Joy, Love, and Well-being: Envisioning a Future Free of Oppression

Both authors reflect on personal accounts of engineering toward social justice and peace. Upon reflection, each of the authors’ experiences as engineers working toward clean water indicate the presence of two existential problems for practitioners of engineering - and potentially design, architecture, and other project areas: hyper-specialization and the problem solver narrative. The authors reflect on well-intentioned efforts that seek to remove oppression from practices and foster mutual understanding, but may inadvertently be contributing to oppression, referred to as engineering parasites. Lastly, the authors envision systems free of oppression in both practice and training centered on joy, well-being, and love.