![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/a25654.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cSeven and then door-close, door-close, door-close, door-close, door-close, door-close, door-close, door-close, and door-close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cartoon by Paul Noth<\/p>\n
There are any number of prospective material explanations for the young strivers\u2019 predicament, and Brooks makes brief note of several, among them the punishing housing market and the imminent collapse of the social safety net. But calcified habits die hard, and rather than seriously entertain any of these explanations, or even clarify why he rejects them, he turns instinctively to what he knows best\u2014dubious social science.<\/p>\n
To make sense of the strivers\u2019 malaise, Brooks relies on the work of Jonathan \u201cHappiness Hypothesis\u201d Haidt, whose 2024 best-seller, \u201cThe Anxious Generation,\u201d argued that digital natives have been addled by excessive screen time. What he adds to Haidt\u2019s account is a dash of questionable neuroscience: in his telling, \u201chemispheric lateralization,\u201d the phenomenon whereby cognitive functions are localized in different halves of the brain, \u201cexplains the acute crisis of meaning today.\u201d A nebulous alloy of smartphones, social media, and a lust for optimization has thrust society into a \u201cleft-brained\u201d orientation, forcing us to adopt a hyper-practical outlook. \u201cThe modern world of technology is literally changing the way people use their brains,\u201d Brooks writes, \u201crendering them less and less capable of finding life\u2019s coherence, purpose, and significance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though researchers have found no evidence that contemporary populations use one hemisphere of the brain\u00a0any more than the other, every part of this picture is presented with slick confidence. Appeals to \u201cthe science\u201d abound. Brooks is apt to fall back on that old assurance \u201cstudies show,\u201d even when studies conflict\u2014or, worse, when the very studies he cites do not show what he says they do. In his book \u201cThe Conservative\u00a0Heart,\u201d from 2015, for instance, he avers that monogamy yields happiness, then adds, \u201cThis isn\u2019t my moral opinion; it\u2019s what empirical evidence tells us.\u201d The \u201cempirical evidence\u201d in question is a study showing that subjects with a single sexual partner have an average of 0.077 additional \u201chappiness points.\u201d But it also found that people who have sex four or more times a week, possibly with any number of partners, have 0.12, a fact that Brooks conveniently neglects to mention.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Meaning of Your Life\u201d also contains its fair share of misrepresentations, as when Brooks muses that \u201cthe idea of opposites attracting might even be biological,\u201d then cites a 1995 study that subsequent researchers have called into question. But no one reading the book will come away with the sense that studies are often contested, or that many of the findings of social psychology and economics remain unsettled, or that results can be interpreted in many ways. Like much popular social science, it makes no effort to prove or even to persuade. It simply asserts and instructs.<\/p>\n
Its tone as it does so is distinctly infantilizing. Chapters are subdivided into digestible sections (\u201cGet Bored the Right Way,\u201d \u201cGive More to Transcend Yourself\u201d) and often end with homework, set aside in a little box, as in elementary-school textbooks. When Brooks is not offering \u201cQuestions for Reflection and Self-Assessment,\u201d he is laying out \u201cThree Big Things to Remember,\u201d as if he were providing a study guide for the exam of a meaningful life. In his book \u201cLove Your Enemies,\u201d from 2019, he admiringly cites \u201cThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People\u201d\u2014which he describes, perhaps with a sense of defensive self-awareness, as a \u201cmasterpiece\u201d that is not \u201cjust cheesy self-help.\u201d Brooks, for his part, rarely imposes on readers by asking them to count as high as seven, perhaps assuming that \u201cthree major lessons from the science of morality\u201d and \u201cfive simple facts\u201d make more manageable mathematical demands.<\/p>\n
Still, Brooks\u2019s turn away from politics and toward a more therapeutic project has not been wholly unhelpful. His practical advice fares better than both his theories and his pallid attempts at profundity. In his columns, he recommends such commonsense remedies as a good night\u2019s sleep and regular exercise. \u201cThe Meaning of Your Life,\u201d in particular, contains several promising suggestions. Who would deny that we would all do better to turn off our phones, interact with other human beings, and maybe even go outside for a walk every once in a while? Brooks struggles, however, when he strays from the cozy precincts of self-help and into the rugged realm of philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In \u201cThe Meaning of Your Life,\u201d he no longer trumpets free markets, extolls entrepreneurs, or praises work as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[412,163,85,46,1619,522,523,4813],"class_list":{"0":"post-378602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-magazine","13":"tag-mental-health","14":"tag-mentalhealth","15":"tag-splitscreenimagerightfullbleed"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}