In the western world, a University education is lauded as a fundamental step for any wealthy, well connected, person looking to climb the social ladder. It is held by many, that one of the most respected and prestigious choices a prospective student might consider, is a degree in the field of engineering. Unfortunately this is a massive misconception that needs to be abrogated without delay. To become an engineer, is to do a disservice to humanity. Engineers are responsible for the deaths, and general suffering of millions of people in the last 100 years of human existence, and that the world would have been a better place without them.
In a corporation, an engineer has limited power. If the boss wants to you to build a vibrator or a talking fish then that is what you have to do. With so many degrees handed out by accredited universities and colleges around the world, there are more than enough people to do the jobs lazy westerner's refuse to do. Do you think that all the people that work for Microsoft are evil people, bent on destroying the glass house of stone throwing lunix zealots? I don't think so. They need to feed their families and buy their well deserved luxuries, just like any American. They therefore become stooges to their masters, blindly obedient, regardless of the impact they impart upon the world.
In a benign example of this zombie like obedience, in the last ten years or so, the bumpers on cars have been switched from being hard metal bars encased in rubber, to flimsy molded plastic covers that crack at the slightest bump. Back in the good old days, when you got into a fender bender nothing happened except for maybe a sore neck and slightly embarrased ego. Your car was fine. Today the story is entirely different. The flimsy crap that is passed of as a bumper these days invariably breaks - leaving the user with an $800 bill for a 5mph car accident. Why is this? Well the car companies have obviously colluded together to make money. Why build a car that survives low impact accidents, when they can build one that breaks easily and requires the owner to purchase a brand new part, -- that is both easy to produce and notoriously expensive -- straight from the factory? Nothing, because engineers are spineless subservient drones willing to do their masters beck and call. They know that this bumper-gate is just a way to ripoff the public.
It is obvious that engineers could care less about the public that they serve, as long as their own hedonistic desires and cravings are answered, who cares about anyone else?
So we have seen that engineers will ignore any moral problems that they have with the product they are helping to create. This is mainly due to the nature of a prospective engineer. These people, mainly "men", are well versed in maths and computing sciences, and are notoriously awkward with the opposite sex. This creates a cognitive dissonance, or a friction within themselves, that continually makes them unhappy and anti-social for the rest of their lives. During high-school they are labeled as "dorks" and "nerds", which does nothing but re-enforce an already poor self-image. At University, engineers band together like a herd of elk being stalked by a hungry lion. They construct a community, and don "team" jackets to announce that they belong to the Faculty of Engineering. This is obviously a sign of insecurity, copied for the same reasons as the Hitler Youth and the Cub Scouts. Outcasts need to band together to survive. However, this can only last so long. When they are placed in a working enviroment, this social safety net is gone. A strong boss in a management position can easily bully an underling engineer to do what he wants him or her to do. He is no longer wearing his red jacket. His power is gone. Look at Steve Jobs, and how he manipulated and took advantage, of Steve Wozniak, the real genius behind Apple Computers. Steve lied and stole from Wozniak for years; the atypical engineer.
Most engineers never set foot near an Arts class or a sorority. They miss out on useful classes like psychology which is helpful in developing manipulative skills and defending against manipulation by employers. Their lack of ethics and philosophic training is also apparent. But where is the death and suffering you ask? Well before we get ahead of ourselves, we know that engineers can be easily manipulated by their bosses due to their lack of a classical education which teaches at least, strong critical thinking skills. We know that this manipulation has been applied to create cheap easily breakable bumpers designed to rip-off societies car drivers. But what if that car company, is a corporation is in the business of murder - like a nation is in time of war - then, applying the previous tenets, we get an army of engineers who are charged with creating machines of destruction, who are entirely moral-less and gutless to question their supervisor's demands. The A-Bomb, the Maxim Gun, sadomasochistic devices, structural failures; if engineers had any sense they would have refused to build airplanes and the World Trade Center. The list of black marks against engineers goes on forever.
This article has argued pervasively and effectively that to become an engineer, is to become a powerless drone-murderer, who can only help to increase the suffering of the human race. I heard on the radio the other day that the draw-string on common set of window blinds, were killing babies with such regularity - the string would become looped around the curious babies neck - that they had to be withdrawn from public sale. Would you like to be the engineer who designed this baby death trap?