It is pointless to talk about blame and ‘principles’ outside of a mature and well-articulated ethical framework.

We read in the HOP Discourse the obsession and fear of failure and blame indeed, the slogans that accompany this fear are called ‘principles’. They are not. The central slogans of HOP are not principles. As described by Conklin (p.8):

Basic truths are called principles. Principles are defined as a list of fundamental truths or propositions that serve as the foundation for a system of beliefs or behaviors. A principle is dependable and predictable.

Fascinating. So how is the slogan ‘blame fixes nothing’ true? How is the slogan ‘Error is normal’ true? How are these dependable and predictable when we know that neither are true? Indeed, simplistic slogans (and HOP spin) never make principles because they can be easily demonstrated to be false. Moreso, because these slogans have no context nor Methodology, they also lead to no method. Neither are they anchored to a mature understanding of ethics, which makes them dangerously false. Just because an academic calls a slogan a ‘principle’ doesn’t make it so. Yet, we see all the HOP followers repeat the word ‘principle’ over and over affirming the myths of HOP. You can repeat the word ‘professional’ a thousand times and it doesn’t make you so.

If you want to develop an understanding of the psychology of blame or failure, the place to turn is NOT to Safety. Certainly, not to a source with no expertise in Ethics.

A good place to understand the nature of blame is Mason, E., (2019). Ways to be Blameworthy Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility. Oxford Uni Press. London. There are many other texts (never mentioned in HOP) that provide a mature and ethical approach to the challenges of failure and blame.

Mason offers a mature mapping of the types, diversity, complexities and varieties of blame. Blame is NOT just one thing that fits in neatly to simplistic HOP (undeclared) ideology.

The only way to really grapple with the complexities of blame is with a solid understanding of Morality, human agency and Ethics. But why would HOP want to do that? Why recognise a wicked problem when a slogan is easy to sell?

For Mason, blame can be ‘ordinary’, ‘detached’, ‘unavailable’, ‘a conversation’, ‘subjective wrongdoing’, ‘objective wrongdoing’, ‘punishment’ or about ‘fault finding’. All of these and more, carry a conditional understanding of what blame is and how it works inside or outside a moral community. If ‘blame fixes nothing’ what has been lost in the rejection of blame? Does this now let everyone ‘off the hook’ for any sense of responsibility and accountability. Blame is not the enemy, it is what we do with it that matters.

You can read a good summary of Mason’s view here: Ways to be Blameworthy Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility

None of any of the discussion made by Mason gets a show in the myths and slogans of HOP. HOP is clearly anchored to the myth of the blame game.

The idiom of ‘the blame game’ is witnessed in the idea of mutual blaming first encountered in the Garden of Even myth where Adam says, ‘Eve made me do it’ and, ‘after all, you gave me the woman, so it’s your fault’. So, the foundations of Original Sin as crowned by Augustine, lay the final blame on God. This is not dissimilar to the myth/story of the suffering of Job. The blame game is discovered in the projection of excuse and the myth of ‘root cause’. Neither are real nor have a sophisticated theology attached to what these myths are about. I discussed these in the book Fallibility and Risk, Living With Uncertainty.

The point here is that a psychology of blame is a ‘wicked problem’ not managed well by simplistic slogans, silly wishes and naïve understandings or morality. I know let’s learn about moral meaning and ethics and ask a scientist/safety engineer! (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/) This is the safety way.

You can collect as many slogans as you like, but without a Methodology (moral philosophy) they never generate a method.

So, this brings us back to the need for a mature and sophisticated articulation of an ethic of risk. If this interests you, you can download for free the new SPoR book The Ethics of Risk, A Transdisciplinary-Semiotic Lens.

This is not a book that comes from the Deontological, Rationalist myths of Safety that suppose ‘blame fixes nothing’. Indeed, I wonder how that slogan would go down in a court room, prison or youth detention centre? Having worked in all three environments, I can tell you, it would be laughed out of court.