Social Animal

The Social Animal The Social Animal by David Brooks is an analytical description of the unconscious and critical role it plays in the human development as well. This book probes the idea that the unconscious mind is the driving force behind human interaction and main component that makes us who we are. The Social Animal, published in 2011, is one of the many published works by Brooks that have received many positive reviews for his intellectual and emotional approach to tackling the diverse subjects while still appealing to the reader. He has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and op-ed columnist at the New York Times. He approaches the power of the unconscious mind using two fictional characters in a modern setting that represent 2 different ideals of attacking life; their names are Harold and Erica. Utilizing these 2 characters to their full extent, Brooks promotes the idea of how the unconscious mind is the dominating factor that perceives who we are and how we go about life. According to Brooks the unconscious mind, contrary to popular, is not an empty and dark void in the mind but a “realm of emotions, intuitions, biases, longing, genetic predispositions, character traits and social norms”(Brooks, x). It controls the way we interact with others as well as promote our growth through the intake of information about our surrounding environment and that in which we get exposed to. The power of the unconscious responds to our every moment without consciously thinking. Intuition is a great example of how we process through life without having to consciously figure or physically state what one has to do or act. Harold is used as a situational example, is placed in a high school setting, trotting from clique to clique already aware of the “unspoken norms” which we tend to follow without really knowing or actually stating the rules. Our mind intake the behavior to which we are exposed to and from then we set rules of how to behave without us fully