STRAIGHT-TALK Learning What We Didn’T Even Know We Didn’T Know
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This material is in presentation format STRAIGHT-TALK Learning What We Didn’t Even Know We Didn’t Know Presentation at Vitruvian Lodge No. 767, Indianapolis, Indiana - January 23, 2018 John W. Bizzack, Master, Lexington Lodge No. 1, Lexington, Kentucky ________________________________________________________ ark Twain is often quoted as having We know there’s no end to education and said, “When I was a boy of fourteen, learning of any kind – formal or informal – and my father was so ignorant I could no matter how smart think we might be at any M hardly stand to have the old man given moment about any given subject… well, around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was there’s always something more to learn. astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” In our Masonic world, we call that enlightenment. Twain, in his typically quaint, inimitable style, makes a point that as we grow, we get a little Becoming aware of and knowing our own smarter, make better decisions, improve our history is vital if plans to mold and shape the judgment and choices – our experiences teach future of American Freemasonry is to be more lessons about life and the world around us. than well-meaning/idle talk. That is if we pay attention to the lessons. Now, I’m not talking about the history we are Unfortunately, that reality doesn’t seem to offered from the fanciful stories of antiquity – always apply or automatically extend to many of which were invented for the purpose of organizations and their behavior. making the young fraternity seem as if it has been in existence from time immemorial. Education is learning what you didn't even know - you didn't know.1 And, everything we What I’m referring to is our factual history – the do know right this minute, at some point out in unfolding evolution of many events in our lives, we didn’t. American Freemasonry once it formally arrived in the colonies. _____________________ By the time the first lodges in America had been warranted and formed, organized British Freemasonry had been in existence for no more than fifteen years. 1 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience, The National Experience, and The Democratic Experience, Vintage, 1964. 1 American Freemasonry did not merely take over 6. The bigger Freemasonry became, the more from where the grand lodges of England, and successful it was. later the grand lodges of Scotland and Ireland, That, and other general narratives like it, have left off. American Freemasonry today is neither been assembled and repeated so often that not “self-made” nor a mere carbon copy of only do many Masons simply accept it, so does European forms. much of the public. American Freemasonry is a child of the Some serious historians and Masonic scholars Revolution, several generations removed from a contend that while decades of self- more mature British society of the time that congratulatory, backslapping, title bestowing influenced the shape of and initial organization and aggrandizing our splendor served its of Freemasonry in England. In the 1730s, when purpose, it also ultimately distracted its votaries Freemasonry began to appear in the colonies, it (and many who led them) from paying collided with local cultures and began attention to or heeding straight-talk about the transforming what was created in Britain into a path American Freemasonry started taking soon different kind of system influenced by yet after it began to proliferate with unnecessary another set of cultural stimuli. haste. There has been no one publication that Today, reality-dosed-straight-talk about the consistently chronicles or meticulous catalogs facts surrounding our history that brought us to the history of American Freemasonry. There are where we are (for better or worse) is rare. lots of resources, as you know, and many There’s little focus on mixing the mortar needed interpretations. We also know, every Mason to mend the cracks in the foundation of does not delve deep into any part of our factual American Freemasonry that better assure its history. intended aim, purpose, and heritage will meet Consequently, stories and accounts passing for the test of perpetuity. history seem to flourish. Most are entertaining _______________________ ideas, but hardly fact-based. Recognizing and understanding how Here’s a few I’m sure you’ve heard. mainstream American Freemasonry arrived at 1. Freemasons started the American its current state is not a jolly story, and certainly Revolution. not one that seamlessly fits with many of the long-standing narratives Masons have come to 2. All generals in the Revolutionary War were accept as factual history. Freemasons. Factual history is often one of those things that 3. All signers of the Declaration of many Masons didn’t even know they didn’t Independence and later the Constitution were know. Freemasons. Now, we find that when straight-talk begins, 4. Washington, D.C. was designed with the general Masonic impulse and attention span several Masonic symbols and, of course… the too often slides back into the more comfortable, city was built by Freemasons. self-congratulatory discourse, seasoned with 5. Almost all famous men in history were lofty rah-rah praise that feeds the kind of Freemasons. sentiment that wards off reality-based-straight- talk and education itself. 2 Nevertheless, facts always have their revenge, 19th century, lamented nearly 150 years ago how however long they may take – especially when it the perpetuity of American Freemasonry was comes to history. Reality is a formidable questionable. They saw what had and was opponent. It never loses. continuing to happen in the first 150 years and that led them to their low-spirited calculations. Professional historians have jokingly remarked that the practice of failing to heed and take into Some believe that had they lived through the consideration the facts and realities about the next 150 years, their forecasts would not have current state of American Freemasonry is so changed. universally embedded that one day some But, that long practiced and highly embraced Masons might think it to be a Landmark. bad habit too many American Freemasons have Interest in Freemasonry as an institution, along of measuring the success of Freemasonry based with membership, is rapidly plummeting, but on the number of men who appear on a roster, not into a pile of rubble and scree as some continues to feed one of the original sins of our contend. Masonic fathers. What is undeniable, however, is that the brand The parent of the “measuring-success-by-roster” has eroded. That is what our professional hand- sin exists because of the thinking that rapidly wringers should be more worried about than expanding Freemasonry and opening its membership loss. membership quickly without the capability of assuring its promise could be delivered was a Becoming aware of the realities and facts good idea. surrounding this erosion - and why errors in action and miscalculations were made in past Now, there is no evidence to suggest the centuries, can be uplifting when we put it all in founders of organized speculative Freemasonry context. in England were not optimistic about its appeal and probable spread. However, it is doubtful if Anything that helps prevent from us from those founders -- any more than the early continuing to play host to the same sins pioneers of American Freemasonry, saw the committed by our Masonic fathers should be effect of unwarranted overextension and rapid welcome. expansion would have on the fraternity beyond And by the way, I use the term, sins or phrase, their own generation any more than many the sins of our Masonic fathers, in a Masons of the past several generations showed metaphorical sense - not as it is commonly they could see beyond theirs. applied in a standard religious or unrighteous As the original sin of discounting the connotation. It is used in a literary sense, consequences of gratuitous rapid expansion referring to an error in action, miscalculation, infected the fraternity, the obsession of and often a poverty-stricken vacuum of measuring the success of Freemasonry in situational awareness America then led to subsequent sins – some We have been told by Masonic scholars, writers more serious than others, but all having the and faithful leaders of the Craft since the latter same rippling effect of unintended part of the 19th century the decline in American consequences that created much of the face of Freemasonry is inevitable. the mainstream American Freemasonry we see today. In fact, Albert Pike and Robert Freke Gould, two of the most revered Masonic luminaries of the The lesson Freemasonry in this country is slowly learning the hard way today is that when 3 the sins of our father visit us we do not have to Straight-talk about American Freemasonry is play host. I would venture to say that lesson is nothing new, heeding it, however, is another one of the reasons Vitruvian and lodges similar matter altogether because there’s an ugly truth to or like it exists today. We do indeed have a about straight-talk when it comes to choice to either repeat or expel the sins of those Freemasonry. Straight-talk can often come who came before us. Learning what we didn’t across as criticism, even though intended to even know we didn’t know, coupled with elevate and broaden insight to encourage and straight-talk about it, might, at some point, sink incite constructive action. in enough for more to quit playing host to those Ascribing accountability for the state of sins. American Freemasonry where it belongs by Regardless, we are left today with another referring to certain errors and actions as sins, is challenge: making Freemasonry more attractive not fault finding or asserting blame brothers – to the members we already have.