David Brooks On Charlie Rose
David Brooks was on Charlie Rose last night. As usual, it is worthwhile considering his ideas.
David Brooks is good provocative. He is not interested in provoking for the cheap thrill of a partisan’s toxic smirk. Brooks is interested in ideas. His presentation is very easy to take. Like an old style liberal, who is understanding and open to discussion and modest presentation. Current proxies for liberalism are understanding only as regards certain religions, ethnicities, social classes or a particular gender. Not liberal at all. Liberalism can be said to be societal morality, but a morality that discriminates using such filters has no moral standing. Be understanding towards all or be a bigot.
Brooks’ appearance on Charlie Rose was provocative in the good way. He is writing a book on the brain, so he has applied recent findings to his interest in political matters. It sounds as though the filter he is using is behavioral economics.
As I understand it, this discipline confirms what you know intuitively. We are not exactly rational creatures. The current Cult of Rationalism, a religion of sorts, asserts we can understand everything. Little likelihood our species will ever even come close. The fear is of encroaching irrationality and the madness that ensues. People are rationally mad though. Lots of educated fools out there.
Brooks was positive about Obama; Brooks described himself as 30 degrees to the Right of Obama. He is clearly aware that Obama is drifting, but places this drift in the context of an intelligent man who is cautiously trying to make the correct decision. Whether that is truly Obama, or a projection of Brooks himself, isn’t really clear, but it is reassuring to think that about Obama.
As an aside, Brooks was wrong that “we like broccoli for emotional reasons”. Recent studies have shown some people have receptors in their tongues which register a bitterness others do not. It’s machinery: DNA, not brain function centered in emotions. Brooks is also probably wrong that brain research will give us much of an answer to public policy disputes. He said such research settles certain disputes: are we rational creatures?, for example. But those are academic, sophomoric discussions and don’t really touch the public. Ivory tower stuff. The counter argument is that the black swan phenomenon is based on just such human-as-rational-player assumptions. So maybe something useful will result from this research. I still doubt it.
The arts have always known, and even better, expressed, that we are emotional, irrational creatures; often act against our own best interests and are subject to the most pesky of character flaws that result in death, destruction, unhappiness, and all sorts of pandemonium. Brooks reminds me of the recent apotheosis of DNA and the “key to life”, we got the answer celebrations; it is one thing to understand the workings of the machinery of evolution, or of the crown jewel, the brain, but being able to draw any pragmatic benefits from that knowledge posits an enormously optimistic leap.
