We all know that the foundation for propaganda and indoctrination is slogans (Ellul https://monoskop.org/images/4/44/Ellul_Jacques_Propaganda_The_Formation_of_Mens_Attitudes.pdf). Slogans are a trap for those who want simplistic fixes to wicked problems (https://safetyrisk.net/no-taming-or-fixing-wicked-problems/). Indeed, slogans fix nothing, say nothing and solve nothing. They are a seduction for people who don’t want to think and, think they already know what is to be known about risk.
Slogans hide methodology and the lack of methodology.
If you actually want to approach ethics, risk and safety in a mature way, you need to make sure you don’t read what some safety engineer thinks about ethics. You don’t need some science marketing hiding moral meaning and selling the nonsense of pre-accident fortune telling. The key to understanding ethics and morality is not reading anything from Safety at all, especially the AIHS mickey mouse chapter on non-ethics.
If you are interested in a mature approach to ethics and some wisdom in moral meaning regarding blame then start here: Mason, E., (2019) Ways to Be Blameworthy, Rightness, Wrongness and Responsibility. Oxford. But we all know that HOP is not interested in learning nor Transdisciplinarity, so they won’t read this book, indeed any book outside of the safety cult.
However, for those who want to learn outside of the safety bubble, this is a book to shake your safety beliefs and myths about blame.
The ideology of the fear of blame espoused by HOP (and SD), is a recipe for simplistic myths and meaningless rituals. Most of all, slogans create a fortress to ensure that all questions are closed not open, and seek answers within the club. It’s like reading a book called ‘better questions’ that is not about effective questioning. One thing is certain, make sure you don’t make any enquiries about what you don’t already know. Knowing that, no-one in HOP will read this book, here is an opening quote:
On a very simplistic view of blameworthiness, a view that nobody holds, we are always blameworthy when we act wrongly and always praise-worthy when we act rightly. Of course, the relationship between rightness and wrongness on the one hand, and praise- and blameworthiness on the other, is more complex than that. Wrongness and blameworthiness must come apart to some extent, although perhaps not completely. It seems undeniable that it is possible to act wrongly without being blameworthy.
Similarly, it seems obvious that one can act rightly without being praise-worthy, and not just because the bar for praiseworthiness seems higher than the bar for blameworthiness: clearly one can act rightly without deserving any credit at all.
On the other hand, there is surely some essential relationship between our moral concepts, rightness and wrongness, and our responsibility related concepts, like praiseworthiness and blameworthiness.
Of course, safety doesn’t want complexity. Why understand complexity when five slogans will do!
The last thing the Safety club wants is: research, Transdisciplinarity, ethical praxis and wisdom.
The best way to ensure a closed approach to knowledge is to demonise the enemy, build the fortress walls and listen to punk rock. What is most essential is to not ask questions about what you don’t already understand. Why? When five slogans will do.
Soon we will launch book 15 in the series on risk on The Ethics of Risk, A Transdisciplinary-Semiotic View. We will launch the book here on https://safetyrisk.net/ and it will be for free download. (We not in the safety game of making money, 1% safety).
This much needed book demonstrates the way in which Safety is locked into deontology (duty) and how this worldview creates endless problems for the industry.
As with all things in SPoR, the book concludes by demonstrating a practical approach to ethics that is mature about risk and opens up a new approach to tackling the problems of right and wrong at work.
brhttps://safetyrisk.net/ways-to-be-blameworthy/
Prompt