Father of the self-help movement (and expert kite-flyer)

Ben Franklin was a writer, printer, scientist and diplomat. He was also, it turns out, the great-great-grandfather of the self-help movement.

In the second part of his autobiography, Franklin writes about his “bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection.” First, he catalogs 13 virtues — temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility, and provides “precepts,” or rules, for each.

Under “industry,” for example, Franklin advises, “Lose no time. Be always employ’d in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary Actions.” (This virtually eliminates Netflix and social media for modern readers.)

For “tranquility, he notes, “Be not disturbed at Trifles, or Accidents common or unavoidable.” It makes me ponder the many nights I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying conversations in my head and worrying about whether I responded appropriately or inappropriately, too strongly or not strongly enough.

Once Franklin identifies his virtues, he goes one step further, making “a little Book” to chronicle his attempts at improvement. Each page has seven vertical lines, one for each day of the week, and 13 horizontal lines, one for each virtue.

Then, each week, he tries to achieve perfection in just one virtue, while allowing the others to slide. Nevertheless, he records a “little black Spot” for failures in these other virtues that week, marking them dutifully at the points where the lines for the day of the week and each particular virtue intersect.

On the week devoted to temperance, Franklin goes an entire seven days without once eating “to Dulness” or drinking “to Elevation.” However, he really drops the ball on five of the other virtues, most especially “Order,” where he gives himself black marks six times that week, and “Silence,” where he records five lapses.

While Franklin is surprised to see just how many faults he has, he is also pleased to watch himself improve under his organized efforts. And if that doesn’t sound like the comment a self-help guru makes right before asking for a check or credit card, then I don’t know anything about marketing.

Regardless, Franklin later undercuts his own success, perhaps ironically because of his adherence to another virtue, Frugality, where one must “Waste nothing.” The author attempts to “avoid the Trouble of renewing” his book of virtues by “scraping out” the old marks and reusing the pages, which results in a book “full of Holes.”

This could, I suppose, be Franklin’s sly commentary about the probability of achieving moral perfection, a sort of preemptive snarkiness toward the entire cottage industry of self-help, which wouldn’t reach full flowering until centuries later, when people had enough free time to perseverate about such matters.

Further in his autobiography, Franklin graphs his daily routine, which involves rising at 5 a.m. and asking, “What Good shall I do this Day?” For the next two hours, he ponders this question while bathing, planning the day’s business and eating breakfast. He works from 8 to noon; spends two hours eating lunch, reading and looking over his “Accounts” (and who in today’s world wouldn’t love a 120-minute lunch break?); works another four hours; and then spends the time from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. putting “Things in their Places, Supper, Musick, or Diversion, or Conversation, Examination of the Day.”

His evening question is similar to his morning query: “What Good have I done today?”

It’s easy in 2019 to subvert these dawn and dusk reflections, to ask simply “What am I going to do today?” and “What did I do?” But that’s not what Franklin is after here. Doing good is much different from just being productive. After all, people can stay busy wreaking havoc on others and on their work and home environments without doing one objectively “good” thing.

Franklin’s schedule indicates bed by 10 p.m., where he probably dreams of moral perfection, or at least of erasers for pencils, something that wouldn’t be invented until almost 70 years after his death and which would make it much easier to reuse pages in his book of virtues.

Or at least make it easier to erase the instances where he failed to live up to his own code, another problem that plagues self-help experts even today.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com


@cschillig on Twitter

Beep, beep, beep, beep, yeah!

Manufacturers of electric and hybrid cars are looking for a few good noises.

Maybe a swoosh or a beep or a chug-chug-chug. Or maybe the sound of a combat tank or a tanker truck.

Next year, a federal regulation will require electric and hybrid vehicles, which make almost no noise, to include sounds at certain speeds as a warning to pedestrians. Otherwise, drivers of such vehicles could sneak up on runners and walkers or people who are visually impaired and catch them unawares.

Last month, however, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration floated a proposal to allow manufacturers to substitute a “suite of sounds,” according to a New York Times piece by Niraj Chokshi, who reported on the challenges of coming up with just one sound, let alone a litany.

The proposal would allow the automotive industry to broaden its thinking and view this as a co-branding opportunity. Hybrid cars could be the sandwich boards of the 21st century, the aural equivalent of “Eat at Joe’s.” But instead of being worn by hobos and cash-strapped undergrads, these messages would emanate from cutting-edge, eco-friendly vehicles.

Imagine a little old lady starting to cross the street when she hears the familiar Liberty Insurance jingle. You know the one: “Liberty, Liberty, Liberty ... LIBERTY!” She swivels her head to the left to see a stylish Kia Niro, bearing down at 55 mph. Activating her orthopedic shoes and compression stockings, she leaps out of the crosswalk with the pantherish grace of a woman one-fifth her age, accident averted.

Or how about the McDonald’s theme song blaring from the vehicle’s grille? Or the stirring refrain of John Williams’ Star Wars theme, trumpeting Episode XXVII, or whatever number is assigned to the latest journey to a galaxy far, far away?

Not only would pedestrians associate said products with environmental friendliness, but they would also credit them with helping to save lives. It’s that most cliched of marketing outcomes — a win-win. (And if car manufacturers charge for different sounds at different speeds, so that vehicles play Advil commercials at 35 mph, Nike at 45 mph, and so on, it’s also a significant source of income, a true trifecta.)

It wouldn’t be long before politicians got in on the act. Imagine the Toyota Camry Hybrid playing only Bernie Sanders election ads, while the Chevrolet Bolt has an exclusive with Donald Trump. Area dealers could substitute local races and issues of note, so the air would be awash with the sounds of school-board candidates, liquor-license approvals, and levy requests, all accompanied by the legally required disclaimers, fading off into the distance as the vehicles crested the next hill.

Meanwhile, with many drivers still tooling around in their old gas-guzzlers, pedestrians would also be assaulted by the familiar and comforting refrains of missing tailpipes, screeching fan belts and idling engines.

Of course, with most pedestrians lost inside the sound of their own earbuds and headphones, few people will be listening anyway.

Before you think the nation’s automotive-industrial complex is above such shenanigans, consider this: A section of Route 66 in New Mexico plays “America the Beautiful” when driven over at 45 mph. It’s part of an effort by the state’s department of transportation, in conjunction with National Geographic, to stop motorists from speeding.

If they can do that, it’s only a matter of time before an electric car announces that “like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There” while riding another driver’s bumper in the passing lane.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Can the GOP jump off the Trump train?

“Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”

Viewers of Dr. Phil have probably heard him ask this to estranged family members. It’s also a question that applies to Democrats in Washington.

Dems are right about Donald Trump’s impeachable offenses, as reported by an anonymous whistleblower — and soon to be whistleblowers, I guess — to great consternation last month.

Following that bombshell, the White House released a transcript that catches the president red-handed, asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for “a favor” — to investigate Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden, and Biden’s son.

This follows Trump’s admission, during a June 13 interview with ABC, that he would accept political help from a foreign government, which the chairwoman of the Federal Elections Commission on the same day said would be illegal.

And if that wasn’t enough, Trump doubled down last week and said publicly that Ukraine and China should investigate the Bidens.

So the Democrats have the president dead to rights, and impeachment inquiries are proceeding apace.

But will impeachment make the party happy?

Likely no. The GOP-controlled Senate would have to vote to impeach the president, something members have no interest in doing, a few outliers to the contrary.

To be sure, the impeachment imbroglio is high drama (or low, depending on one’s perspective regarding the state of national politics), but it could also serve as the death knell for Democrats’ chances in 2020.

Our Founding Fathers were concerned about foreign influence in the running of our nation. Hence, their insistence that the president be a natural-born citizen, the Emoluments Clause and the “high crimes and misdemeanors” language in the Constitution.

These safety features are earmarked for exactly the kind of grifter who now occupies the White House, a man whose businesses profit from the presidency and who isn’t above asking foreign powers to dig up dirt on his rivals.

Yet while the Founding Fathers were quite prescient, even they didn’t foresee a time when such a scoundrel would continue to command loyalty from his “troops,” a modern-day Macbeth whose Thanes do not flee from his monstrous missteps but instead embrace him all the more in spite of or because of them.

So if Democrats bring charges, which they must in defense of the rule of law and to keep such misbehaviors from becoming normalized with successive presidents, they risk being characterized as do-nothings, squanderers of their time in office, and obsessives over what Trump supporters characterize as an attempt to overturn the 2016 election.

If they look the other way at these current allegations and focus instead on advancing their cause, they stand a better-than-average chance of winning the White House in 2020, which would make them — and their supporters — happy.

But looking the other way is something they can’t do in good conscience. More than a few people believe that Trump’s public invitation to China and Ukraine last week to investigate the Bidens occurred because he wants to be impeached, knowing it actually boosts his chances for re-election among voters who still see him as a much-needed outsider sticking it to the man.

It would all be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

The only hope is that conservative Americans will recognize Trump’s antics for what they are, will decide that the country’s long-term viability is more important than any short-term economic gains, and will let their elected officials know they want justice served. If Republicans see their chances of re-election dwindle because of ongoing joyrides on the Trump train, they will exit, and quickly.

But as long as public support is there, they will not, enshrining graft and duplicity in the nation’s highest office.

Dr. Phil’s guests usually pick happiness, by the way, because the causes they are fighting over aren’t worth lost time with family. Unfortunately, Democrats don’t have that luxury. They are in a battle for the very soul of the nation, so they must be right-fighters, regardless of how much it hurts them moving forward.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

A trip to Mars for Ohioans?

Forget gerrymandered Congressional districts and bogus red/blue Electoral College overlays. The image that should have every red-blooded Ohioan boiling with more rage than Donald Trump after the latest New York Times report is a map showing the Mars bar as the favorite Halloween candy of the Buckeye State.

The Mars bar. Really?

Now I understand the favorite trick-or-treat offerings of some other states. Texans love a 10-gallon hat full of M&M’s, California is purring for Kit-Kat bars, and 12 states recognize that chocolate and peanut butter are greater than the sum of their individual parts with Reese’s.

I can even see how Tootsie Pops could shoot straight to number one in Vermont and Montana. Although I personally find them disgusting, they are at least a high-profile candy, thanks to a decades-old advertising campaign that asked, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? (Who cares? Throw them away before you get to the ghastly middle.)

But I can’t possibly understand how Mars clawed its way to the top of both Ohio and Pennsylvania. I have lived in northeast Ohio all my life and have never once seen anybody eating one, let alone handing them out on Beggars’ Night.

The map in question originated with Bid-On-Equipment in Illinois, which noted in a blog post that it had used the Google AdWords site — now known simply as Google Ads — to analyze “search volume trends for more than 100 different types of candy” from September 2018 to October 2018 in all 50 states.

So apparently more folks in Louisiana searched for Air Heads than any other candy during that time period, just as people in North Carolina and South Carolina surfed for information about Milk Duds, and North Dakotans improbably were burning to learn more about Hot Tamales while their South Dakotan neighbors went digging for news on Gummy Worms.

It all sounds highly suspect to me.

And again I say — Mars bars?

I am trying to wrap my mind around the paradigm-shifting injustice of it all. When I tweeted the Bid-On-Equipment map, I called B.S. on the results. (That’s Bachelor of Science to anybody who is offended.)

One respondent noted that nobody Googles candy they are already familiar with, so maybe the map is more reflective of state residents’ curiosity than their favorites.

That makes sense, but still leaves me wondering why, over a 13-month period, Idaho residents looked up SweeTarts often enough to make it number one, or why Swedish Fish surfaced so frequently in Kentucky searches.

It just sounded bogus.

But then came my epiphany. What if “Mars” wasn’t a reference to one particular candy, but rather to all the candy made by Mars, Incorporated?

According to Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, I know), Mars Inc. produces Milky Way, M&M’s, Skittles, Snickers and Twix. If Ohioans were looking up these, and Google captured them under the Mars umbrella, we would go from the doghouse to the penthouse of good taste.

But it can’t be that either, as Snickers and M&M’s make the list separately in several states.

So either the entire study is wonky (but not Willy Wonka-y, because those didn’t make the list either) or Ohioans really were jonesing for their Mars bars last year.

All I know is, based on the vacant stares I’ve received when talking about all this, if your Halloween plans include handing out Mars bars, you’d better be ready for a swift kick to Uranus.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

This column slaps

I learned a new meaning for an old word recently.

Not surprisingly, I must credit my students, who keep me contemporary even as they marvel at how linguistically inept I am for a guy who teaches English.

In class last week, a student said that a particular appetizer at Applebee’s “slaps.” A few other students agreed.

Rather than feign understanding (as I often do when confronted with shifting youth lexicon), I confessed my confusion. Was the appetizer too spicy? Too expensive?

“No, Mr. Schillig, it just means it was ... you know, good,” the student clarified.

“Really good,” another student chimed in.

“So if this class slaps, that’s a compliment?” I wondered.

Students weren’t ready to make a judgment about the course, especially to the person who grades them, although a few did roll their eyes at the out-of-touch bald geezer using a word reserved for people under 18.

I then asked if it was acceptable to say that something — a song, a book or a movie, maybe — was “slapping”? Would several enjoyable things lumped together, like dinner and dancing, “slap,” or did it always have to be “slaps”?

They assured me “slapping” was OK, and that two things “slap.” I told them I would try to be less tragically unhip and incorporate the word into my lexicon, maybe telling my wife that the next meal she makes “slaps.”

Before using my new compliment, however, I did a deep dive — well, maybe more of a shallow swim — through the etymology. I didn’t want to throw around a word with unsavory connotations.

The online Urban Dictionary notes “slaps” means “good as (an Anglo-Saxon word for intimacy that is inappropriate for a family newspaper).” So the term is already on shaky ground for the next staff meeting or the Thanksgiving dinner table: “This sales report is slapping, Jorge!” or “This gravy slaps, Grandma!”

As “slap,” the word is centered on music and music systems. It can refer to “tight music, something you can go dumb to.” This definition sent me scuttling to find definitions for “tight” and “going dumb,” both of which are positive in this context.

As “slapping,” the word can be applied specifically to playing loud music from a car. So “Beethoven’s Fifth was really slapping from those factory-installed speakers in your 1977 Nova” would be something that one could theoretically say, although probably wouldn’t.

An interesting aside involves SLAP, all caps, which is internet slang for “sounds like a plan.” When you text a neighbor to ask that his semi-feral cat pretty please stop fertilizing your flower beds, and he responds with SLAP, you can rest assured that the problem is solved.

Until the cat does it again, that is.

This discussion and my research remind me English is a living language, and changes come quickly. Some stick, some do not. Some even open the door for increased understanding.

For example, far more profound than a new sense of “slap” is the use of plural pronouns “they” and “them” for individual people who prefer not to be identified by the gender-specific “he” or “she.”

This shift in usage received a shot in the arm recently. Merriam-Webster, the dictionary of choice for the Associated Press, announced it would include this sense of the word in its publications going forward.

In the past, I’ve opposed the use of “they” and “them,” to refer to one person, not because I was against the rights of anybody to identify as nonbinary, but because they can lead to confusion. If I’m told “they” will be waiting for me at the corner, I might expect more than one person, until I get there and see just one.

However, such instances would be rare, with most misunderstandings easily deciphered through context. And “they” has a long history of being used as a singular pronoun already, especially informally. When compared with the alternatives — ignoring the earnest entreaties of nonbinary people or introducing a new pronoun (“ze,” perhaps) for these specific situations — it’s preferable to go with “they.”

Plus, if I can accept and understand that a slapping appetizer is a compliment, then I can wrap my mind around “they” as a singular.

Because increased empathy slaps.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com


@cschillig on Twitter