The root meaning of the word for ‘belief’ is closely connected to the meaning of the word ‘faith’. Neither automatically need to be aligned to anything religious although, a study of religion in is helpful for understanding how belief is formed, shaped and sustained. We will be studying this in our approaching module on belief. There are no more places available in this module, registrations are closed.

I can say I have faith in someone meaning, I trust them to be and do who I know they are. I have faith in my wife who I have been married to for 52 years. Based on that track record, my faith may be well-founded. The same kind or level of faith can’t be held if you have known someone for a few hours. So, faith is connected to knowing/history, just as belief is a form of knowing without evidence. However, the nature of faith is such that the evidence is rarely rational.

I can also state that I have faith in a ‘thing’, eg. my car but there is no assurance that it will not break down. When we use the word ‘faith’ applied to things we are expressing a hope not a certainty.

I see so much in the Zero cult in safety that states ‘I believe in zero’. What does that mean? In this sense such an expression is a quasi-religious expression of belief in the infinite. Afterall, zero is both nothing and the infinite at the same time.

This is what happens when DuPont requests that safety ‘believe in the impossible’ (https://safetyrisk.net/believe-the-impossible-and-speak-nonsense-to-people/). This is religious-like discourse one would hear in any faith-belief religious system. The same is expressed in the DuPont Bradley Curve. Both are expressions of religious-like faith. After all, the Bradley Curve asserts against all the evidence, that human have a ‘natural instinct for self-harm.

There is no rational evidence for anything in either the Bradley Curve or the ideology of Zero (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/). Similarly, there is no evidence for belief in any of the semiotic models that Safety has belief in (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-beliefs-by-semiotic-evidence/).

None of the semiotic models used in safety are scientific or rational. That’s what semiotic models do. They help complete the creation of a myth. You can believe all you want in the coloured risk matrix but it isn’t a scientific instrument. We see this in many safety texts that claim to be ‘scientific’ but have no evidence for what is believed. The swiss-cheese semiotic is not supported by any evidence, it is believed by faith. The Jenga blocks of HOP are exactly the same. There is no rational evidence that error works like swiss cheese or Jenga blocks. Such semiotic belief is more about political affiliation and myth than evidence for reality. Both models are semiotic projections, not knowledge-based on evidence.

When you see the word ‘scientific approach’ used for things like a theory of damaging energies, this is not science. Energy-based safety is a belief system that excludes any understanding of human personhood as if all these objects (energies) operate independently of the person who engages with them. That’s why safety loves ‘Energy-Based Safety’ so much – you don’t have to know anything about persons, the unconscious, culture, belief, ethics or any of the non-measurables that operate in the real world, the ecological world. ‘Energy-Based Safety’ is a faith-belief system.

What often happens in any faith-belief system is formation around a semiotic myth (eg. swiss-cheese, 10 energies) and then gets confirmed in hindsight by a range of cognitive biases. There is no connection between holes in swiss-cheese and the proof of safety. Similarly, the many triangles used in safety are myth-faith objects where meaning is attributed. The use of the word ‘scientific’ is mostly decorative. Don’t just love how Safety is so attracted to the religious number of ten.

Another example, when you read about the ‘1% safer’ con, just ask how such a margin of 1% is measured. After all, if the idea is using an image of measurement, shouldn’t it be measurable? Of course not, the 1% safer myth is an icon for let’s identify as safety. It’s a political symbol for a group. There is no way one can scientifically measure if anything is 1% more or less safe. 1% safer is a faith-belief group.

Yet, in safety, so few are prepared to talk about faith-belief. Indeed, Dekker even apologises for using the word in his book on suffering.

Prof. Karl. E. Weick was never afraid to use the words ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ in association with risk. Indeed, because risk is all about what it NOT known. This is why Weick was quite content to use the language of ‘Poetics’ when identifying his style in organisational psychology. Poetics is about all that cannot be measured and you cannot measure risk, it’s a wicked problem.

So, what do we do when we cannot measure of know risk? We turn to semiotics, models and symbols that give us meaning that create myths we believe in. This is why studying semiotic knowing is critical to the discipline of SPoR.