The repetition of rituals, habits and ceremonies offer comfort to those seeking certainty. This creates a sense of safety that is often accompanied by symbolic myths endorsed by narratives about linear being, order and control. The best way to know that this is a myth is when something goes wrong and the response is surprise. You don’t expect things to go wrong when you concoct a world of certainty in myth.

Kay and King write about the search for certainty in their wonderful book Radical Uncertainty (https://safetyrisk.net/radical-uncertainty/). The reality is, we live in a messy, ambiguous and disordered world but put structures on that world to make ourselves feel secure and safe. We see this in Safety with the concoction of swiss-cheese, pyramids and triangles, dominoes, ratios, matrices and curves, all giving semiotic explanation for something that doesn’t exist. And apparently, all of these myths offer ‘controls’.

None of this semiotics is scientific or based on evidence but their value is attributed (https://safetyrisk.net/the-seduction-of-attribution/). This is how semiotics work, in the unconscious, where the image validates the narrative.

We know from recent research by Toby Wize (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/toby-wise) that repetitive actions, behaviours and habits give assurance in the face of anxiety about uncertainty.

In the safety world these habits show up as: Take 5s, Sacred Safety Moments, counting Injury rates, repetition of slogans, tick and flick risk assessments, duplication of safety templates and associations that affirm safety indoctrination. There is nothing more comforting than reading the next safety book written by a safety engineer about how safety is sacred and ‘saves lives’.

There’s nothing more comforting that seeing that old swiss-cheese in a document or that Heinrich pyramid, to know that all you have learned is true and certain. The best way to confirm a myth is to repeat the semiotics of that myth as much as possible. Somewhat like saying the words ‘safety professional’ makes one mystically professional.

Research by Sookud, Martin, Gillian and Wize (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41110550/) demonstrate that compulsivity in task repetition overcomes anxiety about uncertainty. All kinds of addictive disorders show this.

We also know from Religious Studies that ritual and myth are central to certainty in faith. And we see this recently with a new expressed faith in AI, as if AI is the new saviour for uncertainty. We can trace back thousands of years to the repetition of ritual and myth to affirm belief and faith in such myth. And if you are looking for religious myth, the place to go is safety on Linkedin. Here it is, all on display, safety the saviour for harm, injury ratios save lives, HOP is the new saviour, blame fixes nothing, but this silver bullet etc. Safety is marketing heaven for suckers who want to buy the next con to guarantee the achievement of nothing more than the suppression of uncertainty.

And, the more gimmicks, slogans and myths you put in your wheelbarrow, the more you can shout from the rooftops that you have the next innovation in ‘safety science’, zero guaranteed.

If however, you would rather dwell in the world of reality where wicked problems are the norm for human living, you might want re-think the con, the marketing and spin. You can start a journey away from that faux world, by reading any of the free books offered by SPoR in the series on risk: https://www.humandymensions.com/shop/ or by watching any of the videos we have: https://vimeo.com/CLLR