Lifestyles of the which and infamous

 

What of the sayings that sounded so good once upon a time but then became ridiculed as “square,” “straight,” “corny,” etc (take your pick of colloquialism based on when you grew up!)? I’m thinking for instance of Benjamin Franklin’s “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

This surely still promotes a great work ethic that could be said to function, doesn’t it? Well, actually I’m not so sure anymore. As we nowadays know, health has a lot to do with genetics, and a controlled regulation of the hours of the day doesn’t automatically bring wealth. And what of that wisdom? My own wisest thoughts usually appear very, very late at night.

Contemporary usage of pseudo-moralistic sayings like Franklin’s seems to be a kind of longing for apparently/allegedly successful, almost prophetic wisdom. Longing for something somehow proven workable by frequent usage. But the work ethic of yesteryear can very likely not be superimposed on our own weird and dramatically irregular, irrational times.

People today make fortunes out of intangible constructions and digital enigmas based on human vanity, and most of it comes out of a generation of what the older folks would surely call “slackers.” But it doesn’t matter in the long run because the slackers’ excessive profits will be sucked up (and disappear) into “crypto-currencies” that are as intangible and evanescent as their other mastermind constructions. However, I’m sure they’ll have a lot of fun while gradually realising how fickle their fate actually is.

The young ones who, lacking a crypto-currency fortune, waste their old time work ethic on an employer who doesn’t give a damn (never have, never will), will gradually realise something considerably more bitter, and so eloquently paraphrased by the great James Thurber: “Early to rise, early to bed, makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”