David Brooks: "They Had It Made". Harvard, Class of 1940

[freeisbest]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/12brooks.html?em
Op-Ed Columnist
They Had It Made
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 11, 2009

In the late 1930s, a group of 268 promising young men, including John
F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, entered Harvard College. By any normal
measure, they had it made. They tended to be bright, polished,
affluent and ambitious. They had the benefit of the world’s most
prestigious university. They had been selected even from among Harvard
students as the most well adjusted.

And yet the categories of journalism and the stereotypes of normal
conversation are paltry when it comes to predicting a life course.
Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save
Dostoyevsky’s. A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of
mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane
personalities often produced the most solid success. One man couldn’t
admit to himself that he was gay until he was in his late 70s.

The men were the subject of one of the century’s most fascinating
longitudinal studies. They were selected when they were sophomores,
and they have been probed, poked and measured ever since. Researchers
visited their homes and investigated everything from early bed-wetting
episodes to their body dimensions.

The results from the study, known as the Grant Study, have surfaced
periodically in the years since. But they’ve never been so brilliantly
captured as they are in an essay called “What Makes Us Happy?” by
Joshua Wolf Shenk in the forthcoming issue of The Atlantic. (The essay
is available online today.)

The life stories are more vivid than any theory one could concoct to
explain them. One man seemed particularly gifted. He grew up in a
large brownstone, the son of a rich doctor and an artistic mother.
“Perhaps more than any other boy who has been in the Grant Study,” a
researcher wrote while he was in college, “the following participant
exemplifies the qualities of a superior personality: stability,
intelligence, good judgment, health, high purpose, and ideals.”

By 31, he had developed hostile feelings toward his parents and the
world. By his mid-30s, he had dropped off the study’s radar.
Interviews with his friends after his early death revealed a life
spent wandering, dating a potentially psychotic girlfriend, smoking a
lot of dope and telling hilarious stories.

Another man was the jester of the group, possessing in college a
“bubbling, effervescent personality.” He got married, did odd jobs,
then went into public relations and had three kids.

He got divorced, married again, ran off with a mistress who then left
him. He drank more and more heavily. He grew depressed but then came
out of the closet and became a major figure in the gay rights
movement. He continued drinking, though, convinced he was squeezing
the most out of life. He died at age 64 when he fell down the stairs
in his apartment building while drunk.

The study had produced a stream of suggestive correlations. The men
were able to cope with problems better as they aged. The ones who
suffered from depression by 50 were much more likely to die by 63. The
men with close relationships with their siblings were much healthier
in old age than those without them.

But it’s the baffling variety of their lives that strikes one the
most. It is as if we all contain a multitude of characters and
patterns of behavior, and these characters and patterns are bidden by
cues we don’t even hear. They take center stage in consciousness and
decision-making in ways we can’t even fathom. The man who is careful
and meticulous in one stage of life is unrecognizable in another
context.

Shenk’s treatment is superb because he weaves in the life of George
Vaillant, the man who for 42 years has overseen this work. Vaillant’s
overall conclusion is familiar and profound. Relationships are the key
to happiness. “Happiness is love. Full Stop,” he says in a video.

In his professional life, he has lived out that creed. He has been an
admired and beloved colleague and mentor. But the story is more
problematic at home. When he was 10, his father, an apparently happy
and accomplished man, went out by the pool of the Main Line home and
shot himself. His mother shrouded the episode. They never attended a
memorial service nor saw the house again.

He has been through three marriages and returned to his second wife.
His children tell Shenk of a “civil war” at home and describe long
periods when they wouldn’t speak to him. His oldest friend says he has
a problem with intimacy.

Even when we know something, it is hard to make it so. Reading this
essay, I had the same sense I had while reading Christopher Buckley’s
description of his parents in The Times Magazine not long ago. There
is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis
simply stands mute.
___________________

[Islander]

freeisbest wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/12brooks.html?em
> Op-Ed Columnist
> They Had It Made
> By DAVID BROOKS
> Published: May 11, 2009
>
> In the late 1930s, a group of 268 promising young men, including John
> F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, entered Harvard College. By any normal
> measure, they had it made. They tended to be bright, polished,

> affluent and ambitious. They had the benefit of the world�s most

> prestigious university. They had been selected even from among Harvard
> students as the most well adjusted.
>
> And yet the categories of journalism and the stereotypes of normal
> conversation are paltry when it comes to predicting a life course.
> Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save

> Dostoyevsky�s. A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of

> mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane

> personalities often produced the most solid success. One man couldn�t

> admit to himself that he was gay until he was in his late 70s.
>

> The men were the subject of one of the century�s most fascinating

> longitudinal studies. They were selected when they were sophomores,
> and they have been probed, poked and measured ever since. Researchers
> visited their homes and investigated everything from early bed-wetting
> episodes to their body dimensions.
>
> The results from the study, known as the Grant Study, have surfaced

> periodically in the years since. But they�ve never been so brilliantly
> captured as they are in an essay called �What Makes Us Happy?� by

> Joshua Wolf Shenk in the forthcoming issue of The Atlantic. (The essay
> is available online today.)
>
> The life stories are more vivid than any theory one could concoct to
> explain them. One man seemed particularly gifted. He grew up in a
> large brownstone, the son of a rich doctor and an artistic mother.

> �Perhaps more than any other boy who has been in the Grant Study,� a
> researcher wrote while he was in college, �the following participant

> exemplifies the qualities of a superior personality: stability,

> intelligence, good judgment, health, high purpose, and ideals.�

>
> By 31, he had developed hostile feelings toward his parents and the

> world. By his mid-30s, he had dropped off the study�s radar.

> Interviews with his friends after his early death revealed a life
> spent wandering, dating a potentially psychotic girlfriend, smoking a
> lot of dope and telling hilarious stories.
>
> Another man was the jester of the group, possessing in college a

> �bubbling, effervescent personality.� He got married, did odd jobs,

> then went into public relations and had three kids.
>
> He got divorced, married again, ran off with a mistress who then left
> him. He drank more and more heavily. He grew depressed but then came
> out of the closet and became a major figure in the gay rights
> movement. He continued drinking, though, convinced he was squeezing
> the most out of life. He died at age 64 when he fell down the stairs
> in his apartment building while drunk.
>
> The study had produced a stream of suggestive correlations. The men
> were able to cope with problems better as they aged. The ones who
> suffered from depression by 50 were much more likely to die by 63. The
> men with close relationships with their siblings were much healthier
> in old age than those without them.
>

> But it�s the baffling variety of their lives that strikes one the

> most. It is as if we all contain a multitude of characters and
> patterns of behavior, and these characters and patterns are bidden by

> cues we don�t even hear. They take center stage in consciousness and
> decision-making in ways we can�t even fathom. The man who is careful

> and meticulous in one stage of life is unrecognizable in another
> context.
>

> Shenk�s treatment is superb because he weaves in the life of George
> Vaillant, the man who for 42 years has overseen this work. Vaillant�s

> overall conclusion is familiar and profound. Relationships are the key

> to happiness. �Happiness is love. Full Stop,� he says in a video.

>
> In his professional life, he has lived out that creed. He has been an
> admired and beloved colleague and mentor. But the story is more
> problematic at home. When he was 10, his father, an apparently happy
> and accomplished man, went out by the pool of the Main Line home and
> shot himself. His mother shrouded the episode. They never attended a
> memorial service nor saw the house again.
>
> He has been through three marriages and returned to his second wife.

> His children tell Shenk of a �civil war� at home and describe long
> periods when they wouldn�t speak to him. His oldest friend says he has

> a problem with intimacy.
>
> Even when we know something, it is hard to make it so. Reading this

> essay, I had the same sense I had while reading Christopher Buckley�s

> description of his parents in The Times Magazine not long ago. There
> is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis
> simply stands mute.
> ___________________

Yes, there is a complexity to human affairs, but science and analysis
are definitely not mute on the subject. Rather there is a continuing
effort to understand that complexity. Brooks may not understand that,
but he is also not an authority on science.

More interestingly, several of us locally had a conversation recently
about how many, if not most, of our national leaders have graduated from
the same small number of prep-schools and universities. Harvard and
Yale were two universities that were especially noted along with the
observation that admissions to these universities were heavily
influenced by the wealthy elite of the country (our current President a
notable exception). One wonders if perhaps it is time to diversify the
gene pool!

Here are a few names that you might recognize.

Harvard:
Al Gore
John F. Kennedy
Barack Obama
Franklin D. Roosevelt
William Rehnquist
Antonin Scalia
David Souter
Michael Chertoff
Alberto Gonzales
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert McNamara
Henry Paulson
Janet Reno
Tom Ridge
Robert Rubin
Lawrence Summers
Casper Weinberger
Elizabeth Dole
Bill Frist
Bob Graham
Edward Kennedy
William Proxmire
Paul Sarbanes
Charles Schumer
Ted Stevens
John Sununu
David Vitter
Mitt Romney
Eliot Spitzer
Barney Frank
Jane Harman
Katherine Harris
William Perry
Ben Bernanke
Paul Bremer
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Daniel Ellsberg
Douglas Feith
Caroline Kennedy
Alan Keyes
Ralph Nader
Paul Volcker
Lou Dobbs
William Kristol
Bill O'Reilly
Mort Zuckerman
Al Franken

Yale:
George H. W. Bush
George W. Bush
Dick Cheney
Bill Clinton
Gerald Ford
Samuel Alito
Clarence Thomas
John Ashcroft
Hillary Rodham Clinton
John Kerry
Joe Lieberman
William Proxmire
Arlen Specter
McGeorge Bundy
Stephen Hadley
John Negroponte
Robert Rubin
Porter Goss
Paul Bremer
Lewis (Scooter) Libby
Fred and Robert Kagan