The Mutualist Compact and 19th-Century Voluntarism

To suggest one way to move beyond conflict, this presentation examines how nineteenth-century fraternal orders, friendly societies, and freemasons used rulebooks, images, rituals, and myths to create imaginary worlds around mutualist ideals. Enacted in club rooms and public processions, they built on values of tolerance, fraternity, and social harmony. That members did not always live up to these lofty ideals is clear from rules against arguing, swearing, and excessive drinking, but they did provide shared guidelines to creating a peaceful society.

The mutualist compact that emerged is like ambient sound: it is, to quote philosopher John Lysaker, an example of “the power of calm.” Problematizing conflict as a category of analysis allows us to begin the process of finding those ambient pasts, to uncover hidden, neglected, and suppressed episodes and ideals pointing to the historical search for possible peaceful futures.