The Second Mountain

In Chapter 1, “Moral Ecologies,” Brooks discusses his time as a TV pundit working for Jim Lehrer at PBS NewsHour. According to Brooks, Lehrer’s character helped establish a valuable moral ecology at the station. A moral ecology is a space/milieu in which particular virtues are expressed and expected. It is a “system of belief and behavior” that can be both individual and collective (4). Brooks discusses the moral ecology of the United States before the 1960s in which individuals sought value as part of a larger social organization, whether that be a corporation, church, or political party. “The ethos,” Brooks writes of this moral ecology, “nurtured the sort of rich, community life that many people pine for today” (5). He often refers to this as the “We’re All in This Together” ecology (4). Despite this, Brooks discusses the flaws in this moral ecology and makes use of a story from John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie to reinforce his point.

Due to the pressures of this moral ecology and its tendency to crush the value of the individual, a period of social turmoil emerged in the 1960s that radically restructured the moral ecology of the United States. He calls this new moral position the “I’m Free to Be Myself” ecology (7). It is inside this moral ecology, Brooks believes, that modern culture still resides. This ecology, which served as a legitimate and necessary correction to the flaws of the previous moral ecology, has outlived its usefulness and is now causing more harm than good. Brooks thinks that contemporary America is in the midst of another restructuring of its moral framework, putting the country in a crisis mode. He believes that the moral restructuring of a society is not the product of politicians but rather “moral activists and cultural pioneers” (8). “Those who shape the manners and mores,” he writes, “are the true legislators of mankind—they wield the greatest power and influence” (8).

The “I’m Free to Be Myself” ecology emphasizes the value of authenticity, personal liberty, and individual autonomy. As such, he writes, it is about the emancipation of the individual from oppressive group norms and expectations. He notes that it has both right and left-wing variants, which reveals its sweeping, fundamental restructuring of American life. Brooks believes that while the emergence of this moral ecology in the 1960s was “an absolutely necessary cultural revolution,” it has outlived its value. Problems with the central values of this ecology include the privatization of meaning, the “dream” of total freedom, and “the centrality of accomplishment” (11). Care for the self and its correspondent ego-ideal is at the center of this moral framework. This must be transcended for the second mountain. The hyper-individualism of such a society also makes its members overly susceptible to tribalism, which inculcates a very dangerous “us vs. them” mentality. Brooks concludes Chapter 1 by noting that society has overcorrected for the moral ecology of pre-1960s America. The situation, he writes, “makes it difficult to be good—to fulfill the deep human desires for love and connection” (13).

In Chapter 2, “The Instagram Life,” Brooks criticizes some of the fundamental tenets of the “I’m Free to Be Myself” ideology. He frames this around the commencement address, an event in which a successful person of an older generation tells young people about the road to success, their futures, etc. He writes that “We use these speeches to pass along the dominant values of our age,” but the values of the present age turn out to be nothing more than “great empty boxes” (14). In other words, telling young people that they are free to make their own decisions, that life is awash in possibility, and that all they have to do is pursue their authentic selves, is no better than cutting them loose without direction or assistance. He writes:

You will notice that our answers take all the difficulties of living in your twenties and make them worse. The graduates are in limbo, and we give them uncertainty. They want to know why they should do this as opposed to that. And we have nothing to say except, Figure it out yourself based on no criteria beyond yourself. They are floundering in a formless desert. Not only do we not give them a compass, we take a bucket of sand and throw it all over their heads! (15).

The results of this useless advice and ideological disposition, Brooks believes, is aimlessness and terrible difficulty for young people. He believes there is a deep disparity between extremely structured childhoods and totally unsupervised young adulthood. He notes the severe underemployment and unemployment rates amongst recent college graduates and that half of these young people do not have any life goals or sexual partners. He then borrows Soren Kierkegaard’s concept of the “aesthetic life” to critique the adventurer mindset of some young people. Such youths judge their lives by aesthetic criteria and attempt to collect exciting and interesting experiences. This, according to Brooks, is a perfectly fine way to start one’s twenties, but it is no way to live a life, which is much more fulfilling when it is dedicated to deep commitments. “The problem,” he writes, “is that the person in the aesthetic phase sees life as possibilities to be experienced and not projects to be fulfilled or ideals to be lived out” (18). He ends the chapter by using the metaphor of a river of freedom to make his point. Young people need to cross the river of freedom to make it to the other side, at which point they will establish committed settlements. Adventurous “Freedom” is a useful temporary stage in life, but it is not a satisfying conclusion. 

Chapter 3 is about a different kind of recent college graduate: the “Insecure Overachiever.” He refers to these people as pragmatists, and he is equally suspicious of their futures. The utilitarian and pragmatic young person seeks to achieve at a very high rate and often works hard inside established institutions to do so. Unfortunately, in Brooks’s view, their pragmatic work addiction does not save these people from existential meaninglessness. It may be that this work-obsessed attitude can effectively distract people from emotional and spiritual malaise, but it cannot fix it. These people participate in a meritocracy, which provides the most meritorious individual with great individual rewards. The problem is that such a system turns everyone into a mass of competing individuals; it does not establish community relations. He notices a rising problem he terms “acedia.” Acedia is a life that is void of strong emotional attachments and depth of soul. “The person living in acedia,” Brooks writes, “may have a job and a family, but he is not entirely grabbed by his own life. His heart is over there, but his life is over here” (24). The possibility of living in and through one’s whole heart is abandoned. Externally, in the eyes of society, such a person is living a very good life. Internally, the soul has been deeply dampened.

Chapter 4, “The Valley,” is a turning point in Part 1. After discussing moral ecologies, the specific form of moral ethos present in modern American culture, and the two main life paths young people take when indoctrinated in this ethos, Brooks finally turns to the next layer of the fundamental metaphor: the valley between the two mountains. He opens the chapter with a long discussion of the life of acclaimed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy was incredibly successful and climbed a higher first mountain than almost anyone. After a life-changing experience, during which Tolstoy witnessed an execution, he changed his attitude to life, focusing solely on the pursuit of the second mountain. This life-changing experience, though, first shook him deeply, sending him into the “valley” of despair and heartache before the ascent up the second mountain. Many of us, Brooks believes, will undergo similar periods of suffering during which the pursuit up the first mountain of the ego ideal no longer seems valuable. This leads to a sort of existential crisis.

The “telos crisis” is a specific form of existential crisis during which people lose sense of the purpose of their lives (30). With David Foster Wallace, Brooks notes that this is caused by “moral directionlessness” (31). Not only can individuals, like Tolstoy, fall into the valley of moral despair, but entire societies can too. Still critical of modern American culture, Brooks writes, “The grand narrative of individual emancipation left us with what some have called ‘the great disembedding’” (31). This is the disentangling of closely-knit communities and norms. Brooks makes note of Simon May’s statement that love is “ontological rootedness” (31).

Brooks proceeds to discuss several specific aspects of this crisis, including loneliness. He notes that many Americans report being “chronically lonely,” and that deaths from suicide and opioids, which he mutually attributes to despair, are at historic highs. He even notes that the average American lifespan declined for a few years, from 2015-2018. He believes that growing levels of distrust and tribalism are also factors of the crisis, as well as a crisis of meaning, noting that many people have seemed to have “lost faith in faith” (34). He concludes the chapter with a discussion of suffering. Brooks is adamant of the view that periods of intense individual and social suffering are potentially also periods of radical transformation, capable of producing stronger and wiser people. The growth that can be extracted from protracted periods of suffering (by some individuals) is the result of a recognition that we need one another, that ego-generated goals are ultimately of little value, and (perhaps paradoxically) the understanding of the need for an intense sense of gratitude.