We are forbidden to talk of religion or politics in our "closed" Masonic Lodge meetings, but love talking about religion and politics after the meeting over coffee? So we can advise brothers about facts and truthful information when it appears they are repeating misinformation they have heard?
I think that there is nothing at all wrong with, as our ritual says "reminding a Brother in the most friendly manner of his fault." If he is spreading untruthful information.
But, if we do, I think we have to focus on the "most friendly manner" part, and I think we'd be wise to have the proof of the situation in hand.
In many ways we've always reflected each other. We evolved as a social creature.
There's a term called "the looking-glass self." Often Charles Hooley a late 19th/early 20th century sociologist is credited with that term. He posited that we all mirror each other, in that, we treat others as mirrors, in order to observe ourselves, from without. We sort of imagine how we appear to others and off of that, tend to internalise that image and assume it to be our true intrinsic selves. We kind of morph to fit that idea the other person has about us. Hooley tells us that we all move through various kaleidoscopic halls of mirrors we create cooperatively.
Except - for people on the neurodivergent spectrum. For some reason those bright and truly beautiful folks are immune to this social mirroring. And that makes them deeply true to *themselves* - just like the Oracle at Delphi always counseled.
Carl Jung told us - and I'm condensing here) that whatever you like or dislike in another, is actually in you - usually in your subconscious. Again - mirroring.
And this is all probably why solitude and contemplation is important, in moderation - you can quiet the noise and begin to hear *yourself*, down through all the layers of the you that is you - all the way to the spark of the Great Architect that glows within each of us. Once you know who you *really* are, two things happen:
1. you have to decide if you like you, and how to best refine yourself in your truest form
and
2. you have to make the cost-benefit calculation, every day, in every interaction - "is it worth the possible blow-back to be authentically who I am? "
This costs band-width one way or the other. It's the price of the dance in the social arena.
Once again, neurodivergents seem to be merrily strong in their own authenticity, and we could all take a lesson, IMPO. These are the folks who are unafraid to say the Emperor is nekkid. In the the words of Lewis Grizzard, that wonderful Southern wit "Naked is when you don't got no clothes on. Nekkid is when you don't got no clothes on and you up to something."
But globally, as a species, we have been conditioned since the time of radio - to crowd out that inner voice with noise. So so so many people are the products of epigenetic trauma underneath current trauma both personal and social - (there's a metric boatload of Moral Injury we're all trying to swim through in the last century or so, and much more to come) that they can't *sit* with themselves, and so, they use noise to dissociate. I think it happens a lot more than we are aware of, again, because of mirroring.
Ghandi told us "*be* the change you want to see in the world" Again - mirroring. When you change you - then the world around you changes to mirror you.
Have you ever noticed when you walk into a room, there seems to be one person that all the others kind of "follow" ? It's mirroring. I'll posit here that part of this particular example/phenomenon is caused by pheremones - those wily chemicals that we can't consciously smell but that still go right to our brain and give us all kind of information about another person, or even the other animals. Dogs and predators can smell fear - I suspect we can too and most are just not conscious of it. And in social settings, the person with the strongest pheremones is like a magnet and then everyone else mirror them. I can't prove this, but I've suspected it for a long time.
Which brings me to our brains. That one organ that helped us claw our way to the top of every single food chain on this rock, the interface that whatever is eternal about us uses to drive around this meat sack we live inside of and through that interact with the mortal world. Kinda like the power loader exoskeleton that Ripley used in Alien, only a wet-works more elegant and sophisticated version.
Mirroring happens in the brain, and then writes itself onto the nervous system. Our brains are the most important part of us. I understood this when I was 20 years old and in Boot at Parris Island. They were teaching us to throw hand grenades (they were dummies). We were supposed to pull the pin, hold down the handle , throw it, and then, throw ourselves on the ground, our feet pointed *toward* the area of explosion and covering our heads with our hands. The DIs told us - your head is the most important part - protect your head.
We evolved around fires in caves, telling each other our stories and our experiences. In some caves we figure out how to make figures and make them dance by the firelight. We were entranced and *ideas* could be conveyed *with* somatic experience by sight and sound (singing, drumming etc) What goes in our eyes go into our *hearts.*
Which leads me to the invasion of our brains and how they've been Borged for not-good things.
I the olden days, Ben Franklin had this high-tech thingie called a broadside. And newspapers. But everybody didn't get one delivered to them. You had to buy a copy and very often someone would *read* that copy to people at the local courthouse, or ordinary, or town square. People could conjitate for a while, together and individually. They had time to *think* and to either reject, or accept, or modify the ideas. It all happened in the brain and the only "music" was the sound of the reader's voice. But they had to imagine the rest in their minds.
Then came Marconi and radio. It was supposed to be a means of communicating and was almost immediately Borged by advertisers using the waves - and the *music* - to sell us stuff we didn't need.
Prior to this, we had to *read* stuff - and that let us digest it and compare it to what we knew and held dear and we could easily reject it or ignore it. Now, radio *shoved* it into our *brains*
Then the movies came along, and now that stuff could be *shoved* into our brains using sight and sound - moving images - which we *evolved* to track - and music. It was firelight in the cave only better and more colourful. But you still had to pay a fee and it was a communal event which mean that one person could disrupt the entire thing and break the spell.
Then TV came along during WWII and now this stuff could be *shoved* into our brains in every single household. But - you could still turn it off. It could still be controlled by the individual.
Then - the Internet arrived - and all three wavelengths were hijacked - sight, sound and tactile, in that, you have use a mouse - so you are *physically activating* the stuff that is being shoved in to your brain. And then it got miniaturised into phones that you have to carry everywhere because land lines are being eradicated and we've been conditioned to think we need to be connected to this artificial massive brain - now being Borged by AI - everywhere all the time.
I'm NOT saying there is some diabolical conspiracy.
I'm saying that we humans are still children in our moral development and our brains are the most vulnerable part of us and we MUST retain control - at all costs - of what goes in our eyes to our *brains* and our hearts. The Internet is like an IV drip directly into our brains.
Technology is oustripping both our physical/nervous sytem development and our moral development.
The entire human race is being hijacked. It's immaterial whether or not there's an agenda. Our *humanity* - the things that make us *human* - is at stake.
Bob Dole once said that it you aren't the lead sled dog, the view never changes. We humans should never relinquish our position as the lead sled dog.
What an amazing deep dive! Thank you Kathleen! So much to unpack here, I've read your comment twice so far this morning, and will be contemplating it throughout the day.
IMHO: Incentives. All people really want in life is a system, and to attain and grow status in that system. It is something primal in our brain. Social media is just another tool we've created for our own vanity and posts are for increasing ones status in the closed group. The artificial society in a social media platform such as Facebook is meaningless and vain. Its a mask for falsehoods. Who we are on social media isn't who we really are. Rather, It is who we want people to think we are. Our brains in the same way parrot what we are exposed to when prompted. Its easier than reflecting, examining, analyzing and concluding ones own opinion. Like a book report versus a paper. It easier to parrot what you heard, and is no different than the mask we wear for social media. If you've not processed what you've learned then you truly don't believe it as much as you want others to think you do. "Vanity sayeth the preacher, its all vanity." There I just did it.
>>>All people really want in life is a system, and to attain and grow status in that system. It is >>>something primal in our brain.
This makes sense to me, and I do think it is instinctual. When man A defers to man B he is giving status to man B, and all other considerations set aside, man B becomes more attractive to women because of the status conferred by man A.
I'm not sure I'm explaining this well at all, but I think it is true, and I think it points to the biological impulse within women to choose a man capable of protecting her offspring. Something really vital in cavedude times, maybe less so now.
To further expound. I think social systems (communities, fraternities, Families, economies, etc) are fundamentally based on protection and individuals are driven by the attainment of status in those systems.
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.
I agree, when Social Media began it was such an amazing tool for re-connection and keeping in touch. Undoubtedly the greatest personal communication tool we have ever possessed. But, it has largely gone to hell.
That's not to say that something new and better won't rise in its place. As Brother Ken from New York suggested the other day, something decentralized and open source maybe. Someone without financial incentive to enshitify it, something that no one person can control.
Look how much better this platform, Substack is, to the old blogging platforms. Improvement always comes.
"I frequent an old style gaming forum of a long dead franchise, so the denizens of the place mainly talk about politics."
I can't help but think we run in some of the same circles. Especially if that game system's company was bought by another one, which was bought by another one, and they current system is a repudiation of everything we grew up with! :-D
"... 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 couldn't agree more, and it has to do with a lot more than the mere utterance of statements (notice I didn't say "facts") that rally the masses to take sides. In the realm of politics each side is a lot more concerned about winning and not concerned at all about solving. Outside of politics we too often find a comfort zone and become determined to stay in it. Someplace along the way society has lost its critical thinking abilities. That lack of critical thinking weakens everything, even Masonry.
" We are Freemasons. As such we are honor bound to hold ourselves to a higher standard of truth" Careful there, MW. High standard? Absolutely. Higher standard? Higher than what? The world is full of people who are better than me, and most of them aren't Masons (an easy conclusion to reach since most of the world aren't Masons.) This is the kind of statement that could cause Masons to think (especially if that thinking isn't done critically) that we're better than everybody else, which is the last thing we should teach in our Lodges. Thinking or saying anything that suggests we're superior to those who labor in the outer world impairs our ability live in and contribute to it.
I trust that you'll receive my comment in the good spirit intended by a son raised by a newspaper editor. Actually, a Brother newspaper editor.
I believe I am ignorant of many things and have a Dunning-Kruger effect on everything I do know. I'm comfortable with this and it is cause for me to want to learn more.
There is a great YouTube video on Bonhoeffer's Theory of Stupidity, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc, which is extremely informative. If you view this a possible explanation emerges as to why our education system is so forgiving. Look back in history and you can pinpoint where education broke the populace away from the shackles of governments, rulers, or dictators.
The term " information echo chambers" is perfect for our consumption of, well, almost everything. We're advertised to via an echo chamber, social media promotes it, most news stations feed off of it, and more.
In a society who's converted to coveting immediate satisfaction, we have willingly become monetized. We've allowed an algorithm's perception of one's preferences to forms target marketing and content. Ever walk into a store to look at cameras, leave and see advertisments for them online?
That brick and mortar stores tracked your movements via bluetooth and sold the data detailing which area you spent the most time in.
These are just a few of what is likely, to me, a growing trend of isolation. Established business' squeezing out the competition through their ability to pay more for such telemetry. Social media is fragmenting reality and creating a new one just for you. Heck, FB is releasing AI people to their platform (as noted in an earlier conversation topic). How much more artificial can we get and who pushes the brakes and holds these companies accountable?
"Power corrups, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely". What is power, but not having outside influence to the contrary and consequences to actions.
Yes I've waivered here and there, but I don't think we can understand the problem without doing exactly what the post is about, learning more to earn a more complete view of the world around us. This conditioning of instant gratification feeds our fundamental want of dopamine. It's always been there its just being creatively exploited to earn more money and control. I think these certain companies have become the biggest drug cartels in the world.
So, how do we as Masons work to aid in this epidemic when we are also so involved with promoting these terms? How do we live in a drugged society without being drugged ourselves? How do we effect change without being viewed as the one holding the sign on the street corner that reads "the end is near ..."?
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.
That's a really good way of looking at it. Thank you.
>>>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.
I have, in my own life, and have found it to work. I'm a better man today than I was when I became a Mason. That doesn't hold true for everyone of course, some will never allow the lessons of Freemasonry to sink in. The Initiations will not 'take.'
We are forbidden to talk of religion or politics in our "closed" Masonic Lodge meetings, but love talking about religion and politics after the meeting over coffee? So we can advise brothers about facts and truthful information when it appears they are repeating misinformation they have heard?
I think that there is nothing at all wrong with, as our ritual says "reminding a Brother in the most friendly manner of his fault." If he is spreading untruthful information.
But, if we do, I think we have to focus on the "most friendly manner" part, and I think we'd be wise to have the proof of the situation in hand.
In many ways we've always reflected each other. We evolved as a social creature.
There's a term called "the looking-glass self." Often Charles Hooley a late 19th/early 20th century sociologist is credited with that term. He posited that we all mirror each other, in that, we treat others as mirrors, in order to observe ourselves, from without. We sort of imagine how we appear to others and off of that, tend to internalise that image and assume it to be our true intrinsic selves. We kind of morph to fit that idea the other person has about us. Hooley tells us that we all move through various kaleidoscopic halls of mirrors we create cooperatively.
Except - for people on the neurodivergent spectrum. For some reason those bright and truly beautiful folks are immune to this social mirroring. And that makes them deeply true to *themselves* - just like the Oracle at Delphi always counseled.
Carl Jung told us - and I'm condensing here) that whatever you like or dislike in another, is actually in you - usually in your subconscious. Again - mirroring.
And this is all probably why solitude and contemplation is important, in moderation - you can quiet the noise and begin to hear *yourself*, down through all the layers of the you that is you - all the way to the spark of the Great Architect that glows within each of us. Once you know who you *really* are, two things happen:
1. you have to decide if you like you, and how to best refine yourself in your truest form
and
2. you have to make the cost-benefit calculation, every day, in every interaction - "is it worth the possible blow-back to be authentically who I am? "
This costs band-width one way or the other. It's the price of the dance in the social arena.
Once again, neurodivergents seem to be merrily strong in their own authenticity, and we could all take a lesson, IMPO. These are the folks who are unafraid to say the Emperor is nekkid. In the the words of Lewis Grizzard, that wonderful Southern wit "Naked is when you don't got no clothes on. Nekkid is when you don't got no clothes on and you up to something."
But globally, as a species, we have been conditioned since the time of radio - to crowd out that inner voice with noise. So so so many people are the products of epigenetic trauma underneath current trauma both personal and social - (there's a metric boatload of Moral Injury we're all trying to swim through in the last century or so, and much more to come) that they can't *sit* with themselves, and so, they use noise to dissociate. I think it happens a lot more than we are aware of, again, because of mirroring.
Ghandi told us "*be* the change you want to see in the world" Again - mirroring. When you change you - then the world around you changes to mirror you.
Have you ever noticed when you walk into a room, there seems to be one person that all the others kind of "follow" ? It's mirroring. I'll posit here that part of this particular example/phenomenon is caused by pheremones - those wily chemicals that we can't consciously smell but that still go right to our brain and give us all kind of information about another person, or even the other animals. Dogs and predators can smell fear - I suspect we can too and most are just not conscious of it. And in social settings, the person with the strongest pheremones is like a magnet and then everyone else mirror them. I can't prove this, but I've suspected it for a long time.
Which brings me to our brains. That one organ that helped us claw our way to the top of every single food chain on this rock, the interface that whatever is eternal about us uses to drive around this meat sack we live inside of and through that interact with the mortal world. Kinda like the power loader exoskeleton that Ripley used in Alien, only a wet-works more elegant and sophisticated version.
Mirroring happens in the brain, and then writes itself onto the nervous system. Our brains are the most important part of us. I understood this when I was 20 years old and in Boot at Parris Island. They were teaching us to throw hand grenades (they were dummies). We were supposed to pull the pin, hold down the handle , throw it, and then, throw ourselves on the ground, our feet pointed *toward* the area of explosion and covering our heads with our hands. The DIs told us - your head is the most important part - protect your head.
We evolved around fires in caves, telling each other our stories and our experiences. In some caves we figure out how to make figures and make them dance by the firelight. We were entranced and *ideas* could be conveyed *with* somatic experience by sight and sound (singing, drumming etc) What goes in our eyes go into our *hearts.*
Which leads me to the invasion of our brains and how they've been Borged for not-good things.
I the olden days, Ben Franklin had this high-tech thingie called a broadside. And newspapers. But everybody didn't get one delivered to them. You had to buy a copy and very often someone would *read* that copy to people at the local courthouse, or ordinary, or town square. People could conjitate for a while, together and individually. They had time to *think* and to either reject, or accept, or modify the ideas. It all happened in the brain and the only "music" was the sound of the reader's voice. But they had to imagine the rest in their minds.
Then came Marconi and radio. It was supposed to be a means of communicating and was almost immediately Borged by advertisers using the waves - and the *music* - to sell us stuff we didn't need.
Prior to this, we had to *read* stuff - and that let us digest it and compare it to what we knew and held dear and we could easily reject it or ignore it. Now, radio *shoved* it into our *brains*
Then the movies came along, and now that stuff could be *shoved* into our brains using sight and sound - moving images - which we *evolved* to track - and music. It was firelight in the cave only better and more colourful. But you still had to pay a fee and it was a communal event which mean that one person could disrupt the entire thing and break the spell.
Then TV came along during WWII and now this stuff could be *shoved* into our brains in every single household. But - you could still turn it off. It could still be controlled by the individual.
Then - the Internet arrived - and all three wavelengths were hijacked - sight, sound and tactile, in that, you have use a mouse - so you are *physically activating* the stuff that is being shoved in to your brain. And then it got miniaturised into phones that you have to carry everywhere because land lines are being eradicated and we've been conditioned to think we need to be connected to this artificial massive brain - now being Borged by AI - everywhere all the time.
I'm NOT saying there is some diabolical conspiracy.
I'm saying that we humans are still children in our moral development and our brains are the most vulnerable part of us and we MUST retain control - at all costs - of what goes in our eyes to our *brains* and our hearts. The Internet is like an IV drip directly into our brains.
Technology is oustripping both our physical/nervous sytem development and our moral development.
The entire human race is being hijacked. It's immaterial whether or not there's an agenda. Our *humanity* - the things that make us *human* - is at stake.
Bob Dole once said that it you aren't the lead sled dog, the view never changes. We humans should never relinquish our position as the lead sled dog.
What an amazing deep dive! Thank you Kathleen! So much to unpack here, I've read your comment twice so far this morning, and will be contemplating it throughout the day.
Agreed.
IMHO: Incentives. All people really want in life is a system, and to attain and grow status in that system. It is something primal in our brain. Social media is just another tool we've created for our own vanity and posts are for increasing ones status in the closed group. The artificial society in a social media platform such as Facebook is meaningless and vain. Its a mask for falsehoods. Who we are on social media isn't who we really are. Rather, It is who we want people to think we are. Our brains in the same way parrot what we are exposed to when prompted. Its easier than reflecting, examining, analyzing and concluding ones own opinion. Like a book report versus a paper. It easier to parrot what you heard, and is no different than the mask we wear for social media. If you've not processed what you've learned then you truly don't believe it as much as you want others to think you do. "Vanity sayeth the preacher, its all vanity." There I just did it.
>>>All people really want in life is a system, and to attain and grow status in that system. It is >>>something primal in our brain.
This makes sense to me, and I do think it is instinctual. When man A defers to man B he is giving status to man B, and all other considerations set aside, man B becomes more attractive to women because of the status conferred by man A.
I'm not sure I'm explaining this well at all, but I think it is true, and I think it points to the biological impulse within women to choose a man capable of protecting her offspring. Something really vital in cavedude times, maybe less so now.
I believe I understand what you are saying.
To further expound. I think social systems (communities, fraternities, Families, economies, etc) are fundamentally based on protection and individuals are driven by the attainment of status in those systems.
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.
I agree, when Social Media began it was such an amazing tool for re-connection and keeping in touch. Undoubtedly the greatest personal communication tool we have ever possessed. But, it has largely gone to hell.
That's not to say that something new and better won't rise in its place. As Brother Ken from New York suggested the other day, something decentralized and open source maybe. Someone without financial incentive to enshitify it, something that no one person can control.
Look how much better this platform, Substack is, to the old blogging platforms. Improvement always comes.
"I frequent an old style gaming forum of a long dead franchise, so the denizens of the place mainly talk about politics."
I can't help but think we run in some of the same circles. Especially if that game system's company was bought by another one, which was bought by another one, and they current system is a repudiation of everything we grew up with! :-D
MW, a couple thoughts:
"... 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 couldn't agree more, and it has to do with a lot more than the mere utterance of statements (notice I didn't say "facts") that rally the masses to take sides. In the realm of politics each side is a lot more concerned about winning and not concerned at all about solving. Outside of politics we too often find a comfort zone and become determined to stay in it. Someplace along the way society has lost its critical thinking abilities. That lack of critical thinking weakens everything, even Masonry.
" We are Freemasons. As such we are honor bound to hold ourselves to a higher standard of truth" Careful there, MW. High standard? Absolutely. Higher standard? Higher than what? The world is full of people who are better than me, and most of them aren't Masons (an easy conclusion to reach since most of the world aren't Masons.) This is the kind of statement that could cause Masons to think (especially if that thinking isn't done critically) that we're better than everybody else, which is the last thing we should teach in our Lodges. Thinking or saying anything that suggests we're superior to those who labor in the outer world impairs our ability live in and contribute to it.
I trust that you'll receive my comment in the good spirit intended by a son raised by a newspaper editor. Actually, a Brother newspaper editor.
VW,
Your point is well taken. I could have made that particular point in a better way.
And yes, I do take it in good spirit!
I believe I am ignorant of many things and have a Dunning-Kruger effect on everything I do know. I'm comfortable with this and it is cause for me to want to learn more.
There is a great YouTube video on Bonhoeffer's Theory of Stupidity, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc, which is extremely informative. If you view this a possible explanation emerges as to why our education system is so forgiving. Look back in history and you can pinpoint where education broke the populace away from the shackles of governments, rulers, or dictators.
The term " information echo chambers" is perfect for our consumption of, well, almost everything. We're advertised to via an echo chamber, social media promotes it, most news stations feed off of it, and more.
In a society who's converted to coveting immediate satisfaction, we have willingly become monetized. We've allowed an algorithm's perception of one's preferences to forms target marketing and content. Ever walk into a store to look at cameras, leave and see advertisments for them online?
That brick and mortar stores tracked your movements via bluetooth and sold the data detailing which area you spent the most time in.
These are just a few of what is likely, to me, a growing trend of isolation. Established business' squeezing out the competition through their ability to pay more for such telemetry. Social media is fragmenting reality and creating a new one just for you. Heck, FB is releasing AI people to their platform (as noted in an earlier conversation topic). How much more artificial can we get and who pushes the brakes and holds these companies accountable?
"Power corrups, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely". What is power, but not having outside influence to the contrary and consequences to actions.
Yes I've waivered here and there, but I don't think we can understand the problem without doing exactly what the post is about, learning more to earn a more complete view of the world around us. This conditioning of instant gratification feeds our fundamental want of dopamine. It's always been there its just being creatively exploited to earn more money and control. I think these certain companies have become the biggest drug cartels in the world.
So, how do we as Masons work to aid in this epidemic when we are also so involved with promoting these terms? How do we live in a drugged society without being drugged ourselves? How do we effect change without being viewed as the one holding the sign on the street corner that reads "the end is near ..."?
Thank you for this excellent perspective Brother! You've given us much to ponder this afternoon!
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.
That's a really good way of looking at it. Thank you.
>>>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.
I have, in my own life, and have found it to work. I'm a better man today than I was when I became a Mason. That doesn't hold true for everyone of course, some will never allow the lessons of Freemasonry to sink in. The Initiations will not 'take.'
But, I believe that it works for millions of men.