The language of salvation (soteriology) is metaphysical language. Any talk about ‘saving lives’ is metaphysical language. The question has to be asked: saved from what? And, saved to what?
The language of salvation already deems that it knows best about your future. ‘Believe in X and thou shalt be saved’. However, the reality of fallibility also tells us that harm, suffering and loss will visit us in whatever time we have on the planet.
For the religious, salvation involves the promise of a transcendent future. In safety, the promise is for more of the same.
For DuPont and zero safety, the condition for salvation is to believe the impossible. But this future moment can never be a promise of no harm but rather a return to fallibility.
For safety differently we now have a new cosmology far removed from safety science with language of atonement, repentance, spiritual resilience and a theology of safety. But read Dekker’s theology of suffering whose conclusion is that faith in science is better than faith in faith.
So the language of traditional safety and safety differently both speak in metaphysics.
Yet, at the same time neither traditional safety or safety differently include religion in their understandings of culture. Indeed, we are instructed to not talk about it. The silence of safety on its own religiosity makes it more susceptible to it. In many ways Safety is extraordinary in its metaphysical discourse and language of salvation. This is accompanied by language about the fear of death, risk and harm.
In the zero world, risk doesn’t make sense, neither does fallibility, and Safety knows how to be silent about these realities. In zero, the promise is to transcend fallibility and this is its metaphysics and cosmology.
What a strange industry this is, that has no consciousness of its own cosmology, anthropology and metaphysics. Yet, tries to understand itself by not engaging in critical disciplines necessary for such reflection.
And what is the trajectory of all this metaphysical discourse? Where will all this language take safety? How religious will safety be in 10 years?
We need to be educated in all these things. We need to realise how the culture of safety is currently being expressed and why? We need to understand that all of this language of metaphysics emerges from an industry consumed with engineer, science and behaviourism. This is an industry that doesn’t understand itself. This can only lead to a very confusing future and fragmentation between a technical history and metaphysical discourse.
And all of this has enormous implications for ethical practice.
Dr Rob Long
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