Ben Franklin’s sardonic jape at the arrogance of men in Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion certainly speaks to every college age student. Everyone knows one of their peers who simply MUST bring themselves to the forefront of any conversation, or assert their own story as absolutely paramount to anyone else’s. As Jon noted in his post, this flows from a sense of competition that people feel every day, and individuals with such egotistical tendencies see such self-promotion as the surest way to affirm their ‘superiority’. While it seems trivial and immature to act in such a way, such competitiveness is what drives us in all our endeavors. Franklin elaborates on this idea in his discussion on Pleasure and Pain, saying “as fast as we have excluded one Uneasiness another appears, otherwise the Motion would cease”. Preserving one’s own pleasure by avoiding pain is at the essence of every action, and pleasure is derived in one’s own relation to those around them. As the two have a natural balance within each person, would it not follow that they have a natural balance within society? One man’s pleasure must then come at another’s expense, before the tides are returned in another interaction such that each man’s net pain is equal to his pleasure.
This insight of Franklin’s came back to me when reading his Apology for Printers and Printer’s Errors, which both seemed to be a defense of Franklin’s individual value. Errors may be easier to connect with the arrogance described in Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion, in that he chose to publish a letter that flaunts the fact that his paper “is most commonly very correct, and yet you were never known to triumph upon it, by publickly ridiculing and exposing the continual blunders of your Contemporary”. In fact, that is exactly what he is doing, just through another voice. By letting another verbalize the criticism of those around him, he is elevating himself both by publicizing his competitor’s mistakes while marinating a false air of dignity. Thus his own pleasure gained from this letter being read not only personally, but by all those who read his paper comes at the cost of pain to those other publishers whom the author compared to Franklin.
Likewise, Franklin’s defense in his Apology for Printers that “Printers naturally acquire a vast Unconcernedness as to the right or wrong opinions contain’d in what they print” ignores the fact that he above all stands to gain from what is, and what is not printed. He makes himself out to be a simple servant, but when every action (undoubtedly his profession being a continual string of such actions) is inherently one of pursuing pleasure, how can he feign such selflessness? As he himself asked, “how can any Action be meritorious of Praise or Dispraise, Reward or Punishment, when the natural principle of Self-Love is the only and the irresistible Motive to it?” How are his actions any better than that annoying self promoter he mocked in Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion?
