Positive Masculinity

Does Masonry teach it?

At the risk of stating the obvious, Regular Freemasonry is a wholly male institution. Making it rather unique in our modern world.

Recognizing that, a question comes to mind:

Does Freemasonry teach what it is to be a man?

Photo by Iswanto Arif on Unsplash

In my own experience, in a way, it does. When I became a Freemason I was surrounded by men older, more experienced, and perhaps wiser than I was myself. Men I could look up to and try to emulate. Men who understood manhood, and whom I could learn from simply by watching them and speaking with them. Heck, it is still that way today, although I am getting older, and they are passing on to that house not made with hands.

And now that I’m entering the age of old fartery, I get to learn from the younger men who are now sitting in Lodge with me. They teach me much, again simply through watching and speaking with them.

Voices from across the political spectrum, from the middle to the most far ends, men and women, all these voices are pointing out that men and boys are in “crisis.”

I think that is largely true, for a large part of the population. And I think the reasons for it are pretty obvious. Too many boys are growing up without fathers in their lives. They are raised by their mothers, with fathers uninvolved either willingly or unwillingly. They attend schools where most of their teachers are women. After school activities, even those traditionally for boys led by men, are run by women.

None of this is the fault of women. If no father will stand up to lead the Cub Scout group it is surely better that a mother do so than no one at all. If a father leaves a leadership vacuum in his household, a mother will stand to fill it. But for a huge variety of reasons, willing and unwilling, many boys do not have fathers involved in their lives at all.

Given that, can it be surprising that there is a “crisis” for boys and men today?

How can a young man just entering adulthood know what his place and role in the world is, as a man, if he has had no one model that for him?

I would argue that Freemasonry is in a perfect position to help.

And I would argue that if Freemasonry were to help, it would be much more attractive to the men of today.

We say that we take a good man and help him become an even better man.

I’ve found that to be true in my own life. But, I don’t imagine that most of the men we initiate find it to be true in their lives. I say that because I recognize that we do not retain most of the men whom we initiate. If they found enough value, they would stick around. The fact that they do not, shows that we aren’t being effective with those who drift away.

Again, we say that we take a good man and help him become an even better man.

Do we know what a man is?

Do we know what a good man is?

I would argue, based on my own experience, that we do.

But, do we know how to effectively communicate and teach what a man is?

Do we know how to effectively communicate and teach what a good man is?

Do we know how to effectively communicate and teach how to become a better man?

Do we know how to effectively communicate and teach what qualities a man should strive towards if he wants to become a better man?

I would argue that we do not.

We do, I think, communicate all of these things. But, not effectively for most of the men who knock on our doors.

That’s why they drift away. That’s why they don’t excitedly tell their friends about Freemasonry, hoping that they will knock on the door as well.

We are, I think, very badly missing the boat.

We have a widely acknowledged “crisis” of identity and thriving among men and boys, and we aren’t effectively communicating about it to the men who knock on our doors.

I think it is pretty obvious why we may have lost our ability to effectively communicate about it.

There was a membership boom for our Craft following each of the World Wars. Those men, generations of men, didn’t need to learn what it meant to be a man within their Lodges. They learned what it was to be a man on Iwo Jima, in Belgium, and elsewhere around the world. So maybe we lost that from Freemasonry, because it wasn’t needed for a long time.

It is though, needed now.

Should we teach the young men knocking on our doors today about what it means to be a man? What they must do to be a good man?

I would argue that yes, we should. More directly, and much more effectively than we do today.

But that begs the question:

How?