Shock and Fear in Safety There is a naïve belief in the safety industry that shocking people and the dynamics of fear are effective. We see this in the many ‘horror’ photos and clips in the sector as well as the countless injured people who are trotted out with the message ‘don’t be like me’. […]
fear
The Psychic Effect of Safety
The Psychic Effect of Safety and What to Do About It One of the flow on effects of the politics of Safety is unconscious fear. I met a host of officials in safety associations recently and was overcome with the anxiety of some as we shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. I was due to stand […]
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Fear of Being-in-the-World
Fear of Being-in-the-World One of the valuable contributions of the philosophy of phenomenology is the concept of Dasein. Dasein is German for ‘being-in-the-world’ articulated by Martin Heidegger . Heidegger is a controversial philosopher because of his complicity with the Nazi party during WW2. However, the philosophy of phenomenology offers insight into many of the problems […]
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Short-sighted Safety
Short-sighted Safety There is nothing more debilitating to human ‘being’ than hyper-fear, hyper-risk aversion and hyper-safety. Hyper-fear and hyper-risk aversion is the outcome of blind safety and ignorance. I was contacted by a person who is a parent at a school that had just banned children in the school from doing handstands and cartwheels on […]
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The Fear of Power and the Power of Fear
The Fear of Power and the Power of Fear One of the clear messages in the Netflix series House of Cards is the Fear of Power and the Power of Fear. The House of Cards series exemplifies what happens when one makes power the frame for exchange. The idea that coercion, compliance, power and fear […]
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Fake News, Fake Safety and Fake Christmas
Fake News, Fake Safety and Fake Christmas The craft of misinformation has been about for millennia but more recently with the problems of social media has become much more pronounced. The Cult of the Amateur (Keen, 2008) and the world of The Shallows (Carr, 2011) has brought a whole new era of ‘fake news’. This […]
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Promoting Dumb, Anxiety and Harm in the Name of Good
Promoting Dumb, Anxiety and Harm in the Name of Good The by-products of not being educated in the challenges of ethics and ideology in safety training are many (https://safetyrisk.net/isnt-it-time-we-reformed-the-whs-curriculum/). The first by-product is the development of policy by naivety and ignorance. This is where we find language that hides a dehumanizing trajectory in the name […]
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The Reason Safety Has Gone So Crazy
The Reason Safety Has Gone So Crazy – With Must Watch Video This recent article of ours Fall Harness–The Latest Dumb Safety Photo To Go Viral has gone viral itself and it leads very well into this article. One of main reasons that safety has become so silly and out of control basically comes down […]
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Failure Must be an Option
Failure Must be an Option The Australian Government wants to stimulate an innovation/ideas avalanche and have thrown $1.1 billion at trying to create a ‘boom’ of ‘agile’, ‘creative’ and ‘innovative’ people seeking to embrace risk (http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/innovation-statement-what-you-need-to-know-about-malcolm-turnbulls-plan-20151206-glgzhs.html ). Just like the US Government in Oct 2015 in The Strategy for American Innovation advocated Americans to ‘embrace […]
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Why are we Afraid?
Why are we Afraid? We’ve all been afraid of something at one time or another. The classic situation that I remember as a kid was being afraid of the dark; it haunted me for years and stopped me doing a lot of things. In more recent times, I recall being afraid of two guys who […]
