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It’s that time again: time to set resolutions and goals for ourselves as we enter the New Year. In this excerpt from Pursuing the Good Life, the late Christopher Peterson puts the spotlight on Benjamin Franklin, encouraging us to take the statesman a little more seriously… not for his political or scientific achievements, but for the way he set and cultivated his personal goals. Peterson shows that whether our resolutions are set in the beginning of January or halfway through the year, Franklin’s approach is one that we can all take some notes from.

Net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones. —Benjamin Franklin

I am writing this reflection on the last day of the year. Have you made any New Year’s resolutions? I just read an article on the most typical resolutions made by adults in the United States, and I was struck by how many of them embody the strengths of character that have been the subject of my research: spending more time with friends and family (love), saying no to cigarettes and alcohol (self-regulation), getting organized (prudence), learning something new (love of learning), helping others (kindness), getting fi t and losing weight (perseverance), and so on. Another common resolution is climbing out of debt, which in today’s world probably requires creativity coupled with good judgment.

If you want to make your resolutions happen, I suggest one more: taking Benjamin Franklin seriously.

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) is of course widely acclaimed as a statesman and scientist, but he may also deserve credit as America’s fi rst positive psychologist. Not only did he enumerate 13 praiseworthy character strengths (virtues), but he also took on the challenge of cultivating each of them, using himself as a research subject (Franklin, 1791/1962).

Franklin characterized each of the virtues of interest to him in terms of what he called their precepts . In modern psychological language, these precepts were behavioral markers of the virtue in question. For example, the precepts for industry were “lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions” and for temperance were “eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation” (p. 67).

From my perspective, too many of Franklin’s precepts are phrased in terms of what a person should not do, refl ecting his concern with what contemporary virtue ethicists call corrective virtues , those that protect against human inclinations to act in bad ways. But good character is not simply the absence of bad character. Just because people refrain from mean-spirited actions does not make them kind, any more than being free from anxiety or depression necessarily makes people happy.

Nonetheless, the value of his precepts is that they are behavioral, observable, and countable. The goals they represent are hard and specifi c, which modern psychologists know are more effective in motivating change than the vague “do your best” (DYB) goals that many of us have.

Franklin’s own program of character cultivation was prescient. He recognized that exhortation would not suffi ce to change anyone, including himself, which is a point still not fully grasped by some proponents of today’s character education. Merely hanging a character-relevant poster on a classroom wall (or for that matter, the Ten Commandments) will not lead to change.

I spent my elementary school years staring daily at the periodic table of elements, and that did not make me into a chemist or even into a passable student of chemistry. What is needed is a concrete strategy of changing behavior. Franklin believed, as do I, that most people want to be good and decent. The problem is that we may not know how to do it. One does not tell a depressed patient simply to cheer up or a person prone to procrastination to just do it. If they knew how to be cheerful or how to get things done, then they would do so. What is more helpful is to tell them how to do these things. The same point applies to the cultivation of strengths of character.

Franklin also recognized that it would be too daunting to attempt to strengthen all virtues at the same time, so he prioritized them and tackled them in order. He further observed that the strengthening of one virtue might help with the subsequent cultivation of other virtues. For example, Franklin reasoned that the virtue of moderation should facilitate the virtue of silence, given that the latter requires the skills involved in the former.

Anticipating the modern behavior change strategy of “objectively” monitoring progress, Franklin made a book, with one page for each of the virtues he wished to strengthen. He organized each page by the day of the week. At the end of each day, he would think back over his actions and make “a black mark” if he had failed in following the precept. Again, I gently criticize Franklin for emphasizing his transgressions rather than his positive accomplishments, but that followed from the way he defined the precepts for each virtue.

He resolved to address one virtue per week, in the order he had prioritized, so that in 13 weeks he would have addressed all of them in succession. Then he would do it again, and in a year he would have completed four courses. Again, this is very modern, because Franklin anticipated the need for the maintenance of change.

His goal was to have a clean book, and to help him along the way, he included in his log relevant maxims and prayers, much as people today use Post-Its on their refrigerator to keep their goals front and center. For example, my own refrigerator door has a Post-It asking “Are you really that hungry?”

Franklin judged his program a success, in that he accorded himself fewer black marks as time passed. Still, some virtues were harder for him to strengthen than others. In particular, the strength of order gave him great trouble, as he was wont to scatter about his things and could typically rely on his good memory to know where things were amidst chaos. (Does this sound familiar to any of you readers?) In any event, he decided he was incorrigible with respect to this virtue and decided to accept the fault as part of who he was. From a positive psychology perspective, this is okay. No one can have it all, although to Franklin’s credit, he tried to change before he accepted the less than desirable conclusion.

Franklin did fret that his “success” with respect to some of the virtues refl ected changes in the appearance of the character strength rather than in its reality, but from my vantage point, this is a diffi cult distinction to maintain if we regard character strengths as habits. “Fake it until you can make it” is one of the slogans of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it means that if we behave in a sober way, no matter how deliberate or stilted our initial attempts, then eventually we will be sober. We are what we do.

Appreciate that Franklin did all of this when he was 79 years of age!

In Pursuing the Good Life, one of the founders of positive psychology, Christopher Peterson, offers one hundred bite-sized reflections exploring the many sides of this exciting new field. With the humor, warmth, and wisdom that has made him an award-winning teacher, Peterson takes readers on a lively tour of the sunny side of the psychological street. Christopher Peterson was Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. One of the world’s most highly cited research psychologists and a founder of the field of positive psychology, Peterson was best-known for his studies of optimism and character strengths and their relationship to psychological and physical well-being. He was a frequent blogger for Psychology Today, where many of these short essays, including this one, first appeared.

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The post I resolve to take Benjamin Franklin seriously appeared first on OUPblog.

People are always looking for subliminal messages in children’s cartoons. I’m not one of them. There are whole websites devoted to Out of Context Animation. This isn’t that place.

But how do I explain what the bunny and doggy are doing in this clip from a recent episode of Franklin?

(Thanks, Jay Melville)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: Franklin

I've posted about epigrams before, including this one by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

But I was feeling the need for something short and to the point today, so epigrams seem just the thing. An epigram need not rhyme, although poetic ones often do. An epigram is a short, clever, usually witty statement that is memorable. Here is an epigram from Benjamin Franklin, writing as Poor Richard:

Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise

Franklin used repetition (early to), internal rhyme (healthy and wealthy) and alliteration (wealthy and wise) as well as end-rhyme, virtually guaranteeing that this would be memorable after only one hearing.

For those of you who read Latin, here's quite an old one:

Admiror, O paries, te non cecidisse ruinis
qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas.

For those of you who don't read Latin, here's a translation: "I'm astonished, wall, that you haven't collapsed into ruins,/since you're holding up the weary verse of so many poets." Funny, yes?

William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" is composed almost entirely of phrases that can be pulled out as epigrams.

Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider said these, the first four lines of the poem:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Hannibal Lecter quoted the next two lines in Red Dragon:

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

Small sentences, small words - but mighty in their content and staying power.

Got a favorite epigram?

I just finished drawing this movie poster for "The Goonies" showing at the historic Artcraft Theatre. It's an old theatre in Franklin, IN and our poster operation, Mile 44, has teamed up with them to provide funding for renovation of the beautiful old theatre by creating a series of collectible, hand-printed movie posters for some of the theatre's showings. The posters in the series are sold

Author Kevin J. Hayes has been very busy writing American Literature: A Very Short Introduction, but he needs your help. Find out what you can do below. Check out his past posts here.

In a contribution to Esquire in 1972, Tom Wolfe called autobiography “the one form of nonfiction that has always had most of the powers of the novel.” The study of autobiography has since emerged as an important field in American literary history. Of course, some of the major works in the discipline — Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography comes to mind — have received serious critical treatment for decades. More recently, many other autobiographical writings have been recognized for their literary artistry.

With his comparison, Wolfe was not necessarily saying that autobiographers fictionalized their life stories. Some undoubtedly do, but for most autobiographers, the writing process is a matter of selection, not creation. They start with the various events that shaped their lives and choose the ones they want to shape the story of their lives. Franklin, for example, omitted or downplayed some famous events in his life to emphasize ones displaying himself as a humble and hardworking printer. He made himself into an example to be imitated. The scheme worked. His autobiography is the prototypical story of the self-made man. To a certain extent, all autobiography offers examples for emulation.

Franklin’s may be the most important autobiography in American literature, but the genre seems significant enough to deserve its own chapter in my forthcoming American Literature: A Very Short Introduction. I have received such good responses from my earlier blogs that I am anxious to hear what you have to say about autobiography. I intend to start with Franklin and then flashback to the seventeenth century to discuss Puritan spiritual autobiography, captivity narratives, and slave narratives. After that, I need help with structure and content. I would like to subdivide the chapter into different types of autobiography. What other categories are significant enough to deserve separate subsections? Should I include a section on presidential memoirs? (Does that mean I’ll have to read Bill Clinton’s My Life? What am I getting myself into?) Who else’s autobiographies should I include? What do I do about ghost-written or co-written autobiographies?

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It's the eve of the National Book Awards--one of the most dramatic honors a published, well-respected writer can receive--and I'm writing about self-publishing.

I think the hype around bestsellers and the hullabaloo surrounding writing awards creates the false impression that writing will somehow make you rich and famous. If you're thinking about self-publishing, don't do it because you're looking for money and awards--it's dangerous lie that will distract you from the love of writing that got you here in the first place.

Over at Writer Beware, novelist Victoria Strauss is blogging about the pitfalls of self publishing, debunking myths about the profitability and popularity of our humble profession. Read her essay and follow the links as you think about print-on-demand or self-publishing. Take your morning dose of reality:

"Brunonia Barry's self-pubbed debut novel ... has garnered a lot of press and spawned a flurry of blog posts. (Scratch a self-publishing success story, though, and you usually find a special circumstance of some sort--this article enumerates some of the advantages Barry had that most self-pubbed authors don't.) ... there are the shills trying to make a buck on the writerly pipe dreams that inevitably result from this kind of hype."

I'll be covering the National Book Awards with Marydell, Levi Asher, Ed Champion, and Sarah Weinman, but I won't be looking for get-rich-quick or get-famous-quick schemes. I'll come back with practical stories about how to keep writing because you love it, not because you expect to win the novel-writing lottery.