Mass and People
By: Michele Ammendola
The Importance of an Esoteric School
The term mass, from a philosophical point of view, expresses a concept that is frequently considered to be in opposition to the freedom and responsibility inherent to the individual in their uniqueness.
Unlike the concept of people, that of mass has no juridical or constitutional value, but instead describes a sociological phenomenon. The mass is a multitude of individuals within which each person conforms to the will of the group.
The term derives from the Greek word μάζα (maza), meaning dough used to make bread, and from the verb μάσσειν (massein), which means to knead.
Thus, the etymology points to the meaning of mass as a more or less undifferentiated collection of individuals, as attested by Saint Paul, who describes how a potter creates from the same lump of clay vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy, and by Augustine of Hippo, who states that all humanity, because of original sin, is now a mass of sinners.
This definition highlights the undifferentiated and tendentially conformist character of the mass, in contrast to the juridical structure that defines the people.
IMAGE credit: the square magazine Digital Collection (CC BY 4.0)
Mass society is a historical phenomenon whose origins are placed in the second half of the nineteenth century, as a consequence of the process of industrialization.
Its main characteristics are the gradual access of the popular masses to the sphere of consumption and to various forms of political and cultural participation.
Although political participation is discussed, it is understood in a sociological sense, as a broadening of the social base that gains access to public life, and not in the juridical sense of ownership of sovereignty and the exercise of political rights that define the people.
The people are a constitutive element of the State, together with territory and government. Its juridical definition is closely connected to the status of citizenship (status civitatis), which in turn outlines a specific set of rights and duties that bind the individual to the state community.
It is necessary to emphasize the close coincidence between people and sovereignty, underlining how rules on citizenship are fundamental in defining the contours of this concept.
The acquisition of citizenship, in fact, is not a mere granting of a benefit, but an act of profound political significance that affects the person’s capacity to participate in the self-determination of the People they join.
Belonging to the people is realized through citizenship, which confers a special legal capacity. This does not end with the simple right to reside in national territory (right of domicile), but is embodied in a complex set of active and passive legal positions.
In an intertwining of meanings and responsibilities that are today no more clearly distinguished than in the past, as when curses and prophecies exercised powerful influence over the minds of the masses, the influence on society of an esoteric school capable of restoring dignity to the individual now appears extremely important.
Since the death of the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, a military and financial titan, little has been done in this direction.
Temporal power, united with and not distinguished from spiritual power, has obscured Christianity. And to obscure Christianity means to deny freedom.
Christian free will, in fact, guarantees everyone the same possibilities ab initio, at time zero, ensuring in projection the development of one’s own choices.
A good Master stimulates the student by beginning to speak of their vices; an esoteric initiatic school will stimulate its apprentices by speaking of their virtuous inclinations. Two apparently similar things, yet they represent fundamental distinctions.
In a world where very few ask themselves the why and the origin of things, where very few focus on themselves and almost no one rises beyond material and perceptible reality, transcendence will always remain a mirage, leaving the human species forgotten in the mire of immanence.
And as if this were not enough, we anxiously await the current social consequences of Artificial Intelligence, “intelligent” insofar as it is a technology capable of making experience and standardizing procedures to obtain results, a prerogative typical of the masses. What a coincidence!
IMAGE credit: the square magazine Digital Collection (CC BY 4.0)
The failure to seek the divine within humanity, the absence of verticality, the widespread lack of will combined with an arrogant and overbearing knowledge of nothingness, accompanied by a perceived superiority over others, seem to depict the perfect elements of what we might define as the eighth prophecy of the Grand Master: the extinction of the human species.
It is therefore time to resume the journey, that universal journey which nonetheless begins with the individual, with each of us, with the personal path that causes the animal man to die and gives birth to the new man, the true one, conscious and aware of his own vices, devoted to balance, to his own virtues, and to the unattainable perfection typical of a fully realized Mason, who distinguishes himself along the initiatic path just as our dear and lamented Grand Masters Ettore Loizzo and Ernesto D’Ippolito did.
Article by: Michele Ammendola
Michele is a Professor of Surgery, author of numerous scientific articles published in international journals with international collaborations, and a member of international scientific societies.
He is also a member of the following lodges:
La Fenice Lodge No. 990, GOI, Catanzaro, Italy
Camden Lodge No. 704, UGLE, London, UK
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