Obsession is one of the first indicators of a mental health disorder (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920996422000834 ). A good example is OCD (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd).
Any obsession is not good yet, here we are in risk and safety with companies instructing workers to be obsessed with safety. The last person I ever want to talk to is someone obsessed with safety.
This is how the safety industry creates psychosocial risk through ignorance and extremism (https://safetyrisk.net/in-praise-of-balance-in-risk-and-the-threat-of-extremism/). Hey Safety, don’t worry about external psychosocial hazards, Safety is the psychosocial hazard.
The ideology of zero is the foundation for extremism (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/).
And yet here we have the global safety industry describing its congress as a ‘zero event’ (https://safetyrisk.net/the-global-zero-event-this-is-safety/). Here we have an industry, telling lies about golden rules (https://safetyrisk.net/auditing-the-7-golden-rules-of-zero-a-miserable-fail/) when we know all the time that CEOs never apply the same principle to themselves (https://safetyrisk.net/hey-ceo-does-zero-apply-to-you/).
One thing one must do is look at all the sponsors of this event (https://safety2023sydney.com/sponsorship) and avoid any contact with the lovers of zero (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/for-the-love-of-zero-free-download/). You simply can’t attend this ‘zero event’ and then state one doesn’t believe in zero, unless you are a safety hypocrite.
I have written about the dangers of obsession (https://safetyrisk.net/how-to-be-a-safety-extremist/) before:
All of this stuff in safety such as: obsession, extremism (https://safetyrisk.net/zero-as-extremist-ideology/), Zero and identifying as safety (https://safetyrisk.net/you-are-not-the-sum-of-safety/), makes safety a mental health disorder (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-as-a-mental-health-disorder-obsession/). What does obsession do?
- Obsession rejects balance.
- Obsession funnels people and blinkers them to the needs of others.
- Obsession closes down listening, helping and care because obsession is obsessed with itself and its agenda.
- Obsession creates unwanted fears, anxiety and distrust.
- Obsession fosters ritualistic superstitions.
- Obsession projects inadequacy on others and fuels ideas that others are the problem, not oneself.
- Obsession creates fosters avoidance behaviours, isolation and relational dysfunction.
One of the things we try to do with our children is create a balanced view of the world.
I know of a teenager who is obsessed with video games. Every waking moment (and he only sleeps for a few hours each night) he’s on the computer. His parents are off their tree with worry. I know another person who is obsessed with fear of planes who lives in far northern Australia. Then when their mother wasn’t well in Adelaide drove for 5 days to get to Adelaide which is a thousand times riskier. This is the illness of obsession with safety.
There is very little separation between obsession and addiction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction).
And don’t tell me safety is a good thing to be obsessed about.
- Don’t tell me that every waking moment thinking about safety is a good thing.
- If you are obsessed with safety then you would never get out of bed.
- If you were obsessed with safety, you would never take a risk.
- Safety obsessed people don’t know that Risk Makes Sense (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/risk-makes-sense/).
- If you are obsessed with safety your worldview closes in and the rest of real life becomes a sub-set of safety.
The companies that encourage obsession and make obsession a thing to be desired are fundamentally unethical. Such companies encourage people to be mental unwell.
This is how Safety continues to speak nonsense to people (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-experts-in-speaking-nonsense-to-people/).
In SPoR, we always seek balance. The best way to seek balance is to understand risk as functioning in Workspace, Headspace and Groupspace © (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-engagement/). We show this on our risk maturity matrix tool © (https://safetyrisk.net/focus-on-meeting-people-not-legislation-a-path-to-risk-maturity/).
In SPoR, we know that humans are fallible, mistakes are normal and the safety obsession with numerics and metrics (https://safetyrisk.net/1-safer-than-what/) is just more mental illness.
In SPoR, we are not obsessed with performance or measurement, that’s not how people live.
In real life humans don’t live in numerics and metrics. 95% of all that humans do is NOT measureable. You can’t measure the most important things in living like: love, trust, friendship, care, helping, moral integrity, relationships and community but you certainly know when you don’t have them. And you can never have these when you believe in zero and are a safety extremist.
Of course, when you are obsessed with safety you project that SPoR is the extremist, simply because it seeks balance in human living.
Yet, here is Safety asking people to be obsessed with the 5%! Even worse is the obsession with the 1% (https://safetyrisk.net/1-one-percent-safer/). Just more mental illness.
- This means that such an obsession ignores the 95% of real living.
- The last person you would trust is someone obsessed with safety.
- The last person you would want to talk to is the person obsessed with safety.
In SPoR, we don’t get up in the morning and think ‘how can I be safe’, we think, how can I live in community and relationship with others. We don’t count injury rates because these are a measure of nothing.
In real life, you can’t count what counts.
brhttps://safetyrisk.net/dont-be-obsessed-with-safety/
Prompt