Originally posted on May 23, 2021 @ 10:25 AM
Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing
As much as STEM thinking knows anything about language, what it doesn’t know is that language is mostly NOT descriptive. Most of the time when humans seek to communicate they use language that is NOT descriptive but figurative. We most often seek to describe experience and knowledge by what something is not! This is the beauty of metaphor. This is wonderfully explained by Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors We Live By ).
There is a neat little video that explains it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYcQcwUfo8c
At a philosophical level this has huge implications for how we understand language and communication in risk. Metaphor is embodied in all we say and do as people struggle to express existential being to each other. Our choice of metaphor most often shows our underlying ethic/values. So much of what we experience cannot be described so we tell people what it is like, through metaphor, by what it is not. Metaphor matters (https://safetyrisk.net/why-metaphors-matter-in-risk/ ) when it comes to risk because it sets the ethic for practice.
Let’s take one example: ‘People are not problems to control but resources to harness’. Can you see the three metaphors in this aphorism? In reality, persons are neither ‘problems’ or ‘resources’ yet are posed metaphorically as such and the idea of a harness is a metaphor of control. So, the expression states: that people are not to be controlled but to be controlled.
The last thing I want is for someone to ‘harness’ me. The harness stands in juxtaposition to: inspiration, innovation, invention, creativity and freedom of will. Of course, the image of a harness is a well-known semiotic that goes back millennia. The purpose of a harness is to control another or thing. The foundation of this expression is the metaphor of control. Even if one moves the metaphor away from horses and dogs, when a human wears a harness the purpose is control. However, if one is seeking to be descriptive and searches for the word ‘harness’ in a dictionary, it’s all about wearing fittings to control. So, here we have it Safety, the foundational ethic of safety is control.
Let’s look (metaphor) another example: ‘perception is like a camera’. Of course, the human eye is nothing like a camera but we use such a metaphor to try to explain perception, by what it is NOT like. The reality is, the choice of such a metaphor doesn’t come close to explaining how the human eye or the psychology of perception work (https://safetyrisk.net/visual-perception-and-the-camera-metaphor/ ). Similarly, the use of a computer metaphor to try to explain the way the human brain works. Both metaphors are completely misleading and seek to explain the mysteries of human perception and don’t do it very well. One will never tackle risk well if such metaphors govern your thinking about risk and human judgement and decision making. The reductionist discourse that governs the safety world is one of its enduring problems.
I demonstrate much of this discourse in my book Envisioning Risk, Seeing, Vision and Meaning in Risk (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/envisioning-risk-seeing-vision-and-meaning-in-risk/ ).
So, let’s explore a few more metaphors, for example: golden rules. One of the darlings of zero vision is the elevation (metaphor) of golden (metaphor) rules (https://visionzero.global/videos ). Gold has been used as a metaphor for millennia and points to what is superlative in human experience. Gold symbolizes what is purest, most excellent, most noble, most enduring, most sought after, most ideal and most valued in terms of human aspirations, human behaviour and human relationships. Of course, there is nothing rare or precious about the zero vision ‘golden rules’, all are just basic fundamentals in tackling risk. However, the metaphor/symbol of ‘golden’ makes one think there is something being presented here that is out of the ordinary. Wouldn’t safety be much better served if tackling risk as presented as an ordinary everyday activity?
We now know of other metals more valuable than gold, but gold is historically the metaphor imagined with the most value. Gold is also associated with spiritual illumination, perfection and incorruptibility, hence why Zero in safety is articulated in religious language and discourse. Both gold and zero are understood as timeless, changeless, immortal and eternal. This is how the word ‘gold’ has been used poetically throughout millennia. Gold and zero are used as a metaphorical measure of infinity. We no longer use the ‘gold standard’ as a measure economically but we continue to use it metaphorically as a measure of perfection. Such is also the use of zero.
Some even name their delivery of safety as ‘gold standard’ (https://www.goldstandardsafetyinc.com/; https://www.miningreview.com/health-and-safety/bureau-veritas-gold-standard-health-safety/ ). How fascinating to turn to such a metaphor to explain the everyday reality of tacking risk, where there are no heroes, gurus or stars (https://safetyrisk.net/no-gurus-no-stars-no-heroes-needed-in-safety/). Fancy setting oneself up as the ‘gold standard’ in safety. I wonder what happens when some fallible person has an injury?
Why is it that Safety continually seeks to take on these metaphors of perfection?
What good does it serve to set up safety as some process of perfection when fallible people (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/ ) seek to tackle risk in an imperfect world in imperfect systems? When you set up safety under metaphors of perfection the only outcome can be blame and brutalism.
On the other hand, how on earth (metaphor) does the destructive brutal culture of a meerkat serve to explain persons tackling risk (https://safetyrisk.net/meerkat-mythology-in-safety/ ). Of course, the meerkat is the perfect symbol of brutalism, the cousin of control and the sister of gold standard.
Now let’s return to the metaphor of the ‘7 Golden Rules’ for zero and see how perfect they are? No-one wears PPE, no-one speaks conversationally (https://safetyrisk.net/conversational-icue/ ), control is paramount, telling is king (metaphor), workers are negligent, blind and stupid, safety is linear and mechanical, safety is about dos and don’ts and, risk is petty.
Perhaps Safety is much better served by everyday metaphors of everyday things, experiences and activities.
Unfortunately, much of the language and metaphor paraded in safety don’t serve it well. The medium of the message says more than the message in most cases (https://safetyrisk.net/the-medium-is-the-message/ ).
Safety needs to pay attention much more to what it communicates unconsciously than what it thinks it communicates consciously.
The Unconscious is far more powerful that we imagine and she determines what is really said about one’s ethic of risk.
Dr Rob Long
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