Weekend reads: The lost art of connection

How to be a humanist in a broken world

Periods of political polarization are often characterized by rampant dehumanization. Each side is convinced that the other is not just mistaken, but inherently evil, and thus less than human. One way to resist this dynamic is to appeal to logic, complicating the dominant narratives in our culture, and demonstrating how they fall short on reasoning, facts, and critical context. But another way to resist dehumanization is to appeal to our shared humanity — to exit the political arena entirely, and instead emphasize the emotions and experiences we have in common. 

That is exactly what New York Times columnist David Brooks does in his latest book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. In it, he shifts the frame of reference away from what the psychologist Jerome Bruner has called paradigmatic thinking (i.e. making an argument) and towards narrative thinking (i.e. storytelling). In doing so, Brooks offers an exquisite reprieve from the alienation of the present moment.

Fittingly, Brooks opens the book with his own story. The son of two intellectuals, he was raised in a stiff-upper-lip Jewish household in Greenwich Village. The family’s maxim was “think Yiddish, act British.” Unsurprisingly, he grew into a cerebral boy. So much so that a teacher once told his parents that he didn’t play with other children but instead stood on the sidelines and observed them. 

This aloofness only intensified as the years passed, until, Brooks writes, “repressing my own feelings became my default mode for moving through the world.” 

“I was a practiced escape artist,” he reflects. “When other people revealed some vulnerable intimacy to me, I was good at making meaningful eye contact with their shoes and then excusing myself to keep a vitally important appointment with my dry cleaner. I had a sense that this wasn’t an ideal way of being. I felt painfully awkward during those moments when someone tried to connect with me. I inwardly wanted to connect. I just didn’t know what to say.” 

Fatherhood, broken relationships, and public failures all “tenderized” him, and he ultimately came to a realization — that “living in a detached way is, in fact, a withdrawal from life, an estrangement not just from other people but from yourself.” 

As so, as the author told Andrew Sullivan in a powerful podcast interview, he has spent much of his adult life working to become a deeper, more spiritual, and more emotionally available person.

In the process, Brooks has discovered that there are two kinds of conversationalists: diminishers and illuminators. Diminishers are perpetually in “broadcast mode,” and mainly talk about themselves. But illuminators ask questions, listen intently, and make others feel seen and heard.

The experience of being acknowledged in this way has become increasingly rare in our society, and Brooks believes we are now all desperate for it. 

To that end, he lays out some practical social skills that we can all adopt — all of which centre on, as he put it to Andrew Sullivan, “how to be a humanist.” Or, how to regard every human being we encounter as “a soul of infinite value and dignity.”

Such skills include how to listen, how to flirt, how to forgive. As well as “how to let someone down without breaking their heart,” “how to sit with someone who is suffering,” and how to disagree “without poisoning the relationship.” Plus, how to see someone else’s point of view during an argument. (One of the most powerful questions one can ask is: What am I missing here?)

Brooks is a master storyteller and there’s no shortage of moving anecdotes about kindness and care in How to Know a Person. There’s the story of Nancy Abernathy, a professor of medicine who lost her husband to a heart attack, and mentioned in class that she dreaded the anniversary of his death. That day the following year, her former students returned to class, sitting in the back, quietly offering emotional support. There’s also the story a student that Brooks taught at Yale, who had lost her father to pancreatic cancer. Serving as a bridesmaid at a wedding afterwards, she retreated to the bathroom during the father-daughter dance to weep. When she stepped out, a row of friends stood waiting for her, offering silent hugs of support. There’s the story, too, of a man who experienced a public disgrace. In response, one of his friends took him out for dinner every Sunday night for two years.

And then there’s the story of Northwestern psychology professor Dan McAdams, who, during the course of his research, invites people into the lab for several hours at a time, and pays them to tell their life stories. “Half the people he interviews end up crying at some point, recalling some hard event in their lives,” Brooks writes. “At the end of the session, most of them are elated. They tell him that no one has ever asked them about their life story before. Some of them want to give the research fee back.”

This kind of curiosity about other people’s lives can be transformational. Indeed, Brooks argues it has the potential to make our society more decent and more humane. 

But, in my view, this approach is especially valuable for journalists, whose usefulness hangs on the ability to foster conversations that generate understanding. 

Brooks concludes in How to Know a Person that “if we want to begin repairing the big national ruptures, we have to learn to do the small things well.” I hope that we in the press can remember that this year, as the American election threatens to heighten political polarization on both sides of the border. During the coming debates, I hope we can find ways to truly listen to one another — and to affirm our shared humanity.