Culture Wars

BY BOBBY HALTON

It seems as if we’re in the middle of a culture war in the fire service. Lately, you hear a lot more people talking passionately about the culture of the fire service. Many of these voices claim that there is something wrong with or missing in our culture. Some of the proponents of cultural change claim that by changing the culture, we can lower our number of line-of-duty deaths, improve fireground operations, and bring in a new era of firefighter excellence and accountability. We would do well to first figure out exactly what we mean when we say culture. It’s wise to know what a word means before we use it.

Noah Webster, a great Constitutional Convention advocate and devoted believer in American cultural independence, was an American genius who had made a great number of contributions to our society, one of which was the modern dictionary. According to Webster’s Dictionary: “Culture consists of three elements: values (ideas), norms (behaviors), and artifacts (things or material culture).

• “Values are ideas about what in life is important. They guide the rest of the culture.
• “Norms are expectations of how people will behave in different situations. Each culture has different methods, called ‘sanctions,’ of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally are called ‘laws.’
• “Artifacts, the third component of culture, derive from the culture’s values and norms.”

Many say that we should be promoting a culture of safety. Safety is a behavioral objective that is all well and good; however, it is not a value. Safety relates to how we go about performing our duties and how we accomplish our mission. Those who promote the culture of safety teach that we must engineer our operational activities so that we create a less threatening or potentially harmful environment for firefighting. Many great programs have been enacted by the proponents of the culture of safety, including the “16 Life Safety Initiatives,” “The Courage to Be Safe,” and “Everyone Goes Home.” All of these programs are behavioral or normative. Safety is about behavior, not values; therefore, we are not a culture of safety. Safety is a strategical objective of our behavior, an honorable and worthy one, meant to guide the behavior of our institutions, but it does not define our culture.

Then there are those who propose that we become a culture of extinguishment, which expresses the fire service’s commitment to the art of suppression and perseverance during suppression. Extinguishment is not a value; extinguishment is a behavior. Extinguishment is arguably the most important function we perform in our mission to our communities. Those who promote the culture of extinguishment rightfully understand that when the fire is extinguished, things get better. However, we are not a culture of extinguishment; extinguishment is a tactical objective and an honorable and worthy one meant to guide the synchronous behavior of our deployments, but it does not define our culture.

A third group believes we should be a culture of survival and discipline. Survival is not a value; one could argue that self-discipline could be construed as a value, but it is more correctly a behavior. The proponents of survival and discipline assert that by becoming more disciplined, we will be able to perform our duties more effectively and efficiently with less injury. It is clear that proficiency and expertise in the tasks that we must perform are critical; physical fitness is critical, and personal responsibility is mandatory of all firefighters. However, we are not a culture of survival and discipline, either. Those are task objectives, honorable and worthy ones, meant to guide our individual behaviors and help us to be more disciplined and focused, but they do not define our culture.

Our culture is defined by the second word in our name. That word is a value-a timeless value, and the one that defines our culture. That word is service. Our profession is a culture of selfless service, of giving of one’s time and personal treasure for others in danger or in need.

We belong to a culture of service. Selfless service is the value that defines our culture. Selfless service is the principle that guides us in the darkest smoke and in the most intensive fires. Service is the hallmark of honorable character, a character that comes from relentless courage and integrity in the selfless service of others. General Omar Bradley once said, “The nation today needs men who think in terms of service to their country and not in terms of their country’s debt to them.” Firefighters are those men and women.

Now is the time to end the culture wars; all three of these groups are struggling to bring tremendously beneficial normative/behavioral change to the fire service. The most amazing coincidence among all three of these phenomenal culture warriors is their uniform observation that what is needed in the fire service is not just training on new methodology but rather a new emphasis on training-on specific mission-critical training, time-honored drilling on that training, practicing that training, and then practicing it again and again until it becomes habit, until it becomes a way of life. These three culture warrior groups together will succeed in changing behavior, improving safety, improving extinguishment, and improving our survival through self-discipline.

All three of these groups are true change agents; they are true leaders, true giants among us, and we are honored to support and follow them. Every true firefighter embraces the behavioral change they are promoting. Now is the time for them to embrace and promote one another. We can no longer afford the casualties of these pointless culture wars. Our culture is defined by our noblest guiding value selfless service, the one all of our culture warriors embrace.