They Had It Made
By DAVID BROOKS
NYT
In the late 1930s, a group of 268 promising young men, including John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, entered Harvard College. By any normal measure, they had it made. They tended to be bright, polished, affluent and ambitious. They had the benefit of the world’s most prestigious university. They had been selected even from among Harvard students as the most well adjusted.
And yet the categories of journalism and the stereotypes of normal conversation are paltry when it comes to predicting a life course. Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save Dostoyevsky’s. A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success. One man couldn’t admit to himself that he was gay until he was in his late 70s.
The men were the subject of one of the century’s most fascinating longitudinal studies. They were selected when they were sophomores, and they have been probed, poked and measured ever since. Researchers visited their homes and investigated everything from early bed-wetting episodes to their body dimensions.
(More here.)
NYT
In the late 1930s, a group of 268 promising young men, including John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, entered Harvard College. By any normal measure, they had it made. They tended to be bright, polished, affluent and ambitious. They had the benefit of the world’s most prestigious university. They had been selected even from among Harvard students as the most well adjusted.
And yet the categories of journalism and the stereotypes of normal conversation are paltry when it comes to predicting a life course. Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save Dostoyevsky’s. A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success. One man couldn’t admit to himself that he was gay until he was in his late 70s.
The men were the subject of one of the century’s most fascinating longitudinal studies. They were selected when they were sophomores, and they have been probed, poked and measured ever since. Researchers visited their homes and investigated everything from early bed-wetting episodes to their body dimensions.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
They Had it Made David Books 5/12/09
Mr. Brooks seems at his best in these thoughtful and reflective essays (his conservative geometries to connect the dots beyond these reflections typically lose me). In citing George Valliant’s extraordinary contributions to understanding ourselves, Brooks does good public service. The lifespan interweaves nature and nurture factors as cognitive and neuroscience continue to expose a complexity of ourselves to ourselves-- enough to (hopefully), make us gasp as did Brooks: “There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stand mute”
But perhaps, “mute” could be better expressed as silent. For its not that we cannot chatter at the complexities cited (in fact, we reflexively jump to discourse), but perhaps that we could choose silence instead….an implied humility of Brooks’ reflection….of Goethe’s “wonder”. Perhaps, chatter abandoned in favor of silence and reflection, could begin to help us stay with the real paradox of “having it made” in America. And go to the heart of Valliant’s study of the human condition-- that all is certainly not what it appears to be.
Robert Fettgather, PhD.
Campbell, California
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