Scouting: Organization, Movement or Philosophy?

Scouting is not an organization.

Scouting is a movement.

Scouting is also a philosophy. The philosophy drives the movement, the movement uses various organizations. An organization possesses and uses structure, resources and power.

Organizations hire workers, issue policies, buy and sell products, build buildings. The B.S.A., W.O.S.M., and G.S.A.are all organizations that serve Scouting, but they are not Scouting itself.

Movements have an emotional heart. A movement may use organizations but are not dependent on them.

Movements require leaders with the power and energy of an idea or vision.

Movements are very hard to stop and are more likely to bring change to the world. A philosophy can survive events that would kill a movement or organization. A philosophy can skip a generation or two. It is often interpreted, and is more likely to break into autonomous groups, to morph and split and then reunite. We run into trouble when we place our loyalty in an organization rather than the philosophy that built it.

Organizations are much more vulnerable to error, to weakness.

Organizations have a life span; they are not eternal.

Organizations need to be challenged, it’s the only way they can remain faithful to their underlying philosophy.

During the occupation of Poland in WWII the Poles lost their Scouting Organization; it was co-opted by the Nazis. But the Poles did not loose the heart of their movement nor the philosophy behind it. They carried it into the ghettos, the concentration camps, and finally into the diaspora of Poles all over the world.

Polish Scouting stayed alive as a philosophy, as a movement through six decades of Nazi and communist governments. When Poland was freed from communism the scouting movement grew into several competing organizations all vying for official recognition but the movement and the philosophy had survived. When we keep ourselves centered on the philosophy behind Scouting, when we remain faithful to the movement empowered by that philosophy the troubles and trials of the organization are put into perspective.; they are less unsettling. If Scouting is a valuable philosophy it will remain so – there’s really no way to kill it. The organizations formed around it may come and go but the movement at it’s heart will remain strong.