I read with amusement yesterday a self-declared ‘safety expert’ who asserted that safety was not a ‘thing’ so therefore there was no such ‘thing’ as ‘safety culture’.

It’s always amusing to observe mono-disciplinary Safety, with no expertise in Linguistics, Semiotics, Ethnology, Poetics, Ethics or Learning declare all they don’t know in disciplines they have never studied. What was even more amusing is that the paper talked about ‘safety ethics’ (not defined) and sprouted forth on ignorance about ethics. The same publication wrote about a ‘safety ethics approach’, the psychology of habit and trust, ‘moral fatigue’ and ‘ethical fading’. It seems the moment you enter the world of safety, you know everything and have answers for everything. I saw one of these mindless safety podcasts that proposed that safety ‘has an answer for everything’. Dunning-Kruger is alive and well in Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/dunning-kruger-is-alive-and-well-in-safety/).

No wonder Safety thinks it can declare what is, by what isn’t (https://safetyrisk.net/declaring-what-is-by-what-isnt-hop-as-traditional-safety/).

It’s mind boggling that in Safety you can make up any alternate reality, just as long as it is justified by the word ‘safety’. You can declare falsehoods ‘truths’ and the lemmings all march in a row singing glory hallelujah.

Once in the safety club you can say whatever you want to an undiscerning audience that has no skills in deconstruction nor any right of criticism. This is because criticism is deemed anti-safety indeed, any negativity in safety is somehow declared morally wrong.

Any rudimentary understanding of Linguistics will tell you that Safety is a thing.

In language we personify things and speak archetypically of many things. Eg. We talk about ‘the market’, how ‘the market decides’, ‘the mood of the market’ and the metaphors of the market being ‘up’ or ‘down’. We personify cities, countries, political entities and industries eg. ‘Canberra says’, ‘Washington says’, ‘the Economy is weak’,

Figurative and metaphorical language is unconsciously threaded into everything we say (Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By –  https://nyshalong.com/public/archive/20150131/20150131_ref.pdf). We speak about ‘safety’ as a thing and personify safety in our language like we do many things. People even call themselves ‘safety’ or that a group of people are ‘safety’, we declare safety as ‘heaven’, that ‘safety saves’ or that we believe in ‘safety’. The evidence for safety as a thing is overwhelming. Just observe how Safety refers to itself.

In language/discourse we talk about entities having their own culture eg. ‘prison culture’, “youth culture’, ‘Australian culture’, First Nations culture’, organisational culture, Hindi culture’, agri-culture etc. (https://safetyrisk.net/the-culture-of-safety/). Personifying and giving force/energy to things is common in religious studies, film and music Indeed, all poetics is often the expression of archetypical energies. We accept this in language as normal.

But yes, in Safety, with no expertise in culture we are happy to even declare from ignorance, some debate that there is no such thing as culture at all (https://safetyrisk.net/the-culture-paradox/). Or we have engineers writing books on culture concluding with rules that culture shouldn’t be talked about.  Or we have Safety talking about culture as a ‘construct’ (https://safetyrisk.net/culture-is-not-a-construct/) or that ‘systems create culture’ (Hopkins).

It seems the greatest experts in the culture are those who don’t know anything about it.

The first rule about culture is to make sure you don’t turn to Safety’ to learn about culture (https://safetyrisk.net/if-you-want-to-know-about-culture-dont-start-with-safety/).

Even in the AIHS BoK that talks about culture, there is no mention of the fundamentals of culture eg. ritual, myth, religion, belief, enactivity, linguistics, poetics etc. and of course, in such a chapter there is no mention of zero=safety, the bedrock of safety that is the foundation, front and centre of the global safety industry (https://safetyrisk.net/safetyzero-culture/). This is the global industry that turns safety=zero into a deity (https://safetyrisk.net/the-spirit-of-zero/).

It is also convenient that the AIHS Chapter on Ethics also makes no mention of zero. How amazing! So selectively silent on the greatest noise in safety across the globe and yet silent on so many essentials on culture (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-culture-silences/). This is one of the primary characteristics of safety culture, ensuring it doesn’t talk about things that matter eg. fallibility.

 

So, when we talk about culture and the culture of things we often speak about general characteristics of that thing personified. And in Safety, these things are often attributed to have power, when they do not eg. hazards. (https://safetyrisk.net/personifying-objects-in-safety/)

Yet in safety culture, its favourite preoccupations are personified and spoken about as beings with their own energy. There are even silly theories about ‘damaging energies’ (endorsed in the AIHS BoK) as if these ‘things’ have a life of their own, but then in the same breath, seek to discredit anything in SPoR that demonstrates that this linguistic turn only goes one way.

In SPoR, we know that things have an energy and force to themselves, common to all archetypes (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-is-not-a-person-safety-as-an-archetype/). Jung articulated the many shared and common things that have an energy/force to themselves as ‘the collective unconscious’ (https://www.are.na/block/1493356). We observe this in the nature of war, money, capital, love and religion that clearly have a force/energy unto themselves. Why does this matter?

How convenient in safety to create an alternate reality so that you don’t have to tackle it. Or if you do believe in safety culture Safety then dismisses it as ‘what we do around here’.

What this kind of thinking enables is a guarantee that nothing will change in the culture of safety. And if you hear safety sprouting about culture ask if they read any of these:

1. Barry, J., (1999). Art, Culture and the Semiotics of Meaning.  St Martin’s Press.  New York.
2. Bourdieu, P., (1997). Culture and Power. University of Chicago Press. New York.
3. Eschin, S., and Gurung, A., (2009). Culture and Mental Health, Sociocultural Influences, Theory and Practice. Wiley-Blackwell. London.
4. Jourdan, C., and Tuite, K., (eds.). (2006) Language, Culture and Society.   London.
5. Lotman, J., (2013) The Unpredictable Workings of Culture. TLU Press. Tallinn.
6. Mclaren, P., (1995). Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture.    London.
7. Mulhern, F., (2000). Culture/Metaculture.  London.
8. Oswell, D., (2006). Culture and Society.    London.
9. Shore, B., (1996) Culture in Mind, Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford University Press.
10. Story, J., (2021). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, An Introduction. (ninth edition). Routledge.  London.

Of course, you know they haven’t. Speaking from ignorance is one of the characteristics of safety culture. Indeed, what safety does so professionally when someone discusses the complexities of semiotics about culture, they call it a ‘crock of shite’! Then in the same breath ensure they repeat the word ‘safety professional’ and ‘safety ethics’ ten times.

The best way to understand culture is semiotically through understanding culture semiopherically (Lotman). Whilst, there is no perfect way of understanding culture it can only be known existentially and phnomenologically. Yet, conceptually, these are completely foreign to the characteristics of ‘dumb down’ common to safety culture.

If you are actually up for some intelligent study of culture then for Safety there is much unlearning to do. There are also many resources available in SPoR to re-learn about culture. The recent discussion series with Matt Thorne is an example: https://vimeo.com/showcase/11312080

What you get in studying culture through SPoR is a practical, positive and constructive framework for tackling the wicked problem of culture. If you want to know more this, just email: matthew@riskdiversity.com.au

If you would like to do a seminar, workshop or engage in coaching about culture then contact admin@spor.com.au. Once you engage in a semiotic understanding of culture you will be surprised how much more you see about culture, that you never saw before from the safety worldview. What’s even more important is, that you will have a better idea of what to do about it.