Arthur C. Brooks, one-time president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has a new book out. The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness is the latest in his series of self-help volumes that purport to use social science alongside the usual motivational talk and New Age Oprah clichés to enable “human flourishing.”
Brooks was once considered a conservative, writing books such as The Conservative Heart and serving as AEI’s president from 2009 to 2019. Now he is pals with Oprah Winfrey and has even coauthored a book with her: Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. He has certainly built the life he wants by pounding the theme of “happiness” and other pop psychology notions into a glittering empire. Brooks has gone from policy wonk to positivity guru, charging $100,000 a pop for speaking engagements and teaching highly popular classes at Harvard on how to attain happiness.
If I may offer a bit of self-help advice to readers: Stay away from Arthur C. Brooks.
Brooks has made a lot of money offering soporific platitudes, but his latest works are remarkable for studiously avoiding core truths about the nature of evil.
A convert to Catholicism at age 15, Brooks quickly retreated from conservatism when Donald Trump arrived on the scene and put forward serious plans to address the problems Brooks was being paid merely to examine at AEI.
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