Words&Dirt

Summary:

The purpose of David Brooks’s How to Know a Person is to help readers learn to become “Illuminators,” which he defines as folks who “have a persistent curiosity about other people” and are experts in “the craft of understanding others” (13). In service of this goal, Brooks explores his personal history, the life stories of other writers, and a variety of psychological and philosophical frameworks. In Part One, “I See You,” Brooks lays out our best available theories and techniques for social engagement in ideal circumstances. In Part Two, “I See You in Your Struggles,” he demonstrates how these tools can be utilized and adapted to provide companionship and support to people in the depths of immense suffering. And in Part Three, “I See You With Your Strengths,” he describes how we can help people share and revise the stories of their lives in ways that are compassionate, edifying, and empowering. Simultaneously modest and deeply ambitious, How to Know a Person is a remarkable work of intellectual synthesis that is guaranteed to benefit anyone who reads it. 

Key Concepts and Notes:

• This book is a fully-realized guide to “relationshipping”––a term I first encountered in a book called Friends, for Life by Steve Duck. Duck describes relationshipping as an active practice “that can be improved, refined, polished (even coached and practised) like any other skill, trained like any other, and made more fluent” (4). Brooks takes the same approach but in a much more thorough and systematic fashion, pointing out that while some people will always have a natural talent for social engagement, anyone who decides to put in the effort can learn to do it effectively.
  
• This isn’t explicitly a book for therapists, but therapists would do well to read it, especially if like me they are early in their careers. Many of the perspectives and communication strategies that Brooks endorses are among the “common factors” or “therapeutic skillset” that all therapists should learn and refine. His ideas about accompaniment of others, therapy as a kind of editing process, the crucial role of patience, and insistence that we strive to see people in their full moral complexity are all foundational pieces of good therapy.
• Throughout the book, Brooks strikes an elegant balance between subjective and objective viewpoints. He’s not afraid to share intimate details of his life, including personal failures and regrets. He puts himself humbly and convincingly forth as a person whose life has improved significantly through studying how to become a more socially sensitive and adept person. But he also brings plenty of facts and scientific data to the table, along with lots of true stories about the lives of ordinary people that help to illustrate and reinforce his arguments. 
  
• Brooks’s chapters on empathy, psychosocial development, life narratives, and wisdom are all bangers––some of the best writing on these topics I have come across in recent years. His treatments aren’t exhaustive but they’re keenly crafted and focused on the book’s skill-building theme.
• There is just one small feature of Brooks’s outlook that doesn’t click for me. He likes the idea of people having “souls,” which he defines as “transcendent sparks” with “no weight, size, color, or shape” that are somehow supposed to generate awareness “that at the deepest level we are all equals” (31). I’ve never bought into this religious (or at least religious-adjacent) notion, although I appreciate the humanist tradition from which it stems. Fortunately, I don’t think that sharing Brooks’s belief in a soul is necessary to get on board with the rest of the book.
• On the whole, How to Know a Person constitutes a wonderful contribution to modern virtue ethics. I just hope the scope of Brooks’s influence remains limited, because if everyone becomes an Illuminator overnight I’ll be out of a job!
• If you’re interested in this book but are on the fence about whether to read it, please do review the passages below. Brooks’s writing is exquisite and speaks for itself much more effectively than I can.

Favorite Quotes:

When I was young, I wanted to be knowledgeable, but as I got older, I wanted to be wise. Wise people don’t just possess information; they possess a compassionate understanding of other people. They know about life. (7)

In this age of creeping dehumanization, I’ve become obsessed with social skills: how to get better at treating people with consideration; how to get better at understanding the people right around us. I’ve come to believe that the quality of our lives and the health of our society depends, to a large degree, on how well we treat each other in the minute interactions of daily life.

And all these different skills rest on one foundational skill: the ability to understand what another person is going through. There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen––to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.

That is at the heart of being a good person, the ultimate gift you can give to others and to yourself. (9)

Morality is mostly about how you pay attention to others. Moral behavior happens continuously throughout the day, even during the seemingly uneventful and everyday moments. (38)

A person is a point of view. Every person you meet is a creative artist who takes the events of life and, over time, creates a very personal way of seeing the world. Like any artist, each person takes the experiences of a lifetime and integrates them into a complex representation of the world. That representation, the subjective consciousness that makes you you, integrates your memories, attitudes, beliefs, convictions, traumas, loves, fears, desires, and goals into your own distinct way of being. That representation helps you interpret all the ambiguous data your senses pick up, helps you predict what’s going to happen, helps you discern what really matters in a situation, helps you decide how to feel about any situation, helps shape what you want, who you love, what you admire, who you are, and what you should be doing at any given moment. Your mind creates a world, with beauty and ugliness, excitement, tedium, friends, and enemies, and you live within that construction. People don’t see the world with their eyes; they see it with their entire life. (64)

If you want to know someone well, you have to see the person in front of you as a distinct and never-to-be repeated individual. But you’ve also got to see that person as a member of their groups. And you’ve also got to see their social location––the way some people are insiders and other people are outsiders, how some sit on the top of society and some are marginalized to the fringes. The trick is to be able to see each person on these three levels all at once. (109)

At some point in their lives, most people come to realize that some of their models are no longer working. The defenses they built up in childhood are limiting them in adulthood. The avoidant person wants to become more attached. The person with a deprivation schema wants to feel her full worth. The overreactive person realizes that a life of constant strife only brings ruin on herself and those she loves. This moment usually arises as a crisis. A person, because of their own stupid behavior, has broken a marriage, been fired from a job, lost a friend, hurt their children, suffered a public humiliation. Their world has crumbled.

In theory, it should be possible to repair yourself alone. In theory, it should be possible to understand yourself, especially the deep broken parts of yourself, through introspection. But the research clearly shows that introspection is overrated…Introspection isn’t the best way to repair your models; communication is. (142-3)

Coming up with a personal story is centrally important to leading a meaningful life. You can’t know who you are unless you know how to tell your story. You can’t have a stable identity unless you take the inchoate events of your life and give your life meaning by turning the events into a coherent story. You can know what to do next only if you know what story you are a part of. And you can endure present pains only if you can see them as part of the story that will yield future benefits. (217)

Therapists are essentially story editors. People come to therapy because their stories are not working, often because they get causation wrong. They blame themselves for things that are not their fault, or they blame others for things that are. By going over life stories again and again, therapists can help people climb out of the deceptive rumination spirals they have been using to narrate themselves. They can help patients begin the imaginative reconstruction of their lives. Frequently the goal of therapy is to help the patient tell a more accurate story, a story in which the patient is seen to have power over their own life. They craft a new story in which they can see themselves exercising control. (225-6)

I’m not just listening to other people’s stories; I’m helping them create their stories. Very few of us sit down one day and write out the story of our lives and then go out and recite it when somebody asks. For most of us it’s only when somebody asks us to tell a story about ourselves that we have to step back and organize the events and turn them into a coherent narrative. When you ask somebody to tell part of their story, you’re giving them an occasion to take that step back. You’re giving them an opportunity to construct an account of themselves and maybe see themselves in a new way. None of us can have an identity unless it is affirmed and acknowledged by others. So as you are telling me your story, you’re seeing the ways I affirm you and the ways I do not. You are sensing the parts of the story that work and those that do not. If you feed me empty slogans about yourself, I withdraw. But if you stand more transparently before me, showing both your warts and your gifts, you feel my respectful and friendly gaze upon you, and that brings forth growth. In every life there’s a pattern, a story line running through it all. We find that story when somebody gives an opportunity to tell it. (227)

We all know people who are smart. But that doesn’t mean they are wise. Understanding and wisdom come from surviving the pitfalls of life, thriving in life, having wide and deep contact with other people. Out of your own moments of suffering, struggle, friendship, intimacy, and joy comes a compassionate awareness of how other people feel––their frailty, their confusion, and their courage. The wise are those who have lived full, varied lives, and reflected deeply on what they’ve been through. (250)

The wisdom I’ve learned and tried to share in this book has given me a clear sense of moral purpose. Parker Palmer’s words ring in my head: Every epistemology implies an ethic. The way I try to see you represents my moral way of being in the world, which will either be generous and considerate or judgmental and cruel. So I am trying to cast the “just and loving attention” that Iris Murdoch wrote about. Having written this book, I know, in some concrete detail, what kind of person I seek to be, and that’s a very important kind of knowledge to have.

An Illuminator is a blessing to those around him. When he meets others he has a compassionate awareness of human frailty, because he knows the ways we are all frail. He is gracious toward human folly because he’s aware of all the ways we are foolish. He accepts the unavoidability of conflict and greets disagreement with curiosity and respect.

She who only looks inward will find only chaos, and she who looks outward with the eyes of critical judgment will find only flaws. But she who looks with the eyes of compassion and understanding will see complex souls, suffering and soaring, navigating life as best they can. The person who masters the skills we’ve been describing here will have an acute perceptiveness. She’ll notice this person’s rigid posture and that person’s anxious tremor. She’ll envelop people in a loving gaze, a visual embrace that will not only help her feel what they are experiencing, but give those around her the sense that she is right there with them, that she is sharing what they are going through. And she will maintain this capacious loving attention even as the callousness of the world rises around her. (270-1)

Rating: 10/10