AKRAM ELIAS
Past Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Washington DC
Masonic Forum it is in my humble opinion one of the best Masonic magazines that I have seen. The content, the design, the layout, the colors, I think it’s quite inspirational and I think this is the way of the future.
I think it’s important for Freemasonry to come out of the closet, engage society and come up with publications that engage not masons, at a very smart and deep level, but to get non-masons to learn more about what the fraternity is about.
Because Freemasonry and society are inseparable. Masonic Forum, as the title says it, offers a Masonic forum – it is true to its mission, to be a platform for communication and the exchange of ideas. I think this magazine lives up to its title.
There is one thing that’s important about Masonic Forum – the quality is very high. Keep it up. No matter who tries to pressure you and tell you – maybe we can save some money, maybe we can do it a little cheaper, maybe we can do with less – don’t go for that, do not compromise quality. Keep it at the quality level where it is right now, which is excellent!
When it comes to communication tools, you either do it in an excellent manner or it is better not to do it at all. Compromising on the quality of communication does nothing but harm the fraternity, so always aim at the highest quality – for the best – or don’t do anything. Anything in the middle, trying to cut corners, does not serve the fraternity, it cheapens it.
Masonic Forum serves the fraternity and it is best to keep it at high quality. It you compromise the quality, it will no longer do the service, so it is better to keep it as it is.
Everything today is about communications. We live in a global world – and in an instantaneous-communications world. Something happens somewhere in the world – it is instantaneously known throughout the world. And knowing how to communicate, doing it effectively – and at the level of excellence – is essential, because we cannot – you cannot afford to be “so-so”, you cannot afford to do it cheaply, because it would no longer serve your cause.
We live in a nine-second-soundbite world. The words you choose are very powerful. And communication is free, the norm of the day. We are living in a knowledge revolution, knowledge-information is an essential part. Knowledge is transforming the human race, the same way there was an agricultural revolution, there was an industrial revolution – they transformed the economic, the political and the social orders of the time.
We’re now going through a third, most fundamental revolution in the human race – and it is the knowledge revolution. Information is the means to communicate that knowledge. Individuals, for the first time, have access to information, can process it, can deduce knowledge from it and act upon that knowledge independently like never seen before in the recorded history of humanity.
So people who shape messages, who help communicate these messages are today the architects of our society, believe it or not.
Keep it up!
