It's a good book, but Royce's name pops up just once. He joins a list of "Relationalists" (= non-hyper-individualists and "isolated self-interested monads") that includes Edmund Burke, Martin Buber, Walt Whitman, Martha Nussbaum, Annie Dillard, Gandhi, and MLK.
Relationalists are less motivated than hyper-individualists by ego and the drive for personal self-centered success, more by "connection, fusion, service, and care." They're committed. They understand that "a person who does not commit to some loyalty outside the self leaves no deep mark on the world." Doesn't matter how many luxury hotels, for instance, such a person might brand with his name.
The key points of Brooks's "Relationalist Manifesto" include
- Relationship. Life is not a solitary journey... It is a process of forming attachments... It is a great chain of generations...
- Connection. Society is a web, a person is a node in a network, a personality is a movement toward others.
- Nurture. Unconditional parental love instills a sense of we that precedes me.
- Commitment. Vocation, family, philosophy or faith.
- Selflessness. Surrender to something great creates strength.
This all sounds great. It doesn't sound much like the perspective of a William F. Buckley Jr. protege. Even a reformed one. I wonder what WFB would say about it? Would he, for instance, affirm the point about connection and commitment by pointing to his own crusading conservatism?
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