The Art of Manliness - #292： The Road to Character

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast we often lament

00:00:19.680 the loss of good character in our society there's a sense that our leaders and even members of our

00:00:24.580 community can't be trusted to do the right thing and are only out for themselves the collective

00:00:28.640 good be damned why does this sense of moral enemy exist and what can we do about it my guest today

00:00:34.700 has written a book exploring these questions his name is david brooks he's columnist the new york

00:00:38.340 times and in his latest book the road to character he takes a look at exactly what we mean when we

00:00:43.660 talk about character and why it seems like there's a lack of it today david and i begin our discussion

00:00:47.860 with the crooked timber view of humanity that people had in previous generations and how it

00:00:51.980 shaped moral development he then takes us through the cultural changes that got rid of this perspective

00:00:56.200 of human nature and how it led to a loss of a moral vocabulary that makes it hard for people

00:01:00.840 today to even talk about character we then take a look at the lives of several imminent individuals

00:01:04.960 from history and what they can teach us about character formation from general eisenhower's

00:01:08.960 battle to harnesses uncontrollable anger to george marshall's inner fight for discipline and the

00:01:13.740 ability to put big picture goals ahead of personal ambition we then end our conversation talking about

00:01:18.000 the mindsets and actions we can take to live a life of character this is an important interesting

00:01:23.120 and edifying episode i hope you'll tune in after the show is over check out the show notes at aom.is

00:01:28.140 slash road to character

00:01:29.800 david brooks welcome to the show good to be with you so i'm sure many of our listeners are familiar

00:01:44.260 with your column at the new york times and your other books but your latest book out now out in

00:01:48.240 paperback is the road to character and it's about the deeper values that should inform our lives to

00:01:54.740 give us a life of meaning and significance i'd like to talk about the inspiration behind the books

00:01:58.520 you start your book talking about that you were listening to an old a rebroadcast of an old radio

00:02:04.000 show from the 1940s called command performance something you talked about how you were you were

00:02:09.440 struck by the the tenor of that show what was it about the show that that stuck out to you and

00:02:15.140 caused you to start thinking about this idea of character formation yeah that show was a variety

00:02:19.800 show that went out to the troops in world war ii and they replay old radio shows on npr on sunday

00:02:25.060 nights where i live and i happen to hear the show that was broadcast on vj day the day the americans

00:02:31.680 learned that the japanese had surrendered and it was broadcast live just hours after the japanese had

00:02:37.280 made this announcement and bing crosby who was the host of the show got out there and said um i guess at a

00:02:44.260 moment like this uh we don't feel too proud we're just humbled and i was struck by that tone of

00:02:50.560 humility which was just continued throughout the program uh somebody um burgess meredith if anybody

00:02:55.860 remembers the manager from the movie rocky he was a character actor and he read a passage from a work

00:03:01.060 correspondent ernie pile that said you know when we didn't win this work because we're better than

00:03:05.800 anybody else we just have to be blessed with a lot of material abundance we had some good allies

00:03:10.040 we should just try to stay modest and be worthy of the peace uh and so i was just struck it could

00:03:16.600 have been a moment of really chest-thumping celebration but instead people felt humbled

00:03:21.000 and modest then i went into my house and i turned on the tv and i turned on a football game

00:03:26.180 and i watched quarterback throw a pass to a wide receiver who was tackled after a two-yard gain

00:03:31.780 and the defensive back did what all athletes do in these moments he did a little dance and celebration

00:03:37.780 of himself and it occurred to me i'd heard a bigger i'd seen a bigger self-puffing victory

00:03:42.820 dance after a two-yard gain than i'd heard after winning world war ii and so that suggested to me

00:03:48.900 a shift in culture a shift from a more modest culture that says i'm no better than anybody else

00:03:54.520 but nobody's better than me to a more um achievement oriented culture that says look at me look what

00:03:59.700 i've done right it's that little me big me dichotomy you talk about throughout the book

00:04:03.920 yeah and you know i think in between somewhere between world war ii and and the present um we

00:04:11.520 went from we went from a culture of self-effacement to more uh self-celebration and a lot of that had

00:04:18.100 to happen because there were a lot of people in especially back in world war ii who had been taught

00:04:23.060 by society to think too lowly of themselves especially minorities and women and so you needed 0.94

00:04:28.140 to go through a self-esteem movement but part of the argument of the book is that we've sort of

00:04:32.920 overshot the mark and now we've entered a culture where we're too self too much self too much

00:04:38.300 narcissism and not enough humility for real moral development right well let's talk about the title

00:04:44.220 of your book the road to character character is a loaded word it means different things to different

00:04:49.880 people in your book how are you defining character yeah i've come to think of it as um first of all i'm

00:04:56.580 not crazy about the world word uh because it has it connotes sort of um stuffiness sometimes and

00:05:03.040 pomposity um and it also sometimes for some people it's like iron self-will and that's sort of a

00:05:09.000 joylessness but i would say uh i use the word because we really have a starved vocabulary when it comes to

00:05:15.940 the inner life when it comes to moral things and so very often if you're going to try to figure this

00:05:20.360 stuff out you've got to rely on words you don't really like because we just don't have a lot of good

00:05:24.440 words um that's a problem with our civilization or at least western culture so to me character

00:05:29.680 is two things first um a settled disposition to do good that you just have you've built in through

00:05:37.260 habits and other things tendencies to be honest to be courageous and you're not going to be honest

00:05:43.320 and courageous in all circumstances at all times we sort of have a disposition in that direction

00:05:48.220 in part because of how you were born but in part because of the habits and the way you've lived

00:05:51.900 your life and then the second thing uh is um being faithful to your commitments you all make

00:05:58.300 commitments to friends to spouses to a job to a community and i think our our character is determined

00:06:05.420 by how faithful we are how we um how we serve our community how we you know stay loyal to our friends

00:06:11.640 put in time uh with our kids and it's really a the act of living up to your promises so as i mentioned

00:06:18.260 earlier throughout the book you use these dichotomies to talk about the the different world views this

00:06:22.800 worldview moral worldview that existed you know world war ii and then what exists now pre-world war

00:06:29.160 or after world war ii and one you talk about is kant's um the philosopher kant uh his crooked wood view of

00:06:36.520 humanity what is that view and how did that encourage character formation the way you're talking about it

00:06:41.880 you know the contrast is with rousseau's version that we are good inside um and we're so you know he

00:06:49.580 argued that we're basically noble inside and when we get corrupted we get corrupted by society and so

00:06:57.220 inside ourselves is this little angel and if we can only get in touch with ourselves and be true to

00:07:02.080 ourselves and be authentic to ourselves then uh life would go well and kant and other people in this

00:07:09.040 crooked timber school of humanity said no that's not really true we've got some good inside we're

00:07:13.700 splendidly endowed but we're also deeply broken and we tend to be selfish we see the world from our own

00:07:19.840 point of view and so being authentic and sincere to yourself is often the wrong thing because often

00:07:25.240 yourself is uh is you know selfish and slightly dishonest and so people with a crooked timber view of 0.78

00:07:32.480 humanity which i am believe that one of the core things we have to do in life is to identify

00:07:38.780 our course in what's really wrong with us um some people have a tendency to be afraid some people

00:07:44.600 are vain some people are materialistic some people are shallow some people are people pleasers

00:07:49.560 and then sort of work on that problem and the book has like 10 characters and a lot of them none of

00:07:57.400 them were born good they were all kind of pathetic at age 20 but by 70 they were kind of amazing

00:08:02.020 and i wanted to know how they did it and they regarded the inner fight against their own weaknesses

00:08:07.320 as pretty much the central drama of their life and on days when they did something to defeat

00:08:13.400 their weakness some some of them were just hyper emotional and insecure some of them were desperate

00:08:18.600 for love some of them had tempers on days when they defeated whatever their weakness was they felt

00:08:24.200 really good on days when they didn't they felt horrible and so it was a constant battle and they lived

00:08:30.460 their lives as sort of a moral struggle against sin if you want to use that word so another dichotomy

00:08:35.480 i thought was particularly incisive and i've it's made i've been thinking a lot about lately is this

00:08:39.500 idea of adam one and adam two so we're talking about the biblical adam here what's the difference

00:08:44.040 between adam one and adam two yeah this is a distinction made by a guy named rabbi joseph soloveitchik

00:08:48.940 who lived in the first half of the 20th century up in boston and he says we have two sides of our

00:08:55.560 nature which are in competition the adam one which is what he calls the majestic side and that's the

00:09:01.180 career side wants to build and create things and you know be successful and then adam two is the

00:09:07.860 humble side and that's the side that wants to seek goodness and seek virtue to feel like you're connected

00:09:14.220 to an unconditional love that you've fulfilled your spiritual nature and he sees these two sides of our

00:09:21.300 nature our intention and the way i put in the book just to sometimes get out of his categories is to

00:09:26.920 divide between the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues the resume virtues the things that make

00:09:32.800 us good at our job and the eulogy virtues other things people say about us after our debt we're dead

00:09:37.200 like whether you're honest courageous capable of love and so he says these two different sides of our

00:09:45.300 nature are sometimes in conflict because they operate by different logics the resume side operates by a

00:09:50.580 straightforward logic which is input leads to output effort leads to reward and the moral logic of the

00:09:56.480 eulogy side of our nature is sometimes reversed you've got to forget yourself to really find yourself you

00:10:01.200 got to sort of surrender to get what you really need failure can lead to a great success whereas success

00:10:08.800 can lead to arrogance and pride which is a great failure and so i think the distinction is useful because

00:10:14.620 that so much of life is focused on adam one or on the resume side and the sort of to sort of separate

00:10:22.460 out um how moral development happens it's just a useful reminder to live in that other universe um

00:10:29.300 part of the time because i think most of us would regard it as the more important side of life right

00:10:34.140 yeah you mentioned earlier about that we we've we've lost a vocabulary of morality and that's why it's so hard

00:10:41.560 for us to to talk about these things because we have a hunch about them you know there's a part of

00:10:47.080 like we understand it but we have a hard time describing it because we lack of vocabulary so

00:10:52.580 what do you think this vocabulary of morality consists of and and why do you think we lost touch

00:10:58.000 with that yeah i think you know for most of human history there was a vocabulary but it was within

00:11:03.360 religion uh and if you go to religious contexts of any religion they still have the words and they use

00:11:08.920 them with great felicity and their words like sin and redemption and grace and resurrection

00:11:15.760 and but in our secular conversation a lot of people just withdraw those words i just do not like those

00:11:23.200 words uh like sin if you use that um in public conversation they think you're talking about original

00:11:29.400 sin or the deep depravity of the soul or they think you're talking about sex and you're going to crack down

00:11:34.180 on sex but i think it's really hard to know what's going on inside unless you use those words

00:11:39.440 uh or at least or find other words for them it's like trying to describe um colors of a painting if

00:11:47.120 you only know two colors but if you know you know all the 36 colors in the crayon box you can just

00:11:52.960 describe it better and i think you you lose the ability to describe what's going on inside if you

00:11:57.640 don't have a concept like race and sin and i think you know i'm a secular writer and uh i speak in the

00:12:03.980 secular sphere and i think it's possible to come up with secular definitions of this words um grace for

00:12:10.640 example um sometimes if you get suffered a trauma some of your friends who you think are going to be

00:12:16.640 there for you actually are not they sort of vanish but then other people who you barely know they

00:12:21.000 totally show up for you and when somebody you barely know totally shows up for you that's

00:12:25.280 unmerited love that's grace and so you can if you have that concept you can appreciate it when it

00:12:31.940 happens and you you know the central role grace plays in all our lives sin is another one to me

00:12:38.760 the best way to say it is disordered loves that we all love a lot of things and some things are higher

00:12:44.400 than others like our love of truth is higher than our love of money and if say a friend tells you a

00:12:49.080 secret and you blab it at a dinner party then you're putting your love of popularity above your love of

00:12:53.700 friendship uh and we all know that's wrong and that's what a sin is and so if you have a sense

00:12:59.740 of the times you sin and you are all of us are proclivity towards sin then i think you just got

00:13:06.180 a richer understanding of what's going on in day-to-day life so as you mentioned you you dedicate the book

00:13:11.520 to doing these sort of plutarchian analysis character analysis of different individuals from all walks of

00:13:16.480 life you got dorothy parker you got eisenhower augustine and what we can learn from them about

00:13:21.780 developing character and sort of this adam 2 way of life and you mentioned that a lot of what they

00:13:27.220 had in common was sort of this this moral struggle within themselves trying to straighten out this

00:13:33.140 crooked timber of of their humanity and it took them a long time it didn't happen overnight let's

00:13:37.820 talk about some of these individuals in specific dwight eisenhower the guy who commanded d-day president

00:13:42.640 we see him kind of remember as sort of this affable guy sort of even keeled character but you

00:13:49.220 described he had this this great character struggle throughout his life what was that and

00:13:54.420 how did he overcome that that character for so eisenhower's uh core problem was his temper his

00:14:00.940 anger and his passion and the story that i think illustrates it that i tell in the book is when he

00:14:06.200 was nine his he wanted to go trick-or-treating and his mom wouldn't let him apparently she's pretty

00:14:11.860 strict and he threw a temper tantrum and punched the tree in his front yard and he punched it so hard all

00:14:17.340 this he rubbed all the skin off his fingers and his mom sent him up to his room had him cry for an

00:14:22.580 hour and then came up to heal his wounds after an hour and as she was binding him she told him a verse

00:14:29.620 from proverbs which is he who conquers his own soul is greater than you take up the city and six years

00:14:35.820 later when eisenhower wrote his memoir he said that was the most important conversation of his life

00:14:40.660 because it taught him that he had a problem which was his temper and then too he was going to make

00:14:46.000 anything of himself he was going to conquer that and so he really spent all his life really fighting

00:14:50.700 it and we think of him as this sort of happy-go-lucky as you say country club guy but he was inside

00:14:57.520 especially during when he was beating the troops in world war ii and as president he was filled with

00:15:02.520 anger at night he was up late he was smoking he was drinking he had throat infections blood pressure

00:15:08.160 spikes but he had learned a way to battle that some of them his devices were very shallow he would 0.89

00:15:13.920 he was a big hater so we'd write the names of the people he hated on pieces of paper and just rip

00:15:19.240 them up and throw them in the garbage can just all his ways to purge and control his anger so he could

00:15:25.100 be a good leader and a good father and a good president and he managed to do it quite successfully

00:15:29.480 but he was not a sincere person the eisenhower we see on the surface is very different than the

00:15:33.780 eisenhower that actually existed inside and you also talk about how his military career it was

00:15:38.540 stymied for most of his career you know he wanted to he saw himself as this great leader he wanted to

00:15:45.080 to serve in that capacity but it just seemed like he was just getting shunted to different areas where

00:15:49.920 he was acting as the subordinate how did his military career and the struggles of advance advancing

00:15:56.440 kind of refine eisenhower yeah i'd say it made him sort of stifle his ambition and serve an institution

00:16:03.100 and so he was at west point when world war one happened and he sort of missed that and then he

00:16:08.600 got stunted off to staff jobs so he was people's chief of staff he was douglas macarthur's chief of

00:16:14.020 staff for a long time and macarthur was sort of an egomaniac and it was very frustrating to be

00:16:18.560 underneath him because you were basically underneath a um a guy with a monstrous ego and very histrionic

00:16:25.580 and eisenhower was not but he basically served uh believed that i'm going to serve the military

00:16:32.140 when i'm given an assignment that i don't want i'm not going to get mad i'll just say well what's what

00:16:37.260 can i do here that'll be of service to the military and service to the country and it was in many ways

00:16:43.460 until he was probably 45 or 50 it was just a very frustrating life but he filled it with acts of

00:16:50.400 service just doing the job as best as he can and it shrunk his his self his sense of self his sense

00:16:56.680 that this is all about me and i think when he then became allied commander and had to balance all these

00:17:03.880 delicate alliances between the u.s and britain and the french and etc he was able to take himself out

00:17:09.900 i have a friend who has a concept called at stake and when she's at a meeting she and they're having

00:17:16.480 an argument about some policy or whatever she wants to know who's at stake that is say if you

00:17:21.440 criticize the position they're taking do they interpret it as a criticism of themselves and

00:17:27.280 the goal is to not be at stake it's just to say here's my idea it could be wrong if you don't like

00:17:32.540 it it's not about me it's just about the idea and i think eisenhower had a great facility with that

00:17:37.660 and so when people would cross him uh he had the ability to say well this is really not about me this is

00:17:42.120 just about the cause really taking make himself small even in a big role so yeah that idea of

00:17:48.160 thinking institutionally that eisenhower had and that's a big point you make in your book that we

00:17:53.540 don't really think institutionally as a society anymore why is there a decrease in thinking

00:17:58.960 institutionally and what are the downsides of that yeah i think there's a decrease simply because

00:18:03.640 we're a lot more individualistic and we see our life is about fulfilling our own individual mission

00:18:08.360 but you know another person who thought institutionally in the book is george marshall

00:18:12.320 who was also general in world war ii and he basically the basic mindset is you know when i'm

00:18:17.380 born i'm not born into some virgin earth with no institutions i'm born into a crowded place where

00:18:22.920 people came before and they built all these institutions and most of what i do in life is i just

00:18:27.680 inhabit an institution uh you could go to a certain university you could work at a certain company

00:18:33.020 you could follow certain professions and when you enter an institution you are shaped by the

00:18:39.200 institutions by the standards of excellence the codes of conduct uh and then when you um try to

00:18:45.160 live up to those codes you're sort of shaped by it many say hey this thing was here before i was born

00:18:49.580 it's going to be here after i was dead and i'm just going to try to be a steward of it and pass it

00:18:54.760 along in better shape than i got it and i think that's accurate that's actually how we live

00:18:59.620 we don't we don't like totally create our own lives we inhabit posts and we're called to different

00:19:04.580 stations and so i do think it's a it's a calmer more selfless and ultimately a happier way to live

00:19:10.980 just because you know what you're here for you know what's expected of you and you're connected

00:19:17.140 with other people to a common cause and you're just happier being connected to other people in that

00:19:21.420 way and the idea that we're all a bunch of easy riders out on the highway by ourselves i think is a

00:19:27.320 bit of a recipe for for unhappiness and there's sort of a debate in american movies between it's

00:19:33.220 a wonderful life and and that movie easy rider and one has a definition of happiness as really

00:19:39.320 being locked down in a community and sometimes can be frustrated because there are restrictions

00:19:43.540 the other has a vision of happiness of total freedom of no restrictions and i think it's a

00:19:49.420 wonderful life is actually a more accurate version of what happiness looks like i mean i guess one

00:19:54.600 argument people have against thinking institutionally is that it can sometimes suffocate the rights or

00:20:01.000 the needs of an individual right sometimes you put the institution first it can cause harm to

00:20:05.280 individuals i'm thinking things like the you know sex abuse cover-ups at penn state for example people

00:20:10.320 are thinking about the institution of the football program so i mean how do you balance the needs of

00:20:14.560 the individual against the this idea of thinking institutionally yeah well i guess i would say two

00:20:20.220 things one sometimes it can liberate you if you serve an institution like an orchestra if you're a

00:20:27.760 musician then you're probably going to enhance your ability to play and increase your happiness

00:20:31.660 but i guess the other thing i'd say is we all have different commitments to different things

00:20:37.980 and one of the arts of life and there's no rule that this is balancing your commitments so i'm very

00:20:44.260 suspicious of people who are only committed to one thing if you're only committed to an institution

00:20:47.940 and you're not committed to a larger moral system or you're not committed to your friendships

00:20:53.860 then you're going to turn into sort of a totalitarian personality and you're going to sacrifice

00:20:58.240 everything even common decency to that institution so one of the arts of life is balancing your

00:21:02.760 commitment and it could be a commitment to the say serving the catholic church but hopefully you've

00:21:07.700 also got a commitment to theology and and good conduct and when the catholic church is violating your

00:21:14.600 your sense of what's right and wrong hopefully you're gonna pick right and wrong over the church

00:21:20.240 uh the i mean the institutional church and so to me uh if you see yourself as balancing your

00:21:25.760 commitments then it it doesn't always solve your problems which commitment is more important at any

00:21:30.420 one moment but it at least gives you a sense that there's sometimes going to be tension and you're

00:21:34.800 going to have to decide which is higher this idea about tensions that's you make a point in the book

00:21:39.000 about there's a study done amongst college students they didn't really understand the survey show that

00:21:44.520 they really understand what moral dilemmas were right they thought it sort of saw them in these

00:21:48.460 sort of black and white things as morality but you argue in the book that yeah these moral dilemmas

00:21:53.280 are all about tensions of competing competing values that might be good but it's trying to figure out

00:21:59.440 when you put an emphasis on one over when you put the emphasis on the other yeah this uh sociologist

00:22:04.660 christian smith asked all these students name your last moral dilemma and he found that the answers

00:22:09.620 were typically well i pulled into a parking space but i didn't have a quarter or i really like this

00:22:13.840 apartment but i couldn't really afford it and he had to point out these are not moral dilemmas they

00:22:18.180 may be problems but a moral dilemma is when to value systems clash say uh the system that makes you want

00:22:25.680 to value freedom but the system that makes you want to value cohesion uh and community and these two

00:22:31.980 things often clash and uh often there's a there's a clash between justice and mercy uh we want to be nice

00:22:39.720 people but we also want to tell them the truth when they're doing something wrong and be a little

00:22:43.600 hard and so there's there's a tension between these two things and so in my view we're constantly living

00:22:50.120 within these tensions there's no rule that's the problem if you think you have you can set one rule

00:22:54.140 and it's going to apply in every situation you're just going to become cruel and heartless and so the

00:22:59.860 art of living is the art of sort of navigating the boat and figuring out when you're sort of tipped over a

00:23:05.180 little too far one way and when you're tipped over too far the other way right it's aristotelian trying

00:23:09.200 to find that mean so another character speaking of aristotle you highlight in the book is augustine

00:23:15.020 catholic theologian you mentioned this earlier this idea of ordered love and augustine talks about this

00:23:21.080 in his confessions how can augustine's idea of ordered love help us develop our character he was

00:23:26.280 more or less a successful young ivy leaguer that's more or less what he was he grew up in a town in

00:23:30.220 northern africa the town recognized how smart he was they raised some money they sent him to

00:23:34.260 university and carthage and so he was rising successful and he had a very successful career

00:23:39.520 but he was desperately unhappy his heart was restless is how he put it and he just found himself

00:23:46.240 he was like a jealous lover he became a little hedonistic at least by his standards and he would

00:23:53.180 just was unfulfilled and he just felt empty inside he went in for some radical philosophical systems he

00:23:59.600 was just searching around for a way to find inner peace um she finally showed him the way but he

00:24:04.980 still didn't want to give up the life that he was leading he didn't want to give up some of the worldly

00:24:09.900 pleasures he loved he didn't want to give up sex he didn't want to give up um money and sort of the

00:24:17.400 high professional career success he was enjoying and then he had a scene in the garden where he said and

00:24:24.780 he saw a vision of a goddess more or less what was interesting about the goddess was she was not

00:24:29.580 some pristine otherworldly figure he describes her as sort of a goddess of fertility and the message is

00:24:37.040 that you know you think you want sex but i'm offering you a pleasure that's even better than sex 0.85

00:24:41.800 you think you want money but i'm offering you wealth that's even better than money and so the emphasis

00:24:47.720 is that you always move from a lower love to a higher love and life is not about self-denial

00:24:53.340 and it's not about being strict and puritanical uh it's about seeking higher joys and that's sort

00:25:00.120 of the sweetness of life and so we move from lower loves to higher ones and the central argument is we

00:25:07.320 we our longings our desires are too paltry we should go for the big ones not the little ones

00:25:12.760 and if you're shooting your life for money or for facebook likes you're shooting for something small

00:25:18.280 and you should aim for something big right it's that he was trying to uh focus on adam one instead

00:25:25.540 of adam two and he yes and and you know it's you know he wrote one of the first confessions in western

00:25:33.020 civilization the first really autobiographies that was really a journey into his inner life

00:25:38.160 and he spent a lot of time in introspection and he just found himself unsatisfied and sort of

00:25:43.880 wandering about without any without really much joy until he found an organizing purpose well david i

00:25:50.320 think there's a lot of people who are listening to this and they might be thinking yeah i like what

00:25:53.940 i'm hearing i want to develop character i want to live this life of adam too i want to recapture that

00:25:59.400 little me mentality that has humility and puts institutions first when it's when it furthers a good cause

00:26:06.580 but there's always that but like how am i supposed to advance my career in a hyper competitive

00:26:12.060 adam one world where if i don't toot my horn and develop my personal brand on instagram and linkedin

00:26:18.880 and all that stuff how much to advance my career if i'm focusing you know on these these adam two

00:26:23.300 things i mean it's like if everyone else is doing it and i don't do it right i'm gonna be a sucker so i

00:26:28.460 mean there is sort of like a almost a moral tragedy of commons going on here right like if if everyone's

00:26:34.840 doing it and like you don't do it then you're going to miss out so what's your what's your

00:26:38.700 response to that but yeah i guess uh first the the 10 people in my um in the book uh were very

00:26:45.700 successful i died as an irish president united states george marshall was top general augustine

00:26:51.660 was a big bishop um so it's not i don't think it's always either or the second thing to be said is

00:26:57.960 sometimes it is um the the hard part about some of these eulogy virtues is sometimes they do make

00:27:04.760 you worse at your job if if getting ahead is going to involve lying or it's going to involve a lot of

00:27:10.660 bragging then um a lot of these virtues will end up hurting you and that's just a fact and it's also

00:27:17.200 a fact even in um just time management you know a lot of people decide they rather spend time on family

00:27:24.520 and other relationships and less time on the job and it does hurt their careers but they think it

00:27:30.120 makes for a more joyful life and i i do think that's generally the right choice but the final

00:27:35.580 thing to be said and i've noticed this just in my own life is that when i was in my 20s i knew a lot

00:27:41.320 of people who were hyper ambitious and transparently ambitious and they had good 20s they were stars in

00:27:48.700 their 20s but a lot of them have sort of dropped out of my profession i have no idea where they are

00:27:53.320 and they sort of burned through relationships and they were using other people and eventually

00:27:59.940 people just didn't want to be around them they didn't want to hire them and i could think of

00:28:03.880 several examples of people who were who were seen like hyper go-getters at 25 and by 45 they had

00:28:12.600 fallen and i think that's generally true of life that most of us want to work with people um who we like

00:28:19.180 and trust and those who are users those who are treating other people as objects i find in general

00:28:25.860 in life that doesn't really pay off maybe they're we can all think of counter examples of people who

00:28:30.320 are really rotten and really successful but i find in my line of work most of the people who are really

00:28:35.920 successful they can basically you want to spend time with them and because they're pretty much

00:28:40.840 genuine they seem to have some sense of caring about you and caring about the people around them

00:28:45.920 so i in real life i actually don't see a huge conflict between being a good person and having

00:28:52.340 it you know a pretty decent career so you in the book with this code of humility and it's just sort

00:28:56.900 of these bullet points of ideas actionable points on how you can put these things you were talking

00:29:01.520 about throughout your book i mean are there a few points in your code of humility that you think

00:29:06.000 provide a lot of bang for their buck just sort of if you start thinking about it and trying to act

00:29:10.560 on them that you'll you'll see a change not maybe right away but eventually yeah well i i think you

00:29:16.300 know one of the arguments we could have our discussions is what's the most important virtue

00:29:20.080 to have and a friend of mine had this argument he knows tony morrison the novelist and she said

00:29:25.940 courage is the most important because if you don't have courage then you can't act on who you are and

00:29:31.340 what you want to do but i would say humility is the most important and humility is not thinking

00:29:36.620 lowly of yourself my favorite definition in the book of humility is radical self-awareness from a

00:29:41.400 position of other-centeredness that is to say being able to step outside yourself and see yourself

00:29:45.920 both in your strengths and your weaknesses and humility is not modesty abraham lincoln was very humble

00:29:52.540 but he knew he had some special gifts and he was not modest he didn't not deny those gifts

00:29:57.480 but he also knew he had big weaknesses and so to me if you start with that if you start with an

00:30:03.960 honest excavation of where you're strong and where you're not and basically an honest accounting of

00:30:09.960 how you're doing on any given day if you lie at night on the pillow and think well how did i do

00:30:14.720 today at this or this what's my if i'm materialistic was i materialistic today i do think that's the

00:30:21.040 foundation of everything else and so a lot of those traits have to do with just cultivating humility in

00:30:25.920 oneself i guess the other point too is be patient with yourself because this is going to take a long

00:30:29.480 time to to straighten yourself out yeah there's a one of the greek definitions of character the word

00:30:35.580 they use is engraving and it's like engraving stone or engraving in metal it's something that that does

00:30:42.140 it you have to sort of hone the contours over time through repetition and that's why so much of it is

00:30:47.920 about habits about cultivating the right habits until something becomes natural aristotle again right

00:30:52.720 there well david is there a place where people can go to learn more about your book the road to

00:30:56.780 character uh only in the bookstore or on amazon yeah i mean if they can google it they'll find

00:31:01.600 reviews i guess but i have a web page called road to character right but it's been a little while

00:31:06.140 since i've looked at it honestly well david brooks thank you so much for your time it's been an

00:31:09.400 absolute pleasure oh thank you it's been fun my guest today was david brooks he's a columnist of the

00:31:13.080 new york times and his latest book is the road to character it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:31:18.200 everywhere you can find more information about the book the road to character at

00:31:21.400 the road to character.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash road to character

00:31:27.080 where you can find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic

00:31:29.780 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:31:41.020 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this

00:31:45.040 show and have got something out of it i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher it

00:31:48.940 literally takes one minute and helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued support and

00:31:52.720 until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - April 04, 2017

#292： The Road to Character

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