The key ideas

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

David Brooks, 2019

Why can the success you worked toward for years leave you feeling empty inside? David Brooks, who lived through divorce and loneliness himself, tells the story of two mountains: the first is about career and the self, the second is about people and commitments. You will learn what happens in the valley between them and which four commitments help you climb the second mountain.

Who it is for

For anyone starting life over: after a move, a breakup, or when the old life no longer brings joy. And for those who have achieved a lot but keep asking themselves more and more often: is this all there is?

In the end, hyperindividualism produces lonely, self-absorbed people who feel that something is missing from their lives but cannot even name what it is.

Long weekends in an empty apartment

It is 2013. David Brooks is one of the best known journalists in America. His columns have run in The New York Times for years, and he is invited to speak all over the country. But in the evening he comes home to an apartment where nobody is waiting. His marriage of twenty-seven years has ended. The kids have left for college. As he later put it, his weekends turned into one long silence, and he felt lonely and humiliated.

Six years later, in 2019, Brooks published a book about what happened to him and what he saw around him. Its central image is two mountains. We climb the first one for ourselves: school, career, reputation. At some point many of us fall off it into a valley. And then some people find a second mountain, and it turns out to be not a continuation of the first but almost its opposite.

This book is not about getting your old life back. It is about finding a new one when the old one no longer holds. Brooks names four commitments that most often carry a person up the second mountain: a vocation, a marriage, a faith or philosophy of life, and a community. And he explains why our whole culture makes it hard to embrace them.

If you are starting your life over right now, after a move, a breakup, or simply because the old life no longer brings you joy, this book is very much about you. And the fact that you are opening it is already a step.

The mountain everyone sends us up

Almost nobody chooses the first mountain on purpose. Parents point the way, and so do school, friends and the whole culture around us. Get an education, find a good job, earn respect, buy a house, start a family, be happy. Brooks stresses that these are normal goals, and there is nothing to be ashamed of in them.

Climbing the first mountain teaches you a lot. You find out what you are capable of, you build yourself, you learn to take charge of your own life. Brooks climbed it himself, very successfully, and he does not tell anyone to give it up.

The trouble lies elsewhere. The first mountain is built entirely around the self: my career, my reputation, my happiness. In Brooks's words, on the first mountain we build up the ego and define who we are. Along the way it is easy to start wanting the wrong things. Brooks admits that he came to guard his reputation and his time so closely that he had almost no time left for people.

So the real question of the book is not whether the first mountain is good or bad. The question is what happens when you reach the top and still feel empty inside. Or when you get knocked off it.

Read in Livria

About the author

David Brooks is an American journalist and commentator who wrote columns for The New York Times for many years. He is the author of books on character, society and relationships, and the founder of Weave, a project at the Aspen Institute.

All books by this author: David Brooks

Terms from the book

  • Wilson
  • Simpson
  • Keller
  • Fletcher
  • Acedia
  • Meritocracy
  • Kosher
  • New York Times
  • Collective effervescence
  • Moral ecology: Brooks's own idea rather than a scientific term: the set of beliefs an era shares about how to live, what to value and what to be ashamed of.
  • Hyperindividualism: Brooks's word for extreme individualism: the belief that personal freedom comes first and that each of us finds meaning alone, inside ourselves.
  • Tribalism: Tribal thinking: people banding together against a common enemy instead of finding real community.
  • Covenant: For Brooks, a bond built on mutual loyalty rather than gain. Unlike a contract, it creates a shared “we” and changes the people in it.
  • Annunciation: In Christianity, the angel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would bear Christ. Brooks uses the word for the moment when beauty or mystery strikes a person and a vocation is born.
  • Judaism: The religion of the Jewish people, one of the oldest monotheistic religions.
  • Snyder: Anne Snyder, an American journalist and editor. She helped Brooks with his book on character and became his wife in 2017.
  • Weave: A project Brooks launched in 2018 at the Aspen Institute. As the name suggests, it supports people who are weaving connections back together in their towns.
  • Aspen Institute: An American nonprofit think tank in Washington, known for its discussions of politics and society.
  • Relationalism: Brooks's word for a way of life centered not on the individual but on relationships and the bonds between people.

All terms

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