You will probably notice that I love nature, and many of my posts include nature as a feature photo.
We can use nature to learn so many things, health and safety being one, but you can also learn about people and their biases through different groups.
I am a member of a group on Facebook about spiders and spider identification, it is a fantastic group and has helped me reduce my arachnophobia.
A question which comes up regularly is “Do conkers keep spiders out of your home?” Many people will quickly say no, and some will say yes, but you will get a few that will quote an experiment at a school that proved spiders don’t care.
However, when I had a fear of spiders I had conkers placed around my home, and guess what? I had very few spiders in my house, so, in my eyes, the answer was yes, they do work, this wasn’t over a short time this was over many years.
I asked the people who said they do not keep spiders out how they knew, have they tried it. they will often come up with a reason, “I have conkers with spider webs on them” “Why do you get spiders in conker trees” many people who were convinced they didn’t work had no experience.
If you google it you will find the majority say it definitely is an old wives tale, and a few say it’s a fact that there is a noxious chemical within the conker that kills them within a day.
Now I have almost conquered my fear of spiders I find them interesting and want to see them and learn from them, so I got rid of my conkers, and guess what? I now have loads of spiders in my house, I don’t fear them, I study and photograph them.
By having such a closed opinion of things you can lose out forget your biases and look from every angle.
So, what does this mean? and why did I write this post?
My Conclusion
A: There are some things in life that are not black or white but many shades of grey.
B: Many people will have a strong feeling about something and are prepared to defend it at any cost.
C: People’s desire to prove their way of thinking is the correct way often results in insults and ridicule.
D: Many people will totally ignore other people’s arguments if it differs from theirs.
E: It doesn’t matter if people disagree with you, I may or not be correct that conkers keep spiders out, but it worked for me and that is what I wanted.
F: ……..
G: ……..
There are many more that I will add at a later date, can you think of any?
This is a very trivial discussion, If you don’t want spiders in your house, whether you believe it or not, get some conkers, if it works, great, if not, what have you lost, you just have a few conkers on your window ledge.
But, this way of thinking can be used to influence more serious situations not just in Health and Safety but in life in general.
A health and safety issue that I resolved in a very dusty warehouse.
I was performing an accident investigation on a site, and in the distance, there was a man who disappeared in a cloud of dust, I wandered over and asked what he was doing, he said some of these crates get very dusty so I dust it off before picking it.
I asked him, “do you know what’s in the dust”, he replied no, I said “neither do I and I won’t know until I get it analysed”, I told him that I have FFP3 dust masks in the office that will protect his lungs from the unknown dust.
Shortly after 4 members of the warehouse team came to my office asking for face masks.
Had I taken the approach, you must wear a facemask to protect you from crystalline silica that may scar your lungs, causing breathing problems later in life, he may have defended his action and tried to justify them. such as.
I’ve been doing it for years and have no breathing problems, there are lots of people working here and they don’t have any problems so it must be safe (this is what I call common sense syndrome and I will write a post later to explain it further).
Instead, I gave him the information I had, gave him a solution that he could choose to take, and what the benefits of taking my advice would give him.
This subject is so complex, I didn’t realise just how complex until I started writing this post, I will as time goes by explain many of my findings.
Any comments are gratefully received.