The Second Mountain

“There’s always a tension between self and society. If things are too tightly bound, then the urge to rebel is strong. But we’ve got the opposite problem. In a culture of ‘I’m Free to Be Myself,’ individuals are lonely and loosely attached. Community is attenuated, connects are dissolved, and loneliness spreads. This situation makes it difficult to be good—to fulfill the deep human desires for love and connection.”

Brooks believes that contemporary American society is overly individualistic, which leads to an unnatural state of isolation and loneliness. The fabric of society is so loosely coherent in this view that taking moral action (in the sense established through the second-mountain ethos) is difficult. In other words, the structure of society and its attendant moral ethos are antithetical to the pursuit of the good life as Brooks conceives it.

“You will notice that our answers take all the difficulties of living in your twenties and make them worse. The graduates are in limbo, and we give them uncertainty. They want to know why they should do this as opposed to that. And we have nothing to say except, Figure it out yourself based on no criteria outside yourself. They are floundering in a formless desert. Not only do we not give them a compass, we take a bucket of sand and throw it all over their heads!”

Brooks criticizes the supposedly sage advice that members of elder generations pass down to young adults in modern American society. This advice, which essentially instructs people to follow their authentic path without indicating what that means, is useless. In fact, according to Brooks, it makes the tough existential problems of young adult life even worse because of a lack of mentorship.

“It’s fascinating how easy it is to simply let drop those spiritual questions that used to plague you, to let slide those deep books that used to define you, to streamline yourself into a professional person. Furthermore, workaholism is a surprisingly effective distraction from emotional and spiritual problems. It’s surprisingly easy to become emotionally avoidant and morally decoupled, to be less close to and vulnerable with those around you, to wall off the dark jungle deep inside you, to gradually tamp down the highs and lows and simply live in neutral. Have you noticed how many people are more boring and half-hearted at age thirty-five than they were at twenty?”

Brooks believes that one of the avenues of individualism that plagues young people in the 21st century is work and professional overachievement. Many people can use this as a way of avoiding themselves, their existential angst, and their deep loneliness. In so doing, they are “decoupling” themselves from what is most important: the moral life and its spiritual expression in an enmeshed community.

“Since 1999, the U.S. suicide rate has risen by 30 percent. The plague hit the young hard. Between 206 and 2016, suicide rates for those between age ten and seventeen rose by 70 percent. Roughly forty-five thousand Americans kills themselves every year, and suicide is largely a proxy for loneliness. Opioids kill an additional seventy-two thousand Americans every year. And opioid addiction is just slow-motion suicide. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the life span of the average American had declined for the third consecutive year.”

Brooks includes these statistics to provide data-driven evidence that backs his view that there is a crisis of loneliness and meaning in modern American society, which he feels is largely a result of a misguided hyper-individualistic culture. Brooks frames suicide and opiate as tragic avenues of escape from a culture in which social isolation is the norm and via which many young people feel deep disconnection from themselves and those around them.

“The valley is where we shed the old self so the new self can emerge. There are no shortcuts. There’s just the same eternal three-step process that the poets have described from time eternal: from suffering to wisdom to service. Dying to the old self, cleansing in the emptiness, resurrecting in the new. From the agony of the valley, to the purgation in the desert, to the insight on the mountaintop”

In his extended metaphor of the two mountains, Brooks outlines the nature of the valley that lies between them. This valley signifies a period of intense suffering during which the life circumstances of a person become extreme, nearly unbearable. It is a time during which the values indicative of the first mountain are subject to scrutiny and found to be lacking. Brooks believes that his articulation of the movement from one mountain to the valley to the second mountain is simply a way to reframe the path to wisdom as discussed by poets across the millennia.

“But eventually it hunts you down. In this way the soul is like a reclusive leopard living high up in the mountain forest somewhere. You may forget about him for long stretches. You are busy with the normal mundane activities of life, and the leopard is up in the mountains. But from time to time out of the corner of your eye, you glimpse the leopard, just off in the distance, trailing you through the tree trunks”

Brooks compares a person’s soul to a predatory cat that can temporarily be ignored but never shaken. In the aesthetic phase of life, we can try to avoid the summons of the soul through work, adventure, drugs, etc., but it stays with us. Brooks believes, then, that everyone is called by their soul, so to speak, to climb the second mountain and live in accordance with their true nature.

“When you’re deep in a commitment, the distinction between altruism and selfishness begins to fade away. When you serve your child it feels like you are serving a piece of yourself. That disposition to do good is what having good character is all about.”

Brooks often argues for the generation of a virtuous character, one that wants to do what is best for others and doesn’t merely do such things out of obligation. Parental love is the most easily recognizable example of the breakdown of the opposition between selfishness and selflessness. In such a case, the parent loves the child as much as, if not more than, they love themself. Brooks wants his readers to think of this as a model for character development on the second mountain.

“We think of giving as something we do on rare occasions, on Christmas and birthdays. But the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that giving is the primary relationship between one person and another, not the secondary one. It is family member to family member. Friend to friend. Colleague to colleague. People to community. It is the elemental desire to transform isolation and self-centeredness into connectedness and caring. A personality awakens itself by how it gives.”

Brooks’s point about giving is twofold: First, he seeks to show, along with Bonhoeffer, that human interrelations are very often defined by reciprocal gift-giving. This is not confined to specific presents on holidays. He is describing a fundamental aspect of daily life. Secondly, he is prescribing the giving relationship as an antidote to a society that finds itself more and more individualistic and selfish.

“My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me; bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,

A dedicated Spirit. On I walked

In thankful blessedness, which even yet remains.”

Here Brooks quotes Wordsworth, who testifies to an epiphanic moment in his life when he realized he was destined to become a poet. Brooks uses this as an example of the way vocations and commitments in life can call to us even when we do not necessarily seek them out.

“The mentors who really lodge in the mind are the ones who were hard on us–or at least were hard on themselves and set the right example–not the ones who were easy on us. They are the ones who balanced unstinting love with high standards and relentless demands on behalf of something they took seriously. We think we want ease and comfort, and of course we do from time to time, but there is something inside us that longs for some calling that requires dedication and sacrifice.”

Brooks emphasizes the importance of mentorship in the development of one’s vocation, a calling in life he deems much more significant than careerism. Good mentors prompt their pupils to give their best and become more than they otherwise would be. They show “tough love” by adhering to exacting standards. Brooks believes that these are the best, most memorable, and most beloved mentors.

“Deliberate practice slows the automatizing process. As we learn a skill, the brain stores the new knowledge in the unconscious layers (think of learning to ride a bike). But the brain is satisfied with good enough. If you want to achieve the level of mastery, you have to learn the skill so deliberately that when the knowledge is stored down below, it is perfect.”

Another aspect of the pursuit of vocation is mastery of a skill set. Brooks makes note of the difficulty of developing this mastery. In a sense, this requires hacking our normal, hardwired behavior that accepts lower standards of integrated functioning. This deliberate work is part of what separates the master of a craft from someone who is merely good at their work.

“You can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but you can’t be wise with other men’s wisdom.” 

Brooks distinguishes knowledge from wisdom in much the same way he separates vocation from career. Wisdom is something more profound and personal than knowledge. It is born from experience and personal reflection. We can learn from one another, but we cannot make one another wise. Brooks implicitly adopts an epistemology that mirrors his view of two mountains, or orientations in life.

“Things get even harder when your spouse, who loves you so much, wants to help you become a better person. Your spouse wants to give you service. But we don’t want to receive service! We want to be independent and take care of our own lives. Back when we were single nobody gave us gifts, at least not the kind that required a humiliating acknowledgement of our dependence on another person. But in marriage, the big humiliation is that you need help from somebody else.”

For the person in pursuit of the first mountain, which is characterized (in part) by the independent pursuit of the goals directed by an ego ideal, marriage can be humiliating. This is not because of any inherent conflict with a spouse but because of the requirement of mutual dependence. For Brooks, dependence in marriage is closer to the truth of the human existential position than solitary careerist pursuit. It radically limits claims to autonomy in a way that is productive of an understanding of our social nature and fundamental codependence.

“Combustion is the phase when you finally see the other person at full depth. Not the way others see, but the way only you can see. He is just sitting at the table, paying the family bills, and you pause with your loving eyes and you see him tenderly, with all his goodness. She is just coming into the living room, home from work, her hair a little frazzled, juggling a dozen bags and things, and she looks up in the doorway, outlined by the light behind her, her mouth half open expectantly, and you just think–I saw you. I saw all the way through.”

Brooks uses the term “combustion” to refer to the insight marriage offers into the essence of one’s spouse. One of the values of marriage, according to Brooks, is the depth with which another person is revealed. It creates bonds of connection that are penetrating, that make little moments profound and emphasize human relationality.

“You would think that the schools would have provided you with course after course on the marriage decision, on the psychology of marriage, the neuroscience of marriage, the literature of marriage. But no, society is a massive conspiracy to distract you from the important choices of life in order to help you fixate on the unimportant ones.”

Part of Brooks’s project is to consistently criticize the failures of modern American culture to adequately address the most basic and important aspects of individual life. Because married life is so integral to the basic health and well-being of married (and potentially married) people, the general failure to take extensive notice of the marriage decision is, for Brooks, appalling. For him, the cultural significance of marriage should dictate its value as an object of study and public engagement.

“Couples who have reached this final harmony haven’t only achieved contentment; they’ve achieved catharsis, which is a moral state as well as an emotional one. Catharsis comes after the long ups and downs. It comes when you look back and realize that it’s more accurate to say that you’ve really had five or six different marriages, that you were married to five or six different people who happened to inhabit, over the years, the same body. It comes after the episodes of comedy and tragedy, the exposure of sin and joy. It’s like the end of the play when the characters have been exposed and forgiven, tears have been shed and everyone is laughing together.”

Brooks invokes catharsis, a term he derives from Aristotle, to explain the emotional and moral state of mind of those who’ve experienced long marriages. It is not that the marriages are easy or comfortable—catharsis is the result of having extensive, sometimes fraught, relationships with a loved one. It is the moral register of a “harmony” that results only from dramatic periods of mutual symbiotic relations.

“Students are taught to engage in critical thinking, to doubt, distance, and take things apart, but they are given almost no instruction on how to attach to things, how to admire, to swear loyalty, to copy and serve. The universities, like the rest of society, are information rich and meaning poor.”

Intellectual commitments, for Brooks, are valuable for much more than the critical thinking abilities (or career readiness) they provide. In fact, he’s critical of critical thinking divorced from admiration and attachments. The failure to admire results in a dearth of meaningful intellectual connections leads to a scathing, unproductive, detached criticality, which is not good for individuals or societies and is fundamentally antithetical to the second-mountain pursuit.

“I was getting off the subway in Penn Station in New York at rush hour. I was surrounded as always by thousands of people, silent, sullen, trudging to work in long lines. Normally in those circumstances you feel like just another ant leading a meaningless life in a meaningless universe. Normally the routineness of life dulls your capacity for wonder. But this time everything was illuminated, and I became aware of an infinite depth in each of these thousands of people. They were living souls. Suddenly it seemed like the most vivid part of reality was this: Souls yearning for goodness. Souls wounded by earlier traumas. Souls in each and every person, illuminating them from the inside, haunting them, and occasionally enraptured with them, souls alive or numb in them; and with that came a feeling that I was connected by radio waves to all of them–some underlying soul of which we were all a piece.”

In what is perhaps the climax of the book, Brooks describes his turn to faith-based Christian religion. He provides this account of a life-altering spiritual experience, which for Brooks is as illuminating as it is prosaic. In fact, this seems to be the point: Human goodness is everywhere. It just requires the right orientation or perspective to see it. The experience described above is part of Brooks’s personal, religious development, which is the most personal part of the book.

“Suddenly it occurs to you, with no great surprise but simply an obvious recognition, that you are very far from the station where you started. There’s a lot of ground behind you. Moreover, at some point in the journey you crossed over a border. There was no customs officer and no great fanfare. You realize that while God is still a big mystery, you don’t not believe in him. You’re not an atheist. You’re not even an agnostic. You’re not going to live without the biblical metaphysic. You’ve crossed into a different country, and the myths feel true.”

Contrary to the previously quoted passage in which Brooks describes a particularly profound spiritual revelation, he notes that other aspects of religious (spiritual) development unfold unconsciously over the course of years. This is a perspective that evolves over time and is not reducible to any individual experience. Note that the various aspects of Brooks’s moral vision of the second mountain all require long commitments that express their truth only from a first-person perspective over long periods.

“Over time prayer reorients the desires. the very act of talking to God inclines a person in a certain way; you want to have a conversation appropriate to Him; you want to bend your desires to please and glorify Him. Just as old couples become more like each other over time, the person who spends years hearing and responding to God’s company becomes more like Him, at the secret level, the places only God can see.”

Again, Brooks emphasizes the temporal dimensions of the good life. The commitment to a life of prayer only reveals its value in time as well. Brooks goes so far as to argue that in the depths of one’s soul, at a mysterious “secret level,” the prayerful person becomes more godlike. In keeping with his analogy to old married couples, it seems that Brooks means that such a devoted soul is better apt to listen to God than they would otherwise be.

“An infinity of positive influences subtly reinforce one another in infinitely complex ways. It means doing away with the way philanthropy is done now, in which one donor funds one program that tries to isolate one leverage point to have ‘impact.’ Thinking in neighborhood terms brings home the reality that there is never a silver bullet.” 

In his discussion of the fundamental importance of community building, Brooks continues to criticize the first-mountain perspective. Here, it is a criticism of the dominant philanthropic perspective. This (faulty) view tries to isolate an inflection point, address it (generally with money), and thereby solve the issue. Brooks believes that this is inadequate, not systematic, thinking. It is also negligent of the local knowledge, wisdom, and relationality of neighborhoods.

“The community is the expert. Neighbors know that it’s not just the school that educates the child, it’s not just the police who keep the town safe, it’s not just the hospital that keeps the people healthy. It is the shared way of living. People are safe when the streetscape is active. People are healthy when healthy eating is the norm. Kids are educated where adults talk to and encourage the young. It’s the norms and behavior of the neighborhood. It’s the people together to find the best way to live.”

Ultimately, Brooks’s project is deeply democratic. He wants his readers to see the decentralized power in community norms and cultures. These norms are more multifaceted and richly construed than can be easily documented. “The community is the expert” because it is a system of personal relations and customs that intuitively “understands” the way of life of its constituents.

“Collective impact requires systems thinking. Systems thinking is built around the idea that if you take the direct approach to any problem, you’re probably going to screw things up because you don’t see the complexity of the whole system.”

Brooks dichotomizes between a direct approach to a specific issue and “systems thinking.” The direct approach assumes that issues can be tackled in isolation from one another and neglects the externalities, or downwind effects, that may result from this supposed solution. Systems thinking, on the other hand, is meant to be integral in its approach. It does not seek radical transformation in any one area of life, but is, in some sense, a revolutionary overhaul in perspective.