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Telling Instincts

When we are in trouble and look for help we look for it in predictable places.

• We need more money to pay a debt or to fix a problem
• We need better connections (human or divine) to get an ally more powerful than ourselves to deliver us from an enemy  more powerful than ourselves. (Balak last week)

Human history suggests that in fact our problem is almost always ourselves. This is the point that David Brooks tries to make over and over again in his book The Road to Character. Most of the chapters of the book are small biographical sketches where he tries to illustrate for us the ways that people who have accomplished notable things achieved some degree of mastery or control over themselves. Dwight Eisenhower, joint allied commander in Europe was one of his subjects.

One Halloween evening, when he was about ten, Eisenhower’s older brothers received permission to go out trick-or-treating, a more adventurous activity in those days than it is now. Ike wanted to go with them, but his parents told him he was too young. He pleaded with them, watched his brothers go, and then became engulfed by uncontrolled rage. He turned red. His hair bristled. Weeping and screaming, he rushed out into the front yard and began pounding his fists against the trunk of an apple tree, scraping the skin off and leaving his hands bloody and torn.

His father shook him, lashed him with a hickory switch, and sent him up to bed. About an hour later, with Ike sobbing into his pillow, his mother came up and sat silently rocking in the chair next to his bed. Eventually she quoted a verse from the Bible: “He that conquereth his own soul is greater than he who taketh a city.”

Brooks, David (2015-04-14). The Road to Character (p. 52). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Eisenhower would struggle with his temper and vengeance all of his life and only be able to succeed in his very political careers as allied commander and then President of the United States when he achieved some degree of self mastery.

American culture likes to imagine self-control is a function of the individual will, but Brooks wants us to explore how our cultures form us and what they enable us to do. Brooks looks at the cultural context of our formation to see how it prepares or inhibit our ability to succeed. He thinks it is important to see that Eisenhower was formed in Abilene Kansas.

In places like Abilene, Kansas, the big sins, left unchallenged, would have had very practical and disastrous effects. Sloth could lead to a failure of a farm; gluttony and inebriation to the destruction of a family; lust to the ruination of a young woman; vanity to excessive spending, debt, and bankruptcy.

In places like that, people had an awareness not only of sin but of the different kinds of sins and the different remedies for each. Some sins, such as anger and lust, are like wild beasts. They have to be fought through habits of restraint. Other sins, such as mockery and disrespect, are like stains. They can be expunged only by absolution, by apology, remorse, restitution, and cleansing. Still others, such as stealing, are like a debt. They can be rectified only by repaying what you owe to society. Sins such as adultery, bribery, and betrayal are more like treason than like crime; they damage the social order. Social harmony can be rewoven only by slowly recommitting to relationships and rebuilding trust. The sins of arrogance and pride arise from a perverse desire for status and superiority. The only remedy for them is to humble oneself before others.

Brooks, David (2015-04-14). The Road to Character (p. 56). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The World Has Flipped

Brooks’ thesis of his book is that as a culture we have lost this moral vocabulary and this worldview. In many ways our imaginations have flipped. The world of Eisenhower’s youth was imagined to be a dangerous one as the above quote suggests. The individual had to develop self-mastery so as not to fall victim to the temptations of the world. The world was a morally hazardous place where dangers without exploited weaknesses within to bring calamity and disaster.

This social imaginary is lost and replaced by one today that suggests exactly the opposite. The world, physical and spiritual, are not imagined to be dangerous and filled with adversaries, but open and full of potential. What the individual must do to take advantage of these possibilities is not to doubt their passions but to invest in them, to believe in themselves and shake off the limitations often in the form of conventional prohibitions. Social, civic, religious and culture restraints were once seen as allies in the individual’s quest of self mastery are now imagined to be enemies in the individual’s quest of self-exploration and expression.

Even though Brooks does not go into the metaphysical layer of this social imaginary most societies imagined that this goal of self-mastery was not only important for this life but also the next. One had to not just face themselves and their neighbors, they would one day have to face their God and give an accounting of their actions.

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