Digital Engineering Library

  Silence, Power and an Ethic of Risk If you see, listen or watch nothing else this wee k,  make sure you catch the  Press Club Address of Grace Tame, Australian of the Year   Grace so ably articulates the foundations of morality and ethics, in this inspiring address ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4BErJDLhD0  ). The place to start in any understanding of ethics and morality is an understanding of power and silence. Neither of these critical foundations is considered in the AIHS Body of Knowledge (BoK) Chapter on Ethics ( https://www.ohsbok.org.au/chapter-38-3-ethics-and-professional-practice/  ). Indeed, the silence on the nature of power in the Chapter is itself and indictment of its naivety, immaturity and ignorance. One of the best ways to discover the nature of the AIHS Body of Knowledge (BoK) on Ethics is to look at what it is silent about. This is how you groom a population to believe the nonsense of: duty, ‘check your gut’ and ‘do the rig...

  Dobbing, Culture and Risk It’s such a laugh, watching people launch a ‘dob in line’ in Australia. We saw this recently with the  Government’s ‘dobseeker’ hotline  . And we see this approach with  regulators and others in Safety  , with some weird idea that ‘blowing the whistle’ to un-safety ‘works’. This is kindergarten culture stuff? Unfortunately, this kindergarten approach to culture is common in risk and safety ( https://www.nscafoundation.org.au/eventdetails/8759/webinar-making-sense-of-safety-culture ;  https://www.ohsbok.org.au/chapter-10-2-organisational-culture/ ). Any exploration of culture that omits semiotics is certainly not a holistic approach. I fall on the floor laughing when I see these naïve approaches to culture displayed in this ‘dobbing discourse’. We also see this evident in the discussion on whistleblowing in the deontological AIHS BoK on Ethics. The notion of dobbing in Australia is anathema to the mythology and symbolism of ma...

  What Brand of Ethics is Safety? This last fortnight in my city Canberra, has seen an explosion of allegations of rape in the corridors of power, the Australian Parliament . What has come to the surface should be no surprise to researchers in ethics. At the heart of the corridors of power is the problem of politics and power, and how this creates trade-offs in gender relations, privileging masculinist power and violence. The first point of any study in ethics is to understand the difference between: an ethic, morality, a code of ethics and Ethics. If you are looking for such an understanding, then don’t go to the AIHS Chapter on Ethics, you won’t find anything of this nature. Indeed, the AIHS chapter blends all four as if they are one and the same. The first thing one learns upon reading this chapter on ethics is that it is NOT a study in ethics, nor about an ethic of risk. How remarkable to declare in this chapter that ethics is the foundation of professionalism a...

  Greater or Lesser Harm The ancient Greek cult of the  Kriophoros  is captured in the image of the ram-bearer’ and can teach us something about the nature of harm. The  Kriophoros  is also foundational in Early Christian Art ( http://albertis-window.com/2017/03/the-mosocophoros-kriophoros-and-early-christian-art/ ). In the ancient world, the imagery and metaphor of sheep was used as a medium for understanding life. You can see images of the  Kriophoros  on the Acropolis. The symbol of the shepherd carrying the lamb on their shoulders was attributed to the myth of Hermes cult (500 BC) but later was adopted into Christian mythology. The image of the  Kriophorus  can be found in the catacombs. Like many things in transition from Greek, Roman and to Christian traditions, there was much mingling of symbols, cults and myths in the first Century. Much of the theology at the time was an amalgam of cults and symbols. The idea of carrying the la...