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% uptime is the wrong target, how continual improvement mirrors lifelong moral refinement, and how duty becomes the backbone of both spiritual life and professional reliability.
Then we zoom in on the real builders of today’s “Temple”: the backup and recovery specialist guarding the sacred data; the infrastructure engineer hewing and setting the foundation; the Citrix/WebSphere/DB2 specialist adorning the inward workings; the mainframe programmer quietly automating away chaos; and the mainframe operator keeping vigil in the sanctum of production. By the end, your ticket queue, your runbooks, and your change windows look less like random toil and more like stonework on a shared, enduring structure.
Source #1: ITILv4 Foundation
Source #2: The Meditations by Marcus Aurellius