• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long Posts
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no HIERARCHY of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
    • 167 CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Safety Acronyms
    • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
    • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
    • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
    • Safety Slogans List
    • Road Safety Slogans
    • How to write your own safety slogans
    • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
    • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
    • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
    • Safety Slogans for Work
You are here: Home / Robert Long / Echo Chambers and Thinking About Risk

Echo Chambers and Thinking About Risk

November 21, 2021 by Dr Rob Long Leave a Comment

Echo Chambers and Thinking About Risk

imageOne of the greatest challenges for the any industry is introspection, gazing into its own belly button hoping to find something new. We could call this ‘fortress mentality’, the building of boundaries too difficult to break down.

It seems that anytime the fortress wants to know something it doesn’t seek expertise outside of itself (across the disciplines) but rather seeks a source that is safe for the fortress. When the fortress seeks to explain something outside of itself it always goes to a source that accepts the validity of its own assumptions and no others. The temptation to move outside of established boundaries or questioning traditional boundaries is politicized as a threat to the fortress.

The challenge for any fortress seeking a future is Transdisciplinarity.

Transdisciplinarity represents a disposition that accepts sources and knowledge outside of one’s own discipline. I have written about Transdisciplinarity before:

  •  https://safetyrisk.net/the-value-of-transdisciplinary-inquiry-in-a-crisis/
  •  https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-safety/
  •  https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-thinking-in-risk-and-safety/
  •  https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinarity-and-worldviews-in-risk/

The notion of ‘Transdisciplinarity’ was first coined by Nicolescu and should not be confused with multi-disciplinarity.

  • Nicolescu, B.,2002. Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity. Albany: SUNY Press.
  • Nicolescu, B. (ed.), 2008. Transdisciplinarity. Theory and Practice. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Some other good sources on Transdisciplinarity include:

  • Brown, V., Harris, J., and Waltner-Toews, D., (2019) Independent Thinking in an Uncertain World, A Mind of One’s Own. Earthscan. London.
  • Brown, V., and Harris, J., (2014) The Human Capacity for Transformational Change, harnessing the collective mind. Earthscan. London.
  • Nardi, B., and O’Day, V., (1999) Information Ecologies. MIT Press, London.
  • Sommerville, M., and Rapport, D., (eds.) (2000) Transdisciplinarity: reCreating Integrated Knowledge. EOSS, Oxford.

The idea of Transdisciplinarity emerged out of the challenge of ‘wicked problems’. Wicked problems are paradoxical problems that have no solution, are intractable and the more one tries to solve them from mono or multi-disciplines, the more the problem is amplified. You can read more about wicked problems here:

  •  http://www.enablingchange.com.au/wickedproblems.pdf
  •  https://www.sympoetic.net/Managing_Complexity/complexity_files
  •  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14494035.2017.1361633
  •  https://www.nagc.org/sites/default/files/Advocacy/2018March/conklin_wicked%20problems.pdf
  •  https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1511778/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Wicked problems are exacerbated by social complexity and cannot be tackled by mono-disciplinary approaches or attempts at ‘fixing’. Wicked problems are most often exacerbated by simplistic approaches to knowledge. Wicked problems are best tackled by Transdisciplinarity, movement across all disciplines in a holistic integrated method, even methods you don’t understand. Such movement demands trust and faith.

Transdisciplinarity is about holism, seeking knowledge beyond disciplines. Transdisciplinarity seeks an integration in knowing where all disciplines are equally accepted, validated and listened to, including disciplines one might reject such as: metaphysics, theology, religion, semiotics, poetics etc. Hierarchies in disciplines and theories of knowing are antithetical to tackling wicked problems.

There is nothing less educative than fortress thinking, creating an echo chamber to circulate and confirm accepted political discourse.

Risk and safety are a wicked problem. Risk and safety are intractable, unsolvable and paradoxical. There is nothing less enlivening, envisioning, educative or invigorating than turning safety into an echo chamber.

Unfortunately, the safety industry is framed by zero ideology, zero mysticism (https://safetyrisk.net/the-spirit-of-zero/ ) and zero globalism (https://visionzero.global/videos ) thus creating a huge temptation to build a fortress and think within the circulation of an echo chamber. Transdisciplinarity demands tolerance, Zero demands intolerance.

Haidt and Lukianoff (2019) called the process of being closed and insular as ‘coddling’, stating that such a mindset leads to ‘safetyism’. Amalberti called it ‘hyper-safety’, the seeking of impossibility against the realities of fallibility. Taleb (Antifragility) demonstrates that seeking hyper-safety leads to fragility. Heightened fragility is the outcome of building a fortress or echo chamber. Safetyism leads to greater fragility and increased risk.

To develop resilience in tackling risk one needs to resist the echo chamber and maintain critical questions that don’t allow a mono-disciplinary worldview to become a politicized, insular fortress. This means stepping outside of the security of one’s comfortable discipline and seeking learning beyond the disciplinary fortress. I find it absurd that Safety thinks it can enter into disciplines it knows nothing about and feed its ignorance to the safety masses that desire an echo chamber. It seems the best learning about persons, risk, learning, decision making and helping come from safety engineers!

As much as one might like safety podcasts, safety Linkedin, safety books, safety conferences and safety perspectives one should equally step outside of such comfort and embrace ‘differance’ (Deleuze, Derrida) found in Transdisciplinary sources that are not ‘safe’.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Culture Silences in Safety Symbolism - May 19, 2022
  • Culture Silences in Safety Mythology - May 16, 2022
  • The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes - May 14, 2022
  • Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety - May 12, 2022
  • Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety - May 9, 2022
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Wicked Problems Tagged With: anti-fragility, hypersafety, safetyism, transdisciplinarity

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 24,005,028 Visitors

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,419 other subscribers

NEW! Free Download

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Roel on Free Workplace Health and Safety Downloads
  • Rob Long on Safety Silences – Video Series
  • BRENT R CHARLTON on Safety Silences – Video Series
  • Rob Long on Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety
  • Rob Long on Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • simon cassin on Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • Rob Long on The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Aneta Parker on The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Rob Long on How to Tackle Risk You Can’t See
  • Andrew Thornhill on How to Tackle Risk You Can’t See

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Featured Downloads

  • Due-Diligence-Workshop-Nov-2018.pdf (748 downloads)
  • EPS Procedure (514 downloads)
  • Safety Moments - General Collection (8286 downloads)
  • Linz Workshop-17_18-Jan.pdf (1585 downloads)
  • Low-Bridges.pps (3234 downloads)
  • WHO Risk Assessment (1020 downloads)
  • Training-and-Development-Needs-of-OHS-Personnel-23.docx (3893 downloads)
  • Effective-Safety-Management-Systems.docx (6504 downloads)
  • Electrical Equipment Risk Assessment (2034 downloads)
  • CLLR-SPoR-Unit1.pdf (1474 downloads)
  • violence_checklist.pdf (2126 downloads)
  • Guidance-FOR-the-beginning-OHS-professiona1.docx (1684 downloads)
  • Amusement Devices Risk Assessment (2304 downloads)
  • Manual Handling Risk Assessment Form (1380 downloads)
  • OHS-Policies-and-Procedures-Manual.doc (7670 downloads)

Recent Posts

  • Culture Silences in Safety Symbolism
  • Culture Silences in Safety Mythology
  • The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety
  • Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • How to Tackle Risk You Can’t See
  • Study Reveals an Unexpected Side Effect of Traffic Safety Messages
  • Human Factors is Never About Humans
  • Where to Start in Humanising Leadership in Risk
  • Humanising Leadership in Risk, Shifting the Focus from Objects to Persons

What is Psychological Safety at Work?

Footer

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,419 other subscribers

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • After the goldrush
    • The Internationale
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • Psychological Core Stability for Wellbeing in Workers Comp
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • In it for The Long Haul – Making the most of the FIFO Lifestyle
    • Who is Responsible for This?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • Safety Culture–Hudson’s Model
    • Culture – Edgar Schein
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Professional Conferences Are A Sleazy Con
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
  • Admin
    • Study Reveals an Unexpected Side Effect of Traffic Safety Messages
    • Humanising Leadership in Risk, Shifting the Focus from Objects to Persons
  • Dr Rob Long
    • Culture Silences in Safety Symbolism
    • Culture Silences in Safety Mythology
  • Rob Sams
    • The Learning (and unlearning) that Revealed my Vocation
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
  • Barry Spud
    • Things To Consider When Developing And Designing Your Company SWMS
    • Bad Safety Photos
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Simon Cassin
    • Safety values, ideas, behaviours and clothes
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

Most commented on

The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser

Forecasting Safety

The Banned Objects Index – A New Development in Safety Culture

Dumbs for Safety

The Real Barriers to Safety

Safety as Faith Healing

Who Said We Don’t Need Systems?

Why Safety Controls Don’t Always Work

How to use signs, symbols and text effectively in communicating about risk

Safety Should NOT Be About Safety

FEATURED POSTS

Abduction in Risk and Safety

10 Reasons Why Safety Can Never Make You Happy

And the Dirty Word is – Fallibility!

Risk, Safety and Fundamental Attribution Error

How was your break?

Safety – Just a Few Bad Apples

There’s a Hole in Your Investigation.

Innocence and Justice in Safety

Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple

STEM Safety in Drag

Predictably Arational, Safety as a Superstition

The Challenges for Organisations in Dealing with Mental Health

Embracing Diversity & Critical Thinking to Help us ‘Create’?

The Sacred Bra Tree

The Bias of Method Design in Risk

The Great Heinrich Hoax

3 Things I learned about Safety from Buddhism

We Are Such Experts….

Numerology and Psychic Numbing

The Social Psychology of Risk Handbook, i-thou

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,419 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

 

How To Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer

 

 

How to Make your own Covid-19 Face Mask

 

Covid-19 Returning To Work Safety, Transitioning, Start Up And Re Entry Plans

 

How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?

imageOne of the benefits of the Covid-19 epidemic is a total rethink about how we live and work (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-28/coronavirus-could-reshape-how-australians-work-forever/12097124 ).

Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging

One of the fascinating things about the Coronavirus pandemic is watching Safety morph into epidemiology expertise. I would like a dollar for every flyer, presentation, podcast, powerpoint, checklist template, toolbox talk and poster set that had jumped into my inbox… Read the rest

The Stress of Stasis

One of the challenging things about the Coronavirus crisis is stasis. For those without work and confined to home, for those in self-isolation, it’s like life is frozen in time. ‘Stay at home’ is the mantra. The trouble is, in… Read the rest

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.