When a safety slogan becomes a philosophy
The utility company I used to work for had a safety slogan: be safe, not sorry. I always thought it was quietly funny, because I kept hearing a different message underneath it. Not the one they intended.
But that little shift in meaning got me thinking about something much bigger than workplace signage.
In Australia, we have a national Sorry Day. It marks the history of the Stolen Generations, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were removed from their families, often because they had white fathers and the thinking of that era held that they would be better off raised within white society. Some were taken forcibly. Some were handed over by their mothers, who believed the same thing. Some of those children did get a better start in life. Some did not.
I am not certain that outcome is unique to that chapter of history. Every generation, in every country, produces children who thrive and children who struggle. Some of that comes down to character. Some comes from the parents. Some from the culture and the country they were born into.
I am not sorry that people were transported to Australia. I am not sorry that one side of my family migrated here, or that the other side arrived in chains. History is not something I did. It is something I inherited, along with everything else.
This is where the idea of an apology marketing strategy becomes genuinely interesting, because there is a real tension between acknowledging harm and performing remorse for things that happened before you were born. Businesses use the apology as a tactic all the time. A company makes a misstep, issues a carefully worded statement, and moves on. The apology is meant to close the loop, to signal accountability and restore trust.
But an apology marketing strategy only works when the person apologising actually did something. When it becomes a symbolic gesture on behalf of ancestors, it shifts into different territory entirely. It can feel hollow, or it can feel like exactly the right thing, depending entirely on who is watching and what they need from it.
I hold a view on this that some people will agree with and others will not. What I find more useful than apology is understanding. Understanding why decisions were made, what people believed at the time, what the consequences turned out to be. That understanding does not excuse harm. But it does something more lasting than a formal sorry.
I am interested in where you stand on this. Not just on Sorry Day specifically, but on the broader question of whether an apology, personal or institutional, actually changes anything.
All my posts on this and related topics are collected in one place. If you want to keep reading and thinking alongside me:
