This might be the first time I've actually read The Autobiography all the way through. I've read sections here and there (mostly the virtues, since that gets reprinted/assigned constantly), but the only time I maybe read the whole thing was an American Lit class in undergrad.
I found the front half a lot more interesting. I think this is a combination of two things:
1. The stakes are higher, or at least more relevant/personal. Ben maybe not getting a horse for some general isn't exciting. Ben maybe starving because his printing business is having issues is.
2. The stories there are a lot more to the point, and usually tie in with some kind of interesting philosophy/personal development. More of the later stories are just there for their own sake. (I admit that this is me flipping my usual rage against didactic stores.)
3. I imagine these parts are probably more edited by Franklin. At the very least, the final few sections seem to have been unfinished at the time of his death, while the first few had been at least drafted over a decade earlier.
Overall, interesting story combined with some very digestible philosophy. I still think this was a great first pick for 15MAD and a logical starting point for a modern American trying to dip their toe into the classics. 4/5 on the obnoxiously hard to ace classics scale.
Summary: The mail takes forever, and a preview of some of the arguments Franklin will make in the declaration (among other places)
Commentary: There's quite a bit in here about the power of the King vs the Assemblies, making sure grants are paid, etc. that resonates today.
“You Americans have wrong ideas of the nature of your constitution; you contend that the king’s instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion. But those instructions are not like the pocket instructions given to a minister going abroad, for regulating his conduct in some trifling point of ceremony. They are first drawn up by judges learned in the laws; they are then considered, debated, and perhaps amended in Council, after which they are signed by the king. They are then, so far as they relate to you, the law of the land, for the king is the Legislator of the Colonies.” I told his lordship this was new doctrine to me. I had always understood from our charters that our laws were to be made by our Assemblies, to be presented indeed to the king for his royal assent, but that being once given the king could not repeal or alter them. And as the Assemblies could not make permanent laws without his assent, so neither could he make a law for them without theirs.
[...]
This is the purport of what I remember as urged by both sides, except that we insisted strongly on the mischievous consequences that must attend a repeal, for that the money, £100,000, being printed and given to the king’s use, expended in his service, and now spread among the people, the repeal would strike it dead in their hands to the ruin of many, and the total discouragement of future grants, and the selfishness of the proprietors in soliciting such a general catastrophe, merely from a groundless fear of their estate being taxed too highly, was insisted on in the strongest terms.
This is like the people who are always writing, but are really just redoing their playlist for the 12th time that week:
“I have called here by order every morning these two weeks past for his lordship’s letter, and it is not yet ready.” “Is it possible, when he is so great a writer? for I see him constantly at his escritoire.” “Yes,” says Innis, “but he is like St. George on the signs, always on horseback, and never rides on.”
Being in charge is a pain. But fixing someone else's mistakes is worse:
Shirley was, I believe, sincerely glad of being relieved from so burdensome a charge as the conduct of an army must be to a man unacquainted with military business. [...] some chairs having been borrowed in the neighborhood, there was one among them very low, which fell to the lot of Mr. Shirley. Perceiving it as I sat by him, I said, “They have given you, sir, too low a seat.” “No matter,” says he, “Mr. Franklin, I find a low seat the easiest.”
That closes out The Autobiography. I'll put some closing notes tomorrow, and then take a couple days catching up the other blogs.
Summary: Franklin's experiments get published and appreciated (Eventually).
Commentary: Ben Franklin says don't waste time arguing with people who don't appreciate your stuff, just keep making more:
I once purposed answering the abbé, and actually began the answer; but, on consideration that my writings contained a description of experiments which anyone might repeat and verify, and if not to be verified, could not be defended; or of observations offered as conjectures, and not delivered dogmatically, therefore not laying me under any obligation to defend them; and reflecting that a dispute between two persons, writing in different languages, might be lengthened greatly by mistranslations, and thence misconceptions of one another’s meaning, much of one of the abbé’s letters being founded on an error in the translation, I concluded to let my papers shift for themselves, believing it was better to spend what time I could spare from public business in making new experiments, than in disputing about those already made.
Commentary: Ben seems fairly out of his depth here, but he has his son to help him. The best part is when his unit's chaplain complains that no one is coming to his services, so Ben basically has him do communion every day.
We had for our chaplain a zealous Presbyterian minister, Mr. Beatty, who complained to me that the men did not generally attend his prayers and exhortations. When they enlisted, they were promised, besides pay and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which was punctually served out to them, half in the morning, and the other half in the evening; and I observed they were as punctual in attending to receive it; upon which I said to Mr. Beatty, “It is, perhaps, below the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum, but if you were to deal it out and only just after prayers, you would have them all about you.” He liked the thought, undertook the office, and, with the help of a few hands to measure out the liquor, executed it to satisfaction, and never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended; so that I thought this method preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military laws for nonattendance on divine service.
Also, Ben gets zinged for a change:
I inquired concerning the Moravian marriages, whether the report was true that they were by lot. I was told that lots were used only in particular cases; that generally, when a young man found himself disposed to marry, he informed the elders of his class, who consulted the elder ladies that governed the young women. As these elders of the different sexes were well acquainted with the tempers and dispositions of their respective pupils, they could best judge what matches were suitable, and their judgments were generally acquiesced in; but if, for example, it should happen that two or three young women were found to be equally proper for the young man, the lot was then recurred to. I objected, if the matches are not made by the mutual choice of the parties, some of them may chance to be very unhappy. “And so they may,” answered my informer, “if you let the parties choose for themselves;” which, indeed, I could not deny.
It would've turned out way different if it was this Braddock
Summary: Ben Franklin arranges for horses and supplies for the red coats!
Commentary: I know we hadn't revolted yet, but it's still weird to read a whole chapter of Ben doing logistics for the British army. (They get whooped by some Indians.)
Summary: Ben Franklin tries to form a defense compact, and is caught in the middle of a dispute between a friend and the PA assembly.
Commentary: Doubling up today since 14 is so short. That, conveniently, means I'm not in sync with the day of the month. 14 is basically just Franklin trying to set up a mutual defense system for the colonies. It fails, and he says that the whole revolution may have been prevented if it'd passed, due to less taxes. I'm inclined to say Britain would've found some other excuse to tax the colonies and it wouldn't have matterd.
15 deals with a conflict between the Pennsylvania Assembly and governor, and includes a very off color dinner party joke:
“Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damned Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price.” “The governor,” says I, “has not yet blacked them enough.” He, indeed, had laboured hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wiped off his colouring as fast as he laid it on, and placed it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tired of the contest, and quitted the government.
Franklin would eventually become an abolitionist, but was (I think, the timeline is a little fuzzy) still a slave owner at this point. It'd be easy to try to charitably read this as an attempt to "knock down" an off color joke with another embarrassing the teller, but I think he's laughing with, not at here. Sometimes history and heroes are uncomfortable.
You should switch to wet shaving. I can take of leave the double edge or whatever, but shaving cream sucks.
Summary: Ben Franklin starts UPenn, talks about using booze for genocide, sets up a street sweeper, works on paving and lighting the streets,
Commentary:
I thought I had notes for this, but apparently not, so let's just do a pull quote.
Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus, if you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. The money may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors; he shaves when most convenient to him, and enjoys daily the pleasure of its being done with a good instrument.
I never thought about how helpful being able to shave whenever I want at home is. This is sort of a more concrete version of "if you teach a man to fish..."
I guess the lesson is slightly different: the difference between teaching and doing vs the value of learning even small skills.
I have used arch, btw. But I'm on Fedora at the moment.
Summary: Ben Franklin invents stuff, and learns about being non-judgmental from Quakers.
Commentary: After a kind of meh day yesterday, Ben is back up to form.
He established a militia, and designed there flags. Franklin's Irregulars are definitely some kind of badass steampunk regiment. Then he helped Philly buy some cannons.
My answer to him was, that I had read or heard of some public man who made it a rule never to ask for an office, and never to refuse one when offered to him. “I approve,” says I, “of his rule, and will practice it with a small addition; I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever resign an office.
I have learned that this is generally a good policy. If you turn it down, you'll just have to fix the problems anyway. I'm less sure of the "don't resign" part. What if you have a good successor ready? I guess you could just have them voted in. You could even (while dramatically engineering it to be the tie breaker) vote or them.
Indeed I had some cause to believe that the defense of the country was not disagreeable to any of them, provided they were not required to assist in it. And I found that a much greater number of them than I could have imagined, though against offensive war, were clearly for the defensive. Many pamphlets pro and con were published on the subject, and some by good Quakers, in favour of defense, which I believe convinced most of their younger people.
This is true of a lot of things. People don't want to participate in them, but aren't overly upset by them happening in general. It's more or less the more meaning of tolerance. "I don't like it, but I don't try to stop you from doing it." Tolerance is good. We should bring back tolerance. As opposed to forced participation/enthusiasm, which tends to just have the opposite effect.
“If we fail, let us move the purchase of a fire-engine with the money; the Quakers can have no objection to that; and then, if you nominate me and I you as a committee for that purpose, we will buy a great gun, which is certainly a fire-engine.” “I see,” says he, “you have improved by being so long in the Assembly; your equivocal project would be just a match for their wheat or other grain.”
Ben Franklin is a hypocrite. That's definitely a pun.
And, lastly, as Microsoft kills Windows 10 support and ushers in THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP (for real this time):
That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
Commentary: This reads like half war chant and half children's book. I still hate that slant rhyme at the end of the first stanza.
Was away most of the day for a volunteer project and a Halloween parade so let's have our first grain of sand? Or is it a pebble? Whatever. We talked about Blake a little while I was helping fix up a wheelchair ramp today, so I decided to look up a little of him to read. I think I read some of his longer stuff in college and liked it better.
Commentary: I should read (or at least skim) Poor Richard's Almanac.
In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.
This is, I think, the simplest take on vaccinations. Even if you're concerned about side effects, they'd have to be substantially worse/more likely than the disease to be a good reason not to take it.
This chapter is the source of the "Ben Franklin Effect", basically stating that convincing someone to do you a small favor will (unexpectedly) make them like you. Try it, it works! (Especially good with bad bosses.)
“But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man.
Summary: Ben Franklin's virtues and schedule.
Commentary: Oh boy, back at this again! Wow, these blog entries have gotten a lot shorter. I want to shout out Standard ebooks for getting the virtues chart to paste format in a way that was easy to copy and paste. I've worked with this however many times for blogs and classes and it's always a pain in the ass. The schedule doesn't go quite as well, but is readable.
It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.
"Moral perfection", not improvement, not development, perfections. That's a lofty (impossible) goal. He is like 20/21 at this point. We all had lofty ambitious at that age.
But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason.
I think this is a thing I've seen from working on this blog and my other goals. Sometimes I'm focused on making sure I work out enough in a week and I wind up skimping on the blog, or writing a lot for the blog so I don't do as much other writing.
Honestly, he really repeats this in different forms a lot (it's basically what order is, and then it's the next paragraph after the virtue list.) It's probably the most valuable thing. If you can do that well, it'd make all the others easier, which is why he puts it early.
This being acquired and established, Silence would be more easy; and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I improved in virtue, and considering that in conversation it was obtained rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling company, I gave Silence the second place.
Eliminating puns is not a virtue!
“I conceive,” “I apprehend,” or “I imagine” a thing to be so or so; or it “so appears to me at present.”
This is still a good critiquing trick. I talked to my students about it last week.
My ideas at that time were, that the sect should be begun and spread at first among young and single men only; that each person to be initiated should not only declare his assent to such creed, but should have exercised himself with the thirteen weeks’ examination and practice of the virtues, as in the beforementioned model; that the existence of such a society should be kept a secret
Starting a secret society of virtue is probably the best thing Ben Franklin meant to do but didn't.
Commentary: I read part of this section for 15MAD!
But I'm going to focus my comments tonight on an earlier section.
Our debates possessed me so fully of the subject, that I wrote and printed an anonymous pamphlet on it, entitled “The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency.” It was well received by the common people in general; but the rich men disliked it, for it increased and strengthened the clamor for more money, and they happening to have no writers among them that were able to answer it, their opposition slackened, and the point was carried by a majority in the House. My friends there, who conceived I had been of some service, thought fit to reward me by employing me in printing the money; a very profitable job and a great help to me. This was another advantage gained by my being able to write.
As a teacher, there's inevitably some amount of "why are we learning/doing" this every year. I often share some version of this story with them for why learning how to write a decent looking essay is worthwhile:
When I was working generic summer retail, I noticed that my store won a lot more employee of the month, quarter, etc. awards than the other stores in our district. This was odd, since we were smaller, not a flagship store, etc. I'd been to the other stores, they had perfectly good employees as well.
I asked my manager about it one day, and she took me back to the office to show me the latest round of nomination emails from the managers.
Hers was four or five short paragraphs explaining who the employee was, what they had done, etc.
Most of the other stores looked like awkward mid aughts text messages with weird abbreviations, no capitals, etc.
Learn to write decently and your boss will listen to ou.
Summary: Ben Franklin returns to Philly, gets his printing business started, and hustles!
Commentary: As a broadly atheistic leaning agnostic, I do appreciate the idea of religion as a tool for passing down useful knowledge. Or, as Franklin says:
Revelation had indeed no weight with me, as such; but I entertained an opinion that, though certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably these actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things considered.
Summary: Young Ben Franklin continues to be successful in business more than in friendship or ladies. Also, the first appearance of gout, but not on Franklin.
Commentary: Franklin repeatedly uses the words errata and erratum, as in: "This was another of the great errata of my life, which I should wish to correct if I were to live it over again."
I always thought of it as meaning "correction" but it actually means "error." Learning!
"I had brought over a few curiosities, among which the principal was a purse made of the asbestos, which purifies by fire."
Ben Franklin brings lung cancer to England.
On occasion, I carried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands. They wondered to see, from this and several instances, that the “Water-American,” as they called me, was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer!
You've heard, "I am a real American!" but what about a "Water-American"?
Summary: Ben Franklin tells us about his friends in Philadelphia.
Commentary: New response just dropped: “What do you intend to infer from that?”
Also, he starts a writing group where everyone workshops the same prompt, which is kind of a neat idea:
On this it was proposed that we should each of us, at our next meeting, produce a piece of our own composing, in order to improve by our mutual observations, criticisms, and corrections. As language and expression were what we had in view, we excluded all considerations of invention by agreeing that the task should be a version of the eighteenth Psalm, which describes the descent of a Deity.
I've seen this kind of thing in online writing groups, but never in person ones. I could see how it'd be better than the pot luck you normally get.
Summary: Ben Franklin goes back home, then returns to Philly, and prepares to set up a print shop.
Commentary: You can start to see some of the famous Ben Franklin maxims starting to take shape here. Don't get tricked by pretty girls, don't lend money to drunks, etc. I never really thought about the real life experiences that led to them.
I believe I have omitted mentioning that, in my first voyage from Boston, being becalmed off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion I considered, with my master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanced some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, “If you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you.” So I dined upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
The first appearance of "not quite following his own advice" Franklin.
Commentary: Intellectually, I knew Ben wasn't born in Philadelphia, but he's such a fixture of the city that reading about it was kind of weird. Also, Philly is BREAD TOWN. He accidentally buys 3 big rolls, because they're expensive and crappy in Boston.
