MERIT IN CONTRADICTION

Right from wrong. Good from bad. Who makes the call? What influences bear on us?  Understanding ethics could not start at an early enough age, though most children are born with an innate ability to empathize.  Some will struggle with ethics as if it is a burden to be endured. Others are elevated to search out common agreement, avoiding the mistakes the come from rashness. And there are many who learn by mistakes as if awakening conscience.  Long ago religious leaders were sure fear of enternal damnation was sufficient motivation to maintain order.  Even justifying murder was insufficient. We never came out of the Dark Ages because there was never an entrance or exit.  We kept righting wrongs.  The Renaissance gave us justification to think and think we did. Everyday life didn't improve in any perceptable way. Gradually, and having the advance of hindsight, thinkers were able to define motive and outcome, asserting a primacy that made us rethink our conventions and traditional ways. It didn't stop abuses of power or hubris but it did contribute later to the explosions in libraries and labratories during the early 17th and 18th century as became known as the period of Enlightenment.  Those thinkers who positioned to organize Freemasonry were under no utopian illusions. Even to this day we see chaos and order at work in our Lodges.  What then for the likes of men who in the 6th stage of life are contemplative?  Enjoy the challenge. It isn't fear that makes a man learn. It is natural curiosity given freedom of expression. And what better citations to call us together than those that celebrate imagination-  I mean the Arts & Sciences.  Inspired. Accidental. Attention to detail. So we ponder dreams and reality as we always have done. Undefeated. Undeterred by the mountains yet to climb.