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
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 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
who 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
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
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
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 big
problem h
he said if what is right and
wrong depends on what each individual
feels then we are outside the bounds of
civilization
and
so without a strong moral order it's
hard to have
trust it's hard to find your your
meaning in life