Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
At the systemic level, the Craft becomes a framework for understanding how groups build across time. This episode explores how collective work scales beyond individuals—toward lodges, communities, institutions, and generations. By linking the Craft to the Temple, we examine how long-range planning, multi-level coordination, and intergenerational stewardship shape the outcomes we leave behind. The systemic perspective demands altitude: seeing the Craft not only as workers, but as architects of the future.
🔑 Key Takeaways
- Systemic Craft work requires thinking across generations, not just tasks
- The Craft and the Temple are inseparable symbols of long-range collective building
- Development moves recursively—systemic understanding informs relational and behavioral practice
💬 Featured Quotes
0:00:00–0:00:08 — “When we look at the craft at a systemic level, things start to get very, very difficult.”
0:00:15–0:00:23 — “We’re looking across the ways of working across large groups of people, large organizations, and how does that happen and how do we influence it?”
0:00:35–0:00:42 — “When we talk about the craft in this way, we're almost forced by default to talk about another symbol in that conversation, and that is the temple.”
0:00:42–0:00:49 — “The craft builds the temple. That's kind of the way it works, right? When workmen get together, they build against an objective.”
0:01:13–0:01:19 — “We have to look at how we as a crew of people are creating the future.”
0:01:26–0:01:36 — “Do then work backwards through the levels. What does this mean for how I interact with the people in my small group?”
0:02:21–0:02:32 — “Moving up and down through the craft as a developmental sort of structure or as a scope structure more accurately will help you again better craft more meaningful outcomes.”
0:02:49–0:03:05 — “We're really looking for what are the interactive, interoperative elements to make our temple, our dream, a reality.”
0:03:12–0:03:19 — “What can we do to set the stage not just for the current iteration of the craft… but all future workmen on the temple?”
🔗 Explore Related Episodes
Explores the tension between current state and ideal state—mirroring the systemic Craft’s focus on long-range alignment and evaluating gaps across levels.
Focuses on organizing people and structures to support large-scale objectives, directly resonating with systemic coordination and future-oriented planning.
Examines leadership as a systems function—how influence, structure, and distributed responsibility shape the long arc of collective building.
Dynamic Inserts
Creators and Guests
What is A Mason's Work?
In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.
When we look at the craft at a systemic level, things start to get very, very difficult.
And I say that because we're looking across the ways of working across large groups of
people, large organizations, and how does that happen and how do we influence it?
How do you participate in that and what your long-term impact can be?
When we talk about the craft in this way, we're almost forced by default to talk about
another symbol in that conversation, and that is the temple.
The craft builds the temple.
That's kind of the way it works, right?
When workmen get together, they build against an objective.
That objective and what that is should be designed in some way to enhance the quality
of life of all people.
When we look at the craft at a systemic level, the interaction of the craft as concept
with that overarching sort of work, piece of work, becomes our purview.
We have to look at how we as a crew of people are creating the future.
We're looking to build.
And what does that mean for how we operate?
Do then work backwards through the levels.
What does this mean for how I interact with the people in my small group or a local group?
Then how do I practically and behaviorally apply that understanding to myself?
Each of these symbols across the scope of this work does have that kind of recursive
nature to it.
This symbol, the craft as a concept, will really help with that if you struggle with trying
to figure out when and how to do this.
Moving up and down through the craft as a developmental sort of structure or as a scope
structure more accurately will help you again better craft, more meaningful outcomes
here.
So, again, when we look at this systemically at this level, we're looking to evaluate
where we're going, how we're going to get there, who's going to be involved, and what
needs to be in place.
And so we're really talking about the human component of that that is inseparable from
the work itself that humans have to interact.
Maybe in the future, non-humans, etc., etc., but we're really looking for, again, what
are the interactive, interoperative elements to make our temple our dream a reality.
And again, at this systemic level, what can we do to set the stage not just for the current
iteration of the craft, the current sort of workmen, but all future workmen on the temple.
We are in a multi-generational organization and we need to prepare the road not just for
ourselves, but for the people that come ahead of us or after us.
So with that, think about the craft at that systemic level.
And I think you'll find it yields quite a bit of perspective and altitude so that you
can then walk back in through the other sort of developmental levels and figure out how
to best leverage the organization at your local level and then coordinate your own behavior.