The modern American self is best defined by two Enlightenment thinkers who never met but have been arguing in our heads ever since.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed in the primacy of the inner self: a core of goodness constantly betrayed by circumstance. In his view, the world corrupts us. We begin pure and only fail because society, obligation, or expectation pulls us away from who we truly are.

Benjamin Franklin saw it differently. For him there was no such thing as a good person or a bad person, only people who do good things and people who do bad things. Virtue was a habit, not an essence.

Modern America carries both of these ideas, switching between them whenever convenient. We invoke Rousseau when we need forgiveness: I meant well. We invoke Franklin when we need accountability: Show me what you’ve done. It’s an almost entirely incompatible pair of philosophies that coexist perfectly in practice because they’re both so flattering — one to our intentions, the other to our ambition.

But only one of them scales.

“Fake it until you make it” is often dismissed as shallow, but it’s closer to Franklin’s truth. Faking it long enough is making it. The repetition of behavior, not the sincerity of belief, is what shapes character. You become the kind of person who does the things you repeatedly do.

Rousseau invites endless introspection. Franklin invites progress. The first is about how you feel; the second is about what you build.

I find the Franklin model far more useful. Not because it’s truer in some cosmic sense, but because it gives you agency. You can’t always change how you feel, but you can always decide what to do next.

“It doesn’t take great men to do things, but it is doing things that make men great.” — Arnold Glasow