The Meaning of Your Life doesn’t trumpet free markets, praise entrepreneurs, or praise work as a “blessing,” as previous books did. Today, he claims that ambitious professionals, whom he calls “young strivers,” are living superficial and unfulfilling lives. In his view, what they lack is “the one thing you can never simulate. meaning”
There are many possible explanations for the plight of young strivers, but Brooks briefly mentions a few, including a tough housing market and the impending collapse of the social safety net. But calcified habits die hard, and instead of taking these explanations seriously or even clarifying why he rejects them, he instinctively turns to what he knows best: dubious social science.
Brooks relies on the work of Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, to understand the malaise of hard workers. His 2024 bestseller, An Anxious Generation, argued that digital natives are on the rise due to excessive screen time. What he adds to Haidt’s explanation is a piece of dubious neuroscience. In his talk, “hemispheric lateralization,” a phenomenon in which cognitive functions are localized to different parts of the brain, “explains today’s profound crisis of meaning.” The hazy mix of smartphones, social media, and a desire for optimization has pushed society in a “left-brained” direction, forcing us to take a surreal view. “The modern world of technology is literally changing the way people use their brains, making them less and less capable of finding coherence, purpose, and meaning in their lives,” Brooks writes.
All parts of this picture are presented with smooth confidence, even though researchers have found no evidence that modern humans use one hemisphere of the brain more than the other. There are many attractions to science. Mr. Brooks tends to rely on the old assurance that “the research shows,” even when the research is contradictory, or worse, even when the very studies he cites don’t show what he claims. For example, in his 2015 book The Conservative Heart, he avers that monogamy produces happiness, adding, “This is not my moral opinion. It’s what the empirical evidence tells us.” The “empirical evidence” in question is a study that showed that subjects who had a single sexual partner had an average increase of 0.077 “happiness” points. But it also found that 0.12 people have sex four or more times a week, probably regardless of the number of partners, a fact that Brooks conveniently ignores.
The Meaning of Your Life contains quite a few misconceptions, with Brooks thinking that “the idea that opposites attract may even be biological,” citing a 1995 study that later researchers have questioned. But no one will read this book and realize that research is often controversial, that many of the findings in social psychology and economics remain unresolved, or that results can be interpreted in many different ways. Like much popular social science, it makes no effort to prove or even to persuade. Just insist and direct.
His tone was clearly childish. Each chapter is broken down into easy-to-understand sections (“Get bored the right way,” “Try harder to surpass yourself”) and often end with homework assignments stored in small boxes like elementary school textbooks. When Brooks isn’t offering “questions for reflection and self-evaluation,” he offers “three big things to remember,” as if he were offering a study guide for a meaningful life exam. In his 2019 book, Love Your Enemies, he approvingly cites “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Perhaps defensively, he describes this as a “masterpiece” and not just “cheap self-help.” Brooks rarely asks his readers to count to seven, perhaps assuming that “three major lessons from moral science” and “five simple facts” create a more manageable mathematical requirement.
Still, Brooks’ pivot away from politics and toward more therapeutic projects hasn’t been all that helpful. His practical advice is better than his theories and bland attempts at profundity. In his column, he recommends common-sense treatments like getting a good night’s sleep and regular exercise. “The Meaning of Your Life” in particular contains some promising suggestions. Who would deny that we all need to turn off our phones, socialize with other humans, and go outside for a walk every once in a while? However, Brooks suffers from straying from the comfortable realm of self-help into the rugged realm of philosophy.
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