KamiKaze Safety and The Breath of God

I was chatting with a young person the other day and they brought a drink with them. I normally don’t read the text on cans of drink but was struck by what I read on this can. You can see the can in Figure 1. Breath of God

Figure 1. Breath of God

Wow, so I drink this energy drink that is packed with caffeine and bucket loads of carcinogenic additives and I will get the ‘breath of god’! and the drink is called KamiKaze. Yep, kill yourself on this s*#t baby. Apparently, this stuff sells like hotcakes. The marketing of energy is big business.

How is this any different than marketing in safety? Not much.

Complete this checklist ritual and thou shalt be saved. Sound familiar?

‘Safety saves!’ Sound familiar.

‘Safety is a choice you make!’ Sound familiar!

‘’Blame fixes nothing!’ Sound familiar?

This is how slogans work, their rhythms dance in our minds as if some truth or principle is being spoken when in reality, its mythology and marketing.

Nothing written on this can of drink is true or real, except for the mandatory ‘active ingredients’ listed in font 1, nearly unreadable. Ah yes, get your ‘slushy madness’ here! Figure 2. Slushy Madness.

Figure 2. Slushy Madness.

In SPoR, we help people learn how to deconstruct nonsense text (eg. beyond zero), meaningless slogans (eg. blame fixes nothing) and mis-truth (eg. slogans are principles). We help do this with a simple tool that helps deconstruct the text and semiotics to which we are exposed. See Figure 3. Critical Political Questions

Figure 3. Critical Political Questions

It’s not hard to do. It should be pretty easy to cut through marketing as greed and spin. Just stop being a sponge for the marketing of lots of safety stuff.

And, BTW, much of this stuff doesn’t help with legal liability. If something goes wrong, reciting 5 HOP slogans won’t help you in court. Without a methodology and method, a bunch of slogans is meaningless in the face of a disaster.

I’m sure a magistrate or coroner would love to hear the sound of ‘punk rock safety’.

How fascinating, now the Safety Innovation Science Lab has ‘drifted’ into the theology of atonement, grace, repentance and confession and, the morality of zero. There’s nothing like taking in the ‘breath of god’ in safety. What could we call that? KamiKaze Safety?

If however, you are interested in learning a practical and positive methodology and method for tackling risk, you can learn about it here: https://cllr.com.au/elearning/

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Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

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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.