The hard thing about when you’re in the valley is that you can’t climb out; somebody has to reach in and pull you out.
David Brooks
Takeaways of Note:
1st Lie of Culture… career success is fulfilling.
2nd Lie of Culture… I can make myself happy… the lie of self-sufficiency. But the things that make people happy is the deep relationships of life, the losing of self-sufficiency.
3rd Lie of Culture... the lie of the meritocracy – that we are what we accomplish; that we can earn dignity by attaching ourselves to prestigious brands.
Early in life, we often shoot for happiness – the expansion of self
But, joy is a better thing to aim for than happiness – Joy is not the expansion of self, it’s the dissolving of self – it’s the moment where we’re so lost in the cause (something bigger than, and outside of, ourselves) we have totally self-forgotten.
As a nation, we seem to no longer feel good about ourselves, we’ve lost our defining faith in our future, we don’t see each other deeply, we don’t treat each other as well… we need a cultural & relational revolution.
David’s “theory of social change is that society changes when a small group of people find a better way to live, and the rest of us copy them.” Many “Weaver” examples shared in embedded video.
Cited Data of “where we find ourselves” and, thus, “why we need to do something different”:
Too many people are detached, isolated & fragmented from each other. Our imperative to affect relationships differently:
- 35% of Americans over 45 are chronically lonely;
- Only 8% of Americans report having meaningful conversation with their neighbors;
- Only 32% of Americans say they trust their neighbors, and only 18% of millennials;
- The fastest-growing political party is unaffiliated; the fastest-growing religious movement is unaffiliated;
- Depression rates are rising, mental health problems are rising;
- The suicide rate has risen 30% since 1999. The teen suicide rate has risen by 70% over the last several years;
- 45,000 Americans kill themselves every year; 72,000 die from opioid addictions – life expectancy is falling, not rising.