Torence
2009-06-28 23:53:26 UTC
As our group well knows, FreeMasonry has been in business now for a
few hundred years. In that time millions of other business, profit,
non-profit, and fraternal, came about and were delivered to the world,
only to wane and mildew and end up, to put it mildly, into the trash
can of oblivion. Something keeps us relevant particularly to the
Laboring Age men who operate our local lodges. Many of us lucky ones
are in business elsewhere and cannot help but to apply our learning
from this little club, to the experiences and purposes in those places
that clothe us and feed our families.
Thirty years ago, when I started out in business, companies that
are recognized under the law as entities called inc. or ltd only
had a singular purpose, to proceed in the interest of the
stakeholders within the limits of the law. During the last half of
the 20th Century business learned, often too late, that if they expect
to be treated as a personality that, like a person, that function
would make for an awful one and is insufficient. The public, the
courts, the executive and lastly the legislature, who in America are
supposedly the only parties that can engage themselves in the details
of commerce and be the overseers, expect companies to also recognize
that there is a moral imperative to what they do.
The techniques and tools of business have been applied to
Freemasonry over the years often have mirrored trends in other fields.
During the 1950s for example, business hired executives from the
military who often put out a "mission statement." Most American Grand
Lodges actuated by a fear of Communism adopted or revised a
Declaration of Principles at that time. I have always found the one
used in Illinois to fall short. It talks more about whom FreeMasons
are not in the States rather than who we are.
If we were to devise an updated Declaration of Principles for the
Twenty-first century, what notions would you want represented
understanding, of course, that these thoughts should be similarly
applicable to business? What do you take from your lodge into work
with you?
Fraternally,
Torence Evans Ake
Senior Deacon Auburn Park No. 789 Crete, Illinois
PM Arcadia Lodge No. 1138, Lansing Illinois
few hundred years. In that time millions of other business, profit,
non-profit, and fraternal, came about and were delivered to the world,
only to wane and mildew and end up, to put it mildly, into the trash
can of oblivion. Something keeps us relevant particularly to the
Laboring Age men who operate our local lodges. Many of us lucky ones
are in business elsewhere and cannot help but to apply our learning
from this little club, to the experiences and purposes in those places
that clothe us and feed our families.
Thirty years ago, when I started out in business, companies that
are recognized under the law as entities called inc. or ltd only
had a singular purpose, to proceed in the interest of the
stakeholders within the limits of the law. During the last half of
the 20th Century business learned, often too late, that if they expect
to be treated as a personality that, like a person, that function
would make for an awful one and is insufficient. The public, the
courts, the executive and lastly the legislature, who in America are
supposedly the only parties that can engage themselves in the details
of commerce and be the overseers, expect companies to also recognize
that there is a moral imperative to what they do.
The techniques and tools of business have been applied to
Freemasonry over the years often have mirrored trends in other fields.
During the 1950s for example, business hired executives from the
military who often put out a "mission statement." Most American Grand
Lodges actuated by a fear of Communism adopted or revised a
Declaration of Principles at that time. I have always found the one
used in Illinois to fall short. It talks more about whom FreeMasons
are not in the States rather than who we are.
If we were to devise an updated Declaration of Principles for the
Twenty-first century, what notions would you want represented
understanding, of course, that these thoughts should be similarly
applicable to business? What do you take from your lodge into work
with you?
Fraternally,
Torence Evans Ake
Senior Deacon Auburn Park No. 789 Crete, Illinois
PM Arcadia Lodge No. 1138, Lansing Illinois