Manifesto
We, hereby, declare that we swear that this fire we have borrowed is not ours,
but belongs surely to our people!
Foreword: Prior to all my contributions.
We, as engineers, are disciples of the discipline of engineering -- an endeavour devoted to the resolution of problems. Therefore, we ought, above all, to be solvers of problems. Moreover, as public servants dedicated to the welfare of society, we exist to contribute to social tranquillity through the resolution of those very problems. Surely, the essence of such problems is to be found in the interactions between individuals. An engineer, in isolation, cannot truly fulfil their purpose. Our craft, then, is neither pure art nor pure science; it is, at its heart, the resolution of issues arising between persons.
Consequently, we must take care never to resolve perceived problems through exclusion or repudiation. Above all, to seek to resolve problems born of human society by removing people themselves is simply tautological, and one need hardly remark that this error has recurred all too often throughout the annals of technological history. The ethical precepts of engineering -- etched, as it were, with the blood of innocent citizens -- are nothing less than the very social contract which legitimates our existence as engineers.
An engineer should be as a margrave: a guardian at the borders, never a tyrant who presides over the hanging of the innocent. A good margrave could never countenance such cruelty -- that is the province of Wallachian nobility, and they alone.
At its foundation, freedom consists in the interplay of all others' freedoms -- yet, all too easily, it may trespass upon those very freedoms. The margrave, then, is obliged to create systems which enable people to live side by side without doing harm to one another.
It is not permissible that the cost of progress be foisted upon the vulnerable, nor dismissed as a matter of simple misfortune. Instead, every such challenge must be resolved with regard to the harmony of society as a whole.
Glory, then, to Progress and Harmony for Mankind.
And, then, my contributions have begun. Also, will be concluded with an afterword.