Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [3]
So I took up the invitation. I researched, I surfed the web, and I read books. Most important, I discovered Franklin’s autobiography. Started in 1771 as a series of letters intended for his son, William, Franklin wrote a remarkably readable chronicle of his life. Along with musings on science, literature, and philosophy, Franklin described a course of self-improvement he devised when he was a young man. It was a “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.” Franklin’s stated rationale was a desire to “live without committing any fault at any time.” You may call him delusional, but you can’t fault his ambition.
{ Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.}
Franklin’s course required him to focus, for a week at a time, on a particular virtue. There were thirteen virtues in total. After a week, he would go on to the next virtue until he had completed the entire course. Each virtue was accompanied by an explanation, or “precept,” as he called them. In truth, and in the harsh light of almost three hundred years of hindsight, the “precepts” look more like “outs.” Chastity, for instance, didn’t mean “no sex.” To Franklin, it meant “rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.” That’s a pretty wide-open virtue. Probably a good thing, too; a course of self-improvement that included a complete prohibition on sex would have a very small market—monks, nuns, and maybe some diehard Star Trek conventioneers.
The list of virtues reads like an ethical dinner menu:
1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquillity: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Franklin’s “moral perfection” project is not without its critics. Micki McGee, author of Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life,4 suggests that Franklin was the progenitor of the modern self-help movement—our cultural obsession with single-handedly making ourselves “better.” The self-help bookshelves groan with advice on how to be happy, how to handle sadness, how to maximize potential, how to minimize stress. Articles abound on how to overcome anxiety, depression, panic, mother issues, father issues, and just about every other kind of issue you can think of. Materials on self-esteem seem to be very popular, though I can’t help wondering if being seen with a book on how to build self-esteem is good for self-esteem. “Coping” is also a popular theme: cope with difficult parents, cope with difficult kids, cope with difficult employers, cope with difficult employees. I imagine that somewhere there are two people sitting on opposite sides of a wall reading books on how to cope with each other.
The self-help industry churns out multimedia fixes for everything, usually with catchy titles and blue-sky promises. There are motivational speakers and business speakers, life coaches and self-esteem gurus. They scream