Did the Ivy League Wreck The us? Can the Pleasure League Save It?

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David Brooks’ fresh essay in “The Atlantic” (How the Ivy League Broke The us) gives crucial critique of the elite-producing mechanisms of the rustic. It additionally delves into coverage and ethical prescriptions involving amplifying social and emotional talents in addition to collaborative finding out and tasks. As an Ivy League and Stanford graduate myself, however one that ended up a psychiatrist, author, and humanist relatively than a tech, finance, or industry wealthy person, I recognize his research. I’ve executed my absolute best to reside and be told alongside social, emotional, and collaborative traces—and I feel a vital proportion of my cohorts and fellow alum have executed in order smartly. Name me extra of a “glue man” in Brooks’ parlance, now not a gunner.

(I recognize his ode to sleepovers as smartly. Take that, Amy Chua and Vivek Ramaswamy! Let’s face it—The us is mainly a sprawling and terrifying sleepover, wherein all of us may hope to hang around in peace, however for our various biases, aggressions, cruelties, addictions, and weapons. We were given taken over at our sleepover. Sigh.)

May just we Ivy League Glue Guys and Gals have executed extra gluing? Positive. May just The us have executed extra to make certain that those that moved upward professionally and financially stayed similar, collaborative, and useful to those that may just now not or didn’t achieve this? Completely. Worth and incentivize the glue, and extra gluing will likely be executed.

Brooks’ article tells of a “damaged The us,” one wherein political and cultural divides have created the prerequisites for a arguable presidential selection. Thus, he posits, the election of Donald Trump is a symptom of our ailment. Brooks proposes that our sickness is elitism and Ivy League admissions, which position inordinate price on wealth and a specifically slim emblem of highbrow fulfillment, which has in flip ended in disastrous disconnections around the citizens.

The main barometer we’ve got of the collective psyche in a democracy is our elections, and by way of that measure, we’re narrowly divided. Possibly we’re just a bit damaged, or just a bit loopy.

President Trump received with lower than 50 % of the preferred vote, besting Kamala Harris by way of 1.5 % (about 2.2 million votes out of 152 million votes solid, 3 million fewer overall votes than in 2020 in spite of a bigger inhabitants) around the country, although he received all of the swing states with a margin of about 230,000 votes out of about 26 million votes, or about 0.9 %. Trump slightly received, however the penalties will likely be enormous for the reason that coverage, price, character, temperament, and elegance variations are really extensive.

Whilst I recognize Brooks’ research, I feel there’s extra to the tale. I be offering those corollaries from my place as cultural observer and public psychiatrist.

1. I feel The us’s primary ailment is that it has at all times liked rich white men. Their perceived lack of standing (thru tasks towards range, inclusivity, justice, and fairness) has fueled false impression and resentment of minorities. We will be able to’t disregard that Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign, extravagantly supported by way of Elon Musk, in all probability the wealthiest guy on this planet, applied racism, xenophobia, misogyny, transphobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia with commercials, speeches, and rallies within the 2024 election, doubling and tripling down on those inclinations from his first time period. I’d presume that his electorate both counseled those assaults or gave them a bye, thus making the collective American psyche no less than passively complicit with abuse and a hypermasculine view of “power.”
2. Social media has additionally fueled a tradition of fanning the flames of department to get consideration and recognition. Whilst social media has been in some ways a take-heed call to duty and service, it has additionally tilted into scapegoating, hostility, and cyber dysregulation. Deborah Tannen’s “argument tradition” of the Nineteen Nineties has morphed into an assault tradition. As I wrote in a letter to the Global Version of the New York Occasions in 2015,

“The issue isn’t that Twitter has damaged home windows; it’s that social media is a damaged window. We’re taking flight from face-to-face dialog and relationships as a result of we crave the facsimile of continuous touch on-line. However with out the bodily cues of presence, some other folks develop into into disinhibited trolls. Our compassion has at all times been deepened thru actual global engagement. Social media is a siren that draws us clear of that engagement. It could as smartly be referred to as anti-social media.”

1. American citizens had been matter to an undue affect marketing campaign that disinformed them, amplified false concepts, and created false emotional narratives. Thus, the collective psyche would possibly smartly have had the wool pulled over its eyes. (See this file by way of the Brookings Establishment.)
2. American citizens had been simply upset with the incumbent birthday celebration and threw them out in a bout of electoral colic simply as they did in 2016 and 2020. Many analysts level to financial dissatisfaction with the price of items and actual wages.

I don’t assume The us has handled its (1) relational or (4) financial dissatisfactions and disconnections rationally or compassionately. As a substitute, dissatisfaction has been mobilized to elect President Trump. An electoral win is an excessively temporary aid. Dissatisfaction will go back. Most likely within the subsequent nationwide elections in 2022 and 2024, dissatisfaction with President Trump and his birthday celebration will go back the Democrats to energy.

However we’ve got native and nationwide questions. How will we maintain particular person and collective dissatisfaction, misery, and alter? How will we even start to perceive and prioritize the various demanding situations prior to us?

Supply: Ravi Chandra

The wonderful thing about our lives as sentient beings is that we’re able to reworking ancient transmissions of misery and struggling into pleasure and happiness. Happiness is the answer of dissatisfaction and struggling. I outline happiness as better capability and self assurance in coping with misery. This calls for internal and outer sources and builds the root for pleasure. Others have jogged my memory that “radical pleasure” permits us to go back to the roots (“radical” refers back to the root) of pleasure in our very humanity. We will be able to make a selection to stay rooted in our humanity and truth and domesticate the fun of presence and connection.

I’d recommend we want smart position fashions (political, civic, communal, and familial) who organize misery smartly and encourage and assist us paintings towards managing our collective distresses. And we want to domesticate the knowledge that raises the ones leaders and management qualities in our private and nationwide estimation.

All of us want to recuperate at coping with misery. This will simplest come from true allyship with the prone and our personal vulnerability, now not by way of distancing ourselves from issue. A Chinese language proverb states, “The smart particular person isn’t satisfied till everybody on this planet is worked up.”

The antidotes to our polarization, acrimony, and dissatisfactions are proximity, compassion, and pleasure. Although Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign of pleasure used to be now not slightly sufficient to triumph over dissatisfactions, it energized many, many citizens—75 million of them.

I feel the ones yields will repay in time. And in the end, with out pleasure, in particular the fun of human connection, staying power, and thriving— the place are we, as people, neighborhoods, communities, a country, and the arena?

If the Ivy League has damaged The us—the Pleasure League may put it aside!

© 2025 Ravi Chandra, M.D., D.F.A.P.A.