Scapegoating and Safety
The Scapegoat has all the time been part of the best way the Sacred offers with hurt, struggling, uncertainty and guilt. All civilizations and religions have practiced varied types of scapegoating for millennia.
One of the best ways to grasp the character of scapegoating is thru research in: Theology, Soteriology, Non secular Research, Anthropology, Cultural Research, Mimesis, Semiotics and Social Psychology. If you wish to perceive how and why Safety initiatives guilt and blame via scapegoating, don’t ask an engineer.
Rene Girard’s works on Violence, Anthropology, Mimesis and The Scapegoat can also be useful in understanding the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of scapegoating (https://iep.utm.edu/girard/). Why ought to this matter to Safety?
The projection of guilt and blame on others is a fundamental approach for a way people resolve battle and resolve their very own participation in violation, hurt and cultural guilt. The locus for scapegoating is the sufferer, discover one thing or somebody that may be loaded up with blame.
In Jewish non secular ritual, the sufferer was an harmless goat who served as a symbolic (semiotic) substitute for ‘sin’. I wouldn’t suggest studying Leviticus with out some sense of Theology however the scapegoat thought types the inspiration for Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). PSA is the fantastic concoction of Augustine. I talk about a few of this in my free e book Fallibility and Danger, Residing With Uncertainty (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/ ).
With out an understanding of fable/image in a Phenomenological sense (Ricoeur), most of this appears a bit loopy. How can my sins be forgiven by throwing them symbolically onto a goat?
Nicely, a lot we do as people is symbolic that we attribute effectiveness to. How am I married by reciting rituals and placing a hoop on a finger? How does a baby enter heaven by splashing water on their brow? You get the concept.
Many cultures attribute effectiveness to the enactment of change through ritual eg. initiations, college formals, first intercourse, first drink and so forth.
It’s not a lot of a leap to grasp how the safety trade attributes effectiveness to its rituals (https://safetyrisk.net/shared-ritual-in-the-safety-congregation/ ) eg. risk assessments, risk matrices, SWMS, Bow-Tie, Swiss-Cheese, incantations like ‘zero harm’, ‘all accidents are preventable’, ‘safety is a choice you make’.
Rituals for saving are widespread in any exercise that believes it ‘saves lives’.
Safety has actually created many actions, processes and rituals that create conditionality to ‘being saved’.
At any time when somebody is harmed Safety runs an investigation into why its attributed rituals don’t work. After all, these aren’t known as ‘rituals’ however the investigation will little doubt take into account them as such because it seems to why a course of did not work correctly as a reason behind being not ‘saved’. What’s subsequent wanted is an act of PSA to appease the god Zero.
After all, as soon as a scapegoat has been discovered all is nicely, Safety can return to the ineffective rituals it attributes as efficient and even add to them as a result of the parable of volume-equals-effectiveness is one other sacred incantation.
One of many nice securities of safety investigations is already realizing the result earlier than beginning the investigation. The faster a scapegoat is discovered the earlier Safety can return to its main activity of brutalism within the title of its god – Zero.
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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 neighborhood 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.