The research on humans as enactive embodied persons is overwhelming (https://safetyrisk.net/essential-readings-neuroscience-and-the-whole-person/). This is why brain-centrism, brain-safety and brain-as-computer metaphors in safety are non-sense. The research shows that none of this is connected to reality and denies the nature of the whole body as Mind.
Similarly, habits are NOT just a cognition but are rather a complex collection of inter-bodily affectivities (https://www.academia.edu/30974462/Intercorporeality_and_Interaffectivity). There is no such things as ‘habit-safe’ based on a brain-centric worldview. Just look at any discourse about habits in safety and see if there is any discussion of: heuristics, embodiment, enactivity, interconnectivity, resonance, the unconscious or collective unconscious? Of course, there isn’t.
Recent research demonstrates that even sounds in our sleeping unconscious, affect out heart (https://neurosciencenews.com/auditory-stimuli-sleep-25652/). Many researchers call our gut ‘the second brain’. The foundation of decision making is not centred in the brain. A ‘change of heart’ is much more than just a metaphor, just as ‘heart-ache’ is an emotional reality.
Unfortunately, the safety world ignores the embodiment question and continues to understand accidents and events as the result of inerrant thinking. The metaphor of the brain-as-computer is just one more safety myth that keeps the industry from understanding how humans make decisions.
Ungar’s book (Ungar, M., (2012) The Social Ecology of Resilience, A Handbook of Theory and Practice) demonstrates that an engineering-mechanistic understanding of the human person disables a healthy approach to risk, learning and resilience. Resilience is not about ‘re-wiring the brain’ or ‘brain fitness’ but rather the strength of social communities to support and sustain each other.
So, when risk goes wrong in safety what usually happens? Undertake a faux investigation (usually some linear populist package that doesn’t work), confirmation bias overload, doubling of paperwork, expanding regulation and more training to improve cognition, all based on the idea that decision making is about rational thinking. Then when the next accident happens there is more double-down, vigilance and repetition but never any questioning of the flaws in any safety-worldview. Our worldview can’t be wrong, so let’s just do more of the same but change our slogans. I know, let’s just get the same old systems but look at them differently!
Could it possibly be that the worldview needs to be questioned? Could it possibly be that the worldview is the problem, not the process? Could it be that another worldview might provide some insight and help to this recurring issue? Could it be that perhaps the 1B3M view could help better understand events and risk? Are there other worldviews other than the safety worldview? (https://safetyrisk.net/can-there-be-other-valid-worldviews-than-safety/). Are there worldviews/disciplines other than engineering and behaviourism that might offer something better? (https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinarity-and-worldviews-in-risk/)
Of course not! Back to the rinse and spin cycle packed with a concert, lights, changed branding, a T-shirt and better dancing. And for God sake, let’s not let research get in the way of a good mantra. Didn’t you know; ‘safety is a choice you make’ and let’s be 1% safer!
Perhaps a few questions might help:
- Isn’t it about time we stopped manufacturing a worldview to fit the way Safety sees the world? (https://safetyrisk.net/manufacturing-a-worldview-to-fit-safety/).
- Isn’t it about time Safety dropped the nonsense metaphor that privileges the brain over the body?
- Isn’t it about time that Safety realised that there can be no innovation or discovery within the same worldview?
- Could the enactive embodied worldview offer something better in tackling risk? And the big question:
- What is the human body for? Is it just the carrier for a brain?
You can read about a different worldview towards risk here:
- https://safetyrisk.net/embodied-enactivity-in-safety/
- https://safetyrisk.net/embodied-learning-in-risk/
- https://safetyrisk.net/embodied-being-as-foundational-to-culture-and-risk/
If you want to read a case study about how a change in worldview works inside a global organisation then you can free download It Works! and read about how this worldview generates new, alternative and practical methods (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/) that work.
It’s no wonder that we call a reorientation in life a ‘change of heart’.
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
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- Defining Safety by the Absence of Accidents, Injury and Harm - October 9, 2024
- Visual and Verbal Mapping of Risk in SPoR - October 7, 2024
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