Popular discourse on shame and blame tend to place emphasis on the individual. Shame often emerges out of blame but this most often occurs in a social context. If someone does know about an action or event anchored to you, then I guess any sense of shame is only private or historical. Blame and shame are at their most powerful when there is an audience or group one cares about. Private blame and shame have nothing of the force or energy of social ostracisation or exclusion. The power of the spectacle is often the dramatic energy of shaming. Being ‘put on show’ for something a person or group deems wrong, also raises the importance of moral and ethical orientation towards persons.
It is meaningless to discuss the nature of blame and shame without discussing moral philosophy or ethics. After all, blame always carries an ethical imperative.
Blame and shame are also connected to one’s semiosis, the construction of meaning and purpose and the symbolic nature of being.
In the risk and safety world it is clear that the industry is oriented towards a duty to safety, not a duty to persons (AIHS BoK Chapter on Ethics). Indeed, you won’t find an ethic of personhood anywhere in this industry. Even in its vain attempt to tackle psychosocial ‘hazards’ the emphasis is on objects not persons. Such a priority provides the perfect climate for blame and shame. We see this in all the discourse around safety and zero, the ideology that focuses on a number not on persons. As far back as Heinrich it has always been about numerics and ratios.
I was asked the other day by a safety person to prove the effectiveness of what I do by injury rates! Maybe I could ask in return: ‘can you prove the effectiveness of your parenting by injury rates?’
The absence of injury rates is not a measure of anything, except maybe good or bad luck! Certainly all of my children suffered harm and injury in my care over many years. They continue to be harmed by life and suffer through life, but this has nothing to do with effective parenting. Indeed, wrapping children in cotton wool could just as easily be proof of ineffective parenting. The same applies to the care and helping of others in the process of tackling risk.
Indeed, asking for measurements of safety is a sure recipe for the subjective discourse of blame and shame. Thankfully, I have no interest in an industry that is fixated with lower-order goals and meaningless measures.
Whenever I see this preoccupation with measurement, objects, hazards and paperwork I also see a corresponding energy of projected blame and shame.
The first step in disarming blame and shame in safety is ditching the nonsense preoccupation with faux measurement.
When I was a school teacher in 1971-79 I was most conscious of the risks of blame and shame. Yes, blaming and shaming are a risk. You never know the effect of your words and actions as a teacher nor how these are perceived by young people and children. The same applies for safety advisors except they have no training in either the psychology of goals, psychology of perception, psychology of motivation or the psychology of learning! Yes that’s right, the safety industry and it’s curriculum do not prepare safety people for their job! Safety remains the industry for the control of objects, policing of regulation and the counting of injury rates.
In an industry consumed by engineering and behaviourism it is no surprise that the brutalism of blame and shame evoke the metaphor of ‘blood sport’. And yet there seems no reform in sight. Without curriculum reform, the ideology of zero and movement away from behaviourism, nothing will change.
If you are interested in: the psychology of goals, psychology of perception, psychology of motivation or the psychology of learning then, these are all available in SPoR. You can see our curriculum here: https://cllr.com.au
If you want to attend face to face workshops then perhaps come to the SPoR convention in Canberra in May: https://spor.com.au/canberra-convention/
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
- Safety sexism and misogyny looking for a scapegoat - October 11, 2024
- Framing and Priming Investigations, The Manawanui Tragedy - October 10, 2024
- HOP is Traditional Safety - October 9, 2024
- Defining Safety by the Absence of Accidents, Injury and Harm - October 9, 2024
- Visual and Verbal Mapping of Risk in SPoR - October 7, 2024
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