David Brooks on the Art of Seeing and Hearing Others

John Donvan

This is Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan. Hi everybody. If you are a regular follower of our program, you know that we are big champions of argument. That might sound odd given the polarization going on in the world today, but we really believe that engaging with people you disagree with helps not only to explore interesting and important questions, but it also reminds us that it is okay to disagree, that we can actually learn from one another, provided that our arguments are made in good faith, and that the people having the argument, in fact, truly listen to each other. Not to agree necessarily, that’s not the point, but to really understand what the other person is saying and why, to really hear each other, to see each other.

John Donvan

So now along comes a writer who has debated with us on multiple occasions, and he’s just published a book titled How to Know a Person, the Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. And we saw that and we said, that’s our theme in the subtitle, so we have to have him on. I’m betting that you have heard of this writer David Brooks, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, a commentator on the PBS NewsHour. And his book, which I have read, sets out to explore how we do this. How do we see each other better, hear each other better. So in this episode, we are talking to David Brooks to learn what he has learned. David, thank you so much for joining us once again on Open to Debate.

David Brooks

Yeah. It’s good to be back with you, John. Thanks for having me.

John Donvan

So deep into the book, I came across a two sentence paragraph that when I saw it, the bell rang. I said, that’s what this book is about. I’ll read it to you. It said, “The thing we need most is relationships. The thing we seem to suck at most is relationships.” Is that essentially the problem that you are getting at in exploring the things you explored to write this book and then in writing the book itself?

David Brooks

Yeah, I mean, we’re in the middle of some sort of weird social crisis, and we all sort of know the basic facts, the rising rise of suicide, the rising rise of depression, mental health problems. The number of Americans who say that no one knows them well is now up to 54%. And there’s just one sad social statistic after another suggesting that we’re really living in a crisis of connection. And I think there are a lot of causes for this. I think social media has a role, I think in- income inequality has a role. Uh, sociology, the people are not as active in civic life. But my main thing I focus on is skills, is just social and moral skills. How to know how to treat each other with consideration in the complex circumstances of life. Like how to listen well, how to argue well, how to ask for an offer forgiveness, how to host a dinner party, uh, and include everybody.

David Brooks

Uh, and so these are skills, just like learning carpentry is a skill, uh, just like learning how to sail is a skill. And so I’m, this book is an attempt to walk people through the skills of here’s how do you do this? Here’s how do you meet somebody, here’s how to ask good questions. Here’s how to disagree well. Here’s how to sit with someone who’s got depression. And I’m hopeful that it’s a small valley, uh, in restoring a bit of our society and restoring our democracy.

John Donvan

There’s a, there’s a tiny note of nostalgia in what you’re talking about in the sense that you’re saying we no longer know how to. Was there really a golden time in which we were as a culture, not just better at these things, but really good at these things?

David Brooks

Yeah. I never like go, to go back to a golden time ’cause as soon as you started investigating that golden time, um, you know, it sort of wears out. And so I, I, there’s no golden age I would like to go back to, but somehow this social di- disconnection is relatively new. It’s increasing, and whatever it is, we’re not doing it well right now. And so, one of the statistics that really worries me the most is social trust. Uh, two generations, if you go, if you ask people, do you, uh, trust your neighbors? 60% of Americans said, “Yeah, I trust my neighbors.” Uh, now it’s down to 30% and 19% for millennials and Gen Z. So the younger you go, the more distrustful people are.

David Brooks

And so I, I’ve always asked my college students, why, why is there so much distrust in your generation? And one woman said to me, “I’ve had four boyfriends and they all ghosted me at the end.” And so some, nobody had taught those young men to, uh, to end a, a relationship by having a conversation. Uh, they just vanished. And so of course, she’s gonna be distrustful. Of course she’s gonna think boyfriend number five is gonna ghost her. Uh, and so, uh, to me, the way to remedy this is to like, “Okay, here’s how you do this. Here’s how you build a friendship.” And that’s why I focus on skills.

John Donvan

You, the, the book is not in any way, uh, in any way a religious book, but you do speak about the idea of morality and you speak about the idea of each of us has a soul and you rely a good deal on neuroscience also in making some of the cases about the way our brains work, et cetera. Are, are you in a sense locating the soul in neuroscience as opposed to in scriptural text?

David Brooks

Um, well, I, neuroscience, uh, doesn’t give you new philosophies, but it does confirm some of the things we thought we already knew. I tell this story in the book. I was down in Waco, Texas, and I was having breakfast at a diner with a lady, a lady named LaRue Dorsey. And she was 93 years old, the stern disciplinarian. Uh, she said, “I loved my students enough to discipline them.” She had been a teacher much of her career. Uh, into the diner walks, a mutual friend of ours named Jimmy Dorell. Uh, and Jimmy’s a pastor. He pastors to the homeless in Waco. He knows us both. So he comes over to our table and he grabs Mrs. Dorsey by the shoulders and shakes her way harder than you should shake a 93-year-old. And he says to her, “Mrs. Dorsey, you’re the best. I love you. I love you.”

David Brooks

And that stern disciplinarian that I had been talking to instantly turns into an eye shining 9-year-old girl. And so Jimmy brought out a different version of her just with his gaze, just with the power of attention. And that’s why I think attention is a moral act. When you cast attention on somebody, you’re lighting them up, you’re making them blossom, you’re looking at someone with a, a, a soul, uh, that the, that person has some piece of them that has no size, weight, color or shape, but it gives them infinite value and dignity. And we’re not all equal in the level of our brain power or muscle power, but we’re all equal on the level of soul.

John Donvan

I, I had the opportunity early in my career to follow Pope John Paul II when he made a tour of Africa shortly after his recovery from an assassination attempt. And I remember having a moment of recognition that what he was about was doing what you’re talking about, was recognizing the dignity and the value and the worth of every single individual. And I, I, I, that thought came back to me as I was reading this part of your book. But I also wondering, are you, is there a distinction between, in your point of view, between an individual and a soul? Uh, ’cause it seems as though in the answer you just gave the word individual could substitute for the word soul in every case. But I think you mean more than that.

David Brooks

Yeah. Let me, uh, give you an own, a personal story, I guess. And this was about 10 years ago. And, uh, if you, uh, for those who travel on the East Coast, you know, the second-ugliest spot, uh, in America is Penn Station in New York City. And the only spot uglier than that, uh, is the subway station next to Penn Station

laughs). So about 10 years ago, I’m in that subway stop, 30th, third Street and eighth Avenue. And I look around the car and I have this sensation wash over me that every person here has a soul. That every person here, uh, in this subway car has a soul that might be soaring and it might be sick, it might be yearning, but we’re not just a bunch of material atoms that there’s some essence to us.

David Brooks

Uh, neuroscientists have made no progress as far as I’m concerned on asking the following question. We have a three pounds of meat an organ in here, and somehow out of that consciousness emerges. And so nobody really understands how neurons produce consciousness. And believe me, thousands of books I have been reading written about it, and none are quite successful. That consciousness is to me, uh, an emergent property that’s transcendental. And so I do think if you don’t, if you think that everybody is a soul, you’ll wind up treating them well. The person behind the, the counter at, uh, McDonald’s or a stranger that you might meet or somebody you’re furiously arguing with, if you say, “I may be hostile to this person, I may be tempted to be indifferent to this person, but they have a soul. And so I should treat them as if they have a soul with that kind of dignity and respect.”

David Brooks

And there’s a great book, uh, that I recommend to anybody interested in sort of conversations, and it’s called Cr- Crucial Conversations. And in it, the authors argue that we’re, in any conversation, respect is like air. When it’s present, nobody notices, but when it’s absent, it’s all anybody can think about. So the lesson is, if we wanna have good interactions with each other, if we want to be moral people who treat each other well, we have to see each other as invaluable souls.

John Donvan

And let’s get to morality for a moment then. Um, let’s define it as you define it in the book and talk about what’s missing and what you think needs, like, specifically literally what needs to happen.

David Brooks

Yeah. So when we think of moral philosophy, uh, if you go back in intellectual history, you wind, you, you first quickly encounter a bunch of guys, men who built these vast moral systems based on abstract principles. And you think here of Immanuel Kant. Uh, but I think what they missed were the systems of care all around them. And those systems of care, whether it’s in the family or in the neighborhood or in the community, were mostly in those days being run by women. And so it’s no accident to me that in, over the course of the 20th century, a whole series of female philosophers focus on the minute, that morality is not something you build an impregnable intellectual system around. Moral, morality is the concrete act of treating people with consideration and respect in the small, uh, instances of life.

David Brooks

And so Simone Weil emphasized that the, the, the, the essential moral act is attention, is attending to you with a heart, uh, attending to you, uh, with respect. And then Iris Murdoch, who learned a lot from Simone Weil, another female philosopher and novelist in her case, uh, she says, attention is not the big things, not the big challenges, epic moments of life. It’s the everyday-ness of life. And she says, we should try to see each other with what she calls a just and loving attention.

John Donvan

What, what you’re arguing in the book is that there’s a, seeing them and knowing them, uh, is kind of both a challenge, but also very rewarding in the end, that we get some, a great deal back.

David Brooks

Yeah. And it, it, well, I would go around for the last four years asking people, tell me about a time you felt seen. And with glowing eyes, they would told me about a time when somebody just got them. And so it’s wonderful to be seen. It’s also wonderful to be the one seeing, uh, and about three years ago, I was sitting at this very table and my wife walks in and she stands in the, in the doorway, uh, just pausing there and the light streams in. And she doesn’t notice that I’m there, but I have a sensation go through me, which was, um, “Wow. I really know her. I know her through and through.” And it was as if I was seeing the whole of her, like the whole flow and being of her rhythms, her harmonies. I was seeing her, her incandescence.

David Brooks

And it was just this wonderful sense you have with people you really know well, a spouse, a family, a close friend. And the only word in the English language I could use to describe how I was looking at her, I wasn’t observing her, I wasn’t inspecting her, I was beholding her. That’s the only word I could think of. I was beholding her.

John Donvan

Oh, that’s a great word.

David Brooks

And to, just to appreciate someone in that way is just a, it’s just a, it’s a joyful feeling.

John Donvan

Yeah. We could talk for an hour about the word behold, but we don’t have that much time to do that, and we have to take a break right now. So we’re gonna be right back. I’m speaking with David Brooks about knowing a person, his new book, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about how it relates to what we do at Open to Debate when we come back. I’m John Donvan, this is Open to Debate.

John Donvan

Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan and we are speaking with David Brooks, a former Open to Debate debater. I wanna chat with a little bit with him later on about his experience doing that with us. But first I wanna, I, I wanna take a note from your book itself, David. Um, well into it, you start talking about the problem you have with the Sunday talk shows, so I’m gonna read from it. “The host asks gotcha questions scripted in advance to challenge this or that position. The guests spit out a bunch of canned talking point answers. The whole thing is set up as a gladiatorial verbal combat. Just once, I would love to have a host put aside the questions and say, ‘Just tell me who you are. It would be so much more interesting, and it would lead to a healthier political atmosphere.'” So David Brooks, just tell me who you are.

David Brooks

(laughs). Uh, well, the story I tell in the book is, is that if listeners, uh, remember the movie Fiddler on the Roof, uh, they, you know, how warm and huggy Jewish families can be. Uh, and, uh, I come from the other kind of Jewish family. The, uh, the culture in our, uh, world was think Yiddish, act British. And so we were super intellectual and super stiff upper lip. Uh, and then I, I read Patting The Bear when I was eight, this book, and I decided to become a writer. So that’s sort of an, a lonely profession.

David Brooks

And then when I was 18, the admissions officers at Columbia Wesleyan Brown decided I should go to the University of Chicago, which is also very cerebral. Uh, my favorite saying about Chicago, it’s a Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students, St. Thomas Aquinas. So all that is to say is I grew up in a pretty intellectual, heady atmosphere. At our Thanksgiving tables, we talked about the history of Victorian monuments and the evolution of lactose intolerance. Those were our, our kind of conversation topics. And it was a loving home. We just didn’t really express it.

David Brooks

And then about middle age, and I don’t think it was a middle life crisis, but my kids were leaving for college and stuff like that, and my marriage had ended, uh, and I realized I had been living estranged from, uh, my own heart, I guess. Uh, and so I went on a journey, uh, and it was aided unfortunately, by a period of suffering and periods of loss. Uh, and, uh, there’s a great quote from Paul Tillich, “Um, those moments of suffering, those moments when we’re in the valley suffering grief or loss or shame, uh, they interrupt our lives and remind us we’re not the people we thought we were, they carved through the floor of the basement of our soul and reveal a cavity below, and they carve through that and reveal a cavity below.”

David Brooks

And so you see deeper into yourself than you’d ever seen before. And that happened to me in my late forties and early fifties. And that was a period in the valley, frankly. And so my last 10 or 15 years have been a journey to be a more fully, uh, present human being, and I can prove it to you with two ways that I’ve made some progress on this little journey. Um, the first, um, is I’ve been interviewed by Oprah twice, and after the second interview, which was in 2019, she pulls me aside and says, “You know, David, you were so, I’ve never seen somebody change so much in middle age. You were so emotionally blocked before.”

David Brooks

And then in a couple years ago, I was at a conference and, uh, they gave everybody in this crowd a little song sheet with lyrics of a love song on it. And they said, “Go pick a stranger and sing the lyrics into those stranger’s eyes

laughs).” And so my previous self, I would’ve spontaneously combusted

laughs), but I found a stranger and I, I sang a love song into his eyes. So, um, my story is essentially a redemption story of, of rising, having a great career, great family, falling, um, losing a, a sense of that I was really connected with the world and a journey to becoming more fully human.

John Donvan

Wow. You really did answer your own question, tell me who you are.

David Brooks

(laughs).

John Donvan

Um, uh, take me back to the Oprah moment though. So she had this before and after kind of impression of you before this journey and afterwards, what do you think was happening in the second time with her that, that she saw some sort of change? What happened then in that conversation?

David Brooks

I think I, I’ve become, uh, more vulnerable in public as I hope I’ve been a little here. Uh, I think I’ve become just more open, emotionally open. And so I, I tell this story in the book about my old self, and the story involves a baseball game. I love baseball. I’d never been to, uh, I, I’ve been to thousands of games, but I’ve never caught a foul ball. And so I’m sitting there in Baltimore with my youngest son, and the batter loses control of the bat, and it flies in the air and it lands on my lap.

David Brooks

Now, getting a bat is a thousand times better than getting a ball. And so any normal human being is like waving the bat in the air, high-fiving everybody around them, hugging people, getting on the jumbotron. I just put the bat at my feet and sat there straight ahead, like, expressive. And I, I-

John Donvan

What, lemme tell you, what, what did you feel in that moment? What were, were you thrilled and pleased or?

David Brooks

I felt calm

laughs). Like I, I, I have this problem where I, at the crucial moments of life, which should be joyous, I just would get calm and not feel anything. So like I had the emotional reaction of a turtle, I just get more reserved. And so I didn’t enjoy it. And so when you’re like that, I think you just don’t enjoy life as much. And if you cut yourself off, I’m one of my heroes is a guy named Frederick [inaudible

:01], who’s a novelist who really went through the first half his life like me, a little coded over. Uh, and he said, if you cut yourself off from the pains of life and the emotions of life, you’ve cut yourself off from the holy sources of life itself.

John Donvan

Can I ask one more question about the Oprah, uh, event? Do you, do you recall what it was that you shared with her that she found a kind of opening with you?

David Brooks

She was interviewing me about a book called The Second Mountain, which is my last book. And it was, I went into some detail about that dark moment, the, the valley in my life in the 2013, 2014, 2015. And I talked about, you know, the, what pain has to teach us. Uh, I read a book in those days by a guy named Henri Nouwen, and he says, when you’re in a moment of pain, you have to stay in the pain to see what it has to teach you. And my first reaction was that was, was like, “Screw that. I wanna get outta the pain.” But you, when you’re living a life that’s not your best life, uh, when you’re living with, um, in a, in the wrong way, you do have to see what the pain has to teach you.

David Brooks

And so in those dark moments, uh, in those days, I just tried to feel every, all, everything in my life became work. And so I was living in a little dingy apartment and, uh, I wasn’t having anybody over. I had, um, work friends, but I didn’t have as many weekend friends, the kinds you just hang out with. And so I, I had to go on a journey to, to try to be- become a more full human being. And it’s extremely a work in progress,

laughs). But I do think my whole aspect has changed. And so I think when I was with Oprah the second time, I think she saw a person who was willing to be vulnerable and willing to trust.

John Donvan

You know, I, I, I wanna share at this point that, um, you and I know each other a little bit, um, that, uh, your youngest son and my younger daughter were classmates in school together. And I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna confess that at that time I had a couple of different interactions with you, and I actually thought you didn’t like me, or that you thought that I was like, incredibly boring.

David Brooks

(laughs).

John Donvan

And now, now as a result of this conversation, I’m beginning to think there might’ve been another explanation.

David Brooks

(laughs). That’s so interesting you say that. Uh, John, it wasn’t you, it was me,

laughs). I, I never in my, I remember our times together and I had nothing but warm and, uh, affection for you and, and admiration. So.

John Donvan

Oh, thank God, I feel so much better

laughs).

David Brooks

Uh, no, but I think that, that’s so interesting you say that. I think I was just reserved. I was just not showing people how I genuinely felt about them. And maybe my, even my facial aspect, I talked earlier about the power of attention. I was a, like a, you can look at the world with reserved eyes or with warm eyes, or with judging eyes or fearful eyes. And the way you look on the world determines what you find. If, if you see the world through fearful eyes, you’re gonna see threat everywhere.

John Donvan

Mm-hmm.

David Brooks

If you see with reserved eyes, you’ll bring out the coldness of people. And hopefully now I’m beaming, a- affectionate, affectionate eyes upon you John.

John Donvan

I’m, I’m feeling you can sing a love song to me at this point.

David Brooks

Okay.

John Donvan

Um, you do not in the book, you never once cite, uh, experiencing imposter syndrome about any of this.

David Brooks

Yeah.

John Donvan

But then, then as I hear you talk about what your process is, you actually go out and research stuff. It’s not all just coming from you, but you go, you’ve done a lot of reading. You’ve, uh, um, you, you, you went through the neuroscience, you read philosophy. Um, you are not just making this stuff up from inside, but you’re pulling it in from outside and making you more of a conduit to the wisdom of the world than a, a, a professor of it. But, um, you know, maybe that’s the reason there’s no imposter syndrome note there. But do you ever experience that sort of feeling?

David Brooks

I remember two experiences of intense imposter syndrome in my life. And weirdly, they both involved moving into new offices. And so when I was 30, I was appointed the op-ed editor at the Wall Street Journal, and they gave me an office, um, that had this beautiful lo- overview of, of the Hudson River. I remember walking into this office and I’m thinking, “I’m 30, what am I doing here?” And so in tense imposter syndrome. And then in 2003, I was hired by the Times. And so on a Saturday I get a little key pass to get inside the Times DC Bureau, and I’m moving into my office and I had the same sensation, “What am I doing here?”

David Brooks

But I think what you say is, has been a revelation to me over the last five years that I, I used to think of myself as a writer or somebody who crafted ideas and stuff like that. Now I think I’m more of a teacher, and that is to say I take the wisdom of others and I try to pass it on. There’s a saying, uh, we’re beggars who tell other beggars where we found bread.

John Donvan

Mm-hmm. So how do, uh, how do other folks who would see themselves as introverted and therefore reserved in the way that you’re talking about and non-engaging, how do they make this transition to connection that you’re talking about?

David Brooks

Yeah. Well, the first thing is, is just to be curious about people. But then the second thing is questions, just becoming really good at asking questions. And the quality of our conversations will determine that, uh, will be determined by the quality of our questions. And to me, one of the things we can be, and one of the great joys of what you and I do for a living is we’re trained to ask questions. Uh, and one of the things I’ve learned recently is I want all, as many questions as possible to be story eliciting questions.

John Donvan

I noted some of the questions that you suggest would work this way, and they’re, I’m gonna read some of them ’cause they’re quite interesting. You suggest, a good question might be, what would you do if you weren’t afraid? Another one is, if you died tonight, what would you regret not doing?

laughs), that’s a pretty heavy question.

David Brooks

(laughs).

John Donvan

Um, if we meet a year from now, what will we be celebrating? If the next five years is a chapter in your life, what is the chapter about? And this one I really like, can you be yourself where you are and still fit in? So, uh, as you say, you’re looking for narrative questions, which I take to mean you’re looking for people to tell stories about themselves.

David Brooks

Yeah. And, and you know, you gotta, you don’t want to ask a stranger for these questions, you have to know-

John Donvan

Yeah,

laughs).

David Brooks

… you have to build some trust before you ask questions like that. One thing I’ve learned is how many times, if you ask respectfully, how many times does somebody say none of your business? And in my career, the answer is pretty much zero. That if you ask people respectfully, they will talk. And in the course of the reporting, the book I, I interviewed a guy named Dan McAdams a few times, who studies how people tell their life story. So he pulls people into the research lab, and the interviews take like four hours and half the people cry in the middle of ’em. And then at the end, he gives them a little check to compensate them for their time. And some percentage of the people just push back the check and say, “I’m not taking money for this. Uh, this has been one of the best afternoons I’ve had in years. No one has ever asked me my story.”

David Brooks

And I find that true again and again. Again, no one has ever asked people their story. And so if you’re curious, and I, I’m pretty aggressive about asking people about their childhood, people love talking about their childhood. Uh, you’re, you’re honoring them. Uh, and, and you learn that people are weirder and more fascinating than, than you expect from just some superficial experience

laughs).

John Donvan

We, you know, we were doing some research, um, and came across, um, a statement by the Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, that at any given moment, one out of every two Americans is experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. And in your book, you came across something that I had to read twice because I thought it can’t be correct. Um, it’s, I’m gonna quote it. “Lonely people are seven times more likely than non-lonely people to say they are active in politics.” And I was thinking that felt very counterintuitive, that if you’re active in, you’re an extrovert and, uh, you’re an activist, that you would not be lonely. So what’s going on with that statement about n- not, about lonely people going into, being active in politics?

David Brooks

Yeah. Politics has become, for a lot of people a social therapy. So they’re lonely, they’re isolated, uh, and they go to politics because it seems like community. I’m on team red, or I’m d- or I’m on team blue. And politics seems to give you sort of a, a moral action, a way to contribute to the world and be, make yourself presence in the world by being indignant at the right people. But all those illusions, those are all illusions because politics doesn’t really give you community. You’re not like sitting with a widow or hanging out with friends, you’re just hating the same people together. And politics doesn’t really give you a moral landscape. And in real life morality, it’s not like us innocent people over here and those guilty people over there. Morality is something as [inaudible

:46] said that good and evil run down the heart of every individual human.

David Brooks

And politics doesn’t really give you social action. You’re not feeding the hungry, you’re not helping the homeless, you’re just getting indignant at other people. And so it, it’s a, an unsuccessful way to cure loneliness. And it takes you, it makes you feel maybe a little less lonely, but it just enters you in the culture war, into a war of all, against all. And so, to me, one of the tragedies of American life right now is that everything is politicized. Like late night comedy is politicized. Sports become politicized. The universities have become politicized. Uh, and so politics is sort of overrunning our society. And, and in my view, our society is over politicized and, and under moralized. We spend too much time on political viciousness and not enough time on like, how do we be considerate to each other? Uh, how do we, you know, care for each other in ways that we would like to be cared for? And that’s really complicated knowing how to care for each other. But we don’t even think about it particularly ’cause we’re so busy feeling righteous because we’re on the right political side.

John Donvan

W- which makes me ask, you know, in, in, in the sort of exercises you set out and the encouragement you give to know a person, what if it’s one-sided? What if the other person that you’re trying to know is not committed to the same thing?

David Brooks

I wish I could tell you that I knew how to break through to people who don’t want to hear. But you know, when, when that happens, I’ve got this distinction in the book between illuminators and diminishers. And diminishers are people who don’t, are not curious about you, they don’t ask you questions, they stereotype, they ignore, they make you feel small. And illuminators are really curious about you. They make you feel respected, seen, lit up. And so what do you do if you run into a diminisher?

David Brooks

I think the only thing you can do is first, lead with little curiosity. Ask them a question, see if they reciprocate, any bit of curiosity. Second, lead with little vulnerability, just a little something here. Tell ’em about something you’re a little uncertain about and see if they respond with a little bit of vulnerability. And if they do, then you open a little door. But if they haven’t, in my view, there’s not much you can do. A relationship has to be reciprocal. And if they’re not willing to, to be reciprocal and to follow you down as you, as you get deeper and deeper into who you are, then it’s, it just doesn’t work. And so I found there are just some people, if they don’t want to be reached, you’re probably not gonna be able to reach ’em. And you just have to, have to accept that.

John Donvan

An experience that resonates with me that relating to what you just said is, is actually maybe because of the reporter habit, meeting somebody sitting next to ’em a dinner and actually moving the conversation along by asking them a lot of questions about themselves. But after 20 minutes, I’ll realize that they haven’t asked me a single question back. And honestly, I’m okay with it, but it sort of miffs me that

laughs)-

David Brooks

Yeah. Yeah, no [inaudible

:41].

John Donvan

… that I put in the effort. You’re, you, you’ve come up with these categories of, um, illuminators and diminishers. I noticed in the introduction you said, “I am bored with, I’m bored with talking about people as groups.” But I wonder, are you guilty with d- diminishers and illuminators of creating groups again?

David Brooks

Yeah, that’s fair,

laughs). That is fair. You know, tho- those ideals, diminisher an illuminator, they’re an ideal. And I think it’s, it’s worth it to hold up an ideal, uh, for who we wanna be. We don’t want to be… There, there are certain diminisher habits. So for example, one of them is stacking. And stacking is when I learn one fact about you, and therefore I make a whole series of assumptions about you. That you go to Bennington College, so I assume you’re some super woke hipster type. Or that, uh, you like Donald Trump and therefore you must be this, this, this, and this.

David Brooks

And nobody really fits into the stereotypes and an illuminator, uh, doesn’t do that. And so really the, the illuminator ideal is, is just a way of being in the world. Uh, and so for example, one of the, there was a novelist named Ian Foster who wrote of like over a hundred years ago in England. And his, uh, his biographer wrote of him, uh, he projected an inverse charisma. He listened to you with such intensity, you had to be your sharpest best, most honest self. So who wouldn’t wanna be able to have that kind of listening ability?

John Donvan

Alright, we’re gonna take a break and we’ll be right back. We’re speaking with David Brooks, and we’re gonna, when we return, I hope, uh, get some insights on his experience as a debater with Open to Debate. We’ll be right back. I’m John Donvan.

John Donvan

Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan, and we are speaking with David Brooks about his book Know a Person, in which he really explores the idea that knowing another person requires, as he says in his subtitle, seeing, but in the text of the book, he says, more important than seeing is actually listening. And I bring that up because at Open to debate one of our values in putting on a debate, one of the things we hope to have happen, and one of our, one of the things we look for in particular panelists that we bring onto the, onto the stage is will they actually listen to the other side and not just throw their arguments, throw their arguments, throw their arguments, and never engage?

John Donvan

And that, that again, is why we really were so excited about talking with you, that you, you are putting so much emphasis on the need to listen in order to know another person. But talk to us about your debate experience with us in the past. Did you, did you bring full listening? And, uh, and also did you learn something from listening?

David Brooks

First, uh, if you wanna persuade someone, very often listening is more powerful than talking. And so nobody will be changed until they feel understood. And so if you listen to them and they feel they understand them, then they’re open to change. But if you’re just broadcasting at them, you’re not gonna persuade anybody. I will say, when I, um, am in, or was involved in your debates, I was really startled by how much my competitive juices would get going. Uh, and so I, I had to scale that back, I think. But the thing I learned-

John Donvan

Wait, wait, wait. What, what do you mean by, what do you mean? What did you have to scale back in terms of competitiveness-

David Brooks

Aggression.

John Donvan

… and why? Oh.

David Brooks

(laughs). B- because when we get in an argument, one of the things we have to watch out for is the idea that our motivations deteriorate. And in the beginning, we’re just trying to get our, we, we believe in a certain policy and we’re trying to argue for it. But if you’re mo- motivations deteriorate, then what I’m trying to do, I just wanna win. I just wanna show I’m smarter, I wanna show ’em more powerful. And one rule in relationships, if you’re arguing with your spouse or any, a friend or anybody, and you begin to see your motivations deteriorating, you should shut up. Because anything you say after that is gonna, uh, hurt the relationship. So I, I got a little, like, “I just wanna pound these people.”

John Donvan

Okay.

David Brooks

I remember the feeling.

John Donvan

Okay. That’s, so, that’s really… I’m glad I asked that question. Very interesting. So you did dial it back. So I didn’t see that internal struggle going on. We’ve, um, we’ve had conversations like this that are about the discourse with, with other people. Mehdi Hassan was a, uh, a guest on the program talking about debate. And his take was really pretty much win at all costs. It was, it was, uh, it was listening in order to defeat the other side. Um, which sounds closer to that part of you that you had to pull back. We’ve also had Monica Guzman on the program, and you refer to her work in the book. She works with the organization Braver Angels, and they bring together people to have difficult conversations that could be called debates. But Monica’s key thought is, we need to, in order to kind of con come back together, the thing we need to be is curious about each other.

David Brooks

Yeah. So I’m, I’m on Monica’s side, you know, uh, I think most debates are a competition between partial truths, that each side has a piece of the truth, uh, and that you’re trying to find the right balance. And so you’re debating maybe individualism versus community or economic efficiency versus fairness. There’s usually some set of trade-offs. And so to me, in a debate, one of the beauties of debate is you get to hear somebody else’s point of view, and hopefully you, you have the ability to see from other, another’s point of view.

David Brooks

So Monica Guzman works for, as you said, Braver Angels. And they like you. I think your organization have discovered a paradox. And that paradox is that you would think by having a debate, you would just inflame everything. But if you can have an honest debate, and especially if it can be, if the questions can be directed toward a chair and not to each other, the way they do it at, at like at the Oxford Union or, or at Braver Angels, you’re just focusing on the substance. Uh, and then, um, you’re, you’re not really getting hostile and personal. You’re just learning what the other person believes. And I’ve learned there are just some tricks. So you can keep the debate as a learning exercise and not just a gladiatorial exercise.

John Donvan

What are some of those tricks?

David Brooks

One of them was taught to me, uh, by a guy named Goodman in, in Israel, find the disagreement under the disagreement. So if we’re arguing about Middle East policy, what experiences or things have we learned that cause us to see it so differently? And if we search for the philosophical disagreement under our disagreement, we’re not just heading butting heads, we’re exploring together why we disagree. Another one is keep the gem statement in the center. If my brother and I are arguing about healthcare, there is still something we agree upon. If we’re arguing about our dad’s healthcare, we both want what’s best for our dad. So if we can keep returning to that, the thing we agree upon called the gem statement, then we can preserve our relationship amid the disagreement. We disagree about the marketing plan, but we both want what’s best for our company.

David Brooks

And then the final thing I’ve learned is when somebody’s really attacking you and critiquing you, your first job is not to get all defensive, it’s not to fight back. That can come later. Your first job is to stand in their standpoint. It’s to ask them three or four times in different ways, “Tell me more about your point of view?” Then, one of the things is you find the fourth answer they give is richer and more full than the first answer. But the second thing is you’re showing them respect. And as I said, in any conversation, respect is like air. Uh, if it’s absent, that’s all anybody can think about. And in every conversation, and in every debate, it’s happening on two levels, is the nominal subject we’re talking about. And then underneath, and more important is the flow of emotions that are happening between us as we’re having a conversation.

David Brooks

And so, for example, for 20 years, I debated, if you wanna use that word, Mark Shields on the PBS NewsHour. And Mark and I disagreed on a lot of stuff, but never once in 20 years did we ever really dislike each other. We never even got angry at each other. We exchanged opposing points of view without fighting, without emotional animosity. And that tradition has carried on now that I do it with Jonathan Capehart.

John Donvan

That said, sometimes in the debates also, we feel that the passion and the, the vigor, the anger, the robustness that a debater might bring also really does tell us something. Not that we want it to cross over into acrimony and the, the hating each other, but that emotion has meaning. And you make the same argument in the book.

David Brooks

Yeah. Well, one of the great fallacies of Western civilization is that reason is separate from emotion. This was a fallacy, frankly, that, uh, Plato made, uh, that our, our emotions are like horses and the reason is like the charioteer who’s sort of controlling them. This was a, a, um, an era that Rene Descartes, the French Enlightenment philosopher made that you should set aside emotion, you should crush emotion, and you should rationally think through your life from the very beginning. I think therefore I am. But this is a fallacy. In neuroscience, we’ve learned that there’s no distinction in the brain between reason and emotion. And this was established most famously by a guy named Antonio Damasio, who’s a great, great neuroscientist. And he studied people who had brain lesions and they couldn’t experience emotion.

David Brooks

And these people were not super smart, Mr. Spock. They were hopeless, they were hopeless, and they could not make decisions because what emotions do is they assign value to things. And you can’t know what you want or what you don’t want, what’s admirable or what’s contemptible if you don’t have honest emotional reactions. And so there’s one case in Damasio’s practice where he had a patient who couldn’t process a motion. And Damasio said, “Well, do you wanna come back next Tuesday or Wednesday?” And the guy spent 30 minutes arguing, well, here are the advantages of Tuesday, here are the advantages of Wednesday. He could not make a decision. And so that’s ’cause he couldn’t assign value to things. And we err and thinking there’s a, a distinction between those two things, there is not. Reason and emotion are a pair, they’re part of the same process.

John Donvan

The book lays out in its early chapters, some very, very specific, uh, I don’t know if I should call them, guidelines or targets to hit for, uh, achieving the kinds of connections that, that you’re writing about. Um, so the, the chapter, um, it’s called illumination cites, um, various qualities to try to pursue and develop. And, and you write about each of them in detail, what they mean and how to do it. One is tenderness, another is receptivity, another is active curiosity. Another is affection, another is generosity. Another is a holistic attitude. You write also about, um, about being, being playful, being, uh, receptive, being present.

John Donvan

And I’m wondering how this works. I’m thinking of, you know, Ste- Steve Blass the, uh, the baseball pitcher in the 1970s who suddenly lost the ability to pitch a baseball into the strike zone. He, he could not throw anymore. And that’s also called the yips, has come to be a kind of definition of athletes who lose the ability to perform as they had before, where the thinking, some of, sometimes the thinking is that they have started to overthink the performance of a thing they once did naturally and spontaneously and through muscle memory, they’re thinking about it. And in thinking about it, they’ve lost the ability to do it.

John Donvan

And as I was reading this list of stuff to do, I was thinking, “Wow, this could, this could be a Steve Blass situation where if I have to hit all of these things when I’m having a conversation, um, uh, where I, I might not, you know, the spontaneity may go or the organic nature may go.” So how do you app- how do you expect readers to apply the, the specifics? There are many, many detailed specifics you go through of things that make a good for a good connection and a good conversation.

David Brooks

So I’ve had the yips playing baseball, and so you’ve, you’ve brought me back to nightmare circumstances where

laughs), I really, I could not throw a ball. It’s just like, would land on the ground. Um, and so, uh, the yips are real. The way I would put it is it’s like, um, drama school. Uh, and so, uh, actors go to drama school and they learn certain techniques, but when they’re on stage, they’re not thinking about their techniques. They’ve internalized the techniques so they can just naturally be the character they’re playing.

John Donvan

But in terms of learning the techniques, is that, uh, is that something that you’ve sat down and sat at a desk and put, put yourself through somehow or other?

David Brooks

Yeah, I’m talking to myself in a mirror. Let’s practice conversation. I’ll, I’ll give you an example. So one of the techniques I have in the book is don’t be a topper. And so if somebody comes up to me and tells me about they’re having trouble with their teenage son, my instinct is to say, “Oh, I know exactly what we’re going through. I’m having trouble with my Tommy.” And, uh, it looks like I’m trying to relate to you ’cause I’m talking about something we have in common. But really what I’m doing is shifting the conversation away from your problem and onto my problem. And so I, this is something I’m guilty of. I, I’ve been a topper in conversations, and now when I find myself doing it, I’m in the middle of it and I realize, “Oh, I’m being a topper again.” Now I’ve gotta turn around and redirect and start asking questions about your problem and not my problem.

David Brooks

And so I found by naming certain things, uh, it, um, it helps you understand. It helps you see conversations better. It helps you see when things are going astray. And so another one is, um, make them authors, not witnesses. And so when people tell you a story, they don’t go into enough detail. And so when I heard about this conversational tip, make them authors, not witnesses, I should ask like, “Where was your boss sitting when she said that to you?” And that way I get you into the scene and then I’m, you’re really begin narrating me a story and I’m getting a richer account. And so there are times when I think, “Oh, this is the time for me to do this.”

David Brooks

Another is just, you know, be a loud listener. Uh, I have a buddy when you’re talking to him, it’s like talking to a Pentecostal church. He’s like, “Yes, yes, I agree. I agree.” I love talking to that guy. And so these are all techniques that they’re, they become a way of being in the world.

John Donvan

There was, um, an anecdote or an episode in your life that you shared that I, I, I didn’t see coming in, in a book of this nature, but you talked about your best friend taking his own life after years of, of, of quite serious depression. And you said in the book that you don’t feel like you did the right things to connect with him during the time he was suffering. I, I, if you don’t mind sharing that story again and, and why you shared it and what you learned from it and what the rest of us can learn from it.

David Brooks

I shared it because, uh, you know, I keep emphasizing that morality and showing up for people is a matter of skills. And so when my friend Pete, who I, we knew each other since we were 11, um, when he got depression, I lacked the skills to knowing how to show up. And I, I thought it was important to include that in the book because so many people have now have someone in their family or in their friendship circle who have or are suffering from depression. And it’s just super important that we know how to show up for people in those circumstances.

David Brooks

And so when Pete got hit by depression in 2019, uh, I didn’t really even know what depression was, I thought I did. But Pete like had these lying voices in his head that would say, “I’m worthless. I’m worthless. Nobody would miss me if I’m gone.” His mind was lying to him. And so I didn’t quite appreciate how distorting depression is. And I committed some of the errors that I think I, I’ve now learned are classic errors when you’re trying to sit with someone who’s depressed. And so I’d say, “You know, I used to do these service trips in Vietnam. Why don’t you go do that, that you found them so uplifting?”

David Brooks

And I later learned, when you’re giving people ideas of how to, about how to get outta depression, all you’re doing is showing you just don’t get it because it’s not ideas they’re lacking, it’s sometimes energy and much else. So it’s, the problem is much deeper than that. The second make, mistake I made was, uh, I did what psychologists call positive reframing, which is, I just, I try to like remind him of all the wonderful things in his life. “You have a great career, you have a great marriage, your kids are amazing.” And when you do that, you’re not making ’em feel better, you’re making ’em feel worse. You’re just reminding them that they, um, uh, they’re not enjoying the things that are palpably enjoyable in their life right now.

David Brooks

And so I learned the first thing you should do, uh, when somebody is suffering from depression, is just honestly recognize the reality of the situation. “Uh, this sucks, this sucks.” And just so they feel you have some sense of what they’re going through. The second thing is just a burst of goodwill. “I want more for you. I want more for you.” And that’s not gonna solve the problem, but it’ll just show them that your goodwill, you’re on their side, you’re in their corner. Uh, and then just, uh, the art of presence, uh, the art of saying, “I’m sticking around. I’m not going anywhere.” And one of the things I wish I’d done more of with Pete was like, just little touchpoints, uh, like, um, you know, sending you a text, “No response necessary, just on my mind.”

David Brooks

And none of these things would’ve caused his depression to lift. And frankly, none of the errors I made, I don’t think had any effect on the ultimate outcome, which he ended up losing his battle to depression and succumbed. Uh, but at least it’s a way of being present for somebody in a way that’s more gracious. Uh, and so I, I think I could have learned how to do that a little better.

John Donvan

Thank, thanks for sharing that. I think, I think the same could very much be said with people who are experiencing grief, deep grief as well. We, we just have a couple of minutes left and I wanna circle back in a sense to the beginning where you talked about, um, you talked about your childhood and the way that you were raised. This theme comes up again and again in the book that you urge people to learn and ask about people’s childhoods and the ways they were raised. So I, I wanna finish up with understanding why that’s such an important note that you hit again and again.

David Brooks

Well, you know, I, I think the, we all have to live through our childhood twice. We live through it, and then we decide what meaning it had. And, you know, when you really get to know someone, you see how the wounds of childhood show up in their adulthood. If they came from a, an abusive home, you see the defensive architecture they built around that so they can survive abuse if they grew up where the people were hypercritical, you see how sensitive they are to criticism. And so, in my view, the, the defenses we build up in childhood flow through our life. And you might ask somebody, you know, “You seem to have it all, yet you feel like an outsider. Why is that? Like what happened in childhood that give you that sense of being an outsider?”

David Brooks

And now we’re at the level of deeply understanding another person. This is something you only do when real trust has been established. But if you go into both of your childhoods, you’ll see how, how those days of joy really contain a lot of the ways you see the world, even to this point. And the second time, thing you see is sometimes your defensive architecture, uh, needs to be overthrown in middle age if you’re gonna become a full human being. And I would say my story was, for whatever reason, I built up an avoidant defensive architecture in my personality. And the story I’ve been telling you for the last little while is how I have tried to work to overthrow that architecture, the walls that I build up, how I tried to work to tear down the walls.

John Donvan

David Brooks new book is called How to Know a Person, the Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. David, thank you so much for joining us on Open to Debate. It’s been great.

David Brooks

Oh, it’s been good to be with you again, John.

John Donvan

And thank you everybody for listening to Open To Debate. You know, as a nonprofit working to combat extreme polarization through civil debate, our work is made possible by listeners like you, by the Rosenkranz Foundation and by supporters of Open to Debate. The show is generously funded by a grant from the Laura and Gary Lauder Venture Philanthropy Fund. Robert Rosenkranz is our chairman. Our CEO is Clea Connor. Lia Matthow is our Chief Content Officer, and this episode was produced by Alexis Pancrazi and Marlet Sandoval. Editorial and research was by Gabriella Mayer. Andrew Lipson and Max Fulton provided production support. The Open to Debate team also includes Gabrielle Iannucelli and Rachel Kemp. Damon Whitmore mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Alex Clement. And I’m your host, John Donvan. Thanks for listening to Open to Debate. We’ll see you next time.