Diminishers vs illuminators

I've begun reading 'How to Know A Person' by David Brooks. It seems like a really important book at this time in history where AI is taking over and the world - especially in the U.S. - is so polarized.

As Brooks points out in chapter 1: "If we want to begin repairing the big national ruptures, we have to learn to do the small things well." At some point we've got to look one another in the eyes and ask if we want to help things get better or not.

In this first chapter he talks about Diminishers and Illuminators. Diminishers use people and make them feel small and unseen. Illuminators, on the other hand, have "a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know what to look for and how to ask the right questions at the right time. They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, deeper, respected, lit up." To sum up, they make you want to be a better version of yourself.

Then he tells these two stories:

A biographer of the novelist E.M. Forster wrote, "To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self." Imagine how good it would be to be that guy.

Perhaps you know the story that is sometimes told of Jennie Jerome, who later became Winston Churchill's mother. It's said that when she was young, she dined with the British statesman William Gladstone and left thinking he was the cleverest person in England. Later she dined with Gladstone's great rival, Benjamin Disraeli, and left that dinner thinking she was the cleverest person on England. It's nice to be like Gladstone, but it's better to be like Disraeli.

So far it's a pretty good read. Definitely something I need, because for as much as I would like to be an illuminator instead of a diminisher, it does not come naturally to me. ;)

The world needs more illuminators.