Then you become the kind of person who fakes things?
I just realized that you can connect the two with another maxim that we've all heard a million times:
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
This puts further weight behind the intellectual arrow that embodies Franklin's ideals.
What I found particularly insightful is the point that we have a double standard. I judge myself by my intentions and others by their actions. I'd seen this before, but never tied to historical thinkers.
One way to work around this is to ask yourself "what would I think if I saw a friend doing X" where X is what you intend to do. Of course, most folks are more forgiving of a friend than a stranger, but even that small amount of distance and perspective can help you make a better decision.
The only link is the person -- that their acts inform their thoughts and habits, which informs future acts. In this case "good deed math" is likely a post-hoc rationalisation, predicted by the Franklin model but not exactly encouraged.
A good and a bad doesn't make a neutral.
I think everybody can find examples from their life when this was not true. And not even just simple one like a reaction to a flying object towards your face, but some high level impulses, like when I was in love, I definitely couldn’t control my acts completely. Of course, I was still responsible for my acts, but they were only instincts, no real thinking was involved.
s/pulls us away from/reveals
Both Rousseau’s and Franklin’s views have utility. One requires one to express one’s inherent goodness. The other defines whether one is good by whether they do good acts. These both promote good acts.
Taking inherent nature from Rousseau but ascribing bad acts to that inherent nature just means no one is truly responsible for their actions. If they are good they do good. If they are bad it is because they are bad. Anyone believing they are just “a bad person” has no reason to even try to be good except to avoid consequences. It’s a bigger cop out than “society made me” while simultaneously puritanical in ignoring the role of outside influence like society.
> None of us are saints, but we can all try to be better. Each time you do something generous, you're shaping yourself into someone who's more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.
This reads to me a little like: "The distracted boyfriend meme can be found at the helm of the Western mind whenever we encounter betrayal and disloyalty."
I get that this is more of a trope or a shorthand than literally saying that a certain thinker invented the idea of a good person being defined by their actions, but to me it's worth saying that these concepts and ideas are probably as timeless as language, not something invented a few hundred years ago, not something invented by Plato.
To perform behavior X repeatedly and consciously for a long time, you have to have a belief (whether it is good or bad). Hence it is the sincerity of belief which shapes character.
Like when you wash yourself every now and then: you repeat that because you have a belief that keeping yourself clean is useful. Without that belief, you won't waste your time on that. Behavior is just an expression of a belief.