We are not rewarded to bolster the base of the pyramid but to reach for the stars. Too often intermediate levels are built upon a deck of cards. Where the potential to build highest lies, most effort is directed there, often in disregard of the frailty of the supporting levels below.
The engineer knows that they cannot build to the edge of tolerance, there must be some cushion, for often lives are at stake. What better risk management than that lives are at stake, to shake the engineer’s faith in himself and his tools, in the work of his brethren before him.
Danger lies in faith, in comfort in a higher power, in complacency that error will not be catastrophic, that loss is not loss of life for then the engineer builds to the edge of knowledge.
But how many look at the foundations before they build a tower? The Craft has grown in convolution so much that to do so is an uneconomic endeavour. How many understand the Grand Structure we have built? It has grown without design, evolved beyond our comprehension, that now to break the ramparts, one has but to shake the tower.
The Craft now seeks to mend the Structure, but it will take time, generations perhaps. First is to understand and to understand is to deconstruct. This will not be linear. Charlatan will vie with Sage and Jujuman.
In the meantime, what can the body of the Craft do? Reinvent the wheel. Some of us have done this everyday of our lives. The populist Heretics rail against the reinvention of the wheel, but it is in First Principles that we truly understand, and in Knowledge that we have power, if over no one else then over ourselves in the avoidance of an unceremonious and unnecessary suicide.