At the foundation of this con is the fundamental use of measurement metaphor and with it the delusion that safety can be measured. This mathematical methodology is of course nonsense, safety cannot be measured, just as risk cannot be measured.
But, this doesn’t seem to stop the perpetuation of the delusion.
It is no different than the zero delusion (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/) or the ‘drift into failure’ delusion (https://safetyrisk.net/do-persons-and-systems-drift-into-failure/). Both of these delusions rely on mathematical metaphor and a methodology of measurement to present an argument. Please tell me, what is the measure for safety and risk? What are the criteria? And, please don’t tell me injury rates! (The Heinrich delusion https://safetyrisk.net/deconstructing-the-myth-of-heinrich/).
However, we all know zero is impossible, just as perfection is impossible and non-failure is impossible for fallible people in a random world comprised of fallible systems.
Let’s take for example the delusion of 1% safer. If I am only 50% safe today, it will only take me 50 more days to perfection under the logic of this scam. Or if I am less ambitious maybe 5 years. Fancy that, if I buy the logic of this con and get 1% safer each day or year, I can start at 50% safe I will be perfect in 50 days or 5 years! Just imagine how safe I can be under this con if I start at 99% safe. Wow, in 50 days I will be 149% safer! In 5 years I will be 500% safer!
Of course, there is no method that supports this methodology (philosophy/ideology). There is no method for any claim that promises to improve safety by some measure. All you need is slogans, mantras and aspirations (with no method) and keep doing traditional safety.
Just tell everyone you have a ‘new approach’ whatever that means, and of course do nothing different (https://www.cority.com/blog/one-percent-safer-occ-health/). Incrementalism has been a scam for the last 2000 years. Religions have been capitalising on this scam for centuries. Any promise for perfection by increments is a religious scam.
All of this stuff premised on mathematical metaphor and measurement is just emperor’s new clothes (https://safetyrisk.net/the-emperor-has-no-hard-hat/). This is how you get to Naked Safety, and it’s just all the same old traditional safety stuff. There is nothing new, different or alternative in any of it. I don’t want to control you in safety, I just want to harness you!
Without a change in methodology and metaphor, there can be no change in method.
One of the best books one can read on the power of metaphor, methodology and myth is by MacCormac (1976) Metaphor and Myth in Science and Religion (https://archive.org/details/metaphormythinsc01macc).
Any claim to certainty that uses metaphor instantly contradicts any claim to certainty. Metaphor uses language that describes something by what it is not. Metaphor is the first step to the manufacture of myth. Just look at the metaphors used by risk and safety and you will see that any claim to objective, unambiguous, precise language is infused with metaphor that has no clear objective and is comprised of ambiguous properties.
This is why Safety ends up using so much mythical and religious language, seeking perfection, heaven, zero, ‘saving lives’ and no error (https://safetyrisk.net/hope-faith-and-the-nature-of-risk/)
Try reading Lakoff and Johnson Metaphors We Live By (https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Lakoff%20y%20Johnson%20-%20Metaphors%20We%20Live%20By%20-%201980.pdf) for a start. Read anything in safety and look at its language, discourse and linguistics, particularly metaphor, and you will quickly realise the linguistic bias and blindness in the text, oriented to a particular worldview, contradicted by the metaphors used.
In the case of 1% safer, everything is couched in mathematical metaphor with promises of certainty. It’s the promotion of zero through alternate language. Ah, at last, one day by increments we will reach perfection. It’s just more Accidents to Zero discourse.
Look at the assumptions of the discourse and it has a fundamental worldview that presupposes that the world is mathematical. Embedded in this worldview are myths that Safety loves such as: ‘safety is a choice you make’ and ‘all accidents are preventable’. Again, it’s all the same stuff, it’s all the same methodology (Behaviourism, Positivism, Determinism). It’s all the same mythology.
And so there is no surprise that the outcome and method is: more systems, more Technique, more counting, more regulation and more policing.
Aspiration does not generate method indeed, the aspiration to perfectionism embedded in the assumptions of the 1% safer methodology is the same aspiration of zero, the aspiration for perfection. Aspiring to anything makes no difference to anything. Without a method and a motivation to do that method, nothing changes, nothing moves and there is no learning.
The reality is this: there is no zero for any fallible human and any aspiration for perfection is a mental health condition (https://safetyrisk.net/perfectionism-in-safety-and-the-denial-of-humanity/).
No wonder the AIHS markets humans as the problem (https://safetyrisk.net/the-enemy-of-safety-humans/). How can you drift into failure, when you are already in failure? How can any fallible person or system ever achieve zero?
Yet, Safety perpetuates this mythology at a global level (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VIRXEuniWA). Thank goodness zero was centre stage in Sydney at the global safety congress (https://visionzero.global/vision-zero-takes-centre-stage-world-congress) so ably sponsored by all the supporters of zero (https://safetyrisk.net/the-sponsors-of-zero-are/).
And in 100 years when there still can be no zero, when fallible people will keep getting injured, harmed and killed, will the delusion cease? Of course not! If you don’t support zero you are deemed anti-safety. This is how th discourse runs. This is where the mathematical worldview goes. This is why once zero is brought in to any organisation, it is nearly impossible to get rid of it. And, it’s all based on the mathematical worldview and metaphor that dominates the 1% safer discourse.
I think 100 years at 1% safer seems to be a great target for fallible people (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/) don’t you? and, in 2124 when we finally realise that perfection is impossible and that zero is nonsense, will people be 1% safer?
brhttps://safetyrisk.net/only-50-days-to-perfection/
Prompt