I am 2/3rds done with Isaacson’s biography on Benjamin Franklin. I do not really finish biographies. The first half is always more interesting. Once Einstein has become Einstein, I am disenchanted. Isaacson’s biographies really shine when a genius is young—it is a case study on the psyche of someone great.

How would I describe Franklin’s lived philosophy? Civic industriousness.

• Civic in dealing with public affairs relating to his direct and broader community.
• Industriousness in that he spent his time being useful.

Ben was a pioneer in establishing and legitimizing the American project: he laid the foundation for many basic features of our society (postal system, political assemblies, policing, firefighting). He was exceptional in business—but always seemed to orient his goals around the public good. Ben was not interested in riches.

Ben’s schedule for each day included the following two questions: In the morning, what good shall I do this day? And in the evening, what good have I done to-day? I enjoy this selfless definition of productivity.

The antithesis to Ben’s ethic is something like an isolated artist; one who pursues pleasant states of mind (freedom, self-expression, catharsis) through abstract forms. Or the academic in the ivory tower. Ben would see the first as self-indulgent, and the second as useless.

Any good ethic must be selfless. You should not pursue positive emotion (happiness, fulfillment, peace) for it’s own sake. Emotions are best understood as regulators of behavior: they orient the self towards some goal. Emotions are instrumental.

The default end-goal that nature installs in each of us is survival and reproduction. This intermediate steps are satisfying biological needs, some social needs, and a few cognitive needs (reference Maslow’s hierarchy). But submission to evolution feels trivial: it means serving the needs of some animal that is (cosmologically speaking) utterly irrelevant.

I believe in transcendence. This is the (deeply religious) aesthetic I find myself in. You must serve something beyond the monkey you are stuck inside of—even if it means accepting negative emotion. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his own son.

You serve this higher purpose by gaining agency over your emotional system. This is the process of adulting. You design and implement some emotional configuration that is effective and, importantly, sustainable (make concessions to your animalistic tendencies when needed).

Ben Franklin’s end-goal was some kind of communal state-building. He wasn’t perfect but he was pretty darn good. Modern American culture today is very self-interested. Just because that’s a natural consequence of capitalism does not mean it is good.

You can observe the dissonance from core American values from public service to self-interest at UPenn (founded by Franklin). The university is brilliant at producing well-equipped generalists—which is naturally higher-leverage than producing specialists (CEO vs. employee). So why are we training high-leverage individuals to pursue selfish rewards? Why does individual material success warrant the highest praise? Leverage can be a virtue—when it serves something good. It ceases to be one when you orient leverage to serve the self. So we have a culture issue. (Remember that cultural rewards trickle down to individualized rewards—this is Girard’s mimesis.) I would enjoy seeing culture at school that rewards collectivism.