I am, first and foremost, an engineer.
‘Down to earth’ used to be my middle name.
Until I started to notice things. And to ask questions…
At first, under communist rule, I worked blue-ish collared jobs. Despite – or because?!? – holding an MSc in Mechanical Engineering. For me, ‘industry’ had a very clear meaning. And involved getting your hands dirty.
After the regime change, I also changed tack. My hands were still dirty but with a difference.
That was when I first got in contact with the ‘banking industry’.
At the time, those two words put together didn’t make much sense to me. But I was too busy making money…
Now, half a life later, things are falling into place.
‘Industry’ is the where things actually happen. Banking, hospitality, ‘heavy’, transportation, mining, garment, you name it! The point being that ‘industry’ is an actual place. A factory, an office, the open sea, a rolling meadow or a ‘dust bowl’, industry needs an actual place for the people involved to do their thing. Solving other people’s problems and meeting their needs.
Why? Why do we do it? Toil?!?
Because we cannot escape ‘economy’. A virtual space we inhabit, which conditions us to be efficient. Money-wise.
Where?
Inside ‘politics’!
– But you just said that ‘actual things take place inside industry’…
Yep. Actual things do take place inside industry and the interaction between industry and economy takes place inside ‘politics’.
You see, we’ve lived – for a very long time, at least three millennia – in a virtual world.
Vir is a latin word. Has a lot of meanings, ‘hero’ amongst them. ‘Virtual’ means ‘made, on purpose, by a hero’. By us, actually.
People who pretend to be civilized live in a world of their own doing. Knowingly and purposely.
A world carved according to those people’s wishes. Maybe not exactly but at least tentatively.
How did they pull this stunt? Built their own world? As close to their wishes as humanly possible?
Industriously, economically and driven by politics.
nicichiarasa 