Words of Wisdom

Some one asked me today:

Ben Franklin? may I ask why Eelcat?

Good question. I thought since I'm makeing this web site anyways, I suppose other readers will want to know the same thing, so, I've created this page just for answering that very question:

Why Franklin?:

Though I don’t often mention him online, in my daily conversation, he’s quoted almost constantly. You are only hearing me mention him online, now, because next week, a few million people are expected to turn up at his house to celebrate his 300^th birthday, a celebration that starts tomorrow and will be ongoing throughout the rest of this year.

Why Franklin?

I’m not sure entirely how it started, when I first started studying him, but I do remember that my last year of school had a lot to do with it. One of the very last things to happen in school, was on Presidents Day, our teacher had us studying the “three great US Presidents“ …George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Benjamin Franklin. Well, I was one hell of a spit fire back then, not afraid to stand up in class and chew out the teacher for being wrong…I had previously had a [i]“battle”[/i] with her back on Columbus Day, when she had tried to tell us that he’d discovered America…he did not, he discovered South America, nor was he the first discoverer, Eric Leif was here before him, and Nephi, had come here before that. Well, you could imagine, that when I started talking about Nephi and the Lamanites discovering America, that that did not go over too well, for one thing, no one had ever heard of Nephi or the Lamenites, for another once they found out who they were, I was considered a religion freak. I was 8 years old.

So, a few months had gone by since Columbus day and my Nephi spell, and here we are on Presidents Day, studying US Presidents. Now I didn’t know who all the Presidents were than, but one thing I was certain of…Franklin was NOT one of them, and I told her so. I told her about rocking chairs, glasses, stoves, kites, and lighten rods. To this day, I have no idea were I learned about Franklin at that point, not my mother, that’s for sure, she hates Franklin…says he’s evil. I was reading at age 3, and by age 8 was reading more adult type books than children’s books, including Readers Digest Magazine and National Geographic Magazine…I assume I must have picked up some info on Franklin in one of those some how, with out realizing it. Somehow I knew enough about him to feel I had grounds to accuse my teacher of being wrong and than proceed to lecture on what Franklin did do. As you could prob’ly expect, I didn’t get along with the kids in my class, because I considered them “stupid babies” and often told them so…they snubbed me as a “know it all teacher’s pet”.. Books were my friends, the school kid were idiots (or so I said back than) and not having to return to school at age 9, was the best thing that ever happened to me…first thing I did was read McGuffey’s Readers (all 6 volumes), Liberty Tree, Of America vol. I and II, and the Bible straight through cover to cover.

I was 8 when my mom declared schools a tool of Satan and pulled me out of it. My lack of spelling can be blamed almost entirely on my mom, and my never being taught to spell, and combined with the fact that once I was taken out of school, it set into motion my manic obsessive study of what ever I felt like studying, and having been the top in my class at American History, I gather up every American History text book I could find and continued that study on my own…Franklin and the American Revolution being at the top of my list.

It was reading Liberty Tree, and Of America vol. I and II, that really got me interested in Franklin. All 3 books, portrayed him as the greatest of the patriots, it was Franklin who got the protest for freedom going full swing, Franklin was the one who set out to France and got help from their armies. Franklin was the dictator of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote it yes. Without Franklin we’d have no United States, because half the convention walked out in a fight over prayers refusing to be in the same room with delegates of a different faith. Franklin chastised them for using religion as a tool to get their way and set out to preaching what has now become one of his more famous lectures…..(addressed to John Hancock during the Congretional Convention, at age 81)…

And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.

 

When Franklin invented the lighten rod and organized the first fire department, the Salaam witch hunting craze was still going on….preachers were quick to condemn Franklin as a witch, saying that lighten was God’s tool for punishing the wicked, that to prevent God from burning the homes of sinners proved that Franklin was a worker of Satan.

Sanitation was horrendous in the 1700’s, bed pans )toilets) were dumped out of windows onto sidewalks (and who ever happened to be walking by just than), sickness and disease were wide spread as a result. Franklin developed the building of ditches and gutters along road sides to help sanitize the city.

Franklin one of 15 children, never went to school, save for a brief season at age 12, when he had gone to a school to learn to become a priest….originally it was his goal to become a great preacher, but his parents lacked the funds for him to continue his education, and as a teenager he found his calling while helping the family raise money by working at his older brother’s print shop. Setting print for the newspaper, Franklin learned to read, and quickly desired to write, but this dream was laughed at by his family, and he was to young to publish anything, so he devised a plot that would make him famous…he gave himself a pen name and began to write letters to the newspaper, claiming to be an elderly mid wife. It’s those letters that are quoted by millions today: A penny saved is a penny earned; Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise….you know…all those little sayings, they were written by a teenaged boy.

As a young man, he was not the best of people, prob’ly safe to say he was rather wicked, even by today’s standards. He took to drinking and his reputation with women was questionable at best, so in the 1700’s young Franklin was not well thought of, and eventually fled the Colonies and headed for the safety Europe. An illegitimate child of this time period, would come back into Franklin’s life later on, as one of Great Britain’s most vocal supporters. It was the Colonist’s strong support of Franklin’s good name, that resulted in the decision by Britain to make his son the pivotal leader against the States during the Revolutionary War, which sadly resulted in the young man’s down fall.

Eventfully the penniless “prodigal son” worked his way back to the Colonies, working aboard ships to pay his way back. Back in America, he came to the realization that if he didn’t change his life, he’d die young and penniless, and so started his own print shop, which made no money at all, no one would by his paper, which resulted in his coming up with a scheme in reverse psychology….he took a wheel barrow with a very rusty and loudly squeaking wheel, loaded it with paper reams and than made countless trips from his shop to the paper maker, giving the appearance of needing to buy tons of paper because sales were so good, and of course everyone noticed, who could help but notice? That rusty wheel was the loudest thing around! And so was the beginning of Poor Richard’s Almanack, a paper that Franklin continued to print until he retired America’s first millionaire at age 45. Franklin retired not because he wanted too, but rather because at age 45 he had already out lived the average life span of a male in the 1700’s, and no one, including himself, expected him to live much longer, they were all sadly mistaken.

After retiring he took up science as a hobby, and decided to use his great weal (he was the richest man in America) for the good of mankind, which is when he developed the first fire department, built the first post office, and the first public library; as well as building America’s first hospital, inventing flippers, lighten rods, the wood stove, rocking chairs, bi-focal glasses, and mapping the trade winds, so that ships could sail faster and safer.

Also in his retirement years, he meet some black children, who to his astonishment, did not resemble apes and were just as intelligent as white children, which resulted in his starting the Abolitionist movement to set free all black slaves (it was this same group started by Franklin, that Abe Lincoln supported nearly a hundred years later, and thus made slavery illegal in America).

One of the things not commonly known today, was that one of the causes Franklin actively preached, was vegetarianism, he had begun to wonder, if we had been so very wrong about the black races, could it be that we were wrong about ALL races, animals included? He began to ponder the intelligence of animals, but was not able to study further as the Revolution broke out, and the Colonists named him their ambassador. But had the war not broken out and Franklin pursued his study of animals, as he had his study of black races, no doubt eating meat would be just as illegal as slavery is today, because that was his intention.

As ambassador he became America’s top spy, most out spoken politician and statesman, and a fighter for the cause of freedom, like none other ever seen in history before or since.

So, why Franklin? Simply put, he is my idol, my icon, the man I model my own life after, his views on politics, religion, and freedom are like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of…he spoke words of truth, he promoted a God that loved everyone in spite of religion, he denounced and protested organized religion in favor of helping mankind and walking in the footsteps of Jesus, though he started out as a wicked person, he found reason to change his life for the better, when life was coming down all around him, he found reason to build it up and make it better. When he saw slaves treated badly, he didn’t stand back and moan I wish I could do something to stop this…he went out and he did something about it, and because of him, more and more people started to look at the way slaves wee treated, and eventually slavery was outlawed. When he saw injustice in tea taxes stamp acts, and pirate like laws, he spoke out against them, and fought kings of giant nations, head on…and won. Franklin was no different than any other man, he started out poor and with nothing, but he didn’t let that stop him, from working to make his life and the lives of those around him better, it didn’t stop him from fighting for truth and justice and causes he believed to be better for all. That’s why Franklin. There are few people in this world, who are so outspoken against injustice that they literally change history forever…for good, rather than bad. Most men who change the world, change it for the wrong reasons: Hitler and Napoleon for example. They are men who rocked the world in holy terror, they changed the course of history, but it was through teaching of hatred and destruction.

In all of my studies of men throughout history, I’ve only found 2 who had that kind of an impact on the entire world, but changed the world through a philosophy of love and helping those less fortunate…Jesus was one and Benjamin Franklin was the other. And they are the 2 men who I admire most, more than any other. I consider them the greatest men to ever walk this earth.