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

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • 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 2023
      • 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
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • 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
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • 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
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL 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!
  • THEMES
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Covid-19 / Freedom in Necessity

Freedom in Necessity

October 2, 2020 by Dr Rob Long 6 Comments

Freedom in Necessity

fallibleThe characteristics of fallibility are the benefits of fallibility. Unless humans are fallible we can never know the delights of love, forgiveness, relationship, passion, care, helping or learning. The quest for immutability, to be robotic and without error is delusional mythology.

The equivalent of slavery is alienation, from oneself and from being a human person. The quest to be superhuman is its own form of alienation. Alienation means to be possessed externally by something other than oneself. It also means being self-alienated other than oneself, one becomes transformed into something one is not intended to be. This is the essence of a delusion and why an ethic of personhood is essential to understanding an ethic of risk and a discussion of freedoms.

Therefore, any seeking of the absolute against fallibility will be self-alienating as such desires and trajectories are unattainable and seek to make human persons something they are not. Alienation is a social, physical, economic and political phenomenon.

It’s so entertaining watching kids in their imaginations play superhero around the backyard. It’s so much fun to dress in a cape and hold your hands out imagining flying like a superhero. Great to jump off things and crush the imaginary evils on the ground. It all goes well until one is brought back to reality and breaks a collar-bone or cuts a leg.

One of the mythical beliefs that is shattered by Covid19 is that humans should be the masters of their own lives, that others and governments must not have a right to override my individual autonomy, as if we had any.

The myth of autonomy is the denial of fallibility (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/). In SPoR freedom is not defined as autonomy, there can be no autonomy in a social understanding of personhood and community.

The very purpose of Safety Management Systems is to limit autonomy and it’s in SMS that we understand the realities and limits of autonomy. There is a certain freedom in knowing the limits to autonomy. Sartre spoke about it years ago (https://psyche.co/ideas/in-a-pandemic-we-learn-again-what-sartre-meant-by-being-free).

Often when people speak about ‘freedom’ they actually mean complete autonomy and such is not possible in fallibility. In a similar way absolute zero is unattainable (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/for-the-love-of-zero-free-download/). Freedom from necessity is not possible in fallibility either individually, socially or in systems. So, when we speak of freedom we need to be clear in what we mean and how it is defined (https://safetyrisk.net/the-fear-of-freedom-in-safety/ ). The word ‘freedom’ itself is often evocative and yet we rarely define what we mean.

The purpose of many systems often start in serving people but in time they become ends in themselves so that people serve them, systems take on a life of their own (an archetype). When humans are made just a ‘factor’ in a system (Human Factors) and the system alienates us from ourselves as fallible persons then we become dehumanized by the very system we created and need to change it. Dehumanisation is a process whereby people are de-personized by a system that robs them of their fallibility. This is what the language of zero proposes. In SPoR there is a juggle in freedoms – a dialectic, people will always be harmed. In SPoR we are not freed from regulation but from alienation. This is why in the SPoR Handbook (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/the-social-psychology-of-risk-handbook/) dedicates so much space and energy to a definition of personhood and community (pp.30ff). (Neither of these are discussed in the AIHS Bok on Ethics)

Autonomy is not an inherent need. The needs of security, safety, conformity, adaptation, happiness, economy of effort and so on are constant and profound. We are all prepared to accept these things within the limits of how we define freedom. We are all prepared to sacrifice autonomy for the satisfaction of necessities. This is how we understand Due Diligence and the necessities of the law and regulation.

There are several elephants in the room if one wants to articulate an ethic of freedom within an Ethic of Safety. The most important necessities in understanding fallibility are the nature of personhood and power. (Neither of these discussed in the AIHS BoK on Ethics). Without an discussion of how Power is in dialectic with Personhood one will define freedom as autonomy and will most likely have little idea about the meaning of ethics. This is why the AIHS BoK on Ethics advises that safety overrides individual privacy and confidentiality, because it has no ethic of risk. The recognition of fallibility is the first act of freedom and what determines if one is being dehumanized.

  • 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)

  • Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk - February 4, 2023
  • Free Program on Due Diligence - February 4, 2023
  • Not Just Another ‘Hazard’ - February 3, 2023
  • Work-Life and Risk, Feminine Perspectives - February 3, 2023
  • How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety - February 2, 2023
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 a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Covid-19, Ethics, Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: AIHS BoK on Ethics, ethic of risk, fallibility, safety management system

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rob Long says

    October 5, 2020 at 6:42 AM

    Bernard, will post you a copy of my next book in draft for comment, on vision. I don’t think any of the conservative organizations have vision, most vision comes from outside of stasis.

    Reply
  2. bernardcorden says

    October 4, 2020 at 6:22 PM

    Several others have recently sprung to mind which include:

    a) Alcoa Wagerup
    b) Port Kembla copper smelter
    c) PFAS contamination
    d) CFA Fiskville
    e) Magellan Metals and Esperance Port Authority
    f) Rio Tinto Bougainville
    g) Rio Tinto Juukan Gorge
    h) BHP Ok Tedi
    i) St Barbara Gold Ridge Solomon Islands

    It’s a pretty impressive rap sheet and well worth an order of chivalry or at least an honorary life membership of the Business Council of Australia or Centre for Independent Studies.

    Despite its vision, the prolonged silence from the AIHS on many of these issues is embarrassing.

    Reply
  3. Rob Long says

    October 4, 2020 at 5:56 PM

    It’s a shut shop all set like a fortress so that nothing can change and everything stays the same. It’s how power in zero works.

    Reply
  4. bernardcorden says

    October 4, 2020 at 3:42 PM

    The entire AIHS OHS BoK is merely an architecture of oppression and its advocates are trying to ensure the OHS certification program, which is underpinned by OHS BoK becomes a statutory requirement.

    It is a furtive attempt to generate a lucrative revenue stream after its funding was brutally slashed by successive neoliberal governments, which included the ALP administrations under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

    Harmonisation and the COAG intergovernmental agreement under Kevin Rudd merely attenuated the standard of duty of care and provided corporate Australia with a malevolent freedom to harm, viz:

    a) Resurgence of black lung
    b) Asbestosis and mesothelioma
    c) Silicosis
    d) Home insulation program
    e) RAAF Amberley deseal/reseal
    f) HMAS Westralia
    g) Queensland mining fatalities
    h) Anglo Coal Grosvenor disaster
    i) Seasonal Workers Program and Pacific Labour Mobility Scheme
    j) JobActive Program and Work for the Dole
    k) Pathway to Work Program
    l) Reducing NICNAS chemical registration requirements
    m) The McJob gig economy and franchising (7-Eleven and Domino’s Pizza and RFG)
    n) Tip Top delivery drivers

    There are many, many more examples and it is worth asking what has our peak safety body with its cohorts of certified sycophants, state regulatory authorities, Safe Work Australia, the ACTU and the ALP been doing over the past two decades besides sanctioning the provision of an enabling structure and legislative framework.

    The AIHS, the NSCA, the ACTU and the ALP have absolutely no integrity whatsoever.

    Reply
  5. Rob Long says

    October 4, 2020 at 10:22 AM

    Thanks Bernard.
    For those trying to work out what to read next to be educated in the process of tackling risk here is a hint:
    1. Build a bibliography from the references in the AIHS BoK (and there are not that many) and make sure you don’t read them. There is nothing there for much edification. You would get more from reading Fromm’s first page than that lot combined.
    2. Another guiding hint might be to look at the association’s non-vision statements and decide to do the opposite and that might help gain some vision of what to do next and where to go in tackling risk. There is no vision in more of the same.
    Perhaps read something by Lakoff and Johnson who turn on its head all of the Behaviourist, Scientist-Positivist and Cognitivist mythology that dominate the safetyosphere:
    – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26361108_Philosophy_in_the_Flesh_The_Embodied_Mind_and_Its_Challenge_to_Western_Thought
    – https://nyshalong.com/public/archive/20150131/20150131_ref.pdf
    These two publications tear to sheds most of the assumptions Safety makes about cognition and learning and the mythology attached to such assumptions.
    Just imagine if Safety could kick its addictions to STEM/Zero and move into a dialectic with something imaginative, creative and envisionary?

    Reply
  6. bernardcorden says

    October 4, 2020 at 8:39 AM

    What a fascinating post, which led me onto Freedom from and Freedom to and reading a lot of Erich Fromm and Angela Davies until the early hours.

    I don’t see either of their names in the OHS BoK

    Reply

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

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 7,500 other subscribers

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk

Not Just Another ‘Hazard’

Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?

How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety

ISO 45003 and What it Cannot Do

The KISS of Death in Safety

Behavioural Safety is NOT a Foundation for Tackling Psychosocial and Mental Health

The Worst Approach to Psychosocial Problems is an Attitude of ‘Fixing’

The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health

Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Rob long on How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Matt Thorne on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Hurak Learning on How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Rob Long on An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Paul Gentles on An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Brent Charlton on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Rob Long on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Brian Edwin Darlington on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Brian on The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Jaise on The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Rob Long on Posture Myths and Holistic Ergonomics
  • Linda McKendry on Posture Myths and Holistic Ergonomics
  • Rob long on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Matt Thorne on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • Proving Safety
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • NATIONAL SAFETY DAY/WEEK IN INDIA 2023
  • Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • Safety Acronyms

Recent Posts

  • Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk
  • Free Program on Due Diligence
  • Not Just Another ‘Hazard’
  • Work-Life and Risk, Feminine Perspectives
  • Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Free Download – Real Risk – New Book by Dr Robert Long
  • Proving Safety
  • ISO 45003 and What it Cannot Do
  • Harming People in the Name of Good
  • An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Risk and Safety Maturity
  • The KISS of Death in Safety
  • SPoR, Metanoia and a Podcast on Change with Nippin Anand
  • Behavioural Safety is NOT a Foundation for Tackling Psychosocial and Mental Health
  • The Worst Approach to Psychosocial Problems is an Attitude of ‘Fixing’
  • SPoR Comes to Vienna June 2023
  • The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • The Visionary Imagination – Louisa Lawson
  • Heaven ‘n Hell and the Safety Religion
  • Confirmity in Conformity
  • Numerology and Psychic Numbing
  • Thinking of Mortality
  • Safety is the Wrong Anchor
  • Foresight Blindness, Hindsight Bias and Risk
  • Getting the Balance Right in Tackling Risk
  • What is SPoR?
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Afraid to Let Go of What Doesn’t Work in Safety
  • When You Don’t Know What to do in Safety, Have Another Blitz!!!
  • Gloves and Glasses Compliance
  • A Case of Desensitisation – What Would You Do?
  • How to Leave the Safety Industry
  • The Mythic Symbology of Safety
  • Dark Waters, The True Story of DuPont and Zero
  • 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Am I stupid? I didn’t think of that…
  • Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Culture as a Wicked Problem, for Safety
  • Safety Leadership Training
  • Cultural Orientation in Risk
  • The Stanford Experiment and The Social Psychology of Risk
  • Objectivity, Audits and Attribution When Calculating Risk
  • Records of safety activities: evidence of safety or non-compliance?
  • Zero, The Seeking of Infinity
  • Safety Leadership Essentials
  • What Can Indiana Jones Tell Us About Culture

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

7 Incredible Ways To Diagnose Risk More Effectively

We can Value Safety but Safety is not a Value

Free Two Chapter Download and Book Competition

My thoughts during a walk in the Forests in Vienna

Tackling the Reality of Harm

Safetie

Understanding Personality and Risk

The Emperor has no Clothes – Beyond Behaviour-Based Safety

TRIFR Safety Zombies

Knowing When to Break the Rules

Is Safetyism Destroying a Generation?

Just Hangin’ Out…

Rituals in Risk Management – Podcast

Real Risk – Free Download

Transdisciplinarity and Worldviews in Risk

Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety

Trinket Safety

Social Sensemaking Available Now PLUS Free Share and Giveaway

The Disembodied Human and Persons in Safety

The Problem with Zero Harm

Innocence and Justice in Safety

Surfacing – Making the Unconscious Conscious

People Skills Are Not Soft Skills

Anchoring Safety to Objects

Mapping Social Influence Strategies

ACTOR + ACTION + TIME = EVENT

Predictably Arational, Safety as a Superstition

A Parallel Universe in Safety

Third Group Commences the Graduate Program in The Psychology of Risk

Understanding Psychological Terminology

Safety People Don’t ‘Save Lives’

No Gurus, No Stars, No Heroes Needed in Safety

How does collective mindfulness apply to workers compensation?

The Soul of Mental Health

Censorship and Taboos in Safety

Expecting the Unexpected

The Allure of Submission

A Professional Ethic of Risk

Second Student Group Social Psychology of Risk

Safety – Just a Few Bad Apples

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 7,500 other subscribers

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

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY