Key insights from
The Road to Character
By David Brooks
Audio available
12 minute read
Published Sep 13, 2016
What you'll learn
How do you enrich your inner life in a culture that cares far more about the externals? Columnist David Brooks marks out for us the forgotten road to character and introduces us to remarkable individuals from history who have walked it.
Key insights
- 1 Modern culture is more preoccupied with résumé virtues than eulogy virtues.
- 2 The quality of humility is taking a beating in an increasingly narcissistic, performance-oriented society.
- 3 The road to character is a U-Curve: people of integrity go down before they go up.
- 4 The belief that we have the power to change ourselves can be the biggest obstacle to change.
- 5 NFL legends Unitas and Namath are emblematic of the cultural change from self-effacement to self-aggrandizement.
- 6 The conventional interpretation of moral decline after the 1950s does not square with all the facts.
- 7 The road to character is approached from different places, but the fruit is recognizable anywhere.
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