A Mason's Work

arithmetic is a lens into reality that is really easy to kind of get wrong. And a lot

of the ways that you can get it wrong is to think that it's simply using sort of math

to explain stuff. And while it's certainly useful to explain things with math and the

operations of arithmetic, when we talk about our behaviors as men as Mason, one of the big

things that becomes obvious is that we don't in the process of our sort of everyday lives

often get to an arithmetic level of understanding of the way things work. So if you work with

the concepts in free Masonry in general, the broad moving pieces, the small little details,

you'll find that there is a lot of wiggle room. There's a lot of like ambiguity and space for

things to get kind of messed up and you trip over some of the language, some of the words, some

of the concepts. The lens of arithmetic is really about, if you sit down, I think about it,

it's really about precision. When we talk about arithmetic as a concept, it's are we driving to

a level of precision in our understanding of the way something operates yourself, your perspectives,

your ways of working, all of those things. Until you can get to that level of sort of direct

one plus one equals two kind of understanding about the mechanics in your life, your own mechanics,

your own ways of working, the mechanics of the systems that you're supporting, those sort of

ultra precise sort of interactions. Until you can get to that level of precision, what you end

up with is a lot of like mushy feeling things. And so when you're struggling with some of the things

that you are dealing with in your everyday life, driving to that level of arithmetic level of

understanding starts to, starts to really make sense. And this just to be clear, it differentiates

a little bit from logic as a concept, which is very much kind of a cause and effect understanding

of the way the world works. Arithmetic really doesn't make any judgments about any of that.

What it really is saying, you know, with one plus one equals two and those kinds of sort of base

assertions is that you need to get to a definition of one, right? Once you know what

one is, then you can work on two and three and four. And all of the kind of spaces in between,

it's not strictly speaking about getting to that object of understanding and have that

objective understanding being neat per se. So it's not like saying, you know, to go back to the

sort of mathematical analysis, right? It's not about necessarily having all of our numbers be

whole round numbers. It's just about calling it what it is, right? It's about calling that

that reality what it is. That that arithmetic level of understanding those objective definitions

of the way we think and work, you know, start with start with some solid

understandings in your life. And then all of a sudden you can start to understand the

relationships, the connections between those things. And because you're not hedging about what

it is you're talking about, you're better enabled to solve problems. So that is really the kind of

underpinning of arithmetic as a lens into free masonry. Now, one of the things that's probably

useful would be to go into some sort of a practical understanding. But the reality with the lot of

the practical understandings and the crafts sort of across the board is that all definitions are

effectively made up, right? So they're definitional to you. The transferability of those

definitions are really about some different symbols we'll get to a little bit later on.

So as you're driving to this arithmetic level of understanding of the world,

understand that that's going to be based on your own experience as well. So

the more enduring, the more last things, sort of understandings are better transferred from one

mind to the other or one heart to the other. But for now, for your work as you kind of work through

some of the symbols of the craft, really focus on making these definitions your own, making your

understanding of the world and that level of concreteness yours. And then use the other tools that

we've talked about last week to drive the conversation forward. See you next time.