There is an interesting lesson about Character that can be learned from Geometry. When I was young, and my father was teaching me about character, I thought that the purpose of having a good character was so that people would like and approve of me. But in Masonry I learned something new.
I am writing a presentation for my Lodge about Thales, who the ancient Greeks and Romans revered as the "First Father of Geometry". In brief, after learning all he could in his home city of Ionia he traveled to Egypt to study with the Egyptian Builders. There he learned the Egyptian trick of using the Shadow Stick. After building a monument in the dessert the king would want to know how tall it was. So the Builders would drive a stick into the ground and measure it's height. They knew that when the length of its shadow equaled the height of the stick, the length of all shadows in the area would equal the height of the object casting them. So they would mark the length of the shadow and measure the height of the monument across the ground.
A subtle point needs to be made here. If the Shadow Stick is not perfectly perpendicular it induces a small error into the calculation. This small error is then multiplied many times when the measurement is used to calculate the height of the monument. Interestingly, the tool used to insure things are perfectly perpendicular is the jewel of the JW.
The moral lesson that I learned from this is that I am like the Shadow Stick. Just as the Shadow Stick must be perfectly perpendicular in order for it to be a useful tool in making accurate judgements about the world around it, so must my Character be perfectly upright so that I can use it to accurately judge and understand the world around me.
I am writing a presentation for my Lodge about Thales, who the ancient Greeks and Romans revered as the "First Father of Geometry". In brief, after learning all he could in his home city of Ionia he traveled to Egypt to study with the Egyptian Builders. There he learned the Egyptian trick of using the Shadow Stick. After building a monument in the dessert the king would want to know how tall it was. So the Builders would drive a stick into the ground and measure it's height. They knew that when the length of its shadow equaled the height of the stick, the length of all shadows in the area would equal the height of the object casting them. So they would mark the length of the shadow and measure the height of the monument across the ground.
A subtle point needs to be made here. If the Shadow Stick is not perfectly perpendicular it induces a small error into the calculation. This small error is then multiplied many times when the measurement is used to calculate the height of the monument. Interestingly, the tool used to insure things are perfectly perpendicular is the jewel of the JW.
The moral lesson that I learned from this is that I am like the Shadow Stick. Just as the Shadow Stick must be perfectly perpendicular in order for it to be a useful tool in making accurate judgements about the world around it, so must my Character be perfectly upright so that I can use it to accurately judge and understand the world around me.