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Emotions are not the Adversary

  There are many issues in which Safety takes no interest. Just look at safety conferences, journals and publications in risk and safety and you will find precious little about: ethics, politics, holistic ergonomics, consciousness, personhood, professionalization and critical thinking to name a few. Yet these are the topics and issues that are critical if …

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Tackling the Reality of Harm

  ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life’. Genesis 3:17 How Safety defines hurt or harm is a huge issue for the industry. The monster of injury statistics now defined as safety has created a circus of linguistic gymnastics and …

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The Compliance Conundrum

  The challenge of compliance is also a challenge to critical thinking, this is one of the many paradoxes in risk and safety. When we comply or an organization seeks compliance this is all well and good only while things stay the same. When things change and adaptability is required to keep safe, then compliance …

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Love Doesn’t Set Targets

  One of the delusions of the STEM-only mindset is that everything must have a target, measurable goal or quantifiable number. It is the attraction of simple binary opposition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition) that gets seduced by this language and ideology. The silly question ‘how many deaths do you want today?’ is rarely called out as a silly …

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Mental Health and Zero Harm

  The foundation principle of pastoral care required in meeting people with mental health is tolerance. The principle of ‘there but for the grace of god go i’ is a critical disposition when engaging with people who are unwell. The last thing anyone with a mental health concern needs to hear is nonsense language of …

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