An open letter to my engineering colleagues concerning the tragic realities of 9/11
My Dearest Friends of Reason and Science:
First, please forgive the presumption— should it indeed be a presumption—that as a corollary of your being an engineer you have a absolute devotion to the validity of reason and science. It’s entirely possible in the years since graduation from engineering school someone may have convinced you otherwise, i.e. that things are true or false based on what God reveals or what other agencies (secular or clerical) claim to be true based on “higher authority” than objective reality as judged scrupulously by your own mind.
The sad fact as I approach the end of my sixth full decade on the planet is that there’s an accumulation of losses that can’t be passed by without comment. Most of us grew up seeing our parents and even our grandparents as constants of nature; physical death had very little relevance to our worlds. Into late Teenagedom, I recall losing Grandpa —actually a step-grandfather who was the kindest, brightest, internally strongest man I’ve ever known. And how did I react? I didn’t attend the funeral because I couldn’t accept death into my psychological universe! 