Brilliant article by David Brooks from The New York Times, March 7 2011.

David Brooks says that in essence there are two sides of our mind: rational and emotional. The first one is mainly driven by our conscious while the second is seeded deeply into our subconscious.

There is much more to us than mere logical reason. Efforts to improve our humanity fail because they are limited to treating the rational issues, failing to see the importance of emotions. This is why, David Brooks says, The British Enlightenment was more accurate than the French Enlightenment by focusing on the social aspects in our lives as a really defining trait, as opposed to the rational, logic aspect.

Interesting comment on the increasing importance of social aspect, making old skills becoming less relevant. The industrial era created suitable measurements of skills such as IQ, school degrees and professional skills. Today, there are other skills that are becoming vital and they are more subtle and refuse to me measured by rigid methods, but by outcomes that become evident in time. David lists the following skills as an example:

Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.

Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.

Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.

Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.

Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.

Source:  The New Humanism, The New York Times, 2011

This is indeed a glimpse of a new humanity. This needs a different form of government, new policy makers, new principles for education and environmental design  and decision making in general. The way elections are conducted today is an anachronism because the conversation is always limited to managing performance using the old measures and the notion of broad social needs are ignored. The focus of the discussion is superficial and the solutions are outdated. We need a new system focused on social values not narrow profits and where the participation is more direct and broader from a social perspective.