The Psychiatrist and the Sociologist

Collective healing in a culture of individualism. And individual agency amidst systemic challenges.

Dear Friends,

Why is it such a sport to make fun of David Brooks? Slate described him as “a man who seems to have a ‘kick me’ sign permanently taped to his back.” Perhaps it’s for the same reason they make fun of Ross on Friends: we’re skeptical of genuinely good people and it’s a relief when they make mistakes.

Anyway, I bring up David Brooks because just a few days before the Internet pounced on him for complaining about expensive meals at airports (and really, who hasn’t?), he recorded a podcast interview with Sean Illing about how America has become less kind and forgiving.

Illing is no Brooks fanboy, and I sense that he invited Brooks to disagree with him. But he does so with respect and curiosity — one of the things I enjoy about his podcast. At one point, he observes that Brooks’ earlier writing was mostly socio-political commentary whereas his more recent writing is personal and emotional.

Brooks quips that “social science is where smart people go to avoid their emotions.” It’s a great line, and it has been in the back of my mind during recent conversations with academic friends. (The more I get to know them, the more clearly I see how their research (and politics) are shaped by how they grew up.)

Shall we blame capitalism or narcissism?

I mentioned that Illing was eager to disagree with Brooks, who is promoting his latest book, “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.” Brooks is hopeful that “better conversations could help save America from its social and emotional breakdown” caused by a culture of narcissism and hyper-individualism.

Illing agrees that Americans overall are increasingly angry, sad, and isolated. But he disagrees about the cause and the cure. He blames capitalism, which he says makes us compete with rather than care for one another. Becoming a better conversationalist, according to Illing, is just one more burden to bear in an unfair system that pits us against one another and discriminates against those who face the greatest struggles. Let’s start with a living wage, guaranteed healthcare, and affordable housing, Illing suggests, then we can work on our attentive listening. It’s a fair argument … one that is sure to score points among his listeners.

It’s ironic, though, how eager Illing seems to find disagreement with Brooks, who seems to mostly agree with the critique. Yes, we should advocate for higher wages, better healthcare, and affordable housing. But why can’t we also become better and more empathic conversationalists at the same time?

Individual agency amidst structural challenges

Versions of this “individuals vs. systems” debate are everywhere. Are Americans overweight because individuals eat too much, or because of systemic food injustice that provides healthier diets to wealthier communities? The answer is obviously ‘both,’ and I don’t understand why public discourse gravitates to these either/or debates. Yes, we ought to use public policy to make healthy diets and exercise more available to more communities. And yes, we ought to encourage individuals to eat healthier. We can celebrate that different types of people are inclined to work on one approach or the other since they are complementary.

I had a similar reaction to Tressie McMillan Cottom's interview with the psychiatrist Pooja Lakshmin about her book “Real Self-Care.” They both agree that most Americans — and especially women — are living unsustainably stressful lives. As Lakshmin puts it, “you can’t meditate your way out of a 40-hour workweek with no childcare.”

So what can you do instead? Lakshmin prescribes her readers four practices: 1) setting boundaries, 2) practicing self-compassion, 3) living your values, and 4) exercising your power.¹ But McMillan Cottom suggests that the concept of self-care “distracts us from … a lot of unequal experience of the world that I just don’t think self-care is designed to do anything about.” It’s a lot easier to set boundaries and exercise power, she notes, when you’re a wealthy, white executive than if you’re an undocumented migrant field worker.

Lakshmin is aware that her book is most likely to reach the people who need it the least: people like me who might set boundaries and align our values as individual projects toward personal happiness rather than a social project toward collective well-being. But you have to start somewhere, and Lakshmin thinks that “the best way to motivate folks to progressive action is to serve self-interest.” It’s probably why she became a psychiatrist rather than a sociologist. She explains:

We’re always going back and forth between the individual and the social. And the two are always in this dance, where both are true — the government is responsible for enacting top-down solutions. And individuals do have agency to make choices in their lives that can protect them and also spur potential change.

Back and forth between the individual and the social

When I worked in philanthropy, we constantly talked about systems, structures, and social norms. My last employer sought to “harness society’s collective capacity to solve our toughest problems.” I don’t know what we meant by “society’s collective capacity” or how we harnessed it, but it’s the kind of aspirational, inoffensive abstraction that is immune from criticism.²

I am still interested in the “dance” between the individual and the ³social but at a much smaller scale. Is there a role for me to contribute to the collective well-being not of 20 million people, but maybe 200, or even just 20? What if we all focused on contributing to the well-being of 20 other people? Wouldn’t that make for a nice place?

🧰 A useful tool: Matter

After spending a few years going back and forth between Pocket, Readwise, and Matter, I now spend nearly all of my time reading and listening with the Matter App. They’ve added a few features over the past couple of months that I use every day:

1. Real-time transcripts and highlighting for any podcast

2. Chapter summaries for podcasts

3. A variety of AI voices to read text-to-speech that sounds better than most Audible voice actors.

It’s the app I use the most on my phone — even more than Messages or Google Maps. I had given up on finding the perfect reader app, but now I finally have it. And I love their weekly newsletter in which one guest shares some of the online writing that has influenced them the most. I was so intrigued by the eclectic choices of Molly Mielke that I ended up listening to an hour-long podcast with her.

👏 Kudos: A great party idea

My cousin turned 35 around the same time that his wife’s brother-in-law turned 53. So they did a joint birthday party in which they dressed like each other and the rest of us came dressed as our reverse age. That wasn’t a big deal for me: I had to go as a 34-year-old. But Iris had to manifest her inner 83-year-old, and boy did she:

Many thanks to those who shared your road trip playlists. We’re making our way down the California coast now with a lot of highway ahead of us.

I hope you have a great week,

David

1. Those four practices speak volumes to me. I feel like I’ve made good progress on 1 and 2 and now is the time for me to adopt 3 and 4.

2. Except for me — I found a way to criticize it! 😝

3. The tweet-length version of this newsletter is that I’ve come to believe there is a tradeoff between how much energy we can invest in “caring about millions of people” versus caring for a few dozen.