Subjecting and Objecting in Event Analysis
The myth of objectivity plagues the safety industry in all of its ‘methods’ of incident investigation.
One day when it dawns on Safety that there is no such thing as objectivity, it might begin to explore the nature of events with competence and develop a clue on the nature of learning. (The current spate of publications and populace speak of learning in safety, is NOT about learning).
One day when Safety discovers there is no objectivity (https://safetyrisk.net/there-is-no-objectivity-deal-with-it/ ) it might mature and learn how to understand events, human decision making and the collective unconscious.
The safety industry is plagued by this idea of objectivity, which is why it adores engineering, behaviourism and the myth of scientific method (https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/archives/scientific-objectivity-feminism/). And it clearly hasn’t dawned upon the many women in safety that all of this is designed to oppress the female. How strange that women seek to maintain masculinist discourse in order to harm themselves.
Safety also ignores all that can be learned through transdisciplinary (https://safetyrisk.net/the-value-of-transdisciplinary-inquiry-in-a-crisis/), especially disciplines such as: Anthropology, Religious Studies, Theology, Ethnography, Social Psychology and a host of disciplines that embrace subjectivity as a pathway to wisdom.
Isn’t it odd that safety investigations think that knowledge is best obtained by being removed from the subject and yet Anthropology believes that the best knowledge is encountered by being IN the Subject, engaged in the Subject and intimate with the Subject.
An anthropologist knows that the best way to learn is to live with the Subject and of course this Subject is persons. If you want to know a village, village life ans village culture, you have to live IN it. There is no learning from outside, just training.
What is the methodology of Safety for investigations? Avoid contact, listen to no-one and measure the behaviours and hazards. The Dreamworld disaster is a classic example of what Safety thinks is investigation (https://safetyrisk.net/an-engineering-dreamworld/ ).
Take for example the dozens of ‘documentaries’ on the tragedy of the Costa Concordia.
If you do a quick Youtube search The Story of the Costa Concordia comes to the top of the list (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgTOq-2acT0 ) with 17 million views! (see below)
Just do a quick Discourse Analysis (https://safetyrisk.net/three-lessons-in-how-to-be-unprofessional/ ) of the ‘text’ of this video, and you will ‘see’ it gives off the impression that you are watching a documentary and expert investigation. Of course, Safety doesn’t know how to do Critical Discourse Analysis. It’s yet another Discipline it wants to know nothing about.
The film maker of this ‘story’ is a 23 year old Youtuber and gamer Jake, who ensures that the Captain’s affair is presented in salacious detail as if this is valid education. Yet, the video is an engineering delight complete with endless engineering diagrams, animations and voice-over as if the video maker is an engineer. Nothing seems more appealing to people than a fraud presenting something he knows nothing about!
Edutainment is NOT learning, information and data are NOT learning, chronicling events is NOT learning, presenting timelines, engineering diagrams, maps, animations, voice-overs and eye witness recollections, are NOT learning.
The second most popular video on Youtube about the Costa Concordia is The Cost of Concordia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh9KBwqGxTI ) with 11 million views. It’s hard to believe that so many people have watched this animation. Any Critical Discourse Analysis would again tear this 46 minutes of nonsense to shreds. Again, a good section of this video is an Instagram search of the Captain’s salacious affair. The video is made by Internet Historian, that reconstructs history for entertainment and sells VPN subscriptions. The channel’s icon is the author projected as a member of every disciple and Jesus in the Michelangelo’s last Supper.
The third video is a recording of a phone call between the Captain and the Italian Coast Guard (4 million views). Wonderfully presented with no expertise in CDA, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, semiotics, trauma or the collective unconscious.
The fourth most popular Youtube video is titled: ‘Sinking of the Concordia: Why Did the Concordia Sink? History Documentary Real Truth History’. With 2.7 million views. Of course, you soon discover this video is NOT about Reality, Truth or History!
In just these four top videos on Youtube, we realise that the thirst for entertainment is the focus for reflection on tragic events.
One of the starkest realisations of this series of videos is the overwhelming judgement on the Captain by presenters and yet no-one has spoken to him! It is clear that neither Safety nor the Entertainment industry think that Subjectivity is important. Without entering into Subjectivity in an embodied way, there can never be learning, only the substitution of learning for entertainment and training.
Of course, Safety has no interest (nothing in the curriculum or AIHS BoK) in trauma either. It has no interest at all in the trauma of the Captain nor what trauma looks like or sounds like in the moment. Like all the journalists who crucified Christine Nixon (https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/the-crucifixion-of-christine-nixon ) during the Victoria Bushfires of 2009 (https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/bushfire-black-saturday-victoria-2009/ ) with no expertise in psychology, culture, learning or anthropology. Why seek understanding when you have a scapegoat? (https://safetyrisk.net/scapegoating-and-safety/ ).
When you deify yourself (Safety saves) framed in the discourse of perfection (zero), why would you want to learn? This is the challenge for Safety in how it reviews events. It proclaims it wants to learn but doesn’t know how.