June 16, 2025
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
“The Illuminator ideal begins with a different understanding of human nature. People are social animals. People need recognition from others if they are to thrive. People long for someone to look into their eyes with loving acceptance. Therefore, morality is mostly about the small, daily acts of building connection—the gaze that says “I respect you,” the question that says “I’m curious about you,” the conversation that says, “We’re in this together.” In the Illuminator model, character building is not something you can do alone. Morality is a social practice.”
(David Brooks How to Know a Person)
As I write this entry I am mildly distracted by the comings and goings of marine traffic in the adjacent English Bay. In particular, I see a tugboat pulling two barges, one behind the other, with the last one sporting some complicated crane-like equipment. Who knows where they’re going or where they’ve been, but it’s a sure bet they’re headed where they’re very much in need. I have a fondness for these feisty little marine workhorses from having read Timmy the Tug books to our children when they were little. Quintessentially West Coast, “they tow and push barges, assist large ships in navigating coastal waters and harbors, and supply various industries with materials and goods. They are essential for moving resources and connecting communities in a region heavily reliant on water transportation”. (AI Overview)
The tugboat might make a good symbol for Brooks’s Illuminator model. Tugs serve to weave connections between, and fulfill the needs of, an otherwise scattered coastal community. They make it viable to live a relatively modern, productive life in otherwise remote locations. A friend of ours operates a successful destination restaurant that can only be reached by boat. We take the ferry there in the mid afternoon, enjoy an early dinner, get back on a ferry shortly after 8:00 p.m. and are home and in bed by 10 or 11. But I digress.
That people have “humanized” tugboats by giving them names and personalities makes it less of a leap to see Brooks’s Illuminator in a similar analogy. The Illuminator brings empathy, encouragement and acknowledgment to people who, for whatever reason, are feeling disconnected from and alienated by the relentless demands of our productivity-oriented society. One that sees us more and more isolated in our dependence on technology, with only our cell phones, computers and laptops for company.
More significantly for me, the Illuminator sets a different example than what I believed to be the prevailing, if not the only model of a spiritually developing or evolving seeker. Brooks describes this preexisting model in terms of the renunciate or pilgrim who “retires” from society to focus on self-transcendence and, ultimately, divine union (whatever that may be):
“This moral tradition, like all moral traditions, begins with a model of human nature. We humans are divided creatures. We have these primitive, powerful forces within us—passions such as lust, rage, fear, greed, and ambition. But people also possess reason, which they can use to control, tame, and regulate those passions. The essential moral act in this model of character formation is self-mastery. It is exercising willpower so that you are the master of your passions and not their slave. Developing your character is like going to the gym—working through exercise and habit to strengthen a set of universal virtues: honesty, courage, determination, and humility. In this model, character building is something you can do on your own.”
By contrast, Brooks proposes: “In the Illuminator model, character building is not something you can do alone. Morality is a social practice.”
Though this distinction may mean nothing to you, it has come as quite the epiphany to one such as me, who has been steeped in the earlier model of character-building — as self-transcendance or mastery — since discovering the eastern teachings of Kundalini yoga and Vedanta philosophy three-plus decades ago. From Henry James’s: “Know thyself and it will set you free” to St. John of the Cross’s “dark night of the soul”, character development and therefore evolution of consciousness has centered on an individual’s solitary struggles to tame their lower nature, dominate the primitive, powerful forces that limit one’s ability to truly see, care for and be an asset to the greater community.
The Illuminator’s task, as I understand it, is to take the unique skills and abilities one has acquired throughout their life journey, their aptitude for meeting not only their individual aspirations and needs, but for fulfilling their potential as self-realized human beings, and then channeling these qualities into helping, guiding, steering, supporting and companioning their fellow human beings:
“Being an Illuminator is an ideal, and one that most of us will fall short of a lot of the time. But if we try our best to illuminate people with a glowing gaze that is tender, generous, and receptive, we’ll at least be on the right track. We will see beyond the cliché character types we often lazily impose on people: the doting grandmother, the tough coach, the hard-charging businessperson. We will be on our way toward improving how we show up in the world.”
If I didn’t have raging allergies to smoke and hay fever I’m sure I’d show up in the world a whole lot perkier…