Do We Only Reflect Others
Or do we think on our own
Recently I heard a Mason whom I really admire ask the following question:
“Have we become a society in which people only regurgitate that which they are told?”
When I heard him say that, I wondered, if that is widely true, how can our Craft combat it?
Today I read something, from a long time, respected, Freemason that was frankly shocking in its ignorance of really easily checked historical facts. The Brother parroted a number of assertions, all of them false, and all of them truly easy to prove false.
It is undeniably true, I believe, that our society is awash in mis- and disinformation today. It is also, I believe, undeniably true that most of us, either intentionally or unintentionally, have locked ourselves into information echo chambers, never hearing, let alone acknowledging the other side of any argument.
I do not argue that government step in to ‘fix’ this problem. Government has no place in the regulation of private speech, and beyond that government is one of the largest purveyors of mis- and disinformation.
I also do not argue that big tech platforms step in to ‘fix’ this problem. Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Musk can not and will not save us.
Rather I do argue that we each have a responsibility to fix this problem within ourselves, and our circle of influence.
We need to not post or share things that are untrue.
If we aren’t sure if what we are thinking about posting or sharing is true or not, we need to check before doing so.
And we need to listen, to truly try to understand, what the Brother who holds an opinion opposite of our own believes, and why.
We are Freemasons. As such, we are honor bound to hold ourselves to a higher standard of truth.
I frequent an old style gaming forum of a long dead franchise, so the denizens of the place mainly talk about politics. The site has long held a policy of free speech and there are folks from all walks of life and political points of view. The only real restrictions are no doxxing (revealing personal information about a member), no nudity, and no spam. Otherwise, it's pretty wide open.
I don't participate much, but I do enjoy reading all the different comments about current events from all sides. What is great is that we all pretty much fact check each other because yes, there is a lot of crap being strewn about, mostly by the media. I don't watch the news for that reason, although I do enjoy the humor from Greg Gutfeld occasionally. And social media sites like FB is terrible for conveying news and was even worse when it actively suppressed posts that didn't toe the party line in favor of the slant dictated by the government (Zuckerberg admitted this). Thus, I rarely post anything political there, it's mostly an outlet to keep up with my masonic brothers and old friends and family. FB twenty years ago was a Godsend to reconnect with my old military friends and distant relatives I'd lost contact with. It allowed me to find my old family from my mother's side that after my Grandmother passed away I had lost contact with. It even allowed me to have my father reconnect with my mom's brother and wife that lived in Canada that he hadn't seen in over 50 years, since he had divorced my mom. I had the pleasure of driving him up to Canada and see my old Aunt before he passed away.
So, on at least one level, FB and social media as a whole, does offer some benefits, it's too bad it's been corrupted to the state it's in now.
There is a term that sometimes I use, "borrowed knowledge". Most of what we know about Masonry (and other stuff) is "borrowed knowledge", meaning that we learn it from someone else.
In order to make that knowledge ours we have to put it to the test so we can confirmed and verify it, then the knowledge is not borrowed anymore. Have we put Freemasonry to the test? I'm not talking about the Brotherhood part or the charity part, I'm talking about the ritual.