The mind engineering

One of my fondest early childhood memories was my dad telling me bedtime stories. My fondest of these fondest memories is one night when he was telling me “Little Red Riding Hood” and, being tired after a full day’s work, related how “Little Red Riding Hood slid down into the crusher.”

My dad was a mining engineer. His specialty was beneficiation. He taught probably thousands of young engineers over close to four decades. I thought he had the most unbelievably boring job in the world, although I loved the smell of the auditoriums I was free to roam after lectures at the institute where he taught ended.

Last week, a lot of people with a similarly most unbelievably boring jobs in the world turned the lights back on in Spain and Portugal before civilisation collapsed. As far as I know, they got no thanks about it from government officials or other high-profile public figures. They did get thanks from other people with unbelievably boring jobs — the kind of jobs we, the ones with the interesting jobs, don’t really think about, until civilisation steps on the brink of collapse and starts swaying.

Post-modern generations’ ignorance of where their food and energy come from is a lamentable fact many of you have pointed out here in the comments section. Much worse, however, is the ignorance of those in decision-making power of how the physical world works and how vital engineers are for what we have come to know and love as modern civilisation. None of that, not one part of our comfortable lives, would be possible without engineers.

It’s engineers who build roads, houses, hospitals, and anything bigger than a toolshed, really, although toolshed construction also requires engineering knowledge. Hell, installing a water pump connected to a water tank for those outage emergencies during summer drought season requires engineering knowledge. I should know because I could never do it but I’m lucky enough to be married to a man who did it last week. And it runs perfectly, too.

We have water security thanks to engineers who know how water physics works and how pipes and valves fit together. We have food security thanks to engineers who design the tractors, combine harvesters and all the rest of the machinery that makes growing food in massive amounts possible and then brings it from the field to the supermarket where young people today believe food materialises spontaneously or something along these lines. And we have electricity and fuel for our vehicles thanks to engineers. And roads. And pipelines. And transmission lines to take the electricity from power plants to cities and villages. And cars. And all the rest of it. All of it.

Forty years ago I was firm in my belief that engineering was the most unbelievably boring profession in the world. Five years ago, I had a brief but seismic breakdown when I realised a hard truth: I could never become a petroleum engineer or even a geologist because I was so rubbish at maths and it was too late anyway, and how could I have been so stupid as a kid. You know, usual mid-life missed opportunities stuff — which I could have remained blissfully immune to, had I not been commissioned to write a series of basic educational articles about oil and gas production.

To say this was an eye-opening experience is to put it unjustifiably mildly but I have no better words. The amount of engineering work that goes into bringing the chemicals that fuel that same known and loved modern civilisation is astounding, though probably not to the engineers themselves, for whom it’s all in a day’s work, I imagine. Engineers, for the most part, seem to be humble folk, too busy making the world work to be anything else.

This is not to say they aren’t proud folk. We had a family friend who ran a company selling electronics. His card featured Eng. after his name. I thought this was funny — what was he thinking, that’s he’s as important as a medical doctor? Which just goes to show how long I had been stupid and what levels of stupidity I had reached before getting old enough to start addressing the issue. He was as important as a medical doctor. Under different circumstances he could have gone into a research career, inventing electronics for the medical doctors to use. Because he was an electrical engineer.

We’ve discussed all the problems with our political leaders at length and one of these problems, perhaps the biggest and most ignored one, is that there is none among them, at least to my knowledge and cursory research, who is an engineer either by inclination or by degree.

Worse still, they don’t seem to favour the presence of engineers around them. Engineers are unseen and unthought about, until the grid breaks down. Or a pipeline ruptures. Or a water pump fails. Even then, we dismiss them as some sort of lowly maintenance personnel, there to make our lives comfortable, safe and secure, and not ask for any acknowledgment or, gods forbid, recognition. Who do they think they are, doctors?

When I was young, in the 80s, as you might have heard, international travel outside the Eastern bloc was limited. Only the most trustworthy were allowed to travel — and/or the ones who were so good at their job that they got invited to professional events in the West. To give you an idea of the significance of such an invitation, allow me to remind you that centrally planned economies were, at the time, not necessarily conducive to innovation. They didn’t discourage it, but with a policy of ensuring 100% employment not always in line with individuals’ preferences for a career path, chances were not everyone became an engineer, a teacher, a doctor, or a shopkeeper by choice. Finding your calling and following it, in other words, was not the simple matter it is today.

One of my most treasured possessions as a child was a set of felt-tip pens my dad brought me from France where he attended some conference or other, possibly related to crushers or flotation cells, or something boring like that. They are now a treasured memory cuddled up with the regret I will never have the opportunity to apologise to Dad for thinking his profession was boring. I would now like to take a moment to say what an honour it is for me to have the acquaintance of so many engineers, if only virtually. Your presence here really means a lot. Thank you for keeping the world working.