The Small, Happy Life
June 4, 2015 4:10 AM   Subscribe

"‘big’ decisions turn out to have much less impact on a life as a whole than the myriad of small seemingly insignificant ones.” When a NYT columnist asked readers to share how they found their purpose in life, a surprising theme emerged: a re-examination of the scale of our lives, and the source(s) of happiness therein.
posted by mecran01 (24 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
Came here to say that....David Brooks is a regular op-ed writer, but not what one would think of when you think of the image of a NYT columnist. Not to mention he's just a shade better than Thomas Friedman.
posted by nevercalm at 6:03 AM on June 4, 2015


"David Brooks is telling us something dark and sad—about loneliness and the search for connection; about social desolation and sexual frustration and sadness. Something deeply personal, about discovering, too late in life, that accomplishment and position and thinkfluence are no ameliorative for the rejection of your gross old-man wiener by cute millennials."
posted by belarius at 6:03 AM on June 4, 2015 [15 favorites]


I kind of like Brooks' reflective phase recently. There's a kind of parental honesty to it, as if he feels a deep responsibility to his readers to communicate what's really important.

I know for many it's probably a snooze, patronizing or whatever else, but there's a kind of deep seated good intention that grabs me.
posted by glaucon at 6:06 AM on June 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


Yeah I liked this article. It's got some thoughtful quotes from random people that wrote in.
posted by ropeladder at 6:07 AM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't like David Brooks either, but play the ball, not the man. If we're going to dismiss every essay because the writer has flaws, it's going to be a long, boring lifetime. Though I do love the idea of people jumping into the thread quick-as-you-can to let MetaFilter's unwashed masses know David Brooks has flaws. Thank you snowflakes.
posted by yerfatma at 6:08 AM on June 4, 2015 [12 favorites]


[tw: david brooks]

I'm not one of the cool kids, what does this mean?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:09 AM on June 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


as if he feels a deep responsibility to his readers to communicate what's really important.

I take your point. That said, I read it as "David Brooks is pursuing a Virtues Project, and cherry-picks his respondents' reflections in order to highlight what he himself has decided is important."

We discussed mid-life crisis earlier this year, and the Atlantic article in that FPP had this to say about studying aging and happiness: One researcher found that "middle-aged people tend to feel both disappointed and pessimistic, a recipe for misery. Eventually, however, expectations stop declining. They settle at a lower level than in youth, and reality begins exceeding them. Surprises turn predominantly positive, and life satisfaction swings upward."

There's a lot to be said about happiness, expectations, and their study. Brooks' approach may be well-intentioned, but it is limited.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:16 AM on June 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


Brandon, "[tw]" here means "trigger warning" -- presumably for people whose hatred of the writer will prevent them from reading the source article but who still want to come in and take a nixon all over the thread.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:18 AM on June 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


There couldn't be much better evidence that David Brooks is reaching through to some vulnerable, uncomfortable places in his recent writing than the epic freakout of the Deadspin writer in belarius's link above. Something has made that writer very unsettled. Good!
posted by oliverburkeman at 6:20 AM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm not one of the cool kids, what does this mean?

It means you still have a chance. There's a whole world out there, go, experience it!
posted by officer_fred at 6:57 AM on June 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


There couldn't be much better evidence that David Brooks is reaching through to some vulnerable, uncomfortable places in his recent writing than the epic freakout of the Deadspin writer in belarius's link above. Something has made that writer very unsettled. Good!

Could you explain a bit more? The Deadspin writer's piece doesn't seem like an "epic freakout," so much as a "hilarious, on-point takedown." I don't see how a lengthy, humorous criticism of someone counts as a "freakout."
posted by jayder at 6:58 AM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]




I don't like David Brooks either, but play the ball, not the man. If we're going to dismiss every essay because the writer has flaws, it's going to be a long, boring lifetime.

What if one of the flaws the writer has is that everything he writes sucks a lot?
posted by superfluousm at 7:22 AM on June 4, 2015 [9 favorites]


One serious flaw of this piece is that it is predominantly the work of others and is not "by" David Brooks; cut and paste does not a column make.

This is Brooks:
A few weeks ago, I asked readers to send in essays describing their purpose in life and how they found it. A few thousand submitted contributions, and many essays are online. I’ll write more about the lessons they shared in the weeks ahead, but one common theme surprised me.

I expected most contributors would follow the commencement-speech clichés of our high-achieving culture: dream big; set ambitious goals; try to change the world. In fact, a surprising number of people found their purpose by going the other way, by pursuing the small, happy life. ...

This scale of purpose is not for everyone, but there is something beautiful and concrete and well-proportioned about tending that size of a garden.
So: What is so surprising to Brooks about the common theme of "the small, happy life"? Who does he think small-scale purpose is for? Who is it not for, and why? Why is he promoting personal, small-scale development as rewarding, rather than, say, being a small part of something larger?

Meh. It's not interesting, or provocative, or well-reasoned -- Brooks got paid to write six original sentences that amount to "I asked readers a question, here's a theme I saw, and neat, huh?"
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:41 AM on June 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


People complaining about David Brooks writing in the NY Time have never read John Kass in the Chicago Tribune.

You have a deluded but mostly well intentioned uncle. We have a mean reactionary asshole phoning in a column from the suburbs telling people in the city how to get the fuck out of his way.

So I guess what I am saying is lower your expectations for your uncles and editorials and count your minor curses as mild blessings.
posted by srboisvert at 7:52 AM on June 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Meh. I just stop talking to my uncles. Easy peasy. Here's this, David Brooks: "Some things just aren't worth the time."
posted by nevercalm at 8:19 AM on June 4, 2015


(I was going to comment about shallow, mid-life crisis-motivated, dime-store spirituality, but nevercalm's comment has persuaded me to spend my time otherwise.)
posted by LooseFilter at 9:03 AM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Brooks ... I can't stand him.

There is something so saccharine, flaccid, and bourgeois about his worldview. And these columns where he harvests these lightweight musings from readers, are the worst. It reminds me of someone on Mefi's insight about Humans of New York and why it grates so much, that it's " 'life isn't so bad :)' porn" which I thought was a perfect summation.

Brooks is the same way. He combines this kind of rueful-yet-somehow-optimistic tone that boils down to a kind of horrible Calvinist-meets-American-avarice-and-prestige-obsession. His columns seem to exist to sanctify things As They Are. Even as he pretends to mourn social divisions or unfairness, he at the same time praises the efficiency, single-mindedness and gold-plated resumes of the Ivy-educated bureaucratic and professional class that he idoloizes. He smacks his lips with relish when he recounts the resumes of the most privileged people in our society.

And as for these ridiculous moralizing columns... I can't remember the author or the source, but there was a really great piece taking Brooks to task for publishing a column saying that Americans had abandoned thinking about big moral questions AT THE SAME TIME that "black lives matter" was on the front page of papers. The writer, if I recall correctly, suggested that what Brooks really meant was that "the right people" have stopped issuing moral pronouncements from on high.

He seems like a weak, lazy, utterly conformist/establishment thinker. He wrote a column one time celebrating reader advice to "don't be a rebel." He exists to rationalize social divisions, wealth disparity, and the positions of power occupied by people who have benefited from unfairness in society. I think people like him are actually evil. Pretty much the epitome of the raging id of a Baby Boomer spouting forth "Tuesdays with Morrie"-level pablum that justifies the status quo.

I've hated this guy for years. Me hating Brooks, previously: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
posted by jayder at 9:18 AM on June 4, 2015 [11 favorites]


Brooks is an intelligent man who will, for money, write things that are stupid and that he himself does not believe. His writing is worse than useless.

If you tell people that the article featured is written by Brooks then that is no crime and the ghost of Richard Nixon will not appear before you and offer to take you bowling.
posted by devious truculent and unreliable at 9:57 AM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


play the ball, not the man

I wanted to give this column a shot — I am about nothing if not the small happy life. And Bobos in Paradise was surprisingly effective when I read it a decade ago — OMG that’s me in there! Is that what I have become?

But this is just anodyne and nothing new. There’s no study of any sort here (that’s the perennial slam on Brooks, he’s a social scientist with no science) — especially egregious considering a single web search would provide enough material for this column.

Instead he asked his readers to write his column for him, then he copypasted out the bits he likes.

I wanted to play the ball but geez the man can barely bring it to the three point line.
posted by axoplasm at 11:01 AM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


who still want to come in and take a nixon all over the thread.

That's Kinky!
posted by octobersurprise at 11:15 AM on June 4, 2015


Brooks is so weird to me because I love him with EJ Dionne on NPR on Friday afternoons. I certainly don't always (or maybe ever!) agree with him but he comes across as intelligent and personable. But a good 80% of the time, when I read his columns, I find myself rolling my eyes and giving up halfway through because they're just so pretentious and content-free.

This 2009 gem about the how the economic policies of the nascent Obama administration are driven by his staffers' wealth resentment and nerdy status jealousy is a good example of how shallow he can be.
posted by lunasol at 5:28 PM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


One of the resons I heart Metafilter is that I can read a linked article, find it uncompelling or confusing, and then turn to smarter, more aware readers' comments here. I don't know David Brooks from a charity-bin suit but I read this article (I like the topic) and kinda screwed up my face is a semi-second of palsy indicating that my expectations (topic I like has a FPP) were so poorly met that I wondered if I had mentally glitched and missed a ten paragraph muse on the nature of incidental joy. But no. It's just unsatisfying puffery that actually made me feel less satisfied with life after reading it than before.
posted by Thella at 6:14 PM on June 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I guess the thing that I wanted from this article (something resembling "be kind every day and dont worry about being Famous or Important"), though careful quote selection or my own bias seems to come off more like "I'm much happier just living my life and not rocking the boat too much," which would seem like a compelling argument to be made by someone representative of the system intent on keeping itself in power.
posted by softlord at 9:25 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


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