PBS NewsHour commentator and former New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks America’s institutions are focusing too much on logic and have lost their heart.
He laid out that position during a talk at Florida State University’s Ruby Diamond Concert Hall Thursday. He was speaking as part of FSU’s Institute for Governance and Civics’ fall speaker series.
A former Republican-turned Democrat post-Trump, Brooks told the crowd he thinks the United States’ cultural and business institutions have become too focused on what he called the party of the head.
“Because of capitalism and because of technology, is that the party of the head has established hegemony over our culture. The party of the head is the belief that reasoning is the crowning human faculty, emotions are to be distrusted, and material reality is all there is. You don’t have to worry about spiritual life,” he said.
He says it led to too much of a focus on money, work and other issues that can be objectively measured. He says it has had negative impacts on young people.
“What happens to a human being when you cut away their spiritual core, when you pave it over? They notice. I don’t have to give you all the statistics that are by now familiar: the rise in loneliness, the rise in depression, rise in mental health, 60% rise in suicide rates, the number of people who rate themselves in the lowest happiness category in America is up by 50% since 2000. Share of young adults who say they are not happy has more than doubled since 2000. Only 13% of millennial and Gen Z say other human beings can be trusted,” he said.
He also commented on artificial intelligence. He says people are using it as a crutch to avoid thinking for themselves.
“A lot of people just don’t like to think it’s hard, and they will use AI to so they don’t have to think hard, and their thinking abilities will shrivel, and they’ll just become weaker thinkers, and they’ll rely on AI more and more and more, and they will fall into a cognitive underclass because they do not have, they haven’t kept their brains in top shape. Other people who have what they call high need for cognition, they will use AI to think more, and they will become smarter when they become really supercharged,” he said.
The IGC will next be hosting former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sept. 22, for his talk entitled “Saving the West”.
