Gyroscopic Investing

Davod Brooks presents a thought-provoking alternate perspective on the Ed Snowden:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opini ... .html?_r=0

Though thoughtful, morally engaged and deeply committed to his beliefs, he appears to be a product of one of the more unfortunate trends of the age: the atomization of society, the loosening of social bonds, the apparently growing share of young men in their 20s who are living technological existences in the fuzzy land between their childhood institutions and adult family commitments.

If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world. Instead, it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.

This lens makes you more likely to share the distinct strands of libertarianism that are blossoming in this fragmenting age: the deep suspicion of authority, the strong belief that hierarchies and organizations are suspect, the fervent devotion to transparency, the assumption that individual preference should be supreme. You’re more likely to donate to the Ron Paul for president campaign, as Snowden did.

Though I strongly believe that Snowden did was morally correct, I see Brooks' point as well, and agree with him regarding the atomization of society. That said I think Brooks confuses "society" with "government" and his logic ultimately leads to the conclusion that any kind of opposition to the government amounts to betraying one's society--an absurd conclusion (mushy logic with no limiting principle strikes again!).

This lens makes you more likely to share the distinct strands of libertarianism that are blossoming in this fragmenting age: the deep suspicion of authority, the strong belief that hierarchies and organizations are suspect, the fervent devotion to transparency, the assumption that individual preference should be supreme.

Apparently libertarianism is the new 60's liberalism.  Crazy right-wing hippies. 

"Though thoughtful, morally engaged and deeply committed to his beliefs, he appears to be a product of one of the more unfortunate trends of the age: the atomization of society"

Has it occured to him that the atomization of society is one of the results of the sucess of the left (including his employers)?


"If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way:"

Did Brooks bite the hand that feeds him and comment negatively on Occupy Wall Street? This would certainly apply to them.

Over the last half decade the left has sucessfully succeeded in destroying conventional authority, conventional morality, etc etc.  in favor of individuality.  Now he decides he doesn't like the results?

I suggest to Mr. Brooks that the best way for people to stop seeing the state as gigantic and menacing is for it to cease being gigantic and menacing.

Otherwise all they have is standard "blame the victim" psy-ops.

"the fervent devotion to transparency"...

He says that like it's a bad thing?

I have read and listened to David Brooks for many years and I have concluded that he is a complete idiot. 

He says and writes things with internal contradictions that are so obvious that one wonders how Brooks managed to miss them when organizing his arguments.

In the piece above, for example, he fails to mention that many of the institutions that held society together were deteriorating long before individuals began looking out for themselves more vigilantly.

In the employment setting especially, companies today will lay off employees, cut their retirement benefits, cut their pay, and cut their hours without a second thought if they think it will add a penny to the bottom line.  In other words, companies seem to exhibit far less loyalty to their employees than they may have shown in past decades.  I'm not saying that this is a good or bad thing, but to be surprised that employees have a similarly cold-blooded attitude toward their employers should be no surprise to anyone, though it is apparently a surprise to Mr. Brooks.

I always cringe when I see David Brooks on TV because I know that everything he says is going to be earnestly delivered and sound like the words of an intelligent and sophisticated man, but when you really listen to what he is saying much of it doesn't make a lot of sense.

I remember in one column Brooks was doing that Normal Rockwell thing about how much better life was in the U.S. in the 1950s, and one of the comments said something to the effect of "Unless you were black."  How could Brooks miss such an obvious counterpoint to the argument he was making?  Is he really that dumb?  Does he just not care?  Where were the editors?

I would put David Brooks in the same category as Thomas Friedman--they are both basically simulations of good columnists.  They deliver their ideas with confidence and apparent authority, but there is really almost no substance to anything either of them say and when you spend some time with their ideas you find they leave basically no impression on you at all.  Their thoughts are like the mental equivalent of cotton candy.  They enter your mind light and fluffy and create the expectation of something significant before disappearing into a decay-inducing syrupy mess.

MediumTex wrote: I have read and listened to David Brooks for many years and I have concluded that he is a complete idiot. 

Ha.  This is the message board equivalent of a movie trailer that gives away the entire plot.  Your post is great, but you could have stopped after the first sentence.  ; )

Tyler wrote:

MediumTex wrote: I have read and listened to David Brooks for many years and I have concluded that he is a complete idiot. 

Ha.  This is the message board equivalent of a movie trailer that gives away the entire plot.  Your post is great, but you could have stopped after the first sentence.  ; )

Don't ask me why, but David Brooks has always reminded me of a mildly autistic casket salesman.

I say mildly autistic because he apparently lacks the ability to grasp the social cue he has presumably received many times to stop making stupid arguments in the newspaper, and casket salesman because anyone with that pasty skin tone and phony veneer of concern for others seems like he should be working in a funeral home.

^^  +1 !