One of the main reasons that Safety supports zero ideology is ignorance. Safety doesn’t know how to answer the entrapment question of: how many people do you want to injure today?

How funny that I get criticised for being brutal on Zero. Poor old Zero, can brutalise people as it likes but must not be exposed as brutal!

Of course, this binary nonsense question by Safety is based on binary entrapment. It is an unethical question too, any question of entrapment is. Questions of entrapment come to any moment knowing the answer that is wanted and then manipulate the person to get that answer.

The first response to any question of entrapment is: why do you ask me such a question? What is your motivation to ask a question of entrapment? Or throw a question of entrapment back at them and see if they like it!

The trouble is, safety has no ethic of risk and so has no idea it is asking an unethical question indeed, the silly industry thinks that zero is the only ethical target! (https://www.icmm.com/en-gb/stories/2022/zero-harm-only-acceptable-target).

It is this kind of thinking that ends up in complete and utter nonsense naming zero as a culture! ( Defining a Zero Harm Positive Safety Culture by applying mindfulness based high-performance, thinking strategies ). I know, let’s find out about culture and ask a chemical engineer.

This kind of thinking again comes from a poorly educated industry that thinks that safety is about counting injury rates and policing regulations. And even in attempts at humour amplify policing as a normalised process of safety (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-cops-and-safetys-adoration-of-power/). This leads to brutalism, the natural outworking of expecting perfection of fallible people.

 

Any advocacy for zero must have a natural trajectory of abuse.

 

So, there can never be any psychosocial safety under the mantra of zero.

 

Therefore, zero harms people.

Can you just imaging if school teachers expected perfection from a student, it would be the zero harm lovers who would be first to march up to the school and call out the teacher for such a nonsense belief!

Oh, yes but all harm must be prevented! Hmmm, and please can you tell me by what method will you achieve such perfection? This is never the questioned asked by the zero acolytes.

A much better question that should be asked by all safety people and is quite simple: can you please explain your method to tackle risk?

And here is Safety, driven by the outcome, in complete ignorance of process. Outcomes cannot define ethic.

For those who want to be more educated about Zero and how it works, we have collected all the videos and podcasts together in one place:

· https://vimeo.com/user/57711103/folder/17469976

You can also download for free books that target the problem of zero:

To really understand the way zero works, one needs some intelligence about semiotics, mythology, the unconscious, ethics and, a host of non-STEM skills, in which Safety has no interest. Without such understand one is deluded into thinking Zero is just a metric.

But for all those zero lovers, you won’t be disappointed. The zero-congress love-in is approaching soon in Sydney in November. Your invitation is here:

· https://safetyrisk.net/auditing-the-7-golden-rules-of-zero-a-miserable-fail/

Your Non-golden rules are here:

· https://safetyrisk.net/7-golden-rules-that-are-not-golden/

If however you would like an alternative to brutalism you can come to the SPoR Convention in Canberra (https://spor.com.au/september-canberra-workshop/) 18-21 September and meet others who are instead practicing positive, practical methods to tackle risk by disposing of zero so that safety improves (https://safetyrisk.net/moving-away-from-zero-so-that-safety-improves/).

In these workshops you will learn how to avoid the meaningless mythologies of safety and how to embody a real and positive approach to risk that works (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/).