NATIONAL SURVIVAL: What did David Brooks mean by his claim?

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2023

It's hard to "see others," he said: We have dwelt, for the past several days, upon what may seem to be a bit of a throw-away comment.

The comment was offered by David Brooks. It appears deep inside a lengthy essay in Sunday's New York Times. 

In that lengthy essay, Brooks is describing the way he has chosen to live over the past quite a few years. Most simply put, he decided that he needed to become a better person:

BROOKS (10/22/23): If you had met me 10 years out of college, I think you would have found me a pleasant enough guy, cheerful, but a tad inhibited—somebody who was not easy to connect to. In truth, I was a practiced escape artist. If you revealed some vulnerable intimacy to me, I was good at making meaningful eye contact with your shoes and then excusing myself to keep a vitally important appointment with my dry cleaner.

Life has a way of tenderizing you, though. Becoming a father was an emotional revolution, of course. Later, I absorbed my share of the normal blows that any adult suffers—broken relationships, personal failures, the vulnerability that comes with getting older. The ensuing sense of my own frailty was good for me, introducing me to deeper, repressed parts of myself. I learned that living in a detached way is a withdrawal from life, an estrangement not just from other people but also from yourself.

I’m not an exceptional person, but I am a grower. I do have the ability to look at my shortcomings and then try to prod myself into becoming a more fully developed person.

For "more fully developed," we'll substitute "better." At a certain point in his life, Brooks decided to try to prod himself into being a better person.

That strikes us as an excellent goal. Here's Brooks' initial account of the search he undertook:

BROOKS (continuing directly): I have learned something profound along the way. Being openhearted is a prerequisite for being a full, kind and wise human being. But it is not enough. People need social skills. The real process of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete actions well: being curious about other people; disagreeing without poisoning relationships; revealing vulnerability at an appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.

In that passage, Brooks begins to describe the traits he sought to cultivate. This is what he says:

He says he wanted to learn to be more curious about other people. He says he wanted to know how to disagree with other people without poisoning his relationship with such persons.

He says he wanted to become a good listener.  He says he wanted to know how to ask for and offer forgiveness. 

He wanted to know how to make everyone feel embraced. He says he wanted to know how to see things "from another’s point of view."

Brooks wanted to know how to see things "from another’s point of view?" In a famous piece of American fiction, Atticus Finch tells his children that they should acquire that skill. 

It strikes us as an admirable goal. That said, it's late in his essay where Brooks makes the comment on which we've focused this week:

BROOKS: I wanted to learn these skills for moral reasons. If I can shine positive attention on others, I can help them to blossom. If I see potential in others, they may come to see potential in themselves. True understanding is one of the most generous gifts any of us can give to another.

Finally, I wanted to learn these skills for reasons of national survival. We evolved to live with small bands of people like ourselves. Now we live in wonderfully diverse societies, but our social skills are inadequate for the divisions that exist. We live in a brutalizing time.

"Finally," Brooks offers the remark on which we've focused this week.

Say what? In that brief passage, Brooks says he wanted to learn these skills for reasons of national survival. On Wednesday night, he fleshed out this idea a bit while being interviewed on the PBS NewsHour:

BROOKS (10/25/23): I'm not an exceptional guy, but I am a grower. I do change. And so I have been on a journey to try to become more emotionally available, more spiritually available, a better friend to people.

And the sad thing is, is as I have become on a journey to becoming a little more human, the country has been on a journey of becoming less human. And so we now live in bitter and divided times. There's just so much social pain. 

And this book is really an attempt to make us all better at seeing another person, making them feel seen, heard and understood, because, if our country is going to come back from the inhumanity, and if our families are going to come back from the breakdown, and if our workplaces are going to thrive, we just have to be really good at this skill of seeing others, making them feel valid, respected, heard and understood.

Our country is "becoming less human," Brooks said. In his essay, he had stated that point a different way:

"We live in a brutalizing time," he had finally said.

We live in a brutalizing time! If our country is going to recover from this, we need to learn how to "see others," Brooks said. 

After inserting a capital "O"—after turning others to Others—we'd be inclined to call that a very important idea.

In Brooks' account, it isn't all that easy to learn how to "see others." It involves the acquisition of a whole set of social skills, including the half dozen we've listed above.

Sacred Thoreau, off in the woods, may perhaps have offered a slightly different form of this view. At the very start of Walden, he described the problems his neighbors had in understanding his own behavior, and he offered a pregnant phrase about the lives of others:

Economy 

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me...

Thoreau also seemed to be wondering about the lives of others. Somewhat unclearly, he penned this thought:

"If [some other person] has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me."

It may be hard to understand the lives of others! It's harder still when we instinctively tribal beings take a whole bunch of others and reinvent them as Others.

We thought we saw a crowning wisdom in the comments Brooks seemed to swallow. In our view, our national survival does seem to be at stake in this present disordered time.

Borrowing from Walden itself, what the Brister's Hill could we possibly mean by that? Next week, we'll address that question, and one more:

If our national survival is at stake, what should we do about that?

Next week: Clintons and others