Philosopher's Notes How to Know a Person
How to Know a Person
The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
About the Book
Brian's take
David Brooks is one of America’s most insightful writers and commentators, and this is the third Philosopher’s Note we’ve created on one of his books, following The Road to Character and The Second Mountain. In How to Know a Person, Brooks becomes obsessed with the foundational social skill that shapes the quality of our lives and communities: the ability to truly see someone else, and help them feel seen in return. Big Ideas we explore include Illuminators vs. Diminishers, how suffering shapes us, empathy as a trainable art, crafting a coherent life story, and what we really see when we look at others. This is a profound invitation to become the kind of person who brings out the light in everyone you meet.
“You’re going to apply what some experts call the SLANT method: sit up, lean forward, ask questions, nod your head, track the speaker.”
Listen with your eyes. That’s paying attention 100%.
David Brooks
“If I am going to get to know you, it’s not because I have the magical ability to peer into your soul; it’s because I have the skill of asking the sorts of questions that will give you a chance to tell me about who you are.”
David Brooks
David Brooks
“Decades later, [Frederick] Buechner came to the following realization: ‘The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from.”
David Brooks
“A generative leader serves the people under him, lifts other people’s vision to higher sights, and helps other people become better versions of themselves.”
David Brooks
“One of the great fallacies of life is to think that culture is everything; another great fallacy is to think culture is nothing.”
David Brooks
“I believe in lofty ideals.”
I believe in holding up standards of excellence.
David Brooks
Diminishers & Illuminators
28:06
Introduction
From the book
“The purpose of this book is to help us become more skilled at the art of seeing others and making them feel seen, heard, and understood.
When I started research on this subject, I had no clue what this skill consisted of. But I did know that exceptional people in many fields had taught themselves versions of this skill. Psychologists are trained to see the defenses people build up to protect themselves from their deepest fears. Actors can identify the core traits of a character and teach themselves to inhabit the role. Biographers can notice the contradictions in a person and yet see a life whole. Teachers can spot potential. Skilled talk show and podcast hosts know how to get people to open up and be their true selves. There are so many professions in which the job is to see, anticipate, and understand people: nursing, the ministry, management, social work, marketing, journalism, editing, HR, and on and on. My goal was to gather some of the knowledge that is dispersed across these professions and integrate it into a single practical approach. So I embarked on a journey toward greater understanding, a journey on which I still have a long, long way to go. I gradually realized that trying to deeply know and understand others is not just about mastering some set of techniques; it’s a way of life. It’s like what actors who have gone to acting school experience: When they’re onstage, they’re not thinking about the techniques they learned in school. They’ve internalized them, so it is now just part of who they are. I’m hoping this book will help you adopt a different posture toward other people, a different way of being present with people, a different way of having bigger conversations. Living this way can yield the deepest pleasures.”
Brian's Notes
David Brooks is one of the nation’s leading writers and commentators.
He is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times and a writer for The Atlantic. I’m a big fan of David’s incredibly lucid writing, his humility, and his wisdom.
This is the third Note we’ve done on one of his insightful books. We started with The Road to Character. Then we covered The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life.
As David says: “In this age of creeping dehumanization, I’ve become obsessed with social skills: how to get better at treating people with consideration; how to get better at understanding the people right around us. I’ve come to believe that the quality of our lives and the health of our society depends, to a large degree, on how well we treat each other in the minute interactions of daily life.
And all of these different skills rest on one foundational skill: the ability to understand what another person is going through. There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood. That is the heart of being a good person, the ultimate gift you can to others and to yourself.”
Becoming the type of good person who can give that ultimate gift to others and to ourselves is what this wonderful book is all about. (Get a copy.) As you’d expect, it’s packed with Big Ideas. As always, I’m excited to share a handful of my favorites and help you apply them to your life TODAY so let’s get to work.
