Yes, Soren Kierkegaard was a jerk. His philosophy? Not that great either. He used it for selfish reason, to hide from society and his fiancee. There, I said it
2
After reading Paul Krugman’s column on the horrendous wage gap and underemployment of most Americans I had to laugh once again at a David Brooks’ column.
Americans are so busy working paycheck to paycheck to keep from foreclosures on homes and cars that they have zero time for meditation and seeking many goals.
Most schools no longer have music classes..just exactly HOW will children learn to play one musical instrument much less many?
Also Rodin and the rest had the DNA first to recognize that a statue needed to be released from a block of marble.
I’m happy you’re becoming at peace with yourself Mr. Brooks..I truly am!
But I’m 70 yo, still working as a family practice doc in an area with no health insurance...and still take call 24/7.
You have become clueless about a world that is running out of water, irrigation ditches that have collapsed in the midwest, ppl dying in the extreme heat, and that 1 out of 15 people in the world is now refugees with no place to go.
58
So many generalizations; so few references.
20
Good article. Greatness at one thing (like Warren Buffett), though celebrated, must not be confused for a well-lived life.
4
What a dumb title when America is at war internally.
Do you have to be schlemiel to be a columnist?
11
You're a funny one to be asking that question.
6
Mr. Brooks, How are these observations effecting your choices professionally? You have a large megaphone. I think back to the sincere regret you expressed post 2016-election regarding where you spent your time/with whom you spoke when out in the hustings then. Please give us hope for action to break through these barriers to a better future.
6
Remember Guinness book of World Records? I remember the day I tossed it into a fire to show my kids I believed it was garbage. Maybe silly, but I was hoping they learned that to do the best you can with the set of tasks before you is the true measure of greatness. I imagine many of us have some ideas of greatness and while they may involve the Nobel, they may also involve integrity and excellent devotion to responsibilities for which no prizes were awarded. And Guinness World records may not have been involved.
7
There are just people who possess a supenatural talent for something, and it consumes then, and it is a gift to the world. They are like monks living in a form of seclusion devoted to their craft, but undoubtedly their life suffers in other areas, the obvious one being family. I would not judge, for few of us have such innate singlular potential.
6
Again....David Brooks analyzes society and tries to make it clear to us what is wrong with us. We just haven’t gotten our fingers in enough pies. We need to stop focusing on just one area of interest. Once you do this you will guarantee your membership in the Greats. On the other hand all the others who are obsessed with just one thing can’t help but be jerks. That’s easy to make sense of.....Right?
4
The reason the conferences Mr. Brooks attended were hermetically sealed is that they have already pulled down the hatches on the tanks. Pluralism is the enemy when what you value above all is total victory.
8
Mr. Brooks,
I was appalled to hear you say on NPR a week ago, that you would have to consider sitting out this election if the Dems didn't come up with someone reasonable. Reasonable? Is that what you consider the current occupant of the white house? You would actually risk another 4 years of this abomination? What you said was so irresponsible. Anyone who sits out this election is complicit with electing this man again if he wins this election.
50
@Irmalinda Belle
Exactly... not voting because it's just the lesser of two evils is the same as voting for the most evil.
23
Absolutely, why doesn’t Brooks consider a vote for the opposition a vote against instead of a vote for a person .
6
Many influential people and some who are described by many as creative geniuses in their fields behaved by many peoples' standards as jerks toward employees and a daughter (Steve Jobs) is but one example. I am not sure he knew another way than to be exceedingly demanding with employees, as well as to ignore what he viewed as inconvenient family responsibilities regarding his first daughter.
He was for me an insufferable jerk who was liked because Apple products his efforts are linked to were so novel and useful. I often mused how much better those designs and inventions might have been had he sought professional help both in his personal life and in business for his torments.
May he R.I.P.
9
I've met a handful of truly great scientists over the past few decades. Some world class minds one step away from a Noble Prize, and one or two with those prizes as well . . . the answer to David's question is a resounding NO! Yes, some top scientists are jerks. They should be avoided in most social and professional contexts. Most of the truly wonderful minds of the past few generations are well-rounded, amazingly gracious human beings.
Those Jerks? No one who ever knew them will ever be able to mention their fine work without thinking about how big of a jerk they were . . . that's not a legacy, it's a monstrous and avoidable canker sore on a rather fine career.
Just think of how better those jerks could have been, if anyone ever wanted to work with them.
8
Sorry, but Barak and Michelle are potent counter-examples. Period.
9
My view - anyone who is a jerk is automatically disqualified from being great. True greatness is exhibiting selflessness, empathy, and kindness.
14
I thought this piece would discuss Steve Jobs, a great mind, I hear. But according to his daughter’s book, he was a cruel, stingy and awkward father. After I read it, I wanted to throw my IPhone into the fireplace.
5
I know it might sound naive on my part but if you're a jerk your "greatness" is surely diminished. I mean I love Wagner but I never NOT think about his perfidious nature before the music starts playing. I might love the music and recognize his greatness but he is ALWAYS going to remain tainted because of his behavior. Of course the best way to avoid this and say that being a jerk doesn't matter towards one's greatness is by saying that ignorance is bliss. I mean forget that Chopin was as anti-Semitic as Wagner and the greatness can be untainted to one's ear but IF someone KNOWS that a great person is also a jerk, I think it says more about US, the observers, than the individual in question, if we allow the bad behavior of a jerk to NOT taint the "greatness".
6
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1792-1822
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
13
No you don't have to be jerk to be great. But you can be a great jerk of which there is, currently, a most notable example. In any event, it is naïve to argue that those who navigate tensions better have a better shot at greatness than not. Indeed for every example of a gifted person not to have let their genius destroy an intimate relationship (Charles Darwin) there is another whose genius could not brook deeper intimacies for long (Picasso). Then they are others who struck a balance, uneasy at times, between their creativity and personal relationships (Cézanne, Monet and Verdi). There is really no pattern. Reality constantly confounds expectations especially those based on simplistic theories
7
It's amazing to me that Rodin and Rilke found time and intent beyond their artistic obsessions to even get married and have children. Despite their superhuman gifts and dedication to those gifts, they were still human beings who wanted their essence to carry on just in case the fruits of their “travailler“ were soon forgotten. Turns out they were rotten fathers and husbands, but they gave it a shot. Does that makes them jerks?
1
@Vic Williams
Yes. Because they did not consider the suffering they would and did inflict. I don't hold with the opinion that one has to be a jerk, incompetent at life, or miserable to make good art. I know too many people who work in the arts to believe that or excuse it.
4
'They were both horrid to their wives and children. Rodin grew pathetically creepy, needy and lonely. Rilke didn’t go back home as his father was dying, nor allow his wife and child to be with him as he died.'
They were not great.
5
Vague to the point of being boring.
4
I have loved Brooks' writings for years since he is at least to me a rationalist and not a knee jerk Democrat or Republican, However in the last year or so I have absolutely no interest in his column. It's written for people who have no relation to the actual world we live in. It's so esoteric it's past understanding. Of I knew how to attach an emoji I would adda sad face.
marty cohn
8
@marty cohn
What on earth do you find incomprehensible about this premise? In order to change the real world for the better, one must imagine the world as it can be. I don't always agree with Mr. Brooks, but I always find him cogent, humane and informed. "Esoteric" is not a word that I would use. Well-read, perhaps.
3
Oh my! David, did you just discover toxic masculinity?
Congratulations!
12
Fact check alert! Brooks’ reference to “the 10,000 hours (and more) that true excellence requires” stems from Malcom Gladwell’s widely debunked “10,000-hour rule” which he claimed in his 2008 book ‘Outliers’ was the secret to mastering a skill.
See this 2014 Princeton University study challenging Gladwell’s claim: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2014/07/03/becoming-expert-takes-more-practice
Also refer to this article siting a range of scientific studies that suggest deliberate practice is but one component in the complex puzzle of expertise: https://slate.com/technology/2014/09/malcolm-gladwells-10000-hour-rule-for-deliberate-practice-is-wrong-genes-for-music-iq-drawing-ability-and-other-skills.html
This is old news, guys. Come on.
4
@Kate Sennert
This fact check is pedantic in the extreme. Come on. That is hardly the point. Are you saying that because you have to practice harder or longer or not practice harder or longer that decides whether you get to be a jerk or not? I don't really get your point.
6
Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Be Great?
No, David. Ask Abraham Lincoln. He's a good start.
Then, if you're interested, off the top of my head I'll give you dozens of more names of nice geniuses.
4
A jerk isn't great, but in our game the biggest jerk wins. The biggest jerk won because like a hurricane, a mass killer, a deadly virus, a fire or a flood, the biggest jerk gets the most attention. It doesn't matter that the attention is for bad stuff, because money.
Since algorithms took control of the money a lot of people made a lot of dough by publicizing the storms, the unending controversies, the killers and the professional jerks. The rest of us (that don't profit from tragedy ) lose.
Look at it like Pandora's box. Publication of bad behaviors creates copycat coverage of increasingly bad behaviors. You don't create the storm, but you exploit it. You didn't start the virus, but you profit from the fear you create with it.
You didn't buy an automatic weapon, but you helped create a morbid competition by inadvertently glorifying the jerks that kill with them randomly. The algorithms monetize it. Oh, not you.
You don't condone this President. But you make your living not condoning him. You want to put evil back in the box?
Then stop exploiting bad stuff and bad people for the profit in it.
4
You don't have to be a jerk to be great, just a narcissist.
3
If you need more proof of your thesis, David, go watch THE FOUNDER. and see how Ray Kroc turned out.
You can be a jerk and think you're great.
3
Always greater when you're not a jerk. Toujours.
2
"Furthermore, living a great life is more important than producing great work. A life devoted to one thing is a stunted life, while a pluralistic life is an abundant one. This is a truth feminism has brought into the culture."
Maybe from a personal standpoint. Not in terms of history or the interest of the community.
I don't know whether Thomas Edison, Alexander Fleming or Marie Curie lived a great life or what they felt about that "truth brought into the culture", but I'll very happy when I switch on the light on to take antibiotics before having radiotherapy, when the time comes.
1
What this article doesn't explore is the relationship between ego, megalomania, creativity, and success in the white, male, sphere.There is no doubt that many of the most revered creator-thinkers have been unkind to those around them. But perhaps just as many unremarkable males have been unkind to those around them. Biographies are only written about those who rise to fame. So I would posit that it's possible that Mr. Brooks is examining a generic trait through the lens of success. I am certain that there have been many postmen and butchers who beat their wives, but their lives weren't important enough to be examined.
2
What a thoughtful column from Mr. Brooks! By skating outside the established lines, or weaving in and out - and perhaps taking up skiing, curling, or the harp- an individual has a better chance not to get caught in a rut; a greater opportunity to achieve a unique perspective on life and a rich depth unlike that possessed by anyone else.
1
Thanks Brooks, I've always been a big fan of specialization and success. However, your ideas and my own experience tell me that generalization is the light at the end of the tunnel.
1
This concept is illustrated with the various 'Living National Treasures' in Japan...artists who are selected and honored for their contributions to Japanese culture. Almost all of them are masters of more than one art. A Judo master also plays jazz, a koto master also practices ikebana, a kyudo master is also a carpenter, etc. The mastery of two unrelated arts allows the artist to infer connections and make new contribution to his arts.
A master of a single art form might know all the traditional secrets and techniques, but at best he can only blindly duplicate his own teacher's level, but not make new discoveries and contributions to the art. Cross training improves critical thinking and creativity.
Any generalizations regarding human intelligence and creative productivity in the arts or the sciences is presumptuous. Some individuals may be more productive being focused others being more diversified. Regarding the productive output of the relatively few geniuses among us all bets are off. Some are poly maths many are obsessed. We mere mortals cannot hope to understand genius. Frequently they do not understand themselves. This of course may lead to very unhappy or tragic lives.To write a book or an article, however, drawing conclusions from their lives regarding our own tells the reader more about the author than the subject matter.
3
In other words: the liberal arts degree. And yet, a liberal arts education is the very thing Republicans in state governments, the US congress, and conservative media outlets constantly and consistently rail against as being an impractical waste of time when everyone should be studying STEM fields or just doing specific job training. I don't know if you realize this or not, Mr. Brooks, but the older and presumably wiser you get, the more your columns embrace liberal/Democratic ideals and reject conservative/Republican ones. Makes one think, doesn't it?
15
The best reasons for early retirement if you can do it. Learn to enjoy learning at a young age and learn more in retirement. Working for a living is a waste of precious time, a theft. Sadly, as Kierkegaard also observed, no one has a choice to exist and existence is a form of involuntary slavery. Most people never get a chance to know their passions let alone follow them. Instead, they are programmed from an early age that the struggle is good.
3
I have been an artist that was fortunate to have put in the solitary time, as has my wife with her creative endeavors to see the fruits of our labors. It never ends, one must put in the time, and at times be maniacally focused. But one must come up for air.
We decided to have children and the twists and turns have made the art more difficult but the life experience has made all of it more richer. We encourage our children to attack every curiosity that comes to mind, and it has been such a learning experience in my own pursuits.
Nimbleness may may not breed success as much as quickly as a focused approach but I believe it allows for more creative solutions.
2
It's sad but there is some truth in the saying:"the more people I meet, the more I love my dogs."
79
@e That's sad, and reveals a weak state of mind. Some people prefer the interaction with dogs (or any other pet) because it's easier, easier that interact with a different mind of your same level, and this is part of what the author refers. Interactions with any kind of people and groups are the key to enjoy life and succeed.
10
@Misael
No. Not everyone benefits from interacting with others in mindless small talk. For some of us (e.g., introverts, autistic spectrum, high-IQ), being forced into mindless interactions with other people is a strain on our mental and emotional resources and we are exhausted by it.
It is practically illegal to say so in America, but people are *not* all created equal when it comes to intellect or interests. I have only recently accepted that fact and am happier than I’ve ever been as a result. I prefer to work in complete quiet and if possible, solitude. Nothing is more distracting or irritating than listening to other people chatter on about nothing in particular when I am trying to work. Sadly, the Western world is built by and for extroverts: open-plan office spaces are an excellent example of this. And yes, my dog is a great companion!
25
@e That's funny!
I think Oscar Wilde said it best, when he said, "Some bring happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
18
I don't mind the true geniuses who are jerks, as much as the jerks who only think they are geniuses but in reality are not even close. (Hmm, like maybe a certain elected official ... ?)
2
In our society, YES!
2
@Andrei Schor: The US is a virtual Petri dish for psychopaths. It has no immune system that functions against them.
1
yes you have to be a jerk. my on taught me to treat others the way I want to be treated. it's a ticket to the poor house unfortunately.
1
Given Mr. Brooks comment about restaurant servers I understand his interest in this topic.
No, you don't have to be a jerk although all of are always capable of acting like one.
Why did Brooks drop or forget his original theme -- Do you have to be a jerk to be great? I'll answer it for him: "Define 'great,' and define 'jerk.'" A nationally celebrated speaker against child abuse travels the country year-round, while leaving her own children in the care of a nanny. Is she a jerk? or is there some deep and wide blind spot -- caused by her own childhood history -- that has made her out of touch with love and sense? Watch out for generalizing, and for sloppy definitions.
4
Being a jerk is not correlated with greatness. Too many jerks that are not even close to greatness. The current POTUS is a good example of this.
2
"It’s a powerful argument that generalists perform better than specialists."
Brooks writes about artists and authors. I am glad my physician is a specialist and other scientists who discover cures for cancer and other diseases. It's one thing to obsess over a piece of art or a book chapter but quite another to obsess over an 8 year old's surgery or cancer care.
4
The sports world offers some interesting contrasts.In golf, we have Tiger Woods, who, by most accounts is, or at least was, a jerk as Brooks defines the term. We also have Arnold Palmer, by all accounts a tremendously caring person. In tennis, we have Nadal and Federerer, two of the nicest people around seemingly. But we also had McEnroe and Connors - both known for an unrelenting jerkiness. In basketball we had Jordan and Pippen who were fairly "jerky' in their day. But we also had Kareem and Magic who could hardly be described as jerks. Perhaps it is not the single-minded pursuit of perfection that is the key variable, but things like upbringing, or even basic personality. Jerks are clearly made, not born.
1
I think David is on to something here. I keep wondering though about the story of Jesus going off by himself into the dessert to meditate and think? He was neither a jerk, or misusing his wife and children. It’s good to get away from it all and clear your head sometimes. Look up at the stars. And do your own thinking for a change. Block out the noise. But still. There is so much we can learn from one another. And, after all, he did came back to be with his friends. I can appreciate the difficult balance in that. The complexity of trying to be true to yourself -- and to those who love us. Both require a different kind of sacrifice. And a brilliant balancing. That carries humanity to a higher level. In either case. Beyond this, inevitably. The scales of justice will balance all that we do. And in that vein, possibly we're doing the world a great turn. By keeping our obsessive geniuses good and well occupied. You know. With creating beauty. I wouldn't want to go a day without listening to some Mozart. A soul with genius -- who wasn't perfect. But was nevertheless, a vessel for musical truth and beauty. That he bestowed to all of us. Maybe this too is keeping a foot in both worlds.
1
I don't know what RM Rilke you are writing about. It is not the Rilke I know. A man who traveled all over the world, lived in many countries, had many professions, multiple wives, and mistresses, among whom were some of the most advanced women of the world at that time. He was drafted, suffered through the First World War, supported the Russian revolution, then Fascism in Italy. Not quite the mean, focused person holed up in a Paris hotel that you have concocted in your imagination to prove some quite mawkish point about how and by whom art is created. Your tendency, Mr. Brooks, to always construct two apposing types of human beings to define a superior type of person or approach, sentimentalizes and renders quaint both your political treatises and your amateurish examinations of a meaningful style of life. I search constantly to find a word that fits your struggles, but I can never get beyond Pollyanna (esque)
4
Mr. Brooks, more and more you read like someone trying, hoping, desperately for redemption. The Republican Party that you made a career of endorsing and praising and its logical successor to Goldwater, Reagan, et al. has really gotten to you?
5
I found your article to be very inspiring, Mr. Brooks. Very insightful. I have always subconsciously believed the same, but having you articulate the concept so clearly to me was like moving from a black and white vision into a world full of color. It just made my day. Thank you.
2
Stupid is as stupid chooses.
1
Brooks writes, "Do you have to be so obsessively focused to be great? The traditional masculine answer is yes."
I would ask Brooks where he got the idea that "The traditional masculine answer is yes." There is a temptation to be snide and say, "David, speak for yourself." However, I have too much respect for his thoughtfulness (in the literal sense) to do that. Instead I would simply ask Brooks for evidence, not anecdotes, to support his claim regarding masculine (and by default, feminine) answers to the question, "Do you have to be so obsessively focused to be great?".
Brooks' assumed definition of greatness seems to be fairly narrow. Even using his assumption (as I interpret it), that greatness is fame acknowledged and/or defined by subsequent generations, I feel certain that I could find as many anecdotes as he demonstrating a different conclusion. Also, it would be interesting to see if as many of the "great" women were "jerks."
In any case, Brooks' claim certainly is at variance with my own experience.
26
@Steve Fankuchen actually, I think "David speak for yourself" is an appropriate response to every column he writes for this paper.
8
Well said, but a life of "family, vocation, friends, community, faith" still sounds a bit grim. It doesn't leave much room for imagination, weirdness, fun, and not taking oneself too seriously. A bit of aimlessness and individuality are welcome antidotes to what seem like dreary, corporate virtues.
164
@Bill Your last four needed items are absolutely part of the five things listed first. As time goes on you'll see how these activities build up each other.
Certainly, effective lives of faith are full of imagination, weirdness, fun, and not taking oneself too seriously.
8
We need a former Little League baseball player for President. When I played as a kid my team was very good and we won a lot. But at the end of the game there was a ritual which the adults forced us to perform. We had to chant 2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate.......and then shout the other team's name. It was a reminder that you did need the other team to even play the game.
Trump seems to imagine that you can have a ballgame without the other team. Good luck.
281
@paulyyams
Agreed! But the kids should chant 2-4-6-8, whom do we appreciate. In the spirit of the article, kids should learn both sports and Latin.
17
Also, in little league little boys and girls are taught to play by the rules.
21
We'd all be better off if people remember that their time on this planet is limited and that you are mostly likely going to be forgotten within 100 years if not shorter than that. It doesn't matter even if you are the richest human today nor have a building names after you. How many of us know the richest Roman or the inscriptions of buildings which are no longer here? How many people know about their grandparents much less great-grandparents? How many people today remember the top NY Times columnist of 1979 much less 1989? There really aren't that many Rodins or Rilkes. All this fight for fame, fortune, status, beauty, etc. really will not matter.
554
@ms
Wonderful comment! It manages to be both depressing and uplifting at the same time.
37
@ms
I second this. Well said. Life is about living rich and not dying rich.
33
@ms
Reminds me of a great song from the 1930's. "A Hundred Years from Today"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbSWfaDgz00
7
This article s a bit of a backdoor way to get into your - both sides are the same argument. Perhaps we do live in different universes but I fail to see the connection between that paragraph and an article about greatness and its inherent challenges.
1
I just turned 68. I have never aspired to be great, just good. But “greatness” certainly seems to fascinate us humans much more than being “good.” Perhaps Mr. Brooks will comment on that in a future column.
3
Right now I would accuse this whole discussion of being ableist. Hyperfocus is a trait that overlaps with high functioning autism. Everyone loves stories like how the little boy obsessed with train schedules is welcomed by the engineer. That little boy is not a jerk who is choosing to limit his life by becoming an evil monad. This is just how he was born and how he lives his life the best he can.
I would suggest reading all these comments again but thinking about that little boy instead of Rodin.
Of course Rodin was an adult with adult responsibilities. But that may have been hard for the brain he was born with to process.
I understand personally how comforting artistic or intellectual hyperfocus can be when one feels anxious and uncertain about the social world out there.
2
Simon Rodia, creator of the Watts Towers, was a self described bad person, divorced and estranged from his children before beginning his great project. Alone he focused "monomaniacally" upon it.
Had he been well rounded family man we wouldn't have those beautiful structures to admire. Thank goodness for those artists, scientists, teachers and others of noble purposes for their single minded focus!
2
@rob They were probably already introverted and fixated as small children. We would never call an autistic kid a "bad person" for having social processing issues and fixating on trains or dinosaurs or princesses. Yet somehow when we see those kids grow up, we slap them with all kinds of terrible labels because of their social disability. Narcissist. Sociopath. Monad. The more success they have in their area of fixation, the more harshly people judge them for their social failures.
There are plenty of great people who are nice and humble.
However, nice and humble people more often than not remain unknown. It is the brash and the braggarts who make their own greatness known by broadcasting it and aggressively pursuing fame.
2
What Brooks concludes that the ethical, moral or social better life is the best road for a successfully creative career is, alas wrong. It is contravened by studying what makes a great scientist, businessman, author or artist. It is tenacity and focus, while maintaining a plurality of interests outside your main area. It does not necessarily make for good husbands, wives, or partners. Einstein was a poor husband and father, as was Picasso. Unfortunately, the focus required for perfecting one's talent tends to be solitary and does not make for an easy collaborative partnership.
2
After decades of building the GOP bloody brick road of economic and military disasters, David has become a philosopher king.
Except the past isn't revocable, and I will always hold Mr. Brooks accountable.
6
Oh, I do think it would have been better if Rodin and Rilke had joined a local theatre or did some wine-tasting, rather than dedicating themselves to that genuis-stuff.
4
I have some questions at this juncture: Why do we venerate genius? And what do we get out of it? When might veneration be either a good idea or a bad one?
2
@Jonathan Rodriguez
That all depends on how one feels about things like electricity and Homer and calculus. If one likes having those things, then genius is a good thing. But veneration goes too far.
David: I think Pope Francis has answered your question.
1
"Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Be Great?" Case in point: "[Ted] Williams is regarded as one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. Williams was a nineteen-time All-Star ... Williams was temperamental, high-strung, and at times tactless ... Williams committed two fielding miscues in a doubleheader in 1950 and was roundly booed by Boston fans. He bowed three times to various sections of Fenway Park and made an obscene gesture ... When he came to bat he spit in the direction of fans near the dugout ... Williams demanded loyalty from those around him ... Williams' aloof attitude led the writer John Updike to observe wryly that 'Gods do not answer letters'. "
2
What a dull life to be a monad.
We have a Jerk at the helm of this country and great is not an adjective to describe him. Trump personifies the monad life. A man who cares nothing abut anyone or anything except his money. He is stilted in his vision of a life well-lived.
This is what happens when people isolate themselves, believe they are the greatest when nothing could be further from the truth.
Right now, it feels as if a lot of this country is turning into a Country full of monads. Everyone closing their minds to what others have to say. No one willing to communicate eyeball to eyeball. I am not talking about Politics here, but of relationships
based on texts or tweets. Go into most restaurants and people are not even looking at each other, their heads buried in their phones or IPads. The isolation is deafening.
We need to start paying attention to each other soon. If we do not, our children will never have healthy bonds with others.
Kids learn from their parents, they mimic what their parents do.
We best start acting human again.
2
I would not trade my experience in the many endeavors for great success in only one.
We used to be known as people who "couldn't hold a job". Now, we have become valuable Seasoned Generalists.
3
These sentiments are unintentionally one sided. The point expressed here, taken in a biological (nature) sense, is: "it is better to have genetics that match society's general preferences"; a vacuous statement. As an individual who was born with a genetic condition described as "high function autism", I struggled mightily until I found a compatible occupation, programming. Others struggle unnecessarily with their particular genetics, too. People should be encouraged to live a life that is positive and productive. Their inclinations that do not match their milieu's better practices will need improvement (nurture). We should nurture ourselves and make the best use of our nature that we can.
We are not all cut out to be a good president. Need proof?
3
The Venn diagram of greatness and jerkiness overlaps only slightly. However, the Dunning Kruger Effect applies to that group in the overlap where, for example, a man can write a book about character while cheating on his wife with his assistant.
4
"Children who explore many instruments when they are young end up as more skilled musicians than the ones who are locked into just one."
I find that precisely the opposite is true.
3
As a professional music teacher, both privately and in the classroom, I can say with fair assurity that my students who study multiple instruments outperform their single-instrument peers by quite a lot. They have, in the whole, better tone and phrasing, and they are far better able to apply analytic thought to the written music and understand what is taking place in the score. Are you speaking in metaphor? Your statement does not reflect anything I have seen in almost 15 years as a music instructor.
8
Just to keep in mind: what Kierkegaard meant by the one thing one ought to focus on had little if anything to do with how one can achieve greatness. Rather Kierkegaard’s focus was on how to achieve “purity of heart,” and he encouraged individuals to focus on the one thing of seeking to know and do the Will of God, achieved by desire, ie, one’s own will. In his little jewel of a book, “purity of heart is to will one thing” Kierkegaard suggests that to seek and know God’s will is an unfolding personal and unique revelation which becomes clearer as each person’s individual relationship with God deepens.
2
You don't have to be a jerk to be great, but there are a lot of people who are great at what they do who are total jerks. So would bet in some situations, being a jerk helps a lot. Put another way, having expertise in a lot of domains doesn't necessarily mean you are filled with empathy for your fellow man. See Noah Feldman's book "Scorpions", a warts and all history of FDR's outstanding, but very complicated, U.S. Supreme Court.
1
David Brooks! Thanks, as usual, for name-checking your last month's reading and "influencer" conference travels.
I don't see anything in your roundup of jerk- and great-related information that would justify substantial or useful inferences on the title subject. It's just a big toss-up.
4
Well, Mr. Brooks, it does seem to be that far too many males are definitely jerks.
2
Having read through the "Times Picks" relating to this column, I have to commend myself for subscribing to The Times.
1
David, spend less time in Aspen and descend to an altitude more credible and comprehensible to your readers. Aren't conferences more or less intellectual circle jerks? Speaking of "jerks".
4
Uh, no.
Nothing psychopaths do is worth all the wreckage they make of other people's lives.
3
The explain bicycle to a fish line made me remember a button that I & many other women wore in the '60s. It said 'a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle'.
It depends. Some people, both men and women, are such pure strivers that tunnel vision makes them jerks as they are compelled to see one thing through. Eddie Van Halen and Jobs fall into this category, as do Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. Trump and Anna Wintatour? They're just jerks because they're small, insecure people.
3
written by a person who has no idea what the creative life is all about. these artists do not choose how the muse moves through them. brooks has no idea how artists work - they do not choose to work the way the do. what would the world be like if Picasso had been a nice middle class bore like mr brooks? bores is outside looking in...passing judgement - yet again from his middle right middle class middle of the road point of view which he assumes is "normal". humanity would never have moved an inch if not for the shamans, artists and visionarys who sacrificed, not always by choice to peer into the abyss and imagine what did not already exist
2
Nice is better than great. Discuss.
2
Neither jerkness nor greatness can be measured, or even objectively evaluated. This kind of article seems much too abstract to mean anything in the real world. Asking a question like "do you have to be a jerk to be great" reduces captivating complexity to insipid simplicity.
Give me instead biography and autobiography that presents people as much as possible as they are in real life. Not just at their best and not just at their worst. Of course one has to sift and simplify some. But the best biographers can do that without reductionism. Their work is remarkable.
2
All human beings are 99.9 percent the same, it is only the need of most people to create a perfect idealization of humanity that every inventor or artist must be reinterpreted as perfect in some way.
In this way Rodin is recreated as the perfect artist, true to his craft over all else. Rodin was no different than anybody else with carnal needs and appetites, it's called being human...the rest is a marketing idea from some clever biographer
All people can be jerks, the amount of jerkiness in them is more about their upbringing and socialization than anything else. Someone with a face like Brad Pitt should be a lot less Jerky then somebody too fat, or too short, with less hair and a bigger nose.
Navigating the pot holes of this life with a big nose gawkiness is more an achievement than the things they hang on walls in museums. A life is the ultimate test of wills, it takes a special genius to get through this life with honor and dignity intact.
It is only a quirkiness of the human mind that needs to rank and categorize humanity that leads to the thing known as the genius.
We should take a cue from the animal kingdom, where the only genius is the one who survives to the next day.
All talk of genius is nothing but fantasy.
1
Great article, Brooks.
Polymaths generally have few niches in the US economy as other than investors or business owners.
2
Homogeneity in a population also leads to a mediocre culture and a fallow ground for thought and progress. There may be a child in Mexico, or Guatemala, or Syria who could get an education and absorb and grow culturally and intellectually and eventually create the medical or technical or artistic means to transform our society.
Who can grow productively in a country that says, "You will not replace us"? Replacing may be exactly what we need to survive. We've got an awful lot of home-grown people who are jerks and not enough who are geniuses.
3
Just assumed this was going to be about Trump - But I'm sure DJT has never heard of either of the artists....
The body of the article focuses on whether being singularly focused is required to be great yet the title refers to being a jerk? These are two separate traits. There are people who are singularly-focused who can be kind and amicable. Other than a more clickable title and some odd American proclivity that confuses greatness, expertise, and focus with sociopathic and abusive behavior, I can't guess why you would equate the two.
Chess is a good arena for examining this idea - extremely arduous and requiring not only genius but an enormous accumulation of knowledge. Two of the 3 best players of all time: Bobby Fischer - obsessive, nasty, reclusive, few positive relationships, and borderline crazy until later life when he crossed the line; and Magnus Carlson - astonishingly normal, funny, and well balanced with strong and positive family relationships. The other one? Garry Kasparov seems to be somewhere between these two extremes.
4
I would add personal satisfaction to the list of life's commitments. This is part of a continuum ranging from satisfaction that comes from a job well done to gonzo ambition to win it all every time to the abject pathos from narcissism. Trying to make these commitments"mutually enhancing" doesn't seem realistic to me. Choices are necessary and establishing priorities give meaning to life and our ultimate destiny.
'
1
Genius is the ability to capture childhood at will -- and mesh it with technical expertise and experience. It's a bit easy to wrap this in a simplistic narrative about generalists vs. specialists, but its more complex. It's better to have many specialties than no experience in anything -- a bureaucrat floating above the clouds, unconcerned with anything. That's how we get these meaningless media debates of left vs. right, urbanist vs. ruralist, man vs. woman, black vs. white that most people find unrecognizable in their own lives.
Instead of putting people into categories, let's start judging people by the quality of their work. There are generalists and specialists, jerks and not jerks who have contributed good, bad and ugly work all over. But let's not fetishize either--that's how you get a succession of extremely bad [architecture critics at the nytimes] people who swing widely between a bubble mentality to not knowing anything at all.
1
David writes: "Furthermore, living a great life is more important than producing great work. A life devoted to one thing is a stunted life, while a pluralistic life is an abundant one." While I understand that many, probably most, share this view, I do not and never have. For me, producing great work is the ONLY thing that matters. I have voluntarily given up many of the things that others long for, divorced young, sacrificed much - all in the name of producing work I could be proud of - and I would not change a thing. The only regrets I have are related to times when I was unable to dedicate myself fully and instead gave in to society's mandate that one live a "balanced life."
You can live the kind of life David describes as rich and pluralistic and produce good work; you can't live that life and produce truly great work. If love, family and community is where you find lasting fulfillment and satisfaction, that is wonderful! But if not, if like me you find those things to be largely irrelevant and instead find your purpose in work, then heed that calling. I would much rather be known as a brilliant jerk than an average but very nice person.
2
I really enjoyed this thoughtful column. This quote in particular stands out-
"And I was realizing that while we’re learning to preach a gospel of openness and diversity, we’re mostly not living it."
I see the preaching in both progressives and conservatives. Each feels misunderstood by the other, yet give and take conversations rarely developed. We are wonderful at talking "at" another person, but we are horrible listeners.
Even worse, we don't reach out to others with different world experiences/perspectives as if they had something valuable to share.
2
“Do you have to be a jerk to be great?” In two words: Arnold Palmer.
3
You don't have to be a jerk to be great.
And you don't have to be great to be jerk.
We have plenty of jerks who are not great.
(Like the one that tells us ad nauseam that he is the most intelligent, the best negotiator, the most popular, etc.)
There is endless variety in Jerkdom.
4
I was surprised when I read this column. I expected a column about how Trump chooses his cabinet.
Thank you Mr Brooks.. Ugely refreshing.
2
Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Be Great?
I would not call Nelson Mandela a jerk.
5
Go to one of the trump rally's, or just speak with one of the more ardent supporters. They like the way he is not "politically correct" and that he taunts and demeans people. Those folks are living Life vicariously through trump. They think that uncivil conduct is appropriate and will point an angry finger at you if you challenge them.
4
I think Mr. Brooks is becoming the post-modern version of a self-help writer. Think some combination of Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, and Wayne Dyer. Like these predecessors, Mr. Brooks relies on sweeping generalizations that sometimes evaporate on close examination. The fact is, most true geniuses — and there aren’t many — do focus on their work to exclusion of everything else. Frequently they are just not very nice people. To cite one example: Steve Jobs was one of our greatest business leaders. His insights and products were insanely great, to use his term. But as a human, he left a lot to be desired. And to cite another example: I don’t think Jesus worried much about leading an integrated, balanced life. He sacrificed everything to his work, including himself.
5
David Brooks article proceeds through a series of false equivalencies. Touching upon Rodin and Rilke, he mixes up focus and solipsism. Focus is necessary to carry through all creative production in the arts or business; focus is discipline experienced in the moment. Solipsism like that cultivated by Rodin and Rilke over 100 years ago did indeed cause them to act like jerks, leaving a trail of abandoned spouses, lovers and children, and in the case of Rilke, no discernible social convictions beyond a love of the aristocracy and a sentimentalizing of Russian peasants. Focus, on the other hand, is what is found in Samuel Beckett.
Rilke's magnificent Duino Elegies (1912-22) enact the limits of solipsism, lamenting how our consciousness prevents us from entering pure existence -- for him even warm-blooded animals display "a great sadness" -- and seeing the external world mainly as a source of symbols by which to represent the inner world. Finally for Rilke there is joy in looking up at the Stars of the Land of Pain and accepting death. Brilliant, but narrow.
In another false equivalency, Brooks segues from a praise of generalists to his default position that the only thing keeping conservatives and liberals apart is their refusal to be nicer to each other; "There are good people on both sides," as someone remarked recently.
People are different. They have different personality and different styles. It is very difficult to force yourself to be interested in things that are not interesting to you. You may force yourself to study them or practice them, but you will be miserable. On the other hand, it is also difficult for person that tends to interest in a lot of thing to limit himself to one area. Both types could succeed, sticking to their style, providing that they are talented. Success is very often just a luck, to be in the right place and in the right time, or knowing of right people. Universally acknowledge success is relatively rare, and there is no recipe that will guarantee it for your personally. I guess you may just enjoy life as it is, although for some people this is impossible advice. We are all different.
1
Tillie Olsen wrote a book on women artists entitled , “ Silences.”
I keep hoping for a new edition with updated revisions.
1
The conferences Brooks attended, two "very conservative and two "very progressive", were very probably no more "hermetically sealed" than would be a conference of centrists or moderates. I've noticed that people who preach political moderation and centrism are often inflexible and can't see the error of their ways when the opposing arguments they "moderate" are anything but equally deserving.
2
You write: "And I was realizing that while we’re learning to preach a gospel of openness and diversity, we’re mostly not living it. In the realm of public life, many live as monads, within the small circles of one specialty, one code, no greatness."
This fact can be witnessed on the NYT's site every day as posters (readers who post opinions) brutalize anyone at odds with their confirmed mindset on any number of topics. Very closed people.
We are not living diversity; we are living the life of looking for affirmation for our own ridgidity. It's dismaying and immature.
4
I think the point of this column speaks to young people ( and their helicopter parents) who limit effort to one area. In training we obsess about the few superstars but most of the best in a field have much more diverse background. Our kid’s would benefit from knowing this instead of being pushed into ever more selective schools to focus on only one field. Balance and perspective are valuable tools.
"This is a truth feminism has brought into the culture."
That really came out of left field. I wasn't aware that the great people of the European Renaissance were inspired by feminism.
2
There are many things in life that nudge us along in a way that make life worth living. Making a deep dish apple pie with a crust made from scratch is one. Writing a poem and seeing it published is another one.
Thank you again for writing this particular essay.
1
"A tech entrepreneur who is 50 is twice as likely to start a superstar company than one who is 30 . . . . A survey of the fastest-growing tech start-ups found that the average age of the founder was 45."
A simple explanation for these observations is that it's easier for a successful middle-aged person than a successful young adult to attract venture capital, simply because a successful middle-aged person has a longer track-record of success than the successful younger person. With whom would you rather invest your money, all other things being equal?
So of course someone with better financial backing will have a significantly greater chance of creating a "superstar" or fast-growing-startup company than someone with worse financial backing.
Yet Brooks uses the original observations to argue that it's the "broader range of experience" that's decisive. Fail! Brooks also fails when he repeats the "10,000 hour" fallacy.
6
25 years ago, K.D.Laing sang about the "Season of Hollow Soul". I think we are in one. Glenn
1
You say: "Both men [Rodin and Rilke] produced masterworks that millions have treasured. But readers finish Corbett’s book feeling that both men had misspent their lives." I would suggest that you correct that to read: "Both men produced masterworks that millions have treasured. But I finished Corbett’s book feeling that both men had misspent their lives."
It's an important distinction, since you commit the error of thinking that how you view life is the way others should view life. That had you led such a life, you would view yourself as someone who had misspent his life. A failure.
Life is more complicated than that.
Humans, if anything, are about diversity. Some work in groups and some work alone. You cannot say that those who have worked alone have been failures, while only those who work in groups have given us knowledge, progress, art. Those who have chosen to work alone have given us great treasures. It is their choice, not yours, about what kind of life they should lead.
I am so happy that you are David Brooks. You could never have been Rodin.
5
@Logan And neither could you Logan. Was it really necessary to be so negative toward Brooks? And so many are. Why is that? I suspects it's something, a shadow perhaps, behind Brooks's writing. A shadow many are afraid to admit may exist. A shadow who sees and knows it all.
2
@Nightwood---Uh, no, not at all. The point is if you're (Brooks) going to pontificate, don't assume what you offer is valid. For most of his piece, it is not.
3
@Nightwood - And turning this back around, why was it really important for Brooks to be so negative toward Rodin and Rilke? And presuming that he could speak for the "readers" generally? As if he could speak for me - and thousands of others, I suspect.
Brooks was giving his own evaluation of their lives. He should have said so directly, not by dissembling. He should not have invoked the supposed reaction of the "readers." It's really very simple; but if it would make you feel better, let me rephrase my last paragraph with the following:
"I am so happy that you are David Brooks. You are insightful writer whose work I admire; but you have attained your excellence in your own individual way. I cannot praise you highly enough; but you could never have been Rodin. You are different individuals who have achieved greatness by different paths."
Is that better?
2
How many Instagram 'influencers' will be remembered in 10 years? 20 years? 50 years, or longer? Today, we are focused on the wrong achievements.
4
Brooks was fine until he got to the part about being in conservative and liberal conferences and how they were speaking different languages and probably couldn't understand each other. Again he is back to equating the two sides which is a jerk move on his part. If Brooks is accurate in his assessment, the reason the two couldn't understand each other is due to their end goals not being equatable. In general, liberals are looking out for their fellow man and creating a healthy environment for everyone. The conservatives are after winning and dominance and power. One is after seeing what can be done to make the lives of Baltimoreans better while the other wants to point to how inadequate those people are and how superior they are.
But again David prefers not to discuss what is in the heart and actions of conservatives and how that has manifested itself in our times. He prefers the blanket statements that leaves everyone questionable and suspect. No, David, there are some very good people out there who don't wish to hurt others and are trying to make America a better place for all. It doesn't take much to be a jerk - just care about yourself above all. It's much more work to be conscious of your actions and how that effect others, but why bother doing that when you know you are righteous from the start.
8
I have spent the last couple of weeks bemoaning my choices, which have all been about satisfying my curiosity and dabbling in various different fields of my overall discipline. I'll never be as skilled as the competition, where people do specialize and hone their skills.
This article came along at such a necessary time that it seems spooky. I'll have to report back in ten or twenty years about whether generalizing worked for me, but I'm certainly feeling better about it today.
5
Kierkegaard advocated a solitary rather than double minded focus, but not with respect to an activity or object. the purity of heart is to will one thing, which is the good. Taken from James 4:8, the good is the pursuit of truth n our lives. truth to follow God in religious sense but also to live a truthful life in the secular world. How sad it is that our leader and his followers have neither the desire to follow the good, that is a truthful life, nor even the understanding of what truth is. How great it would be if be if we all had that purity of heart, which is the good.
3
"Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood, with his memories in a trunk .....
You would not think to look at him but he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row."
Bob Dylan
2
Brooks continues to search for topics far afield from politics, as he seems desperate to write about anything, save that today's Republican leadership's apparent mission is systematic deconstruction of American Democracy.
8
Who was it who said "Most great men are bad men"? I don't think it was Nietzsche.
1
It was Lord Acton (John Dalberg-Acton) in an 1887 letter who said ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
3
I’ve never found even two people who see the world through the same lens. If the sun didn’t rise the human race would be unable to agree when one should get out of bed.
4
What is "great"? And do we need to strive to be "great," anyway (recall your own column re: living a simple life, a few years ago, Mr. Brooks)? And what is a "jerk"? This is all totally subjective so ... kind of not meaningful. I am just glad this column was not about dear leader (and DB saying he is "great"), which I at first feared it might be from the title (without having seen the subtitle yet).
1
Take for example your columns, David: They have a half life of about 24 hours and in a week they are as dead as your ideas.
4
What is celebrated as greatness, or what is actually great?
Rilke and Rodin are just two of the artist-myth standbys we seem to return to again and again to examine the creative life with the end-goal always to focus on what makes the artist exceptional, special, and different from the rest. There may be quotations from the artists themselves, popular anecdotes about them from the culture, etc., to back up this project, but those are mostly employed to build a fiction. Rodin may have preached work, but what do we really know about what went on in his brain when he was bored, or tired, or hungry?
Brooks here is getting at a simple but essential truth. We are all many things, including creative, boring, engaging, obsessive, light-hearted... keep the list going. That's being human. And then there are the stories we tell about ourselves because we don't want to appear to be some of the things on that list. True greatness, he seems to be arguing, comes in acceptance and truth-telling.
2
Tell it to Mitch McConnell, Mr. Brooks!
7
Brooks is conflating two characteristics, achieving fame and being a jerk. Here he posits a generalized correlation as if they are related. If they had any cause and effect connection, then the bigger the jerk the greater the fame would be easily affirmed. This piece is more like saying that about 14% of the time it rains on Tuesday, so it always rains on Tuesdays.
I would posit that there are many contributing factors to being famous and to being a jerk. Some may be coincidental but not likely determining factors of either one or the other outcome.
Among those factors are the culture and circumstances a person grows up in and works in. I know exceedingly talented people that are not famous because they were not lucky enough to get the big break or were stabbed in the back by a co-worker. I know people whose main talent is the ability to be utterly ruthless rise to high positions by stabbing more talented people in the back. I think both types of people are more a result of the lack of opportunity of positions than any particular personality trait.
Consider this hypothesis: our society/culture/ideologies seem to be more predisposed to waste talent/skills/intellect than any individual characteristic. I would really like to see some truly unbiased work to test if this hypothesis has any real bearing. Opinions and correlations are cheap and often misleading.
2
How would David Brooks know? His vehement defending of President Bush's war in Iraq continued for at least a year after all credibility for the justifications of the invasion had debunked.
Seeing that his self righteous and aggressive ridiculing of anyone who disagreed with him would jeopardize his career, he transformed into a chastened, and ostensibly reasonable thinker. To Brook's credit, he didn't pull a Lee Atwater and wait until his deathbed to apologize for his past, although, he has never to my knowledge recanted any of the destructive policies and justifications of his prior writings.
Do you have to be a jerk to be great? Based on his writings, Brooks has been a first class jerk throughout his career, but will never know even a whiff of the aroma of greatness.
7
@jyalan And yet, you're reading his words in the NYT. Where are you published?
@Matthew Cherry
Would you choose to be deliberately unaware of publicly proferred views just because you might find them absurd?
These stats about an undefined category of "fastest-growing tech startups," not all startups, sound like they're cherry-picked to back up the thesis Brooks started with.
1
Probably the greatest, generalist genius of all, was Leonardo da Vinci. His interests spanned just about everything in the arts and sciences. And people who knew him, said he was a generous, likable person.
And then you had another genius, a prickly, bad tempered Michelangelo.
IMHO, if you're a jerk, you'll probably be one with or without the genius component.
5
Okay, but Rodin was great at sculpture... I like the ideas in this article, they just don't seem that fleshed out...
And, have a splendid workshop!
These men are all sociopaths. Everything you describe is a level of disorder (malignant narcissistic sociopathy) manifest in a male brain. Sociopaths are jerks. Some of them do “great” things, but most of what they do results in “great” harm to individuals and societies. Most of what they do is drive vent by impulses and based on a bottomless need for power, dominance, money, game, control and fame.
1
How can you be great if you're a jerk? Why do we measure greatness so narrowly, without taking the "whole person" into account?
1
@rahul
Well, I see what you're saying, it's true, not a lot of our "greats" were/are great human beings.
@rahul
How about Michael Jackson or Bill Cosby or Charlie Rose? All great at what they did. And turned out to be jerks in many ways.
1
What this article misses is the reason that these single-minded individuals chose the lives they did. What childhood wounding made them choose art and work above all else? Why did they forgo intimacy and connectivity with other people and the world around them? There has to be a secondary gain there. People choose the lives they lead for many reasons - both conscious and unconscious. It would be interesting to dig deeper.
3
Doesn't a push towards general-ism undo just about all of the established coherence of capitalist economic theory (i.e. that specialization is the natural outgrowth of diversification over time and space)?
Good piece. I have always felt that intellectual self limitation is practiced by people that can't accept how complex and diverse the real world is. I am okay knowing there is no simple "right" way forward, and that I don't know or understand everything. Many people are not.
2
@James Fear
"I am okay knowing there is no simple "right" way forward, and that I don't know or understand everything. Many people are not."
And that latter group includes the people who gave us electricity. Hooray for them!
There are ascetics and hermits who go about their sacrifices with glum, sour demeanors and there are those who go about their austerities with a look of gladness and joy.
There are musical geniuses who treat others with indifference or cruelty and some who are kind and a pleasure to be around. (See Scorsese's film "Rolling Thunder Review" about Bob Dylan.)
In other words, there are lots of different people and lots of different ways those people express themselves.
R. W. Emerson wrote that a person should try to live their life as if it were a well constructed poem. In other words, consciously with a purpose and a deep awareness of the now.
David Brooks seems to be following the lead of Karl Marx lately. Remembering that he said about philosophy: "It's a living."
2
There is a nomadic quality to monads. Wandering away from home into a solitude that longs for home.
We created a motto for our hermitage:
"Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone;
Stepping aside to make room for Another."
While looking toward intimacy with all things, all beings -- there is a non-attachment that is called for which some mistake for detachment. They're not the same thing.
1
I have known a few great people who are not jerks, and many jerks who are not great.
Great to be creative, think different, have many interests. It's called intellectual curiosity, and produces innovation: new ideas, new technology, great art.
On the other hand, pluralistic life does not mean that we should embrace values and ideas that we find reprehensible, morally, ethically and intellectually. I have friends who are liberal Republicans; we disagree about how to create a healthy economy.
I don't have friends who think that women's reproductive rights should be curtailed, climate change is a ruse, or those who cannot afford health care were "bad planners" and should be left to die. (No, I'm not making this up; an attorney at a law firm for which I worked said this. He also argued that the severely disabled should be allowed to die, because that caring for such people was a waste of public resources. This is what they don't say in public, people.)
So yes, I hope that I am creative, productive, imaginative, curious and smart. But no, I'm not going to a right wing think tank conference, no thank you. Apples and oranges, David!
4
“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
― Gustave Flaubert
5
In my past 17 years of working, I’ve learned that most successful people in business, industry and Government have the extroverted personality and are assertive, with a good degree of clever and recallable humor mixed in. And they can remember everything and parrot out all the information from a meeting or encounter, while forecasting some schedule impact. That’s mostly it in a nutshell. It’s not really something you can change or obtain in college or your early working life..you either grow up in an environment with those traits around you while absorbing them or don’t (or otherwise you are able to fake it to make it). And those people have mostly given up on doing the physical work that got them there in the first place, and are now in a position to be human capital managers. In order to be a human manager, you need to be able to verbally prod (aka motivate without reward) your employees into doing their job on your behalf to meet the organizational objectives. So yes, you need to be somewhat of a jerk to be successful.
2
OFTEN I LEARN MORE From others whose points of view differ from mine, than from those who have similar visions. When I was in college in the 60s, I heard the refrain, focus on one thing. But I never did. In high school I focused on the academic curriculum there, while in Hebrew high school I focused on that material. I also studied classical music. In college, I wandered from premed, to languages, to English, to writing, to linguistics. In grad school, I wandered from Linguistics to Counseling to Special Education, to Bilingual Education, to Psychology, to Psychoanalysis, to family therapy. I continue to delight in exploring new things, such as theoretical physics, political commentary, composing, cooking and swimming. True, I'm not much of a social butterfly. But I thrive on learning from what others have to offer. The monomaniacal life never suited me.
2
@John Jones I wish I knew people like you. Stay happy.
2
To me the greatest genius, and the truest artist is the one who upon completion of that which may take a lifetime to complete, opens it so that god may look upon it, then throws it in the fireplace.
This is another one of those days when The Times' Op-Eds here make me think I've opened The Onion by mistake.
5
Thank you for the quotation from William Blake, who embodies for me a good life, though he worried greatly about whether his work would be remembered and appreciated or die with him. Blake was a great rambler and walker, who in company sang some of his lyrics. He cared deeply about injustice and occasionally took risks to right them.
Looking at the Blake Archives, it is astounding how much work he created, both as a commercial printer and as an aggressively original artist. But he created these works with his wife, Catherine, to whom he was married for 45 years. Theirs was a great partnership and recent scholarship has upended the notion that she was a either a saintly figure who embodied the Angel of the House ideal of women that would rise in the Victorian Age or a house maid with no agency of her own.
And like most of us, the was both sometimes a jerk and sometimes a lovely, warm man who had many friends and admirers, and many who thought he was mad in his stubborn adherence to his own vision. Two hundred years later, he is still an inspiration.
2
@Wanda
William Blake was one of the great artists and poets of all time. Greatly underestimated even today except by those artists who found him to be an inspiration and genius and realized his genius.
I could write more but it's better to view his work and read him. He was the genius, not I.
4
Life is hard and then you die. Enjoy it for what it is.
2
Nobody has to be a jerk. Ever.
Jerks are jerks because they never learned, or are incapable of learning how else to deal appropriately, lovingly, with others. And nobody intervened in time to keep the condition from becoming permanent.
Because being a jerk makes most jerks feel bad or they fail to get what they want, they take their bad feelings out on others. They excuse their behavior by hiding behind self-perceived genius or hard work, or long hours, or other myths they make up and believe about themselves.
Jerks are usually extraordinarily dumb. Viz your president, Mr. Brooks: The biggest jerk in the history of mankind in the entire universe and beyond.
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No, just a sociopath.
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Of course this jerk would encourage broad, thin understanding of many skills or pursuits over deep devotion to one alone.
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No, you can be both great and not a jerk. I really miss Obama. He seemed like just a very very nice man. And he was extremely thoughtful, intelligent, worked toward the common good and will be remembered therefore as "great".
Now Trump is of course different. Everyone, including most members of his own party and everyone who had dealings with him here in New York previously remembers him poorly. His own Secretary of State called him a moron. So, a jerk. Will he be remembered as a "great" president? QED, my friends - QED.
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@Tom
Trump is the anti-Obama in ways too numerous to do justice to.
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Odd, the article barely addresses the question in the title. It talks about single focus but that is not the same as being a jerk. One can have a single professional interest and still treat people kindly.
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"Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Be Great?"
Nope. Sister Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther king Jr, are just a few David. These and many, many others are great, humble people out to help mankind.
Generalists can be jerks, too.
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You have to be a jerk to be noticed.
You have to be a jerk to get reluctant people to do your bidding.
You have to be a jerk to impress stupid VCs
You don't need to be a jerk to be great.
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I submit that anyone who consistantly acts like a jerk is not a great person by definition. One may be a great artist, musician, doctor -- whatever, but if they act like a jerk they are not great people. I remember Rafael Nadal's uncle's remark: it is important he becomes a great tennis player, it is more important he becomes a great man.
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David Brooks is to philosophy what Thomas Kinkade was to painting. In a word: hokey. Hopelessly mundane but given to sweeping, groundless pronouncements. How else to explain a remark like “. . . living a great life is more important than producing great work”?
The irony is that the very words Mr. Brooks uses bear the indelible mark of one of the great jerks of history, William the Conqueror. As does the land in which he resides, “discovered” by that archfiend Columbus.
There’s no need to celebrate such jerks — they usually contrive to do that for themselves. But let’s not denigrate them either.
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"In the realm of public life, many live as monads, within the small circles of one specialty, one code, no greatness."
Such a life in an incubator of hate. It is no wonder our politics are poisonous. How many of us read the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to open our minds?
We would get along better if we widened our horizons. Towards this end maybe the N.Y. Times could publish a Wall Street Journal editorial and visa versa.
That some great artists create out of deep personal void is a point made much more eloquently, I think, by the late great Father Lee:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/obituaries/father-owen-lee-dead.html
David, please go back to your faintly irritating pseudoconservative bromides. Columns like this one, to quote Dorothy Parker, make this reader want to fwow up.
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We want achievements in all fields to have admirable creators. In this way, we can attribute greatness to great character. Or put another way, we want to say that nothing good comes from poor character.
Alas, achievement and character are not so strongly coupled. At times it seems you have to be a jerk to be even noticed! But some of the most creative people are skilled at listening, processing, and recombining to produce something new and yet recognizable. And often times, these listeners are the admirable types we want to see.
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I guess you have to be a jerk to be "great" in the competitive world of capitalism.
You either worship the bottom line or give an edge to your competition. There is no place for "nice guys" like environmentalists or democratic socialists. Or even anti-nuclear deals to avoid yet another war.
No, we must live in the world our "great" jerks have made.
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About political conferences being "so hermetically sealed."
It's a false equivalence to hold up the right wing and the left wing right now. The parties are not at opposite ends of a healthy political spectrum. The right wing has left the spectrum completely. It's "hermetically sealed" existence is enabling a racist bigot. The real left/right spectrum is probably embodied in the left wing political conference with Klobuchar's stance on the right and Sander's more liberal stance on left.
My point: one side, the right-wing Trumpian Republican, is hermetically sealed in dysfunctional, highly inappropriate and offensive rhetoric and ideology. The left now encompasses the functional, healthy political spectrum -- only hermetically sealed form bigotry, trickle-down, oligarchy.
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David Brooks does an excellent job trying to explain to his readers what the good life consists of. It’s an interesting endeavor but it’s pointless. For most people, the ability to choose the good life or any good life is severely constrained because of economic and social conditions which we are largely powerless to change or improve. Any discussion of the good life must include changing the existing structures that make consideration of the good life even possible in the first place. David Brooks should spend more time using his wide medium to confronting the systems of inequality and oppression that make any good life all but impossible.
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After a 30-year career working as a lawyer and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I'd say that being a jerk can help but is not essential to achieving greatness in business. I would say it's probably the same for other fields of endeavor -- the arts, sports, politics.
Another thing that can help but is not essential is a distorted view of reality. Steve Jobs was known for being a jerk and for having a "reality distortion field".
Many people think that being somewhere on the autism spectrum helps too. I won't name any names, but I could.
The point is that there is a spectrum of all traits like this and we humans are complex. We can't measure jerkiness and we can't measure greatness.
I've found that instead of being reductive and drawing a lot of conclusions by analyzing people's lives it's better to let complexity be complex. Does it really add to our enjoyment of great art, for example, by analyzing it to death?
So, David Brooks, tone down your criticisms of people like Donald Trump. You know little about the man, yet you pretend to know his every feeling and motivation. Accept that you don't.
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As Joseph Campbell put it, "Follow your bliss." Judging from their biographies, Henry James and Marcel Proust lived fulfilling lives with many friends and thry produced masterpieces. Rodin and Rilke, like Frank Sinatra, did it their way.
Amen. I was recently at a pretty liberal gathering and someone asked if anyone had ever watched a full hour of Fox News prime time. A groan went across the room of 300 or so attendees and maybe five people raised their hands. I’m sure it’s the same at gatherings of conservatives. We have to listen to each other, even if we don’t like what we are hearing. It will make us all better citizens.
Recognize that the ability to interpenetrate, hold contradictions, stay open minded, learn from setbacks, and hold one's self through pain-- these skills are taught and modeled in the primary attachment relationships of early life. How we view "the other."
How we are trained to orient towards life -- which can either be "in the moment, curious and self loving" or "anxious, horribilizing, and self-hating"-- is 100% due to how we are treated and viewed by our mother (or mother substitute). Without love and encouragement, we will tend towards blame, demonization, off-loading flaws onto others via projection (DJT).
This is a right-left schism because right wing attitudes and policies play into a negative/punitive/suspicious orientation to life: which can be "bootstraps"-- at best, but s "throw away the key" at worst.
A negative/suspicious mindset means the right attributes the inequality of blacks to something inherent and substandard about black people, rather than see it as an indictment of the system of entrenched racism and a trauma legacy imposed on them by white people.
Narcissistically, they cannot see themselves in a negative light. They need scapegoats.
The left more often thinks, "there but for grace go I"... That a person who was horribly hurt might well hurt others, and still needs healing. That every kid deserves to be backed, nurtured, loved, and provided with stability and opportunity.
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I don't believe there is always a single "correct" answer to a question. Brooks is talking about something that has no "correct" answer. Wagner went one way, Yo Yo Ma another. The the world may be both better and worse for it at the same time.
If you hold yourself to the views and standards of others, you'll likely never be great at anything. If you don't hold yourself to the views and standards of others, you'll be perceived as a jerk by many.
As an example of this there is very well known micro-quote from Einstein on the topic of quantum mechanics referring to it as 'spooky action at a distance.' What people don't know is the context. This was not an observation but a sardonic mocking of the notions put forth by other great minds on the topic.
However, I don't think he was being a jerk nor would Bohr have taken it as an insult. He was simply expressing his views concisely without wasting time with social niceties. Bohr, for his part, would obviously have been aware of this and the debate would continue normally.
But for a society that increasingly clings onto presentation over substance, those who achieve great things can often seem to be jerks. But they aren't.
there are plenty of geniuses who are not jerks.
there are plenty of jerks who are not geniuses.
I don't see the 2 things as being correlated. But agree that broadening experiences makes for more well-rounded people.
As far as bridging the political divide, let's start with agreeing on what constitutes lying and being humane to humans.
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“Certainty is only possible when we know little. With knowledge doubt increases” Goethe
I appreciate the thoughts here, but lately I am overwhelmed by how frequently Brooks articulates truths that are obvious to women (especially mothers) and have been for a very long time... (Felt this around all his second mountain articles too.) These simple fundamental truths of women's lives are like a thunderclap to men, apparently. Perhaps these ideas can only touch men when expressed by a man, though that makes me sad...
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@Katie Taber Don't extrapolate the Brooks experience to "men" or even most men. What is simply real life for most of us routinely hits Brooks like a thunderclap. We mortals can only marvel.
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The piece reminds me why college students were once encouraged to study liberal arts for a well rounded education to prepare for life. Does anyone do that anymore?
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Do you "have" to be? No, but it helps in most areas of life. If you're willing to subordinate the feelings of everyone around you to your own, then you'll get a lot farther in life, especially economically and romantically. Sure, it's "possible" if you don't, but it's far easier for those who do.
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This assumes that all great artists are men.
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Wisdom is simply expertise in multiple domains. Making extended connections in multiple domains is genius. Doing all of this while being kind is greatness.
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Maybe not a "jerk" but it probably does take certain personality types or traits to pursue and achieve so-called "greatness" during a lifetime or posthumously.
But most of us are average personalities and to us, personal, self-defined "success" is what we strive for. It can mean many different things to people - emotional happiness, financial gain, professional influence, etc.
My major professor in graduate school had Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote about success taped to the wall of our lab. It made a huge impression on me as a 20-something and has guided my life. Not only do I feel successful, I've been called a "great" mom by my sons. IMHO no better endorsement exists.
“What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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This column helps build a case for the value of a liberal arts education. That value lies in exposing students to multiple ways of understanding and experiencing the world, in teaching them that true knowledge and understanding can only be developed by transcending boundaries. It's not "thinking outside the box," it's rejecting boxes in the first place.
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David,
You confused "great" with "successful by conventional definitions of professional achievement."
There are many ways to be great, and I'd argue that a vast number of people live "great" lives: dedicated teachers, social workers, volunteers, and so on. These people may be anonymous to most, but to the lives they touch, they are undoubtedly great.
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Brooks seems unaware that there is another book by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk entitled You Must Change Your Life (2009, English 2013) that also uses Rilke's quote as its basis, but in this case the change that is required must come from the realization of the coming global catastrophe. It is all well and good to be a well rounded gentle soul, but that will not stop the destruction of our planet.
2
This a column about artists, but an example from business is worth considering. Milton S. Hershey and Fred C. Mars, both built a major candy company. But Hershey was loved by all and built a lasting legacy of Hershey PA (a model town) and Milton Hershey School (school for orphan boys), while Mars was despised by all and left his company to his sons. Hershey gave away all his money before he died and Mars died extremely rich. What is the value of a life well lived?
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It's hard to be great. I'd settle for adequate.
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Great essay, but what is the point? I wonder, do creative people (Rodin, Rilke or other jerks) have choice. The underline of the essay’s point is that people are the same; therefore, there is the better way to achieve success. People has unique talent and born or acquired personality, and live in different environment. To devote their entire life to one thing, or live a "normal life" still succeed in certain fields, can’t be taught, it just happen. I see many people wasted their talent, if they can focus and devote their time in one filed, they could achieve greater success. To many, create amazing work is great life.
1
Mr. Brooks,
Thank you for writing about a subject other than politics, and more specifically about how bad Trump is. It's refreshing to see, and your current article is interesting. I enjoy your insight.
Best,
Doug
1
It strikes me that the world of higher education (and many parents) are pushing the importance of knowing exactly what you want to major in before you start college and concentrating hard on that major, which is preferably technology, business, accounting, pre-med or pre-law. The concept of a liberal education and the promotion of exploration is getting lost....and this will be a huge loss to the well-being of individuals and society as a whole.
2
Most creative artists lead messy lives - they need new loves to get them going.
Read up on Picasso. Or Gauguin
We should scuttle the idea that high achievers don't have to behave. We can afford to do without those types now. They cause much of the unhappiness in the world. They're not worth it.
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The old dicho (saying) is that Americans live to work, while Mexicans work to live. This is possibly one of the many reasons that life is much more pleasant and relaxed in Mexico than in the busy, harried, and divided United States. My personal life strategy has been to work in the United
States (as little as possible) and spend my money in warm, cheap countries where it stretches much further. I probably will not be remembered for notable accomplishments, but then how many of us are? And the most memorable are often decidedly unpleasant.
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You make a good and important point. What makes a city great, and greatness need not be a synonym for mere size, is the stimulation that comes from constant immersion in diversity. One inhabits multiple worlds at nearly all times. NYC derives much of its creativity from its diversity, but a place need not be heavily populated to be diverse. That phenomenon explains why college and university towns are the choice for retirement for some, not just their diversity but also their constant stimulation. Time to re-read and contemplate Aristotle's "Politics".
1
We are caught between a world of interest and imagined need, neither mutually exclusive and both coalescing; however, often without recognition as the mind continues without us. The conundrum is ego satisfaction, wavering between self-gratification and control or surrendering to ignominy and ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Searches for meaning continue while way stations along the journey offer pause for second guessing.
1
Aristotle believed that repetition was important for instilling the idea of habit formation, which lead to better thinking and improved ability to follow through on projects without worry of success. He believed that repetition lead to a well rounded understanding of a topic.
However, Aristotle also believed that a round and balanced development in a wide variety of topics ranging from physical education, music, debating, science, philosophy, and free play time all helped to foster growth of an equally formed body, mind, and soul. Aristotle taught balance and moderation in all things.
Sounds like a philosophy that leads to thoughtful insight in a reduced stress environment.
1
Do you have to be a jerk to be great? Or put another way, is it true, as the great (but jerky) Leo Durocher is reputed to have said, that "nice guys finish last"? Not necessarily. But we all know plenty of people who got ahead by cheating or treating others like dirt.
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Yeah but if you are an aggressive white male with limited moral compunctions. Well the world is still yours to use and apparently destroy. So the good still try to hold things together while the self aggrandizing live quite well indeed. Women need to stop being so nice and caring and make men earn every thing we do for them from praising them to raising their offspring. I doubt most will ever really listen to what women have to say. Or black folk for that matter. Rep Cummings does not seem to get any respect. Nor Rep Pelosi. No matter how long or hard and against what odds they have struggled. Humility is fine, humiliation is NOT the same thing.
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Just....Wow!
I wonder how George Gershwin, a pretty "genius" composer, I like to think, considering the body/diversity of his work. would have reacted to this column, when asked if he felt "stunted." He also played a mean game of tennis and was a prolific painter.
Of course, you'd have to drag him away from the piano at the party, playing for everyone gathered around it, while having a heck of a good time. Ira, not so much.
Some achievers like being left alone and others get nourishment from being a part of a larger whole. Some are Thoreau types and others are Gershwins. Producing art is a solitary act but the inspiration for it can come from anywhere, any time, and anyhow.
As for the women: Yup!
1
Of course you don't need to be a jerk to be great. Jerks tell themselves that's what they're doing to self-justify the behavior they know is terrible, and often get a hype-machine going about them.
For example, a lot of people know Steve Jobs was a total jerk who tried to disavow his first daughter, and also think he was a great man who built Apple Computer. But he wasn't even close to the only reason Apple Computer was successful, and quite probably not even the main reason: The main reason Apple was the innovator it was had to do with the other Steve of Apple, Steve Wozniak. And Wozniak wasn't (and isn't) a jerk at all, he's always been someone who cares deeply about the joy of the people around him.
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@Dave I was there, at Apple, at the time. And I can assure you that you are spot-on. And it's no secret among my fellow alums.
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Dave, I speak as someone who has lived and worked as a lawyer and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for 30 years. I don't see how you can credit Steve Wozniak for Apple's success.
Sure, he contributed. But his contribution was technical, and the important contribution is not technical but executive.
There are plenty of people with ideas. Few people can execute at a high level like Steve Jobs did.
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@Dave
Absolutely correct. Steve Jobs simply stood on the shoulders of Steve Wozniak and took all the credit. This is well known and a common story of real geniuses like Wozniak- it is the story of wall street and hedge fund billionaires.
31
Speaking of women unable to live as monads, Mr Brooks, take the women Camille Claudel and Lou-Andreas Salome from the respective lives of Rodin and Rilke, and R & R's suddenly more rest & relaxation than rock & roll. Each had their amazing Lee Krasner moments without which R & R are probably reduced to the wrecks Ms Krasner had tried to keep husband Jackson Pollock from crashing.
David, one of those hermetically sealed worlds is a netherworld of fallacy, bigotry and hate. It has presided over almost the entirety of our recessions over the post WWII period since Ike. It worships a past president that extolled the virtues of greed, and, now, a president who despairs that "no-one wants to hurt each other anymore" ...
Care to guess which party this is?
1
I wish people would stop repeating that one has to spend 10,000 hours achieving excellence in any endeavor. It's an assertion, not a fact, and a journalistic cliché.
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DF Wallace said it best and succinctly, but it's interesting how his point is easily forgotten given the default social currency of the world seems to be achievement: "There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship...Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings."
Sad but true, how we tend to fall into a routine of familiarity...to the exclusion of this wide and diverse world...to our loss. Those that travek to distant lands know the difference, as they have to adapt to enjoy themselves and remain humble...for the little they know. And speaking of stifling our lives by full dedication, and hard work, to our 'specialty', we fail to see the whole, and the need to get involved in our community and in social intercourse; and in politics, the art of the possible. And speaking of politics, we fall in the trap of not wanting to get involved because 'politics' is dirty (if dirty, it is 'politicking', not politics), and arrogantly want to keep our hands clean; this is precisely what led to a vulgar liar and demagogue convince misinformed people to elect him...while a majority abstained, hence, being led to the slaughterhouse...by their noses. But I digress. Making a living by having a specialty is O.K., provided we care to look after each other...by applying the Golden Rule. I bet you that if the 'geniuses' you mentioned (Rodin, Rilke) could redo their lives, they would follow your advice, share their humanity and enjoy whatever life has to offer as fully integrated social beings.
How I wish the media would do this with the government workers who are creating policy and making a difference vs having Trumps every whim as headline, maybe the media needs to take your advice.
1
Freedom is the ability to define your own success and sources of happiness. To some, it is focus on just one thing and to others its pluralism. To some it is living a very social and community focused life where as others prefer more solitude and contemplation.
Lets stop defining these things for others.
1
We live in a society that values wealth above all else. And these days, it does not even matter how you attained your wealth. But, I would posit that wealth has nothing to do with greatness. And that the only thing that matters is how you relate to the world and if you innovate for the betterment of all. Not complex ideas, but a very challenging way to live a life in our society this way.
1
While innovation is not necessary for art or science, it certainly helps. But innovation almost never arises from mono-focus expertise. Instead it occurs when ideas from two or more different disciplines bang together in an unlikely way (a lovely example being the Argentine auto mechanic who, after observing a tool for uncorking a wine bottle, created a birth delivery device that has saved the lives of thousands of mothers and their babies). Business folks, artists, and scientists would do well to include diverse knowledge sets the next time they collect a group of experts to solve a difficult problem or create masterful new work.
I once wrote a book. It was lacking in character development among other things. I realized that to write well, to do what I wanted to do, I would have to completely immerse myself in the effort, to essential live in the book, and become part of it while I was writing. Others may have the talent and ability to write well without making that level of commitment, but I do not. Perhaps that is the difference between being genius and being ordinary.
1
Brilliant thoughts, and deeply affecting.
I would only step up to defend both Rilke and Rodin on the grounds that their poetry and sculpture still have much to offer us. Although I prefer Rilke translated by Robert Bly, which is to say I prefer Robert Bly approximating Rilke, I like much of what Rodin created. Never mind that he developed a kind of factory system like Warhol’s. Never mind the two men’s shared obsession with focus.
Years ago I viewed an exhibit of human hands Rodin had cast, hands in a pluralistic orgy of postures, stretches, and reaches. Since I couldn’t touch them without being cast out of the museum, I tried to force my own hand into the same posture as the hands he had produced. What I learned was invaluable to me, a lesson about the relationship of soul to body, spirit to hand. I also learned much about how a blind man might “see” by touching. Moreover, I saw how Rodin found a vast world in a small part of a man. In the human hand is a whole universe. These are insights I would never give up on the grounds that Rodin didn’t live more liberally.
Mr. Brooks’ observation also applies to ideologues. One cannot live a rich and pluralistic life while embracing any ideology. One cannot say, “I am A Conservative” and “My enemy is A Liberal,” or visa versa, and lead a rich and pluralistic life. Conferences like the ones he describes are by intention narrowly focused by ideology. Like blinders on a horse, is ideology.
In an opinion column such as this, it's impossible to share one's every thought on a topic. So I give David Brooks the benefit of the doubt that he doesn't conflate genius, greatness and excellence. His point seems to me to be crystal clear, and well worthy of consideration by any of us who have chastised ourselves for making choices that seem to sacrifice genius, greatness and/or excellence for living a whole-hearted life. The living monuments to the genius of mothers are their generous, kind and other-centered grown children. The legacies of greatness of EMTs and first responders are literally lives saved. The excellence of a life is measured not by dying with the most celebrity, toys or cash, but by the living memories of those who have been touched by kindness, healed by forgiveness, and transformed by love. The evidence for these won't be found in museums or libraries, but in a far better world left behind. Thanks, David, for the reminder.
3
Maybe it's" better" to be a generalist than a specialist. But it's not relevant. When you are obsessed, you are obsessed. It doesn't make any sense to tell the rare person who only wants to sculpt to play tennis or go swimming. It's not even a problem. There are so few people that love to sculpt. When someone loves to play tennis they only want to be as good as they can be and it's futile to tell them to sculpt a little bit.Tennis, in and of itself, means almost nothing. It's right up there with throwing a basketball into a hoop. Probably the world makes more sense if everyone stays within the same parameters as Brooks illustrates, but fortunately that's not going to happen anytime soon.
1
In short, specialization is for insects, not humans.
I like to compare 2 brothers. Both played professional baseball at the highest level. One is renowned across America, even in song, married the most beautiful woman in the world, divorced her, & spent most of his life trying to recapture his glory. His ego demanded that he always be introduced as "the Greatest Living Ballplayer" and yet, he was a sad, unfulfilled man till the day he died.
His brother, OTOH, was also a superb ball-player, batted .300 10 years in a row, was a great fielder and married happily till death did them part. He built a thriving business, had a GREAT friendship with his teammates, and was even the subject of a book by David Halberstam. Dom DiMaggio is NOT in the Hall of Fame, yet he probably should be as he was truly a great player. But more importantly, his life was a model of how life should be lived: Friends, family, work, satisfaction. Even the great (and domineering) Ted Williams deferred to Dom and especially Dom's wife.
Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee Clipper, Joltin' Joe, lived a much sadder life, despite the glitz. He wanted to sue Simon&Garfunkel for the line "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? " never understanding it was a COMPLEMENT! As he neared death he said "At last I'll get to see Marilyn again." What a sad commentary on, in MY humble opinion, a squandered life after baseball.
PS: A Yankees fan, not a Red Sox fan.
2
In the movie "Beware of Ginger Baker", Johnny Rotten says words to the effect that if the psychopathic violent tendencies Baker all too frequently displayed were what it took for him to be the mold breaking rock and roll drummer that he undoubtedly was, then who was he, Johnny Rotten, to question it. Ginger Baker was not a happy man and yet while many of us average Joe's lead contented lives buoyed by quotidian pleasures of family, friends etc., isn't there always a side of us that wants or wanted to be exceptional, to be a star? In some respects the star is part and parcel of the American dream, the myth that supports and justifies the whole structure of inequality. And to the extent that this is so, isn't this one of Mr. Brooks's most un-American Op-Eds!....
........ and I agree with it. We need to see a shift from the cult of the individual towards one of social interaction, responsibility and recognized common interest, which unfortunately may be rendered less likely by our obsession with our little screens, the phubbing culture.
The pluralistic life, by all means. But the political turn at the end implies that the hermetic divide between right and left is the result of too much focus. It's not. One side set up it's own media empire to enable conservatives to avoid ever having to hear competing viewpoints, and today brands the mainstream media as "enemies of the people" who only purvey "fake news." The conservative movement invested the enormous sums of money and energy necessary to wall off its followers from reality, because it knows, as Stephen Colbert said, that the truth has a well-known liberal bias. Once one starts widening one's perspective about, say, climate change, gun violence, health care, economics, and other topics, today's conservative ideology pretty much falls apart. Pluralism and conservatism don't mix.
2
It's interesting to me how someone who has never created a great work of art (or anything else for that matter) can tell others how it is done. Thanks a lot, David.
1
I recently saw Ron Howard's documentary on Pavarotti. As a young man, Luciano was focused on improving his technique. But once he mastered his repertoire, he focused more on enjoying life. You could say he was more Zorba than Zorba, he loved life so. As you watch him age through his performances, you see how he sang with more and more emotion and humanity. As a young man, he mastered skill. But as an older man, he used that skill to convey great humanity. This is what took him from mere talent to genius. Skill, after all, was just the subtext. It is what he did with that skill wowed the world.
Many creative people are OCD, their obsession fuels their genius. When you spoke of a conservative group and a liberal group it reminded me of how we are intentionally divided into these groups. I believe most people are a little bit of both in one degree or another. The politics of intentionally dividing people into their side and encouraging them to hate and demonize the other side stifles creativity and entrenches people into supporting things they don’t believe in. The first step to creativity and leading a more fulfilling life is to avoid any kind of political gathering that is classified liberal or conservative.
Mr.Brooks I respect your intelligence and outlook. BUT Rod Schoonover’s revelations in this newspaper today overshadows your opinion and that of everyone else. The shocking reality Dr. Shoonover reveals about the supression of his findings and conclusions on climate change and national security by Trump is such a terrifying occurrence that it places all other matters on the back burner. So, if the world is going to allow Trump’s tactics to continue, then the human race will disappear and Auguste Rodin’s sculptures will have noone left to admire them.
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I agree with Brook's basic premise that a monomaniacal pursuit in any type of endeavor is not necessary for excellence and success.
But then he jumps to broad sweeping conclusion about being progressive or conservative is too live to narrow a life. after attending four conferences.
I fail to see the logic in that.
There are progressives and conservatives that have very wide ranging interests. I use myself as an example.
Definition of a good life: when you die someone cries. This comes from the old saying "may his/her memory be a blessing." That's all that really matters.
2
Engineers and scientists tend to be monads. I was one once. I didn't make connections: I avoided new friends. I avoided fights, though, once initiate I was, am a fierce, tactically-aware opponent --- I usually won and still do. I avoided even relationships with women because I thought them a waste of time. I think you grow out of it.
Still, I feel most comfortable solving a problem and being left alone.
One advantage of having been a teacher in a public school is that I encountered many different kinds of poeple, not only the students, but also their parents, and my colleagues.
But it took me a while to realise what a gift this was.
3
There are many artists and writers who have led, stable, even monotonous lives. The poet, Wallace Stevens, for instance, worked in an insurance firm. It is our popular media and entertainment industry that selects for the unstable, or, as David Brooks puts it, "jerk," artist because that concept sells better. The are just as many, if not more, examples of artists who are not self absorbed. http://www.wallacestevensbiography.com/
97
Having spent a career dealing with artists, in particular visual ones, I observed a very unique type of ego, one that derives from the gall required to be able to ask incredibly large amounts of money relative to most people's disposable income for what is essentially of no functional value whatsoever. It takes a certain monomaniacal conviction to do it.
5
@Roger C Seems like a cynical view of it all. "Functional value" is not all there is to life. Art, music and other forms of "beauty are other important parts of a well-lived life, one of balance and richness.
4
@Michael DeHart: True, but does anyone really need a steel bunny for $90 million?
3
The single-focused homogeneous life leads to knowledge, while the balanced pluralistic life leads to wisdom.
(Repeating this comment as earlier one did not seem to post.)
3
Einstein fiddled to keep from burning out.
3
So, in your learned opinion, Mr. Brooks, both Rodin and Rilke were jerks.
The Thinker is still one of Rodin's most mentioned works of art, displayed in Washington's museums and other world class ones, while we have a head of the government to whom is completely unable to think. His second most famous work is The Kiss, while the modern version would show Trump embracing Putin and giving him a kiss.
And while at it, maybe you should translate Rainer Maria Rilke's poem Der Panther from German to English. Rilke's panther was walking in circles inside a cage that seemed to have a thousand bars for him, while those in cages at the Southern Boarder can't even walk and sleep while standing.
2
David, you could say that all humanity is born into neurosis and the Rodins and Rilkes are pointing the way out.
They pointed out the way for us to overcome the blather we are born into and the failures of the symbolic order our parents lived in. They recognized that you need to create signifiers of excellence as examples to those who want the ability to focus i.e., know what they want, but have not discovered yet how to do the 10,000 hours but might be looking for inspiration to try.
The pain of their victims does not forgive the behavior but it did bring into focus the phony idea of artistic license which has subsequently be whole heartedly discredited.
1
Fred Rogers wasn't a jerk. He was great.
8
"Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Be Great?"
No, Mr. Brooks. Ambitious ones become jerks only when they become convinced that they have absolutely no chance of becoming great.
4
Mr. Brooks, wake up and smell the bacon: You know many of the most important people in Washington. Start talking to them about how stupid and dangerous all of this stuff is. It in NOT a GAME!
Mr. Brooks provides numerous examples of "highly accompished" men who have multiple interestgs OF THEIR OWN. I see no examples of "highly accomplished" men who did the housework, cooked meals, put the kids to bed each night, led Scout troops and coached Little League teams. The point that "highly accomplished" are highly "self oriented" remains unchallenged by the article, I think. Playing more than one musical instrument is very different than putting your musical instrument aside to change a diaper.
6
I've had three distinct careers, lived in four different regions of the country, in big cities and small towns, learned five different languages (badly), traveled across the US and around the world, read high falutin books, watch trash TV, love hot dogs and donuts as much as cioppino, enjoy listening to Eminem, the Distillers and Randy Travis as much as Mozart, Keith Jarrett and Ravi Shankar and today work with inventors with product ideas in fields ranging from medicine, environment and high tech to silly gadgets.
My life is good. I'm happy. But I ain't famous. As my mother told me growing up:
Mit eyn tokhes ken mit nit tanzen af alle khasenses: with one butt you can't dance at all of the weddings.
But I keep trying to.
225
@Mad Moderate
Your mother was very wise, indeed.
18
@Mad Moderate, I read David Brooks(& much of the NYT) as much for the comments as the content. I learn so much from commenters.
Your comment is not only thoughtful & intuitive but, perhaps the most beautiful one I've read.
Thank you for the smile!
29
@Mad Moderate;
“indeed everybody wants to be a wow,
But, not everybody knows exactly how....”
Ogden Nash
20
A single minded focus does not make a person a jerk. Poor choice of title!
2
Jerks often rise to greatness, but as they rise to their jerkish greatness, they do so only because those they harm (by being jerks) fail to stand up to them and their jerkishness.
One can be great and a jerk. Or one can be great and not a jerk. The trick is, to be a jerk, and chose to be great while also choosing to not be a jerk.
1
We can be sure that our biggest jerk, Trump, thinks of himself as great. The greatest. Like Rodin's most famous work, The Thinker, Trump sits with as many original thoughts as the stone statue. There they both sit, one naked, the other with naked ambition, but each without a thought of their own.
4
One virtue is missing in this column, humility. Benjamin Franklin noted that listing his own personal virtues, by definition, he could not list humility. Philippians 2 contains an early Christian hymn praising Jesus Christ. One curiosity about this exultation, Jesus greatness is found in his humility; "...he counted equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking human form...". King Alfred the Great being the UK's only King in their history to have the appellation "Great", was known to have mingled with his subjects in public in the clothes of a commoner. Gautama Buddha left the palace to address the suffering of those outside the palace walls. There is the story of a school girl in Princeton, New Jersey, who had trouble with math. She stopped by visited an old retired neighbor and shared her frustrations about math. He offered to help and she learned to her math better. Albert Einstein was her retired neighbor.
4
A study of history and the evolution of the human race is a study of individual genius those individual who were driven to create, explore, think. They come in all shapes, sizes, skin colors and dispositions. Yes, many are social misfits. It's been said: " show me somebody who had a happy childhood and I will show you a nobody, but show me someone who had a horrible childhood...that person we can expect great things from."
A happy life, a happy relationship does not lead to a Leonardo da Vinci.
You can have happiness or eternal fame. That is the choice. The love that spurns, that breaks the heart has created more masterpieces than anything else on earth.
Focus comes out of misery. The heart and the mind cannot work together, the mind must be dominant.
As an example I knew someone that was a great athlete, he had natural skills that were simply amazing, he was on the right track, then when he was 16 he met a girl, and that was it, he stopped going to practice, stopped playing, got into partying, Here was a person going in the right direction , blessed with ability who was sidetracked....sidetracked by happiness and fun. It's not so much self denial as being denied, being locked out of the social world.
The genius isn't a jerk, they are just lonely and look for companionship in their creations. They make their own companionship.
1
Mr. Brooks asserts that, "living a great life is more important than producing great work" as if that is a fact, when it is really his opinion. There are examples in art, music, medicine and other sciences where the "great work" has turned out to be far more important to humanity than the "great life" of the creator would have been to his/her society.
But I think his recounting the debate about specialists versus generalists is interesting, until the penultimate paragraph, in which he tries (unsuccessfully, in my opinion) to apply these labels to political ideologies.
2
I think I'll just be happy and kind, but not great.
2
This is a very interesting point of view on greatness as the Euro-US cultural complex has defined it. Mr. Brooks asks us to step outside the common narrative that focuses men on being such a monad in order to produce cultural artifacts that may or may not be considered great at some point. How many monad men achieve the epithet, great, in their lifetimes or subsequently? Not many. Mr. Brooks also notes how such men are supported by women who had and still have no approved social role but to serve one man in their lives, and hopefully, it is a man pursuing greatness. We could also discuss the myriad 'lesser' men who support those men who have dedicated themselves to pursuing greatness. Their job is to laud the Rilke's and Rodin's during and after their lives. Since Greek times at least men have pursued activities they hoped would lift them above all other men throughout time and set them among the stars as gods. We are still in the grip of that narrative. Is it any surprise that following that narrative is correlated with the destruction of our ecosystem and the lives of those supporting such men and such pursuits? Mr. Brooks is onto something, something radical. If we open our minds and cease supporting monad men we might have fewer sculptures and poems and more justice, fairness, and the simple joys of living distributed more equitably among us all.
2
You described to a T my late brilliant practicing psychoanalyst husband. Who, at 33 also became a holder of an MA in theatre, wherein, he acted, produced, and “play/cast doctored” as his published research showed the workings of live theatre reflect psychoanalytic principles. He worked/played 18 hours daily. He was loved,and mostly not a jerk, but have to admit, I had to be a more generous wife than I was initially inclined, not like I had a choice. As to women have had it right all along? Your words were affirming to a serial lawyer, mother, elected official, nurse, parental caregiver, grandmother...
100
This piece neglects the role that deep personality traits play...we should not expect people to change who they are if they are truly talented scientists, artists, etc...that is more important than playing by so-called social rules. My own successes in life are heavily attributed to doing only a very few things extraordinarily well, and maintaining what my friends and family reference as a "laser-beam focus."
5
And there at the end of the article is yet another plea to please, please listen to conservatives, not to ignore them, to include them.
Brooks seemed to be asking to hear progressives, too, but not really. He's writing in the Times, so he knows progressives are being heard here. It's the conservative dialog he's trying to smuggle into range.
But conservatism has so comprised every idea and principle on the altar of power that it's revealed as monstrous whenever it speaks outside its self-congratulatory fraternity.
Was conservatism ever anything but the political code for white patriarchy? Is there anything humane and life-affirming it offers to the nation it has twisted and maimed with approved greed, affirmed misogyny, or well-nurtured racism?
Conservatism stands without make-up or disguise in a fully-exposed Republican Party as the enemy of democracy, decency, and often life itself.
5
Pretty much what I argue in my recent, “Theme and Variations: Musical Notes by a Neurologist.”
Artistic greatness can skew toward monomaniacal behavior and jerkiness: no news there. We notice artistic geniuses, and the behaviors of jerks make news. Today’s headlines are filled with quotes from jerks, and they’re filled with reports of those jerks’ latest acts of insensitivity, if not outright cruelty.
What we don’t notice, and what doesn’t make news, is common human decency, which can constitute greatness, and make for a well-lived if not especially “accomplished” life, if accomplishment is defined solely in terms of money, fame, and/or power over others, and that’s where the problem lies: our society elevates money, fame, and power over others, and gives those things unlimited, unceasing attention, while decency, sensitivity, and gentleness are behaviors that we may want our kindergarten and grade-school teachers to develop in our kids, but then we stand idly by as our young adults slough off those behaviors and in later years become the competitive jerks who make headlines, lots of money, and end up wielding power over others. On America’s polytheistic Mt. Olympus, materialism, fame, and power are by far the most powerful gods.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall become paving bricks,” is America’s unofficial motto.
5
Mr. Brooks, you correctly identify the pentagram as the master key to a successful life. But you do the reader an injustice by not enumerating the subtle dangers and powers of this potent universal force.
I just read Dogme et Rituel De La Haute Magi by Eliphas Levi, the French occultist and magick-ian, who spent many years researching the pentagram's true essence as the Goat of Black Magic, the powerful animal of lust attacking the heavens with its horns. This goat is part of us all, hungry and loud.
Also on my Summer reading list was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, who did not understand the pentagram, and The Testament Of Solomon, which describes the king holding aloft a ring proffered by the sensitive archangel Michael, engraved with a pentagram to control winds and angels, bind the demons, and help him build a Temple.
The Temple of the Freemasons, of course. These working-class Americkans learned that success lay within the pentagram's sublime boundaries. They derived from it the tri-agon, or pyramid, and harnessed its thick connection energy in service of a more perfeckt union for themselves, their families, their communities, their dining furntiture, and their God of the Deliberating Black Mountain Goat.
These indeed are the "five big passions of life" and the universe. Our current selves are not good enough. We have to be transformed through right action. May we be wise enough to live our lives along the never-ending 5-pointed path the founders elucidated.
1
For once I totally and completely agree with Mr. Brooks. However, being Jewish I would have a six point star--family, vocation(s), friends, community, faith and Health.
Brooks must be read with a political lens; he is a pundit afterall. What he is really saying is that we, the readers who are nytimes left-leaning moderates and progressives, are living a homogenous and stifling life. To truly live, to truly be great, we should should be open to the party of Mitch McConnell and his like. I prefer to remain ordinary and argue for equality and justice for all.
5
We live in a society that celebrates jerks: their fame or at last their recognition, their wealth, status and prestige: in short all the trappings of success. Of course, we see only one aspect of these celebrated lives, namely that sliver of life that brings them, people who would otherwise be obscure, to our attention. And so it is no surprise, that their personal pain and hardship too often remains in obscurity. This is the bitter irony of success. Even Richard Wagner, a notorious jerk, appreciated that the price of the "ring of power" was love, a them carried by Tolkien in the "Lord of the Rings." Who is responsible for this? Society, which enables jerks, or the individual who craves success so obsessively that he or she sacrifices most of what is precious in life for its sake? Ultimately, each individual must take responsibility for himself. But surely any society in which "success" is as extraordinarily and as dramatically lopsided as our must share a huge part of the blame. "We have seen the enemy and he is us."
Is it really being a jerk or is it that because it takes such intense focus and singular mindset to achieve greatness that the rest of us who are not capable of doing so see it as just being a jerk by the definition that we have chosen to impose on it? To them they see the rest of the world as frittering away their lives, meandering through it while making little lasting contribution to society. Who are we to say they are wrong?
We keep wanting to neatly package things up by our definition and when it falls outside of that we simply decide its wrong. That is the state of our politics, the state of relationships between countries, the state of relations between races, the state of relations between the wealthy and the not. And that in itself is wrong. Humans are way too complex to try and do that yet we drive ourselves crazy in our attempt to neatly and easily define things.
“Dear Mr Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?
Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club."
1
Creative people are rarely conservative. Why is that?
2
As an author an instructor, I have been aware of the power of narrative for decades, but never has it been as obvious in the political arena as it is now. Political parties in the US have separate narratives, but rarely have the two narratives, Democrat and Republican, deviated so far from each other with such hatred as they do now.
Narratives operate off of conflict, and conflict, as anyone who has put together a movie, play or novel, has a nature and shape. The nature is the theme of the central conflict, what it is over, and the shape includes five plot points in the geometry of a pentagon and includes the five-pointed star, the pentagram you mention. But long stories have several subplots (different issues), and these can be put together in other pentagons with the same structure. All this geometry can be put together to form a dodecahedron, the whole political world.
The narrative is told from one of these pentagons as its point of view. Here's the interesting thing. If you look through the protagonist's pentagon to the opposite one (antagonist), it points in the opposite direction, works backwards and the story is completely different. If you use that opposite pentagon for the POV, it becomes the protagonist and the world of the story does a paradigm shift. That explains the depth of our political conflict and how it is tearing us apart. We must learn to see the narrative from both points of view. Our country is at stake. https://www.story-alchemy.com/?page_id=175
Clearly not. Greats like Magic Johnson and Joe Biden, among others, have proven that you don't need to be a jerk to achieve success. Unfortunately, there are those who achieve greatness who are jerks, just like in every aspect of life and level of achievement. There is a reason why there has been a spate of articles about the correlation between being a sociopath and being a successful business leader or politician, but that does not make every high achiever a sociopath.
The better question, however, is whether the examples set by the good guys, and gals, are the ones that will or will not be emulated by future generations.
Since there are no universal truths when it comes to people and their behavior, it seems as if Mr. Brooks' column is more of a rhetorical question being presented as an empirical one, though jerks like Donald Trump, for example, clearly offer legitimate reason for concern.
After all, if anyone can grow up to be president, anyone can also grow up to be a jerk. The better question is whether they have to be one and the same. I think not.
Greatness stands alone, but 'jerkiness' is relegated to the eyes of the beholder as is 'the good life'. Jerkiness isn't a tool used to achieve greatness but it may be the side effect of obsession, but only if in the presence of those who's expectations are not being met.
Shifting out of jerkiness doesn't happen automatically by increased exposure or imposed diversity nor by defining your society's definition of the good life, especially for the obsessed. Let us not judge the jerkiness of those who create greatness, but be exemplars for the jerks who are looking for new obsessions.
It's always strange to see the disconnect of David Brooks. He has a consistent literary focus on character and kindness, yet never mentions the leader of his chosen party,
who has neither kindness nor character.
He discusses morality and life balance, while his chosen party dishes out cruelty and lies, cutting life balance basic services such as health care.
Many people believe the fake news spewing from this administration, but David's too politically aware to have any excuse to believe it.
It seems to be a sort of internal gaslighting, that you can remain a decent person and yet support all that; lot of that
going around these days.
1
Bravo! My most favorite quote is from Robert Heinlein:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper,
plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship,
design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts,
build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying,
take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone,
solve equations, analyze a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer,
cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects."
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love, 1973.
" It would have been like trying to describe bicycles to a fish.
"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."
Irina Dunn/Gloria Steinem. Just so we know where THAT idea came from...
3
Awesome article, David! Keep it up.
If one has two Passions in Life, say Real Estate and Sex, is oNe more liKely to be Great?
Poor David, consumed again by the madness within. No one chooses between greatness and living the balanced pentagrammic life. If you happen to be born Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, or Ludwig van Beethoven you will compose, innovate, create and perform. If you can play the piano like Artur Rubinstein and channel Chopin, you can be forgiven if you allow the other points of the pentagram to wither. For the rest of us mere mortals, we may be sufficiently talented that one or more of the points of our stars are more developed than the others, and many of us would replace faith with reason (after all, Hegel tells us religion and philosophy lead to the same truth). Those great monads may not have lived the ideal contented lives of those tending all five points of their personal pentagrams, but are we not happier as a result of the efforts of those same brilliant monads who gave their 10,000 hours for the betterment of the lives of mankind? And is that not 'community' on steroids?
1
I don't know if there's very good evidence for David Brooks's premise that well-rounded nice guys are more likely to be "geniuses" or "successful" than single-minded jerks are. Maybe so, maybe not. But I do agree that there's too much polarization and insular thinking in our politics these days. And frankly, the New York Times is a great example of this.
1
Of course, you will want to credit Rita Mae Brown for your funniest line.
1
It's quite possible that greatness and jerkdom have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. I suspect we all know jerks who aren't particularly good much less great at anything.
On the other hand I'm lucky to have had a handful of teaching virtuosos in my life (now sadly gone save one), who were wonderful to be with and who appeared to have had personal lives as rich as their professional ones. Greatness can coexist with warmth, even joy.
91
@DavidWiles--Do we still think that Thomas Edison was "great?" Now, that we know that he bullied and thieved his way to the top? HE was a jerk. First class. That famous Elon Musk electric car is NOT named Edison.
3
@ChesBay
There will never be a car called the Musk.
4
This essay by Brooks reminds me of an arresting quotation in Janet Browne’s biography of Charles Darwin. One beautiful evening, toward the end of his life, Darwin was out walking with his son and daughter, and he remarked that if he had his life to live over again, he would never let a day pass without reading a few lines of poetry. “Then he quietly added that he wished he had ‘not let his mind go to rot so.’ ” (Browne quoting Leonard Darwin quoting Charles Darwin.)
55
@Mark
Charles Darwin did not fathom his posthumous fame.
1
@5barris
Darwin was already famous in his lifetime. And he included a line about wishing he had read more poetry at the end of his autobiography: "if I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week."
3
The Greek philosophers explored what it meant to live a good life. In the hectic, non-stop, high-tech fast pace of life today, it is hard to stop and ask deeper questions of life. Thanks for doing that in this piece David.
Good insight: "A better definition of success is living within the tension of multiple commitments and trying to make them mutually enhancing." But I think a part of it is also coming back to a touchstone of what within those multiple commitments brings life to ourselves or to those we love, and using that to help weed out extraneous busyness.
1
Getting back to Kierkegaard. It makes all the difference what 'one thing' one wills, and Kierkegaard argues that the only 'one thing' that is really one thing is one's faithfulness to God. But faithfulness to God translates into a myriad of duties and loves and passions in the real world. The monomaniac does not will one thing, but chases artistic greatness and personal achievement at the same time.
1
Thank you for this fine column. Too much space is devoted to ephemeral matters, and it is gratifying to read a reminder about taking longer and wider views.
2
Does it have to be one way or the other? Is there only one right answer to the seemingly endless quest for programmed “success” in being a “winner” instead of a failure? Is this even a good question? What seems unacceptable in this rather rigid piece is that people are basically ... maybe intrinsically ... different in the way they are, and so in the way they live their lives. And that that is all right ... for each of them. What is good for one, in other words, may not be so for another in the fact of her/ his very life. Or perhaps it’s about accepting and facing challenges, maybe better alone or maybe better with others. At that, no life is without failures and disappointments ... which, by the way, lead to the experience of miracles like gratitude and pardon even for and of oneself. I personally would be very hesitant to judge the quality of life of Rodin or Rike or the guy who lives across the street from me.
2
Greatness and a beautifully lived life are not incompatible. There are many examples; I'll just say Steph Curry and Lin Manual Miranda.
5
The only question to ask of Rodin’s and Rilke’s lives as artists is—Did their self-absorption produce art? Nothing else matters.
5
Both geniuses and social misfits have brains wired different from the rest of us. Causality or corelativity? Hard to think of a "normal" high achiever. There is even a business research theory of a correlation between being a successful CEO and sociopathy.
4
In reading this column I’m reminded of the one track life of Tiger Woods. Early success followed by years of tragic struggles.
6
@DWC
But don't forget that with men --- especially --- youth is the boundary of genius. The great physicists did their best work at incredibly early ages. The most innovative rock stars were barely out of their teens. Athletes --- that goes without saying. So it's not surprising that Tiger's best years have been in his youth.
1
@Trista
Largely due to the trapping of adulthood...but, everyone makes choices.
1
An absolute and unyielding dedication to task to a minimum requirement for writers, painters and other artists. The trap inherent for writers is they wind up living the writers life rather than the actual life and experiences they are trying to convey. They isolate from the dirt and grit that would make for better works whether fiction or fact based.
The same is true, I think, for journalists. If you spend four years or more in college learning skills, background, nuance and then immediately get a job reporting, you miss out on aspects of life that would make for a better reporter.
In my own case, I was very fortunate to become a professional at reporting while still in college, having begun to work in radio news while still in high school. I have found that the time away from reporting, doing other things that sometimes conflicted with the imagine of an "objective" reporter, greatly enhanced my ability to see and understand events. Without outside experience, I could still be a good reporter but not as good as needed.
As for artists, it has been said that being an artist is the most selfish choice one can make. Fundamentally, it is a cry in the wilderness: look at me. Look what I can do. Look what my pain, suffering and keen perception has brought forth.
Many artists are miserable people and it is no great surprise. But if you were to ask them at the end of life if they would trade their misery for having just led an ordinary life, they would likely shout: NO! NO! NO!
5
It's impossible to make a rule about such a topic. J.S. Bach, arguably the greatest musician of them all, lived a modest and varied life as an organist, a full time administrator of musical programs in several middling-to-larger churches, as an organist in demand for his opinion on whatever organs were being built, and as a an apparently devoted husband to three wives and the father of twenty children, besides composing the core of the Western musical canon, much of which he did in what he thought of as spare time. Benjamin N. Cardozo, possibly America's greatest legal light, was a recluse with a monastic devotion to study who never married. As my grandma used to say, it takes all kinds.
17
The very day Trump was elected, I said to a friend that a generation of kids will grow up thinking the path to success I’d paved w lies. I hope it does not happen.
12
David down the rabbit hole again.
14
This is an old question. David starts with typical types of examples of awful great men, leading to the traditional answer that genius necessarily comes at the price of being a jerk. We've seen this with biographies of Steve Jobs. But then he argues against that conclusion. However, his analysis, while pretty good, is hurt by some slippy definitions. Greatness, success, performance, excellence, skill, creativity, creating star companies are not the same thing. For some of them it might be more possible to co-exist (or even be mutually causal) with a positive character than for others. Perhaps it is only raw, once-a-generation genius that cannot, or perhaps it can even if no ready examples come to mind. Even if not, perhaps we so badly need geniuses to help solve our immense problems that those who choose to be around them go into it with their eyes open, and have a back-up plan if and when they can no longer put up with them.
Can anything think of any geniuses who were also wonderful people, such as humble, gracious, courageous, giving, empathetic? (I'd leave faith out of it as that's a Davidism.)
Can anyone think of the causal mechanisms between genius and personality or character? Or is it more correlation masking as causal?
3
To be great on paper, yes, be jerk.
By American standards of building greatness, that means:
- slavery for centuries (a jerk move),
- not paying a liveable minimum wage - one step up from slavery. (a jerk move)
- bullying little countries. (a jerk move)
Greatness of heart, will often not be real on paper.
5
To have been Rodin!
1
This all sounds nice, but who knows really. This essay is entirely anecdotal and reflects Brooks' personal biases more than anything factually determined. It's easy to write columns like these that are not bounded by any real evidence or documentation.
9
Doesn't it seem as if the jerks are in charge?
8
Well Mr. Brooks, I started my work life as a research assistant in biology. I switched after 18 years to IT. Why? Because, back in the late 90s pharmaceutical companies had discovered the joy of not hiring Americans, of refusing to train anyone no matter how well qualified they were, and because I needed a job. I had to learn to apply my mind in a new way to a new field. Fortunately my innate curiosity helped me learn. Then, after working for 13 years for one company, I was downsized 3 months shy of my 55th birthday. Since then I've been unable to find a steady job: in one case the start up company folded, in another the program that funded my job was cut. I have good skills. But employers don't want to pay for good skills. They want to complain that they can't find anyone. I'm 60. I don't want to work as a cashier. I want to use my mind to solve problems.
However, I look at it this way. Employers are spoiled and they are spoiling millions of lives with their refusal to hire people who don't have exactly what they are looking for. When most of the baby boom generation was in workforce that attitude made sense. Now it doesn't. But we keep on praising the jerks who lead these corporations as visionaries. Some vision they have: they are contributing to the impoverishment of at least 2 generations. As for diversity, they don't want it. They don't want intelligence or critical thinking. They want drones.
7/29/2019 11:36pm
25
@hen3ry
Looking for meaning and validation in one's life via the workplace is asking for disappointment. The workplace is conditional and arbitrary --- and an unreliable yardstick to measure one's self-worth and fulfillment.
I had to work in tech to survive and support my family, and I was part of some groundbreaking launches in the 1990s and 2000s.
But those innovations are now superseded and even obsolete, and the fortunes of my employers waxed and waned and I have been in and out of jobs for decades.
What saved me is that I always did my own creative work outside the job. I wrote my fiction, my nonfiction articles for small magazines, and my screenplays. Now, although I am still employed (for now), I have a small movie in production and a novel and short story collection coming out --- and not self-published, either. What I considered my avocation has come to define the latter part of my life.
I never expected my employers to treat me fairly within my own definition of the word. They are killer whales, swimming in their own merciless seas. Their focus and perspective are on their own survival, and they will take what they need and use people for their own purposes.
Capitalism has never been architected to treat its employees fairly or justly. Businesses are for themselves and their founders/stockholders. An enlightened, dedicated society can yank and squeeze some fair treatment out of them, but they will always revert to their own priorities when they can.
1
@Trista In America we are what we do. You might have the gumption and energy to do creative work. I don't. While I never expected to be treated fairly I didn't expect to be treated like trash all the time either. And perhaps it's time that employers and capitalism, as practiced in America, changes in terms of how human beings are treated.
3
William Blake, who like a medieval mystic routinely saw visions and whose poetic persona declared it's better to murder an infant its cradle than nurse unacted desires, is a strange source of David Brooks' self-help advice.
And is it really necessary to point out that however "stifling" the lives of Rilke, Rodin, Beethoven, etc. they all achieved something a Times op-ed columnist has not, and never will?
1
I’ve noticed that many people have it backwards. They think they must become a Jerk first, or a least remove the filters. Then they can become great, or at least fool certain others into being dazzled by the performance. I won’t comment on the gender disparity among the Jerks, it’s obvious. And yes, the true Jerks rarely suffer. It’s their Families, acquaintances, friends and co-workers who must bear the burden, and suffer.
Just one piece of advice to the Kids: avoid Jerks at all costs. You will be used and abused, and will hate yourself later. Speaking from experience.
11
Long live the fringe dwellers.
1
Yep, we are hermenuetically sealed from thoughts, opinions, and facts not our own.
1
I really dug this article right up to the clumsy political analogy at the end. I am not sure you can draw a parallel like that between career and ideology but if you were going to then its not a choice between two specializations, its a choice between ideological monoculture and diversity. Progressivism (the real thing not online outrage porn) is about communal adaptation to diverse outlooks and new facts. Conservatism is about adherence to tradition and social homogeneity. This is why the more people travel and learn the more liberal they tend to be (with many exceptions of course). I have plenty of relatives who I love, who vote republican and call the civil war "the war between the states". I am not different from them because i dont understand their way of thinking (I'm confident I do), I am different because I am also open to other ways of thinking. I'm Tired of these constant false equivalencies that pop up everywhere.
5
Not everybody has to be nice. I'm willing to accept that genius comes with a price. Not being a genius myself, I'm kind of stuck having to be nice. That's OK. I love Rodin and Rilke's work. I love Apple products. That doesn't mean I need to be friends with Steve Jobs. Let geniuses be geniuses so long as they don't blow up the world and kill people.
167
@caplane
If the question was meant for Trump you were spot on. Trump was born a jerk and bullied everyone in his path with all the equally greedy lawyers in lawless New York.
But, there are far more wiser alligators in the "Swamp" than he.
2
This is not a column about greatness, but rather a column about how best to lead a good life. Nothing wrong with that, but why drag greatness into it? I realize that we've moved on from the 18th century obsession with genius, but by conflating excellence and greatness, Mr. Brooks entirely misses what greatness is.
Consider the headline: "Do you have to be a jerk to be great?" The question implies that if someone just wants it enough, greatness is possible, which is where we are today--celebrating mediocrity as excellence, and excellence as greatness.
Finally, that Mr. Brooks would choose one of the greatest sculptors in the history of art to ponder his jerk-quotient question is ludicrous. Rodin wasn't "excellent" at his work; he was great at it. It goes without saying that, like Michelangelo, he was obsessed with making art. But being obsessed with one's work is merely the sine qua non of greatness. Yes, it's a correlation with genius, not a cause. Like cutting off your ear in order to be as great as Van Gogh, it’s misguided in the extreme to think obsessively working yields greatness.
By the way, the best book ever written on the character of genius artists is Margot and Rudolf Wittkower's "Born Under Saturn." Mr. Brooks should read it, think about it, and only then attempt the topic of greatness.
77
@Emile You have schooled the author of this article well. I'm sure he will amend, due to your wise counsel.
6
@Emile Dear, dear Emile. Why does everything have to be a be-all, end-all argument, won or lost? The article was about the good life, and showed no deprecation of either Rodin or Rilke. This is perhaps one reason Trump gets by with telling folks that "elitists" think they are stupid and helps to make Mr. Brooks' point at the end of the essay. He read a biography. He thought about it. He used this space to talk about it and he is told (he with his fine education and wide reading) that he should not offer any observations that you, yourself, have not made. Sigh. We really are lost, aren't we? We can never listen without judgment.
22
@Emile What's the difference between "greatness" and "excellence"? You seem to be drawing a sharp distinction without justification.
"By the way, the best book ever written on the character of genius artists is Margot and Rudolf Wittkower's "Born Under Saturn." Mr. Brooks should read it, think about it, and only then attempt the topic of greatness."
Let me translate:
"Hey Mr. Brooks. Lemme give you some homework. Go read a 300 page book I like. Let me know once you've finished. Make sure you draw the same conclusions from the book as me and then fully internalize my line of thinking. Only then can you open your mouth (and regurgitate my opinions as fact)."
3
This is a wonderful article, thank you. It resonates very strongly with me, as I've been a creatively active person for over twenty years. Initially, my focus was in one arena, to the exclusion of other interests. Yet, life and those interests kept creeping in. I've come to understand that this form of living, where I create differently, am socially active, and even pursue other outside interests to expand my knowledge, is more akin to how life is actually lived. It's more fulfilling. It leaves more room for beauty and the encountering of unexpected insights. Forcing life and relationships into a narrow mold is stifling and damaging. It also, as the article mentions, is an outmoded view of creative life - a myth- that all great art is done by individuals suffering alone while treating those around them either terribly or indifferently. False. I also like the acknowledgement that great things can still be done in middle age or later. Our culture's fixation with youth, and the expectation that young people are finished if they aren't superstars by the time they're 30, is also restricting and damaging. Breathe and live.
1
At the end of his show, Chris Matthews asks his guests “Tell me something I don’t know”. Today’s column was inspiring and told me some things I didn’t know. This is rare in today’s media. Forget Trump, forget Democrats, forget the stifling world of politics. Write about people. It’s far more interesting.
4
To Rodin and Rilke, David, you should have added the monomaniacal narcissist Trump. He’ll do or say anything so long as he thinks it makes people like him. Truly revolting and a real danger to the United States of America.
1
Nicely done, David.
Greatness and goodness are not so easy to mix.
Always alone; never lonely
Jiro dreams of cars
Jiro dreams of coding
Jiro dreams of landscape architecture
Ok, Netflix?
3
Brooks’s “thesis” is a common one, readily apparent to anyone with some basic intelligence and varied human interactions. That a well balanced life is far more enriching than the obsessive path trod by the experientially impoverished workaholic. Never one to miss an opportunity to editorially state false equivalencies however, in conclusion he lumps the “very conservative” ideologues with the “very progressive “ ones. I, for one, would take one compassionate, empathetic, smart, and inclusive Elizabeth Warren over ten million exclusionary, rigid, mentally constricted, self-satisfied Mike Pences any day of any week.
8
But David, think of what an accomplishment it would be to get a fish to understand bicycles.
1
...and just imagine the level of jerkness reached by the person who only believes that they are great
Apropos of... what? Brooks, you're losing your vantage point: nice guys finish last. Afterall, how many leaders are there about whom we hear, "They're such a great guy/gal!"? Not many. It's exceedingly rare.
3
Progressives have a hard time understanding conservatives because nothing conservatives believe in has any basis in evidence. For example, another three innocent people were murdered yesterday by a man with an assault rifle. To conservatives, this has nothing to do with an assault rifle. Put a pistol in that psycho’s hands and I guarantee he does not kill those people. But, don’t worry, Trump is praying for the families.
7
Interesting Anthony, that conservatives think exactly the same about liberals. Maybe both are wrong...maybe both are only looking to find fault with the other. Reminds me of the Catholics and Protestants in the fifteen hundreds.
I've just finished reading the Corbett book, too, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I don't mean to be too personal, Mr Brooks, but you have been putting a lot of your own "personal" stuff out there lately, and - if you'll forgive me - I think a lot of what you write here is some pretty basic transference on your part.
I've loved Rilke's poetry since I was in high school, well over forty years ago. Whether he was a jerk by not going to his dismissive, uncaring father's funeral didn't interest me then, and it doesn't now; I didn't know him, and he didn't know me.
Proust was a bit of a "jerk", too, but I also just finished my annual reading of "In Search of Lost Time."
That Rodin - who struggled as a young man against a mocking, exclusive elite who refused to take him seriously - ended up a bit, well, bonkers near the end doesn't change the fact that his genius changed the way we see the human form, and each other.
And yet here we are - about 100 years after they were all in their prime, give or take - not talking about how their deadening dedication (in Proust's case, literally) to their art changed humanity for the good... But what jerks they must have been.
And, if there are any of us left, I wonder who we'll be talking about, still, in another 100 years. Any guesses, Mr Brooks?
6
Donald Trump has arrived at the ripe “old” age of 73, as “monadic” as they come; No interest in the arts, the sciences, other cultures, other humans, or even the animals that inhabit our planet. Making money, self-aggrandizement and “winning” at the expense of others just about sums up the sad and etiolated world he inhabits and would drag us into.
6
The best piece of wisdom I've ever read in the New York Times.
It seems to me that this op-Ed piece comes to the same rather unextraordinary conclusion that anyone with a decent undergraduate degree should come to. In fact, the lesson used to be the actual reason that people got bachelor’s degrees: to not be jerks! Evidently they don’t teach ‘em like they used to.
1
Oh for heaven’s sake, to each their own. These two probably had antisocial and/or narcissistic personality disorders. Because they were also geniuses it worked out just fine for them and the rest of us.
If someone wants to shut herself off from the world to write novels, and she can afford to do so, that sounds positively blissful. Buddhist monks choose to die alone, what’s the problem here?
If socializing and interacting with others makes your skin crawl and you prefer to churn out masterpieces for the ages (or even for your own garage), go for it. Life is short, live your passion if you are lucky enough to have one.
179
@A. Simon Maybe Brooks is an extrovert. Extroverts cannot understand introverts who want to be left alone.
27
@A. Simon
I absolutely agree with the notion of to each their own. The one question that I would have for Rilke and Rodin is if you prefer to be alone, why would you get married and have children? In my mind, there is little worse than a person that creates a human and then treats them poorly. If you are not willing to be an active, engaged parent, then don't become a parent. No amount of creative genius or greatness ever excuses being an absent parent.
30
@Brian
Very good point, Brian. During that time, people were hardly expected to be “woke” engaged parents, let alone attuned to their children’s individual needs. Children were seen and not heard. Women’s roles were confined to subservience and homemaking (basically free labor) and raising kids. Marriage was essential for these guys— for the wives, not so much.
23
Not necessarily, Mr. Brooks.
Richard Wagner was a first-class “jerk.” He seduced, for openers, the wives of his financial benefactors. Father of Isolde while her mother, Cosima von Bulow, was married to Wagner’s principal conductor, Hans von Bulow. A magnificent composer he was; something less though when it came to right and wrong.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was not a “jerk.” Soldier, scholar, teacher, devoted husband and father, and author of perhaps the most enduring myth of the 20th Century.
Greatness—or genius—is something that we can appreciate while distancing ourselves from what it creates, especially if the creator is something less than the ideal we attach to the person’s gifts.
And I would be seriously remiss if I neglected to mention Joanna Kathleen (J.K.) Rowling, creator of the best-selling books in world history. No one’s coming forward with tales of her “jerkiness.” In the main, I trust, we can expect decent people to achieve at least the commendable.
As for presidents, who, really, besides nation-saver Lincoln and the splendid one-and-half Roosevelts (choose your own whole or half) would qualify? Yet, all three had dirt under their fingernails.
Relationships do not guarantee greatness. And the lack of greatness does not consign one to eternal jerk-hood. Relationships might, at their best, provide a soul’s comfort. We know relatively little of the personal lives of Shakespeare or Beethoven. To some questions, Mr. Brooks, there no answers.
81
I think Mr. Brooks piece conflates different things ... the desire to create and work at all costs, above all and everyone else, is life as lived by some obsessives. From the outside how can we truly judge another’s experience — all we have is the “artifacts” of their existence. In the cases of Rodin and Rilke the art speaks for itself. But I have long treasured the wisdom and beauty of Rilke’s writing:
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
8
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18,
Then, of course, there was JS Bach. A devoted family man, you can't turn on a classical station any hour without hearing not only his music but that of his children.
12
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18 After reading this piece, I thought, Hmm..this is waiting for a Red Sox comment. And here it is. You do not disappoint. Your words are “genius.”
7
Sound advice, which, for too many of my retired colleagues, we learned too late. Not that we did any lasting damage to families or our own well-being, but all those years of putting in 12 or more hour days, could have been more balanced towards family and personal growth. These kinds of lessons you learn in your senior years, which, of course you attempt to impart to your children, who, have already modeled their own careers after how we lived ours.
1
Another thought occurs to me which may have occurred to others. Great (and no so great) artists are often grappling with psychological needs springing from their less than ideal childhoods. But for the great art they create, they might become something far worse than a philandering spouse or unfeeling parent.
1
Mr. Brooks,
Thank you for returning to your sweep spot, this is a great column piece. Stay away from Trump bashing, the rest of the Op-Ed team can’t help themselves. I appreciate your insightful work when it’s like this.
David you ought to get out travel more. Suggest South East Asia and South Asia. If you happen upon India you will find church Hindu temple mosque synagogue Sikh gurdwara Jain temple ...all on the same street. People greet each other on all religious cultural festivals. The languages are spattered with an amalgam of words from other languages. Especially in Indo China, there is such deep rooted influence of Indian and Chinese cultures one cannot tell where one starts where the other begins. Be and Let Be is the motto so people give each other room and space to exist. These ancient civilizations have given humanity many gifts from the number zero to the paper we write on and it would not happened if they existed in isolation.
2
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work --
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.
(W.B. Yeats, "The Choice")
4
"They were both horrid to their wives and children. Rodin grew pathetically creepy, needy and lonely. Rilke didn’t go back home as his father was dying, nor allow his wife and child to be with him as he died. Both men lived most of their lives without intimate care."
David Brooks is searching for truth and meaning and I admire it. That said, he is too easily taken in by his own bromides. One should examine the statement above and ask a rather simple question: how many 19th century men does this describe, genius or no? Brooks may be onto something in all his public searching of late, but he often comes to it too easily. Correlation does not equal causation.
3
Becoming a polymath takes up some of your spare time as well. It requires an essential selfishness to work constantly at the expense of nearly everything else. But a person immoderate with work and moderate in everything else isn't the worst thing a community could have.
2
Most people don't have to worry about this, thankfully, since very few people have a true passion or talent to begin with. And it's the talent that drives one to obsession. No one gives his life to something at which he doesn't have some innate, inborn capacity.
1
“A tech entrepreneur who is 50 is twice as likely to start a superstar company than one who is 30, because he or she has a broader range of experience.”
Are you sure? At 30, I have more experience than many 50 year olds. Not trying to be obnoxious here—just stating a fact. I have lived in three countries, I speak four languages, play two instruments, have two advanced degrees and am pursuing a third while working. I am a tri-athlete and a decent chef. I have held positions in a few well-respected companies, and a couple not-respected ones.
You know what I don’t have? One tenth as much money or credibility as the average 65-year-old “specialist” in America. You know the one—the painfully boring guy who speaks one language (poorly), has worked for the same company for 40 years without innovation or excellence, and most importantly, enjoys lecturing people of my generation about the importance of getting more “experience.” Interestingly, these lectures are often followed up with a generous offer of working for him to gain such invaluable experience (for free, naturally).
Some people have talent and/or access to capital and connections; most do not. Some people seek out new opportunities and thrive; most do not. Being born at the right time, to the right parents, seems to be the single biggest factor in achieving any measure of success in our “meritocracy.”
3
Albert Einstein indeed played the violin (and piano); it helped him brainstorm (or so he said).
Here are a few famous people who played instruments:
https://www.liveabout.com/famous-people-who-play-music-instrument-2456173
However, many "great" people are or were obsessive and totally focused.
Just as there is no one way to write, there is no one way to achieve "greatness".
Each person, great or not, should find the way that works best for him or her (a sentiment already stated, more or less, by Plato)
2
You're starting to ask the right questions Mr Brooks.
Now do a piece on the correlation between psychopathy and senior leadership in the corporate and political worlds. The characteristics to be "successful" in the latter in our culture do unforuntately match the characteristics of the former quite well.
3
"Great men are almost always bad men." --Lord Acton
1
As I was reading David’s piece my deep thoughts were about education. How many NYT readers remember Frank Bruni’s powerful editorial: “The Most Contrarian College in America”? Great experiments in truly “liberal” education” are marginalized into extinction by STEM emphasis and the “prestige” of big name, big monied, universities. As a faculty member at St. John’s College, over the decades I have seen precisely what David describes here embodied in the lives of our graduates: Artists, entrepreneurs, violin makers, physicists, vintners, mathematicians.... Enough said.
3
Genius doesn't ponder what lifestyle will best facilitate it, it just is.
7
@John B
Perfectly put.
Was disappointed to have this piece degenerate into the typical progressive/conservative dichotomy at the end. Seemed like Brooks was hoping somewhere else for a change.
1
Corbett's book sounds a lot like our US leadership without the genius or the hard work-just all the worst characteristics.
2
Required reading for workaholics (and those who have the misfortune of working for one).
2
Hyper-focused people are born that way and this trait tends to show up even in early childhood. It's not something one can choose. It can be a blessing or a curse. But it's how your brain came out of the womb.
Some people with this trait also suffer from autism spectrum disorder, and that explains why they don't all rise to the same heights.
2
See also (among many): Ansel Adams.
The people who achieve excellence tend to have one foot outside their main world. “Compared to other scientists, Nobel laureates are at least 22 times more likely to partake as an amateur actor, dancer, magician or other type of performer,” Epstein writes.
Well Brooks, you're encapsulated a near perfect operational definition of Asperger's Syndrome.
You rhetorically asked, "Do you have to be so obsessively focused to be great? The traditional masculine answer is yes. But probably the right answer is no."
Maybe Maya Angelou was more masculine than I thought.
You didn't ask what "great" is. Did you mean the "great" that translates into "acclaim" or did you mean the "great" that gets someone sent to disgrace, before a later generation realizes how smart he was? Mr. Turing comes to mind.
In Trump's America, the nerd in the corner who plays the piano like Ben Grosvenor might not make it in one piece to high school graduation. After all, when Donald Trump said "great," he obviously was in-tune with what America thought was "great" in 2016. He even emphasized over and over again how different his "great" was, in comparison with all the "losers" who preceded him.
In most tech startups, for every Paul Allen or Steve Wozniak there must be a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Oblivion otherwise.
So yes, in America you have to be a jerk to be great. People who are smart and talented, like maybe the late Nat Cole, must continue to enter and exit through the side door. You can never apologize too often for being too smart but, if you're flexible, you may escape by getting a jerk for a business partner and all will be well.
1
While I totally agree with the value of a
pluralistic life, I fail to see the causal effect that a monomaniacal approach to life has on being a jerk. The title was quite misleading and not proven or really addressed in the piece.
3
David Brooks, in far too many columns, constructs black and white scenarios: situations are either good or bad, one is either moral or immoral, a good Boy Scout or a juvenile delinquent.
Unlike Kierkegaard’s “either/or,” Brooks’ “either/or” lacks nuance and complexity. It is too good and too simple, too black and white, to be true.
To suggest Rilke and Rodin failed life because they were obsessively focused is like saying Picasso failed life because he painted with cubes when he could have been handing out morsels of food to the Parisian poor or that William Carlos Williams failed life because he thought he could be both a Patterson, New Jersey, family doctor and a poet when doctoring is all he should have done.
Emerson, in his essays on power and self-reliance, said concentration and self-trust are primal behaviors for the good and powerful man and woman to have. This is doubly true for poets, novelists, artists, where their power must drive their egos or art objects won’t be constructed.
The only question to ask of Rodin’s and Rilke’s lives as artists is—Did their self-absorption produce art? Nothing else matters.
4
Do you have to become a morally questionable human being to accomplish great, exceptional things as a human being?
The general rule appears to be the more your decisions will have an effect on other human beings (become momentous, thus more likely to be considered great) the more you must comport your life as others and/or operate within some type of social structure (say a committee) which distributes and waters down the decision making process, makes responsibility for the decision difficult to locate.
This is why politicians try to make themselves as "human" as possible, demonstrate they have a good family life, follow a religion, and work well within community efforts, and why deviation from the comportment of others is rarely forgiven when it comes to decisive, singular, not to mention momentous action unless confined to certain areas, such as the creation of beauty in the arts or discovery in science, and even in these areas no small effort is made by critics to cut down on accomplishment by pointing out the personal shortcomings of creators and discoverers, as if the object is to demonstrate that in some ways they were "less than human" and should have operated along the general rule of paragraph one.
It appears that an exceptional accomplishment is less likely to succeed the more it's a decision which affects others not to mention calls for novel thought and behavior, and is more likely to succeed if it's a beautiful piece of art or a discovery.
I find that analyzing the lives of great men and great women to be a largely pointless undertaking: we don't really know what makes their work great and their personal lives sometimes miserable. Obsessive focus on painting or writing might mean one artist is ignores his family, while another treats them well. We never know.
Connection and community and a pluralistic life is wonderful for most of us. But historically -- and with a bit of myth attached to it -- communities have often relegated artists to the margins, to lives that isolate them. Out of that isolation might come creative effort that sustains the artist, and creates beauty for all of us.
I just don't find this piece working for me this time. Sorry.
2
Our modern economy has forced most people into rigid specialty, and demanded more and more of their time towards it. This is the essence of our divides, that each person becomes an advocate of the small thing they know, but nobody becomes the advocate of the wholistic approach to life.
Most scientific and social insights are blind to the larger effects of one area of specialty to the other. When people try to help others, they help from their own rigid, isolated view, which when applied to a person of a similar narrow life focus to their own, might be effective, but when applied to a live of different narrow focus or attempted broad focus, becomes stifling, unhelpful and perhaps a hinderance.
This is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for all of recorded history as societies created specialists that overcame human obstacles. We can look at more modern examples, but I won't do that because they're still alive and I don't want to offend them. But often enormously 'successful' people as we define that create enormous pain for others in their quest.
Was Rodin great? I'm not sure. For those who consider him great, they are reacting to the feeling that his work gives to them, and if it makes them feel good they call his work great. They don't see anything else. This article starts with the assumption that he was great, but that was a narrow definition to begin with.
Maybe your definition of greatness needs rethinking.
1
One of the single-mindedness-es I notice is...it's as if we are only talking about men when we refer to this singular focus. Women seem to be left out of the equation, not just from the writer's description but also the comments. Part of what is getting women notice now in their worldly lives is their ability to focus "out there". To be more single minded about their own work. Having the personality or not, women have been so untrained to think for themselves about how to shape the world. Do they have other jobs? Many do. Some don't. It's important to have that choice.
3
@seaperl
There were plenty of great women who obsessively focused on their work. Virginia Woolf; Emily Bronte; Meerabai
2
As usual an insightful, thoughtful piece of writing by Mr. Brooks.
He did me a “ginormous favor in this article! He reconfirmed my college degree which was 100% general studies of Everything, music, art , literature, languages, history and science.
I am 81 years young now and spent the past 45 years as a fund raising consultant for non profit universities and myriads of
other causes. In every campaign, I found my general knowledge of so many things provided me with the flexibility I needed to be successful.
Thanks again, Mr Brooks!
4
We're all simply different. Some have that tendency to focus to the extreme, some focus less so, some focus not at all. In the end, we all do what we do. I think this is simply wired into us, much like being an introvert vs. extrovert. One thing I have a question about in Mr. Brook's column. Those four conferences that he attended, 2 progressive, 2 conservative, that were "hermetically sealed" against the others ideology, what about the leakage represented by the presence of Mr. Brooks? Were there no other Mr. Brooks-types around? And, by the way, you'd be hard pressed to explain swimming to a fish also. Or even breathing through gills.
7
How can someone as wonderful as brooks (the "reformed" con who loved the con until he didn't love the con) possibly cause a problem?
What a hypocrite.
I have always been weary of having a goal. In fact, I never had one. I noticed that as a young boy coming into adolescence that goal oriented people tended to mis out on alot of every day pleasures and activities. If it were a certain sport, no way do they have time to pick up an instrument . It seemed to me that they were unaffected by other people, lacked sensitivity which bread seriousness and tended to have of humor and self depreciation. I on the other hand were a great observer. So great that I can mimick a sport or activity and almost master it in a short time. However, that sole talent kept me away from other things I thought. It narrowed my vision and kept me from experiencing other paths. I thought I would be missing out. So as my ADHD ( which is my long lasting gift ) kicked in to adulthood my plan was to be a film director since one should be great observer but never be a proprietor of anything specific. Be good at everything.
Short cut to me becoming a NYC Cop then a Firefghter, EmT, bartender , gardener , plant designer , turf master, guitar player, cyclist, boxer, guitar player, truck driver , security guard, and most and best of all at the age of 52 ... a very good singer.
As my old friends and peers check there 401k and live a life of quiet desperation trying to convince themselves that working in a cubicle under flourecent lighting is a life worth doing over, I choose, above my pension, ..I can choose. I am free.
4
@Dan Cafaro
all guitar playing singers need a pension
Brooks, a master of conflation, manages to take a reasonable idea - breadth of experience trumps myopic focus - and try to make it apply to politics.
The factors that make one a progressive or a conservative have nothing to do with intellectual versatility, broad experience or a pluralistic life.
One can have multiple passions - music, literature, family, athletics, community - and be rigidly dogmatic in political view.
7
I, for one, want my cardiac surgeon to be obsessively good at one thing, regardless of whether she or he is a beloved community leader or gives great thought to delighting neighborhood children with extensive holiday decorations at their house.
8
At the end of the day, cross fertilization, integration, and putting a little of this into a little of that is the essence of life itself. The best creative minds borrow ethos and drive from the outside and infuse it into their art — even Rodin drew from the work’s of Dante and Michelangelo and Rilke found inspiration in Nietzsche and Russian existentialism. David Brooks nails it again. All ideas and growth, genius or otherwise, derive from a mind tolerant of and adaptive to the vast world of influences and resources that surround it.
5
Ann then, there is that wonderful passage in The Great Gatsby.
"And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college ... and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn’t just an epigram — life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all."
Five years ago, at the age of 55, and while living a rather undistinguished life dedicated to family and community, I was unexpectedly visited by the muse. It didn't take me long to understand that my life's path had been permanently redirected, and as my commitment to the "voice" deepened, my friends and family began to worry about my sudden withdrawal from "normal" life, which they (mostly) interpreted as the mid-life delusions of a once friendly and considerate fellow.
It is hard for me to communicate to anyone (even my spouse) the spiritual depth of what has happened to me. Not only do I feel a great responsibility to fulfill this work placed before me, but my entire life makes sense to me in a way that it never did before. As my surrender to the voice of the muse has deepened, so has my anti-social behavior.
Although I feel no small distress at losing many friends and alienating most of my family in the process, I cannot escape the rewards of my devotion to this angelic being that is guiding me through what has turned out to be the richest and most extraordinary adventure of my life, which, I sincerely believe, I was placed upon the earth to fulfill.
I've heard writers often say, "you don't pick the book, the book picks you."
That is what happened to me, and if I have become a (more) selfish jerk, I apologize with crossed fingers behind my back.
5
If the work is useful and life-giving, why would it exclude your loved ones?
2
@Gramps
I think you might enjoy this:
https://matthewbrecher.com/thegoat.html
Sometimes work has to take precedence over family and sometimes family over work. It is the famous work-life balance.
But we should all be decent human beings regardless of whether we're sculpting, digging ditches or just buying a cup of coffee.
On the subject of the overrated "Range" and the equally overrated Roger Federer and Tiger Woods who figure in the book, some situations and professions call for specialists. Do you care if the brain surgeon also stars in community theater? My guess is that you want a brain surgeon whose foremost focus is brain surgery.
But some professions, like journalism, call for a mastery of a variety of subjects. In a 40-year journalism career, I've written about everything from brain surgery to baseball. You have to be able to talk with anyone about anything. This skill has been denigrated in the hyper-focused digital age, but it doesn't mean we should throw out the need for specialists. -- thegamesmenplay.com
3
I'm fascinated to watch you grow as a person. Over the last several years your point of view has greatly evolved. You're not just a political pundit anymore. You're a Philosopher! Our modern society ignores philosophy as fusty old fashioned thinking, but what Philosophy means is love of wisdom. Our modern society values two perspectives: the latest thing, whatever it is, and unwavering pursuit of success, especially financial success. You're questioning these foci shows your search for wisdom. Does obsession with the latest new thing or obsession with success lead to greater happiness or in the long run a better society? You've logically concluded, No! I hope we don't have to drink hemlock to get the rest of the world to see it.
10
@Doug R
If Brooks is a "Philosopher" I am LeBron James.
2
@Barking Doggerel
I agree. He is a wannabe philosopher.
Mainly he is a Trump enabler.
LEAVE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, DAVID.
David's thinking is totally simplistic and unfocused. He must be jealous of people who focus on one subject.
RE: "Soren Kierkegaard asked God to give him the power to will one thing."
I've been saying for many years that if God would grant me an ability it would be to always ask the right question. The right question would always get the truth.
3
Very interesting piece David.
family, vocation, friends, community, faith ! YES!
Right! the cult of the individual has not served us well.
Per Amazon's documentary about Sweden it turns out that it is not the Socialist paradise we imagine--- that didn't work out for them! Swedes apparently are very capitalistic now and committed to what I can only describe as "a rising tide should lift all ships". Fairness seems important and the culture seems focused on consensus. These traditions seem more efficient than our voluminous laws. Surprisingly there is no minimum wage in Sweden.
So yes David perhaps if we meet not as adversaries but with the goal to somehow get along then we can make progress and reduce tension to boot. Our problems are not that serious. Its the way we approach them that defeats us.
1
The community-ish attributes that Mr. Books is selling vary in individuals completely independently from the attributes that make for creativity. As a psychologist would say, the variables are orthogonal. It's a fool's errand to try to generalize otherwise.
1
Way too much emphasis is placed on what kind of people great artists are when they're not busy being great artists. I content myself with what they created as artists, revel in their contributions, and leave the tittle tattle for others to sift through. Familial strife and other forms of waywardness are rampant whether you're a great artist or janitor.
11
So what is the implication for students setting off to college to be educated to a career and their parents? Increasingly our public rhetoric about education is focused entirely on employment. Our universities and institutions of higher education tout facilities and job seeking support. What about pluralism, breadth of knowledge and citizenship?
15
It is possible that Rodin and Rilke and other genius types did not become solely work focused and decided to discard their relationships in order to achieve greatness, but were instead people with social disorders - perhaps even on the spectrum - whose intense focus of their genius was a a result of their fundamental personal makeup. Personality drove the genius, not the other way around.
That doesn't make everyday workaholism a great idea, but it might explain more about the loner genius who is obsessive about his work.
To the extent that we can, we should strive to be well rounded people, with a richer relationship to our community and our families, to our friends. Is it really necessary to be a tortured genius?
But, I have to say, if we are going to drive the conversation to a political end, as Brooks did, that the fundamental inhibitor in our lives to being fully involved in others is our very fragmented time. We work, not to achieve genius, but to pay bills, to get healthcare, to fund education, to make retirement a 30 yr period of something other than penury, if at all possible. Until one is wildly successful - up there in that top 5% - life is spent making the financial equation close. That leaves 95% of us as worker bees in the hive, looking for food until we drop.
Fix that - find ways to make the middle class middle again, and community will follow.
16
An executive from an ad agency came to speak to an art school illustration class I was in in the '80s. He said about illustrators, "you can tell which ones have a liberal arts background; they always have the best ideas." As an older student who had dabbled - deeply - in several different areas, I felt he validated my whole life!
17
Your point at the end of the piece is almost missed, a reiteration of what you have said many times. That we need to integrate ourselves ideologically. I agree; and at family gatherings that happens. It is unlikely to happen at a conference, which is intended to be a "hermetically sealed" place to safely present ideas.
In my opinion, the present single-mindedness is a phase that we are moving through in our evolution. I'm not worried that we will be stuck here.
"Furthermore, living a great life is more important than producing great work."
Then again, there are those who have had a crummy life and produced great works like Van Gogh. Did he choose to have a crummy life, nothing in his letters to his brother Theo indicate that, but what those letters do indicate is his devotion to his painting at the expense of everything else. He didn't choose that path, the path chose him.
" A life devoted to one thing is a stunted life, while a pluralistic life is an abundant one."
Would you tell that to a priest or rabbi or imam? How about a medical researcher or all those devoted to the life study of one thing? Do they have stunted lives for not being more"pluralistic"?
Take care when making generalities for they are so often deeply inadequate.
17
I take issue! How can one be a good priest or imam without studying all things - music, poetry, science?
David Brooks is nearly always so middle-of-the-road, with an air of supercilious, calm detachment. Rodin and Rilke did what they did, and who is to decide what the "right" answer is about "perfection of the life or of the work"? I myself hope there are always the lunatic artists who couldn't maintain a personal relationship if their life depended on it. As for the ones who are loving family people as well as fine artists: thank God for them as well. The world contains multitudes, as one great poet, not so great at personal relationships, once said in a song to himself.
10
@Drew
Amen!
1
Is there a single approach to life that applies to everybody regardless of their proclivities and differences? The traditional columnist’s and self-help manual’s answer is yes. But the truth is, probably no.
To say that a specialist life is stunted and a generalist life is one of abundance is a staggering generalisation, oblivious to the richness and variety with which any serious pursuit rewards devotion. And to say that this is “a truth feminism has revealed” is simply astonishing: have there been no generalists in the long histories of the many cultures that have made up human civilisation before 20th century feminism?
The difference in any case is meaningless. A mathematician might be a generalist to other mathematicians because she works in many fields of math, but a specialist to non-mathematicians who work on things other than mathematics.
If knowledge is the goal, specialism is the only way (even if you specialise in more than one field). If happiness is the goal, do what you like.
6
One of my brother's best friends, in his first year as a corporate lawyer, was told by his supervising partner, "Remember, [redacted], it's not the amount of time you spend with your family; it's the quality of that time." My reaction was that if somebody told me that, my reply would be, "That's how I feel about my job, not my family." Oh yes, after one year, [redacted] left the firm and became a highly respected law professor.
All work and no play may not make Auguste or Rainer a dull boy, but it certainly makes them tragic figures.
7
Sure, Nobel laureates are far more likely to be amateur actors or dancers or musicians. But who remembers the names of any Nobelists outside his own field? And who can forget the monomaniacs like Rodin or Rilke? Or Brando or Picasso or Curie or Tolstoy or Darwin?
5
Mr. Brooks has been on a fulfilling life journey with more than one rollercoaster ride being added to his travel kit along the way. The choice of articulating his current take on genius, creativity, productivity and genuineness is at once engaging as well as being additionally thought provoking - after all, isn't that the real task of a respected and well-read Opinion Columnist? Do the names Studs Terkel or Mike Royko (oops, showing my Chicago roots here) ring a bell with some? My point, all three are superb in their abilities to make us think, critically think about who we are becoming as a person, a people, a community, a culture, a country... and perhaps most importantly, about how we are "really" trying to live as we are learning to more joyfully be among others. Hopefully, how we choose to live our lives becomes one of many healthy touchstones from which to choose... in deed, for our grandchildren's sake.
5
@michael
Terkel and Royko are treasures , even more so now...
1
Causality does not equal correlation.
Not a very interesting piece. The only thought left is how much the author has read and how many conferences he has attended. I’m happy for your kind of privilege.
3
My saying has always been, you can be legendary or you can be loved, but not both...
2
"Excellent," and positively deliriously good news for dilettantes everywhere. I may take the rest of the night off!
2
Great insights. The homogeneous life produces knowledge. The pluralistic life produces wisdom.
3
Yes but the one and only biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species began in Africa 300, 000 years ago.
As one of three closely related African primate apes aka bonobo, chimpanzee and humans -we are driven by our nature to crave fat, salt, sugar, habitat, water, kin and sex by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation.
The matriarchal peaceful sex driven bonobo is more distant from humans by their nature than the patriarchal violent and sex driven chimpanzee.
For most of human existence an active life style with a use- by mortality expectancy of 35 years old limited choices and options. Access to fat, salt, sugar, habitat, water,kin and sex requires little or no effort and our life expectancy has doubled since the dawn of the 20th century.
People who tend toward monomaniacal pursuits have an agenda in saying it must be that way for true greatness to be realized. Are they right? Maybe so. Maybe not. Probably true for some, but not for others.
Every time I hurt myself or make a mistake in my work , I try to remember what I was thinking when the mishap occurred .
Bad thoughts are always the reason.
Magical thought is the ability to see beyond good and bad.
Think pure thoughts ,and the magic will ensue.
2
@King Philip, His majesty
Too much concentrated effort can be counterproductive because it allows a distraction to be annoying instead of part of life. I am my own worst enemy.
While I found this piece an interesting way to begin a Tuesday, it soon felt a bit too didactic, while still written with DB's flair for putting words and thoughts together. That said, my take was that
whatever pursuit or pursuits you choose, what's most important is that you realize, through observing others, that you have the flexibility and freedom to choose what works best for you.
I'm not sure how large is the intended audience for this piece, since very few of us achieve anything that might objectively be called "greatness." I would think the larger point would be that we live in a society that so worships celebrity and "success" that we reduce greatness, for our greater convenience, to such ultimately petty things as careerism, running a business, even starting one of the "fastest-growing tech start-ups" (typically to better mine our fellow humans' privacy), and then pursue those petty accomplishments like the devil. A meditation on what we mean by "greatness" that we even seek it might be in order. Short of that, this comes off a bit too much like telling us the truly great "have it all," depending for its life affirming effect on our readiness to flatter ourselves.
4
I've taught high school for 35 years and Mr. Brooks comments have me thinking about the great pressures being placed upon my young students to thrive in the manufactured system of elementary and secondary education. School often is drained of fun as students enter their early years of elementary. Preparation for and taking standardized tests begins to monopolize the school day, while art, music and physical activity become an occasional condiment. Students (who succeed) become myopic in their ability to fill their heads with the information of the day and then drain to refill tomorrow. There's no time for retention, contemplation or analysis. A foundation for future experiences is never formed. On graduation, two things are clear: the students leave believing school has been a drudgery not to be recalled fondly and no curiosity for more has been nurtured. The system has produced young adults woefully unprepared for a world where fast paced change will require constant reinvention. A "pluralistic" education where students are given the freedom to find their own passions and rebound from occasional failures would produce are far more happy, adjusted, dynamic and prepared generation of adults.
17
I think some of you are missing the point. It is in the title. Being the creator of something "great", something outside of yourself, for the world at large, at the expense of your intimate relationships (to both yourself and others) is perhaps not so admirable as formally thought. Tolstoy wrote amazing books and texts, inspired many thinkers, and yet was a brute to his wife (who edited his texts in long hand) and to his brood of daughters, whom he tried to disinherit. Does his great work make up for his lack of compassion for the family he founded? And why do we prize this public "success" more than the personal and private? And why do we assume that one comes at the cost of the other?
5
@CDH
It's not a question of "making up" for anything. Tolstoy wrote wonderful works that will last for a very long time. Millions of men are bad husbands and fathers. We don't prize Tolstoy's success; we prize his works. When you read Tolstoy's novels, you are immersed in the wonder and joy of the novel, and not thinking about Tolstoy the person at all.
2
“Furthermore, living a great life is more important than producing great work."
This is an opinion, blindly stated as a fact. While it may be a fact with which many will agree, it is not necessarily true for all.
People come to their own definitions of what a great life is, a definition informed by the cultural influences to which they attend and the people who surround them, among many factors.
We know from his recent book that Mr. Brooks has experienced his own epiphany in regards to defining a great life. That's all fine for him. But he should be more careful when projecting lessons learned from his personal struggle and journey on to those who read them, let alone presenting them as universal truth.
5
I just love David Brooks. (Almost) everything he writes resonates with me and I (almost always) wholeheartedly agree with his way of thinking. This one in particular was a very well crafted essay. Love how you so deftly navigated your thesis from Rodin and Rilke to today’s political climate, Mr Brooks. Bravo!
2
I must say that I found this piece refreshing. I do not always agree with David Brooks but this column had an element of intellectualism and compassion that Brooks interestingly deems important in the piece itself. To the larger point-- I do not think one has to be abrasive, closed or irritable to be great. I think there is greatness, skill and creativity in being an optimist in a difficult world. Rose-colored glasses are not a sign of foolishness, but of a strong spirit. I think that being an irritable hermit is also a luxury that has been afforded to great ...men, largely. They always had the space to rely on a woman to take care of mundane tasks. No wonder most of our history books are defined by these men, for better or worse.
8
Maybe one gets happiness from singular focus and another gets it from diving into diverse fields! Maybe one's creativity is fuelled by deep intensity while another is motivated by experimenting with new arenas! Maybe even the same person is driven by different motivations and has different styles at different times in his or her life! I know I have. Different approaches bring different flavours of fulfilment that may not be inherently comparable.
Maybe the lesson to learn here is to just appreciate the diversity of humanity and observe how we as an individual or as a society choose to admire one over the other. That may teach us about who we are at that point in time.
7
"Furthermore, living a great life is more important than producing great work." Oh no sir, it is not. If the thinkers and makers (male or female) of the past thought that way, there would be few great scientific discoveries or important works of art. Greatness is sacrifice and obsession with untold hours of mental and physical toil and devastating obstacles just to achieve a few fleeting moments of exhilaration and connection. Also, the greats have always mined their surroundings and remain open to happenstance, think Einstein in the elevator wearing his daily drab uniform. They don't need to go to conferences to learn about the jargon of synergy and disruption. Greatness doesn't necessarily last a lifetime, and a sad end isn't proof that it wasn't worth what they gave to humanity. This article is a defense of happy mediocrity, no thank you.
5
@dm "If the thinkers and makers (male or female) of the past thought that way, there would be few great scientific discoveries". No, sir. We would have the same scientific discoveries, just maybe a few years later.
1
I am not sure “happy mediocrity” was the point here. If you read the book “Range” you may get a better feel for the greatness of diverse activity and thought. I have found that the most imaginative ideas and solutions and truly stellar thinking come from those of synthetic perspective and insight. Many of the singularly focused “experts” can become rigid but accumulate power and prevent change. I think a mix of people who are macro and micro, or in domain and out of domain makes sense for advancing in most endeavors. But it is also worth considering how we cultivate that range within ourselves.
4
Right on.
1
I’ve been a high school principal, a Catholic seminarian, an opinion writer for a big metropolitan newspaper, an organizational development consultant, a sales and management trainer, a college professor, a parent of four, and six years ago I became lyric and scriptwriter and acting coach for a performing arts academy.
I aspired to other vocations that never materialized: opera singer, priest, novelist, Olympic high hurdler, actor, biblical scholar.
Still, I feel happiest and most fulfilled when my kids are happy, crushed when they are sad. My greatest joys in life are my grandkids. I truly love spending time with my wife. I have a terrific life and have no Idea how all this fits into the points David is making here.
Also, I’m kidding about the high hurdles.
11
Simplistic. Probably the result of not enough obsessional focus on your work. (Assuming your work is to be able to write interesting and meaningful opinions that rise well above the ordinary.) I don't want to sound rude, but you don't seem to have an idea of what sacrifices are required to reach a transcendent level in art. Naturally, having multiple interests is part of the obsession. Dreaming of your work, another part. (There are many.) If you go to sleep every night dreaming of other responsibilities, you will excel only in those.
13
Thank you for bringing up that to have dedication to working staying focused or making art one needs to stay completely focused on doing what is good and to need. To not need help or wait or think but to do what is in one’s heart to keep doing and learning to do. Not to back away but to keep doing what is loving to do and not let anyone stop. Not let attention go to other things or ways of knowing or doing what is not good. To respond to my way of doing what is loving and helpful and to not be afraid to do what it takes to not let myself do not good and do what is. To help people do what they need.
@TheoC
totally agree and have written to Brooks.
I often write to him because he is basically one of the many enablers of Trump and I cannot stand his prattling on -- a pseudo=philosopher!
His view of artists is totally simplistic and shows a lack of knowledge. (I am a classical musician)
On one hand you must focus to be great-- on the other hand there are myths about the monomaniacal artists that are superficial and he shows a great lack of knowledge about their array of interests. (Including Mozart ((who played billiards; had lots of acquaintances; had a wife and 6 children (2 survived); )
1
Why need there be a "right" way to spend one's life? Where does the standard of normalcy--the standard that Brooks assumes just has to be there--come from? Why is it so hard for some conservative commentators to consider the possibility that what is right for one would be torture for another and vice versa? Why is it so important for those commentators' fans to believe that human life comes with a discoverable template, when it possible (and so much more interesting) to survey the infinitely diverse ways in which human beings have chosen to spend their one-off lives?
40
@Nick
Agreed. In my experience, most conservatives have deficits in emotional IQ. They prefer the certainties of black and white because they’re uncomfortable with the uncertainties of grays. They tend to also be lacking in empathy and unable to entertain the validity of experiences they can’t understand. They have trouble relating with the emotional journeys of anyone wired differently then they are....
For me, the conservative is generally a person uncomfortable with change and in need of an orderly works with predictable buckets.
12
@Gwe
Of the handful of great teachers in my life, one that stands out is my first year contracts professor. Joe was in his sixties and spoke with a soft Arkansas accent. He was well aware that the other contracts professor, a young east coast preppie who spoon-fed and rewarded regurgitation, was preferred by most of the students. But that was not Joe’s way. He told us that he realized most folks long for the certainty black and white answers. But he said if we were among them, we would come away from his class sorely disappointed. This was because we were going to spend the entire year with him studying “those gray aareeyahs”. He was a man of his word. He taught us an often painful but ultimately rewarding lesson: how to think.
3
One of my favourite quotes by Kiekergaard:
"Purity of the heart is to will one thing."
1
“[L]iving a great life is more important than producing great work.”
I see. So Beethoven missed the boat. If only he had spent less time on that darn composing thing of his and taken up knitting or skiing or social dancing, he could have led a great life. Maybe we wouldn’t have the Ninth Symphony or the Missa Solemnis or the late quartets and piano sonatas, but hey, at least he would have been a Well-Rounded Guy!
I for one am eternally grateful that Beethoven was Beethoven.
34
@Paul Frommer Well, Giusepepe Verdi was a great guy, lived a full life and he even gave all his money to a charity for old musicians. You don't have to be a jerk to produce great music.
@Paul Frommer
it's ridiculous for david brooks to write these generalized articles.
Beethoven was not a jerk, for example. He sought out love, adopted his nephew (that went very badly though!), had friends, and was an enormous reader. He also took very long walks in the countryside. His deafness isolated him and made him estranged from others.
I think David Brooks feels HIS lack of greatness and has to put down some of the greatest artists of all time. But David doesn't realize he could be greater than he is if he would leave the republican party and stop enabling trump.
We all have a little greatness in us.
Genius/creativity cannot exist without the infrastructure in place to allow it to floresce whether that is the support of family or friends or the society at large that is necessary for its recognition.
Therefore, those ordinary people who may have no obvious talent but who show up and do the mundane but important things to make the world function are the heroes that allow those with a sprinkling of fairy dust to rise.
So, I believe it is necessary to have a strong community first before all the plants in the garden can thrive. Too much diversity can hinder instead of help, which is why your observation "I was realizing that while we’re learning to preach gospel of openness and diversity, we’re mostly not living it" is often true and, I believe, quite natural.
10
David, I think you wrote this essay for yourself. Nothing wrong with that, but please take courage and follow your heart. With a mind as grand and clever as yours, as well as Rodin's and Rilke's, it is challenging to feel as well as think.
5
Brooks writes, "Do you have to be so obsessively focused to be great? The traditional masculine answer is yes."
I would ask Brooks where in the world he got the idea that "The traditional masculine answer is yes." There is a temptation to be snide and say, "David, speak for yourself." However, I have too much respect for his thoughtfulness (in the literal sense) to do that. Instead I would simply ask Brooks for evidence, not anecdotes, to support his claim.
12
What if you are exactly who you are suppose to be. Would you know it? Most of us wouldn't. Most of us battle it out between our inner thoughts and outer behaviors. We go through the process of life. What I've learned is life itself is the reward. Appreciating life more requires demanding less of yourself. Retirement taught me that.
16
As someone who often finds myself ensnared by the distractions of modern life, I can relate to Kierkegaard's wish to live a focused life. Focused on one or on multiple points - I'll take either one. Just let me focus!
6
Parents are told their children have a better chance of prestige college admissions or generous scholarships if they specialize. Maybe so but it seems a cruel sort of child rearing, doesn’t it?
I’ve known of children who, for instance, just wanted to play their flute. Night or day, that was their source of joy. Fine, of course, let them play away. Alternatively, there is the high schooler whose parent is planning for that baseball scholarship and won’t let them take off a season to check out track and field. A cruel nutty culture wants kids to specialize.
19
Agree with Brooks. In the 1990s, Boston Consulting came up with a new word, bi-sociative, to describe people who could see the connections between things that most other people could not. Their advice was to ID these people and keep them around since such insights are extremely valuable in a rapidly changing world.
Thos Friedman's books are along the same line - those societies that are ready for the rapid changes happening will thrive in them, or at least decently survive them, compared to societies not set up to embrace change. As Brooks notes, it is diversity of experience that helps with both insights and flexibility, two critical factors in creating wealth to support your family, along with "impulse control" as coined by Chua and Rubenfeld in The Triple Package.
3
@cljuniper "Bisociation" was used by Arthur Koestler in his 1964 book The Art of Creation, and not by BCG.
I agree with many other commenters who've said this is a great piece. Normally I'm cycnical of what you write but this is a good topic at least and one I've spent a lot of time wrestling with.
I think another poster (Chris) said it best: for some people, being monomaniacal is the only way they can reach the pinnacle. I consider myself as one of those people. For these people, they have a choice: be a jerk, or be balanced and settle for less in terms of external recognition and achievement. I made my choice after some hard lessons which for me was the right one.
Still others can do both but I think it is difficult and requires perhaps greater discipline than making a choice between the two.
For the vast majority of people though, they go with balance and place value on family and relationships since the rat race can burn you out and ultimately is not as rewarding. Let's say for instance you're a great artist. You can continue to do great art but to become recognised as a great artist requires a bit more: some luck, some ambition, drive, etc. It's the latter part and navigating the politics of it that makes you a jerk.
6
I heard a Fresh Air interview with Ben Folds today. He has a new book
A-dream-about-lightning-bugs
I learned he's gone through more failed marriages than most because he focused on being good at writing songs, but not a good husband.
French art in the early 20th century lives on. The character or intimate lives of the artists does not. Hard to think of anyone these days doing anything that will make such a lasting impact as the smattering of impressionists known world round. Harder still to think of anyone today setting a tone of civility and decency that will somehow live on as goodness pays itself forward.
2
Brooks is always pining after the One Great Formula. But there are different kinds of achievement. If your goal is to explore a single theme to its utter depths and take it past the boundaries of the known, monomania is probably the path to take. Or if you are seeking to create a grand new synthesis out of many disparate and seemingly incompatible elements, you will need to become the most expansive of generalists to pull it off. Different projects, different methods.
As for who is more likely to ignore the kids and kick the dog, it's probably the monomaniac with his, her or its unrelenting focus. The generalist hops around from topic to topic, theoretically creating more opportunities for socialization in the interstitial moments.
Still, anyone who pursues any kind of all-consuming project will spend vasts amounts of time in solipsistic mind-space: not much room left over for other people to exist, let alone visit; much anxiety about wasting opportunity in pursuit of unproductive trivia. Choices must be made. One usually pays a spiritual price for an all-consuming worldly compulsion.
6
David......................................
I like it.
Not the most articulate among the other comments but I went right to the point. I always enjoy and appreciate your point of view.
3
In his book "Demien", Herman Hesse makes the point that every person's life is a journey unto themselves.
Humans are diverse and complex. Unlike other creatures we don't focus on finding food or mating alone. There is no one way to skin a cat or live a life. Some humans have Savant Syndrome. Some have mood disorders leading to helter skelter lives.
One important note: To score high on an intelligence test one must be skilled at both "visual-spatial" and "verbal" types of reasoning. Of course depending on enculturation and other influences truly gifted folks, usually do have a wide range of interests!
I hope you reach many new, or prospective parents with your message.
9
When I worked in a competitive firm in the Midwest in Chicago, any diversions from "real work" were considered silly and any individual doing anything other than "real work" was maligned as un-serious. In the same firm but in the NYC office, I immediately noticed that many people had outside interests...and even openly spoke of them! Coming from the midwest, I was literally shocked that someone would speak openly at this high-adrenaline workplace about taking an acting class on the weekend or picking up their spouse at the airport. But of course I appreciated the more open outlook on life. Hmmmm...IMHO this suggests the different cultures of middle America versus the coasts.
7
Perhaps, America's openness and diversity is really live and let live. Our disputes are those exceptions to the rules that have disempowered or disenfranchised individuals and groups. The rights of minorities to live freely without fear, the right of women to make decisions about their body and access to medications to maintain their right, the rights of people with different sexual orientations or gender identification come to mind as on-going impairments to America's diversity. Time after time these fears of empowering these groups have proven baseless.
So, if republicans want to have their fear based meetings, and liberals want peace movements, and churches want to have their magical thinking, and hate groups want to have their meetings it's all good as long as they practice live and let live.
4
I'm not sure what this article is trying to say. While I agree with one of the basic premises — the need for variety in life, the fact is that great achievement in highly skilled trades, crafts, or technologies, require either years to master or prodigal gifts (Mozart) — or both. And, to one who is fascinated by a subject, he or she is not a nomad, but instead are seeing hugely exciting possibilities within their sphere of interest. Generalists achieve nothing exceptional or lasting to the greater world — but that is not to say that their lives, to them, and those close to them, is not wonderful and meaningful. So, again, I don't quite understand what this article is trying to say.
4
There is only one thing that can be more important and rewarding than living a great life and it is saving others peoples lives (doctors, police officers, scientists looking for the cure of many illnesses...). Anything different (writing the greatest book, winning the World Cup, composing the greatest melody, being the brightest intelectual...) is pure vanity.
3
@Ivan
Talk about monomania! That is like the argument that building great cathedrals was a terrible waste of resources that might have been spent on improving the lives of the poor. I will argue that more people's lives were inspired and sustained by access to those structures over the centuries than could have benefited by a few hundred extra calories at the time.
I believe that is true of any great work of art, even those whose creation actually cost lives during their construction.
3
Life and all its permutations is not lived in one manner especially among talented and vital people. Sometimes it may be lived in a focused attitude requiring every once of concentration. At other times it may be loafing and inviting the muse or soul to speak. Deep relationships with people with overwhelming involvement may lead to solitariness at least for a while. The point it seems to me is to live life as fully as possible where ever it may lead. An accomplished fulfilled life may not even be marked by socially accepted great works. Wisdom lies in living life fully, not necessarily obvious results. Perhaps a great teacher who leaves an invisible mark is the greatest artist of them all.
4
Unfortunately, most employers want employees who are expert in a specific area the day they start work. It doesn’t make it possible for most professionals to generalize.
7
I'm a consultant who works with professional athletes. The best ones, especially those who have long careers, are not monomaniacal. Yes, they are dedicated and intense about their craft, they do all of the little things, and they are relentless on the field of play. But, they are also contemplative and foster strong family and community ties to maintain their life balance and avoid burnout, but mentally and physically.
8
There’s a difference between true genius and workaholism in the pursuit of more pedestrian goals (eg money or developing the tech-of-the-month.) But too many mere mortals confuse (relativity short term) success with being a “genius” or being SEEN as a genius. Its sad when run of the mill (but relatively successful) business and tech folks try to position themselves as geniuses by overworking in one area. And it sets a bad example for the younger generation.
8
I think the Pentagram is a fine analogy. Those in a hermetically sealed culture will fail because they don't take the time or energy to understand their adversaries goals or methods. In learning those, there's always the hope that some of the new ideas will take hold. As a San Francisco born Berkeley trained architect my initial goal in life was to be a cosmopolitan sophisticate. The true goal, enhancing the human condition, took a little more time and effort. Great art can also be the result of the participation of many views and interests. Film and buildings are in this catagory.
5
It is perfectly possible to be both "monadic" and "pluralistic" in the sense Mr. Brooks is talking about. One can have a single main focus while paying attention to a wide variety of topics.
7
Yawn. A tantalizing piece that delivers little. The artists mentioned are very good to be sure, but not in the pantheon. I think Goethe lived a full and various life. Einstein was complex and I suspect temperamental, but hardly isolated and ingrown. In any case, our obsession with the artist, the auteur, the genius, is tedious. Let’s focus on the work itself. It’s nice to know a little bit about Claude Louise Navier and George Stokes, but I’m far more interested in the Navier-Stokes equations. I’m
4
David, I think that there are so many more important issues to talk about other than what is in a nut shell Trump's narcisism personality disorder. Soren Kierkegaard wrote an entire book on love. Trump's bottomless ego and its' attention getting needs are based on hate. I observed the conquer and divide culture first hand here in Wisconsin under the toxic leadership of Scott Walker and his outsider money. You need to delve into some Rene' Girard to grasp the scapegoating that is now at the heart of the GOP political theatrics - to create rivalry and division - devoid of any real agenda for the advancement of this nations and its' citizens. Or perhaps revisit Eric Fromm's "Sane Society" to realize a sane society does not have leaders like Trump. But, really, let's move on - to the real issues that matter for a future so that this nation moves on in the 2020 election!
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@1blueheron Rene Girard has left us a very good analysis of our present illness. Start with his late book, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, which summarizes much of his life work.
1
I generally agree with the point the author is trying to make, but is it necessary to cast it as a battle of the sexes?
"Do you have to be so obsessively focused to be great? The traditional masculine answer is yes. But probably the right answer is no."
"A life devoted to one thing is a stunted life, while a pluralistic life is an abundant one. This is a truth feminism has brought into the culture. Women have rarely been able to live as monads."
Troll baiting assertions like that, which are not the least bit based in fact and mostly rely on pop psychology generalizations are far less effective than simple statements of fact like:
"A tech entrepreneur who is 50 is twice as likely to start a superstar company than one who is 30, because he or she has a broader range of experience. A survey of the fastest-growing tech start-ups found that the average age of the founder was 45."
More of the latter and less of the former please.
9
There are two related but slightly different qualities mentioned here: 1) being obsessed with work to the exclusion of other aspects of life, and 2) being abusive towards others in the pursuit of one's work (as apparently Rodin and Rilke were towards their families).
The first quality I have no problem with- if somebody's nature is to intensely and narrowly focus on something, I don't see that as inherently superior or inferior to being more balanced. Also, take for example Bill Gates- somebody can be narrow and intense for a certain period of their life and then branch out later.
The second quality, however, behaving badly towards others while pursuing one's ambitions (Steve Jobs may fit into this category to an extent), is absolutely a character flaw and lessens the degree to which I would consider them successful in life.
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@jci think the comparison of Gates to Jobs is a very good one. In his early days Gates was admired - and imitated- in his industry for being singularly focused and harsh, as was Jobs. Where they seemed to diverge is that Gates evolved to be influenced by others, to become aware of his need for others, such as his wife and father, to develop respect for others such as Warren Buffet, to work together to achieve greater good for a much larger purpose in life. He passed through his singularity in his narcissistic youth, and then grew past it, transcended it. Jobs did not.
6
I like Rodin sculptures, and don't know Rilke. That said, Rodin did some amazing sculptures, lovely to behold. That he was not a good person is disappointing. But very, very few of us are creators of art, music or literature . 99.9 percent of us just eke out a living, try to enjoy family and amuse ourselves.
But all of us can be kind, can be helpers and not hurt people.
That is not creativity, it is humanity.
54
An artist, whose passion engulfed his life, might be Gauguin as authored by Somerset Maugham in 'The Moon and The Sixpence'. One senses he has lost some of his humanity along the way.
A memory of a summer lunch with my parent in the town of Figueras in the province of Gerona, Spain, where afterward she went off to buy a newspaper, and I headed in another direction while listening to 'Ah, Madame...', the voice easily recognizable to this ear in adolescence.
The truth of the matter is that I did not want to be introduced to Dali - his work magnificent and original to this eye, but there was a barrier I had constructed when seeing him at a distance a decade earlier, it was not necessary for this onlooker to see the artist in person.
It would be of interest to this admirer of Mr. Brooks' work, how he would define Emily Dickinson and Florence Nightingale.
Joining Chris from Florida, in thanking him for giving us a detente from the state of our current political affairs.
3
It is alarming that conservatives and progressives live in such different worlds. A house divided against itself will not just lack quality; it will fall.
14
Perhaps David Brooks should go back to writing about that which he knows: selling conservative politics. His musings on community and connectedness are superficially interesting, but in the nature of the space allotted to an oped column, usually raise more questions than they answer, glossing over any number of difficulties. In particular, today's excursion deftly sidesteps its ostensible subject in the two areas where I have spent most of my now nearly 80 years: music and mathematics (I am professional in the first and a passionate amateur in the second). People like Mozart and Euler do not need to be told to "work"; they are called to it and no matter what else they may be involved in (both were reasonably well married BTW) part of their minds and instincts were always "working" no matter what else they may have been doing, since much of the achievement in both areas comes from subconscious activity . How else could Bach father 20+ children, teach Latin and arithmetic and fill 47 volumes with some of the greatest music ever conceived? Creators like Beethoven create the way the rest of us sweat --- as a natural process in which they, to paraphrase Stravinsky, become "a vessel through which their works pass" and they have little if any choice in the matter. It is in their nature and we are all the richer for it.
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@jprfrog
Exactly. They are the lucky to be called so strongly to a purpose rather than living life aimlessly wondering “what if”.
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@jprfrog
Isn't the point of op eds to stimulate thinking?
"...raising more questions than ... (he) answers ..." seems like THE worthy use of op ed space to me.
4
@jprfrog I agree. I've known a few Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Like your examples (Euler, Bach, Beethoven) they live for their work. It's not a conscious choice. But also, many are so profoundly gifted that they do, sometimes, engage in unrelated activities, and often at a fairly high level. Einstein was a gifted amateur violinist. In the present, at gatherings of elite molecular biologists you will find people playing a mean game of tennis in the afternoons, or playing chamber music in the evening. But they are not generalists. Their aptitude for science is usually log-fold higher than any other interests they may have.
2
I agree that balance is more valuable than monomaniacal commitment to something. I think this is true for a large number of people. A smaller fraction may benefit from being monomaniacal as long as they don't have other responsibilities.
I used to be the latter, until I met my wife, had kids and then I've changed. Now I have greater balance. (I've always had a bunch of extracurricular activities.)
There are people I know who are balanced and yet manage to do great things. Not sure if I'm one of them but I doubt it but I do know if I hadn't sought balance and focussed on my science alone I could've reached the pinnacle (some of my friends and my mentors have, i.e., getting a Nobel prize). It was the way my life was going and I can see what needs to be done.
Now I still may reach that pinnacle but it will involve some luck and some things going my way. I don't mind if it doesn't since I've learnt what is most important to me and it is not external success. It is being true to who I am.
4
A very thought-provoking piece. One wonders if living monomaniacally is the only path to genius for some... and if so, if it’s worth it, either to themselves or the world. Maybe those are two different answers.
And thank you for at least occasionally rising above the politics du jour. It’s refreshing.
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Imagine if you showered the same amount of time on your loved ones as you do on your work. You'd be much richer than monetary wealth could ever make you.
33
@larry bennett I'm a hyper-focused introvert on the autism spectrum. Being around other people exhausts and bewilders me. If I showered as much attention on other people as I do on my work, I'd wind up a stressed-out basket case.
17
@larry bennett Your causation/effect wouldn't work with humans in practice. You can shower someone with love, and still end up alone because human relationships are voluntary.
1
Most MAGA supporters are monads, they want a homogeneous society and don't either preach or live a public life of diversity and openness. Well so much for my "deep" thought of the day. I suppose we can expect Brooks to go back to his single purpose of admonishing liberals tomorrow and instructing them as to what they must do especially after the debates this evening,
8
Essentially, this is looking for that fine line between genius and madness.
7
You are a learned man, an observant man, a man who knows truth from lies, so tell us, which of the four conferences were more likely to be dealing in verifiable facts and which ones were dealing in conspiracy theories, debunked "facts" and magical thinking? I don't see it as shutting myself off from other opinions, others experiences or just others, I see my isolation as trying to keep my sanity when fully half the voting population have negated their previous political positions, abandoned their moral standing and their patriotism, all the while trying to gaslight me into thinking I'm the un-dead zombie. I'm still open to ideas, I've just had my fill of ideologues.
541
@Rick Gage Now that....that is something I can stand behind. Good rebuttal, Mr. Gage.
41
@Rick Gage - You got the wrong message from the article. The message is there is richness in diversity of opinion. Lumping all conservatives as magical thinkers is prejudice and like saying all liberals hate America. I think his point is "E Pluribus Unum". There is group think on both sides of the divide.
21
@Rick Gage
Just so. This is a great bookend to the previous articles chronicling the perpetual whining of 'conservatives' who feel that their 'views' are being sidelined and they are not given a proper platform to spew.
I said then, who wants to listen to the same old tired nothing? Conservative types never have anything new, novel, sensible or even helpful to offer anyone.
Yet, there is that overwhelming blind support that keeps them in office, doing nothing. Go figure.
29
Another excellent book to read on the subject of genius is Walter Isaacson”s “ Leonardo da Vinci”. Here was someone who was a genius in many fields and was always restlessly exploring new ideas.He is probably best known for the “Mona Lisa” which he carried around with him for 14 years working on it intermittently.He had so much to study that he was constantly busy but not at the expense of his personal life which he enjoyed-he was said to have dressed lavishly and traveled on a whim.He said that art is never really finished, only abandoned.He actually did walk out on many art commissions.He did not worry about what the world said-he just wanted to explore it.
23
@JANET MICHAEL
Another Renaissance figure Benvenuto Cellini is worthy of consideration. Known now for his fabulous autobiography, he was a renowned goldsmith and sculptor, with patrons consisting of nobles, a couple of Popes, and Francis I of France. On the other hand, he murdered several men on trifling points of honor, was imprisoned and made a fantastic escape from the Castle St Angelo in Rome,enjoyed carousing, hunting, women, and music, not necessarily in that order. I'm sure however, that when he was working, he would tolerate no interruption; being an artisan back then was literally a cutthroat game.
5
Thanks, David, for mansplaining that we women can, in fact, have it all by living flexibly within the pentagon. Why didn't we think of that?
203
The smallest possible measured sliver of time in our current world can be described as the amount of time between when a man describes something women (generally) might feel and the resulting denunciation by an aggrieved woman exhorting “mansplaining”.
Providing a little space around ideas is useful for wondering what someone might be trying to communicate.
12
@December Let’s also note way Brooks mangles the fish/bicycle quotation. And totally leaves Camille Claudel out of the discussion regarding Rodin’s messy entanglements. Eeeeesh.
14
@Kurt Mitenbuler No, the smallest measured sliver of time is what you probably can't do anymore!
9
In answer to the question in the title and explored in your essay, I'd say the jury is still out with my three adult-children. One son is obsessed and refuses to steer beyond his singular interest. One has had to tackle a wide-ranging series of part-time gigs while a third started successfully in one extremely competitive field only to turn away and focus on a more artistic endeavor. Who will be successful; who will be the jerk? I dare say it's whatever makes him or her happy. The failure is not trying.
80
@Actual Science
"One son is obsessed and refuses to steer beyond his singular interest. "
Has he been screened for Autism Spectrum Disorder? Hyper-focus is one of the traits that would suggest he should be screened by a professional.
2
@Actual Science
Your sons could develop into anything. There's no knowing!
But oh, dear, "singular" is not a long form of "single". (Note to those people who despise knowledgeable vocabulary: Tough.)
2
As I was reading this column the name of Fred Rogers kept coming to mind. He might not have reached the heights of recognition of Rilke or Rodin but his singular focus on improving and educating young minds regarding the beauty of appreciating diversity and spreading joy was a gift to a generation of young people and their parents. Maybe a monadic life is not a bad thing.
121
Not sure I'd say Rev. Rogers was a monad in his focus; rather, he was multi-gifted, developed those gifts, and brought them to bear on a multifaceted question; how do we raise happy and good people? When you make yourself the servant of the world in all its diversity, you are almost always protected from seeking to be an isolated unity.
60
@Lauren McGillicuddy. Totally agree with your response. Mr. Rogers’s vocation was multifaceted but culminated in one goal.
17
@Mimie McCarley
That's exactly what David Brooks is talking about when he mentions pluralism.
3
I think the key to genius is to as the article suggests live outside the box. You need to violate intellectual or artistic boundaries not for a year or two but probably for your entire life. Einstein's miracle year was in his one room apartment with his wife and infant son in Bern, Switzerland. He transformed physics while working as a patent clerk and going home to his desk in that little apartment. Karl Marx wrote his famous treatise on capitalism in the reading room of the British Museum all by himself. Michelangelo was obsessed with his art and so was Da Vinci. The mathematician Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Theorem working in secret in his attic for seven years. The list is endless. Elon Musk has been married several times. He works 20 hours a week which I think complicates normal human relationships. Alexsander Solizynitsyn memorized his novels about the Soviet Gulag while hauling logs in the Siberian winter, then typing them in secret when he was released to live in exile. The great American physicist Richard Feynman produced his work alone. His ideas had no parallel in quantum physics and despite his erudition he retained his working class New York accent. To be a true genius, one should be weird and obsessed, it comes with the territory.
21
@Yankelnevich
And yet it's Leonardo who inspired the term "Renaissance man", with his interest and achievements in multiple fields, not only art but also engineering (from flying machines to buildings to weapons) and anatomy. Galileo wrote poetry and plays for fun. Einstein played the violin and by all accounts was something of a womanizer. At my alma mater there was a chemistry Nobel laureate who is also a published poet. Alan Lightman, a professor at MIT in physics and creative writing, is known both for his research and physics textbooks and for his fiction.
6
@Yankelnevich
Not true. Some geniuses are very nice, normal people in other ways and some are not. Consider two of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Leonhard Euler bounced his grandchild on his knee while dictating mathematics to his amanuensis. His mathematical articles are written like essays, introducing the reader gradually to the flow of his ideas. Carl Friedrich Gauss was a snob who dismissed some great work by young people by saying "I did that years ago but didn't publish", even while praising that work to others. His written mathematics is difficult, in part because it expunges all trace of how he came to his ideas.
6
@UA
Furthermore, Einstein played the violin very well, though not at the professional soloist level.
1
All specialists decry thoughts that lie outside the bounds of their specialty. It is the weakness of the current corporate lifestyle that the different must be punished.
7
@Don
Nonsense. You don't know all specialists or anything like it. And "specialists" is not "corporate".
2
Great article, and advice.
One of the greatest flaws on our insistence of specialization is that our smartest and brightest aren't allowed to speak outside of their specialty.
A true waste of talent is silence in the face of knowledge.
26
To accomplish any task requires ignoring everything not essential to it. When anyone tries to consider far more, one cannot focus, one cannot decide, one cannot execute the task. That however does not mean that the creative process is a focused one, indeed, it is not. That is when the vision and design comes together and splits apart and incorporates additional visions and insights. In Taoist terms, the creative inspiration is the yang, and the execution completing the task is the yin.
9
Yes, David reminded me of my childhood when my community consisted of a few streets and a small city with a lot of cultural variety. In some important sense you couldn’t choose your neighbors anymore than you could choose your family. These days the socioeconomic profile of every community is widely know and you can choose to live among those who share your interests, values, and politics. It seems ideal in certain respects but it’s really very much the opposite of the American “melting pot.” It’s more a muffin tin version of America social life. It’s brought us to Trump, and It does not bode well going forward.
10
@Richard Frank
Love the “muffin tin” analogy—it’s perfect!
1
We, life-long liberals, living in the liberal enclave of Washington State, have spent the past 8 winters roaming the midwest and desert southwest. We have traveled 55000 miles. We camp (over 300 sites, mostly dispersed) and hike (over 3500 miles).
One thing that is really cool is that we run into a lot of Trump supporters. Know what? They are nice. We joke, they ask us if we need anything, we know we could count on them even though our license plates clearly indicate we are from Washington state.
Everybody is a lot more similar to them than they think they are. Wish everybody would get out more and make contact with those who they might believe is their "enemy." We think they would find that maybe they aren't.
323
@Travelers
Your comment reminds me of how I used to describe my experience as an international sales manager, many years ago. I used to travel the world, supervising approximately 25 representatives, and I frequently noted that what surprised me was not the differences among people of varying cultures, but the similarities. If more people had the opportunity to travel and meet others, there would be substantially less fear and hate in the world.
70
@Travelers Sounds fine, as long as they don't vote for Trump.
29
@Travelers
Glad Travelers had such a lovely time. That's a great way to see the USA. My guess is that he/she and his/her companions are all white, middle to upper class Anglos. I've traveled that way a lot, too. A lot. And yes, most people everywhere are fine. But Trump supporters, who are mostly white, treat other white folks better than they treat non-whites. Being white, I've been a beneficiary of it. But I have no illusions about how they treat other folks not like them (or me). I've watched and listened to it happen too much to be that naive.
197
Have fun, learn from all directions and reach out to others!
I have always been a "generalist specialist". In Farming, a 20 year tech career, personal life, I look for interesting information and tasks to both enrich my life and find better ways of doing any activity. I used my farming background to solve Technical and business challenges for my customers in Tech. I counsel people at the farmers markets. I am looking for new to me information and foods that are interesting and useful.
I could never have been or be one of those narrow specialists, but I can be knowledgeable about myriad subjects and make useful connections. This makes life fun for me.
When I was a young man and looking for a female partner, I was never incredibly good at finding them for myself but I was described as "An Edwardian Gentleman" more than once. A description I think I have embraced. For an Edwardian Gentleman in this context is one who can converse with nearly anyone, sufficiently intelligently as to be pleasant and moderately entertaining and to learn along the way.
I think all of this has been enhanced by interactions with people of nearly all social classes and heritages and speaking and reading more than one language.
33
@Organic Vegetable Farmer
Lovely!
The top of the mountain is a lonely place, indeed. Once there, people can often become obsessed with the "what-if" regarding failure, not realizing that life is dynamic and ever-changing; and that includes our makeup and the circumstances around us. We all aspire and have goals. That is human nature, and that innate characteristic should not be dismissed. But how many times have we attained what we worked so hard for at the expensive of our personal need for love and intimacy, happiness and joy. I guess I can say, "Whew, glad I was not born a genius after all." Yet, upon looking back at 70 plus years of life, I would be dishonest if I denied ever being tempted by the desire for some sort of glory. However, it is also in looking back that one can realize that it is always those loving connections with friends and family which bring fulfillment and inner peace. I guess you can say to yourself, Now that is success.
38
Description of super-achieving geniuses in this article are really descriptions of persons who would now be diagnosed with "Asperger Syndrome". This term is now actually going out of fashion as these individuals are diagnosed as within the spectrum of autism. It is also recognized that to a large extent genetic factors underlie it and not as thought some 50 years ago, deficient mothering.
16
Gatekeepers hate eclectics. I worked in Silicon Valley for 15 years. Everybody claims to love the Steve Jobs cosmopolitanism of calligraphy, mediation, etc. In reality, they want monads. The market harshly penalizes people for harboring diverse commitments.
209
I agree. Underlying the righteous espousals of “diversity” and “inclusion” is a terrifying sameness that pervades, making contradiction feel almost seditious. Perhaps its due to the increasing rigidity of thought, experience, and intelligence that so many emergent technologies have exacerbated online. Social media realities create a sort of homogenized culture where diversity used to reign supreme, leaking into the real world — often to extremes — making compromise nearly impossible.
20
@Ricard
I’m not sure why you’d chose Steve Jobs as your exemplar. He was notorious for being awful to people who worked under him. He was prone to publicly shredding anyone he felt was underperforming in any way. Apple under Jobs was a “culture of fear” to quote one article.
As to your main point, it’s half true. In my own career as a programmer, I can’t say that anyone ever extolled the virtues of diversity, so honestly I don’t know what you’re talking about there. But it’s true that I was expected to be a programmer, and nothing else.
29
A boss surely wants a monad to perform a specific task, but Brooks’ argument is that to do something unique, original, and great, it helps to have diverse skill sets.
10