Poetic disciplines are those things that cannot be measured. Semiotics Human Movements Law Poetry Dance Art Music Theatre Social Psychology Biology Performance Humanities History Geography Theology Metaphysics Knowing Multimodalities … [Read more...] about Poetics and Risk Part XIII – Poetic Disciplines
Social Psychology of Risk
Praxis and SPoR
One of the things academics do well in safety is analyse Safety. What they don’t do well is, propose practical alternatives that involve the connection of theory to practice. The ancient Greeks knew this well and used the word ‘praxis’ as a way of learning through a special kind of practice. For … [Read more...] about Praxis and SPoR
Poetics and Risk Part XII – Communicating Unconsciously
So after a lot of videos and getting to understand Poetics and the Unconscious, how do we apply this to risk? How do we communicate unconsciously? Communication via checklists has already been proven to not give people meaning and purpose in an organisation. In fact most people in an organisation … [Read more...] about Poetics and Risk Part XII – Communicating Unconsciously
Poetics and Risk Part XI – Poetics and the Collective Unconscious
Jung and his Understanding of Myth and Symbols show a collective unconscious, a collective knowledge, even though they have not met each other and share forms of the mandala, totems. So, what is it that they share in common, that cannot be seen or measured? Sheldrake calls it Morphic Resonance … [Read more...] about Poetics and Risk Part XI – Poetics and the Collective Unconscious
The Sacred Triangle in Safety
There is little doubt that the triangle is ‘sacred’ to Safety. A search on Google for ‘safety triangle’ shows 297,000,000 results. The best way to work out if something is ‘sacred’ to a group is to suggest to take it away. Then watch the response, the sense of dependence and the dissonance in … [Read more...] about The Sacred Triangle in Safety
It’s 67 for Safety
One of the benefits of having grandchildren is keeping up with Poetics, language, discourse, Discourse, identity, slogans and trends. ‘67’ is an internet meme that has emerged through TikTok and Instagram reels in 2025 that has no meaning. The meaning of ‘67’ is that its meaning is that it has no … [Read more...] about It’s 67 for Safety
Safety as Avoidance
Safety as Avoidance The language of ‘error’ is unhelpful when it comes to understanding human judgment and decision making. One can assemble pyramids of ‘unsafe acts’ and ‘unsafe conditions’, fault trees of ‘active and latent failures’, maps of ‘violations’, ‘slips’ and ‘missed barriers’, sets of … [Read more...] about Safety as Avoidance
The Nature of ‘Safety Speak’
A collection of us are writing our next book Poetics and Risk, Feeling Into Being at the moment and we expect it to be released early next year. The book is about the importance of language in risk and being sensitised to making meaning (semiosis). Our contributors to the book are from: … [Read more...] about The Nature of ‘Safety Speak’
Online Inductions and Safety Effectiveness
I visited an organisation last week which was very excited about their new online induction process as it meant that new employees can “hit the ground running” and has freed up their safety people. It was obvious that induction, to them, was just a necessary evil and a process to tick off rather … [Read more...] about Online Inductions and Safety Effectiveness
An Introduction to Semiotics and Risk
An Introduction to Semiotics and Risk This video gives a brief introduction to semiotics and the unconscious in communication and decision making about risk. The video gives a visual and verbal overview of signs, signifiers, signified and significance, the foundation of semiotics. Through a study … [Read more...] about An Introduction to Semiotics and Risk