The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

by David Brooks

University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth adds that thick institutions almost always have a clearly defined shared goal, such as winning the Super Bowl or saving the environment. They have initiation rituals; a sacred guidebook or object passed down from generation to generation; distinct jargon and phrases that are spoken inside the culture but misunderstood outside it; a label, such as being a KIPPster for a KIPP charter school student; and they often have uniforms or other emblems, such as flags, rings, bracelets. Jonathan Haidt of NYU advises that if you want to create a thick institution, you should call attention to the traits people have in common, not the ones that set them apart. Second, exploit synchrony. Have people sing or play or move together. Third, create healthy competition among teams, not individuals. People fight and sacrifice more for their buddies than for an abstraction, so embed people in team relationships. Thick institutions are oriented around a shared moral cause. They don’t see their members as resources to be exploited but as fellow marchers in a holy mission. Thick institutions tear you down in order to build you up. They enmesh you within long traditions and sacred customs that seem archaic a lot of the time. They ask you to bury your own identity in the collective identity. They point to an ideal that is far in the distance and can’t be achieved in a single lifetime. “The secret of life,” the sculptor Henry Moore once said, “...