Bringing The Craft to the 21st Century

by Walter P. Benesch, MPS.

Preface

Originally this paper was to be a
satire. However, after many months of
meditation and consideration on the
topic, I have come to realize what is
presented should be given serious con-
sideration.

Those Masons who still believe the
Masonic myth that no man or no body
of men may make innovations in the
Craft must dismiss those thoughts as an
erroneous concept. A brief look at the
history of the ceremomes and rituals
will quickly prove that myth false. You
must therefore open your minds to the
new ideas presented here. Constructive
criticism, comments and intelligent de-
bate on this topic is welcomed. Personal
attacks, unconstructive criticism, grum-
bling and general negativity will not!

Others may greet these ideas with a
great deal of criticism. But before jump-
ing onto a negative frame of mind re-
member I too once thought the topic a
joke. No longer! We are about to come
to a new century and even a new mil-
lenium. All things must change or be-
come stagnant and die. The proposed
changes presented need careful con-
sideration.

Introduction

In the middle of the l9th century, the
Craft faced serious declines and almost
extinction in many areas of our country.
Many Lodges were still reeling from the
Morgan Affair. Something had to be
done to turn the Craft around . The
Brethren of the Scottish Rite introduced
the idea of putting on the degrees in
dramatic form, upon a stage. Elaborate
backdrops, modern gas lighting, and
special effects were introduced. The
Brethren were taking advantage of the
latest technological advances. Beautiful
costumes and regalia were included.
The results was a dramatic increase in
membership. Men soon heard about the
beauty and wondrous theater associated
with Masonry. They wanted to see what
was offered. Obviously the benefits
were not just for the Scottish Rite but
for the Blue Lodges too, since you must
be Master Masons to be a member of
the Scottish Rite. The changes did not
stop with effects of modern staging and
elaborate costumes reached into the
York Rite and even the Symbolic
Lodge. Many lodges instituted the use
of costumes and scenery. When electric-
ity was brought into the cities and coun-
ties in America, Masonry quickly re-
placed the old gas lighting with the new
incandescent lights. The Craft was
keeping pace with the new technologies.
Special lighting effects were added.
More and more dramatic renditions of
the degrees were introduced. Our num-
bers swelled.

The result of these innovations in the
body of Masonry are evident. Around
the country one can see many great and
beautiful Masonic structures which
were paid for by the Brethren who came
to the Craft to experience the beauty of
the degrees and showed there gratitude
with considerable contributions. The
rolls of the Craft continued to increase
throughout the first half of new century.
When W.W.I broke out, the Brethren
were seen in every aspect of the war
effort. In the 20's, the returning
Brethren continued to pour money into
the Craft as a form of gratitude for the
splendor and beauty as well the pro-
found experience they received. W.W.II
again saw the Masons in the forefront
of the war effort. The high point of
membership was reached with the re-
turning veterans and their interest
which continued for another decade.
However, that flocking to the Craft
soon cooled and now in many places has
slowed to a trickle. Thus we are ex-
periencing the graying of the Craft and
a doubtful future.

It is time to look again at the Craft
with critical eyes and to find new ways
and ideas which will convey the mean-
ing and beauty to those who no longer
seek out the Craft. No doubt, the Craft
will have to open its doors to all men, no
matter what color, race, or religion.
Likewise, the various Masonic Grand
Lodge will have to recognize each other
even if they don't necessarily believe the
same things nor have the same color of
members. But something more is
needed. We need to also look at the
wave of technological innovations with
society in the next century. In the past
technological advances in the Craft in-
creased our members. But look at a
technology we did not take advantage od
and that may have impacted the Craft in
a negative way. What was that tech-
nology? Photography!

Photo Realism, the Cinema
and the Decllne ot Masonry

In 1839 Fox Talbot invented the
camera. This invention forever changed
the way mankind viewed their world
But not until it was available to the
masses. The first cheap camera ap-
peared around 1888. However, it was
not until the beginnings of this century
that photography became a dominant
form for recording the event of this
world. The photograph became a
means of immediate testimony. The
photo represented a realism, a means to
capture experience.

Photojournalism offered a world in a
series of unrelated pictures. The past
and present were reduced to a set of
anecdotes. Life, death, heaven and
earth were reduced to a photo image.
The camera made reality manageable
and opaque. It denied the intercon-
nectedness and continuity of life and the
world. The mystic tie of all mankind
was reduced to a picture. For example
the photo became life itself. This was
vividly evident in the name of the first
mass-media magazine of this century
Life. The title only added to the confu-
sion. Are the pictures of life, or are they
life. The magazine answered the ques-
tion for us in it's first edition when
showing a new born child it announced
"life begins.." The replacement of
the photo for the experience of reality
has deprived us of both the once
metaphysical and mystical side of life.

The photographs took the place of in-
ternal reflection. The need for spiritual
advancement was replaced by a black
and white image and later a moving
image on a large screen. The photo re-
places memory. The photo is no longer
a picture, it is a fixed image of an event
It holds the image unchanging for as
long as the photo itself remains. But pic-
tures do not preserve meaning. The
photo offers an appearnce devoid of the
severed from all living experience. The
photos are images of strangers. The
photo records without discrimination
The Daumier cartoon of Nadar (an
early French photographer) in his bal-
loon with his hat flying off in the wind
while he is photographing the city of
Paris from the air holds a suggestive an-
swer as to what the camera has become.
The camera is the eye of God. But in the
hands of HUMANS?? ! ! ! ! !

What has been the impact? The
camera and its images have replaced
God. This has only increased with the
advent of moving pictures. As the cine-
matic realism and especial effects have
taken photography to new heights. The
photo, the motion picture (a direct out-
growth of the photo) is now colorized.
Special effects added. The new physical
and metaphysical reality is presented
daily in multimedia, multiplex cinemas.
The mystical search for meaning and
God is now replaced by a multimodal
media experience.

Do you doubt this last statement.
Look at religion and Masonry. The de-
cline of the traditional churches and
Masonry correspond directly with the
rise of colorized photojournalism, TV
and the cinema. Masonry can no longer
compete with the stark, cosmic and dra-
matic images of the silver screen. Can
we dramatically show a man die, soul
arise out of the body, show the confu-
sion often experienced at death only to
attempt to reach his remaining loved
one as in the movie Ghost? No, we can't.

The values and the relationship with
our spiritual source, to our ancestors,
even to deity are now reduced down to
a series of images or motion pictures.
Even death is shown as motion picture
reality not real life. Is there any wonder
that those who have lost touch with
values and the mystical side of their
own spiritual nature think nothing of
replicating the violence and murder
seen on the TV and motion picture
screens with no thought of consequence
or guilt? Photos are TRUTH. No need
to look behind them!

I am GOD! The perfect example of this
is the photo of the Vietnam Policeman
shooting a hand cuffed prisoner. The
moment of death is captured for ever.
The horror of the act etched in our
minds. The thoughtless cruelty of the
executioner evident, right? What the
photo doesn't convey is that the pris-
oner being killed was one of the greatest
terrorists in South Viet Nam. The one
being killed had killed countless times
including friends and family of the
policeman and countless Americans.
Yet the image has over taken the facts.
The image has made us a god without
context. This applies a hundred times
more for the motion picture. All judg-
ment is gone. The camera defines our
reality. Social change is now based on
images, not thought (think of the reac-
tions to the nightly news of such sights
as the African famine and the fall of the
Berlin Wall and a thousand other ex-
amples). Politicians know this well. The
photo-op has become a part of the
political genre. The image is the radical
weapon in posters, newspapers, pam-
phlets, news broadcasts, etc.

Here is the key to the fall of Masonry.
New technology was the savior of Ma-
sonry in the l9th Century through the
first half of this century has now become
its anchor. The sets, costumes, temples
and symbols no longer can hold the im-
agination and stimulate the mystic na-
ture of the man. Today's humans ex-
perience far more in a movie than any
ceremony or ritual can give him. The
image has become the reality. No longer
are the morals and symbols of Masonry
important in the context of the multi-
media blitz of Dolby sensurround
sound and special effects of the movie
theater.

This is not meant to be a judgment
against photography nor motion pic-
tures. It is just a statement of how they
can be perceived. If used properly they
can enhance both thought and memory
in a positive way. Photos are a form of
history. A relic from our past. As Berger
notes (page 61): "If the living take that
past upon themselves, if the past be-
comes an integral part of the process of
people making their own history, then
all photographs would acquire a living
context, they would continue to exist in
time, by holding arrested moments. "

Should Masonry then transform the
rituals and ceremonies into elaborate
movies with top name stars and multi-
million dollars of special effect? No. But
not for the reason most may consider.
Photos and movies are technologies in-
vented in the last century, and just per-
fected and utilized in this century. It is
too late to use them if we are thinking
about the next century.

What does the future hold? Will new
means of visualization and reality emer-
sion further impact the Craft? Can Ma-
sonry take advantage of evolving image
and symbolic representations as it did
in the last century? Can we tap into the
emerging technologies to improve the
Craft or are we just going to creep into
the sand and become as extinct as the
trilobite that covered the earth 400 mil-
lion years ago? Let us once again look
for the answer in the new technologies.

Virtual Reallty

Virtual Reality (VR) is the use of
computer generated graphics, motion,
sound to simulate an artificial world. In
the VR world the user can move
through various areas and places. They
experience mukiple sensory through
sounds, head mounted displays and tac-
tical gloves and suits in an artificial
world. VR uses are just beginning to be
explored. To give you a brief idea of
what is currently being experimented
on in VR labs here is what NASA and
George Mason University are doing on
a Joint proJect.

NASA's Johnson Space Center with
GMU has developed "Science Space",
a series of virtual reality microworlds
for teaching science concepts and skills
that students have difficulty mastering.
The goal is to examine whether virtual
reality's sensorial immersion can help
students remediate misconceptions and
construct accurate mental models of ab-
stract science concepts. The central re-
search goal is to examine whether vir-
tual reality's physical immersion and
multisensory experience can help stu-
dents remediate misconceptions and
construct accurate mental models of ab-
stract concepts.

To achieve these goals NAS created an
environment called Newton World. The
sensorial immersive VR has promise as
an interface for inquiry based on micro-
worlds in a number of ways:

l.VR supports true learning-by-
doing. Students control the environ-
ment and experience the behavior of
objects in the virtual world.

2.VR is three-dimensional. This
sensory immersion interface represents
objects in a three-dimensional environ-
ment and facilitates multiple frames of
reference. These capabilities have the
potential to enhance the meaning of
multidimensional phenomena and pro-
vides insights into scientific visualiza-
tion (Erickson, 1993).

3.VR offers multisensory communica-
tion. Students can see, hear, or feel "in-
visible" factors affecting the behavior of
objects. Learners are able to perceive
abstractions that they cannot sense in
the real world. Such multisensory
stimulation are valuable in learning and
recall.

4.VR motivates users. Users are in-
trigued by their interactions with physi-
cally immersive environments, induc-
ing them to spend more time and con-
centration on a task (Bricken & Byrne,
1993).

Another benefit is the multiple modes
of immersion through sensory repre-
sentatioll which increases the saliency of
key concepts. If one "is" a bouncing
ball (i.e., immersively perceiving the
world from that sensory perspective),
one is aware of relative velocity on
many more sensory dimensions than
simply watching a ball move as an ex-
ternal observer. Think of the impact if a
candidate is the object of the Masonic
allegories in a VR environment.

The newest stage in the development
of VR is strikingly familiar to Trekies
(Star Trek fans to those who are not). In
"Star Trek: The Next Generation," the
crew's R&R (recreation & relaxation)
time is often spent on the starship' s
"HoloDeck" -- a walk in theater
where interactive 3-D holograms create
the illusion of strolling through a Pacific
northwest rain forest, or recreate the
world of a favorite work of fiction. Not
to be outdone by science fiction, scien-
tists today can pick up a headset and
control wand and enter their own ver-
sion of a HoloDeck--a three-dimen-
sional virtual reality environment that
lets them immerse themselves in visual
and auditory representations.

The CAVE

The CAVE was originally conceived in
1991. The intent was to design a VR
system that avoids the current limita-
tions of VR systems such as poor image
resolution, isolation from the real
world, and inability to simultaneously
share virtual experiences with multiple
users. The CAVE is a projection-based
VR system. The illusion of immersion
is created by projecting stereoscopic
computer graphics into a cube com-
posed of display-screens that completely
surround the viewer. These effects in
the CAVE can be coupled with a head
and hand tracking system to produce
the correct stereo perspective and to iso-
late the position and orientation of a
three-dimensional input device. A sound
system adds to this effect.

The viewer explores the virtual world
by moving around inside the cube and
manipulating objects with a wand-like
device. The CAVE blends real and vir-
tual objects in the same space so that a
person has a view of his/her own body
as they interact with the virtual objects.

The physical dimensions of a CAVE
may be approximately 10-foot-square
room. In a darkened lab, projectors and
mirrors overlap multiple images on
each screen. Inside the CAVE, the users
wear stereoscopic glasses to turn the
projections into hologram-like images
(remember the 3D glasses of the
'50's?). Six to 10 people can stand in
the CAVE and view the projection.
Control of the images and the world
may be by one of the participants or by
an outside observer. If all in the CAVE
are wearing the glasses, all will ex-
perience the same situations.

The CAVE enables users to visualize
computer graphics in a way that cannot
be done on a traditional workstation
screen. Some of the current applications
the CAVE technology is being used for
include:

 1. The Cosmic Explorer - a research
tool for exploring the stages of the
evolution of the Universe.

 2. Modeling Superconductors on
Massively Parallel Computers to
provide insight to the still unsolved
problem of graphically representing
superconductors .

 3. Regional Scale Weather Display -
Users explore the landscape,
weather evolution, and patterns in a
period of 120 hours as if they them-
selves were a thousand miles tall.

 4. Visualization of the Molecular
Dynamics of Cancer - Here molecu-
lar dynamics simulations are used to
observe the behavior of a protein
that regulates the growth of cells.
The study of this protein is particu-
larly relevant because changes in its
molecular structure can lead to un-
controlled cellular growth and
cancer.

Could the CAVE be used in Masonic
ceremonies and lodge rooms? NO! At
least not now. It is far too costly and
requires much too much programming
and high end computing. However,
that is in this century. Remember it
took almost 50 years for the camera to
become available to the general public
at an affordable price (1839 to 1888).
Why all these examples of the CAVE
technology and virtual reality? Because
they could hold an answer to a possible
future of Masonry!

The Virtual Masonic Cave
of the Future

The CAVE and other VR technologies
were developed in the 1990's. If we add
25 years for the cost and future develop-
ment to reach a mass market, a CAVE
type environment may be ready for the
office and home by the year 2015, if not
earlier. By that time Masonry may be
ready to take advantage of the tech-
nology to offer a new and even more
realistic way to portray the degrees.

The advantages are immediate. The
multimodal input would be far greater
and have a significantly greater impact
than our traditional degrees. The VR
lodge wouid offer stunning visual effects
that would stimulate the candidate. The
potential for a positive psychological
and even mystical experience would be
far greater than in any current lodge
environment. At the same time we
could insure that the images are not
devoid of meaning and context, thereby
avoiding the fault of photography dis-
cussed earlier. The impact of the sym-
bols of the degrees would be brought to
life in a combination of motion pictures
and animated graphics where the tools,
stones and workmen described in the
rituals would come to life. The candi-
date would transform the physical
temple into the heavenly abode which is
alluded to in so many of the degrees.

Would using a Masonic VR cave vio-
late the traditions of the Craft? Not re-
ally. The hoodwink would be replaced
by the cave glasses (when in the
darkened CAVE you can not see
through them). The light and darkness
would be controlled by either the Wor-
shipful Master, the head technician or
the Masonic computer run program.
The clothing would remain unchanged.
The symbols would remain as they are,
just depicted in a new way. THIS JUST
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE LAST
CENTURY USING MODERN
STAGING AND SCENERY. The only
difference is that Masons would be
having their candidates experience a
VR world rather that costumes and sets
they often see in the Scottish Rite and
elsewhere. The greatest handicap Ma-
sonry would face is the variations in the
rituals found in each of the different
states (and sometimes even within a sing
in the next century the creation of a Ma-
sonic VR world to be be projected onto
a lodge room 'cave' environment would
still be costly. Most lodges could not af-
ford the technology and the program-
ming necessary to do it independently.
However, if the rituals could be unified
across the country a single mass pro-
duced program for all the lodge and
paid for jointly by all the Grand Lodges
the costs could be manageable (remem-
ber I'm talking about 25 years from
now). This assumes the continued
lowing cost of technology and the in-
crease processing power of even
portabls computers. The laptop upon
which this treatise was being written is
more powerful than a mainframe com-
puter of 25 years ago. The assumption
is that the cost of VR and the creation
of a VR environment will see a similar
dropping of cost in the next century just
as the camera price dropped dramati-
cally in the past. If we ignore this new
technology will the impact on the Craft
be as negative as the camera and the
photo was in the last half of the 20th
Century?

Still producing the first Masonic cave
prototype would be costly. But, by the
time the Craft is ready for the change
the talent may be available to us "in-
house." Already many of the younger
Masons are involved with the creations
and writing of computer programs.
Surely we could tap some volunteer
services of the Brethren to develop the
basic programs. If not, once again we
could contract it out as did the Scottish
Rite Temples did in the creation of the
huge screens and backdrops used in
their ceremonies. Once the prototype
was completed and tested the final pro-
duct could be produced. When per-
fected, the program would be copied,
mass produced and distributed to
lodges at a reasonable cost. The size a
the Masonic cave could fit most current
lodge rooms provided that it retains ap-
proximately the same dimensions as the
current Caves. This is assuming that
the CAVE would be still the preferred
choice and another better and cheape]
technology doesn't come along (which is
likely).

Think of towing the candidate to wall
through King Solomon's Temple. To see
the tools and symbols of the Craft float
in front of him. Better still, through,
VR world he could become a tool and
put to proper use. The lessons of each
degree would have a significantly
greater impact. The positive ex-
periences would stimulate and en-
courage everyone who experiences it to
spread the word on the teachings and
impact of Masonry. The York Rite and
Scottish Rite could take similar ap-
proaches to their ceremonies and ritu-
als. The impact of the Mark Degree or
the Royal Arch would be significantly
increased if the candidate were to dis-
cover the mysteries of the degree in a
world unlike any that they have ever
experienced before. It would be both a
return to ages past while still being pre-
sent in a VR world no one else, except
his Brothers, has experienced.

Yet this will not happen without care-
ful planning and forethought on behalf
of current Masonic leaders. It also will
require open minds and an eye to the
future. If Masonry is to continue into
the next century all possibilities must be
explored. The Masons of the last cen-
tury knew this. Have the Masons of
today come to that realization yet? The
technology is still being developed. We
need to be ready for it when it is ready
for us. The apple (pun deliberate) trees
of modern technology introduced into
the Craft by our Brethren a hundred
years ago bore fruit that has lasted a
century. We are still nourished by it
today. But the tree is growing old. New
trees need to be planted.

A seed of change has been proposed
here. It is hoped that its future fruit will
nourish the Craft in the 21st Century.
Without such fruit can we even survive?
Let us turn to the lessons of our own
history and in so doing plan for the fu-
ture. Masonry has done it in the past.
New innovations were introduced
before in ways that kept the meaning
and traditions strong. VR may give us
the way to do it again. That may seem
silly now but not to those under 30 who
are on the cutting edge of this tech-
nology. Are not those created, educated
and enlightened individuals we want to
attract into the Craft? Aren't those the
very ones we need to keep the Craft
alive in the 21st Century? The answer
to both questions is a overwhelming
YES! Now let's start planning the future
of Masonry accordingly. Let's bring the
Craft into the 21st Century!
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