0:01

When you're a journalist and people don't trust

0:03

you, it's always your fault. These

0:05

people need to be represented. They are

0:07

Canadian. They deserve to have a voice and

0:09

a seat at the table.

0:10

It is time to go back to the office and the

0:12

time is now. Russia had reasons to be

0:14

concerned. They had reasons to be fearful.

0:17

We're at an absolute turning point

0:20

in reproduction. This is the problem with

0:22

realism. They just treat all countries the

0:24

same. They don't distinguish between dictatorships

0:26

and democracies.

0:29

Hello, Munk listeners. Roger Griffiths here, your

0:31

host and moderator. Welcome to this, our continuing

0:33

conversations called the Munk Dialogues.

0:36

These are in-depth questions and answers with some of the world's

0:38

sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. We

0:41

go deep into the big issues and ideas that

0:43

are transforming our world and

0:45

shaping the public conversation. This

0:49

week, we're speaking to New York Times columnist, bestselling

0:51

author, and former Munk debater, David

0:53

Brooks. David is a cultural commentator

0:56

and an astute observer of social

0:58

trends and behaviors. He

1:01

believes that our society is increasingly

1:03

fractured. The number of people reporting

1:06

feeling isolated, alone, and invisible

1:08

are higher than at any time

1:11

in recent memory. David has a new

1:13

book coming out this fall, which offers a practical

1:15

guide to helping people truly

1:18

get to know each other in order to foster

1:20

deeper connections at home, at work, and

1:23

throughout our lives. He joins us from

1:25

Washington. David, welcome to

1:27

the Munk Dialogues. Great

1:29

to be back with you. Likewise.

1:32

I look back fondly on our debate

1:34

with you. That was in

1:36

downtown Toronto. The topic

1:38

was capitalism. Let's see

1:40

if that's a subject we revisit in this conversation.

1:43

So much has happened on that front in the last

1:45

four years. But what I want to begin

1:47

with, David, with you is the new

1:50

book you have coming out. I'm excited,

1:52

as always, to see a new David

1:54

Brooks book. This book, in

1:56

particular, I think resonates with us here at

1:59

the Munk Debates.

1:59

We're trying to

2:02

do, in a sense, what

2:05

a lot of the book is about, which

2:07

is kind of modeling civil and substantive

2:09

conversations. And what

2:11

I've learned and what I want to hear from you, David,

2:13

over the last number of years of trying to do

2:16

this is, you

2:18

know, that it's not easy. It requires a certain

2:21

kind of set of attitudes and behaviors

2:23

and inclinations. You've done a beautiful

2:26

job of putting this together in your

2:28

new book, and I want to kind

2:31

of dig into it with you in

2:33

that spirit. So why don't we

2:35

begin there? What was the impetus for

2:38

writing how to know a person?

2:41

Where did this come from? What

2:43

path set you on the road

2:46

to write this book? You

2:48

know, as I traveled around, my job

2:50

was to interview people like yours, and people kept

2:52

telling me they felt invisible, unseen

2:55

and unheard. And so it occurred

2:57

to me there's, you know, there's all this depression

3:00

across our societies. There's mental health

3:02

problems. You know, there's been a rise

3:04

in the number of people who say they have no close personal friends.

3:07

And so it just seemed like there was this epidemic of blindness.

3:09

You know, black people feeling their daily experience

3:12

was not understood by whites. Rural

3:14

people not feeling seen by coastal elites.

3:18

Lonely young people not being seen by anybody. Husband

3:21

and wives and broken marriages feeling

3:23

invisible to the person who should know them best. And

3:26

so it seemed to me that this what is this skill?

3:28

How do we make people feel seen,

3:30

heard and understood? And it occurred to me that if

3:32

you're going to run a successful family or company

3:35

or organization, you

3:37

have to be able to understand the people around

3:39

you and make them feel felt, make them feel

3:41

seen, heard and understood. And so I really

3:43

started writing the books just like, what is this skill?

3:46

And I figured, you know, therapists have it. I

3:48

think biographers have it. I think teachers have

3:51

it. Nurses have it. Actors

3:53

have it. And so I just want to interview a lot of

3:55

people and figure out how can I be better

3:58

at making the people around me feel. that

4:00

I understand them and feel

4:02

respected and valued by me.

4:04

Okay, let's dig into this. When you talk about

4:06

these skills, where should we look for them? Is it

4:09

in our ability to communicate? Is this a kind

4:11

of outbound skill or is it incoming?

4:14

Is it our ability to listen? It certainly

4:17

seems in our society we put a lot of emphasis

4:19

on the former and not so much

4:21

on the latter.

4:23

Yeah, I found, you know, even the act

4:25

of asking questions. So questioning

4:27

is a moral act. And I

4:30

go to parties and I sometimes I leave the party and

4:32

I think, you know, that whole time, nobody

4:34

asked me a question. And so

4:36

good questions are open ended questions like, tell

4:39

me about like, you don't want to dictate the answers.

4:43

If you get to know somebody

4:45

well, I find the great conversations

4:47

to have after you've earned their trust are like

4:49

big questions where you get them to stamp 30,000

4:52

feet above their lives and maybe see themselves

4:54

anew. So I asked people, what

4:57

crossroads are you at? Most of us are

4:59

in the middle of some crossroad, but we don't think about

5:01

until somebody asks, or what would

5:03

you do if you weren't afraid? A lot

5:06

of people know fear plays some role

5:08

in our lives. But they don't know

5:10

exactly how. And when we ask them, it gives them a chance

5:12

to talk about that. How do your ancestors

5:14

show up in your life? We're all been affected by our ethnic

5:17

heritage, our culture, but how exactly

5:19

it's fun to talk about these things. And

5:21

so in the book, I basically walk people through

5:23

the skills from the very first

5:25

second you lay eyes on another, to

5:28

hanging out casually to having

5:30

good conversations, to asking questions, to

5:33

disagreeing well. So it's really a set

5:35

of very practical skills. And I think the

5:37

shocking thing is, these are some of the

5:39

most important skills we can have,

5:42

think about it, breaking up with someone

5:44

without destroying their heart, asking

5:46

forgiveness, getting to

5:48

know somebody else's story. We

5:50

just don't teach these skills. And as

5:52

a result, I think a lot of people are lonely.

5:54

I think a lot of people are hurting. And a lot of

5:56

people aren't treating each other well.

5:59

I'm gonna go bigger picture for a

6:01

second. One of the things that seems to be happening

6:03

in our society, David, is the intrusion

6:06

of instrumental reasoning to everything.

6:09

Everything is, in a sense, a means

6:11

to an end. Increasingly, we often, in

6:13

our conversations with each other, how we treat

6:16

people in our day-to-day lives, these

6:18

interactions are, as you say, so important

6:20

to giving context and cadence and

6:23

kind of humanizing ourselves

6:25

in this digital existence we live, yet

6:28

we often force or

6:30

treat people as means to

6:32

our ends as opposed to

6:34

ends in themselves. Do

6:37

you agree with this thesis? Is

6:40

that a problem? And then, if

6:43

we were trying to reverse engineer

6:45

that, what are the early steps

6:48

that it would take to build

6:50

a sense of compassion and empathy, a genuine

6:53

concern for other people as

6:55

ends in themselves?

6:57

Yeah, well, let me just start with the very first moment.

6:59

Let's say we're just meeting and we're just casting

7:02

eyes upon each other. Let me tell you

7:04

a story about how to do that. I was in

7:06

a diner at Waco, Texas one morning

7:08

having breakfast with a lady named LaRue

7:10

Dorsey, and she's this 93-year-old

7:12

black woman who presented herself to me as

7:15

a stern disciplinarian. She had been a teacher

7:17

and she said, "'I love my children enough

7:19

to discipline them.'" And I'm so intimidated

7:22

by her, to be honest. An income

7:24

into the dining room walks this mutual friend

7:26

of ours named Jimmy Durell, who's a pastor

7:28

down there, a big, rolly-polly guy who

7:30

really has a church for the homeless. And

7:34

he comes up to our table to the diner and

7:36

he grabs Mrs. Dorsey by the shoulders

7:38

and shakes her way harder than you should ever shake

7:40

a 93-year-old. And

7:42

he says to her, "'Mrs. Dorsey, Mrs. Dorsey, you're

7:45

the best. You're the best. I love you. I love

7:47

you.'" And she, from

7:49

this stern disciplinarian, immediately turns

7:51

into this bright, eye-shining nine-year-old

7:53

girl. She's just like radiant

7:56

all of a sudden. And it showed me the

7:58

power of attention

7:59

when we...

7:59

first meet somebody at any time, we

8:02

are either casting a gaze upon them

8:04

that says, I value you and respect you,

8:07

or I'm cold and I'm treating you instrumentally,

8:09

you're just an object to me. And

8:11

the kind of attention we cast will determine

8:14

what we see. In Jimmy's case,

8:16

he's a pastor, so he looks at everybody

8:19

through a particular theological lens. When

8:22

he's looking at anybody, he's looking at

8:24

a person made in the image of God. He's

8:26

looking into the face of God. He's looking

8:29

somebody with a soul of infinite

8:31

value. Now you can be an atheist

8:33

or a Jew or a Christian or whatever,

8:36

but looking at each person you meet with

8:38

that level of reverence and respect

8:41

is an absolute precondition for knowing them well.

8:44

When we're meeting someone, everyone

8:46

is asking unconsciously a question, am I

8:49

a priority to you? Am I a person to you?

8:51

And the answer to those questions will be delivered with your

8:54

eyes before they're delivered with your mouth. And

8:56

so when I think about the skill of treating somebody

8:58

as a human being, not as an object, it

9:01

starts at that very first moment when I

9:03

lay eyes on you and I tell you, yes,

9:05

you are a person to me. I will just take joy

9:08

in you, whatever you have to offer.

9:10

Those are great insights. Let's talk about disagreement

9:13

because that's another part of what we do

9:15

here at the Munk Debates. You've been part of

9:18

them. Their purpose is no small part is

9:21

to agree to disagree.

9:23

And I could say that some of our

9:25

debates are obviously better than others. It's precisely

9:28

often because not the

9:31

actual content of the debate or the substance,

9:33

but the style in which people engage

9:36

in disagreement. So what do you see as the

9:38

effect of habits when it comes

9:40

to disagreement? How

9:43

can disagreement move us forward to

9:45

understanding? Maybe even raise the possibility,

9:48

the prospects of conciliation.

9:51

How David, should we think about

9:54

disagreement?

9:55

Yeah, well for the book, I talked to a bunch of conversation

9:58

experts and to try to learn how do we... do this

10:00

well, one of them said to me a great conversation

10:03

is two people who think the other is wrong.

10:06

A terrible conversation is two people who think

10:08

there's something wrong with them. And so

10:11

we can argue without thinking the other person

10:13

is some way diminished. And the way

10:15

you do that, there are certain tricks. So

10:17

one of my friends said, find the disagreement

10:20

under the disagreement. If you and I

10:22

are disagreeing about say, gun policy

10:24

or tax policy or abortion, what

10:27

is the philosophical basis deep

10:29

down which is causing us to disagree?

10:32

We can have fun taking a joint exploration

10:34

to find that out. Another

10:37

rule is keep the gem statement in the center.

10:40

So if you and I are disagreeing, say my brother

10:42

and I are disagreeing about our dad's healthcare, we

10:44

may disagree about what kind of healthcare each get, but

10:46

we both agree we want what's best for our dad.

10:49

So if we can keep coming back to that,

10:51

to that gem statement will save our relationship

10:54

in the course of having a disagreement.

10:57

And just one more I'll mention, sometimes

11:00

people in politics, we talk across

11:02

difference. That's our job is whether it's an ideological

11:04

difference, sometimes it's class difference. Sometimes

11:07

it's ethnic difference. And

11:09

so sometimes somebody's going to be attacking you,

11:11

critiquing some system you're a part of or some

11:14

way you behave. And

11:16

your natural instinct, at least mine in those circumstances

11:19

is to get all defenses like no, it's not me.

11:21

I'm not part of the problem. I'm actually part of the solution. But

11:24

I think that's the wrong approach I've learned. The

11:27

right approach is to stand in their standpoint,

11:30

instead of being defensive, ask them a

11:32

whole series of other questions. What

11:34

am I missing here? What's your position?

11:37

Where? How did you come to believe that? And

11:39

then I stand in your stance point,

11:42

I show respect for your point of view. And

11:44

respect is crucial when we're having disagreements.

11:48

Now, there's a great book called Crucial Conversations,

11:50

which I recommend. And

11:52

in there, the authors say, in any conversation,

11:55

respect is like air. When

11:57

it's present, no one notices when

11:59

it's absent. and it's all anybody can think about.

12:02

So with each thing I say to you, I may be

12:04

disagreeing with you, but I wanna say

12:06

it expressed in a way that makes me show I respect

12:09

you, that makes you feel more safe, and

12:11

that the underlying flow of emotions, if

12:14

that's healthy and respectful, then

12:16

the intellectual disagreement can happen with wild

12:18

and kind of fun abandon.

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and open your mind to a world

13:10

of great debate. David,

13:14

let me try out on you one of the arguments

13:17

that you're probably all too familiar with,

13:19

but I think it's widespread in our society, and

13:21

maybe people aren't always

13:23

as conscious of it to the extent to which

13:26

how it informs, I think, often our

13:29

agreements and disagreements

13:31

with each other. It's a view that there are certain things

13:35

that are unknowable. In fact, many

13:37

of us, according to this theory,

13:40

are

13:41

ultimately unknowable to

13:44

each other. And in a sense, what

13:46

you're presuming, what you're arguing about, is really

13:49

a fiction, that this

13:51

kind of intuitive awareness

13:53

and empathy is a construct,

13:56

a construct of liberalism, a construct

13:59

of our...

14:00

our modern world. And

14:02

for these critics, they would say that the

14:05

world we live in is a world of power relations.

14:07

It's a world of huge cleavages of race,

14:10

gender, and identity that separate us off

14:12

from each other in ways

14:14

that are profound and

14:17

suggest that any conversation we have

14:19

across these gaps,

14:22

these chasms, will

14:24

always be incomplete,

14:26

messy, and maybe ultimately unsatisfying.

14:30

Yeah, I just don't think that's true. I mean, I think

14:32

it's harder across difference. There's no question.

14:35

I don't want to say that the matters

14:37

of economic and racial and other

14:39

injustices are unimportant.

14:41

This book is about how we can build relationships with

14:43

one another, not to solve

14:46

all the world's problems. But I do

14:48

think, and you know, I go around and I ask people,

14:51

tell me about the last time you felt seen and heard.

14:53

And with glowing eyes, they

14:55

tell me stories sometimes radically

14:58

across difference, sometimes across

15:00

race. Sometimes they just read

15:03

a book, say a white woman reading a book

15:05

by Zadie Smith, a black novelist,

15:08

and feeling herself wrapped

15:10

up in that book. And so, you

15:12

know, I had a guy tell me about his daughter

15:15

recently who was struggling in second

15:17

grade. And a teacher said to her, you know,

15:20

you're really good at thinking before you speak. And

15:24

that little comment made the whole year

15:27

go well for the girl. Because before

15:29

what she thought was her weaknesses, she

15:32

began to see as a strength. And she began to think, that

15:34

teacher gets me, and it really turned her

15:36

around. If you have doubts that we can

15:38

see each other across differences, I

15:41

guess I would recommend a book by Tracy Kidder called

15:44

The Strength of What Remains. And

15:46

Tracy Kidder is a white guy in his 60s who

15:49

went to Harvard. And he writes

15:51

a book about a guy named Teo Gracious, who

15:53

grew up in the hills of Burundi and

15:56

survived the Burundi genocide.

15:59

And the book is titled, told from the perspective

16:01

of Deo. In the first scene,

16:04

Deo has lived in rural Burundi

16:06

all his life. He's never been in an airplane

16:08

before. He's never seen a room that nice before.

16:11

He's never traveled while sitting down before.

16:14

And Tracy Kidder takes us into

16:16

his mind. So we see the plane from Deo's

16:18

point of view. We see the trip escaping

16:21

the genocide from Deo's point

16:23

of view. We go back to Burundi

16:25

and see the spot where the genocide happened

16:27

from Deo's point of view. If

16:29

anybody thinks it's impossible for one human being

16:32

to gain, not to understand

16:34

another person the whole way, but to

16:36

gain great insights, then that

16:38

book is to me a reputation. And

16:41

that book is not alone. I know

16:43

people who feel deeply felt and

16:45

seen by people across racial categories,

16:48

across gender categories,

16:50

through class categories, even across

16:52

political categories. I

16:54

firmly believe it's possible to get. So

16:56

I can say to you, no matter who you are, I'm

16:59

beginning to get you. I'm not all the way there. I don't

17:01

get you the whole way, but I'm beginning

17:03

to see the world as you see it. And

17:05

there's no finer way to live in

17:07

a diverse society. And this is another

17:09

motivation for the book, frankly, is human

17:13

beings evolved to live with people kind of like ourselves.

17:16

And now we live in North America, especially

17:18

in these wonderfully diverse countries,

17:21

but our social skills are not adequate to the societies

17:24

we live in. And we just have to be a lot better

17:26

at seeing across difference. And I

17:28

can provide you with case after case to show

17:30

that it's possible that

17:34

as the Terrence, Roman poet said it, I

17:37

am human and nothing human is alien to me.

17:40

So David, how do we scale this? I mean, is

17:42

this something that can be modeled beyond

17:44

simply a hope, a desire to

17:47

become better at acknowledging

17:49

each other, really recognizing

17:51

each other, discoursing with each other, coming

17:54

to understandings with each other on a case

17:57

by case, individual by individual

17:59

basis. Are there some examples,

18:01

some tactics, some approaches that we could

18:03

use here to be more purposeful

18:06

about each other when we

18:09

interact in society as a whole?

18:13

Yeah. I think there, first of all,

18:15

what I'm talking about is I was

18:17

in a world where I spoke a lot, spent a lot

18:19

of time talking about community and relationships and

18:21

connections, and I believe in all that,

18:24

but it was a little too abstract. I wanted to know what is

18:26

the micro process by which a relationship

18:29

is deepened. What is the process by

18:31

which a friendship is deepened? David

18:33

White, the poet said, a friendship we're not there

18:35

to improve each other, we're there just to be

18:37

a witness, just to share

18:40

and have the privilege of being seen by somebody

18:42

on a journey you can't, complete on your

18:44

own. To some extent, it doesn't

18:46

scale. To some extent, every

18:49

relationship is built slowly and locally

18:51

between young human being and another, and

18:54

I'm simply trying to give people the tools to

18:56

be better with their members

18:59

of their family, with members of their

19:01

company, with members of their community. So

19:03

at some level, it doesn't scale. But the

19:05

systemic part of invisibility is

19:08

that there are communities in both

19:10

our countries where they

19:13

look in the mirror of society's regard and

19:16

they don't see themselves. They've

19:18

been rendered invisible by the media, they've

19:20

been rendered invisible by the power

19:22

structures. I

19:25

talk about a great book by

19:27

Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man. It

19:30

begins with the guy who, because he's black,

19:32

says, no one sees me. When they look at me, they

19:34

see versions of themselves, they see pieces

19:36

of their imagination, they

19:39

see everything around me, they see

19:41

everything but me. He's

19:43

describing a world that's been structured

19:45

to make black people invisible. That

19:48

part is not simply one-on-one, getting

19:51

members of different groups visible, equally

19:54

visible with all other groups. That's

19:56

a matter of social justice.

19:58

pedagogical

20:01

perspective, we do enough to teach this. I mean,

20:03

listening to you, I think to myself,

20:05

wow, wouldn't this have been fantastic

20:07

in first year university or community college

20:10

if I'd been sat down

20:12

and led through these types of exercises

20:14

and understandings that you're talking

20:17

about? I mean, I don't feel like

20:19

we really have many of these opportunities.

20:22

If they come about, they come about

20:24

through serendipity, by being

20:26

lucky by the fact that you have

20:29

an association with a group of friends

20:32

or a professor, a teacher, some mentor

20:34

in your life that instills

20:36

these values in you.

20:39

David, are we making a mistake here by leaving all

20:41

of this in effect to chance?

20:44

Yeah, I think so. It was what I'd say

20:46

the greatest frustration of writing the book is that

20:49

nobody teaches the skills. I mean, these

20:51

are skills. It's like learning carpentry. It's

20:53

like learning tennis. How do you

20:55

listen? Well, if my friend is

20:57

suffering from depression, I have a chapter in the book, a

20:59

friend of mine was hit with just

21:01

a savage depression. And I didn't know

21:03

what to say to him. I'm reasonably well educated,

21:06

but nobody had ever told me what do I say to someone

21:08

with depression. So early in

21:10

his depression, I tried to think of ways to

21:13

suggestions about how we could get out of depression.

21:15

And I later learned that if you say

21:18

you should do this, you should do this, you're just

21:20

showing you just don't get it. Sometimes

21:23

early in his depression, I said, you know,

21:25

you shouldn't be depressed, you have so much to live for

21:27

you have a wonderful family of a great job,

21:29

your kids are amazing. And I later

21:32

learned that saying that to a person's depressed

21:34

only makes it worse, because you're,

21:36

you're telling them to enjoy the things they probably

21:39

can't enjoy. And so I went

21:41

into that hard circumstance, really

21:43

completely uneducated. And I

21:45

look at some of my students and frankly, some of my

21:48

fellow adults, they don't know the basic

21:50

social skills. And so the book is really

21:52

meant to fill that in. I

21:55

interviewed a guy in the middle of writing this book, a guy

21:57

named Dan McAdams, he studies how

21:59

people tell the life stories at Northwestern

22:02

University. And what he does is

22:04

he brings people in, he gives them a research fee,

22:07

and for four hours he asks them about their lives.

22:10

He says about half of them cry while talking

22:12

about their lives. And then in

22:14

the four hours, he says, okay, we're done.

22:16

Thank you very much. Here's your research fee. And

22:19

they say, I don't want to take your money. This has

22:21

been one of the best afternoons I've had

22:23

in my life. No one has ever

22:25

asked me to tell me about my story.

22:29

And so somehow we've found in a culture where

22:31

nobody ever asks, what's your story? And

22:34

then go into detail. And I can tell

22:36

you, now I do it, you know, now that I've written this

22:38

book, I'm the most socially inept

22:41

person on the face of the earth. But even I, I sit

22:44

on trains or planes and just ask

22:47

people their life story. I can tell

22:49

you it's fun. It's way more fun than putting

22:51

on my headphones and reading a book. And so it just

22:53

encouraged me to really change the way I live.

22:56

Yes, that is a great insight. If

22:59

we all think about the number

23:01

of just fascinating kind of off the wall

23:03

conversations we have, it

23:06

does delight. I remember once

23:08

being on an airplane flight and striking up a conversation

23:11

with the person beside me who

23:13

turned out to be a trained

23:16

locomotive engineer for his

23:18

entire life. I learned everything about

23:21

the intricacies

23:23

of union politics in the

23:26

railway industry, freight derailments,

23:29

how the industry had changed. I

23:32

couldn't have spent a better two hours

23:34

with this person and to

23:36

share, to have that story, none of that

23:39

would have come about if we hadn't been

23:41

curious in each other and

23:43

in each other's lives.

23:45

Yeah, I met a woman at

23:47

a Trump rally actually, and turned

23:49

out she was a lesbian biker who'd converted

23:51

to Sufi Islam after surviving a plane crash.

23:54

I was like, what stereotype are you fitting

23:57

into? People are always more amazing.

23:59

They are. The one thing I've learned, people are not

24:01

a problem to be solved. They're a mystery

24:03

that you'll never get to the bottom of. And

24:05

so it's just fun. And we

24:07

deny ourselves a lot of that kind of just interpersonal

24:10

fun.

24:11

David, let's segue a bit because it's

24:13

related to this conversation

24:16

of how we impart dignity

24:18

to people. You've written a lot over

24:20

the years and recently I think in powerful

24:23

ways that remind us that

24:25

those of us who belong to what you've

24:27

characterized as the boho

24:29

class, the bourgeoisie

24:32

bohemians of which I would

24:34

include myself, at least in part based

24:36

on my education,

24:40

you've talked accurately at times about

24:43

the need to kind of puncture

24:45

the self-satisfaction, the

24:48

self-regard of the

24:51

knowledge worker slash laptop

24:55

class. How do we talk to that

24:57

group, David, about these issues? And

25:01

you get at this. There's a certain conceit

25:03

amongst this group, again, to which I belong,

25:06

which is that we think we know

25:08

it all. You're not telling us anything new.

25:11

We're sophisticated. We're educated. Of

25:13

course we listen to people. Of course we

25:16

try to reach across the divides

25:19

in our society and in our lives to give

25:21

other people voice and

25:23

respect. In effect, David, thanks

25:26

for the insights, but we've got this. We're

25:28

handling it. How do you puncture that self-certainty?

25:31

Because it is a reality, as

25:34

you say. It's very subtle, but

25:36

it's still nonetheless alienating

25:39

us from each other. It's

25:41

othering a lot of people from different

25:43

walks of life, most notably people that

25:46

are often perceived as belonging

25:49

to a different socioeconomic class.

25:51

And arguably, it's pretty bad

25:53

for our politics right now, too. Yeah,

25:56

well, I would go to the data. So

25:58

I don't know. I don't

26:00

know most of them personally, but I can say

26:03

something with high degree of tolerance.

26:06

When it comes to knowing other human beings, you're not as

26:08

good as you think you are. And so

26:10

there's this guy named Willis Ikas at Downy University

26:12

of Texas. He studies how people

26:15

know the thoughts of what's going on in the other person's

26:17

head as they're talking to them. And

26:19

the average person is right only 22% of the time.

26:24

The average person is right about friends and family

26:26

only about 35% of the time. Some

26:28

people are really good. They're right 55% of the

26:30

time. Some people are really terrible.

26:33

They're right 0% of the time, but they think they're

26:35

right 100% of the time. So

26:38

the evidence is that we're just

26:40

not that good. Naturally, without the training,

26:43

you and I, we walk around

26:45

in social ignorance, not completely

26:48

unaware of what other people are thinking of us. And

26:51

that matters in all sorts of realms

26:53

of life where highly educated people congregate.

26:57

There was a McKinsey study done where they asked

26:59

people in firms, why

27:01

did you quit? And the CEOs

27:03

of firms think people quit my firm because they want to get more

27:06

pay elsewhere. But when they ask the people

27:08

who actually quit a company, why did they quit? It

27:11

was because my manager doesn't recognize me. They

27:13

didn't feel seen. And if you went

27:16

to those managers, I'm sure they think they see

27:18

and recognize their employees, but they don't. They're

27:21

overly confident about themselves. And

27:24

that's why, to me, the essence of

27:26

seeing another, no matter what your education level

27:28

is, it's not imagining what

27:30

they're thinking. It's asking. It's

27:33

asking them a question. And you have

27:35

to do this skill just to get really

27:37

good at conversation. You

27:39

have to be exceptional at just

27:42

knowing how to listen really

27:44

well and respond really well. So

27:47

for example, one of the things I tell people

27:49

is, be a loud listener. I have

27:51

a buddy who, when I'm talking to

27:53

him, he's like grunting and saying, Amen,

27:56

and cheering me along. Just

27:58

love talking to that guy. brings out

28:00

the everything in me. And

28:03

so, you know, I do think these are skills

28:05

that you may have a PhD in English literature,

28:08

but these are skills that you're

28:11

probably not as good at as you think you are.

28:13

David, so much of what you're describing here is about the

28:16

benefits of living in

28:18

a kind of offline world. Yet, so

28:20

many of us are spending

28:23

most of our time in a very different world, an online

28:25

world. What's your sense of the trade-offs here, the respective

28:29

opportunity costs of not spending

28:31

as much time, maybe as we should, offline?

28:35

Yeah, my view is in the online world,

28:37

there's a judgment everywhere

28:39

and understanding nowhere. That it's just

28:42

very hard to present yourself because, you know, time

28:44

in a tweet or an Instagram or a TikTok post,

28:47

you know, time to present the full you. You have

28:49

only time to present the performance you. It's

28:52

also not one-on-one. Real

28:54

conversation, real getting to know another person has

28:57

to be reciprocal. If I'm

28:59

gonna get to know you, I have to let you get to know me. And

29:02

we have to walk through these intimacy

29:04

gradients where, you know, we slowly

29:06

begin to trust each other. We're sharing things that

29:08

are sometimes hard to trust. And

29:11

in my experience, that just doesn't happen online.

29:13

Maybe it does for some people. And I can think

29:15

maybe of some grief communities where it really does happen.

29:19

But I'm a little skeptical that we

29:21

can make the deepest friendships of our life be

29:24

solely online friendships. I think online

29:26

is great to meet people, but you

29:28

wanna meet them face-to-face at some point. And

29:31

as I say, when I look at the best sellers,

29:33

there's a book called Girl Wash Your

29:35

Face. It's a bunch of books,

29:38

like trying to help people overcome the fact they've

29:40

just been harshly judged online. And

29:42

the books say, don't worry, don't worry

29:45

about it. It's just somebody else's opinion. And

29:48

I think that's good. So many are bruised and

29:50

traumatized by how they've been treated in the

29:52

online world. So I guess I'm a little

29:54

skeptical that you can really have the deepest possible friendships

29:57

strictly over the internet.

29:59

of this conversation, you talked about depression,

30:02

just how it's so prevalent in our society today,

30:04

the kind of silent suffering

30:07

that's going on. Talk to us a little bit more about

30:09

the origins of this, why

30:11

you think it has its roots in part in

30:13

these attitudes that we bring to our

30:16

public interactions with each other, how we engage

30:19

or not with each other, and how

30:21

the processes of meaningful, substantive

30:23

conversation and understanding can actually have

30:26

a healthy healing effect

30:28

on people and their lives.

30:30

Yeah, well, let's go to an extreme case. The

30:33

people who turn into these awful mass shooters,

30:35

usually young men, they're invisible.

30:38

They feel invisible and unseen. I read a

30:41

manuscript or a magazine article

30:43

by a guy named Tom Juneau who interviewed one of

30:45

these guys who was caught before

30:47

he could kill anybody. And he said, you

30:49

know, even at that moment, when I was, had

30:51

my guns and I was leaving the car,

30:54

I thought if somebody would just pull

30:56

me aside and say, you don't have to do this. We

30:59

just pay attention to you. He said, I would have given

31:01

up. I would have stopped. And so

31:03

that's the extreme cases of

31:05

people who feel radically

31:08

unseen. And therefore

31:10

they want to take it out on the world because, you

31:12

know, if the world doesn't recognize you,

31:14

you feel it as an injustice, which it is. And

31:17

then in the extreme cases, they get, you

31:19

know, they basically get suicidal and want to, they

31:22

want to get what they crave most, which is recognition.

31:26

And so those are the extreme cases.

31:28

And the more moderate cases, it's

31:32

just loneliness. You know, the number of

31:34

people who say they're persistently lonely

31:36

and depressed has risen over the past 20

31:39

years from this teenagers from about 20%

31:41

to 45%. It's

31:43

just shocking. It's just a shocking degree

31:46

of social isolation. And so

31:48

I'm hoping that what I've learned, you

31:50

know, as I said, I'm like, if you had

31:53

known me in high school and college, you would have seen

31:55

a guy who was really good at like, when you reveal

31:58

something to me, I'm good at staring at my shoes. and running

32:00

away. I'm like fear of intimacy,

32:02

kind of socially awkward. You know, journalism

32:05

rewards people who are kind of aloof. We

32:07

don't really do anything, but we try

32:09

to observe people doing things. But

32:13

over the course of middle age, I suppose, I've

32:16

tried to get a little better. I've tried to be a little

32:18

more emotionally open. I've

32:20

tried to be vulnerable with strangers. I've tried

32:22

to be vulnerable in public. And

32:25

I have to say, it's

32:27

changed me, you know, I can prove it. I've

32:29

had the honor to be interviewed by Oprah twice in my

32:32

life, four years apart. And

32:34

after the last interview, after we've done taping, she

32:36

said to me, you, I've never seen anybody

32:38

change before. You were so blocked before. And

32:41

that was weirdly a proud moment for me, because

32:44

it shows that I may not

32:46

be naturally the most, you know, intimate

32:48

and socially adept person on the face of the earth. But

32:51

we can get better. And

32:53

you can get better at the skill of

32:55

making people feel felt. And

32:58

I've had in hard times

33:00

and really bitter political times, can't

33:03

tell you how many conversations I've had

33:05

where I just felt so honored

33:08

by what somebody shared. And

33:10

I would mark them as among the

33:13

emotional highlights of the last

33:15

few years, some of those just really precious conversations.

33:18

No question, David, how important

33:21

has your faith been

33:23

to your thinking here in this book, and

33:27

the messages that you're trying

33:29

to communicate to your readers

33:31

and the broader public? To what extent has, has

33:34

faith to some extent provided you with a set

33:36

of circumstances, I mean, to broaden out your

33:39

understanding of

33:41

the dignity and respect

33:43

of other people, from completely

33:46

different walks of life

33:48

and realities than your

33:50

own. I mean, you mentioned earlier in this conversation,

33:52

the example of the pastor, and I, I

33:55

just wonder if you think there's something

33:57

special that faith imparts.

33:59

to those who want

34:02

to model the

34:03

kind of attitudes

34:06

and inclinations and behaviors that you

34:08

think are so important

34:10

to giving real meaning to

34:12

our day-to-day lives.

34:14

Yeah, I would say faith helps, but it's

34:16

really not required. But what faith

34:18

does, and I would say what the Judeo-Christian

34:21

tradition, which I know best does, is it

34:23

gives us an image. God

34:25

knows us. He knows us not

34:28

with rational eyes of a scientist,

34:31

not with a cold, observing

34:34

lens of a market researcher. He

34:36

loves us and sees us and knows us

34:39

with the eyes of perfect love.

34:41

And so for him to know is not

34:43

like some academic thing. To know

34:46

is an intellectual thing, an emotional thing, a

34:48

social thing. In the Bible, the

34:50

verb to know has all sorts of meanings

34:52

to have sex with, to enter

34:55

into covenant with. The biblical

34:58

people understood that reason and emotion

35:00

are not separate. And so in the

35:02

Bible, for example, there's the parable of the

35:04

Good Samaritan, and there's an injured

35:07

guy on the side of the road, and

35:10

all these people walk by him, and they don't really see him.

35:13

Only the Samaritan, the person from a hated

35:15

and reviled tribe, he sees

35:18

him. Only the Samaritan goes to help him. And

35:20

the other people not seeing him, it wasn't an intellectual failure,

35:23

it was a failure of the heart. And

35:25

so I think what the Bible does is it communicates

35:28

a way of seeing we can admire

35:30

and try to copy. And I

35:32

would say that's not, you don't have to have biblical

35:34

religious faith to see that way

35:37

of seeing, that way of regarding

35:39

another. And just to think, you

35:41

know, I may get believe

35:43

in God or not believe in God, but

35:46

I ask you to believe that each

35:48

human being you meet has a soul, has some piece

35:50

of them that has no size, weight, color,

35:53

or shape, but gives them infinite value and dignity.

35:56

And you're going to treat them not as an object, but

35:58

as a bearer

35:59

of faith.

35:59

of an immortal soul. And if you

36:02

keep that concept in your mind, you'll

36:04

probably end up treating them well. And

36:06

so I wouldn't say religion is necessary

36:08

for seeing well, we all know blind religious people.

36:11

But I think it holds up an ideal, an ideal

36:14

that's a warm embracing gaze,

36:17

and a sense that this person in front of me

36:20

is of infinite value and dignity. This person in

36:22

front of me is better than me

36:24

at some things. This person in front of me is fascinating

36:27

on some subject. And so it

36:29

what's central, whether it's Christian humanism,

36:32

or secular humanism, the idea

36:34

that you're going to see the complete value and

36:36

complexity of the human being in front of you, that's

36:39

the key.

36:40

David, thank you so much for sharing

36:42

this book with us. I think we

36:45

all have to add it to our reading list

36:47

when it's out this October. And I just

36:50

want to thank you, you know, this is something, you know,

36:52

that didn't just come out of the blue, you have to spend a lot of time

36:54

and effort writing this book.

36:56

I know these are issues and ideas that you've been working

36:59

on for a while now. Like

37:01

you, those of us associated with the monk debate are kind

37:03

of fellow travelers, we're trying to

37:06

model this society that's less tribalized,

37:09

less riven by polarization and divisions.

37:12

And that's why David, I just urge the

37:15

monk debate community to support you get

37:17

this book, let's see what wisdom

37:19

we can learn and what we can impart to

37:21

each other. So David, thank you so much for your

37:23

time today. And for coming

37:25

on the program and talking

37:28

to the monk debates community. Oh,

37:30

thank you. It's been a pleasure.

37:35

Well, that wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest

37:37

David Brooks, he certainly give us a lot

37:39

to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on

37:42

what you've just heard on this or

37:44

any of our podcasts, please send us an email

37:46

to podcast at monk debates.com.

37:49

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