[bhsusukc] We are we are we are we are the engineers

"We can we can we can we can demolish forty beers.  Drink rum drink rum drink rum all day and come along with us, for we don't give a damn for any old man who don't give a damn for us."

In this song we see the following social class markers: cursing, heavy drinking, drinking of the following types of alcohols: beer, rum.  Each of these are markers of lower social class, and so the song is a historical artifact that has recorded that, at the time the lyrics were composed, engineering was a profession of lower social classes: get your hands dirty.  Previously.

Inspired be someone finds the lyrics offensive.

Things have changed / are in the process of changing, and through this lens we can easily see that many of today's social conflicts happening around engineering as a profession are class warfare:

Women in STEM: women not of lower social class and men of lower social classes do not get along.  (It may seem on the surface that this was a conflict about gender, but it's actually about class.)  There's probably something deep going on about how and why lower social classes had organized their courtship structures differently.

For the lower social classes, engineering, a profession formerly reserved only for them, was their window for upward social mobility.  We expect (and see) defensiveness, acts of protecting their territory, when outsiders encroach: behaviors and environments enjoyed or tolerable by their class but unpleasant or intolerable to the higher social classes.

Ultimately, the lower social classes will again be left holding shit end of the new stick, but with understandable struggles along the way.