EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT SAVING THE WORLD I LEARNED BEFORE I WAS TEN!
By Craig Franklin and Gary HutchinsonA manual for human survival- a humorous sojourn through serious subject.
SECTION ONE
Craigy Sets Out To Save The World
Prior to the time in my young life when my being became absorbed with such all-consuming concerns as hair, pimples, social status and – the most thoroughly distracting and confusing of all – girls, I spent considerable time observing and reflecting on the human condition. Between six and ten I made numerous discoveries and arrived at a number of principles (agreements) which I was convinced would solve all of man’s ills and produce a veritable paradise on Earth.
Since I was endowed with a great deal more cerebral proficiency than was in any way reasonable, I was indeed fortunate to have adults in my life that always listened with interest and support to my questions, concerns, ideas and hypotheses. I was, therefore, quite certain that all I needed to do was present my miraculous findings to them and in a matter of weeks (a month at the most) my principles would be implemented worldwide and life would become simply grand for everyone. There would be no bullies, no wars, no poverty or hunger. People would live happily in safety, leading productive, personally meaningful lives, based on love, demonstrating a willing and eager, mutual helpfulness.
With such a major contribution accomplished prior to my tenth birthday, I had some all quite serious concerns about just how I would productively occupy the remaining eight or nine decades of my life.
It was at age nine that I first encountered the most pernicious of all intellectual monsters - the “Yesbutt” (the final ‘t’ was added for reasons – not entirely pure of heart - that will become clear). I would present my list of principles to adult after adult (those outside my immediate, supportive circle). They would listen (well, most would listen. I guess I had a reputation of being doggedly tenacious even at an early age so they knew it was best to just let Craigy get it off his chest). They would nod. (I would take that to be encouraging.) When I finished, the lurking monster (all that time quietly, invisibly, skulking in the shadows of their minds) would inevitably rear its head. “Yes but . . .” They would proceed to agree that, yes, if enacted my principles would in fact save the World, but then would proceed to tell me why they could never be enacted.
“They work in my home,” I’d rebut.
“Yes but that’s a special situation,” they would come back.
“All the adults I’ve talked with about my plan agree it is a good one.”
“Yes but even good plans often don’t work.”
“The plan is flawlessly logical.”
“Yes but most people don’t act logically.”
“My plan meets all of man’s positive emotional and physical needs.”
“Yes but! Yesbut! Yesbutt . . .!”
It came to me that I had virtually never encountered a “yes but” emanating from anyone ages ten and under. I proceeded up the age scale to determine when it surfaced. Perhaps it was related to hormones. Perhaps it was a virus to which kids - up to some certain age - had a natural immunity.
The biggest Yesbutts were definitely between the ages of thirty and sixty. Once I began tapping the 65+ age group, I noticed a definite mellowing. Even those who had been the most dyed in the wool Yesbutts prior to retirement, rapidly grew into the more comfortable and helpful Givitagoers.
Thus came about my four categories of responders to ideas for social change.
There were the Letsdoiters who were generally under age eleven, although forty-two year old Miss Oakley – she was known to wear slacks and buy instant coffee, so most of the women of the town looked down on her – somehow seemed to have escaped catching the Yesbutt syndrome. I loved to talk with her. No topic was ever off limits and no idea was ever rejected out of hand as unworthy. I wished she had been a teacher – goodness knows, we needed more teachers with those traits. But I digress. (One of the traits I have always admired most in myself!)
People from eleven into their mid to late twenties were the Disticks (Disinterested Skeptics). They’d neither offer discouragement nor encouragement – they just didn’t seem to have the time or energy necessary to contemplate events occurring outside their own heads. (I assigned the blame for this in males to the rampant growth of ugly hair over the private areas of their bodies and to the female’s eventual insistence on wearing sweaters and blouses having those two unsightly bumps in them!)
Those falling within the thirty to sixty or sixty-five age range were the aforementioned Yesbutts, who always had long lists of reasons why new ideas would not – could not – work, and therefore should not be tried. I figured they were probably terrified at having their lives turned upside down, so they went out of their way to prove the worth of the status quo or at least protect it from all boat-rockers. (Look in the dictionary under boat-rocker to see a picture of Craigy Franklin at age nine!)
Then, the Givitagoers, those past retirement age, seemed to project some mixture of what had been, what was, and what might have been. It was a kind of wisdom that allowed for possibilities other than those they had lived and known, and in most instances, had even treasured.
So, early on, several unexpected stumbling blocks loomed in my campaign to save the world. Unfortunately, the nay-sayers – primarily the Yesbutts – seemed to hold the power in my world.
Those with kindred spirits were either too young to effect change (the Letsdoiters) or too old and feeble to provide any muscle (the Givitagoers) - though both groups were long on encouragement, and I appreciated that.
Pop had what seemed to be a modestly helpfully suggestion: Encourage the Givitagoers and the Letsdoiters to demonstrate, in the way they live, just how helpful and powerful my principles really were. It was the best advice I have ever been given, although I didn’t fully understand that at nine.
Eventually, I came to see that when you tried to push ideas on someone else they typically reacted by needing to defensively prove their own way was better or right. An attack on their way of living was an attack on the core of their self-concept and only one’s life itself is typically more tenaciously defended than one’s ego.
Discussions with them, therefore, were really not discussions at all. I would state one of my principles and say they should adopt it. While I was building my case, they were not really listening, but instead using that time to think up counter arguments that would support their previous – comfortable – position. In that way, they really never heard the details of my position that they were so tenaciously arguing against.
The Yesbutt Generation was clearly the worst about using this defensive positioning rather than listening. Interesting to me, they thought it was a fine approach when they utilized it, but they became enraged when their teenagers used the same strategy with them (and teenagers ALWAYS do, of course!).
I thought long and hard about Pop’s advice. It made sense. I realized that when I admired the way a person lived or what he had accomplished in life, I tended to emulate him. Part of my problem was contained in the concept ‘admire’. It was inextricably tied to what one believed was the most important goal in life – the purpose for living. Bullies were admired by those whose purpose was acquiring personal power. Teachers by those valuing knowledge. The clerics, when spiritual aspects were held in highest esteem. The Yesbutts when it was the status quo one sought to preserve. The rich and famous for those who sought status and personal worth in such artificial accomplishments, fully divorced (I thought) from the true purpose of living - being a helpful person.
My most basic problem, then, was how to convince people to cooperatively strive for a World in which the universal human condition was positive, and where love, compassion, reciprocal esteem, and mutual facilitation were the means for achieving and maintaining it.
It appeared to me that the Yesbutt Generation – in particular – was so deeply committed to accumulating great piles of stuff or power to prove themselves worthy (successful), that they had little room left in their beings to consider that stuff was relatively meaningless compared with assisting one’s fellow-men. It was black and white to me – abject selfishness vs. necessary altruism. The stockpilers vs. the sharers. Those who thought in terms of ME vs. those who thought in terms of US.
When I curled up in bed at night and thought back over my day, it was always the nice and helpful things I’d been able to do for others that filled my young being with feelings of contentment and self-worth. In a passage from my diary at age fifteen, I referred to that feeling (somewhat indelicately, perhaps, though from the perspective of a fifteen year old male it represented the ultimate height of positive feelings) as “the orgasm of inner joy.” Later, in my books about the Little People of the Ozark Mountains™ I coined the word ‘fuzzalatious’ to cover the same set of wonder-filled, deep down inside, warm, feelings. At nine, I had no catchy phrase – perhaps that would have helped my cause – so herein I may from time to time borrow from the Little People’s vocabulary in order to proceed with an economy of words.
Since my call to arms based on logic had been relatively unsuccessful, I decided to go the route of common sense. Although it seemed blatantly clear to me that logic and common sense were cut form the same cloth, most others, interestingly, did not make that connection. ‘Logic’, I came to understand, was the less trusted, Ivory Tower version of the If this -Then that connection, while ‘common sense’ was the dependable, reliable, if-then connection of the common man. “If treating people in one way curtailed crime (for example) then it was only common sense to treat them that way.” Call that common sense and it was immediately accepted. Call it logical and it produced immediate skepticism.
Armed with my new, more laid back, less academic approach, I went forth to again make my attempt at saving the world. But again, the army of Yesbutts remained steadfast. In fact, I noted a substantial increase in their defensive maneuvering. That told me (at ten) one thing for sure. Common sense (in which they tended to believe) was even more threatening to them than logic. One principle of human behavior became clear: ‘The more powerful (believable, perhaps) the threatening belief, the more resistance a person manifests.’ (Stated another way: ‘The more reasonable the threatening information, the more resistance the person manifests – up to a point.’ It is usually that point at which either the teen or the parent marches out of the room, the one with the most clearly reasonable argument remaining victoriously behind.)
I’d seen it in Harold, a fifteen year old who was particularly kind to me and who would come over and play catch or shoot baskets with me. There were times when his parents got on him unmercifully about something he had done - something that he really could have cared less about ever doing again. But, the reasonableness implicit in their reaction seemed to force him to defend what he had done and turned it into something he just needed to keep doing.
I climbed the huge pear tree behind our house to reconnoiter. I was dumbfounded (as a youthful pacifist) when I recognized that both logic and common sense were tantamount to using force when it came to trying to change another’s behavior (at least among the Yesbutts and their teenagers.).
If the lessons of history and the discoveries of psychology had demonstrated anything, it was that force and punishment were the least effective (almost always ineffective, in fact) means for making long-term changes in behavior. Long term change only came through personal commitment to some belief or value or goal, and personal commitment seemed to evolve most readily when someone witnessed a meaningfully dramatic demonstration of the merit (power), which the belief, value, or goal held.
So, it was back to Pop’s wise observation that effective modeling was at the core of initiating positive change (or negative change, also, for that matter).
It brought me back to thinking about the importance of what a person holds as his most important personal concern or goal. That seemed to be the bedrock, the ultimate starting point. My plan would be to go out of my way to become an altruistic model for those folks whose main goal in life was to be rich, or to own a big house, or fancy car, or to achieve great power. It seemed a less difficult task to sell my ideas to those folks whose ultimate concerns were things like improved mental health, housing for the poor, or a healthy planet.
What had initially seemed a simple sell had quickly become an extremely complex undertaking. I needed to beat a strategic retreat and regroup. I needed to find some common ground upon which I could approach the fully selfish folks on the one hand and the altruistic on the other, while accommodating everybody in between.
Three pears later, the flickering of an idea occurred to me. “Happy, productive, helpful, well-adjusted people (four of my plan’s basic goals) were clearly both easier to live with and less of a financial burden to society as a whole than their opposites.” The altruists would certainly understand the importance of that statement if only out of compassion for their fellow man. I figured that even the most self-centered, cold-blooded, hard-hearted person on Earth would also buy into the idea, because it meant in the long run he would have to spend less tax money for social programs (mental health, crime, poverty) and was more likely to be able to live in a more comfortable, safe, crime-free, neighborhood.
I tried it out on Mom and Pop first. After a thorough discussion (with actual, mutual listening involved), they agreed it fit both ends of the continuum I had set up (altruistic and self-centered). I took the idea on the road. First to Doc. He agreed with very little discussion, and although he didn’t discourage me, I could tell he believed my plan was doomed to failure. I admired Doc a great deal – after Mom and Pop, probably more than anyone I knew – but he and I had disagreed about man’s basic human nature my whole life (well, for the six years of it that I could remember, at least). He saw man’s nature as dark. I saw it as positively constructive. He thought the bad stuff was buried deep and immutably in man’s genes. I believed that dark side only flourished when a child failed to learn positive values such as compassion, helpfulness, and self-respect based on integrity. (I was, as you can imagine, some bothered that such a wise man as Doc held a totally different point of view from mine, but I would live with that until life proved one of us right.)
In fact, Doc had once said he hoped I was right about man’s nature and would prove him wrong. That suddenly seemed to put the weight of the world on my young shoulders. (It is that overwhelming burden that I detail in another autobiographical book, 36 Hours to Live.)
My discussion with Parson went on and on, but really never addressed the main issue. He got off onto the idea that people who would go along with my plan just so they could live a safer, more comfortable life among more congenial people, were doomed-to-hell-sinners. He went on and on about how it was the “intention’ not the action or outcome that had to be pure and Godly. I listened but probably not with a completely open mind after the first half-hour. I was late for a ball game at John’s, which meant I’d be stuck out in left field again.
The discussion quickly petered out when I asked him, “If all you have said about intention is true, then how is it you accept Harry Osco’s donations to the church when everyone knows he is all quite intentionally the most ungodly man who’s ever trod the streets of our little town?”
(I walked three times, got one hit, and caught one of the six fly balls that came my way in left field, so I was a pretty happy nine year-old by supper time.)
That summer I pursued the field of psychology and read everything that I could find on the subject. I was pleased to learn that John Watson and B. F. Skinner had proved the importance of positive reinforcement in changing behavior – something I had personally discovered sometime prior to my 6th birthday. I was more taken, however, by the field of Phenomenology. It showed that people act on what they ‘believe’ is real, rather than on what may ‘actually’ be real. In fact, in terms of human behavior, ‘real reality’ virtually never plays any significant role. (If we think a guy is dangerous, we react to him as if he were dangerous, even though in “reality” he’s a safe, saintly person.)
All of that, coupled with the gnawing realization (thanks to Parson) that to know a man’s heart you needed to know his intentions not just his deeds – provided new dimensions for me to explore and utilize in fulfilling my life’s mission.
Regardless of all the new things I learned, it all kept coming back to modeling. Show people the benefits of living a compassionate, helpful, love-based life and they just might try it themselves. Modeling seemed to initiate a whole lot less defensiveness in folks than did discussions, logic and common sense. Still, I could see that a little kid’s actions were seldom taken very seriously (as a model of behavior for adults). A nice, well behaved, helpful, little kid (which I was) got lots of smiles and unending pats on the head (perhaps that explained why I remained so short) but I doubted he was looked upon as a model for adults’ behavior. Although I hated to have my hair ruffled, I had to admit the experience reinforced my belief in my mission – my values.
The light bulb lit brightly above my head. That was the secret. It all fell into place early one morning as I was looking down from my favorite oak tree, watching the first beams of daylight chase the shadows across the graves of my biological parents. Use Skinner’s reinforcement techniques to establish universally applicable basic positive values (intentions) rather than merely building situation-specific behaviors (deeds).
That suggested that one would not have rules for kids based on what they could and couldn’t do (behaviors), but rather guidelines that would help them make decisions about their own behaviors based on their positive values. (Had my Wisdom Quotient matched my 165+ Intelligence Quotient, I would have realized that was essentially the way Mom and Pop had raised me – even without ever having read Skinner, Watson, Freud, Snygg, Combs, James, or Craigy Franklin. Modeling! Reinforcing values! It just doesn't get much more positively powerful that that!)
So, I would enlist a band of folks to model behaviors based on positive values that would encourage others to accept those underlying values and use them to guide their own behaviors so the human condition would be forever improved. It worked fine right up to that last phrase. Someway, improving the human condition had to become each person’s ultimate incentive, and quite clearly that was not the case.
Well, it was the case for altruists – about ten percent of the population according to my experiences (Doc put it at more like two percent.). The rest seemed more concerned (except on Sunday morning, perhaps) about improving their own condition. They rationalized their position by saying, “I take care of myself so, others can (should) take care of themselves.”
It was akin to the big lie promoted by motivational speakers: “You can be anything you want to be.” I wanted to be just an average kid, a little taller and a lot dumber – that could never happen. Perry, a mentally retarded friend of mine wanted to be an airline pilot – that could never be. We all have limitations – sometimes fewer that we believe, I’ll admit - but to deny their limit-setting power is a giant deception.
[Excuse another digression but it really felt good, so just be happy for me!]
As the phenomenologists pointed out, people invent a perception of reality that reinforces their own needs or biases. If I believe that since I can take care of myself, that indicates that everybody else can do the same – my version of reality - then I am relieved of any responsibility for them or their welfare or even for the future, human generations. (It may be a perception – like the one above – that is based in ignorance, but the quality of its source becomes irrelevant once it becomes one’s reality.)
My basic job, as it turned out, was to find ways of helping people include in their definitions of reality the concept that improving the human condition must be everybody’s primary concern. To do that, people had to become convinced just how precious the human being – the human species – was. There had to be locked links between emotion and logic, passion and values.
Once that was achieved, the rest would be easy. Clearly, certain ways of treating and approaching people and society improve things for everybody – other ways harm, even devastate things. I felt that certainly anyone with an IQ larger than his shoe size should be able to understand that!!!
Later, as I read man’s history more seriously (as a teen), I was fascinated to realize that just as I had “discovered” the agreements necessary to establish and maintain a humanity-friendly social order, so had thinkers of every previous generation also discovered those same truths.
So, why had the World remained in such a mess? I think I found the answer in that tree when I was nine. It’s not the rules of appropriate behavior that have been elusive. It is the unwavering commitment to the necessary value-base that seems missing – or at least floundering in a sea of nearsighted selfishness.
It seemed such a simple concept at ten. “If every neighbor in the world would willingly and eagerly just make sure that the neighbors on each side of him were safe, well taken care of, happy, and had reasons to be self-respecting, then everyone in the world would live in a positive human condition – in a humanity-friendly environment.”
At sixty-five, it still seems a simple concept. Perhaps the details need to be specified. That runs against my grain. I’ve always believed in providing sound, broad, generalized, value-based principles that people could then thoughtfully apply to a wide range of situations and conditions (rather than trying to cover each possible, specific situation with a rule or law).
Perhaps by considering the two-dozen Positive Social Agreements (Section Three) that I believe people must make and keep with each other, folks will be able to work backwards and formulate that single, general principle, themselves.
I have divided Section Three into several dozen areas. Within each, I first state the nature of each topic, illustrate it by the simplistic though often profound observations taken from Craigy’s childhood diaries, and then pull all of that into an “Agreement” followed by some “grown-up” observations and discussion as the spirit moves me.
The Agreements are just that: Pledges to act in certain ways with one another (a two-way street). I imagine that you will find little that is new to you here. It is my hope, however, that the presentation will provide some gentle, concrete, reminders about the truths that you and I have known from a young age, and of the crucial, immediate, necessity to spread them (model them) among those whose lives you have the privilege of touching.
Before getting down to those more formal, concrete, nitty-gritty, aspects, let me lead you on a short romp around the little town that provided my introduction to social order and introduce you to some of the folks that helped form my early impressions of mankind.