Meerkat Safety, Can it Get More Dumb?
In the long tradition of ‘Safety doesn’t know what to do’ we have the latest ‘Shlock’ from Worksafe NZ.
Hot on the heels of Hazardman, Dumb ways to Die, Mums for Safety and sexy safety we now have ‘Meerkat safety’. Hot on the heels of dumb down pickles, Safework NZ has now launched ‘meerkat safety’.
Isn’t it strange this industry that doesn’t know what to do about safety. How weird that the best way to tackle risk is engage a marketing company and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a dumb down idea that will fall over in a few weeks. How strange to have a campaign using meerkats as some entrée to the human understanding of the human unconscious. How strange this industry that doesn’t want to get serious about the human unconscious and decision making. No, let’s tap into our ‘inner meerkat’ and check our gut (https://safetyrisk.net/the-aihs-bok-and-ethics-check-your-gut/) and talk about ‘instinct’ and for god sake, don’t talk about research on the human unconscious.
Of course the concept of ‘sensing something’ is on the same planet as ‘common sense’ and ‘check your gut’. What an amazing projection into the human unconscious from this engineering-behaviourist-science industry that has no clue about how workers make decisions (https://safetyrisk.net/how-workers-really-make-decisions/ ; https://safetyrisk.net/how-do-workers-make-decisions/). And what is this extra-sensory perception? Ah, it’s meerkats running over a computer telling you that some things wrong??? Please can Safety get any more dumb?
I know what the conversation goes like on site. ‘Let’s stop this work, my inner meerkat told me this is risky’ and your boss replies, ‘here’s the EAP number, call a counsellor’. The idea of trusting instinct to make decisions is fraught with huge problems. If you want to get serious about instinct, heuristics, implicit/tacit knowing then start here: https://monoskop.org/File:Polanyi_Michael_The_Tacit_Dimension.pdf . Then when you are finished that one, I have a few hundred more to keep you going. Is this the basis for how Worksafe NZ wants decisions on risk made in the workplace?
Just because this engineering-behaviourist-science industry has no clue about human consciousness doesn’t mean it make sense to develop some crazy attachment to ‘meerkat instinct’ as if ‘gut thinking’ and instinct are the foundation for effective risk decision making or that meerkat instinct is even remotely like human heuristics, which it is not.
Of course, there is no comparison between the instincts of a meerkat and how the human unconscious works. Making such a comparison even if only symbolically, shows that Safety has absolutely no idea of human consciousness. Human sensemaking has absolutely NO correlation to the sensemaking of a meerkat. Fancy thinking that the best way to encourage looking after your mates was to be compared to meerkat instinct.
‘Meerkat’ is the Dutch name for ‘monkey’ but is a mongoose that gathers in packs that brutalise each other often leading to severe injury and death. They are highly aggressive and fiercely competitive in a destructive victimization of any form of weakness of vulnerability in the pack. Vulnerable members of a meerkat pack are rejected and killed as required. They make coalitions so as to acquire dominance over others and eradicate the vulnerable (https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/16393/ScottK.pdf?sequence=4; All clear? Meerkats attend to contextual information in close calls to coordinate vigilance
).
However, be it far from me to discuss how absurd this is but just look ‘Meerkat Safety’ is even trade marked (https://www.lattitudesafety.co.uk/programmes/meerkat-safety-all-for-one-the-meerkat-way/) and you can do a ‘meerkat’ risk review (https://www.lattitudesafety.co.uk/programmes/meerkat-safety-all-for-one-the-meerkat-way/) or you can play the ‘meerkat safety game’ (http://www.meerkatsafety.co.uk/).
It seems when Safety doesn’t know what to do, in the long line of ‘trust Barry Spud’ it continues to do all it can except engage in solid research into how workers make decisions.
Sound like a good model for Safety? You bet, let’s have more ‘Meerkat Safety’ sats Safework NZ. Sounds a perfect semiotic for when a Worksafe NZ Officer comes on site and crucifies you for not wearing glasses. That’s the meerkat way!
Dr Rob Long
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Peter Collins says
Having worked in the Zoo industry it was made very clear to me that attaching human characteristics to animals is a huge no no and should never be attempted.
Charles Tortise says
It is indicative of the concept that has underpinned management since its introduction in the 19th Century as a counter to rail crashes and its development thereafter as a way to achieve efficiency and that is that educated and qualified managers can do the thinking out of context for workers better than the workers themselves who have been characterised as stupid, indifferent and uneducated. The concept of Safety Regulators regulating what is and isn’t safe and punishing bad behaviour to leave only good is ignorant of reality but conforms to the managerial mindset.
Rob Long says
The ruthlessness of the meerkat suits such a management model.
Rob Long says
I have never worked in the zoo industry but already know that comparing social or individual consciousness to animals is the height of stupidity.
It just shows just how dumb Safety is. The research on the nature of consciousness, human unconscious and collective unconscious is overwhelming. Only Safety could love scientific and engineering knowledge so much that it completely chooses to ignore it and bang on about common sense and instinct as if it actually knew what it was. Only Safety could develop a Body of Knowledge in safety that makes no mention of the unconscious in anything it does until it gets to ethics and ‘check your gut’ is its profound ontology for morality.
Most murders I met in gaol had all checked their gut before they killed someone and their instinct told them it was right.
Bernard Corden says
B F Skinner performed most of his operant conditioning experiments on rodents and pigeons yet wrote most of his books about humans
Mark Perrett says
I have a DVD about how meerkats survive by looking out for each other. I’d be embarrassed to present it to a group of wharfies though.
Admin says
Kiwi wharfies at that!
Rob Long says
Mark, they don’t look after each other, that’s just spin. They function like all animals under the survival of the fittest myth and destroy and reject the weakest in the pack. They kill the weak so that the pack can survive. Don’t be conned by the propaganda about meerkats.
Rob Long says
Perhaps a little homework might be helpful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FvldVeBJUs&pbjreload=101
No, safety would rather believe bulshit like this
Bernard Corden says
Or Remember Charlie
Rob Long says
Nothing is more reliable that Safety looking everywhere for vision and not finding it. It’s hard to find vision when you look in the wrong place. When your foundation is positivism, engineering and compliance you create a pretty small box so much so that the small set of chapters in the AIHS BoK can easily fit into it. Oh yes, and I checked my gut and it said that meerkat mythology is unethical.