Zero Vision but Purchase Insurance
One of the realities of maturity in fallibility is understanding finiteness, vulnerability and risk. The profession of infallibility is a sign of a mental health problem.
It’s because we don’t talk non-sense to ourselves that we purchase insurance. It’s because we know human life is random and not in our control that it is sense-able to buy insurance. It is simply delusional to speak the ideology of zero and then purchase insurance, which demonstrates that one doesn’t really believe the ideology. Recall the huge stage poster ‘we believe’ at the World Congress on Safety 2017, I bet they even had event insurance!
Tournier (Learn to Grow Old, p.173) states quite sensibly:
‘We die a little every day in all the things we leave uncompleted. All work is a beginning which does not really finish. It is rare for a person to be able to achieve what they have undertaken to do. Especially within the time expected. Every job takes longer to complete that one thinks it is going to. Which of us doesn’t know the feeling of guilt at always being behind in one’s programme? At not being able to concern oneself with one thing, except by neglecting many others? But also the fact that we often invent unnecessary jobs to do in order to avoid more difficult tasks? … The unfulfilled is always experienced as failure.’
The purpose of having an aspiration to the absolute is to demonstrate to oneself that it is not achievable. Everything in human life is limited and human maturity and professionalism is defined by the ability to live with fallibility, not its denial. The key to maturity is acceptance of vulnerability and finiteness not its denial, this ensures that one accepts the challenges of helping. Professions are all about ‘helping’ those less fortunate in the world of randomness. If one doesn’t accept the realities of helping, then one is not in a profession. If one doesn’t frame the world through the lens of learning one will never be a helper or a professional. If one doesn’t accept the limits of human ‘being’ one cannot be professional. If one talks delusional discourse of infallibility one can’t identify as professional (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/ ).
The ideology of zero vision has no vision for what to do about human reality. When we have a real vision for fallible people we ‘help’ because, ‘there but for the grace of god go I’.
Unless Vision understands the world of randomness and finitude, there is no vision. Unless Vision knows that all human plans are never accomplished, there is no vision. Unless Vision professes acceptance of not achieving vision then there can be no empathy or connection in vision. Of zero vision is self-defined as a blindness.
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
- Zero is Not a Noble Goal - October 22, 2020
- Data Ethics and the Ethics of Data in Safety - October 17, 2020
- Resiliencing Wisdom for Covid Safety - October 16, 2020
- X to Zero and Zero to X - October 15, 2020
- Right Then Children, Sit Up Straight and Take Some Safety - October 15, 2020
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