I once met a very successful businessman who told me that stereotyping is really, really, bad, but that it is really, really, handy. Stereotypes do not just sprout from nothing – it is inevitably based on many collective experiences over long periods of time. Then someone is offended, the layers sue, the journalists write, and suddenly gangsters are super cool, the police are the bad guys and humans have approximately forty-three different genders.
Laws have changed and medicine and engineering have taken huge strides ahead. Gone are the days when lawyers were practical philosophers who represented Roman citizens for free in the forum. Anything from answering the phone to reclining in a leather chair is likely to find its way onto the modern lawyer’s invoice, probably on advice of a quiet, deadly efficient accountant.
Lawyers over time have managed to cement a reputation of money-hungry devils with very flexible moral direction. I have often heard how sharks are apparently offended by the slanderous comparison between the cold, calculated predators, and sharks.
Gone are the scary days when healers looked to cast sticks and dried body parts to discover the cause and provide a remedy for any ailment. Gone are the days when cocaine-based medicine was a go-to cure for almost anything. Humanity did go through very harrowing times as medical techniques and potions were developed, but there seems to be a great curve of scientific progress that accompany the timeline of modern medicine.
Healers have always been revered in society. How many young, single doctors were the cause of calloused knees among the town’s girls and their mothers? (Obviously due to them praying for opportunity to experience the matrimonial potential apparently inherent to all doctors).
Engineers! These are the people who I think are arguably at the apex of human ingenuity. They may be stereotyped as being over-confident about their intellectual superiority (nowhere near the actuarial level though) and very uncertain about the usefulness of other people. This stereotyping however will be of no concern to an engineer, since it probably originated from one of the lesser bipedal life-forms that regularly intrudes into the engineer’s environment.
In recent years I have had a few supremely disappointing medical encounters. Some specialists in particular, seem to have become more detached and more morally agile than stereotypical engineers and lawyers can ever be. Apparently essential procedures are always staggeringly expensive and success can never be guaranteed. Quite the opposite – patients will be expected to sign a sixty-four-page agreement (drafted by the resident lawyer, of course) to confirm acceptance that surgery may not be effective and may probably even make things far worse! The question arises – has the noble medical profession lost its way in pursuit of money? Are Hippocrates’ principles no longer relevant because it fails to recognise the essentialia of German luxury sedans, trips abroad and holiday homes?
The hitherto opposing poles of mildly effective natural healing on the one side, and the money-driven cut-and-drug approach of modern medicine on the other side, may soon have to compete with the ultimate alternative. I first read about the concept of nanobots in a wonderful sci-fi series by Evan Currie. The heroine of the saga would survive catastrophic trauma and heal from any injury in no time, due to these wonderful microscopic machines that swarm inside her and never rest or cease working on repairing any anomality in her physiological make-up. Nanobots are however not just confined to fiction. It is real, and stunning advances are being made in this field. Perhaps engineers and nanobots may become the most efficient healers ever.
Almost inevitably, the characters in the 3G-series include engineers, lawyers and doctors. The group has its own resident layer and engineers. Raising the Bar sees much court-room action and in Finding the Way, a doctor with questionable ethics plays a central role.