Isn’t it funny how critique of my work on Zero only goes one way. Fancy being criticised for being too harsh on Zero?!#?!

Here we have the most divisive ideology in safety, the ultimate extremism, something not believed by safety people (https://safetyrisk.net/update-on-zero-survey-just-believe/) that has a trajectory of brutalism and the critique is: being harsh.

I guess people don’t understand how Zero is a semiotic or an Archetype and has an energy of its own. Zero needs to be understood like we understand ‘The Market’ or ‘The Economy’. Archetypes have a life of their own, well beyond the people in a system. Many things work like this that have their own unstoppable momentum.

And where does Zero come from? The delusional ideas of Heinrich, absurd assumptions based in engineering/behaviourism, simplistic binary oppositional logic and, the nonsense idea that injury rates measure safety. Just look at the poor sucker being trapped in a binary question (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra5LK8x86zU) because a question of entrapment is how Zero works.

And once you bring zero in, as was done by global safety in 2017, it’s nearly impossible to get it out. This is because very quickly as zero becomes the identity of safety, being anti-zero is defined as non-compliance, anti-safety and the desire for injury.

Those who do get rid of it quickly discover that disposing of Zero improves safety and it works (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/).

What other industry sets a numeric concept as its vision? Certainly not a profession.

If one wants to be a safety professional and a caring one, vision must be focused on persons not metrics. There can never be any ethical vision for persons in zero.

But Dr Long, don’t be too harsh, poor olde Zero will get upset.

Say that to all the people who get the sack because they challenge zero. Say that to the people who get blamed for an injury; say that to those who get the sack because an injury occurred; say that to all those who get treated harshly because zero rules the waves pushed by some crazy Captain.

And for god’s sake don’t highlight the absurdities of selective zero (https://safetyrisk.net/zero-and-a-culture-of-denial/) or all the things Safety shows no interest in (https://safetyrisk.net/critical-sources-of-harm-ignored-by-safetyzero/) because they can’t be counted. Don’t point out the nonsense of believing the impossible (https://safetyrisk.net/believe-the-impossible-and-speak-nonsense-to-people/) or that safety speaks nonsense to people. Don’t highlight all the silences that help sustain zero (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-culture-silences/). Be kind to Zero, so that its silent brutalism can rage.

Have you actually watched the Zero video ‘In the Blink of an Eye’? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIhgJ93t0Jw).

This is safety (https://safetyrisk.net/the-global-zero-event-this-is-safety/).

Can someone please tell me how any of this helps people in the challenge of tackling risk?

And please don’t tell me about the non-golden rules (https://safetyrisk.net/auditing-the-7-golden-rules-of-zero-a-miserable-fail/) because Zero breaks the first rule of mutuality. The traffic of zero only goes one way. Zero cannot countenance compromise, there is no movement in zero. Nothing is acceptable except zero. Zero traffic only goes one way!

In SPoR, we have no interest in zero or counting injury rates. We focus on ethical processes and humanising outcomes to help people better tackle risk.