Love, War and Engineering
Lately I've been thinking about a political principle. That a powerful form of activism is to live with integrity.
I first started thinking about this after watching the film "As We Forgive". A key theme of that film is that it took love, legitimate one-on-one connection, to restore the country of Rwanda after the genocide. So love is political. Connection and tolerance are political. They are intertwined in our citizenship.
And then I ran into a few instances of this philosophy in rapid succession.
Jordan Peterson, who I have started investigating (and disagree with on some solid points, but have some admiration for nonetheless) espouses this philosophy from a conservativish standpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti1Tob5Ceh8
I started reading "The Slow Professor", and a key message concerns the power of the individual. That the Slowness of one academic, even in short admissions of imperfection and short grabs for meaningful time, are acts of resistance in a culture of corporate speed.
And finally, my re-acquaintance with Shambhala Buddhism. I have been off the right path for a while, mucking about in the weeds, nursing the deep wounds of my brother's death. A key principle of Shambhala is that the kingdom of an enlightened society is built upon the right action of enlightened individuals. World peace comes from inner peace.
So this is my intention for this semester, to work towards this inner Slow, inner peace, integrity, deliberation. I feel like a student of Socrates. I have a lot to learn.
And the last bit to discuss, is that if these things are the case for the individual, and if these principles hold true for people politics, then we should teach them.
The title for this post was devised a little frivolously, but I think it is solid. All is fair in love and war and engineering. I don't actually believe this - but the saying isn't actually about believing it, right? It's more of a jab at the way that we act in these grand endeavors. We forget ourselves. We forget what is fair, and we feel justified.
Normative Holism is one term for the idea, that engineers can do no wrong if they can do good math. But this is an irresponsible way of being.
If I need to learn about connection, self-reflection, and what really isn't fair about war and love, in order to play a part in peace, then so should engineers that affect our world. We should talk about love in the engineering classroom. We should talk about war in the engineering classroom. Engineers can still be the nerds and the rascals and the McGuyvers that they think they are, but preferably not at the expense of their blossoming as full people. Not if they must fragment sharply to become engineers and engineering.
It's an interesting problem, that we are born with the capacity for love, war and engineering, and that we keep them in separate spheres. I think the community of engineering self-organizes, unconsciously, to value knowledge that is cleansed of failure and complication, to exclude those who don't engineer in the same way - this justified by physical principle, to rewire our brains in the formation of "problem solvers" but not problem solvers.
I sort of don't know, but I sort of do know what to do in the face of a neoliberal system that doesn't give a fuck about my hippy dippy peace bullshit. I still think it's in our best economic, political, national, global interest to be engaged as full people in this way. I will spin it. And I'll teach it. And I'll talk about it.
I first started thinking about this after watching the film "As We Forgive". A key theme of that film is that it took love, legitimate one-on-one connection, to restore the country of Rwanda after the genocide. So love is political. Connection and tolerance are political. They are intertwined in our citizenship.
And then I ran into a few instances of this philosophy in rapid succession.
Jordan Peterson, who I have started investigating (and disagree with on some solid points, but have some admiration for nonetheless) espouses this philosophy from a conservativish standpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti1Tob5Ceh8
I started reading "The Slow Professor", and a key message concerns the power of the individual. That the Slowness of one academic, even in short admissions of imperfection and short grabs for meaningful time, are acts of resistance in a culture of corporate speed.
And finally, my re-acquaintance with Shambhala Buddhism. I have been off the right path for a while, mucking about in the weeds, nursing the deep wounds of my brother's death. A key principle of Shambhala is that the kingdom of an enlightened society is built upon the right action of enlightened individuals. World peace comes from inner peace.
So this is my intention for this semester, to work towards this inner Slow, inner peace, integrity, deliberation. I feel like a student of Socrates. I have a lot to learn.
And the last bit to discuss, is that if these things are the case for the individual, and if these principles hold true for people politics, then we should teach them.
The title for this post was devised a little frivolously, but I think it is solid. All is fair in love and war and engineering. I don't actually believe this - but the saying isn't actually about believing it, right? It's more of a jab at the way that we act in these grand endeavors. We forget ourselves. We forget what is fair, and we feel justified.
Normative Holism is one term for the idea, that engineers can do no wrong if they can do good math. But this is an irresponsible way of being.
If I need to learn about connection, self-reflection, and what really isn't fair about war and love, in order to play a part in peace, then so should engineers that affect our world. We should talk about love in the engineering classroom. We should talk about war in the engineering classroom. Engineers can still be the nerds and the rascals and the McGuyvers that they think they are, but preferably not at the expense of their blossoming as full people. Not if they must fragment sharply to become engineers and engineering.
It's an interesting problem, that we are born with the capacity for love, war and engineering, and that we keep them in separate spheres. I think the community of engineering self-organizes, unconsciously, to value knowledge that is cleansed of failure and complication, to exclude those who don't engineer in the same way - this justified by physical principle, to rewire our brains in the formation of "problem solvers" but not problem solvers.
I sort of don't know, but I sort of do know what to do in the face of a neoliberal system that doesn't give a fuck about my hippy dippy peace bullshit. I still think it's in our best economic, political, national, global interest to be engaged as full people in this way. I will spin it. And I'll teach it. And I'll talk about it.
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