The Road to Character

by David Brooks

Many of us are in Ivan Ilyich’s position, recognizing that the social system we are part of pushes us to live out one sort of insufficient external life. But we have what Ilyich did not have: time to rectify it. The question is how. The answer must be to stand against, at least in part, the prevailing winds of culture. The answer must be to join a counterculture. To live a decent life, to build up the soul, it’s probably necessary to declare that the forces that encourage the Big Me, while necessary and liberating in many ways, have gone too far. We are out of balance. It’s probably necessary to have one foot in the world of achievement but another foot in a counterculture that is in tension with the achievement ethos. It’s probably necessary to reassert a balance between Adam I and Adam II and to understand that if anything, Adam II is more important than Adam I.