David Brooks

The positive side of that is there was a lot more self-effacing behavior.

There was less ego.

There was less display, less performance.

I had a friend who wrote speeches for George H.W.

Bush, the elder who was raised in that World War II era.

And the speechwriters would write these paragraphs on how asking George W. Bush, H.W., to talk about himself, what a great guy he was and how he was going to make a great president.

And he would cross out those paragraphs.

He said, I'm not going to brag about myself.

They said, you're running for president.

You have to tell the country how good you are.

And he finally did it.

He read the paragraph and his mom called him up the next day and said, George, you're talking about yourself.

And so there was a sense you don't talk about yourself.

Joe DiMaggio, when he hit a home run, he did not do a bat flip.

So there was that emotional reticence had an upside.

I thought it was elegant, gentlemanly, but it had a ferocious downside.

And I think it's changed in part because women are more powerful in the culture and they demanded it.

But it's also changed in part because of what we've learned about the brain.

There was a prejudice which stretches all the way back to Plato.

That reason is reliable and wise.