Movie critic and later oped journalist of the wall street journal. He has served as contributing editor for the atlantic and newsweek. A bestselling author, brooks books include bobos in paradise, on Paradise Drive and is third look the social animal that hidden sources of love character and achievement became a New York Times bestseller number one bestseller and of course the work that he is discussing tonight is already number one on the amazon hardcover bestsellers list. In addition to all of this though. [applause] david teaches at Yale University and is a member of the American Academy of arts and sciences. Responding to david tonight is mike sub vibe nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in the Washington Post and author of heroic conservatism as well is coauthor with pete wainer of city of man. In addition he served as a Senior Adviser of a Bipartisan Organization dedicated to the fight to end extreme poverty and preventable diseases as well as a pastor to fellow at the Denny Hastert center for economics and government policy at wheaton pretty. As they service a senior fellow at the council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Editor at the u. S. News and world report as well as a top aide for president george w. Bush for policy and Strategic Planning and the chief speechwriter. At the conclusion of davids remarks mike will provide a response and then we will go to audience questions. David, welcome. [applause] thank you. About 10 years ago i was driving home from work from the news hour and it was the summer afternoon or evening about 7 00. I pulled over to my house in bethesda and we had a driveway that one row beside and i pull in and i can see the backyard. My kids were then 12, nine and five had gotten a hold of the ball one of those cheap brown and they were kicking it up in the air. They were chasing it across the yard and they were laughing and giggling in the ball was arching to the air and the sun was coming down through the trees with the grass that was strangely green. [laughter] so i pulled into the driveway and iran rolled up after day of work and an unexpected beautiful site that i just stared at them and it was one of those moments when life and time are suspended and when reality spills outside of its bounds and you just get a sense of feeling of overwhelm regret. What did i do to deserve this . And i feel subsumed by it a duty you have not earned. That sense of getting subsumed by beauty you have not earned creates a strange desire, a strange stirring. Everyday life gives you a glimpse of a higher joy than you ever get and exposes something deep inside of you and you want to be worthy of what you have been given. So we all know the word, that undeserved gift. You can get it around different people. I had it at that moment looking at my kids. I remember seeing people that have an inner light. I was at the American Enterprises last summer seated next to the dalai lama at lunch and he is a guy who radiates inner light. He laughs at unusual moments so he just starts laughing and he wants to be polite so you laugh back. You feel comfortable with the guy and i remember i asked him he had the dalai lama bag and i said you have any candy in there . He basically its everything you get in the firstclass cabin of an airliner, a blindfold, little razor and a big bar. When youre around someone like that with an inner light you want to feel worthy of them because there is joy there. I was in Frederick Maryland with my friend Charles Murray at your gun i read into some women who helped immigrants learn to read. It can take years to do this process. When i walked in to the rome the women ages 50 to 80 you just felt the wave of goodness come the globe loving care musical voices or were settled and rooted. It made you feel valued and important and again a sense of quietness of an inner life. You want to feel worthy of them and if you have the career success i have had its okay but what they have i dont have. You want to be worthy of that. When i come to the Trinity Forum i experience a different sort of undeserved love. I have so many friends in this room who have not only exemplified certain ways of being in the world but who have actively, and helped me in times of need, in times of vulnerability, who leads the organization pete wainer Michael Cromartie have come forward in times of struggle with supporting council. Cecilia macalpine hosted me in their home. April lawson and Kristin Collins collins, younger in years, wiser and age. And our Close Friends with their son out there. Jenny who invited us to many of their in way over there so this is to me a bit of a coming home but also a bit of feeling that these people have helped me more than i deserved. When you are surrounded by that you do feel like in the book is really a product of five years of that kind of searching. The book starts with this distinction which sharia mentioned between the resume and the eulogy virtues. The eulogies are the things they say afterwards and death whether we are brave courageous the kinds of relationships we build them whether we have are capable of deep love. We know the eulogy is more important in the daily life especially in washington where we place more emphasis on the resume we are more clear about our career than how to serve with intuition and that was true of me. A book that helped me think about was that luck written in 1965 called a lonely man of faith. He looked at genesis and said there were two accounts of genesis that stand for the two sides of her nature which he he called adam one and add called adam one and add them to. Wants is basically a resume adam that wants to build and create and build things. It is a noble adam. Adam two is the internal adam that wants to embolden qualities have a strong third in the creation of ones possibilities a solid sense of right and wrong not only to do good but to be good. Adam juan wants to conquer the world and add them to wants to obey a calling and serve the world. Adam juan asked how things exist exist and adam too asks why things exist and what ultimately we are here for. Adam juan wants to venture forth and add them to wants to be anchored. These two atoms sometimes are in confrontation with each other and we do live in a culture that supports adam juan and sometimes ignores adam too. I would add adam juan and to operate by different logic. Everett leads to reward. Adam to lose by an inverse logic which is a moral logic and not an economic one and its filled with diversions. You have to give to receive and surrender something outside of yourself to gain strength within yourself and conquer your desire to get what you crave which can lead to the greatest failure which is pride and failure which can lead to the greatest success which is humility and running. You have to forget yourself in order to find yourself you have to lose yourself. You have to balance these two things. We live in a culture where its so competitive, where the noise of communication silences and drowns out the still silent voice inside. The meritocracy wants to promote yourself with the next job opportunity. Social media wants you to be broadcasting yourself creating highlight reels of your life. We have a philosophy that is prominent today that we are naturally good and we need to trust that golden tree. Follow your passion and be true to yourself and trust yourself. And 201950 the Gallup Organization had a poll question question. In 1950 12 of the students said yes im a very important person. Ask the same question again in 2005 and it wasnt 12 , it was 80 . [laughter] they have a thing called sources on in marxism test prevails people a bunch of statements does this apply to you and their statements like i like to be the center of attention that i find it easy to manipulate people because im so extraordinary. [laughter] and the median marxism score has gone up 30 of the last 20 years but along with that the increased desire for fame. High School Students were asked would you rather be bored junior high School Students were asked would you rather be a celebrities personal assistant or president and three when they would be justin b. Versus system. I asked barbara and she would rather be Justin Biebers assistant. [laughter] asked if they would like to lead a life with a lot of fame or a life of and to the one they set a life of fame. Eyes say im kind of famous go with the sex. [laughter] its better. I didnt know whether to tell that one. But if you are only adam one you turn into a shrewd animal. If thats all you have the lack quality of inner depth. You arent able to speak with a sophisticated language. You live not attached to things that are the most important in life and that is certainly venture at times in my life. You receive the gifts that life can offer but to settle for a moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve figure people seem to like me. Im not obviously hurting anybody but a core piece of yourself is a little listening that originally hope. The gap opens up between actual self and your desired cells. So i spent four years trying to figure out that inner life that sense of being unworthy of the kids one has received. How do you get that . How do you become a little more worthy . A book in only give you so much. Reading and writing a book cant get you there but it can hopefully provide a roadmap. I got an email from a guy named dave jolly who is a veterinarian who are minded me that only so much can be achieved in words. He wrote when a wise person teaches is the smallest part of what they give. The totality of their life and the way they go about it in her smallest detail is what is transmitted. Never forget that the message is the person. Perfect over lifetimes of effort that were set in motion by yet another wise person hidden from the recipient in time. Life is much bigger than we think. Cause and effect intertwined in a fast moral structure that keeps pushing us to do better become better even when we dwell in the most painful and confuse darkness. The message of 101 wisemen says is the least of what he gives. So i was looking for people. I was looking for friends. I was looking for dead friends who left us a legacy of their lives to Service Examples on how to be better. One of those friends was a woman named ida eisenhower. She was born in 1862 in shenandoah virginia. Her mom died when she was five. Her father died when she was 11 and she became an indentured servant and when a family was out for pick it one day she split. She got her cell phone to high school got into a caravan train to kansas guard or so per university married named David Eisenhower and gave birth to six sons one of whom was named Dwight Eisenhower. When Dwight Eisenhower was nine he wanted to go trickortreating. I decide you are too young. Dwight eisenhower had a temper tantrum in the front yard and punch the tree and a punch is so bad he rubbed the skin off with his knuckles. I dissent into his room had them cry for an hour and came up to bind his wounds and recited a verse. He that conquers his own soul is greater than he who takes the city. Many decades later eisenhower said that was the most important conversation of his life because it taught him that he had a weakness of sin himself that he needed to be. If we think of him as this garrulous country club kind of guy, he was a man of angering impetuousness but he addressed his own sin and defeated a sin. At night he would lie awake insomnia drinking Throat Infection spiking Blood Pressure 37 i cannot let temper beat me and he developed a series of strategies to defeat this sin. Some of them were stupid. He would take people he hated and write the name on a piece of paper rip it up and throw it in the garbage can. Thomas burton wrote to souls are like athletes. They make opponents worthy of them if they are to be tried in extended in push to the full limits of their power. Wide eyed and we teach us is the importance of locating your core person in identifying the activities to which it leads to the things you are ashamed of and defending and beating it and understanding first but you do have it. The second friend i acquired died longer before samuel johnson. He was born in 17 on line in england and barely survived his birth. He was handed over to a wet nurse whose milk infected and lets virtuosos. He was blinded in one eye and deaf in one ear and smallpox left him scarred. They perform surgery on his jaw which left scars on his face. He opened his arms and left the want open for six years. He develops system and ocd. He was rolling about and failed businesses student, failed as a teacher. His life at age 30 was what he called radically wretched. Suicide attempts was a very unsuccessful life. Out of that suffering come he turned up suffering into something. The first thing suffering doesnt it should be said theres nothing intrinsically noble about suffering but as paul tillich wrote suffering makes you look deeper into yourself beneath the daily cares of life and remind to you are not who you thought you were. Suffering carves into the basement of your soul and carved to the floor revealing a cavity below and that floor revealing a cavity below. What suffering created in johnson was a radical self honesty. We think of humility is thinking lowly of yourself that my favorite definition of humility is radical selfawareness from a position of other centeredness. Radical selfawareness and johnson achieved that. He walks to london and he started writing treatises whats tree form does. He wrote his way to goodness. He developed a Firm Understanding the world by taking each of these weaknesses and writing about them. He couldnt control his own body but he needed to control his own mind by anchoring it in the reality of the truth. So he wrote about sloth, he wrote about envy. He had a radical curiosity. If someone someone told him there was a river in oxford where people were drowning he jumped into the river to see what it was like. Somebody told him that if you stick to and a musket and chewed it will explode so he stuck seven and and shot it against the wall. The subjects of his essays were there things that plague him sloth and the guilt boredom sorrow and he grabbed them each by the hand and over the course of that is one biographer wrote the iron entered his soul. He became from ace debt scattered person to a very stabilizing giving one. He created an amazing work ethic. The French Academy took 50 years to write the first french dictionary. Johnson did a bond with six quirks in eight years. A friend of his was given a lectureship at oxford called the blackstone lectureship. His friends knew no law so johnson said i will write the lectures for you. He wrote 1600 pages for free for his friend. Between 60 to 72 he wrote the lives of the poet 52 biographies containing 378,000 words. This hunger to express, he had a great social club Edmund Burke Adam smith but he also had his home. Former prostitutes, slaves doctor with no money and 13 People Living with him at a time. There was the largest to him a generosity of spirit. That was all created out of intellectual honesty. When he died one of his colleagues wrote he has made a chasm which not only nothing can fill up that which nothing is a tendency to fill it. Johnson is dead let us go the next best. There is nobody. No man can be said to be quicker of mind and johnson. So from johnson we learned how to turn suffering into selfunderstanding and the importance of radical curiosity and intellectual effort and the way intellectual effort can lead to moral goodness. The third friend i met was a woman named dorothy day. Dorothy day as many of you know was the person who could not just read a novel she inhabited the novel became the characters of the novel. Unfortunately she read a lot of this so she took to drinking carousing living in poverty sleeping around a couple of abortions, one or two suicide attempts a very disorganized life richie was arrested wrongfully arrested but she took her rest is an indictment as a judgment on her own disorganized life. Amazing capacity for selfcriticism. She couldnt get out of it though. She had a child out of wedlock and she decided all the accounts of childbirth she had read were written by men so she decided she would write one. She wrote 140 minutes after giving birth and its very dramatic by the climaxes with a beautiful scene. She wrote if i had written the greatest book to compose the greatest symphony painted the most beautiful painting or carve the most exquisite figure i could not have felt the more exalted creator that when i place my child in my arms. No creature can contain the best all of enjoys i felt after the birth of my child and with this came the need to worship and adore. And again unmerited love. That worship that adoration. My friend Christian Women says love is always in motion. It went to a child but then it spread outward. She formed the catholic worker she formed communes, homeless shelters not only serving the poor but living with the poor and embracing poverty. It was the love that led out into the community. Her example teaches us the value of selfcriticism and also the value of love and the service of community. So these are all some of the friends that you learn from. The fourth one i would mention is the great novelist george elliott. Like the others she had a very bad childhood. She was the sort of christian who didnt get much love from her mother and therefore she was emotionally needy. She fell in love with every guy she encountered, married or not, available or not, 70 years old 15 years old. She just needed love. She fell in love eventually with Herbert Spencer was her intellectual equal. In 19 1852 at age 32 she wrote him a letter which was a bit of a turning point. The letter, the pathetic or what she is begging him to marry her. Dont worry you wanted to notice me, i wont even be around but again she finishes with a flourish. And she says i suppose no woman ever before wrote such a letter is this but im not ashamed for i am conscious of the juror churro find that im worthy of your respect and tenderness whatever grossman and vulgar minded women may think of me. Worthy of respect and there comes a certain point in peoples lives where people develop, they dont need the affirmation from outside. They develop an internal criteria of right or wrong and she achieved that what you might call an agency moment. She didnt work out with Spencer Bushey met a guy named george loose who is also a writer legally married to his wife was six a strain having three children with another man. She fell in love with him but in the victorian area there was no divorce possible. If she had gone with him she would be labeled an adulterous unless all of her friends. She decided to my going to face social ostracism or go to him . For about a week she wrote ive counted the cost of the step ive taken and im prepared to bear without irritation or bitterness or renunciation by all my friends. Im not mistaken in the person to whom i have attached myself worthy of the sacrifice i have incurred. My only insight is he should be rightly judged. So what elliott teaches us is the power of love to improve us morally. First it humbles us. It reminds us we are not in control of their on line. Love is an invading army that we want to be conquered by. The second thing it opens the soft parts of her character. Third it he centers itself or my desire riches are not in ourselves but in others. For that eliminates the distinction between giving and receiving. If that makes us political and thats the idealistic early romanticized love the kind that taylor swift sings about. [laughter] elliott had that but she had what you might call a second love. The second love is the kind that goes to older people who have been scarred by life or in mashed in responsibilities whose love is not as poetic and its more local. Its about knowing your own weaknesses and knowing your partners weaknesses. My friend described as kind of love in a wedding toast. The second love hero is private and its particular. The object is the specificity of this man and that woman. The distinctiveness of the spirit in that flash. This love prefers deep to widen here to there. The grasp to the reach. When the day is done in the lights are out there is only this other hard, this other mind mind, this other face to assist in repelling and greeting once angels. It does not matter who the president is. When one consents to married one consents to be truly known which is an ominous prospect and so the ordinariness of the impression and to call forth the forgiveness that will be required. Marriages are exposures and we may be heroes to our spouses but we may not be idols. Its a very beautiful passage. They stayed together for years. He suggested to elliott that she write fiction and she would be good attitude she comes back a week later with a short story and he starts crying. He realizes her talent. In sum by his love is secure because the rest of his life subsumes himself to her superior ability. He becomes her age and her publicist or editor or counselor. She is sensitive to criticism like all of a sudden it gets approved in the morning cut up a newspaper newspaper articles that mention him sichuan have to read them. So in that we love becomes a moral edification. These are some of the things that need to prepare some of the activities that lead to depth of character. To get them you have to step outside the culture that says the pygmy that celebrates itself. You have to embrace and alternative culture that many of us in this room are familiar with. This is one we dont live for happiness. We were endowed with imaginations for holiness and goodness. We are willing to struggle if we can get that. Two are divided creatures equally broken and splendidly endowed. Three the struggle against their own weakness and sin is a central drama of life not the external struggle for success. Four humility is the greatest virtue. In the struggle pride is the daily vice. It blinds you to your own weakness. Characters build of your confrontation with yourself. No person can achieve selfmastery on their own. We all require assistance from outside from friends, from family and institution sent from god. In the course of this book i came in thinking that character was his iron figure of selfdiscipline like the victorian view but then i realize nobody can do it outside. The characters really the strength of your commitments to things outside. A person of character has a set philosophy about fundamental things is enmeshed in unconditional love and is committed to task that cant be completed in a lifetime. So these friends to me they are like the people on the wall. Company standards inspirations and as i say writing a book doesnt make you better but they give you a model. The reward is what i saw in those ladies in frederick moments of tranquility and joy. Adam one is never tired and he never stops. There is always another ambition out there. But add them to does experience moments of tranquility enjoyed. I mention dorothy day earlier. One of my favorite examples for her and she was a woman who struggled and suffered a lot maybe too much but it ended her life she was asked by robert kohls the sociologist if she had ever thought about writing a memoir. She was a great writer and she said you know i sat down one day near the end of my life that i wrote on a piece of paper a life remembered. I thought of how to describe my life that i thought back over the key moments of my life and then she said and i thought my life, my moments and i thought of the lord and his visits to us many centuries ago and i was grateful to have had him on my mind all that time. That feeling of gratitude and peace when adam one slice them before at him too. The final thing i will mention is the greatest of them which is augusta born in algeria. He had a mom most of you know named monica who is the helicopter mom who beat all helicopter moms. [laughter] she had a devouring love for herself. She wanted to control who he married what kind of christian he was, where he lived when he left to go to italy she screamed at the boat is sailing away. Shes not back in document followed him. He became a he excommunicated him and brought him back. She was all over him. But at a certain point he became the kind of person she wanted and the man she wanted and they are heading back to africa and she said to him all my life, she was about 56 i wanted you to be a certain sort of man and a certain sort of christian and you are that. She eventually said my life here is more or less done great i thought i wanted to die in africa but i dont care. And so they had a conversation which augusta describes in the garden. He writes that after all that conflict for all those years he writes that they experience quote the highest delight of the earthly senses and the purest material of life with respect to the sweetness of that life. They did by degrees passed through all things bodily even a heaven when sun and medicine moon and stars on it are material things that went beyond beyond. He is a long sentence thats hard to parse. Ive read it many times and i can understand what it is but a word replicate his the sentence. That word is hushed. He says the sound of the birds were hushed and the sound of the trees were hushed. The sound of the air was hushed and the sound of our voices will were hushed and the sounds of our hearts were hushed and you get the sense of silence and peace and tranquility. That is something we are all looking for and that is the reward at the end of the road to death. So i introduce you to these friends and i guarantee you just doing the book isnt enough. Just writing it, just reading it doesnt make you better but it does point a path that appoints a path to each other a way web stumbling Forward Together to each other going home at night thinking what are my chief sins and how did i do today on them who can i rely on, who can i trust and ultimately who can i surround myself with who loves me more than i deserve . So thanks very much. [applause] [applause] in the road to character david brooks wonders if the life of achievement has really resulted in human excellence worries about turning into something less impressive than he hoped muses on the eulogy virtues and right he says to save his soul. The technical literary term for this is a midlife crisis. [laughter] most of us just buy a convertible. David typically has produced a book that could be an important cultural turning point a book that seems not just a composition that a culmination something important. Work this ridge defies easy summary. Part of the book is an exercise in cultural criticism expressed through the creative choice of biographical examples. David prefers what he calls heroes of renunciation, Diverse Group consisting of men and women minorities and whites, people and straight, wrist to craddick and bluecollar generally shaped by tragedy and driven to make unsparing demands on themselves. They stand in contrast to ascend and forms of self trust selflove, selfexpression selfesteem and self actualization. The choice is clear. I have set before you unite us therefore choose unite us that your descendents may live or maybe its not quite so clear. As david recognizes american character is a composite, an alloy of more realism and moral romanticism. Eisenhower is a National Type but so are patton and macarthur. Even joe dimaggio after all married marilyn monroe. Our current problem is a massive overcorrection the advance of careerism, consumerism and woodstock expressiveness at the expense of the inner struggle and the inner life. The literary achievement of the the the road to character is inseparable from the virtues of its author. As the reader you not only want to know about francis or saint augustine, you want to know what david makes a Francis Perkins or saint augustine. The voice of the book is so calm and fair and humane. The highlight of material is the quality of the authors more and spiritual judgments across the pages david is such a reliable guy, such a pleasant companion and the book is rich and memorable epigram. Egotism is the ravenous hunger in the small space. Humility is the awareness that you are the underdog in the struggle against your own weakness. Saint augustine it turns out was historys most High Maintenance boyfriend. My copy of the book is maniacally underlined, starred in dogeared under admiration and envy. While containing cultural criticism the road to character cant be reduced to it precisely because david doesnt take our camino struggle to be primary. Like frederick beekner he finds the greatest drama in our sacred journeys the saving and losing of souls including our own. This demands a return to the moral vocabulary of the previous era still have her membered and powerful, consciousness of sin a real determination to reach holiness, a recognition that we are most spiritually freed when we are bound in a calling. Its amazing how dangerous and countercultural it is to say these words aloud. David is the perfect modern translator of these ideas because he is constitutionally incapable of fingerwagging. This is a call to a cheerful tolerant shared struggle with sin. Thomas a a campus that be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. Humility is the beginning of holiness and the destination as well. David describes a type of spiritual maturity that i have occasionally glimpsed sometimes an african village, sometimes an urban ministry, sometimes in a last room for a few. These examples though very different have a similar feel graciousness, steadiness gentleness a concentrated sense of purpose, the stillness of a wise trust. To be honest these portions of davids book were not pleasant for me to read. His description of maturity, of the center of grounded life sometimes made the book feel hot in my hand. It was difficult to fairly review something so convicting. There is a very real at this that looms in middle age when your alarm clock sounds more like the growing crowing three times, when you look in the mirror and stares back. They can be so much anxiety and dryness craving and clutching pessimism and pride and thats just in finally buying it gym membership. [laughter] put another way if davids 15point humility word buzzfeed quiz i would have abandoned it in for completion during that my score, fearing what my score would be. I suspect that many of us would. If the book had stopped there i would have secretly hated it like a cancer patient hates a c. A. T. Scan. Too much accuracy, too much resolution. I am grateful that the book did not stop there. We are ultimately saved by grace says david thesis number 10. It may, in the form of love from friends and family and the assistance of an unexpected stranger or from god but the message is the same, you are accepted. You dont flail about in desperation because hands are holding you up. You dont have to struggle for place because you are embraced and accepted. David makes this point in a nonsectarian and even nonreligious manner. He is always careful, always courteous to leave people the space to find their own way but this is not a viewpoint that comes out of these Classical Tradition or out of the taurean morality. It is an inherently theological contention, a rescue that originates from the outside. The scales of the universe in the end come down decisively on the side of love and we experience it not like the argument in the book but like a smile on a beloved space. Instead of finding, we are found. Perhaps the most amazing thing about grace is that all of their sins our failures are losses in their mediocrity are merely the preface to a story that can begin even in middle age, even at any age. Grace according to Simon Tugwell means that wherever we have gone to, whatever we have done that is precisely where the road to heaven begins. However many wrong turns were taken, however unnecessarily we may have complicated our journey for road still beckons in the lord still waits to be gracious to us. By carrying a part of this hope davids book is a means of grief grief. Let me close with one observation. David is a former bull presence in the book which allows us to be vulnerable readers. He would never in a million years elevate himself as one of the models of humility and inner struggle he praises but he is to me. Ive gotten to know david over the years first is then admirer and an occasional dinner companion piece and example of humane wisdom. He wears great learning lightly. He is an extraordinary talent for friendship and one reason this book will be so influential is because he is so admirable. David saying it is always the writers duty to make the writer better. David would achieve that role without writing a word. But im grateful that he is produced to the road to character. Thank you. [applause] we have come to the conversation part of our evening conversation where david and mike will take questions from the audience. There are just three rules to question time. One, to be brief, be civil and of course ask a question in the form of a question. [laughter] david the christian apologist c. S. Lewis he quoted a new book says that those who seriously and constantly seek joy will never fail to miss it. We tell us that resonates with you in relation to the journey you are on . I guess the distinction should be made between happiness and joy. We have a culture organized around happiness more or less and that is usually defined in the social Science Literature by how you are feeling right now. Are you happy, are you in a good mood and it has produced valuable teachings in literature. The first is that money doesnt correlate well with happiness. It does at and then it levels off. Age correlates to happiness. People are pretty happy in their 20s and then happiness begins to drift down and autumns out at age 47. [laughter] which is called having teenage children. [laughter] and then it rises up in the 60s. Peoples happiest years are the 10 years after retirement. And so i think thats useful to know but i have never actually met anybody who lived for happiness or almost never said i shouldnt say that. I was in vegas over the weekend. [laughter] that most people want to struggle and use it in a religious term or not they want colon as in they want to feel their life has significance and they are willing to endure a lot of struggle for that. Now lewis definition of joy is a very paradoxical one and instructive. Its not always the crimson and the trumpets. His definition of joy is michael will know it better but its that sense of searching. But dorothy day use that phrase, saeb wrote a beautiful book called the long one is. Loneliness was not only solitude but it was spiritual searching. We are happy when we are struggling and to feel that sense of fulfilled my feeling of surrounded us. I feel like michael i have done injustice to you. Lewis also talked about being surprised by joy. His autobiography. Maybe not something you can seek but that comes in other pursuits. One thing about the Spiritual Life that has impressed me with people i respect in this way is the singlemindedness. We talked about the pursuit of joy, the pursuit of god, the pursuit of holiness. The courage to will one thing. The perseverance to will one thing. That i think is another characteristic, the focus. Other questions . In the back there are, stuart. This is a political town and you are both political thinkers and i want to explore how the book and the philosophy of the book can maybe help address what a lot of us in this town probably in this room thinks is a broken political system, a great divided society Wealth Redistribution over the last 30 years or the red and blue about this stuff, poverty rates, all the things that we hear about in Public Discourse and maybe that is not what your book is about at all but given you think about politics all the time, how can the thinking you espouse in your book help us resent her, refrain, get us back to politics and governance that will allow the country to move forward more purposefully and so forth . I keep a list of five people in washington who i think exemplify the highest virtues and renewed faith in washington. People like anthony winner. [laughter] i guess a couple of things leap to mind. First is i would defend the space that is nonpolitical. Johnson going to mangle this but he had a good of all the things that human hearts endure all of the things that kings can a lot of our lives they friendship and community is more foundational than politics. Nonetheless i do think the shift in culture has affected politics in two ways. First as we become a more proud culture and it should be said we should not be nostalgic and we should not want to go back to the 40s and 50s. We were a more racist culture sexist culture and fathers were mostly cold to their children and did not express emotion. The food was awful. [laughter] but in this one way i do think the culture was healthier in the sense of self in the smaller sense of self. People werent bragging about their colleges on their window stickers on the back of their car and what vacation destination they went to. That would then considered getting too big for your britches and i think a couple of things benefit from that. If you have a large sense of self and the truth that the people that disagree with your are in the way and you will be a polarizing figure. You think politics is a competition between halftruths youll be humble about the disagreement because you will realize your opponents have a piece of the truth rate i think they rise of egotism has contributed to polarization. Its also contributed to an inarticulateness about moral things. We have these things called google engrams where you can track what words are in usage across magazines newspapers and books, the number of economic words have gone up and the users of moral words have gone down. Over the last 30 years works like kindness, humbleness honor, bravery are down 55 . So we are just less articulate. I dont think we are worse off we are just less articulate than that it had an effect on Public Square. The final thing to be said is character of the public petitions. We all are in businesses that have character challenges. We are pundits and we broadcast ourselves all the time. Its hard to get out of that unscathed but politicians are their own product. Jim cooper is here somewhere. I didnt see him but someone i really admire and has great intellectual honesty. Every meeting is about themselves. Everything is about themselves. I interviewed someone in the Obama Administration while the interview was going on the president left the front lawn to go in a helicopter or whatever lawn that is in the guy interested the interview just so he could stand out the window and see the presence back as he went into the helicopter. He was so much in love he just wanted to see his back. Can you imagine be surrounded by that . What i find is most challenging is the lack what gets corroded is an internal voice which says the truth. You have an external voice where you say what you have to say for the party but you have an internal honesty. Abraham lincoln had a man named john hay who who wrote the sterry string to wear. He was writing press releases about the work. We are going great, general meade is a hero and a genius and in his diary we are losing. General meade is such an idiot. [laughter] but to have that internal voice that gets swept away if you are all internal and thats a gigantic character challenge that her politician space. I would politicians face. There are two forms of humility that you should look her in the book. Humility if im describing it correctly the sin the democratic nature of sin. We struggle with it together. We struggle with and community. Makes it impossible to have a sense of superiority if you are augustinian in this. But you also talk in the book about humility based on limitations and imminent epistemological humility. What we can know. And a predisposition to make mistakes slowly. So i think humility does have social and political consequences. Things are not contained in the private realm and they lead i think in a conservative direction a burkean direction towards the politics of repair rather than the politics of dysfunction and recreation. Those i think are some interesting themes in the book when it comes to the public implications. In the back. I would be interested to know both of your perspectives on what i suspect you believe is the unwarranted rise of narcissism. What do you think has really triggered this . Newspaper columnists. [laughter] we are a humble breed. You know in my view there are some things that triggered it. Some of them were legitimate by the way. Up until the 1950s and 60s and 70s large members of population had been taught to think too little of themselves. There had to be rise of selfesteem to help his people. In the book i summarize a beautiful book by catherine graham. She is a person who early in life who had been taught to think nothing of herself into the course of hardship she learned her own capabilities. But to me the big thing, thought it was the 60s and american conservatism we are told to blame everything on the 60s but to me the shift happened in the 1940s. Basically the country had been through depression, the war 16 years of repression and restraint and they said the heck with it. We are going to let loose. So consumers and shot up advertising shot up the madman era but the big shift was they had seen world war ii and the and they said we are going to turn the page on human nature. And they wanted to do away with sin. So there was a book by rabbi Joshua Liebman that came out of that im going to write the new 10 commandments. Thou shall love myself thou shalt honor thyself and that was on the number one bestsellers list for 56 weeks. Another book came out called the mature mind this at the same thing. On the bestsellers list for 20 weeks. Dr. Spock came out with his baby manuel said if your child steal something give him what he stole and tell him he can trust his desires but he has to ask for it it. Thats an up beat view of human nature and then the power of positive thinking comes up with a guy named carl rogers comes out with humanistic psychology. You are really good inside and everything bad is outside so there was a philosophical shift that happens it wasnt the boomers i was at woodstock. The greatest generation. Anything to add . No. [laughter] right back here. Why do you go ahead and stand up. David so much of what you write about is steeped in the judeochristian tradition. Were there times in this journey we felt like actually the judeochristian tradition didnt have the framework that you needed to articulate what you are seeing, feeling and thinking . You have to understand i was raised in a certain sort of household with my parents are academics. I knew i wanted to be a writer at 87 and the joke i tell us in high school i wanted to take date this girl bernice and she dated another guide. And i said what is she thinking . I write way better than that guy. [laughter] so i was steeped in that and then the admissions director at brown and columbia and wesley decided i should go to the university of chicago. I was mentioning to somebody the crude saying about chicago its more fun for us to die but the better saying is that baptists teach the jewish state thomas aquinas. So when i got there some of the old refugees of world war ii were still there. German professors in the first two years were great hooks and when those professors saw us and encroached us with those books they said these books have the key to the truth. Aristotle, hobbes, the bible shakespeare bruce. This is the magic he. I dont know if anybody communicates back to students but it was communicated to me in those first two years were so powerful. So they are ideas and part of that is the local metaphysical. Its unclear what sort of language or religion Abraham Lincoln had. He grew up with the king james bible. It had the vocabulary so thats what i know and thats what i believe in. So everything i know is within that tradition. I just dont know asian traditions and i dont know buddhism. If there are limits to that tradition and questions that cant be answered im not aware of them. Is interesting that the sources of that tradition or countercultural now. Would be interesting to see where they emerge whether its Christian Education that plays an Important Role in this how parents inculcate this and what sources of input they have two engage in a countercultural message. I had a different Academic Experience going to Wheaton College. The joke there was the administration had and premarital sex because it might lead to dancing. [laughter] i found it to be studied the elegy at Wheaton College and it was a decision my parents didnt really understand as far as the economics of studying theology in college but it was a place to get something settled. Im not sure how much of our educational process is now oriented towards getting something settled. So it has to come from somewhere and fortunately they are now coming on the New York Times bestsellers list. And i say one thing about wheaton . When i was writing the book i want a lot of schools and many schools and presented to get feedback. By far the best session i had was with seven professors at wheaton. I have met a lot of weedy cents usually in bars late at night. [laughter] clubs in Lower Manhattan where the meetings are out of control. But i have always sensed a strange simpatico. Obviously chicago is i dont know kind of school it is, a celibate school. We were involuntarily doing it out of conviction. That one was off the rails. But there was an intellectual earnestness to both places and not all schools celebrate that. Having those two years at chicago especially the first two and wheaton, you cannot we still a wheaton grad and you cannot tell a chicago grad. Different schools, there are a lot of schools that legal mark and i didnt pick them. Jeff, right here. Why dont you stand up . Wait for the mic. It stick. I have detected no variation on the age range. By students have been raised in a certain way and to strive to get into yale and they have been working to cure fatal diseases and Founding Companies they are perfect but yet they have not been given a moral vocabulary. One of my students said to me we are so hungry. We are so hungry. I dont think there is any age difference or education difference. I spoke to 16,000 people who sell cosmetics the education is probably different in this room there is no difference how you have to phrase it or understand it. But the churches and synagogues who are completely serious those that have the urge to do this it belongs to the demographic category. But my main concern is that huge amount of idealism is a deep distrust of politics and it is interesting that they are institutional list sometimes theyre oriented to radical change but working to that approach i think is a little bit of a generational disconnect. They want to do peace corps but if you ask their view of social justice coming it is much lower and it is a shame. That there are issues out there and and if you think politics is not important to you then you dont have a need for justice at that moment so i think that urgency to make them into instruments of idealism. We will take two more questions. Rarely for david. You mention end during your talk like in a city like this one if you have the best piece of the vice for people in their 20s and 30s . That were overtaken maybe it is coming to a group like this but it is still we a leak to the elite to move beyond that were association of the elite or that bubble. Is important but every sarah tried to get out of the bubble so i go to aspen in colorado. [laughter] to get in touch with the real america. [laughter] it seems fine by the way. [laughter] so if you look at a military uniform knu name the ranks . That his Old School Like other cultural literacy test that you should have to pass and that is one thing but i think of a good life could be led hero or a bad lie elsewhere. My College Students have to career path. One is the noble the other is the cold and saks sellout Goldman Sachs sellout for i tell them there are many more. But there are a lot of horrible people in the ngo world and good people in the finance world park would doesnt matter which world but how you live your life. So thules prioritized one or two i have hired a lot of people and he says i have one question that is crucial. Name a time you told the truth and effort than it hurts. I tell my students if you can fake that you will be okay. [laughter] no. But do you live a life of the internal drama . That can be a hedge fund or the ngo if you live your life spending your life reading books or surrounding yourself with friends or keep a journal and doing self awareness and self criticism or if you have a discussion what is love good for . What are the challenges in our lives . Of just like georgetown or chevy chase. [laughter] to more questions. Going up that baltimore ending up at Hebrew School todays before my barbets i began my sad departure from judeas them then they came to realize that if god expects me to do good deeds than happy and doing a good deed that is expected of me anyway then how can i make up for my sins . It was not familiar with isaiah 64 yet but it seems a longer journey you have picked up the pieces from true transcendent truth today it is earned by good works out is that it or not it into your journey . It should be pointed out i grew up in new york and went to Greece Church school i was part of the old boys choir. There were 30 jewish they would not sing lord jesus so the ball you would drop. [laughter] volume would drop. The but the question of agency and grace are crucial. How much can you get there are in your own and do you have an act of surrender . It is the unsettled in my mind i was raised in a culture with the belief you can earn your way but as some point it occurs they you have to surrender your life and i am not clear. I dont have an answer for that. Last question. A term that you both used is holy mess holiness a and what you live that out to a year life then what you deem that to be . With the definition of a brain surgeon is someone who studies brain chemistry for 20 minutes then goes to a conference of how to do their job i feel like that because i know people have been reading these works for centuries. Not centuries. [laughter] but for a lot longer and a lot better than i have. It is a challenge to me when speaking of such topics people treated so cool then i go to a Christian School and they talk about that from 15 years ago so i feel overmatched by the ideas in this regard. My book is not a religious book uses religious categories but is meant to address all audiences of faith. Because i think the Public Square needs to have these words introduced today non sectarian manner. And there was a time when public theologians in the square we had a readership we had very little of that today. So i wonder why any secular writer the chief writer shot by a neck up. To use the word holding this in two ways to suggest a moral choice. Though luminescent but also for example i am amazed how many christians have not been to jerusalem. There is different artwork on the wall from different moments but there is a similar face of humility and simplicity and joy and of us beatitudes that is more explicit holiness. It is also intimidating because it is possible to have courage with a point of decision but will leave this holiness is about the habits that the ball off and like your own mind. And that cannot be done in a moment because as they become a character with the most intimidating of those christian virtues because it is the work of a lifetime when you meet people in that category it is not likely. Thank you so much. [applause]