This is the response I often get whenever I offer criticism and offer free constructive alternatives to traditional safety. Rather than actually listen to or read the criticism, and the substance of the criticism, the response is usually name calling. It is interesting that I never receive a call, email or note of enquiry from any seeking to understand another worldview, clearly a worldview that is not understood. Such is the desperate need for Transdisciplinarity in the safety industry. The key to learning is enquiry.
For example: whenever I list research or silences in safety culture (https://safetyrisk.net/if-you-want-to-know-about-culture-dont-ask-safety/) there’s never a question to try and understand the nature of the silences or criticism of them. These were listed in the previous blog on culture:
· Conceptual Metaphor
· Semiotics
· Semiosphere
· Collective Unconscious
· Safety as Archetype
· Meaning-Purpose
· Dialectic (Existentialist)
· Religious knowing, ritual, Semiosis
· Transcendence
· Ethics
· Politics
· Wickedity
· Phenomenology/Being
Can someone in safety please show me any text or work on safety culture that mentions or discusses these? Yet, all of these are essential for an understanding of culture.
Apparently exposing gaps in understanding is ‘safety bashing’. If your worldview doesn’t agree with the dominant safety worldview, you are a ‘safety basher’. When criticism comes to safety from a discipline outside of safety, its ‘safety bashing’.
The reality is, all of the critical thinking applied to the safety industry seeks improvement in how people tackle risk. The same applies for the substantial critical thinking fostered by many in the S2 camp. Most of this criticism seeks to make safety more professional.
There is no learning without critical thinking. There is no learning without risk.
Establishing gaps, examining issues, identifying problems, applying an ethical lens, questioning assumptions, analysing method, naming mechanisms that dehumanise and harm persons – this is apparently ‘Safety bashing’. Then offering alternatives, practical tools for free is ‘Safety bashing’.
What is most amusing in the defence of traditional safety (other than name calling) is no creative practical alternative is offered to the toxicity of zero, excesses of paperwork, the religiosity of safety, dehumanising persons and endless engineering/behaviourist ideology.
Labelling and branding are one of the first steps in anti-learning. Finding a brand to demonise is the first step in blocking enquiry. We see this often in the binary polarisation in social media that fosters so much mis-information (https://safetyrisk.net/what-does-misinformation-do-in-safety/). Once something has been ‘pigeon-holed’ that is not understood, there is no longer any need to listen or learn. This seems the purpose of Linkedin. This is a foundational tool in the maintenance of propaganda and indoctrination, the opposite of education and learning.
For those who do enquire about SPoR, who seek learning, the outcomes are substantial and they work (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety/). It just takes that first movement of enquiry, that first genuine question of asking not telling.
Everything that is offered in SPoR (for free) is positive, practical, constructive and enhances the way persons tackle risk.
You can start your Introduction to SPoR here for free: https://safetyrisk.net/introduction-to-spor-free/ If you do you will soon discover that it will improve the way you tackle risk.
Dr Rob Long
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- Culture and Risk Workshop – Feedback - March 24, 2023
- The Myth of Certainty and Prediction in Risk - March 21, 2023
Wynand says
Rob, by now you should know that I am a huge supporter of your work. I must say, however, that I think you are, in fact, a “Safety” basher, but certainly not a “safety” basher. You often attack the positions, weaknesses and ridiculous philosophies of (as you often call it) “poor olde Safety”. I think it is important for readers to understand the difference between safety and Safety in this context. Please go on “bashing” Safety by exposing errors, while at the same time contributing massively to safety.
Rob Long says
Good pick up Wynand and of course you are right, although the metaphor of violence is not intended for the Archetype either.
Matt Thorne says
Rob it still astounds me that people, as passionate as they may be in disagreeing with you, in very few cases reach out and discuss it. It’s not as if your email is a secret.
Rob Long says
More so, just a simple question of enquiry. What is SPoR about? What do you mean by? What is semiotics? Can we talk about worldviews? Why do you think learning is embodied? Why do you understand culture as the collective unconscious? What is the semiosphere? How does SPoR work? Nup, it seems Safety is most content when old worldviews are consolidated, reified and contrary analysis is demonsised. More engineering and behaviourism, that’s all that’s needed to tackle risk.