The Road to Character

“I wrote this book not sure I could follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the road looks like and how other people have trodden it.”—David Brooks

With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in The Road to Character, he focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives. Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which emphasizes external success, Brooks challenges us, and himself, to rebalance the scales between our “résumé virtues”—achieving wealth, fame, and status—and our “eulogy virtues,” those that exist at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty, or faithfulness, focusing on what kind of relationships we have formed.

Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint. Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic convert and champion of the poor, learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity and surrender. Civil rights pioneers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin learned reticence and the logic of self-discipline, the need to distrust oneself even while waging a noble crusade.

Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road to Character provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities, and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth.

“Joy,” David Brooks writes, “is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming for something else. But it comes.”

Quotes and thoughts while reading:

I first need to note that this book brought out some internal biases I had. I found that I took a vitriol reaction to the multiple allusions to god, sin, and the recurring imagery of religion and it's role in how we used to define character. David Brooks is right here, 100% wholly, that through the lessons in the bible, and the use of words like "sin" we could teach people how to build a certain kind of character. As society moves forward, the question becomes, was the character taught through these sources in some way better than the character being taught today. I think this is the answer Brooks is trying to answer. There's a lot to talk about, lets get started.

"Occasionally, even today, you come across certain people who seem to possess an impressive inner cohesion.... They radiate a sort of moral joy. They answer softly when challenged harshly. They are silent when unfairly abused. They are dignified when others try to humiliate them, restrained when others try to provoke them. But they get things done. They perform acts of sacrificial service with the same modest everyday spirit they would display if they were just getting groceries. They are not thinking about what impressive work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all. They just seem delighted by the flawed people around them. They recognize what needs doing and they do it.... These are the people who have built a strong inner character, who have achieved a certain depth.... These are the people we are looking for." (p xvi-xvii) My notes say 'Woof, we're off to a good start.' And in the above we really are. The people listed aren't usually president, nor the Executive Director, but they are usually a fulcrum that turns the tides of a country, or the direction of an organization. I hope I fall into this category, and if I don't, I know where I need to push myself to be.

"Psychologist have a things called the narcissism test... The medium narcissism score has risen 30 percent in the last two decades... Along with this apparent rise in self-esteem, there has been a tremendous increase in the desire for fame. Fame used to rank low as a life's ambition for most people. In a 1976 survey that asked people to list their life goals, fame ranked fifteenth out of sixteen. By 2007, 51 percent of young people reported that being famous was one of their top goals." (p 7) Food for thought when we think about the differences between generations. How they interact, how they treat one another, the planet, or their communities. If you go from a culture who cares more about self-sacrifice and self-effacement to one that seems to care more about the individual it's not a huge surprise to see a sense of community collapse.

"A person choosing a career looks for job opportunities and room for advancement. A person choosing a career is looking for something that will provide financial and psychological benefits. If your job or career isn't working for you, you choose a different one... A person does not choose a vocation. A vocation is a calling. People generally feel they have no choice in the matter. Their life would be unrecognizable unless they pursued this line of activity." (p 24) Here is where being religious helps a lot to find a vocation, and to feel like you don't have a choice in the matter. I wonder, do atheists have vocations? I don't believe in a higher power, but I do believe in altruism, and helping those in need. Brooks states "a vocation is not about fulfilling you desires or wants... a vocation is not about the pursuit of happiness... or avoiding struggle and pain"(p 25). And I agree with him, because a fulfilling life is not only about doing what makes you happy, its about doing what is right and what makes a difference. How you reconcile what is right, and what is making a difference is another matter.

"A dozen voices form across the institution[Mount Holyoke] told students that while those who lead flat and unremarkable lies may avoid struggle, a well-lived life involves throwing oneself upon the tack, testing moral courage and facing opposition and ridicule, and that those who pursue struggle end up being happier than those who pursue pleasure" (p 29) Reading this all I can think of is Burnet Brown and the power of vulnerability. It feels so true, and at the same it feels so scary. But isn't that the point?

"One day, as Roosevelt was reentering politics[after his onset of polio], Perkins sat on a stage and watched him drag himself up to the podium to deliver a speech. His hands, supporting his weight on the podium, never stopped trembling. Perkins realized after the speech, someone would have to cover his awkward movements as he lurched down from the stand. She gestured to a woman behind her, and as he concluded, they hurried up to Roosevelt, nominally to congratulate him, but actually to shield his movements with their skirts. Over the years, this became a routine." (p 40) What happened to us as a country? In no way would Roosevelt be elected to office today, yet what a leader we would have lost? What does this speak to in regards to our morals and character as a country today? Where does that kind of truth take us?

"Sin is not a demonic thing. It's just that our perverse tendency to fuck things up, to favor the short term over the long term, the lower over the higher... The danger of sign, in other words, is that it feeds on itself. Small moral compromises on Monday make you more likely to commit other, bigger moral compromises on Tuesday. A person lies to himself and soon can no longer distinguish when he is lying to himself and when he isn't. Another person is consumed by the sin of self-pity, a passion to be a righteous victim that devours everything around it as surely as anger or greed." (p 55) Brooks is trying to reclaim the word sin, but my interior bias against the word really gets in the way as a I am reading this all. Through the definition above, I can kind of see where Brooks wants to be in regards to sin. And I agree, people rarely just commit egregious acts out of the blue, their own morals and character slowly erodes down to a point where they can commit the large acts of greed, or gluttony, or terror even.

"Today, we tend to live within an ethos of authenticity. We tend to believe that the "true self" is whatever is most natural and untutored. That is, each of us has a certain sincere way of being in the world, and we should live our life being truthful to that authentic inner self, not succumbing to the pressures outside yourself. To live artificially, with a gap between your inner nature and your outer conduct, is to deceptive, cunning and false... Eisenhower hewed to a different philosophy. This code held that artifice is man's nature. We start out with raw material, some good, some bad, and this nature is to pruned, girdled, formed, repressed, molded, and often restrained, rather than paraded in public. A personality is a product of cultivation. The true self is what you have built from your nature, not just what your nature started out with"(p 68) I feel like Ian and I need to have a conversation surrounding this topic, because I would be interested on his take of it all. I think Brooks is right, in that today we don't celebrate the honing of the self, we want people to be the naturally faced person they were born as, but considering morals, does this mean the idea of a socially acceptable way of living goes out the door? Does this mean each person will have their own, individual ethos, pathos, and logos? No longer will they be expected to bend, meld, and yield to the greater societal systems? I feel like this is the utopian goal, but I just can't see how it would work. My own limitations showing themselves.

"On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy gave an inaugural address that signaled a cultural shift. Kennedy's speech was meant to indicate a new direction in the march of history... Three days earlier, however, Eisenhower had given a speech that epitomized the worldview that was fading away. Whereas Kennedy emphasized limitless possibilities, Eisenhower warned against hubris. Whereas Kennedy celebrated courage, Eisenhower celebrated prudence. Whereas Kennedy exhorted the nation to venture boldly forth, Eisenhower called for balance... a need to balance competing priorities, 'balance between the private economy and the public economy, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration...' Eisenhower warned the country against belief in quick fixes. Americans, he said, should never believe that 'some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.' He warned against the human frailty, particularly the temptation to be shortsighted and selfish. He asked his countrymen to 'avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.' Echoing the thrifty ethos of his childhood, he reminded the nation that we cannot 'mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage...' He warned, most famously, about the undue concentration of power, and the way unchecked power could lead to national ruin. He warned first about the military-industrial complex--'a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.' He also warned against a 'scientific=technological elite', a powerful network of government-funded experts who might be tempted to take power away from the citizenry. Like the nation's founders, he built his politics on distrust of what people might do if they have unchecked power." (p 72-73) Whew, Eisenhower was certainly a man after my Grandmothers own heart. I'll have to chat with her sometime about what she thought of him. I think there is a low of good that is said throughout the text I have included. Namely how the shift away from Eisenhower has become so wholly complete. Most notably, the warning against quick fixes, or spectacular and costly actions offering miraculous solutions. That is what our entire government is based upon now. I also find it fascinating that Eisenhower, a military man, is so against the military-industrial complex. He admits the military is necessary, but he is cautious against the amount of power it has. This is the general feeling I get from Eisenhower, that of caution. "Let's make our mistakes slowly" he used to tell his advisors.

"The first big thing that suffering does is it drags you deeper into yourself. The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that people who endure suffering are taken beneath the routine busyness of life and find they are not who they believed themselves to be. The pain involved in, say, composing a great piece of music or the grief of having lost a loved one smashes us through a floor they thought was the bottom floor of their soul, revealing a cavity below, and then is smashes through that floor, revealing another cavity, and so on and so on. The person in pain descends to unknown ground... Suffering opens up ancient places of pain that had been hidden. It exposes frightening experiences that had been repressed, shameful wrongs that had been committed. It spurs some people to painfully and carefully examine the basement f their own soul. But it also presents the pleasurable sensation that one is getting closer to the truth. The pleasure in suffering is that you feel you are getting beneath the superficial and approaching the fundamental. It creates what modern psychologists call 'depressive realism', and ability to see things they way they are. It shatters the comforting rationalizations and pat narratives we tell about ourselves as part of our way of simplifying ourselves for the world... Suffering, like love, shatters the illusion of self-mastery... It teaches that life is unpredictable and that the meritocrat's efforts at total control are an illusion." (p 94) Mmm, suffering, my favorite thing to battle people about when they claim that all they want to be is happy. Brooks does a superb job here of laying out all the benefits of suffering, while not making the claim it is easy, but by making it seem worthwhile.

"O Lord and master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power and idle talk. But give to thy servant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love." (p 103)

"This code of code of privacy is different from the one that is common in the era of Facebook and Instagram. This privacy code, which he[George Marshall] shared with Frances Perkins, is based on the notion that this zone of intimacy should be breached only gradually, after long reciprocity and trust. The contents of the private world should not instantly be shared online or in conversation; they should not be tweeted." (p 119) As my note states "I was born in the wrong time". But what does that mean for the relationships that people have now? I feel like they still harbor truths that they don't tweet, or share on various social media sights. Truths that only come out in the same occasions of intimacy described above. This I must believe, or truly don't understand the state of the world today.

"FDR called Marshall into his office on December 6, 1943. Roosevelt beat around the bush for several awkward minutes, raising subjects of minor importance. Then he asked Marshall if he wanted the job[Commander of Operation Overlord(the invasion of France)]. If Marshall had simply uttered the word 'Yes', he presumably would have gotten the job. Still, Marshall refused to be drawn in. Marshall told Roosevelt to do what he thought best. Marshall insisted that his own private feeling should have no bearing on the decision. Again, and again, he refused to express his preference one way or the other... FDR looked at him. 'Well, I didn't feel I could sleep at ease if you were out of Washington.' There was a long silence. Roosevelt added, 'Then it will be Eisenhower'... It was the greatest professional disappointment of Marshall's life, and it came about because he refused to express his own desires." (p 124) Guh, come on, really? Really? I know I am a product of the narcissistic culture we live in now, but for something that important, to not put in your 2 cents?

Intellectual Love on page 168 is an experience I've had, and hope everyone gets a chance to experience. "By four in the morning they were talking about the greats... Deeper and deeper they went, baring their souls. Akhmatova confessed her loneliness, expressed her passions, spoke about literature and art. Berlin had to go to the bathroom but didn't dare break the spell... That night Berlin's life 'came as close as it ever did to the still perfection of art.'" (p 168) It was a communication in which intellectual compatibility turned into emotional fusion.

Cesar Pavese wrote: "You will be loved the day when you will be able to show your weakness without the person using it to assert his strength." (p 170) Love depends on the willingness of each person to be vulnerable and it deepens that vulnerability.

"Adam I wants you to go through life as a self-contained unit, coolly weighing risks and rewards and looking out for your own interests. Adam I is strategizing and calculating costs and benefits. He wants you to keep the world at arm's length. But to be in love is to lose your mind a bit, to be elevated by magical thinking" (p 171-172) In this way, I am torn between Adam I and II. I want dearly to be like Adam II, but too often I find myself reverting to Adam I.

"At a phenomenally young age, he[Augustine] won the ultimate mark of success. He was given a chance to speak before the imperial court. He found that he was a mere peddler of empty word. He told lies and people loved him for it so long as the lies were well crafted. There was nothing in his life he could truly love, nothing that deserved the highest form of devotion: 'I was famished within, deprived of inner food'...Augustine's feeling of fragmentation has its modern corollary in the way many contemporary young people are plagues by a frantic fear of missing out..." (p 192) Brooks goes on to talk of lust, and how it is "selfish desire. A true lover delights to serve his beloved. But lust is all incoming. The person in lust has a void he needs filled by others. Because he in unwilling to actually serve others and build a full reciprocal relationship, he never fills the emotional emptiness inside. Lust begins with a void and ends with a void." The more I reread over this, the more I'm sure that I am going to send my copy to the Hess Ranch. I can see them getting as much food for thought out of this as I have.

"By another definition, pride is building your happiness around your accomplishments, using your work as the measure of your worth. It is believing that you can arrive at fulfillment on your own, driven by your own individual efforts. " (p 199)

"In Christianity, at least in its ideal form, the sublime is not in the prestigious and the lofty but in the everyday and the lowly. It is in the washing of feet, not in triumphal arches. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled. Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. One goes down in order to rise up. As Augustine put it, 'Where there's humility, there's majesty; where there's weakness, there's might; where there's death, there's life. If you want to get these things, don't disdain those.' "(p 205) What is it such that Christians, on the average, just don't seem to get this? I started, a long time ago, to make the distinction between Christians and Christ-followers. I think, from everything that I have read, that I am a Christ follower, as to live in that way is to try to be truly a good person, one who cares for others, and tries to live as is stated above. Most Christians don't seem to want to live by the tenants.

"Sometimes at that moments a wave of light breaks into our darkness and it is as though a voice were saying: 'You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.'... Those of us in mainstream culture are used to the idea that people get loved because they are kind, or funny, or attractive, or smart, or attentive. It's surprisingly difficult to receive a love that feels unearned. But once you accept the fact that you are accepted, there is a great desire to go meet this love and reciprocate this gift." (p 206-207) I think this is the Hess Ranch love. This is what they mean when they say they love you, they are saying that they accept you, and hope you accept them in reciprocity.

"... communications have become faster and busier. It is harder to attend to the soft, still voices that come from the depths. Throughout human history, people have found that they are most aware of their depths when they are on retreats, during moments of separation and stillness, during moments of quiet communion. They have found that they need time, long periods of stillness, before the external Adam quiets and the internal Adam can be heard. These moments of stillness and quiet are just more rare today. We reach for the smartphone." (p 250) I don't think anything has to be said further than this. It is incredibly true. We don't sit with ourselves anymore, we sit with a billion other people, on the other side of the screen. In some way, we aren't alone, but in others we are.

"The meritocratic system wants you to be big about yourself - to puff yourself, to be completely sure of yourself, to believe that you deserve a lot and to get what you think you deserve (so long as it is good). The meritocracy wants you to assert and advertise yourself. It wants you to display and exaggerate your achievements. The achievement machine rewards you if you can demonstrate superiority - if with a thousand little gestures, conversational types, and styles of dress you can demonstrate that you are a bit smarter, hipper, more accomplished, sophisticated, famous, plugged in, and fashion-forward than the people around you. It encourages narrowing. It encourages you to become a shrewd animal." (p 253) And that's all you are when you do this, an animal. You lose one of the things that makes you human, compassion, kindness, altruism. etc.

"Parental love becomes merit-based. It is not simply 'I love you.' It is 'I love you when you stay on my balance beam. I shower you with praise and care when you're on my beam.' ... Lurking in the shadows of merit-based love is the possibility hat it may be withdrawn if the child disappoints. Parents would deny this, but the wolf of conditional love is lurking here. This shadowy presence of conditional love produces fear, the fear that there is no utterly safe love; there is no completely secure place where young people can be utterly honest and themselves." (p 255) I think I felt this way with my Father, he always showered you with love when you did something good. And this did build up that sense, that it could be withdrawn, which it was.

"Over the past few decades there has been a sharp rise in the usage of individualistic words and phrases like 'self' and 'personalized,' 'I come first' and 'I can do it myself,' and a sharp decline in community words like 'community,' 'share,' 'united,' and 'common good.' The use of words having to do with economics and business has increased, while the language of morality and character building is in decline. Usage of words like 'character,' 'conscience,' and 'virtue' all declined over the course of the twentieth century. Usage of the word 'bravery' has declined 66 percent over the course of the twentieth century. 'Gratitude' is down 49 percent. 'Humbleness' is down 52 percent and 'kindness' is down 49 percent." (p 258) Ouch, just ouch. Again, it's just a little scary to think that this is the world that we live in. A world lacking in humility, but burgeoning with selfishness, and hubris. It gets even scarier when it is cited that two thirds of young people who participated in a survey at Notre Dame couldn't describe a moral problem, or described a problem that wasn't moral at all. "The mental space that was once occupied by moral struggle has gradually become occupied by the struggle to achieve. Morality has been displaced by utility. Adam II has been displaced by Adam I." (p 258)

"The things that lead us astray are short term - lust, fear, vanity, gluttony. The things we call character endure over the long term - courage, honesty, humility. People with character are capable of a long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings consistently through thick and thin. People with character also have scope. They are not infinitely flexible, free-floating, and solitary. They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional lies. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime." (p 264)

"In politics and business the lows are lower than the highs are high. The downside risk caused by bad decisions is larger than the upside benefits that accrue from good ones." (p 267)

All in all, it was a very chewy book. Offering the opportunity to think deeply about a myriad of topics. I actually think there were too many topics, but that is the fault of the reader, not the author. You could spend a whole week on each chapter, and offer it the depth of thought it deserves. The chapters on love were especially piercing, and I have a newfound respect for Eisenhower thanks to Brooks. Hopefully, the thoughts pushed forth from this book will continue to bob on the surface, as if buoys with bells.