How the Elite rigged Society (and why it’s falling apart) | David Brooks

Summary

In this thought-provoking discussion, David Brooks confesses his place among the educated elite, highlighting both the achievements and failures of this group in shaping modern society. Brooks critiques the inequities and systemic advantages perpetuated by the elite, leading to a rigid class system. He delves into the spiritual decline brought on by the privatization of morality and the unraveling of communal values. Touching on political dynamics, Brooks warns against aligning with figures like Donald Trump, who represent elite interests rather than true populism. He argues for a cultural shift back towards communal and moral foundations, suggesting that historical cycles of rupture and repair can guide society towards transformation. Brooks calls for a return to moral formation at the center of society, emphasizing generous, humane connections between people for genuine cultural change.

Highlights

• David Brooks admits he's part of the 'educated elite' and reflects on its role in society. 📚
• The elite did both great things (like inventing the internet) and not-so-great things (designing a system tailored for their success). 🌐
• Brooks claims the privatization of morality has led to a spiritual and cultural crisis. 👻
• He criticizes figures like Donald Trump, arguing they represent elite, anti-left interests. 🤯
• Brooks suggests historical rupture and repair cycles as a model for societal recovery. ⚡
• He emphasizes personal and cultural engagement for meaningful change, pushing for generous, humane connections. 💬
• Brooks sees cultural change as more profound than political, driving society towards better, shared paths. 🌱

Key Takeaways

• David Brooks confesses his membership in the 'educated elite' and critiques their role in societal inequity and moral decline. 🤔
• The elite have created a caste system favoring their skills, making success nearly unattainable for others. 🏆
• Spiritual and moral decay, according to Brooks, stems from individualized morality replacing universal moral order. ✨
• Brooks links the rise of figures like Donald Trump to the educated elite's anti-left incompetence. 🚀
• He argues for cultural renewal, drawing from past cycles of societal rupture and renewal. 🔄
• Brooks calls for personal, relational, and civic cultural shifts back towards communal and moral foundations. 🤝

Overview

David Brooks, an acknowledged member of the 'educated elite', offers a deep dive into how this group has both contributed positively to advancements and negatively by entrenching societal inequities. By designing systems favoring their own skills, the elite have created a challenging class system that benefits few and leaves many at a disadvantage.

In addition to systemic social inequalities, Brooks highlights a spiritual and moral crisis, attributing it to the shift from a universal moral order to individualistic morality. This transformation, he argues, has led to a societal decay in trust and meaning, with consequences on mental health and communal ties. Brooks connects this spiritual collapse to the political realm, where he criticizes movements led by figures like Donald Trump as symptoms of elite-driven fragmentation rather than hopeful populism.

However, Brooks refrains from painting a bleak future, instead calling for a return to communal, relationship-centered values through cultural shifts. He draws on historical examples of nations rising from crises through 'rupture and repair', emphasizing that genuine change comes through evolving cultural narratives and embracing shared moral foundations. His vision advocates for individuals and communities to reconnect with a generous, humane outlook, fostering a society that thrives on compassion and collaborative growth.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Personal Story The chapter begins with the narrator confessing to being part of the educated elite, highlighting their upbringing by historian parents focused on Victorian England. The cultural environment at home was distinctive, with an emphasis on intellectualism and British manners, symbolized by their pet turtles named Disraeli and Gladstone. This environment was characterized by emotional restraint. However, at the age of seven, the narrator's encounter with the book 'Paddington Bear' sparked a desire to become a writer, a passion that has been central to their identity since high school.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Elite Education and Career The chapter titled 'Elite Education and Career' reflects on the author's youthful experiences with relationships and academic choices. It begins with a personal anecdote about the author's desire to date a woman named Bernice, who chose someone else instead. The author humorously questions Bernice's decision, believing himself to be more talented in writing than his rival. This anecdote highlights the author's youthful values and self-assessment. At the age of 18, the author faced pivotal life decisions when admissions officers from prestigious universities like Columbia, Wesley, and Brown guided him towards attending the University of Chicago. The chapter humorously alludes to the perception of Chicago as a place 'where fun goes to die,' reflecting on the challenging and rigorous academic environment.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Rigging the Meritocracy The chapter 'Rigging the Meritocracy' begins with an anecdote about Chicago, described humorously as a place where 'atheist professors teach Jewish students at a Baptist school,' highlighting its intellectual diversity and elite education environment. The narrator mentions their personal experiences, stating that they majored in history and celibacy, suggesting a blend of academic pursuit and perhaps a self-deprecating commentary on their college life. After graduating, the narrator secured a position befitting an 'educated elite,' working as a conservative columnist for the New York Times, which they humorously compared to a role of significant organizational importance.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Spiritual Consequences The chapter titled 'Spiritual Consequences' features a story about a rabbi visiting Mecca, suggesting a unique and infrequent encounter, as indicated by the phrase 'not a lot of company there.' The narrative then shifts to the speaker's professional experience, particularly with PBS NewsHour, which is compared to another news program called News Night. The audience for this news program, referred to as 'educated Elite,' is described as wonderful and somewhat seasoned. Additionally, the speaker shares an anecdote about a 93-year-old lady who approaches them at an airport, humorously revealing that while she doesn't watch the program, her mother does, hinting at the program's appeal across generations.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Rise of the Anti-Left Elite This chapter discusses the role of the educated elite in shaping modern society. It highlights the positive contributions they have made, such as creating the internet and popularizing brunch and mocktails. On the downside, it criticizes how they've designed a meritocracy that favors the skills they possess, ensuring their own success. By age 12, children from affluent backgrounds are significantly ahead academically compared to their peers, highlighting systemic inequalities that benefit the elite's offspring.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Crisis and Recovery The chapter 'Crisis and Recovery' discusses the disparities in educational and professional opportunities between wealthy and poor individuals. It highlights statistics showing that children from affluent backgrounds are significantly more likely to attend prestigious universities and secure positions in elite workplaces compared to those from less privileged backgrounds. This situation contributes to a societal caste system. Additionally, the chapter details the impact of education on life expectancy and social outcomes, stating that individuals with only a high school diploma tend to have a shorter lifespan, are more likely to have children outside of marriage, and often experience social isolation.
• 04:30 - 06:00: Spiritual Legacy and Cultural Change The chapter titled 'Spiritual Legacy and Cultural Change' discusses the contradictions in American society, where there is a pretension of egalitarianism despite the presence of a caste system. It argues that the most detrimental actions were not material but spiritual. There was a privatization of morality, leading to the destruction of the moral order. The chapter references historian George Marsen, who highlighted the power of Martin Luther King's rhetoric. King's message was powerful because it appealed to a moral order inherent in the universe, suggesting that if grave injustices like slavery and segregation are not considered wrong, then nothing can be deemed wrong.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Conclusion and Humanism This chapter reflects on the implications of individualism on moral order, highlighting the challenges of subjective morality. Referencing a warning from journalist Walter Litman in 1955, it explores the potential consequences for civilization when moral values are left to individual determination.

How the Elite rigged Society (and why it’s falling apart) | David Brooks Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so I have a confession to make I'm a member of the educated Elite my parents were historians of Victorian England our Turtles when I was growing up were named Israeli and Gladstone the culture in our home was think yish act British very stiff upper lip we showed no emotion and then when I was seven I read a book called paddings in the bear and decided I want to become a writer and that was Central to my identity ever since in high school um uh what you call
• 00:30 - 01:00 like fourth form or something like that um I wanted to date a woman named Bernice and she didn't want to date me she dated some other guy and I remember thinking what is she thinking I write way better than that guy and so those were my values H and then when I was 18 the admissions officers at Columbia Wesley and brown universities decided I should go to the University of Chicago and some of you may know the saying about Chicago it's where fun goes
• 01:00 - 01:30 to die my favorite saying about Chicago it's a Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students St Thomas aquinus so it's very educated Elite uh and I fit right in I had a double major at Chicago in history and celibacy while I was there um and then after school I got a job where an educated Elite person should get a job I was hired to be the conservative columnist of the New York Times a job I likened to being the Chief
• 01:30 - 02:00 Rabbi at Mecca uh not not a lot of company there and then I got a job on PBS which is our PBS NewsHour which is our version of news night and again educated Elite uh we have a wonderful audience somewhat seasoned and so if a 93y old lady comes up from me the airport I know what she's going to say I don't want your program but my mother loves it uh and
• 02:00 - 02:30 so so we members of the educated Elite did some good things we created the internet brunch and mocktails you're welcome we did some bad things we designed a meritocracy design designed around the skills we ourselves possess and rigged the game so we succeeded and everybody else failed by age 12 children American children of affluent kids are four grade levels above everybody else by University the
• 02:30 - 03:00 age rich kids are 77 times more likely to go to university or to ivy league university than kids from poor schools in adulthood 54% of the people at Elite workplaces went to the same 34 Elite colleges so we ended up creating a cast system people with high school degrees die nine years sooner than people with college degrees people with high school degrees are five times more likely to have kids out of wedlock people with high school degrees are 2.4 times more likely to say they have no friends so we
• 03:00 - 03:30 created a cast system even though we pretend to be egalitarian but the worst things we did were not Material America has a very strong economy the worst things we did were spiritual we privatized morality and destroyed the moral order uh George Marsen is a great historian who said what gave Martin Luther King's rhetoric its power was the sense there's a moral order built built into the universe that if slavery is not wrong nothing is wrong if segregation is not wrong nothing is wrong
• 03:30 - 04:00 we took that essential moral order that holds people together and we decided it's up to you to find your own truth find your own values back in 1955 a great American journalist named Walter Litman understood this was going to be a b big problem he said if what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels then we are outside the bounds of civilization um and so without a strong moral order it's
• 04:00 - 04:30 hard to have trust it's hard to find your your meaning in life and so America and I think Britain too has become a sadder Society rise in mental health rise in suicide 45% of high school students say they are persistently hopeless and despondent four since 2000 the number of Americans without close personal friends is up by fourfold since 2000 the number of people who say they have no who say they are in the lowest happiness category is up by 50% we've just become
• 04:30 - 05:00 sadder the third thing the educated lead has done and this may not please you is we produced Donald Trump uh some people think Donald Trump is a populist Donald Trump and Elon Musk went to the University of Pennsylvania and IV League school and became billionaires JD Vance went to Yale Pete hexi went to the Princeton Yale Steven Miller went to Duke Fox News typ like Laur Ingram went to Dartmouth and they represent the educated Elite and the key factor of the
• 05:00 - 05:30 educated Elite is that they're not pro-conservative they're anti-left they don't have a positive Vision conservative vision for society they just want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates and this means in the first place they're astoundingly incompetent I have a lot of sympathy with what drove people to vote for Trump but I I'm telling you as someone who's on the front row to what's happening do not hit your wagon to that star
• 05:30 - 06:00 thank you you're supposed to boo P heith gave away our bargaining chips with Putin before we even had negotiations Elon Musk has 25y olds firing people who were controlling our nuclear codes it's like Sam bankman freed got control of our Nu nuclear Arsenal second Elite narcissism causes them to eviscerate every belief system they touch
• 06:00 - 06:30 conservatives believe in healthy societies are built on healthy institutions they're an anti-institutional conservatives believe in steady and gradual change Edmond Burke their disruption conservatives believe in constitutional government Donald Trump says I alone can fix this conservatives believe in moral Norms they're destroying moral Norms conser the other belief system that they are destroying us judeo-christian Faith judeo Christ faith is based
• 06:30 - 07:00 on service to the poor service to the Immigrant service to the stranger I went to numibia South Africa throughout the 1990s and 2000s and I watched people die of AIDS then I went back with my friend Mike Gerson and I saw those 25 million lives saved I saw people living lives of dignity and so what's the first thing Donald Trump did he eviscerated that program my friends in America are conservative evangelicals in government
• 07:00 - 07:30 who want to fight sex trafficking poverty they want to preserve National Security Donald Trump is declaring war on those Christians so don't so I've describ three different things we educated Elites brought you we destroy the social fabric through inequality we destroyed the moral fabric through privatizing morality and we
• 07:30 - 08:00 destroyed the institutional fabric what's happening right now how can we come back well we already are I often ask people tell me about a time that made you who you are as a human being and they never say I want a fantastic vacation in Hawaii they never say that they say I went through a really hard time the death of someone the loss of someone moving away from home entering a new vocation Paul tiik the Theologian said those moments of suffering interrupt
• 08:00 - 08:30 your life and they remind you you're not the person you thought they were they carve through the floor of your basement of your soul and they reveal a cavity below and they carve through that floor and they reveal a cavity Below in moments of suffering you see yourself in a more Deep Way than you ever did before and in those moments of suffering you can either be broken or you can be broken open and people who are transformed decide I'm going to be broken open and Nations that are going to be transformed by moments of suffering say we're going to be broken
• 08:30 - 09:00 open we've been through periods of national crisis before across the world Nations have constantly hit a spiritual and cultural crisis and then revived this country between 1820 and 1848 I was here in the 1980s Britain recovered in the 1980s Australia in the 1970s Germany and Japan after World War II South Korea in the 1980s Rwanda after 1994 Chile in the 1990s
• 09:00 - 09:30 my own country we've done this again and again we've grown not through a happy merry ride we've grown through a process of rupture and repair when society and culture is in crisis and we figure it out 1770s the Old Colonial order had to go sorry 1830s the East Coast Elite had too much power Andrew Jackson brought an era of populism 1860s the slavery order had to go Abraham Lincoln brought forth National Redemption
• 09:30 - 10:00 1890s we had failed at industrialization we had a Civic Renaissance of all these Civic organizations that filled in the whole and created a sane Society 1960s the conformist culture of the 1950s had to go and we had the changes that came there the temptation of those who don't read history is to think this time is different we're in another period of rupture and repair we have spiritual resources I'm a conservative I believe the that we are inheritors of a great spiritual Legacy
• 10:00 - 10:30 what Michael Oak called the great conversation we have the voice of Genesis that we're all made in God's image that's the foundation of democracy we have the voice of Exodus that we wander through the Wilderness and we eventually get to the promised land we have the voice of Jesus even if you're not Christian blessed are the meek blessed are the poor in spirit that's a source of great strength in my country we have the voice of Alexander Hamilton poor boys and girls should rise and succeed we have the voice of Edmund Burke that we should be modest about
• 10:30 - 11:00 what we can know because culture is really complicated and we should operate on society the way we would operate on our father gradually and carefully we have the joy voice of John Stewart Mill we value diversity and pluralism because it leads to what he called adventures in living when you have a spiritual moral and relational crisis the job is to shift the culture and we are moving I think from a hyper individualistic culture the last years toward a communal culture I didn't
• 11:00 - 11:30 like the social justice movement but it was an attempt to find Community I'm not particularly a big fan of Maga but it's an attempt to find Community cultur change is about a shifting of the heart it's a Prov providing new answers to the question how should I live my life it's about soulcraft and it isn't done the way you do political change culture change Works differently it's done as Walter batet put it if you want to Wi people over enjoy the things
• 11:30 - 12:00 that conservatives enjoy culture changes when a creative minority find a beautiful way to live culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy that's the story of the early church it's the story of the clam sect they weren't my cup of tea but it's a story of Bloomsbury I was mentored by William F Buckley it's a story of the conservative
• 12:00 - 12:30 movement in America culture changes on a personal level when we relate to each other with attentive and generous gaze Simone VY said attention is the purest form of generosity culture changes on a spiritual level tselot said you can't create a system so perfect that the people in it don't have to be good it's when you put moral formation at the center of your society and finally it happens at the Civic level when a thousand voices and a thousand
• 12:30 - 13:00 different organizations create Civic institutions that provide healing and relationship in society that's how culture changes I was at a bar about two months after October 7th and if you had seen me there you would have thought sad Guy drinking alone I call it reporting so I'm scrolling through Twitter and it has all these brutal images from the Middle East but I come
• 13:00 - 13:30 across a video of James Baldwin and he says you know there isn't as much Humanity as one would like but there's enough and what you've got to remember is that when you walk down the street every person you meet you could be that person that could be you you could be that monster you could be that Saint you could and you have to decide who you're going to be now James Baldwin was treated shabbily by my Society because of his race and other things but
• 13:30 - 14:00 he had a right to be bitter but even in that circumstance he uttered the ultimate humanist statement you could be that person that person could be you and the phrase that rang in my head when I heard that was defiant humanism that even in harsh and brutal times were called upon to see each other in the fullest deepest and most respectful way that God imagined that they would be seen thank you very much