New York Times Columnist David Brooks speaks about his new book ‘How to Know a Person’ in Graham Chapel on Oct. 30. (Sam Powers｜Student Life)

New York Times columnist David Brooks delivered a lecture about how to strengthen interpersonal relationships titled “How to Know a Person” at Washington University, Oct. 30. 

Along with writing for the Times since 2003, Brooks appears regularly on PBS NewsHour and is the bestselling author of five other books, including “The Road to Character” and “The Social Animal.” The sold-out lecture from the prominent political and social commentator took place in Graham Chapel and is part of a book tour for his sixth book “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen,” which was published on Oct. 24.

Brooks’ lecture, like his book, centered on how people can more clearly understand and uplift each other. He said this can be accomplished through simple acts of attentiveness, respect, and engaging in meaningful, open-ended conversations.

“We inhabit a society in which people don’t treat each other with kindness and consideration, and in my view, they haven’t been taught,” Brooks said. “It’s things like how to be a good listener, [how] to disagree well, and [how] to sit with someone who’s depressed or grieving, and [how] to ask for and offer forgiveness.”

Brooks said that this societal failure to listen well is aggravating the state of people’s mental well-being.

“There’s just been this epidemic of social pain [that] I’ve been covering for about six or seven years — pain [that] is now being replicated on a global scale,” he said. “And that sadness and isolation turns into meanness because if you feel invisible, unseen, disrespected, you’re going to regard it as an injustice and lash out.”

Brooks pointed out the mental health crisis in the United States today. He used statistics to highlight the large percent of people who feel undervalued, misunderstood, and invisible — things that lead to high rates of loneliness, depression, and despondency.

“As I’ve become a little more human, American society has become a little more dehumanized,” he said.

While Brooks framed the relevance of his book within humanity’s high prevalence of interpersonal issues, the majority of his speech centered on ways that people can bring out the best in each other.

“There are some people who are diminishers, and there are some people who are illuminators,” Brooks said. “The diminishers make you feel stereotyped, small, unseen, invisible. The illuminators are curious about you. They listen to you. They make you feel respected.” 

He fine-tuned his themes of humanistic thinking with advice for improving interpersonal communication: listen loudly by vocalizing affirmation; ask questions that probe at why people believe what they believe; and think of responses to people after they finish talking, even if that means pausing momentarily to gather your thoughts.

Brooks drew frequent laughter from the audience for jokes that poked fun at his own experiences while pulling extensively on anecdotes from his own life and those of his friends and spiritual and community leaders.

Towards the beginning of his talk, Brooks quoted the biographer of the English novelist Ian Foster, who wrote that “‘to speak to [Foster] was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.’” 

“Who wouldn’t want to be that guy, bring out the best in people?” Brooks said.

Helen Wilcockson, a local St. Louisan, appreciated the graciousness Brooks showed in his lecture. “He’s a decent human being, and that comes over loud and clear and in a way [that] that’s what he’s selling,” she said. 

Wilcockson added that she was not expecting to find Brooks as comedic as she did. “I think his humor surprised me because it’s not that you don’t see humor on Channel 9 when he talks — but not like that.” 

Lisa Hautly, a St. Louis resident, was similarly surprised by how much humor Brooks injected into his talk and appreciated hearing how his thoughts have evolved from the past columns and books she has read from him.

“[I’ve been] reading him through different stages…[and] I think his perspective as he matures is really important,” Hautly said. “I’m really anxious to read [“How to Know a Person”] because I feel like it will weave together much of what he’s talked about from a more mature perspective.”

One of the key ways that Brooks’ perspective has changed over time has been tied to his religious conversion from Judaism to Christianity in 2013. He pulled on his religiosity in an anecdote towards the end of his talk about a pastor named Jimmy, a man who Brooks said saw the image of God in every person he interacted with.

“He’s looking at somebody who has a soul of infinite value and dignity, a person so important that Jesus was willing to die for that person,” he said. “Now you can be an atheist, agnostic, Jew, Christian, Muslim, whatever, but having that kind of respect and reverence for every person you meet is the prerequisite for understanding them well.” 

“Every person you meet is fascinating on some subject,” Brooks said. “Every person you meet is better than you at something; every person you meet is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery you can never get to the bottom of.”

The University presented this event in partnership with the St. Louis County Library Foundation and The Novel Neighbor.