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The Masonic Roundtable - 0558 - Short Attention Spans · The Masonic Roundtable - Freemasonry Today for Today's Freemasons

• 0:22
  Speaker: Oh, wait, what was I doing again?
• 0:24
  Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Masonic Roundtable, a weekly
• 0:27
  Speaker: program where Masons from around the world get together to talk
• 0:29
  Speaker: about Masonic news and opinions in a friendly and social manner.
• 0:33
  Speaker: As a reminder, we live.
• 0:35
  Speaker: We. Wait a minute.
• 0:36
  Speaker: Who said that?
• 0:38
  Speaker: Let's see.
• 0:38
  Speaker: Um. As a reminder, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are
• 0:42
  Speaker: solely the opinions of the participants and do not
• 0:44
  Speaker: represent any Grand Lodge statements or positions.
• 0:46
  Speaker: Make sure you keep your conversations open for the
• 0:48
  Speaker: public and on the level to interact with us.
• 0:52
  Speaker: Oh, there's Joe.
• 0:53
  Speaker: Uh, send questions and comments
• 0:55
  Speaker: to our Facebook and YouTube
• 0:56
  Speaker: page.
• 0:57
  Speaker: Hello and good evening.
• 0:58
  Speaker: And remember, your chat may show up in the show.
• 1:00
  Speaker: Hey, Robert.
• 1:01
  Speaker: And as always, if you can't
• 1:02
  Speaker: catch us live, we're doing it
• 1:04
  Speaker: live.
• 1:05
  Speaker: You can catch us on the replays or on your favorite podcast app.
• 1:08
  Speaker: You know me.
• 1:09
  Speaker: The one, the only John Ruark, past master of the Patriot
• 1:11
  Speaker: Lodge, number nineteen fifty seven in Fairfax, Virginia.
• 1:16
  Speaker: And wow, it's been there's been a lot of things moving around.
• 1:19
  Speaker: And.
• 1:19
  Speaker: Jason.
• 1:20
  Speaker: Hey, Jason, over here, over here.
• 1:23
  Speaker: How's it going?
• 1:26
  Speaker: Shiny shiny squirrel.
• 1:28
  Speaker: Hey, Jason Richards, past master of Acacia Lodge, number sixteen
• 1:31
  Speaker: in Clifton, Virginia.
• 1:33
  Speaker: Excellent, excellent.
• 1:36
  Speaker: Who else do we have?
• 1:36
  Speaker: We have.
• 1:37
  Speaker: Uh. Hey, Joe.
• 1:39
  Speaker: Joe, get off your phone.
• 1:41
  Speaker: Joe!
• 1:42
  Speaker: I'm tiktoking.
• 1:43
  Speaker: Oh!
• 1:43
  Speaker: Scrolling.
• 1:44
  Speaker: Hello?
• 1:45
  Speaker: Hello?
• 1:46
  Speaker: Hello?
• 1:47
  Speaker: God, these glasses are killing me.
• 1:48
  Speaker: Joe Martinez, past Master Manassas Lodge one eighty two.
• 1:53
  Speaker: Um, currently, it looks like I'm in a hostel.
• 1:54
  Speaker: Like it's a really nice hotel room.
• 1:56
  Speaker: You're in a back room somewhere legit.
• 1:58
  Speaker: Really depressing.
• 1:59
  Speaker: Yeah, I'm very beige right now.
• 2:01
  Speaker: Joe Martinez.
• 2:02
  Speaker: Uh, I'm in Boston this week, so not in the Virginia area, but
• 2:07
  Speaker: good to see y'all.
• 2:07
  Speaker: Good to see y'all.
• 2:09
  Speaker: Better to be seen than Boston.
• 2:13
  Speaker: Yes.
• 2:14
  Speaker: Boston.
• 2:15
  Speaker: Yes.
• 2:16
  Speaker: And Robert the Grayskull.
• 2:18
  Speaker: Johnson.
• 2:19
  Speaker: That's right.
• 2:19
  Speaker: Gotta represent this.
• 2:23
  Speaker: Well, I could have went to see it tonight.
• 2:24
  Speaker: Right.
• 2:25
  Speaker: But anyway.
• 2:26
  Speaker: Got we.
• 2:27
  Speaker: I think you look very
• 2:29
  Speaker: distinguished in as a silver
• 2:31
  Speaker: fox.
• 2:32
  Speaker: Thanks.
• 2:33
  Speaker: I got the He-Man.
• 2:34
  Speaker: I got, I got my I got my Filmation, uh, hat on.
• 2:40
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 2:40
  Speaker: I'm ready to go.
• 2:41
  Speaker: Anyway, I love, uh, the lambs.
• 2:44
  Speaker: We're doing a live.
• 2:46
  Speaker: I believe it or not.
• 2:46
  Speaker: Somebody I know hadn't seen the Bill Reilly clip.
• 2:49
  Speaker: Anyway, uh, speaking of short attention spans.
• 2:52
  Speaker: Uh, yep.
• 2:54
  Speaker: Uh. We're here, we're here.
• 2:55
  Speaker: Ready for the short attention span show.
• 2:57
  Speaker: I, I thought about not taking my meds today for this episode, but
• 3:02
  Speaker: I thought, nah, let's not do it.
• 3:03
  Speaker: Yes.
• 3:04
  Speaker: So focus, people focus.
• 3:08
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 3:08
  Speaker: So, uh, yeah, in case you haven't picked it up, that's the
• 3:12
  Speaker: topic of tonight's episode.
• 3:13
  Speaker: But before we do, let's head
• 3:16
  Speaker: over to our sponsors patreon dot
• 3:19
  Speaker: com slash the Masonic
• 3:20
  Speaker: Roundtable.
• 3:21
  Speaker: You guys are great.
• 3:22
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 3:22
  Speaker: Cheers.
• 3:23
  Speaker: And a salute to you.
• 3:24
  Speaker: Salud.
• 3:26
  Speaker: And, uh, yeah, if you want to support Masonic education for
• 3:29
  Speaker: many years to come or twenty, forty, whichever comes first.
• 3:32
  Speaker: Head over to patreon dot com slash Masonic.
• 3:35
  Speaker: No no no no no no no no. Okay.
• 3:37
  Speaker: We're just going to keep doing the show for ever.
• 3:42
  Speaker: Yeah, we'll just keep doing it because I mean, yeah, when the
• 3:45
  Speaker: vacuum of Masonic education, like goes completely dead, then
• 3:52
  Speaker: we're the we're the only where it's just us.
• 3:54
  Speaker: The only game in town.
• 3:57
  Speaker: Just us.
• 3:58
  Speaker: The brothers out there on the table.
• 4:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:02
  Speaker: Well, is it an echo chamber?
• 4:03
  Speaker: If it's only your echo you're hearing?
• 4:05
  Speaker: Yeah, sure.
• 4:06
  Speaker: No. So deep, so deep, so deep.
• 4:10
  Speaker: Some people might call that schizophrenia.
• 4:15
  Speaker: So can you talk to yourself?
• 4:16
  Speaker: As long as you're not answering.
• 4:17
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:19
  Speaker: Couple more weeks, Joe.
• 4:21
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:22
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:23
  Speaker: We are two weeks away from Esoteric Con twenty twenty six.
• 4:27
  Speaker: The one and only esoteric con.
• 4:30
  Speaker: I've been, uh, looking at the social medias.
• 4:32
  Speaker: I've been seeing a lot of, lot
• 4:33
  Speaker: of little, little pop up
• 4:35
  Speaker: esoteric cons.
• 4:35
  Speaker: They're really cute and stuff.
• 4:36
  Speaker: I love it, but, uh, yeah, you want the OG esoteric, Masonic
• 4:42
  Speaker: and other seeker conference?
• 4:44
  Speaker: Uh, you will come to Northern
• 4:45
  Speaker: Virginia on Father's Day weekend
• 4:47
  Speaker: and, uh, yeah, be super esoteric
• 4:51
  Speaker: And hopefully have a long
• 4:53
  Speaker: attention span, because each of
• 4:54
  Speaker: these talks are forty five to
• 4:56
  Speaker: sixty minutes.
• 4:57
  Speaker: So we need you to lock in
• 4:59
  Speaker: Caffeinate plug in and get in
• 5:02
  Speaker: there.
• 5:02
  Speaker: So alright.
• 5:03
  Speaker: Do it.
• 5:04
  Speaker: Go get it.
• 5:05
  Speaker: I'm going to have a lot to say
• 5:07
  Speaker: about this when we in this
• 5:08
  Speaker: particular episode.
• 5:10
  Speaker: Um, I'm super stoked, like super cool lineup.
• 5:18
  Speaker: Like it's going to be awesome.
• 5:20
  Speaker: So really, really excited for it.
• 5:23
  Speaker: I am jazzed and you'll be there.
• 5:24
  Speaker: So that's even better.
• 5:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 5:26
  Speaker: And then what are we doing the day before though?
• 5:30
  Speaker: Setting up, setting up filling bags.
• 5:34
  Speaker: That's two days before.
• 5:35
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 5:36
  Speaker: So John, tell us what we're doing Thursday.
• 5:38
  Speaker: We are going to the George Washington National Masonic
• 5:42
  Speaker: Memorial to go set up and do a TMR live on the floor of an
• 5:47
  Speaker: actual working Masonic Lodge.
• 5:50
  Speaker: So that'll be fun.
• 5:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 5:52
  Speaker: And yeah, we'll see.
• 5:54
  Speaker: We'll do it live there and we'll see if the the tech works.
• 5:58
  Speaker: It'll be fun nonetheless.
• 5:59
  Speaker: Looking forward to that.
• 6:00
  Speaker: Yep.
• 6:03
  Speaker: Great.
• 6:04
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 6:04
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 6:06
  Speaker: And then, uh, we also have
• 6:08
  Speaker: everyone's favorite, favorite
• 6:09
  Speaker: segment, especially Joe's while
• 6:11
  Speaker: he's traveling.
• 6:14
  Speaker: Tarot card of the week.
• 6:24
  Speaker: Love that song.
• 6:25
  Speaker: Doing a live.
• 6:26
  Speaker: Alright, who wants to take their favorite tarot card out?
• 6:30
  Speaker: Oh, and oh, is this a throwback one?
• 6:33
  Speaker: The composition notebook.
• 6:35
  Speaker: Tarot.
• 6:35
  Speaker: What the.
• 6:36
  Speaker: Doodle doodle tarot.
• 6:38
  Speaker: Cute composition notebook for all your doodling during class.
• 6:45
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 6:45
  Speaker: Is this a stick?
• 6:46
  Speaker: Figure one.
• 6:48
  Speaker: Uh, yes, it is nice.
• 6:52
  Speaker: And for short attention spans, we have.
• 6:55
  Speaker: Interesting.
• 6:56
  Speaker: The Empress.
• 6:58
  Speaker: Oh. Oh, nice.
• 7:00
  Speaker: Look at that.
• 7:01
  Speaker: She looks pregnant, too.
• 7:03
  Speaker: Yeah, she looks super pregnant.
• 7:05
  Speaker: Um, well, she is often depicted.
• 7:10
  Speaker: Or she went to White Castle.
• 7:15
  Speaker: Yeah, she's.
• 7:16
  Speaker: She's got her little, like it looks like the flowers, but, you
• 7:19
  Speaker: know, minions or whatever.
• 7:21
  Speaker: She's all about the
• 7:23
  Speaker: understanding, the nature, the
• 7:25
  Speaker: nurture.
• 7:26
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 7:27
  Speaker: Creativity.
• 7:28
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 7:29
  Speaker: Abundance.
• 7:30
  Speaker: Abundance.
• 7:30
  Speaker: That's the one abundance of thought.
• 7:32
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:34
  Speaker: He's got abundance of steps in is what she needs.
• 7:40
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Speaker: Actually, that's just a she was at Chernobyl.
• 7:44
  Speaker: It's an extra boob.
• 7:46
  Speaker: Yes.
• 7:48
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:49
  Speaker: It's, uh, it's the mom card, right?
• 7:50
  Speaker: So it's always good because
• 7:53
  Speaker: whenever I have a short
• 7:54
  Speaker: attention span.
• 7:55
  Speaker: I think of Stacy's mom.
• 7:57
  Speaker: Get me back on track.
• 8:01
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 8:02
  Speaker: Yes!
• 8:02
  Speaker: There we go.
• 8:04
  Speaker: That's a good deck.
• 8:05
  Speaker: I haven't seen the deck in a while.
• 8:06
  Speaker: So that's that brings me back.
• 8:08
  Speaker: Brings me back.
• 8:10
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 8:10
  Speaker: All right.
• 8:11
  Speaker: Well, tonight, this was a topic
• 8:13
  Speaker: that I know Joe was inspired by
• 8:15
  Speaker: recently.
• 8:17
  Speaker: He was, uh, looking at.
• 8:18
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 8:18
  Speaker: Yeah, it was you.
• 8:19
  Speaker: We were talking in our, our chat that you said you had seen some
• 8:22
  Speaker: studies about short attention spans and the generations.
• 8:29
  Speaker: And tell me more, tell me more.
• 8:30
  Speaker: What got you intrigued about
• 8:32
  Speaker: this and how does it relate to
• 8:34
  Speaker: Freemasonry?
• 8:35
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 8:35
  Speaker: Well, I mean, yeah, I, I actually find those links.
• 8:39
  Speaker: I'm sorry, I'm mobile today.
• 8:40
  Speaker: So I don't have my, my big honking desktop, uh, with all my
• 8:43
  Speaker: tabs, I never close.
• 8:44
  Speaker: Um, but yeah, it got me thinking how Freemasonry, the way it is
• 8:49
  Speaker: today is not built for passive attention, you know?
• 8:54
  Speaker: And, you know, watching people today, watching my own kids, um,
• 9:00
  Speaker: you know, I, we do start to see that their attention spans are
• 9:04
  Speaker: built quite differently than, than people that came before,
• 9:08
  Speaker: you know, and I'm not going to get all old and stodgy and say,
• 9:12
  Speaker: well, social media this and social media that.
• 9:14
  Speaker: It's a little bit of everything, right?
• 9:16
  Speaker: It's we have an issue where
• 9:18
  Speaker: modern life trains us nowadays
• 9:22
  Speaker: to expect instant novelty,
• 9:25
  Speaker: right?
• 9:25
  Speaker: Instant feedback and, and asks us to participate, but asks us
• 9:30
  Speaker: to participate in a way that doesn't cause friction, right.
• 9:33
  Speaker: Um, to be participatory and not
• 9:37
  Speaker: have to invest a lot in that
• 9:38
  Speaker: participation.
• 9:39
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 9:40
  Speaker: Um, instant gratification.
• 9:42
  Speaker: We all love when we post on social media and, you know,
• 9:45
  Speaker: somebody gives us a thumbs up or somebody gives us a smiley face.
• 9:49
  Speaker: If you give us a heart, you know, we'll pay attention to you
• 9:51
  Speaker: a little bit more than others.
• 9:53
  Speaker: The dopamine man.
• 9:54
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 9:54
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 9:55
  Speaker: Um, but again, it's, it's bigger than one thing.
• 9:58
  Speaker: Um, you know, and like I said, watching my, like my kids go to
• 10:02
  Speaker: school, they learn differently than, than we did, you know?
• 10:06
  Speaker: Um, so I just find it
• 10:07
  Speaker: interesting that we are part of
• 10:09
  Speaker: an organization that doesn't
• 10:12
  Speaker: work in that world, you know,
• 10:14
  Speaker: of, again, instant
• 10:16
  Speaker: gratification.
• 10:17
  Speaker: I mean, mind you, yeah, you can sit for eight hours and do a one
• 10:19
  Speaker: day class or a blue lightning or whatever you call it.
• 10:21
  Speaker: I wouldn't call that instant gratification, but, um, you
• 10:25
  Speaker: know, these are these little tips and tricks that pop up that
• 10:27
  Speaker: think that they're satiating, that, that need for, for
• 10:31
  Speaker: gratification or whatever.
• 10:32
  Speaker: And it's just, it's just not there.
• 10:34
  Speaker: Settle down.
• 10:36
  Speaker: De lambs.
• 10:37
  Speaker: Um, but yeah, so that's what got me thinking.
• 10:40
  Speaker: Um, you know, I think it's, it's an issue for Masons today, for,
• 10:45
  Speaker: for Masons tomorrow.
• 10:47
  Speaker: And what do we do about it?
• 10:48
  Speaker: You know, how do we combat that
• 10:50
  Speaker: and how do we bring this into
• 10:52
  Speaker: the conversation?
• 10:52
  Speaker: It's like, how do we, how do we turn that corner, you know, and
• 10:56
  Speaker: find gratification in things that cost more sweat equity?
• 11:01
  Speaker: Well, and how do we offer something more?
• 11:04
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 11:05
  Speaker: Right.
• 11:06
  Speaker: Yeah, that we're in competition with that.
• 11:08
  Speaker: So how do we, how do we give good use of the time?
• 11:13
  Speaker: What's the value proposition?
• 11:14
  Speaker: Right.
• 11:15
  Speaker: Well, I think one thing that is really interesting is.
• 11:21
  Speaker: As I think all of us, maybe Gen
• 11:24
  Speaker: X and millennial, we've
• 11:26
  Speaker: witnessed at some point some
• 11:29
  Speaker: person in our life who has asked
• 11:30
  Speaker: us to fix their computer or if
• 11:35
  Speaker: you're like me, set the VCR
• 11:37
  Speaker: time.
• 11:38
  Speaker: Um, so where I'm going with that
• 11:42
  Speaker: is my grandfather was always
• 11:45
  Speaker: telling me he was never going to
• 11:46
  Speaker: be the guy who fell behind in
• 11:49
  Speaker: technology, and he really
• 11:51
  Speaker: hasn't.
• 11:52
  Speaker: Um, with the exception of like the big jump, right?
• 11:55
  Speaker: To like a mobile phone with virtual buttons, that's hard.
• 11:58
  Speaker: Um, but he's an older gentleman.
• 12:00
  Speaker: So what have you that said,
• 12:04
  Speaker: there's this sort of idea that's
• 12:07
  Speaker: always out there about this sort
• 12:10
  Speaker: of negative, um, uh, people
• 12:15
  Speaker: don't want to attach to new
• 12:16
  Speaker: technology.
• 12:17
  Speaker: You see it today with, uh, tons of people crapping on AI.
• 12:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker: The anti AI movement came, the
• 12:27
  Speaker: anti AI movement is really
• 12:29
  Speaker: crazy.
• 12:30
  Speaker: And I think for the most part,
• 12:31
  Speaker: that comes from a place of what
• 12:34
  Speaker: I would call, uh, an And
• 12:36
  Speaker: insecurity.
• 12:37
  Speaker: Uh, you know, I mean, it's not going to make better art than
• 12:43
  Speaker: Juan Sepulveda, right?
• 12:44
  Speaker: Or write a better, uh, Masonic
• 12:46
  Speaker: article, perhaps than than many
• 12:48
  Speaker: of the Masonic artists out
• 12:49
  Speaker: there.
• 12:51
  Speaker: That all said.
• 12:54
  Speaker: Our kids, as generations move along while there's this sort of
• 12:59
  Speaker: resistance to the technology our children grew up with,
• 13:03
  Speaker: technology, I will I will probably bet any number of
• 13:09
  Speaker: dollars that at least the four gentlemen on the screen today,
• 13:13
  Speaker: uh, and a number of the folks in the chat who have kids, those
• 13:17
  Speaker: kids have had a screen at some point, whether it's an iPad, a
• 13:21
  Speaker: Kindle or something.
• 13:25
  Speaker: I've talked with tons of dudes in the fraternity who all work
• 13:29
  Speaker: with like psychology and children and their therapists
• 13:33
  Speaker: and all those things, and they tell me all the time when I
• 13:36
  Speaker: voice my frustrations with my kids, that I shouldn't be so
• 13:40
  Speaker: hard on them because they, what they had access to made their
• 13:46
  Speaker: brains develop differently.
• 13:49
  Speaker: Wow.
• 13:50
  Speaker: And so we're trying to make a
• 13:54
  Speaker: square peg fit in the round hole
• 13:57
  Speaker: sometimes.
• 13:59
  Speaker: And the fraternity as we stand,
• 14:04
  Speaker: we don't like to change
• 14:07
  Speaker: anything, but I think there's a
• 14:10
  Speaker: way forward.
• 14:11
  Speaker: Um, and, and I think sometimes
• 14:15
  Speaker: that way forward isn't always
• 14:16
  Speaker: the best.
• 14:17
  Speaker: Uh, we can talk about that later, but that's, that's,
• 14:20
  Speaker: that's the thing I see is like the attention span.
• 14:23
  Speaker: We say it isn't there, but maybe
• 14:25
  Speaker: it's just not there the way we
• 14:28
  Speaker: want it.
• 14:30
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:30
  Speaker: And, and I know John is going to be angry if you don't bring some
• 14:34
  Speaker: data into this.
• 14:34
  Speaker: So I did find my data.
• 14:36
  Speaker: So we're going to talk about data, right.
• 14:38
  Speaker: Um, but I really want to key on
• 14:39
  Speaker: what Robert said when it comes
• 14:40
  Speaker: to we, unfortunately, we have to
• 14:43
  Speaker: frame this generationally,
• 14:45
  Speaker: right?
• 14:46
  Speaker: Um, so let's talk about your boomers, your older Gen Xers.
• 14:50
  Speaker: Um, you know, they grew up in a linear media environment, for
• 14:55
  Speaker: lack of a better term.
• 14:56
  Speaker: Books, analog.
• 14:57
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:58
  Speaker: Um, schedule television time, you know, not like where you
• 15:01
  Speaker: could DVR something and then watch it later.
• 15:03
  Speaker: Um, lectures, uh, civic
• 15:06
  Speaker: organizations down when you were
• 15:08
  Speaker: kids, you know, and, and most of
• 15:10
  Speaker: your meetings were face to face
• 15:12
  Speaker: meetings.
• 15:12
  Speaker: You know, that doesn't mean that the older generations to include
• 15:16
  Speaker: myself had better minds.
• 15:18
  Speaker: Um, it just means that they were
• 15:20
  Speaker: accustomed to slower, I guess,
• 15:23
  Speaker: sequential attention.
• 15:24
  Speaker: Right.
• 15:25
  Speaker: Um, you know, so when we bring this into masonry for some of
• 15:29
  Speaker: our older members, lodge may Mayfair, feel more normal to
• 15:32
  Speaker: them the way it's currently set up, because they were formed by
• 15:35
  Speaker: institutions that expected this level of patience.
• 15:38
  Speaker: Right now you get to your
• 15:40
  Speaker: younger Gen X and your
• 15:41
  Speaker: millennials.
• 15:42
  Speaker: You know, we're that transition generation.
• 15:44
  Speaker: You know, we do remember analog life, but we also got a
• 15:48
  Speaker: Tamagotchi and a Game Boy, you know, and we adapted our adult
• 15:52
  Speaker: lives to, to email, to smartphones, to social media and
• 15:56
  Speaker: to being able to, quote unquote, multitask in the workplace.
• 15:59
  Speaker: Right?
• 16:00
  Speaker: So again, that transition period
• 16:02
  Speaker: and that transition generation,
• 16:04
  Speaker: I find the most interesting,
• 16:05
  Speaker: right?
• 16:05
  Speaker: Because they're able to bridge that gap for the most part.
• 16:07
  Speaker: Um, because I would say a lot of people in the same generation as
• 16:12
  Speaker: me that are Freemasons that I do associate with, um, a lot of
• 16:16
  Speaker: them do appreciate the depth and the attention that you need to
• 16:20
  Speaker: place in masonry, but we're also used to efficiency, right?
• 16:23
  Speaker: We hate the minutes being read.
• 16:24
  Speaker: We think it's absolutely stupid.
• 16:26
  Speaker: Um, you know, we, we sometimes tolerate tradition, but we have
• 16:30
  Speaker: less patience for the administrivia that is gobbling
• 16:33
  Speaker: up Masonic meetings.
• 16:34
  Speaker: Right now.
• 16:35
  Speaker: We're coming to the generation Gen Z and Gen Alpha, you know,
• 16:41
  Speaker: that are starting to come of age to become Masons.
• 16:44
  Speaker: Um, like Robert said, you know, people end up on devices as
• 16:49
  Speaker: early as like one and two years old nowadays, right?
• 16:52
  Speaker: It's not like when we grew up, it's completely different.
• 16:55
  Speaker: You know, they've grown up in an all digital world, you know,
• 16:58
  Speaker: smartphones, platforms, um, notifications, hitting them up
• 17:01
  Speaker: all the time.
• 17:02
  Speaker: Short form video, you know, vine started all that and, and feeds
• 17:06
  Speaker: that use algorithms to keep your attention, you know, even for
• 17:10
  Speaker: that short level of time.
• 17:12
  Speaker: So it doesn't mean that these younger folk sound it older are
• 17:16
  Speaker: incapable of depth.
• 17:18
  Speaker: It means that depth to them is unfamiliar from the way we we
• 17:24
  Speaker: know it and we understand it.
• 17:25
  Speaker: Right.
• 17:25
  Speaker: And I did find a study.
• 17:27
  Speaker: So there was a study from UC Irvine go UC.
• 17:32
  Speaker: Um, and it actually traced, uh,
• 17:35
  Speaker: it did work with younger people
• 17:37
  Speaker: and people's average attention
• 17:38
  Speaker: span by looking at things on a
• 17:39
  Speaker: screen.
• 17:40
  Speaker: So in two thousand and four, the
• 17:42
  Speaker: average attention span for
• 17:43
  Speaker: screen was two and a half
• 17:44
  Speaker: minutes.
• 17:46
  Speaker: Um, then by twenty twelve, the average time that they recorded
• 17:49
  Speaker: in this really long study was seventy five seconds.
• 17:54
  Speaker: Um, the last time they took data was in twenty twenty two.
• 17:57
  Speaker: And they observed that the measured screen attention, time,
• 18:01
  Speaker: attention time was 40s or less.
• 18:05
  Speaker: So that's just in twenty years.
• 18:08
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 18:08
  Speaker: The same studies that I was seeing, Joe showed that oh four
• 18:12
  Speaker: was one hundred and 50s.
• 18:14
  Speaker: And then by twenty twelve it dropped to seventy five seconds.
• 18:17
  Speaker: And then recent tracking has
• 18:18
  Speaker: shown that it's forty seven
• 18:20
  Speaker: seconds.
• 18:22
  Speaker: And what it presented was it said, uh, they have a. There was
• 18:26
  Speaker: a piece of the column that was called the the reading brain
• 18:28
  Speaker: versus the digital brain.
• 18:30
  Speaker: And so like, we are all I mean, essentially we grew up and
• 18:33
  Speaker: probably most of our listeners grew up as reading brains.
• 18:37
  Speaker: Read the chapter, answer the questions, talk about it.
• 18:40
  Speaker: And the thing is, the quote says, as neuroscientists
• 18:45
  Speaker: Maryanne Wolf has famously pointed out, humans are not born
• 18:50
  Speaker: with a biological mandate to read linear text.
• 18:54
  Speaker: The brain has to painstakingly build neural pathways to do it.
• 18:59
  Speaker: And so the like right now they're talking about Gen Z. Um,
• 19:05
  Speaker: they actually, they, their brains are amazing.
• 19:10
  Speaker: Uh, Gen Z and Alpha, it says they both peaked.
• 19:15
  Speaker: They have peaked neuroplasticity
• 19:17
  Speaker: during an era dominated by rapid
• 19:20
  Speaker: interactive short form digital
• 19:22
  Speaker: stimuli.
• 19:23
  Speaker: The neural pathways are actively
• 19:26
  Speaker: optimizing for high speed
• 19:28
  Speaker: context switching rather than
• 19:30
  Speaker: slow, sustained linear
• 19:31
  Speaker: processing.
• 19:33
  Speaker: And the thing that was like, holy cow to me was that, uh.
• 19:43
  Speaker: There, there was a bit that they talked about.
• 19:46
  Speaker: They have a way to.
• 19:50
  Speaker: Figure out very quickly if what
• 19:53
  Speaker: you're talking about is even
• 19:54
  Speaker: relevant to what they want to
• 19:55
  Speaker: talk about.
• 19:57
  Speaker: So it's like an instant
• 19:59
  Speaker: recognition of what you're
• 20:01
  Speaker: saying.
• 20:02
  Speaker: Doesn't matter.
• 20:03
  Speaker: I don't want to hear it.
• 20:06
  Speaker: So dismissal.
• 20:07
  Speaker: Okay.
• 20:08
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 20:08
  Speaker: Um, and it's really, it's, it's really wild.
• 20:12
  Speaker: Um, what I find the, uh, the quote.
• 20:15
  Speaker: I'll, I'll, uh, I'll butt in, but it's fascinating stuff.
• 20:19
  Speaker: I still like to be an old guy and just go pay attention.
• 20:24
  Speaker: But but see, I, I really found
• 20:25
  Speaker: when, when I was reading that
• 20:27
  Speaker: and, and, and I did look over
• 20:28
  Speaker: that study.
• 20:28
  Speaker: And then when I started looking at, uh, generational attention
• 20:32
  Speaker: span, um, which there's a little bit of poppycock, you know, if
• 20:35
  Speaker: I'm going to be the old guy, um, you know, there's a little bit
• 20:37
  Speaker: of subjectivity in some of the stuff that I saw.
• 20:40
  Speaker: Um, but in general, you know, I, I, I consider myself in that
• 20:45
  Speaker: transitional generation, right.
• 20:46
  Speaker: Um, you know, I'm forty eight,
• 20:48
  Speaker: so definitely Gen X a couple of
• 20:49
  Speaker: years away from, from
• 20:51
  Speaker: millennial, right.
• 20:52
  Speaker: But missed it by this much
• 20:56
  Speaker: missed by that much and I'm
• 20:57
  Speaker: okay, I'm, I'm happy in a Gen X
• 20:58
  Speaker: land.
• 20:58
  Speaker: I really am um, because people don't mess with me.
• 21:02
  Speaker: So that works out okay.
• 21:04
  Speaker: But, uh, but realistically, I think the issue is that I think
• 21:09
  Speaker: our generation had the easiest time transitioning because we
• 21:13
  Speaker: lived in both worlds, right?
• 21:15
  Speaker: And we also have the easiest
• 21:19
  Speaker: time in bridging that gap
• 21:21
  Speaker: between those two huge
• 21:22
  Speaker: generations.
• 21:23
  Speaker: Like we understand where the
• 21:25
  Speaker: older generations are coming
• 21:27
  Speaker: from, and we do have a bit more
• 21:28
  Speaker: patience with that younger
• 21:30
  Speaker: generation.
• 21:31
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 21:32
  Speaker: Because we lived in those worlds, whereas those two
• 21:34
  Speaker: generations, when I see it out in the world, they cannot deal
• 21:38
  Speaker: with each other.
• 21:38
  Speaker: You know what I mean?
• 21:39
  Speaker: They don't function well outside
• 21:41
  Speaker: of your family units and things
• 21:42
  Speaker: like that.
• 21:42
  Speaker: Like older people and younger people do not jive well.
• 21:46
  Speaker: You know, they don't speak the same language.
• 21:48
  Speaker: Well, there's there was something else.
• 21:50
  Speaker: We're all just dead inside.
• 21:54
  Speaker: Too much.
• 21:56
  Speaker: So no joke though there, Jason.
• 21:58
  Speaker: Uh, our generations are much a
• 22:02
  Speaker: young man, my father, our
• 22:05
  Speaker: generation is so much more, uh,
• 22:08
  Speaker: able to have something that they
• 22:10
  Speaker: would keep referring to as, uh,
• 22:11
  Speaker: a default mode network or d m n,
• 22:14
  Speaker: which is basically the they say
• 22:16
  Speaker: it's the part of the brain
• 22:17
  Speaker: that's responsible for
• 22:18
  Speaker: daydreaming, uh, deep creative,
• 22:21
  Speaker: what they call it deep creative
• 22:22
  Speaker: synthesis and like your original
• 22:25
  Speaker: aha moments.
• 22:27
  Speaker: Uh, and so we're much more
• 22:29
  Speaker: comfortable with silence and
• 22:31
  Speaker: nothing.
• 22:32
  Speaker: And it's only because we didn't
• 22:34
  Speaker: grow up in an era of constant
• 22:36
  Speaker: bombardment.
• 22:37
  Speaker: I found that quote, it says it's
• 22:40
  Speaker: a mistake to say Gen Z has an
• 22:41
  Speaker: inferior brain.
• 22:43
  Speaker: Their brains have brilliantly adapted to the information
• 22:46
  Speaker: ecosystem they live in, right?
• 22:48
  Speaker: Just constant bam, bam, bam, bam bam and being flooded.
• 22:51
  Speaker: It's reactive.
• 22:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 22:52
  Speaker: It's like Blade Runner, right?
• 22:53
  Speaker: Like everywhere you go, there's ads just popping up in front of
• 22:56
  Speaker: you and it says, if you train a brain on a relentless wave of
• 23:00
  Speaker: immediate data, it naturally evolves a brutal filter to
• 23:04
  Speaker: survive the noise.
• 23:05
  Speaker: They don't have short attention spans.
• 23:08
  Speaker: They have highly sophisticated,
• 23:09
  Speaker: lightning fast relevance
• 23:11
  Speaker: detectors.
• 23:12
  Speaker: Yes, yes.
• 23:15
  Speaker: They're so good at making those
• 23:17
  Speaker: snap judgments of is this
• 23:19
  Speaker: relevant slash interesting to
• 23:21
  Speaker: me?
• 23:22
  Speaker: If not done?
• 23:23
  Speaker: Yep.
• 23:24
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 23:26
  Speaker: Which is fascinating too, because the, the studies that I
• 23:29
  Speaker: was looking at early, earlier in preparation for the show to
• 23:32
  Speaker: talks about, you know, we talked about the dopamine hit, right?
• 23:35
  Speaker: You get a notification on your phone or you, you wonder why
• 23:37
  Speaker: you're scrolling for an hour on TikTok and like, why haven't I
• 23:41
  Speaker: put it down?
• 23:41
  Speaker: Right?
• 23:42
  Speaker: So yes, we chemically get that reward chemical.
• 23:46
  Speaker: And because we're so used to that, even even the millennials
• 23:50
  Speaker: and beyond, it's actually training our brains.
• 23:55
  Speaker: So it's not so much starting out
• 23:56
  Speaker: like, like the younger
• 23:57
  Speaker: generation who's always had a
• 23:59
  Speaker: screen.
• 24:00
  Speaker: Even those who are now becoming more addicted to their phones.
• 24:03
  Speaker: Um, it's, it's training
• 24:06
  Speaker: ourselves to expect the reward,
• 24:08
  Speaker: right?
• 24:08
  Speaker: From a Pavlovian sense even.
• 24:10
  Speaker: Right.
• 24:11
  Speaker: And so that's where Even if you if you came from an analog
• 24:18
  Speaker: generation now, because, you know, we are we're trying to
• 24:22
  Speaker: adapt to this.
• 24:23
  Speaker: Uh, another, another good
• 24:24
  Speaker: example is where the
• 24:28
  Speaker: cognitively, even with AI, we're
• 24:31
  Speaker: offloading things that we should
• 24:33
  Speaker: be remembering or we used to
• 24:35
  Speaker: just keep in our short term
• 24:36
  Speaker: memory.
• 24:37
  Speaker: We're even offloading that.
• 24:38
  Speaker: Uh, here's an example of that,
• 24:40
  Speaker: um, remembering calendar events,
• 24:43
  Speaker: right?
• 24:43
  Speaker: Uh, I would be useless without
• 24:46
  Speaker: Google calendar because I got
• 24:47
  Speaker: five kids going to five
• 24:48
  Speaker: different places.
• 24:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 24:49
  Speaker: And I just dump it all there.
• 24:51
  Speaker: I don't need to remember it.
• 24:52
  Speaker: I just need to have my phone look at.
• 24:54
  Speaker: Oh, that's where I need to be.
• 24:55
  Speaker: Y'all know my wife.
• 24:56
  Speaker: Just tell me what time to show up and what to wear.
• 24:59
  Speaker: And I'm good.
• 25:00
  Speaker: Y'all know each other's phone numbers?
• 25:02
  Speaker: Oh, I was I was literally about to say that.
• 25:03
  Speaker: I don't know my kids phone numbers.
• 25:05
  Speaker: I don't know my children's phone numbers, I just don't.
• 25:08
  Speaker: I know my wife's phone number,
• 25:10
  Speaker: my parents phone number, and my
• 25:12
  Speaker: in-laws.
• 25:13
  Speaker: Phone number.
• 25:14
  Speaker: Um, but that's because I
• 25:16
  Speaker: memorized them, like, twenty
• 25:18
  Speaker: five years ago, and they haven't
• 25:20
  Speaker: changed.
• 25:20
  Speaker: Yeah, I got.
• 25:21
  Speaker: I haven't changed.
• 25:22
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:22
  Speaker: My wife's, my bank and my, my mom's old phone number.
• 25:29
  Speaker: That's it.
• 25:30
  Speaker: My old, my old landline at my house.
• 25:32
  Speaker: I'll never forget.
• 25:33
  Speaker: But, you know, in the house I grew up in.
• 25:34
  Speaker: But yeah, if you ask me what my kid's cell phone numbers are.
• 25:37
  Speaker: I couldn't tell you.
• 25:38
  Speaker: No idea.
• 25:39
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 25:40
  Speaker: Um, John, I would love for you to pull that.
• 25:44
  Speaker: That, um.
• 25:45
  Speaker: I can't stop staring at it
• 25:46
  Speaker: because I'm not listening to
• 25:47
  Speaker: y'all because I have a short
• 25:48
  Speaker: attention span.
• 25:49
  Speaker: Um, that post from John Paul at nine fifty five.
• 25:53
  Speaker: All right.
• 25:54
  Speaker: Let's see here.
• 25:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:57
  Speaker: Because I really, really, really want to touch on that.
• 26:00
  Speaker: So yeah, so John Paul writes when creating lectures, try and
• 26:04
  Speaker: make it sound not boring.
• 26:05
  Speaker: That usually means a lecture should be a page long and sound
• 26:09
  Speaker: like how you speak.
• 26:12
  Speaker: That's not what we're saying at all.
• 26:13
  Speaker: That is literally not what we're talking about here tonight.
• 26:17
  Speaker: I understand.
• 26:18
  Speaker: Believe me, I get it.
• 26:19
  Speaker: When I see a brother stand up
• 26:22
  Speaker: and he has twenty five pages,
• 26:24
  Speaker: um, single spaced, you know,
• 26:27
  Speaker: double sided.
• 26:28
  Speaker: And he starts reading and you
• 26:29
  Speaker: get read to for forty five
• 26:31
  Speaker: minutes.
• 26:32
  Speaker: I can absolutely understand how that's all slides.
• 26:36
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 26:36
  Speaker: But yeah, but I think, but I think yeah, with the, with the
• 26:42
  Speaker: magic lantern slides too.
• 26:43
  Speaker: Um, I, I don't disagree that
• 26:46
  Speaker: delivery matters at all, but I
• 26:47
  Speaker: think this is, it's a little bit
• 26:49
  Speaker: reductive.
• 26:50
  Speaker: Um, because the point we're
• 26:51
  Speaker: trying to make is, is bigger,
• 26:53
  Speaker: especially when it comes to
• 26:54
  Speaker: Freemasonry.
• 26:55
  Speaker: Right.
• 26:56
  Speaker: Masonry.
• 26:56
  Speaker: None of us, I think, would agree
• 26:58
  Speaker: that masonry should become
• 27:00
  Speaker: shallow, right.
• 27:01
  Speaker: To accommodate these shorter attention spans.
• 27:03
  Speaker: I think that we need to become more intentional enough that we
• 27:08
  Speaker: earn the attention of the people that were trying to seek.
• 27:11
  Speaker: Right.
• 27:12
  Speaker: So I would never I would never
• 27:14
  Speaker: be happy with a one page
• 27:15
  Speaker: lecture.
• 27:16
  Speaker: Um, I would be pissed.
• 27:17
  Speaker: I would walk out and be like, what is this nonsense?
• 27:19
  Speaker: You know?
• 27:19
  Speaker: Right.
• 27:20
  Speaker: Um, but do something worthy of
• 27:22
  Speaker: my attention or worthy of the
• 27:24
  Speaker: attention of the people in that
• 27:25
  Speaker: room.
• 27:26
  Speaker: So that that's a game.
• 27:28
  Speaker: Related to that, the up its game.
• 27:31
  Speaker: Here's a trend that that I've been finding fascinating.
• 27:34
  Speaker: Um, getting bits and pieces of data from different sources.
• 27:38
  Speaker: And so you don't know again,
• 27:39
  Speaker: what's what's true, what's
• 27:40
  Speaker: accurate.
• 27:42
  Speaker: But in general, what I'm hearing
• 27:44
  Speaker: is that Gen Z is converting to
• 27:47
  Speaker: Catholicism at a higher rate
• 27:50
  Speaker: than other generations, which is
• 27:52
  Speaker: fascinating because I've been
• 27:53
  Speaker: tracking Pew studies of like the
• 27:56
  Speaker: religious society of people and
• 27:58
  Speaker: like believing in a supreme
• 28:00
  Speaker: being and, and like, you know,
• 28:02
  Speaker: uh, do they consider themselves
• 28:04
  Speaker: religious?
• 28:05
  Speaker: But it's always been trending down generation by generation
• 28:08
  Speaker: and then data after data.
• 28:10
  Speaker: I'm seeing that there's this
• 28:12
  Speaker: rise in Catholicism y
• 28:13
  Speaker: Catholicism of all religions,
• 28:15
  Speaker: right?
• 28:16
  Speaker: Because there's structure, there's ritual ritual, right?
• 28:21
  Speaker: There's intention, right.
• 28:24
  Speaker: We cannot forget the, the bane of, of, of Uber conservativeness
• 28:30
  Speaker: is that increasingly the leader of the Roman Catholic Church,
• 28:36
  Speaker: the pope has been increasingly more and more liberal, but much
• 28:42
  Speaker: more open and understanding of the world that they live in.
• 28:46
  Speaker: I mean, relevant.
• 28:48
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 28:49
  Speaker: Much more relatable.
• 28:50
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 28:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 28:51
  Speaker: Much more relatable.
• 28:52
  Speaker: I mean, relevant is a great term.
• 28:53
  Speaker: One of the, uh, it was two popes ago, not John Paul Benedict, I
• 29:01
  Speaker: think it was Benedict Benedict was kind of starting to do some
• 29:06
  Speaker: stuff, but what I thought was wild was when he.
• 29:10
  Speaker: So people who don't know the
• 29:11
  Speaker: Vatican has like, you know,
• 29:12
  Speaker: their own science departments
• 29:14
  Speaker: and astronomy departments and
• 29:16
  Speaker: things.
• 29:17
  Speaker: One of his chief in the world, one of the chief astronomers at
• 29:21
  Speaker: the Vatican, was like, no, I talked to His Holiness.
• 29:24
  Speaker: And basically, you know, we we basically said something like,
• 29:28
  Speaker: the existence of God doesn't like if if we discover
• 29:32
  Speaker: extraterrestrials, it actually doesn't make God smaller.
• 29:35
  Speaker: It makes them bigger.
• 29:36
  Speaker: Right?
• 29:36
  Speaker: And this, this at the time, like was a very weird thing for them
• 29:39
  Speaker: to even say out loud.
• 29:42
  Speaker: And, you know, I mean, it's just wild.
• 29:43
  Speaker: And so I think because of that, the relevance factor that you
• 29:46
  Speaker: guys are talking about, people are kind of coming into it.
• 29:55
  Speaker: So I think it's a good segue to
• 29:56
  Speaker: like, how do we, how do we then
• 29:58
  Speaker: pivot that?
• 29:58
  Speaker: So how do we do make this relevant to, to Freemasonry?
• 30:02
  Speaker: And because we know that the
• 30:05
  Speaker: tradition that we all love and
• 30:07
  Speaker: respect has a lot of patience,
• 30:11
  Speaker: right?
• 30:12
  Speaker: A lot of learning, a lot of face to face, looking at another
• 30:16
  Speaker: person in the eyeballs, right?
• 30:18
  Speaker: It's, it's not something you can just, just scroll through for an
• 30:22
  Speaker: hour and, and get.
• 30:24
  Speaker: Um, so, you know, again, how
• 30:27
  Speaker: would we make, I wouldn't say
• 30:31
  Speaker: make masonry relevant, but how
• 30:33
  Speaker: do, how do we take advantage of
• 30:36
  Speaker: like this trend with Catholicism
• 30:39
  Speaker: in order to appeal to those who
• 30:44
  Speaker: may have shorter attention
• 30:45
  Speaker: spans.
• 30:46
  Speaker: So I think it has to start with intention, right?
• 30:51
  Speaker: I think the intentionality of Catholicism, everything happens
• 30:55
  Speaker: for a reason.
• 30:56
  Speaker: It's the same with masonry, but we don't explain it.
• 30:59
  Speaker: That is true.
• 31:00
  Speaker: That is an excellent point.
• 31:01
  Speaker: Like the opening and closing of the lodge is a ritualistic
• 31:09
  Speaker: spiritual consecration of the room into a holy space.
• 31:14
  Speaker: Nah, bro.
• 31:14
  Speaker: They just walk around in circles.
• 31:15
  Speaker: What are you talking about?
• 31:16
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 31:18
  Speaker: And that's that's something
• 31:20
  Speaker: that, you know, your average
• 31:23
  Speaker: rural lodge member just has no
• 31:25
  Speaker: idea about.
• 31:27
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 31:28
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 31:28
  Speaker: I mean, I, I, I think, and, and I've seen this happen and, um,
• 31:32
  Speaker: you know, I, I always tell people I'm a, I'm a recovering
• 31:35
  Speaker: Catholic and I know we're not talking about religion today,
• 31:37
  Speaker: but I think it really does apply because we're literally seeing
• 31:40
  Speaker: younger people, the younger generations, moving to a more
• 31:44
  Speaker: ordered and ritualistic form of expressing their religion, which
• 31:48
  Speaker: is really counterintuitive to what we're talking about.
• 31:51
  Speaker: But, you know, I, I find and I tell people this all the time, I
• 31:54
  Speaker: said, I absolutely miss the ritual and the intention that
• 32:00
  Speaker: church gave me.
• 32:02
  Speaker: And maybe I was too young to understand it before, you know
• 32:04
  Speaker: what I mean?
• 32:04
  Speaker: But I do.
• 32:05
  Speaker: I do long for that.
• 32:06
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 32:07
  Speaker: Um, and I think there were some outside of the Catholicism
• 32:10
  Speaker: thing, you know, and I know we've talked about this on the
• 32:12
  Speaker: show before, there's been this increasing trend of less and
• 32:17
  Speaker: less, I guess, atheism within younger generations, you know
• 32:20
  Speaker: what I mean?
• 32:21
  Speaker: They're not subscribing to a defined organized religion, but
• 32:24
  Speaker: they're actually more spiritual and practice their spirituality
• 32:28
  Speaker: more so than the generations that came before, you know, that
• 32:31
  Speaker: went to church or went to synagogue and just did the
• 32:33
  Speaker: things that they were supposed to do, because that's what you
• 32:35
  Speaker: did on a Saturday or Sunday, you know what I mean?
• 32:37
  Speaker: So you're not using Jesus as an ATM?
• 32:40
  Speaker: No, no, but, you know, it's like I said, I found I've always
• 32:44
  Speaker: found that interesting.
• 32:45
  Speaker: I'm like, we've got a whole bunch of dudes who are looking
• 32:49
  Speaker: for something spiritual, you know, and seeking answers to the
• 32:52
  Speaker: Mor and things like that.
• 32:54
  Speaker: And they're not getting it,
• 32:55
  Speaker: whether it's from a religious
• 32:58
  Speaker: organization or from a fraternal
• 33:00
  Speaker: organization or whatever it is,
• 33:01
  Speaker: they're not finding it, you
• 33:02
  Speaker: know?
• 33:02
  Speaker: Yeah, that's a shame.
• 33:04
  Speaker: Well, there's also this, this.
• 33:07
  Speaker: So I think it's been this way for a while.
• 33:10
  Speaker: Um, and it started well before
• 33:12
  Speaker: Covid and it, Covid really moved
• 33:16
  Speaker: it forward.
• 33:18
  Speaker: And this is, you guys kept saying intention.
• 33:20
  Speaker: And I think the word intention
• 33:23
  Speaker: is something that transitions or
• 33:26
  Speaker: I'm sorry, I'm sorry transcends
• 33:28
  Speaker: even more than doing something
• 33:31
  Speaker: with intentions.
• 33:33
  Speaker: There's, there's like, um, the,
• 33:36
  Speaker: the mentality of, of quality
• 33:38
  Speaker: over quantity.
• 33:39
  Speaker: Um, there's, I mean, there's a,
• 33:43
  Speaker: there's a, there's a trend
• 33:44
  Speaker: called, uh, underconsumption
• 33:46
  Speaker: corps.
• 33:47
  Speaker: Right.
• 33:48
  Speaker: Uh, there's, there's things like, uh, um, like a developing
• 33:53
  Speaker: sense of emotional and ethical values in a lot of the younger
• 33:57
  Speaker: generations as well.
• 33:59
  Speaker: And so everything has intent now from from their sort of
• 34:03
  Speaker: spiritual value all the way through even shopping.
• 34:11
  Speaker: I'm sure you guys have noticed, right?
• 34:14
  Speaker: The big joke was like hipsters and craft beer.
• 34:17
  Speaker: Craft beer started it, maybe, but eventually that shifted.
• 34:23
  Speaker: The intentional crafting of
• 34:26
  Speaker: things has even shifted the the
• 34:30
  Speaker: economic markets of products and
• 34:32
  Speaker: things.
• 34:33
  Speaker: Look at places like Bespoke Post, right?
• 34:36
  Speaker: For about sixty bucks a month, they're going to send you
• 34:38
  Speaker: something that's quality.
• 34:40
  Speaker: And it's not like a shop, right?
• 34:42
  Speaker: They went out and they like
• 34:43
  Speaker: intentionally picked the items
• 34:45
  Speaker: that they would offer like a
• 34:46
  Speaker: mercantile.
• 34:47
  Speaker: And people flocked to that.
• 34:49
  Speaker: Uh, I've got a bag tag, small business and things too.
• 34:54
  Speaker: That's leather and, you know, leather embroidered.
• 34:58
  Speaker: And it says, this bag is not yours.
• 35:03
  Speaker: The best thing I've ever gotten from this post.
• 35:07
  Speaker: That's funny.
• 35:08
  Speaker: But so the that intention is there.
• 35:10
  Speaker: It's like they're serious and, and they'll give the attention
• 35:14
  Speaker: to what is relevant.
• 35:18
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 35:18
  Speaker: Um, another thing that comes to
• 35:20
  Speaker: mind related to that is okay, so
• 35:23
  Speaker: we as Masons are, are here to
• 35:24
  Speaker: promote temperance.
• 35:26
  Speaker: And again, I don't think we
• 35:27
  Speaker: internalize that as much as we
• 35:29
  Speaker: should.
• 35:29
  Speaker: Right.
• 35:30
  Speaker: That is one of the stoic virtues
• 35:31
  Speaker: is to apply temperance, uh, and
• 35:34
  Speaker: restraint and not just in
• 35:36
  Speaker: alcohol, but in all things in
• 35:39
  Speaker: life.
• 35:39
  Speaker: In fact, uh, a lot of the Stoics
• 35:42
  Speaker: talked a lot, a lot about
• 35:43
  Speaker: voluntary discomfort.
• 35:45
  Speaker: Right?
• 35:46
  Speaker: Just because you can eat three thousand calories a day doesn't
• 35:51
  Speaker: mean that you should.
• 35:52
  Speaker: Or you know what?
• 35:54
  Speaker: You can actually restraint.
• 35:56
  Speaker: Here's here's a case in point.
• 35:58
  Speaker: I choose to choose to have dairy right when the discomfort.
• 36:04
  Speaker: Well, well, so you guys know that, um, uh, one, one habit
• 36:09
  Speaker: that I do is I only eat ice cream on a full moon.
• 36:13
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 36:14
  Speaker: And pick that up from some YouTube video a long time ago.
• 36:17
  Speaker: And kids are like, hey, you
• 36:19
  Speaker: know, why aren't you getting ice
• 36:20
  Speaker: cream?
• 36:20
  Speaker: If I'm out with them, I'll buy them something.
• 36:22
  Speaker: But it's not a full moon, right?
• 36:25
  Speaker: The kids joke.
• 36:25
  Speaker: I'm wolfing out.
• 36:27
  Speaker: I'm where wolfing out.
• 36:28
  Speaker: But but that is a very small example of how I choose to
• 36:35
  Speaker: restrain myself, to use temperance as a tool to say,
• 36:41
  Speaker: I'll, I'll be able to get it later, but, but for right now, I
• 36:44
  Speaker: need to voluntarily cut something off to prove that to
• 36:48
  Speaker: myself, that I can do it, that, you know, whether it's putting a
• 36:52
  Speaker: timer on your phone that, that, you know, turns off your phone
• 36:56
  Speaker: at a certain time, right?
• 36:57
  Speaker: All these little things that we do, um, to help show some
• 37:01
  Speaker: restraint because that's all we're trying to do, right?
• 37:04
  Speaker: We're good men, you know, um, making them better.
• 37:08
  Speaker: And the goal is to do this
• 37:09
  Speaker: through actual practical
• 37:12
  Speaker: implementations of, of
• 37:14
  Speaker: restraint.
• 37:14
  Speaker: And that's how we break.
• 37:16
  Speaker: That's how we break the curse of what our brains are being
• 37:18
  Speaker: trained for, whether we want, uh, case in point too, I was,
• 37:22
  Speaker: um, I was, I think it was probably a TikTok actually was,
• 37:27
  Speaker: um, that they were talking about how some of these shows, uh,
• 37:31
  Speaker: modern TV shows or Netflix shows, if you listen to the
• 37:37
  Speaker: dialogue, a lot of the act, the, the dialogue in these shows are,
• 37:42
  Speaker: um, they're saying the internal monologue out loud, like it's
• 37:47
  Speaker: really dumbing down the plot.
• 37:49
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 37:50
  Speaker: And and they say it a couple times to reinforce it.
• 37:53
  Speaker: And I saw an interview with,
• 37:55
  Speaker: with some, some writers and they
• 37:57
  Speaker: said that we have to do that now
• 37:58
  Speaker: because most people watching the
• 38:00
  Speaker: shows on Netflix have one of
• 38:02
  Speaker: these in their hand and they're
• 38:04
  Speaker: multitasking.
• 38:05
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 38:05
  Speaker: They're not looking at the screen.
• 38:06
  Speaker: They're not looking at subtext and context.
• 38:08
  Speaker: They're looking at, they're listening.
• 38:10
  Speaker: And they, that's how they, they get the show.
• 38:12
  Speaker: And that's why shows like and or on Disney Plus.
• 38:17
  Speaker: Right.
• 38:18
  Speaker: There's so much subtext that goes on.
• 38:20
  Speaker: There's so much double entendres.
• 38:22
  Speaker: And it's, it's too smart of a show because you have to watch
• 38:26
  Speaker: it a couple times to go, oh, that's, that's what she was
• 38:29
  Speaker: really saying the whole time.
• 38:31
  Speaker: Um, but that's rare and it's
• 38:33
  Speaker: getting more and more rare all
• 38:34
  Speaker: the time.
• 38:35
  Speaker: So yeah, we have to break ourselves from that curse.
• 38:40
  Speaker: Um, because even if we're not
• 38:43
  Speaker: digitally native or, or screen
• 38:46
  Speaker: native, We are continually
• 38:48
  Speaker: training ourselves was pretty
• 38:51
  Speaker: good though.
• 38:52
  Speaker: Oh, it's so good.
• 38:53
  Speaker: Oh, I haven't watched it.
• 38:54
  Speaker: I heard somebody say the the some.
• 38:58
  Speaker: It was like a news article or whatever, you know, variety or
• 39:00
  Speaker: somebody, but not variety.
• 39:02
  Speaker: They, they said, uh, uh, Nicolas
• 39:05
  Speaker: Cage is yes, the worst part of
• 39:09
  Speaker: Spider-Man noir.
• 39:11
  Speaker: And, and then the first comment that had like friggin ten zero
• 39:16
  Speaker: zero zero pluses was Nicolas Cage being the best part of
• 39:22
  Speaker: something is awesome.
• 39:25
  Speaker: Nicolas Cage being the worst part of something is epic.
• 39:31
  Speaker: Yes.
• 39:32
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 39:33
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 39:34
  Speaker: He's good.
• 39:35
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 39:39
  Speaker: Um, so if we are taking good men
• 39:41
  Speaker: and making them better and
• 39:42
  Speaker: trying to apply this Voluntary
• 39:45
  Speaker: discomfort.
• 39:46
  Speaker: I think that is an opportunity for masonry to do just that, to
• 39:50
  Speaker: say, hey, first thing I, I was I learned in masonry was patience.
• 39:55
  Speaker: Like I've submitted my application.
• 39:57
  Speaker: Why do I have to wait a month to get voted in?
• 39:59
  Speaker: Right.
• 39:59
  Speaker: Um, and then the mentorship, the
• 40:02
  Speaker: catechisms, the time between
• 40:04
  Speaker: degrees, those are all perfect
• 40:07
  Speaker: opportunities to teach young
• 40:10
  Speaker: Masons and that there's not an
• 40:12
  Speaker: age thing.
• 40:12
  Speaker: It's just, you know, new to masonry to teach them that this
• 40:17
  Speaker: is not a rush job.
• 40:20
  Speaker: This is not instant gratification.
• 40:22
  Speaker: This is a lifelong journey.
• 40:27
  Speaker: Agree or disagree?
• 40:30
  Speaker: I got a thumbs up from Joe.
• 40:31
  Speaker: That's good.
• 40:32
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 40:34
  Speaker: No, sorry.
• 40:34
  Speaker: I really was paying attention.
• 40:36
  Speaker: The stupid AC in this room kicks on, and it's.
• 40:39
  Speaker: It sounds like Hiroshima when it starts, and it's like.
• 40:45
  Speaker: How do you know?
• 40:46
  Speaker: Sounds like.
• 40:47
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:49
  Speaker: Give me a little.
• 40:50
  Speaker: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, buddy.
• 40:53
  Speaker: So I. I have to say, one of the
• 40:56
  Speaker: documents that I shared with the
• 40:59
  Speaker: the brothers in this, uh, show
• 41:02
  Speaker: and something that I certainly
• 41:03
  Speaker: will drop in the knights and
• 41:05
  Speaker: Squires.
• 41:06
  Speaker: Um, uh, the Knights and Squires, uh, Facebook group is a document
• 41:13
  Speaker: that was released and it's called the Degree Rituals of the
• 41:17
  Speaker: Supreme Council, thirty third degree ancient and accepted
• 41:20
  Speaker: Scottish rite for the Northern Masonic jurisdiction, United
• 41:23
  Speaker: States of America.
• 41:24
  Speaker: And this is by C DeForest Trexler, thirty third degree.
• 41:27
  Speaker: Uh, this was published in two thousand and eight, and it was
• 41:30
  Speaker: on their website.
• 41:32
  Speaker: Uh, you could just download it.
• 41:34
  Speaker: And it is really, uh, it
• 41:37
  Speaker: comprises a foreword, a preface,
• 41:39
  Speaker: a, uh, an argument for revision,
• 41:42
  Speaker: uh, in which they talk about the
• 41:44
  Speaker: Pike ritual and how the southern
• 41:45
  Speaker: jurisdiction was like, yo, I
• 41:47
  Speaker: can't believe the North is
• 41:48
  Speaker: changing stuff.
• 41:49
  Speaker: But the southern jurisdiction also created the, uh, you know,
• 41:53
  Speaker: standardized Pike ritual, which was more abbreviated.
• 41:56
  Speaker: Uh, they talk about degree realignment, matters of style,
• 42:00
  Speaker: and all of these things.
• 42:02
  Speaker: And it talks about each of the degrees, but it's not about what
• 42:04
  Speaker: the degrees convey so much.
• 42:07
  Speaker: It is, is it about their history?
• 42:09
  Speaker: And if for, for the folks who are not in the Facebook group, I
• 42:13
  Speaker: will give you one thing that I think is when I first read it, I
• 42:17
  Speaker: thought I was so upset.
• 42:21
  Speaker: I just thought, how, how dare
• 42:23
  Speaker: they like lump everybody into a
• 42:25
  Speaker: group.
• 42:27
  Speaker: So techniques and technology is
• 42:30
  Speaker: is the section and it's on page
• 42:32
  Speaker: thirteen and just the secondary
• 42:36
  Speaker: um, paragraph says a video
• 42:39
  Speaker: recording of degree rituals, was
• 42:42
  Speaker: first sanctioned by the Supreme
• 42:43
  Speaker: Council in nineteen eighty six,
• 42:46
  Speaker: subject to specified conditions
• 42:48
  Speaker: for the limited purpose of
• 42:49
  Speaker: training, critique and
• 42:50
  Speaker: evaluation.
• 42:52
  Speaker: In two thousand and three, the Supreme Council discontinued
• 42:55
  Speaker: publication of the degree rituals in printed book form, a
• 42:58
  Speaker: practice that dated back to at least eighteen seventy.
• 43:02
  Speaker: Henceforth, all the degree rituals were recorded on a
• 43:06
  Speaker: single computer disk.
• 43:08
  Speaker: An updated copy, which is distributed to each valley
• 43:11
  Speaker: manually so that they're talking about, uh, just this, the way
• 43:18
  Speaker: they present the degrees and when they go into the video.
• 43:23
  Speaker: And then just before this DRM, that ish.
• 43:26
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 43:28
  Speaker: So this is the part that sticks out to me.
• 43:30
  Speaker: Audiences of the twentieth
• 43:31
  Speaker: century also were accustomed to
• 43:33
  Speaker: lengthy.
• 43:34
  Speaker: So this is the nineteen the
• 43:35
  Speaker: nineteen oh one to two thousand
• 43:38
  Speaker: or nineteen.
• 43:38
  Speaker: We know what the twentieth century is.
• 43:40
  Speaker: Some people don't.
• 43:41
  Speaker: Anyway, uh, all accustomed to lengthy, uh, theatrical
• 43:46
  Speaker: performances featuring long monologues like this one.
• 43:50
  Speaker: In contrast, contemporary
• 43:52
  Speaker: audience audiences conditioned
• 43:55
  Speaker: no doubt by modern media, expect
• 43:57
  Speaker: and tolerate only much shorter
• 44:00
  Speaker: presentations in which thoughts
• 44:02
  Speaker: are communicated in brief
• 44:03
  Speaker: exchanges of interactive
• 44:04
  Speaker: dialogue in the nature of
• 44:06
  Speaker: everyday conversation.
• 44:08
  Speaker: In other words, the message of the degree ritual must be
• 44:11
  Speaker: communicated within a shorter audience attention span.
• 44:15
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 44:16
  Speaker: And when I first read that, I
• 44:17
  Speaker: was like, whop, whop, get out of
• 44:19
  Speaker: here.
• 44:20
  Speaker: I'll take the hour long, uh,
• 44:23
  Speaker: thirty second degree southern
• 44:24
  Speaker: jurisdiction.
• 44:27
  Speaker: Royal secret lecture any day
• 44:29
  Speaker: over a simple play that's put
• 44:33
  Speaker: on.
• 44:33
  Speaker: And I'm supposed to get something out of it, You know,
• 44:36
  Speaker: as you were talking about that and I mentioned this to y'all
• 44:40
  Speaker: before, um, you know, I witnessed the exact opposite
• 44:45
  Speaker: experience my first time, my only time, uh, going to Guthrie,
• 44:48
  Speaker: Oklahoma to view the degrees.
• 44:52
  Speaker: Right.
• 44:52
  Speaker: So in Guthrie, in that Scottish
• 44:54
  Speaker: Rite Valley, they do all twenty
• 44:55
  Speaker: nine degrees.
• 44:56
  Speaker: Um, there were people that traveled way far.
• 45:00
  Speaker: There were people from, um, Washington, the state, from
• 45:04
  Speaker: Alaska, uh, from Hawaii that came to this reunion to
• 45:08
  Speaker: literally participate and watch all twenty nine degrees.
• 45:12
  Speaker: And I'm like, everything Robert said is kind of crap because you
• 45:16
  Speaker: know, it, it's, it's being played out differently.
• 45:19
  Speaker: You've got guys that are longing for it or, and I know Jason
• 45:22
  Speaker: mentions this a lot.
• 45:24
  Speaker: Um, you get these watered down degree experiences and it only
• 45:27
  Speaker: compounds your, your boredom with masonry, you know?
• 45:32
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 45:34
  Speaker: Another Scottish Rite, Mason.
• 45:36
  Speaker: Because when I get the degrees, I want it done right.
• 45:39
  Speaker: Then you can look.
• 45:41
  Speaker: Valere Saint Louis I think is fantastic.
• 45:44
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 45:44
  Speaker: Uh, Guthrie is awesome.
• 45:46
  Speaker: Virginia.
• 45:47
  Speaker: Uh, I'm not a Virginia Mason or anything, so I just, you know,
• 45:51
  Speaker: I, I have a weird.
• 45:53
  Speaker: I heard something weird.
• 45:55
  Speaker: I heard that so many people from Virginia went to Guthrie that
• 46:03
  Speaker: they now banned the practice of a Virginia Mason going outside
• 46:07
  Speaker: the jurisdiction to receive Scottish Rite degrees.
• 46:09
  Speaker: Is that is there truth to that?
• 46:11
  Speaker: I don't know, there's I there's
• 46:13
  Speaker: I can't speak to that that
• 46:15
  Speaker: rumor, but there is no ban per
• 46:18
  Speaker: se, I think that impacted
• 46:21
  Speaker: certain valleys.
• 46:22
  Speaker: And I think the conversation was
• 46:24
  Speaker: had, but I've seen nothing
• 46:25
  Speaker: official.
• 46:26
  Speaker: Um, but see, there you go.
• 46:30
  Speaker: If, if that's a thing, Then why don't you do the cool thing?
• 46:34
  Speaker: What's the thing?
• 46:34
  Speaker: Yes.
• 46:35
  Speaker: No no no no, we have to ban the thing because that'll fix it.
• 46:39
  Speaker: Yeah, right.
• 46:41
  Speaker: Don't try to change.
• 46:43
  Speaker: Ban it.
• 46:44
  Speaker: Just ban.
• 46:45
  Speaker: Not.
• 46:45
  Speaker: Don't be the change.
• 46:46
  Speaker: Change the be.
• 46:47
  Speaker: Change the be.
• 46:49
  Speaker: Yeah!
• 46:50
  Speaker: Damn.
• 46:51
  Speaker: Yeah!
• 46:52
  Speaker: Ah!
• 46:53
  Speaker: My attention span is running out.
• 46:55
  Speaker: Let me change.
• 46:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 46:58
  Speaker: I don't want to change anymore.
• 47:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 47:02
  Speaker: And so, um, I think another, another point to, to be made
• 47:06
  Speaker: back to, um, the, the quote you had earlier, Robert, about the
• 47:12
  Speaker: instant validity filters or however you, you put that.
• 47:17
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 47:19
  Speaker: There is an opportunity in Freemasonry to cut out the, the
• 47:24
  Speaker: business part, right?
• 47:26
  Speaker: The administrative part, the
• 47:27
  Speaker: talking about the light bulbs
• 47:28
  Speaker: and electricity and, and this
• 47:30
  Speaker: and that.
• 47:31
  Speaker: The jurisdictions.
• 47:32
  Speaker: Some jurisdictions have the
• 47:33
  Speaker: luxury of dispensing with the
• 47:36
  Speaker: minutes.
• 47:36
  Speaker: Some jurisdictions have the luxury of, uh, putting business
• 47:42
  Speaker: as a separate meeting and just presenting a report or printing
• 47:45
  Speaker: out a report and having it passed around the lodge for, uh,
• 47:49
  Speaker: you know, for a verbal vote.
• 47:51
  Speaker: So those are Virginia.
• 47:54
  Speaker: The minutes can be dispensed with.
• 47:59
  Speaker: By the Grand Master, but only by the Grand Master.
• 48:04
  Speaker: You know, you could take the Neil deGrasse Tyson route when
• 48:06
  Speaker: he talks about death.
• 48:09
  Speaker: And he says, uh.
• 48:10
  Speaker: So it replaced death with the minutes.
• 48:12
  Speaker: It's not that we have to die.
• 48:15
  Speaker: We get to die.
• 48:17
  Speaker: We get to read the minutes.
• 48:21
  Speaker: Though that that does remind me of a quote.
• 48:23
  Speaker: Um, and so this was a brother
• 48:27
  Speaker: was telling me the output of a
• 48:30
  Speaker: conversation that he had at his
• 48:31
  Speaker: lodge where someone had
• 48:34
  Speaker: mentioned, hey, what if we got
• 48:36
  Speaker: rid of just all this
• 48:39
  Speaker: administrative stuff?
• 48:41
  Speaker: To which the past masters in his lodge said, but then what would
• 48:45
  Speaker: we do in lodge?
• 48:49
  Speaker: Dead serious.
• 48:49
  Speaker: One hundred percent serious.
• 48:51
  Speaker: Wow.
• 48:51
  Speaker: And so he's relating this story to me as like, oh my gosh, this
• 48:55
  Speaker: is how out of touch this particular lodge was because
• 49:00
  Speaker: that was masonry for them.
• 49:05
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 49:05
  Speaker: It gets back to what I was talking about earlier, like your
• 49:08
  Speaker: older generations are.
• 49:10
  Speaker: And I'm not, I'm trying not to make a generalization, but in
• 49:13
  Speaker: general, they just they're okay with how a Masonic meeting goes,
• 49:20
  Speaker: you know what I mean?
• 49:21
  Speaker: They.
• 49:21
  Speaker: And that's why people will stand
• 49:23
  Speaker: up and say, what do you mean you
• 49:24
  Speaker: can't?
• 49:24
  Speaker: We have to read the minutes.
• 49:25
  Speaker: We just.
• 49:25
  Speaker: We've been doing that for fifty years and they're absolutely
• 49:29
  Speaker: okay with it.
• 49:29
  Speaker: So they're not doing it to be
• 49:31
  Speaker: difficult with you for the most
• 49:32
  Speaker: part.
• 49:32
  Speaker: That is the tradition that they were born in and lived in and
• 49:36
  Speaker: are going to die in, you know?
• 49:38
  Speaker: So it's hard to change that.
• 49:41
  Speaker: You know, it's hard to change
• 49:42
  Speaker: that mindset, but there's
• 49:45
  Speaker: always.
• 49:47
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 49:47
  Speaker: So could you imagine if, um, like Jason said, everything was
• 49:53
  Speaker: done with intention and everyone knew what that meant and that
• 49:58
  Speaker: education had a top priority in every lodge and discussions on
• 50:04
  Speaker: how we can help support each other and grow each other was a
• 50:07
  Speaker: top priority in every lodge.
• 50:10
  Speaker: Then you get to emulate the
• 50:12
  Speaker: Catholic model, providing value,
• 50:15
  Speaker: providing a sacred space that is
• 50:17
  Speaker: offline, that is analog, that
• 50:21
  Speaker: gives people the opportunity to
• 50:23
  Speaker: unplug.
• 50:26
  Speaker: And just supports the that that growth that way.
• 50:31
  Speaker: That could be one way that we
• 50:32
  Speaker: could help to be a, um, an oasis
• 50:37
  Speaker: in this, uh, this flood of
• 50:40
  Speaker: instant gratification.
• 50:42
  Speaker: How about you leave your phones in the cubby with the Tyler?
• 50:45
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 50:45
  Speaker: Not a bad idea.
• 50:47
  Speaker: Right.
• 50:47
  Speaker: Well, here's the thing.
• 50:51
  Speaker: I'm busy.
• 50:53
  Speaker: If you're like, are you just going to be a curmudgeon and be
• 50:57
  Speaker: like, well, if you refuse to take your phone and leave it in
• 50:59
  Speaker: the cubby, um, you are, you're signaling to me that you're not
• 51:05
  Speaker: really wanting to be here, so you should just leave.
• 51:07
  Speaker: It's an invitation.
• 51:10
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 51:11
  Speaker: Oops.
• 51:11
  Speaker: Strongly recommended email.
• 51:13
  Speaker: It's an invitation for you to
• 51:16
  Speaker: leave the world outside and come
• 51:18
  Speaker: do something truly sacred
• 51:19
  Speaker: inside.
• 51:20
  Speaker: MM. I'm thinking back to these, uh, comedians who are now doing
• 51:26
  Speaker: their, their bagging your cell phones before you go in.
• 51:30
  Speaker: Um, partly that's due to, you
• 51:32
  Speaker: know, they're testing new
• 51:33
  Speaker: material and they don't want,
• 51:34
  Speaker: you know, that being recorded
• 51:35
  Speaker: and shared on the internet when
• 51:36
  Speaker: their jokes haven't been fully
• 51:37
  Speaker: polished.
• 51:38
  Speaker: But it's also to be, you know, a
• 51:41
  Speaker: like, hey, just look at me
• 51:43
  Speaker: through your eyes, not through
• 51:45
  Speaker: your screen.
• 51:46
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 51:46
  Speaker: Right.
• 51:47
  Speaker: How many concerts have you seen the concert?
• 51:49
  Speaker: Right.
• 51:50
  Speaker: Everyone's just.
• 51:50
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 51:53
  Speaker: Maynard will get mad.
• 51:57
  Speaker: Yes.
• 52:00
  Speaker: All right, well, then let's get to wrapping things up.
• 52:04
  Speaker: Final thoughts and all of that.
• 52:05
  Speaker: I don't have a good final question for today.
• 52:07
  Speaker: So we'll just hand it over to Robert the Grayskull Johnson to
• 52:14
  Speaker: bring us home.
• 52:16
  Speaker: Uh. I just feel like if Freemasonry is going to thrive.
• 52:22
  Speaker: Um, our presentation has to sort of evolve.
• 52:25
  Speaker: And what I mean by that is it doesn't have to evolve away from
• 52:27
  Speaker: what we do.
• 52:28
  Speaker: I think it should just be more intentional.
• 52:30
  Speaker: As we've discussed, uh, degree
• 52:32
  Speaker: should be a performance, not a
• 52:34
  Speaker: recital.
• 52:35
  Speaker: We've talked about that ad nauseam.
• 52:37
  Speaker: Uh, we have to bridge the gap by
• 52:39
  Speaker: becoming, uh, you know,
• 52:41
  Speaker: radically so.
• 52:43
  Speaker: Masonry is already what we would consider radically inclusive.
• 52:47
  Speaker: Uh, if we look at the, uh, some, some organizations in the world
• 52:50
  Speaker: today, um, it is inclusive of different cultures and religions
• 52:57
  Speaker: and all these things.
• 52:59
  Speaker: But you know, what I'm wondering is, are we not inclusive of, uh,
• 53:03
  Speaker: you know, like, I think we've, we've cut through the, the ice
• 53:06
  Speaker: here, we've said that maybe the issue isn't attention spans, but
• 53:10
  Speaker: rather the modicum of what's being done or conveyed or how
• 53:14
  Speaker: it's being done.
• 53:16
  Speaker: And so I think we're inclusive of everything else.
• 53:19
  Speaker: Masonry shouldn't just be about memorizing, you know, monolithic
• 53:22
  Speaker: blocks of text, right?
• 53:24
  Speaker: So we should sort of have a way to engage, uh, generations and
• 53:31
  Speaker: not just generations.
• 53:32
  Speaker: People learn differently.
• 53:33
  Speaker: We all know this.
• 53:35
  Speaker: It's like the, the, the, the
• 53:36
  Speaker: ultimate irony, uh, if we look
• 53:39
  Speaker: at what, uh, young people are,
• 53:41
  Speaker: uh, they're actually looking for
• 53:43
  Speaker: outside of the lodge, uh,
• 53:46
  Speaker: they're running toward again,
• 53:49
  Speaker: what you've spoken of
• 53:50
  Speaker: intentionality.
• 53:51
  Speaker: They're rejecting all of these things that are like fast
• 53:54
  Speaker: fashion and cheap junk.
• 53:56
  Speaker: And so we have the thing that
• 53:57
  Speaker: they want, but we've got so
• 54:00
  Speaker: bored with it, we've like sped
• 54:02
  Speaker: it up because we think, you
• 54:04
  Speaker: know, the man of the sixties and
• 54:05
  Speaker: 70s who's shaving on the way to
• 54:07
  Speaker: work, you know, now, now you've
• 54:10
  Speaker: got people who are like using a
• 54:13
  Speaker: straight razor, taking their
• 54:14
  Speaker: time.
• 54:15
  Speaker: Like all of these things.
• 54:17
  Speaker: There's intention in all of this stuff.
• 54:19
  Speaker: And I think that's the real takeaway.
• 54:21
  Speaker: Freemasonry has exactly what everybody's striving for.
• 54:24
  Speaker: Uh, but we're going to totally miss them if if we don't change
• 54:28
  Speaker: how we present the material.
• 54:30
  Speaker: I think one thing I am going to
• 54:31
  Speaker: do is when this episode is done,
• 54:34
  Speaker: I'm going to take the
• 54:35
  Speaker: transcript.
• 54:36
  Speaker: I'm going to throw it into
• 54:37
  Speaker: notebook LM and say, make me a
• 54:40
  Speaker: five minute presentation on what
• 54:41
  Speaker: we talked about, and I'll post
• 54:43
  Speaker: that in the Knights and Squires
• 54:44
  Speaker: group too.
• 54:45
  Speaker: Oh, and we'll see what it comes up with.
• 54:47
  Speaker: It'll be a little like flag on
• 54:48
  Speaker: there that it's notebook LM or
• 54:50
  Speaker: something, but I'll be curious
• 54:51
  Speaker: to see what it comes up with
• 54:53
  Speaker: because those types of tools,
• 54:56
  Speaker: uh, they're not shortcuts,
• 55:00
  Speaker: right?
• 55:00
  Speaker: They are, uh, alternative ways of presenting information.
• 55:04
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 55:05
  Speaker: To, to meet the needs of the person who needs it.
• 55:08
  Speaker: Right.
• 55:08
  Speaker: So anyway, I said a whole bunch.
• 55:11
  Speaker: Sorry.
• 55:11
  Speaker: I like it.
• 55:12
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 55:13
  Speaker: Thanks, Robert.
• 55:15
  Speaker: Thanks, Robert.
• 55:17
  Speaker: All right.
• 55:18
  Speaker: Boston.
• 55:18
  Speaker: Joe.
• 55:19
  Speaker: Boston.
• 55:19
  Speaker: Joe.
• 55:20
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 55:21
  Speaker: Um, no, this is great.
• 55:22
  Speaker: I really love talking about this topic tonight.
• 55:25
  Speaker: Um, and I think maybe the
• 55:29
  Speaker: question for us is not whether
• 55:32
  Speaker: you're a modern person seeking
• 55:36
  Speaker: masonry has the attention span
• 55:38
  Speaker: for masonry.
• 55:38
  Speaker: I don't I don't think that's right.
• 55:39
  Speaker: Is maybe the real question is whether masonry is still worthy
• 55:43
  Speaker: enough to demand the attention of those who seek it.
• 55:47
  Speaker: Right.
• 55:47
  Speaker: You know, we've talked so much
• 55:49
  Speaker: tonight about how the world
• 55:50
  Speaker: pulls us in all these different
• 55:52
  Speaker: directions, right?
• 55:52
  Speaker: It teaches us to scroll, to skim
• 55:55
  Speaker: through things, to react and
• 55:56
  Speaker: move on.
• 55:57
  Speaker: Um, masonry actually asks you
• 56:00
  Speaker: to, to stop, um, to listen, to
• 56:06
  Speaker: reflect, to contemplate, to sit
• 56:08
  Speaker: with symbols, to live
• 56:10
  Speaker: obligations and to search for
• 56:13
  Speaker: truths that don't reveal
• 56:15
  Speaker: themselves all at once, you
• 56:16
  Speaker: know?
• 56:16
  Speaker: Not after a twenty eight minute episode.
• 56:19
  Speaker: So that's not boring.
• 56:21
  Speaker: That is the work that we're asked to do.
• 56:24
  Speaker: Right.
• 56:24
  Speaker: But on the other side, we can't
• 56:26
  Speaker: waste the attention of our
• 56:27
  Speaker: brothers and blame them for
• 56:29
  Speaker: drifting.
• 56:30
  Speaker: Right?
• 56:30
  Speaker: If we ask men to to be present,
• 56:33
  Speaker: then Lodge has to offer
• 56:34
  Speaker: something meaningful and
• 56:36
  Speaker: purposeful and, dare I say,
• 56:39
  Speaker: alive.
• 56:40
  Speaker: You know, um, if the lodge just becomes another meeting, men are
• 56:44
  Speaker: going to treat it like one.
• 56:45
  Speaker: And they have for decades, you know.
• 56:46
  Speaker: But if a lodge draws a man back
• 56:48
  Speaker: into thinking about his
• 56:50
  Speaker: character, thinking about those
• 56:51
  Speaker: around him, thinking about his
• 56:53
  Speaker: obligations, about his
• 56:54
  Speaker: relationship to the divine, then
• 56:57
  Speaker: I think masonry still has the
• 56:58
  Speaker: power to, to transform us and to
• 57:00
  Speaker: change us.
• 57:01
  Speaker: Um, you know, uh, goes back to everybody here.
• 57:05
  Speaker: We've, we've had him on the show, um, Sean Bradshaw past
• 57:08
  Speaker: grand master in North Carolina.
• 57:10
  Speaker: You know, I love his, elevator
• 57:12
  Speaker: speech when it comes to what
• 57:13
  Speaker: masonry is.
• 57:14
  Speaker: And he calls it the science of transformation.
• 57:16
  Speaker: I think that is absolutely apt and super beautiful.
• 57:20
  Speaker: But, you know, I think my takeaway for tonight is this is
• 57:24
  Speaker: the world is constantly fighting for our attention.
• 57:28
  Speaker: Um, and I think that masonry should be fighting for our
• 57:33
  Speaker: transformation and allowing us to, to do that.
• 57:36
  Speaker: Ooh, I like it.
• 57:39
  Speaker: Yeah, I approve Jason.
• 57:44
  Speaker: Um, I'd like to double down on, on Joe's sentiments.
• 57:50
  Speaker: I think masonry needs to do the hard work of not trying to
• 57:57
  Speaker: conform to the rest of the world and the, the experience the rest
• 58:05
  Speaker: of the world provides, but to transcend the rest of the world
• 58:11
  Speaker: and the experience it provides.
• 58:14
  Speaker: Um, if we think that masonry
• 58:18
  Speaker: offers something uniquely
• 58:21
  Speaker: valuable in our initiating
• 58:25
  Speaker: experience, in our brotherhood
• 58:27
  Speaker: and in how we frame our
• 58:30
  Speaker: relationship with the divine,
• 58:34
  Speaker: then.
• 58:38
  Speaker: I think we double down on that and.
• 58:45
  Speaker: We do it in a way that is
• 58:47
  Speaker: authentic and high quality and,
• 58:53
  Speaker: um.
• 58:58
  Speaker: Doesn't cheapen or or.
• 59:05
  Speaker: Doesn't try to.
• 59:09
  Speaker: Make the experience, you know, sound bite or real sized.
• 59:16
  Speaker: Um, I think there's beauty in the intentionality.
• 59:18
  Speaker: I think there's beauty in the ritual.
• 59:21
  Speaker: I think we need to double down on all of that and actually
• 59:24
  Speaker: explain why it's important.
• 59:27
  Speaker: Like, again, the opening and
• 59:30
  Speaker: closing of the lodge example,
• 59:32
  Speaker: the the true secret of
• 59:35
  Speaker: Freemasonry being the initiatic
• 59:37
  Speaker: experience that binds us all
• 59:39
  Speaker: together.
• 59:39
  Speaker: Right?
• 59:39
  Speaker: Like these are these are all
• 59:42
  Speaker: things that Freemasonry has, has
• 59:45
  Speaker: kind of moved away from, you
• 59:49
  Speaker: know, in the post World War two
• 59:52
  Speaker: era boom.
• 59:54
  Speaker: Um, I think we have an opportunity to get back to the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker: truly transformational life and spiritual, life changing
• 1:00:08
  Speaker: organization that we have.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker: Um, but it's going to take work and it's not as easy as just
• 1:00:17
  Speaker: trying to push as many members through the gates as possible.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker: It's a numbers game.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker: I gotta bump up those, those numbers.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker: There's a rookie numbers.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker: Numbers.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker: Rookie numbers are the ones who
• 1:00:30
  Speaker: are leaving and never coming
• 1:00:31
  Speaker: back.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker: That is true.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker: Well said.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker: Alright.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker: Um. Let's see.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker: As for me, final thoughts on this.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker: Another thing I've been fascinated with in this part of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker: retreat from the world and focus is like the difference between
• 1:00:50
  Speaker: multitasking that we all are terrible at, even though we
• 1:00:53
  Speaker: think we can do it, we literally can't do it.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker: Our brains are not wired to multitask versus deep work where
• 1:00:59
  Speaker: you're actually focused, you're in the flow state, you're in the
• 1:01:03
  Speaker: zone, you're getting work done.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker: Time seems to slow down.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker: That's what we're.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker: Actually trying to be targeting, going, going forward.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker: And it's not easy, especially
• 1:01:15
  Speaker: when we talked about in the
• 1:01:16
  Speaker: beginning about, well, what is
• 1:01:18
  Speaker: our attention span or, or we
• 1:01:20
  Speaker: heard in an episode a couple
• 1:01:22
  Speaker: weeks ago where that some people
• 1:01:24
  Speaker: would rather hit a button that
• 1:01:26
  Speaker: shocks them instead of be alone
• 1:01:29
  Speaker: with their thoughts for fifteen
• 1:01:30
  Speaker: minutes.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker: Right.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker: So, um, it, it takes effort.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker: It takes time to build it like you're building a muscle.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker: Um, but that's what masonry can
• 1:01:44
  Speaker: offer is a way to break free
• 1:01:46
  Speaker: from social norms, societal
• 1:01:48
  Speaker: norms of, of the just swimming
• 1:01:51
  Speaker: in information.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker: Um, I like the words we, we use today about being authentic or
• 1:01:57
  Speaker: intentionality, the focus.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker: And I guess the, The way I'll
• 1:02:03
  Speaker: summarize this part two is it's
• 1:02:07
  Speaker: the difference between like fast
• 1:02:08
  Speaker: food masonry and savoring
• 1:02:11
  Speaker: masonry.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker: Right.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker: That's what we can offer.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker: We can offer a chance to savor
• 1:02:16
  Speaker: that experience, to sit, to be,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker: to be present, to not rush it,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker: to enjoy it, to do it with
• 1:02:23
  Speaker: focus.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker: Do it with intentionality so
• 1:02:26
  Speaker: that we become transformed at
• 1:02:28
  Speaker: the end.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker: So hopefully you guys will take that as an opportunity to
• 1:02:34
  Speaker: observe masonry in your own special way so we can get past
• 1:02:38
  Speaker: those short attention spans.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker: With that, I want to thank you all very much for watching and
• 1:02:43
  Speaker: keep searching for more light.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker: Have a good night.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker: Wow.