Chapter 9 - The Builder’s Oath
Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California
When a man's pulse is healthy and temperate, and when before going to sleep he has awakened his rational powers, and fed them on noble thoughts and enquiries, collecting himself in meditation; after having first indulged his appetites neither too much nor too little, but just enough to lay them to sleep, and prevent them and their enjoyments and pains from interfering with the higher principle-- which he leaves in the solitude of pure abstraction, free to contemplate and aspire to the knowledge of the unknown, whether in past, present or future; when again he has allayed the passionate element, if he has a quarrel against any one-- I say, when after pacifying the two irrational principles, he rouses up the third, which is reason, before he takes his rest, then as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least likely to be the sport of fantastic and lawless visions.
Plato, The Republic
In my first post, A Nobler Strain, I laid out my goals for this project, outlined the Philosophy of Building Better, and explained what Timeless Building Furthering Human Flourishing meant.
In our first chapter of the Philosophy of Building Better, we discussed how we are all building in one way or another and how that makes us all builders. We explored how our actions have consequences and how we are all “building our own house,” as the process of building impacts us just as much as the things we build. For better or for worse.
In chapter two, we discussed the true meaning of the “pursuit of happiness” and how the aim of all building projects is to further human flourishing. We explored myriad examples of the poor way things are often built nowadays and shared a glimpse of a different way of building. A way of building that moves the world towards a healthier, more whole place.
Chapter three introduced us to the age-old debate between proponents of objective truth and those who think reality is subjective. This post also first introduced us to Christopher Alexander and his Timeless Way of Building, which has been a major inspiration for this whole effort. Using Alexander’s concept of The Quality Without a Name we contended that there are objectively good and bad acts of building based on the degree they do or do not contain this quality.
In chapter four, we expanded on the objective nature of reality by grounding objective truth in the specific context of a situation. We explained how a particular setting contains a physical, personal, societal, and temporal context. We also drew parallels between the act of exploring context and the customer discovery that my job as a product manager requires of me.
Chapter five afforded us the opportunity to dig deeper into the world of temporal context. We discussed how the Lindy Effect can be a powerful heuristic for predicting something’s quality. As an example of the staying power of ideas that remain relevant thousands of years after they were first proposed, we discussed how Aristotle’s concept of The Golden Mean could be applied to modern building.
In chapter six, we began to discuss the responsibility that Better Builders have towards the people they are building for. We discussed the reality that there are no neutral design choices and explored the concept of “shadow patterns,” building patterns that are designed to get users to act in a way that is contrary to their interests. We also shared a powerful framing technique to help us build better by designing for our users as if they were true friends of ours.
Chapter seven outlined the reality that the path to building better is not always going to be easy. We acknowledged the fact that, in pursuing a better way of building, we will face pushback from followers of the status quo. We explained the reality that, at some point, we will all be faced with the pressure to ethically compromise and how the true better builders will be those who refuse to compromise on their ethics.
In chapter eight, we discussed how a builder’s job does not end the day that their project is completed. We explored the importance of not only repairing the things that we build, but of using our buildings to repair the fabric of the world around us. Ultimately, we acknowledged that, in this temporal world, all of the things we build will eventually decay. Despite this reality, we reaffirmed our commitment to doing what we could to nudge the world in a better, healthier, more whole direction.
And now we arrive at the concept that started this entire project. My wife becoming pregnant approximately two years ago led me to start thinking about the kind of parent I wanted to be. As part of preparing for this major life change, I began to reflect on the role that technology played in my life and the relationship I wanted my son to have with it. As a builder in the technology industry, I started to become more aware of some of the negative effects that our technology was having on us as a society and that those effects were especially pronounced in children. The first question I really remember contemplating was, “why is there a Hippocratic Oath for Doctors and not software engineers?” Around that time I read The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander for the first time and also started a book club focused on reading classical philosophy with some friends.
All of these threads came together in The Building Better Project.
The culmination of the Philosophy of Building Better is making a commitment to following a better way of building. A timeless way that strives to promote the flourishing of our users and build in harmony with the surrounding world. All of these ideas are useless without taking the step to apply them in our acts of building. My solution to that disparity is to propose just the "Hippocratic Oath for software engineers” (and builders of every other stripe) that I believe this world is missing. I would be honored if you considered signing The Builder’s Oath, but even more importantly, I hope you will consider making some kind of commitment to a higher standard of conduct whether you be a software engineer, writer, architect, construction worker, chef, investor, fellow product manager, or any other of the countless numbers of builders that are out there.