Engineering Principles Are Moral Blueprints
Change Advisory Board
This episode of Change Advisory Board is a deep dive for mechanics, technicians, and engineers who live every day inside load tables, torque specs, tolerances, and fluid systems—but may not have considered that these technical disciplines are also moral ones. We explore how the core principles of engineering mechanics—statics, dynamics, geometry, material science, and energy management—form a direct parallel to the ancient moral architecture preserved in Freemasonry. Concepts like moment of inertia, section modulus, lever equilibrium, fastener preload, tolerance classes, hydraulic...
info_outline
The Gavel, the Gauge, and the Broken Foundation
Change Advisory Board
This episode confronts one of the most difficult crises a person can face: the collapse of life under addiction—and the parallel responsibility of a fraternity committed to lifting a worthy brother in distress. Through a dual lens of Alcoholics Anonymous and Freemasonry, we explore addiction not as a moral failure but as a physical abnormality paired with a devastating mental distortion: the loss of perspective that allows a person to take the first drink despite knowing the consequences. We trace the progression from physical compulsion to shattered resolve, isolation, self-deception, and...
info_outline
Stone, Soul, and Software
Change Advisory Board
The philosophical principles underlying human conduct and ancient wisdom traditions establish a framework for understanding order and morality. Marcus Aurelius emphasized that the body is perishable, merely a "little flesh and breath" or a "network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries", while the rational soul should seek to know itself and choose its own nature. The end for rational animals is to follow reason, be content with destiny, and understand that the Universe is transformation. This pursuit of wisdom is paralleled in Freemasonry, which holds that all elevating and benign...
info_outline
Twin Peaks and The Unfinished Temple
Change Advisory Board
This episode traces a strange and elegant thread between David Lynch’s Twin Peaks cosmology and the philosophical architecture of Freemasonry. Both traditions distrust final answers. Both insist that mystery is not a flaw but a tool—something like a chisel that keeps the builder awake. Lynch treats closure as artistic death; Masonry treats completion as spiritual stagnation. When these two worlds meet, the owl-ring becomes a symbol of perpetual investigation, and the Square and Compasses become the geometry of eternal striving. What emerges is a shared blueprint: the unfinished temple as a...
info_outline
The Level and the War-Forge
Change Advisory Board
This episode traces a sharp line between the Masonic Level—symbol of equality, humility, and shared human destiny—and the immense industrial architectures that manufacture the tools of modern warfare. The Level teaches that all people stand on common ground, “partakers of the same nature,” and that death is the great equalizer that dissolves rank and distinction. Yet the defense industry operates on a different plane entirely: profit-driven hierarchies crafting weapons that divide, destroy, and stratify the world. We explore this philosophical collision with care. On one side stands...
info_outline
The Canopy and The Starfield
Change Advisory Board
This episode explores the shared sky between Masonry and Starfield—a symbolic canopy that says more about human purpose than it does about stars. In Masonry, the Celestial Canopy stretches from the lodge room to the edge of creation, reminding the initiate that the universe itself is the Temple of the Grand Architect. In Starfield, that same vastness becomes the stage for Constellation’s search for the Unity: a literal attempt to pierce the heavenly veil and discover what truth, if any, lies beyond it. We draw parallels between the Lodge’s starry firmament and the cosmic expanse the...
info_outline
Compassion and The Compass
Change Advisory Board
This episode walks straight into the messy, human middle ground between loving people and losing yourself in the process. Using the story of Paul and Eunice—a sober helper and a deeply traumatized veteran—we unpack what compassion really looks like when trauma, addiction, resentment, and financial collapse all live under the same roof. Guided by the compass of Freemasonry and the inner fortress of Stoic philosophy, we explore the idea of the cable tow as a moral boundary: the point beyond which “helping” turns into self-destruction. We connect that to how we run systems and services...
info_outline
The Temple and the Error Budget
Change Advisory Board
What happens when you put Solomon’s Temple next to a modern error budget and ask them both what “perfection” really means? In this episode, we explore the idea that reliable service is not just a technical outcome but a moral consequence — the visible result of character, duty, and brotherly love expressed through IT work. Drawing on Freemasonry, Stoic philosophy, and the writings of Marcus Aurelius, we unpack what it means to work logarithmically toward an ideal you will never fully reach. We contrast the Masonic Temple and its working tools with SRE and ITIL principles: why 100%...
info_outline
The Architecture of Eternity
Change Advisory Board
Freemasonry’s Moral OS and the Birth of Human Reliability This episode of The Cab Call traces the long arc of Masonic history as if it were the version-history of humanity’s oldest moral operating system. Instead of treating the Craft as a museum of rituals, we explore it as a living reliability framework—prophecy, practice, and interpretation—evolving over thousands of years to keep human beings resilient in a world full of entropy. We move from the prophetic era, where symbols like the Cube and Square encoded universal laws of stability, through the great operative builders who...
info_outline
The Gauge and the Calendar
Change Advisory Board
This episode explores the Twenty-four-inch Gauge — one of the earliest and most quietly profound symbols in Freemasonry — as a blueprint for surviving and thriving in modern system administration. The gauge’s ancient triad of vocation, refreshment, and service becomes a practical lens for navigating today’s impossible mix of project deadlines, user interruptions, enterprise timetables, automation demands, and mental load. We trace how the symbolic 8/8/8 division maps directly onto the SA’s world: focused work protected from interruption, rest defended as a prerequisite for cognitive...
info_outlineJoin us as we uncover how the timeless lessons of structure, planning, and meticulous refinement, taught within the degrees of the Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason, are utilized by modern Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). These lessons are crucial for designing, deploying, and maintaining reliable computing systems.
What You Will Learn:
- The Blueprint for Reliability: Adherence to Design. Discover how SREs apply the principles of the Trestle-board (used by the Master-workman to draw his designs) to their infrastructure. We discuss the foundational importance of explicit planning, focusing on translating business goals into measurable Service Level Objectives (SLOs). The goal is to build a "spiritual building" (the reliable service) that achieves figure, strength, and beauty.
- Refining the Rough Ashlar: Eliminating Toil. Learn how the SRE mandate to eliminate toil directly mirrors the builders' transition from the Rough Ashlar (representing a crude, imperfect state) to the Perfect Ashlar (a stone ready by the hands of the workmen). Toil is the manual, repetitive, automatable work that lacks enduring value and scales linearly with service growth. SREs dedicate their time to engineering work (at least 50% of their focus) to write software that replaces this manual labor, ensuring staff scales sublinearly with system size.
- Searching for Truth: Mastery Through Failure. The diligent worker must search to the foundations of knowledge to find the Truth buried under error. We explore SRE's commitment to rigorous self-assessment, particularly through blameless postmortems following significant incidents. This practice is essential for finding the root causes of failures, improving systems, and making the organization more resilient as a whole.
- The Discipline of the Craft: Understand the emphasis SRE places on high standards for workmanship and conduct. Just as the craft requires "virtuous education", SREs prioritize continuous learning and structured training, including studying the liberal ARTS AND SCIENCES, to master the complexity of distributed systems. We look at how practicing mental discipline, combined with preparation exercises like disaster role-playing, aids in maintaining rational, focused, and deliberate cognitive functions during emergencies.
This episode demonstrates that whether erecting physical edifices or building the world's largest cloud services, success hinges on meticulous execution, relentless refinement, and an unwavering commitment to quality and Fidelity.
Source #1: Ahiman Rezon; or a help to all that are, or would be free and accepted masons by Laurence Dermott
Source #2: Duncan's Masonic Ritual & Monitor (1866) by Malcom C. Duncan
Source #3: Site Reliability Engineering edited by Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, and Niall Richard Murphy