The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
Purchase →This book is part self-help primer on how to ensure some level of interdependence later on in life and part autobiography chronicling author David Brooks’ ups and downs in life as a twice married, conservative author, columnist and pundit. Achievement and self satisfaction are the goals of the first mountain in life while finding meaning and the joy of being in service to others are the characteristics of the Second Mountain.
The book becomes a discussion of individualism versus community and ultimately speaks to the importance both can play in our lives. The message is about what it takes to live a meaningful life in a self centered world.
Our capacity to develop as humans is central to my belief system which is one of the reasons I belong to Braver Angels. When this book came out I saw an interview with the author whom I have read with interest since the publication of Bobos in Paradise and whose column I regularly read in the New York Times. I really wanted to read the book.
The first thing that struck me in reading was the very large number of quotes, approximately two or three per page. They come from a dizzying and often distracting variety of sources from Christian theologians to Hasidic masters, to psychologists and philosophers, to literary thinkers and current popular figures.
I wanted to hear more from the author and less from all the people who have informed his thinking.
Once I decided that I was going to continue reading it was a fairly easy task of following his clear narrative and broadening premise that we need to go beyond ourselves to be contributing members of the human race. We need to be in community, show empathy, act according to values learned and exemplified in marriage, in faith and follow our vocation with courage and conviction.
He discloses his struggles with most of the above. His failed first marriage, his ambivalence between Christian teachings and his Jewish heritage and his identities as a journalist, writer and teacher.
The message of the book is to move beyond our comfort zone and expand past our “hyper-individualism” into communities of service because it is the “right thing to do”. Lofty and laudable goals.
David Brooks is a person of achievements. He went to the best schools, he writes for prestigious papers, he teaches in renowned universities. This book is about achieving: climbing another mountain, having a great marriage, building the best community.
Where this effort falls short is that the author, by his own admission, is a work in progress and sometimes falls into the enthusiasm of someone who has now discovered the way forward and is dazzled by its beauty. Most of the stories are about people who succeed in their struggles and who are able to hear and follow their instincts that tell them the way to go.
What about most of us who continue to live in doubt?
When I hear David Brooks on television I often hear humility, I heard less of it in this book and I missed that yearning question of “whither now?” which I feel we need in today’s world.
Perhaps because I am older and can speak about an almost 50 year happy marriage, my hope (and given David Brooks curious nature) is that there will be another book, maybe the third mountain, that talks about our desire for inner peace, which is my definition of joy.