Do the Freemasons still exist?

Mon, 2016-02-15 11:41

#2

SquireNed

Secret societies are a little

Secret societies are a little less secret in this day and age, which might have something to do with it. However, a large part of the focus of the group just simply didn't survive the Fall; there were only a couple of lodges off-planet, and the remaining Freemasons just sort of drifted into obscurity. There are a few brinker habs where there is some ideological continuation, especially with respect to the deism of the order and the general symbols, but you don't see Freemasons walking around every day. Unless it's all a conspiracy and they just don't get license plates for their flying cars with Freemason symbols on them anymore.

Mon, 2016-02-15 12:19

#3

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

SquireNed wrote:Secret

SquireNed wrote:
Secret societies are a little less secret in this day and age, which might have something to do with it. However, a large part of the focus of the group just simply didn't survive the Fall; there were only a couple of lodges off-planet, and the remaining Freemasons just sort of drifted into obscurity. There are a few brinker habs where there is some ideological continuation, especially with respect to the deism of the order and the general symbols, but you don't see Freemasons walking around every day. Unless it's all a conspiracy and they just don't get license plates for their flying cars with Freemason symbols on them anymore.

Okay, sure, I get that Freemasons probably wouldn't have fared any better than anybody else in the Fall, but... The Fall was like, 30+ years after 2100 A.C.E., and information about the Freemasons just kind of peters off at that point. Is someone actually trying to scrub the records like they've forgotten about the Streisand Effect, or did basically nothing interesting happen relating to Freemasons in the last forty years?

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Mon, 2016-02-15 12:32

#4

SquireNed

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Okay,

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
Okay, sure, I get that Freemasons probably wouldn't have fared any better than anybody else in the Fall, but... The Fall was like, 30+ years after 2100 A.C.E., and information about the Freemasons just kind of peters off at that point. Is someone actually trying to scrub the records like they've forgotten about the Streisand Effect, or did basically nothing interesting happen relating to Freemasons in the last forty years?

AFAIK, the latter. Or, if anything interesting happened, it happened in secret. The Freemasons just didn't have the cultural support they used to have, and I can tell you (having been on Earth pre-Fall) that there was a definite diminishing trend regarding their numbers. It's just like the original Illuminati; being a secret society doesn't actually do good things for your numbers, and recruiting is hard when your memetic goals are no longer in the mainstream. Furthermore, a lot of the old Masonic stuff was sort of pop cultured into oblivion. When an organization loses control of its own symbols, it doesn't really have direction; while Continental Masons and Traditional Masons had sort of been at odds for a long time, some of the late 21st century movements basically wanted to have the symbols and secrecy without the philosophy and tradition. Combine this with the fact that global security interests turned heavily against secret societies during the pre-Fall era as a sort of cold war witchhunt began, potentially as a result of ASI influence or potentially as a response to ASIs first pulling on strings, and you saw compelling reasons against joining organizations like the Freemasons.

Mon, 2016-02-15 22:20

#5

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Huh... Well, that makes sense

Huh... Well, that makes sense, I guess.

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Tue, 2016-02-16 16:50

#6

Kremlin K.O.A. Kremlin K.O.A.'s picture

If you look, I suspect you

If you look, I suspect you might find masonic ideas in the founding of the Argonauts and the Titanians. BY the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st, the Masons were simply a mutual aid society. They still had a rule against atheists, but if your religion had a completely different creator deity from the mason next to you, that was fine. A Christian, a Gaian, and an Odin worshiper could all be masons. That they had radically different ideas on the identity of the 'Great Architect,' well that was merely cause for polite debate. Then again, they were a mutual aid society... they might have formed the Morningstar.

Tue, 2016-03-15 08:10

#7

Panoptic

I would be very surprised if

I would be very surprised if there weren't at least a few masonic lodges in the ranks of the hypercorps but I have no direct proof for that notion. The sheer lack of information on the topic is a tantalising hint.

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Sun, 2016-06-05 20:08

#8

Dr. Maxwell Dr. Maxwell's picture

You all realize we are

You all realize we are literally members of a secret conspiracy that pervades all aspects of society, and which actively recruits people of talent, power, and wealth, correct? I am rather sure we ate the Freemasons if they were truly a thing.

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Sun, 2016-06-05 22:29

#9

SquireNed

The existence of a larger

The existence of a larger overarching secret society does not mean that it has absorbed smaller, now potentially extinct, secret societies. Unless we have some guarantee, there is at least a non-trivial chance that the Freemasons simply ceased to exist in the Fall, or never reorganized to such a point as to be meaningful. Firewall may also have some old members from secret societies that have fallen from their prime, but I don't know that it's safe to say that many secret societies not dedicated to science, x-risks, or transhumanism have been absorbed wholesale (or even in parts) into our midst.

Mon, 2016-06-06 05:10

#10

Dr. Maxwell Dr. Maxwell's picture

That logic would be sound if

That logic would be sound if there were an infinite amount of social capitol, inroads to institutions, and resources. Obviously there is not, which is why sometime we rub up against others. I just find it silly to talk about the Freemasons as anything more than a social club, if they were ever more than that one of the existing conspiracies long ago almost certainly absorbed their major components.

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Tue, 2016-06-07 00:43

#11

SquireNed

Dr. Maxwell wrote:I just find

Dr. Maxwell wrote:
I just find it silly to talk about the Freemasons as anything more than a social club, if they were ever more than that one of the existing conspiracies long ago almost certainly absorbed their major components.

I think that you might have hit upon the essence of why we don't really see them anymore. There was a Masonic lodge within a city block of my childhood home, and yet I've never met a Mason after the Fall. My idea is that since Masonry was primarily sort of a social organization, rather than a really cohesive centralized group or a conspiracy prior to the Fall, it didn't really have the appeal once most of your Mason friends were dead and as a result the fraternities just sort of disintegrated on their own. Of course, one could argue that the Ultimates were much the same, and look where we are now. Of course, the Ultimates were born of the chaos that preceded the Fall, and in many ways we fulfill the all-important transhuman need for safety.

Wed, 2016-06-08 10:03

#12

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Uh, guys?

Uh, guys? The Fall happened quite a bit later than 2100, which is about the last time I found any hard details on the Freemasons as anything approaching any kind of organization whatsoever.

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Wed, 2016-06-08 12:29

#13

SquireNed

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Uh,

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
Uh, guys? The Fall happened quite a bit later than 2100, which is about the last time I found any hard details on the Freemasons as anything approaching any kind of organization whatsoever.

Central organization is not necessary for a society to exist. Just because there wasn't a central organization after the 21st century doesn't mean that the various branches of an ostensibly secret society just went poof magically. Besides, the late 2000's were really where space colonization began to pick up, so it's entirely possible that some of the Masons were involved. Hell, maybe they had brinker habitats somewhere that got lost or destroyed in the Fall.