The Idealism of Jackets and Ties
David Brooks is one of America’s most successful thinkers in much the same way that Thomas Kinkade, painter of light, is one of America’s most successful artists. And Brooks’s column on Teddy K’s endorsement of Obama is artful in much the way “A Day at the Cinderella Castle” is artful.
The respect for institutions that was prevalent during the early ’60s is prevalent with the young again today. The earnest industriousness that was common then is back today. The awareness that we are not self-made individualists, free to be you and me, but emerge as parts of networks, webs and communities; that awareness is back again today.
Sept. 11th really did leave a residue — an unconsummated desire for sacrifice and service.
Got that? The “residue” of 9/11 is not the bitter recognition of how a surge of panic and nationalism can lead to unjust failed wars. The residue is David Brooks’s unconsummated desire for further nationalistic sacrifice, as if all those corpses in Iraq were not, are not, enough. He believes that America’s young, like him, long for a day at the Cinderella castle, which, it should be emphasized, has a dungeon in the basement.
Do you think Kinkade thinks clouds really look like that? Maybe he does. Do you think Brooks really thinks that we are “free to be you and me” only if we are unsocialized atoms? Well, maybe he does, because the way he puts it, we aren’t individuals at all. We — you and me — “emerge as parts of networks, webs and communities.” What you are is a mere part of a larger, grander whole. And if that whole demands your time, your money, your life–demands to consumate its desire for sacrifice and service — who are you to say no? Well, nothing, really. At least not anything distinct, with purposes, plans, and a value of its own. You are it.
The truth is that we emerge from networks, webs, and communities as individuals with a heavily socialized set of ideas and desires. Individualism is an idea about the locus of agency, worth and respect, about how responsible we are, or can be, for our decisions. It is an idea about the uniqueness of individuals, about self-discovery, self-creation and self-expression. These ideas can become embodied in the norms that govern our networks, webs, and communities. A culture can be individualistic. The evidence is that people in individualistic cultures thrive. But for Brooks it is nihilistic, vain, anti-social, empty self-indulgence or the marching “idealism of jackets and ties,” idealism for conformists — for conformist men.
January 29th, 2008 23:57
You know, Will, I dig your point here and I share your fondness for Rothko and disdain for Kinkaid but I’m just curious: Is this an art blog now?
Presumably, one can be an individualist and have bad taste!
January 30th, 2008 00:11
His name is spelled “Kinkade.”
January 30th, 2008 03:09
You’re all into analogies lately.
January 30th, 2008 09:10
Clyde, Thanks. Fixed.
Kevin, I promise, I’ll stop!
January 30th, 2008 10:02
I don’t like your tone. Are you suggesting that Disneyland isn’t the Happiest Place on Earth?
January 30th, 2008 10:26
I have found your art analogies somewhat unconvincing…but I like analogies. I think the analogies might be stronger if you appealed not so much to things with good taste, and more to things that work.
There is proverbially an enormous amount of room to disagree about good taste. And even when I question tastes and goals, I tend to somewhat impressed by execution. E.g., I don’t see *why* people want to make long open-water swims, but I can still be impressed. So setting aside questions of taste and color in your over-the-top art examples, I can still be impressed by their craftsmanship.
There’s admittedly some room to sincerely disagree about what works. (And there’s always unlimited room simply to disagree. E.g., speaking of being impressed by execution, it is no great feat to invoke China’s economy as an example of Communism, but quoting Chinese economic growth figures to fractional percentage points so shortly after the recent revisions left me in flabbergasted awe.:-) But I think there’s distinctly more agreement among reasonable people about what works than about what’s tasteful.
So generally I think you could get broader and more heartfelt agreement by appealing to analogies like the battlefield failings of armies optimized for parades or ideology, or the limitations of big thinkers fondly imagining planning econonomies or software engineering processes down to the last interchangeable humanoid unit; or the realities of working aristocracies or spacecraft or plantations or armies vs. Hollywood or whitewashed fantasies.
(Of course, to the extent that there’s overlap between what works and what’s elegant and tasteful — as argued off and on throughout history, recently by Paul Graham in “Taste for Makers” — it’s a poorly defined question which kind of analogy is more convincing.)
January 30th, 2008 11:19
I wouldn’t want to get into defending Brooks as an author more generally, and I can see why the quoted passages rubbed you the wrong way, but isn’t Brooks broadly right on the objective if not the normative question? My understanding is that indicators of civic involvement are up across the board for my generation. I don’t think that it constitutes a denial of individual identity, but it’s certainly happening, right?
January 30th, 2008 11:38
Trevor, Maybe. Data? If it’s up from your generation, then that means it’s up from mine, Gen X, not up from the Boomers. And I remember that 2000 Census study that showed Gen X was all into civic engagement, too.
And Brooks isn’t talking about the level of involvement, but the style. The contrast is between chaotic gatherings of dirty hippies activists and orderly lines of nearly-identical young men with close-cropped hair and jackets and ties politely expressing their collective commitment to something “bigger” than themselves, preferably the interests of the local nation state.
January 30th, 2008 12:00
This line from Brooks:
‘Sept. 11th really did leave a residue — an unconsummated desire for sacrifice and service.’
…applies equally well to the jihadis, does it not?
January 30th, 2008 12:17
Trevor is right, at least in my anecdotal experience. Contrast the enthusiasm for Obama among today’s college crowd with the resounding “meh” response to the Clinton vs Dole race among my peers in ‘96. I personally find it droll that these cute young kids think that politicians can actually affect their lives positively, but Will is correct that a decline in cynicism from Gen-X levels is like a decline in crazy from the Britney Spears level.
January 30th, 2008 14:08
Re: “The Kennedy Mystique”
David Brooks misspelled “Mistake”.
January 30th, 2008 20:00
“Sept. 11th really did leave a residue — an unconsummated desire for sacrifice and service.”
If it’s indeed an ‘unconsummated desire,’ does that mean that these idealistic young people are not actually sacrificing or doing service?
January 30th, 2008 22:59
We need to match the sacrifice of the greatest generation. Then we will satisfy Brooks. Only a few hundred thousand corpses to go.
February 3rd, 2008 18:41
It’s “Painter of Light ™”. And, God help me, my wife likes him.