This post is meant to be sort of a footnote to my previous post “Fear of the Deep” (February 2014). David Brooks' latest column in the New York Times1 is about depth, and I think it provides a good example of not understanding depth. One thing conservatives do very often (and way too successfully) is to redefine terms to fit what they want reality to be. In his column, Brooks, a conservative, works hard to redefine depth as not having anything to do with the unconscious mind, or even really with the evolving scientific understanding of the human mind:
“[The] evolutionary description [of the human mind] has become the primary way we understand ourselves. Deep down we are mammals with unconscious instincts and drives. Up top there's a relatively recent layer of rationality. Yet in conversation when we say someone is deep . . . we don't mean that they are animalistic or impulsive. . . we mean they have achieved a quiet dependable mind by being rooted in something spiritual and permanent.
A person of deep character has certain qualities: in the realm of intellect, she has permanent convictions about fundamental things; in the realm of emotions, she has a web of unconditional loves; in the realm of action, she has permanent commitments to transcendent projects that cannot be completed in a single lifetime. . . . depth, the core of our being, is something we cultivate over time. . . . We begin with our natural biases but carve out depths according to the quality of the commitments we make. Our origins are natural; our depths are man-made—engraved by thought and action.”
OK, where to start? First, please notice the fluctuating and very vague definition of “we.” Brooks wants to appear to be stating what is obvious to all of us, so he includes us readers in his thoughts as if we automatically agree with him, as if he has the ability to speak for all of us. Personally, I don't agree with his description of depth at all and thus resent his use of “we.” As my posting on smarm discussed, smarmy people (who are often conservatives) value “right” thinking over any kind of equal communion among peoples. We are only part of Brooks' “we” if we agree with what he is saying; otherwise, we are not a part of that we. The reader is excluded by not agreeing, by questioning.
Secondly, take a look at the adjectives Brooks uses in his description of a person of depth: “quiet,” “dependable,” “spiritual,” “permanent” (used thrice), “unconditional,” “transcendent.” This is another characteristic of conservatives; they do not deal with the world as it is but with the world as they wish it were. What or whom do these adjectives benefit? I mean, why is Brooks using them as positive descriptions of the deep person? What value does a quiet, dependable, spiritual person with very permanent, unconditional, and transcendent interests have? It seems clear to me that such a person would be of great value to an orderly society based on stable religious values. But that kind of society is a pipe-dream, and that kind of person would be devoid of truly creative thought and awareness of the way things really are or might be. That sort of person would be a prop to existing social structures, not a freely thinking being. Note that Brooks uses abstract terms in his definition almost entirely, but when thinking metaphorically about his description of what he calls a deep person, it seems quite clear that he is not describing depth but width or breadth, perhaps. His description reminds me of the pressure my generation got from guidance counselors in high school to participate in the broadest range of courses and activities possible, to present a person of breadth of experience to colleges. And, indeed, such a person undoubtedly is of great value to a static society or religion, but again such things really do not exist.
The greatest artistic geniuses (whom I think are often deemed by some as people of depth) tend to go very deep into the area of their talents but not worry so much about being quiet, dependable, permanent, unconditional. Picasso most probably did not worry too much about how many wives and mistresses he had. James Joyce left behind not only the society that educated him but also an increasingly indigent birth family, in order to pursue the depths of his own literary talents. I'm not saying that these people are socially admirable—that's not the point about these people. I'm saying that depth is absolutely not a character trait that we can concoct for ourselves by being the kind of people that a stable society approves of. And I do argue that depth is greatly dependent on access to the unconscious mind, which Brooks relegates to being only the realm of the “animalistic or impulsive,” a realm in need of control by our rationality.
The guide I choose in trying to understand depth is the psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung felt he found certain universal archetypal images in the unconscious mind that we humans all share based on our common evolutionary history and our common nature; I believe that art bears out Jung's findings. We respond to great art because it reaches something deep inside ourselves that we might not be consciously aware of otherwise. It expands our sense of our own nature and therefore of humanity itself.
Society has a very great interest in keeping its citizens quiet, dependable, permanent in affections, etc. We are socialized to be this kind of dependable person as we grow up, but hopefully at some point (perhaps in college, perhaps in middle age) we learn that we are so much more than our social personas—that we have creative depths that allow us to be active thinkers, to question given truths, rather than (or in addition to) being a quiet, dependable participant in social institutions.
Brooks speaks of how suffering can deepen a person; I'm fully with him there. If your place in society causes you little pain, why question it? What motivation do you have to see beyond the surface? But, again, Brooks chooses a rather tame definition of suffering: “So much of what we call depth is built through freely chosen suffering. People make commitments—to a nation, faith, calling or loved ones—and endure the sacrifices those commitments demand. Often this depth is built by fighting against natural evolutionary predispositions.” This kind of “suffering” doesn't sound too awful, does it? Yes, parenting involves some sacrifice, and certainly being of a particular religious affiliation can cause suffering (though I don't think Presbyterians in this country suffer too much for their religious commitment). This is sunny thinking that assumes we can become the best a person can be by living quietly within social institutions; again, this type of thinking is entirely unrealistic. If I were going to talk about how suffering can deepen a person, I'd inquire about the father whose son was killed in a car crash on graduation night, so senselessly. I'd take a look at the soldiers and veterans of our current wars who are turning to suicide so much more frequently these days. Does their suffering make them deeper people because they suffered for their country—or just people suffering because our society does not want people to be aware of and educated about the unconscious mind of the individual or the nation. Otherwise, we might question what we are doing, what we are being asked to do.
One time Brooks uses metaphorical language is when he paraphrases the theologian Paul Tillich on the experience of suffering: “. . . suffering scours away a floor inside themselves [sufferers], exposing a deeper level, and then that floor gets scoured away and another deeper level is revealed. Finally, people get down to the core wounds and the core loves.” I wonder if that world “finally” is Tillich's word or Brooks'? I don't think there is any finally, any end to how deep we can go; I think the ongoing evolution of art and culture shows that. Conservatives like to believe there's a permanent structure that we only have to identify and live within and then we will be safe. They are afraid of the deep because the deep challenges us to question and be creative and improvise. Anyway, I assume the metaphor of scouring a floor is Tillich's, and I can agree with this metaphorical definition of depth—it's a going deep into the structure of one's self, including one's unconscious self—especially one's unconscious self, and it's done not by making broad social commitments but by questioning and moving beyond socially imposed definitions of the self. The father may decide that alcohol should not be so widely available in our society; the soldier may have to accept that he has killed innocent people. It seems to me that Brooks here has used a metaphor that contradicts his own argument, but then he is very clearly not a metaphorical thinker. If you want to believe in absolutes, you have to think in abstract terms—not the concrete terms that can remind us of how things actually are. The concrete image in the metaphor is a reality test of sorts.
Brooks is a smarmy thinker and writer. I don't know if my posts in this blog mean anything to anyone other than myself—perhaps not. It feels to me that we are being swept away into Brooks' kind of world—a world of breadth and not of depth. My experience in life has been that individual depth can be salvific. I write mainly as a witness to a world or at least to an individual possibility that I think we are fast losing.
1http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/opinion/brooks-the-deepest-self.html?emc=eta1
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