David Brooks Interview: How To Live A Meaningful Life

The most important knowledge is learned through experience, not books; however, when you have the experience, if you've got the book in the background, you have a name for what you've experienced and can think 'oh, that's what that teacher was talking about'—so education is best understood as planting seeds that bloom when life happens.

“i'm a big believer in the the saying that you can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but you can't be wise with other men's wisdom you have to go through life yourself to become wise and the knowledge the really important knowledge you get is learned through experience not out of a book”

George Marshall, who commanded the U.S. Army in WWII, had ambition as his core weakness; he made a rule: 'I am never going to advocate for myself'; when FDR offered him command of Operation Overlord (D-Day), Marshall told the president four times 'my own personal desires have no bearing on your decision,' which cost him the command but demonstrated his code; he became admired because he lived by a principle addressing his core failing.

“another hero of mine is george marshall who was who ran the u.s army during world war ii and his core problem was ambition he was just ruthlessly ambitious and so we've said it made a rule in the army i'm never going to advocate for myself if somebody wants to promote me fine i'm not going to advocate for myself”

Brooks recommends studying a substantive subject (like genetics, history, or science) rather than journalism because you need to know something about something; the craft of journalism can be picked up by doing, but body of knowledge is harder to acquire later and is necessary for meaningful contribution.

“a good piece of advice that was offered to me young was know something about something when you go into the world have some body of knowledge you can bring it to the world if i had to do it all over again i'd probably do genetics because i think if you're living now and living for the next 50 years genetics will be really important”

Columnists don't really shape how people think; they try to provoke people to think for themselves by providing a context; they don't persuade politicians (who only ask whether a column helps or hurts them politically), and the satisfaction comes from having had your say even if nobody listened, because you at least expressed what you think is true.

“the second thing about writing a column is you don't really shape how people think you try to provoke them to think you provide a context in which they can think for themselves so the idea that columnists are influential politically influential i think is not true we're just trying to poke people”

Modern conservatism was grabbed starting with Pat Buchanan but most recently by Donald Trump through a scarcity mindset and tribal ethos where politics is war, life is competition for scarce resources, and tribe is in conflict with tribe—an ethos absent under Reagan, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush that has infected the Republican Party and represents white identity politics.

“conservatism was grabbed starting with a guy named pat buchanan but most recently donald trump by a very different ethos a scarcity mindset a tribal ethos the life is conflicts politics is war it's a competition for scarce resources it's our tribe against their tribe and that is a scarcity mindset that was not there under ronald reagan”

Eisenhower lived as a hater despite his public image as a genial figure; during WWII and his presidency he would be up nights smoking and hating; to combat this, he wrote down the names of people he hated on a piece of paper, ripped it up, and threw it in the garbage as a practice of attempting to purge his hatred.

“we think of eisenhower as this sort of garrulous country club kind of guy but that was an illusion he he uh he was a hater during world war ii and during his presidency he would be up nights smoking uh hating and he tried to combat that he would all the people he hated he'd write down their names on a piece of paper and rip up the paper and throw the garbage can as sort of an effort to purge his hatred”

In marriage, when spouses discover each other's selfishness about six months in, the proper moral response is not to blame the other person but to recognize one's own selfishness as the problem one can control; when both partners see their own selfishness as the issue, the relationship has the foundations for goodness.

“there's a formula that uh tim and kathy keller uh talk about you marry somebody and uh you think they're perfect and then about six months in the parish you realize that the person you thought was perfect was is actually kind of selfish and as this person is making the as you're making that discovery about her she's making it about you and your natural tendency is to think well our relationship has some problems and the real problem is the other person's selfishness but if you have a moral conscience you say no actually my selfishness is the problem here my selfishness is the only selfishness i can control”

Pain and suffering are not transformed by themselves; when pain is not transformed, it gets transmitted to others—people who are hostile and angry usually have deep pain they've covered over; this is why exposure of soft vulnerabilities through suffering creates capacity for connection rather than transmission of pain.

“there's one phrase you used in your book you said it's gotta crack you or crack you open those moments of suffering in the valley of moments of painful moments in our life can either break you or break you open and the breaking is when you get fearful some people something bad happens and and some people just get fearful and they close in on themselves and they want to be invulnerable so they close in and they develop this coding of hard brittle stuff and often they react angrily and they lash out at others because they're fearful”

Most people over age 30-40 have had a valley moment that changed them; it's very rare to find someone who hasn't experienced suffering and been transformed by it; John McCain's experience in a POW camp as a valley moment stripped away shallow aspects of his personality and added deeper registers to his life.

“and if you ask people go around and ask people what made you who you are it's never nobody ever says you know i took a vacation to hawaii and it was great and that changed my personality it made me who i am nobody ever says that people say i went through a hard moment of struggle and it refocused my life or i was in the marine corps i was in war i struggled with a very ill child i had a cancer scare i covered john mccain he was in prison camp and a little of the the shallow frat boy that john mccain was went away in that prison camp and a deeper register entered his life and most people have had that moment it's very rare that you find someone over age 30 or 40 that hasn't had that moment and been changed by it”

Deep love is passionate love; 15% of people maintain passionate love throughout 50-60 year marriages, while occasionally you see couples in their 60s, 70s, or 80s still looking at each other with the same passionate love they had at 18 because they have 'tended their relationship well'; most people's passionate love fades as the relationship matures.

“and what is deep love well it a deep love is is um a completely um a passionate love and one of the things that entrances me is that when people fall in love the first few months are often like the rock music video i i love a rock music music video by the gugu dolls called come to me and it's about that passion of that first dating love and i read a study recently that 15 of people have that love all through their lives they can be married for 50 or 60 years and the complete passion never goes away and those are the lucky people and occasionally you'll see a couple in their 60s or 70s or 80s and they look at each other with the the same passionate love they did when they're 18 and they've tended their relationship well”

The conservative movement has fundamentally changed over Brooks' career: it was the party of free trade, open immigration, and American global engagement under Reagan, but has become the party of closed trade, closed immigration, and withdrawal from the world, showing that the same name and party label can contain completely inverted values.

“everything about the conservative movement has changed in the course of my career so when i um entered it ronald reagan was still in office and it was the party of free trade and now it's the party of closed trade it was the party of open immigration and now it's the party of closed immigration it was the party of american involvement in the world now it's a party of withdrawal from the world”

At the University of Chicago, Brooks encountered professors who were refugees from WWII Europe who treated the great books (Shakespeare, Milton, Hobbes, George Eliot) with sacred reverence, believing these books contained the keys to how to lead a good life, and who modeled deep commitment to nobility and excellence despite Brooks being a poor student in high school.

“i got there and i found these professors some of them refugees from europe and world war ii who took the great book so seriously they felt if you read hobbs and shakespeare and milton and george eliot the right way the keys to the kingdom the keys to how to lead a good life were kept in these books”

While Brooks was enclosed in a prison of individualism during his career climb, his children (12, 9, and 4 at one point) and being with them created the primary cracks in his individualistic armor; even as an emotionally inhibited person, fatherhood smashed through his emotional defenses and became the language through which he connected with his children.

“the people who could crack through that were my kids and the i remember when my oldest was 18 months we were playing early in the morning and i had this thought that i know this person better than i've known anybody and he probably knows me better than anybody's known me and at that age i'm not sure we'd ever said a word to each other because he couldn't speak yet”

The Weekly Standard, founded in 1995 by Brooks and friends including Bill Kristol and Andrew Ferguson, was intended to guide the Republican Party toward becoming a solid reformist party during the Gingrich revolution; Brooks' conservative heroes Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton represented a moderate, incrementalist approach to change and concern for the poorest citizens.

“in 1995 my best friends were starting a magazine and they were people like bill crystal a guy named andrew ferguson a guy named fred barnes and it was called the weekly standard and it was a conservative magazine the gingrich revolution was just happening and we thought there should be a magazine to guide the republican party or to be a conversation place where the republican party can become a solid reformist party”

In 18th century America, European colonists and Native Americans lived side by side, but colonists would leave European communities to live with Native Americans while no Native Americans moved to European communities—a phenomenon that bothered figures like Benjamin Franklin because it suggested European civilization was inferior at creating community and belonging.

“there was a moment in the 18th century when you had the european colonists and the native american culture side by side and all the europeans or many of them would go and live with the natives and none of the natives would go live with europeans and this really bugged people like benjamin franklin it's like we're the superior civilization how come people are leaving our culture to go to them but nobody's leaving them to come to us”

Brooks' sense of George Washington as the father of his country came from immigrant identity rather than genealogical connection; while a friend descended from George Washington had to ask what it was like for him, Brooks had always assumed Washington was his father figure, suggesting that nationality is defined by imaginative identification rather than blood.

“i was walking around the metropolitan museum of art with a friend who was actually related to george washington not directly but indirectly and we looked at a picture of george washington on the wall in the museum and my friend innocently asked what's it like for you because for me he is the father of my country but you're not related to him and i remember thinking that thought has never occurred to me that i assume of course he's my father figure this is my country and it didn't matter that i didn't have any relatives here when when he was alive he's still the father and i think that's that's what um a country is that's what america is”

The vocabulary of sin and grace has been lost; without understanding sin, people don't know how to confront their own weaknesses or see how sin is corrupting and contagious; without understanding grace (unmerited love), people don't sense the fundamental goodness of the universe or know how to surrender to goodness they don't deserve.

“i was talking about one of my books on a tv show and i said this book is about sin this book is about um uh confronting our own sinfulness and how do we overcome it and i got an email from uh somebody in the publishing business said you know i love the way you talk about your book but i wouldn't use the word sin it's such a downer use the word insensitive”

Americans are hungry for moral and spiritual vocabulary; when Brooks speaks about moral development and spiritual transformation at business conferences with 3,000-5,000 executives, people are silent and afterward ask for phone relationships, wanting someone to talk to about deep questions—suggesting widespread hunger for meaning-making that lacks cultural venue.

“when i'm out on book tours one of the things they do is they they book you into these business conferences where you get to talk about your book to a group of three or five thousand business executives and at the conference they've been talking about their fiduciary responsibilities and healthcare benefits and you walk into a room and they're like 3 000 62 year old white guys in boring suits and i'm going to go talk to them about george eliot's love life or i'm going to talk about how saint augustine felt his soul expand in the presence of god”

The meritocracy—the system where people rise through achievement and competition—contains soul-destroying lies: that career success can make you happy, that you can make yourself happy through self-improvement, and that people who achieve more career success are worth more as human beings.

“meritocracy is the system most of us live in it is the system that we get promoted in life through achievement we get good grades in school and we we rise to the top of our class that's meritocracy”

Personal transformation and social transformation must happen simultaneously; becoming a better society requires becoming better people with different values—replacing ego-driven competition with solidarity and bonding, which involves shedding some ego desires and seizing others.

“one of the things you find when you have cultural change is that people realize that personal transformation and social transformation have to happen at the same time in order to have a better society we have to be better people we have a different set of values not the values of the ego not the values of competition but the values of solidarity and bonding and so it involves shedding some of the ego desires and it involves seizing some of the others”

If you take a homeless person to McDonald's for a burger, you improve that core piece of yourself; if you walk by a homeless person ignoring them, you slightly pollute it—the small choices we make throughout life determine whether our core self becomes more or less holy.

“if you take a homeless person in to have a burger at mcdonald's you've improved that core thing if you walk by the homeless person and ignore their existence you've slightly polluted it”

During the valley, Brooks became radicalized about how much American society is broken; the 30% rise in suicide, 70% rise in teenage suicide since 2011, swamped mental health facilities on college campuses, doubling of depression in a generation, and 72,000 annual deaths from opioid addiction show a society in deep crisis—more people die yearly from opioids than died in the entire Vietnam War.

“i i think our society is much more screwed up than i thought that if you look at our society right now you've see a 30 rise in suicide rate 30 or a 70 rise in teenage suicide rate since 2011. you see mental health facilities in every college i go to being swamped the number of people who say they're depressed is doubled in a generation”

Americans rank #1 in the world in narcissism tests; the median narcissism score has risen 30% in the last 20 years; Americans rank 26th in math ability but #1 in believing they're good at math—showing a disconnect between actual competence and self-perception driven by narcissistic inflation.

“there they give these tests the call the narcissism test the psychologists do and they give people a bunch of statements and they say they're statements like i love to look at myself in the mirror i find it easy to manipulate people because i'm so extraordinary somebody should write a biography about me americans rank number one in the world of narcissism in these tests the median narcissism score has gone up 30 in the last 20 years”

There is an extra level of enchantment in life—a love beyond what evolution requires—that humans are capable of when willing to tap into it; this unlimited ability to care for one another distinguishes human love from animal loyalty and is accessed when living in an enchanted realm of relational presence.

“a friend of mine when her daughter was born she said i found that i loved her more than evolution required and i've always loved that sentiment because some things we do to pass down our genes some things we do in life to pay the rent but there's an extra level of enchantment in life if we're willing to tap into it that is our limitable ability to care for one another penguins are really loyal to each other but they don't have the kind of love that uh we have for the ones we love and with that when you live in that realm you're living in an enchanted realm”

A Spartan educator said 'I make honorable things pleasant to children,' establishing a standard and helping people see what they are capable of; after tasting such heights, it's hard to settle for cheap wine, which is what great teachers do—they teach people what to love.

“there's a spartan educator who said i make honorable things pleasant to children and so you hold up they this is what you can do with your life and after you've tasted the heights it's hard to settle for the cheap wine and so i think they they taught us new things to love and they taught us um ways to see the world”

Through studying emotion and neuroscience, Brooks came to understand that the head and heart are not different but the same thing; knowing is a form of love; and people are not primarily cognitive creatures but primarily desiring creatures—we're defined by what we value, not by what we think.

“through that process i began to see that the head and the heart are not different that the head and the heart are the same thing that that knowing is a form of love uh and that we're not primarily cognitive thinking creatures we're primarily desiring creatures and so it was a slow process of sort of opening up the heart”

If you stay close and build a local landscape as an artist (like Faulkner, Bellow, Morrison focusing on particular regions rather than universal themes), people will come to you and enter your landscape—universality comes through radical particularity, not by trying to appeal globally.

“if you build if you stay close and you build a landscape as an artist like faulkner or so bellow or toni morrison people will come to you and they'll enter your landscape and so i think it's a lesson for anybody find out what your damon is fine is the core thing that animates your life for springsteen it was those people in freehold new jersey from his childhood he needed to understand them he spent his whole life trying to understand them”

Communities have a technology for convening (dinners, shared activities, model trains) that functions as the excuse to get together—the actual purpose is relationship, but the shared project (building, cooking, gardening) is what makes gathering possible and sustained.

“every organization i've ever seen and every group i've seen has a technology for convening they have some way they get people together and often it's a shared dinner party sometimes it's a shared love they all love model trains and they work on model trains together but the model trains are not really the thing the model trains are just the excuse for them to get together and so communities have a lot of things in common one of them is they have a common story how do we get together how to reform where are we going they also have a common project”

Transformative communities offer 'harshness in the context of love'—strict discipline and high standards (no cursing, no disrespect, punctuality) balanced with 200% accountability delivered with 200% love, where the love is not at risk even if behavior requires correction.

“you need what i find with those programs is you need to offer harshness in the context of love so they offer very strict discipline demands if you're in our program there's going to be no cursing you're not going to check out women you're not going to be late to anything and we're going to offer you as they say 200 accountability in the context of 200 love and that love without the toughness is just sentimentality and toughness without the love is just harshness but the the people who really turn around lives have both those things in equal measure and they they're just i'm going to love you my love is not at risk here you can behave badly my love is not a risk i may treat you differently but my my love is not at riskier”

Vocations announce themselves aesthetically—through beauty that calls to us; the Greek words for beauty and call are similar, and people often find their calling because something seemed beautiful and they became curious about it and spent a lifetime learning about it.

“what's interesting to me about moments when people find their vocation is that they're very aesthetic they find something beautiful and beauty calls to them the greek word for beauty is similar to the word for call and they find something beautiful and they they just want to pay attention that beautiful thing”

Medieval theologians called 'acidia' (lack of desire) the condition where people are spiritually lost without a calling, don't know how to do moral development, and aren't touching their deepest desires—resulting in life feeling flat; this is endemic in modern America.

“it it manifests as what the medieval is called acidia which is lack of desire when you're sort of lost without a sort of spiritual calling when you don't know how to do moral development you're you're not touching your deepest desires and so life just seems kind of flat”

William F. Buckley was the most famous conservative commentator in America in the 1950s-60s, founded National Review to begin the modern conservative movement, had a TV show called Firing Line with intellectual conversation at high levels, and served as a mentor who taught Brooks about the world of ideas, opinion journalism, and valued literature and art over politics.

“william f buckley was for in the 50s and 60s the most famous conservative commentator in america uh maybe the most famous commentator in america he founded a magazine called national review which was really the beginning of the modern conservative movement he had a tv show on pbs called firing line which was intellectual conversation at a very high level which no tv show does today”

To heal divisions across racial, economic, and ideological lines, you need personal conversations and relationships—it doesn't happen without the meeting of minds; political solutions can address some problems (justice, redistribution) but the fraying social fabric gets solved one room at a time.

“to heal that kind of division and that sense of injustice you've got to have a difficult conversation across color lines in that town and when you bring people together across those divides you've created the potential for a new source of power and there's a guy named peter block who writes a lot about community and he says power is created when new people are brought into the room especially when people who are formerly defined as part of the problem are brought into the room... but i i do think social change especially across distrust across racial lines across economic lines across ideological lines it doesn't happen without the meaning of those minds and across relationships and people get triggered so fast... but we think about our problems can be solved by politics and a lot of them can matters of justice economic redistribution but when your problem is the fraying of the social fabric that gets solved one room at a time”

Jim Lehrer created a 'moral ecology' around the PBS NewsHour where he was stoic on air but emotionally expressive off-camera, and for 10 years Brooks tried to get the 'eye crinkle' of approval rather than the mouth downturn of displeasure, thus learning how to do broadcast journalism through nonverbal feedback rather than explicit instruction.

“one day i think it was december 31st about 2000 i got asked to be in on the newshour with jim lehrer and lehrer was the kind of guy who he was very stoic on the air because he didn't want to be the focus of attention but when the camera was not on him he was very expressive his face is very expressive and so when i said something on the air that he liked i would see his eyes crinkle in pleasure and if i said something crass or stupid i would see his mouth downturn in displeasure”

The effect of meritocracy on Brooks was to make him streamlined and productive but relationally disconnected; he developed a clock in his head always pushing him to move on from conversations to the next task, leading him to value time over people and relationships and to struggle with lingering in presence with others.

“to me the effect on the meritocracy on me was makes you streamlined like i'm not going to develop messy relationships because i'm on the move uh it gave me i had all these commitments i had deadlines i had to fulfill i had parts of my job i had to do and so i had a clock in my head and the clock was always move on from this conversation because you got more stuff to do”

Brooks describes a friend named Chris Wyman who experienced transcendence when a falcon landed on his windowsill in Prague; when the bird locked eyes with Wyman, he felt his insides crumble and experienced the distance-dissolving connection between human and bird; the moment was so powerful that Wyman wrote a poem wishing it would not end.

“i had a friend named chris wyman who was writing poetry in prague and a falcon landed on the wind on the windowsill and if the bird was so beautiful he he just looked at it and he called his girlfriend who was taking the shower and said he got to see this and they came out and they looked at the bird and then the bird turned its eyes and locked eyes with wyman and wyman said when i locked eyes with the bird i felt my insides crumble”

Brooks responded to his valley by trying workaholism—trying to work his way through spiritual and relational crisis; his kitchen drawers that should have held silverware held post-it notes instead, and plates were replaced with stationery—a metaphor for a life misspent, all work and no presence.

“and so i was living alone and i did what any idiot would do in a moment of spiritual and relational crisis which was that i um tried to work my way through it i tried workaholism is a very good distraction from any spiritual or emotional problem and it's what a lot of people do when i did that and so the story i tell is that if you went to my kitchen in my apartment where i was living alone and you opened the drawer where there should have been silverware in my kitchen it was just post-it notes and where there should have been plates it was just um stationary because i was just working working working”

Aisha Butler lived in Englewood, Chicago in a dangerous neighborhood with bullets coming through windows; she and her family were planning to move to Atlanta; at a going-away barbecue, she saw a little girl in a pink dress playing with broken bottles and tires in an empty lot; she realized they couldn't leave, canceled the move, and began rebuilding the neighborhood—now RAGE (Rebuild Englewood) has transformed the community through volunteer work and creating parks on empty lots.

“one woman in chicago a woman named aisha butler she lived in this tough neighborhood in chicago called englewood and the bullets were coming through her window from time to time and she was scared for her nine-year-old daughter and she told her husband let's get out of here let's go to atlanta it's just too dangerous here we can't raise a family here and so they were going to go to atlanta and then they um were about to move out they had a barbecue said goodbye to all their neighbors and one day she was looking across out of her window at the empty lot across the street and she saw a little girl in a pink dress playing with broken bottles and tires and she turns to her husband and says we can't leave that we can't just be another family who left”

A 'first mountain' person values career success, status, and individual accomplishment; most people early in life are climbing the first mountain of achievement, establishing identity, and rising in their careers—this is normal and good, but insufficient for a meaningful life.

“the first mountain is the mountain we seek to climb most of us early in our lives we get out of school and we want to establish our identity we want to know who we are we want to achieve success we want to make a difference in the world we want to get good at our job and that's the normal thing to do and so a lot of us spend the early parts of our adulthood or the earlier parts of our life getting good grades trying to be good at school trying to get into a career trying to establish yourself in your career and it's a perfectly good thing to do”

The Greek concept of thumos (thymotic urge) is the desire for recognition; young people want to be recognized and, if they are outsiders from a minority group, are particularly driven to do something notable to make people notice them; Brooks once fantasized that obscurity with posthumous influence (finding him 100 years later) would be satisfying, but now rejects this in favor of experiencing richness while alive.

“when you're young you want to be recognized you want there's an the greeks had a word for it the thymotic urge the thumos you want people to recognize you and if you're a young writer and you feel like you're an outsider because you come from a strange group that's a minority you want to do something to make people notice”

Brooks illustrates the persistence of deep desire with a metaphor: a man bought a home with a bamboo stand by the driveway he hated; he tried to eliminate it—chopping it down, digging deep, pouring poison, laying gravel and cement—but years later a small shoot of bamboo came back through the driveway; we all have deep desires that we try to pave over but eventually the bamboo shoots up.

“i read about a guy who bought a home with a bamboo stand by the driveway and he hated bamboo so he chopped it down he took an axe to the root system he dug a three-foot hole he pours plant poison into it he pours three feet of gravel six inches of cement and then two years later a little shoot of bamboo comes up through the driveway and in my view we all have that we all have these deep desires”

The second mountain is about contributing things rather than acquiring them; it's about reaching down and helping people who are struggling rather than climbing up and acquiring status; the first mountain is about ego while the second mountain is about orientation toward others.

“if the first mountain is about acquiring things getting a big career and getting a name getting an identity the second mountain is about contributing things uh the first mountain is about climbing up the second mountain is reaching down and helping people who were struggling themselves the first mountain is about ego the second mountain is about an orientation about others”

The Republican Party has a bad future because America's future will not be formed by 76-year-old white men in Florida; the demographic realities make white identity politics a losing proposition over time.

“in my view the republican party is is got a very bad future in front of it because the american future is not going to be formed by 76 year old white men in florida”

A memorable moment of family happiness—children playing in a yard with summer sun and perfect lawn—produces a joy greater than anything felt at work, a joy that is realized, not earned, and reveals something mystical in human relationships that doesn't quite make sense but is deeply real.

“i remember one time i was i drove home from work and it was a summer and i got home and i pulled into my driveway and i looked in the backyard and my kids were then like 12 9 and 4 were playing with a ball and they were kicking it up in the air and chasing each other across the yard and they were giggling and rolling all over each other self each other and having the greatest time and so i pull up and i'm just looking at them through the windshield of my car and like the summer sun was coming through the trees and my lawn for some reason looked perfect and i became aware of a level of joy that's greater than anything you ever feel at work”

Brooks has been working with Mark Shields on the NewsHour for 17 years without ever having a 'crossword each with each other'; Shields is a Boston Irish kid and beautiful-hearted man, and their friendship has been 'one of the great joys' of Brooks's life, illustrating the lesson: find a noble human being and hang around that person.

“so it was a great pleasure and a great honor to work with uh my buddy mark shields we've been doing the show for 17 years now and we've never had a crossword each with each other he's like a boston irish kid now and is older but he's just a beautiful hearted man”

E.O. Wilson had an 'enunciation moment' at age 7 on a beach in Florida during his parents' divorce—seeing jellyfish, stingray, ocean animals he'd never conceived of, a naturalist was born in that moment of beauty and discovery, prefiguring his entire life course as one of America's greatest scientists.

“for eo wilson it was the same age he was seven and he uh his parents were getting divorced and they shipped him away one summer he was living in the south they shipped him away to a place called paradise beach in florida and he was staying with a family he didn't know but he they were on the beach and he never seen a beach before he was living in land and so he started wandering the beach at seven and he spent all the days out on the beach and he saw animals he had never had any conception of he saw a jellyfish and he was boggled one day he was sitting on the dock and his feet were in the water and a stingray slid beneath his feet and he said those moments a naturalist was born”

Rabbi Jonathan Sachs points out that creation of the universe gets 9 verses in Genesis but creation of the tabernacle (a shared structure) gets hundreds—because divided people need a common project to unite them, and building the tabernacle was what transformed scattered individuals into a common people.

“rabbi jonathan sachs points out that in the book of genesis the creation of the universe is told in like nine verses in the book of exodus the creation of the tabernacle which is this little structure the israelites we're building is told in hundreds and hundreds of verses why did it take so long to describe the how you create a tabernacle with this kind of wood and that kind of wood because the israelites were divided people they needed a common project to hold them together and was building this tabernacle is what took a divided people and made them a common people”

A rabbinic story: Moses as a shepherd had a lamb that escaped into the wilderness; Moses chased it deep into the wilderness; the rabbis teach the lamb represents the part of us that's 'most himself'—we need to go into solitude/wilderness to find ourselves because there's no audience to perform for, no one to impress.

“there's a rabbinic story about moses who was a shepherd and one of his little lambs took off like a gazelle and wins the wilderness and moses had to chase it deep into the wilderness and the rabbis tell us the lamb is most himself he needs to go off and be alone to um to find himself and the reason you need to be alone is if you live life as performance to try to impress other people when you go off into the wilderness there's nobody to perform for uh the trees and the mountains they don't care and so you have to go out there and um and not be the gifted child anymore just be on your own where everything else falls apart”

Bruce Springsteen had an enunciation moment watching Elvis on Ed Sullivan (wanting to be that) and then the Beatles (committing fully—'I had no plan B'), and after massive early success he stripped down rather than going big—he planted himself in Freehold, New Jersey, writing about those small lives he needed to understand, becoming particular and local rather than globally ambitious.

“bruce springsteen had an enunciation moment also at a very early age he was home watched the ed sullivan show and a guy named elvis presley come on and he said that's me that's what i want to do and so he got his mom to rent a guitar tried to play it found out it was hard and he quit but then a few years later he was also watching the ed sullivan show and the beatles came on and this time he said that's me that's what i'm going to do and so he spent his childhood doing one thing uh learning to play a rock star and um as he says i had no plan b and and what's impressive about springsteen to me a lot of things i'm one of those people who goes to all the concerts and stuff is the most impressive moment in springsteen's career for me was he had his two albums first two which failed commercially then the third one was a smash success born to run he was on the cover of time and newsweek same week the natural progression after you have your big smash success would be to go big and do this big global album that make you a worldwide sensation instead he went small he stripped down and he planted himself in the towns he grew up in in free hill new jersey in asbury park new jersey and he wrote about the small lives there that he wanted to figure out”

A child psychologist studying orchid and dandelion children (those who thrive in good conditions but struggle in bad vs. those resilient everywhere) was driven by contrast with his sister: he was a dandelion thriving everywhere, she was an orchid of greater gifts but fragile, eventually suicidal—his life's research was animated by the aggravating contrast of these two.

“he has a he's very famous for a theory called the orchid and the dandelion he says some kids are orchid children they um if you plant them in a good situation they'll bloom if it's a bad situation they really struggle and some kids are dandelion children wherever they grow up they're fine they're just resilient and his life has been about exploring this the two different kinds of kids and i finally learned why he's so fascinated is because he grew up with a sister and he was a dandelion wherever he did he was he thrived his sister was an orchid she was more brilliant than him more friendly than him more sociable than him more beautiful but she she would sometimes be on top of the world sometimes deep in depression and struggle and eventually in her 40s she committed suicide and so for this researcher the contrast between him and his sister is like the animating question of his life”

Cultural and civic change come before political change (citing Robert Putnam's study of 1890s America): first cultural revolution (social Darwinism → social gospel), then civic renaissance (creation of clubs, scouts, NAACP, unions, settlement houses), then political movement (progressivism)—modern America won't be turned around politics first.

“there's a phrase in the book of job and the sparks fly upward and when i look at the moments when america has turned itself around i'm instructed by robert putnam of harvard who studies the 1890s and it was a moment a little like today there was a big economic transition there's a big wave of immigration there was a lot of political corruption and change came in three stages first there was a cultural revolution in those days something called social darwinism which was super individualistic and competitive was replaced by the social gospel movement which was a very communal and then you have a civic renaissance you had the creation within a few short years of the boys and girls clubs the boys and girl scouts the temperance room with the settlement house movement the naacp the unions all these new civic organizations came into being and then a few years later you had the progressive movement which is a political movement so in cultural civic political and our society now is not going to be turned around politics first you have to have the cultural and the civic before you can get the political change”

Trump represents both 'rippers' (those who create enemy distinctions, framing politics as war) and the media business model of polarization (whipping up tribalism for engagement)—instead of introducing groups to each other so they can see humanity, media and Trump intentionally increase stereotyping and hate.

“no listen we live in a society of weavers who are really trying to rebuild relationship we also live in a society of rippers uh i think we live with the president who wants to always create friend enemy distinctions it's always us them it's always war war war and he's not the only one by the way a lot of our my colleagues in the media our business model is polarization we sort of whip up frenzies of people in our tribe to really hate the other tribe and instead of introducing them to get them to know the other tribe because it's really hard to hate somebody when you're close up to them uh we there's just ripping and there's generalization and there's stereotype”

Ego is a constant struggle and cannot be entirely eliminated; people may succeed in shedding acute self-consciousness some of the time by reorienting toward service to others, but even successful people like the speaker still check their book rankings hourly, showing that ego-loss is perpetual work rather than a permanent achievement.

“losing ego is something you never entirely do we all want to think about ourselves we won't want to think the world really likes me and i wrote a book about how important it is to get deeper than ego but when i'm on my book tour i'm checking my amazon ranking every hour so like it's a constant battle”

Brooks became op-ed editor for the Wall Street Journal after Brussels, received 100 submissions per day and had to say no to 99, learning to say no—a very hard skill—which later informed his approach to writing and judgment.

“i come back and become the op-ed editor for the wall street journal so i'm getting 100 submissions a week or a day and i had to say no to 99 so i had i learned to say no in those years which is a very hard thing”

Brooks became a moderate Republican at exactly the moment when that tradition was dying; there were Republican traditions of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Alexander Hamilton that valued social mobility and moderate reform, but Brooks' moderate Republicanism became a fringe position within the party.

“so i became a moderate republican at the exact moment that was dying and i still sort of am there but there are only six of us left”

During 9 years at The Weekly Standard, Brooks found out what he actually believed through trial and error, trying on different ideologies like suits in a department store (libertarianism, social conservatism) until finding Alexander Hamilton's vision of using government to create social mobility as his authentic political orientation.

“i find that when you're in a group and everyone's believing the same thing you just believe what the group believes you sort of have to strike out on your own and figure out what do i actually believe and throw a process of trial error or sort of on my own in the wilderness i found out yeah these are the important writers for me these are the important ideas this is my world view and it was a process of trial and error like putting on suits in the in the department store in the mall”

In 2003, Brooks received a column offer from Gail Collins at the New York Times, initially planned to decline because he preferred longer 5,000-word pieces to 800-word columns, but ultimately said yes because no one turns down the best real estate in journalism—a decision that reflects weakness of courage rather than strength.

“in 2003 i got a call from gail collins who was the editorial pageant of the new york times and she asked me to come up and have lunch and i had an inkling that they were going to offer me a column and i decided i would not do it because i like writing i was writing for the atlantic and the new yorker at that point i like writing these 5 000 word pieces and a column is only 800 words it's not my best length”

Being a political pundit requires having a new idea two times a week, which is like being married to an infomaniac; the advantage is that it forces continual learning and growth, but the constraint is that people become obsessed with generating ideas from every experience, turning life into material for columns.

“the challenge of being a pundit is you have to have uh two times a week you have to have a new idea and so the joke is it's like being married to an infomaniac it seems fun for the first couple weeks but i used to have all these normal human desires for um for food water now i just have one desire column ideas”

McCain took reporters to restaurants like Antoine's in New Orleans for expensive meals, to casinos where he taught them to shoot craps, and shared his anger and failures openly; he experienced proximity to death in a POW camp that inoculated him against self-deception because 'everything that came later was gravy' and he couldn't lie to himself.

“he once took me to antoine's this restaurant in new orleans and we had like a 35 000 calorie meal we had nine different kinds of whiskey i remember that at the end they poured off this coffee with brandy in it it was flaming and we were drinking this flaming brandy and coffee and i remember asking the waiter is it decaf and then he once took me to a casino what kind of presidential candidate takes a reporter to a casino and he taught me how to shoot craps”

Brooks has been liberated by becoming politically homeless; not knowing where he belongs, he can think whatever he wants without party loyalty pulling him back, as has happened to some of his friends who went back to Trump despite identifying as never-Trumpers.

“for me at least it's been liberating because um i i don't quite know where i am i'm politically homeless and so i can think whatever i want”

Writing 'The Social Animal' about emotion was like Ghandi writing about gluttony (asking someone to write about what they're bad at); Brooks did it by studying brain science and fMRI machines to understand how people become more emotional, and in the process met great neuroscientists who taught him that emotions tell us what we value.

“there was a period in the 90s when i wrote the social animal and it was a book about emotion and my friends joked that you know me writing a book about emotion was like gandhi writing a book about gluttony it's like what the hell are you doing like people saw me as an emotionally closed person who who was not exactly the warm embracing soul that he wanted to be”

Brooks reached the top of his first mountain—career success beyond what he imagined—but felt nothing when his book hit the New York Times bestseller list, a moment he had dreamed of since age 7, showing that external achievement doesn't deliver the satisfaction promised by meritocratic ideology.

“i had way more career success than i ever thought i was like this ain't so great i remember the first i wrote a book in 2000 called bobo's in paradise and i was driving around la on my book tour and i got a call from my publisher and it said you're going to be on the new york times bestseller list and so i want to be a writer since i was seven this was one part of the dream like to get on the best seller list and i felt nothing it was nothing like getting on the bessel list was some thing that was happening externally to me and it was sort of a disappointment”

A man from Australia whose wife died young reported that in the years since, he experienced profound moral and spiritual growth from her death, feeling almost guilty at benefiting morally from her death, but recognizing he now speaks in a different register, values different things, and could not have predicted the growth that came from tragedy.

“i had a guy from australia write to me and he said the worst moments of my life was when my wife died young and he said in the years since i read a guy named parker palmer and he said i learned what palmer had to teach me which was you have to listen to your life and see what your life has to teach you and he said this guy from australia said i feel almost guilty at how much moral and spiritual growth happened after the death of my wife because i profited from her death but i i lead a different kind of life i speak in a different register i value different things”

Brooks met a former banker in Kentucky who lost his job and now works helping men come out of prison to re-enter the world; when he talks about this work, his eyes glow in a way they never did around banking, suggesting that meaningful work produces joy that status and wealth cannot.

“i met a guy in kentucky a few months ago who was a banker and he lost his job and now he works helping men come out of prison to re-enter the world and when he he's on the second round when he talks about that experience his eyes just glow in the way they never did around banking”

Brooks says he can recognize first-mountain and second-mountain people by looking at them: first-mountain people want to know what you think of them, are somewhat hard to reach, and clawing their way upward; second-mountain people have their eyes locked onto another person, talking in hushed tones, oriented toward relationship.

“um they want to know what you think of them and the first mountain person they've got a certain rhythm and pace and they're somewhat hard to reach and so they um they're sort of clawing their way and the things they talk about uh and i see this where i live in washington you go to a coffee shop and you overhear conversations and 90 of the conversations are about career strategy”

There are people who have moral joy—joy is their permanent outlook; they're grateful for people around them and live their lives as service; Jimmy Durrell walks among homeless and poor with warmth and enthusiasm; Yo-Yo Ma and Jeffrey Canada radiate joy and cheerfulness even in difficult circumstances; these people have gotten themselves out of the way and are oriented around building intimate relationships.

“so there's some people who have joy where it's just a second where you had a moment a great thing happened you're lost in nature and it's just like wow that was an amazing moment but some people joy is their permanent outlook they're just grateful for the people they're around and they live their life as just service and so they walk through life i was just with this guy in waco he's fresh on my mind jimmy durrell and you see him walking amongst the homeless and you see him walking among the poor you see him walking among the rich and he just like peers into people and he bores down on them and he's just all enthusiasm he's like a cheerleader of life”

The Weaver Project is an initiative to identify, learn from, and support community builders ('weavers') who are rebuilding social fabric; Brooks started visiting the best people on earth who do lives of service to understand how they build community and spread their values nationally; the project is at the Aspen Institute.

“i was writing these columns and everything i wrote about was about social isolation it was the rising suicide rate it was neighborhoods breaking down it was families breaking down it was the tribalism in our politics and the hatred from one tribe to another and i thought the social fragment the social fabric is just fragmenting before our eyes and then i had the realization that but it's being solved at the local level by these people we call weavers who are just really good at building community and so i wanted to understand how can we lift them up and illuminate their example learn from their values and spread them around and nationalize their effect”

Even today Brooks doesn't know anyone who can read all online comments without becoming depressed or hurt; you have to develop thicker skin through experience, but the acrimony of online discourse is a new form of psychological assault that wasn't possible before digital media.

“and you have to go through this to get your skin a little thickened but even today i i don't know anybody who can really look at all the comments and not be um depressed and not be hurt”

In the House and Senate, even among 100 people and their staffs, relationships are attenuated—senators know people in their party well but not the other party, with 'buffers of ignorance' preventing cross-party understanding despite proximity, showing that institutional proximity doesn't create relationship.

“the democrats and republicans know nothing about each other they would tell me you know here's what the other team is thinking i was like i just talked to them they're not thinking that at all and so there's just this even in the close in body like the house of representatives of the u.s senate there's just these buffers of ignorance uh and it's mystifying to me that you got a senate is 100 people surrounded by staff you think they know each other really well that is not the case they do not know each other well they are they're um they know people in their party well but they don't know people in the other party well the relationships are attenuated”

Brooks describes himself as a 'middleman' writer—not an original genius but someone who reads widely, marks passages that move him, and curates and passes along the best insights he encounters, serving as a beggar telling other beggars where bread was found.

“some people are geniuses and they come up with brilliant thoughts and that's their writing i don't have that kind of mind so what i do is i do a lot of reading and i try to take the parts that meant something to me and i try to share it with the readers and somebody said what writers are we're beggars who tell other beggars where we found bread”

The first six months as an NYT columnist were miserable because Brooks didn't know how to write a column, had never been hated on a mass scale before, and was bombarded with hundreds of thousands of hateful emails from readers, which depressed him until he asked his assistant to read them, which depressed the assistant, so Brooks stopped reading comments entirely.

“the first six months on the job was miserable because i didn't know how to write a column and i'd never been hated on a mass scale before and so i came in more from the right the times readers were more on the left and they bombarded me with hatred”

Brooks had a completely untroubled childhood with loving parents who showed love but did not express it verbally, creating a blockage where he had security but lacked capacity to articulate emotions—a deficit made painfully clear when his grandfather said 'I love you' on his deathbed and Brooks could not say it back.

“i had a completely untroubled childhood i grew up in new york city um i went to a wonderful school called grace church school i had loving parents who offered love but not really talking about it”

The study of history allows one to go back centuries and understand how human beings behave; Brooks wrote 16 papers on Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars and learned the lesson that 'the lows are lower than the highs are high'—meaning political failure is more consequential than political success—a lesson that has lodged in him and influenced his political thinking.

“the study of history allows you go back centuries and see how human beings behave and so i wrote like 16 papers on thucydides and the peloponnesian wars and one of the lessons of that which i've carried through life is that in politics the lows are lower than the highs are high meaning then when a politician screws up it is a big disaster when they do something really good you get a modest uptick”

Jim Lehrer and Mark Shields were both Marines, which was the thing they were proudest of; their attachment to the Marine Corps and their colleagues was the deep source of their identity; Lehrer taught Brooks that the Marine Corps lesson—'if I get punched in the nose I can come back'—meant fearlessness about challenge.

“mentor lara taught me how to do the broadcast journalist he also taught me um about loyalty i think the thing lara was proudest of and mark shields is also proudest of is the marine corps they're both marines and i saw their attachment to the core as the proudest thing uh in their life”

John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign on the Straight Talk Express allowed journalists to travel with McCain, get to know him, and see him respond to criticism; Brooks learned to provoke McCain into talking by getting him angry, and observed how McCain's anger built up in response to attacks from George W. Bush.

“when i first got my job as a columnist an older columnist named robert novak gave me a good piece of advice which was interview three politicians every day and those days i did it and the problem was most politicians didn't have much of an inner voice then i met this guy john mccain and mccain had an inner voice mccain you could ask him any question and he would actually tell you what he thought and so i loved being with him”

Emotional openness and vulnerability are learnable skills like any other; Brooks learned to be more emotionally open through exposure to emotionally transparent people who 'beam love' and demand it back, and through uncomfortable experiences like singing lyrics to strangers while making eye contact—practices that gradually loosen up emotional defenses.

“the way you recover from that is being around people who are emotionally transparent who beam love at you and demand you beam it back at them and that means putting yourself in circumstances where you feel completely uncomfortable i was at a conference a couple weeks ago and the person organizing that session gave us all pages with lyrics to a song and they said find a stranger next to you look into their eyes and i want you both to sing the lyrics to each other”

An immigrant uncle, Irving Browning, was a silent film director who decorated his apartment in Washington Heights like Wyoming in 1860, having never gone west of the Hudson River—the imaginary ideal of America was created by immigrant children with pictures in their heads of what the country was like.

“i had a great uncle named irving browning who was a movie director back when they made silent pictures in atlantic city and he made westerns and if you went to his apartment in washington heights in new york it looks like you're going to wyoming in 1860 he had powder horns he had lassos he had chaps it was all western stuff and irving browning himself never went west of the hudson river he was just imagining what the west was like”

The community of early conservatives Brooks knew (meeting at a townhouse in 1990s New York for cocktails and intellectual conversation) has fractured—some went left, some went Trump, most became 'never Trumpers' who can't stand Trump, but lost the common ground that held them together as an intellectual movement.

“of the people who i knew when i was 25 in the conservative movement some of them have gone lyft some of them have gone trump right some of them most of us are never trumpers which say we still call ourselves sort of right but um we can't stand that guy and what he stands for and so it's been every every uh wednesday i think it was when i was young and in new york in my 20s we would meet at a townhouse and just have a cocktail party with our friends and we were all conservatives together and that group most of them would talk to each other now uh and that's the convulsions of history”

Brooks has spent 50 years writing almost daily since age 7 when he read Paddington the Bear, using writing as a practice of self-improvement and becoming the best version of himself through repeatedly engaging with texts and ideas that challenge and deepen him.

“when i was seven i read a book called paddington the bear and i discovered at that moment i want to be a writer and i've been writing for 50 years since almost every day maybe i've missed 200 days in the course of my whole lifetime”

Brooks' first job out of college was bartending, which taught him reliability and work ethic; his subsequent work as a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago exposed him to absurdity and human error, providing daily stories that made him appreciate both journalism and human nature.

“my first job out of college was bartender which was one of my best jobs ever i was trying to be a freelance writer and every week i sent off an article to a magazine and every week it got rejected”

The tea party movement and rise of Trump signaled the death of compassionate conservatism; Brooks had written 1,600 columns in 2015 saying Trump would never get the Republican nomination, so he was shocked when Trump won primaries despite racist statements and lies, forcing Brooks and others to write 'never Trump' columns.

“and trump was the break uh trump was the moment where a lot of us really were shocked you know i wrote like 1600 columns in 2015 saying don't worry donald trump will never get the republican nomination”

Camp in nature during childhood created for Brooks a successful racially integrated community that was removed from normal social hierarchies, taught courage through risk-taking, and created the capacity for deep bonding through physical proximity in tents; these camp friendships from age 12 remain core relationships 40 years later.

“starting in at a very early age six or seven i spent two months every summer at a camp in central connecticut called camp the incarnation and i was there for 15 years it was my childhood and it was in part the only successfully racially integrated institution i've ever been a part of”

Brooks' grandfather taught him immigrant mentality through stories of his neighborhood in which different ethnic groups (Finnish, Swedish, Italian, Czech, Bohemian) occupied different buildings, connecting him to historical New York and instilling in him an ethos of ambition, education, and the dream of rising from outsider to insider status.

“my grandfather um used to take me to pancake shops and teach me how to pour how much syrup you should pour on the pancakes now you could it was free so you could pour all you wanted he also taught me about his experience his it was his father who really came over uh to this country”

Brooks was a foreign correspondent in Brussels from roughly 1989-1994 covering the end of the Cold War, Soviet Union's collapse, German reunification, and the Oslo Peace Process—an era when history seemed to be turning wonderful and the 'end of history' seemed plausible, but the Yugoslav civil war with its ethnic cleansing foreshadowed the return of tribalism that would dominate the next 25 years.

“when i was 30 the wall street journal asked me to go to brussels with my wife and be a foreign correspondent for the opinion pages and they gave me a section of the world to cover which was from wales to vladivostok from scotland to cape town so it's like half the world and it was the early 90s and i covered nothing but great news for for about four years the end of the soviet union the independence movement in ukraine nelson mandela coming out of prison in south africa the oslo peace process german reunification the maastricht treaty european unification”