We all know that wooden spoons make us sick. We also know that black kitchen instruments cause cancer. Except, this and much more is lies. Just more dis-information for the gullible, naïve and non-discerning that are seduced by ‘influencers’, lying presidents and billionaires. If ever we needed more critical thinking it is today.
And, it doesn’t take much to interrogate a message. Just apply a little Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) or critical thinking and dissect the claims made and the source of information. If someone says they are not going to ‘control’ you but ‘harness’ you, they are saying the same thing. There’s nothing different! Look behind the slogans and ask: ‘By what method?’ Look behind the show and performance and ask: ‘Where is the substance?’
We teach how to deconstruct messaging in SPoR with some simple methods and tools, one being the Critical political Questions tool. See below.
This is just one of the many practical and constructive tools we use to help people discern messages few to them. It is a critical tool we use to deconstruct safety messages. We have many methods in SPoR that help people with practical positive and constructive approaches in how to tackle risk (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/).
Just because someone states they are ‘doing something different’, doesn’t mean they are ‘doing something different’. Just look for the methods and don’t be seduced by the slogans. Rhetoric is cheap, substance requires intelligence, a methodology and constructive methods. Just because someone states they are ‘making things great’ doesn’t mean they are making things great.
Just ask, who is the beneficiary of the spin that is being promoted. Just ask where does the money go? Just ask who holds the power and who this message serves and pretty soon you will smell a scam wrapped up in spin, offering promises of methods that don’t exist. Don’t listen to the slick stories and slick podcasters spruiking snake oil. Most of it is just noise, promotion and propaganda offering nothing new and no method.
Most of the time in safety, promises are made for what people want to believe in, not what is real. And after the dust settles, the bank account is emptied and the slick stories are gone, it’s just back to traditional safety and everything is the same.
And, it doesn’t matter whether the person has a business or uses professor before their name, interrogate and deconstruct the language. You will quickly find out that slick marketing and promotion/slogans hold no substance. Much of what is being thrown about is simply Propaganda (https://monoskop.org/images/4/44/Ellul_Jacques_Propaganda_The_Formation_of_Mens_Attitudes.pdf).
We see this often in safety, where people with no expertise in what they are promoting are promoting what they don’t know. Go to the source. Expertise in safety doesn’t make one an ethicist, anthropologist or an expert in culture. We see this with Safety offering stuff in linguistics (https://safetyrisk.net/linguistic-non-intelligence-with-safety-non-experts/), Mental Health (https://safetyrisk.net/if-you-want-to-know-about-mental-health-dont-ask-safety/), ethics (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/) and much more.
It seems the only qualification one needs to promote what one doesn’t know is a post nominal in the safety cult (https://safetyrisk.net/safet%cf%89-and-the-wickedest-man-in-the-world-a-magickal-illusion/).
But watch out for those wooden spoons and black kitchen implements, we would want to have anything other than zero harm.
Dr Rob Long
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