‘When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, reason like a child, think like a child. But now that I have become an adult, I’ve put an end to childish things’ – St Paul (1 Cor 13:11).

It is not easy to change beliefs but we do so often, especially in the adolescent years.

I remember conversations with my parents when I was of age to vote, that I no longer believed as they did. I remember discussions with my Dad, that I no longer shared his theology. Such discussions have the potential to invoke Cognitive Dissonance (https://safetyrisk.net/cognitive-dissonance-and-safety-beliefs/) and the pain associated with it.

Cognitive Dissonance is not about discomfort in belief but rather the threat to identity, belonging and social meaning. It is the reason why some people never shift in beliefs, regardless of the evidence. Such a change in belief can mean a loss of belonging to a group, the loss of identity to a culture/society and isolation from the very needs that sustain well-being. The stress of Cognitive Dissonance is way up the Richter scale in distress, pain, harm and suffering. For more read here:

What you believe carries ethical weight and power. For example, a belief in Zero invokes a discourse and ethic of brutalism (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/). I have worked with many organisations that believe in Zero and it is nearly impossible for them to ditch this unethical belief. Indeed, they make zero a moral good through binary Cartesian thinking. This is also because the belief is endorsed by Indoctrination and a binary logic founded in the belief that any harm is evil. The opposite is true.

Whatever you believe in safety has an ethical outcome and is underpinned by moral philosophy.

Once someone has the Realisation that zero is morally evil, they can’t go back. This realisation occurs at the point of no return, represented by the red box in the Cognitive Dissonance Cycle (Figure 1).

Sometimes the best way to understand the cycle of Cognitive Dissonance is the use of this semiotic map. It is at this red box where one is confronted with either Realisation or Return.

Figure 1. Cognitive Dissonance Cycle

In the musical Phantom of the Opera there is a pivotal song called Past the Point of No Return. The lyrics are as follows:

 Past the point of no return –
no backward glances:
Our games of make-believe are at an end.
Past all thought of “if” or “when” –
no use resisting: abandon thought, and let the dream descend

What raging fire shall flood the soul?
What rich desire unlocks its door?
What sweet seduction lies before us?

Past the point of no return,
the final threshold – what warm, unspoken secrets
will we learn?
Beyond the point of no return

(Christine)
You have brought me to that moment where words run dry,
to that moment where speech disappears into silence,
silence

I have come here,
hardly knowing the reason why.
In my mind,
I’ve already imagined our bodies entwining
defenceless and silent –
and now I am here with you:
no second thoughts,
I’ve decided,
decided

Past the point of no return –
no going back now
our passion-play has now, at last, begun …
Past all thought of right or wrong –
one final question:
how long should we two wait, before we’re one?

When will the blood begin to race
the sleeping bud burst into bloom?
When will the flames, at last,
CONSUME us?

 

This song occurs at a pivotal part of the story, you can see it sung here: https://youtu.be/6FpRjVPMOoM?si=tEAlY8kyJbURmfTS

This is the point where the ugliness and reality of the Phantom are revealed and cannot be denied. Yet, to admit such ugliness to this monster would change her life forever.

We don’t have such realisations when we are confronted by belief in the easter bunny or no Santa. However, this kind of realisation is not Cognitive Dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance threatens every part of one’s identity and belonging. It threatens with pain, suffering, psychological harm, loss of belonging and unbearable separation.

It is also why (coupled with many other cognitive biases (https://safetyrisk.net/perception-heuristics-cognitive-bias-and-the-psychology-of-safety/) people cannot give up beliefs. Life is so much more comfortable and certain in maintaining comfortable myths. This is where and when one is placed in a moral crisis/dilemma.

Moral dilemmas and ethical stressors ought to be the foundational study of any safety curriculum. Sadly not.

So, how is a safety belief formed?

Usually what happens in risk and safety is some lord, guru or authority (eg. curriculum) declares something as a truth that is then made mythically true (through semiotics/semiosis) and then is believed and must not be challenged.

This is usually anchored to a relationship to the guru-lord who must be defended politically. All belief once anchored takes on ethical, moral and political power. This power is overwhelming and irresistible, given the power of the lord-guru.

This is why Safety believes slogans like ‘blame fixes nothing’ after all, it was declared and made true by a lord-guru. To refute the belief is to refute the lord and this must not be entertained. This is why people believe in S1/S2 after all, it was declared and made true by a lord-guru.

In a similar way, the safety curriculum creates many myths, supported by semiotics like Heinrich’s dominoes and triangle, Reason’s swiss-cheese, the DuPont Bradley Curve, zero ideology, the BP coloured risk matrix etc. Then once anchored into the safety worldview as mythically true, they must not be challenged, regardless of the evidence that demonstrates none of these semiotics (https://safetyrisk.net/the-semiotics-of-safety-beliefs-free-workshop-july/) are true. Indeed, if you challenge any normalised belief in safety or any guru, you are made anti-safety.

However, once someone renounces the belief in zero and quickly discovers that safety doesn’t change, they find out they were afraid of nothing. Then they move forward, past the point of no return being able to humanise persons in risk and look back at their belief in zero as a delusion.

This is why in SPoR, we push people to that point. Because, without the power of Cognitive Dissonance there is rarely change.