If you’re a long-time reader, you likely know I occasionally delve into topics related to social interaction, human psychology, and related areas. Although I’ve studied them formally, what has schooled me best about the human condition is the same as what you’ve been schooled—educated—in: life.
I’m operating on the premise you’re one who’s paid attention to interpersonal dynamics as you’ve coursed your way through life and have spent time considering—wondering—why a certain person or a group does and believes as they do.
By no means am I suggesting it’s important to psychoanalyze the behaviors and motives of others, but I am suggesting it’s important to be observant, occasionally sitting in wonderment, and perhaps confusion, about why Joe or Jane Schmo does or believes x, y, or z. After all, that’s an essential ingredient in developing and maintaining successful relationships. Like the ones you have—or should have—with your spouse, life partner, children, friends, and coworkers or professional colleagues.
Obviously, there are multitudes of differences between children and adults, but one in particular plays a crucial role in how we approach life. Like other animal species, we armor up as we move from innocence to whatever the stage beyond innocence is. Except that the four-legged critters’ armor is physical whereas ours is mental and emotional. The result, like knights of the days of yore, we approach the battlefield of life encrusted in suits of mail. That is until something pierces it. Like your child being diagnosed with cancer.
In How to Know a Person, David Brooks provides a primer in how we can better understand others. I’m unclear about Brooks’ education level, but I’m pretty sure he’s not a trained Freudian or Jungian psychologist. Nonetheless, he’s a keen observer of and has a good grasp on the human condition and behavior. As such, he gets to nub of a healthy person and successful group: Letting others know they’re “valued, heard, and understood.”
In this age of clamorous give-but-not-take exchanges, that’s far more challenging to accomplish than it should be. But it wouldn’t if we’d remove our armor and listen actively. Even if the third element—understanding—isn’t fully achieved, the first two—valued and heard—could.
Brooks has a magnificent ability to bring obtuse and off-putting notions down to the realm of ordinary people’s comprehension. For example, he quotes Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian writer, who wrote, “Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently he is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.” That’s Russian for “we’re complicated.”
Or, as Brooks puts it, we’re “messy creatures.”
Indeed we are, and I maintain the more of a mess one is, the more they try to harden their armor by cloaking their messiness behind materialistic layers, like glittering décor and other ostentatious trappings. The problem for them is those veneers are not opaque, but translucent. Which means we can see right through them.
Brooks references psychologist Jonathan Hardt’s term “rampant irrationality” in context of what we hold sacred, although sacred, as it’s used here, is not specific to transcendental beliefs. Brooks suggests those with “an overactive defense architecture,” who constantly think their opponents are not just wrong, they’re evil, exhibit that. He says they’re on constant war-footing for perceived threats from malevolent forces surrounding them. And when that happens, they’re no longer in control. Their anger can “ratchet up higher and higher” until it consumes them. They then express it in a hostile fashion, like seeking revenge on perceived enemies.
Consider how a knight’s armor and a person’s mental and emotional armor serve the same purpose: self-protection. Extend the metaphor further. Imagine how sweaty and stinky the knight becomes underneath that armor. He becomes so clammy he becomes downright disgusting and unfit for polite company. Simply put, he becomes quite unbecoming.
That, in turn, flies in the face of a vital principle of a healthy life that says we should work constantly on becoming better versions of ourselves.
In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer makes a similar point. He says if one constantly protects themself by locking themself within their house—behind their armor—they’ll never be free. He punctuates it by saying, “It’s that simple.”
The subtitle of Brooks’ book is “The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.” I believe it gets at the gist of his work better than the actual title because we can never fully know another. But we can come to understand them better. And in the process, come to know and understand our own self better.
