So much of the discourse in safety is about judgement of intent. We see this demonstrated in the language of ‘complacency’ by sources with no expertise in either psychology, neuroscience or the unconscious. It is as if a safety qualification comes with a module on mind-reading. This all started with Heinrich in 1931.

More so, the belief that the mind is the brain also warps any perception of how decisions are made. Indeed, physicists, philosophers, anthropologists and neuroscientists know so little about the psychology of perception and consciousness it is mind-boggling.

Try watching this 17-minute video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6p8tGkE_-8) on non-human consciousness and see how you go.

Experts in neuroscience know that the human Mind is NOT in the skull (https://safetyrisk.net/essential-readings-neuroscience-and-the-whole-person/). Rather, thinking involves all our bodily systems in inter-corporeal and inter-affected ways. This is why we need to perceive thinking as embodied NOT brain-centric. The brain is nothing like a computer. Such a metaphor just empowers the myth of the human as a machine. There is no correlation between how humans-as-bodies work compared to computers. As Roger Penrose informs us, consciousness is NOT computational (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXgqik6HXc0&t=34s). AI cannot ‘think’. Machines cannot ‘learn’.

We have known for some time that all our bodily systems (nervous, endocrine, respiratory, integumentary (skin), muscular, digestive, cardiovascular, reproductive, cellular, urinary, feeling/emotional and skeletal systems) interact and inform the brain of what has already been decided and enacted. The brain is NOT an organ that directs the decisions of the body.

Once you reject this belief and understand the human person as an embodied set of systems, you think very differently about human decision making. You also see decisions about risk very differently.

For a start, belief in embodiment, helps one understand that 95% of all decisions are: habitual, heuristical, affordances, emotional, cognitively biased and unconscious.

The myth of James Reason’s violations, intended actions is neither real or true, just as his list of unintended actions and ‘error types’ are concocted nonsense. By ‘unintended’ does Reason discuss the human unconscious? No. Yet, his map of errors somehow gives Safety a mythical understanding of how ‘error’ works. Similarly, you won’t find any discussion on fallibility in safety books on ‘human error’.

A read of Norretarnders (1991) The User Illusion, Cutting Consciousness’ Down to Size (https://archive.org/details/userillusioncutt0000nrre/page/n5/mode/2up), disposes very quickly of the idea of complacency and ‘error types’. Or perhaps read some of Varela:

But let’s not let evidence get in the way of a good binary safety belief.

In SPoR, we capitalise the word ‘Mind’ to mean ‘embodied person’. This is linked to the discipline known as Enactivism.

I have been playing the guitar since I was 12-years of age. I don’t ‘think’ when I play today. I don’t need any rational work when I play by feel. The memory and ‘thinking’ is in my hands and muscles, nerves and body. We do most things this way eg. driving a car, walking, eating or riding a bike. We don’t ‘think’ when we use metaphors or gestures. The brain doesn’t tell the feet what to do on a bike nor how to balance. The body does all this on its own as dictated by affordances. That is, engagement with the object communicates what your body needs to do.

There is a huge difference between: Procedural knowing, Perspectival knowing and Participatory knowing.

We also see the belief in the brain-as-computer in how people think about psychosocial risk. Similarly, in how people understand resilience. Belief matters for one understands risk.

When people experience high levels of anxiety and depression, the symptoms are in the body, not the brain. You can’t un-think out of anxiety. But take a benzodiazepine or morphine and within a few minutes the body relaxes and our body tells our brain that it is relaxed. The chemical overrides bodily systems, the heart slows down, the muscles de-stress and breathing slows down.

There are many works of art that demonstrate the inter-connectedness, inter-affectivity and inter-corporeality of life. One I like is by Yama holding the Bhavacakra (the wheel of life) (https://www.nwrafting.com/international/the-wheel-of-life-bhavacakra).

Sometimes the best way to explain life cannot come from the scientific method. Science simply isn’t equipped with the tools or methods to tackle what it cannot understand (read Matthews and Robinson (2024) Theorizing the Anthropology of Belief, Magic, Conspiracies, and Misinformation. Belief in Science as absolute is an act of faith. Rupert Sheldrake helps explain the limitations of belief in the myths of Science (https://archive.org/details/sciencesetfree100000shel).

Where does this leave us with understanding unconscious error in safety? In more uncertainty and wisdom than rapidly projecting ‘complacency’ on others. Indeed, most who believe in complacency cannot even tell you what it is! Try it next time you hear someone use the word ‘complacency’ and ask them to explain what it is technically.

Ask them to explain what happens in complacency. Does the brain ‘switch off’? Does ‘Attention’ get lost? What is attention? They won’t be able to explain that either.

We will be studying these issues in our Beliefs Module that starts in a week.