Brooks on the dearth of modesty

From Congressman Joe Wilson to entertainer Kanye West self-indulgent expression is the order of the day. David Brooks looks back to a time when it wasn't.

When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.

But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within. . . . It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

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