Secret Societies
For a comprehensive overview of secret societies and in particular freemasonry, see https://thedukereport.substack.com/p/secret-societies-and-modern-masonry? which also links to the emergence of the City of London in the 18th century.
I have found nothing in these perfectly written (and illustrated) accounts to take issue with. Peter Duke speculates on the motivations of the founding fathers whereas much might alternatively be explained in terms of the pursuit of incremental power for its own sake, i.e. without any master plan. Others will see satanic forces at work.
These accounts are the background to what I wish to add here.
The first thing to note is that secret societies are overwhelmingly the preserve of men. They are fraternal orders. Where are the women?
The second is that fraternal orders undermine the principles of the market economy, rule of law and electoral democracy. The market economy does not work if there is hidden favouritism.
The third is that they are hierarchical. Secrecy is maintained by the principle of “need-to-know;” this results in very few, if indeed any, having the big picture.
The fourth thing to note is that secretive societies use ritual, with some rituals resulting in kompromat. While appearing secular, they borrow much from religion. (Some of us do not stand on ceremony and have an aversion to ritual.)
The fifth thing to note is that secret knowledge is inherent to the culture, and not only discretion and loyalty to fellow adherents. The word for such secret knowledge is gnosis, which takes us back to various cults of two thousand years ago.
Remedies in theory are easy, but any implementation exceedingly difficult. For a start, membership of secretive societies needs to be declared treasonous. But how can this be enforced?
We are and have long been in a civil war, for the moment only sporadically violent. Maybe this has always been the case, but now in plain sight.
Cultural remedies would be to change how masculinity is seen and propagated. More profound would be to abandon patriarchy lock, stock & barrel. The correlary would be a turn to a radical feminism with a rejection of equality in favour of difference.