Temperance Week 1: Chart

The lure of northern European cuisine notwithstanding, Temperance wasn't a bad week for me.  I think the time I spend thinking about food instead of working – issues of Resolution, Order, and Industry more than Temperance – would be more upsetting to Franklin than any trouble I have avoiding eating to dullness and drinking to elevation.  Here's my first scorecard:

This is a little deceptive, since I was crazed finishing grades on Monday, and on vacation during the weekend, more or less hewing to my vacation plans.  But looking at the pooling of faults midweek, we can see what I expected and what partly motivated me to begin with – at once the particular difficulties of this system for me and its potential benefits.  I am challenged in Order, Industry, and Resolution, especially when I work on my own schedule, as I will be doing for a few months, writing my book in precious time I earned by teaching overloads earlier in the year.  I won't get this time back, and I want a little bit of Franklin's signature virtues to help me use it well. 

This week is Silence: "Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation." It is also likely to be relatively easy, since I am working from home and not prone to trifle with my beagle, the only one around to talk to during the day.  I'll use the time to develop more disciplined work habits in preparation for Order.  I hope.

Temperance versus Portland

Franklin begins his cycle of Virtues with Temperance, ostensibly because it lays a foundation for the others, "as it tends to procure the Coolness and Clearness of Head...so necessary where constant Vigilance was to be kept up...against the unremitting Attraction of ancient Habits, and...perpetual Temptations."  Stay temperate and Justice, Chastity, and Industry will be a snap to keep up.

But Franklin's reasons for this ordering are a little over-determined since, as he regularly brags, Temperance comes easily to him.  This is a man who advises that to save money, those in the career-building phase might imitate him in regularly eating oatmeal or cornmeal mush for supper, or else "a Slice of Bread, a Handful of Raisins...and a Glass of Water."  With such a diet, Franklin exempted himself from meals with his family (he was working for his brother), using the time he saved to learn mathematics.  He credited his rapid progress in the subject to the clear-headedness produced by his Temperate eating. 

Similarly, just a few pages into the Autobiography, Franklin notes that, like his father,

I was brought up in such a perfect Inattention to those Matters as to be quite Indifferent what kind of Food was set before me; and so unobservant of it, that to this Day, if I am ask'd I can scarce tell, a few Hours after Dinner, what I din'd upon.  This has been a Convenience to me in traveling...

By "those Matters" Franklin refers to his father's disinterest in the type of food he ate at any given meal, "whether it was well or ill drest, in or out of season," its flavor, and its quality in relation to other possible foods.

Now, I live in the Pacific Northwest, a region where issues of seasonality, flavor, and preparation are essentially the local religion.  Long before I moved here, I cared about food.  Far from considering an indifference to food an advantage when traveling, I regularly plan trips around the restaurants to be visited and available cuisines to be sampled. 

Moreover this, my first week as a Virtue Projector, was also my first chance for R&R in months: Spring Break, with my grades in and no new teaching upcoming.  I was headed to Portland with T. for the weekend and uneasy about how this would jibe with Temperance Week.  For instance, I felt reasonably certain that Franklin wouldn't have spent the night before a trip surfing the web looking at menus, and trying to figure out whether he should leave early enough on Friday to allow for three brunches in the weekend. 

But what exactly would exceed Franklin's definitions of Temperance, assuming that the locally foraged nettles and the well-mixed, innovative cocktails featured on nearly every one of those internet menus couldn't penetrate his indifference?  Despite his endorsement of cornmeal mush and his intermittent vegetarianism, Franklin's instructions for Temperance are reasonably open, dwelling not on the content of the menu (since he barely noticed it), but the mental impact of the food consumed: "Eat not to Dullness; Drink not to Elevation."

I wasn't sure I wanted to stay within the bounds of even this latitude.  I had been looking forward to the food on this trip for a long time.  But...it was Virtue Project Week 1.  Now or never?

At first it wasn't too bad.  We didn't brunch on Friday, and with dullness and elevation in mind at lunch, I settled for a thin sandwich (lox and cream cheese on rye) and had broccolini with chili flakes with it, instead of a pastry, at Elephants Deli.  Was I dull?  Would a pastry have made me dull?  I wasn't even sure I was full.

By dinner I was starved.  Blackened catfish on cheese grits, fried okra and (since I'm a lightweight, and a pint would definitely have elevated me) just a little bit of black ale at Delta Cafe still felt within the bounds of responsible non-dullness.

Saturday brunch was indulgent and delicious, but hardly dullness-inducing, cinnamon french toast and a scrambled egg at the preciously-named "Bijou, cafe" in the Pearl.  Coffee, that classic of mental acuity, the nectar of the Protestant work ethic itself, preserved my sharpness.  Not bad.

But dinner...we had an early reservation at Grüner.  After a dense, chewy pretzel, a jenga-like tower of endive, apple, fourme d'ambert and hazelnuts with hazelnut oil vinaigrette made me forget the unhappy couple seated next to us who arrived separately and sniped at each other through dinner. And finally I got to sample the spring nettles, combined with ricotta in dumplings, and covered with butter, parmesan, and a generous helping of trumpet mushrooms.  Portland battled with Franklin and insisted that I drink the entire large glass of Grüner Veltliner.  As a lightweight, I was beyond elevated, happily planning future trips with T. and talking at random about learning foreign languages to do so.  Afterward, it only made sense to ignore the endless chilly rain and stop for a healthy portion of mocha and cinnamon gelato, returning to the hotel to continue the northern European theme by watching a Swedish film in a dull, elevated blur. 

Next: the first week's scorecard.

But first...procedures

How does Franklin monitor his progress toward moral Perfection?  A printer by trade, Franklin roots his procedure in the technology of the day planner:

I made a little Book in which I allotted a Page for each of the Virtues.  I rul'd each Page with red Ink so as to have seven Columns, one for each Day of the Week...I cross'd these Columns with thirteen red Lines...

Franklin produces a labeled grid on which, at night, he can mark each "Fault" of the day in its proper place.  He attempts above all not to stray in performing that week's governing virtue, "leaving the other Virtues to their ordinary Chance."  Here is an example of one of his own Temperance worksheets, which he provides in his Autobiography for the reader's use:

It was a bad week for Silence and Order (I know the feeling), but Franklin met his primary goal and was temperate, in control of his appetites.  He seems to take some care in the placement of his blots, using that to note the time of day of each mistake.  As I live through the virtue-weeks, I will do the same.

Franklin's insight is one shared by other printers and writers: the permanence of writing offers a special form of pleasurable focus on the self.  It prolongs the week indefinitely, mapped onto the page.  The neat grid, the red lines – they will compensate for the loss of behavioral freedom, the ability to commit one's blots, and leave them behind.
 

The Virtue Project

Late in the second part of his Autobiography, writing of the events in his life around 1730, Benjamin Franklin notes with typical aplomb, irony, and almost mad optimism:

It was about this time that I conceiv'd the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection.  I wish'd to live without committing any Fault at anytime; I would conquer all that either Natural Inclination, Custom, or Company might lead me into.  As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other.  But I soon found I had undertaken a Task of more Difficulty than I had imagined...

The "Difficulty" took many forms.  Franklin observes that while thinking of correcting one "Fault," he would find he had committed another one.  Bad habits tripped him up.  Unruly desires overcame his ability to pursue virtuous actions according to the guide of reason.  All in all, moral perfection was not at all as readily achievable as he had imagined.  Characteristically, he decided that what he needed...was a system.

Franklin identified twelve virtues that he thought would, possessed together, produce perfection.  Each was explained according to a pithy motto or instruction (on this, more soon).  These virtues were: Temperance; Silence; Order; Resolution; Frugality; Industry; Sincerity; Justice; Moderation; Cleanliness; Tranquility; and Chastity.  His general idea was to focus completely on one at a time, while monitoring his progress simultaneously in all.

When he showed the list of virtues to a Quaker friend with some self-satisfaction, Franklin found he had one to add.  The Quaker "kindly" let him know that people thought him proud, "overbearing and rather insolent."  When arguing, he was told, he wasn't satisfied just with being right, but tried to dominate his interlocutors.  As we will see, Franklin liked to think of himself rather differently, and so he decided to cure himself of this vice, and added "Humility" to cap his list.

He was, I am guessing, pleased to do so, for with thirteen virtues, he might focus on one each for a week, and run through the entire list four times in a year – precisely.  Franklin liked thoroughness and neat results, and now each season would be a thorough virtue program, a self-improvement project.  Who knew what might be possible in a year?  Day by day, Franklin kept records as he went, noting blots and successes.

*  *  *

I first read Franklin's autobiography when teaching it as the final text in a course designed to help new English majors learn to read and write better, and to be familiar with the entire range of literature in English.  My course is the middle one of three linked classes, and includes literature from the 1530s through the 1780s.  The course is large, generally enrolling 200 students, give or take, and is often a battle in which I stake my enthusiasm against my students' willingness to be distracted, my jokes or striking remarks against the constant onslaught of their texting, my presentation of ideas which repay focus and thought against their desires to flit among stimuli and memes.

Still, I do like the rapid pace of a crowded survey class.  Often enough, when rereading the poems and novellas I assign and preparing my thoughts on their importance and achievements, I am delighted and impressed anew, charmed with each writer's originality and talents in his or her turn.  Such pleasures are available to me in the form of 2-4 authors a week.  But Franklin's Autobiography, one of the few texts I hadn't read before, provoked a more sustained fascination, outlasting my lecture preparation, my lecture.  I was thinking about him, talking about him, for days on end.

Was it just that I was longing for students to adopt Ben Franklin's earnestness about labor and virtue, and his single-minded pursuit of what would improve, but also remunerate and credential him?  After all, Franklin embodies many of the goals I have for how my course might light the way for my students – many of them of humble backgrounds, the first in their families to attend university; many of them paying their own way.

Or was it that I wanted to be Franklin, the charismatic populist sharing a system with the power to do more good more quickly and directly for the students than the necessarily slow processes of learning to think critically and write analytically could deliver?  In the preface to this same second part of the Autobiography, Franklin prints letters from contemporaries who had heard of his having begun his memoirs and begged him to continue, just to inspire the young.  "School and other education," noted Benjamin Vaughan, a merchant and doctor who had helped Franklin negotiate peace with England after the War of Independence, "constantly proceed upon false principles, and show a clumsy apparatus pointed at a false mark; but your apparatus is simple, and the mark a true one..."  Couldn't Franklin, now as then, help me give my students what they lacked, the work ethic and drive I was too imperfect to persuade them to embrace?

The truth was that, once more, I was responding more intensely to the reading than many of my students, and not only with altruistic, teacherly solicitude and ambitions on their behalf.  The truth was that, like Franklin, I am romanced by systems, rules, and enumerations, and was, similarly a little priggishly, buzzed by the prospect of what such a virtue "Method" could achieve.  I immediately wanted to run through Franklin's virtue Project myself.

In fact, that, I told my friends, was exactly what I planned to do.  Like Franklin, I'd spend a year on building skills in thirteen virtues, one week for each, cycling through them four times.  I'd keep records and assess my progress in an ongoing and cumulative fashion.  A convenient time to begin was just after the course ended, on the vernal equinox, March 21. 

Except I didn't.  In the rush of grading and preparing for more teaching, in the freedom from daily accountability temporarily granted by the break between terms, my plans for ordered self-improvement lapsed and faded.  My characteristic vices and virtues held their ground.

Three-quarters of a year passed, and I taught the class again.

This blog will be the record of a 21st-century teacher and writer undergoing Franklin's Virtue Project for a year.  We begin, this week, with Temperance.