The inability to “see” others lies at the root of America’s increasingly hostile sociopolitical climate, claims New York Times journalist and bestselling author David Brooks.
Brooks opened President Linda Livingstone’s Baylor Conversation Series on civil discourse with a lecture given to almost 2000 Baylor students, faculty, and local Wacoans. Given just hours before the Presidential debate, the bright-eyed audience appeared eager for an effective antidote to the polemic tumultuousness of the next hours and months.
Brooks began by diagnosing the state of the nation as a greater reflection of the current state of the individual soul. He shared several recent statistics pointing to the increase in cases of severe depression, feelings of isolation, and those who consider themselves to have zero close friendships, ultimately asserting that “America is a sadder country, and a sadder country means a meaner country.”
For Brooks, this is where politics comes in. As a result of social isolation and feelings of invisibility, more and more people are misplacing their desire for deep and meaningful connection in the political sphere. For many, politics has become a sort of “self-solving” of this inner sadness—mere medicine for a loneliness that requires a tangible cure.
“America is a sadder country, and a sadder country means a meaner country.” – David Brooks
Brooks explains that politics has given an increasingly isolated public the illusion of tight knit community. People feel a sense of belonging or identity when they subscribe to the worldview and opinions of a certain political group, and yet no one truly knows them as a unique and individual person. They are only a number counted, not a person seen.
Because of this, the world of politics has become a grand scale war of identity. To disagree with someone’s politics is to deny and reject the entire person. The person is generalized down to a political label with a set of opinions, rather than seen as a whole person, complex and interesting. The human person, says Brooks, has become a “land of permanent warfare.” Where there should be connection and seeing, there is division and attack.
If a lack of real human connection is the core of our charged political atmosphere, what is the effective response? Brooks offers a solution so ancient and innate to the human experience it might appear lackluster in the modern age: conversation and friendship.
Brooks argues that in our age of digital distraction and false connection, the average person simply does not know how to get to know someone in a deep and meaningful way, especially when that person is unlike them. This void of social skills both produces and exacerbates the issue—obstructing human fellowship and its corollary, civil discourse. This is where Brooks’ most recent book comes in. Fittingly titled, “How to know a person,” the book offers itself as a humble guide to help every individual learn “the art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen.”
Brooks urged the audience at Baylor and those reading his book to recognize that everyone has room to grow in the art of knowing and seeing people deeply. He outlined his book’s main points of advice for growing in this art.
There are two types of people, Brooks told us — illuminators and diminishers.
Illuminators are those who shed light on another person, encouraging them to open up about their life and experiences. An illuminator recognizes that each person’s story is more nuanced and detailed than they could possibly imagine and is thus quick to give their attention and always 100% of it—they do not listen in hopes to respond, but because they are simply interested and care.
A diminisher, on the other hand, is quick to lessen another by putting them in a box. With little true attention, they merely listen for answers they want to hear and judge someone based on their own preconceived generalizations. Brooks urged all of us to habituate ourselves to the careful and caring attention of an illuminator and watch as it changes not just ourselves, but American culture at large.
Even so, the idea that a climate as hostile as American politics could be healed by deep connection and humble conversation across divides, still seems idealistic to some. And yet, Brook’s call for true connection strikes a deep and innate chord. If you could boil down the daily argumentative, polarized, and hate-speech rampant interactions (within politics and outside), one major metaphysical and ethical question is at stake—do human beings have intrinsic value that does not depend on what I think of them? Or is every person’s value dependent on their values, beliefs, or actions?
“These failures of seeing are not failures of vision or failures of intellect—they’re failures of the heart.” – David Brooks
Brooks would answer the first. If every human person has intrinsic value dependent on something outside of one’s own perception of them, then the desire to understand one another quickly enters the fray. Conversations quickly turn from hostile tennis matches to unified discussions, disparaging comments to respectful interaction, asserting one’s own will without care for the devastation inflicted to listening carefully with a desire to understand. Brooks argues that disagreements between people will and should remain—but the ultimate goal (for all people to flourish) is remembered.
As Brooks noted while closing his speech; “these failures of seeing are not failures of vision or failures of intellect—they’re failures of the heart.” As the United States prepares for yet another combative election season, one cannot help but wonder what might happen if we all admitted where our own hearts fail—fail to see, to respect, to know. Perhaps America, as with any truly free state, may return once more to the art and privilege of civil discourse. A practice that, as President Livingstone noted, “is both timeless and timely.”
