Four Industrial Revolutions: Four Stages of English Freemasonry

By: Gerald Reilly

– Jeffrey Sachs

This series seeks to describe three hundred years of English Freemasonry, from the 1723 publication of the Book of Constitutions to the present, within a framework of four industrial revolutions and the corresponding cultural shifts. This model could be adapted for describing other freemasonries.

Scientific methodology describes nature in terms of prediction and control. It is termed an industrial revolution when such descriptions are aggregated and rapidly, technologically, are extended to the production of food, clothing, shelter, and communication.

The ramifications of which are drivers for new cultural practice.

During the first industrial revolution, the policies, procedures, and practice of English Freemasonry provided enlightenment models for the development of civic administration and a functioning civil society.

In the nineteenth-century, Enlightenment morphed into Modernism. A ‘mood’ for a universal humanism questioned the legitimacy of the existing grand narratives; especially those of religious, political, and moral theory.

Yet, it was believed that grand narratives based on ‘reason’, ‘science’ and ‘progress’ could be a means of improving human circumstances with shared ideals being effectively debated in the public sphere.

Given its increasing critical mass, English Freemasonry was able to maintain an enlightenment image and identity even although, it adopted enhanced organisation, administration, and operation on the modernist model.

In the previous article [Four Industrial Revolutions: Four Stages of English Freemasonry – The Square Magazine] reference was made to the pioneering computer work, undertaken in WWII secrecy at Bletchley Park, by Alan Turing et alia. Winston Churchill referred to the Bletchley staff as “the geese who laid the golden eggs and never cackled”: their story began to hatch in the mid-1970s.

IBM main frame computers were being used in large American-owned UK-based companies from the 1950s. The ‘Bill of Materials’ was soon managing supply chains and manufacturing processes; this significantly impacted on the way things were done in both government and business.

When mainframes ruled the earth: ‘IBMosour’ c.1964

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During the 1970s, much USA and European manufacture was transferred to the East as accelerated by computer added design and manufacture (CAD/CAM).

This facilitated design for automatic component manufacture and assembly; thereby, enabling trillions of manual operations to be automated – robotised.

By 1984, screens and keyboards were ubiquitously ‘one per desk’; this accelerated the shift to digital administration, transaction and, the ‘paperless office’ (sic).

The grand narratives, even in revised form, were losing currency; not so much their content but rather, doubting the very concept of universality: ‘rationality’ was now being understood as a cultural construct and no longer a ‘universal’.

Civil society had been based on discussing shared ideals in the public sphere; but now, shifting to a place and space for diverse identities, overlapping visions and, resistance to authority although, with greater subtlety than in the 1960s.

Freemasonry had thrived with Empire. The immediate impact of imperial loss, accelerating after WWII, was initially mitigated by high levels of employment and disposable income.

Freemasonry’s critical mass generated growth; however, from the 1960s, membership and influence lessened. Concealment of masonic practice led to suspicion – even hostility – arising from a masonic ‘secrecy’, imposed in 1903 by the Grand Secretary, Sir Edward Letchworth. Following which, freemasonry withdrew from the public sphere and generated a self-destructive secret life of its own.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

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By 1984, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four description of a dystopian state control over ‘truth’, ‘reality’, and language was a significant influence: the big religious, political, and moral narratives were no longer de rigueur.

This created a portal for ‘truth’, ‘reality’, and language to be defined by the providers of big technology; in particular, MSDOS’ first spinning and then networking communication into a world-wide web. The third industrial revolution dating from 1984 is also known as, ‘the first digital revolution’.

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By enabling the generation of new document types, the use of personal computers transferred computing power from institutions to groups and individuals.

Information management moved into libraries, schools, and small offices; onto dining room tables, into garages and spare bedrooms.

By the end of the millennium, residential design included home offices and IKEA was selling ‘office’ furniture designed for domestic use.

Civil society, once dependent on institutional infrastructure, was now gaining enhanced influence as enabled by a previously unimagined technology. A decentralization (popularisation) of information technology generated both new connectivity and, communication opportunities for civil society.

Community groups could now manage membership and income with self-produced newsletters, reports, and spreadsheets; campaigns for influence and action were thereby facilitated.

Sinclair ZX Personal Computer first introduced in 1982.

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A new literacy was generated. Individuals and groups within civil society were no longer bound by the printed word alone; skills were acquired for the navigation of digital interfaces, the manipulation of files, and the use software to facilitate new forms of participation in civic space and civil society.

Spreadsheets, databases, and word processing became the quiet engines of community action; these transformed citizen interaction with institutions and with each other.

Civic and civil participation and interaction, was now in a cognitive partnership with machines.

It transformed how civil society could manage its affairs and further its objectives. A stunning example is the 1987 introduction of The Essex Mason.

It became the primary mode for communicating provincial objectives, organisation, and outreach; a platform for the publication of local lodge activity.

It generated a significant advertising revenue, commenced merchandising and became a major contributor to masonic and other good causes. Although introduced as a monotone single A3 folded sheet; within ten years, it comprised twenty pages in full colour and was produced quarterly on The Essex Mason’s own AppleMac desktop publisher. (Now generated monthly on its own website accessible by the billions digitally enabled.)

the essex mason

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The personal computer enabled individuals and groups to make a difference by way of drafting petitions, publishing critiques, and organizing protests. It shifted the balance from large and less flexible organisations to fleet-footed organisms.

This disrupted and fragmented traditional authority structures as with the use of PCs, new civic actors could, more effectively, influence and challenge both government and business.

In this new digital public sphere, individuals became networked without a need for formal organisation: everything could now be prefixed ‘e-‘.

Indeed, in The Temple That Never Sleeps (2006) the term ‘e-mason’ was coined as identifying when some, or all, of daily masonic advancement is provided by digital means. (But of course, nineteen-years is a very long time in information technology.)

The above chart summarises this impact of the personal computer. It generated changes in practice for some organisations; in others, the new technology was initially used to reinforce old practice.

There is an anecdote about some 1950s siblings purchasing a television for their elderly parents. A few days after it was installed, the siblings enquired how their parents were getting on with TV; the reply was, “It’s wonderful, if we close our eyes, it’s just like the radio”.

Even though freemasonry might accept its eighteenth-century seminal role in the formation of civil society, even now, it may not be entirely comfortable with the concept of being a part of civil society. However, from 1984, freemasonry was forced to consider its public perception.

As suggested above, from 1903 Freemasonry commenced a withdrawal from the public sphere. Even though from 1730, Pritchard’s Freemasonry Dissected was the first of a succession of exposés of ‘masonic secrets’.

In 1952, the Revd Walton Hannah’s Darkness Visible shared masonic ritual with the uninstructed and popular world who are not masons; ubiquity (published in thirty languages) notwithstanding, seemingly it was taken in masonry’s stride.

In 1984 it was pronounced that, ‘The Craft seeks to avoid publicity …. the current policy is to recommend, discreet silence’. That met neither the contemporary demand for transparency in the public sphere nor dealt with Stephen Knight’s 1984 publication, The Brotherhood: The Secret World of the Freemasons.

‘Avoid publicity’ was the last gasp of exclusivity. ‘The Brotherhood provided a wake-up call…Freemasonry has evolved, and taken a long look at what it is and how it should fit in with modern society…..That gave birth to what has become known as the Openness Policy’.

Thus between 1984 and 2015, freemasonry came, out of the closet of exclusion to engage with a brave new world. (The concluding article in this series planned for the October 2025 edition of The Square will indicate how in 2018 for the first time in its history, with Enough is Enough, English Freemasonry confronted the country’s press.)

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A critical turning point of no return between 1984 and 2015 marks postmodernism’s shift from critique to a significant rejection of grand narratives and a decentralised pluralism of information and influence.

Comfort zone dichotomies such as ‘good – bad’ and ‘real – fake’ collapsed; this required a reshaping of identity and authority.

Yet by 2015, digital proliferation had begun to challenge even this framework. Postmodernism proved ill-equipped to manage digital power. Feelings were now a substitute for knowledge.

From once shaping the civic sphere as a vanguard of Enlightenment, how, if at all, did English Freemasonry engage with modernism and postmodernism and how does its offer engage with contemporary paradigms.

Post-truth is not simply defined by misinformation but rather, by machines which imitate natural language. Artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and white-collar robotics are not tools.

For the first time in the history of technology, humans have generated a machine-based agency which communicates in an alien language which imitates human tongues. This agency challenges what, hitherto, has been understood as knowing, acting, and belonging.

Natural mutations, cultural revolutions, and digital machine learning can be understood as processes of iteration. The decentralisation accelerated by the ubiquitous PC is now being radically enhanced with blockchain algorithms.

In light of this, of what might the masonic offer now consist? If freemasonries once served as templates for civic engagement, might they again generate an epistemic sensitivity, discernment and, the courage to stand on uncertain ground? A response will shape its relevance within civil society and the resilience for its very survival.

Given that human hegemony is now shared with machines. In whom or what do we place our trust: that’s if we place our trust at all?

In the last in this series, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be considered and appraisal. After which in later issues of The Square and not waiting for it to happen, there will be a group consideration of the form a Fifth Industrial Revolution could take. Its working title will be ‘Humanistical Iteration’.

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