Two Logics

Prior to the meeting, a recent prospective client sent me an extended quote from NY Times columnist, David Brooks in his August article in The Atlantic, The New Old Age - What a new life stage can teach the rest of us about how to find meaning and purpose—before it’s too late.

It’s long, but worth reproducing in its entirety, as it encapsulates the tension so many of us experience in our culture and within our own hearts:

“We live in a culture that has become wildly imbalanced, like a bodybuilder who has pumped his right side up to excessive proportion while allowing his left side to shrivel away.

A well-formed life is governed by two different logics. The first is the straightforward, utilitarian logic that guides us through our careers: Input leads to output; effort leads to reward; pursuing self-interest and responding to incentives leads to success; thinking strategically, climbing the ladder, impressing the world. This is the logic that business schools teach you.

But there is a second and deeper logic to life, gift logic, which guides us as we form important relationships, serve those around us, and cultivate our full humanity. This is a logic of contribution, not acquisition; surrender, not domination. It’s a moral logic, not an instrumental one, and it’s full of paradox: You have to give to receive. You have to lose yourself to find yourself. You have to surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself.

If career logic helps you conquer the world, gift logic helps you serve it. If career logic focuses on “how” questions—how to climb the career ladder, how to get things done efficiently—gift logic focuses on “why” questions, such as why are we here, and what good should we ultimately serve? If career logic is about building up the ego, gift logic is about relinquishing it and putting others first.

A well-lived life, at any stage, is lived within the tension between these two logics.”

As someone whose job straddles the two logics, I’m most interested in helping folks get in touch with the second deeper logic. What does it matter if you climb the ladder, save money on taxes, and make better investment decisions if you don’t get to the deeper questions of “why” and for “what” purpose?

For some “straightforward, utilitarian” logic, check out our most recent articles on investing in bonds, maximizing your HSA, and protecting yourself online.

But, more importantly, spend some time thinking about the paradoxical moral logic that Brooks is talking about.