Don’t fence me in

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle

Underneath the western skies

On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder

Till I see the mountains rise

Cole Porter ¹

The author reminds cohorts of myopic safety proselytes, micturating crusaders and delusional bloggers that this performance by Roy Rogers (FAIHS) and Trigger (ChOHSP) at the recent Zero Vision National Safety Congress (ZVNSC) in the Corporate Republic of Australia (CRA) was recorded before the enforcement of mandatory physical or social distancing (SD) requirements.

Statutory safety legislation across Australia merely codifies the duty of care principles of common law. Its primary object is to provide for a balanced and nationally consistent framework to secure the health and safety of people at work. Subordinate regulations prescribe requirements that support specific duties via a preventive, systematic and consultative risk management approach. This has generated implementation of occupational health and safety management systems based on the Deming quality management cycle throughout most industrial and commercial sectors. It is merely a clockwork tool and an extension of the scientific method and Taylorism. Indeed, Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn provide extensive discussion on the objectivity of science and Wilhelm Reich once proclaimed…….Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena. ^2–14

The Deming philosophy achieved widespread acclaim throughout Japan in the aftermath of the second world war. Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo and the nuclear holocaust delivered by Enola Gay and Bockscar obliterated obsolete modes of production and an innovative and more intense entrepreneurial Kondratiev wave of capitalism with its boom and bust cycle of creative destruction beckoned. This initially transpired via a series of lectures at the Hakone convention centre in Tokyo some five years later. It involved extensive discussion on statistical process control and Walter Shewhart’s militaristic architecture of oppression. More recent developments include a relentless pursuit of perfection via business improvement techniques such as Six Sigma and Operational Excellence although…..The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection. ^15–25

This is exacerbated by a hegemonic sandstorm with an overwhelming animosity towards social democracy and any skerrick of collectivism. More than five decades of neoliberal authoritarianism with its ruthless pursuit of wealth and power has created a solipsistic culture of cruelty in a chthonic environment of fleeting shadows and covert lawlessness. Towards the end of the second world war prisoners in work or death camps were eventually liberated. However, many vulnerable migrants and most indigenous youths will often attest that you don’t have to be in jail to feel incarcerated. Indeed, the protean elements of totalitarianism have merely mutated or recrystallised and are evident throughout countless workplaces in most western democracies. It is typically disguised by an alabaster exterior of perfection or veneer of respectability, which conceals a festering crypt of maladaptive anxiety and simmering discontent. In a hot desk environment under suprasurveillance indentured servants or peons with crippling mortgages and escalating household debt are unable to speak the truth to power. An obedience to the orthodoxy prevails, which crushes dissent and extirpates critical thinking or discernment via paychecks for silence……It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. ^26–35

Deming’s philosophy had a remarkable impact on the Japanese industrial and commercial sectors and reinvigorated a shattered economy following its devastation after the second world war. However Newtonian physics via its third law of motion demonstrates every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Almost seven decades later an architecture of oppression with a relentless pursuit of perfection may have antagonistic socioeconomic impacts and contribute to several other much less glamorous and often unheralded statistics. Japan is experiencing crippling debt to the tune of US$ 9 trillion, which is expected to reach almost 250% of its gross domestic product. It also has an unenviable and disturbing suicide rate and the powerful lyrics from Robert Fletcher and Cole Porter resonate, especially amidst a global climate of state imposed incarceration: ^36–43

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above

Don’t fence me in

Let me ride in the wide open country that I love

Don’t fence me in

Let me be by myself in the evening breeze

And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees

Send me off forever, but I ask you please

Don’t fence me in

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