Ben Franklin and the Lost Soul
Listen to this articleOne of our most inventive, forward looking and memorable forefathers will be celebrating his 319th birthday on January 17, 2025. He ran away from home and became an apprentice with his brother James at his print shop. It was grueling work and Ben not only worked in printing but he sold the products on the street. At 15 he left his ungrateful brother and found his way to Philadelphia where he worked with a printer and soon developed other sources of income . He worked all of the time and was instrumental in our country’s fight for independence .
He is the only person who signed all of our historic independence documents. In his 84 years of life, he strived to better himself, help others and find solutions. He invented such things as bifocals, swim flippers and the Franklin stove. The classic bench photograph was taken in 2021 McMinnville, Oregon by my wife Laura. The question is: do we turn our heads and ignore the needs of this child?
Our ever growing AI driven society is creating a huge chasm of detachment from reality. We have to put the brakes on and pull back before it’s too late.
On November 27, 2024, Australia passed a law that children under 16 could not use social media. They are surely on the right track! Everywhere I go I sadly see young children, teens and adults grasping their phones as if they are life preservers to save them from drowning. In reality, they are the weights that are pulling them down to drown in the whirlpool of misinformation, materialism, addiction, and a negative impact on mental health.
This is creating anxiety, depression and social comparison leading to low self-esteem. We are creating a socially introverted generation and society where real-life social interactions are no longer the norm. At my gym, these young adults cannot spend five minutes on a weight machine without looking at the constant stream of notifications and updates. This is becoming plague throughout our society, leading to excessive usage and the disruption of daily life. I’m all for the access of information, the ability to communicate and other useful aspects of the internet, but it is creating a loss of focus and purpose in our youth.
Users are developing unrealistic expectations about lives, sex, self-worth, body image further impacting self-esteem. In that same gym and in the daily process of life, they are looking inward to the black hole technology and missing the beauty of the world around them. In that same gym, bars, restaurants, night clubs, everywhere their heads are in their phones. One of my saddest thoughts is what if the future love of their life walked by and you were checking the latest post from some fake pretender and you missed them.
Our schools are at the center of this debacle. They throw computers at the children starting at the age of four. They’ve taken handwriting out of the curriculum and removed the joy of reading tangible books from their hands. What our children need is basic survival skills to allow them to enter our society prepared to live and flourish. Sadly, the teens in my neighborhood don’t know which end of a rake or broom to hold as they don’t have a send button on them. We can’t get someone to work the simplest tasks or assignments and when you do they want $25 per hour! I worked in a shoe factory for $1.33 per hour. and I was grateful for the work.
The young man pictured above, sitting next to one of the greatest men in history. He is no different from Ben. Our system let him down. He had no direction, guidance and support to be able to assimilate into the real world. I don’t know his circumstances but I do now what the system he has grown up with had given him. No work ethic, no practical skills, no survival tools. There are more and more like him failing every day. We can’t turn our heads anymore. The very fabric of the survival of society depends on the success and survival of every individual. They are not expendable throwaways. Instead of spending 100’s of billions of dollars on boondoggles such as high speed rail, fantasy trips to Mars, and spending billions of dollars on war world wide, we need to redirect the focus of spending on grass roots education, housing and occupational training.
The simple answer is not simple. It’s hard work, painful reality and a retraining process. We are a strong nation, we are smart people, we can do it for them and for ourselves.
