WHEN THE SMALL PRINT ISN'T QUITE ENOUGH

Are we followers or free thinkers?  A very nice gentlemen recently put this question to a crowd. At times unless we are prone to rashness or a gamble we're fluid, adjusting to circumstance.  We have known for a great long time the better hunters were those who thought out the better way to reduce risk and optimize the kill. Big and brash, despite what movies portray about men, usually came to an ignominious end, Even in our sanitized first world, we honour them with higher car insurance rates and a perponderance of youthful deaths. Even at a young age, intelligence begins to shine through. As little people are powerless, they are subjected to the experiments we call parenting. In whatever inglorious state, adulthood happens and we are gifted to the world, assuming more and more the illusion of control over our future. Each one has a story, as idiosyncratic as the next. There are things about FM that set it apart. Acknowledging agency was a defining moment. When it is in our best interest, we follow. When we have gathering enough information from observation and experience, our choices become more or less qualified. It sounds so mechanical but that is us trying to rationalize.  We live in this soup of particles, in a state of consciousness, the one trait that distinguishes. Even then men stretch out to explore consciousness, with intoxicating plants that change our sense of reality. In early days, shamen used their compounds to engage with the beyond, to commune with the creator, to ask and understand. But we are of an age with all the benefits history can afford us. Not as reality but as the ideal. If only we could understand enough to predict with more certainty than guessing. You and me? We attempt reason, knowing cause and explanations of phenomena.  For us masons, we are inclined to apply this style to know ourselves. Even then we can't do that without understanding the context of life around us. And so it goes. Curioser.