The Road to Character

“To nurture your Adam I career, it makes sense to cultivate your strengths. To nurture your Adam II moral core, it is necessary to confront your weaknesses.”

Using the model set forth by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Brooks describes the dichotomy he sets out to challenge with parable-like directness. We like to cultivate our strengths, but it is more important to attend to unpleasant truths.

“In [people who have built a strong inner character], at the end of this struggle, the climb to success has surrendered to the struggle to deepen the soul. After a life of seeking balance, Adam I bows down before Adam II. These are the people we are looking for.”

Brooks argues that strong inner character and moral compass are more essential to both personal and societal well-being than external reputation and sense of self-congratulation. We should seek individuals who exemplify the former qualities.

“This little contrast [between the humility of a WWII D-Day celebrity-hosted radio broadcast to the bombastic victory laps of a football quarterback on television] set off a chain of thoughts in my mind. It occurred to me that this shift might symbolize a shift in culture, a shift from a culture of self-effacement that says ‘Nobody’s better than me, but I’m no better than anyone else’ to a culture of self-promotion that says ‘Recognize my accomplishments, I’m pretty special.’ That contrast, while nothing much in itself, was like a doorway into the different ways it is possible to live in this world.”

Brooks uses this contrast to set up a real-life example of the dichotomy he discussed in his Introduction. The WWII radio broadcast exemplifies Adam II character, whereas the football quarterback exemplifies Adam I character.

“The social code was embodied in the self-effacing style of actors like Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper or the character Joe Friday on Dragnet. When Franklin Roosevelt’s Aide Harry Hopkins lost a son in World War II, the military brass wanted to put his other sons out of harm’s way. Hopkins rejected this idea, writing, with the understatement more common in that era, that his other sons shouldn’t be given safe assignments just because their brother ‘had some bad luck in the Pacific.’”

The culture of self-effacement and humility was once so extensive that it often manifested in highly visible ways in media and entertainment. Even political figures refused special treatment for themselves and their families, even when it was a matter of life and death, with high risk of heartbreak and tragedy.

“Humility is the awareness that there’s a lot you don’t know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong.” 

This is the chapter’s turning point from examining the current culture of “Big Me,” or self-centeredness and aggrandizement, to arguing for a return to the culture of “Little Me,” as demonstrated in the previous quotes from Chapter 1.

“Moral indignation [in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire] set [Perkins] on a different course. Her own desires and her own ego became less central and the cause itself became more central to the structure of her life. The niceties of her class fell away. She became impatient with the way genteel progressives went about serving the poor. […] She threw herself into the rough and tumble of politics. She was willing to take morally hazardous action if it would prevent another catastrophe […].” 

Perkins, once a young society woman descended from the Founding Fathers, changed her ways after witnessing the horrible deaths of the Triangle Shirtwaist employees during the infamous fire in 1911. She became a workers’ rights advocate and champion of the working classes for the rest of her life.

“In [Perkins’] method, you don’t ask, What do I want from life? You ask a different set of questions: What does Life Want from Me? What are my circumstances calling me to do?”

Perkins’ example, in the wake of a life-changing experience, leads us not to focus on how our own life has been changed, but how we can change the lives of others. If we pay attention to our environment, we can address dire need.

“As the Jewish Mishnah puts it, ‘It’s not your obligation to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from beginning it.’”

Ancient wisdom from the Jewish religious and cultural tradition teaches us precisely what Perkins’ example embodies. The world has been here since long before us, and it will continue to exist after us. Our actions will pave the way for others to complete the needed work toward improvement.

“Sin is also a necessary piece of our mental furniture because sin is communal, while error is individual. You make a mistake, but we are all plagued by sins like selfishness and thoughtlessness.” 

Brooks spends several pages separating the overuse and misuse of the word “sin,” largely in religious contexts, to clarify its meaning. A sin is not something an individual commits, but a larger wrong committed by society.

“[The famous speech Dwight Eisenhower delivered near the end of his presidency] is the speech of a man who used to tell his advisers ‘Let’s make our mistakes slowly,’ because it was better to proceed to a decision gradually than to rush into anything before its time. This is the lesson that his mother and his upbringing imparted to him decades before. This was a life organized not around self-expression, but self-restraint.” 

Due to his mother Ida’s moderate, yet exuberantly warm and loving upbringing, Eisenhower’s sense of balance and self-restraint under fire made him a steady, capable military leader. These values served him in his presidency.

“Recovering from suffering is a lot like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They crash through the logic of individual utility and behave paradoxically.”

Brooks uses this simile to establish how Day’s personal suffering gave rise to her Catholic faith. Her life was once hedonistic and tempestuous, but in examining her own suffering and alleviating the suffering of others, she found peace.

“Day did what sensitive people do when other people are in trauma. […] Many of us don’t know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence.”

Day’s experiences with trauma—her own and that of others, particularly the people she cared for in a hospital during the 1918 flu epidemic—prepared her for the challenge of caring for those in need.

“People who possess an institutional mindset, as Marshall did, have a very different mentality, which begins with a different historical consciousness. In this mindset, the primary reality is society, which is a collection of institutions that have existed over time and transcend generations.” 

Marshall is remembered as a quiet, yet formidably efficient leader due to his institutional mindset—his consciousness of when to keep tradition and when to reform it. His intent was always to serve whatever organization he was part of to the best of his ability.

“In his new position [as Secretary of State], he enacted the Marshall Plan—although he never called it by anything but its official name, the European Recovery Plan—and President Roosevelt’s wish that Marshall be long remembered by history came true.” 

After years of slow promotion and commitment to the US military, government, and the causes and campaigns in which he was involved, Marshall finally got to put his institutional, organizational brilliance to humanitarian use. Having the plan called by his name in later years is a testament to his dedication.

“We think of public-spiritedness as self-assertion, but historically it has been a form of self-government and self-control.” 

Working toward the good of communities and institutions requires a greater amount of humility and self-control—willingness to work behind the scenes and even take a back-seat to the cause—than most people generally assume.

“Social sin requires a hammering down of the door by people who are simultaneously aware that they are unworthy to be so daring.”

Fighting broad social injustice calls for individuals, like Randolph and Rustin, who know that they are flawed themselves; this leads to greater insight and humility.

“When people behave on the basis of uncompromising individual desire, [Eliot] came to believe, they might set off a selfish contagion in those around them.”

Living by example matters. Eliot believed that if people conduct themselves in a selfish manner, then others are more likely to take point and follow suit.

“Love is submission, not decision. Love demands that you make a poetic surrender to an inexplicable power without counting the cost. Love asks you to discard conditional thinking and to pour out your love in full force and not measure it by tablespoons.”

Love as a motivating force requires us to give it wholeheartedly, despite the consequences. To love is to take a risk, and logic does not govern it.

“Augustine was apparently history’s most high-maintenance boyfriend. His language is precise. He is not in love with another human being, he is in love with the prospect of being loved. It’s all about him. And in his memoir he describes how his disordered lusts fed on themselves.” 

Augustine’s example teaches us that love and desire without order—without focus outside the self—can be highly destructive forces. Learning to channel and direct love and the desire to be loved is an important aspect of humility.

“[Augustine] started with the belief that he could control his own life. He had to renounce that, to sink down into a posture of openness and surrender. Then, after that retreat, he was open enough to receive grace, to feel gratitude rise upward.”

Self-centeredness and self-love, as well as self-aggrandizement, were follies that Augustine needed to experience before he could experience true humility. This struggle marks the aspects of his writing for which he is remembered.

“When the external constraints are loosened, when a person can do what he wants, when there are a thousand choices and distractions, then life can lose coherence and direction if there isn’t a strong internal structure.”

Without a strong internal sense of direction and purpose, at times in a person’s life when all obligations fall away, it is easier to become distracted. Not all distractions and passion-driven choices are beneficial ones.

“The foundation of [Johnson’s brilliance and versatility as a writer] was his tremendous capacity for sympathy. His life story begins with physical suffering. […] He seems never to have shaken that vulnerability, but he succeeded in turning his handicaps and limitations into advantages through sheer hard work. For a man who continually castigated himself for his sloth, his capacity for labor was enormous.” 

Sympathy is often born of personal experiences with hardship, and Johnson’s life is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Aware of his limitations, Johnson worked harder at every turn, and it made him a universal thinker.

“[M]oral realism collapsed. Its vocabulary and ways of thinking were forgotten or shoved off into the margins of society. Realism and romanticism slipped out of balance. A moral vocabulary was lost, and along with it a methodology for the formation of souls.” 

This is Brooks’ simplified summation of what happened during the 1940s through the 1950s, in the wake of WWII and during the Cold War. After the Great Depression’s deprivation and the hardships of war, the people we now think of as the Greatest Generation were determined to consume, enjoy, and have fun. Brooks argues that this outlook and approach led to self-centeredness and moral laxness.