Conformity
Does it help, or harm a Lodge?
It has been unusually sunny here this spring, so last week my granddaughter and I were sitting out on the front porch of my house. We had set up the outdoor furniture, and dragged all the softgoods up from the basement to make the space wonderful for summer again. We wanted to enjoy it for a bit.
A guy walked by on the sidewalk with a big scarf wrapped around his head. Pretty much it covered his hair, then wrapped around his mouth and nose. My first thought was that I should step into the house, grab the .45 and blow the terrorist looking freak straight to hell.
But, alas, one must be civilized, so instead I just watched as he wandered on by. Living across the street from a college, one does see some strange things from time to time.
My reactions to such strangeness are most often quite a lot different from my wife’s however. I am much more accepting of non-conformity than she. While I can’t accept anyone who chooses to dress like a terrorist, I’m pretty much good with anything else.
I see strangeness of look and dress as a form of creative expression. Performance art in a way.
She does not. She almost always has a negative reaction to such things.
She’s more of a conformist than I.
Last week we had a discussion here about dress in the Lodge. If you missed it, you can catch it here:
Misplaced Focus
Some time ago I attended a Lodge meeting and was really struck by some of the conversation I overheard prior to the start of that meeting. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since.
I also put a tiny snippet from this post on Social Media, and there it gained a great deal of traction and response.
Thinking about everything that everyone said, I started to wonder about conformity, and the vast differences between my view of it, and my wife’s view of it.
Lots of Masons, really good Masons, seem to push for conformity within their Lodge. The Worshipful Master prior to me in my Lodge was really concerned about such things. He published dress codes for each meeting and such.
I took over and promptly did away with all that. If my Lodge chose to adopt a ‘Lodge Uniform’ I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to supporting that, but having everyone wear a specific type of clothing, without a particular theme in mind just strikes me as kind of meaningless.
I wonder though, is my general acceptance of non-conformity actually harmful to a Lodge? Or is it the other way, is a general drive for conformity what’s harmful to a Lodge? Of course, neither could be harmful, I’ve got to keep that in mind too.
But conformity goes a bit further than that.
Years ago my wife joined OES, she’s still a member, as am I, but neither of us are active. She had a couple of objections, but one of the most serious was the dress code of our local Chapter. They insisted that their members wear dresses.
My wife wears pants suits, and she believes those to be conforming with professional dress in today’s world. Her argument, made to me and anyone else who would listen, was that if Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State of the United States could meet with the most powerful leaders in the world, in a pants suit, that was proper dress, and the mid-twentieth century dress adopted by the Chapter was not. That the Chapter was indeed non-conformist. Outside the socially accepted norms. And she does not want to step outside of what is socially accepted.
Ultimately her argument was that while the Chapter felt it was dressing well, to her eye it was dressing improperly for the age in which we live.
I see that sometimes in our Lodges too. Tuxedo’s with matching bow ties of a color other than black. Would anyone at all attend a Governor’s Inaugural Ball here in Olympia in a tux, sporting a bow tie other than black? I think not, not beyond the rare nut anyway, and that shows that such a Lodge isn’t dressing properly or well, no matter what it might believe. It is instead dressing outside of the accepted norms of our time. We gave up on colorful tux’s sometime in the early 1980’s I think.
But maybe a Lodge that does that isn’t looking to conform to societal norms. Maybe it is doing it to stand out? Maybe that’s a good thing? Or maybe people will just think we’re a bit nuts?
I don’t know.
Undoubtedly, playing into all of this is the fact that all of us Masons are by definition ‘joiners.’ We’re all seeking at least some level of conformity, in a way.
But is it a lot of conformity, or a little? Mental, emotional, and moral conformity? Or visible and expressive conformity as well?
And if we do too much to conform, do we risk falling into a rut? I think an argument can be made that Freemasonry has been stuck in (but slowly working to climb out of) a rut since 1960.
It makes me wonder.
Is conformity a good thing for our Lodges? For our Craft as a whole? Or is it a bad thing? Maybe it has no bearing one way or the other?
What do you think?
Let’s chat about it in the comments below…
Looking for more? Everything I wrote last week can be found on my LinkTree.
As most of you are aware, I moved from the non-conformist capital of the world to Vermont. Now I am not comparing this to the Orwellian 1984, but there is not a lot of individualism around here. I have been trying to make contact with a lodge without much luck.
Last evening, while at dinner, I noticed a gentleman walk into the restaurant wearing a jacket with numerous pins attached to his lapel; the almost universal sign of a mason. I overheard the word lodge, so I walked up to the gentlemen talking and as I approached I took in the pins and in fact, he was a Master Mason and a member of the Scottish Right. I introduced myself to both men, with the the appropriate grip, and we talked for a while. The person with the pins invited me to lodge and a function for the weekend. I asked about the dress code and he became very serious about how jacket and tie were required for the sidelines and the line wore tuxedoes. It was a sign of respect. We talked a bit about how important that was to masonry, without me being confrontational (ya, right). It is just after being the Secretary under Cameron and Greg, the idea that what we wear is more important than who we are just seems to be anti-masonic to me.
From my point of view, a dress code like "a suit and tie" are required in the Lodge shouldn't even be necessary, alas, it is.
Your manner of showing up in Lodge to attend a conferral or even a business meeting is a statement about how you feel about that organization, and about yourself. It also has an impact on how the men who might come before the Lodge as candidates perceive the Craft.
I live in the Phoenix area and everywhere you go no one dresses up. Non-conformity in public would be making the slightest effort to present a dignified appearance. Conformance to the public standard in the Lodge would thus be showing up at Lodge in Crocs, T-shirts, ball caps, and sweatpants.
To me the conformity is to a principle, that of proving outwardly to the community that might look in on your Lodge, that your Lodge contains men of higher quality than the general community around you.
It doesn't take a lot of work to put a suit in your car before you drive off to work just so you can get dressed at the Lodge.
Masons are supposed to be better men. Why dress down to the lowest common denominator?