I do not agree with my lord Crypto-Alchemist, where he deems the day's cloaca "provides a few very good definitions of the term's meaning".
This isn't because (necessarily misplacedi) loyalty to ideology on my part, whereby "can't possibly agree with the simpletons, no matter what they say" ; nor is it because "definitions" can only ever be one, and if there's a plurality of supposed "definitions" available there's either no term being defined or no definition being offered. But engineering is not taylorismii, the item wikipedia discusses, the superset of which is of course early, romanticiii, soviet planned economy.
Nor is engineering simple casuism, either, some kind of of common law practice applied upon machineryiv, keeping incomprehended lists of recipes "known to work". I'm aware "Google engineers" made "a program to play go" in this manner, not to mention Monsanto "engineers" have been "developing" all sort and type of nonsense in a very similar way. Nevertheless, engineering isn't "keeping a (well indexed!) list of pictures of walls shit was thrown at" anymore than it's "throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks".v
What is it then ? Oh engineering is... well, you see, it's nothing. Nothing at all. Like "love", "engineering" is a null concept, a label put on putative panacea. Like "love" is the supposed solvent of all possible impediments standing between you and the fucking of the girl you want to fuck, just so "engineering" is the presumed lubricant, easing away all asperities on your way to a functioning you desire. There's exactly nothing more to it, claiming engineering as an identity is exactly like claiming "you're a lover". "Ok, but I mean, what do you do for a living ?" will be the necessary response. Outside of simple erotomania, "being an engineer" as a mental disease, outside of the deranged states of psychological breakdown in humans, engineering's just a conceit. It's something people who aren't engineers say to explain their dysfunction to people who can't do things -- because for very good reasons lack can not be directly approached by they who are lacking.
Yes, systematic approaches, both ontological and gnoseological, which is to say in one's activity as well as in one's thoughts, are ultimately the only way to obtain... systems. Whopee. "Engineering" has exactly as much to do with this as disco dancingvi ; and besides the world will stay meaningless irrespective how you go about convincing yourselves.
In the hope I've distertained and entressed...
———- Loyalty may only ever be invested in persons, and never in abstracts -- let the latter toil for their bread, and be discarded as rags the moment they fail on any score for they are not persons.
This, incidentally, is why the pantsuit theatrical performances wherein a person "accused" is supposedly confronted by an abstract "prosecuting" it, such that supposedly the person is held to defend his conduct in all particulars, any failure on any account (even if it were only the account of the cluelessness of the audience, as it often -- perhaps most often -- happens) resulting in a so-called "conviction", while the abstract's not held to defend its perdurant conduct to any standard, even the most egregious breaches being in general denied and on the rarest of occasions predendedly cured (and regularly to the lowest of possible standards, "actual damages") are so universally ridiculous and thus universally derided. The only correct stance available is that the abstract first defends itself from all possible charges, with failure on any account (including simple disinterest on the part of the audience) reducing it to non-existence ; whereas the person defends itself on a total balance, and only ever cures voluntarily, and on the actual damages standard. Until your state works that way -- the only way it possibly could not to mention the only way it conceivably should -- you can take your socialist nonsense and feed it to whatever ein anderes that'll take it. I'm not. [↩]
- The strand that eventually yielded "Entreprise Resource Planning" in the post-modern era is simply a management technique, it follows human behaviour so as to enact partitions between sets of separable behaviours, and inhibit some while stimulating others. It's simple "a/b testing", if you prefer that terminology, though substantially it's the same fundamental approach to plant husbandry that yielded fruiting trees in the sad Iranian desert ten to twenty thousand years ago. [↩]
- This is the whole value proposition of the early days, systematic and universal taylorism is what "soviet" even means in the first place, standing as the only possible meaningful interpretation available on the tradition of neo-protestant tractology inaugurated by Karl Engels & friends.
Yes indeed, "marxism" is, exactly like "beans&ricely yours" Armstrongism or Ehret's "mucusless" diet (indeed there historically existed a firebrand moron who'd have logically regarded AIDS as the one true path to health) a barely lisible footnote in a footnote to a footnote to intellectual discourse, Calvin's obscure and deeply anti-interesting nonsense. Nobody cares, seriously now, all this provincial idiocy is about as interesting as the "particular" expression of precious cuntletry put forth as airs by whatever random (yet supposedly distinct) small town belle. This is the inescapable trap these poor souls forever toil in : that mere existence does not therefore also predicate identity, certainly not outside of the village they were born in. This is why we here in town have two words (bios, zoon) to discuss the situation, and this is also why... Nobody. Cares. [↩]
- Artefacta, properly, items made by the hand of man. [↩]
- Because these aren't things to be, I need new words to discuss the having of children with my father just as much as you do! What am I going to do with the supposed definitions of remaindered words ? [↩]
- Do you suppose, by the way, the women didn't flock to you because you didn't have the moves ? When, that ? Now, or back in the day ?
Who made the moves, then ? And how ? And were they engineering ? [↩]