Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  05/19/2013 03:49 PM Report

On the power of your name . . .

"The name of the game is not always what it seems to be, Sean Gardiner writes from New York.

One son was named Loser, the other Winner.

One became a policeman and was eventually promoted to detective.

The other fell into the life of a small-time crook, racking up at least 31 arrests before being jailed for two years.

But for the brothers Lane it was not a case of their unique names sealing their fates. "I went a totally separate route right from the start," said Loser Lane, 41, a detective in the South Bronx.

Loser, a star student and athlete, went on scholarship to an elite prep school, on to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and then joined the force.

Winner's life has gone the other way. Now 44, Winner last month completed a two-year jail sentence for breaking into a car. He is living in a homeless shelter in upstate New York, shuttling back and forth between it and the city trying to get his life on track.

Why did he commit so many crimes? "It's just some situations I got in," Winner said.

Loser said of his brother: "Most of the crimes are minor crimes. He's just kooky, not a heavy drinker, some domestic violence problems, but was never a heavy drinker, never into drugs ... He's just not all there, I think."

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/31/1027926917671.html

(In fairness, most adults and Teachers called Loser "Lou".)

doodah  03/21/2011 08:49 AM Report

This 'Brooks-Chua' War, ahem, 'debate' has inspired the creation of my next movie, *Revenge of the Nazi-Nerds*(thought of it myself, in less than a hundred words), watching these Nerds trying to intellectually reinvent the wheel and exaggerate to overstate the obvious for more $$ is as funny as a 'Jesse Jackson' speech, or watching two monkeys trying to simultaneously impregnate a football.

worldwatcher  03/21/2011 03:06 AM Report

I like what the Salon reviewer said, in this hillarious except from their review, about Brooks' work of fiction:

"[I]t's like watching a creepy middle-aged man fuss over his Barbie [Erica] and Ken [Harold] dolls, posing them......, wiggling them in simulated carnal relations......, while periodically pausing to tell his audience how cool it all is, and what is going on inside his dolls' soft plastic heads."

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2011/03/04/pz_myers_on_david_brooks_the_social_animal

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It's also kinda creepy how fascinated -- or at least pre-occupied / obsessive -- this middle-aged David Brooks man seems to be with little/teenage girls *sleepovers*, as evidence by his NYT's commentary about Amy Chua:

"Amy Chua Is a Wimp"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/opinion/18brooks.html

worldwatcher  03/16/2011 02:06 PM Report

To doodah 03/16/2011 08:38 AM:

Speaking of, ahem, *dogs*, *doodah*..., you're barking up the wrong tree.

doodah  03/16/2011 08:38 AM Report

My goodness, worldwatcher. If you were our Noble, Benevolent, Liberal Dictator, would you outlaw WWII movies just because they show a few Nazis petting a few German Shepherds (Nazi Animal-Lovers)?. Would that be Too Much Propaganda?

worldwatcher  03/16/2011 04:27 AM Report

David Brooks got his intellectual and literary ass kicked in the New York Times Sunday Book Review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-the-social-animal-by-david-brooks.html?pag ewanted=1&_r=1

(Published March 11, at the NYT's online edition, and on March 13, NYT's print edition.)

The last line of the review says it all:

"Brooks is out to expose the superficiality of an overly rational view of human nature, but there is more than one kind of superficiality."

worldwatcher  03/15/2011 07:30 PM Report

More enlightenment from the fertile mind of David Brooks:

Recently (March 11th), David Brooks was interviewed on the PBS Tavis Smiley Show. Thankfully that interview was less than 15 minutes, so I could actually sit through that while waiting to see who the 2nd guest was going to be.

So, here's ANOTHER COGNITIVE GEM FROM DAVID BROOKS(!!) -- 'sociologist' or 'cognitive/developmental psychiatrist' -- expert on *love*, *character* and *human achievement*:

Brooks claims that, "Scientists say whether you graduate from high school depends on how you interact with your mother in the first 18 months of your life."[!!!]

No, it doesn't depend on your mom's/parent's *EDUCATIONAL* level (even whether mom/dad have a university degree), and/or *ECONOMIC* level, their *PROFESSIONAL* occupational level, and/or *where* you live (your residential level, upscale or downscale, and/or the level of availability, quality and resources of the primary and secondary schools that you go to), and even your school's classroom sizes -- but, according to David Brooks, how your mom interacts with you in the first *18* months of your life, and that's going to determine the *rest* of your life.

So, for example, those white babies born in a rich family, in a rich neighborhood, who's moms *don't* interact with them "correctly" in the first 18 months of life are *far less* likely to ever end up graduating from, say, Beverly Hills High School (or some fancy private high school), or even getting along with their future employment bosses(!!), than a Black child born and raised in a rural Mississippi delta town, or a Latino baby raised in a gang inhabited barrio, is likely to graduate from a run-down, always lacking for funds and even lacking enough classrooms, desks and text books, economically poor public high school.

You see, the *subtext* of David Brooks assertion is that even poor people, especially Black and Brown people, are to blame *themselves* -- in the very first *18* months of their babies' lives...: that, 'it's even poor Black and Brown people's *own* damn fault and there's nothing that, especially, we white people can do about it!' This so, regardless of how we as a country unevenly fund educational opportunities, resources and facilities at the neighborhood and district level -- typically based on historical/institutionalized racial [or economic] segregation. So, a much *better* predictor is where that baby/child, through no fault of its own, by happenstance and/or heredity of birth, happens to live and what environmental, motivational and educational community resources are provided by the city and/or state.

David Brooks assertion is essentially a pseudo-scientific, warmed-over, blame the victims (of racism and poverty), REAGANESQUE 'explanation':

'They're *Black/Brown* [because let's face it, that's who Brook's is talking about]; it's their *own* damn fault; there's *nothing* we *white* people and *our* country can do about it; let's stop feeling guilty about it; we've given them too much already; it's *our* money and resources right down the drain; and we don't want to give them *anymore*!

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I prefer what Walter Cronkite once said:

"We [white people] can try to escape our responsibility for our history here [by, for example, saying that we white people, today, never owned slaves (although the wealth of the U.S. was based on slavery, near slavery, semi-slavery and segregation of Blacks, Browns, and Asians, as well as genocide and the mega-mass stealing of Native land, leading right into the 20th century, as well as stealing Mexican land, and setting up U.S. corporate mono-crop/resource colonies in Latin America)], but we can not morally escape our responsibility for its results."

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You see, AS ALWAYS, when it's seen or implied as a *Black* or *Brown* social problem, then, for white conservative pundits and the U.S., it's a *"personal"* responsibilities problem, but when it's or becomes a *white* social problem (like abusing certain illicit, *white*-fancied drugs; or the sharply falling educational rate of white male students going to college and professional schools -- especially, but not only, in the South -- or even getting the grades/scores necessary to do so), then it's or becomes a *national/state* responsibilities problem (requiring even forms of *white-male* affirmative action considerations and remediations).

doodah  03/11/2011 08:02 AM Report

...He's a white 'Lester Holt' he is.

Leila  03/10/2011 09:14 PM Report

OH GOD. David Brooks again. Why? For one hour? Why do you keep having him on, so many times, be now thinks he's important. Who is he? He's a pretender. Now so bright..

He pretends he likes Obama, he wants to be cool, so he can then

make mischief. Like today, saying Obama can be beat.

He has those shifty eyes and weak mouth.

I'm with the guy, who turns on Kimmel. Charlie, you have some really great,solid people on your show, so why David?

charlizecourriers  03/10/2011 04:29 PM Report

David needs to study social theory. His rap reminds me of an anecdote my profssor of philosopy of science recounted years ago. Once there was a man(like Brooks) who wanted to understand the world-so he started writing down all the facts he encountered. He spent a whole life doing this and at the end he couldn't understand why he hadn't done anything scientifically meaningful. It was all gibberish,David. In Zen, there are three kinds of thinking: thinking, not thinking, and without thinking. This book may actually be the second.

blank  03/09/2011 09:41 PM Report

i don't believe in faking anything i just like to be myself i like there not being any wall just knowing that it makes me relax

worldwatcher  03/09/2011 07:52 PM Report

Hey, salgadoce 03/09/2011 06:30 AM:

I like what the Salon reviewer said, in this hillarious except from their review, about Brooks' work of fiction:

"[I]t's like watching a creepy middle-aged man fuss over his Barbie [Erica] and Ken [Harold] dolls, posing them......, wiggling them in simulated carnal relations......, while periodically pausing to tell his audience how cool it all is, and what is going on inside his dolls' soft plastic heads [or, rather, David Brooks']."

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2011/03/04/pz_myers_on_david_brooks_the_social_animal

worldwatcher  03/09/2011 06:18 PM Report

Hey, SharkswithfrikingLazers 03/09/2011 03:54 PM:

Unfortunately some people can't very easily at all, if ever, *change* their behavior, because their old *comfortable* ways -- and some people are just emotionally stuck in a rut -- even if it's the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again but *not* getting what they want out of life, out of friendships, out of intimate partners, out of healthy and constructive goals, etc.. This is better than, to them, the scarey thing of trying something *different*, the *unknown* -- like *real* friendships, and the practices therein, or *real* love, or *morally* meaningful goals (and the *moral* definition of being a "success", rather than Western orientation's *economic* definition), or especially telling their friends or intimate partners what they are afraid of, if they try something different (different behavior), or asking and being open to questions instead of making assumptions. And the only thing they're faking is the *appearance* of complete sanity -- and the only people they're fooling are *themselves*!

They sometimes resort to a shrink, but all most shrinks do is ask people how they feel this week [Patient: "Dr., I can't tell what time it is." Dr.: "What time do *you* think it is and how do you *feel* about it?" Patient: "I feel like I can't tell what time it is." Dr.: "Good! We're hear to just explore your *feeelings*."], but *never* suggest what those people could *do* [never teach them, no practical advice/suggestions, how to tell what *time* it is] to could *try* to change some aspect of their behavior or actions [like, "Does that chronic behavioral aspect ever *work* for you as a practical matter?"] to get constructive results they might *like* (consider trying something different -- a *new* model of behavior)! So, what can be done about people who don't even know how to *fake* anything different but the appearance of sanity?

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So, whether it's a person or, scaled up, a society, take the case of Israelis (the last state, an *officially* ethnic-supremacist/-exclusivist state, of its ideological kind in the world, with *everything* in their nation *legally* oriented to the privilege of just one ethnic/"racial" group. Before in the U.S. they called it "Manifest Destiny" and later "Segregation", in South Africa they called it Apartheid, in Germany they called it "the final solution" -- one *most* Israelis secretly or *openly* want against the Palestinian native people). Even, in Israel, as many once brutalized ethnic victims themselves, it feels better to them to resort to history's previous methods themselves -- "But, now it's *our* turn!" -- brutally resorting to ethnic or national supremacy -- the longest model that human history has had. And resorting to perhaps the only model they personally know or had experienced [e.g., like physically abused kids who grow up to be physically abusive adults], even if it always ends up in tragedy (human suffering, or social strife, or wars) -- than actually be that "light unto the nations" and try multi-ethnic equality where *no one* is made to suffer and *everyone* gets to live in peace and dignity. The only thing that Israelis, as a society know how to fake is, just like Nazi Germany (Israelis model of ethnic supremacy), pretending to be an (or even the *most*) advanced, cultured, superior nation. Just like other countries have done in history -- with the same tragic results, at least for other people in the world, but as King said, an arrogance that the victimizers will ultimately greatly pay for in their *own* blood. As Einstein said, 'If we Jews, after all we have been through, do not learn honest cooperation with our neighbors, then we will deserve everything that befalls us.'

It was a true visionary, Martin Luther King, who knew (instead of pontificating what people are the "greatest", or the most "intelligent", or the most "successful", or what people had the monopoly or franchise on wisdom) that "The Promised Land" began with a change in the *heart* -- and that "The Promised Land" was a truly just society with equality and dignity (personal, democractic, economic, educational, etc.) for *ALL* -- and that God's "Chosen People" are not those who think they're racially, or ethnically, or sexually, or religiously, or nationally, or otherwise *innately*, *superior* to others around them -- and this is what bores me about most of Charlie's political pundits -- but those with a special moral conscience, with an awareness of human suffering, to bring about, indeed, a just global society for all.

worldwatcher  03/09/2011 04:02 PM Report

JohnGelles 03/09/2011 04:27 AM: "What ever that was, it gets marinated in each mind in the audience or in the universe of readers and discussers, and it is there, in those thousands of other minds that Brooks and his audience together have an effect on the future of mankind."

"[T]he future of mankind"!!?: WOWWW...!! In another comment poster's words, Brooks *is* THE "OMNIPOTENT COSMIC PERMEATOR"...!!

Btw, thanks for the heads up on the Salon review, salgadoce (03/09/2011 06:30 AM).

SharkswithfrikingLazers  03/09/2011 03:54 PM Report

David, you are ubiquitous (Meet The Press, Charlie Rose, etc.) and now a book that covers such an incredibly complex issue. Are you one person or a staff under the David Brooks name?

As to your being emotional you said it yourself: "The other thing you can do is change your behavior. One of the lessons of this research, one of the foundations of what I learned was a guy named Timothy Wilson from the University of Virginia. He emphasizes that to change your mind, you change your behavior. And the Alcoholics Anonymous have the saying "fake it till you make it." So if you change your behavior, then slowly that will rewire the way you think."

So David if you do NOT want to have the same emotion as the table, as well as enhance the relationship with your wife, you know what you have to do--fake it until you make it. Write her a paragraph about how you feel about her and start those emotional neurons a growing.

worldwatcher  03/09/2011 03:21 PM Report

Ellen_Dibble 03/09/2011 10:47 AM: " I am not at all surprised people are mostly saying what Brooks's book is NOT."

Thomas Friedman...: Another TV-made, propped-up celebrity, mediocre 'intellect', and pop pundit, with few equals as such, who regularly gets an hour on the Charlie Rose Show to -- ohhh, *so* earnestly -- mug 'intellectual' (with his oh-so-earnest and highly practiced pseudo-intellectual facial expressions and poses are the best in television, just go look at his intellectually, highly pretentious studio picture at Wikipedia) and blather on and on -- even more facile and *MUCH* more pompous than the facile David Brooks. (Btw, Brooks tones himself way down on the PBS Newshour Friday debate with Mark Shields, but probably it's because Brooks has *half-way* decent and fairly articulate establishment liberal opposition there to put Brooks in check there.)

Whenever the hugely egotistical Friedman turns out to be wrong on his ultrafacile punditry -- which is *often* -- like many of these media-boosted/-hyped mediocre 'intellects', he then pretends (with the little loophole he always leaves) like he's always had the opposite, *right* position all along: "*Remember*, Charlie..., I said that Saddam Huessein was a mere few months away from [developing] a nuclear bomb that could hit Western Europe and even our cities, *unless* it's not true!"

Anyway, whenever I hear Charlie say, "Thomas Friedman..., for the hour", I just switch right over to Jimmy Kimmel Live -- even if it's a repeat: at least Jimmy Kimmel's monologues are much shorter, much funnier (unless you like Friedman's *deadpan* 'humor'), and the rest of Kimmel's show is usually *worth* an hour (although I'll usually record anything after his monologue and little comedy sketch to watch the next evening at a more reasonable time, and head off to bed so I can wake up for work the next day).

So, I only watch Charlie Rose if sacrificing Kimmel (especially the first 20-30 minutes to relaxingly wind down my day) is worth it, or I'll time-record the rebroadcast of Charlie Rose.

(Sometimes I video record Charlie's midnight show, which used to be the first broadcast out here, like I did when he had opponents of these U.S. Mideast wars (now extended to Pakistan) on his show, although now they -- the people who were *right* all along in their warnings about these wars and the position they would put the U.S. in in the region -- Harvard's Stanley Hoffman [go *hear* what he so eloquently had to say on Charlie's show], Jessica Tuchman Matthews [who constantly warned that the U.S. would be left with *no* good positions if we went blindly into these pretextual Mideast wars, and that it could be a *quagmire*, and that it could actually create *worse* positions, like a *recruiting* device for more terrorism (I mean, aside from the U.S. killing scores of civilians at a time in cities, towns, market places and even wedding parties, with the same "collateral damage" excuse that the other terrorists use) and greater Arab/Muslim resentment, or like 'a war where we can't *stay* and we *can't* leave!', or like actually *increasing* Iran's regional political influence], the very politically articulate Yousef Ibrahim, George Galloway, Jonathan Schell, Henry Siegman, even, bravely, as well as eloquently, actor Viggo Mortensen -- are, ironically, nowhere or little to be found on Charlie's show -- vs., especially, the Zionist pundits and the Zionist neocons who mightily lobbied for, misguided us into, and *championed* these quagmire wars, actually wars, especially the war in Iraq, for *Israel's* benefit, that were supposed to be over in a few weeks to a month or two at the most.)

Anyway, back to Brooks..., and no one is comparing him to Shakespeare, just to at least reasonably good fiction and at least reasonably good science. He just let his huge EGO as a media celebrity conservative pundit get to him: 'I can do (pontificate expertly about) *ANYTHING*!'

(I have a friend who's a brilliant and good lefty lawyer, but when someone who's 'an armchair lawyer', their saying that they were 'reading up' online, and with a preconceived notion 'asks', more like 'expertly' *insists* to, her about something outside her specialty in even the field of law, she just says, with all her brilliance [and modesty which makes it funny to me], "Welll, if you 'read something online,' then you probably know more than *I* do about it because, I'm sorry, it's *not* my specialty!')

If Brooks' book is *NOT* what it's pontificatingly *SUPPOSED* to be -- *neither* good science *nor* good fiction -- and *neither* one are his field [what's Brooks going to do next, pontificate another science topic to *poetry*?] -- but you, Ellen_Dibble *STILL* want to read his 'tome', then, of course, spend your idle hours-on-end, days or week however you want!: that's what pop/pulp fiction, even from a pop pundit, is for!

charlizecourriers  03/09/2011 03:17 PM Report

Why isn't he donating the profits to charity? Perhaps there won't be any.

NeilMacCallister  03/09/2011 03:00 PM Report

Wow! .."Our Mr. Brooks"!

A great man who has slidden down from, "Well, we do need to conserve our national potentials, and restrain our deficits" ...into "Well, I really like that our nation has grown emotionally to such an extent as to have elected such a spectral-feeling President who has so wonderfully regained the love and respect of the world community as represented at Harvard, Columbia, and Venezuela."

Can we maybe get Mr. Brooks back? ..with Charlie, Al, and Disney's Mr. Iger to revisit that classic Disney airing where Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett pilot a steamship down the Mississippi, burning every table, chair, and stairway handrail, to win a steamboat-race against some out-of-town carpetbagger that might be seen today as The People's Republic of China?

Oh yeah, ..I forgot, ..we are not supposed to "win" anymore (Thank you Mr. President for that education in "civility", and all the appreciation and "respect" we get for it from the now also-bankrupted world-at-large.)

We now just burn tables and chairs in our homes to try and stay above freezing temperatures for as long as we can.

(..Good Golly, I do miss the dreams of those American try-hards!)

Until we once again discover America, "God Bless our Mr. Brooks!"

Ellen_Dibble  03/09/2011 10:47 AM Report

Lightning Rod Brooks -- certain people (Thomas Friedman is another; I have watched him eviscerated by a chat board) are pretty good at that role. They are in no way whatsoever to be compared to Shakespeare; like all of us, they have a role. Somehow we manage to play our role in strenuous opposition to these lightning rods. I am not at all surprised people are mostly saying what Brooks's book is NOT. Don't read it then. Speak about these things, if you need to, based on Aeschylus and highbrow journals like Science. I dare you.

doodah  03/09/2011 09:44 AM Report

...He's a one man Spinal-Crap Concert..coming out to reach YOU, Fa La La La La Lah

salgadoce  03/09/2011 06:30 AM Report

Hilarious review of 'The Social Animal'

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2011/03/04/pz_myers_on_david_brooks_the_social_animal

"...I don't know whom this book is really written for. It's definitely not going to satisfy any scientists, or even any informed people who want to know more about how the brain works — there's no technical meat on the bones of this farce. It's certainly not going to satisfy anyone hoping for literary quality, or beauty and poetry, or even a good story. I suspect that its only virtue is in uniting C.P. Snow's two cultures, both of which will be populated with peeved readers flinging the book with great force across rooms everywhere."

worldwatcher  03/09/2011 05:42 AM Report

re Ellen_Dibble 03/08/2011 09:42 PM.

Repeat: What one reviewer said sums it up: that Brooks' book neither stands alone as good science or good fiction.

If the book is not good literary fiction, then why read it?

worldwatcher  03/09/2011 05:38 AM Report

re Ellen_Dibble 03/08/2011 09:42 PM.

Repeat: What one reviewer said sums it up: that Brooks' book neither stands alone as good science or good fiction.

If the book is not good literary fiction, then why read it?

If the book is not good science, then why read it?

If the book is racially and ethnically biased -- in humanity's time-long, tragic, war-torn sequence of who's supposed to be superior -- in some kind of universal, supremacist, all-knowing way -- "David Brooks said he thought the Scottish philosophers were closer to the truth about reason and emotion" -- then why read it?

It's just David Brooks' very lengthy 448 page screed -- dressed-up bad science put to dressed-up bad fiction put between two dressed-up hard covers -- with DAVID BROOK'S name as GIANT and PROMINENT as the title (certainly not something scientists do, and in my home library the far better fiction writers don't do that either, let alone either claiming that they have the ultimate perspective on truth).

Hasn't human history justified and suffered enough wars and/or brutal oppressions by the starting point of someone claiming that one "race", ethnicity, nation, or its group of thinkers was innately superior to all others? Haven't we *been* there..., *done* that..., often enough? In the 20th century it has been, ironically, both the so-called Aryans, "the chosen, superior race" of ultra-nationalist Nazi Germany, and then, the once brutally oppressed -- repeating this time-worn, tiresome and tragic belief -- since become the brutal oppressors themselves, the ultra-nationalist Jews of Israel (which also claims to have "the most moral military on earth"), "the chosen, superior 'race'" of Palestine.

Why read this when there are *good science* books _even oriented to the layperson_ AND, respectively, *good fiction* out there -- unless maybe you've just got a LLLLOT o' time on your hands: much more time than I do. I have to be more *selective* with *my* time.

JohnGelles  03/09/2011 04:27 AM Report

You are what you eat, drive, do, read, think, drink, feel, buy, want to be, are seen as, are (really)--even if it cannot be put into words.

We have language, literature and science to help us know and understand ourselves and other people: But that was before today's brain science began to measure physical quantities on the surface and within the cavity of the brain itself.

This new capacity to display models of temperature or electrical activity in the brain can be mated with experiments to find correlations with other measures of people and/or ancient and modern theories of personality, character, and attractiveness of real examples and fictional characters.

What you will end up with in another million years is not the ability to read and know other people the moment you capture their emissions from a hand held scope aimed at the spot on their head right between the eyes. Your scope will fail in its function because, as David Brooks said, people's brains allow for too many outcomes from NOW based on outcomes before -- starting the moment we're conceived.

Nevertheless, the idea that rational behavior can be improved by sleeping on decisions -- or at least pausing between reacting to differences over time -- may have merit.

In fast paced competitive play, we really cannot do much pausing. We have to develop the technique of instant action with the decision process hidden from view.

In selecting a spouse, we can fall in love at first sight or sleep on the problem a while.

I guess the matter at hand is what DB said for the hour or what he put in the book. But, then again, as any fool can plainly see, what Brooks did is only a small thing for starters. What ever that was, it gets marinated in each mind in the audience or in the universe of readers and discussers, and it is there, in those thousands of other minds that Brooks and his audience together have an effect on the future of mankind.

Some say the effect will be small, compared to that of Shakespeare. Others are not so sure. The two effects mentioned may not be measurable at all.

We are what we read and we are our DNA. And we are happiest when we have a close friend -- though often he must be dumb and walk on all four legs.

doodah  03/09/2011 01:03 AM Report

I think the commenters here are trying to read too much into this benevolent harmless book and it's author. This book is intended to be an insight to the metaphysics of why politicians do what they do. It is simply a guide INTENDED for THEM (politicians), by David Brooks, who is a Renaissance Shaman (Omnipotent Cosmic Permeator). He is the beam of light that changes the behavior of atoms on a molecular atomic level. That's all.

blank  03/08/2011 11:04 PM Report

i used to play sim city on a mac in high school i always used the cheat code where you have unlimited money any time you need money you just enter the code and it gave you money

i made all the dopest cities i had the city of dope the city of boom it had this sound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u31FO_4d9TY

the whistle sound in that video that was in sim city

Ellen_Dibble  03/08/2011 09:42 PM Report

I was trying to say that I do NOT think the story format is enough of a draw in itself. Brooks said as much. A novel, being read for character development and plot, would be designed differently. This book was designed as a vessel for concepts that would be far less accessible if set forth as medical/psychological treatises. But the reason the concepts are mostly familiar to me suggests that they are "in the water," and have seeped through. It may be a mistake for the publishers not to include the stick figures I suggest, and if they are sending out Brooks as ambassador on tour to promote his book, as he says, that does seem smart, because he can put these concepts on the table for national discussion, and then people like me will want the book for reference. The links between modern science and ancient wisdom would not be set forth by scientists, and therefore scientific advances are not immediately contextualized. Peer review happens first. Then people can begin to consider how this affects how we educate ourselves. I wonder how many people read Rousseau's Emile? How many people said that it was ephemeral. As I recall, that book influenced how childhood and development were viewed. You almost have to have a sense of the turning of generations to have more than historical interest, but this is now, and many of us alive today can recall when the unconscious was viewed as only valid to address if you happened to have gone insane. So this is a new page. Like anything, it may not be something that is part of any particular person's (your) conversation with the world. But I welcome it.

blank  03/08/2011 09:32 PM Report

i would agree i would say life is as simple as having a girl who is the person you sleep with and get lost in abstract with getting exercise outside in nice places running into people you know throughout the day as you pursue basic tasks which are determined by whatever goals you have which will naturally occur to you based on your situation and having money to do it all

worldwatcher  03/08/2011 09:08 PM Report

Ellen_Dibble 03/08/2011 08:12 PM: "I do remember David Brooks said he thought the Scottish philosophers were closer to the truth about reason and emotion".

Not the *Chinese* philosophers (who've been at it many more centuries)? Amy Chua of "Tiger Mom" 15-minute fame might beg to differ with you. (And please see my comment posts under that show about the *simplistic* answers that, seemingly, most Americans love -- and what people are *called* who believe that human attributes, especially "intelligence"/wisdom, and deficits are, as a group or innately, unequally distributed among various "racial"/ethnic/national[/gender] groups.) Not the Indian maharishis? Not the Latin American social and political philosophers? Not any of the other European philosophers -- why, French philosopher is almost a single word in many history books, aside from the German ones? No Native American philosophers? -- none of the ones that the Scottish, along with the other Europeans, helped to wipe out? No Arab or Persian philosophers? And, of course, no black philosophers. Just the *Scottish* ones?: *they* had some monopoly or franchise on *truth*?

worldwatcher  03/08/2011 08:37 PM Report

Check out the Amazon reviews -- none of them rate Brooks' -- "love, character and developmental achievement expert", let alone "the hidden sources" of them -- book as even particularly good.

What one reviewer said sums it up: that Brooks' book neither stands alone as good science or good fiction.

It's a pop society/psychology/literature publishing and publisher's gimmick -- and the *448* pages, I guess, are to make you think that he *must* know what he's talking about! Too many good and real books out there, whether fiction or science literature (even for the layperson), let alone an *HOUR* of him on TV (I guess Brooks owe you a BIG one, huh, Charlie?), especially about something he has no professional background in, to waste your time on this book -- unless you're a retiree at home with lots of time to kill, and lots of time to read *anything*.

This book is going to have a very short 'shelf-life': two months from now you won't even be able to sell your copy to a used bookstore (for more than a buck or so, if they'll even take it at all, and it'd end up in a pick-through bin near or outside the front of the store [weather permitting]) -- it'd cost the store more to shelf and take up 448 pages of large hardcover inventory space than it'd be worth to sell. In 4-6 months you'll start seeing it left outside on the sidewalk in a cardboard box, along with other miscellaneous items, after people move (the stuff, too old or two trifling, that they didn't want to take with them).

Ellen_Dibble  03/08/2011 08:12 PM Report

I'd say it was a mistake to switch OFF Brooks and go to Kimmel. Actually where I live one follows the other. But I did actually want to "marinate" (Brooks' word for this, using his selection of furniture example) with his thoughts on the unconscious, so I went from Charlie Rose (after a useful half-hour with Tavis Smiley on matters Middle Eastern) ASAP to Craig Ferguson, who even on a wooden day connects to his and our unconscious. I found him having a half-asleep day, he having a very small infant at home, and therefore he having had only 3 hours of sleep. That tends to bring out the unconscious if you're trying to do spontaneous connect-to-your-funny-bone entertainment. He had Paula Poundstone as second side-kick, and it was great grist for the mill of Brooksian analysis. I do remember David Brooks said he thought the Scottish philosophers were closer to the truth about reason and emotion, but I need the book to get it all together. No problem. I now have the book. The footnotes are just what I need. The narrative is nothing I would think could grab my attention. I am reminded of the way I latch onto certain comic strips or political cartoons. A glance makes me ask what is being encapsulated here, and I pause to drink the little sketch dry. It looks like I can open The Social Animal the way one can open China's I Ching, and find something that is effectively a horoscope, something to project your understanding into and come up with new things. The second edition I hope does have the illustrations. Stick figures will do. Meanwhile the open-at-random and maybe-see-nothing or maybe-see-everything situation obtains.

worldwatcher  03/08/2011 07:14 PM Report

David Brooks -- sociologist or cognitive/developmental psychiatrist: *you* decide...

A WHOLE HOUR OF THIS...!? From "Tiger Mom" to David Brooks, 'the silly season' on the Charlie Rose Show continues. I, at the midnight airing of this Charlie Rose Show edition, immediately switched the channel to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live: it's *better* comedy and more interesting and more entertaining guests.

Brooks opines all the time about politics: let's ask him what he thinks about cognitive/developmental thought processes.

Whatever...

Maybe he and "Tiger Mom" should co-write their next book together so their book chumps -- err, buyers -- can get double the bang for the buck!

I guess if you're a conservative political commmentator and, especially, a national TV-made celebrity, you can be an automatic, off-the-cuff "expert" on almost *EVERTHING* -- even if it's *NOT* your professional field and you have *NO* academic background in it, huh? The U.S.'s TV-made celebrity 'culture' continues...

cmportnoy  03/08/2011 05:16 PM Report

As a couples therapist for over 30 years, I have developed a sorting process by feeling. At the beginning it was simply, "That's IT; that's not IT." In the last ten years, it has become more elaborate and conscious. As soon as I learned some basic things related to the brain, especially the limbic system and the processes of trauma, I knew I had hit pay dirt. I had the language to describe what I knew were "limbic truths."

David Brooks gets IT. Everything he writes or discusses about the brain it chock full of limbic truths. Layered on top is his authenticity, which comes through in so many nonverbal ways. His humor is delightful.

The very, very best thing, though, is that he understands that it gets no better than Bruce Springsteen if one wants to converse with the limbic system. A story, put to music, that speaks to the body, letting one feel known, with integrity,and pure joy in being alive and part of the world. Ahh. Transcendence!

doodah  03/08/2011 02:59 PM Report

Seriously, there has not been a more perfect Presidential candidate to come along than, BUDDY ROEMER, since I don't know when. If you do the research, his FOUNDATION, EXPERIENCE, and SKILL-SET is far superior to anybody anywhere.

Ron Paul is just a conservative version of Ralph Nader, i.e. he sees the problems, he does a whole lotta complaining, HE HAS NO VIABLE SOLUTIONS OR ALTERNATIVES. Like Ralph Nader, he is a Critic, first and foremost, NOT a Problem-Solver.

I bid you, this BUDDY ROEMER, IS A PROBLEM-SOLVER (and he reads a lot of books, for you book lovers).

David Brooks, it's time to start talking about, BUDDY ROEMER.

Charlie Rose, it's time to start talking about, BUDDY ROEMER. It's time to raise the bar; I implore you.

REMant  03/08/2011 01:57 PM Report

I think we have an unconscious mind, which we are largely unconscious of, but if academics have anything to say about it, then it must really be unconscious. This, of course, was the ostensible reason why Watson invented behaviorism. Behaviorists ever since have reveled in the notion (for it couldn't be an idea) that we can't know ourselves, nor really have any free will. David seems to have missed this aspect entirely. All the principles he enunciated confirm not just old ideas, but old Progressive and pragmatist ideas. They certainly have zip to do with Adam Smith, and I wonder if he has read anything more of him than the title of his books.

I think he must have a very poor grasp of 20th c American intellectual history, as well. E O Wilson and the like were a fad several decades ago; behaviorism further back than that. If there has been an upsurge of interest in the unconscious, it has accompanied the rise of political correctness, social as opposed to intellectual history, Catholicism and allied liberal evangelism, and, of course, America's decline. I do think he's right about one thing; he's not an abstract thinker, and like most journalists he's a would-be novelist, which aligns perfectly with other aspects of his character.

Non-measurable traits are perhaps better predictors of the lack of success, than of success, at least in today's society, and the founding generation lost its mothers as often as its fathers. However, in an era when ppl often died of disease or mishap at an early age, there was a great deal more pressure to achieve, and children were also routinely treated as adults, not as kids. They were expected to keep journals and diaries and engage in self-examination, and often sent away to school. The English aristocracy used to send their sons to each other's families to be brought up, to put them on their own and away from their mothers. I don't think child-saving with its notion of the benefits of prolonged adolescence has produced anymore successful individuals, tho evolution seems to point in this direction.

Brooks seems to have been reading Garry Wills. Kant was, in fact, notorious for his idea of moral intuitions or categories, as much as the sentimentalists with their moral sense, which can be said to subordinate rationality to emotion. The skeptic Hume wrote "reason is, and ought to be only a slave to the passions." Opposed to them were ppl like Locke, who, following the Stoics, merged emotion with rationality, and said the will only follows reason. Their followers are still debating the issue. Similarly, the idea that you can change habits by changing behavior is the same old-fashioned behavioral modification mocked in A Clockwork Orange. Opposed to it is cognitive or Gestalt therapy, which holds not unexpectedly, that behavior can be changed by changing ideas. The question of whether God exists was also answered long ago. It was dissolved into questions of whether He is a person or nature, woman or man, will or idea, skepticism or design, passion or reason, social or individual, etc.

This is all illustrated in his statement that behavioral economics really tells us something. Economics began as rules (nomos) for the efficient management of a household (oikos) and so it remains despite being sidetracked by discussions of how to become wealthy (mercantilism), whether decisions should reflect unchanging individual preferences or not (public choice, or if perfect information is needed. Its basis is the simple optimization of cost accounting, and is summed up in the statement made by the so-called marginal school in the 19th c that it was the study of the allocation of scarce resources to competing ends. Despite sometimes considering itself otherwise, it has always been normative, the issue being what a rational person should do, not what an uninformed (will not being considered an issue) person may or may not do. And like all natural law it acquires its force from the idea of design, not power. It would be hard to point to any science that does not, even the theory of natural selection. I don't know that anyone has ever been so foolish as to confound individual behavior with concept, not even Plato, but economists are, ironically, not the best philosophers. Behavioral economics merely asks why ppl don't conform to the norm. Were it not for that it could just as well be called consumer behavior.

Yet after all his talk of irrationality and/or social instinct, Prof Brooks comes to the prescription one might never have expected from either a Dewey or a Keynes: authoritarianism. Why am I not surprised?

BTW, people seem to fall in love an inordinately large amount of time with pp who look just like themselves - take, for instance, Harry and Kate - or with someone who's previously loved them.

Ellen_Dibble  03/08/2011 12:09 PM Report

Great to hear David Brooks on this topic. I was writing down all the references to researchers he cited. Why? These ideas have been alive for me, whether from the general milieu or from my own efforts to be human, and I don't think the ideas he presents would open many windows for me. However, plenty of times I'm arguing for those positions and have had to do it in the past without citations. So I'm thinking I should get the book for the footnotes.

And I'm thinking if someone has NOT been thinking for decades the way I have about these matters, this book might require a pretty steep learning curve, even carefully made concrete and paced with enough story to make it easier to absorb.

He started by saying in the future we won't conceptualize "reason/emotion," and that we can't know what will show up instead. Oh, I have to think about that. We can definitely "just" listen to him discuss this for an hour, and be amazed. Such reframing of awareness, conscious and unconscious, via the friendly and familiar voice of David Brooks, is a very special gift.