WHAT WE KNOW: WHAT WE SUPPOSE: WHAT WE NEED TO DO

I won't get into the misogynistic attitudes of the estates. No need. They are self-evident. They are evidence at best of male chauvinism, at worse of stupidity.  To explain the process over 10s of centuries, let me bring to mind the Nike swoop. The artificial division of genders was and is intellectual bankruptcy.We crawled into the Rennaisance not as conquering heroes but sheep that escaped the shepherd. From a time when Italy was a cluster of principalities, Florence had become a centre of imagination from 15th century on. The estates of control were forever altered by events they could neither predict or suppress.  Who knew the pushy upstart John Wycliffe would commit to translating scripture? Who could have guessed that translation would challenge a 1,000 years of dominance by the Roman Catholicism. And who then would guess it would put into motion influences that created the opening for a populist humanist movement. It was like injecting oxygen into a vacuum. Human beings thrived in a period that unleashed creativity and a freedom of the human spirit.  And my God did we experiment. The masquerade of Florence was a manifestation of liberty, that could not have happened in any other place. Well before the Baroque and then Rococo Period, the gentry of Europe and Britain began for the first time, to travel for enjoyment, subscribing to a Grand Tour into the nightlife of risk takers.  Intellectually, the Arts burst barriers wide open. It claimed a sensory experience that violated social restrictions and people lined up for heretofore, forbidden sensations.  Taking a big historical step into 17th century Britain, we find a violent 10 year window of secular, political and military activity. We would be disingenuous to think people  literate and illiterate could not be influenced.  Is it feasible to think the foundations of Freemasonry were forged by blood and suffering? Appeal today? Yes