Mark: Most of us believe our greatest strengths define our character. But what if the opposite is true? What if the path to a meaningful life is built not on our talents, but on a ruthless confrontation with our deepest flaws? Michelle: Wow, that’s a heavy opener. It feels completely backward from everything we’re taught, which is to lean into your strengths, find your passion, be your best self. You’re saying we should focus on our worst self? Mark: That very question is at the heart of David Brooks's bestseller, The Road to Character. It’s a book that fundamentally challenges our modern definition of success. Michelle: Right, and Brooks is fascinating. He's this prominent New York Times columnist, a respected political pundit, but he opens this book with a stunning confession: he wrote it 'to save his own soul,' admitting he's paid to be a 'narcissistic blowhard.' That honesty is what makes this book so compelling. Mark: Exactly. He’s not preaching from on high. He’s on the journey with us. And he starts by drawing a brilliant distinction between two types of virtues: the "résumé virtues" and the "eulogy virtues." Michelle: Okay, I think I can guess. Résumé virtues are the skills you list on LinkedIn to get a job—you’re a great coder, a strategic thinker, you increased profits by 20%. Mark: Precisely. They’re about what you do for a living. But the eulogy virtues are what people talk about at your funeral. Were you kind? Were you brave? Were you honest? Were you capable of deep love? Michelle: And nobody’s eulogy ever says, "He had a fantastic LinkedIn profile." Mark: Never. We all know the eulogy virtues are more important, but our culture is obsessed with the résumé. Brooks argues this has created a massive imbalance in our souls, and he gives it a name. He calls it the conflict between Adam I and Adam II.

Michelle: Adam I and Adam II? That sounds biblical. Mark: It is. It’s a concept from Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik that Brooks uses as his central framework. Adam I is the career-oriented, ambitious, external self. He wants to build, create, produce, and conquer the world. He lives by a straightforward, utilitarian logic: effort leads to reward. This is the résumé-virtue self. Michelle: That’s the one we all know. The one who’s grinding, networking, building a personal brand. Mark: Exactly. But then there’s Adam II. This is the internal self. Adam II wants to embody certain moral qualities, to have a serene inner character, to serve a higher good. He lives by an inverse logic: you have to give to receive. You have to surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength. You have to conquer yourself to win a victory. This is the eulogy-virtue self. Michelle: And I’m guessing our modern world is a giant Adam I party, and Adam II didn't even get an invitation. Mark: He’s not even on the list. Brooks illustrates this cultural shift with a stunning historical anecdote. On August 15, 1945, just hours after America learned it had won World War II, a radio show called Command Performance was broadcast to the troops. The host was the biggest star of the era, Bing Crosby. Michelle: Okay, so this is the moment for maximum, world-saving, chest-thumping celebration, right? Mark: You’d think so. But Crosby gets on the mic and says, "Well, it looks like this is it. What can you say at a time like this? You can’t throw your skimmer in the air. That’s for run-of-the-mill holidays. I guess all anybody can do is thank God it’s over." The whole show was like that—Risë Stevens sang a solemn "Ave Maria," Burgess Meredith read a piece by war correspondent Ernie Pyle cautioning against pride. The overwhelming feeling was humility. Michelle: That’s incredible. It’s almost impossible to imagine that kind of restraint today. Mark: Well, Brooks provides the perfect contrast. He says he went home after hearing that old broadcast and turned on a football game. A defensive player tackled a receiver for a measly two-yard gain. And what did the player do? Michelle: Let me guess. A massive, self-glorifying victory dance complete with pointing to his own name on the back of his jersey? Mark: You got it. Brooks writes, "I'd seen a bigger self-puffing victory dance after a two-yard gain than I'd heard after winning World War II." That, right there, is the shift from a culture of humility to what he calls the culture of the "Big Me." Michelle: The "Big Me." It’s the selfie generation. I see it everywhere. Brooks even has the data to back this up, right? He mentions a survey of high school students. Mark: He does. In the 1950s, Gallup asked high school seniors, "Are you a very important person?" 12% said yes. By the 2000s, that number had jumped to 80%. Michelle: Eighty percent! That’s a staggering shift. But hold on, isn't some of this a good thing? The self-esteem movement, for example, was meant to empower people, especially women and minorities who were historically told they were less important. Think of someone like Katharine Graham, who took over The Washington Post after her husband's death. She was raised to be self-effacing, but she had to find her "Big Me" to stand up to the Nixon White House. Mark: That's a fantastic point, and Brooks acknowledges it. He agrees that the shift had positive effects, correcting for deep-seated social injustices. The problem isn't self-esteem itself; it's the imbalance. It's when Adam I, the ambitious self, completely swallows Adam II, the moral self. We’ve become so focused on building our brands and résumés that we've lost the language and the tools for building character. Michelle: We’ve lost the instruction manual for Adam II. Mark: Exactly. And Brooks argues that the way to find it again isn't by trying to be perfect or strong. It’s by looking in a place most of us try to avoid: our own flaws.

Mark: He builds on this famous line from the philosopher Immanuel Kant: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." Michelle: The crooked timber of humanity. I like that. It’s a bit more forgiving than "we're all miserable sinners." It suggests we’re all just a bit wonky. Mark: Precisely. And Brooks's radical idea is that character isn't about straightening the timber. It's about working with the crookedness. It's about confronting your core sin—your pride, your fear, your selfishness—and building a life of meaning out of that struggle. He says the central drama of life isn't achieving success; it's the inner war against your own weakness. Michelle: That’s a tough sell in a culture that’s all about hiding your weaknesses and projecting confidence. So how does this actually work in a real life? Mark: The book is filled with examples, but one of the most powerful is the story of Frances Perkins. She was the first woman to serve in a U.S. Cabinet, as Secretary of Labor under FDR. But her journey started with a profound tragedy. Michelle: I remember her story from the book. It’s unforgettable. Mark: In 1911, Perkins was a young, well-educated social worker having tea with friends in New York City. Suddenly, they heard fire engines. They ran outside and saw a horrific scene unfolding at the nearby Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The upper floors were engulfed in flames. Michelle: And the doors were locked, right? To keep the workers, mostly young immigrant women, from taking breaks. Mark: Locked. The fire escapes collapsed. The fire department's ladders were too short. As Perkins and the crowd watched in horror, young women began to appear at the windows, silhouetted by the flames. They held on for as long as they could, and then they jumped, one after another, to their deaths on the pavement below. 146 people died that day. Michelle: That's just horrifying to imagine. The sheer helplessness of watching that. Mark: Perkins said that day was "seared on her mind." It changed everything. She felt she had been "summoned" by that event. Her life was no longer just a career; it became a vocation. She dedicated the rest of her life to fighting for workers' rights, for safer conditions, for social security. The New Deal as we know it was profoundly shaped by her relentless drive, a drive born from the ashes of that fire. Michelle: So her character was forged in that moment of trauma and response. But what about the rest of us? Are we supposed to wait for a tragedy to be "summoned"? Mark: Not at all. That's the key. Perkins's story is dramatic, but Brooks argues that we are all summoned by life in different ways. It could be a personal failure, a moral test, a loss, or even just a quiet moment of realizing the gap between the person you are and the person you want to be. The point is that character isn't built when things are easy. It's built when you're confronted with your own limitations, your own "crooked timber," and you have to decide how to respond. Michelle: It’s about the struggle. The beauty is in the stumbling, as the book says. Mark: The beauty is in the stumbling. It’s not about achieving perfection, but about engaging in the fight. And that fight, that road to character, requires a moral compass. It requires an understanding of what loves are most important.

Michelle: Okay, so we have these two selves, Adam I and Adam II, and we build character through struggle. But how do we actually live this day-to-day? What's the operating system for Adam II? Mark: For that, Brooks turns to one of the giants of Western thought: Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, who lived in the 4th century, was a brilliant man but, by his own account, a complete mess. He was driven by ambition, lust, and a desperate need for praise. He felt fragmented, tossed about by his desires. Michelle: Sounds surprisingly modern. Mark: Completely. And his great insight, which became the foundation of the book's "Humility Code," was his concept of sin. For Augustine, sin wasn't just about breaking rules. He had a more beautiful formulation. He said we sin when we have our loves out of order. Michelle: We sin when we have our loves out of order. Slow that down. What does that mean? Mark: It’s profound. We all love many things: family, friends, money, status, truth, justice. And we all instinctively know that some loves are higher than others. A love for your family is a higher love than a love for money. A love for truth is higher than a love for status. Michelle: Right, that makes sense. Mark: An "ordered soul" is one where the loves are in the right order. You prioritize the higher loves over the lower ones. A "disordered soul" is the opposite. For example, if a friend tells you a secret, and you blab it at a dinner party to seem interesting, you are putting a lower love—the love of popularity—above a higher love, the love of friendship. You've gotten your loves out of order. Michelle: Wow. That is a framework you can actually use. It’s not about a list of "thou shalt nots." It’s a question you can ask yourself in any situation: "Am I putting my loves in the right order right now?" That’s powerful. Mark: It’s a moral compass. And for Augustine, the ultimate journey was reordering his loves. He had to learn to love God—the ultimate, highest good—more than he loved his own ambition or his own desires. This required a profound act of surrender. He had to stop believing he could fix himself through his own willpower. He had to accept grace. Michelle: That’s the U-curve the book talks about. You have to go down into humility and surrender before you can rise up with a stronger character. Mark: Exactly. You have to descend to ascend. And this leads to the book's conclusion, what Brooks calls "The Humility Code." It's a list of 15 propositions for a moral life. We don't have time for all of them, but a few are key. First, we don't live for happiness, we live for holiness—for a life of purpose and meaning. Second, humility is the greatest virtue, because it's an accurate awareness of your own flaws. And third, no one can achieve self-mastery alone. We all need redemptive assistance from outside ourselves—from family, friends, community, or for religious people, from God. Michelle: It’s a code that runs completely counter to the "Big Me" culture. It’s not about self-expression, but about self-conquest and, ultimately, self-forgetfulness. Mark: Right. The goal isn't to find yourself, but to lose yourself in service to something greater. That’s where true joy is found. Not in the delirious swell of the orchestra, as Brooks puts it, but in a quiet, peaceful hush.

Mark: When you pull it all together—the two Adams, the crooked timber, the ordered loves—what you get is a powerful argument for a different way of living. Brooks is making a case that the things our culture celebrates—fame, wealth, status—are ultimately unsatisfying. They are the goals of Adam I. Michelle: And a life lived only for Adam I, as the story of Ivan Ilyich in the book shows, ends in a deathbed realization that "maybe I did not live as I ought to have done." It’s a hollow victory. Mark: The real journey, the road to character, is the journey of Adam II. It’s messier. It’s full of struggle and self-confrontation. It requires you to be brutally honest about your own weaknesses. But that struggle is what gives life its meaning and its weight. It’s what builds a soul that is solid, not shallow. Michelle: It makes you wonder, what's the one core sin or disordered love you struggle with most? For some it might be pride, for others fear, or the need for approval. Mark: It's a tough question, but a vital one. The book suggests that identifying that central weakness is the first step on the road. It’s not about eradicating it, because we’re all crooked timber. It’s about engaging in the lifelong battle against it. That’s where character is built. Michelle: And that’s a much more hopeful message than "you're special, just be yourself." It says you can be better than you are right now, and the path is through humility and struggle. Mark: We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Find us on our socials and share what resonated. What does the road to character look like for you? Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.