Originally posted on August 21, 2021 @ 5:09 PM
The Best Options in Safety Are Not Always Efficient
One of the great French Philosophers was Jacques Ellul (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul ; https://ellul.org/) a person well before his time. Ellul developed the idea that the quest for efficient outcome leaves damaging by-products and trade-offs in the demonization and dehumanization of persons.
Ellul was a leader in the French Resistance and was acutely aware of the power of Propaganda and disinformation (https://monoskop.org/images/4/44/Ellul_Jacques_Propaganda_The_Formation_of_Mens_Attitudes.pdf ). His book Propaganda published in 1965 offers sobering warnings for today. His other work The Technological Society published in 1954 (https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Ellul_Jacques_The_Technological_Society.pdf ) should be on every reading list in the risk and safety industry. Ellul wrote over 60 books including The Ethics of Freedom again, a book written in 1976, offers outstanding thinking for our age with so much propagandist-disinformation about what constitutes freedom (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/56371484.pdf ).
Ellul called the quest for efficiency Technique. Technique has a life of its own and operates in oragnisations as its own life-force – like an Archetype. The ultimate example of efficiency is the extermination of people under the Nazis or Pol Pot. At a micro-level it shows as bullying, misogyny, brutalism, victimizing, exploitation, abuse and power-centrism.
One of the great challenges for risk and safety is the ethic of outcome over process and outcome over medium. The method of seeking efficiency cannot be separated from its outcome: the ends never justifies the means. As admirable as it is to seek a reduction in harm at work, it is simply unethical to brutalise people in the seeking of such an outcome. It simply doesn’t make sense to harm people in the process of the reduction of harm!
I received an interesting email this week on the ’16 Indicators of Efficient Teaching’ (see Figure 1. 16 Indicators of Efficient Teaching).
Figure 1. 16 Indicators of Efficient Teaching
Of course, what is missing from this blurb is a focus on relationships and social psychology. Relationships are never about efficiency. It takes a great deal of time to listen, understand and engage persons and also understand groups. Technique calls such use of time ‘a waste of time’.
The beginning of learning is not efficiency but relationships. This is why online learning in the current Covid19 world is such a challenge. Online methods of education have always been weaker educationally than face to face learning. Whilst you may be able to get some good training outcomes, embodied learning is a huge challenge. So, in the current climate most teachers online have to settle for second best and have become most creative about serving the relational needs of their students (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.596582/full ).
When it comes to the challenges of determinism, necessity and freedom we know that risk and safety holds to a hard line of determinism over choice. This is evidenced by the way Safety polices PPE, even though it loves the mantra ‘safety is a choice you make’. How strange that safety doesn’t understand the fundamental ethical dialectic in this position. If ‘safety is a choice you make’ then why would you want to rob me of my choice? We read lots of similar logic in the debate over masks and vaccinations.
Ellul does a great job of tackling the challenges of determinism-necessity-freedom in his book The Ethics of Freedom. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy read. Similarly, the challenges of the subjectivity-objectivity dialectic.
Of course, if you read the pathetic chapter on Ethics in the AIHS BoK you will realise that Safety believes in its own objectivity. If you are looking to understand Ethics this chapter is a great study in what NOT to do.
When we realise that efficiency must be held in dialectical tension with relationship, objectivity with subjectivity, determinism with freedom and, license with necessity, then we can better focus on personhood.
You won’t find a discussion anywhere in the risk and safety industry on an Ethic of Personhood, this helps justify the culture of bullying and brutalism that pervades it culture. This is why the risk and safety industry preference efficiency over an Ethic of Risk. This is why Safety loves Zero (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/for-the-love-of-zero-free-download/ ). This is why Safety has little concern that its medium is the message (https://safetyrisk.net/the-medium-is-the-message/ ). This is why ‘Safety speak’ is more about Propaganda and Indoctrination than Education and Learning.
If one believes in zero then that’s the end of learning. Learning only occurs when one acknowledges fallibility and accepts risk (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/ ). There is no learning without risk. Risk is not the enemy of safety.
The pathway to zero is the pathway of efficiency (Technique), where the primary outcome is a number. The quest for 1% less injuries is exactly the same (https://safetyrisk.net/1-safer-than-what/ ). Whenever one speaks this language in safety it always points to the expendability of people in the quest for a numerical outcome and efficiency, and such language is unethical.
Dr Rob Long
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Brent R Charlton says
“Safety is a choice you make,” followed immediately by put on your safety glasses whether you like it or not. Simple but powerful illustration of the absurdity of the first statement!
Rob Long says
Yes Brent. If Safety really believed that mantra then is must ‘dictate’ the quashing of human agency to enforce a safety outcome. This implies an ethical choice of enforcement/dominance by the one with power which then develops a new mantra ‘safety is NOT a choice you make. It’s a choice I make for you. So, it’s just the shifting of choice and power to another in the name of safety. How is that ethical?