Goodbye, David

On Reading David Brooks in Divided Times

David Brooks wrote his final column for the New York Times this morning. It’s a brilliant column, as I have come to expect, but I felt an ill-defined blend of inspiration and sadness as I read it. After twenty-two years of inviting us to think carefully about complexity, Brooks is heading off to some new, yet unnamed professional adventure — one I will be certain to find and follow.

Brooks is someone I have never met, though I understand we know some of the same people. One degree of separation, combined with years of affinity for his work, can almost make it feel as though I know him. I don’t agree with him on everything; Brooks is a moderate conservative, whereas I am a moderate progressive. But whenever I start feeling cynical about conservatives, I read Brooks and am reminded how smart people who disagree with me can be. It is also strangely comforting to linger over the word moderate in an age of extremes. Maybe there really is a moral center to be found — and perhaps even an emotional center — where the fear of our day can be set aside for collaboration and hope.

I first learned about Brooks while meeting with a small group of scholars funded by the John Templeton Foundation. We were an earnest group — all with lofty academic degrees and all interested in positive psychology. Everyone else seemed to know Brooks’s book, The Road to Character, while I had never even heard of it. Before the airplane touched down on my return trip, I had ordered the book. I won’t review it here, but it is extraordinary, and I have quoted from it in almost every talk I have given since.

Brooks has uncanny timing. Again and again, his words in an opinion column touched the precise imaginations of my heart. I’ll spare you the details, but here are a few of his columns that reached as deeply into my heart as they did into my brain: The Rot Creeping into Our Minds, How America Got Mean, What’s Happening Is Not Normal, and The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture.

Prophets are not people who tell the future; they are people who speak the truth in muddled times. Many today aspire to be prophets simply by being influencers or sharp critics, yet so often they leave behind little more than destruction, division, and shame. Brooks’s words can be sharp and critical, but they always come with an invitation to moral clarity — and a profound call toward curiosity and grace. If there is ever any doubt about his heart, read his book How to Know a Person.

Thank you, David Brooks, and goodbye. I will miss your columns, but even more I will miss the balance you brought to intellectual discourse and public conversation.

Please write more books.

I’ll be the first in line.

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P.S. I once wrote a series of blog posts in response to Brooks's article, How America Got Mean. If interested, you can get started here.