I'm sorry but it's very hard for me to take seriously Ben Franklin's exhortation...

smaddox · on Oct 25, 2017

I doubt Ben took them seriously. He's well known for having fabricated popular stories on slow publication weeks/months. This was likely his form of click-bate.

emodendroket · on Oct 25, 2017

I mean the list of virtues is very typical of this era in America anyway, to be fair to Ben Franklin. I doubt a lot of thought went into it.

tome · on Oct 25, 2017

Click-bait? I think click-bate is something else.

B1FF_PSUVM · on Oct 25, 2017

With bated click - the moving mouse/finger hovers for a while, then, having hovered, moves on.

purplezooey · on Oct 26, 2017

Especially if it's something on medium.com

breckinloggins · on Oct 25, 2017

I look at it the other way around: the reason these were so important to Franklin was that he knew perfectly well how bad he was at them.

Somewhere along the line we've conflated valuing virtue with already being virtuous. The hypocrisy of most "moral movements" doesn't help, of course.

emodendroket · on Oct 25, 2017

Sure, we all fall short of our own ideals. But when your own lifestyle goes so far, gleefully, in the opposite direction you have to ask yourself if it's really a virtue you care about.