Digital Engineering Library

  The ‘Roots’ of Behaviour It’s always fascinating watching the risk industry battle with behaviourism, because it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter that behaviourism doesn’t work; Safety believes it does. So, the constant quest is to go deeper, even though it doesn’t know how to go deeper into more behaviourism. Hence, we see projected courses like this one from the NSCA. Now we have to go to the ‘roots’ of behaviour apparently contained in ‘three inducing factors. Never mind that these ‘factors’ are defined poorly, especially culture, just don’t say anything and keep silent about human judgment and decision making. Don’t talk about the elephant in the room. One of the things you won’t find in either safety curriculum, risk curriculum, SRMBoK or AIHS BoK is discussion about the elephant, human judgment and decision making. This was the subject of my first book in the series on risk: Risk  Makes Sense, Human Judgement and Decision Making  (for free download here:...

  What’s in a Safety Mantra? One of the characteristics of the safety industry is the repetition of process, rituals and language attributed to have salvic purpose, to save lives. Any examination of the language of the safety industry reveals an extensive soteriology (theory of salvation). The formula goes something like this: ‘if you perform these acts, signs, processes or systems, you should expect to be saved’. This is why blaming is such a characteristic of safety, because if you had done everything right, you should be saved. This is why Safety is so surprised when all that is done (within all its limited and fallible knowledge) an event occurs and a person is injured. The rhetoric of safety is consistent with its worldview that ‘all accidents are preventable’ and ‘safety is a choice you make’. This language leads naturally to the mantra of ‘zero harm’ and then by consequence to zero vision ideology. Once one constructs reality by measuring injury rates, one is on a slippe...

  Covid 1984 – The Shake Hands Maskerade and Vial Diplomacy Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past George Orwell Boys from the Blackstuff  was a highly acclaimed British television drama series written by the Liverpool playwright  Alan Bleasdale . It was initially screened during the fall of 1982 following a period of fomenting civil unrest that culminated in the notorious inner city riots within its  Toxteth district . Amidst the  Thatcher-Reagan  alliance with its rubric of  trickle-down economics , profits were privatised and losses socialised. The ensuing wealth unlike blame failed to reach the downtrodden in the lowest echelons and that infamous sophism from the  illegitimate daughter of Satan  still resonates…….….. There is no such thing as society . Moreover, it reflects and aligns with the insipid vision of our peak safety body, which is merely a one trick dog and pony show and much...

  Spin, No nsense Language and Propaganda in Safety It wasn’t that long ago that the latest trend in safety was to label someone a ‘thought leader’ or a ‘. Of-course this was meaningless language because tradition, orthodoxy and zero wants no disruption, compliance is the god of Stasis (zero). Even when safety declares it is ‘different’ it uses the same language as safety orthodoxy and tradition to spin the idea that something is different, when it is not. It still remains anxiety about: measurement, quanta, objects and numerics. There can never be leadership, imagination, creativity or inspiration in zero, the global mantra for the safety industry. Oscar Wilde once said that: ‘society forgives criminals but never forgives the dreamer’.  I wrote recently about the visionary imagination and visionaries: ·          The-visionary-imagination-margaret-atwood ·          The-visionary-imaginati...

The Visionary Imagination and Marion Mahoney Griffin In Chapter 3 of book 9 in the series on risk I present a review of select visionaries, people who envision, know all about risk. The last thing visionaries want is stasis and zero. One such visionary is Marion Mahoney Griffin, the architect who designed the city I live in, Canberra. The following is an except from Chapter 3 of the book. Marion Mahony Griffin The city I live in Canberra, is a designed city, the vision of Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin. The story of that vision is often attributed to Walter but even a casual reading of their relationship will show that the design of Canberra was perhaps more Her-story than his-story. Walter in his letter’s attributes much to Marion’s work as more significant than his own and it seems when investigating Her-story much of the humility attributed to her speaks more of the patriarchy of History than the reality of her significance and influence. Unfortunately, too, some hi...