“Man,” wrote Aristotle more than 2,300 years ago, “is a political animal.” Today, that seems particularly evident. The proliferation of mass social movements, the ever-present yet democratized nature of contemporary political commentary on social media, the 24 hour news cycle, and our penchant for politicizing everything all lend prima facie support to the idea that humans are helplessly activist. But Aristotle was not simply observing that we are inherently drawn towards boycotts, protests, and culture wars. He meant that we are strongly inclined towards social connection. People need collective commitment, not just individual liberty, to be fulfilled and these commitments must be forged in moral virtue. This understanding of human nature lies at the core of what was called communitarianism: a social perspective emphasizing virtue and civil society, largely transcending the traditional divisions of Left and Right. This philosophy of public life gained traction throughout the 1990s, crested with the turn of the new millennium, and then went into sharp decline. Is its moment about to return?
At the beginning of April, I participated in the 2019 Global Philanthropy Forum—an international gathering of philanthropists and social impact entrepreneurs concerned with democratic society in the United States and abroad. The keynote address on day one was delivered by David Brooks, founder of Weave: The Social Fabric Project and recently the author of the #1 New York Timesbestseller The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. As the jacket explains, the book “explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community.”
In his address, and in the book itself, Brooks argued that the vitality of our relationships with one another, and our willingness to establish and nurture social bonds with charity and affection, offer answers to the epidemics of loneliness and depression and to the struggles of our political society presently afflicting our embattled nation:
The problem with relationship[s] is they happen slowly, and they take time and they don't scale. But norms scale. If you can change the culture you can change behavior. If you can change how people think they should live then you can change the whole society. Social change happens when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them. That happened in the 1960s, that happened with the feminist movement…and so what Weave is about is trying to change the culture around the Weavers that are already existing. There are millions of them. They're a movement that doesn't know they're a movement.
Although he now stands outside the increasingly populist mainstream of the American political Right, David Brooks took the stage as a conservative, and spoke to a room full of left-leaning global travelers (both foreign and American) about the values of community at its most local. Yet the reception with which he was met was rapturous. His head seemed to snap back at the enthusiasm of the applause.
