Maybe I'm reading too much into it, and it's just a coincidence, but it sure looks possible that Times columnist David Brooks read my criticism of his column and, in a subtle way, responded in his own column. Here's the back and forth:
My June 23 criticism:
From David Brooks' column, offering advice to people in their 20s:
"If you are going to be underemployed, do it in a way that people are going to find interesting later on. Nobody is ever going to ask you, 'What was it like being a nanny?' They will ask you, 'What was it like leading excursions of Outward Bound?'
This is bad advice in so many ways. First (in unfortunately classic David Brooks fashion), it is outward-directed rather than inner-directed. Who are these "people" that Mr. Brooks thinks one should live one's life to impress? Isn't it instead better to live in a way that suits one's own character? If someone loves little children but hates the woods, maybe that person would be better off as a nanny than as an Outward Bound leader.
Mr. Brooks' June 30 column, riffing on what Cass Sunstein calls the difference between "tuners" and "spinners":
It should be said that both spinning and tuning are patterns of social interaction. They are patterns of being outer directed (now there's a social category type with legs!).
Some people are inner directed. Their way of being in the world is based less on a pattern of interaction and more on a way of projecting what's inside to the surrounding environment. Let's call these people projectors.
I'd say a lot of heroes are projectors. Their primary attachment is to an ideal. They can go through life faithful to that ideal and carry on despite a blizzard of abuse or indifference. I'm thinking of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Aung San Suu Kyi.
On the other hand, there are some projectors whose primary attachment is to some psychosis, some emotional or narcissistic wound. They project outward from that. I add this distinction because every social typology has to have a slot for Donald Trump.
Again, maybe it's just a coincidence that Mr. Brooks is making an "outer directed" and "inner directed" distinction in his column just a week after I called him out on "outward-directed rather than inner-directed." But maybe my piece prompted him to think and write about it. If I did, great, and if not, and it happened without my having had anything to do with it — well, that's great, too. Like nearly all such distinctions, it can become a false dichotomy, if one takes it too far. But it can, I find, also be a useful way of thinking about things.
Also, so long as we're tying up loose ends from that David Brooks episode, it's worth mentioning, too, that the Times ran a letter to the editor, under the headline, "Child Care Is A Worthy Job," making some of the same points I did.