SCALING UP OR SCALING OUT

Our museums showcase what we were, remnants of a time when craftsmanship was still skills based. The intensity of that Jewish scholar Karl Marx was a reaction to industrialization. He was harshly criticized for suggesting the price society would pay for efficiency.  Today he is largely dismissed but for a time his influence was profound.  I mention Marx to bring attention to the truth about change- it comes with costs, calculated or not. With that in mind, am I wrong to think masonry has been wrestling with the costs of up scaling operations to an industrial scale?  Our history/legends tell a story of a less than 30 masons at a tavern deciding to organize into a larger organization to preserve the best parts and reduce vulnerability. Larger numbers meant we gave up one on one conversations.  Intimacy is not entirely lost when the crowd swells but it does move conversation to the club over drinks after a performance. Is it so hard to  imagine standard cirriculae being created for the first time to stabilize the 'masonic science'? But how to standardize without leaving too much behind?  One way was to speak to future generations in metaphor an symbol.  Leave the task of sorting through priorities to the intelligent mind of the future. In this framework, philosphy provided the precision necessary which history proves was a good assumption. Not much of a guess, really.  No one could predict the challenges of overseeing masons on a national and international scale. Who could have predicted the decline of the estates we experience in our secular environment, over cooked with advanced communication systems and surviellience. Despite the graveyard of failed models behind us, scholarship continues as do the essential philosophical agreements to disagree.  We have changed yet we are the same. Better educated, better informed, perhaps more confused, more alienated.  Simplifying the demands of life.