SPEAKERS

Nippin Anand

Nippin Anand  00:00

Welcome to another episode of embracing differences with me. Nippin Anand, myth busting, why we should be concerned as an industry and as a society. Myth Busting, viewing a myth as a false story. It is a political ideology. It is not rooted in science. Myth Busting creates divides and it amplifies our differences. In this podcast, I will explore what is a myth and why myth busting should concern the risk and safety industry and our society at large. What are the dangers of myth busting and how we can avoid falling into this trap. Here is the structure of this podcast, we will ask, what is a myth? What is the power of a myth? What is myth busting? Why myth busting is an ideology and not science? Why myth busting should concern us? What is a myth? A myth is a sacred narrative shared between people within the culture. Unlike an absolute truth, a myth is a cultural truth made true by rituals and symbols of that culture. Take a look at this. In Christianity, for instance, nativity is a myth made true by the symbol of crucifix and the ritual of baptism and confession in Risk and Safety all accidents are preventable. Is a myth made true by the symbol of zero harm and the ritual of investigating accidents and counting injury rates. Science also has its own myths. All truth is measurable and reducible to matter. The Myth of science is symbolized by an hourglass or a microscope or a laboratory and ritualized by writing peer reviewed papers and conducting laboratory experiments. Think of myths as narrative shared between people within their culture, symbols as sign systems that we use to interpret the narratives within the myth. Sign systems can include images, text, words, metaphors, slogans and artifacts. Rituals are scripted behaviors and collective emotional responses to conform to the myth. Symbols and rituals are far more complicated than that, but for our purpose, let’s just keep it there. Myths do not live in our brains. Myths are embodied in our unconscious mind and shared between people through their gestures, habits, heuristics, metaphors, intuitions and instincts. Any attempt to explain a myth in its entirety is a myth in its own few people question their myth. Despite that, myths hold a secret to some of the most profound questions in our lives. Why was the world created? Why does life matter? Why are we born, and what happens to us when we die? What is afterlife, and is there one? Why do we have so much suffering in this world, a myth should not be mistaken with the legend, which is exaggerated, tales of real people in identifiable time, a fairy tale, for example, magical stories of other worldly time and space, a fantasy one person’s imagination, or a propaganda, stories with a hidden agenda. Myth is the truth of every culture. Here’s a short story of a myth. In April, 2023 during visiting India, to facilitate a workshop to a group of ship managers, I met with a catering staff, Arjun, seeing a Tilak on his forehead, as you can see an orange dot. I asked Arjun, why do you wear this Arjun said this father always believed that smearing your forehead with Tilak would keep you safe. By coincidence, we were discussing root cause analysis in the workshop. As Arjun shared his story, one ship manager said, at least Arjun believes in his what he wears. And another one said, and of course, his method is more scientific than ours. Everyone had a good laugh. At first, I thought I understood why everyone was laughing. These men were laughing at their situation. Their own life bears so little meaning when they compare it with the catering staff, when in the days to follow, I realized that I didn’t really comprehend the essence of their outburst. Their real dilemma was not in comparing between arjun’s beliefs and their own disbeliefs. What concerned them was his method was more scientific than theirs. They understood the limitations of causality, investigating accidents, and they knew arjun’s Myth bore more meaning than their science. Myth was more powerful to these men than science, and that was a jaw dropping moment for me, the power in the myth in the days to follow. I read more about how Arjun myth made sense. A Tilak on the forehead will not reduce the number of accidents in the workplace, but a Tilak keeps the wisdom of the ancestors. AL. Life, like all myth, the power of the tilak lies in its oral transmission from one generation to another. One does not need the literacy skills to read a book, attend to lectures or become an intellectual to understand how the tilak works. The myth is performed orally through storytelling, symbols and rituals, and becomes experientially embodied in the receiver of the story. Arjun does not know how the tilak would keep him safe. He simply lives his myth by following the wisdom of his ancestors in faith. Does arjun’s knowing about the power of the tilak really matter? Well, that depends upon what we mean by knowing tacit, implicit and expert. Knowledge is not in our conscious awareness. It lives in intuitions and instinct. And so his body has learned, even when he is consciously unaware of his myth. My nine years old son can solve his rubric cube in less than few seconds. But if I ask him, How did he do that, He shrugs his shoulder and walks away with attitude. Arjun, instincts and intuitions are guided by the wisdom of his ancestors, though he may not be cognitively aware of his myth, and thank God it is not the other way around, because 98% of our decisions are based on our intuitions and instinct, which we call gut thinking. If you’re still debating between science and myth, then consider this. The Tilak is one on the frontal lobe part of the brain just behind the forehead. The front and lobes are what make us unique in the animal kingdom. So we can use language, make meaning, think in abstract, make choices and compromises between options. We can reflect, plan and anticipate what lies ahead. A Tilak made of sandalwood paste, an extract made from sandalwood trees, when applied to the forehead, will cool the nerves, thus avoiding knee jerk reactions and instinct decisions in Genesis. Ashes worn on your forehead remind people of their mortality, fallibility and humility. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return in the event that things go wrong. The ritual of smearing the forehead reminds us of the danger of being self centered, ego centered and animalistic, which is driven by instinct instead of reflection and thinking, myth busting. Now imagine a different encounter with Arjun. I see Arjun and I ask him, what’s this Tilak all about? Arjun responds with the same thing. My father always believed it would keep me safe. I ask, prove it to me, how it keeps you safe? I cannot prove it, Arjun responds, well, then that’s a myth End of conversation. This is myth busting. If it ant proven measurable or reasonable by my standards, then it must be wrong. Myth Busting does not see myth as a sacred story of another culture. Myth busting sees myth as a false story. Myth Busting is an ideology. The Indian word mithya, which is false story, which people often think is where the word myth originates from, is perhaps the cause of much confusion. What is false mithya cannot be true, which is Satya. The Greeks, I believe, were more powerful in making a distinction between mythos and logos, which is meaning and scientific concepts and the complementary relationship between the two. The biggest danger today with myth busting is ignoring the Greek wisdom and falling into the binary trap of true and false stories. Myth busting ignores the Greek wisdom, myth busting turns to material science for its myth, a search for absolute truth, defendable through reason, which is rationalism, proven through evidence, which is empiricism, verifiable as either true or false, which is positivism, governed by universal laws, which is through logic and measurable to be qualified as the greatest good. Utilitarianism, truth is that which can be reduced to matter verified and measured. Subjectivity contaminates the truth.

Nippin Anand  09:12

Bias becomes an enemy. Whatever I inquire should produce the same result as another person, or it cannot be true. And so in myth busting, there is no place for cultural truths, only universal truth. It is no surprise that Arjun Tilak has no place in science. There is no evidence, no thinking, no logic, and no way to validate Arjun truth. It is the truth of another culture which has its own symbols and myths and its own cultural context. If you come to Arjun with a checklist design on positivism, which is yes or no or a risk assessment template based on rationalism, what sense would that make? Faith does not make sense when they use the myth, symbol and rituals of science to question the myth. Symbols and rituals of a Hindu person. Think about it from arjun’s perspective as well. How would our own rituals, symbols and myths make sense to him? I can hear Arjun saying this, all these people speak the language of efficiency and measurement. They sit for hours discussing KPIs and targets and then manipulate their numbers to meet with their targets. They record each minute of their time at work and then sit in a pub for hours drinking alcohol without any sense of time. How is skin piercing, tattooing, breast augmentation, liposuction, or eating junk food based on evidence based decision making. Why would someone pop in a painkiller tablet every time they have a headache? Why wouldn’t they sleep more? What sense would it make to count injury rates to prove that people are safe at work? And how is my faith in God so far off from them turning their risks from red to green when an accident happens, the myth of a risk based checklist is as good as the myth of a Tilak. Is it not? I would say the myth of the tilak is more scientific than the checklist, because at least it is not forced upon you. Whichever way we see the world, the common denominator remains the same. Humans are the same mythical and non rational creatures, not irrational. In every culture, we judge and refute another person’s truth, but we don’t look at ourselves in the mirror enough. But that in itself, is not a problem. The real problem is when the myth of science is politicized and becomes the basis proving the myth of another person wrong. That is the realm of myth busting, proving a myth as a false story based on science. But myth busting is not science. It is an ideology hidden under the guise of science. True science is humble, inclusive and open inquiry into the unknown. True science is not afraid of being wrong. Safety Management System is based on the same principles of myth busting through reasoning, evidence, measurement and logic, we can prove another person as irrational and unsafe. What is common between Arjun, who wears a Tilak captaino Who navigates the ship to salute the island, a crew member who instinctively jumps into an enclosed space to save his mate, and the captain of the ship, Bucha, who turns to the shore for his crew to make a phone call, is that they all defy the myth of safety and, by extension, the ideology of science. Their myths are not just false stories. These are stories of crime, negligence and human error. Myth Busting is brain centered, I think, therefore I am, said Rene Descartes, well known for his Cartesian philosophy in the Western world, thinking and reflection is what makes us so unique. Myth busting is based on the same Cartesian brain centered view of science that makes intellectual reasoning superior to embodied wisdom. Think about it is the myth of science and so deeply problematic in its own it downgrades the wisdom of experiential knowledge and it elevates the glory of academic credentials. It gives too much power to someone who holds a certificate or a five wide template, but know so little about the functioning of the embodied mind. Tell me how you do it, or I will mark you down. If only I knew, I would think of experts and people with years of experiential knowledge. Experts do not know how to make their decisions. They don’t work out their intuitions and instincts in advance. Myth Busting shines light in the head, but it misses the point that myths are not in the brain. Myths live in our bodies, but what happens when experts become too sure about themselves, impose their myth and control another person’s truth? For that, think of the symbolism Arjun stilaq at the center of his forehead, it reminds him to become aware of his ego, arrogance and self centeredness. Why myth busting should concern us. Myth Busting is here to stay, and it should concern us all. You can type the word myth in your search engine and look at the marvels of artificial intelligence for yourself. Myth busting is now a scalable disease, and what Cathy O’Neil, the author of the book weapons of math destruction, would call a threat to the world’s political landscape, democracy and humanity at large, in myth busting, we see another person as a hazard and an object to control. It is a relationship between what Martin Buber would call I, and it the starting point is to prove another person wrong. There is no listening, only assuming, telling and winning. There is no conversation and there is no meeting. Myth Busting does not allow me to meet with Arjun because it sees. Confusion, curiosity and diversity as a threat to be destroyed. A meeting requires that I leave my own myth on the one side, let go of the urge to control and listen to Arjun as he shares his myth in a meeting. We don’t need myth busting because we have to work alongside feel and experience another person’s myth. Our world needs science, but not only material science, and certainly not the ideology of science. We need the kind of science that creates space for love, humility, reciprocity, acceptance and curiosity to understand another person’s myth in a world increasingly threatened by diverse perspectives, it is my hope that this episode will bring us one step closer embracing differences in the next podcast in this series, we will discuss how we can learn about myths, symbols and rituals of another culture. Knowledge of the myths, symbols and rituals of another culture, reveals new patterns in our stories and brings new meaning to our lives, we will learn how to widen our perspectives, enrich our imagination, improve our expertise, and with all that, our ability to get better at managing the risks. Join us for a webinar on myths, rituals and symbols on 30th of January, at nine o’clock UK time. Details are all there on our website if you are interested to learn about myths, symbols and rituals of different cultures and enhance your cultural intelligence. You can also join us in Aberdeen from the fifth to the seventh of March for our conference and learning for learning. If you are interested to learn about how to conduct accident investigation, we have a workshop coming up in London from 14 to 16th of May. For more details, you can go to our events page, novellas dot solutions, forward stroke events. If you need more information, please visit us on our website, novellas dot solutions, or send us an email at support at novellas dot solutions. If you are interested to read more about culture and learning, I have recently published a book. Are we learning from accidents? The book is available on Amazon, Kindle, Kobo and Apple books. Every now and then, we organize workshops around the world where we introduce the participants to the power of subjectivity, experiential learning, unconscious decision making, embodied learning, relational thinking, conversation mapping, mandala drawing, and a wide range of practical and intuitive methods and tools in social psychology of risk. Hi. I hope you are enjoying watching these videos, and they are making you think little bit. And if they are, please subscribe to our YouTube channel at Team novellus. My name is Nippin. I am a former ship captain, a master mariner, and I work at the intersection between anthropology, social psychology and the neurosciences of how human beings learn, unlearn, relearn and make decisions, particularly in groups, which we call collective sense making. I work with organizations around the world, particularly in high risk areas, to help them diagnose, understand and improve their culture. If you want to know more about our work, please visit our website, novellus.solutions. Thank you for watching. You.