The Opinions - David Brooks on Staying Humane in Inhumane Times

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

These are cruel and challenging times. How did previous generations hold on to their sanity — and humanity — in the face of violence and instability?In this episode, the columnist David Brooks seeks answers in the intellectual and moral traditions of ancient Athens and Jerusalem. The key to thriving, he argues, is to embody behaviors that might at first seem contradictory.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. My name is David Brooks. I am a columnist for the New York Times, and I write about politics, I write about culture, I write about social science, and from time to time, I write about world events. Since October 7th, I've been thinking a lot about the spreading brutalism of our world. Israel has seen attacks overnight by both rockets and gunmen, dozens of rockets were fired from the guards. The Gaza's health ministry said the death toll from the 13th month-long war has ticked past 44,000.

Because the Middle East is so contentious, a lot of the brutalism is right here in our own country. And that's the vicious debates we're having. That's people screaming at each other. And the thing I've been wondering about is how do we live in this brutal environment without being brutalized ourselves? How do we live in a way where we remain open-hearted? And we don't get calloused over by our own hatreds. We're not the first group of people to live through realistic times. So I wanted to learn from the wise people in the past,

how do you stay humane in times that are in humane? And so I went back to two intellectual and moral traditions, and those two traditions are symbolized by two cities, Athens and Jerusalem. And they're different, these two traditions, but they each have resources upon which we can draw. And so, for example, the Greeks lived with constant warfare between their city-states, and they developed what you might call a tragic sensibility.

And I think this sensibility taught them a couple things. First, it taught them a sense of humility, that our accomplishments are tenuous. We can't really control our destinies, and we just have to face that. Humility is not thinking lowly of yourself. It's seeing yourself accurately. Second, suspect rage. If you go back to the Iliad, the great work by Homer, the word rage is in the very first sentence. And we see characters like Agamemnon and Achilles who are being stupid because they're filled with rage.

And if you look around the world today at the protests and the rallies, you see so much rage. The Greeks would say to those people who are filled with self-righteous anger, sure it feels delicious to be filled with rage. But you're blinding yourself to reality. You're simplifying the world. You're desensitizing yourself to the horror that is all around you. Another tradition that I think can teach us a very important set of lessons is centered around the city of Jerusalem and the three Abrahamic faiths. And these faiths emphasize what you might call recognition.

And that's the idea that every human being from birth needs to be seen and recognized and respected. And so one of the great things you can give to another person is the gift of seeing them. of paying attention. And so the Abrahamic traditions teach us to lead with love even in hard times. And so in dangerous times, your instinct is not to want to cast the just and loving attention on others because it seems soft. It seems like you're leaving yourself vulnerable. And indeed you are. It's dangerous to be gentle and open-hearted in hard times. But it's also dangerous to shut off your heart. The Greek tradition is big on prudence and how to be skeptical. The Jerusalem tradition, on the other hand, is very big on empathy, very big on compassion.

It orientes you not to the most powerful people in society, but the people who are hurting the most. Can you hold these two mental minds in one single brain? Well, Max Weber, the philosopher, asked this very question in a famous essay called politics as a vocation. He said, can you be warm-hearted and also rational and cautious? I try to think how does this play out in my own life. A couple days ago, I was doom scrolling through social media, and I was looking at all these images from the Middle East, and I was getting disturbed, disturbed, disturbed.

And then I flick down my social media feed, and I see an old video of James Baldwin being interviewed. The world is held together. Really, it is, held together. But the love and the passion of very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair, walk down the street of any city, any after, and look around you. What you're going to remember is what you're looking at is also you.

Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster. You could be that cop. And you're going to decide on yourself not to be. And so amid that social media doomscrow of inhumanity, suddenly Baldwin was giving us an example of great humanity. And the phrase that leapt to my mind as I heard him was, was defiant humanism.

It's easy to be a humanist in good times, but to be a humanist in bitter times, in bitter circumstances. That is truly a heroic act. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur,

Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vichakad, Fiby Lett, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Brusek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota.

The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuelski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.