New York Times columnist David Brooks is one of the most read, listened to, and discussed social commentators of our time. While often representing the ‘Right’ in such venues, Brooks is more commonly known for his moderate political views and personal temperament. Through his newspaper column, his weekly appearances on NPR and PBS, or in his best-selling nonfiction pieces, Brooks has become known for his keen ability to diagnose and to see what others miss’doing it with humor and grace. Possessing a unique ability to help readers understand those with whom they disagree, he exhibits intellectual humility and curiosity, subjects we will discuss later.
In his most recent work, The Road to Character, Brooks’s decade-long intellectual journey continues by way of an investigation of some profound and fundamental questions, not just about society in general but about himself. While this book is clearly not meant to be autobiographical, he admits it became deeply personal for him. Having come to acknowledge himself as undeniably successful in terms of his career, he nevertheless sensed he was deeply lacking in some of the classic character values.
He distinguishes what he calls résumé and eulogy virtues: the former are things you list in order to get a job and prove your external success; the latter are the qualities said about you at your funeral. While admitting he wasn’t sure he could personally follow the ‘road to character,’ he wanted at least to ‘know what the road looks like and how other people have trodden it’ (xiv). Yet he believed this was not merely personally important: Might it be possible to illuminate the dark narcissistic route so many of us find ourselves on? We live in a time that cries out for authenticity but too often produces shallowness and self-absorption.
The Power of Narrative for Formation
Accordingly, Brooks’s book exhibits surprising passion. It is as if we are allowed to watch someone stumble upon something unexpected, finding it more beautiful, complicated, rich, and yet elusive than ever imagined. To enter this place of wonder, Brooks pulls strongly from his early themes of cultural commentary as well as astute psychological observations, but now he keeps bumping into the transcendent. We see this repeatedly surface in his micro-biographies.
While the volume begins and ends with broader cultural observations, the large center of the book is composed of chapters that tend to focus on a key classic moral theme (e.g., self-conquest, ordered love, dignity, humility). Rather than first discussing these ideas philosophically, he gives primacy to narrative. His earlier work in psychology has clearly taught him the power of formation through story. Employing the life histories of a diverse group, from Eisenhower to Augustine, from George Marshall to George Elliot, from Dorothy Day to Samuel Johnson, Brooks discovers no single path but rather diverse ways these people learned to question themselves, struggle against their baser instincts, and aim to grow out of their egotism.
Though they represent different backgrounds (male and female, rich and needy, extrovert and introvert), each recognized in some way the need to look not merely internally but externally, seeking strength, vocation, and value that could not simply emerge from one’s divided self. Readers will find here not sinless heroes, but messy humans who in some ways discovered some kind of ‘grace,’ to use Brooks’s language. And this grace fostered in them the willingness to fight for character and development in one way or another. Such grace, which was not necessarily recognized as from God but often extended from other humans, nevertheless seems to point to the transcendent. I believe this book invites further exploration about this transcendent experience: From where does it come? How might it ground the moral compass? How do we have access to this ethical call amid the flux of our ever changing cultural and psychological assumptions?
The Emergence of the Big Me
Brooks says that a major shift has occurred in the modern world, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. Our moral moment, he believes, should not be imagined as growing out of the wild 1960s, but instead has its roots in the postwar years of the ’40s and ’50s. After the war years of austerity and self-sacrifice, there was a longing for escape, consumption, and distraction. With this move came the ‘Big Me,’ as he calls it: from childrearing to retirement, the emphasis shifted away from trying to follow external expectations and ethical norms to becoming ever more in tune with oneself. A slow moving but nevertheless massive shift took place, he argues, from ethical self-suspicion that questions one’s desires, to an unapologetic self-centeredness that places confidence in the individual. If I want to know what is right, then I need to look within rather than outside of myself. I am the arbiter of good, my good; others can and should seek their own good, but none can rightly impose on me.
This shift, Brooks concludes, led to the loss of a much-needed moral vocabulary. Bravery, humility, integrity, virtue, and gratitude have been replaced with the language of self-reliance, personal growth, individual happiness, and achievement. For example, Brooks argues that as language such as sin, soul, and vocation are replaced with mistake and weakness, our lives become like a ship that has its anchor cut off, leaving it vulnerable to inevitable storms. ‘Sin is a necessary piece of our mental furniture because it reminds us that life is a moral affair,’ and this binds us together, since we are all ‘sinners together’ (54). We need one another to survive; we need one another for forgiveness; we need one another for wholeness and love. Recent cultural forces have encouraged us, however, to think less of the other and more of the self, the ‘Big Me.’
Some good, he admits, can grow, and has grown, from this focus on the self. For example, too often in the past, institutions and societal structures have belittled women and demeaned minorities, maintaining self-serving prejudices under the rubric of serving the larger good. In these environments, emphasizing the value of each individual can lead to detecting and alleviating social injustice (247). But even in these cases, true liberty and dignity should connect people, placing them within a matrix of character and commitment to others, rather than making them their own idols that cannot satisfy.
Brooks points to an abiding problem: We find ourselves almost completely on the side of self-esteem, and the ethical environment today places the self at the center of everything. This is a weight too heavy for any single self to carry. Institutions thus become endangered, whether marriages or government, churches, or friendships. This is because these all rely on a commitment to something larger than the individual. Otherwise one should stay committed only as long as the relationship can serve one’s résumé virtues.
But let us not think that this is merely a problem ‘out there.’ Why would one make oneself uncomfortable, building cross-cultural relationships, for example, if it risks our personal peace (they sing so differently, eat strange food, speak with different rhythms that are hard for me to understand, have different salaries, and look different from me)? While we don’t say those things out loud, we do tend to gravitate toward people who are just like us, and this points to the preference for the self over the significance of the other. This is not merely a problem in the world; it is a problem deep in the church.
In the church, how do we distinguish between personal preferences and kingdom-ordered loves? How can we speak of self-control and discipline without undermining grace? How can we hold up vocation without letting it become a thinly disguised version of self-actualization at the expense of others? How can we foster courage without breeding arrogance? How do we encourage conviction without settling for naive and selfish pronouncements that exalt personal privilege rather than divine concern?
Brooks seems to be on a journey, and I encourage you to join him. He has come to realize that ‘we don’t become better because we acquire new information. We become better because we acquire better loves’ (211). As believers, we confess that we love because we have first been loved; we are humble because the Spirit of God testifies in our hearts that by adoption’rather than merit’we are children of God; we are courageous because we are safe in the strong arms of the Father; we sacrifice because the incarnate Son of God died for us, even when we were his enemies. The people of God are set free to think of others rather than themselves, to risk for others, loving them in ways that look like a cross and feel like a resurrection.
Brooks helps us better understand our cultural moment in America, and he encourages us to listen and look for the transcendent. When we do, I believe we have the opportunity to see the earthy Jesus living, dying, and rising, and to find new life in him. Only in him can we avoid mere moralism; in him we are liberated to seek character that flows from the love we have received and now participate in.
