Blues music sprang from slavery and Jim Crowe. It's the best model I know for dealing with trauma.
17
What David says makes sense – other than the reference to “a communitywide rite of passage for people coming out of prison”. To equate being sent to prison to being sent to do something for one’s state/community/organisation is demeaning to persons who have undergone the latter experience.
4
This is a good one, Mr. Brooks. Especially agree with this comment: "When you privatize morality and denude the public square of spiritual content, you’ve robbed people of the community resources they need to process moral pain together."
However, there are groups, such as Alcoholic Anonymous, that make available a community that can help wounded folks "to process moral pain together." The 12-step program can help those people enter into moral recovery, availing them opportunities to right the broken relationships with themselves (restoring personal integrity), those they have alienated, and God (i.e., higher power, as it is commonly referenced in the Big Book). AA is the American contribution to spirituality, as noted by the spiritual writer Rev. Richard Rohr, OFM.
8
I felt my soul leave my body when I finally realized that if a truth is too difficult or painful to confront, it will be ignored, denied or repressed. Even by those who claim to be unflinching truth-tellers.
9
I appreciate Brook's remarks and he raises questions that beg for answers: is there such a thing as "spiritual"? What do we mean by that? What do we mean by "moral"? These words suggest that materialism or naturalism are unsatisfactory explanations for reality. What's more, words like "moral" suggest that there is a Moral Law and thus a Moral Law Giver. If this Moral Law Giver has been offended, shouldn't we seek purification from this Being and on his/her terms, not ours?
5
In one of David Brooks long ago columns on morality, he suggested we provided both socioeconomic supports to young single mothers but that those supports should involve programs with, I believe he said, "teeth" in them. Trauma, especially early childhood trauma affects cognitive processes, baseline health, and alters a person's ability to trust. The moral issues involved with such trauma often lie with institutions and cultures in which the child or young person is hurt. I believe that Pope Francis suggested that his church would do well to keep quiet about sex for one hundred years and see what happens. Moral thought often too quickly becomes moralistic. All of our neurotransmitters and their effect across synapses is reality, chemical. Rituals that may be well intended in small groups can very easily become one more way the big system requires compliance of trauma victims. Forgive now. Heal now. Get on with life now. Stop hurting people now.
6
Thank you, David. Our culture has become wildly devoid of meaningful spiritual or moral shared events. I really enjoyed your thoughts on these matters. I agree with you wholeheartedly.
11
These thoughts seem to be the ramblings of a political commentator who has lost his way. Next month, we will read that David Brooks has followed former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey to the seminary.
8
A profound view and right. I attended such a ritual yesterday in which a young man on the verge of marriage asks forgiveness from his parents in front of an extended family. The release of emotions in this ritualized setting prepared both the child and parents for a fundamental life change. A similar ritual for returning soldiers should be revived solemnly and seriously.
4
One thing that must be accepted about trauma is one will never be the same again. And that notion is terrifying to many people as well as to those around them. They want you to get back to your "old self" and you may want to cling to what you were before you lost your innocence but these are traps which enslave you to your trauma.
Trauma needs to be a transformative crucible. It needs to be part of an action, a movement through space and time, a first step, not a step off a cliff.
Brooks' is so right to envision a society which gathers together as a matter of course to shepherd each other through these transitions. It would help the traumatized regain trust and faith in their fellows and it would bring trauma into the realm of experience which is truly accepted as part of life by society.
There is a trend in psychotherapeutic modes towards incorporating Buddhist tenets and mind training and I believe it is a very positive direction for helping traumatized people. And it's not woo-woo or esoteric. For those who are not familiar, Buddhism, in it's basic teachings from the Buddha, is a very pragmatic, practical view. In many ways it's acknowledging the obvious -- you are not your thoughts, you are, rather, that which is aware of your thoughts. All things are transient. Only the present moment really exists and everything else is a hallucination. A good therapist can guide you on how to use this knowledge to *liberate* yourself and be free to move forward. Peace.
13
I've just read the last of your columns that I will read. I've been reading your stuff since we met and talked for two minutes on K street in DC, but in all these years you've never seemed to get away from moralizing and religiosity and pious declarations of "what we should do" about this or that "problem". Sorry, but this last column just creates another category of thought or action or being that you can moralize about, without offering something more than thoughtful. You oughtta been a priest.
6
@Rapid Reader
On the one hand your comment made me think of the song by Fred Small that has the line "don't should on me and I won't should on you...". But on the other hand politics is a lot about "what we should do." For example, we should or should not invest in education, job training, medical care for the elderly, infrastructure, building a bigger military, or shrinking it. Lots of these positions have moral dimensions. While I often don't agree with Mr. Brooks, I appreciate that he has the courage to bring values, morals, indeed principles, into his discussions of policy, political agenda, candidates and office holders.
17
Good article, thank you
2
Brooks' discussion seems to miss the distinction between the moral consequences of doing evil and suffering evil, calling both "moral trauma". While both can be traumatic, and in war coexist, the processes for healing are not the same. Forgiving and being forgiven should not be confused.
2
I'd be more concerned about not starting the wars that cause people to have PTSD and require cleansing rituals.
I was with Mr. Brooks until that point. There are different kinds of PTSD, and this approach might be helpful for PTSD where it is caused by abuse, rape, any of the forms of damage that occur in daily life. But with respect to soldiers, it would be so much better if we didn't go to war so easily and reserve it as a real last resort.
10
Great column. I feel that America operates as a spiritual wasteland. Money is no substitute for love or kindness. Even basic empathy. The worst qualities of human nature and selfishness are embodied by POTUS, and the body politic is infected by trickle down effect.
We won't get back to any form of harmony until we operate from hope and love, not fear and hate. It's pretty simple, actually.
9
Mr. Brooks, the "old man" was Private Ryan and he continued to ask whether he had done enough to make the sacrifices on his behalf worthwhile.
It's about the debt we all owe. It's the question our president has NEVER asked and that failing is our collective stain.
Now, on this day when an American president said, "it is what it is" re: the torture, murder, dismemberment, and dissolving in an acid bath of legal U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, we need to ask, "Are we a good country?"
Now that's a trauma we all will share going forward. We will all need to answer Ryan's question: "Have I done enough?"
13
Sebastian Junger addressed some of this in his book "Tribe", as well as his book written after embedding with troops. He talks about the many things we lost as a society, where we have taken away many of the rituals of the past, of coming of age (like a Bar Mitzvah/Bat Mitzvah, tribal initiation ceremonies for kids coming of age), and also the rituals around transitioning back. People talk about the 16 million people under arms during WWII who transitioned back successfully into the baby boom world, but they also don't mention the many who didn't make an easy transition and bore scars in private.
We make big noises about thanking service people for their service, but we otherwise don't give them what they need, the ability to tell their stories, to share with the community what they experienced; likewise, with trauma victims we see them as that, rather than listening to them, acknowledging them and helping to welcome them back.
The one thing I am firm on, though, is that this moral cleansing or reawakening cannot be based in religious faith, we are not talking the morality of the churches and the like, this has to be the morality of humanism, because the institutions of religion have been some of the biggest purveyors of abuse and their response to it tells you they aren't the answer.
17
Why do people think surrendering their bodies to the military campaigns of liars, pirates and murderers has anything to do with liberty?
4
A 'thick moral culture' can never happen in a society driven by greed and the deification of money.
12
Unfortunately for America's warriors, too many of our wars have been ignoble and wrongheaded. So we are ambivalent about the returning soldier; we want to show gratitude for his or her sacrifice, and atone for not sharing it, yet we know it was, in so many cases, an unworthy enterprise for which we do not want to share the shame.
14
David, you and your Christian wife shd join an Episcopal Church. They have rituals for everything.For instance, after I suffered a miscarriage, my priest and I met and put together a service which included reading Romans 8 (the Spirit *grieves* on our behalf). The church also use inclusive language often.
2
Wonderful article. There is no single treatment for PTSD that works for everyone and this gives people another option.
I would add one more option.
EDMR. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.
It seems very safe but I do not the percent effectiveness. May be worth looking into if you know anyone with PTSD.
https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/eye-movement-reprocessing.aspx
3
Probably the best way to fight the spiritual void is to go back to the religious morals and teachings that when practiced properly, really did "make America great". Of course it's easier to give up the moral compass and fill the void with drugs and self indulgence.
The trouble is with the extreme left that demonizes religion and also spirituality. If we can separate those two--neither the Tea Party nor the extreme left would thrive. Balance has been lost from US politics and lifestyle--so a quick fix of medicine seems more appropriate than this type of spiritual healing, which requires patience and faith.
2
@APS I'm not sure what you mean by the "extreme left." Are you talking about Communism? If so, I would agree that they are anti-religious, but I would be cautious to say they "demonize" religion; because not all individuals feel exactly the same way and many Communists may have loved ones who are religious and don't want to hurt them. As for spirituality, I disagree with you because Communism, by it's own definintion, is a fully humanistic political theory and therefore it would be difficult to argue that it could be characterized as anti-spiritual. In fact, the opposite would be more accurate. I myself am not a Communist and the main reason is because I don't believe that humans are quite yet ready to give up their ego demands for the good of the majority. But if humans could do that, then we would have a truly spiritual society.
4
There were more American battle deaths at Iwo Jima in 3 weeks than their have been in Afghan/Iraq in the past 17 years.
Yet, most WW2 veterans kept to themselves about what they experienced.
1
@Freddy... and suffered in silence.
3
Based on the chosen title, I was prepared to read a paragraph or two and dismiss as the ramblings of another mind locked into forcing others to chose religion, preferably their brand. Totally wrong of me!
This is possibly the most profound article I have ever read regarding PTSD and all other forms of abuse. Wise and understanding, David Brooks has zeroed in on the bulls eye of the matter, that one's soul has been destroyed and short of putting it back together, there is only bits and pieces of recovery.
PLEASE CHANGE THE TITLE SO THAT NO ONE WILL AVOID READING THIS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT PIECE.
Next, print up a million copies for distribution everywhere. No, stop! Make it a billion! I hope this becomes required reading in every psychology training program, everywhere.
7
Thank you for this David Brooks. I am a Vietnam era vet having served 8 years in the US Air Force. For several years I have been advocating what you are suggesting, but I don't have the pulpit you have. Soldiers go through basic training where they are stripped of their identity and made into a number and ordered to commit atrocities in the name of some "greater good". Once the military is through with them they are stripped of their uniform and their military identity and put back into civilian life as if nothing had happened to them. The least the military could do is spend just as much time on a program, a ritual, to restore their civilian identity, forgive them for what they have done, and help them find a new place and a new identity for themselves in civil society. Even though I am an engineer who worked, post-military, on NASA projects sending spacecraft to other planets and on some military projects, I have not been able to find a place for myself within society. I live with my grown kids, but I no longer have any friends. Not one. For the last 25 years I have resorted to an isolated unemployed existence writing novels, travel journals and other writing research projects. I can't deal with people, so I self publish. I trust no one. At 77 years old, I know that I will never be a functioning member of society again.
225
@David Sheppard You sound like a deeply spiritual, profound and sensitive individual. Your sense of alienation is understandable yet deeply disturbing, because many of us can identify with your feelings. Thank you for your service to this country and to us, we are deeply indebted to you for taking this burden on our behalf. Please continue to write and publish, perhaps some of us will learn from your journey.
75
@David Sheppard I am very moved by what you wrote here and am so sorry that after your service to our country, we have let you down. I have been moved by Mr. Brooks' column to create my own personal ritual of healing and transformation and will be asking my friends and family to be part of that -- I have no idea how at this point or what this thing will look like. I'll bet there are many veterans who share your feelings about people and community life. I am so sorry. Thank you for your candor and best wishes to you.
50
@David Sheppard Please know the courage it took for you to share your story and bare your soul have not been in vain. May you soon feel the reconnection to us all; May you feel our gratefulness for your service and dedication; And May you feel our embrace as you move into the healing process that will come...God Bless
38
The way to have fewer traumatized veterans is to make fewer of them in the future. The US has been at war since 1941 almost continuously. Most of those wars have been illegal, immoral, or just plain stupid. We are at war today and we have about 800 military bases in 80 countries around the world. It's past time to think whether that expense in human life is necessary.
159
@J. Free, thank you! This is the only way!! "when will they ever learn? when will they ever learn?"
10
Yup. My first post ever. Two tours in Vietnam. Thanks to superb West Point "training" my soul (compassion and empathy?) left my body well before graduation. You have captured in words the separation from self I feel. Thank you so much. Now I know what to seek out......the piece of me I left behind. Well done.
171
"The good news is that the people who are addressing trauma most directly are reviving a moral language and developing a moral curriculum. "
People who work with traumatized people know this. It's not being 'revised.' Rarely is treating trauma *only* medicalized.
While I agree with many of your points, you do a disservice to people who work to help people heal from trauma by making it sound as if we fail to take the complicated levels into account. It's at the soul level, the neurobiological level, the heart level, the emotional level, etc.
58
@Anne Amen - I bristle at the "We call it PTSD and regard it as an individual illness that can be treated with medications." I don't know of any psychologist worth his or her salt who would suggest that PTSD can be treated with medications. Perhaps some of the symptoms can be ameliorated with medications, but medications don't treat PTSD per se.
12
Trump was elected shortly after my beloved mother (I was her primary caregiver) died and I suffered a stroke -- on the same day. The election of "that awful man," as mom called him, seemed to me but another symptom of the meaninglessness and moral emptiness of life during that dark period. I was diagnosed with PTSD -- and Trump was definitely part of the trauma. This wasn't about politics, "liberal" or "conservative." Amorality and nihilism are moral and spiritual conditions.
A weak and petulant President who manufactures lies daily, who believes in nothing but himself, who denies that words have significance, who claims to value "our flag" without the slightest understanding of the principles it stands for (e.g., the Constitution), who unctuously bows before dictators and tyrants, who continually treats our military and intelligence personnel with contempt, who suborns and encourages violence against the press and his perceived "enemies"...? It's beyond unacceptable. It's Stalin-esque (Putin-esque?). And it still seems unthinkable.
Yes, trauma is more than a physical and psychological phenomenon (and, in my experience, too many medical "specialists" fail to grasp that the body and the mind are inseparable). And everyday politics can be profoundly traumatic, especially when an illegitimate, morally bankrupt figurehead sits at its top, endlessly whining. It's almost more than decent, idealistic people can bear. But his days are numbered, and we will heal.
151
@jim emerson, thank you for speaking the truth so eloquently. may your words find their way into reality, and may your own healing continue.
18
Truama from war is probably inevitable. But war itself is not. This is the problem I have with this essay. The moral decay inherent in war itself precedes and sets the stage for the inevitable trauma that will be the experience of many of the participants, perhaps most of them. So what you suggest Mr Brooks sounds like good advice. But better not to have put one's support behind a war that caused the trauma. That would a rite of confession and purification more fundamental, it seems to me, and much more important to put in place.
2
EMDR is a proven therapeutic modality that helps most cases of PTSD and acute anxiety. Myths will only take you so far. Changing how the mind repossess events leads to a cure. I have experienced the benefits of EMDR.
2
My experience is that being non-spiritual does not make one more likely to commit suicide or have PTSD than does being spiritual. The atheists I know are no more likely to commit suicide and/or have PTSD than are the non-atheists. Also, some countries with higher percentages of atheists and more secular cultures than the US have lower suicide rates, including the Denmark, Holland and Vietnam.
But let’s assume that being non-spiritual tends to make it harder for people to not be depressed and not commit suicide than does being spiritual. That is irrelevant to whether there likely are any spiritual entities. Analogously, suppose believing that the earth revolves around the sun tends to make it harder for people not to be depressed than believing the opposite. I’m still quite sure the earth revolves around the sun.
But it is very important that the public square of any society is infused with moral judgments and reasoning about morality. I suspect that this makes it more likely that people will make decisions that increase the probability of increasing the number of choices that can be made by those impacted by the decisions who are able to make the fewest choices. For instance, moral philosophers’ lives are full of moral judgments and reasoning about morality, and moral philosophers tend to be better than those who are non-moral philosophers at making choices that increase the likelihood of helping those people they can impact who are able to make the fewest choices.
1
Too bad Mr. Brooks wasn't as concerned with the issue of trauma when he was using his column in the NY Times to promote the war in Iraq. Where are those Weapons of Mass Destruction Mr. Brooks? What was the evidence of there existence? How many people have died? Has the oil money paid for it all? Why not use your column to give us all an update?
5
This: " wish our culture had many more rites of passage, communal moments when we celebrated a moral transition."
We used to.
It was called "walking the aisle" or "a public profession of faith." This was standard practice for becoming a Christian in my Baptist church. Once done, the convert was surrounded by deacons and church members who encouraged him/her.
Now that many of the Baptist churches are being replaced by non-denominational Bible churches, I don't see this happen as much. As a matter of fact, some churches don't ever require you to walk the aisle, you can just tell the pastor you have become a Christian.
Sometimes the old ways are the best.
2
WE have our myths. They are seen everywhere. Like, the fires in Calif are due to Gods anger at liberals. Like the only God is a Christian one. WE are a nation of angry, miss informed myths.
3
outstanding
Grow a soul or buy one?
I am doubtful based on my literature reading and experiences that medications do much of anything deep or lasting for for PTSD . I am glad that David Brooks does at least write, bring up the sociocultural things that maybe contributing, causing the troubles of the U.S. and beyond. Just for those interested I have found the writings of of Psychologist Bruce E Levine.net to be somewhat interesting and offering of some insights about some of the underlying cultural causes. I take the trouble to comment and to mention him here to be possibly helpful to other commentors who I presume likemindedly interested in these possible underlying causes of our problems.
1
Interesting that David Brooks, who has historically been an apologist for conservative views, which did not particularly favor socially progressive thought, has (perhaps due to his rapidly increasing age) become insightful about a human condition that warrants liberal attention. Welcome to our side, Mr. Brooks - even if it's just until the memory of your typical insensitivities return to consciousness.
A major difference between clearly declared and clearly ended wars, like I and II, and Vietnam, is that soldiers went over together and came back together in I and II, by ship, with the long trip home like a group therapy session, or at least a debriefing, some time for reentry with comrades who knew what each other went through. There were usually crowds of well wishers as the ship docked.
Vietnam soldiers returned home, sometimes one by one, often to protesters, wanting their hair to grow out so they could mingle as a civilian.
Now returning soldiers have few if any persons their age who understand or care to understand what they went through. With no more draft, we have a certain type of dedicated person going off to war, and there are fewer of them at home to welcome them. They must feel more isolated than returning soldiers when there was a draft and there were many more veterans.
Having a president who was a veteran probably helped earlier returning troops. It can't help that our current president has shown scorn for some military commanders and who has passed on important occasions to honor veterans.
3
I met a playwright who worked with suicidsl vets refusing to go to a therapist. Doctors monitored her workshops to help participants create and act in dramatized stories. 30% signed up right away with therapists. I worked through my own frozen disassociation by writing what happened using the discipline of art to force insight and design not just telling the story
As someone with PTSD for the past 10+ years, my improvement has come through all of these areas. Psychiatry, prescription meds, finding myself again, and marijuana.
Although Brooks makes mention of others who battle PTSD, one of the things the media and society needs to make clear, is that PTSD is just not a veterans' problem, or one that affects sexual assault victims. That consistent narrative marginalizes those who are not veterans or sexual assault victims and hinders their ability to share and heal...or even worse, when they do tell people they have PTSD, they are usually laughed at because, in their minds, PTSD is only for vets and sexual assault victims. It's all forms of trauma.
Don't get me wrong, both vets and sexual assault victims are clearly two groups who suffer immensely from PTSD and thus the attention, but the narrative is too focused on them.
David, David, David...
Reading you is like when I was a kid, feeling my missing tooth with my tong constantly: I know what is going to happen, but I would still keep doing it over, and over and over.
You talk about morals and victims of war after a Republican President sent a lot of those people to the last idiotic war. And when they were back, even getting the medicines you mentioned was problematic.
And we have the immorality of requesting that people that need Medicaid, BECAUSE THEY ARE POOR need to go through all this hoops to get help.
But for God's sake, do not regulate Corporations or the Financial system!!! Those POOR PEOPLE are being HARRASED by Government!!!
I guess I come back because I like to vent at you, after all... Read you next week!
1
US healthcare, another profit-driven debacle of an essential service, is not even making an attempt to help sexual violence trauma. Republicans take away contraception, family planning support, turn a a blind eye to sexual assault ( Roy Moore, Kavanaugh, military, church, athletics ). Sexual assault is pervasive no matter how hard the PR machines confuse with weasel words. Hope our newly elected young people have the bravery to make sexual violence treatment a priority. The elders have failed.
1
For someone writing self-aggrandizing articles on
moral and spiritual" issues, David Brooks is certainly out of touch when it comes to Social Security disability for veterans with a post-traumatic stress disorder.
Of course it's "medicalized". Do you think they're going to qualify for help if they go into a Social Security office and claim it's a "spiritual" issue?
What really irks me about the self-proclaimed "moral majority" is that when Reagan was in office, we ended up with a homelessness epidemic, and to this day we're still getting lectured about how it's a "moral and spirtual issue' that conditions such as trauma are "medicalized" when they can overcome such issues without chemicals.
Yeh, so could that homeless vet if he hadn't seen people blown up and his back hurts from an injury that compelled him to drink. David Brooks you couldn't even walk a mile in his shoes.
How strange! You send young men to kill and die in a war which makes no sense, which has never been explained, or justified, which they can't understand, but which goes on and on and on, repeating the same errors! And the young men come back physically, psychologically, spiritually impaired, or if sensitive, shattered. Brooks never once questioned the Middle East wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lybia), but enthusiastically backed them. He doesn't question now. Like his neocon brethren he takes absolutely no responsibility. Rather naked hypocrisy is cloaked, as always, in vague platitudes and cliches of "spiritualism". Spiritual revival? Why not just pull out of Afghanistan? Think how many lives, how many communities, will be saved.
5
Why do we send men away to do terrible things?
66
It's called chaos. All we do is rationalize it. Why did one man survive a battle and not another? Pure chance, nothing more. It's attempting to try and make sense of this that may be half the trouble. While me are still alive to appreciate the importance of it, it's important to understand that at this time God is not 'sacrificing' one person and 'delivering' another. He views everyone equally, and is not playing favorites with anybody. Why this impartiality? That way he avoids killing everyone.
Brooks supports a GOP that sits complicit and does nothing to prevent gun violence. There have been four, that's right four, attacks of gun violence this week including an emergency room being shot up and a doctor killed trying to save lives. The US has been at War for years with no end in sight. The moral transition cannot happen with wars both foreign and in our country daily with gun violence.
5
We have a model and a paradigm for re-integrating the wounded - it's called Restorative Practices and Restorative Justice, healing circles and community. Active listening and genuine caring for one another is what we all need right now.
4
Mr. Brooks writes: "I wish our culture had many more rites of passage, communal moments when we celebrated a moral transition."
I wish our culture didn't believe so frequently that war is the solution to the problems we face. That would prevent many of our problems from occurring in the first place.
4
As a trainer in men's trauma, I agree with much of what has been said here, except that there is a biologic factor not mentioned that has to do with the body's "retention" of unprocessed effects of trauma. Spiritual healing IS necessary, but so is work on releasing the physical toll of trauma though body work of some sort or another.
An excellent resource is Bessell van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps the Score. He has worked with trauma in veteran's at the VA in Boston and at Boston University Hospital's Trauma Center.
In his book, he details the ways trauma releases, among other things, Cortisol, which remains at high levels creating havoc and a perpetual fight/flight/freeze response until released. He also has many you tube videos explaining the process.
There is an increasing number of Somatic Experience clinicians who specialize in this kind of work.
4
Brooks' column is thoughtful as it stands, but in the context of his other writings, it's just a posture: he was an ardent supported of the Iraq invasion and delivered contemptuous (albeit literary) words for those who opposed it. How many PTSD sufferers came out of that concocted war that he supported? Brooks wasn't concerned with their souls then, just advancing a right wing ideology wrapped in the flag.
1
I find this column well meaning. PTSD prevalent for this country's brave soldiers affect many and also earlier in life. Often and only the combination of positive factors alone do not work without the correct medication. A walk I have walked with a family member many years. We are not becoming a kinder society. And those afflicted
find a yet a more insecure world and in crisis without resources or support succumb even more.
1
Trauma does not only arise from man-made causes, such as war or abuse. It can from from life itself, as in disease, unexpected death of loved ones, accidents, or even the realization that our actions have caused others to suffer. Trauma affects all of us, in different degrees.
Healing seems to require an individual spark of hope and commitment to heal, as well as a support group. Attention to basic rules of conduct (nothing too fancy) and meditation help the individual, and can be done by anyone with a modest amount of effort. Our houses of worship, of whatever religion, should provide the communal support and guidance (and if not, look for another house of worship).
The point is, the necessary elements to create the “thick moral culture” that you mention are already here, even though they may need activation, repurposing, or to be viewed in a different light.
1
Are we, as individual people, inevitably, in sone ways or other ways, responsible for what happens in our family. our neighborhood, our organizations, our community. our society? Of course we are. And not just for the good stuff that happens.
1
I can't explain my trauma in a way that makes sense to people. It just doesn't seem life a big deal to them, but it ruined my entire life.
I'm 49 and it might ruin my entire life at this point. I've told people to just kill me and it would be easier.
I have an awesome therapist that might help deal with it, but none of us know. We don't know how these things turn out. We're so primitive.
All I want people to understand is that yes, I thought I was going to die in that moment, but no that wasn't the worst part of it.
I spent 2 years trying to shove this under the known, because I was told my parents would be killed if I said anything. The trauma itself it not that big of a deal. The years of dealing with the responsibility to protect my parents, at the age of 10, nearly killed me many times. One day it might just end my life.
6
@DudeNumber42
Blessings on you and the child within you who still holds so much hurt. I wish you well. I wish you healing. Your life matters.
3
Brooks again advances the notion that if only some kind of a lost permanence were to be created again, or somehow found- an invisible, gargantuan spiritual cement block, say-one grain from which would infuse, grow and predicate one's being; then contentment, happiness peace of mind and love, love love would cure all our ills, mental, moral and spiritual. Again and usual, lurking in all of Brook's enthusiasms and ruminations about human well being or betterment, exists a benevolent tyrant waiting its turn to become red in tooth and claw.
1
David always gently treads on the edge of an issue, trying not to offend anyone, which is really kind of a waste. Though in this instance, he has touched on an issue of the greatest importance. Our society is hopelessly shallow and lost...the hero's journey is an ancient psychological pathway to find way to find wholeness, and would be useful for veterans.
Our society, shallow & self obsessed, thanks to the rise of technology, is filled with fragmented confused people. The most confused of us, veterans, have been the shooters in the most recent mass shootings. Our government has a responsibility to find ways to help these vets to resolve their psychological confusion.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Edward Kennedy died of the exact same type of brain cancer, wasn't it in the same area of the brain? the area of speech? I had a family member die of the same type of cancer. Unexplored guilt can be deadly.
2
For me, however, medicine heals broken bodies, psychology and psychiatry heal broken minds. And exactly what is a broken soul if not a broken mind?
Show me a "soul" and then, just maybe. I will start to believe and understand this stuff that you call the "spiritual." Ethics and morality do not require spirituality or any greater power than that of humanity.
I do not doubt the sincerity of anyone's "spiritual" belief. If you can find healing through spiritual belief, higher powers, religions, shamanism, animism, naturalism, satanism,or whatever, then good for you -- go in peace comforted in your beliefs.
I don't know if my comment will show up, but the shear pain of this is off the charts. Yes, I have PTSD diagnosed but is it as bad a battle fatigue? Probably not, but probably yes.
Worse is when it comes from somebody your supposed to trust.
38 years later I still cant deal with it. I could die of it due to chemical use.
2
I wish that Republicans would understand that "medicalizing" trauma, such as PTST, enables those veterans to obtain Social Security disability and get a place to live, instead of roaming the streets homeless.
3
Mr. Brooks,
Maybe if Americans could make a living wage rather than working two jobs they'd have more time to spend raising their children. This spiritual and moral void clearly comes from growing up with no parental guidance.
--Just a Thought
6
“As a culture we’re pretty bad at dealing with moral injury..rising suicide and depression rates, the rising fragility and distrust, all flows from the fact that we’ve made our culture a spiritual void. When you privatise morality and denude the public square of spiritual content, you’ve robbed people of the community resources they need to process moral pain together”.
Beautifully said. Inevitable consequences of society which worships money.
Is it time to think of a global economic system that puts people and not an idol called money at its heart?
Pope Francis was right to call the “unbridled capitalism and the "cult of money", calling for ethical reform of the financial system to create a more humane society”.
Leaders need to be bold in tackling the root causes of the economic crisis, which lay in an acceptance of money's "power over us and our society".
"We have created new idols; the worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal."
American brand of Laissez-faire capitalism is heart of growing inequality in society, directly responsible for the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation.
In such a society Ethic is a nuisance.
Pope was spot on saying "There is a need for financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone," he said. "Money has to serve, not to rule."
3
I admit that myth affects me. Habit and imprinted emotion, and some fear remain with me from my time as a Christian. I have some friendships still but every time I want to rejoin the fold I'm blocked by all the inaccuracies you have to accept to participate in the community. We all know it's a charade but we feel better pretending. I think it's right that we are shedding myths because they are vulnerable to skepticism and are not true. Any good it would do will always be undone. And room for improvement in the treatment of the condition of trauma is not an excuse to abandon the pursuit of knowledge and revive myths that will be just as untrue as they were before.
1
That 'spiritual void' is religion, which believers want to translate into substance, is called 'Faith':
"Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." ~ AMBROSE BIERCE
2
So often, I find myself frustrated and annoyed with David Brooks' columns.
But this one brought me to the edge of tears.
I love this essay. And as a psychotherapist, I find what he has written here to be 100 percent true, timely, and rarely expressed as well as it has been right here. This essay is a gift.
7
There’s a folk saying that when an adult harms a child, the child’s soul goes away, sometimes for a short time, sometimes forever. Having had mine go years ago, one day, after a lot of ego state and post-traumatic therapy, it came back. And stays.
2
There is a long tradition of traumatized soldiers returning from wars and finding solace within wild nature. From Hemingway's Nick Adams to the renegade grizzly scholar, Doug Peacock, veterans have nurtured their wounds in wilderness across North America. The desecration of these public lands by the current administration - lands that serve as "the geography of our democracy" - is not only an ecological disaster, but, as we see in this essay, a spiritual disaster as well.
2
Fantastic point Mr. Brooks. Well spoken.
The question is how to do so, is it a muslim or christian faith we espouse in public squares- and who gets to decide?
1
@David
How about faith in our shared humanity?
I have PTSD. I receive counseling and medication for it. Both help.
I recently went to the drug store to refill my prescription of anti-anxiety medicine. The Pharmacist told me that, in about one month, there would be a nationwide shortage of this critical drug that helps Americans who suffer from trauma. She said that doctors are writing so many prescriptions for this anti-trauma medicine the manufacturers can't keep up. Thus the looming shortage.
I looked at her and said I could tell her in one word why the country had so much trauma that doctors and psychiatrists everywhere were writing so many prescriptions.
Trump
3
@Vanowen
Hard to imagine a comment that minimizes PTSD any more than this one. Differences on political policy and tone do not cause PTSD. Try going into a war zone before commenting on what causes PTSD.
Brooks is making a very astute point here. The medical model treats the body, the psychological model treats the mind, but it takes a spiritual model to repair the soul. Sometimes we need meds, and sometimes we need psychological help, but until the soul is engaged, the existential issues of trauma will not abate.
Abuse comes in all shapes and sizes, but the core of trauma is always the same. The soul, that essence of sentience, deeper than then mind is what is crying out for help. With corporations being people, and hospitals organized around profits, is it any wonder that our souls seem abandoned.
It is not just those severely traumatized people that need help. The void Brooks is pointing to is real. Is it any wonder that as a whole our society now lacks the wherewithal to do any more than treat the body and the mind? We have become soulless. There is little left in this country that can speak to that which is deepest, where the soul is suffering.
We have lost the old line churches, and have fallen into the void that comes before renewal. We will find new spiritual understanding, more inclusive, more open. A new spiritual invigoration will come from the ashes. The void Brooks has pointed out will begin dissolve as new meaning arises.
There is a soul in America, but it's been lost in greed. The restoration is coming. Compassion and empathy will return. We the people will rise, and corporations will be a means, but not an end.
202
@Maury May it be so; your hope is lovely but without action nothing will change. Most people are still waiting for a messiah to come and save them. In the meantime they order more wine and rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
If we are truly committed to building a moral society we must find a spiritually alive community with eyes wide open about our nation's past sins - starting with the theft of this land from indigenous peoples and the enslavement of "the other" to make us rich. If you have given up on religion but long for a spiritual community may I recommend the Unitarian-Universalist path. It could empower you to be part of the solution, abandoning the myth of a savior.
17
@Sue Frankewicz Thanks for your sweet words. My spiritual path is described on youtube Maury Lee. I am full of hope for this country and this world. Have a wonderful day!
1
@Maury Beautifully said. But I do believe that America's soul is still alive and well. That is why immigrants want to come here. And as exhausted as I am from all of the terrible events of 2018, I do believe in this country and we shall turn this all around. I am doing my best on a local level to be a good neighbor; good friend; and good family member. As my great mom used to say, it starts with all of us in our own little circles.
10
PTSD in soldiers occurs when they have to assume the moral responsibility for their actions and for what they see in war.
That is why a country should never go to war on a vote of 51-49. The entire country has to send these people, telling them that they are with them all of the way.
That was my main problem with the war in Iraq. It was done in the same manner as the tax reform bill---get enough votes to pass. Ignoring the people who had to go there and experience it.
Shame on Bush.
489
@Dan
I agree, except from what I understand, the very munitions and armaments are traumatizing. Just being around the type of warcraft we're sending soldiers into, even in the absence of killing, is traumatizing. I don't think many people come home from today's wars feeling great.
19
@Eric. Interesting though how our gaming glorifies exactly those munitions and armaments that in real life traumatize us. I see snippets of ads for various games which all include horrific scenes that if the players were really involved in, would break their spirits (see all this poss-trauma stress). Something's wrong with this picture.
23
@Dan
Imagine the guilt and PTSD among Palestinians for the death and destruction from their rockets fired into Israel.
1
The world is a complicated and confusing place Mr. Brooks. There are as many paths through it as there are people looking for one.
I've spent a life time looking at paths, and as a result have chosen to share my own findings with very few people and do not recommend any one path to anyone. I do believe, however, that if one makes the effort to find their way through this world, they will most likely find it worth their while.
I have also come to have enormous respect for those you mention in your opening paragraphs, those kind souls who, with or without the right training, do something concrete everyday to help their fellows. Their kindness and caring about others inspires me and, in the broad scope of things, makes a real difference.
As for the thread you seem to be pulling at the moment, if you haven't read it already, I would recommend "Memories, Dreams, Reflections". One of many paths you might find worth looking at.
1
Always appreciate your effort, David, to reach for the light, an option, a way that's most obvious, even, but not in our line of vision. This is an exceptional piece.
Gives me pause. Gives me hope.....
1
Since when did David Brooks becomes a clinical psychologist? Last week we had depression being caused by people being a bit lonely, apparently all they need is a good hug and a bridge club and they'll be cured. This week we have PTSD being the result of a broken soul, the cure for which is spiritual ceremonies. And although he's happy to spout Native American rituals as an example, we all know he's thinking about bums on pews in church. For there's nothing a good American Conservative likes more than to blame society's ills on people not going to church.
3
One of your best. Been reading you for a very long time.
Poorly thought out.
So Religion is going to save us? We've heard that again and again. Prayer has no function but deluding the mind. But I'll stop there because the value of religion is a preposterous discussion.
The problem is that we need to stop wars and help those who can't help themselves. We need to repair the horrid wealth disparity in this country and start getting serious about climate change. If you think we are unhappy now, Mr. Brooks, wait until that comes into full bloom.
Good economy? Yikes. Most people do not buy stock and the lower and middle class have not seen wages rise for decades. Millions of American live pay check to pay check and have practically no cash on hand. The medical insurance problems still loom dangerously and we need Medicare for All. I have recently studied the medical plans for seniors and the rules and regs are so complicated. Health plans in a country should not be profit motivated; that is the same logic as if public schools should make a profit! Something as critical as health care should not be profit motivated no more than our school systems. We might also need to set up a Minimum Basic Income for all. The rules of capitalism are what is causing pain and suffering in this country for all the reasons above. It has nothing to do with spirituality. Sometime Mr. Brooks, you need to go read the book called "Logically Fallacious," it reviews the 300 common logical fallacies. You stumbled with most of those here.
2
Another week, another cluless, or simply dishonest, column by Brooks. If only he would read some history instead of the simplistic, feel-good books he prefers, he would understand that the “mythic life” is what many soldiers who now suffer from PTSD were seeking in pointless, destructive wars, and that most of the trauma in the world today is a result of those “mythic” wars. You can’t heal the world’s traumas while worshipping the so-called “men’s movement” religion of male violence and domination. Pick up a history book!
2
Sounds alot like Robert Bly and passages from his book "Iron John". Points out a hole in our society and a deep need, no matter what side of the political spectrum you're on.
"Wherever there is trauma, there has been betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury"
you helped elect him, now your crying crocodile tears, for a nation with ptsd.
2
David:
A challenge for you. Go and talk about trauma to a few other groups:
-- transgender students who have been bullied, harassed or violated.
---asylum seekers who have walked for hundreds of miles with small children without knowing where their heads will lie at night.
-- women who have been routinely harassed by men or raped or the such
-- minorities targeted by the police
--any immigrant that has left all they love behind to be a foreigner and occasional second class citizen so that their children can have a future.
Not trying to be cute. Not trying to play the victim card for any of these groups.
I am trying to make a wider point. If you want to understand the Democratic party, go talk to these people. They are PEOPLE, too. We are all in this together and until our spirit of community extends to our global humanity, trauma will continue to be a part of our worlds....and sadly so will war.
5
Please explain exactly what “inner self” or soul may be for you. These terms are so vague and relative as to be meaningless. Same for “morals” which are so different for different religions and cultures. Do you mean your morals? Let’s just stop sending people to kill other people and this “moral” issue will be solved.
2
Speaking as someone who has been diagnosed with PTSD due to childhood physical abuse from my mother, and combat experiences in the rivers of Vietnam - and has been successsfully treated after two or so years with a caring psychiatrist and a trauma therapist - it sure would be nice if America and the rest of the world embraced globalism, completely turned our backs on senseless wars, and learned to handle interpersonal conflicts in spiritual ways. Competition, religion, strongman tactics, and fickle finger pointing blame don’t do anything other than ultimately turn us against one another - I believe it’s called tribalism. Maybe we could start by changing our national anthem to John Lennon’s “Imagine” or Woody Gutherie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” After all - we are ALL in this together whether we like it or not.
136
@Michael Sparkman Thanks for your hopeful comment. And I love the idea of changing our national anthem. We built our country on “blood-soaked” ground, from Native American genocide to using African, then African-American slave labor for centuries. Those shadows still live with us. We need truth and reconciliation, soul-cleansing as Brooks might say.
6
@Michael Sparkman
A good thought and happy to hear you have found some resolution.
David Brooks suggests a cleansing ritual for veterans and others with versions of PTSD. Far better would be to eliminate wars and child abuse. It can be done, although, amazingly, there are powerful forces seeking to prevent such action. Right now, in the U.S., those forces are represented by the Republican party, which foregrounds militaristic nationalism and the destruction of health care and social programs that could lead to a better life for all.
David Brooks should undergo a cleansing ritual and renounce the Republican party and its policies that he has embraced for so long.
7
@Michael Sparkman
How well is that passivity and introspection working out for Tibet?
Too late, pilgrims...It's the Tower of Babel time. The socials have revealed our true inner souls...And its not a pretty sight.
1
Dear Mr. Brooks, I urge you (and other readers) to learn about the very successful trial studies conducted by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) on the therapy-assisted use of MDMA to treat PTSD. (http://maps.org/research/mdma.)
Many veterans have been helped already.
1
Until those who claim moral superiority stop doing so, this piece will hold no water. Until those on the top stop worshiping at the alter of the almighty dollar and refuse to use "spirituality" as a tool and means to gain power in the form of voting blocks, this country will not heal. Capitalism has no room for spiritual practice and until David and his ilk stop ignoring our leaderships manipulations and the worst messages of religious dogma for their own gain, I struggle to take Davids words to heart. I hear you David, but why don't you share this with the President and your other capitalist friends and see what they do with it? Until our leadership and their benefactors in big business start behaving in ways that do not crush peoples souls, we will never be without the despair and emptiness that selfish greed creates everyday in this country.
2
For a community to practice the sort of healing rituals that Mr. Brooks refers to, the members of the community must have a shared system of belief. In America, we used to have several complementary systems of belief. We had our civic beliefs which were based on Constitutional strictures and normative beliefs that rose above any other political or cultural differences and we had religious institutions which for the most part augmented our civic system. Unfortunately all of those belief systems have been compromised and there is nothing left to bring us together. A significant number of religious institutions are either morally corrupt or so enmeshed in politics that they are unable to offer spiritual solace to the populace. And, our politicians and other leaders have weakened or destroyed our civic norms.
1
Ghosts
They’re all dead now, all, except me.
Dyuan died yesterday here in our village, holding a rake out in front of him like the rifle he once carried so well. His last target was the resident ghost of a former enemy who over the years had become his friend.
Some nights as we sat around the fire, one of us with too much rice wine might be brave enough to speak of our village ghost moving about out there in the dark, in the tree line.
Dyuan laughed and told us the ghost waited for him in the next life for the two of them lived together longer than the American boy had lived his own, short life. They are together now; gone to that place we all must one day visit.
The war had made him unafraid and in those rare moments when he did not smile, Dyuan stared into the darkness over the river and provoked the shadow world. “We have unfinished business.”
Only in this did he move from this common heart we all shared in our small community. And while we feared the many phantoms around us we forgave Dyuan a thousand times for he was ever our friend, our living spirit and the best among us. We loved him like no other.
Vietnam is full of ghosts. Wandering souls who died violently, ripped from their bodies and their unfinished lives, with no loving family to honor them and no altar to receive veneration and nourishment. They are confused, without the purpose to guide new generations through this troubled land. Their fate is to wander, wander without end.
.
9
Brooks wishes "our culture had more rites of passage, communal moments when we celebrated a moral transition...for forgiveness of a personal wrong, for people who felt they had come out the other side of trauma and abuse."
All the while his president commits wrongs, lies, insults, terrifies and revolts us daily with his obscenities, his inanities, his lunacy.
Maybe Brooks could cough up some obscure but very well-respected psychiatrist who could mumbo and jumbo us after Trump leaves. Like a medicine man, wave an incense wand over the blighted nation and declare it pure again.
Maybe Brooks could find some big-chested, mythical Bunyanesque-cum-Marlboro American man to come along after in his Ford 150 honey cart and sweep up the detritus that the republicans have made of this country and its values.
4
@George Dietz: Maybe easy cynicism and cheap satire will disappear, too.
2
Reading Mr Brooks somehow provides me with hope through this wall of noise built by politics, business, and media. His ability to shed light on spiritual trauma reflects empathy toward others.
Listening to other people's pain, in a society driven by success, power and control, is a hard skill to develop....
and the only thing capable of allowing vulnerability to breathe and heal.
It's clear to me that some of the negative comments spouted below were posted by Mr and Ms Know it All and their only child...Reason. They might recognize that the damage to the spirit increases when sarcasm and cynicism tramples on the gates of wisdom.
It's simple. Start with kindness, and build from there.
5
November 20, 2018
Heroic endeavor to rise about spiritual stress that relieved by great spiritual demands for loving survival albeit moral, psychic or physical. There are not any calculations to guide other than nihilism or lack of faith tears the fabric of self love and the greater love for ones world view and salvation that lives in every soul and every national soul - as long as we listen to our heart and all the Treasury of - the journey universal, true as herewith David Brooks is a winner in light and words, thanks.
jja
1
Sorry. Utter lack of self awareness of his role in the military and economic policies causing PTSD - both in veterans and civilians coping with lack of healthcare and living paycheck to paycheck with crushing debt.
5
I couldn’t agree more about a community wide ceremony to celebrate the foregiveness of a personal wrong. I tried to have a party at the local high school to celebrate the acknowledgment that a teacher had a sexual relationship with a student but nobody attended. Maybe we could have a street dance to acknowledge the moral failings of the gymnastics world who failed to go to police but rather reported sexual abuse to a gymnastics federation.
2
It may be that individual choices, such as not heading off into meaningless wars, might be the ultimate spiritual remedy.
47
@GLO, YES, David Brooks' the supposition that perennial war is a necessary part of life, and couching it with the crimes of sexual assault and abuse is absurd.
2
How can our society deal with these type of "deep issues" when we can't even provide health insurance to our citizens like the rest of the industrialized world?
9
At this point in the story I reflect back to my own personal Slaughter House Five moment. The bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong, otherwise known as the Christmass Bombings. Casualites were in the thousands. At age 19 from the bridge wing of a US Navy destroyer I witnessed the raids. The shame was immideaite but the depression took a decade or two to learn how to deal with it. Soul, specifaclly care of the soul helps. When the reminders come and in these days of Trumps impersonating Nixon they come often. Soulfulness resuscitates me so the EMTs don't have to.
8
Our obsession with belief and religious ideology has displaced myth and ritual not only in American society but in American religion. For too many it’s the mistaken notion that belief defines one as religious. Let me say however that it’s not what one believes that makes one religious; it’s certainly not ideas that anchor our moral being in the world. It is what one does. And in religion the doing is ritual. Ritual gives shape to our ways of being in the world, and myth gives shape to ritual. Failure to understand the power of these two fundamental facts of religious and social existence gives us few resources for healing or for personal and social integration or for that matter for our moral moorings in a chaotic world. Brooks seems almost to get this.
9
Thank you Mr. Brooks, a free press IS essential to growing a soulful democracy and this article advances that vision. A hearty piece, focused and deep.
4
David, I've been a fan of your work for years, and this one you hit it straight on the head. I have suffered extraordinary emotional and psychological both in my childhood and in my divorce, and out of it, I seemed to have discovered many of the same things that you are talking about --- the retreat into a mythic journey, influenced by Campbell, and the re-integration of the soul. As a counselor, I teach people to take solo travels - go somewhere, alone, feel as if you are leaving everything behind, and come back having reconnected with your soul. I've been doing this for nearly a decade and developing a community of people who have survived terrible traumas, but through this integration, they are connecting to themselves again, and certainly on a moral level. The solo travel work helps people to gain a kind of moral re-alignment, in the sense that they can release so much emotional energy from the healing power of the road and regain a kind of moral integrity with themselves that was taken away. (there's a lot of keroauc infuenced in my work, and much of it is about the mysticism that comes from being out there in motion). I feel strongly that we must take our lives into our own hands because the world just doesn't get it. And I also believe that these people I am serving and teaching to take real journeys need a sacred space to connect and heal together. Anxiety is not cured with a pill. It is healed in community---particularly when that community sees who you are.
7
Sure.
But the thing that makes Brooks painful for me to read is that his precious "discovery" of these issues does not help anyone. And he refuses to understand the role that toxic, uncontrolled capitalism plays in all this. It's not that we need to go back to the Church. It is that we need to lead more moral, care-filled lives across the board, and that means also how we earn our livings.
6
I don't understand the acid attacks on Mr. Brooks in these comments. I'm a very liberal Democrat who watches and reads him with respect, if not always in agreement on his analysis. He is honest about his own misjudgments and earnest in his search for reachable ways to relieve human suffering. I was moved by his book, The Road to Character. You may argue with his suggestions in this column, but his reach is deeply human.
26
@PK Indeed. The "acid attacks" are just automatic for many of these readers - they must have their ritual denunciation of Brooks or Douthat, regardless of what they read.
This Liturgy assures them of their place and purity of their views.
5
For too many of us, there is a recognition that dawns on us that we are not part of a community. We don’t have others we can count on for support when we need it. We have friends for the parties, but not for the pitfalls. When illness or misfortune strikes we stand alone and vulnerable to the industries that by design will take anything we have left. Too many of us stand with our initial trauma and then the additional trauma of abandonment - or worse exploitation.
We are not good at helping each other through hard times. Too many of us have not thought deeply about how to be “helpful”.
When we build a wall, our first thought isn’t about what if feels like to be on the other side of it...foolishly thinking that we won’t be standing there one day.
12
@Yeltneb
Your comment is so sad it touched my heart. I understand on a personal level because as we get older, as I am, our friends fall away. I am deeply thankful to have family to call upon when needed and this coming Thanksgiving will revive my feeling of being loved and wanted.
2
This reads like you warmed over a column from ten or fifteen years ago. Classic David Brooks - dreary, rehashed spirituality-babble, myths and moral culture-babble.
Like most Republicans you care all about people's souls and not so much about whether they have food, housing, decent education, a living wage, fair treatment free of discrimination, etc. And a "thick moral culture" will fix the traumas of veterans with PTSD! Sure it will.
Remember when the public square had "spiritual content," it also had slavery, and second class citizenship for women and anyone with dark skin, and subjugation of women to mens' reproductive dictates. Sadism was openly celebrated against sexual minorities and anyone who dared to be remotely different. Fairly often the "spiritual content" of the public square included public executions. Families brought a picnic to all the hangings and made happy family memories.
That was a VERY "thick moral culture."
David Brooks must surely be getting tired. He does not have any new thoughts, only the tired, deluded and hypocritical GOP-gibberish he's been peddling here for years already. Enough.
14
@DW
Check out Mississippi's Hyde-Smith's enthusiasm for public hangings. There's a remnant of the "thick moral culture" David Brooks hankers for.
I think it would be a good thing for everyone if David Brooks left journalism and entered the ministry (or rabbinate in his case).
13
"When YOU privatize morality and denude the public square of spiritual content..."
Sir, WHO has privatized morality and torn down the public commons? Who are these religious fanatics who wish to control women's own healthcare, eliminate fair immigration, give themselves tax breaks not anyone else, alter scientific process truth and create laws that are based on their "religious "preference.
The"elephants in the room" call themselves conservative republicans ,just like you call yourself albeit different modifiers. Why do you insist on the group YOU?
I am a democrat and I do not want to do any of he things you
accuse me of ( as a YOU.) With all due respect,
in the interest of being a non-combatant. you fail to get that laying blame on no one is sometimes laying blame on every one. It is often non-productive.
8
“Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life,” Joseph Campbell
I have spent a life-time thinking about the new global mythology that is emerging.
Victor Hugo wrote “All the forces in the world are not as powerful as an idea whose time has come. I believe the new global mythology that is emerging will include key terms such as: Isight (in contrast to eyesight); Ivolution (the evolution of human self-consciousness); Ewarrior; Iwarrior; and IRevolution. I’ve created a short music video to explain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHKDVj86wVM&t=1s
And Trump's wall would split the Tohono o'odham in two. Until you come out and deplore Trump and his nutty plans, you best leave the Tohono o'odham out of it. With your silence, you would cut them through the heart.
3
People like to talk about these things - never should have happened! These poor victims.
I've been raped. NYC. I worked in Viet Nam, 66-67 saw and experienced things that tear on apart. And on. People know that. And do, say, offer....zip. Oh, some say Wow, I never would have been able to do that.
And so many have been through so much worse. And get even less understanding and support. Not pity!
6
Consider the socio-economic PTSD many now suffer because of the Republicans' embrace of supra-capitalism . Their collective anger elected the village idiot Trump , passing over his opponent, a much more serious, experienced policy wonk stained by character assassination . Until we have an educated electorate this will continue.
5
The primary impediment to public, ritualized healing activities is the consumer capitalist society...Americans have chosen to organize society / morality primarily in terms of profit.
If someone can’t make money from it, it’s very unlikely to happen. This is morally wrong.
9
@Patrick
No "Americans" have not done that. A very very very few people have imposed that upon us since 1980. Before that we had a well regulated capitalist system that controlled the depravity everyone seems to think they have a right to abuse others with today.
3
More Charles Murray.
The subtext of the column is that neighborhoods and communities , a self-serving myth rather than a prescribed remedy ,will cure all the ills left untreated by the attempted and often successful evisceration of social services by the GOP.
If the GOP had its way, and one more vote, it would have repealed ACA without any replacement. ACA included mental health coverage. Trauma is a pre-existing condition. Brooks uses mythology to distract from the soulless policies of his GOP.
8
Well done, Mr. Brooks! And let me add a personal experience that, I believe, illustrates your point,
As a "semi-retired" 72 year old from the advertising and marketing industry, I found myself working in a ski shop, as I did while in college. During a lunch break, I met a young man there who had just been hired to work in the back of the shop to install bindings on boards and skis. But he was already worried about being fired because he was not learning the job quickly enough for the manager.
This felllow told me he had been honorably discharged from the Army because of his PTSD, a condition resulting from four tours of combat duty in Afghanistan. It wasn't just the countless fire fights with insurgents. He knew knew he was a lucky survivor. What stole lhis soul was the "mopping up" after the fight; carrying his dead and wounded brothers to a medi-vac helicopter. This happened too many times.
As a fellow veteran who had never been in combat, I still had the empathy to feel his pain. So, I went to the manager and asked him if he had ever served in the military. He said he had not. I said, "So you have never been in combat, fighting for your team, then carrying your dead and wounded brothers to the waiting helicopter." He said, no.
At that point, my new friend found himself with new friends ready to help him succeed, to protect and preserve his soul.
The next day, he removed a U.S. Army pin from his shirt and gave it to me. "Thank you, my brother," he said.
16
@David Ohman
Bravo!
1
@David Ohman Great anecdote and actions. Thanks for helping your fellow man.
For two generations now, the western society has made a clear effort to look for ways to function away from God. That of course, has caused the current moral downfall we live in.
Man's existence and its purpose on Earth can be fully explained only by word of god - The Bible -. This is the same for all of men's ilness, physical and mental. The only way to heal up a broken heart, a broken mind, a severely traumatized person, is by turning your eyes to Jesus. He is the only one capable of filling up that part of the human being that science will never reach: its spirit.
Any other path, as the author says, is just an attempt to fight an spiritual void.
2
@Jose
Nope. the current moral downfall we live in is directly caused by the theocratic overthrow of our government by the GOP. Of course none of the movers and shakers are actual Christians it is just a ploy to get votes to set up the morally depraved system they have created where the lucky few get to exploit the rest of us for profit.
11
@Jose, I'm glad to see you aren't American. Here, I get to have my own religion, with no Jesus in it. And I am not in a spiritual void.
1
If Brooks and the GOP support treating trauma at all levels that it needs to be addressed, they should support funding for safety nets for vets, for women who have experienced domestic violence and sexual assault, for children who have witnessed violence, etc.
Yet they do not. This is where morality is lacking.
15
Mr. Brooks - yet again - embarrassingly comments on topics he knows nothing about. Let us go no further than this: what is this "spirituality" he so glibly opines of?
It has no definition, so to imply that "finding" something we don't even know how to define could somehow be an answer to deep trauma with potentially multiple causes is just nonsense.
Mr. Brooks has essentially said, "Ah yes, John needs to fill his spiritual void! I know! Let's put him through a 16-day purification ceremony! That'll fix him!"
It's beyond embarrassing: "There could be a communitywide rite of passage for people coming out of prison."
There could be, and boy oh boy nobody would ever commit another crime after a life-altering rite of passage like that.
4
I think Brooks makes some good points here. However, I also think we need to put the bootstraps myth to bed once and for all. A seed planted in toxic soil will not produce a beautiful plant. We need to fight against the selfish and greedy policies that have been so furiously fought for.
Just one example, veterans are getting nothing in return for their service while others are getting more than they could ever want or need.
8
@Tricia, "veterans are getting nothing in return for their service." What is it you would propose they "get?" They are paid while on a duty in a job they selected. Without a draft (thank heavens!) people who join the military are making a choice. Our warrior culture and the over-militarization of the nation means that they will be exposed to violence, in fact be trained in it. What benefit does this provide them? How is this good for the rest of us? What do we owe people who willingly made such a career choice? They could have chosen to be mail carriers, or welders, or teachers, or coders. But they chose this path.
4
@Tricia
Back up on that "nothing," Tricia. I have military in my family who have never seen combat, and they retired with lifelong health benefits that put those of the rest of employed America to shame. Further, after twenty years in, they worked in civilian life another twenty and now get SS on top of their military pensions.
So, while I appreciate your sentiments about income inequality, they don't necessarily apply to our military personnel.
The military who really need our help are those who suffer PTSD as a result of armed conflict. We should do a lot more to acknowledge and help them. David likes to avoid government intervention by dumping their needs on local churches and community centers after wailing about how we've lost our spirituality. I really don't think a big group hug is going to help those people. They need real programs preferably sponsored and funded by the government that include the expertise of mental health professionals.
8
When people have jobs and communities, they're not traumatized in the numbers this society exhibits. Where is your responsibility for supporting forces that for the last three decades has destroyed jobs and communities. Look for another war and president to cheerlead for. Remember the George W Bush presidency and your boosterism? Find another forum for sermonizing.
5
i didn't even read the article. i just scrolled down to see that David read a new book...
4
@Gene 99
Don't be so hard on him. Apparently, he's also traveled around and talked to a couple of people.
3
Bill Clinton would say to someone "I feel your pain" and then proceed to fortify the structures that was creating that pain. I remember David Brooks continually mocking Noam Chomsky for his criticism of US foreign policy. David has never taken responsibility for the misery the policies he has pushed for, the wars he has defended, the soul deadening heartless society he has been a shill for. His tenderness is expressed after the fact. The harm he has caused creates an endless supply of hurt that allows him to express his concern without doing much of anything to change the conditions that are responsible for that hurt.
8
Or, the soldiers come home, having carried out the order of the prince, then (in order to solidify the cover up) they are put to death. And, the king and the President and all of the subjects perform a little sword dance each time the SUV's are filled, in celebration of the prince's largesse in decreasing gas prices by fifteen cents a gallon, in time for the Thanksgiving drive, from New Jersey and long island to grandma's house in Connecticut.
4
You make an assumption, David.
You assume that everyone believes that there is a "soul".
That everyone has one.
That everyone wants one.
Your assumption is based on the belief that certain words go together: spirituality, morals, rituals, rites... and soul.
I make no such assumption.
To me, this is not a neatly wrapped-up bundle.
You see, I'm a woman.
1500 years ago the Catholic Church debated long and loud at one of their many Councils (Elvira?) over whether females even had souls.
About a year later, they took the vote.
By one measley vote it was decided that they did, though it wasn't exactly like a male one.
Oh, they were so happy when Aristotle was rediscovered!
Aquinas made his fortune by rewriting his works.
You see, what they said was, there is only one sex - and it is male and that females are really just "deformed males".
Trust me: You don't want the details (but if you do, it's all in Aristotle's, "The Generation Of Animals".)
The "male soul" is very different from the "female soul".
That is why females are not "equal" within the Constitution of the United States. Our "Founding Fathers" agreed with such icky misogyny and left the ladies out.
You wish for "more rites of passage"?
Well, I wish for better laws.
You have a nice day, David.
And, please - stop making so many assumptions.
8
All the spirituality (sorry, I know Brooks largely means religion) & “morals” won’t make one bit of difference towards healing true traumatic suffering while we live in a nation in which the President is applauded & “forgiven” for his heinous behavior by a good percentage of the population including conservative Christians (especially the sickly political powerful & wealthy Evangelical leadership) & the “pro-life” Catholic Church that has aided & abetted the child sexual abusers in its midst.
6
Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for a most pertinent and urgent diagnosis:
"As a culture we’re pretty bad at dealing with moral injury. Sometimes I look at the rising suicide and depression rates, the rising fragility and distrust, and I think it all flows from the fact that we’ve made our culture a spiritual void."
In both my personal and vicarious experience I have seen how the insidious root of this disorder can take hold and thrive. I'm convinced it springs from an inability or deliberate refusal to distinguish between Justice and revenge.
Ultimately, Justice is fulfilled in Healing. The pursuit of revenge is driven by the absurd insistence that the antidote to injury is to inflict another injury.
Twice I've seen loved ones recover from life threatening injury when they startled medical staff as they rose from their hospital beds to provide effective relief for the suffering of other patients. Numerous nurses declared those healings "miraculous".
In each case, upon their physical recoveries , they went on to forgive those responsible for their injuries... and an aura of health and peace settled over them.
U.S. history offers another lesson: Consider the vindictive Versailles Treaty that ended WWI and provoked WWII. But then came the of the counter-intuitive wisdom, mercy and compassion of the Marshal Plan that enabled peace and prosperity for generations to follow.
We do have a Spiritual core in our culture, It is time to reawaken it. Lead on, Sir, Please!
4
Thirty years ago, the psychotherapist/ordained Methodist minister Gerald May declared that addiction was the sacred disease of our time. Perhaps today the effects of trauma qualify for that description. There is a component of both trauma and addiction that yearns for a spiritual connection to something greater than self. The irony is that the yearning requires an abandonment of the myth of the power of personal control, that which is the hardest of all things to yield.
2
@Tommy Boy
Addiction is also a physical symptom of trauma. In an effort to cope people self medicate and get addicted physically or emotionally to trying to find the first high that gave them the relief they got that first time.
What is not mentioned enough when the topic comes up is that every high after the first high is less as a high and less effective at filling the void it filled the first time. This goes for every substance people use to change how they feel.
Mr. Brooks' "thick moral culture" is an impossible solution in the United States. We are the melting pot of religions, ideas and social systems. On this front, the best one can hope for is to find a supportive relationship and community within the larger culture. Regrettably, this is a poor substitute for those who are damaged, and in need of repair.
1
Food for thought, and not the religious type, an escape from reality into a make-believe world of peace and after-life rewards if our sins were purified by confession. Mental trauma is harder to view, confront and control than physical harm, an inner wound hard to be brought to the surface...so the sufferer can be helped. Of note, pain and suffering are not co-equals, suffering a much deeper, and at times social, endeavor, best resolved by introspection and accepting ourselves as human beings in need of redemption; and this may require external help, as you described.
1
@manfred marcus Heaven is most likely not some kind of reward earned, it's where you go next.
@Rupert As an agnostic, there is no way to assert what happens when we die...other than returning our ashes to Mother Earth, where they belong. Whether there is a God or not we humans are just not smart enough to know, and resolve. Besides, it would be an insult and much arrogance to invent a God at our specifications, and have him/her/it tolerate our despicable cruelty...before the kill, in our never-ending wars...to take what belongs to our neighbors.
As a child of two aethiests who both passed away in the last two years, my siblings and I have been dealing with transitions without set rituals. As many have said in the comments, traumas can be big and small, seen and unseen.
I am not sure there is one way that works for everyone. Perhaps expecting that there is one solution to deep pain is fool's gold. However, having family where there is a safe space without shame and fear to express your feelings seems to help.
Too often I find myself and others manipulating children with fear and shame. If they don't do this or that something terrible will happen. If they act this way or that, someone will judge you negatively.
Maybe the questions we ask to each other shouldn't be what did you do today, but how did you feel today. Maybe that could be our ritual (to start).
5
What an excellent point from David Brooks. We are a superficial society that aspires to wealth and not much else. We ignore the traumatized, the homeless, the mentally ill (who sometimes bear trauma's scars), and all the less fortunate members of our community to such an extent that we render them nearly invisible, like the untouchables of India. And, in our race for wealth, we ignore the miraculous wonders and systems of nature while plundering earth's resources.
I agree that there is a tremendous need for spiritual life and responsibility in America. But our struggle to become a more moral people will also require political gestures of concern for vulnerable populations, and for the natural world that provides our food, shelter, and livelihoods.
3
While our public sphere may be "denuded of spiritual content" it's mistaken to imply that we have consciously denuded it. Culture is driven by economic reality. For over a century our economic reality has been ruled by the shift to industrial production and the need for individuals as independent production units to fit the interchangeable needs of industry.
As Dr. Krugman points out in his column today, urban areas are gaining economic power, largely due to their concentrations of highly educated and skilled workers that attract the most successful businesses. Large population centers inevitably draw diverse groups of people, people who don't share religious/cultural traditions. This cultural diversity demands the construction of protections for diverse beliefs and fragments whatever rites of passage have managed to survive industrial and post industrial reality so far.
Earlier in the 20th century, national challenges like WWII united people across regional, economic, and cultural divides. Today the military can't facilitate this kind of cultural reunification; a voluntary military engages only a tiny percentage of our people. Today young people hoping to launch careers must often separate from family and community and relocate to find those careers. One of our remaining rites of passage is "commencement", a graduation rite that celebrates the disintegration of an age cohort to scatter across the country in search of degrees and careers.
1
How do you do it man?
Over and over, You describe the thing accurately then proceed to step over or around it never ever acknowledging the fact that the GOP and your own active propagandizing in these pages is the source of that lack of soul?!
Before the GOP theocratic overthrow of the US Government by the people for government by the upper classes and forced their depraved versions of Christianity upon us we had a public morality that would rise up when the depraved indifference of government agencies was exposed. You and the GOOP actively villified these people as demanding things they had no right to and otherwise otherizing them so that you could go on making our nation souless.
It is a shame you are so good at dissociation as it seems if the scale would fall from your eyes you might actually be good at helping describe the things we need to address as a nation government by the people For the people.
6
Brooks says that "wherever there is trauma, there has been betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury." That's true for man-made traumas, like war or sexual assault, but natural disasters also cause trauma. Where is the "abuse of authority" in an earthquake? Where is the "moral injury" in a tornado?
Trauma is not ultimately about betrayal, but about the arbitrariness and irrationality and sheer randomness of disaster. We devote immense resources over our entire lifetimes to developing our ability to manage our circumstances, and trauma results when that ability drastically fails, whether the inability is caused by man or nature.
Because Brooks is so focused on "spirituality," whatever that is, he ties trauma to "moral injury" so that he can prescribe spiritual solutions. As an atheist who believes in neither spirit nor soul, but only in the social contract, I would prefer that we treat the body and the mind, and stop pretending that all would be well with the world if only everyone would just go to church.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
3
@Ecce Homo
As a fellow atheist, I must disagree with you on the Brooks' intent of the word, "spirituality." For me, real spirituality is about our connections with each other, with Mother Earth. While science binds us together, there is also a need for a sense of brotherhood in the pursuit of making this world a better place for all of us.
Frankly, while I find the worship of mythical "gods" a frequently tragic waste of time and intellect, I find it is none of my business if someone needs houses of worship, and the preachers who lead them, to make them feel whole and good.
It is when that religiosity seeks to control our government and thus, the lives of the rest of us, that I will not put up with such nonsense. That is when spirituality runs amok.
You can begin by stopping calling the Military a "Job." It isn't People need to be healed from having to kill other people and their children. The military is "service."
3
Excellent article.
1
Come on, Brooksie.
For all your ranting about spirit, you're front and center in the American battle against humanity.
Its an elegant ploy, this focus on our boys returning from wars of choice and commerce, but you Republicans create like victims by the score.
You privilege the rich, you worship corporations, you create SCOTUS in the image of Catholic fathers, hypocrites to a man, ignoring the plight of your suffering people.
Obedient to ideology you cast aside when the spirit to sermonize hits, you're one with apparatchiks explaining that eliminating Medicaid for any unable to find work is a leg up, a fine opportunity to join good Americans in their relentless drive to the top.
You scheme to keep those at the top where they are. In the name of some woeful politics you become one with the "money and property over all" crew who mistake capitalism for democracy, wealth for worth.
This moralizing is nice, uplifting I'll grant you; in the context of the rest of your shtick its painful to read.
Veterans suffer because you send them out to do just that, but so do many others.
People with careers foreshortened by employers running for foreign tax havens, people denied benefits when they can't find jobs in towns where there are none, spirited, aggressive strivers who can't afford to finish their education.
This is the loaf you toss like rolls of paper towels at starving hordes in Republican America.
And there you are waving your little flag, shouting "Buck up, America!"
3
I look forward to a day when no ball cap is available to wear which indicate what war someone is a veteran of.
WWII
Korea
Vietnam
Iraq
Afghanistan
North-west Pakistan
War in Somalia
Operation Ocean Shield
Lybia
Operation Observant Compass (Uganda)
Yemen
1
Came to see commenters taking David Brooks to the woodshed (again) and wasn't disappointed. Spiritual void, indeed.
2
I am a veteran as well suffering from PTSD, a veteran of marriage to a white collar criminal who stole $5 million, committed bigamy and a master manipulator. And not only was I betrayed by my husband, but by the government and the court system as well. My now ex-husband worked as an informant for the FBI who asked that I stay married until his sentencing so that he would look as a sympathetic family man in court despite them having to know he “married” another woman without divorcing me as they were monitoring him 24/7. And the judicial system does little to enforce family law leaving me to pursue spousal support in 3 courts in 2 States. Both the government and the judicial systems fail at supporting those whom they are designed to protect. If I were a veteran of a war or a victim of physical abuse, there are services in place to help, but there is little available for those who also have lost a part of their souls to emotional and financial abuse. I’m sure there’s room in the healing pool for us all. Last summer I fulfilled a dream I’ve held onto since I was 16, and at 63 it was time and I took a 62 day solo xc and back road trip and along the way I met with 22 other wives and ex-wives of white collar criminals and through the sharing of our stories, healing began.
2
Thank you for your wisdom - we need people who are calling us to build a thick moral culture.
2
"Wherever I go I seem to meet people who are either dealing with trauma or helping others dealing with trauma. "
I bet you do David. You'd think if that is the case you would realize the folly of your support for never-ending-wars, denying women a right in their own destiny and other Republican supported atrocities on Amerika. And throw in a good tax cut as well.
1
Such a thoughtful piece. As a culture we place limited value of the states of liminality that we encounter as we experience transition or trauma. When my mother got sick, I distinctly remember recognizing that my life was changing. As I drove down to see her in the hospital, I knew things were never going to be the same for me and my family. I didn't know what form this would take, but recognizing this helped prepare me to handle the challenges ahead.
If one studies Anthropology, one realizes the extent to which ritual helps usher people through life's inevitable changes and challenges, but we aren't all that great at dealing with change in this country. We are still a culture that asks our people to "toughen up and deal with it," rather than acknowledging that there will be sadness and confusion and feelings of low self worth sometimes, but that if we can hold on and ride through the storm, that most times, these feelings will pass and that hopefully, as a culture and community, we can help shepherd one another through these tough times. And yet, instead of supporting those in the most need, we throw them in jail or ridicule them and take away their social services. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could be a culture that accepts responsibility for the pain that it inflicts on its military, for example, and helps to usher those in need through their pain to a place of healing and support so that they can feel strong enough to carry on rather than hopeless and frightened.
4
One of the causes of our spiritual void is the efforts of the last 30 years to destroy 'the commons."
This term describes not only our collective space, but our sense of being a collective, a neighborhood, a community, a group of different people but with shared interests.
But the neoliberal onslaught has followed Margaret Thatcher's famous line that "there is no such thing as society, there is only the individual."
And the neoconservative response to that view was to caste the individual as an economic unit that only acts in their own self interest. This was the ultimate expression of a free market.
But biology tells a different story, as does sociology and common sense. We are hard wired to seek communion with others. Our religious teachings all point to ideas of brotherhood and sisterhood. And if you look at the response to any of our now frequent disasters you see selfless sacrifice, not selfish self interest.
Our real moral dilemma is that our leadership and our current social structure is at odds with these basic needs and principles.
Our other dilemma is the virtual silence from those who profess to be the cultures moral leaders. It's as if other than gay marriage and abortion our religious leaders have no social views at all. This explains why so many Americans now describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious.
And maybe that's where our salvation lies.
1
@drspock
Or you could more clearly say; "the republicans did this to us with their lies in aid of their avarice and moral depravity."
2
Trauma? How many guns per person does your country have and why on earth have you been so passive with your insane Republican political party about doing anything at all about it? Column after column these days you sound like you are way over medicated and obviously way too detatched from is going on in the USA today..... and snowballing out of control .
5
Rites of passage, so important to instill communal values and to affirm an individual's worth and potential, especially for boys, who tend to grow up into those who cause the most trauma, men. Bar mitzvah, Eagle Scout, communion, sports, high school graduation - there are several key times that can't be overlooked or diminished. But the most important is from father to son. When he looks in your eyes, hands on your shoulders, and says, well done, you're ready.
Every one of us will face pain and suffering in life. The question that accompanies this experience is how we make sense of it. Suffering cuts through the comfort of life and reveals the true spiritual nature of the world and our being. What Mr. Brooks is arguing, is that for us to have a chance at healing and being whole in a new way, we cannot ignore the moral and spiritual component of our response to the pain and/tragedy we have experienced. Suffering is transformational. We do have influence over how it transforms us. Lt Col Dave Grossman, who studies the trauma of war in his book “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society” also argued for reintegration rituals for soldiers returning from war. Precisely because war is a moral practice.
4
@Andrew Cagle, the wars of choice in which the USA has been engaged, since WWII, are not "moral practices." They are a-moral by design, and immoral in result and effect.
Whether we view it as injury to the soul or PTSD or battle fatigue or whatever else it may be named, we need intense neurological research into ways which the brain is injured by combat trauma and how we can fix it scientifically. It is possible there may be an explanation of brain restructuring induced by an intense immersion in some kind of "otherworldly" experience. No reason not to look into that that as well.
Meantime, the intensity of mental and psychological suffering experienced by some combat veterans is hard to understand unless you have seen it. It is awful. And, the elevation of literally anyone who serves in the military to the status of hero has cheapened the appreciation of what has happened to those who have survived combat but emerged so damaged as to make normal life nearly impossible.
2
I was very surprised at the number of negative reactions to this column. Although I am unchurched, I firmly believe we have a "moral soul" that individuals and nations have lost repeatedly -- the wars and their devastating impact on those individuals who served as well as our nations. Trauma of any kind is a moral loss if we only listen and acknowledge that we cannot "understand" what they have experienced, but that we CAN support them in whatever way helps them through. From the beginning of human time, people have struggled to make sense of their world, whether it is through myth, religion/spirituality or science. For me, it is the way I live my life that helps me through my life experiences. Although like Thomas Paine, "My own mind is my own church", I believe we all struggle to find our own "moral soul" in whatever way keeps us on that road.
7
A beautiful column, though ultimately sad because we long ago rejected the solution sitting in front of us. When explorers and colonists from the great nations of Europe arrived in North America, they found the First Nations of the Americas. Complete societies living sustainable lives in harmony with the first great ordering principle: nature. Some were hunter-gatherers and some had settled down to sustainable agriculture. And being human, some Nations did not get along with others and yes they had peculiar rituals like the ones Mr. Brooks describes. And so the white settlers set about Christianizing and civilizing them, in other words, making America safe for colonial rule. When the First Nations resisted, the Europeans called them savages and largely exterminated them. And now, here we are. Captives of the technology we invented to make our lives easier, unable to process tragedy and loss, and blaming each other for our own failures. When you live in harmony with your world, you experience its seasons and absorb its highs and lows. But we builders of great civilizations abhor such savagery and cling to our manifest destiny and wear the suffering it produces as a badge of honor, until we can't.
4
In America today, we talk and discuss and witness accounts from people who have been through many forms of mental torture, but we as a nation cannot find the fortitude to do anything more than offer thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers for everyone and everything. Our government has become totally useless in providing answers. Money has everything to do with this. Corporate interests and their lobbyist buy our elected officials to keep things just the way they are.
7
I appreciate this article, David, and the shared confoundment and pain for the people who suffer. If you haven't seen The Protagonist, a documentary based on the work of Europides, I think you would find some commonality. Thank you.
3
@Txcindy1 Thanks for the reference. Here's a short take on that: https://vimeo.com/35914902
Euripides produced an impressive body of classic work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Plays_by_Euripides
I am finding the classics have quite a bit to say about good and evil, and do it as well as anyone. For example, Virgil comments about how the road to death (evil) is short: facilis descensus Averno, and Milton Paradise Lost - evil be thou my good, and better to reign in hell than serve in heaven (Trump to a "T").
1
The best way to have one's soul back in is to retrieve it from religious beliefs. Autonomy is the first step to confront traumas.
5
Check out the work of the ManKind Project, Mr. Brooks. Our training offers an initiation experience for men unavailable anywhere in our culture- Changing the world, one man at a time.
1
We live in a culture today that eschews moral standards and feeds instead on the vagaries of political correctness...what was wrong yesterday is right today.
Our politicians and presidents today continue to send our soldiers into battles, irrespective of the toll. It's not just the body count of the enemy, it's the "soul" count of those who kill in the name of their country.
Yes, we had disturbed men who survived battles in WW2, but no one seems to know how most of them managed to go on with their lives. No one who had fought back then took an automatic weapon into a crowd and started shooting.
Yes, David is right. It's a spiritual void. A religious vacuum, too. Morals have been lost to the oxymoronic Politically Correct. It won't change until we change.
4
One ritual in our culture is for a woman with a credible story of sexual harassment or abuse at the hands of a Supreme Court nominee to testify before the Senate during the nomination hearing. The Senate then votes to confirm the nominee. After the Kavanaugh hearings the column you wrote wasn't about trauma, though that would have been the perfect time to write about it. Instead your focus was on how we are splitting into tribes, allowing you presumably to position yourself above the fray, as the enlightened national scold. Talk about a spiritual void.
6
I very much appreciated Brooks' column and the suggestions he offeres for dealing with such a complex problem. However human beings and the human condition is in itself a great mystery. And we are similar but different in countless ways. The ways we heal ourselves is deeply personal.
I found your remarks absolutely brilliant. Calling him out for his lack of consistency and high-mindedness is as important as praising him for his ideas in this article. Perhaps we have to settle for 'more than one thing can be true at the same time' and perhaps then, and only then, will we become comfortable with the idea that people are usually somewhat inconsistent -- no one is perfect or right all the time. Again, thanks for your contribution to this important subject.
@Ellen Merchant Notice how Brooks did not say trauma is a physical issue. It is. It's a deeply physical issue, and an evolutionary issue, given our neurology. The body keeps score - as Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk writes. What is Brooks' agenda here as he directs the readers attention to the moral and spiritual? Is this another riff on his America needs religion/spirituality theme? I note that he tiptoes around how the Catholic Church - bastion of morality and spirituality - has been a veritable fount of trauma.
1
Brooks was an ardent supporter of George W. Bush's discredited invasion of Iraq, stating in March, 2003 “History will allow clear judgments about which leaders and which institutions were up to the challenge posed by Saddam and which were not.”
Now, faced by the epidemic of PTSD suffered by veterans, Brooks bemoans that our moral culture isn't "thick" enough to heal these wounds. In lieu of actual solutions, he throws a few darts: Joseph Campbell, Native American purification rituals, maybe we could institute some civic rituals.
The correct response to wrongfully traumatizing a generation of our all-volunteer armed forces is not to invent mythologizing ceremonies to heal their spiritual wounds, but to respect their service with honorable tasks. This will require better leaders, better thinkers, and better writers than the war criminals and their cheerleading crew who led this nation astray after 9/11.
5
We are all weak and wounded in different ways. We must learn to accent the weakness in ourselves and welcome the weakness in others. Mother Theresa said she looked for Christ in the people she served. I am not deeply religious in a formal way, but see us in need of a national belief system that celebrates what we supposedly stand for. We have to look to some of the stories of our religions, the 23rd psalm which talks about the anointing of the head with oil, the Lord's Prayer which asks god to deliver us from evil. We have the potential to heal. We must find those better angels within us and do it, daily.
Very insightful, David.
One of the best ways for traumatized people to heal is through activities that bring them together in the outdoors, be it through fly fishing, hiking, camping , or skiing. For instance, there are many Vets and non Vet volunteers participating all over the U.S. in non-profits such as Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, that fills the need to reunite the tribe, and to help Vets heal in a peaceful, non judgmental environment.
In Vermont we have a form of purification ceremony, described above by Mr. Brooks, known as Veterans Town Hall, where Vets come together every November to speak about anything they want - for instance, their war experiences and re-entry issues. And non Vets are encouraged to attend and simply listen. We have been doing it around Vermont for two years and it is very powerful experience for both Vets and non Vets alike. https://www.wcax.com/content/news/Veterans-come-together-in-Burlington-499582551.html
Brooks attributes the pervasive trauma and alienation in American society “to fact that we’ve made our culture a spiritual void.” He wants us to reintroduce “rituals” into our society that he claims would heal our wounds.
That suggestion is utterly ridiculous, but predictable coming from a dedicated Republican because it makes our problems our personal responsibility and the cure a spiritual revival that absolves the government from any responsibility for the suffering of our fellow citizens. It suits the Republican agenda to blame people for their own problems. It promotes the individualism that is the root of the alienation of traumatized Americans. They are alone and that’s the way Republicans want it. Their useless advice is “go pray.”
There are many successful societies with considerably less pain and alienation than ours that are significantly less religious than American society. Look to Sweden, or Norway, or Denmark for a secular solution to the ills of American mean-spirited individualism.
Start by guaranteeing health care to all Americans and go from there. Sending people to church isn't going to cure the pain of Americans who have been abandoned by a heartless society.
3
Pointing out that "most ancient cultures" did thus and such, while it is obvious today that no ancient culture 's work or beliefs or actions made the slightest improvement in our lives on earth, is really silly.
It is ridiculous to suggest we need a "moral culture," when there is no definition of moral culture. What is "cleansing?"
What is "rite of passage?" How does a man or woman grow a soul," when there is no scientific, or even non-ludicrous, explanation of what a soul is.
Reading this has made me depressed. But I'll get over it in a few minutes by reading something good.
1
I often find myself wonderings why it is conservatives feel the need to "moralize" everything.
2
President Obama sang Amazing Grace for the country. That one act moved this needle farther to the good than any president’s hopes and prayers. Moral leadership matters.
5
Rituals such as a personal meditation practice that goes beyond the mind and fills the soul are sure to make the individual and society evolve without a preconceived religious or political idea—those put the cart in front of the horse usually.
Every living American is traumatized. During my lifetime America's biggest expense and biggest export has been war. The Vietnam War was based on lies. $6 trillion on the Global War on Terrorism. 9-11 is a constant reminder that a weapon of mass destruction on an American city is not an impossibility. Every Congressional election is a competition to inspire and capture fear.
War, and preparation for the next war, dominate our nation's politics. Our Military-Industrial Complex is insatiable. America glorifies war. America always has enemies. We are all complicit.
4
The chief economic engine of human civilizations all over Earth is War, and has been for thousands of years. The moral problems Brook speaks of derive from the type of mind required to impose, maintain, and survive such a framework., especially since that framework guides all human actions at this point (the war on women, the war on peace). The moral injuries required to set us upon each other as murderers and thieves in the service of leaders who require such things cannot be healed by sanctifiying such violence with any kind of ceremony. But, the end is in sight. We are pushing ourselves and our environment beyond the limits required to sustain human life on this planet as we go down doubly, triply, infinitely to continue creating War at all levels of society. Is it true the only way to peace is human extinction?
2
You're a Joseph Campbell kind of guy. He once wrote: "Find someone you like, read everything they wrote and then everything they read." The internet has made it easy to fracture both healthy and unhealthy myths(stories).
America is the "young person" in the quote below. The old myths have been discarded and we are living in an age with too many choices for a new myth...and so we have not one but the fragments of many.
“The big problem of any young person's life is to have models to suggest possibilities. Nietzsche says, 'Man is the sick animal.' Man is the animal that doesn't know what to do with itself. The mind has many possibilities, but we can live no more than one life. What are we going to do with ourselves?”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
2
And yet, Mr Brooks, your party - your president - has been and continues to be the main architect of that which has led, and will continue to lead, to trauma. The rush into the oncoming train called Climate Change - something your party and president do not acknowledge - will lead to infinite future trauma. The protection of the uber wealthy using tax cut scams yet selling it as a benefit for those suffering from economic trauma will only get worse. The ridiculous and dangerous foreign "policy" (now, that's laughable) puts the world on the path to disaster and infinitely more trauma.
If we want to reduce future trauma, there is only one answer - get Trump and the republicans away from government leadership. Their ideas are bad ones - they are traumatic ones.
1
I am not religious but I do believe what binds us all is love. We need leaders in this country that don't foment hate or endless wars all for the sake of the almighty dollar. Greed makes people blind. We need to remove money and hate from our politics so that our nation and its people can heal! We can all use more love!
1
It seems that wherever Mr. Brooks goes he encounters people helping others cope with trauma. He obviously didn't see Sunday's post by David Johnson, chairman of the Columbiana County GOP. It was an image of the inferno with the message, "God's Punishment to Liberal California."
Mr. Brooks concludes: "It'll take a lot to make our culture a thick moral culture."
He could start by reexamining his membership in the Republican Party.
3
"Medication can rebalance chemicals in the brain, but it can’t heal the inner self."
Complete gibberish. There is nothing beyond the chemicals and connections in the brain. PTSD isn't an injured foot or a something. Believing in a soul doesn't make it exist. Fix the brain. Avoid wars. Learn from mistakes. Treat injured soldiers including those with damaged brains. Learn how to better treat and to better avoid. Repeat. We were on this spiral for generations. Then came the likes of Brooks to tell us we need spiritual healing and to ignore the obvious. These teflon republicans who are somehow not at all to blame for the horrors they've caused. MONSTERS.
1
I don’t often disagree with Brooks, and here I’m not disagreeing with his essential point, but I have a powerful disagreement with his example.
He uses the old man at the cemetery in Saving Private Ryan as an example of a man damaged by war who feels morally tainted plaintively seeking assurance. I took the scene otherwise. The old man owed a debt to the character played by Tom Hanks, whose dying words had been, “Earn this!” In the scene at the cemetery he was asking his wife to testify on Hank’s grave, in font of him, that he had done what Hanks had asked. That he had been a good man, he had “earned” what Hanks had given him. It, for me, is one of the most emotional scenes in all of moviedom.
1
Would be nice if conservative Republicans in Congress stopped loving Ayn Rand and the objectivist garbage she preached. We've had a whole lot of these folks in leadership positions, with recent Speaker Paul Ryan and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan as classic cases.
David, your ideas are basically sound, but until a good chunk of the American electorate and media stars such as yourself come out and condemn selfishness and promote the enactment of adequate social programs nothing good will happen.
The zeitgeist of our country needs to change...and soon!
2
"Sometimes I look at the rising suicide and depression rates, the rising fragility and distrust, and I think it all flows from the fact that we’ve made our culture a spiritual void. "
From the Economist:
"...America is an extraordinarily violent country. Its firearm-murder rate is far above the rest of the rich world. Yet there are roughly two gun suicides for every gun homicide. Easy access to guns undoubtedly worsens matters. Guns are perhaps the most efficient means of getting the job done: 83% of attempted suicides by gun are successful, compared with 61% of hangings and a mere 1.5% of intentional drug overdoses.
...Two Princeton economists, have argued that a toxic cocktail of opioid addiction and stagnating economic prospects is worsening the problem of premature death, including by suicide, among middle-aged whites...."
Mr. Brooks would have you believe the rise in suicide rates is a direct symptom of some kind of "spiritual void" in our society.
I look at the rising suicide and depression rates, and I think there are tangible causes. I think chalking up problems like these to a "spiritual void" too conveniently ignores more likely causes.
4
@Anonymous, both of the causes of trauma that you correctly cite are driven by one thing- money. The NRA is a gun-marketing group, period. The opioid "crisis" was invented by big pharma to make lots of money off of people trying these drugs (whether prescribed or recreational) and then becoming addicted. In both cases the reaction of many is to say "we need to spend tax dollars to heal these people and fix these problems." Wrong: the correct approach is to tax these entities (who made money off both the abusers and the abused, the perpetrators and the victims) into oblivion for the social harm they have wrought. And then punish by imprisonment as needed. We put black men into jail for years for unpaid tickets compounded by one twenty dollar petty theft. And the NRA and Big Pharma get off scott free? And the GOP solution offered by Mr. Brooks is "spiritual cohesion?"
Thank you David Brooks. There are more things in heaven and earth ...
I often weigh in with my fellow liberal/progressive/democrats to bemoan the cause of much of this trauma, but agree that real, ceremonial and symbolic formulations of community and spirituality are part of the human experience.
Sadly, the obtrusive self-defined "religious" effect in the US today is the self-defined "Christians" who refuse to follow the Jesus of the gospels and try to cleanse themselves of the deadly sins of pride, hatred, greed, violence, etc.
It gives a bad name to the spiritual, and I think that's sad. For most people, the much-maligned "kumbaya" is not a bad thing. Instead of snark, contempt, and contumely, we could make the effort to represent and enact goodwill, peace among men (and women).
In the presence of evil, goodness has a hard path. And, sadly, this evil has taken on the mask of religion. It's all about worshipping communal prejudices, helping hypocrites loot and exploit, and listening to the worst voices in one's head.
I strongly recommend the Gospels. The message there, while occasionally off track, is about the golden rule and caring about others and not being a hypocrite.
4
Many many years ago, the psychologist O.H. Mowrer developed a theory, partially based on biblical ideas and early Christian practices and partially based on Synanon, the drug rehab program, as well as his own research on learning and his own experience with depression. His theory was that the healing that was needed for fears, guilt and most neurotic symptoms, was a spiritual one that could best be achieved by social means: sharing, confession, group discussions. Trying to heal oneself by oneself was most often futile. As a non-spiritual, atheist, I still valued Mowrer's insight on the value of social connections with regard to our most intimate demons and the need for openness, not secrets, and of a community of forgiveness and acceptance. A spiritual or religious person may frame such interactions in terms that match his or her beliefs, which may make them stronger when the community shares those beliefs. In fact, one way to think about religions is that they have flourished as a way to provide such social support and their belief systems give deeper meaning to these activities. There are probably other ways than religious to achieve similar community cohesion and support, but with trauma or guilt or deep fear, such support needs to reach into our most intimate thoughts and allow us to make them public enough to obtain feedback from our community. In other words, Brooks has a point.
1
Wow! I’m 20 + year’s psychotherapist and trauma survivor on several levels and the most fundamental for me that the wound is about huge injustice done by the family court system to me and numerous other fathers and mothers too. Fortunately I don’t feel guilty because I’m not but I am isolated as all who’ve gone through this are.
David hits this 100% that it requires communal rituals rites of passage and hero’s journey paradigm. BUT it won’t happen while the rates of divorce/ non marriage/ nuclear family fragmentation/ lack of respect for fathers / power imbalance vis teens and parents/ extreme feminism that sees this is zero sum game
Until men and women can reach peace in USA it won’t get better
2
@Jonathan Goldin
Hey, I'd like nothing better than to be on some hero's journey rite of passage thing. As a woman, that option has never been offered to me. Mostly, I've had to work harder and be better than most of the men just to be patted on the head and told that it's okay that I'm taking up their rightful air space.
You're a psychotherapist? Let me suggest to you that you not take on female clients.
1
The concept of rites of passage, sacred space, training by the elders, ordeals that prepare and test the initiate, rituals that symbolize the transformation taking place?
I'm not sure in human history rites of passage have ever been successfully developed although it is a beautiful idea. What the idea seems to imply is that a human can be developed, altered, transformed beyond present capacities in particular and/or general directions but that to do so pain, struggle, heartbreak, etc. is involved (the ordeal), but this pain is justified and necessary because both there is no other way and because there are successful elders, initiates of the process guiding the transformation and they are of the highest integrity and trustworthiness, are physical evidence of the possibility of the success of the rite of passage.
We humans have probably been successful only at small rites of passage at best, like dreaming small dreams and not successful at large dreams, vision quests. We can for example, encourage a baby to get up and walk, to make it to our waiting arms and to get it to accept the pain of falling down because walking is eventually possible, but eventually as humans grow into their capacities it becomes harder and harder to develop still more difficult rites of passage, elite rites of passage, which is why say becoming a Navy SEAL or Nobel laureate is for the few.
But it is a beautiful idea, a very beautiful idea, and obviously one waiting to be fully developed.
1
"I wish our culture had more rites of passage": interestingly enough, many classics of literature are constructed as rites of passages. King Lear is a good example: Lear is (1) stripped of his old identity (separation rites), (2) he discovers empathy and a new self (liminal rites), and (3) he is reunited with Cordelia on a new basis (Incorporation rites). Our many 'coming of age" novels also typically follow this threefold structure. Much use could be made for healing and/or preparing us for spiritual changes through deep and empathic reading of our shared literary patrimony.
4
This column reminds me of the song "Imagine" written by John Lennon. It speaks to the world as it should be and can be if we all lived by the Golden Rule.
Such sadness in this world, that could be lessened if we all just reached out to one another.
"No more wars, only Peace" . Something we all can be working towards.
If only those we elected would start the process, as the only power we have is to vote. And there is no political will to do the right thing, in spite of our voting..
Our obligation to each other must be paramount in our lives if we ever have a hope of overcoming the trauma that most people suffer.
This year I will be giving Thanks for the work that the Parkland students have done to make our nation safer. Thanks to the volunteers who are fighting fires in California. Thanks to the Puerto Ricans for trying to save their Island. Thanks to our Veterans for protecting our Freedoms. Thanks to everyone who takes their voting rights seriously. Thanks to all people or all colors, genders and languages for enriching this country.
And a special thanks to all parents who do right by their children. For it is the future generation who is our hope.
5
David Brooks, you are National treasure. For 14 years I have worked with a writers' group at our local women's prison,a group who desperately needs a "community rite of passage"upon release. For their benefit -- both for building their writing skill and addressing their ongoing trauma -- I intend to read this column to them at our next meeting. Many thanks.
6
''Wherever I go I seem to meet people who are either dealing with trauma or helping others dealing with trauma.'' -Aye me too. They are dealing with the trauma of this republican administration/President and all the severe damage it is creating.
I try and soothe their pain by reassuring them that this administration will be completely gone in 2 years, but even then the damage will be long lasting - probably for a generation or two.
I only hope that Single Payer comes soon enough to help these people, and save them.
12
I assume you missed the point about the failure of “medicalizing the problem.”
I just finished my devotional reading for the day and then read this. Amazing pairing. The scripture readings dealt with being a light in the world, and bringing people out of darkness. What Mr. Brooks writes of here is along these same lines. It would seem that where one could reclaim his or her soul lies within the moral fiber of the community of believers.
4
Interesting point of view, albeit somewhat idealistic and naive. The rites of passage and cleansing may sound good to those not steeped in trauma work, but as a psychoanalyst having worked with trauma victims for over 40 years, these spiritual magical solutions do more harm by giving false hope and by inadvertently trivializing the life changing and pervasive affects of having been traumatized. The idea of a soul being destroyed is apt but not new. Thirty years ago Leonard Shengold in his seminal book Soul Murder detailed the devastating effects of child abuse on children.
3
Thank you David for bringing light to dark places. I hope many people read and share your thoughts about bringing the spiritual nature of humans into healing and recovery.
4
I , very simplistically , believe that it would help if we start the day with a positive thought and go to bed remembering only the positive aspects of our day .
We are surrounded by too much negativity, pain,suffering , violent news, tv programs full of crimes, tv commercials full of frightening medical drugs with depressing innuendos about the status of our own health .
It is time to let our eyes caress whatever nature is around us , even a solitary tree , that we start having faith and hope in our families, friends and acquaintances.
Not everything or everyone will give us some optimism, but we have to find it within ourselves, just changing and challenging our perspective in our own little world .
2
I love the term moral injury. I find that it, at least for me, describes Donald Trump. He morally injured the Republican party, he morally injured the Republican electorate, and he morally injured our Republic. All of these groups are less moral than they once were.
David's inability to speak his truth on these pages strikes me as an injury also. I do not know how he has place Trump in his moral and political universe. For a man paid to express his thoughts in words, their absence is troubling. I would like to read that opinion, in a fierce unfiltered manner.
7
@Robert I think that the fixation on Trump is a sign of exactly the problem David Brooks is describing. Another ancient ritual has to do with creating a mythical figure that represents the failings of an entire group. Trump may be that figure currently for Americans, but he does not change the individual responsibility of every member of this society.
3
@Robert
There are omly two differences between Donald Trump and all the horde of older big-city liberals with whom you are so comfortable with - as they tell you whatever they think you want to hear.
1. Trump finally had enough of the radical turn liberalism has taken and thought he could do something about it. Thank goodness he took this action because every worker now has choices on where to work, and that means personal power.
2. Being old enough, Trump decided he was never going to just sit down and let people attack him. This is a new thing in American politics, but most of the country actually enjoys seeing a political leader - not really a politician, is he? - refuse to let little squeaks call him names.
If this traumatized you, you have surrounded yourself with a poor selection of friends, or a miserably limited news feed. Time to explore.
No I can speak for myself. It is a lovely narrative but none of it applies to me. I am asserting, Donald Trump has committed a moral injury on America and the Republican party. I think we are seeing a decline in David Brooks's ability to speak honestly about the current Republican party because of the new Republican party's electorate. That is all.
I assure you I am not traumatized, but thanks for your concern if not your actual advice.
3
Current research demonstrates that LSD and psilocybin are profoundly effective in healing PTSD. Without the benefit of "community rites of passage," what these drugs accomplish is nothing less than severing the mind's identification with the ego. The ego is the segment of the psyche that holds on to pain and feels vulnerable. The "soul" (an acceptable term that has other names as well) is the psychic realm that invites healing by identifying with the wider panorama of life and extending love in all directions.
5
In my adulthood with much help I survived and overcame what someone a therapist deemed a metaphysical trauma- what I've come to realize is that the world has its own problems.
Perhaps America should have priorities other than wealth, power and entertainment and actually focus on helping Americans overcome and thrive.
But that would take a miracle wouldn't it, or people to actually reflect on their mortal souls
7
@Howard
It would take less of a miracle if we didn't live within a cancerous economic system that punishes decency and rewards selfishness, pride, avarice and most of the other cardinal sins. (Not sloth, though. It wants us all working, to either produce or consume, all the time.)
But then again, I suppose changing our economic system to something more humane would require its own miracle.
1
PTSD is not a wound to the "soul", it is a response by the mind to mental and, or physical trauma that science doesn't yet know how to cure.
And as with every question that we once didn't know the answer to, humans are willing to forgo logic and seize upon rituals and magic as answers.
That works often enough to get some through a life, some through a year and some through about a minute.
But we now know that the earth is in orbit and that we don't need rituals to get the sun to rise; At least some of us do.
10
What’s the price of betrayal, Vietnam a war we couldn’t win as well our leaders knew, Iraq a war that shouldn’t have been initiated all its pretexts were false, Afghanistan, 17 years later in the graveyard of empires and the guy was in Pakistan when we finally got him and we didn’t come home even then. How about you have to have a moral reason to fight a war in the first place, we don’t and it doesn’t take long for the troops to realize it, that’s the betrayal sort of like what’s going on at the border right now.
17
Every single human being is on their own personal journey with their higher power - whatever it is. Every single human being has a 24/7 direct connection with that power and the good available to them in the universe.
There is a religious organization void - not a spiratual one. Many people have realized that the people they listen to in their religious gatherings have simply been pretending to have some super power that connects them and that they are the only way to reach that higher power.
It's poppycock. It is time for the hundreds of millions of people around the world to celebrate the community of their gatherings - not some person (usually a man) with a microphone and THEIR interpretation of things written thousands of years ago.
Let's all celebrate the extraordinary gift of life we have been given and, as most people do, strive to live it to the fullest and highest level of social consciousness that we can.
7
"...and I think it all flows from the fact that we’ve made our culture a spiritual void."
Spirituality is a highly loaded concept. Interconnectedness is a more accurate description of what our culture is lacking. Our churches, economy, and politics seek to separate us and compartmentalize us into opposing groups. Our identities become intertwined with a narrow group. In turn, this makes confronting our moral injuries potentially dangerous for fear of being ostracized, shunned, or cast out altogether. Moral injuries are not limited to military service. Many people experience moral injury in the course of everyday life. People share more in common with each other than we believe. That which separates us, cannot heal us.
13
This very Brooksian conversation hits a chord with me. Although it is absolutely necessary to avoid celebrations that seem fabricated (a marriage celebration when you discover your forever career?), I know we have all experienced first hand the trauma in people around us and what it has done to their spirits. Adopting some creative approaches that allow people to let go of the burdens of guilt they carry, could, if well-designed and sincere, offer people an opportunity to find some forward energy and allow them to have an improved life experience going into the future.
I worked, for awhile, with children who had been suspended for taking weapons to school (almost anything can be a weapon, but think can of food in a sock). What I discovered was the trauma in these young people and that they took weapons to school for protection against other children with problems that amounted to pathologies. There were so many of these children in our city's schools that an alternative school was designed to continue to educate them while under long term suspensions. The local university developed a program called Violence is Not the Answer and took our students through these interactions while they attended the school. I have been listening for those names to crop up in the news as offenders and I am happy to say that I have not heard one of them.
Clearly all innovative ideas are welcome in the interests of assuaging personal pain.
6
One tradition that has historically required such a rite and discipline of penance from soldiers whose souls had been damaged by war has been the Orthodox Christian church. Importantly this branch of Christianity has also not had a theory of 'just war.' War is seen at best as a necessary sin, but a sin all the same from which participants, soldiers require absolution not just superficial congratulations or parades proclaiming them heroes.
What harm are we doing to our warriors, those whom we send to fight for the USA, when we fail to recognize the trauma to their souls that they have endured? When we glorify the killing? When we proclaim them heroes but fail to support our heroes in reentering civilian, non-combat lives? When we fail to help them reunite with their souls?
And can we do any of that if we fail as a society to understand and proclaim the inherent evil nature of war and militarism? If we fail to see war as at best a necessary evil and last resort from which we all must seek absolution and ask forgiveness?
5
As a society we need to take the responsibility of sending young men and women off to wars too easily and with little purpose other than to fulfill some political desire. We have come to believe that war is the answer too many complex international challenges versus negotiation. Negotiation and coming to a mutually agreement is now seen as weak instead of morally just. The Trump admin seems to discard treaties or international agreements that do not solely benefit the US. That is not the intent of negotiation. Peace and mutual respect should be end result. Let's stop sending our soldiers into wars without end or purpose. That will serve our soldiers more than the moral degradation that war brings to everyone involved.
9
THANK YOU!!!! We need more of this kind of reporting on a daily basis in the news. Let's stop hearing about the Donald's tweets and start thinking about how each one of us can have a positive impact on others. My purpose in life is to do good deeds for other people. It is when I am at my happiness. Even small gestures make a big impact, not only on me but on others. The type of change we need in the U.S. society cannot be directed from the top. It must come from each and every individual.
9
People feel alienated when they aren't respected, listened to, valued, or treated like human beings. The degradation of spirit in America begins when our politicians and other leaders speak out against others and categorize them as evil because of their religion, skin color, ethnic origin, economic status, if they are handicapped, or if they just don't fit the stereotype of an American. Rituals mean nothing if we don't feel accepted by our communities or our families or anywhere.
Perhaps our soldiers would encounter more understanding if every citizen between the ages of 18 and 30 had to spend two years in the armed forces. It would force someone like Donald Trump to recognize that rich isn't the only way to be. Perhaps meaningful public service should be part of every student's education instead of sentencing petty criminals to community service that demoralizes them.
And if you want forgiveness David, you aren't getting it from this reader. You have consistently shilled for the party that has created this wasteland. You never once spoke out against the way the GOP treated Obama even though it was perfectly obvious that their behavior was racially motivated. I think the ritual you need to indulge in is called a public apology.
9
Beautifully written and so needed right now. I have read and re-read Joseph Campbell "The Power of Myth" and will be buying the DVD series from PBS. It lets us know that we are all more alike than we are different and explains so much. There are too many "wounded" among us that need to reconnect to something that will give them comfort and purpose in life.
12
Mr. Brooks looks forward to his dream of a “thick moral culture.” If that culture were limited to the Utopian ideals Mr. Brooks envisages it would be a wonderful goal. That, however, has not been the way of our country. Rather, to too many Americans morality means traumatizing those who do not adhere to the morality that the culture imposes, thereby having the opposite effect that Mr. Brooks desires.
6
@JDR
But why not define morality or moral integrity in a larger, more compassionate way? Why let those "moralistic" people you refer to have control over the true meaning of what is moral? Be a counter to that. It is not Utopian, but human to bring heart into our interactions. Be the change. There are many with you/us.
Elegantly put, and much on my mind. I was raised in a traditional Protestant home-church environment in which spirituality and morality were taught and expressed daily through metaphor. Metaphors provide a rich mechanism for individuals to apply lessons learned. Today, most organized religion is small, limiting, and so very literal. This hyper attention on the literal has squeezed the truth out of the church, and me along with it.
12
The leads to the question of how to create meaningful rituals in a modern society. In the past, rituals were passed down from generation to generation and were followed because of tradition. While people can always invent new rituals, they won't carry any weight and no one is going to follow them. I don't have an answer, but might be a good topic for a future column?
3
@SC
PTSD is not a wound to the "soul", it is a response by the mind to mental and, or physical trauma that science doesn't yet know how to cure.
And as with every question that we once didn't know the answer to, humans are willing to forgo logic and seize upon rituals and magic as answers.
That works often enough to get some through a life, some through a year and some through about a minute.
But we now know that the earth is in orbit and that we don't need rituals to get the sun to rise; At least some of us do.
I'm happy to find that I agree with David Brooks on this.
As for spiritual rituals to bring soldiers back to peacetime life, it is not possible to make such rituals an institutional part of military decommissioning without establishing an official religion. And I think Mr. Brooks would agree with me to maintain separation of Church and State. But it's a good idea for each religion to reach out to ex-soldiers in some way.
People have a natural reluctance to kill other people. The military puts a lot of effort and energy into the basic training of soldiers, and a significant piece of that is training recruits to overcome their reluctance to pull the trigger against someone else. The need for this training became apparent during WWII, when many new soldiers simply could not pull the trigger in combat. The military psychologists went to work on that, and it's no longer a problem.
Now, since the military spends a lot of effort training recruits to kill, would it be too much to spend a couple of months training them to re-enter civilian life, and to re-activate their natural inhibitions against violence? In other words, a non-religious rite of passage to socialize them back to normal, peaceful life. Could we do that?
By the way, I recall reading somewhere that Viking warriors went through a series of milk baths to cleanse their spirits after war. Perhaps a sort of rebirth into innocence...and we have a lot of surplus milk.
4
@Duane McPherson
I like the surplus milk part. I thought we were going to force Canada to buy all our milk. Sort of like Mexico paying for the wall.
But, seriously--the best programs for vets seem to be those that give them something to do. I've seen programs about vets working with horses. Those seem to work very well. Also, music--learning to play an instrument or singing in a chorus.
Social support is important, but sitting in a pew listening to some guy talk about God may not be especially helpful. It's too passive. Active participation in something new and meaningful would be more helpful in giving the mind something different to circle to.
As for David's ex-prisoners, the way we handle incarceration in this country is disgraceful. Rehabilitation should begin in prison, yet all we hear about is how prisoners basically regress into animalism. Then, they're released, and they're magically expected to thrive in normal society. No community-wide rite of passage is going to help with that problem.
David has good ideas, but he expects you and me to deal with these problems in our churches and community associations. Communitarianism. But, our cancerous capitalism leaves communities without the resources to do that. We're supposedly part of a nation here, but it's become a nation that glorifies dog-eat-dog individualism above all else.
2
@CF:
I agree entirely, especially with your last two paragraphs. Our prison system does nothing to re-integrate convicts back into society, which is what it should be doing.
David Brooks always wants the social repair projects to be done by volunteers, as you said. But the problem of re-integrating ex-soldiers is a problem created by the military system, and the responsibility belongs on the military (and thereby, all of us) to remedy it. And likewise for ex-convicts. For both groups, re-integration programs are a win-win, for them and for the rest of our society.
1
This essay brought t my mind Al-Anon, a 12-step program for the families and friends of an alcoholic. Al-Anon provides a community of shared experience and understanding of what can be the trauma of living with an alcoholic.
It has been a part of my life for 40 years and provided the spiritual foundation of which Brooks speaks. I can walk into a meeting anywhere and feel at home because we have a common understanding and set of values by which we make choices to move forward.
10
There are plenty of things that Trump deserves to be blamed for but what Mr. Brooks is writing about and hoping for here goes beyond that. It strikes to the core of the United States since our inception. Many writers here have touched upon it. Max Weber, in his book "The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism," said: “Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs." As long as America believes that that is our ultimate purpose we will have a spiritual gulf that can not be crossed.
19
Mr Brooks writes about medicine and spirituality when he has no credentials to do so. He supported all the policies and the party that brought us to this point and now pontificates about the state of the country. Trauma is so real that it not only affects the brain but also the genes and can be passed on to a second generation. Psychoanalysts often refer to the "soul" the deepest part of ourselves but not in a religious way. It is more akin to our sense of self. Kind of like the soul of America which has been deeply hurt if not almost obliterated by the current regime.
I doubt that anyone believes that medicine along can help PTSD any more than it can cure any mental and emotional illness. News flash, people need social support to get through any illness - mental or physical.
14
Suffering and the causes of suffering will always be a part of the human condition-inescapable. With 7 billion people on the planet, the only answer to help alleviate this suffering is to embrace it with our hearts wide open, our hands in service, our minds braced in equanimity and vigilant responsibility for our part in all of it. Every moment we live on this earth we humans cause harm to some other living being in one way or another. If we can step back and say," Yes-I cause harm every day and I can take responsibility for my part in that." In doing this we begin to actively ameliorate the deepest levels of suffering in the blueprint of the human consciousness, here is where the healing starts.
7
@Gigi Love, the sad part of suffering is that humans become amnesic, reluctant to learn from history. So they repeat the same mistakes of treating fellow human beings inhumanly, over and over again. If each of us recognized the truth that we are each a manifestation of the multiplicity and diversity of the same one source, we would literally treat each other with kindness love dignity respect as we would wish others treated us.
3
@Petey Tonei I totally agree, and the dilema I feel is how do we "awaken" one another to the place of recognizing the truth? Sometimes suffering, like when the HIV epidemic hit America, families finally admitted that they loved their gay children and expressed their regret for the judgment they wielded. Ironically, love can blossom out of suffering.
1
This is a beautiful essay. It would be wonderful if something like Bastion could take hold nationwide, along the lines of the 12 step programs, with leaders but no authorities, starting a movement that would bring people together in mutual support. Maybe giving people a means of dealing with trauma would also allow us as a nation to let go of the denial that poisons our society with scapegoating and misdirected anger. Maybe we could confront the collective sins of our society as well as celebrate our triumphs and move towards a grounded self-assessment and sense of community.
7
Bless you, David Brooks, for your insights and compassion. The day will come when hearts will be more open, hopefully soon!
4
People that are weak are better workers for the corporations and wealthy. We see in the current culture of the united states one that worships money and possessions. Those that are our leaders, and their owners, are simply trying to maximize profit. It is not in the best interest of the owners that people be made whole. The turmoil creates desperation and that leads people to cults and the cults deliver these members to the owners political minions. In the past human ignorance allowed the turmoil, but we have utterly defeated mother nature and the only way to create the turmoil necessary to drive people into the cults is to torture them intentionally (wars, fake justice system and fake medicine). We now get the added feedback loop of the effects of climate change. The cruelty will continue until all are good slaves within cults that pledge their allegiance to the political minions of the owners.
This is just GOP policy. It's not working as well as it once did, but natural disasters will help it along some. The fascism of Trump is somewhat effective as well. We are told the cure is belief in a supreme being that apparently likes to see us suffer under the hands of evil owners. It makes perfect sense if you just give up and join a cult.
11
No worries Mr. Brooks. The spiritual void will be filled by the religious right and its form of mandated Christianity sooner than later. Just ask Mike Pence.
11
Is this about curing the disease or capitulating to it and accepting it as inevitable human behavior (the new normal), and then, settling for treating the symptoms – whether with medication or by “growing a soul”? Wouldn’t it also be good to work on reducing war, sexual assault, poverty, racism and all of the things that cause trauma and PTSD?
It's like treating survivors of mass shootings for trauma - but doing nothing about guns. Administer “thoughts and prayers,” and repeat when necessary. Yesterday 1000 Oaks, today Chicago (everyday Chicago). How is that a “thick moral culture”?
It seems to me the “spiritual void” starts, not at the point of treatment of trauma, but at the causes of trauma – like war – and (to peel back another layer) at using God or capitalism or race or human nature to justify it.
Leaving the causes of trauma in place just makes the drug companies happy and the high-priests of myth energized.
It’s doing the same thing over and over – myths or Prozac - and expecting a different result. It’s insanity.
14
@Michael
You make the mistake of assuming a David Brooks opinion piece was written in good faith. Mr. Brooks makes an excellent living alternately supporting the economic system and powerful individuals within that system that ensure the majority of us live precarious lives beholden to our oppressors and bemoaning the completely predicable effects of that system.
1
@Shirley0401
Thanks. You put that well - and said directly what I decided not to say. I’m very aware of what Brooks is doing. But sometimes I sound like a broken record constantly accusing him of hypocrisy. So I decided to take a different tack here and be a little more subtle. Subtlety not being one of my strengths.
In some Native American tribes, warriors coming back from battle had to be kept away from the women & children, & made “human” again before they were allowed back into normal tribal life.
8
Maybe if we hadn't chosen an Antichrist as our leader our national soul would be less traumatized and suffering individuals would face less of a headwind in their healing -- we actively banished our national soul in 2016 and it will take the most holy rituals you can invoke to entice it back.
3
@TS, there is no such a thing as antichrist. All souls are pure, emerging from the same one source. Each one a spark of the same divinity. Our personalities are individual garbs, shaped by our conditioning, our upbringing, our society, our times, our conditions, our circumstances, each variable participating in shaping our views opinions perspectives worldview and our biases prejudices. Blame those, not our soul, it remains unsullied, unsoiled, unshaken in its peace, serenity unharmed by anything external. The problem with the judeo-christian tradition has been to always look outside for some god that exists far away at a distance, attainable only by judeo-christian prayer or faith or rituals, without even understanding that the god you seek is within. So the seeker is forever lost, in the midst of everything that is available to him or her, right under the nose.
1
A "thick moral culture" (unfortunately a viscerally revolting turn of phrase) and capitalism with its pursuit of profit over people, its worship of individual greed over community welfare, are incompatible, but Brooks will forever write columns as if that is not so. Therefore, they will always be insulting and utterly out of touch.
5
"Wherever there is trauma, there has been betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury." And, Mr. Brooks, our country is experiencing trauma of the deepest and most pervasive sort. As a Republican, whose party is responsible for it, you have a nerve diagnosing it because neither you nor your party are going to do anything to correct it.
This column is nothing more than your mint julep in the clubhouse after the 18th hole.
14
David, Yes! You are spot on.
2
I have a solution. Stop with the trauma. Stop electing politicians that send us to war. Here's a solution to the problem of having over 30,000 people die from guns each year: Get rid of the guns and you will get rid of the problem. A simple solution that would be hard to implement I know. And sadly America doesn't like to solve hard things any more. They spend their time listening to Rush do their thinking for them.
12
Questions for Mr Brooks -
When you see so much trauma, do you ever question your support for the Iraq War?
When you see so much trauma, do you ever think the framers intended for us to be the most heavily armed populace in the history of humanity? Is your focus still on background checks?
6
pjc
Refusing to allow needless wars like Iraq and Afghanistan that traumatize our you while enriching the rich would be a place to start and refusing to abandon the poor to substandard housing, inferior education, zero opportunity and continual incarceration would help a lot too. This problem won't be solved with platitudes or psychology or spiritual awakenings. It requires funds, focus and commitment to the nuts and bolts. Social ills can be fixed and, yes, it's engineering. We have the tools. It's time to use them.
5
You can not love mammon and god. We must choose. The choice is between rapacious capitalism or something else not yet identified or created.
8
Beautifully spoken, thank you.
1
So we finally are discussing what deeply afflicts our societies, a spiritual void. Religions tried from times immemorial to fill that void... Maybe it's time to look back at them....
3
@mdainesi
Looking back at religion would be like...well, looking backwards.
For humanity's entire existence, ignorant people have explained whatever they didn't understand as a god's doing. And relied on their gods to make things better. Nothing has ever improved or changed. And you're still convinced that religion is the answer to anything?
I must ask the author, what about the physical damage to the brain that trauma can cause? For instance, children who undergo sexual violence at a young age will often have a shrunken amygdala. What right of passage will repair that? What tradition will repair that? Once again modern medicine is criticized as "unable" to heal the "true self", while superstitions and habits are proclaimed to be the only real cure. This is despite a lack of evidence to support it and only backed up by esoteric musing of the author and one anecdotal piece of evidence. Talk about convincing.
2
@Bob Of course trauma shows up in the brain. But if the mental experience of trauma damages the amygdala, surely the mental experience of healing can help to repair it. For example on of the most healing things for young children is physical contact - lots of it, for years. I worked with traumatized children and I know this to be true. We humans have been dealing with trauma since the dawn of time, and there are ways to heal - spirituality is one major pathway to healing. That is why we are spiritual beings. Let us not allow our new knowledge of brain chemistry and the insights given by MRI's and so forth bedazzle us so that we are blinded to the ancient truths.
4
@Lynn Sherwood
If physical contact will heal trauma that is seen in the damaged amygdala, then you should have been able to see the repairs in the MRI's of the wounded children.
Have you citations?
@Lynn Sherwood
I'm not advocating for nothing but medical prescriptions, but we need to stop demonizing and criticizing medicine as if it isn't a key part in many people recovery. Of course somebody with trauma will need therapy and counseling. But what the author seems to be arguing is that modern medicine, which includes both the physical and mental needs of the patient, is insufficient compared to ancient tribal rituals. Which is ludicrous.
1
I have had a lot of spiritual teachers in my life, not only to overcome trauma, but simply for the wisdom and humanity they teach.
My very favorites are Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kafka, Gorki, Pasternak, and above all and way beyond is my very favorite, who has a birthday tomorrow, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991). He taught me this:
"Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life" And with the constant practice of this wisdom I, too, have discovered that it is TRULY everything in life.
Also, NY Times daily inspiration and wisdom comes from "Socrates" who is a great source of comfort during Trump trauma and comments on wide- ranging topics in this newspaper.
Thank you, Socrates, and as an American I count my blessings daily and give Thanks-giving to all those who will be united with their families and give and receive "kindness" in their lives.
4
As someone who received a trauma-injury, combat PTSD, while serving in Iraq in 2003, diagnosed finally in 2014...
I must call attention to one line Brook's has in his thoughtful piece that is utterly and medically incorrect:
" Wherever there is trauma, there has been betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury. "
This is not true. Trauma injuries in war come from the normal physiological reaction due to a cocktail of factors converging, the greatest one being feeling lack of control over events unfolding. Being trapped. PTSD is first and foremost a physiological injury to the body. The body gets stuck in a fight-or-flight moment, chemically and physically.
From that, associated emotional or mental problems can and do develop as someone seeks to cope. But there need not be any betrayal, abuse of authority or moral injury to receive a trauma injury like PTSD. That is a myth he furthers. Sometime life just is, it's not as Brooks offers at least on this one count. SF
9
@Jarhead
Perhaps the betrayal is in being sent to a war that can't be won; endless war with no clear overarching goal and one offering financial profits for some big corporations (Halliburton, Blackwater, etc), changing and hapless political and military strategies, lies to the public and manipulation of many young people into destroying homes, families and communities of people who they are not sure if they are even the enemy. The individual soldier is the pawn. On some deep level, he/she must feel it.
1
@susan171
Thanks, Susan. As I wrote my comment, having lived in Cambridge, MA some years after the war, I said to myself - - someone of the Left will write about "Bush's War", Bush lied people died, etc. Thank you for proving my anticipation true.
But no, when you are in combat, trauma is situational or perhaps cumulative in coming about for an individual. Not political.
We Marines were in Iraq in June 2003 and saw the lack of WMD, etc - - and in our dark humor we turned to each other and said, "OMG we are in an unjust war!" Then, we went back to protecting each other and making sure civilians were safe. In war, policy and politics are generally above most folks pay grade.
Certainly, moral injury is possible and frequently involves faulty authority or betrayal. But combat PTSD is not moral injury. It is a physiological injury that a limited number of us suffer out of all those who go to war. Have a good Thanksgiving. SF
1
When we were youths, Mr. Brooks, they called it "boot camp". It was a mandatory step for every American male, except the wealthy who bought their way out, or the physically or mentally unfit. Personally, I think it was wrong to force young men into pointless, harmful wars (Korea and Viet Nam). If the culture can come up with a more sound, peace driven concept for this gauntlet, I might agree. Might.
1
Congratulation David, you were one of the Republican propagandists most enthusiastic about sending these guys to Afghanistan and Iraq. Someone would be doing the world a great service if they dug out all Brooks' commentary from the period 2001 to 2005. Now he's moved on from Republican propaganda to pop psychology.
7
@John
Baby steps, John. He now sees the evidence of what those senseless conflicts have done to actual people. Sadly, his solution, as always, is to task us with taking care of this problem locally in our churches and community centers with some magical rites of passage to heal mental trauma.
He really got me with the communitywide rites of passage for ex-cons. Oh, yeah, after we turn them into animals in our abhorrent prison system, a group hug will surely undo all that damage.
Sigh.
Dear Mr. Brooks, I am always struck by the caring in your writing voice. It comes across loud and clear. It is a rare and very much needed perspective in these times when it is easy to give in to despair. You're reminding us of our humanity -- and you don't take the easy way out (no punditry here).
1
The idea that some human beings are better than others and therefore entitled to exploit other human beings with impunity is the source of trauma. All hierarchies of worthiness such as the one pointed to in this biblical verse found in Matthew, 8:8, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed” reinforce this model for abuse and must be replaced with hierarchies of responsibility that respect the dignity of all humans.
Add to it the individual's assent to an ersatz and justifying mythical dogma and an infantilizing belief in an all-powerful, superior being as a test of one's loyalty to the group and you have the ingredients for future trauma. As Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
5
What a lovely piece of writing. One doesn't need to go to war to be traumatized, but war has made more progress than any other human attribute. Slaughter can come from anywhere.
Minorities are traumatized from birth and so were all women, but maybe, just maybe, that's changing. I wish Mr. Brooks had included Dr. Blasey Ford by name in this piece.
3
I have consulted in VAs for more than 40 years, though I am not a veteran. When Lifton published "Home from the War" in 1973, it gave new focus to an old, old issue (old as the human race). Soldier's heart, combat fatigue, PTSD--- all are the same. We can call it an illness (I do), but it really is how people change having undergone the worse-- war, rape, catastrophe.
Psychoactive compounds (meds, MJ) may change it but they do not ablate it. Many people simply learn to live with it-- a good cinematic example would be "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit". The most horrible complication (and magnifier) is alcohol.
Probably few things are more helpful than group meetings with other vets-- which seems to impart a sense that one is not alone, that there are ways to endure, lives to be lived.
One of the most pernicious notions is that if we find exactly the right compound (marijuana?!, SSRIs?!), that PTSD will be "treated". PTSD is not just some illness. It changes people-- and with good reason. It has always been an expected outcome of what we can expect of men sent to war (or any human subjected to some true horror).The culture, in turn, needs to respect and honor this. Religion is not going to right this wrong any more than a medication will. But affording dignity to this goes a long way. As Arthur Miller wrote of his "Salesman"-- "attention must finally be paid to such a person."
3
Good to see another Republican find that life is more than GDP and trade with Arabia. Tribes and societies have tried since their beginning to reconcile their perception of the physical world with the stirrings in their growing and adapting brains, stirrings to which various descriptors have been attached, such as sehnsucht and weltschmertz. It's discouraging however to see words like "soul, morality, spirituality, inner self" thrown around without definition. When a fan at a ball game holds up a sign that says: You Gotta Believe... we may ask "believe what?" The Shaman and the Druid must give way to the Oliver Sachses of our world. Amateur psychologists aren't the answer to an enduring human problem.
3
Id like to summarize Mr Brooks article . Our society is so broken American humanity is having a very difficulty time being a part of it or reconciling our hopes with stark reality of modern America.
1
Mr. Brooks is right that we need more community rituals on a micro level. But he misses an important point: The foreign policy elite of our nation has betrayed us. America has been at war since 2001. Endless war follows endless war. Ironically, Osama Bin Laden dreamed of embroiling America into losing all perspective in the Middle East and having us forget that foreign policy must be worth the price it requires; that is, there are limits as to what even America can accomplish in the world. The elite's children are never the ones who are sent to war and traumatized. They don't have to escape a failing rural economy and enlist. And for all his narcissism President Trump appeared to recognize this unpleasant fact during the campaign. Now he seems captured by those he then rightly mocked.
3
It's hard to deal with personal trauma in a society that idealizes the individual and embraces selfishness.
I quit watching television regularly over 30 years ago, so I notice cultural changes when I do happen to watch.
I was disturbed by a program my mother watches. It wasn't the homosexual couple or the casual sex that bothered me; it was the selfishness. There was an opportunity for the main character to reflect and make meaningful changes in her relationship with her adult children. Instead, she and her friend went off celebrating the importance of THEMSELVES.
What kind of soul do you have when all you value is yourself? A consuming soul, a using soul, who knows something important is missing....but where do you buy it?
3
@Sharon
Have you considered that anyone who would appear on a television show such as you describe would have to be not only selfish but of severely limited intelligence?
I appreciated this column, which ambitiously tackled some large issues.
America once had a thick moral culture. Unfortunately, it was the product of a society that was misogynistic, racist and homophobic. The morality of the community was well-defined, but one was in deep trouble if one disagreed with the consensus. A thick moral culture must be inclusive and non-judgmental if it is to avoid the paradox of creating more trauma in marginal parts of society.
I concur that something profound is missing in our lives and in modern American society. It seems often that the path to success lies in the path of greed, self-promotion and crudity rather than higher values like compassion, empathy and common decency and courtesy. These latter higher values are key, not coincidentally, to healing trauma. They are rooted in a philosophy of accepting people for who they are -- traumas included -- rather than who we want them to be or think they should be.
Religion is the spiritual path for many of us, but it isn't necessarily the only one. There are kind souls among the religious and the non-religious. What they share is a common bond of having an accepting compassion for their fellow human beings.
I didn't agree with everything Brooks wrote here, but overall this got me thinking about big issues, which is a pretty successful column in my estimation.
3
Thought provoking. How do you go beyond your inner self? How do you reach that point of trust? There is, at least for me, a fear that your group, your trusted leader may be the next one to offer kool-aid, or require you carry a banner, or demand obedience or silence. An indoctrination. So we keep to ourselves. It is a known safety.
Usually I think Mr. Brooks is too far off the mark, but I can accept his column today. Trauma is awash in our society, for a variety of reasons. in some ways, that is why our political world is so disgusting. Voters are looking for people to blame for their soullessness.
1
There is certainly a place for spirituality in all our lives. The lack of it is not really in our communities, where there is a wealth of connection and association for those not already too alienated to partake of it. The lack is in the fetid corruption of our political and business leaders whose unbounded cynicism and greed has promoted alienation and division and antagonism. The corruption of our political leadership has been evident for a long time, although it is clearly so much worse that it now threatens to choke our democracy. But the growing evidence of the hypocrisy and corruption of the “new generation” of our business leaders is perhaps even more appalling. What the leaders of Facebook and other internet billionaires have done to satisfy their greed and their egos, undermining democracy and stoking hatred to grow their business, has harmed America and the world far more than any of the crimes of the Robber Barons and monopolists of the 19th and early 20th Century. If David wants to go in search of moral renewal, addressing and calling out the moral rot of the nouveau hyper-rich may be a place to start.
3
This is a beautiful piece with a philosophical depth, which appears to defy the day by day nature of journalism. That might be a contradiction which all journalists may carry. As soon as the essence is touched, the sincere truth of a voice will be brought into a full exposure for comments and reactions of all kinds. In consequence, what resides at the core of such a voice would be washed away. Even “MeTooTraumaMovements” (as an extended version of “MeToo”) may timely come out from social media. That is, in my view, the nature of today’s digitally (almost) defined free society in which (almost) no one wants to miss the opportunities for a ride onto a tide with a collective notion of ‘I absolutely don’t miss this one’. The opinion piece itself has a restrained beauty in a moderation. The concept of aboriginal mythologies is introduced to meet the modern medical therapeutical, in an implication that mutual understandings between those two would become a forceful healer for wounded souls. But, yes, indeed, the classification of terminologies raises a difficulty. Many generic nouns have been, sociologically and historically, already associated with different ideas, or genres or categories, as if fixed in a grille. Although Brooks here says of soul-touching subjects in depth and importance, his argument slides well on the surface as well, because, I guess, the columnist knows too well many aspects of contemporary problems, which I was trying to elucidate here and failed.
Your last column was very good. I feel strongly that in advocating PTSD I have to step away at this point. There's too much coverup.
PTSD is often related to either inflicting, or receiving an immoral, baseless harm.
The best cure is prevention, of course. In the military, I can only imagine what moral contortions are needed when asked to fight a war without end, for a purpose that is intentionally murky.
The preventable part then...perhaps we shouldn't be fighting wars without clearly identifiable moral purpose, relevant to all.
As to the traumas of rape and assaults on oneself...I can't imagine that a visit to the sweat lodge consecrating a rite of passage has a lot to offer a rape victim.
To find one's moral compass one first needs to be able to pose the question: "Is it right?"
Each time I read the New York Times I find myself wondering if contemporary America will ever rediscover its ability to ask that question.
2
In researching the acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker, I discovered that he is something that is condemned by most of us reading this newspaper, and I branded him as such, a Christian Dominionist.
Generally, liberals are secular, if we identify and participate in religions it is not all consuming, and we certainly are not prepared to consign the blueprint for human relationships to an ancient tome attributed to a supernatural being.
But many are. Other than the aforementioned there is the Vice President, Pat Buchanon, and most Muslims of the world, along with a small segment of ultra-orthodox Jews -- along with hundreds of other sects. What they have that we don't is an absolute certainty values, and acceptable behaviors that if followed will provide love and comfort that even transcends the end of human existence. Life is never a failure, a waste, as if lived according to instructions it is a stepping stone to pure happiness.
We liberals have our own myths, such as "The Arc of history is long but it bends towards justice." Maybe, as long as we get to define what is just. And of course David seeks to ease the emotional pain of war fighters who may have massacred scores of innocents.
Our brain has evolved over millions of years, all except this brief instant for identification of danger and destroying it. Empathy was limited to pack or clan at most. Universal contentment is asking an awful lot for we highly overrated species.
1
@Call Me Al
How many Muslims do you know? They are no different than our Roman Catholics, our Mormons, and our evangelicals--all of whom are very eager to impose their particular brand of religious fervor on the rest of us. If they weren't, then how is it we are swimming in so much anti-gay, anti-birth control, and anti-abortion rhetoric? If those Christian sects were so open-minded, they would just keep their beliefs to themselves, don't you think? They wouldn't be seeking to sit conservative judges who will eventually outlaw abortion and gay marriage, don't you think?
So, if you want to label most Muslims in the world "dominionist" you should be more specific about the not-insignificant number of Christian "sects" hoping to do exactly the same thing. It's not just a few guys like Buchanan, Pence, and Whitaker. It's billions of people.
1
This is where the healing starts. But the public square, and public political discourse has been shredding the moral fabric and corroding sincere grassroots efforts to build a moral community, a new lexicon of meaning and transformation. As moral issues from refugees to sexual harassment are weaponized by their respective political parties and turned into vehicles of emotional manipulation for political ends, it becomes harder and harder for our local conversations - trying to respond to the needs of the wounded -to have salience when the national conversation is so poisoned. As long as the financial ends of news organizations and the political ends of politicians coincide in the sensationalist and aggressive exploitation of moral sentiment, the hopeful world David Brooks describes will be difficult to construct.
Great piece! There is something called restorative justice to help the victims and perpetrators of criminal behavior. Check it out.
1
Trauma damages the brain and so it damages what we experience as our central existence: our soul. It makes us feel guilty and fearful.
The absolute worst trauma is that inflicted on very young humans who have not yet developed resilience. A scientific study of genetically identical mice found two groups of mothers: those who licked their babies a lot and those who didn't. When the mice grew up, the well-licked mice exhibited much greater resilience to stress. Then they switched the babies: still the well-licked mice were better at coping with stress.
So the mother-mouse bond is all important. I think the human mother-child bond and relationship is equally important.
My solution to child abuse and neglect? Universally available and affordable family planning and birth control !! So simple!! So cheap!! So very cheap compared to trying to help victims recover.
So very cheap compared to dealing with the trauma some victims inflict on others.
In our current social and economic context, caring for and providing for a child is hard. An unplanned child can throw a family into chaos both personal and economic.
Simply: a planned child, a wanted child, is at less risk for abuse and neglect. A well-loved and well-mothered child is likely to be more resilient in the face of stress.
So: support family planning and birth control
Slogan: every child a planned and wanted child.
1
Very true! Forty years after sexual abuse at church all tell me your essay is spot on. Time goes cyclical, not linear. You’re nailing that, Brooks.
Yes, when Brooks implicitly validates communities and resources that respond helpfully to trauma, he also, as one reader says in dis-ease, he “nibbles” around the edge of organized religion. Some spiritual communities of all world religions recognize and provide healthy ingredients, practices and traditions that are healing, enlarging the souls of those involved. Some synagogues. Some mosques. Some Christian congregations.
Some don’t.
Spiritual communities that politicize their core or constituency do not provide these resources, in my opinion. Their object is not the soul, but the body politic. They twist and distort soul-growing things. On those, I am with Langston Hughes in “Goodbye Christ.” Sweet Jesus, how they abuse your name!
The polls think I’m a red evangelical (a current by-word for good reasons), but I’m not. Never been. I’m a blue-pattern voter, church-goer and resident of a red state. Stuff’s more complicated than it seems, folks. Purple.
Go, Brooks!
4
Before creating thousands of tragic PTSD victims by engaging in unwinable, never ending, unjustifiable, immoral wars and armed conflicts, how about providing the force of federal law to the Powell Doctrine, and the 8 questions posed therein?
2
While I align with Mr. Brooks emotionally on this subject, I think we must take a step back. To have any of this occur, we must first have community. You know, that thing which was systematically destroyed by the lust for greed and power by those who were supposed to lead us. We have lost our community. We need to become a culture of "we are all in this together", as opposed to "you are on your own." It is not lost on this old guy that sadly, this change came with the era of Ronald Reagan and Republican fantasies.
5
I notice that Mr. Brooks mentions women’s sexual traumas in passing, then focuses on soldiers. Men. Warriors.
It gets to be tiring after a while, these sermons from Republican patriarchs. We have plenty of “spiritual” organizations in this country, many of them evangelical. They are insular, often politicized, opposed to other religions and those who practice them, and they teach that the Man is Head of his Household.
Lordy lord. Give me messy collegetown friendships and alliances any day over these Manly Cleansing Graduation rituals recommended by Mr. Brooks.
3
The novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko is a powerful story about a Navajo soldier returning to his community after WWII. Highly recommended.
1
Interesting that Brooks would chose a Native American tribe
as an example since it was virtually wiped out by the practitioners of Christianity.
Likewise with Khe Sanh. Probably the most relevant fact about that inferno was the abandonment of the base a few months later, thus exposing the battle's absurdity in the inane war that (spiritual) America had blundered into and that fact wasn't lost on many of the men that fought there.
Spiritual America of the 1950's and early 60's had committed a grievous error in prolonging conflict that then turned into a conflagration for the people of SE Asia in order to "save" them from the "godless" communists.
Perhaps, David, you should consider the words of General Giap, that cut to the core of spiritual America.
" And though we knew most Americans had nothing against us , we wanted to carry the war into the families of America, to demonstrate, N'EST PAS, that if Vietnamese blood was being spilled, so was American blood."
Why would mowing down scores of enemy soldiers cause PTSD? Preachers tell us that a soldier is the hand of Caesar, who is the ordained minister of God who "beareth not the sword without purpose." Further, we are told, the command "Thou shalt not kill" does not pertain to war or government. I suspect that 99% of PTSD is no more than the accusing finger of God on the conscience, a reminder that even Caesar will be made to answer to the 6th Commandment on the Day of Judgement. "It is necessary that evil come, but woe unto the man by whom it comes." That verse gripped Lincoln with an awful dread, and although he put himself in the first part, he never acknowledged that he was thus also "the man" of the second. These men suffer from crippling guilt, and their ministers compound the evil by dismissing it. In essence, bottling up the hellish demons inside. Human blood cannot be wiped from human hands except by God. They will find peace only in God's forgiveness.
Is this about curing the disease or capitulating to it and accepting it as inevitable human nature (or the new normal), and then, settling for treating the symptoms – whether with medication or by “growing a soul”? Wouldn’t it also be good to work on reducing war, sexual assault, poverty, racism and all of the things that cause trauma and PTSD?
It's like treating survivors of mass shootings for trauma - but not doing anything about guns. “Thoughts and prayers” – and repeat when necessary. How is that a “thick moral culture”? It seems to me the “spiritual void” starts, not at the point of treatment of trauma, but at the causes of trauma – like war – and (peel back another layer) using God or capitalism or race to justify it.
It’s doing the same thing over and over – myths or Prozac - and expecting a different result. It’s insanity.
2
You left out the trauma so many of us feel. It's called Presidential Traumatic Stress Disorder. The helplessness
we feel as Trump debases the dignity of the office of the Presidency, enabled by the silence of Republicans, especially Mitch McConnell, a soulless leader who cares nothing about the welfare of Americans. This version of PTSD is real. It's widespread and growing. We will not experience any relief until Trump and McConnell are dethroned. My biggest fear is that their sordid behavior will become the norm for the future.
3
We can commend this column, its sentiment and purpose, but am I the only one who finds it deeply ironic that Brooks has spent a career promoting a political party determined to transfer wealth to the few and deny every effort to nurture the very young, spend money on education, provide real care for veterans and the sick, and deny working people a reasonable retirement? Does this make Brooks feel better about himself at this late date, when America's traumas are rooted in the pathologies of the Republican Party?
5
A wonderful piece.
1
Knowledge of science, the chemical and physical aspects of the human condition can be very comforting. When we acknowledge that we are but a machine doesn't eliminate the spirit, rather, it adds to the sense of wonder, gives us the right to fail, and see the value in other life forms. When we assign divine sources to the dopamine hit we get from self flagellation or long distance running the weak minded are easily lead and might do something stupid.
This too shall pass.
Such wonderfully lofty thoughts coming from Mr. Brooks this morning. Couched in the language of history and psychology, his column conveniently neglects to point out the degree to which the succor he recommends seems to come from two sources contributing to our disruption: evangelical Christianity and white nationalism.
How can we substitute nurture and caring for the judgmental and threatening tentacles reaching out for our society's wounded souls?
You’d need need more involvement in community and we haven’t done that in a while.
"People who endure trauma sometimes say that they feel morally tainted. They have the same plaintive mind-set as the old man at the cemetery in 'Saving Private Ryan,' who says to his wife, 'Tell me I’m a good man.'”
This is the reason some people who were abused as children choose not to have children themselves. They fear they are doomed to become abusive, destructive parents, having had their moral character formed and deformed by horrible role models. They also fear their own genetics. They see their abusive parent or parents as so loathsome they consider it a favor to the human race not to perpetuate their genetic material. Better to eliminate it from the world.
This reason for not reproducing often remains unspoken because it will not be understood by others, or because of the shame of the moral taint Brooks mentions. Better to be accused of selfishness than to be seen as fundamentally, grotesquely defective.
1
Spirituality hocus pocus. There are a few real, actual expert psychologist who have figured out some stuff about PTSD. Your vague references to religion only cloud what has been established in science. I have treated PTSD, active duty soldiers at a military base, as well as many civilians. None needed to be preached to about values, or spirituality, or who betrayed them.
This clouds an important issue, the lack of any morality in key parts of our society, namely in the highest parts of our government. And they appeal to the spiritually gifted in order to subvert basic democratic values. And then pundits like you cloud the issue when you can find some faux-expert that allows you to blow and old horn that has been used repeatedly to undermine decency in governments and society.
Spiritually serves a vital purpose. And this purpose is not served in any public media. Those who are rigidly, and narrowly obsessed with religion have different personality makeup than that 8% of the population that are prone to develop PTSD. Read Resick.
1
Junger's "Tribe" suggests that affliction of "moral injury" is more prevalent when
1. combatants are fighting on foreign soil for causes that are not clear
2. the civilian population back home is not engagedor disinterested
3. there is too little time for returning combatants to process their stories before returning home.
In Homer's Odyssey, after the ten-year Trojan war, it took the hero another ten years to return to his home in Ithaca -- so processing time shouldn't have been an issue. However, back home, the civilians were not making similar sacrifices -- in fact, were more intent on pestering our hero's wife than in caring for returning soldiers. No surprise, then, that the hero's homecoming became a scene of epic violence and carnage.
Contrast that with World War II, for which the incidence of "shell shock" was much less prevalent than today's PTSD. There was a clear and present danger represented by Hitler, those back home were sacrificially-engaged in the war effort, and our returning troops had the benefit of a multi-week journey home on troop ships, during which they could share stories, process their experiences, and decompress before reuniting with loved ones.
Today, the causes and aims of our armed conflicts seem less clear, civilian engagement and interest in these conflicts is minimal, and the return home happens in hours rather than weeks or years.
In truth, we should be surprised that "moral injury" is not more prevalent.
1
"I wish our culture had many more rites of passage, communal moments when we celebrated a moral transition."
The problem is that too many rites of passion tradition establishments -- most major religions -- have themselves become tainted, corrupt, cult-like, irrational, and manipulative. Void of rational thought, enemies of science, steeped in patriarchy, dripping in myth-theater increasingly debunked by younger people.
Furthermore, Mormons, Catholics, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims are all losing young people's faith because women, lesbians, bisexuals, gays, transgenders have been ostracized and neglected by the rites of passage leaders in all these major religions. Young people see that and grow disgusted. If rites of passage traditions are to be relevant and respected, they need to evolve to accept -- and empower -- all people. Otherwise they become conduits for trauma rather than a passage to enlightenment.
2
Good to see another Republican find that life is more than GDP and trade with Arabia. Tribes and societies have tried since their beginning to reconcile their perception of the physical world with the stirrings in their growing and adapting brains, stirrings to which various descriptors have been attached, such as sehnsucht and weltschmertz. It's discouraging however to see words like "soul, morality, spirituality, inner self" thrown around without definition. When a fan at a ball game who holds up a sign that says: You Gotta Believe... we may as "believe what?" The Shaman and the Druid must give way to the Oliver Sachs of our world.
1
It's all rather simple, were one to come down to it-It's all a terrifying , terminal case of 'exponrential terminal savage and inoperable ANGST--with flourishes
I sometimes read Mr. Brooks' opinions and wonder what country he lives in, what possible "inner movie" runs through his brain that lets him simplify the tragedy that is today's America and write of simple solutions, simpler times. He seems to write of impossible solutions in order to comfort those who suffer the least.
Trauma isn't about mental illness, illusion, it is the absorption of pain, of abandonment, of realizing that there is no God, no country, and nothing but a hard truth, that America is dying as Rome died, one stupid foreign war at a time, one arrogant billionaire American oligarch at a time.
We have wars so the rich get richer, and the poor get weaker, that is the way of life today. Trauma is just a feature of the day, not a bug. It is as if Orwell's 1984 is in place, and Brooks is the soothing voice blaring out platitudes.
True change would require significant social and economic change, and that war is far in the future, and I have no doubt that Brooks would be on Big Brother's side.
Hugh Massengill
1
This is simplistic. Cancer, stroke, and heart attack survivors can also suffer from ptsd. Trauma is not always a moral issue. One may lead a decent life and still be stricken with a severe illness. These health issues are traumatic because they can suddenly strike young, apparently healthy people who don’t go through life expecting catastrophe around every corner, who do all the right things— get an education, save money, eat right, exercise, don’t smoke— but get sick anyway. The last thing these patients and survivors need is the suggestion that they are somehow to blame.
I’m also not clear on why it should be a diverse society’s function to come up with a purification process. This is putting the cart before the horse. Jews have Yom Kippur, Catholics have confession. If you want the benefits of a spiritual existence, it’s a lifelong undertaking. It’s not an acute treatment to be picked up when times are tough and discarded when things are fine and you don’t feel like being spiritual anymore.
107
@Lawyermom. I guess anthropology has nothing to offer. A shame. It seemed so promising—this hope that we could learn from those with a different way of living.
4
@Lawyermom
Moreover, accidents happen that are faultless. No moral judgement there, yet trauma results. What is worse though is that "I wish" we had a culture that actually cared about other people enough to remove "medical bankruptcy" from our vocabulary. You don't have to visit many other countries to see how sick our society is. But it would all be cured if we just had a ritual. Yeah...
8
@Reader
Bottom line, we can wring our hands, move onto another issue (we Americans are so good at that) or we can recognize the spiritual lacking that so clerly exists in our country today. It's easy to criticize but talk to people on the "front lines" in mental hospitals, VA offices, etc. You'll hear of a collective hopelessness that, I believe, can only be rectified through some sort of spiritual renewal.
7
Why not take steps to prevent trauma? Many of the traumatic events Mr. Brooks describes are preventable. Rather than accept these injuries as inevitable, we can do more to prevent child abuse, sexual assault, and unnecessary wars. We can alleviate the trauma inflicted by poverty and the lack of access to affordable health care. So much of what Brooks laments results from inadequate public policies or the absence of policy. What is required to remedy the situation isn't a rebirth of spiritualism but political will.
1
I agree with Mr. Brooks that individuals often cannot privately process their "moral injury" and their resulting "moral pain." They suffer profound disruptions, and I agree that cultural affirmation might enable their healing.
In this column, Mr. Brooks writes mostly about communal responses to specific injuries, but he makes a conceptual slide toward organized religion more broadly when he decries the tendency to "denude the public square of spiritual content."
Allowing organized religion to have freer rein in the public square does not guarantee that sufferers of PTSD will be helped. If we are serious about helping people with psychological and moral pain and mental illness, indeed we should put more effort into narratives and rituals that can support their healing and growth. Other strategies are of course important, too. We need to provide effective, informed responses. But merely making it more socially acceptable to use "God" language in the public square does not ensure that anyone is helped.
For this reason (among others), I avoid the word "spiritual" when describing the range of human emotions and values, the narratives we make of them, and the meanings we assign to them. We need to be informed about trauma, and we should contribute to a supportive culture. But we don't need the word "spirituality" to express that, and we don't need more spirituality or religion in the public square.
2
David, If you want to focus on trauma, a better use of your creative energy would be to focus on trauma that is man-created or exacerbated and then look at how to prevent it in the first place. One main reason that so many of us are traumatized is that our government allows terrible suffering to take place with no regard for human life or happiness. Witness- mass shootings, the recent California fires, hurricanes, etc, some of which are wholly preventable (mass shootings), and the others while even if they are created by nature are exacerbated by climate change and inadequate governmental response in terms of a financial safety net and lack of reliable healthcare. Equating all kinds of trauma is a waste of intellect as well as a waste of time. Please start talking in concrete terms about what we can and must do to reduce trauma that we create!
4
PTSD seems to be more prevalent in soldiers who come from middle class American families. While the Marine machine-gunner at Kke Sanh certainly suffered trauma, compare his experience in a single battle with the author of "Blood Red Snow."
This account of a German machine-gunner on the Russian Front in WWII is much more harrowing, and the German soldier's battles were multiple and went on from 1942-1945. And yet, he doesn't seem to have been affected by PTSD. Perhaps the fact that most of Germany was destroyed in WWII made his individual trauma relatively minor. In contrast the Marine in Vietnam came home to a civilized, undamaged society.
Another interesting book is "Men at War." (Both books available on Amazon.) The author describes the harrowing hand to hand bayonet fight during the battle of Bunker Hill. And yet for the American Minute Men who survived it, the battle was considered a perfectly normal wartime event. The Americans retreated, got a good night's sleep in their nearby homes, and were ready to continue fighting when called upon. The author surmises that there was no mention of PTSD because life in general was hard for American colonists.
This is both good news and bad. It's good that we live in a First World society where most people don't see a lot of everyday trauma. But this just makes it harder for our service members to avoid PTSD when they deploy to war torn countries where life is hard and violence is common.
3
I am one of those whom E Tick saved with a healing trip to ancient Greece and Turkey. In 1998 I went into a major depression after the death of my mother, followed by the sudden death of my older brother from pancreatic cancer, and then the most crushing blow the suicide of a brilliant, but very troubled, undergraduate assistant of mine whose body I discovered. Fortunately, Ed was taking wounded people like me on a trip to ancient Greek healing sites and I dropped everything and joined him. In ancient Pergamon (now Bergama) we visited the ruins of an ancient Greek hospital complete with dream chambers where healing dreams were encouraged by the ancients. Ed arranged for us to repeat that ritual and I had a powerful healing dream which I described to him and later wrote up for inclusion in his book, "The Practice of Dream Healing." Since then Ed has focused his energy on healing Vietnam war vets with equal success in trips to Vietnam. I cannot say enough about Ed's unique approach to healing. He's been the physician of my soul, traveling companion, and friend.
5
I have long admired David Brooks as a writer, and can't describe my surprise and delight at his topic today. Many of us privately set out on our own spiritual quest or journey, without validation or support from our culture, because we sense an inner spiritual void. But in public, or maybe even within our circle of family and friends, we don't mention it. To see it right out there in print in the New York Times this morning is a gift, because as a culture, we are so in need of healing.
3
Bob Dylan's girl from the Red River Shore is a song about longing the narrator is told by the girl to go home and live a quiet life. He goes to the West and to the east leads his quiet life. he stands by his cabin door and stays out of a life of crime. I am always intrigued by mr. Brooks essays on those dimensions of life where we attempt to find meaning. The best we can do just accept our obligations . I remember years ago a gunnery sergeant in the Marines told me your fault my fault nobody's fault you're still dead. In the end the best we can hope for is to enter our house Justified.
2
Despite the woo woo nature of this column, Brooks has tapped into something invisible , but none the less real. Trauma and the associated horror are like black holes. You can’t see them, but they exert an enormous powerful force. Ritual and respect for these forces is essential. When trump stood in the smoldering ruins of Paradise California, amid what inevitably are the ashes and miasmas of incinerated humans and animals, and couldn’t remember the name of the town, he did damage. His inability to honor the dead soldiers in France and at Arlington, strikes a blow to the spirit of this country. Somebody needs to smudge the White House.
6
It needs mentioning that clinical trials are now being done on treating PTSD via MDMA in conjunction with psychotherapy. Great promise has been seen for MDMA as an adjunct for therapy, and as a way to access the spiritual depths of each sufferee.
2
From my time living in Japan, I can attest that David is right about the positive power of ritual in society. The Japanese have hundreds of rituals for all sorts of activities, from significant events to simple daily activities. They even perform a ritual thank you every single time they eat a meal or snack. This is a thank you to the universe, and they perform it whether they are in a group, alone in their apartment, or bivouacked on the North Face of Mt Fuji or Half Dome. My friends have told me that these rituals are a powerful force which bring structure and meaning to their lives.
But these traditions and rituals come from thousands of years of Japanese society. America simply does not have a deep history like that, and we can't just wish it on ourselves. David continually longs for a return to some misty-eyed 1950's American Protestant past which I personally never knew, and within which I am frankly very grateful that I never had to be cocooned, since it was based on a foundation of discrimination, denial of science, and Christianity, which is not my belief system, and I don't want it forced on me.
We Americans must adapt to our own modern reality. We can't invent tradition and pretend we're the Japanese. We can't wish for a fantasyland past with dark shadows. What our society CAN do is adopt truth- and fact-based public policies that demonstrably improve the lives of most Americans. We haven't done that yet, and it would be a really great start.
6
@Chip Leon
Catholics have ritual. Confession to heal the soul and put the person back on track to avoiding the same sins. Three sacraments of initiation: Baptism, Eucharist which physically connects us back 2000 years to Jesus Christ, and Confirmation for candidates who have gone through training and are personally accepting final sacrament of the three. Anointing of the sick for those who are about to have surgery, are in the throws of illness or on the cusp of death.
People have put aside their faith while they pursue activities that yield visual results. Sports are the new religion. The impact on the soul of rituals done right just does not resonate with many people today. I believe you can see the results in the rising rates of depression and suicide among our valuable yet emotionally fragile young people.
@Chip Leon
Since you never lived through the 50's please don't make such ridiculous assumptions. Today Christianity is in your face, it wasn't then. Science was exciting then when the race to space started after the Russian launch. As a child it was a free, creative time when your parents weren't breathing down your neck all the time. Kids today are cocooned with their video games and smart phones, not us. Was it perfect? No. There was discrimination that even now we are sorting out.
@amp
I wasn't there but I've heard all about it from my Mother who fled a society that required her to be a Catholic mother or schoolteacher or go to the nunnery (no kidding, her friends did this), or nothing. So... women weren't super well treated. Same sex couples also didn't get the best treatment, nor blacks or Latinos. So it was a great time for a select few. Discrimination is not an afterthought.
Great column. Support is essential for recovery from trauma and it is good to know people are getting it. Medicalizing trauma treatment without support is useless. If one were to measure the amount of trauma Americans experience compared to less developed countries, I think we would be surprised at how good most of us have it. People recovering from trauma need to have deeply felt and abiding relationships with family, friends and counselors who identify traumatic behaviors and work through those behaviors in real time. Outside that bubble, really nice people help allot.
2
Now that our society allows people to acknowledge their own pain and suffering, however big or small...it must also accept more responsibility for bringing these people into the fold. Society can throw all the drugs and therapy it wants at people, what outcasts mostly need is a sense of belonging, acceptance and normalcy. This emerges from society and the group, not necessarily within any individual.
1
Just a reminder to some of the commenters here that "spiritual" healing does not require a religious content including any of the prophets or even God. The Native Americans did just fine with the earth and all of its features and attributes. Spirituality is a state of mind.
15
@Mister Ed
Wow, Mister Ed, someone finally realized spirituality is not the same as religiosity. Congratulations, and thanks.
While I would agree that mythic structures do have the power to reclaim or re-energize the soul and, would certainly support efforts to recreate some sort of mythic structure to help those suffering from trauma, we are living in a century where those mythic structures have been proven to be just that---myths. In those great interviews between Joe Campbell and Bill Moyers, Moyers continually ask Campbell what would replace the myths he devoted his life to studying--to which he no clear answer---only to say, myths did serve an important role in infusing meaning into life. I know this probably sounds banal, but, for the last month I have been canvassing for several local political candidates, and would say, even when listening to people I had severe ideological disagreements, there was always in these conversations sparks of humanity---going forward, I feel if we could all stop looking upward and stop looking downward and instead look at and listen for those sparks in others that would add a bit of humanity to our day.
7
David Brooks’ thoughts bring to mind the restorative justice practices being used in school. They bring those who are disruptive into conversation with each other, offering an alternative to the prideful posturing that often extends conflict.
4
I know an elderly woman in her 90s who faced utter childhood trauma. Her mother shunned her because of her dark skin and she was always treated as an outcast, taunted constantly by her own brother and other relatives, the biggest taunt being "who will marry you"! She also survived her dad's premature sudden death from heart attack when she was barely 8, she had always felt her dad was the only one who loved her. Now he was gone too and her mom widowed with 4 kids, became poor overnight. Fortunately wealthy relatives from her mom's side, stepped in and gave shelter to the family. This elegant dark complexioned lady survived all that. Brilliant in school, her family urged her to higher studies, medical school and such. She became a brilliant physician serving mankind for several decades, a loving giving wife mother grandmother sister aunt in-law and friend to scores. Extremely spiritual, she practiced yoga meditation since her mid 40s, receiving spiritual support from a community spread worldwide. Today in her 90s, her PTSD emerges, visions of her harsh childhood, her rejection from her own mother, the taunts from relatives, come flashing as though fresh. Being a physician she proactively does everything from prayers to guided meditations to pharmacological to talk therapy, even regression therapy. She does it without shame. With courage, I am human she says.
11
Actually I'm pretty sure that the medical community recognizes that talk therapy is essential for working through trauma like PTSD. Talk therapy, soul searching and soul recovery are typically longer term treatments (in some cases perhaps lifetime treatment is required). It's the insurance companies and their ilk who insist that a pill will fix it all and refuse to pay for anything further(they do the same with physical injuries as well which is why people can get 80 vicodin for a muscle pull but not physical therapy).
And of course the VA is part of this scam, for years it has denied claims of PTSD and discharged vets under spurious claims of misconduct so it wouldn't have to treat them for PTSD.
People are not rediscovering morality they're fighting to take it back from a corrupted framework that emphasizes stockholders and share price over actual patient care and positive outcomes.
Healthcare is a right not a privilege. No amount of pseudo-religiosity will make the majority of Americans forget that.
16
This is a beautiful column and talks about a subject that has been made taboo by those who are so virulently opposed to the dogma of organized religion, and rightly so as it has also traumatized and violated so many.
But Mr Brooks is not talking about these institutions. He is talking about the care of one's soul, our central core that exists after all the masks society imposes on us are peeled away, including religious upbringing.
Yes, of course we must stamp out war, review our hideous treatment of human beings through incarceration, attend to human rights, etc. I have worked toward these goals all my life.
But even if these atrocities no longer exist, we will continue as human beings to be subject to suffering. The loss of a child, the death of a mother, the illness of a beloved friend, divorce, etc.
How do we restore ourselves to health? How do we integrate the wound so they we may function and how can we use it to gain solidarity with all suffering people and enhance our love and compassion?
I agree with Mr Brooks that meaningful ritual that touches our unconscious is part of the answer. Of course we may need medicine and counseling as well.
Moreover, how we can use ritual to replace our tendency to actually want to go to war?
Some accounts of combat are horrific but at the same time many combatants tell us they have never felt more fully alive. Why is that?
What is lacking in our society that we want to place ourselves in extreme positions to feel alive?
10
People experiencing trauma and anxiety are churning thoughts and ideas in their heads almost constantly.
I've found that the best spiritual medicine is to empty the mind of all thought in meditation. This takes practice, but when the mind is empty of all thought there is no trauma or anxiety. The mind is pure and free of all struggle.
And I, too, wish our society would take spirituality more seriously. But it shouldn't be based in belief. It should be based in the practice of emptying the mind of all thought. Get thee to a Zendo!
1
I always struggle with Brooks' columns like this one, which seem to constantly nibble at the edges of organized religion. I don't particularly disagree with anything he says but in this age of political evangelism and so many people searching for authoritarian structures it makes me very nervous. Everyone needs to find their structures, their communities and make their rituals. And everyone needs to allow others their own way. And NONE of it should be in politics.
I find David's longing for moral architecture in today's America of hugely varied experiences and backgrounds and the Trump Administration upsetting and somewhat dangerous.
7
@LS I was going to write something about dealing with the trauma that is convulsing America and the world at a time when a dangerously narcissistic autocrat is running the White House, but then I saw your cautionary message, so I'll limit myself to responding to your expressed concerns. I share your concern about David Brooks' column, but also feel that the next great awakening in America will need to be spiritual. Not sure what form that will take, but I think you're on the right track when you suggest that it's a personal journey and don't believe that conflicts with what's written in this column.
Beautiful essay, and very wise. As a community, we are just beginning to understand how trauma represents a spiritual injury. Sometimes, as with the trauma suffered by soldiers or law enforcement, that can be a moral injury. Almost always that means injury to sense of self, to our sense of how the world works and our relationship to it, and our connection to something greater than ourselves, however we conceive of that. We have also lost our understanding of the importance of ritual to mark important times of transition and to remember (not just memory, but a re-integration of self, and self and community, re-member). Ritual can be in a ritual context, but it does not have to be. Lastly, we have denigrated myth to the point where "myth" equals false: "That's just a myth." Myths are our sacred stories that help us understand our lives, our world, and our place in the world. They help us make meaning. Thank you for illuminating the connection of these things and the role they, and too often their lack, is impacting us today.
8
Mr. Brooks: Much better than Tick's book is Jonathan Shay's ACHILLES IN VIETNAM, and its companion, ULYSSES IN AMERICA, for Vietnam Veterans' PTSD, which examines war trauma through the Greek myths. My Philadelphia VA Hospital has a program entitled "War and Moral Injury" for vets with soul trauma, which I have found very helpful in dealing with the loss of one's soul and the trauma of combat. I highly recommend these books to you, and this program to fellow combat vets.
7
MickNam
A well said commentary. The books you mentioned were and still are the cornerstone of my post VIETNAM rebuild. The understanding of developmental psycho social moratorium is most important. Myth, non myth, Jung, Campbell all create reasonable, yay necessary, blocks of construction to restore what we as the the veteran cannot always see. Thank you for your comment and welcome home brother...
@MickNamVet
Another book that might assist, because there is always the two-way street, is The Sorrow of War, by Bao Ninh, who appears in Burn's The Vietnam War.
(Didn't you leave an explanation/opinion on here a year and a half or two ago about why you thought former Marine General John Kelly hooked-up with Trump as his gate-keeper? Always stuck with me because I thought you nailed it succinctly.) Anyway, have a nice Thanksgiving, from one Vietnam Vet, (REMF) to another.
fighting the spiritual void?
don't we have anything better to do, in this physical life,
than fighting something that does not exist?
the soul is just a word we have developed to name
our sentient awareness as self, and to relate that self
to the idea of sin, of right and wrong...
we continue to deny our simple identity as human species.
we have to be something better, "special"
when in reality, there is nothing better to be
than what we really are already.
we just haven't gotten there yet.
and we insist upon filling the space in our heads with
the supernatural and mythical...
but, things are changing, slowly over time...
10
In addition to those suffering from trauma continuously (and consciously) recalled, there are certainly many others who also suffer from childhood trauma whose memory has been suppressed and that they no longer consciously recall.
3
Interesting that a most important description has been left awash. It’s not a
Ways about what happened then but often about what is happening now. Abnormal responses to normal situations are oft times built on the developmental curve of life. The question we might ask ourselves, or others, is “how old do you look at this response”. A tantrum thrown at this might well be based on that from developmental years. I.E. a veteran might find his current decisions, while based on the now, are perhaps based on Ericsson’s (?) moratorium. I often see this in adult children of alcoholics; more learned behavior. Sigh. We are a tangled nest are we not?
I think it's a lovely concept to address the spiritual void involved in trauma recovery. I think it more important to direct folks to effective and empirically proven trauma therapy. EMDR therapy has been helping trauma sufferers for decades. It's effective, safe and powerful. It gets results. See EMDRIA's website for more information. It's real and tangible.
1
Good for EMDR. Some EMDR grows resilience and provides relief. Some ... didn’t. Soul growth after trauma comes thru many forms and mediums. Astonishing how stubbornly we resist the answers of human civilizations for eons—mythos.
As a returning VN veteran, I had the benefit of the friendship of a quiet assuring older brother in-law who was a WWII vet, who was a tail gunner in Britian with several purple hearts. He could not talk about his experiences in the Air Corp and the limping back to base or the loss of so many buddies.
But his life's example of a good career, raising a great family and his commitment to his church and volunteer community was a visible sign to me that things would be OK in time. His patient look and understanding with my anger and sometimes rage was enough. He knew how I felt deep down, and that showed me the way back. I am greatful to him and those at the VA who do so much to help others come back.
16
We live in a society in which lots of money is the greatest good, the measure of a person's worth.
Decisions are made "top down," and crying needs and new ideas are routinely ignored and rejected because, I guess, they were not needs or ideas that concerned the top echelons of our society.
We are not even trying to remedy the causes of so much of our pain and suffering or even trying to find out what might be wrong.
I guess you could call this a "spiritual" problem. How are "thoughts and prayers" working for you, Mr. Brooks?
It could also be that we are living under a new system of Feudalism whereby hopelessness is just the lot of the serfs toiling for the landlords. This may be surprising, but rich, well-educated crazy people have nothing on poor and abused crazy people.
Our society and its people are being tortured by concentrations of money and their consequences. Humanity no longer has a place here.
7
@Al Mostonest, it is certainly important to identify what is hurting us so that we can stop it from occurring in the future, and it is also important to support the emotional recovery of people who are already hurt. These two strategies support the same goals. The latter strategy is what Mr. Brooks discusses in this column.
2
Myths, OK. But careful: making yourself into a myth will lead to inflation, and then you have to deflate without wounding yourself, if you want to lead a normal life (what other kinds are there?). And drugs are not your friend here. There's nothing quite like having a stable consciousness, and there's nothing like no-frills yoga to achieve and maintain yours. Books are written about all this, but the bare facts are worth bearing in mind. The freedom of consciousness, including freedom from religion, we now enjoy, has enormous pitfalls, as we are seeing. The free person falls back on herself or himself, so having a Self that is known and that you can communicate with and tend is of paramount importance.
3
I'm a psychotherapist who has worked a great deal with people struggling with the effects of all sorts of trauma. I am explicitly "spiritual" with folks when it is appropriate. I believe that it is a powerful part of the healing process for some people. My hope is that the secular members of my profession are tuned to the same frequency as Mr. Brooks!
11
"Wherever there is trauma, there has been betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury." Huh?
The article is proof that you can say anything and making sense is not a requisite. When dealing with emotional and physical injuries causing trauma, it is not so easy to put them in to categories. Nor is it appropriate to portray some of the things in this article as actually real, as something that exists outside, like a rock. The failure to understand that we make most everything up and that all things are transient does not permit us to see actually what is there, what is real.
Sorrow is not trauma, until people make it so. A lot depends on what people say to themselves, over and over, about the experience.
If Mr. Brooks means trauma that is caused by meaningless events, the machinations of other minds, by the moral and/or spiritual failures of others, it is not the end of the world, and we do not have to perceive it as such, unless you choose to do that.
Consciousness, itself, is at the root of trauma and is traumatic in its own right. Many never recover from the experience. Fear is the great force connecting all trauma, a feeling of anxiety concerning the outcome of something. It can only be dealt with effectively by deciding on an action and pursuing the action. Either it works or it doesn't. Try, try again. We are all afraid of something, one time or another, and a culture that is based on stimulating fear to control people is not a culture at all. Enter Trump.
5
@Reuben Ryder, I am not convinced by your proposed definition/explanation of trauma as "a feeling of anxiety concerning the outcome of something." Trauma, as defined by psychological professionals (for example, in the DSM-V) and as it is referred to in this article, relates to an event that has already happened. The outcome of the event is known (and indeed was usually witnessed firsthand). Thus the detail offered by Mr. Brooks—"betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury"—makes sense to me. One might argue with Mr. Brooks that trauma can also be caused by a non-moral event, for example, by a car accident. But I don't see how trauma can be anxiety about the future. Trauma, as I understand the common and technical use of the term, is about the past. I imagine that Mr. Brooks might agree with you that "we do not have to perceive" moral injuries as traumas, but in this column he argues that it can be very difficult to change one's perception and that this mental adjustment often cannot be achieved alone as a pure act of will but may instead require community support and validation.
1
@Tucker Lieberman I hear you, but perhaps I needed to be more clear. The definition does not imply the future, literally. The outcome of something was about the event of the past. Perhaps this you will better understand. You are making an assumption that it was about the future, when it is about the past and what to do in the moment to relieve the anxiety. Like all crises, they do not last forever. You either come out of them better or worse.
There is no doubt that a supportive community is a great tool to recovery. Some of the best proposals for returning soldiers has a great deal of well defined behavior by supportive staff that helps the patient to regain their well being.
Again, it is not about the future. We live in the present, all the time, whether we are aware of it or not.
Meh. We had a prospective tenant last weekend tell us he has PTSD because of bad relationships, and a rough childhood. It was kind of laughable at first the first part...but the guy was troubled and at risk... Telling someone like that to just get over it is unrealistic. It's societies problem not yours.
I totally agree with David's conclusion that spiritual needs are and have always been part of human experience. Humans have certain areas of growth and development that each person must be responsible for: physical health, mental health, social health, financial health, community health, and spiritual health in which one adjusts one's relationship with the universe until it is aligned with good against evil. Tribal and traditional religions have often served the function of helping one move in the direction of the good. However, a traditional religion is not necessary for all us. Some can take messages from all sources from Confucius and Socrates to Gandhi and other great spiritual leaders and find our own way to spiritual growth and awareness. Happy Thanksgiving.
2
David remains content to promote his brand of mysticism. It's easier than facing his complicity in GOP mischief since Reagan.
The middle class is effectively destroyed. And "capitalist" billionaires/corporations are running wild feeding off government tax breaks/hands outs.
Until David addresses the modern Robber Barons, this type of essay is pure deflection.
18
@David Henry
Thanks David.
Many "therapists" want to pitch a philosophy.
As stated, patient "Art" is not credible and any professional who professes that the "soul" left his body is a charlatan.
1
@David Henry
Yep. The column can be summed up as "Thoughts and prayers."
2
That was beautiful and very compassionate. While there are many of us traumatized by family members drug addiction or absent alcoholic parents, Alanon has provided so much spiritual hope and help. I think those twelve steps are an extraordinary ladder or wheel of healing for anyone who has suffered any trauma. As a retired teacher, I always felt the greatest compassion for students traumatized by poverty, refugee status, culture shock, one parent in prison, violence or abuse. Now I have the greatest compassion for all those affected by the trauma of the Camp Fire. I hope they find a safe breathable place to live soon.
2
It is important to recognize trauma, to act to deal with it in ourselves, and to help others deal with it.
However, wallowing in it makes it worse. The idea is to overcome it, not to let it take over life.
Sometimes it takes over anyway. Fighting that is dealing with it.
I don't mean to blame the victim. I'm thinking more of people around the victim. They too often emphasize the trauma instead of the recovery. They help perpetuate the trauma instead of helping the victim get past it.
The first time this was pointed out to me was by a teen, whose complaint was that her family would not let her get past the sexual abuse of her by her uncle. They let that define her, and she said that hurt more than what the uncle did. She wanted it all to stop, because they were making it worse. They were her problem, not helping her.
They thought they were helping, being supportive, or so they told me. She felt they were making it about themselves, not her real needs as she felt them.
6
I think you are missing something here. Many trauma survivors don't know the extent of the trauma they experienced as children, young adults and even adults. Children who are subject to emotional and physical trauma including physical and emotional abuse mostly blame themselves. And if one is lucky enough to find a counselor or therapist to help one through the emotional maze of having survived, there remains the lingering feeling that as a victim, you are still at fault, despite evidence to the contrary.
I am not speaking of war-related trauma, I have not experienced that. However I struggle, as a 50-something woman to live a good life. I blame no one at this point, life happens. It's only about me, at this point, to the extent that my recovery is on me.
2
Thank you, Mr. Brooks. Was hoping earlier that there would be an essay from you, and my wish has been now granted, without keeping it a secret.
It is possible that our Nation has been slightly traumatized by this Presidency. Eh, and it is becoming harder to stay in the same place? One has to run faster than ever in this revolutionary era of technology and we don't know 'What is Happening'.
Singular as it sounds, acquaintances come to 'visit' in times of sorrow, on the basis that I always know the right thing to say. This is not true and makes one feel like a walking encyclopedia of platitudes.
When taking up the gauntlet, and deciding to help a person, an acquaintance, a friend traumatized by a loss, we take the journey together. We go through the looking-glass, knowing that we are there to relieve the burden. It can be a long journey where we go our separate way on occasion, only to find each other again looking at the next obstacle to hurdle.
Sometimes it works, where the casualty of stress feels relieved, while you remain a bit jangled and mangled.
There are two books on my list to read: 'Road to Character' by you and Joseph Campbell's mythology, and perhaps you might enjoy meeting Ebenezer Le Page, in the book by G.B. Edwards, where the narrator never leaves his island.
Thanking you for your honesty, and wishing you a happy Thanksgiving, while we continue on our travels. What a Life!
3
Outstanding essay! We are experiencing tectonic plate shifts in religion of all sorts because we are outgrowing them. But we still need myth and ritual to nurture and express the soul. I see some attempts at myth in stories such as Star Trek, Black Panther, Hunger Games, and almost anything from Pixar. Lacking any really good options, we have placed much of our ritual life in sports events where we struggle with body posture during the national anthem. Our collective PTSD arising from the current global angst may lead to healing our weary souls if we can approach healers with grace and humility.
10
Happy Thanksgiving. This was lovely.
7
“Wherever there is trauma, there has been betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury.”
This conclusion by David Brooks is incorrect, although his column about the concept of soul is true.
Sometimes, probably more often than not, a person sustains psychic trauma without any wrongdoing by anyone. The death of a parent, of a sibling or, most horrific, of one’s child inflicts such trauma on people.
Terrible things happen to good people every day. Accidents or unexpected illnesses happen to family members or close friends, and the community typically grieves with those suffering the loss and offers comfort.
Usually, no one was at fault in these situations. There was no betrayal. No one suffering such trauma lost his or her soul – unless we call a broken heart an injured soul.
If we entertain the notion that a person suffering such a loss now feels morally tainted, rather than recognize the deep sadness they are experiencing, we add insult to injury.
14
@sdw,
These are known as 'circumstances beyond one's control', and while telling the person that you are sorry for whatever is the cause of their feeling lost or bereft, one can follow this by a deed of action.
It would be wondrous if this presidency could allocate relief funds to our Californian fellows who are now without shelter, forgotten by those of us in the East, ready to prepare our favorite Thanksgiving recipe, while Mother Nature leaves many Americans in a case of unease and anxiety, subject to her whims and caprices.
Let us bin the sentence, 'I feel your pain', or 'We all have a cross to bear'. Ask yourself when was the last time you thought of Ferguson.
1
@Miss Ley
You mix situations, lumping everything into “circumstances beyond one’s control.” In the case of the California fires, this applies to the role “Mother Nature.” We should feel empathy and act on that feeling.
On the other hand, you also write about whether Donald Trump will allocate sufficient relief funds, and you write about Ferguson, where a police officer shot an unarmed 18-year-old black youngster and riots ensued.
Trump’s action or inaction and the Ferguson shooting both fall squarely into the three requisites for trauma listed by David Brooks: betrayal, abuse of authority and moral injury.
The focus is not on whether we show enough empathy. It is on whether the person guilty of misconduct has created and the victims have sustained an injury to the soul.
And, Miss Ley, speaking to a bereft person about “a cross to bear” suggests that the person somehow has done something to deserve punishment. It is cruel.
1
Veterans of wars represent a small fraction of those who experience the life-altering consequences of trauma. Just ask the thousands of young boys and girls who, today, can barely function as a result of their abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church; or the millions of women - our mothers, sisters and wives - who are just now finding public expression in the Me Too movement for their centuries of sanctioned and ritualized abuse... and the list goes on. The cover for this horror: Brooks' peddled myth of Nationalism, wherein myth itself displaces the actualities of what it means to live in this world creatively, trusting in the self and others, without fear. Even the examples conjured in his article - i.e. the traumatized soldier who, through the help of community, becomes a newly minted heroic "warrior" - reeks of the wholly abusive power structure he sets out to confront. What Brooks appears to be terrified of, as are all proponents of the myth of Nationalism, is the power of the individual conscience, the one source capable of confronting the corruption and abuse inherent in every community. His "thick moral culure" is not going to be achieved by the recitation of cliche-ridden mumbo jumbo, but rather through the hard process of accountability - which this article does not even touch upon.
31
@RMW While accountability is necessary, the victims of trauma still have to deal within themselves with the physical, mental, and spiritual effects of the trauma they suffered. Brooks is right to ask the question: what do/what can we do to help people in that situation? Medication, therapy, etc. can be helpful, but they tend to be victim and doctor/therapist interactions. Brooks is asking what we as a community can do to help. How can we accompany trauma victims, whether returning soldiers, abused children, or those grieving the death of a loved one whether "natural" or the result of a mass shooting? If we ourselves don't have a strong moral/spiritual "soul", we won't be able to do much for them. So Brooks is right to ask us to look at the spiritual void that exists in this country now, a void that is reflected, among other places, in hatred of the "other" and in the inability of elected officials to work together for positive good.
7
David highlights the role a community plays in helping its wounded members recover from the traumas they have suffered, often on behalf of the community, itself. The failure of American society to extend similar aid to its damaged members surely arises in large part from the individualist ethos that defines our culture.
We offer our citizens a high degree of autonomy, but in exchange we demand that they assume responsibility for the consequences of that freedom. We celebrate our soldiers, but the community provides little support to help them recover from the horrors they experience in combat. We expect them to remain strong, to fit our image of the heroic warrior. As in the case of General Patton slapping a shell-shocked GI in WWII, we seem embarrassed when some of them display their vulnerability. Their "weakness" challenges our myth of the resilient individual, able to confront life's traumas without flinching.
In like manner, we may express sympathy for the victim of a sexual assault, but many Americans still harbor the suspicion that her own behavior contributed to the attack. She either drank too much or wore provocative clothing. In either case, she misused her individual freedom and paid the price.
A society committed to the ideal of the autonomous individual has a difficult time nurturing the values and institutions which acknowledge the limitations of that outlook. We pay a high price for our blindness.
7
@James Lee,
In a manner of speaking, my spouse went on a ramble about Vietnam, with a veteran friend who nearly choked him in the process. Could you blame him.
Earlier watched a case of a seventeen-year old, raped by a man ten years her senior, and who 'brought it upon herself' for wearing embroidery on her underwear. This took place in Ireland, where the Women's Movement is growing in momentum.
Here I would have pointed out that Belgium nuns are known for their embroidery skills in placing lace on such garments.
'Selfish' is the dominant word that comes to mind in the midst of a society of gentle, peace-loving, grasping souls. So kind, we are, and ruthless in acts of well-meaning, ill-advised measures.
On reading the reflections of a well appointed financier, who came to the conclusion that in life, it is not the motivation of wealth or sex that drives us, but the killing instinct that remains dormant in our make-up, I blinked and pondered.
Perhaps one of the reasons, our Nation finds comfort in food and enlarges its girth, is to fill a void of emptiness, while counting our blessings with another slice of mince pie.
1
You have written something here Mr. Brooks that is vital to each one of us, whether suffering from inner torment (are we not all in some measure tortured?) or not, and thus key to our culture as a community of caring human beings.
You have gifted me with a new and hopefully growing perception of life and its priorities.
We need to nurture one another to establish meaning and our own course in life. It can and must come from connection to one another.
9
I am normally contemptuous of the New Age language of “spirituality” but I have to agree with Mr. Brooks. Trauma is a moral and spiritual wound rather than a medical one. Medicalization of the human condition is a grave danger. When a grieving spouse or parent is offered pills instead of religion or philosophy; when works of art are disfigured by “trigger warnings”; when students complain that ideas they disagree with a danger to their health, it is the culture, not the individual, that is sick. And it will breed trauma, disaffection and misery faster than the makers of antidepressants can develop new drugs. There are studies that show that cognitive therapy or philosophical or religious conversations are as effective as drugs in treating depression. War trauma is less in societies in which the returning soldiers are admired and lauded rather than despised. More books, less pills should be a prescription for every trauma sufferer.
10
@Mor
Thoughts and prayers, eh? Medication is meant to be a bridge, not a replacement of inner healing. Individuals come to terms with trauma, to the extent that they are able, via different paths. To blame the culture is simplistic and wrong.
The whole "society is sick" trope is just an excuse to get on a favorite hobbyhorse and go for a gallop around the room. Trigger warnings seem to be one of yours, as is a belief that returning military are despised - also incorrect.
1
@Mor
Are you serious? Have you not heard a serviceperson thanked for their service a hundred thousand times here? I go to the store, a military or ex military guy in front of me on line gets his military discount, and the cashier says, "thank you for your service."
I watch a ball game on TV and see some military guy and his family carted out onto the field so everyone can applaud and thank them for their service.
This constant thanking and expressions of heartfelt gratitude has not seemed to help our soldiers suffering PTSD from their stints in Iraq and Afghanistan one iota.
1
@Mor: I notice tour examples do not include children being torn from the arms of their mothers, people being denied medical treatment because of pre-existing conditions, or people who are denied assistance after fire or hurricane damage - to name just a few. While I feel that we cannot be truly spiritual until we transcend religion, while still recognizing the verities upon which religions are based, I think that both trauma and (for want of a better word) materialism are both veils over the soul, the conscience if you will, which when awakened, demands that we view the world differently than we have previously. It is a dangerous undertaking to awaken the soul; we risk remaking all our values and priorities.
Thanks Mr. Brooks. We need to discover & develop what ties
us together in a spiritual way. BUT, the way must be one while
acknowledging one part of our nature---the destructive one,
WILL, at the same time, develop our constructive & supportive
part, and have the HOPE that this positive part will control our
negative part. LOVE IS THE CATALYST.
2
If we required a two year commitment to some sort of national service from everyone, it might go a long way toward thickening the country. I suspect we would discover new ways to be a "hero" without going to war. Working together with folks from dissimilar backgrounds, I suspect we would discover new ways in which we are all in this together, and we might come away with a greater respect for "the commons," and our part in preserving them.
And I suspect requiring a two year national service for everyone would be good for our traumatized collective soul.
54
@Ben Bryant Thank you for this comment. National service would provide profound benefits to individuals by embedding them deeply in their communities, reducing isolation, and promoting purpose. It's also the only way I can think of that we as a society can move off our glide path towards hatred and civil war.
1
@Ben Bryant
Well said. As J.F.K . put it, “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. As true today as ever it was. It would give many young people the opportunity to make the transition from school to a career with a chance to meet and work with Americans of dissimilar backgrounds and views about living in America.
In that kind of environment it is to be hoped they would learn that not all have been as fortunate as they and perhaps develop compassion and understanding for those less fortunate. Good idea.
3
Thank you for talking about the place for soul in how we heal. While there is much to be said for the medical model, the original Ancient Greek meaning of the word "psyche" was soul; not mind, brain or behavior. So psychology was originally the study of soul.
Of course, this was not a Christian conception of soul. It was a polytheistic conception, in which every wise, heroic, jealous, vengeful, nurturing, lustful, ecstatic, mad or loving god or goddess reflected some part of the wide variety of human experience without moral judgement. So I would be wary of Brook's use of the word "moral" in this context, but I applaud his main point.
Myths can act as mirrors for us to see and accept the many parts of ourselves that we might otherwise ignore or deny. They can also offer a measure of meaning to our descents into darkness, if you consider how the Ancients saw descending into the Underworld as necessary to turn an innocent girl like Persephone into a Queen or a lost man like Odysseus into a true Father.
Ritual can evoke such images and midwife such rites of passage. But it need not be ensconced in established religious or cultural traditions. Creative, attuned groups of people can collaboratively create new rituals with more vitality and transformative power.
The empiricists were right to reject empty ritual and superstition. But the objective focus of science cannot replace the subjective nature of the soul.
(See: "Care of the Soul" by Thomas Moore, & Meridian University)
7
The film “The Best Years of Our Lives” sought to typify the challenges of veterans returning from WWII. In that story three veterans who did not previously know each other become entwined with each other in their efforts to reintegrate following war. In different ways they offered hope and encouragement to one another.
In “The Deer Hunter” the alienation of returning Vietnam vets is depicted as almost insuperable.
Unlike other wars, US veterans organizations largely abandoned returning Vietnam vets. Neither the VFW nor the American Legion welcomed returning “long-haired hippies”. As a result of abandoning the vets at the time of their return, these organizations have shrunk to obscurity, and the veterans lost the communal support they badly needed. The organizations have since changed their stance, but it has been too little too late.
The isolation, abandonment and hyper-individualism imposed on Vietnam vets has come at a high personal and social cost that continues to be paid today.
One can only dread the enduring cost of imposing multiple tours of duty on our military in the Middle East. The supposed virtue of a volunteer Army has devolved into the reality of a misused mercenary force whom we feel free to send back into unremitting combat because “they are paid to do it” and “they agreed to do it”.
They did no such thing. They agreed to serve a country that would use their service wisely, not foolishly. And that betrayal will take decades to repay.
8
For everyone saying this is on the money, there are others saying it's all neurotransmitters.
If you think the world is reducible to synapses, chances are the word soul has no meaning.
A former soldier who said he felt his soul leave his body after killing many and retreating? I guess you'd suggest his medications be adjusted.
I agree with you 100% Mr Brooks. This is a powerful piece.
12
@Talbot
I'm one of those soulless types you disparage, and I would not suggest that the guy who felt his soul leave his body needs his medications adjusted. (Though I wouldn't scorn medication either; if you have any compassion at all despite considering yourself very high on the spirituality meter, you recognize that medications can do a lot to relieve suffering in some cases - so, in short, do adjust his meds if it helps him to cope.)
But my first answer is not to send him into combat in the first place; then we won't have to argue about who is morally superior, debating medication versus soul-babble.
Let's understand the etymology of the word "religion," from religare, to tie, to fasten, to bind. The same root forms the word ligament. A body without ligaments supporting its various pieces in an integrated upright posture would collapse into a heap of bones. A psyche without inner supports and connections, however these may be understood or defined, faces the same ungamely fate. Thank you Mr. Brooks for your insight into the necessity of ligaments in a healthy society.
6
While our constitution pays lip service to freedom of worship and speech, the true passion of our nation is revealed in clinging to the right to inflict mortal violence without restriction as the most exalted of human rights. When we excise violence as our right, and the just answer for wrongs, from our essence, perhaps we will find a spiritual rebirth. Until then, an America without violence is like a Persia without poetry.
4
Art is certainly the best way to free a human soul. It can give a person individual strength in the bleakest of situations. Without a sense of individual dignity people always turn cynical and hopeless. And that speaks volumes about the problem with poverty on this planet. The greatest thing about art -- not to mention how it can develop perceptions, emotional intelligence, and dignity -- is that the greatest artists the world has ever known celebrate humanity. There's compassion in art. There's hope in a life full of dreams and memories. So what do you think art is made of?
10
You would do well to read a book called "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kok, MD for a profound examination of ptsd and trauma from abuse, etc. as well as war. Our culture contributes much to causing it including by not providing sufficient community.
14
We are physical, mental, emotional, spiritual beings. All parts to make a whole. When one part is repressed, ridiculed or wounded deeply then the potential of the whole person at best goes unmet at worse distorts the individual/nation into something grotesque.
It’s good to hear that people have found a ways to help heal the mental wounds folks carry.
Thank you Mr. Brooks for your continued thoughts on healing and becoming better more fully human.
17
I am glad you are addressing humanity a bit more here. I would like to read about your impressions of the trauma that many black men have felt from being reported and assaulted for just looking threatening. The largest group of those with trauma ruminations here in the US are women who have been sexually assaulted. Those women who are pregnant while being assaulted pass the trauma chemistry onto their unborn children, so they are damaged, too. Rape victims relive the nightmare(s) over and over, and over, just like soldiers from the violent war theater, and sometimes it leads to a slow form of suicide: like substance abuse. PTSD was a label advancement on what has always been known as trauma rumination. Trauma ruins lives.
The only way out of the disease, just like with treating other psychiatric problems, is to rehearse focusing outward, towards the needs of others, to have a mission, to have employment, to not be allowed alone inside one's own head. This is cognitive therapy to distract and retrain the mind to other thought patterns. A ritual might help, but I think it would take more than that. The community around these trauma victims needs to change to re-enable them. The biggest threat to traumatized soldiers returning, or to assaulted women, is not being needed, wanted, hired, by the community. We can't make a private sector hire these former soldiers.
22
Interesting that he commented about our society being in a spiritual void. Finally someone recognizes this void. Suicide rates would plummet it we would allow the soul to feel, to be recognized. So often in society God is hated and shunned, but God wants to share all of his light and love; he wants to heal our wounded souls. Why does society think it is so awful to believe in a God who can heal the soul and help anyone overcome trauma? In Matthew 11:29 Christ invites people to come unto him with the promise that they "...will find rest to their souls." What a blessing.
8
@Marielle Ryan I agree with you that healing is found in the words of Jesus, however, since many people have been harmed by the "church" they have rejected the words of the Bible as well and immediately attack anyone who brings up religion, especially Christianity.
@Marielle Ryan
"Finally someone recognizes this void. "
I am always confused by comments like this. This void is talked about 24/7 in churches and elsewhere.
@Marielle Ryan The hitch has been that the American right wing snitched Jesus away and made him into a weird, hateful monster. No, I'm sorry, you cannot love Jesus and hate gay people and oppose gay marriage. No, I'm sorry you cannot love Jesus and support cutting social service programs for the meek and poverty stricken while cutting taxes for the billionaires. No, I'm sorry you cannot love Jesus while dumping toxic waste into rivers. Jesus sits at our borders, disguised within an immigrant caravan, takes a look at his people, cheering on a hateful man who enjoys ripping babies from their mothers, and weeps. When the American Evangelicals and other "Christians" start reading David Brooks and try swapping love for hate, embrace for fear, and most anything besides Donald for president, Jesus will relax.
Another deceptive straw man to battle! Comprehensive treatment for PTSD is a lot more than psychoactive medication. However, among the things that the Reagan Revolution eliminated were the mental hospitals, i.e., the very places that people could get comprehensive treatment. We do not need to look to myth or religion to help people suffering from trauma; we just need to support the institutions that would help.
19
Quote
"I wish our culture had many more rites of passage, communal moments when we celebrated a moral transition. There could be a community wide rite of passage for people coming out of prison, for forgiveness of a personal wrong, for people who felt they had come out the other side of trauma and abuse. There’d be a marriage ceremony of sorts to mark the moment when a young person found the vocation he or she would dedicate life to."
But I gotta tell ya, the great contradiction that continues to exist in your writing is that you seem to be allergic recognizing the fundamental veracity of much Marx and Weber's descriptions of how capitalism undermines the 'thick moral culture' you long for. Throw in the 'natural void' amplifying the 'spiritual void' caused by the trashing of the planet in the search of profit, and it's really staring us in the face.
"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man [sic] is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe."
KM, The Communist Manifesto.
I agree with much of what you say. But until you come clean about the corrosive effects of the basic trajectory set by surplus value extraction in a globalizing regime that privileges property over people and refers to corporations as legal persons, your analyses seem borderline sentimental.
78
@Brendan ... but wasn't it Marx ( or maybe Lenin ) who said " religion is the opiate of the people "?
It's like you've been trying to say this for oh-so-long.
A breakthrough, this column. Going forward, try to apply this insight more broadly and you might see the shortcomings of the punishment ethos of the conservative movement Trump so handily highjacked.
9
I don't understand any of this. I have lived in communities of faith and I have lived in places like here in Quebec where 80% are Atheist or Agnostic. There is little if any difference.
It is community that makes all the difference. It is community that sets standards of behaviour.
I know of One of our Protestant Ministers who proclaimed she did not believe in God and when her church tried to get rid of her her flock would not have it. I guess she really explained the Gospels.
Nobody explains your constitution is a social contract. It is about how we deal with each other. The second amendment is far more important than guns it is about how we treat those whose morality prevents them from being in the military. It says we must respect deeply held convictions.
Your country was founded on respect for each other and your country is lead by someone who has no respect for even himself.
When Mr Scalia changed the meaning of the second amendment he echoed the words spoken by Barry Goldwater in 1964. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Karl Hess III wrote those words and he was a libertarian.
Libertarians don't believe in spirituality so can lie with impunity.
11
The notion of rituals to cleanse moral injuries may have some relevance to traumatized combat veterans, but seems less well suited to persons whose trauma may have sprung from, for example, prolonged childhood abuse.
And community-based healing presupposes the existence of a community, which is increasingly hard to find.
16
Odd coincidence. I reread, Demien by Hesse last week.
The point of the novel is to teach the reader that, "every persons life is a journey unto themselves".
Max Demien, an important character in the book means, great spirit. The lead character is Emile Sinclair a German youth, who eventually winds up seriously wounded in WWI.
The questions, the reader asks after finishing the work is, was there two persons or one? Is a person's great spirit, or soul always within them? Is life's purpose to find it?
6
Mr Brooks, I liked this piece because it spoke about a kind of spirituality that is true and healing. That is the essence of all true religion, that it be based on the idea of a loving creator. As sincere followers of any faith, we try to live in a moral manner. When one of us is wounded, whether emotionally or physically, we offer compassion, acceptance, and kindness. In these modern times, there has been a lot of brokenness, what the medical establishment calls trauma. It is difficult to find spaces in very large communities for myth-making and ritual. These sorts of things are best done in smaller groups, such as a temple, church, or even a community center. Another aspect to this is considering how we live our lives. Do we support programs and policies that continue hurting people, or do we try to lessen our impact, for instance, on what will exacerbate climate change? Can we all learn cooperation so that individuals aren't suffering? Can we back politicians who are committed to staying out of an unnecessary war?
1
There’s a ritual called voting, through which the ordinary man or woman shares in the power of the body politic, and can see, through the sheer effort put into collecting and counting votes, that their opinion is valued by the community.
And then there’s a group called the Republican Party, that tries to prevent people from voting, or to collect their ballots and throw them away uncounted. This is an ongoing trauma inflicted on the American body politic.
Yes, it would be nice if America had more morally affirming rituals. So let’s begin by removing the political party that works so hard to suppress them.
14
"We in America need ceremonies, is, I suppose, sailor, the point of what I have written."
Updike, "A Traded Car"
As our country was self-invented, each American is called to invent their own universe. Sometimes it's tiring, and lonely.
9
Rwanda instigated a community reconciliation process for perpetrators of the genocide that my Rwandan friends tell me was often effective. There are amazing accounts of forgiveness and healing. If that kind of community process can work with something that severe, there is hope that something similar can work in other traumatic situations.
6
These sorts of rituals work best at a tribal level, or the level of a religious congregation. The only secular organization that we have of that size are primary schools. It needs to be a few hundred people of a wide range of age groups (schools have a narrow range of ages). Sadly, at sizes above that, rituals don't scale well. We don't know enough about the participants to care about them. It becomes impersonal. I fear that before we can return to the sorts of rituals that David advocates (and I agree that they are spiritually healthy), we would need to establish social structures of that size again, the size of a rural village, a church congregation, or a big company union local. Our lack of useful rituals is really just a symptom of the decline of civil society at a local level. We need a way and a reason for secular neighbors to bond, ideally not on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion, because we don't want the ugly sides of tribalism together with the good ones.
.
How to reconstruct civil society in a secular and atomized society? Perhaps channel more government benefits to be spent through local government structures, which will get more people involved in local politics. But people like their autonomy too much to embrace small communities today. We need something like religion without the gods, priests and the ugly bits of the dogma, a new secular religion. Nobody has found that yet.
4
Actually, 12 step programs offer "religion without the gods, priests and the ugly bits of the dogma". Yes, dogma creeps in from time to time, but a time honored principle of these programs is "take what you like and leave the rest".
1
Wonderful column.
The purification of warriors is described in Numbers chapter 31 verses 19-20.
Analogous to an orbiting spaceship, reentry following a traumatic episode is dangerous, and if the trajectory isn't precise, the soul overheats. Some prefer to stay in the safety of their orbit, some succeed and return to earth, and some, tragically, burn up trying. A healthy culture guides reentry and reduces the risk.
6
@Eitan
One more note - my father in law was in the 2nd infantry division, landed at Normandy on D Day, fought in Northern France and in the Battle of the Bulge, and his battalion entered Pilsen in May 1945 ahead of the 3rd Army. He had a bronze star and two purple hearts. Most of the people he fought with did not come home. It took him over a decade to "reenter", marry and resume a "normal life".
Once General Patton visited his platoon and was reviewing the troops. He said to the Captain, "I don't have time to thank all your soldiers personally, but I'd like to shake the hand of your best soldier." "Why that's Corporal Besdin", replied the officer. As Patton, a notorious anti-Semite, shook his hand, my father in law said - "And I'm a Jew, Sir".
Clarity of purpose, fairness and decency to all. May his memory continue to inspire me and my family.
Carl Jung spoke about soul in a way that resonated with Joseph Campbell and his subsequent popularization of the hero's journey. The soul is complicated and, as such, is resilient. As a culture, we have lost our acknowledgment and appreciation of the soul--human and universal. To be concrete, soul is the essence of all life that connects us humans to everything outside ourselves--including the environment and the inhabitants of this fragile planet we live on. In our own insulated, protected lives we have lost touch with our planetary home. We have lost touch with our souls. We have lost touch with heroes. We have lost touch with resilience. We have lost touch with ourselves.
15
Our whole society has institutionalized cruelty and suffering, and made it OK to disconnect, by turning a blind eye. We are morally corrupted and ethically a wash in the mythology of this time, a very dark time.
Trauma is daily, moment to moment now. In my lifetime it has increased, become more violent, and spread to effect most all beings. There are many ways to heal, but one will still be faced with the trauma. What I find helpful, when the body's memory kicks in, I try to talk to it like an old friend; "Hi, it's you again, I could go down that path and I will sometimes, and I won't judge myself, but, my friend, this is something I want to release, so I'm letting it go now," and then I release it. It is a series of releases. My body has never healed (even after a soul retrieval), even though I have sought help in many ways. So it's what I must live with, and instead of pushing the feelings away, I say hi, its you again, ok, now I'm turning my attention elsewhere. This doesn't always work, but it works enough, a lot, and it does get so much easier.
And I believe that underneath all of the horror and beauty there is a field of sameness. This allows me to go forward, eyes and heart open, and blinders off to the cruelty and suffering, and then, to concentrate of relieving the pain of others; all creatures, and our Earth. Everything is alive and interconnected, and the more compassion we can feel for others, the more we heal too.
30
@Leslie S
Such insight, so beautiful!
Good topic . Thanks Mr. Brooks and others who share here.
Just a reminder: Healing takes time.
3
@Bull
One more point: Language has serious limitations. Of course that wont stop us from trying to talk/write our way out of messes.
I guess that's why mind & body should remain intact, and an integral part of a healthy life, whenever practical.
I truly appreciate Mr. Brooks continued harkening toward the values of spiritual community. We must recognize the damage wrought throughout the world by 'western judeo-christian' colonialism. Close to 40% of the U.S. is racially/culturally not 'western', and closer to 50% if one includes those stigmatized by christianity.
Our current struggles reflect humanity shedding its dried and frayed historical folklore mythology skin - resisting the truer, science based epidermis below.
Reminiscing is self-delusion.
2
Christ loves everyone, and offers hope, peace and healing to everyone as well. He is no respecter of persons.
"There could be a communitywide rite of passage for people coming out of prison, for forgiveness of a personal wrong, for people who felt they had come out the other side of trauma and abuse. There’d be a marriage ceremony of sorts to mark the moment when a young person found the vocation he or she would dedicate life to."
Classical Judaism has publicly recited blessings for much of this. There is, e.g. matir assurim, the blessing upon release from prison (although there are stipulations as to what kind of prison) and the all inclusive generic ha-gomel, "He who bestows favor on the undeserving", publicly recited, by men and women, upon deliverance from all forms of danger.
I am not aware though of any vocation blessing. If anything that type of marriage suggested by Mr. Brooks might be followed by a divorce. No blessing for getting fired either.
8
David, it seems to me that your "elephant in the room" is religion, religious belief, and religious ritual--all of which WERE at the heart of the post-pagan world. That's what I suspect you're lamenting when you say that "WE" have "made our culture a spiritual void," and that's what Weber meant when he noted "the disenchantment of the world."
I note that religious belief and practice, if statistical evidence is to be accepted, continues at a very high level in the United States. Citizens still find it comforting, valuable, and even natural to believe in God and to join with others in worship and in ritual observances.
Despite that, there does seem to be an emptiness and a vacuum in our culture generally, and in individual "souls," that religious energy can't deal with positively: Religious people still struggle with the after-effects of traumatic experiences--and rather than healing through pastoral care, or prayer, or community worship, many still drift with prescription drugs, self-medication, or just fall apart.
It's tempting to blame the deficits, and the inadequate responses to them, on the culture. But the fact is that nothing has changed in "the essential human condition": we still live in, are injured by, and have to recover and survive in, a world that is not disenchanted, but still full of mystery and challenge.
It seems to me that our root dilemma is existence itself; we need to face up to its imperfection, and develop the resources that all mortals have.
14
After WW2 veterans were given support togo to college. I believe this kind of recognition of an individuals value by entry into a community of mature students be it college or manual helped many erase the trauma.
16
(Details changed for the sake of confidentiaity - this is a collage of several patients I worked with)
I worked with a vet who had grown up in a rather violent inner city neighborhood. She recalled being in her home the day Martin Luther King died, lying on top of her younger brother to protect him from bullets coming in the window during the riots.
She decided as a teen to become a doctor - and her plan included being a medic in Vietnam, then returning to her community to “give back.”
In Vietnam, she was traumatized by what later appeared in her repeated nightmares as “trucks piled high with dead bodies coming into the compound.”
A charismatic person, she ran for local office in a state far from home, was elected and became quite successful until accused of corruption.
One day, on the verge of giving up, holding a bottle of pills in her hand, sitting at the edge of a pond by her father’s house where she had come to recover, she suddenly felt overwhelmed by the oak tree to eh side of the bench she was sitting on.
When she talked about that moment, she described “the tree at the end of the earth,” and communicated a sense of awe and beauty as she spoke of it.
The room filled with calm and peace as she spoke and for months afterward, I would ask her to tell me where her “tree” was. 9 months after we began, she returned to work, still in pain but somehow supported by “something more.”
Www.remember-to-breathe.org
13
"When you privatize morality and denude the public square of spiritual content, you’ve robbed people of the community resources they need to process moral pain together."
So public morality is maybe like putting disobedient citizens in the stocks or making them wear a red letter? And the public square has been denude[d] . . . of spiritual content" because all the churches have had to remove the crosses from their steeples?
3
The physical body is just a vehicle for transporting the spiritual soul during this life on earth. The cure for the rising suicide and depression rates is for people to have a relationship with God, the One who can help us through the difficult times. Jesus tells us in the gospel of Matthew" Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."
11
Beautiful. It is so simple, but often when people are offered this hope, they are only offended. Why?
3
Brook’s is out of step with his party.
Like Scrooge his party only cares about punishment. And using the criminal justice system as a lever to maintain white supremacy (along with Gerrymandering).
It has elected and holds beloved a president whose bottom line is winning, and identifying losers
White Evangelical men and women do not care about supporting a system that provides for those in need.
They only care about lowering taxes, ending the social safety net, killing the ACA, abandoning those with pre-existing conditions to unaffordable options and short term gains through long term destruction of the environment.
So if Brook’s really wants to make a statement then leave his GOP.
13
As a Presbyterian Church USA pastor, I encourage anyone who finds today's culture of materialism and individualism a thin gruel for the soul to (re)connect with a healthy religious community. While much in the church today has rightly been deemed corrupt and deserving of condemnation, there are many vital congregations quietly trying their best as fallible, faithful people to live humbly, justly, and lovingly in service to God and neighbor. The Holy can be found and wholeness can be discovered in worshiping communities. It happens there more frequently than most suspect.
20
@John C. Van Nuys
Here in Quebec 80% of the population is agnostic or atheist. I have lived in the bible belt. There is no difference between believers and non believers. The need is not for spirituality it is for community. We need hugs and affirmation.
10
@Memphrie et Moi
Attending a vital congregation, as this pastor describes, provides not just spirituality, but a community! I, too, am a member of a vital church community. We celebrated our veterans on Veterans Day. Almost 200 of us sang happy birthday to one member who just turning 90 this last Sunday. On Thanksgiving you can join a big gathering if you don't have family near by. We work together, side by side, supporting each other and those in need in our greater community. I cannot imagine raising my family with out the support of a community. It is out there if you seek it!
3
@John C. Van Nuys
Spirituality and ethics do not necessarily come from religion. Example: The Crusades; The Inquisition; Religious Wars throughout all ages.
I am very tired of the lecturing by religious people about the "soul".
I would bet that many in the Alt-Right who are virulent hateful people are church goers.
6
"My soul has fled."
What a profound observation, and expression of same.
I can relate.
11
It was the mythic perspective that helped me heal from a devastating psychological trauma.
Myths are not false tales. Rather, they are stories that reveal truths about ourselves, truths that do not arise from factual knowledge.
All facts must be true, but not all truths are factual. Such is myth.
16
On the other hand, learning to put things we don't like, or that scare us, or disgust us in perspective works pretty well.
In 1972, Andrew Weil published his first book, The Natural Mind, in which he drew the fundamental difference between 'natural' highs, attained through meditation or skill development, as being positive addictions, in that what is difficult at first grows easier as we acquire expertise, but not only easier, but more and more rewarding as one gets better and better, and negative addictions, such as drug highs, where the first experience is most intense, but increased drug usage entails a lowering of pleasure, until the addict feels nothing but compulsion.
I've been meditating since 1962, about 500 times/year, and it's far more satisfying now than it was even last year, when I was a mere 77 years old. Similar experiences with acquiring skill in the lifetime sport of golf. Or getting more sophisticated in statistical analysis.
Tobacco, alcohol and other mind altering experiences...just the reverse, just as Weil stated.
Religion, as Marx stated, is the opiate of the people. All of the holy rites and holidays impress children who later attend church out of habit and as a way of 'fitting in'. It's main draw is the promise that death, the primal fear, is not the end of existence.
In the end, either you live an informed life, or you consider life as a dress rehearsal. The spiritual void? The soul? Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
18
@Nat Ehrlich
I can only speak of my experience, not that of "the people". I did not attend church as a child, so attending as an adult is about choosing to journey through my adulthood with a community, not a repeated habit. This community is not perfect but they are all seekers of kindness, compassion and a better world. We help each other heal, and together we also help our community. It is about providing love in THIS life. No fear, no conforming. Love and community.
2
What an excellent, heartfelt article. I really appreciate it. I feel you did a good job steering away from politics and religion that people react to and miss the point. The human dilemma. I totally agree there needs to be some help back into society when people come from major trauma. I work in a group home that is just for that purpose. And apparently there's only one in the whole state of Virginia. No doubt there's hundreds, if not thousands, if not more -walking around in a cloud of oblivion wishing they had someone they could talk to before they get shoved into the fast lane. Out west I hear there's groups of veterans that group together themselves and go on week or month long hiking trips together and have a chance to decompress, out in nature.
12
I am not surprised to see that many people here are attacking the mere hint of religion in this op-ed. I don't want to weigh in on that. But I would point out that there are many places in the world where rite-of-passage rituals are based on nation or community as much as religion. Take the Central-Asian, Muslim nation of Kyrgyzstan. The nation has an ancient founding epic known as Manas, about a Hercules-like hero of the same name who united the Kyrgyz tribes and fought off invaders. Across the country there are various natural features where he is said to have performed super-human acts or where the great moments of the epic occurred. Communities near them often use them for rite-of-passages; young men will climb mountains or reenact some great deed that occurred there. This goes for many other rituals at many stages of life, and a visit to his birthplace in Talas is like a visit to Mecca to the Kyrgyz. These rituals connect them to their founding myths and their founding fathers. In America we have history rather than myths (mostly). I'm not sure how easy this would be to replicate in our young, disparate nation, but Thanksgiving is a few days away. Suddenly I feel guilty that my wife, cousin, mother and I are just going to Denny's this year. Maybe I'm part of the problem.
6
Trauma is part of my DNA. I am the child of Holocaust survivors.
My parents helped. I was told many, many times, "In Poland is was good. There were troubles sometimes, we worked hard but for 1000 years we had a religious life there. We do not regret having stayed. We just wish we had done more with all the good people (many Jews and many non-Jews). Go back and help with the bad people " I did and found my soul.
I got my PhD in constitutional law specializing in human rights. I then went back and for 25 years started and ran the largest private human rights NGO. More in the spirit though also with the few who remembered pre 1935, they taught me to pray and do good from the soul and in my case,it was a Jewish soul but also found the souls of the good people who were not Jewish. It is always the spirituality that is our essence and organized faith is but a human endeavor to try to work together in community and it is often not perfect, but it is helpful if one realizes that it is not the rabbis, nor the priests, but more so the community working together with some guidance trying to do good for those who need more help than we do. Whatever our institution is it needs constant attention and spirituality is one of those vital parts where institutions are also needed. For example, without a moral, ethical basis Facebook can end up doing more bad than good.
14
Supportive communities all over the US know how to do all these things. If a person feels a spiritual void, it is very easy to find a neighborhood church, for instance. Welcoming people, hospitality, rites of passage, rites of forgiveness/ reconciliation... it's all there.
5
Yes, that’s exactly what happened when a family friends recently brought a mixed-race couple to her evangelical church in the Midwest.
The mixed race couple was immediately set upon by one of the very best that the “pro-life,” “moral majority” has to offer.
It was so horrible that one of the party, a hyper-fundamentalist woman (former overseas evangelical missionary along with her husband, sister) in her early 70’s actually left that church.
There’s plenty of “community” among Catholics too, if one is a child that wants to be sexually abused by priests or if one desires to form a protest group against church cover ups or even a denial congregation (the supporters of a priest accused of sexual abuse were recently described in a NYT article).
One can also find comfort in their desire to condemn others for the “sins” in their personal & private lives.
3
@Alyce
Maybe they need a hand to help them there. Shattered people who already feel vulnerable... well put it this way, a little kindness goes a long way.
1
@Ann
Not all churches all the same. Vital, loving communities are out there, but you have to do the work to find them.
David Brooks is my favorite NYTs columnist. And, this piece is confirms my opinion. Gail, Maureen, Paul, Charles, Frank, Ross, Roger, and Nicolas are all great, but with Brooks I sense a humble human growing as we all are trying to make sense of this journey. Best to all!
28
This is extremely misleading and potentially harmful: "trauma is a moral and spiritual... as much as psychological or chemical... Wherever there is trauma, there has been betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury. Medication can rebalance chemicals in the brain...."
Trauma is about the brain/nervous system. It is caused by overwhelming experiences when something happened too quickly to process or we were overpowered. Accidents, surgery, adoption and other pre- and peri-natal disruptions can create trauma, and those usually don't involve abuse or betrayal.
Medications and psychotherapy treat symptoms of trauma, they do little for true healing. There are emerging body-based therapies that perhaps for the first time in history, are allowing us to actually heal trauma by rewiring the nervous system (Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, craniosacral, AEDP, IFS among them). Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, John Chitty, Diane Poole Heller, Ray Castellino are among many who are breaking new ground in this field. While I agree with Tick's perspective on the soul, I wouldn't call him or any of these experts moralists.
We all should know a bit of trauma first aid, because PTSD is often the result of how we respond to an event (and is about human connection - the part of this article that's most on target):
https://francescaredden.com/emotional-first-aid-trauma-prevention-every-parent-needs-know/
http://www.ginaross.com/images/emotional_first_aid_brief_guide.pdf
6
If everyone were just nice to everyone else like I am with people, there would be no trauma in the world. There would be peace, and goodness, and everyone would be equally happy and prosperous. Problem solved.
5
@Tom
I'm new here, trying to fit in with the commenting crowd. This was my attempt to summarize those who believe that with the right political leaders, there would be no more trauma in the world. Did I hit the right note of self-righteous vacuity?
1
@Tom
Well, you almost got it. You fit in with David Brooks' vapid philosophy quite nicely. Nailed it, in fact, with the "self-righteous vacuity." I'll be using that phrase going forward.
1
This article seems to dabble with some very important, intertwined issues of society. It's clear that people who are oppressed or suffer in other ways should be supported within their society. The big question today is whether there should be a moral imperative imposed across society, namely, political correctness, to do this. I believe that skepticism toward politically-driven, social values and mores is healthy (even when such imperatives are noble) and reflect a wisdom more common in backwaters of society, e.g. fly-over country. Morality should not be conscripted by institutional authorities, like Hollywood, political parties, the media, or even organized religion or science. It should be a natural CONSEQUENCE of understanding, appreciation, respect or love, i.e. something good. For example, many believe Islam is a young, reactionary religion, loaded with strict rules of conduct and minefields of blasphemy. I believe that much (though not all) of such morality, which regards the Holy Koran or Muhammad, for instance, is a natural consequence of great love and respect for these entities. In contrast, each letter that was added to the LGBTQ community acronym in our society did NOT seem to follow a higher level of awareness of or empathy with each new addition. Having to declare that black lives matter suggests to me that this approach may have limited success.
1
There is a big loophole in the medical diagnosis of PTSD that needs to be filled.
Every edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), including the current one, narrowly defines the diagnosis for PTSD as requiring either experiencing (or witnessing, or being threatened by) a *single* horrific event of physical violence.
However, there are many types of trauma that are induced by repeated, prolonged exposure to horrific events of a psychological nature, and/or that might not rise to the level of life-threatening violence. Spousal abuse and child neglect can take these forms, as can forced prostitution, living in a war zone, etc.
Doctors call this type of trauma Complex-PTSD. It has some similar symptoms like PTSD; but there are important medical differences.
Unfortunately, the DSM has never included C-PTSD as a diagnosis, even though it's included in the International Classification of Diseases. (It has been considered for the last two editions, but not adopted.)
Because C-PTSD is not an "accepted" diagnosis in the US, victims who suffer C-PTSD often encounter three big problems:
1) Doctors who don't accept the illness as "real," and misdiagnose the victim with a different and incorrect illness.
2) Insurance companies who don't accept the diagnosis.
3) Legal impacts, such as not being covered by the ADA or Worker's Comp.
It's time that the medical community create a valid diagnosis for C-PTSD, and treat it as a distinct illness.
18
@Paul-A
Yes, and developmental trauma, probably the most ubiquitous cause of most of our mental and physical health problems is also not included in the DSM, despite a very large effort to have it included.
http://www.traumacenter.org/announcements/dtd_papers_oct_09.pdf
2
"Our society has tried to medicalize trauma. We call it PTSD and regard it as an individual illness that can be treated with medications."
"Trauma" and "PTSD" aren't the same thing; a person can experience trauma without developing PTSD, a clinical diagnosis with forty years of research to back up its validity. And although two medications are FDA-approved to reduce its symptoms, PTSD is widely viewed as being best treated with psychotherapy, not drugs.
"But it’s increasingly clear that trauma is a moral and spiritual issue as much as a psychological or chemical one. "
No, it isn't. In fact, no sentence with the word "spiritual" - or, for that matter, "soul," another favorite of Brooks's - can be said to be "clear." Both words imply the existence of some murkily defined supernatural realm for which there's not one shred of evidence.
5
@bergfan
Yes.
I was traumatised. Though I came to think of the experience as "soul-destroying" (and then "soul-wounding" after further reflection) I never meant more by these terms than that I no longer experienced being me as I did and could no longer act as I was before. In other words I was poetically describing a change in my subjective experience of living and being me. The likely objective reality, however, is that traumatisation unfortunately involves injury to the proper functioning of our lower brain - in particular our amygdalae.
That how we experience ourselves to be, is a consequence of our brain functioning, is something we should accept. It's much easier when you know you are not as you were or should be. At least I don't "have the luxury" of being deluded that my physical self is a thing utterly apart from who I am. People saying "my body", is as ridiculous as talking about one's self in the third person, as far as I am concerned.
1
@bergfan
Yet another know it all. It's depressing reading these comments.
You take some words of Brooks and twist them into a pretzel of your own making.
Brooks is talking about something that is way off the beaten track for most people in the West.
This in-depth analysis of the human spirit gave me pause to think about distress in my life as well as others. For the most part my time here on earth has been no different from most people's...sad and happy times, joyful and heartbreaking experiences, and even giving birth yet witnessing death of loved ones. And although I no longer follow closely organized, man-made religions per se, I do still believe in the endless quest of the soul, to transcend as best we can the struggles and flaws within us.
Mr. Brooks is correct when he says that as necessary as therapy and medication are in times of traumatic stress, we still need the uplifting by the spiritual to be healed fully. We find these means surrounding us whether it be our churches, our synagogues, our Mosques. We also find this healing within the Native American culture, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Great works of literature often show us that tragedy in life is inescapable while simultaneously expanding and making stronger the soul. But as David Brooks touches on, it is that community which is in so many instances The Healer....we being there for others and vice versa. It's that human connection of mutual compassion, empathy, and love that in more cases than not is our salvation.
7
I'm a Zen Buddhist, and being a religious person helps me get inside the doors of prisons, to do volunteer work.
But I prefer to meet with inmates outside of a chaplaincy or religious framing. They already have vibrant, hearts, minds and souls, which are traumatized by incarceration, often under cruel conditions. They sure don't need me or Brooks to give them souls, or to teach them about morality.
70% of inmates are functionally illiterate. Instead of a soul, or rituals, they need a chance: something not previously afforded them. These are men who would've been ecstatic to be accepted into the military. Or to join a craft guild and be apprenticed for a skilled job in the construction industry. But are too illiterate
When the men leave prison, they have no resume, only the requirement to disclose to future employers that they are felons. They will be on the street with $50, and face the immediate trauma of homelessness.
Ending the school-to-jail pipeline is more compelling to me, than talk of purification and other rituals.
I'd rather hear about ways we can fix society so that fewer people are traumatized by poverty and ignorance.
I'd like to see them be given an opportunity to have passages in life to celebrate.
282
I think you are both right community matters to fix broken people the head the heart and the soul have to be seen as one.
10
@Eric
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
5
what an unexpected and beautiful piece. thank you
13
Thanksgiving is close by and we mostly manage to have what we need by rubbing shoulders with relatives, friends and the larger community. Christmas doesn't work as well as it did in the 1950's I knew. All of us who read your opinion have been gifted. As an aside, I think life in 2018 is pretty good, all things considered. The echo, soundbox (or facebook and twitter) magnify the problems and, for the most part, rarely have much positive to absorb. Oh well, I trust that my grandchildren and their children will also live a life easier and more rewarding than my parents' generation and earlier. Be thankful--even if you have to stretch a bit.
4
Ne thankful yes this is so right when there is good reason to be thankful.
1
Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for your voice of uplifting moral clarity. We do indeed have a spiritual void in this world and we are trying desperately to fill it with consumer goods on the individual level and economic growth on the national level. We fail to realize that life's most important imperative is to find our calling and share it with others.
As a teacher, would that I can help young people find their talents and their passion and use those to craft a better world for themselves and others. Your column reminds of this opportunity.
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As a member of AA I recognized what David Brooks was suggesting. We celebrate years and, even, days of sobriety with coins given from sponser to sponsee. They mark the milestones of how far we've come from where we were.
Good luck to all the people who want to live in or re-live the past. Either way we can't change it. We can only move forward. One minute, one hour, one day at a time.
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I completely agree with Mr. Brooks about the need for a "purification ceremony", especially for a our troops returning from combat. The act of violence committed against our fellow humanity is so traumatic to one's soul, there need to be a way to repair that trauma.
The ceremony of cleansing should be created, using religious traditions (think baptism/purification rituals), of a civic ceremony should be created.
7
What does Brooks mean by the word "spiritual"? Is this another of his attempts to get us to turn to some non-existent deity for guidance and help? Formal rituals and ceremonies can have a great benefit but let's divorce them from this notion that some divine force is ready to soothe us and resolve the problems of our own making if we appeal to it. One ritual I would like Brooks and other Republicans to complete in a very public way is an admission that they were wrong to support the second Bush administration and its disastrous colonial expedition in Iraq -- a pointless war which resulted in the deaths of thousands and traumatized so many veterans and their families.
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This may make it even worse for the traumatized to learn in public that they fought the wrong war. The soul is a tricky thing I fear. Sure a lot compassion is needed for these victims and we should admit the mistakes from the past to shape a better future.
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@ClarkTCarlton
For me, the word spiritual's meaning has changed through my life. I no longer turn to an organized religion to guide me, but I feel the spiritual word close by.
It's the new baby, the love that I feel for a pod of orcas that I see, the healing that takes place between individuals, the different groups helping others work towards healing due to past injustices.
Despite the fact that our world is troubled I see so much goodness on a daily basis--that spirituality.
How can there be any spirituality that spans a culture when that culture is in the throes of late-stage capitalism? Even the so-called traditional venues are now stadium-sized mega-churches devoted to the "prosperity gospel". A miracle for these adherents would be actually sitting near the same stranger on two successive Sundays. Everyone's ready to grab what they can and they're all cheered on by some guy in a $5000 suit that they probably wear once. Rituals of purification only have efficacy if they are recognized universally, otherwise, they are just regarded as some airy New Age mumbo-jumbo, even ultimately by those who undergo them. The minute you walk out of the room, you're back in the same Hobbesian chaos.
Since organized religion seems to be inadequate to the task anymore, maybe we should devote more attention to the offerings of psychedelics, which don't presuppose any elaborate and questionable mythos to work.
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Mr. Brooks has hit on a wonderful idea: establishing a community centered on a system of shared morals and rituals. But I think someone thought of this already . .
it's called religion.
You can look it up on Wikipedia. It's an old thing that people used to have before they learned that God is dead, and that all cultures and values are equal.
Brooks seems to advocate for a "spiritual" mindset that will make people feel and act better. So that's nice. But it's easier said thsn fone to be a "spiritual" secular humanist.
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@Wiener Dog, would you posit that the culture and values of ISIS, or of white supremacists, are equal to liberal democracies that embrace universal human rights? Are you suggesting there is moral equivalence among all value systems?
There was a sort-of-joke in the 60's: what is the worst kind of acid (LSD) trip? The answer was: one where you don't change.
The worst, and scariest, aspect of a spiritual void is not knowing it exists in you.
The various Comments reflect the problem: complaints about "religion" not really mentioned in the article; criticisms about Mr. Brooks choice of words. Meaningless, trivial, irrelevant thoughts - sadly ignoring or not understanding the point. Our pathetic culture has absolutely no spirituality in its foundation or anywhere else. Our "melting pot" has melted away the rich and wonderful spirituality that most immigrants brought with them. The oppressive need to "fit in" has brought our culture to the lowest, simplest common denominators. Any kind of spirituality is too "different" to be acceptable to us as a group, too unscientific to be accepted as "fact".
In times of crisis - like now - we have nowhere to look for the wisdom of our ancestors or our elders.
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A lack of spirituality is the mirror of our society so it will be hard to help traumatized people if the void is within us. No drug might fix this it will only wipe out memories.
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A wounded soul, PTSD, call it what you like, but there is no one size fits all cure (ritual, as Brooks proposes, or therapy, or drugs--prescribed or otherwise). Every individual is unique, and while people may experience the same or similar trauma, they experience it in the uniqueness of their being.
As I get older, I find it ever more saddening that instead of helping each other, as Jesus taught, we hurt each other--sometimes in horrifically violent ways, sometimes in more subtle ways. Of course it probably was ever thus; we just know about more of it thanks to the information age. Human nature doesn't change, I believe, but society can change through organized movements. (See abolition, suffrage, civil rights, feminist, gay rights movements. But see also all the backlash. So it's ebb and flow.)
One thing I will say relative to the most often mentioned kind of trauma here: the wounds of war. We have to treat our veterans better. They shouldn't have to wait to get counseling when they are in crisis. They should be given the best health care. The military and government should do everything possible to help them heal physically and psychologically to the fullest extent possible.
Politicians pay lip service to our men and women serving in the armed forces and to veterans, but they don't want to pay to provide the care of those who have come home wounded in their body or their soul. Shame on them.
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@JediProf
I agree that we have to take care of our veterans, but we must also not send young men into unnecessary wars. The War in Iraq is an example.
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Or maybe we could do more to reduce PTSD by, say, not starting insane forever wars all over the globe. That might help.
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@MikeP And not taking children away from their parents by locking them up. Instead use diversion programs and support people with mental health issues and substance abuse issues so the children have a constant home base and supported parents.
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Brooks supported a GOP administration that authorized torture and attacked anothe country over WMD that did not exist. The politicians he supported sent young men into the middle of a civil war they did not anticipate and for which they were not prepared. Where is his morality? So much of the trauma he describes here was caused by the very people and policies he supported. That is why his words on this subject ring hollow.
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@Mrsfenwick
And he voted for Donald J. Trump Sr., the spiritual leader who fills our void.
Tua culpa, tua culpa, tua maxima culpa. Feel better now?
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@Mrsfenwick thank you for stating this. It needs to be said to him over and over again. He is the one who has a void to fill.
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@Mrsfenwick
Come on. Mr. Brooks has changed his opinion about both Trump and the Republican party, and made that clear in his columns. Save your powder for those who never admit their mistakes.
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I’ve never been anywhere near a war but when the war veteran described his trauma as his soul leaving his body I knew exactly what he meant. My childhood trauma has affected me for decades, and the process of uniting and recovering body/soul is the most important work of my life.
Trauma is the great untreated epidemic of our time. This article is profound.
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@wsr
Yes, it was similar for me when I read it, too; a knowing that reaches beyond anything literal, that was born for me too, of early and frequent abuse that set me up for decades more of it in life choices. The work of decades to grow into the human identity I now have, came through the opportunity to transform following the 12 Steps, validation of that fellowship, and friends and family who see love before condemnation. I feel I have had more than one life.
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@Judy 100%. My trauma led me to drugs & alcohol & sex, which all worked very well initially until it all burned down, which led me to the 12 steps (thank god), leading me to sanity & therapy. The fellowship gave me the foundation to literally 'recover' what was taken from me as a little boy. And yes a lot of it happened in churches, not in the sanctuary, but in the basements, where the real healing occurs.
Brooks posits a superior moral equivalency of the spiritual "opiate of the masses" for the other more contemporary chemical ingredients. Can he be certain that either provides the necessary relief from the pain and anxiety of modernity?
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Rituals and ceremonies are all well and good. But science has pretty much disproved the religious dogma offered by existing religious hierarchies, and materialism and greed have been enshrined by our political and economic system.
I suspect the "spiritual" problems to which Mr. Brooks refers are caused by people having to fit themselves into corporate and political systems that have lost the ability to genuinely care about people. David Graeber described this well: https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
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@mitchtrachtenberg
Science has also shown us that there is no spirit or spirituality, and morality is an merely an opinion. Problem solved!
This all may be true. And while I do not have any particular event in my life that has caused me trauma, every day my senses are under assault from the demon in the White House. We watch and listen to the news, we see things horribly affecting people all over this country and others, and instead of reassuring words from our dear leader, we get name calling and verbal assaults on people of all types, including those we normally would think of as our heroes.
The nation as a whole will soon be, if its not already, suffering from this continual verbal assault. It is truly a slowly accumulating trauma.
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@LesW
There is a formal name for such Trump-induced PTSD. It's called Trump Derangement Syndrome or "TDS." It's very common these days, and I understand some experimental treatments are in the works.
@LesW - while I realize that not every NYTimes comment needs to be about Donald Trump, I completely agree with you. Any person who has endured sexual abuse is walking around triggered by the fact that this vile abuser occupies the oval office. Every LBGT person is terrified that their newly won rights will be taken away or that they’ll be victims of a hate-crime. African-Americans, Jews and Muslims are waiting for the next shooting. Members of the Armed Forces are wondering if we are heading towards another war. Having Trump as our so-called leader is traumatizing for many. It’s traumatizing not knowing what’s coming next. Many don’t sleep well, are overeating, and are showing other signs of stress and trauma. Very good point.
6
Our trauma as a nation is dealing with our president. We have a mad man at the helm and he is only growing daily more insane. How do we as individuals deal with that? How do we deal with it as a nation? Many people have said to me they are afraid when the president goes down, and he will, he will unleash nuclear war and take millions if not billions with him. How do you deal with that on a personal and national level. Seems over whelming to me. I think I'll have another glass of wine and hold my kitty cat in my lap. However, I will vote.
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@Nightwood Good idea. I have five kitties. They sent me out for the past three years (and many, many prior years) to knock on doors and work the phones for smart, humane Democratic candidates, in addition to the voting booth.
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@Nightwood
No, you are not suffering from trauma. Get a grip. It's not all about you. He's a bad president. You have not suffered death, injury, rape, or loss of a loved one because of him. Soldiers suffer trauma. Rape victims suffer trauma. Children who lose a parent suffer trauma. You have not suffered trauma.
.
The worst thing Trump has done to this country is to give license to catastrophists who regale us with tales of how the world is about to end, and just how it affects them emotionally, at least twice a week. Some of them are NYT columnists, but they're particularly common amongst the commenters online. Could you please try to regain just an scintilla of perspective?
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@Tom, no this trauma is very real. He is not just a bad president. He is dealing in gaslights and is undermining our trust in reality, truth, science. His behavior is intolerable, and yet he holds an office representing the most powerful person on earth. As a consummate con man, he is lying and bearing false witness to advance his own agenda, and that agenda is as vicious as it based on greed and Machiavellianism. He is hurting people, Tom, very badly and yet he commands the support of some 45% of us. That fact alone can drive a person to wine and kitties.
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More rites of passage. Yes. That does make sense. You've pointed to something sorely missing in our society: a way to acknowledge and communicate our collective recognition of experience achieved, challenge surmounted, and forgiveness. In this culture of individualism we need ways to reach out and draw in, to include and embrace, not just divide.
A thoughtful, moving column. Thank you.
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@SRF Rites of passage, so important to instill communal values and to affirm an individual's worth and potential, especially for boys, who tend to grow up into those who cause the most trauma, men. Bar mitzvah, Eagle Scout, communion, sports, high school graduation - there are several key times that can't be overlooked or diminished. But the most important is from father to son. When he looks in your eyes, hands on your shoulders, and says, well done, you're ready.
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@wc
So true, but equally true, I think, for girls and boys. I understand what you mean when you say "especially for boys" and do recognize the great pressures they in particular face. The suffering of girls tends to be more internalized and the hurt and anger aimed inward rather than outward. It's less visible and less physically violent, but it's there, and girls are equally in need of recognition and affirmation.
We used to have a shared space for ritual, and soul restoration, and healing. I remember. We called it “church.” It wasn’t the emotio-tainment that passes for worship on the stage of the average American-Evangelical gathering . It created room for mystery, and reflection, and connection; rituals to encourage forgiveness and recommitment, in humility. It strengthened us for our real moral imperative: love God, love our neighbor— who happens to be everyone.
In some places, for some of us, it still does.
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@Kris K In the 50+ years I faithfully attended church I saw no room for mystery, ritual nor humility. I only saw an assertion of "truth", which served only to divide and stigmatize. Modern American Christianity in all it's guises has created the void of which Mr .Brooks speaks.
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@Kris K As long as Christians line up behind a leader who spits on everything that Christ stood for, there's no reason to think of the Church as anything but a political function for organized smugness and systemic racism.
Jesus told his disciples to pray not in public, but in the privacy of their own homes. He had a point. That was the first of many, many things that his supposed followers pointedly ignored. I find it impossible to take them even a little bit seriously anymore.
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@Kris K
I whole heartedly agree. But in 2018, there are fewer people who ever experienced church in the way you describe. Read an article called "Church is something we create together" on the OnBeing website. I read it to my congregation instead of a a sermon, and they were moved to tears. It's not exactly how I would have worded it....I give more credit to the Spirit than to us for "creating Church." But it will warm your heart nonetheless.
I grieve for my countrymen and women whose picture of "Church" is the horrifying image of America's politicized evangelicals-- in my opinion they profess a gospel that is NOT good news to the world. How tragic!
Pray for "eyes to see" and "ears to hear."
Thanks for writing.
2
A quick reading of the comments reveals that this piece isn’t for everyone. Well and good since many things in life aren’t for everyone. The Four Seasons by Vivaldi gives wings to my spirit, while for my wife it brings sleep. We don’t all have to be moved by the same thing. Mr. Brooks piece spoke deeply to me for those I know, unfortunately many, living with PTSD, and to me living with the losses caused by degenerative arthritis.
Mr. Brooks thank you for casting your words as bread upon the waters. For some it fed there souls, for others it had no meaning. All well and good.
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@Clinton McKinven-Copus The ducks ate the bread cast upon the waters of a David Brooks column.
@L D Nonsense. Stop being so cynical. Happy Thanksgiving!
An ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure. So let's stop making excuses to fight wars, avoid enormous moral injury and trauma, a get honest about the fact that there's no excuse for the brutalities we commit in the name of country. Evil is evil, and cannot be exorcised by therapy or feel-good messages or invocation of myth.
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@judy snyder Well said! And let's regulate those firearms INSIDE the country! Inside and outside the USA is combative. Why? Because this country's leadership and too many clueless voters (often superficially religious) have no soul. They are empty and unhappy.
3
I appreciate this article very much and find it interesting that some have responded as though it's something to be argued over. It's merely one man's viewpoint and concern over the starkness that permeates our culture and then making a few suggestions.
I love the ongoing process that is life and have had many different viewpoints and passions throughout my life. At this time I have particular concerns over men and boys in our society. It seems to me that from the youngest age, there's still a pressure for them to "tough it out" and stifle their emotions. Addiction and suicide are rampant among males and females at this point, but somehow women seem to find it easier to find places to turn to deal with their emotions than men do. There's such disrespect for men that are vulnerable. It really concerns me.
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Here's a modest proposal - let's worry, as a society, as much about minimizing the traumas as Mr. Brooks does about trying to relieve their effects.
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Mr. Brooks writes, "... community would take possession of the guilt the soldiers may have felt for the things they had to do on its behalf."
"say a prayer for the common foot soldier..." The endless war the working men and women of the Armed Forces are fighting is profit driven by the MIC. I honor the workers, I have zero respect for the bullet makers.
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Maladaptive neurophysiological conditions do not present a valid justification for bringing the divine back to life. Without meaning any disrespect to the faithful, not everyone needs religion to overcome trauma. Joseph Campbell was on the right track in his interpretation of the ‘Monomyth’, but human psychology does not require mythology to be understood.
It’s fine if people find solace in a personal faith, or spirituality, but there is nothing okay about using faith as a rationale to proselytize other people.
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In spirituality, people do not find solace, they find and come to know God.
@ubique Well there always the Unitarians.
Beckoned or not, the gods will appear. Beautiful article. Thank you.
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A lovely column. Thank you Mr. Brooks for feeding my soul and hoprfully others' as well.
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With family and community structures greatly eroded by consumerism, social media and other modern pitfalls it's especially hard for Americans to deal with trauma. I would hope that those who try to help others who are suffering could extend their empathy to other societies who have likely undergone far greater trauma (sometimes at the hands of Americans - I think we've sponsored 30 or 40 wars since WW2!) After living many years overseas, I was privileged to learn a bit of what our society does not know anymore about war - since we haven't had one HERE since the Civil War... it does make a difference.
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Brooks is much too negative about America's spiritual void. Although there are many who suffer from various problems, most people are able to cope, and get help from their friends, colleagues, and loved ones. Some of us don't require religious type experiences or traditions to feel a send of worth or community, and Brooks shouldn't be so judgmental. Some find it through thoughtful and interesting books or films or art, through political involvement, or even collegiality through sports.
13
@Larry Figdill
Imagine the worst moment of your life repeating itself in your mind over and over. This can go on for years. After awhile nobody wants to hear about it anymore. Friends abandon you. Family prays you don't mention the trauma again. Professional help is needed to Recover from PTSD.
Mr. Brooks, this is exquisite. I’m not religious, and I don’t want to be. But this speaks to my soul, that part of me that truly desires helping others and relieving their pain. Everybody hurts, and everybody can help heal hurt. Take a chance, and take a small step. Help your neighbor, lend a hand, volunteer your time, donate some money. Like it or not, we’re all in this together.
This thing called Life.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian
The common 'religion' of our society is 'spiritual but not religious'. Established religion has no mechanism and no language to address the spiritual trauma that grips so much of so many people's lives.
The modern world needs a spiritual revival, and is hungry for it. Organized religion has to follow the lead of the people and tip their own scales to being less about outward religiosity to being more deeply spiritual.
Pope Francis can be the world leader in this revival, if the Church- most especially the Bishops in the US- will follow. His message: a more merciful Church is the future Church.
5
@Phyliss Dalmatian
We all do those things, Phyliss, that helping of others and relieving of their pain. You make it sound like we're all in our houses being selfish. That is certainly not the case with all the people I personally know.
But, I cannot help a vet with PTSD because I don't have the resources or the knowledge. Even parents of vets with PTSD cannot help them. Sitting in a church hearing about a God that allows war will not help them.
The government needs to step up and provide programs for these people that include professional counseling and being given something worthwhile to do. In ancient times, the boys could go back to hunting and trapping and collecting stones to build huts to help them rebuild their lives. We need programs like that here, but let's be realistic--we are a wage earning society, not a subsistence hunting trapping society.
The other issue I have with Brooks is his nonchalance with ex-cons, as if a big group hug is all they really need to assimilate. After basically being treated like animals while incarcerated? No, I'm sorry, that won't work.
These are people who have been damaged in a way that goes beyond what food pantries or hugs or sermons in church can do for them. I cannot hold a sixteen day purification ceremony for them.
At the end, Brooks throws in- "nations and people have to grow a soul." My soul is fine; my nation's is not. And, as we all know, the tone of any organization is set from the top.
3
"Our society has tried to medicalize trauma. We call it PTSD and regard it as an individual illness that can be treated with medications. But it’s increasingly clear that trauma is a moral and spiritual issue as much as a psychological or chemical one."
No, that isn't clear, increasingly or otherwise. In fact, I think the author just made this up. I also think that if you asked him to define exactly how "psychological" is different from "chemical" is different from "moral" is different from "spiritual," he would not be able to provide any sort of answer.
What is the point? Who does this help? What does this add? Why was this written?
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THE POINT is that we humans are more than chemicals. THIS HELPS many of us who deal with trauma who don't look to drugs for solution. THIS ADDS important insight into how and why so many in the modern era are struggling to find peace with ourselves and neighbors. IT WAS WRITTEN to expand our understanding of where, and how, we might find meaningful answers to life's questions.
Thank you, David Brooks!
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@karp
Mr Brooks is referring to the fact that reducing emotional suffering to categorical man-made medical diagnosis, and treat it as such, is not sufficient to heal.
Reading "The Spirituality of Imperfections" and "An American Madness" may answer some of your questions
13
@karp Be still and know I am God. Be still and reflect upon this universe and God or not, here we are, making love, making war, building pyramids, building the great cathedrals of Europe, foot steps on the moon and now a jeep running around on Mars by creatures made of blood and skin and a jelly or custard like substance for a brain. It is all comedy, mystery, love, hate, loss, grief. It is life, not mere bacteria at the bottom of a murky swamp. Whether one believes in God or is an atheist, it is a miracle or if one prefers, a happening/ From a mix of chemicals wrapped in skin, Peace.
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