Seduction and Simulacra in Safety
I was sent some astounding graphics the other day by someone who had reworked some SPoR symbols using AI. The work done was impressive and AI certainly did an amazing job of animation that 10 years ago cost me $10,000 to do a similar thing. But then I started wondering, what is all this? What have we made these signs and symbols?
There is much to learn from a study of semiotics that has much to say to an industry that is overloaded with symbols that it gives meaning to. Indeed, some of these symbols have been made sacred and much more than they were ever intended to represent.
The French philosopher Baudrillard (1981) wrote a philosophical essay (which is very difficult to read) about the nature of signs/symbols and what we tend to do with them. What we tend to do, is make the sign of something a replacement of the reality that the sign represents. The sign then becomes the meaning of that reality rather than what it is many to signify.
Baudrillard, thought that were four stages in this ‘decline’ to ‘simulacra’ that are represented as follows.
What Baudrillard stated was that humans tend to replace reality and meaning with the symbols created to represent them. In the end, he stated, the image and symbol becomes a replacement and simulation of reality. Indeed, that as we elevate the power of the symbols we create they hide reality.
I see this often now with AI where something online (complete with bells and whistles) becomes a fascination and an attraction. Yet, its significance and mesmerizing and dazzling representation is only real online, on a screen.
Baudrillard believed we can become so saturated with the semiotics of representation that we lose touch with reality. He called this phenomenon ‘the procession of simulacra’.
I see this often in Safety with images of swiss-cheese, dominoes, pyramids, risk-matices, bow-ties, Bradley Curve, Zero etc. that are made sacred by an industry that doesn’t know its own semiotic reality. Swiss-cheese is just an image thought up by James Reason to try an explain causation but does an appalling approach of fixing events to linear causality. Yet, criticise the swiss-cheese in safety circles or Reason, and one seems to have deconstructed a sacred /religious object. The image of the swiss-cheese has now been made a simulacra.
Then unfortunately, the philosophy/methodology that is the foundation of the symbol eg. Heinrich’s pyramid, is lost and hidden.
Rather than deconstruct the philosophy of Heinrich, his philosophy is now hidden by the symbol. Yet, the false consciousness of Heinrich is lost. The image then becomes the new ‘truth’ and once politicised in risk and safety, is made Holy and Sacred. This is how we end up with injury rates as proof of safety and slogans as symbols, as meaningful and made truth (principles). Any attempt to apply critical discourse analysis to the image and its philosophy are now classified politically as being anti-safety.
This is the effect of being in the simulacra. The reality of safety is lost and the ideology of the simulacra becomes the new truth. It then must be defended at all costs in the politics of risk and safety. Yet, the symbols and slogans are just that, a simulacra not reality. The disconnect is now complete.
When we study semiotics in SPoR, we understand how Baudrillard’s procession works. We know through semiotics how the sacred is created, believed, endorsed and worshipped over time. Indeed, how Safety makes the sacred (https://safetyrisk.net/the-sacred-triangle-in-safety/) so that the reality of safety is lost. We see exactly the same in the symbols/slogans of HOP. The procession of simulacra is the same. Slogans must now be defended and new discourse developed to hide the philosophy that was originally embodied in the HOP thought bubble.
If you are interested more in how all this works, you are welcome to tackle the challenges of the symbolic seductions of semiotics here: https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/
Prof. Robert Long
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Hi Rob, so true, I am always amazed how surprised leaders are when I reflect criticism of the old linear type models that are so embedded in the traditional safety and leadership approach. However when explaining that they miss everything related to the psychological and cultural dynamics, they start to understand the reasoning behind my comments. When I presented the Causation Model that you and I developed, I was totally criticized by the traditional safety people on LinkedIn.