Morality in the 21st Century: David Brooks

BBC Radio 4 - Morality in the 21st Century, Episode 6: David Brooks

"'We've had 40 years of individualism, some of it on the right, which was about economic individualism, some of them on the left about social individualism, and we've pretty much run out the string. And to me, it's caused three overlapping crises.

First, a crisis of social solidarity. In my country, the US, a generation ago, you, 20% of Americans said they were lonely. Now it's 40%. We’re at a 30 year high in suicide rates and suicide is a proxy for lonely.

The second is a crisis of alienation. We don't trust our institutions. We're disconnected from the people who govern our lives.

And the third is a crisis of purpose. A telos crisis. It's shocking to me that after all we know about the brain and human behavior, that depression rates are on the rise, mental health problems are on the rise'...

‘Alexis de Tocqueville a long time ago, came to America in 1831, and saw something he'd never seen before and had to invent a new word for it, and he called it individualism. And he saw it as one of the greatest, perhaps even the greatest threat to democratic freedom'...

'One of the wisest bits of advice I was given once was surround yourself with the dead. Take pictures of the people you admire through history, put them on the wall, have them watch over you. And you won't be completely great person. But if you have a sense of, of what standard you should aspire to, you might be slightly less shallow than you would otherwise be.'...

‘Lincoln did not think lowly of himself. But he thought accurately about himself. And my favorite definition of humility is a sense of radical self awareness from a position of other-centeredness, the ability to be apart from yourself and to see accurately your strengths and weaknesses.

And because of that, ultimate accurate knowledge of himself and a sense of security, he gave what I think is the greatest speech in American history, which is his second inaugural. And that was the speech where the North had, was on the verge of a great triumph against the South. He could have been tribal. He could have said, we won you lost, we fought for good, you fought for evil. But instead it's a... great speech of unity. The key words in the speech are all: us, together’

‘Binding up the nation's words’

‘Right. And it's a great act of, of, of healing and a great act in a moment like today when we're, when we're divided along such tribal lines. To me it is the classic document of how even a moment of great division can can yield a plea for unity.’

‘And it was extraordinary that he held that sense of unity all the way through and used very religious language to evoke it. As indeed did Martin Luther King. I mean, what have we lost in religion nowadays that it's seen as a source of division instead of a source of reconciliation and healing?’

‘Yeah, he did have a sense of an Exodus story. I do think, and this is especially true in the United States, that we were, we had a national narrative, and it was the Exodus story. And you've spoken eloquently about this, that the Puritans came here, saw themselves leaving oppression, crossing wilderness coming to the Promised Land. The founders believed in this. Lincoln believed in this, King believed in this.

And I just spent a couple of months traveling the college campuses, asking students do you believe this is an Exodus story. This is a potential promised land or as Lincoln said, an almost Promised Land. And they look at me like I'm crazy. And they said, No, this is not like that, that I don't see any story of redemption here. I don't see any land of milk and honey here. I see a land of oppression.

And I came away thinking that whoever decided to teach or to stop teaching US history to American young people did a very effective job. Because they don't know much about it. And they've not been taught the essential promise of the country. They've been taught the wrongs and I understand that because there are great wrongs, and we should try to overcome them. But the unifying bond of that Exodus narrative has gone and it just doesn't resonate with people under 30 in my experience’

‘And there can be such a thing as collective Alzheimer's disease can't there? If you have Alzheimer's and you lose your memory, you lose your identity. And I see that happening to the nations of the West right now.’...

‘When I was a young boy I had two turtles named Disraeli and Gladstone. And it was the phrase I'm sure you've heard this in New York among New York Jews, it was Think Yiddish Act British. And so it was a it was a time of great reading of English history as a great unifying story and as frankly as a way to, to rise up and be classy, and it still exists, that, in the form of The Crown and Downton Abbey and things like that, but that great narrative of a story, of an Island Nation that really rose up and has become a great nation.

These are inspiring stories and we have no right to look down on people in the past as somehow inferior to us, that what CS Lewis called chronological narcissism or egotism. Their achievements, sometimes when I look back on, you know what happened in Britain between 1830 and 1848, which was a time of real social recovery… remoralization. And when I look back at the American founding or what happened in the United States between 1900 and 1910, another period of renormalization. I think I wish we could do that. I wish we were competent to do that. And so those were both moments of great achievements, both moments when nations turned themselves around without war.’"


Meanwhile today liberals just bash the other side as deplorables because they don't want to let biological men into women's toilets

Another side effect of liberals hating their countries (presenting the US as a land of oppression)