The Ethos of Clarity

Happy Friday,

One could simply state that clarity is a cornerstone of the engineering profession, ensuring precision, safety, and trust in all endeavors. It's important because engineering requires translating complex technical ideas into actionable solutions that clients, contractors, colleagues, and the public must all understand. That makes clarity in communication, design, and execution an essential engineering skill. All 100% true.

And that would be enough. But it's not. Because in the context of one brief life, there’s something more to this notion of clarity... as an ideal.

Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French philosopher, knew its weight: “I have made this letter longer than usual,” he wrote, “only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” To be clear requires effort, to carve away excess until the essential truth stands bare and unadorned.

Ernest Hemingway hunted truth in his writing, his words exceedingly taut and deliberate. He knew that the vagueness of too many words betrays clarity.

In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark designs structures with fierce integrity, rejecting conformity, every line and beam a testament to his exacting standards. Like Hemingway’s prose and an engineer’s plans, Roark’s structures cut through the noise to stand as monuments to the clarity of uncompromised truth.

Clarity isn’t just craft, it’s courage. It's the refusal to let shadows hide mistakes, the will to do the thing right, and to build what lasts. Clarity is saying what must be said, no more, no less, so the message stands strong under the weight of reality.

Without clarity, errors creep in. Confusion festers. Trust wanes. The work fails. But with it, engineering, art, and architecture rise tall, strong, and they endure, leaving a legacy of truth. Anything less, one could argue, is a betrayal of the calling.

To your legacy of truth,

Dave

Feedback and blowback are always welcome: dave@goodnewsfriday.com

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