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Do New Year's Resolutions Make Sense for Geezers?

Because of the holidays and being between semesters, I haven't been assigning homework on a regular basis. I'm sure the reader will be relieved to get back in the swim of things. Very well then, today's assignment is the chapter on "Moral Perfection" in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography.
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Should we make more, or less, effort at New Year's Resolutions as we get older? A cynic might say that an oldster should have outgrown such nonsense by now. A wit might say that if such resolutions did any good, the oldster would have reached moral perfection long ago, and thus the question doesn't even come up.

I hope you were lucky enough to have known a grandfather that you looked up to as a wise old man. Mine once told me that a young man never thinks about the consequences of his actions. That's not such a brilliant or original thought, but I 'remember it as if it were yesterday,' as old men are prone to saying.

He was right: we really do get better at anticipating consequences of our actions as we get more experience in life, probably because we have had to suffer more of those consequences. It is both satisfying and pleasing to see yourself getting better at something -- something difficult -- over time. If nothing else, it is a great consolation prize that offsets the shock of looking in a mirror.

In addition to better recognition of dire consequences, your self-control is actually improving. Long overdue! You are not going to run the 100-yard-dash faster this year than five years ago, nor are you going to turn heads while strolling down the beach in a bikini, so why not put childish nonsense behind you and concentrate on what you are getting better at? 

For instance, I have always been dissatisfied whenever my blog degenerated into a travel blog. Perhaps you like travel blogs -- well, be patient, you will outgrow them. There are too many of them, they all follow two or three formulas, and they offer almost nothing of intellectual and cultural value.

But if you start off in travel-blog-mode, and plan to change the focus as your writing and thinking improve, it is still easy to backslide when most of comments and readership seem to follow travel issues.

And there are better ways to build a readership -- such as assigning homework, and meting out punishment to readers caught cheating. (yea, sure.)

That is the value of New Year's Resolutions to me. It is a specific time to grit my teeth about escaping this intellectual ghetto, once and for all.

Comments

XXXXX said…
Can you define "moral perfection" in your own terms?

Personally, I don't think perfection exists. When one thinks about the consequences of their actions, WHAT they think about changes as one ages but I think a young person can think about consequences just as well. The difference is that the consequences they are concerned about are the personal consequences they might have to face eventually. An older person perhaps thinks about more than just himself. Sometimes.

Nothing is perfect; nothing is pure. Like taking a drug, there are unintended side effects always. We cannot always even know what they will be. Perhaps there is a greater acceptance of this fate as one gets older. Due to numerous failures, we eventually get around to accepting our limitations. Is this what you mean by moral perfection?



Well, George, for one thing, moral perfection includes doing your homework! (grin)

Accepting limitations is certainly a good example of moral perfection, although Franklin wasn't too concerned about it, at that stage of his life.
XXXXX said…
I couldn't find the exact spot readily by going to your link but found it in www.ushistory.org. It is page 38 of his autobiography.
I think it's in the striving for the virtues he identifies that the virtue lies. The actual list is less important than the conscious striving and working toward achieving the virtue. For by engaging in that process, we can't help but become more aware of ourselves.
I think that's the real goal.
Not sure, George. Your explanation reminds me a little of the "modern math" vogue in the school system when I was a lad.
XXXXX said…
That's a good argument but, actually, I think I'm quoting you.
Remember back when your subject for awhile was process over product. You made a case for pretty pictures missing the process of wind, water, time, etc.
We are just as much a product of creation as the rocks and the mountains. We have a process as well. We can identify "product" which correlates to the specific virtues Franklin identifies.
But, when you read his autobiography, he tells you all about his process. Explains how he tried and the difficulties that occurred to prevent success the way he had initially envisioned it. That's his process.
How did that process benefit him? That is my point. Even he admitted it was impossible to achieve the actual virtues, but going through the process of TRYING TO, of structuring his life, making choices, becoming so very aware of each of his own behaviors and how they did or did not line up with the virtue, etc. in order to try like the dickens to achieve the actual virtue, didn't that in itself, that process, if he would just continue it from that point onward, make him a much better person. A man of character and of honor. So, in a sense, his goal had been achieved. (But, not the way he had initially thought of it. And isn't that just so true of life anyway. We geezers have learned that.)
edlfrey said…
The title of the assigned chapter was PLAN FOR ATTAINING MORAL PERFECTION. AS George points out Franklin does go on at length about the process but I disagree that he "admitted it was impossible to achieve the actual virtue'.
In his words he said:
"To Temperance he ascribes his long-continued health, and what is still left to him of a good constitution; to Industry and Frugality, the early easiness of his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune, with all that knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained for him some degree of reputation among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the confidence of his country, and the honorable employs it conferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues, even in the imperfect state he was able to acquire them, all that evenness of temper, and that cheerfulness in conversation, which makes his company still sought for, and agreeable even to his younger acquaintance. I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit."
Perhaps he did not attain Moral Perfection but he seemed to be satisfied with his efforts. Or using the words from his story of the man buying the ax "but I think I like a speckled ax best". He did not only try for moral perfection but he at least attained a level of "speckled ax" morals.
The Quotemeister scored a few points on this comment, I'd say. I too think that the end result of a process matters. With virtue/habits, it becomes your "capital" that you can partially live on.