Initially posted on April 12, 2018 @ 12:56 PM
The Mythic Symbology of Security
One of many unusual contradictions on the planet of security is between the positivist materialist paradigm that dominates the WHS curriculum/texts and the mythic symbology that dominates security discourse concerning the exercise of enacting safe-work. How unusual that one ought to use language and pictures related to the mythology of Greek heroes in understanding the duty of appearing safely. No surprise the trade is confused about its personal id.
One of many principal causes that managers and security folks can’t ‘attend’ to psychological hurt is that the protection sector in curriculum and coaching is solely not educated to be delicate to it. The WHS curriculum is consumed as much as 75% with measurement and counting, the place would it not get the talents to study to be delicate about psychological hurt? Certainly, the STEM-only paradigm that dominates WHS curriculum can’t even ask good questions on psychological hurt as a result of it has no grounding in a transdisciplinary strategy to curriculum. Neither is STEM skilled or expert in curriculum itself, once more this could depend on a transdisciplinary strategy to information within the disciplines of Schooling and Studying. Subsequently, it’s no shock that security is imbued with photographs of super-heroes and Greek fantasy slightly than photographs that invoke empathy and compassion.
In my newest guide: Fallibility and Threat, Residing With Uncertainty (now with greater than 2000 downloads – https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/) I spend appreciable house discussing the character of mythology and symbology within the threat trade (p. 26-35). How unusual that an trade consumed with measurement and counting ought to drift into Greek mythology to clarify itself. Moreso, it’s due to the chance and security trade is so mis-educated that it’s unable to grasp its personal drift into spiritual mythology in looking for self-identity. Fable is outlined by Ricoeur as:
‘Fable will right here be taken to imply what the historical past of religions now finds in it: not a false rationalization by the use of photographs and fables, however a standard narration which pertains to occasions that occurred at first of time and which has the aim of offering grounds for the ritual actions of males of in the present day and, in a basic method, establishing all of the types of motion and thought by which man understands himself on the planet.’
As I state in my guide:
‘Fable connects the empirically actual with the paranormal and sacred within the type of indicators and symbols and thus portrays how the world is with how folks would love it to be. We see such an appropriation of this understanding of fantasy in well-liked tradition and flicks. Most of the blockbusters within the final 10 years have been targeted on transcendence, the sacred and mythological explanations of the world.’
It’s by means of fantasy and symbology that we mediate our understandings of life. Once we deny what’s fallible with the language of infallibility (zero) in security discourse then no surprise Dekker describes bridging the hole between engineering and psychology as ‘ontological alchemy’ (http://sidneydekker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/10.1007_s10111-015-0321-7.pdf). The extra security endeavours to measure the immeasurable, the extra it could actually solely drift into spiritual mythology in its discourse. No surprise the DuPont Bradley Curve describes the human propensity to err within the discourse of authentic sin (https://safetyrisk.web/nonsense-curves-and-pyramids/). How else may one atone for complete human depravity and get to zero with out infallibility.
And not using a transdisciplinary schooling security doesn’t even know the way spiritual it’s. This was demonstrated so vividly on the World Security Congress 2017 (https://safetyrisk.web/no-evidence-for-the-religion-of-zero/). As I state within the Fallibility and Threat (p. 34):
‘Disciplines which are materialist-pragmatist in orientation like STEM don’t have a hermeneutic or language to contemplate such metaphysical questions neither is it one thing STEM practices or has the language to discover. For this reason when the chance trade worldview seeks solutions to those metaphysical questions it finally ends up speaking about issues of religion, transhumanism and the symbolism of zero. Ah, we shall be good in the future.’
On web page 42 of Fallibility and Threat I listing greater than 20 totally different examples of how security expresses safety-work by means of the hero fantasy. The semiotics of every of those legendary heroes are wrapped in Greek mythological graphics and symbols. All are hyperlinked within the guide. You may study extra about Greek mythology right here: https://greekgodsandgoddesses.web/heroes/.
When fallibility and mortality are the enemy, solely a hero will do.
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PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA
Rob is the founding father of Human Dymensions and has intensive expertise, {qualifications} and experience throughout a spread of sectors together with authorities, schooling, company, trade and group sectors over 30 years. Rob has labored in any respect ranges of the schooling and coaching sector together with serving on varied submit graduate government, submit graduate supervision, submit graduate course design and implementation applications.
