Several sports have a penalty box that is often called the ‘sin bin’. We love those rhyming memes don’t we, even though few these days would comprehend the theology or history of sin.

The Sin Bin is the opposite of ‘blame fixes nothing’ another meme/slogan developed in traditional safety with little thought about what is implied, what it promotes or the linguistics of slogans. I know, let’s just call slogans ‘principles’ and get the lemmings to repeat on repeat and make it so.

Isn’t it interesting how so many in safety turn to religious language when thinking about blame and consequence for mistakes or human error?

I recently saw on LinkedIn, a post that described the last 50 years of so called ‘safety science’ explained as a ‘Tower of Babel’. BTW, there is no science of safety. The post came complete with an AI generated picture of a technicist tower. Such a semiotic says a great deal; about what the author thinks safety is.

The most famous image of the Tower of Babel is by Breugel (1563) that captures the Biblical myth of the creation of languages and problem of human vanity.

I’ve meditated in front of this wonderful painting in Vienna for an hour and admired this work, especially knowing its theology, mythology, history and semiotics. How fascinating that the disjointedness, disarray, dysfunction and factionalism of safety is compared to Babel by Safety.

The belief in Babel, is that in origin, humanity had one unified language. Then when humans decided to construct a tower to heaven and be as gods, their efforts were ruined by God who created languages to confuse their communication so the tower could not be built. The tower building stopped because none of the groups building the tower could communicate with each other. The incomplete tower then became to symbolise: human vanity, longing for the eternal city (Ellul), the nature of power, a revelation of self-worship, Royal hegemony and the nature of sin.

We often see Safety turn to religious semiotics and salvation narrative to explain itself. After all, ‘Safety saves lives’ (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-people-dont-save-lives/). How interesting that Safety Differently (with no expertise in theology) uses the discourse of atonement (https://safetyrisk.net/is-there-a-place-for-atonement-in-safety/) (https://safetyrisk.net/the-doctrine-of-atonement-for-safety-people/) in seeking to explain error. We see similar Augustinian theology in the Bradley Curve that believes human error is ‘original sin’ (https://safetyrisk.net/the-dangerous-and-harmful-bradley-curve/ ).

It is also interesting that the semiotics of HOP builds its image on the belief of Jenga blocks and the building and collapse of a tower. The nature of safety semiotics says a great deal about safety beliefs. So often what is unconsciously stated, says much more than the propositions or slogans that get thrown about in various safety cults.

The Sin Bin in sport comes in various degrees so that blame is apportioned by the referee in order to ‘fix something’. Can you just imagine the FIFA World Cup throwing around the slogan ‘blame fixes nothing’?

Whilst the Sin Bin may not be perfect, it has become essential as a method for some form of justice in sport. Just because systems of blame are not perfect doesn’t mean that throwing blame out the window is some kind of remedy.

Indeed, if HOP actually understood the complexities of the psychology of blame, they wouldn’t have thought up the silly meme in the first place (https://safetyrisk.net/the-meaning-of-blame-thinking-beyond-the-spin-and-slogans/). Now all we see is endless linguistic gymnastics by HOP, trying to justify nonsense (via sunk cost) (https://safetyrisk.net/the-myth-of-shifting-blame-from-individuals-to-systems/) in some distraction from the absurd creation of a slogan. What else would you expect from a source with little expertise in ethics?

Once one has received a warning, yellow card, red card, been sent to the penalty box or given time in the Sin Bin, there can follow a tribunal. I remember last year a team that seemed destined to be in the AFL Grand Final being knocked out of the competition because their best player (Izak Rankin) was given a four week suspension for a homophobic slur (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-21/afl-hands-down-suspension-over-izak-rankine-alleged-slur/105672066). The team paid a great price for his blame and the episode served as a symbol for what happens in such circumstances. Blame fixes things.

The Sin Bin serves as a great example of the power of figurative/metaphoric language.

Safety would be in a much better place if it gave more attention to its metaphors, symbols and the semiosis it creates through its many slogans and semiotics.

Instead, as each new slogan and symbol is presented by desperate thought bubbles, it just digs a bigger hole, rather than a tower, that Safety then seeks to climb out.

If you want to know more about the importance of linguistics and semiotics you can study these in SPoR (https://cllr.com.au/elearning/) so that messaging in risk is positive, constructive and upbuilding for safety outcomes