David Brooks's 5-Step Guide to Being Deep
A
manifesto against America's 'happiness' and 'resume' cultures
ASPEN, Colo.—David Brooks doesn't
subscribe to the Pharrellian school of life. It's not that he begrudges Pharrell
for being happy. It's that he believes American culture is too centered around
attaining happiness, at the expense of "a different goal in life that is
deeper than happiness and more important than happiness."
We're not only obsessed with happiness.
The New York Times columnist argues that we focus on accumulating power,
material wealth, and professional achievements instead of cultivating the kinds
of qualities that will be discussed at our funerals. As Brooks phrases it, we
emphasize "resume virtues" over "eulogy virtues."
Brooks's objective is to establish a
"counterculture" to our happiness culture and our resume culture.
It's to fashion a path to "inner depth." In a talk at the Aspen Ideas
Festival, which is sponsored by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, he
did just that. Expanding on a column he wrote
in March, Brooks wove together various philosophical, theological,
and biographical threads to define what it means to be "deep," and
how to lead a life of depth.
***
As Brooks sees it, resume virtues and
eulogy virtues represent two sides of human nature. In a 1965 essay,
the American rabbi and philosopher Joseph Soloveitchik developed a
dichotomy to capture this phenomenon. He distinguished between "Adam
I" and "Adam II."
"Adam I is the external Adam, it's
the resume Adam," Brooks explained. "Adam I wants to build, create,
use, start things. Adam II is the internal Adam. Adam II wants to embody certain
moral qualities, to have a serene inner character, not only to do good but to
be good. To live and be is to transcend the truth and have an inner coherence
of soul. Adam I, the resume Adam, wants to conquer the world…. Adam II wants to
obey a calling and serve the world. Adam I asks how things work, Adam II asks
why things exist and what ultimately we're here for."
(Brooks didn't get into this, but
Soloveitchik actually
conceived of Adam I and Adam II as a way to reconcile the fact that
Genesis offers two accounts of how God created man. As an Orthodox Jew who
believed in the "divine character" of the Bible, Soloveitchik didn't
accept the explanation that the stories sprang from different authors and
sources. Instead, he argued, they existed to illustrate "dual man."
In the first account, in which man is created "in the image of God,"
Adam is tasked with "filling" and "subduing" the earth. In
the second account, in which man is created out of dust and God's breath, Adam
is charged with "serving" and "keeping" the Garden of
Eden.)
"We live in a culture that
nurtures Adam I," Brooks said. "We're taught to be assertive and
master skills, to broadcast our brains. To get likes. To get followers."
Being deep doesn't preclude you from
being, well, shallow, he added. "Some days we want to be externally
successful, some days we want to be internally good. The question is whether
your life is in balance."
So how do we nourish Adam II—the deep
Adam? For that matter, what does it even mean to be deep?
"I think we mean that that person
is capable of experiencing large and sonorous emotions, they have a profound
spiritual presence," Brooks said. "In the realm of emotion they have
a web of unconditional love. In the realm of intellect, they have a set,
permanent philosophy about how life is. In the realm of action, they have
commitments to projects that can't be completed in a lifetime. In the realm of
morality, they have a certain consistency and rigor that's almost
perfect."
Deep people also tend to be old.
"The things that lead you astray,
those things are fast: lust, fear, vanity, gluttony," Brooks observed, in
religiously inflected language. "The things that we admire most—honesty,
humility, self-control, courage—those things take some time and they accumulate
slowly."
Albert Schweitzer, Dorothy Day,
Pope Francis, Mother Teresa. These are deep people, according to Brooks.
***
What qualities spur us to plumb the
depths of our being? Brooks outlined five:
1. Love
The love Brooks has in mind is of the
transformational, unconditional variety. "It could be love for a cause,
usually it's love for a person, it could be love for God," he said. Love
issues the humbling reminder that "we're not in control of
ourselves," and also "de-centers the self"—a "person in
love finds the center of himself is outside himself." It “complicates the
distinction between giving and receiving, because two selves are so
intermingled in love that the person giving is giving to him or herself."
Brooks cited the French writer Michel de Montaigne, who, when asked why he had
such strong affection for a friend, replied, simply, "because I was I, and
he was he."
2. Suffering
"When people look forward, when
they plan their lives, they say, 'How can I plan ... [to] make me happy?'"
Brooks noted. "But when people look backward at the things that made them
who they are, they usually don't talk about moments when they were happy. They
usually talk about moments of suffering or healing. So we plan for happiness,
but we're formed by suffering." Like love, suffering exposes our lack of
control over our lives. But it also encourages deep introspection and
equips people with a moral calling. "They're not masters of their
pain, they can't control their pain, but you do have a responsibility to
respond to your pain," Brooks explained. He gave the example of Franklin
Roosevelt, whose character was forged through his battle with polio.
"We
plan for happiness, but we're formed by suffering."
3. Internal struggle
"Here, I don't mean the struggle
involved in winning a championship, starting a company, or making a lot of
money," Brooks cautioned. Those who have depth are "aware that while
they have great strength, great dignity, they also have great weakness. And
they are engaged in an internal struggle with themselves." Consider Dwight
Eisenhower, who constantly tangled with his bad temper. "Internal
struggles are the logic by which we build character," Brooks said.
4. Obedience
Brooks took aim at the common message in
commencement speeches that students should turn inward to discover their
passion and vocation. "If you look at the people who are deep, often they
don't look inside themselves. Something calls to them from outside
themselves," he said. They obey a cause. Brooks mentioned Frances Perkins,
who watched in horror as people leaped to their deaths during the Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, and then devoted her life to workers' safety
(she eventually became FDR's labor secretary).
5. Acceptance
Brooks also calls this
"admittance," seeking to shake the word's association with
exclusivity (think a nightclub or college). He likens the concept to the
religious notion of "grace." It is "unmerited, unearned
admittance"—belonging to "some sort of human transcendent
community." Whereas Adam I wants to "work" and
"sweat," Adam II "simply accepts the fact that he's accepted.
Adam II, the spiritual side of our nature, stands against the whole ethos of
self-cultivation, which is the resume side of our world. The ethos of
scrambling, working, climbing." Just as the journalist and activist
Dorothy Day brimmed with gratefulness after the birth of her child, acceptance
energizes the accepted. "They want to honor the people who gave them that
gift and they want to pass on the gift that they didn't deserve," Brooks
said.
What's perhaps most interesting about
Brooks's schema is how it inverts the reigning culture of self-help in this
country. The 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People this is not. Rather than suggesting
depth-seekers take control of their lives, Brooks is urging them to surrender
control to external forces, at least to a degree. With the exception of
"internal struggle," we can't readily act on his advice. We don't
necessarily choose when we fall in love, or whom or what we fall in love with.
We don't decide when suffering is visited upon us. Obedience and admittance, by
Brooks's definitions, cannot be willed into existence. The most we can do is
accept invitations to a more meaningful life, whenever and wherever they arise.
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