The Road to Character, new book by David Brooks releasing tomorrow and his friend Oliver Burkeman has a preview:
He is less enthusiastic about politics in general, though, in keeping with the new book’s inward turn. “I just find talking to politicians less interesting than I used to,” he says. “I used to find it fascinating, what all the little subterfuges going on in the construction of the immigration bill were. But I just can’t get my interest up any more. There’s a lot more action sociologically, psychologically, morally than politically, these days.” He lights up when asked to discuss the course he teaches to Yale University undergraduates, one day a week, entitled Humility. (Cue more blogosphere jokes.) “To get into a place like Yale, you have to work so hard, and these students know they’ve not spent time on this other part of their lives – so like any normal person, they feel a dryness, or a shallowness.” After completing the set readings – Augustine, Homer, Montaigne, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr – they have “a new set of categories, a new set of things to worry about”. Recently, one student told him that, since taking the course, he was much sadder than he used to be. “That’s a high compliment!” says Brooks. “He was a phenomenally bright and successful student. But, you know – you should be a little sadder, sometimes.”
He is less enthusiastic about politics in general, though, in keeping with the new book’s inward turn. “I just find talking to politicians less interesting than I used to,” he says. “I used to find it fascinating, what all the little subterfuges going on in the construction of the immigration bill were. But I just can’t get my interest up any more. There’s a lot more action sociologically, psychologically, morally than politically, these days.” He lights up when asked to discuss the course he teaches to Yale University undergraduates, one day a week, entitled Humility. (Cue more blogosphere jokes.) “To get into a place like Yale, you have to work so hard, and these students know they’ve not spent time on this other part of their lives – so like any normal person, they feel a dryness, or a shallowness.” After completing the set readings – Augustine, Homer, Montaigne, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr – they have “a new set of categories, a new set of things to worry about”. Recently, one student told him that, since taking the course, he was much sadder than he used to be. “That’s a high compliment!” says Brooks. “He was a phenomenally bright and successful student. But, you know – you should be a little sadder, sometimes.”
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