New York Times columnist David Brooks posed a question to his readers today. “Would you exchange a professional triumph for a personal blow?” This is problematic. One does not choose between these things. Worse, he gives this false choice more weight because he uses the example of a public figure. [The American actress Sandra Bullock recently won an Academy Award for Best Actress of the year. Shortly after, it was revealed in the public media that her husband, also a celebrity, was in an adulterous relation with yet another celebrity.]
Notwithstanding Brooks particular biases or agenda, he rightly acknowledges that “teams of researchers have been studying happiness ... [with] an impressive rigor”. He also states “Modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones”. If there was any doubt of this, consider the billions of dollars spent in education to test literacy and numeracy against the rising costs of school dropouts and bullying, also in the billions. We can teach people to count but teaching empathy is a different matter. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC News Chief Medical Editor, refers to this an ‘EQ Gap’.
Brooks “overall impression from this research’ is a bit muddled. He states for example “that economic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and that they emerge out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important.” I’d state this somewhat differently. Economic and professional success is the result of mastery of one’s métier, hard work, good fortune, and strong interpersonal relationships.
