The safety industry is so poor at tackling the nature of resilience because it denies the nature of human fallibility. This is the burden of believing in zero!
There’s no need to speak about resilience if you believe in zero. The key message in safety is to ‘just believe’ or to ‘believe the impossible’. (https://safetyrisk.net/update-on-zero-survey-just-believe/; https://safetyrisk.net/believe-the-impossible-and-speak-nonsense-to-people/).
Don’t forget that big Hillsong poster at the global zero event in 2017 when zero was first adopted as the global mantra for the industry:
Don’t forget that Zero was ‘front and centre stage’ (https://visionzero.global/vision-zero-takes-centre-stage-world-congress) at the global safety=zero event in Sydney in 2023. Don’t forget who the sponsors of zero were (https://safetyrisk.net/the-sponsors-of-zero-are/).
Why would anyone in safety=zero have any idea about the nature of resilience.
You can only believe in zero in denial of fallibility (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/).
No-one in safety globally (including the not-so-differently group) present about the unethical nature of zero. None present any critical thinking about the ideology of zero (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/). Indeed, when academics (with no expertise in ethics) present in favour of zero in a so called ‘innovations lab’ (https://safetyrisk.net/zero-is-an-immoral-goal/), you really know why Safety knows so little about resilience.
The need for Everyday Social Resilience (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/) exists because humans are fallible, life is random and, injury and harm are necessary for learning.
- You don’t need resilience if you believe in perfection.
- You don’t need to know anything about resilience if you frame your view of the world through zero!
Of course, we know that such a view is a mental health disorder (https://safetyrisk.net/why-zero-vision-can-never-tackle-mental-health/). When your language is zero then any language of resilience is a contradiction in such a belief.
How bizarre this industry that wants to tackle mental health from its own mental health disorder!
If safety only exists in the absence of injury, then why is this industry so pathetic in understanding the meaning of resilience? This is because safety=zero.
Even when Safety does speak of resilience it is always about the resilience of objects. This is the core message of so called ‘resilience engineering’ and the nonsense of ‘drift’. If this is how the so called ‘new view’ speaks, then there is no safety differently.
The reality is this:
- The acceptance of harm is foundational to all learning.
- The acceptance of harm is foundational to understanding resilience.
- We only develop resilience in acceptance of fallibility, harm and injury.
- Resilience is not about objects
- Resilience is a ‘mindset’
- Resilience is NOT a verb
If you want to know what resilience is about you can download our free book on Everyday Social Resilience (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/).
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
- How to Escape the Safety=Zero Cult - January 14, 2025
- Making Sure There is No ‘Cultural Shift’ in Safety - January 14, 2025
- How to Make Ensure That People Don’t Speak Up - January 13, 2025
- It’s Not a Secret, We Just Don’t Talk About It - January 11, 2025
- Myth, Objectivity and the Subjectivity of Language in Safety - January 11, 2025
Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below