David Brooks:
Cultivating
a Cultural
Imagination

“... where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I love my God.” - Augustine

All human beings long for transcendence. The yearning for something holy, something higher than what we currently experience or know, can be the spark for so much of our work. But if that longing isn’t active, if our imagination atrophies and we can no longer see the unseen, work can seem meaningless. So how does the imagination stay active? And how does our common longing for what’s transcendent shape communities and industries? Author and cultural commentator David Brooks sheds new light on the reality of our common longings and the hope that it bears for our society.

David Brooks became an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times in September 2003. He is currently a commentator on “The PBS Newshour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He is the author of Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. In March of 2011 he came out with his third book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, which was a number 1 New York Times bestseller.

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