The Relationalist Manifesto

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The relational life is an open adventure. There are always ups and down, the forces of impersonalization warring against the forces of personalization. What matters is how you serve relationships through the ups and downs. It’s in the how. The profundity is in the adverbs.

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

Brandy Cerne

Some Weaving is in the family—to practice the unconditional love that is proper family love. This sometimes requires daily acts of putting your convenience before mine, setting aside time for family dinner, making the most of any chance to have a celebration, overwhelming the bad things with good things and of course the regular habits of forgivene

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

Brandy Cerne

Personal transformation and social transformation happen simultaneously. When you reach out and build community, you nourish yourself.

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

Brandy Cerne

The hyper-individualist operates by a straightforward logic: I make myself strong and I get what I want. The relationalist says: Life operates by an inverse logic. I possess only when I give. I lose myself to find myself. When I surrender to something great, that’s when I am strongest and most powerful.

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

Brandy Cerne

Most of us get better at living as we go. There comes a moment, which may come early or later in life, when you realize what your life is actually about. You look across your life and review the moments when you felt more fully alive, at most your best self. They were usually moments when you were working with others in service of some ideal. That

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

we are formed by relationship, we are nourished by relationship, and we long for relationship. Life is not a solitary journey. It is building a home together. It is a process of being formed by attachments and then forming attachments in turn. It is a great chain of generations passing down gifts to one another.

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

Brandy Cerne

Whenever I treat another person as if he were a stereotype, I’ve ripped the social fabric. When I treat another person as an infinite soul, I have woven the social fabric. Whenever I lie, abuse, dismiss or show easy contempt for a person, I have ripped the fabric. Whenever I see someone truly, and make them feel known, I have woven the fabric. When

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

Brandy Cerne

An individual who has become a person has staged a rebellion. She rebels against the individualistic ethos and all the systems of impersonalism. Society tells her to want independence, but she has declared her interdependence. Society says we live in a materialist reality, but she says we live in an enchanted reality. Society tells her to keep her

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

Brandy Cerne

Relationalism is a middle way between hyper-individualism and collectivism. The former detaches the person from all deep connection. The latter obliterates the person within the group, and sees groups as faceless herds. The relationalist sees each person as a node in a thick and enchanted web of warm commitments. She seeks to build a neighborhood,

David Brooks • The Relationalist Manifesto

Brandy Cerne