AS WE ARE AND WILL BE

Around the world of masonry, we appear to be connecting today's hot intellectual questions with those of the 18th and 19th century, written into ritual.  Were is occams razor when we need it?  We've made our understanding altogether more complicated than need be. As obscure as we are, as it is simple explanations compete with the idea that if something is above our station it must be barely understood by everyman.  Just when we thought the high priests of science have long since been buried, under their own rhetoric here they are, knocking us about. If we were one community, we would still have competing ways of thinking, providing options, better to best. We are many communities brought together when members of each connect with universal truths. Science, art, belief, each and all are distilled to suit the intellectual properties of each tribe. There is a belief that we must compete to achieve dominant universalities. What if in the vastness there are a variety of chains, then it is up to us to reconcile those others with our own.  We can't imagine how to have one instruction for the entire world, so we make learning available and invite the world to come forward. That alone makes us adaptive, because masonry has many rituals, many jurisdictions; some more permanent, others emerging but always  with  ideas relevent to the day.  No need to regurgitate bromides until they irritate, being able to compete with a good meal and convivial company is never going to stop. And when they are kept in balance in a lodge, who could complain?  Each generation our children are 'smarter' than the generations before them. History is refined, questions mingle with critical thinkers. There is doubt about the way FM is administered but not about the philosophies with it.  So we have a stoic settling in to hear from you, your Aristotelian notions not sure he isn't an epicurean.