Overview of David Brooks’ Lecture

By Cindy Chen 

Made possible by Edward S. and A. Rita Schmidt Lectureship in Ethics, New York Times columnist and bestselling author David Brooks delivered his speech “Education and Civic Purpose in a Polarized Society” at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 31 in Weber Chapel Auditorium.  

Brooks’ thoughts on the divisive nature of politics and its impact on our nation is especially timely as Pennsylvania approaches its midterm elections.  

Brooks draws attention to the urgency of the social and relational crisis inflicting the United States by sharing several troubling statistics with the crowd. For example, in the past few years, depression rates, occurrence of teenage suicides, hate crimes, and gun sales have all increased in the United States. 

 While Brooks acknowledges that these trends have many underlying causes — including economic troubles and an overreliance on technology — he mainly attributes the troubled state of the country to the loss of moral education.  

The purpose of moral education, according to Brooks, is to teach people basic social and emotional skills, which translates to a society in which everyone aims to promote kindness. Although our nation’s current priorities have drifted from these values, Brooks states that it is possible — and ever more important — to continue in pursuit of moral education.  

He proposes we do so by constantly practicing moral habits. These habits, for Brooks, take the form of considering how your daily actions affect others, or as he puts it, “being a genius close at hand.” Regardless of whether one’s actions are as commonplace as asking someone else if they’re okay, Brooks stresses that it is, in fact, mundane actions that will repair the “tattered fabric of society.”  

This is because what has made society so “tattered” is the way in which we are forgetting how to relate to each other. And the absence of these little skills — Brooks tells the crowd — leads to political polarization and other national problems.  

In the eyes of other nations, the United States seems like it has always valued individualism. However, Brooks cites a distinct moment where the United States moved from prioritizing the community to the individual, also known as the “Age of Big Me.” 

The conformist culture of the 1940s and 1950s led to counterwave movements that aimed to break free from its restraints. However, these movements overshot individualism, creating culture that continues to be “defined more and more by the Age of Big Me.”  This focus on the self and self-liberation, Brooks continues, has formed a problematic “moral vacuum.” 

When people are placed in a moral vacuum, they grab the closest thing on hand in order to fill it. Unfortunately Brooks says, the “closest thing on hand in our age is politics.” In using politics to fill a moral void, we have created an illusion of morality and exacerbated division within society. Brooks explains by pointing out how political parties market themselves as a team to their constituents. By making voters feel as though they are on the “right team” and doing the “right thing” by voting for certain policies, it becomes easy for each party to convince their constituents to hate the other players.  

Being aware of how we can be manipulated into contributing to polarization is important to keeping the integrity of American democracy. Yet, Brooks maintains that the most important thing is to be an “illuminator” rather than a “diminisher.” A diminisher in Brooks’ eyes is someone who ignores others. An illuminator, on the other hand, makes others feel alive and understood.  

While that might seem like a lofty goal, Brooks makes it easy: we become illuminators simply by treating “every person like they have a soul — which has infinite value and dignity — and if we treat every person like they have a soul, we treat them right.”