When your linguistics deny fallibility and your language is about perfection, why would you need support services for people who are harmed? Why would you purchase insurance? How can you develop support services for people who are harmed and injured whilst at the same time preaching ‘believe in zero vision’? Do people not realise that this contradiction is crazy?
The ideology in one cancels out the belief in the other.
If your language is ‘safety is a choice you make’ and ‘all accidents are preventable’ the development of support services and empathy for people who are harmed is diminished. Spruiking language like ‘zero suicide’ (https://vimeo.com/995654336) diminishes empathy, fosters arrogance and alienates people suffering mental health issues. No-one wants to speak about their vulnerabilities to someone talking about ‘zero suicide’ or ‘zero harm’. The ideology and discourse of perfection is alienating to everyday fallible living.
So in SPoR, we acknowledge fallibility (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/), we see no problem in accepting harm and focussing on building skills in empathy, helping, care, listening and resilience as sense-able (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/). Indeed, we have developed methods that work in building these skills (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/). The skill development and methods offered in SPoR work (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/). Organisations that practice SPoR quickly discover how easy it is to humanise risk and safety.
The first and easiest way to begin to humanise safety is to ditch zero ideology and the linguistics of zero. The moment you move away from zero ideology and linguistics, safety improves (https://safetyrisk.net/moving-away-from-zero-so-that-safety-improves/).
When organisations embrace SPoR, they move away from the love of objects and the nonsense of psychosocial ‘hazards’ and develop skills in understanding persons, discourse, enabling Socialitie and building social resilience. We call this Everyday Social Resilience (the book is for free download – https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/).
You can watch two videos on Everyday Social Resilience here:
Everyday Social Resilience from CLLR on Vimeo.
and here:
Everyday Social Resilience 2 from CLLR on Vimeo.
Keeping a focus on the Everyday is critical for any organisation.
A one-off odd moment or unusual event will only be well managed if Everyday Social Resilience is the norm for the way the organisation functions.
Relational support takes a long time to establish, founded on trust, demonstrated care and a climate of helping/servanthood. When your primary concern and discourse is a number, I know what matters most to the organisation, and it’s not me.
The moment when things go pear-shaped and an organisation needs a climate of resilience, it cannot be accessed if the organisation doesn’t practice Everyday Social Resilience. You would think this might be obvious but nothing diminishes a climate of resilience more than the delusional speak of zero.
And when a disaster occurs, bringing in 50 specialist counsellors has little effect. In times of disaster the average person doesn’t use professional services! People in crisis go to those they trust and know and, you can’t build trust and empathy if you are preaching the nonsense of zero to people.
This is why people don’t seek psychosocial support from Safety, because Safety knows nothing about psychosocial support. Safety is too busy chasing psychosocial ‘hazards’ and moving about objects (https://safetyrisk.net/what-is-psychosocial-safety/). This is why many people are not happy being in Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/ohs-voices-from-the-resistance-rosa-carrillo/).
If you want to learn about SPoR and all it offers you can read any one of the free books and resources or just send an email and ask a question.
Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below