There is endless research on how the heart and gut serve as ‘second’ and ‘third’ brains (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384446830_The_Gut_The_Body%27s_Second_Brain; https://neurosciencenews.com/cognition-emotion-heatbeat-29747/; https://columbiasurgery.org/news/your-heart-has-brain-its-own). Which is why in SPoR we understand humans anthropologically as whole persons-as-Minds. In SPoR, when we use the language of Mind, we don’t think brain, we think person.

Our model of One Brain and Three Minds (1b3M) (https://safetyrisk.net/why-does-1b3m-matter-in-safety/) is central to tackling the way people ‘think’. It is also why metaphors and models of humans as cogs (https://safetyrisk.net/its-all-in-the-cogs-for-safety/) and humans as ‘factors’ (https://safetyrisk.net/who-is-the-human-in-human-factors/) don’t sit well in an understanding Holistic Ergonomics (https://safetyrisk.net/holistic-well-being-in-risk-differently/).

This is why a methodology of personhood is central for understanding The Ethics of Risk (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/the-ethics-of-risk/).

Having a heart for safety is the foundation for tackling risk.

Interestingly, we have always believed throughout History that the heart is the seat of human ‘being’.

The Mexicans (1500 BCE) viewed the heart as the whole person.

Here we see the Egyptians (2500 BCE) weighing a heart by a feather (https://www.worldhistory.org/article/42/the-egyptian-afterlife–the-feather-of-truth/ ).

Here we see the Aztecs (14^th Cent) offering heart sacrifice (https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/aztefacts/and-one-to-hold-the-head) because the heart was understood as the centre of life.

In the work of St Paul (55CE) we see a radical conflation of all of his anthropological terms (Jewett)  eg: “heart” (kardia), the “body” (soma), the “flesh” (sarx), the “soul” (psuche), the “mind” (nous), the “spirit” (pneuma), the “conscience” (suneidesis), “head’ (kephale) and inner and outer “man” (eso/ezo anthropos). This radical approach to the nature of personhood is embedded in his theology of the person. So, when Paul speaks of moral meaning he incorporates all of these is an understanding of persons.

Here we see a Franciscan Allegory of Chastity (faithfulness) 1320 CE (https://www.wga.hu/html_m/g/giotto/assisi/lower/crossing/40allego.html) where the blind demons steal the hearts of the faithful (bottom right corner).

In History in the West, it was thought wrong to draw the heart until Leonardo Da Vinci (1500 CE). But in Christianity, the heart was, and still is, understood as the seat of moral and emotional being. Indeed, most religions elevate the centrality of the heart in understanding being.

In this painting by Philippe-de-Champaigne (Belegium) (1645)  (https://ikuelldotcom.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/an-analysis-on-the-saint-augustine-painting-of-philippe-de-champaigne-by-selen-kaptan/) we see Augustine holding a heart in a burning desire for truth.

This from Meister Caspar re Venus (1470 CE)  (https://gynocentrism.com/2019/03/19/frau-minne-the-goddess-who-steals-mens-hearts-a-pictorial-excursion/) who steals men’s hearts.

The Miracle of the Miser’s Heart by Donatello (1448 CE) in Basilica di Sant’Antonio in Padua, captures the myth that the dead man when heart was removed was found to be a miser’s heart (and therefore couldn’t go to heaven). See on the far left the replacement heard being drawn out of a box.

Moving forward we see the art of Frida Kahlo 1939 (The Two Fridas). In this art Kahlo presents her two personalities as two versions of her with a different heart.

Emojis

In 2025, the image of the heart is used extensively as emojis and gesture. You can see what these mean here: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/relationships/a65059812/emoji-heart-meanings/

We know that emojis have a significant affect in all forms of online communications (see Danesi – The Semiotics of Emoji) (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321976795_The_Semiotics_of_Emoji_The_Rise_of_Visual_Language_in_the_Age_of_the_Internet). We know from extensive research that the use of an emoji can even pacify an offensive email or SMS (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12221085/).

In Music and Poetics

All of music and Poetics are flooded with metaphors of the heart (https://www.chosic.com/topic/songs-with-heart-in-the-title/) and soul (https://discover.hubpages.com/entertainment/Songs-With-Soul-in-the-Title). Indeed, these are interconnected in song and music as ‘mind’. We accept this language as normal in all Poetics. We never say ‘I love you with all my brain’. The heart is most associated with love and the emotions, the soul is most associated with passion, being and life.

Metaphors of the Heart

The heart is a common metaphor used across cultures for love, emotions and life as a journey (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228355841_A_Cross-Cultural_Analysis_of_Heart_Metaphors). Understanding how we use metaphor is critical to understanding what people mean and how figurative language works. See further The Poetics of Mind (https://assets.cambridge.org/97805214/19659/sample/9780521419659ws.pdf). Here are a few examples of metaphors of the heart and their meaning:

Mental Health

When we see a doctor one of the first things the doctor does is take our pulse and analyse blood pressure. We know that much of our concerns about mental health, depression, anxiety and psychosocial risk are anchored to the heart. There is a direct connection between things such as diet, sleep, distress and body condition to heart disease (https://www.victorchang.edu.au/heart-disease/mental-health).

Yet, how strange that so much of the symbolism associated with psychosocial health (no hazards) depicts the brain??? Hmmm, if something is psycho-social, wouldn’t images of relationships and community make more sense?

When we think in SPoR of resilience we understand it as a community, socially-situated matter (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/). Resilience has very little to do with individual capability to ‘bounce back’.

Metaphors We Live By

Many of our beliefs and values are influenced by the Metaphors We Live By (https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~jhoey/teaching/cs886-affect/papers/LakoffJohnsonMetaphorsWeLiveBy.pdf). For example, if the language of brain-as-computer or symbols of brains-for-thinking are constantly used, we tend to think of thinking done by brains and brains like computers.

Why is this relevant for safety?

This is how the language of thinking is used in HOP, with a brain as the central metaphor for thinking (https://safetyrisk.net/hop-is-traditional-safety/). When one’s image of growth is a brain growing out of a pot plant, it wouldn’t make sense that thinking and Mind were embodied. Indeed, this shapes the way learning is understood as rational cognition. It’s like the silly language of a ‘pre-accident’. What extraordinarily negative language to attribute to everyday living. Hello everyone, did you know you are living in a pre-accident?

Whether you like it or not, the popular metaphors we repeat in words and images in safety, shape many safety myths and beliefs.

For example, events don’t emerge in a linear fashion, they are often messy yet, safety continues to promote the idea of swiss-cheese and dominoes in contradiction to reality. Indeed, most events are complex and have many hidden features that are often only perceived in hindsight. We can thank the likes of Heinrich (Dominoes), Reason (swiss-cheese) and Dekker (semiotic tubes) for the naïve belief in linear cause.

One of the outcomes of focusing on persons as mechanical (cogs) and machine-like metaphors in safety is that it enables the dehumanisation of persons. The same occurs when we see humans as brain-centric or use computer metaphors for understanding human judgement and decision making. This is NOT how humans think.

Indeed, this is why AI doesn’t ‘think’ and never can ‘think’ like a person because humans are embodied beings (https://safetyrisk.net/essential-readings-neuroscience-and-the-whole-person/). The concept of large Language Models (LLMs) gets the use of language completely wrong based on the myth of brain as computer. Any study of the neuroscience of language acquisition demonstrates that this is NOT how language is learned in humans.

The more we focus on humans-as-computers on a carrier body, the less likely we are to even understand why people do what they do. Of course, AI will never have flesh, heart and blood and so AI can never ‘know with the heart’. Without a heart, how can AI ever know ‘matters of the heart’? How can it learn anything ‘by heart’? Without that pulsing ‘mind of being’ how can AI ever know the passion of the heart and soul of being?

This is why we need a heart for safety. It is in the heart and through language of the heart that we know love, trust, being, life and care/empathy.

This is why we speak of ‘heartache’ not ‘brain-ache’ when we think of social connection, moral meaning, relationships and community.

This is why language matters. The language we use is much more than just a way of communication. All language embeds symbolic and figurative thinking hidden in the text (https://semioticon.com/semiotix/2012/03/halliday-and-multimodal-semiotics/). The work of Michael Halliday is critical in understanding safety literacy (https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-6/learning-to-mean). The very grammar and semantics we use and hear, shapes belief.

Safety Literacy

When my daughter started her degree in Education and Teaching specialising in literacy, the first text on the list was M. A. K. Halliday, Language as Social Semiotic The social interpretation of language and meaning (https://archive.org/details/languageassocial0000hall/page/n5/mode/2up). (She now runs a reading literacy centre). You can guaranteed that Halliday is nowhere to be found in anything to do with ‘safety literacy’ or ‘usability mapping’. Why would you need to know anything about the semiotics of language, grammar in meaning or metaphor, when writing or speaking in ‘safety speak’? Why would you need to know about grammar and semantics when assembling text for meaning in safety? Why would you need to know about the dynamics of slogans and how they affect people?

The Legal Mind and Language

Unfortunately, Safety is yet to learn that linguistics matter. Safety continues to speak gobbledygook to people (https://safetyrisk.net/zero-discourse-as-gobbledygook/) as if you can make language mean what you want.

None of this ‘in-house’ and cult-like language is considered this way by real professions. Any court or lawyer would tear to shreds any of the silly talk that the Safety club accepts. Indeed, Greg Smith demonstrates this time and time again in our audiobook on Risky Conversations (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/risky-conversations-audio-book/).

Greg Smith recalls in one of the Risky Conversation videos (https://vimeo.com/163648220) how language used in an Induction and on company posters was used against a client in a prosecution. He mentioned the same about slogans used against clients in other prosecutions. In the end, you will be held accountable in a court (should something go wrong) by the language you use.

This is why Safety has no real understanding of the danger of its many silly slogans.

Just ask yourself, what does ‘blame fixes nothing’ mean to a coroner, lawyer or magistrate? Guess what, it means? It means – Blame fixes nothing! You can’t make these words mean something else. Far from being a ‘principle’ it is an anti-principle! It condones non-accountability. That is its legal meaning. Repeat it often enough in an organisation and when something goes wrong a very clever barrister will use it against you. The same goes for nonsense language like ‘safety is a choice you make’, ‘zero harm’, ‘all accidents are preventable’, safety obsessed’ (https://safetyrisk.net/dont-be-obsessed-with-safety/), ‘learning from normal work’, ‘work as imagined and work as done’. All of this language carries unintended legal ramifications that in-house safety is yet to consider.

The Heart of the Matter

The more we use language and discourse that puts a focus on the whole person and on social-relational meaning, the more we will step away from the individualist and behaviourist ideology that dominates safety.

We can begin this journey by changing our language, metaphors and symbols, away from the brain, to a focus on whole persons. This is the power of Holistic Ergonomics. This is the power of multiliteracies in safety (https://safetyrisk.net/multiliteracies-for-safety/). This is where we need to start if we are serious about psychosocial health.

For this, we need to start thinking about personhood and persons as Minds. Focusing on persons is the key to safety of the heart. Moving away from the love of objects to the love of persons is the heart of safety.

If you want to know more about anything raised in this blog you can email here: admin@spor.com.au

If you are interested in how this works out in safety investigations, you can join the group about to start the SEEK Program in November (https://safetyrisk.net/seek-investigations-workshop-online/).