Placing an emphasis on the psychological without the social is a critical omission in the common discourse about psycho-social risk. Placing an emphasis on hazards without an emphasis on risk, also creates a similar imbalance.
In SPoR, we seek to strike a balance between the social-psychological by emphasising conditions of social meaning as a factor in psychological outcomes. In taking this focus, we move away from an individualistic approach towards an inter-affectivity approach to risk. To do so requires a completely different vision.
In my book Envisioning Risk, Seeing, Vision and Meaning in Risk (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/envisioning-risk-seeing-vision-and-meaning-in-risk/), I place an emphasis on the nature of vision.
Vision is not just about what we see physically but about what we see meta-physically – what is beyond the physical. When we look beyond the material world, we enter the world of beliefs and what is believed collectively. In my book the opening chapter starts with ‘Vision Doesn’t Start With the Eyes’. In this chapter I discuss the ‘Minds-eye’ and the nature of perception associated with Indigenous knowing and other ways of knowing that are NOT rational and limited to brain-centric thinking. The brain is nothing like a computer and the human body is nothing like a machine.
Meta-physical knowing is interested in the things of the soul, heart and being, embodied being. Meta-physical knowing is interested just as much in the imagination and the unconscious as the physical and material. Indeed, it envisions these worlds as inter-dependent, inter-affective and inter-corporeal. How do you look with your heart and not with your eyes? One of the best ways to understand meta-physical knowing is to feel the power of music/song. Why do I cry when their song is played?
And when we think of what people believe collectively (as a society, community, and in organising) we also consider the outcomes of belief. What are the consequences of belief? What do our beliefs move? And, if a belief doesn’t move us, do we really believe something more than just an idea of something? Without movement, there is no learning. Holding a priority of ideas is not belief.
It is often in our social world where our beliefs are tested.
In our social world where relationships matter, what would you do for someone you love? If you say you love someone but don’t move for that love, is it really love you are talking about? Often the need for movement in love also involves sacrifice and suffering.
In my book on Envisioning Risk, I discussed a number of people I considered ‘visionaries’. Visionaries see the world differently. This is not the glib sense of safety ‘differently’ where nothing changes but a concept but rather a way of vision where everything in belief moves. I find it amusing in the safety world where every other person is a ‘thought leader’ where nothing of vision is proposed except more meaningless rhetoric. Being entertained is not about vision nor about learning.
Visionaries don’t just live in the world, they imagine a different world.
One of the visionaries I discuss in the book Envisioning Risk is the Apostle Paul. (I also discuss Nelson Mandela, Jacques Ellul, Bosch, Blake, Kierkegaard, Jung, Mary Douglas, Louisa Lawson, Marion Mahoney Griffin, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendel and Marcia Langton).
The first letter Paul ever wrote was to the Galatians (people in middle Turkey). In this letter Paul states many radical things for his time, things that contradicted the common way of seeing the world. He argued for a radical understanding of personhood where he said there was neither Greek nor Jew, Male nor Female, Slave not Free (3:28). Such a declaration for non-discrimination is a complete turning upside down of belief for the ancient world in AD 49.
If you really want to understand Paul, it is best to read him Politically and Socially, not evangelically. The evangelical worldview completely distorts what Paul was on about. Such a view makes Paul into who he was not. In as similar way, Christian Nationalism has nothing to do with Christianity.
Paul was both practical, political and had considerable academic expertise. If you want to know more about Paul you can read here: https://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/WallaceQ01.html
Another of Paul’s wonderful sayings in Galatians is: ‘Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ’. This too, is so radical and the key is understanding what Paul meant by ‘law’. Yes, Paul was an expert in Jewish Law but this saying has nothing to do with regulations, legal meaning or legislation. Such is an important lesson for an industry like safety that is fixated on regulation and law.
The closest we have to understanding Paul’s belief is with Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s idea of the ‘social contract’ (https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04954279v1/file/Overview%20of%20social%20contract%20theories.pdf). However, the idea of the social contract goes back way further than Hobbes and Rousseau. The Hindu ‘Dharma’ carries the same meaning of the virtuous life in communal meaning. In this life I don’t do things because I have to or am compelled to but I am motivated to do things through my being.
We all carry worries, ‘burdens’, concerns and sufferings, such is the way of fallible human living. There is no perfection. There is no burden-free life. Nirvana is myth.
If you live a human life, you will be harmed. There is no zero harm. Zero harm is a dangerous myth. Zero is a dangerous delusion that fosters dehumanisation of persons (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/).
The sooner we ditch the nonsense of perfectionism the quicker we can enter into Everyday Social Resilience (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/). The ideology of Zero repels the need of flourishing in resilience. The quicker we can ditch the lens of safety and focus on persons, the sooner we will know how to empathise, connect and embody the meaning of resilience. Similarly, when we learn to ditch the semiotics of heroes and super heroes in safety, we can begin to understand resilience.
The virus of individualism in Western society is the myth of self-reliance. I expose this myth of self-reliance in my book Everyday Social Resilience.
Resilience is NOT about ‘pull your self up by your shoe straps’. The common metaphors of brain health, mental fitness, ‘rewiring the brain’ and controlling psychosocial hazards are nonsense ideas built on the myths of brain-centrism, individualism and hazard-control.
In Paul’s letter, we obviously know by his content that this group of people are having issues with: communality, mutual support, discrimination, hierarchy and legality. Paul’s letter virtually asks these people to dump these values and change their worldview. Asking people to move their worldview is the stuff of Cognitive Dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance is painful and involves much more than just switching ideas or emotional discomfort. Cognitive Dissonance involved distress, painful turning around and movement in an opposite direction. This could involve breaking relationships, social context and moral meaning anchored to a group (https://safetyrisk.net/change-in-safety-and-cognitive-dissonance/).
Bearing another’s burdens doesn’t mean taking burdens away. There are no miracles in pastoral care. There is no magic in care ethics. Bear one another’s burdens is about not being alone but being WITH in those burdens. Bearing burdens is not about wishing for zero or silly aspirations that are neither human or practical. Bearing burdens is not about ‘fixing’ or ‘controlling’. This is a huge challenge for an industry fixated on fixing and controlling.
Bearing burdens is about moving with the other person in their pain and, in their suffering so they know they are not alone in such suffering. This kind of safety is not found in control but in being. This kind of safety has nothing to do with ‘saving lives’. The skill to do this requires ditching some of the common safety beliefs about control, power, problem solving and fixing. It also demands a new ethic of personhood and knowing the power of powerlessness.
In our book on Everyday Social Resilience we have an image on the cover of an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff juxtaposed with those dancing at the top. I wonder what this cover says about bearing ne another’s burdens?
brhttps://safetyrisk.net/bearing-burdens-and-socio-psychological-safety/
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