Perpetual Self-Confrontation

"Joseph Soloveitchik argued that these two sides of our nature are at war with each other. We live in perpetual self-confrontation between the external success and the internal value. And the tricky thing, I'd say, about these two sides of our nature is they work by different logics. The external logic is an economic logic: input leads to output, risk leads to reward. The internal side of our nature is a moral logic and often an inverse logic. You have to give to receive. You have to surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself. You have to conquer the desire to get what you want. In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself.

We happen to live in a society that favors [the former], and often neglects [the latter]."

~ David Brooks, from "Should you live for your résumé ... or your eulogy?" TED Talks, 2014

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See also: 

• "The Moral Bucket List," by David Brooks, The New York Times, April 11, 2015

• Brooks, D. (2015). The road to character. New York: Random House. (author, library)

• Soloveitchik, J. D. (1992). The lonely man of faith. New York: Doubleday. (library)

• "Moral Man and Immoral Society: Rediscovering Reinhold Niebuhr," On Being, October 25, 2007