Complacency is one of those favourites that Safety loves to evoke when it has no idea what has happened. It’s a projection usually given to others that has no meaning other than an attribution of smugness associated with ‘not thinking’. The truth is, the use of the word ‘complacency’ explains very little, it’s just a convenient projection Safety uses to explain what it doesn’t understand. Once the word has been said, we call all stop thinking because we now have a reason and cause. But ask anyone who uses the word what it means and they probably can’t tell you.
What is complacency? Seek out a definition and generally there is reference to:
- Excessive self-confidence
- Numbed to risk
- Lack of motivation
- Over-estimation of capability
- Inability to see one’s own faults
- A state of mind
- Unwillingness
- Desensitization to threat
- Lack of desire
- Smugness
- Hubris
- Apathy
- Arrogance
- Lack of care
- Not concentrating
- Unconscious mindlessness/indolence
It’s just a pejorative word that somehow seems to satisfy Safety that it has a cause.
The reality is, without extensive engagement with another, one might never know why someone did something that is inexplicable. Indeed, many times people don’t even know for themselves why they did something. Many times, people are captured by an impulse that is not explained.
The truth is we don’t really know what we believe till we see what we do (Weick).
Throw into this mix the human need to make decisions by heuristics, habit and trial/error. This accounts for 95% of all human decision making.
Often humans make mistakes because a pre-learned habit or experientially developed heuristic doesn’t match the context or change in context. This contextual mis-match is often found in what people attribute as a ‘poor decision’.
But I’ve never seen any such consideration in an incident investigation. Especially not from an industry consumed by a worldview locked into materialist behaviourism.
Unfortunately, what just happened involved no conscious decision at all, there was no time for a rational process to take place nor any time for cognition. Humans make most fast and efficient decisions this way. Very few decisions are made rationally, cognitively or thoroughly because there is simply no time for such a decision.
Many decisions we make are reactive, impulsive and reflexive. This is how we drive a car, play spots or play music. Many times, we make decisions by muscle-memory NOT slow rationally con ducted process of cognition. We know this as ‘enactive’ decision making. We explain this in SPoR using the 1B3M metaphor and model (https://safetyrisk.net/gab-and-robone-brain-three-minds/).
Enactive and embodied decision making extends way beyond what we know about human consciousness. Read Gallagher, S., (2023) Embodied and Enactive Approaches to Cognition. Cambridge University Press. London.
The reality is, we know very little about unconscious decision making and ought to be super careful about attributing words like ‘complacency’ to events we don’t understand and that don’t seem to make sense.
The trouble is in Safety it is so easy to propose a simplistic but meaningless label to an action that doesn’t make sense than, actually explore and research an issue. It’s so easy when a safety engineer can explain what has happened. It much easier to get some simplistic behaviourist explanation that isn’t true or some engineering myth than, research the meaning of our perceptions of decisions. Why explore the mysteries of the human unconscious when a simplistic positivist myth will do?
Complacency is so convenient (https://safetyrisk.net/the-assp-getting-complacency-completely-wrong/; https://safetyrisk.net/the-convenience-of-complacency/) and easy but hurtful, dangerous and toxic discourse.
On most occasions complacency is evoked as a myth (https://safetyrisk.net/the-complacency-myth/). It is maintained as a safety delusion (https://safetyrisk.net/the-complacency-myth/) against any attempt to be thorough and scientific. The truth is, safety has very little idea about the Wayward Mind (https://safetyrisk.net/complacency-and-the-wayward-mind/) but is so quick to find the complacency myth when needed.
Start with some reading in Neuroscience (https://safetyrisk.net/essential-readings-neuroscience-and-the-whole-person/) to get started. Avoid anything put out by Safety on anything to do with the human Mind and decision making put out by non-qualified and inexperienced amateurs. Look at the source, interrogate the source, interrogate qualifications and you quickly find out that the source has no expertise beyond safety. There are plenty of frauds in Safety read to take your money and change your bank balance but are simply peddling behaviourism.
The wise move is to step outside of Safety to a transdisciplinary source with expertise in neuroscience, particularly in enactive approaches to consciousness. In the meantime, be much more cautious about the language one uses and attributions made to decisions that don’t make sense.
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