I was recently on holiday at Hill End (https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/country-nsw/bathurst-area/hill-end ), a preserved gold mining town from the 1860s just 3 hours west of Sydney (https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/visit-a-park/parks/hill-end-historic-site). You can find out more about Hill End here: https://www.historyhill.com.au/
If you are a Historian and Semiotician, there is so much to see and experience at Hill End. If you want to learn how people lived and died, a visit to Tambaroora Cemetery is a must. Indeed, cemeteries in general are great to expand your semiotic skills and do History.
Hill End has just 100 residents but at the peak of the gold boom was 30,000. And, death in mining was common, indeed, death was common.
In my walk of Tambaroora (http://tambaroora.com/notes/cemeteries-tambaroora.pdf ) I came across this grave and it reminded me so much of Safety and the nonsense of Heinrich (https://safetyrisk.net/hoodwinked-by-heinrich/). Here we have a grave of George Griffiths who ‘Died Through Carelessness’. See Figure 1. Grave of George Griffiths
Figure 1. Grave of George Griffiths
Of course, the language of ‘carelessness’ is meaningless but is favourite of Safety. Stating that someone was ‘careless’ is simply a projection to try and explain something that was not understood. Heinrich is full of this nonsense language, like:
‘man-failure’ (p.22, 25 or p.128.) or p.23. ‘scatterbrained youth’, p.37 ‘inherently reckless’, p.72 ‘spirit of bravado’, p.73 ‘who is indifferent’, p.75 ‘under developed mentalities’, p.107 Recklessness, p.125 unsafe practice is often named as an ‘indulgence’. It is simply the height of ignorance to anchor to anything in Heinrich (https://safetyrisk.net/deconstructing-the-myth-of-heinrich/). Yet, Heinrich is still taught in safety curricula around the globe. Everything about Heinrich is concocted nonsense. All of this language of Heinrich makes as much sense as this grave stone.
Take note, this headstone states that this is ‘Sacred’ to the memory of George Griffiths who was ‘careless’. So, it’s sacred to be careless?
Of course, when you are expert in Linguistics, Culture and Ethics like Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/more-of-safety-talking-to-safety-about-safety/ ), why would attention to language be important? Other than to count it.
The ideas of awareness, paying attention, consciousness, concentration and care are all mitigated by the fundamental nature of humans to take action by heuristics, that is, by not thinking. The reason why fallible humans can do things fast and efficiently is by not thinking but, by being in a Mind of automaticity. This is what the 1B3M concept is all about (https://safetyrisk.net/why-does-1b3m-matter-in-safety/).
The beginning in understanding why people do what they do is in understanding 1B3M.
Most accidents are about a disconnect between a heuristic and context.
This mis-match means that a human enacted in a way that was right, had not the context changed. It is not about judgment at all! Poor old George Griffith probably had the right heuristic for the wrong place.
When we say to someone ‘take care’ or ‘be careful’ what are we saying? Not much. It’s like asking someone to ‘be conscious of’ something. Yet, the purpose of human efficiency is to do things unconsciously. And, Safety knows so little about human consciousness. It has no interest in it.
The real problem in all of this (including the idea that Safety has expertise in Linguistics) is, the complete disregard for any interest in the nature of Unconsciousness by the safety industry.
Poor old Safety bogged down in its materialist/scientist philosophy, has no consciousness of the human unconscious.
This is how it ends up in the pointless language of ‘carelessness’. This is how Safety ends up stuck in silly slogans named as ‘principles’ (https://safetyrisk.net/hop-is-traditional-safety/ ) with little idea of why people do what they do. This is why traditional safety (renamed S2) endeavours to come up with crazy mechanics to explain why people do what they do (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-ii-spin-and-s2-discourse/). As if the collection of data gives meaning to human enactments.
Once all the spin/slogans of HOP and S2 has been deconstructed, none of it explains why people do what they do. Once all the language of ‘performance’ and ‘theatre’ have been exposed as spin, there is still no articulation of a methodology or method. That is, they still don’t know what to do. Just declutter your systems and all will be well. But they are still the same safety systems.
If you want to know more about how people really make decisions and about a methodology of tackling risk that works, you can register for the free module on Embodiment and Risk here: admin@cllr.com.au
In this study module we explore the nature of human decision making, the mystery of the human unconscious (https://safetyrisk.net/attending-and-attention-consciousness-and-risk/) and what to DO about it in a practical positive way.
Dr Rob Long
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