Chip on shoulder? That would (EDIT: 'might be true!'
) be true if I had never been approached........ I have been on several occasions throughout my life.
I thought that Americans had mostly turned their backs upon social and political hierarchies? Do you like class systems? Maybe in America it's different to here.
To join many top clubs here you must be a freemason. Others will allow suitable people to join, but nobody may become a committee member unless they are a mason (such as our best yacht-clubs). Masonry is exclusive, and tiered. The pyramid is a perfect symbol of the levels of secrecy and exclusion. If you support these concepts then go for it.
But I don't think that you can. If you apply, meet two masons who are prepared to reference or guarantee you without having known you (!), etc etc, I don't think that you would be able to go through with it.
It's a question of whether you could get up, leave your home, travel, go to a place where you would be surrounded by strangers, subjected to unusual, tense, stressful and strange ceremonies....... in situations where you would need calm, collected courage.
Could you do that? If so, then start now. Get up, go out, get a job, a position........ and become the person that Masons seek to join them. And then you will have joined a class system.
I thought you wanted a flat playing field.......