When You Don’t Know, Ask Safety. Safety Knows Best.

I have been blogging now for many years and always use the word ‘Safety’ capitalised to represent the culture and type of safety anthropomorphically. The use of such a grammar is neither personal or inclusive.

We do this all the time in our language often without knowing it. We personify cities as if they have an archetypal character eg. ‘Canberra says’ or ‘Washington stated’. We also do this with concepts like ‘the Economy is weak’ or ‘the Bible says’ or ‘the Environment is under stress’. We do this constantly using metaphor, syndoche and metonymy, giving human cultural character to a thing.

Understanding Linguistics should be foundational for any safety person (https://safetyrisk.net/linguistics-and-risk/; https://safetyrisk.net/culture-silences-in-safety-linguistics/) after all, so much of how we use language has significant legal and moral implications in risk. Indeed, what we say in risk if something goes wrong, will be used against us in court (https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/166158437).

If you want to study Linguistics in risk one should approach an expert in Linguistics. In SPoR, we conduct a course in Linguistics and Risk (https://cllr.com.au/product/linguistics-flyer-unit-21/) if you are interested.

You would think that seeking expertise in a Transdisciplinary way (https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-thinking-in-risk-and-safety/) would make sense but no, when Safety wants to know about Ethics it doesn’t ask an Ethicist, it asks an Engineer (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/). This is typical of the way Safety tackles the challenge of learning, it looks inside itself for answers to what it doesn’t know. This is mono-disciplinarity at work. This is how we end up with Engineers writing on culture telling us not to talk about it (https://safetyrisk.net/what-can-indiana-jones-tell-us-about-culture/). This is how we end up with Safety lecturing the industry on ‘learning’, with no expertise in Learning. This is how we end up with Safety presenting theology as science and zero as an ethical goal.

Transdisciplinarity is the key to tackling risk and safety, which are a ‘wicked problem’ (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-wicked-problem/). But read any chapter in the AIHS BoK and you discover all the same old sources, same old safety academics and same old perspective on ethics, learning, culture or risk.

The best way to learn in safety is NOT to read safety. The best way to learn in safety is not to listen to safety podcasts. This is just echo chamber safety (https://safetyrisk.net/researching-within-the-safety-echo-chamber/) where Narcissist Safety keeps looking at itself hoping to learn something new and different. This is why Safety loves the word ‘professional’ but doesn’t understand its ethic. This is how Safety loves the word ‘different’ that has the same methodology as what it proposes it is different from.

This year in Australia we had a referendum on giving Indigenous peoples a voice to the Australian Parliament. The referendum failed on party lines. One of the crazy mantras in propaganda of the opposing camp was ‘If you don’t know, vote no!’ and this had a resounding effect on the electorate. Here is Australia where the projection of intelligence is glorified in ignorance. Yet, we tell our kids ‘if you don’t know, ask!’ or if you don’t know, research!’. Preferably, in a source where some level of expertise in the matter is present.

It’s great to see a legal professional like Greg Smith write into the safety space (https://safetyrisk.net/proving-safety-a-book-review/ ) but in many ways it’s like ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’. Most of what Greg has been saying for the last 10 years doesn’t make a dent in the ignorance and mythology of Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-myths/). Indeed, Safety doesn’t even know that most of its rituals and myths (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-the-myths-and-metaphors-of-safety/) are legally meaningless. Yet Safety gives them meaning where there is none. I often get asked by Safety about semiotics, and such advice is quickly rejected because ‘safety knows best’.

So, in the interests of suggesting reading outside of safety on the nature of persons (that ought to be the foundation of safety, not objects) I have attached the following:

• Claxton, G., (2009) The Wayward Mind, An Intimate History of The Unconscious. London.
• Claxton, G., (2015) Intelligence in the Flesh. Yale University Press. New York.
• Colombetti, G., The Feeling Body, Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind. MIT Press, London.
• Damasio, A., (1994) Descartes’ Error, Emotion, Reason, and The Human Brian. Penguin, New York.
• Damasio, A., (1999) The Feeling of What happens, Body and Emotions in the Making of Consciousness. Harvest Books, New York.
• Damasio, A., (2003) Looking for Spinoza, Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain. Harvest Books. New York.
• Damasio, A., (2010) Self Comes to Mind, Constructing the Conscious Brain. Pantheon Books. New York.
• Damasio, A., (2018) The Strange Order of Things, Life, Feeling and the Making of Cultures. Pantheon Books. New York.
• Damasio, A., (2021) Feeling and Knowing, Making Minds Conscious. Pantheon Books. New York.
• Durt, C., Fuchs, T., and Tews, C., (eds.) (1997) Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture. MIT Press. London.
• Fuchs, T., (2018) Ecology of the Brain, The Phenomenology and Biology of the Embodied Mind. Oxford University Press. London.
• Fuchs, T., (2021) In Defense of the Human Being Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology. Oxford University Press. London.
• Ginot, E., (2015) The Neuropsychology of the Unconscious, Integrating Brain and Mind in Psychotherapy. New York.
• Johnson, M., (1987) The Body in Mind, The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason. University of Chicago Press.
• Johnson, M., (2007) The Meaning of the Body, Aesthetics of Human Understanding. University of Chicago Press.
• Johnson, M., (2014) Morality for Humans, Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science. University of Chicago Press.
• Johnson, M., (2017) Embodied Mind, Meaning and Reason. How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding. University of Chicago Press.
• Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M., (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.
• Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M., (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh, The Embodied Mind and Its Challenges to Western Thought.  Basic Books, New York.
• Macknik, S., and Martinez-Conde, S., (2010) Sleights of Mind, What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions. Henry Holt Co., New York.
• Meyer, C., Streeck, J., and Jordan, J. S., (2017). Intercorporeality, Emerging Socialities in Interaction. University of Chicago Press.
• Noe, A., (2009) Out of Our Heads, Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons from The Biology of Consciousness. Hill and Wang. New York.
• Norretranders, T., (1991) The User Illusion, Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. London.
• Panksepp, J., (1998) Affective Neuroscience, The Foundations of Human Animal Emotions. Oxford University Press. London.
• Raaven, H., (2013). The Self Beyond Itself, An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences and the Myth of Free Will. The New Press.  New York.
• Ramachandran, V. S., (2004) A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness. PI Books, New York
• Robinson, K., (2011). Out of Our Minds, Learning to Be Creative. London.
• Thompson, E., (2010) Mind in Life, Biology, Phenomenology, and the Science of the Mind. Belknap Press. London.
• Tversky, B., (2019) Mind in Motion, How Action Shapes Thoughts. Basic Books. New York.
• Van Der Kolk, B., (2015) The Body Keeps the Score, Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin, New York.
• Varela, F., Thompson, E ., and Rosch, E., (1993) The Embodied Mind, Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press, London.

 

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