Semiotic Belief/Myth The Heinrich triangle believes that injury rates are a representation of safety. It also confirms that injury is hierarchical.

Heinrich makes many pejorative psychological projections in his discourse and of course has no expertise in psychology. A nice foundation for Safety as expert -in-everything discourse to follow.

Heinrich was an insurance salesman.

Heinrich’s dominoes believe that events are linear, and cause interconnected sequences of affect. Bird established similar beliefs to Heinrich believes that objects are connected to subjects. A nice foundation for later semiotics of damaging energies safety.

Bird also endorses the injury rate myth.

The semiotic of the donkey is a subtle start to the myth of the dumb donkeys in safety.

Bird established a belief that damage could be controlled. He also believed that certain attitudinal personalities were connected to certain decisions and behaviours. Bird had no expertise in psychology or social psychology. Again a wonderful precedent for safety as experts-in-everything. Rasmussen believes that the centre of safety is systems. His semiotic makes no mention of persons, humans or an ethic of risk. The focus is on objects.

The foundation of Rasmussen’s work is that safety is mechanistic. By the time of Rasmussen Safety believes that risk is technical, mechanistic, systemic and built on human error. Rasmussen also believed that short-cuts conformed to psychological ‘rules’.

Rasmussen also believed that events were linked to human factors but this was just discourse to establish that humans were a factor in a system.

Rasmussen was an engineer and anchored engineering to safety and human error. This helped establish the belief that safety was a socio-technical system.

His model of rule-based shortcuts and theory of decision making (pp. 166) has no connection to any aspect of psychology.

Rasmussen had no expertise in psychology, sociology, anthropology or social psychology.

By the time of James Reason, Safety is firmly addicted to the ideology of linear safety.

In James Reason, Safety falls in love with the swiss-cheese model of prevention and causation. The myth has now become sacred.

The belief is anchored to barriers (objects), systems, failures and human error.

Safety believes that everything is hierarchical, and has more triangles to reinforce hierarchies.

It now believes it has a model of causation and investigation.

In Reason, Safety has a Decision Tree for how events are caused and for culpability.

The swiss-cheese remains one of the greatest negative legacies of James eason.

Safety believes that events are caused by Acts of intention, violation and unconscious failures.

Safety believes in absent-mindedness and yet Reason has no expertise in anthropology, social psychology or critical disciplines to explain influences or unconscious influences on human action.

In the Bradley Curve, Safety now believes in not just linearity but that un-safety is a ‘natural instinct’.

Of course, this is contradicted by all we know of evolution, homeostasis and allostasis.

This comes from DuPont, masters of harm (Dark Waters) and zero ideology (believe the impossible).

Yet another linear, binary, in-and-out model of causation, with no mention of persons or ethics. The Hudson hierarchical steps have become another sacred cow for Safety, similar to the creation of the myth of a High Reliability Organisation (HRO).

Like zero, these so called ‘cultural’ maturity jumps are mythical and unattainable. Like many graphic images in safety, they affirm the belief in static aspirational unattainable goals.

By 2017, zero ideology becomes the foundation of global safety.

Moreso, Safety now believes a number is a ‘vision’. This firmly anchors the safety belief that safety is about metrics and numerics. Zero is now equated to safety so much so that Safety now employs people as zero-harm advisors.

By the time we get to Dekker, Safety is firmly anchored to linearity, hierarchy and human error.

The metaphor of the tunnel affirms a belief/myth in the unknowable unconscious.

In S2, we have more beliefs in systems-centrism, object-centrism and beliefs in energies as cause.

Whilst using the language of socio-technical thinking, S2 includes nothing of a social or ethical focus. Safety believes that everything is about function.

Safety believes in Engineering. Indeed, until recently the ASSP was the ASSE. Changing the language from engineers to ‘professionals’ has made no difference. Most importantly, repeating the word ‘professional’ has become critical to the industry that has no foundational discourse in Ethics. We now have firmly ensconced in Safety, that everything is binary. Including the mythology that there is some now kind of safety anchored to traditional methods of safety.

The marketing machine of S2 gets into full flow. Most S2 semiotics affirm a mechanistic worldview.

This is despite the fact that Hollnagel has recanted on some of his semiotics recently.

As if to put in concrete, traditional Safety now firmly believes in hierarchy, linearity, swiss-cheese causality and barrier (objects) prevention all wrapped up in HOP Jenga blocks (complete with mice anchored to the sacred swiss-cheese).

Coupled to this is now five slogans called ‘principles’ from sources with no expertise in ethics (principles).

Then Safety believes in nonsense ideas such as a ‘pre-accident investigations’. Jenga blocks are the semiotic for this strange idea of non-events as something being investigated.

Now safety believes that slogans are ‘principles’.

Through HOP, safety now believes in brain-centrism as if, decision making comes from the brain. No-one in HOP has any expertise in the psychology of neuroscience nor social psychology.

The focus remains on systems and performance (measurement).

HOP continues the long tradition in safety of the dis-embodied person.

Another popular belief in safety is the idea of a ‘mindset’. This is attributed to the brain not personhood or an embodied sense of being.

This helps affirm the belief that safety thinking is mechanistic, technical and engineered.

Safety semiotics offers no understanding of Mind as the whole person.

Meanwhile Safety continues to believe in hierarchies and is addicted to the language and colours of ‘controls’. The belief remains focused on objects, systems and hazards.

The Hierarchy of Controls (HoC) has now been insitutionalised and made sacred to the safety industry.

The coloured Risk Matrix has now been both institutionalised and made sacred. Few in safety can imagine that such a device could be excluded from a risk assessment. Just like the HoC the belief is that there is a correlation (Fundamental Attribution Error) between colours and risk. The myth of the Matrix anchors Safety to the myth of objectivity, when everything about the matrix is subjective and meaningless. Meanwhile Safety remains anchored to brain-centrism when it focuses on psychosocial hazards, mental health and the control of objects.

All of the semiotics of brain-centrism affirm the belief and attribution of a body-mind problem. Safety believes the brain is a computer yet, there is no evidence for such a belief. It is just an easy and convenient metaphor.

Whilst Safety uses the word ‘social’ it has no belief in the nature of Socialitie.

The women in safety movement affirms the belief in masculine power and superiority by the use of the stiletto semiotic for identity. There is no greater symbol of male power than the stiletto.

Many of the affirmations and semiotics of Safety affirm beliefs in misogyny, male dominance and zero.

If you want to see the belief in the sacredness of triangles, look no further than Linkedin Safety.

This semiotic as well as binary and brain semiotics populate most of the posts on safety in Linkedin. The belief and faith in AI as saviour is also common on Linkedin.

Human Factors models affirm the belief/myths in cogs as a brain, the heart as a pump, ergonomics about objects, neuroscience as about brains etc.

There is no mention of Ethics, personhood, the unconscious, embodied knowing, moral meaning, semiosis, semiotics, religion, Poetics, Wickedity etc.

In one of the latest fads we see the re-surfacing of interest in energies. Not human energy but the energy of objects. Apparently, objects make decisions and enact risk.

Again, all of what should be important to safety is missing, similar to the list above.

The semiotics of safety beliefs wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the obsession with PPE. Safety believes that the least form of protection (by its own HoC construct) is the most important to police. This is because it is visible and easy.

What Safety doesn’t do is consider with any competence anything that cannot be seen or measured.

In process safety we see the focus on objects and things and no belief in many critical factors in the phenomena of human being eg. the same beliefs are missing from Human Factors. A common belief in safety is the belief in process. Yet again, all that is essential in belief in the phenomena of human being and personhood is missing.