Saturday, October 15, 2005

The Electric Franklin

Sourced from www.ushistory.org

According to many people, The Independent is the best newspaper published in England. In its issue of December 30, 1998, kindly sent to me by my friend Suzy Bittker, there appears an unsigned editorial entitled "A Search for a hero who helps us to define ourselves."

A poll, it seems, has been conducted by the program TODAY of Radio 4 for the nomination of such a person, man or woman, native of the British Isles or not. Many votes, of course, were cast for Winston Churchill. The first of the few women on the list is Queen Elizabeth I who defied imperial Spain with Britain's scanty resources. Gandhi and Mandela gathered a number of voices, as did Gutenberg, Galileo, Luther, Shakespeare, Mozart, Chekhov, Darwin, Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft and many others.

"But," says the writer of the editorial, "the man who combines all that we are looking for is often overlooked. His name is Benjamin Franklin. As a scientist, he tamed lightning: the lightning conductor was his brainchild, allowing man to build unafraid of the elements. Thunder and lightning had belonged to God: now they belonged to man. Technological advance since Franklin's time, from computers to space travel, has relied on the electricity he harnessed.

"His confidence was remarkable. He became on of the most fervent of the Americans once the British connection was irretrievable. As a letter-writer, his erudition is legendary. The first of the "natural men" whose bourgeois mores were to come to dominate the globe, he declined to wear a wig while ambassador in Paris. He was self-made, a printer and publisher, the first of a new breed.

"He was a master of the modern political art of compromise, striving to avoid the breach with the mother country. He conceived the compromise between the rights of states and the popular vote, and the two-chamber Congress containing both a Senate and House of Representatives, that made the U.S. possible.

"Franklin replaced religious absolutes with what was practical, an American injunction that has since become world orthodoxy. And by happy coincidence, he was born a loyal colonist — a Briton through and through. The next millennium will probably uncover as its hero a woman born in Lagos, Sao Paulo, or Nanking. But it is Franklin we humbly submit as person of this millennium."

Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American in his day. Wherever he went, crowds formed. People worldwide pictured Franklin when anyone said, "American."
The diversity that is the Internet may be epitomized by only one person in history - Benjamin Franklin - someone commercially successful, ever concerned and involved with the public good, a great communicator, and a remarkable man of science and technology, finding practical effective solutions to real problems.
Trying to comprehend Benjamin Franklin's life and legacy is like trying to grab a shadow. Each time one tries to get a fix on the reflection, it darts away and grows even larger.

"Who and what was Benjamin Franklin?" was the question we asked at the outset of this project. By turns pamphleteer, apprentice, printer, balladeer, inventor, philosopher, politician, soldier, firefighter, ambassador, family man, sage, delegate, signer, shopkeeper, bookseller, cartoonist, grandfather, anti-slavery agitator, Mason, and deist - he was all of the above and none of the above. His great biographer Carl Van Doren called Franklin "a harmonious human multitude." As Franklin was an "electrician" also, we kept looking for a common current that defined him. From the time he was a teenager thinking about ways of education to the time he was an 83-year-old man agitating for abolition, the mainspring of the "human multitude" may well have been public service.
The remarkable Benjamin Franklin, a printer by trade, a scientist by fame, and a man of action by all accounts, continues to shape American thinking and action. The Independence Hall Association, owners of ushistory.org, has commissioned and assembled resources for you to explore the diversity that was Benjamin Franklin.

Each generation produces people who reshape their world. Benjamin Franklin was one such man.

For his popular quotes one of which is the legendary "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise", visit the following link:

http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/quotable/index.htm


Saturday, October 08, 2005

Mrs. Sudha Murthy and Compassion

Usually speeches in my school are mostly about business and speakers are all successful business people we read about in newspapers and magazines. But day before yesterday's speaker was a lot different. She is successful, her success measured by her happiness and what she wanted to achieve. She is none other than Mrs. Sudha Murthy, Chairperson, Infosys Foundation, an organisation that is doing wonders for the country through philanthrophy.

Since I will not be able to do justice on a wonderful speech lasting almost an hour, I urge you to read Sudha Murthy- Woman of Destiny. It has most of what she said today. For a story on how Infosys was born, read How Infosys was born.

Summarising, her major points were

1. Be very ambitious and work very very hard at this age.
2. Have compassion and give back to society what you get from it.
3. Philanthrophy is different from charity in that it is
a. In doing favours to society without expecting anything back
b. In doing favours without any preference to particular communities, religion etc: who needs most should get first
4. Too much money must not be kept as it will otherwise ruin the family and children. Dont spend too much, as the more you spend, the more you will find to buy. Either give it to your alma mater, your parents, guru or to philanthrophy.
5. Staying in a small growing company is better than joining a very large company as you might never be able to reach top positions in a very big company and responsibilities will be slower in coming to you.
6. Never do anything that is against your value system or that undermines your integrity.

Last year Narayana Murthy had come to campus and left us with a mesmerising speech, that was simple and humble. This too was matching it in every way.

The many business speeches that we hear clearly come from the mind but these two came from the heart, and that creates the huge difference that sets the Murthys way apart.