NY Times column

[ewurgler]

So, I thought us soc folks can appreciate the disgustingness that is David Brooks' column today.

Does anyone else enjoy reading Brooks and Kristol to gross you out or make you depressed about the world?

[samoth]

Well... it's this kind of thinking that keeps us sociologists busy! I haven't read the book itself - are these really its claims? or is Brooks offering his own creative interpretation?

[waitinginohio]

wow, that was rather awful.

As far as New York Times columnists go, I generally turn to Maureen Dowd when I want to feel bad about life/humanity. Her article published in Latin (though she wasn't the one who translated it into Latin, and the original English version wasn't published, mind you) took the cake. Though looking back, the vast majority of her 2008 pieces were horrendous...

[ewurgler]

No, I haven't read the book and probably won't. Harvard Kennedy school seems to turn out a lot of ridiculous conservative scholars. Gross.

Dowd does annoy me, but I do find some of her more snarky columns pretty funny.

[slothy]

Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I really don't have any problem with what Brooks said. He never claims that institutions are the be all and end all of everything, just points out that institutions (and particularly well-established, exclusive professions) influence people in the direction of orderliness. Maybe I should rethink this whole sociology thing?

[ewurgler]

Slothy,

Well, sociology itself is pretty institutionalized, so we all need to rethink it. Just kidding.

Perhaps I am reading his column with all of my disgust for his past columns in the front of my mind. In general, I have a problem with him associating critical thinking with liberal individualism and selfishness, and categorically praising "institutions" as cornerstones of collectivism and selflessness.

As an aspiring academic, I find it unsettling that an educated public figure is arguing against an aim to "unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves."

[misterpat]

So, I thought us soc folks can appreciate the disgustingness that is David Brooks' column today.

Does anyone else enjoy reading Brooks and Kristol to gross you out or make you depressed about the world?

I frequently read Brooks and Kristol. I disagree with Brooks often, and Kristol the majority of the time. But I fail to see what you find so horrible about this particular piece.

[technocat]

No, I haven't read the book and probably won't. Harvard Kennedy school seems to turn out a lot of ridiculous conservative scholars. Gross.

Heclo is a fellow at the Brookings Institution, that bastion of arch-conservatism. I also fail to what's so horrible about this column.

[synthla]

I think the issue the OP sees is encapsulated in this statement: "Invariably, the people who make that list [of people Brooks most admires] have subjugated themselves to their profession, social function or institution." Although Brooks goes on to admit that institutional thinking does have it's bad side, it ultimately, among other things, "give meaning to life."

Having spent years working in a profession (law) where many practitioners do subjugate themselves to their work - in the process often denying their deeper desires, dreams and needs for the sake of a stable and relatively large paycheck - I can see OP's point. I think most of us in these forums, although now determined to spend the next few years of our lives within a very institutionalized setting, intend therein to find the tools and opportunities with which we will strike out on our own in a intellectual sense - challenging existing assumptions, positing new theories, etc. I read Brooks to be more or less explicitly attacking that approach - indeed his first paragraph sets forth a definition of a liberal arts education that places value on "unsettling presumptions" and then proceeds in the rest of the piece to undermine the worth of such an approach to life and learning.

But isn't that what we sort of hope to do in academia? Unsettle presumptions by digging deeper than those who have come before us, maybe achieving some new insight that runs counter to the institutionalized, conventional wisdom? Maybe that's just me. Yet I certainly don't think my current job is giving the type of meaning to my life that I want, but that Brooks seems to think is more valuable than a liberal education.