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The Purpose of The Way Things Are
by Mark Havenner
Although the concept of The Way Things Are is new, it is a long time in the making. During the early 1990s I first began my quest for understanding what I call The Way Things Are
- all of that stuff that makes us who we are. This took me to many
places and I had many teachers. But looking back at it all I learned in
those formative years mostly inside a coffee shop. It wasn’t the
“elders” or authority figures that taught me the most about the world I
lived in, it was from my peers and via intense chatter spawned by too
much caffeine. I learned more about philosophy, religion, and my
society from coffee shops than I ever did from any formal educational
institution.
Since then I’ve spent many years learning about
the Universe and Everything In It mostly from books and from well
established masters on the topic including philosophers of the
Enlightenment and of ancient world along with other well-regarded
experts.
Through all of this study I found the lowest common
denominator. Especially in western tradition most of these theories,
movements, and philosophies came from one of a few dozen mystical
societies. Or if they didn’t come from the societies specifically than
the philosophers or “experts” were members of them.
Now there are many people in this country that will tell you that the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Golden Dawn, et al are
the secret government and are trying to take over the world. You may
also hear that many of these groups worship Satan and conduct sexual
rituals culminating in human sacrifice of virgins. While that is all
very amusing and makes for good thriller fiction, it isn’t actually
true.
In fact, these mystical societies are almost entirely
devoted to simply learning about the world, the universe and everything
in it. They may argue about the best way to do that and they certainly
do not share a lot of beliefs, but they are no more malicious than a
group of teenagers at a coffee shop talking about philosophy. In fact,
many of the traditions that came from these societies were in great
part responsible for abominable notions such as “capitalism”, “the
Enlightenment”, “freedom of religion” and *gasp* “Science”!
If it weren’t for these meddling secret governments we wouldn’t have
Jeffersonian democracy, supermarkets, or toaster ovens. When I hear a
conspiracy theorist say “They are taking over our government!”, I say,
“Yeah and?” Of course they are. They are the foundation of our
government. It is because of them we have founding forefathers with
foresight enough to create a Constitution and Bill of Rights.
But I digress.
Since these societies were mostly responsible for a lot of the
philosophy I learned, I thought I should just go to the source. I spent
a few years studying them one by one and in fact joined a couple. It
was at the same time a remarkable and frustrating experience.
While I was fortunate enough to learn a great deal from them I encountered several problems.
1. It costs a lot.
I mean. A LOT! We aren’t saying U.S. college tuition here, but for a
club it’s pretty intense. One has to have a huge amount of expendable
cash to fork over a year just to learn what they want to teach. That
means just like the Victorian era, you have to be rich to learn about
the world you live in.
2. It’s proprietary.
Why?
This is knowledge concerning the human race. Why hide it from some
people and show it to others? Most of this information is free
elsewhere in various forms, it’s just their particular version that
costs money and an incredible amount of time to earn. We all deserve
knowledge and no one owns knowledge. It was frustrating that the only
way I could “earn” knowledge was by handing over dues for ten years in
order to get to that next special level.
I also don’t buy
the scaffolding argument. If I’m curious enough I can read about
something before a five-year prerequisite and it is up to me and only
me to determine if I understood it properly. I don’t need to spend
ten-years of dues to find out something I’d already read and researched
five years prior.
3. It’s stuffy.
They really
haven’t changed their ways since 1892. They walk around and call each
other “Postulant” and wear purple robes and hum Greek to one another. I
feel like I’m in a Stanley Kubrick movie whenever I read a lesson. It’s
no wonder people are jeeved out by these societies when they speak in
tongues and chant in basements under candlelight.
Now I’m
not knocking ritual – I think it’s important, but I think it is more
important that there is a purpose for what you are doing and that the
ritual actually helps you understand things. It should not be done just
for tradition’s sake. And there is nothing wrong with modernizing
things.
4. It’s gibberish.
We are all here to understand The Way Things Are,
right? Why not make it understandable and digestible? If one actually
sits down and reads a lecture written by any of these societies they go
cross-eyed. I think I’m a reasonably intelligent person, but when I
have to reread a paragraph eight times to catch an elementary meaning
than I get frustrated. If they want to instruct people, then they are
still using Little House on the Prairie teaching techniques.
5. It’s useless.
These societies do not perform their mission. They say they want to
preserve knowledge and teach others what they know yet they make it so
costly and proprietary that they don’t preserve knowledge nor do they
teach others. What is so special about knowledge that it can’t be
distributed to the masses? If it is so special that the masses can’t
understand it and it never gets distributed, what is the point of the
knowledge? No one owns knowledge. Not even 1000-year old secret
societies.
So after all of these years of study, research
and patience I’ve decided it is time to open it up. All the knowledge I
have is free for anyone who wants it and I will do my best to present
it in an engaging, useful and dynamic way. I will use all the resources
available to me to ensure the information is presented completely and
understandably.
And why do I have the “expertise” and
“credential” to teach others this stuff? Well I don’t . . . no more
than you, or anyone else sitting at the coffee house. We are all in
this together! You are welcome to step in and do the same. The social
networking, education and wiki software are all designed for you to do
just that.
This is a community of people wanting to learn from
one another, not a community of elitists who think only a few deserve
to think.
This work by Mark Havenner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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