Safety Stole My Freedoms
There’s a lot of simplistic stuff in relation to Covid19 about ‘rights’, ‘freedoms’ and ‘personal liberties’ ( Protests have been criminalised under COVID. What is incitement? How is it being used in the pandemic? ) One thing is for sure, when you hear simplistic binary language about rights and wrongs, black and white in safety you can be sure it’s wrong and probably dangerous.
One of the most difficult things for Safety to get a hold of is the challenge of wicked problems, unsolvable problems, uncontrollable problems and dialectic (https://safetyrisk.net/risk-and-safety-as-a-wicked-problem/). The idea that any binary question or idea can be a useful proposition in risk is simply nonsense. The dumb down question that assumes injury is an indicator of safety by asking ‘how many people do you want killed today?’ must be totally rejected.
All thinking about risk and safety needs to start with fallible humans in a random world and imperfect systems for which no binary framework can be applied.
If you haven’t worked out yet that Covid19 is a wicked problem then you will probably think Covid is a Behaviourist problem.
- Managing COVID-19 as a Super Wicked Problem: Lessons from, and for, the Climate Crisis
- COVID, the wicked problem too big for medical experts alone to tackle
When we accept that all actions have by-products and trade-offs there can never be a simple black and white binary approach and most often there are no ‘solutions’ and ‘fixes’. Yes, you may have a belief in individual liberty but you don’t have the right to spread the virus and kill me as a by-product of your individualism. So, you can stand up and chant protests all you like but if that leads to my death, I’m equally as right to seek my individual liberty in return.
The foundation of ethics is not just the foundation of professionalism but also the foundation for living in community and Socialitie. You don’t read about any of this in the AIHS BoK indeed, the BoK tells Safety that it has the right to dominate the rights of others if a safety person deems a situation unsafe (p.41). Indeed, this section of the BoK chapter tells safety people they have a ‘duty’ to override the freedoms of others in the name of safety! No, you can’t just do what you like to me just because you deem the situation unsafe!
Of course, this is why the BoK on Ethics is not an Ethic of Risk and why its simplistic deontological message is an unethical message. The AIHS Bok on Ethics is simplistic nonsense and omits dozens of critical complex ethical factors in its framework and in many ways is fundamentally dishonest and unhelpful (https://safetyrisk.net/the-aihs-bok-and-ethics-check-your-gut/ ).
The question of freedoms and liberties can only stand in dialectic with responsibilities and accountabilities. Without a social ethic, there is no ethic. Furthermore, governance and leadership are situated in this dialectical ethic and its challenging movement. Safety needs to embrace a very different body of knowledge in ethics and learning if it ever wants to be professional.
Dr Rob Long
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Mark Perrett says
This makes me think of binary, black and white approaches to ethics. Taking such an approach is also likely to be wrong given the subjectivity of ethics.
Bob says
“Yes, you may have a belief in individual liberty but you don’t have the right to spread the virus and kill me as a by-product of your individualism.”
With respect, isn’t that a somewhat ‘binary’ dichotomy?
Of course, if people aren’t careful, or they exhibit a willful disregard for their fellow citizens, there’s a chance of infection leading to varying degrees of illness, even fatality, quite dependent on numerous variables, and proportionate control measures are most certainly appropriate to minimize the likelihood of exposure to possible infection.
I personally don’t think mass public protest will achieve much to change minds at government level, but what the recent heavy-handed reaction by the state to the mere expression of a desire to protest against lockdown proved is that there is a double standard at play. Anyone with a sense of fairness should realize that however correct it may be to be concerned about limiting public gatherings, this concern must be consistently expressed if it’s to be taken more seriously.
I simply feel that there’s a conversation to be had about how effective sweeping, restrictive, lockdown measures actually are, as opposed to measures which are more proportionately tailored to areas of higher risk, so I won’t be misrepresented as an anti-lockdown loon. Is it not precisely this kind of excessive, draconian, and disproportionately and inconsistently applied controls against which this site serves to raise reasonable arguments.
Nobody was charged with incitement for earlier protests regarding other social issues, which are also valid issues of concern, but once there was an expression of intent to protest against something falling more squarely in the lap of local authorities, there appears to have been a more forceful response. It’s almost as if local authorities were a little offended once the disagreement was a bit closer to home, leading to a more vindictive reaction.
It’s been documented on record that the very same authorities publicly expressed unanimous support for protests against one issue, with only kind words of support to be offered, but once there was an expression of intent to protest against something more directly under the local authorities’ control, there was open contempt and derision. The hammer came down. Doors were kicked in. People were arrested.
It appears a little consistency in response, and a little more even-handed respect for citizens, regardless of the issue about which they were expressing concerns, would have helped the authorities retain some degree credibility, and may have resulted in more widespread compliance by citizens for the right reasons.
I’m not arguing that there should have been arrests or charges for the earlier protests against the other valid issues. Quite the opposite.
Rob Long says
The blog is about dialectic and wicked problems???
Bob says
Inconsistency is somewhat of a stumbling block for effective dialectic.
The example raised in my post simply focused on a real world example.
Rob Long says
Bob, dialectic is not focused on consistency but the dynamics between competing forces in Discourse in discourse. It focuses on the movement between dichotomies and the often unsolvable propositions of binary judgements. In your post you describe this in the idea of ‘a conversation should be had’. In binary propositions such as ‘how many people do you want killed today?’ there is no conversation and no seeking of open dialogue. Zero doesn’t need to talk to anyone.