In a terrific book The Gate by John Van-der-Zee the author tells us a story about professor Charles Alton Ellis who practically designed the bridge in 1927 using pencils and slide- ruler. Of course, he verified his calculations through communication with another outstanding engineer Moiseyev. All-in-all though there is a remarkable statement in that book, "It is unlikely that such achievement (one person designing such a bridge-MS) could be accomplished in our times."
But why? Now we have computers, we have software, we have manuals and books, we have professors and graduate students; we have all the power you can imagine and still, it is unlikely that one person could design a bridge? What's the secret?
The secret is in the way a person is valued. When professor Ellis was commissioned to design a bridge he was considered a sole expert hired for a job. Nobody doubted him and nobody broke the work into pieces. It was a risk, of course, but that risk was based on an interesting perception:
- It is better to lose in the company of the smart than to gain in the company of the stupid.
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Ellis was fully responsible and fully accountable. Chief Engineer Joseph Straus, fired Ellis after the design was complete because he considered that Ellis was too obsessed with details and that jeopardized the schedule. But Straus never doubted Ellis's skill and never tried to divide the work between a group of people. He respected the craft. Now the people are treated as a commodity.
Golden Gate bridge was a unique construction -- it demanded unique people. So was the Manhattan Project, so was the Lunar endeavor, so was the SR-71, so were and are the requirements of any technical challenge. And not only technical.
- We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them.
That was said by Michael Douglas in the movie American President. Serious people, how do you define them? Historically there seem to be only one primary criterion- the deeply rooted dignity based on self -- reliance. According to this criterion our beloved USA should be filled with serious people, the inhabitants of the "home of the brave'.
So where did Mark Twain get his scathing perception?
He got it from his observations of the American men. He lets anybody walk over him that wants to" we see that all along. Men we know, men around us, men on TV and men in power behave like eunuchs to say the least: they lie, they cheat, they are shallow, they sell themselves for nothing, they are in the state of perpetual hysterics and they are very- very afraid"of what? There's only one fear -- the fear of being poor.
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