Safety is NOT at the top of some hierarchy of concocted values made up by Safety. Safety has no right to over-ride the rights of others or their culture just because it loves to claim such power. Yet, this is the nonsense that the likes of Hopkins suggest (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-gives-me-the-right-to-over-ride-your-rite/).
Safety is not the number 1 priority. People don’t live their lives in order to be safe. Safety is neither a value nor a virtue. Safety is a temporary outcome at best.
If you make safety ‘first’ in how you see the world, then safety is made religious. We see this in all the propaganda of Safety. This is how Safety makes Christmas about the fear of harm (https://safetyrisk.net/be-very-afraid-at-christmas-festive-fear-is-here/).
When people in safety declare that they are safety or safety is their life (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-is-not-your-life/ ), you are witnessing cultic safety.
The beginning of understanding the challenges of risk is NOT making safety first.
The key to being balanced in the safety industry is keeping perspective on competing virtues and values that fill life and being. Having a clear ontology and well worked out moral philosophy is essential to keeping perspective in how one tackles risk.
Declaring a slogan like ‘blame fixes nothing’ a ‘principle’ is a great example of how Safety declares an absolute to the exclusion of vital competing virtues and values. This kind of stuff is usually promoted without a clearly declared ethic or any sense of moral philosophy. This is what happens when safety is made a lens to view the world. This is why a Transdisciplinary approach to risk is essential for balance that puts safety in perspective with all of life.
Making things safe is not a virtue if one demonises persons and their autonomy in the process of trying to achieve ‘zero harm’. Zero is just another cultic absolute that believes its own religious ideology (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/). Any declared absolute like ‘blame fixes nothing’ is just like zero and positions life in binary black and white fundamentalism. This is what cults do. We see this in the paternalism of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life with a hidden methodology that attracts Incels to his authoritarian rhetoric. There is nothing virtuous to find in Peterson’s ‘rules’ as they end up facilitating a cult of hate.
Being successful in safety or claiming to be morally ‘right’ doesn’t make an act virtuous.
This is why when Safety aims for perfection, it usually brutalises people in the process. All absolutes, authoritarianism and perfections work this way. We see this in all forms of idealism.
Without a consideration of Socialitie in a method to tackle risk, one might achieve one’s objective (safety) but at the psychosocial harm to community, persons and relationships.
One thing is for sure, if you want to know about virtue ethics or what is Beyond Virtue Ethics, the last place to go researching is safety.
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
- Upside Down Safety and Red Pen Safety Non-Leadership - April 26, 2025
- All You Love is Need - April 26, 2025
- How to Make Safety Culture Myths True - April 26, 2025
- Building Belief and Networks of Belief in Safety - April 23, 2025
- The Harm You Cannot See - April 19, 2025
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