David Brooks: belief

Transcript context

…What is the kind of shock that will work? I gave you all the statistics of how sad we are. My analysis is, there’s an attachment theorist named John Bowlby who said that all of life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base. That secure base for most of us is a secure attachment to mom and dad, a secure devotion to a specific place, the place that’s sacred to us. Assured devotion to our nation and confidence that our nation stands for something good. Secure implantation in, as I said, a moral order. I think that secure base for a lot of people has been destroyed. Families are less healthy than they were. Communities are less healthy where the moral order has been taken away, so that we privatize morality. It’s every man and woman for herself. Two-parent families seem to be doing quite well. It’s a problem that there’re fewer of them.…

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