• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Robert Long / The Mechanistic Worldview and the Dehumanisation of Risk

The Mechanistic Worldview and the Dehumanisation of Risk

February 23, 2019 by Dr Rob Long 5 Comments

The Mechanistic Worldview and the Dehumanisation of Risk

fallibleIt should be no great surprise to anyone that a huge number of trade-offs have been made by accepting the mechanistic worldview of risk. The narrative in risk over recent history has shifted away from humanising people to that of dehumanising them.

The champions of dehumanisation have been many: the regulator, the legal profession, risk and safety associations, political parties, the OFSC, engineering and the many technologically focused groups within the safety industry. The mechanised worldview is the dominant ideology in risk, security and safety. This worldview (individually and combined) tends to shift the focus from humans to objects, maintaining that this is the only way to manage risk and uncertainty.

We certainly know this ourselves; we feel it in the way the system and its agents, treat us. The mythology associated with the mechanistic worldview (and its trade-offs) creates the delusion that safety, security and risk are being ‘controlled’. In reality, nothing is safer, and no risk is mitigated. Rather, risk gets shifted, reframed and relocated. Often this shifting sends the risk to an area where data is not counted. In other words, it goes underground.

The following table should assist in understanding the mechanisation process.

Mechanistic Trend Dehumanising Outcome and Trade-Off
Excessive systems The more systems are seen as solutions, the more powerless humans become within those systems. Humans respond in a desensitised way through ‘tick and flick’ and diminished thinking. Then, when mistakes are made, the next solution is developed by adding to the system.
Focus on data The accent on data creates the perception of risk as scientific and objective, putting it into conflict with subjectivity of risk and uncertainty. Data is elevated as objective when it is not, but rather, meaning is attributed to the data.
Focus on engineering The heavy focus on engineering in safety leads to a loss of adaptability, creativity, innovation and validation of imagination. Engineering cannot respond to the complete nature
of human decision-making; it is limited by engineering thinking. Sorry to disappoint the engineers, but humans cannot be understood as objects or machines.
Focus on technology As safety continues to be preoccupied with the love of technique, and human labour is viewed as costly, the trade-off increases the risk of people working alone. The love of technique assists the view that human fallibility is a problem.
Behaviourist focus The behaviourist worldview understands people as the sum of inputs and outputs. Behaviour becomes confused with culture, and policing with observation. Behaviourism itself becomes confused with social psychology.
Cause-and-effect thinking The misattribution of cause and effect creates a focus on black-and-white attribution rather than the diversity of choice under a lack of optimal knowledge. This creates the delusion that decisions are made on the basis of rationally complete knowledge. There is perhaps no more idiotic saying in the safety industry than ‘safety is a choice you make’. Such silly language deems all fatalities suicide. The Danny Cheney case is a classic example.
Focus on ‘damaging energies’ Under this focus, risk and safety are perceived as the release of energy rather than a human decision-making. This approach creates the delusion that decision-making has been considered. Once a focus is made the vision filter, it creates safety arrogance, in ignorance of any other view.
Focus on hazards This is the continued focus on objects-as-safety. This creates the delusion that hazard hunts are effective, as though imagination in human decision-making is not required. Rather than thinking about the uncertain, the unknown and the unexpected, this focus creates the delusion that named hazards diminish risk.
Focus on zero and numerics Safety is reduced to counting and injury data and is attributed a cultural value where no such connection exists. The continued focus on numerics shifts the attention from people and reduces thinking to ‘people as the problem’ and numbers as absolute. This creates a climate of intolerance and blaming fostered by absurd dehumanising slogans such as ‘all incidents are preventable’.
Excessive checklists and audits (against systems) The dumbing down of thinking to lists creates a dependency on both the lists and their (uncreative) creator. The tool then becomes the methodology. Thinking outside or beyond the checklist is limited and discouraged. Conversation and listening are disregarded as valuable tools for risk thinking and the object (SWMS, JSEAs) becomes the outcome rather than serving as a thinking tool.
Binary oppositionalism Safety is viewed as a black-and-white process, a fundamentalist exercise rather than a process requiring imagination, adaptability and adjustment in judgment. The binary worldview limits thinking so that one can’t think of the grey between the black-and-white understandings of the world.
Emphasis on forensics, science and disconnected-ness As safety pushes more to being dictated by a regulatory and mechanistic focus, people become desensitized to thinking within the safety space. This creates a culture where Safety people become hated because they respond in such a dehumanised way to workers. Rather than disown the subjective space, Safety people should reject the objectivity of safety as attributed and not real.

So what can be done about this? Here are five steps as a starting point in reversing the trend:

  1. Understand how the mechanistic worldview works and how acceptance of this worldview feeds its appetite.
  2. Keep its methods to a minimum. Minimalism gets rid of the mechanistic dynamic, and then one’s focus and energies can be devoted to humanising the safety space.

  3. Don’t accept the mechanistic view without question. Take, for example, the idea that due diligence is a measured mechanistic process that one can demonstrate to others. Even in the regulation it is clear that due diligence is a subjective process with as many scientific, mechanistic properties as ALARP. Zero needs to be challenged, and dissonance needs to be presented to those who have accepted the legitimacy of the mechanistic worldview.

  4. Shift the safety discourse to a proper understanding of culture rather than confusing culture with systems and behaviour.

  5. Name the dehumanising process as it raises its head in meetings and in espoused ‘safety speak’. Safety people should be always contesting the trajectory of initiatives rather than contributing to the ongoing mythology created by the mechanistic worldview.

This is only a beginning. There are many things people in safety can do to subvert the toxicity of this mechanistic worldview and the way it dehumanises the safety space. Make a start today and tackle this trend with some good open questions that challenge this trajectory and what it is doing to us all.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Tensions and Faultiness in Risk - February 4, 2023
  • Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk - February 4, 2023
  • Free Program on Due Diligence - February 4, 2023
  • Not Just Another ‘Hazard’ - February 3, 2023
  • Work-Life and Risk, Feminine Perspectives - February 3, 2023
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Safety Management Plan, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: dehumanisation, risk

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Bernard Corden says

    November 11, 2020 at 5:57 PM

    The following link provides access to a recent report entitled “As If We Weren’t Humans: The Abandonment of Temporary Migrants in Australia During COVID-19”

    https://www.mwji.org/covidreport

    Reply
  2. Rob Long says

    March 7, 2019 at 5:51 PM

    How entertaining to watch the likes of Alan Jones to invoke safety for capitalist gains. There’s nothing like invoking safety to shut down the binary mindset and demolish a good stadium.

    Reply
  3. Bernard Corden says

    March 6, 2019 at 3:51 PM

    The following link provides access to a report entitled “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power” from the former Bishop of Liverpool, The Right Reverend James Jones KBE.

    It describes many of the undesirable outcomes associated with the mechanistic worldview of risk and it’s not pretty:

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/656130/6_3860_HO_Hillsborough_Report_2017_FINAL_updated.pdf

    Reply
  4. Rob Long says

    February 24, 2019 at 10:57 AM

    An excellent reflection Charles. Unfortunately the issues you have observantly analysed are profoundly amplified in Safety.
    There is simply so little vision, innovation and lack of imagination in the industry, because all that matters is compliance, territory and power.

    Reply
  5. charlestortise says

    February 24, 2019 at 8:28 AM

    Dear Rob, the challenge is massive as we, I say this as I agree with you, are set against 200 or more years of what has been accepted as true and demonstrated as efficient in exerting control. It starts in school on the traditional model where batches are moved through a process of “education” where what is learnt is that to succeed we must quickly conform to giving back to the “teacher” the right answer which means the one that is expected not necessarily the one that matches the truth. We are then rewarded by grades which are associated with qualifications to give a quick reference for entry into the world of work. The above rests on science which was conformist to the world view of a perfect mechanical universe that could be studied and understood. This was fine, Newton was as right as possible and effect followed cause until the 20th century when Einstein, Plank, Heisberg and Shewhart disrupted the validity. The first three names are probably well known the fourth possibly less so but in his work on variation he provided a means for understanding the behaviour of processes and importantly a means to learn what they would do, with a chance of being wrong into the future. Instead of working on people as components in a machine as per Taylor Shewhart led the way for Deming to demonstrate the futility of interfering and controlling behaviour of people in a system in order to improve the quality of work done within it. Once the process is stable the only way to improve is to understand the sources of inherent or common cause variation that are in the system and work to improve them using knowledge gained that is the context of that operation. This undermines the import of a best way gained from outside or one best way designed by enlightened and educated managers high in the hierarchy for the stupid, soldiering worker to follow. Knowledge is power but what gets protected is that this power means the higher the authority the more right their knowledge must be, to protect that authority the importance of quality of knowledge diminishes compared to protecting the association of right knowledge from right position. New knowledge disrupts this and the situation is challenged if knowledge must be learnt related to context not in accordance with doctrine and dogma. De-humanising leads to disengagement, treat people as a resource, a hired pair of hands for a set period of hours and no wonder they leave their brains at home. Joy in work is a critical way to change this but is discordant with efficiency over effectiveness. Good news is there is an alternative to working harder at making the wrong things more right bad news it is not what the hacks are selling so they will shrilly challenge it to maintain an orthodoxy. Best practice does not mean doing the same as everyone else.

    Reply

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,499 other subscribers

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk

Not Just Another ‘Hazard’

Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?

How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety

ISO 45003 and What it Cannot Do

The KISS of Death in Safety

Behavioural Safety is NOT a Foundation for Tackling Psychosocial and Mental Health

The Worst Approach to Psychosocial Problems is an Attitude of ‘Fixing’

The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health

Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Psychosocial Security, Following-Main in Threat - Personal Safety News on Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk
  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Rob long on How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Matt Thorne on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Hurak Learning on How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Rob Long on An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Paul Gentles on An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Brent Charlton on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Rob Long on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Brian Edwin Darlington on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Brian on The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Jaise on The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Rob Long on Posture Myths and Holistic Ergonomics
  • Linda McKendry on Posture Myths and Holistic Ergonomics
  • Rob long on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • NATIONAL SAFETY DAY/WEEK IN INDIA 2023
  • Proving Safety
  • Free Program on Due Diligence
  • Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk
  • What Is Safety?
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity

Recent Posts

  • Tensions and Faultiness in Risk
  • Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk
  • Free Program on Due Diligence
  • Not Just Another ‘Hazard’
  • Work-Life and Risk, Feminine Perspectives
  • Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Free Download – Real Risk – New Book by Dr Robert Long
  • Proving Safety
  • ISO 45003 and What it Cannot Do
  • Harming People in the Name of Good
  • An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Risk and Safety Maturity
  • The KISS of Death in Safety
  • SPoR, Metanoia and a Podcast on Change with Nippin Anand
  • Behavioural Safety is NOT a Foundation for Tackling Psychosocial and Mental Health
  • The Worst Approach to Psychosocial Problems is an Attitude of ‘Fixing’
  • SPoR Comes to Vienna June 2023
  • The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • The Visionary Imagination – Louisa Lawson
  • Heaven ‘n Hell and the Safety Religion
  • Confirmity in Conformity
  • Numerology and Psychic Numbing
  • Thinking of Mortality
  • Safety is the Wrong Anchor
  • Foresight Blindness, Hindsight Bias and Risk
  • Getting the Balance Right in Tackling Risk
  • What is SPoR?
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Afraid to Let Go of What Doesn’t Work in Safety
  • When You Don’t Know What to do in Safety, Have Another Blitz!!!
  • Gloves and Glasses Compliance
  • A Case of Desensitisation – What Would You Do?
  • How to Leave the Safety Industry
  • The Mythic Symbology of Safety
  • Dark Waters, The True Story of DuPont and Zero
  • 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Am I stupid? I didn’t think of that…
  • Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Culture as a Wicked Problem, for Safety
  • Safety Leadership Training
  • Cultural Orientation in Risk
  • The Stanford Experiment and The Social Psychology of Risk
  • Objectivity, Audits and Attribution When Calculating Risk
  • Records of safety activities: evidence of safety or non-compliance?
  • Zero, The Seeking of Infinity
  • Safety Leadership Essentials

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

Developing Our Inner Introversion

Calculators, Matrices and Mumbo Jumbo Risk Assessment

How was your break?

Accidents Happen Because You Don’t Put Safety First

Concept Mapping Risk iCue

Does Safety Have A Soul?

New Social Psychology of Risk Website

The Trajectory of Zero Vision

The Measurement Mindset in Safety???

Social Psychology of Risk Two Day Workshop

Rituals in Risk Management – Podcast

What are Your Secret Messages in Safety?

Psychology and safety

Reflections of a ‘Doer’

Lemmings for Lemmings in Leadership and Risk

Utopian Language and the Quest for Perfection in Safety

An Social Ecology of Resilience

Not Much Like Safety…

Four Indicators of Toxic Safety Culture

The Shock of Homeostasis

Body Memory and Safety

Dumb Ways to Die Doesn’t Work

Reflection Makes Sense

Perth Workshops

Natural Born Learners

Safety Justifies Anything and Everything

The Different Levels of Wrongness!

Understanding Conscience and Safety

Actions in ‘Bad Faith’

The Futility of the Centralised Safety Management System?

When Art Speaks to Harm

It Takes Two to Tango–Reflections on Safe Behaviour

Semiotics and the Unconscious Messages We Send

OMG – Big Words and Safety

SPoR Quarterly Newsletter September 2021

iCue Diagnostic, What is Your Risk iCue?

Workshop – Understanding Culture Tackling Risk

The Triarchic Mind, Risk and Safety

Seven Essential Safety Reminders

Surfacing – Making the Unconscious Conscious

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,499 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY