Engineering Happiness
Engineering Happiness
Midcentury Engineering Culture and Progressivism
Thus far in our exploration of progressivism:
Part 1 gives an overview of progressivism
Part 2 looks at progressive ideas in Plato’s Republic
Part 3 looks at the progress wrought through technological change in the midcentury modern age
In this post, we’re going to look at midcentury modern engineering culture. Where we’re going is:
A look at how those who “would not progress” were seen and treated by midcentury modern progressivism (this is ugly)
Drawing lessons about progressivism out of the midcentury modern experience
Examining the modern progressive age—the digital age—to see if those same lessons apply
Finally, we will look at progressivism from a Christian perspective.
Engineering Happiness
How can engineers "make life truly worth living instead of a burden," as Waddell and Harrington write?[1]
The authors of these addresses—and many others besides—give three answers to this question. First, increasing material wealth increases human happiness and reduces human toil. Second, creating powerful weapons—weapons too powerful to contemplate using—has ended all war. Third, the habits of the engineering mind, or what might be called the engineering mindset, will work its way through and perfect government.
Happiness Through Material Wealth
Visitors to the 1964 New York World's Fair would have noticed a round building in the General Electric Pavilion—Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress. This animatronic stage show follows a family in the 1900s, the 1920s, the 1940s, and "the 21st Century." Throughout the show, the audience is treated to a description of the material inventions of that era and a discussion of how each made life better.
While the family seems to be the show's center, the real focus is the family's new possessions and how those possessions have made life better and people happier.
Colonel H.G. Prout echoes these sentiments In Addresses to Engineering Students. Prout argues there are six great eras in the movement from barbarism to civilization: the use of fire, the bow and arrow, the use of pottery, the domestication of animals, the manufacture of iron, and finally, the invention of written languages. Of these six eras, Prout said in 1911:
You will have observed that of the six great forward steps taken by the human race as a race, five were enlargement of his physical powers and improvements in his material welfare, through conquests over the forces of nature, and the sixth of these great steps worked for his advancement by enabling him to preserve and distribute knowledge. Even that step probably had its greatest value in hastening the conquest of nature. So we must not be surprised to discover that progress is through knowledge of a material universe.[2]
Marx held a similar view of the value of material goods in producing happiness. He assumed the production of material goods would be so wholly automated and perfected through advances in science and engineering that the main problem to solve would be the distribution of goods. Placing the distribution of goods into the hands of the state—or rather, disinterested people working for the state—would make it possible for him to:
…do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.[3]
World Peace
When Addresses to Engineering Students was published, the last war of any note was the American Civil War, which had ended over 45 years before. There was a brief dust-up with Spain recently in 1898, but the American military had so soundly defeated the Spanish military that it could hardly be called a "war" in the same sense as the Civil War.
It seemed as if technical progress and engineering were creating a world in which war would no longer exist.
The chief lesson of the Spanish-American war was technology wins wars. When modern American protected cruisers attacked a line of anchored Spanish ships in Manila Bay, they destroyed the entire Spanish squadron—while only seven American sailors were lightly wounded. The second time the American and Spanish navies encountered one another, in Santiago Harbor, had the same result. No navy was a match for superior American technology and engineering.
Why wage war when you know you will lose?
Engineering had likewise driven the human cost of war to unprecedented levels, making war almost impossible to imagine. John F. Hayford said in 1911:
The engineer by producing powerful weapons and the means of concentrating troops quickly has made war so costly and so deadly that we must credit him with being a most efficient peacemaker.[4]
Partnering with Gods
Even the most convinced believers in progressivism did not hold material wealth was enough to make men happy. It was also clear the distribution and use of material goods were essential to achieve universal happiness. Who would be willing and able to guide society along scientific lines? Engineers, of course.
According to Hayford: "In improving personal morals, as well as national morals, and thereby advancing civilization, the work of the engineer is extremely powerful."[5] Why should the engineer develop and maintain personal morals rising above the rest of a society? Because the engineer is not like the lawyer, who "lose one-half their cases" and are "retained to disguise the truth or so distort it as to win cases." Engineers are unlike doctors, who "grope blindly in the dark." The engineer is unlike the military man, whose primary objective is to destroy, or the minister, who "deals with things based on faith."[6]
Instead, the engineer seeks a truth governed by the laws of nature, a process that cannot be corrupted by a desire for gain or a lack of knowledge. Engineers have "no object in concealing the truth or in misusing it"[7] because you cannot impress thoughts on the physical world like you can the minds of men. The engineer must "know the truth and live by it."[8]
The engineer is, in short, "a partner to the gods. "Who else of all mankind [but an engineer] has a discipline so fine?"[9]
If the engineer can warp nature to man’s desires, can the engineer not also create happiness out of the raw stuff of the material world? And what of those who would not “go along,” the “standpatters” who did not agree with, or like, progress?
[1] Waddell and Harrington, “The Profession of Engineer,” 1.
[2] Colonel H. G. Prout, “Some Relations of the Engineer to Society,” in Addresses to Engineering Students, ed. J. A. L. Waddell and John Lyle Harrington (Kansas City, MO: Waddell & Harrington, 1911), 167.
[3] Marx Karl, The German Ideology, n.d. Theses on Feuerbach, Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy.
[4] John F. Hayford, “Study Men,” in Addresses to Engineering Students, ed. J. A. L. Waddell and John Lyle Harrington (Kansas City, MO: Waddell & Harrington, 1911), 342.
[5] Hayford, 342.
[6] This and previous come from a passage in J. A. L. Waddell, “Address to the Members of the Graduating Class in the Engineering Department of the Rose Polytechnic Institute,” in Addresses to Engineering Students, ed. J. A. L. Waddell and John Lyle Harrington (Kansas City, MO: Waddell & Harrington, 1911), 422.
[7] Prout, “Some Relations of the Engineer to Society,” 171.
[8] Prout, 172.
[9] Prout, “Some Relations of the Engineer to Society,” 171.