The Relationalist Manifesto p. 1 - Hyper-Individualism

Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in...And here I was thinking that I had a nice list of very good excuses not to read The Second Mountain by David Fucking Brooks, and here the Aspen Institute posts what's sure to be the best part of it on their website for free. We all know that the center of the book is going to be borderline plagiarism and recycled content, the bookends are the only parts anyone will actually care about, and here someone goes and spoils the ending.

Okay, so you all know this I'm sure, but Brooks is involved in some Aspen nonsense called Weave: The Social Fabric Project. To these cynical eyes, this appears to consist of a bunch of think tank types tracking down do-gooders who've been helping their communities for ages, claiming they constitute a "movement," giving that movement a name and then taking all the credit. A bit offensive, perhaps, but there are certainly more destructive things that rich people can do with their excess money, and it's not like I'm among the few thousand movers-and-shakers in the target audience for this thing.

The only thing I care about here is the "manifesto" that is just the last chapter to The Second Mountain. It takes the form of a list - hey, just like the one that ended The Road to Character! Boy, Mr. Vocation Matters is really pushing the envelope. It's long, too - well, not by manifesto terms, but it is about 75 points spread across 7 sections totaling around 5800 words. I plan to do a breakdown of each of these (I might combine the shorter ones), but keeping in character with the author, these will be shallow dives.

So a little recap: I've wasted a disgusting amount of time trying to figure exactly what Brooks' ideal world looks like. What I've landed on so far is an upscaled right-communitarian system in which towns and neighborhoods are ruled over by local elites in a top-down manner while a largely symbolic national government spends its time creating cultural myths to bind the tens of thousands of little autonomous communities together. So basically it's the Zhou dynasty, which did keep it going for a long time before they all killed each other - but hey, every system has its problems. We'll see if I'm right as we advance.

Ready? Okay, the first two sections are I guess his first principles, identifying the Goofuses and Gallants in his worldview. In the first section, "Hyper-Individualism," we meet our Goofus:

1. There is always a balance between self and society. In some ages the pressures of the group become stifling and crush the self, and individuals feel a desperate need to break free and express their individuality. In our age, by contrast, the self is inflated and the collective is weak. We have swung too far in the direction of individualism. The result is a loss of connection—a crisis of solidarity.

This is definitely his first principle, the idea that we're all monsters. The next eleven points are clarifying what he means by this, so I won't dwell here.

2. Hyper-individualism, the reigning ethos of our day, is a system of morals, feelings, ideas, and practices based on the idea that the journey through life is an individual journey, that the goals of life are individual happiness, authenticity, self-actualization, and self-sufficiency. Hyper-individualism says “I belong to myself and no one else.”: Hyper-Individualism puts the same question on everybody’s lips: “What can I do to make myself happy?”

Is this really the "reigning ethos of our day"? Brooks doesn't offer proof for any of his assertions - I assume those are in the beginning of the book, which I can only imagine is as much a factual trainwreck as the first chapter of The Road to Character.

3. Hyper-individualism rests upon an emancipation story. The heroic self breaks free from the stifling chains of society. The heroic self leaves home and community and finds himself by looking inward. The self stands on its own two feet, determines its own destiny, secures its own individual rights. Hyper-individualism defines freedom as absence from restraint.

This really reminded me of that weird bit at the end of The Road to Character where he went on about the tradition of giving a copy of Oh, the Places You'll Go! to recent high school graduates and opted to interpret that not as a message to be confident in the face of a scary world, but as a message that you're better than everyone else. Therein lies the problem with having a model to examine the world - if you're not careful, you wind up seeing patterns where they don't exist.

As for the statement more generally, I suppose it is accurate, although Brooks has again chosen to look at everything here in the most negative light possible. I can't see how independence (which, in American society, traditionally leads to starting a family) is inherently selfish, but that's just a difference of perspective.

4. In this way, hyper-individualism gradually undermines any connection not based on individual choice—the connections to family, neighborhood, culture, nation, and the common good. Hyper-individualism erodes our obligations and responsibilities to others and our kind.

Holy shit, he stole this from Rod Dreher. I told you they basically believed the same thing, didn't I? All right, maybe it was just laziness (look who we're dealing with), but this is still a logical overlap between Brooks' mushy "pragmatism" and Dreher's not-quite-theoconservatism - a reflexive assumption that anything old is good and anything new is dangerous.

5. The central problems of our day flow from this erosion: social isolation, distrust, polarization, the breakdown of family, the loss of community, tribalism, rising suicide rates, rising mental health problems, a spiritual crisis caused by a loss of common purpose, the loss—in nation after nation—of any sense of common solidarity that binds people across difference, the loss of those common stories and causes that foster community, mutuality, comradeship, and purpose.

So much to unpack here, and so little evidence provided. Some of this stuff is obvious - the "deaths of despair" he's referencing here are not caused by a shift in some abstract notion, but in the decline of the American manufacturing sector and the loss of both the income and identity that went with those jobs. The "common stories" thing is kind of a running joke about how Brooks seems to think we should replace Congress with a summit of poets or some such. You can hack this one down yourself, I'm sure.

6. The core flaw of hyper-individualism is that it leads to a degradation and a pulverization of the human person. It is a system built upon the egoistic drives within each of us. These are the self-interested drives—the desire to excel; to make a mark in the world; to rise in wealth, power, and status; to win victories and be better than others. Hyper-individualism does not emphasize and eventually does not even see the other drives—the deeper and more elusive motivations that seek connection, fusion, service, and care. These are not the desires of the ego, but the longings of the heart and soul: the desire to live in loving interdependence with others, the yearning to live in service of some ideal, the yearning to surrender to a greater good. Hyper-individualism numbs these deepest longings. Eventually, hyper-individualism creates isolated, self-interested monads who sense that something is missing in their lives but cannot even name what it is.

So it's funny that Brooks is so terrified of socialism, because this is basically an argument against capitalism. The argument for capitalism is that it harnesses the power of self-interest and is therefore superior to any system that requires universal virtue to function. Brooks plainly hates that argument, viewing it as immoral. This goes well beyond his previous claims about success eroding morality and is, instead, a critique of a whole system that could have come out of a critical theory seminar. Of course, Brooksianism is incompatible with any system devised in the last thousand years, but I find this interesting all the same.

7. Hyper-individualism thrives within the systems of the surface. Consumerism amputates what is central to the person for the sake of material acquisition. The meritocracy amputates what is deepest for individual “success.” Unbalanced capitalism turns people into utility-maximizing, speeding workaholics that no permanent attachment can penetrate.

...And here's Brooks taking it back, lest anyone think he's a Commie. His insistence that his problem is with some specific form or type of capitalism; this is sheer bullshit, as capitalism is built around competition and therefore any form would be anathema to him. But of course, it's worth remembering that, historically, the opposite of "capitalism" was not socialism but monarchy, which shows us where he's headed.

8. The hyper-individualist finds himself enmeshed in a network of conditional love. I am worthy of being loved only when I have achieved the status or success the world expects of me. I am worthy of love only when I can offer the other person something in return. I am what the world says about me. In the end, hyper-individualism doesn’t make people self-sufficient and secure. It obliterates emotional and spiritual security by making everything conditional. It makes people extremely sensitive to the judgments of others and quick to take offense when they feel slighted.

"Conditional love" is a term you hear used to describe the parenting style of people with narcissistic personality disorder, a deficit of empathy that causes them to view their children as extensions of themselves. This keeps up the theme of Brooks assuming that the average American (and the average Westerner more generally) is a clinical narcissist, which is an amazing claim given how little evidence he offers.

9. Hyper-individualism directs people toward false and unsatisfying lives. Some people lead an aesthetic life. They see their lives as a series of Instagram experiences which may be pleasant, but which don’t accumulate into anything because they are not serving a large cause. Some people become insecure overachievers. They seek to win by accomplishment the love, admiration, and attachment they can’t get any other way, but of course no amount of achievement ever gives them the love they crave.

The obligatory fist wave at The Kids These Days With Their Darned Smartphones And Their [INSERT CURRENTLY POPULAR SERVICE HERE]. Note: I'm pretty sure Instagram is not the site du jour, actually.

10. When you build a whole society on an overly thin view of human nature, you wind up with a dehumanized culture in which people are starved of the things they yearn for most deeply.

That could be true, but how does that bear on us?

11. The uncommitted person is the unremembered person. A person who does not commit to some loyalty outside of self leaves no deep mark on the world.

My obligatory comment about how, by his own standards, Brooks isn't committed to much of anything.

12. Hyper-individualism leads to tribalism. People eventually rebel against the isolation and meaninglessness of hyper-individualism by joining a partisan tribe. This seems like relation but is actually its opposite. If a healthy community is based on mutual affection, the tribalist mentality is based on mutual distrust. If a healthy community is based on an abundance mindset, the tribalist mentality is based on a scarcity mindset—we’re in a zero-sum struggle of all against all, threat is everythywhere. If a person in healthy community delights in difference and celebrates other people’s loyalties, the tribalist seeks to destroy other loyalties. It is always us versus them, friend or enemy, destroy or be destroyed. Anger is the mode. The tribalist is seeking connection but isolates himself ever more bitterly within his own resentments and animosity. Tribalism is the dark twin of community. The tragic paradox of hyper-individualism is that what began as an ecstatic liberation ends up as a war of tribe against tribe that crushes the individuals it sought to free.

Everything in this enormous paragraph is recycled and has been addressed elsewhere. I'll only comment that I have never understood how it is that one gets from "I'm only in it for me" to "For the good of the volk!" - really feels like there should be a few more dots here. Also, I'm just copy-pasting this, so any errors are on the Aspen Institute site (and presumably in the book, so I hope the editor didn't drink too much).

Next time: We meet Gallant.