The Dangers of Organizational Defensiveness

[jducoeur]

A friend was remarking recently on some confusions that an SCA novice recently had -- my best guess is that she was just starting out, and people were tripping over themselves to make the SCA look *easy* to join, and simply confused her in the process. (Telling someone about t-tunics is great if they appear to be terrified of sewing. But if they're trying to understand the right way to make period clothes, it's not helpful.)

On thinking about this, I am reminded (tangentially) of what a bad idea this can be if you carry it too far. Take the Masonic example, for comparison.

Masonry, like the SCA, is in its way kind of Weird. It's much more respectably Weird than the SCA, and really isn't part of the Archipelago of Weird, but neither is it quite Mainland. Like all clubs, it's always desperate for new members, and ever moreso now that it is in a downslide. So many of the guys reckon that, since we need new members so badly, we'd better make it easier to get in. Masonry was originally a very exclusive organization, so obviously the way to improve our membership situation is to make it more inclusive, right? Well, not necessarily.

Context: Masonry is heavily about the ritual. A full-fledged Mason, for most purposes, is one who has been through the first three degrees. Each degree is an immersive ritual, wherein the candidate is escorted through an experience that is designed to symbolically teach some life lessons.

Let's go through some of the things that have changed over the years:

• First (a long time ago), the time between degrees was reduced. This happened a long time ago, but it's significant. In the Middle Ages, the degrees (Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason) meant exactly what they claimed to be: they were guild ranks, and you would normally spend years earning your way to the next level. As things became less operative and more symbolic, the time between degrees slowly shortened to a single month -- just enough to symbolize that these *are* separate degrees. (There are a few jurisdictions that still require a year or more between degrees, but not in the US.)


• Then the ritual got some of its harsher edges softened. Original Masonic ritual is bloody stuff, written by medieval Masons whose livelihoods depended on absolute secrecy, and you swore to keep those secrets on pain of death and worse. But oaths like that are *scary*, and moderns can't necessarily cope. So the ritual was amended to make clear that the oaths aren't really quite *that* serious any more.


• Then the Lecture stopped being required, or even expected. Previously, before you could move on to the next degree, you had to demonstrate that you understood the lessons of the previous one, in a sort of ritualized Q&A session. By the time I started, this was unusual enough that I got noticed for doing it. Today, it is considered remarkable to the point of being the talk of the town.


• Quite recently, the degrees have gotten squashed together. Some modest number of candidates complained that it was inconvenient for them to make it to Lodge three months running to take the degrees. So the idea of the One-Day Class began. In this, an official panel of expert ritualists demonstrates the ritual to *hundreds* of candidates simultaneously. What was originally an immersive experience became a floorshow. The result is very convenient -- Grand Lodge loves to brag about the many hundreds of new members they can induct this way.


• As part of that, the notion of applications through an individual Lodge got waived. After all, if you're taking the degrees directly from Grand Lodge, then you might as well apply there as well, right? So the candidates get assigned a Lodge to be a member of as part of their initiation, but they don't really have to go to the inconvenience of attending it.

So, let's put all that together. We wind up with an organization that is *easy* to join, and *safe*, and *friendly*. Everyone should join now, right?

No, of course not. Prospective members want to know what the organization is *for*, and I no longer have an answer for them. In practice, we now get these hundreds of new dues-paying members each year, but most of them rarely or never attend Lodge, and many drop out quickly, because they've never really developed any attachment to the club.

Safety and ease comes at the price of feeling special. When the ritual is watered down to that point, it just looks silly. If you don't demand that members learn from it, they don't understand why they're going through it at all. And when there's nothing special or interesting going on here, no one's going to be very interested in joining. If you don't require that your new members *invest* a bit of themselves, they're not going to care about the club much.

These examples are all drawn from a single club, but they apply to most. It's fine and dandy to reduce exclusivity, and often a fine idea to brush away specific problems for specific people. But most *serious* new members of a club are willing to be a little challenged, and are more likely to get drawn into it for that challenge...

Comments

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

Join the SCA
Become a Master Laurel Dance Instructor in a day!
Become a Knight in a day!
Become a Master Pelican Bureaucrat in a day!

And then what?

I see you point.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Masonry as Kleenex...

Not only does it have no meaning to the initiate. It just plain has no meaning.

(Yeah, I'd have seriously considered Masonry, if it would have me. But it won't.)

[pamelina.livejournal.com]

I'd have seriously considered Masonry, if it would have me. But it won't.

How come? Are you not religious enough?

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

How come? Are you not religious enough?

Precisely. As I understand it, in order to be a Mason one must have some belief in a Supreme Architect. I don't. I think I have the rest of it, you know, a guy, and fairly honest, and an adult. By age...

I even own a tuxedo. :-)

[jducoeur]

As I understand it, in order to be a Mason one must have some belief in a Supreme Architect.

In the interest of completeness, while I think of it: this is true of "regular" Grand Lodge Masonry. It's not true of the Grand Orient of France, and some other offshoots, which deliberately relaxed this restriction. They're considered schismatic by the main trunk of the organization, though...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Good to know, but I don't like to do watered down stuff. :-)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Hunh. If I had to put together a textbook on how to make membership worth less, this would be a chapter.

I've been examining the sociological issues surrounding -- wait for it -- Warhammer, since that's what I've been playing a lot recently. It has a steep buy-in: price, time investment, and skill mastery -- that serves to make the community more cohesive and longer-lived than might otherwise be expected from a loose pack of alpha nerds spread across two continents (as it's still primarily a UK game). The initiation rituals -- while involving paint brushes and time, instead of oaths and time -- make the result have apparent worth. Things gained at great cost are worth more to us, even if their resale value is low.

Seeing your description of Masonry's user-friendliness "advances" puts me in mind of a the evolution of another game. MageKnight came out as a competitor to Warhammer, and failed. It purposely removed the obstacles to playing, by pre-painting the miniatures, pricing them cheap, and making the rules (gasp!) comprehensible. As a result, it exploded and then faded -- a fad. It made a ton of money for its makers, but has no lasting legacy; its figures rot away in my basement, robbed of a community to give it meaning.

Now, I'm not saying the deep meaning of a miniatures game is in line with Masonry; but the social mechanisms seem fairly parallel. Perhaps you need to move to have a secret inner sanctum, which the motivated can aspire to. Parallels to the SCA are for the reader to draw; I'm far enough from any peerages as to have a peon's view only.

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

You're a Warhammer player? What armies do you general?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

To be more specific -- 40K, not Fantasy. Daemonhunters (with Witchhunter allies), and I just completed a Nurgle Death Guard army. So, both sides of the fence.

Darn, I need a minis icon. ;)

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Re: garb: T-Tunics are one of the more period things a newbie is going to be able to sew, all things considered.

However, to the point, I think you're entirely correct "Safety and ease comes at the price of feeling special." If it's hard or expensive to do something, people will value it more. And it will probably be intrinsically worth more. "I climbed Bunker Hill" vs. "I climbed Mt. Katahdin!"

But even more so, from where I sit, Masonry has two reasons why someone might be interested in it. 1: the social alliances, which may or may not have practical application these days, and 2: the philosophy/mystery side of it. If 2 is erased (which it sounds like Mason Central is intent upon), then just 1 remains, and there are other organizations that can provide it. Ones which don't require white satin aprons on the men or that the Born-Agains tell you are Eeevil. Masons aren't as obviously in the AoW because they've been around a long time, but I do think they're not on the mainland.

[jducoeur]

If 2 is erased (which it sounds like Mason Central is intent upon)

I might almost prefer it if they *were* intentionally trying to wreck the mystery. But they aren't; rather, they mostly just don't get it. Masonry is still suffering from the fad of the 1950's, when it increased in size something like tenfold, most of that being guys who joined for the social side. They went through the ritual, but it was never emphasized, so they never really saw it as special.

The result is that most them perceive Masonry as *mainly* a charitable organization. Which is admirable in its way, but it's only one charity among thousands, and meanwhile the spiritual side that made Masonry unusual has largely withered through neglect...

[oakleaf-mirror.livejournal.com]

Re: garb: T-Tunics are one of the more period things a newbie is going to be able to sew, all things considered.

I would argue that this depends entirely on the newbie in question. Did they come to the SCA with modern sewing know-how? Have they been doing costuming in a different venue? I think jducoeur's point was that without taking the time to find that out, you could actually drive people away by telling them to make a T-Tunic for their first event, when they were capable and hoping for so much more.

My disagreement

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

My first garb was a long tabard over sweatpants and a reasonable poofy boxz shirt. This was basically sewing four tubes. I did not know how to sew, but I got help.

I just don't think that T-tunics are for everyone. They are an answer, but not the answer. As the original post suggests, having a catch-all answer isn't always a good thing.

I like tabards and they are easy. Maybe I should start a meme "Or you could make a tabard to put over modern clothes" to follow the general newvie advice of "Make a T-tunic."

Re: My disagreement

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I think the problem was that the newbie was presented with *several* catch-all answers, and couldn't sort them out.

Honest question: is a tunic too hard to sew?

[metageek.livejournal.com]

1: the social alliances, which may or may not have practical application these days

That's an interesting question: do the alliances benefits of Masonry still hold? My impression is that the 1950s explosion Justin mentions would have been due in part to people wanting to advance their careers by networking. If so, then expanding the group might have ruined that appeal, if the backbenchers started getting tired of nouveau macons trying to ingratiate themselves. Justin?

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the *reality* but the Myth is that it's not merely networking, but preferment of masons over nonmasons, if you have a choice.

[jducoeur]

And the reality is that there is still probably a *bit* of that, if only to a modest degree. That's not surprising, though -- it's true of any club, that in-network connections tend to get slightly favored over people outside the "family"...

[jducoeur]

Yes and no. There was probably some of that -- while Masonry has long made an ostentatious show that you must not join for purposes of advancing your position in the profane (cognate for "mundane") world, in practice there has always been loads of that. And it may have annoyed some people.

But really, what has killed Masonry was its own success. It was *so* big during one generation that it became "your Dad's club" -- no true child of the 60's wanted anything to do with it. The resulting generation gap, more than anything else, was what hurt the appeal.

(And to the point: actually, yes, the connections are still sometimes a bit useful, as in any networking organization. But not even remotely as much so as they would have been, say, 120 years ago, when it was very much the province of the Great...)

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how much of this is true of Masonry internationally, and how much is just in the US? I'd like to imagine there's hope of a future generation of Americans discovering the mystery of Masonry in Europe and (re)importing it back to the States.

[jducoeur]

Hard to say. I know that at least some of Europe is much more serious than the norm in the US -- for example, I have an acquaintance in Drachenwald who is a Swedish Mason, and he has occasionally been boggled by how lackadaisical it is here. I don't know what is typical, though.

Indeed, I know that there are some schismatic and/or branch organizations in the US that are more ritually-focused. For example, Prince Hall Masonry, the long-separated (and recently-reunited) mainly black offshoot of Grand Lodge Masonry, appears to do the ritual *much* more seriously, based on what I've seen.

And to be fair, I'm sure that there are individual Lodges that still do it well, even within Grand Lodge. In the long run, there's a fair chance that they'll be the ones that are still around to pick up the pieces, decades on. But I do think that the main body of Grand Lodge Masonry is likely to go through a serious organizational collapse before that happens...

Progress by pruning

[metageek.livejournal.com]

But I do think that the main body of Grand Lodge Masonry is likely to go through a serious organizational collapse before that happens...

Sounds like evolution: when circumstances change, and drive a species extinct, the survivors are the isolated pockets that dodged the Foo-Killer by getting out and not being Foos any more.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

A timely post for me, as well - having just read through quite a lot of posts on another list about "not being an exclusive clique" versus "if we give them out like peppermints they don't mean anything". A fairly regular conversation to see floating by in SCA-land.

It strikes also at the question = does small group = big problem? I suppose it is, if you have depended on the funding or the head count for some reason. But it isn't always so bad. I am part of a group that happily waxes and wanes between 5 and 25 members. Because we do not depend on more than 5 people to function, it works very handily. We do different things with 5 than with 25, but that doesn't particularly matter - in fact the variation in head counts improves our flexibilty.

Being part of too many organizations, and frequently feeling sad because I can't be part of other groups that are clearly eager to have me, I tend to think that fewer and more exclusive organizations - even in the land of the Weird - might be a good thing.

[jducoeur]

This might well be true. It's difficult for me to be entirely objective about, because I'm pretty deeply invested in the SCA on an ego level, in a way that I never quite became with Masonry. Thus, it tends to freak me rather badly when I see the SCA making mistakes that I have seen cause long-term structural problems in other clubs.

I confess, one of the reasons for my long-standing Mysteries project, and perhaps the main reason why I'll probably *have* to follow through with it eventually, is simply that I expect the SCA to decline eventually. Not any time soon, but likely in my lifetime, given the way things have been going over the years -- it is gradually ossifying in ways that I suspect are inherently unstable. And I want something I find fun after that happens...

[cellio]

Wow. I had no idea that masonry had been watered down that much. That sounds pretty much worthless. When it becomes about counting points and not about nurturing a community, what's the point?

[jducoeur]

To be fair: in *some* respects, Masonry is still very strong. In particular, as a charitable organization it is consistent, well-organized, well-funded and very much a benefit to the community. My complaint is largely that, while this makes the organization a real positive social good, it doesn't make for a very interesting *club*, especially for younger folks who want something cool and fun to do while they're doing good works...

[siderea]

Lot's of good things have already been said, so I just want to add one spin on this:

When calculating how much should be asked of prospective/new members, it is quite important to remember there are differences between difficulty and laboriousness and slowness.

The question of how much sewing difficulty a SCA newbie can stand is different than the question of how much work something is.

In my observation, it's never a good idea to reduce laboriousness but it's usually OK to attempt to reduce difficulty. That may come as a surprise. But think of it this way: Imagine an SCA group with a hard-to-follow set of T-tunic instructions. Would it be bad for the group to make it easier on their new members by improving their T-tunic hand-out? I don't think so; I don't think the difficulty has any per ipse value. But should they sew the T-tunics for the new members? No; that reduces their investment in their kit. The work is part of the experience we provide; to eliminate that is to eliminate much of the satisfaction.

To be clear, if someone elects to seek out difficulty and take it on for their own challenge, that is a very different thing than difficulty of the non-negotiable chores of joining.

Furthermore, the slowness of a process may have nothing to do with either its difficulty or its laboriousness. If you have no local sources for feastgear, you're just going to have to wait for Birka! It's not difficult nor is it laborious. But if you're trying to join in September, that's going to seem pretty slow.

[jducoeur]

I largely agree, but with one big caveat: underestimating how much difficulty a newbie can take can be a cripplingly bad mistake. When you take someone who is ready and raring to go, and eager to take on something challenging, *discouraging* them from doing so is almost always an error. I've seen that from time to time in the SCA, and I see it a *lot* in Masonry. For example, it's *assumed* that no initiate wants to demonstrate that he has learned the ritual. They don't even usually ask any more. That's done in the name of difficulty (because most Masons sincerely believe that learning ritual is much harder than it really is), but it's terribly overplayed, in a nasty self-reinforcing behaviour -- once you have generations who have learned that this stuff is Hard as their first lesson, it becomes a deep cultural bias...

[siderea]

I agree. Perhaps it's better to say that it's OK to eliminate difficulty that has no per ipse value and is not voluntary, but difficulty which is intrinsic to the enterprise should not be eliminated, because it will sap the value of the enterprise. As you point out, you can't eliminate the difficulty of demonstrating you've learned the ritual without, essentially, eliminating th the ritual itself (or more precisely the Mason's personal relationship to the ritual is what is eliminated).