It’s always amusing to see Safety throw language about with no meaning such as ‘revolutionary’, ‘visionary’, ‘trailblazer’ and ‘thought leader’. This is the language one uses when traditional Safety talks to traditional Safety about traditional safety.

Apparently, one is a ‘visionary trailblazer’ in safety and joins an ‘elite group’ by repeating the word ‘professional’ as often as possible. Of course, the language of non-vision includes the lowering of injury rates, ‘pioneering methodologies’ and ‘expertise’ in traditional safety. There is no pioneering methodological paradigm shift in any of this stuff. It’s still all packaged as the reduction of injury rates and expertise in safety apparently merits expertise in everything.

This includes ‘innovation’, ‘championing’ and prevention of injuries (https://www.assp.org/news-and-articles/assp-honors-five-visionaries-for-revolutionizing-worker-safety).

None of this is real, it’s just the concocted rhetoric of Safety that in the end cannot be taken seriously.

The excesses of all this language of accolade, demonstrates that language is meaningless in safety, especially when it comes to what it means to have ‘vision’ (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/envisioning-risk-seeing-vision-and-meaning-in-risk/).

Sadly, these people who have worked in the safety industry for some time are devalued by the way the ASSP uses language. Visionaries don’t seek accolades or meaningless discourse by associations who invest and centralise power in association. Visionaries are usually known by their lack of orthodoxy and conformance.

Real vision in safety cannot be found from within the confines, controls and traditions of orthodox safety culture. The typical characteristics of safety culture (ignorance, compliance, injury rates, policing, heroics, conformance and myopia) ensure that innovation, creativity and discovery are suppressed. Indeed, any sense of vision will be quickly quashed within orthodox safety as being non-compliant and anti-safety. A good example is how the so-called ‘innovation safety science lab’ endorses zero as a moral goal. The language of ‘innovation’ is meaningless when all one does is endorse the status quo. Just look at all the sponsors of zero, no visionaries to be found (https://safetyrisk.net/the-sponsors-of-zero-are/). Any sponsor of zero stopped thinking critically a long time ago.

In many ways, the excessive language of Safety talking about itself in this way is simply embarrassing.

Whenever I see the language of ‘thought leader’ and ‘guru’ used in safety I instantly think that the person so labelled cannot think critically. The label is about as meaningful as putting 6 post-nominals after your name, that simply help identify membership to the ‘safety club’. The greater the use of safety post-nominals, the more likely one has simply conformed to the demands and constraints of ‘safety think’.

And as for the word ‘revolutionary’, I can’t think of anyone inside the safety industry who warrants such a word. In safety, the most important cultural characteristic is to keep things safe, not to offer vision.

Safety would be much better off without all this meaningless language. There has been no revolution in safety in the last 100 years. Spin, slogans and ‘discourse’ of ‘differently’, don’t demonstrate any movement in either method or methodology.

Indeed, the safety mindset of policing the regulation, counting injury rates and offering expertise on things with no expertise, is simply more deeply ingrained as a characteristic of safety culture. I know, let’s not even talk about safety culture, such is the promotion of ignorance as a safety culture marker.

So, if you are looking for vision in risk don’t search for it inside safety. If there is any sense of vision about risk it’s most likely one will find it outside the safety camp of orthodoxy, compliance and safety culture.