On fire, most of the time

I've enjoyed Seth Godin's marketing wisdom sound-bites for years... he makes a lot of very keen observations, and when I read his post today about Managing urgencies I found myself relating it back to the recent state of online Masonic discourse. From Mr. Godin's post:

"You can have grand visions for remodeling your house or getting in shape, but if there's a fire in the kitchen, you drop everything and put it out. What choice do you have? The problem, of course, is that most organizations are on fire, most of the time."

The kind of inflammatory rhetoric discussed here by Bro. Greg Stewart et al makes it awfully tempting to grab a fire extinguisher and fight some fire... I know, because I've started and abandoned several responses in the last couple of days myself. I'm not going to do it, because I have work to do. If there were any gentlemanly resolution to be reached through reasoned discussion about problems facing the Fraternity today it would be one thing... but the acrimonious back and forth we are witnessing lately is not debate, it's classic arguing on the internet, and it's not going to make our ashlars any smoother.