That’s a very good one-sentence explanation. The “post-collegiate” fraternity part is good because I know when I told my young gentleman that it was like a college fraternity only more devoted to spiritual development, he at first gave an odd little exclamatiionat “fraternity.” Conjures the wrong ethos, I think. I never belonged to a college fraternity, but Masonry has obviously been fighting against the image of a drinking society with secret handshakes for centuries.

I think what I told that fellow was that college fraternities were in some ways modelled on Freemasonry, which in retrospect was probably not helpful!

The idea of a “calling card” is a good one. I meant to suggest that to my Worshipful Master. Thanks for reminding me. It would be a good thing for officers and members to carry with them for those rare opportunities when someone is making a serious inquiry. Most especially, we need to make it clear to people that A) we can talk about what we do — it isn’t all secret, and B) prospective masons have to ask to join, they do not have to be invited, nor indeed are they likely to be invited directly. I’ve noticed a lot of confusion on those points. People generally think that they shouldn’t even ask a mason to talk about Masonry because it is so secret, and that a person has to be invited to join a lodge. Just the opposite of the truth.

Anyway, many thanks for your comments!

Bro. Owl

last year, as my lodges education officer, I hosted a 13 week info booth at a local concerts in the park series. In those first few hours I had to come up with a quick sentence that tried to encapsulate what it was today and why it was relevant. I tried to go beyond the its a fraternal order of fellowship and mutual assistance, and really try to hit the bullseye as I only had about 30 seconds to make the speech. the good thing was that I got to do it over and over for the remaining weeks, and honed it to a pretty sharp point.

What that sentence came to was this:

Freemasonry is a post collegiate masculine fraternity whose purpose is to initiate interested men into an ancient philosophy based on principals of personal development and connecting to an inner sense of the divine.

Most often, it got weird stairs or a simple “ok” to which they scooped up a brochure and walked off. and over those weeks I realized that that response was ok, as the fraternity really only has an interest to a little over 1% (maybe) of the overall population, and so only those interested would even get what I was talking about.

To augment “the speech” I had a bunch of cards made up with my name, my lodge, my cell number and email, and my mark, and on the back I put the website that I put together, http://www.freemasoninformation.com. For those halfway interested, I made sure to put one in their hands and try to talk to them more if their time permitted.

Needless to say, its tough. Reaching that 1% of the population is the hardest part of any outreach.

As to your other ideas, I like your thinking, and have to admit it much along the lines that I myself have explored and found myself upon. Now, I see faith in a multifaceted way (the myspace quizzes say I’m a neo-pagan, for what ever that means), and can appreciate that the framers of Freemasonry really did see the need to unite the “seekers” into a guild, to try and look beyond what Dogma insisted that they do. Sadly though, I think that is the least emphasized part of the fraternity today, yet still its strongest.

Keep working on that elevator speech, look within for what Freemasonry means to you, and there you will likely find the answer of what is Freemasonry.

Br. Greg

I do not think that ideals themselves are necessarily polarized. It is our language that tends to make things seem polarized because English (at least) is constructed around oppositional thinking. Children are taught the language using oppositions such as big/little left/right boy/girl up/down light/dark, etc. A quick glance at these ideas should show that they are not, in fact, “opposites” except within a culture that says they are. One could just as easily think of them as simply relational. One term is defined in relation to another. There is no need to polarize them as if they were enemies or mutually exclusive. But we are raised and conditioned to think that they are indeed mutually exclusive.

The two primary devils in these sets of ideas (or words) are man/woman and good/evil. What happens in our culture through our use of language is that these pairs are claimed to be “opposites” and then are also related to each other so that we come up with Man=good ; Woman=evil. Or Light=good=man=spirit; Dark=evil=woman=body.

Thus the construction of opposites becomes the construction of oppositional complexes of ideas. “Masculinity” or “Femininity” become reified by our culural handling of these complexes — i.e., their promotion by powerful individuals and groups — until everyone simply assumes they are in fact “things” that exist independently of our having constructed them.

In a sense they do come to exist independently of each individual’s psyche because they enter into the collective psyche and so appear to be universals. Our culture (that complex of related and opposed ideas and the very habit of opposing one thing to another) is like the air we breath or water to a fish. We do not notice it and almost cannot see it because it is all around us and we are, in a sense, made up out of that substance.

I do not disagree with your last statement about a world without ideals. But it is a human world you are talking about, a human world based upon a particular configuration of psyche in which ego is predominant. Personally, I am with Jung in believing that ego is too dominant, too frightened of losing its position of control over the world, and that is the cause of so much of our grief. But I do not think that the “world” is comprised of ego and ego-desire. My idea of the world is much bigger than that and holds more possibilities. At the same time, because I do not share your premise that ideals are inevitably driven by ego or selfishness, I do not think that a world without ideals, ideas, or ideologies (complexes of ideas) would be a good thing — or a bad thing for that matter. The idea that good and bad are polar opposites is part of the problem, and I try to avoid such polarized thinking.

So, my inability to agree with your statements here or to answer your questions very effectively lies in the fact that I do not share your premise that ideals are “by definition polarizations of thought, of desire.” In the first place, I consider thought and desire to be separate things, separate concepts. Desires can very often arise without the benefit of thought and thoughts may arise from other sources than one’s personal desires. To the extent that “desire” may be thought of as the motive force behind the will as a conscious, active faculty of the psyche, then desires and will are certainly involved in almost any thought or feeling.

But, again following Jung’s model of psyche, thoughts and feelings are only part of what goes on in the soul. And indeed the will is often very poorly grasped by the ego and is driven by more unconscious forces. The ego, because of the way it is educated to speak, tries to polarize desires and think in terms of “me” and “the Other” in order to avoid having to deal with the complexity of what is really going on. The ego, after all, as the center of consciousness, desires most of all to deny the existence of the unconscious parts of the psyche. It’s fundamental and first act of polarization is to declare that all things outside its range of vision (what we call consciousness) are The Other. So it makes the rest of the soul upon which it floats like a tiny island in the sea, an Enemy, a Devil, or an unreal fantasy.

Which is to say that in pursuing ideals such as “Conservatism” and “Liberality” these concepts become fuzzier and fuzzier as they are set in opposition to one another and to numerous other ideas. Compassion, for example. The Right has introduced the phrase “compassionate conservatism” into the political discourse. To some, that sounds like a paradox of some sort, almost an oxymoron. But in reality, if we think about it, there is no reason that the desire to conserve what is should necessarily conflict with (or be opposed to) compassion directed at our fellow human beings.

If we are motivated by the desire to conserve our society’s forms and ideals, its virtues, then compassion for others and a sense of duty in support of all our fellow citizens as equals is entirely consistent. If, on the other hand, what we desire to conserve is our own wealth, power, and position, and those of our family, then compassion for others might interfere in that goal. But still, it might not. For the prestige of an individual citizen and his or her family is raised when he or she or they perform acts of philanthropy and charity. Presumably, true “compassionate conservatism” would do so.

Alas, however, those who invented the term did so, apparently merely as a smokescreen to dupe the unthinking voter. Their intent was to assert that true compassion lies in forcing people to stand on their own feet, take responsibility for their own poverty, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Sink or swim compassion, I guess. Not my ideal of compassion, but it certainly is the ideal of compassion for those people who believe it. They honestly think that “tough love” is what poor and distressed brothers and sisters need. And they do not see any conflict between such “compassion” and the firm belief that those who are poor are so because of their own moral failings, a failure to embrace the Protestant work ethic, at the very least.

I’m sure you could parse these ideas into oppositions and polarities, but I see a more complex web of relational ideas with multiple levels of meaning and many vectors of desire. A good deal of our present age’s political bickering over words comes from the failure to realize that words can bear many interpretations, and if someone interprets “compassion” to mean something different from your own definition, that does not mean they are simply “wrong” or trying to deceive. It means that language doesn’t actually support the strict, simplistic notion of polarized opposites like boy/girl or cat/dog. We only imagine such things to be opposites for ease and convenience and by force of old habits.

Imagination is the key, not thought, or feelings. Only if the ego-consciousness admits the place and power of imagination in its relationship to the cosmos, can it (the ego) begin to see how reality and language actually work. However, there is quite a good reason why Ego does not open that door very often, and that is that the view on the other side of the door is mind-boggling. The ego prefers things neat and tidy, even if it means incessantly arguing and making war with others — prefers that to being boggled and risking having its foundations completely upset. The ego was created for just that purpose: to give the boggling mind some firm mooring. The risk of admitting that Imagination is Reality is that the Ego will slip away and sink beneath the surface of the sea of the Unconscious, and be lost.

It is not a problem that is easy of solution.

– Owl

Yes, absolutely, we must learn to listen, to understand, and develop greater patience and tolerance. It is essential that we dialogue, discuss, resolve conflict. And if we do so we will certainly soften the demarcation and disagreement between our ideals and between men. But will this ever eliminate the fundamental cause of divisions and conflict between people and nations? As long as ideals exist, can there ever be real, lasting peace that requires no effort?

What are ideals and where do they come from? From where do they get their energy, their inertia? I can only think of two possible sources of ideals: ourselves and divine intervention. The latter I’d prefer to stay away from as it is too metaphysical, too speculative. So let’s say, then, just for discussion, that ideals are the dreams, the aspirations that originate from the individual. Would this not mean, then, that ideals originate from the self, which is inherently self-centered, isolated, and primarily concerned with self-preservation? Is it possible that ideologies, as noble and altruistic as they can appear, originate from the self-centered ego? Is it possible, then, that ideals and the systems that fall out of them, are inherently flawed as they are merely fabrications, expressions of the striving, self-centered ego?

If we feel that our ideals will preserve, protect, and help others, we should look at this very carefully, for this desire, as altruistic as it may appear, could possibly be the ego’s desire for ego security, and for the gain of power and control over others. It may be very subtle, and may seem very innocent, but is it possible this could be? I’m not saying we should not help others or not strive to eliminate poverty and so on, but we have to be very careful not to be pressing our beliefs upon others. We have to be sure that our self interests are not the seeds of our actions.

I hear what you are saying, Alferian, but I can’t help wonder if the very intrinsic nature of ideals isn’t at the root of the problem of conflict in this world, rather than the selfish misuse of them. If ideals are born from the self, then ideals are the expression of the pursuit of self gain. How could they not be? Ideals are, by definition, polarizations of thought, of desire, regardless of their extent. When we believe ourselves to be insufficient or incomplete, perhaps not good enough in some way, we devise a plan, a vision, an ideal of what we should become. Or perhaps we are reacting to another ideal that is being forced upon us. But in doing so, are we not then actualizing, perpetuating the division that the self sees within itself and between itself and others, thus fueling difference and conflict? If ideals are projections of the self, then how could ideals not be divisive in nature?

Can we envision a world without ideals and ideology? Is such as world possible? Is such as world desirable? But I feel that such a world, if it were desirable, would not be possible as long as the world is comprised of ego and ego-desire.

In the true spirit of lively, engaging, and truth-seeking discussion, I stop here and allow you to continue, if you wish.

But the state of the right hand fighting against the left hand is not natural or even normal. We have two hands, two eyes, two nostrils, etc. so that they can work together. Two hands allow us to engage in all the crafts and arts we humans have ever produced. Two feet as well, since we freed up our hands by learning to balance on our two feet.

The mind and values that shape its construction are the problem. Liberality and conservatism, as values, are not diametrically opposed. Because being liberal can be self-serving as well as help others; and likewise being conservative can help the whole community as well as helping ones own narrow interests. For the most part members of the right and the left believe their ideology is the one that will preserve, protect, and help other people, the whole nation. They are not entirely wrong in thinking so. The problem is in supposing that the “opposite” ideology is against them and wrong. In each case, right or left, the citizen must break out of the oppositional thinking and look for balance. Underlying these ideologies and political parties, are values and the values of each group are good ones. The problem is in how to bring those values to expression in a free society without becoming a dictatorship. For that we need civil debate, polite conversation, and tolerance of other people’s opinions, which means we must stop hating our political adversaries and practice empathy and compassion. We must learn to listen.