Quirky

One of the odd mannerisms of Benjamin Franklin was his vegetable diet. He was working for a printer when he encouraged the printer to not eat meat and he say's "I wished to get myself diversion in starving him". It is interesting that even though he tells the printer that this is a healthier way of eating he looks at it in a jovial manner a way to play a practical joke. The printer did suffer from the diet and finally ordered pig inviting guests to join him but, the pig was cooked early and he ate the whole thing before his guests came. Another practical joke he was a part of was when his acquaintances wrote poetry one of them wanted him to pretend it was his because the other fellow always criticized everything he wrote. Sure enough he didn't criticize it when he thought it was from Benjamin. They told him the next day. His acquaintance went to England with him even though he had a wife and a child because he didn't like her relations and planned on never coming back. Even though Benjamin had someone watching out for him he was around some strange characters when he was 18. He courted his wife and promised to return to her since they were too young and he was not set up in a business yet to get married. Now back to the vegetable diet, I wonder if it was the consequence of being beat and abused by his brother that led him to start that diet a means of controlling his environment which sometimes people with eating disorders do. It is interesting that even though the situations change in people's lives with eating disorders they don't change the way they began eating when they were stressed but, continue in the disordered eating through life as it seems Benjamin did. Although he was on a ship when they caught some cod and he says that he is glad we are reasonable people who have to come up with reasons to do things. He decided to eat the cod because they found a little fish inside a smaller one and since it ate it he thought it ok to eat the fish. What is it about eating disorders that frame eating habits that continue through life when in fact the eating habit was only started because of a stressful relationship and a need to control one's environment but, controlling eating? Even when the stressful relationship leaves someone's life they retain the eating habits that were formed why?

Divine Providence

Early in Benjamin Franklin's life you can see evidence of divine providence. Once while he was on a boat and only 17 some women were talking to him and an older lady came and warned him that they were not the right sort of women to be talking to and showed why. He took her advice and when they asked him to come to talk to them more he declined. Come to find out they were thieves who were arrested after their apartment was searched and the stolen goods found. That old lady was an angel that saved him his reputation. When he got into Philadelphia where he hoped to work for a printer his good clothes were coming later and he had little money but the baker game him 3 rolls so he was walking down the street with dirty clothes and a roll under each arm and in his mouth when his future wife first saw him and thought he was a sight. It is amazing that she remembered seeing him. I think it is a possible spirit recognizing spirit moment. Divine providence seems to be the case when he had two different governors at that young age invited to associate with them one wanted to set him up with his own printing office when his father wouldn't do it on his recommendation.

Two other Thoughts

Ben Franklin studied a book on a vegetable diet and learned temperance in his food and drink. He said it " brought clearness of head and quicker apprehension. A vegan diet I guess is not new but, that was not my opinion from dietetics school. I think this is probably not the first time someone has taken an old concept and made it seem new. The younger generation always feel that their parents ideas are outdated. Their is a natural tendancy to assume something is new when in fact it may be hundreds of years old. Maybe this is why the D&C says we should not eat meat only in winter or times of famine. The vegan diet diverges from the bibel concept of everything on earth being for the benefit man either to please the eye or gladden the heart. I'm sorry but cows are for the benefit and use of man.

The other topic is related to Ben Franklin being beat by his brother who he was apprenticed to. From this he states that he detests arbritrary power. He hated being beat so much that he goes to great lengths to distance himself from it. He finds an opportunity to get out of the indenture and leaves town with the help of a friend away from the knowledge of his family. He finds himself in New York at 17 with little money. But, even with all that just like other abused people he blames himself partially for being beat. I wonder why it is human nature to blame oneself when suffering abuse.

Put on the humble inquirer

Page 16

Ben Franklin was a debater with another bookish lad in town John Collins. They disputed and were very fond of argument and desirous of confuting one another; He describes how disputations can become a very bad habit making people extremely disagreeable in company by bringing contradiction into conversation. It produces disgusts and perhaps enmities even with friends. On disputing he adds "persons of good sense …seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh."

Maybe since my ancestors were from Edinburgh I have inherited the tendency to fall into disputing. I learned quickly on my mission that it was never effective but, the other areas of my life seem troubled by it. The advice from Ben Franklin is to put on the humble inquirer where he became expert at "drawing people even of superior knowledge into concessions the consequence of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved."

He continued this for a few years but left it gradually retaining only a habit of modest diffidence, never using words like certainly or undoubtedly that gave positiveness to an opinion that may be possibly disputed. Instead he would say I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so. It appears to me or I should not think it, so or so for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so, or it is so, if I am not mistaken.

He puts it more clearly when he says "If you desire instruction and improvement from others, you should not at the same time express yourself fixed in your present opinions."

I have thought a lot about this concept and realize that I must do a complete turnaround in the way I interact and speak with others. I remember a time in college when I had a roommate's boyfriend got so mad at me when we were discussing a difference of opinion. I could not, until now, understand why. Last night I was contemplating this when my husband was talking to me on a walk and I realized that if I am so fixed in my opinion and positive of it, it must feel like talking to a wall when you talk to me. If you are so fixed in your opinions' how can you be open to truth taught by the spirit if you are so sure you are right and already know something about somebody and you just have to convince them of it when you talk to them. No wonder he says that this "positive assuming manner" "seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat most of those purposes for which speech was given to us."

Besides how can we be so positive in our opinions when we know that we are carnal, sensual, devilish and imperfectly mortal?(Mosiah 3:19) Our understanding is young and always changing just like our lives changes one line at a time, one new thought at a time. We grow from grace to grace with changes ever so slowly that to have a "positive assuming manner" in our interactions with other seems only proud and haughty and a blind manner of living.

"Men must be taught as if you taught them not. And things unknown proposed as things forgot."

Voice-of-the-Spirit

Voice-of-the-Spirit

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Page 2 "Most people dislike vanity in other, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor and to others who are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life."
Wow what a new idea to me that vanity could have a benefit. Being vain from young in my life and spending time in the mirror as a teen ager with a sister who calls me vain I have always thought of vanity as something one did not want. Benjamin Franklin has changed my view some types of vanity is merely confidence in who we are and that is a good trait. This is a trait that we can then use to benefit those around us and one that will pick us up by the bootstraps when we fall. We are Children of God and some vanity is a reflection of what the creator has placed in us all.
The negative forms of vanity are always coupled with self-centered and selfish behavior. Many times it is my experience that this type of vanity originates from a what Jonah 2:8 says" he that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy." So Vanity is harmful when it is not the truth. When we bend to the desire to make up that we are more than we are or better than what our actions and words show. It is a twisting of a mirror on our own behaviors and how others around us might see them.
The trick is to separate ourselves from the view that others have of us and seek only to see how God see's us because he is the source of all truth and is the only one who truly knows us and knows our strengths weaknesses and progress. He is the only one we ever need to please anyway.

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