‘Risk has been projected by ‘risk theory’ as a set of technical issues, of ‘risk analysis,’ ‘risk assessment,’ and ‘risk management,’ but the technical dimensions of risk do not eliminate moral and normative judgments.’ (p. 171, Hunt, ‘Risk and Moralization in Everyday Life’. In., Risk and Morality, (2003) Ericson and Doyle (eds.).
All risk practices are deeply moralised. This is because all risk is situated in social context and decisions always bring an outcome for persons, good or bad.
We watch the news each day and are either fed judgments on moral outcomes or make those judgments ourselves. The popularity of so called ‘reality TV’ is realised in the ‘games’ played about morality. This is evident in the way these ‘shows’ are marketed and manipulated. The judgments made about whether one considers something ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is not ‘given’ ‘naturally’ but is rather enculturated.
Often, the judgments made about how risk is ‘tackled’ boils down to the political power of a person or group according to competing virtues in a context. It is so easy to brutalise persons in the name of a proclaimed virtue. This happens all the time in zero organisations who proclaim zero as a virtue. Once a slogan or meme has been declared a value, principle or virtue by an organisation the ‘ends’ are made to justify the ‘means’. In this way we get declarations that zero is a moral goal (https://safetyrisk.net/zero-is-an-immoral-goal/) because the ‘ends’ are used to justify the ‘means’. This is just utilitarian safety on full show on show by the so called ‘Safety Science Lab’.
If one considers how (process/method) zero is achieved, zero can never be a moral goal.
Moralization always rests on a set of criteria and beliefs, and in safety these are most often undeclared. Indeed, Safety most often believes that right and wrong is innate, objective and known cognitively. All one has to do is comply with a ‘duty’ to that so called ‘objective value’. This is the discourse of the AIHS BoK Chapter on Ethics. In this chapter, there is no discussion on the nature of power, politics, competing values or the nature of virtue. This is head in the sand ethics where the lens of safety is made the a ‘greater good’, than the integrity of persons.
This is the same ethic that was used to colonialise Australia and exterminate the First Nations people in the name of English Culture and missionary endeavour!
When safety is given primacy as a principle or value over other principles or values, then all kinds of unethical practices are justified. Often, in the name of ‘good’.
In this way, one can declare slogans ‘principles’ to suit a hidden agenda and then prioritise positive psychology over the need for justice. This is what happens when one turns the slogan ‘blame fixes nothing’ into a ‘principle’. This is exactly the same as Heinrich, who in 1931, declared his many myths of safety into ‘self-evident’ truths. Then with concocted pyramids and dominoes developed a system to demonise persons in the name of numerical outcomes. He then packaged his concoctions into a book that he called ‘science’.
Heinrich was one of the first to use safety to over-ride the self-control and autonomy of persons. Most of what I read in Heinrich is a formula for unethical practice.
If autonomy is a virtue then NO, you don’t have a right to over-ride my rights, using safety as your moral weapon!
You can’t use one virtue against another virtue and claim to be virtuous!
Similarly, you can’t create a hierarchy of ‘goods’ so that safety becomes the greatest good.
In an ethic of care, safety is not the number one priority!
Safety is NOT the foundation for how to live and be!
You can’t hope to claim the will to harm on the way to zero harm. Yet, this is what zero vision does. Using Psychosocial harm to get to a low injury rate is immoral.
It is so easy to use safety as a weapon when you have no studies in ethics or expertise in moral philosophy. It’s so easy to maintain simplistic binary nonsense to justify the brutalism of others in the name of ‘good’. This is what happens in an industry that is yet to build a foundation for what it does on ethics and then declares itself ‘professional’.
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.
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