Justice week 1: wrong none

According to Franklin, injustice is achieved both actively and passively.  You can be unjust by hurting others.  But you can also be unjust by refraining from actions you should perform: "Wrong none, by doing Injuries, or omitting the Benefits that are your Duty."  Justice in this framework is related to Franklin's general theory of action and virtue, which is to be accountable for what you fail to do at every moment (Resolution – "Perform without fail what you resolve"; Industry – "Lose no Time"). 

As with Sincerity week, I didn't find it a particular challenge during Justice week not to do injuries, though it is always possible to feel as though we could "omit" less, do more for others.  What is the true scope of Duty?  

This question is hard for a regular person to answer responsibly but non-neurotically.  If the injuries we commit against others can be hard to assess in a global economy (under what conditions was the t-shirt I wore today made?), it can be even harder to know what benefits we might be obligated to confer and how.

Ben Franklin is not often invoked in this context.  Always a popular and populist figure, he is regularly named as a supporter of individual thrift and responsibility, of entrepreneurship, and even of modern free-market economics.  Not for nothing was he cited by economically conservative Congressman Aaron Schock in the interview with Men's Health I mentioned in last week's post.  Franklin can even be made to stand in opposition to policies seen as overly intrusive on individual liberty, as in this Cafepress t-shirt you can buy for a mere $35:

Here is Franklin as the hip anti-Obama.  He is neatly signified as opposing the federal imposition of health care or higher taxes on a polity that refuses to benefit from another's sense of Duty, or to be forced to perform that Duty themselves.

Similarly, as historian Jill Lepore notes in a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Paul Ryan's Medicare- and social-services-cutting budget plan is named "The Path to Prosperity," a subtle echo of Franklin's famous essay, "The Way to Wealth" (discussed in April 19's Resolution Week 1 entry below).*  Economic conservatives readily name Franklin as the patron saint of freedom from the burdens of collective endeavor which, they imply, Franklin knew would hobble the individual and thereby, in their view, the nation.

Lepore argues against this, describing the difficulties of Franklin's sister, Jane Mecom, to whom, of all his correspondents, Franklin wrote most frequently.  Uneducated, married young, bearing child after child (nearly all of whom died), Mecom becomes for Lepore an argument that the state alleviate such misery – and convert it to productivity a la Franklin – by making universal education, health care, family planning services and, we might add, suffrage, available.  Pace Ryan, Lepore believes Franklin would agree.  She notes he gave a generous bequest to Boston's public schools in his will.  (Her eloquent argument may be found here.)

Franklin's definition of Justice in his virtue system could certainly support Lepore's reading (as might the record of Franklin's substantial endeavors for the public good, which only begin with him founding libraries and fire companies, and creating paper currency for the Colonies, long before his more well-known participation in crafting the republic). 

To assess Franklin and his role in our own age is to accumulate numerous quirky and troubling data.  (The abs are only the beginning: more to come.)  It's nicer, in my opinion, to credit him for his advocacy that we not omit the Benefits we owe others.

Coming up: return of charts, courtesy of restored hard drive.


*Thanks to Eugene's Blogger of the Year, Culinaria Eugenius, for bringing this to my attention.

Sincerity Week 1: Political abs edition

Sincerity week was less of a challenge than industry week for me.  Franklin exhorts me to "Use no hurtful Deceit.  Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly."  I didn't find myself much tempted to deceive others hurtfully, and so this wasn't a terrible challenge. 

I am intrigued that this is the first of Franklin's categories to attempt to monitor thought – the activity he seems to locate as the source of fair dealing.  Franklin cuts insincerity off at the source.  His cautious "if you speak" follows from his Silence adages (week 2; entry below), which stressed engaging solely in purposeful and beneficial speech.  While I therefore assume that "think[ing] innocently and justly" is meant to characterize my own thought and speech patterns – no lying, no unfair agenda – these adverbs seem possibly transferable to one's interlocutor, with whom one is being sincere.  Does Franklin imagine that the more "innocently and justly" I think, the more I will think others innocent and just?  Presumably speech intended to bait or call others out on their own insincerity isn't Franklin-approved (it's unproductive). 

Diplomacy, in short, remained a question for me with this system.  Franklin only cautions me to avoid "hurtful Deceit" but says nothing about white lies, or about the small flatteries and compromises that can often grease the wheels of administrative or other collaborative work.  I assume that a practiced and accomplished diplomat such as Franklin was well-acquainted with these and other forms of productive, necessary insincerity.  I plan to research this a bit the next time "Sincerity" is up.

Meanwhile, this week we had the pleasure of seeing Franklin invoked by none other than Aaron Schock, the Congressman from Illinois's 18th district who flaunted his pecs and six-pack in a shirtless photoshoot for Men's Health magazine:  http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/aaron-schock-fitness .  Most of the way down the page, Schock names Franklin as his (improbable!) fitness inspiration:

"One of my favorite quotes is from Ben Franklin, who said, 'A good example is the best sermon,' " Schock says. "And I think if you want to start talking about healthy lifestyles and staying in shape, then you yourself should do your best to try to be a model, an example to people you're trying to convince to do the same."

It is...piquant to see the Founding Father known for his comforting, comfortable heft cited in this fashion.  I can't imagine Franklin taking the necessary time away from, of all things, the business of public service in order to manipulate his appearance in this way.  Nor would he conflate being a "model" of fiscal prudence and actions of simultaneously public and personal benefit (his sweet spot, and what he is referring to here) with other forms of modeling.  (Similarly, later in the article, Schock describes his work as a Congressman as a useful part of his exercise regime, rather than vice versa: "Exercise...keeps me in good physical shape, and it relieves stress. And when you're a representative of the public, there's never a shortage of things to do.") 

Do I deduce some Insincerity in Schock's tribute to Franklin (more on this soon in relation to "Justice," coming up)?  Poor Richard's adages are, of course, meant to be detachable and adaptable.  Even exemplarity itself seems to have two sides, since elsewhere, we have Franklin declaring, in a proto-Wildean voice, that "Setting too good an example is a kind of slander seldom forgiven."

But I digress. 

There has been an improvement this week in industry and resolution, since I take last week's industry low-point seriously.  Unfortunately, there will be a temporary hiatus in charts, due to the death of my hard drive.  It will be resurrected, I hope, this week, in time for Justice.  Stay tuned.

Industry week 1: assessment

Franklin's explanatory motto for Industry is: "Lose no time.  Be always employed in something useful.  Cut off all unnecessary actions."

Look at that.  With its three (count 'em) logical absolutes (no time; always employed; all unnecessaries), it's a thing of beauty to me: an inhuman, uncompromising ideal, sure, but a powerful fantasy also.  For me it evokes an optimistic vision of what I might be able to achieve if I could regularly access an idealized, machinelike version of myself. 

The truth is, there have been periods in my working life during which I have almost realized this vision.  They occurred under short- and long-term deadlines.  The less interesting of these involve me grading for 12 or 15 hours straight, say, well into the wee hours of the night, with the tv on mute (to make me feel less isolated), ideally stuck on a channel with patterned images (so as not to distract me) – maybe on the choppy graphs of the weather channel, or the more engaging palette and lighting of CSI: Miami marathons.  I wind up sleeping for a few hours and teaching the next day.  Such all-nighters offer satisfying completions, but they aren't sustainable.  More importantly, they aren't even valuable in the longer term. 

Writing deadlines have a slower approach and a much bigger payoff.  When finishing a large project (articles, dissertation, book), I adopt longer-term versions of what I imagine Franklin conceives of here.  I have evolved taxing, but productive, daily schedules: two, and eventually three, multiple-hour writing stints per day; a daily bout of exercise to keep myself from imploding; a day off once a week, with grocery shopping and the week's only socializing.  Brief periods of daily rest are built into the schedule, primarily to enable its continuation.  That is, virtually all my pleasure during such a work period exists to serve the work.

Such monastic routines are increasingly hard to bear.  After I finish, I look back on them with a mixture of pride, awe, and a recollection of the mounting, agonizing desire they produce to complete them and emerge into a freer life.  They have produced my largest-scale and most intricate work, the research which is at the heart of my professional identity.  It's the hardest thing I do, since the earliest stages of writing have always been difficult for me and the later ones grueling and draining.

I've never been able to keep to such schedules for more than a few months.  I have a large writing project afoot now, and the Virtue Project was largely undertaken to facilitate it.  Thus far – about halfway through my first 13-week cycle of Franklin's virtues – I don't think I've been very successful. 

Part of this has to do with a strangely busy administrative season.  Mostly teaching-free though I may be, I have found myself attending daily meetings.  Arriving at home after these, I have trouble switching gears into a writing mode. 

But looking at Franklin's industry adage, my current days seem crammed with inexcusable, excessive periods of goofing off and delay.  Would the week's chart with its few blots I deem memorable lapses even be an adequate response?  I don't mark every time I fail to cut off an unnecessary action, each moment I "lose time." The singleness of purpose evoked by that adage seems to me to be Franklin's signature quality, and I haven't lived up to it.

For a while I've thought I might try to ratchet up the intensity of performance of the next 13-week cycle of virtues, and perhaps I need to start doing that sooner.  The writing won't wait.  Maybe it's time to return to monastic routines and a more intensely Franklinesque degree of scrutiny, in the interest of a more faithfully Franklinesque productivity.  Next week is officially devoted to Sincerity (more soon), but Industry is going to remain front and center for me.