How “Luxury Beliefs” Hurt the Rest of Us
01:00:06 Share

I'm Barry Weiss, and this is Honestly. One of the most brilliant terms I've come across in years is the concept of luxury beliefs, like a Balenciaga bag or a Tesla or a second home in Aspen. Luxury beliefs are costly and they're fashionable, but these beliefs can only be afforded by people whose status shields them from the harm those beliefs can cause. And this concept of luxury beliefs, it was coined by my guest today, Rob Henderson.

He defines luxury beliefs as ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich while inflicting costs on the lower class. And once you know the term, you start to see it everywhere. In ideas like defund the police. Like I believe that we should at some point abolish the NYPD because I just think that when your DNA of policing is slave patrols, I don't think we can ever abolish

Just make fixes here and there. Where, according to the most recent polling, overwhelmingly wealthy, educated people who live in safe neighborhoods call for a policy that would leave lower-class people living in high-crime neighborhoods vulnerable. Are humans really built for monogamy? Or the idea that monogamy is just an oppressive institution. So in our society, it's kind of built up to the idea that monogamy is something that we should all be striving for, that it's a milestone that we need to obtain.

Even as the people promoting this idea often live and raise children with the economic and social benefits of intact families. Or the idea of healthy at every size. The idea is that, well, by telling people that their bodies are wrong and they must transform them, we're really showing that we care about them. Which denies that there are negative risks of obesity. But in

But in reality, it's just rooted in fat phobia. Which is a view often pushed by people who can afford organic food or trainers or have never had serious weight problems themselves. For Rob, the concept of luxury beliefs isn't just academic. Those people in the working class neighborhoods who are suffering, he spent most of his life as one of them.

As you'll hear, he grew up in a kind of chaos that most PhD students at Cambridge, where he is now, would hardly be able to understand. The story of his life and how he managed to find his way out of the dysfunction that crippled so many of his friends and ultimately to make his way into the hallowed halls of Yale and Cambridge is inspiring in itself. But what makes it so important to this conversation is that Rob is a kind of outsider on the inside.

And because of that, because of his past, he's able to stand at a distance and to observe the indulgence and often the hypocrisy of our elite class. Stay with us. Hey, guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Rob Henderson, thank you so much for talking with me today. Thank you, Barry. It's great to be here. So.

Rob, I'm sitting in a studio in L.A., but as we talk, you're sitting in an apartment in Cambridge.

You're a graduate of Yale. You're a scholar. You're this rising academic star. You're working on a book that's coming out next year. You've got all the trimmings of just not just an elite life, but like the creme de la creme. But your path to getting to these institutions doesn't look at all like most of your peers. And so I want to start there. I want to start with your story and with your background. You write about this in the introduction to your book, and I found it gutting that

You talk about how all three of your names, Robert, Kim, and Henderson, each one of them belongs to an adult who abandoned you. Yes. So my first name, Robert, comes from my birth father, who I've never met. I have no memories of him. He abandoned my mother and me when I was a little baby. And my middle name, Kim, comes from my birth mother, Susie.

It's her family name. So she came to California from South Korea when she was a young woman and subsequently became addicted to drugs and was no longer able to care for me. So when I was three, I was put into foster care, spent the next few years in foster homes.

And my last name, Henderson, comes from my adoptive father. So after I had been adopted out of foster care into this working class family, we settled in a small dusty town in Northern California called Red Bluff. And for a couple of years, I had this sort of stable, intact family home life.

But a couple of years later, my adoptive parents divorced and my adoptive father was angry at my adoptive mother for leaving him for filing for divorce. And as a way to get revenge on her, he subsequently severed ties with me because he knew that by cutting off ties with me, this would hurt my mother. And he was right. And so all three of my names come from adults who abandoned me and who were exiled.

intended to be my caregivers, and then they weren't.

It seems to me that, you know, encoded in your three names are three epidemics, maybe maladies is the right word, that we're seeing in this country. You know, absentee fathers in the name Robert, addiction to drugs in your mother, and then in your final name, divorce. And then you add in financial insecurity and the foster care system. And I think that just the level of chaos that you experienced as a child and as a young child is

will be really hard for some people to comprehend, but extremely familiar to others, just depending on which side of the American divide that you happen to be born into. So I'd like to just talk a little bit more about your childhood. And let's maybe start with what is the earliest memory that you had with your birth mother?

My earliest memory was from when I was three years old. I was in a slum apartment in Westlake, Los Angeles. The memory I'm basically sort of seeing black and then I'm looking up and seeing two police officers and then I'm seeing black again and I'm on my mother's lap.

and I'm clinging to her. And I instinctively know that these two police officers, I mean, I didn't know that they were cops. I just thought these were like sort of two guys wearing black clothes. And I knew that they wanted to take my mom away. And I thought that if I just held on tightly enough, they would just go away. And if I couldn't see them, then maybe the next time I looked up, they wouldn't be there anymore. And then suddenly I'm in this long white hallway. And I'm

Sitting on this bench next to my mom and I'm drinking this carton of chocolate milk and I sneeze and I drop the milk and it spills all over the floor and I'm looking down at it and then I'm looking at my mom for help and I realize that she can't help me because she's wearing handcuffs. Those are the only memories that I really have of my mother. Why was she in handcuffs that day?

Well, she'd been doing drugs for a long time. So before this, I recently obtained some documents from my adoptive mother, from my experiences in foster care.

And I learned through reading these documents from social workers and psychologists and so on that my mother and I, before we had lived in that apartment, we were living in a car and we were basically homeless. My mother was doing all these drugs and she wasn't able to care for me. We were in this apartment and...

She would tie me to a chair while she was doing whatever she was doing. And over time, the neighbors could hear my screams. And apparently one of them called the police and they showed up and saw what was going on here. And this was why they arrested her and placed me into foster care. And that was the last time that you saw your mother?

Yes, that was the last time. Do you know if she's still alive? Do you have any contact with her? I don't. You know, I've thought about, you know, what it would be like to see her again. And I'm not sure that I even want to. It's something I'm still sort of thinking about and working through there. So three years old, you lose the only adult that you had in your life. And then you enter into the foster care system and you're in seven foster homes within five years. Tell us about that.

that experience. And maybe this only came later when you realized that this wasn't the way that other children were living and that this wasn't typical.

Yeah, I mean, I, so I was placed into a home. And I just remember sort of the first time I was in it was teaming with other kids. And this first home must have had around eight or 10 kids. And the foster parents, we would usually call them like Mrs. Because it was usually a foster mother who would who do the main caretaking. So it'd be Mrs. So and so and and they would be our sort of primary caretaker, but it was like,

You know, like fighting over food. I remember, you know, during dinners, there would be so many kids and it was just sort of like reckless, you know, just getting the food and trying to eat as fast as you could before one of the other kids took it. Oh, God. And...

I was moving schools like every three to six months and no one really read to me or checked up on whether I was doing my homework or not. And, you know, it's a tough thing because in a way, like it's not right to neglect kids in that way. But on the other hand, if you know that this kid is only staying with you for three to six months and you have 10 of those kind of kids living with you,

I mean, how can you track all of those kids and their academic progress and whether they're turning in their homework or not? I mean, I did none of my homework. I was a terrible student. I was falling so far behind in my sort of academic progress that the state of California mandated I had to take an IQ test because they were worried about a possible like developmental delay.

or some kind of potential learning disability or something. Oh, my God. I gradually sort of became aware that there was something different about my situation in that first home and in the second home, too, through watching TV, actually, where I would see families of just sort of like people with parents and their children, and the kids never had to leave.

and move to a different family. And I started to pick up that like, oh, that's like what normal or typical families look like. And my situation is different.

And it wasn't necessarily just because I was moving homes, but my foster siblings would also come and go. And I wouldn't necessarily know who was going to be in the house day to day. I didn't know if I was going to be in the house or whether my social worker would come to take me somewhere else. What was the transition like? You know, was there ever any notice that, hey, tomorrow you're just going into a new home and there's going to be a new set of half a dozen kids and a new guardian taking care of you? No.

And I'm also curious, like, did you have comfort objects? Like...

I'm just imagining a little child being sort of shuttled from strange place to strange place. And I want to understand a little bit more about how that worked. Yeah, I had a social worker named Jerry and she would check in on me like once a month, wherever I was. And she would take me to In-N-Out, regardless of like, you know, even if she was coming to check on me or if she was taking me to a new home, we would always go to In-N-Out. And like, you know, I love that. But there was never any warning whatsoever.

And I didn't really have belongings. A lot of my clothes were sort of like hand-me-downs from older foster siblings or whatever clothes the foster parents had from the previous kids or anything the kids had outgrown. Whenever I'd move to a different home, I didn't have like a duffel bag or whatever, like any kind of like, you know, serious luggage. It was just like a black garbage bag or shoebox. And I remember my adoptive mom saying,

A couple years ago, she was talking to me about this. And she remembered when she came to pick me up from LA to move in with them. She remembered just being sort of like repulsed at how little I had, you know, like a couple of like Happy Meal toys and, you know, some clothes. And that was about it. And yeah, she was, you know, sort of displeased to see that that was, you know, that was how I lived my life.

So you mentioned your adoptive mom just now, and, you know, you were finally adopted at seven by a couple who had a four-year-old daughter. And when you got there, did you have a sense like, okay, you know, to the extent that a seven-year-old can have a sense of these things, like this is going to be my family now?

Yeah, it's weird. I almost immediately accepted that this was permanent. I think in part one, because my adoptive parents right away told me to call them mom and dad.

And that sort of had this effect on me of like, oh, like, these are my parents. This isn't just like, you know, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so house that I'm staying in for three months. These are my parents and my sister. You know, she's like, oh, this is your sister. And so I'm like, oh, I have like a real sister. And so I had this sort of distinct feeling of like, oh, she's never going anywhere. Like we're brother and sister and I'm never leaving her and she's never going to be taken from this house.

And I remember like the day I moved in to my adoptive family's house in Red Bluff, my sister gave me some of her toys. And, you know, like she had a bunch of toys. I'm like, how does one kid have so many toys? Because I'd never seen that before. And she gave me some of them. And, you know, she's like, these are yours now. You can have them. And I'm like, you know, just totally confused by this. Like,

wow, you know, just how nice she was. So yeah, I mean, those first couple of years that I lived with this family, I remember just being in this sense of happiness. And occasionally, while I was living with them, you know, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and have these nightmares of, you know, I'd have the nightmares and wake up that, you know, I have to move somewhere else now or, you know, like I'm back in the last foster home I was in, I'd wake up and in my dream, I would wake up and I'd be there.

And I'd look around, I'm like, oh, like, being adopted was the dream. And then I'd really wake up and like, my heart would be pounding.

And, you know, I'd get up and get a glass of water and managed to fall back asleep. But those years in those homes, I think like they, you know, they affected me in ways that I didn't really understand at that age. What you're describing to me is like that you were so used to surviving, having to, you know, fight other kids for resources, not having stability. Yeah.

And like, how long did it take for you to get to sink in maybe to the kindness and the generosity and those good feelings? Or is what happened to you in the first seven years of your life, did it kind of make it almost impossible to have that trust and be able to relax into the new sense of stability that you got in this adoptive family?

Um, I think it took me a little while to fully adjust to it. So I remember my eighth birthday, for example, you know, we went to my grandparents house and my adoptive mother's parents, and there were all these presents. And, you know, my adoptive father wheeled out this bicycle, I'd always wanted a bike, and I wanted to like really learn how to ride one. And so when they bought me this bike, I was like, wow, this is a really good bike.

But I felt odd about the whole thing, just because, you know, again, I wasn't used to that, you know, like, why would you give me these presents? I didn't really feel like I deserved it. And hearing things like love, you know, like, it was just natural for my adoptive parents, you know, they'd tell my sister, you know, I love you. And then they say, you know, we love you too, Rob. And I would say it back, but I didn't like I didn't feel it. It

It just felt like something you said, you know, like, oh, it's this polite thing you say, like, thank you or please. And I love you. Like, those are just polite words that people say.

And how old were you when things there also started to fall apart? I was nine. Yeah, nine years old. So you'd been in this family for two years? Yeah, for about two years. Yeah. And I was in the living room with my sister. We were watching The Parent Trap, the Lindsay Lohan version, not the one from the 60s. Oh, my God. One of the greats. Yeah, it's good. And then, you know, my adoptive mother comes out, my father too, and they sit down and

you sort of solemnly say that they have to tell us something and they pause the movie and you basically say like you know we're we're separating you know things are working out but it's not your guys's fault it's just you know sometimes adults don't get along anymore that kind of thing

And I remember sitting on the floor, you know, I was laying on the floor watching it with my sister. And I'm just sort of sitting there. My sister gets up and goes to the couch to sit like between our parents. And my mother was crying. And so my sister started crying, too. I don't know if she really understood what was happening. I think she had some some idea. But she was really crying because my mom was crying. And I was just sort of on the floor, like, trying to process all of this. Like, what does this all mean exactly? Like,

Am I going to be moving in with one of them? Am I going to maybe get put into a different home? Like trying to figure out what was happening here and suddenly feeling like very disconnected from them again because they're all on the couch, you know, sort of huddled together and I'm sort of on the floor looking up at them and Separate. Yeah, separated like physically, but also I think maybe mentally or psychologically separated from them. So what did happen next?

So my mother ended up moving to a duplex across town. And my sister and I actually for the next few weeks, anyway, we would alternate. We could stay with dad and then mom. And one day, my mom, you know, she's sort of packing things up for my sister and I have my bag ready to go stay with with our dad.

And my mom, she's like, you know, it's just going to be your sister for this weekend. And my sister and I start protesting like, what? Why can't you know, why can't Rob come? Why can't I come?

And my mom drives to my sister and she comes back later and she explains to me that my adoptive father doesn't want me to stay with him anymore. And my mom, you know, I remember she was sort of crying and she was telling me this because I think, you know, she was really affected. And she knew that it was going to hurt me. And, you know, that was sort of what my adoptive father's intent was, I think. And so...

It was hard for me for the next, you know, each time I would see my sister sort of leave and come back and I would ask her questions like, oh, did he say anything about me? Or like, you know, maybe I can come just like one night, but then I'll come back, you know, like that kind of thing. Like, I don't have to stay for the whole week. Oh, my God.

So there was no explanation from him? No, it was hard. And so, yeah, I mean, around this time, when they were still together for those first two years, I was actually doing pretty well in school. They were making sure that I was doing my homework. They would read to me like that kind of thing. And I remember they were they were kind of surprised, actually, at how well I was doing because they had the reports and knew that I was getting like really bad grades in the foster homes. And I think they were sort of pleasantly surprised at how well I was doing.

But then after the divorce and the emotional effect of no longer having my adoptive father around, all of that sort of affected me. And I stopped caring about school again. And I was getting to like a lot of fights with other boys at school. And it was like,

you know, maybe like jumpstarted my adolescence or something, you know, going to hang out with like my troublemaking friends and like started smoking weed and like, you know, vandalizing buildings. I was like nine years old doing all of these things. Yeah, nine, 10 years old, like, you know, popping pills and like getting into fights and stuff like. You're nine years old and popping like Vicodin. Like what is going on here? You know, I think on some level, I can't say this was this was definitely not a conscious thought that I had.

but i think on some level you know when i was getting into trouble and you know the teachers would call my mom in for like the student whatever the parent teacher conferences you know i think like on some level i wanted my adoptive father to like be aware of this or like you know somehow like hear about this and and maybe reach out and see what was going on with me or something like that um and that was maybe my way of trying to get his attention in some way but you know it didn't work

What did your life look like as a teenager? Yeah, getting into fights and, you know, smoking a lot of weed and drinking a lot by this point. I mean, I was, yes, like showing up to class drunk sometimes or high or both. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, by the time I was able to drive, you know, when I was 16, it was like, you know, I was almost never home. You know, by that point, I was like driving blackout drunk on the freeway too. And like, definitely not on track for college or anything. Like my grades were like the last thing I was thinking about. And, you know, much more about like, just hanging out with my friends and, you know, sort of like trying to stay away from home as much as possible.

So basically, I mean, everything in your life up until this point, I mean, it's almost like a caricature of the kind of background that would lead someone to a life of dysfunction themselves. I really am curious what you credit for not going down that path. How did you avoid going down the path that I imagine many of the people that you grew up with did?

It's definitely not like one answer. There were multiple factors here, a couple of different people. So one was a high school teacher that I had who suggested that I join the military. And I had heard this actually from a couple of different adults in my life, you know, adults that I respected or admired in some way. My friend's dad, too, had been in the Air Force. He suggested it, too.

So for me, like that was like kind of an option lingering in the back of my mind. I knew I wasn't going to go to college, but I also knew that I didn't want to stay in Red Bluff. And I knew that if I did, I probably would have gone down some of those paths you mentioned. I mean, I had five friends in high school and.

like five close friends that I would hang out with regularly, spent the time with the most. And of those five, two of them ended up going to prison. One of my friends was shot. So one of them joined the military. And the other one, I actually don't know. I think it was at a car wash or something. But, you know, that was sort of like, those were like the options for me. I didn't even necessarily think like the military was like, you know,

you know, this great thing. Like, you know, I kind of liked the structure of it appealed to me. And like, I thought the uniforms look cool and that kind of thing. But it was like, it was really about like, I just need to get out of here. And even if it's not necessarily like the right path, I know that at least it's not the wrong one, which is the one I'm on now. And then how did you get from the Air Force to Yale? Yeah.

By the time I, my enlistment was coming to an end and I had sort of like had enough time to reflect and to think about what I wanted to do with my life. And I think like one day I just, I just Googled how to get into college as a veteran or something.

found this program called the Warrior Scholar Project. And basically this is like a two week academic bootcamp. So, you know, military veterans who want to go to college, but maybe they're a little rusty or they need a little sort of assistance or to kind of brush up on their skills can go to this program. And then from there I applied and met a few people, um,

you know, somehow got in, which I was surprised by. But then while I was in the military, I had taken like some night classes at a local community college and like built up like, you know, roughly two semesters worth of credits. And I got like, you know, pretty good GPA. I think it was all A's or maybe all A's and one B or something like that. And took the SAT, which was like really like a weird thing because I never took the SAT in high school. And then I took it when I was 24. It was a weird feeling. And then

did pretty well there. And yeah, from there, I just like figured I, you know, I applied to Yale and I didn't even think I was going to get in. But I somehow did. And that was sort of how it happened. I had no backup plans for if I didn't get in. So I'm glad I did.

I was like, well, if I go back to Red Bluff, like, you know, or, you know, by that point, my mom was living in San Jose. So I'm like, I'll figure it out. Like, I felt like, you know, the military did give me this sense of like self-sufficiency and just like belief in myself that like, even if all like this, these sort of like foolhardy plans of getting into this fancy school don't work out. Like, I'll figure it out anyway. You know, I'll have another plan. Okay. So you go from this crazily chaotic upbringing to the military. Yeah.

And then six years later, you were at Yale, which is the ultimate symbol of upper-crossed elite America. Tell me about that transition. And how did that experience help you coin this phrase that I love of yours called luxury beliefs? You know, I had gotten out of the military in August of 2015, and I started Yale in September. So, you know, it was like literally days later. I was like one day I'm like in my uniform in the military, and a couple days later I'm on this campus. And

sort of seeing what was going on there. I saw, you know, a lot of the student protests. What were they protesting? What year is it? This was 2015. So they were protesting Erica and Nicholas Christakis for, you know, the Halloween costume controversy. Students called it a march, not a protest when they gathered last month to say they didn't feel safe on the Yale campus after an email went out from Associate Master Erica Christakis. That was like my introduction to Yale was seeing that. You should not sleep at night. We're out. We

You are disgusting. And now I want your job to be taken from you. I don't want you to have this job. I am disgusted knowing that you work at Yale University where I will get my degree. So you go from the Air Force to hordes of students claiming that an email about Halloween costumes is literal violence. It is not about creating an intellectual space. It is not. Do you understand that?

It's about creating a home here. Yeah, I lost friends over that. I was so shocked that just, you know, I read the email, the infamous email that supposedly started all this. I read it five or six times, you know, trying to like, you know, suss out what exactly was it that upset all these people? And then I would ask questions like, well, what's upsetting about it and why? And I remember I asked this young woman who I thought was my friend, you know, whatever. We only knew each other for like years.

eight weeks into that, that fall semester was when the protest kicked off. So I had made like a couple of acquaintances or like friends or whatever. And yeah, there was this female student that I knew. And, you know, eventually she just said like, well, you're too privileged to understand like the pain that this email caused and how it's, you know, emblematic of like broader trends and all this stuff. And, you know, at the time I didn't really understand like

I didn't understand the perspective she was coming from. I didn't understand like social justice as an idea, like any of that. Right. It was just like outside of my world. And yeah. And then to hear that, like, you know, you're too privileged. And then later I found out that this person grew up in Greenwich, which is like, you know, a really rich part of Connecticut. She went to Exeter. Yeah.

You know, like a typical Yalie, right? And like to, you know, but because I guess because she saw my appearance, right? Like, oh, you know, whatever, like, you know, cisgender Asian male or something like, you know, she had like a stereotype in her mind of who I was and where I came from. And

a lot of the language that the other students used. I mean, there was this other student, she was telling me about her kind of upbringing and like how she ended up getting into Yale or something. And she was like, you know, I had this really strict Asian tiger mom kind of thing, like really tough upbringing. And she was like, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

And I said something like, you know, my mom is Korean. And that wasn't really like my experience. Like I didn't want to like get into my life in that. I think it was like a party or something. I didn't want to get like, oh, that wasn't really my experience. And then she said like, oh, so you didn't have a traumatic childhood.

What did you say? I just like, you know, I didn't want to get into it. Like I said, so I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. And, and just like, let it slide. And, you know, one of my friends was there too. Like he, he was like sort of overhearing and he's, you know, he's dropping and he like when he when he heard her say that he looked over at me like waiting for me because he knows about my life and he was like waiting for me to say something to her. But

I just didn't want to say anything. I just didn't want to get into why it doesn't count to me as trauma or like if it does, it's a different time. It's just, it was just not the right time. It's interesting though, because you could imagine someone from your background just pummeling that person, you know, the interlocutor in this story with like, yeah, let me tell you about my life, you know, and if you really want to play, you know, this sort of status game of how much victimhood chips we have, like I'm going to crush you every time, but you didn't do that. And I guess, you know,

You know, how did stumbling into this world where people sort of like trade on victim status, often by having to exaggerate like the smallest of difficulties in their own background? You know, I'm just curious about like how you moved through that and maybe how that sharpened your idea of luxury beliefs. I mean, I...

When I initially saw that this was kind of trendy to broadcast one's victimhood or sufferings, I was kind of shocked by this because, you know, I'm not necessarily like questioning any individual person's claims of pain or suffering. But I will say that like the people that I know from

other periods of my life, like the military or where I grew up or foster siblings or whatever, they were not very quick to talk about those things. Often people who go through serious kinds of traumas, it takes them a long time

be able to talk about them and to express them. And so I remember, again, I'm not questioning any person's claims, but I remember being very suspicious of people who were so quick to tell people about this. And it's kind of funny because this is what I'm doing now. And maybe I sort of absorbed this from that environment of talking about it or whatever. But at the time, I remember like, what is this? And realizing like, oh, this is sort of a trend here. And

Over time, I came up with this idea of luxury beliefs because I was having these kind of strange conversations with people who had ideas that I had never really been exposed to before, or at least like never heard these arguments formed in like a serious way. You know, for example, you know, I talked to one of my classmates at Yale who said, you

monogamy is outdated and like the institution of marriage is sort of this relic of the past this sort of like patriarchal system that kind of thing and i asked him like where did you grow up like what was your life like and this person responded like oh i you know i had a two-parent family you know raised in that kind of environment and i would come to learn that like i i think i met

One, maybe two people, you know, throughout like all the years I was at Yale who who didn't grow up like who wasn't raised by both of their birth parents. Just the vast majority of people had that kind of life, that intact family life.

And then I asked this person, what do you plan to do? And they replied that I'm going to get married and have a family and that kind of thing. And so I was just, you know, I found it interesting. And multiple people said some version of this to me that like monogamy is outdated, but then they personally plan to get married and have the same kind of family that they had. And so the luxury beliefs idea is, you know, I define it as ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the lower classes and

And so in this case, you know, someone who says monogamy is outdated, like that will actually give you that'll like give you some social cred or some like kind of validation from other elite college students or graduates of these kinds of places. But if you sort of broadcast that belief and it trickles throughout society, um,

Well, if you're in a sort of like a low income or working class situation and you're not getting married, like this will actually have like detrimental impact on children and on families and on sort of neighborhood stability and all of those things. And it's kind of ironic because like the upper classes, number one, they're the most likely to broadcast, you know, these kinds of unusual luxury beliefs. But then they themselves are more likely to get married and to kind of recapitulate the privileges that they're critiquing.

Well, the one that comes to mind most readily for me is is an idea that was so dominant last summer, which is this idea of defunding the police. Yeah. I mean, this is like, you know, I couldn't have asked for a better example because I coined this term in 2019.

And someone had told me in 2019, like, oh, you know, pretty soon, like, you know, the chattering class is going to be talking about defunding the police. I don't think I would have believed you. To me, it's so straightforwardly obvious, like why, you know, of course, like expressing the belief confer status on the upper class and why, if this were to be implemented, we would disproportionately see the costs inflicted most on the lower classes, because it

It's true that crime is, you know, disproportionately sort of committed by people in poverty. But the victims of crime are also the most likely to be victims of crime, too. So basically, because there are far more victims than there are perpetrators of crime, you're actually victimizing the poor. I mean, so for example, if you look at the rates of aggravated assault, for example, it's seven times higher for people in the lowest income bracket compared to the highest income bracket.

victims of, like, sexual assault, robbery, burglary, all these kinds of violent crimes, it's disproportionately concentrated among the poor. And so if there's no police around for them to contact, then they're going to be the ones who are going to be the most victimized by all of this. And the other thing is, like, we have these sort of, like, broad categories of, like, you know, oh, these rich and poor and whatever, or classes, upper and lower classes. But then, like, if you get...

into sort of a more nuanced view of all of this. Like, who are the people who are disproportionately the victims and the perpetrators of crime in these lower income areas? Well, the perpetrators are guys like me and my friends in high school, like young guys who are impulsive and reckless and don't have much regard for other people. And the victims are disproportionately like easier, quote unquote, easier targets like the elderly or women. Those are the people who are going to be victimized by these kinds of policies.

And the other thing is, like, you know, I saw this poll from YouGov who most supports defunding the police. And I was glad to get the sort of original research report, this long PDF. And I found that, you know,

you know, it was broken down by income category. And the income category that is most in favor of defunding the police was the wealthiest one. The richest people are the most in favor of defunding the police. Because they can afford private security and they can afford to relocate if their town goes to crap. Right. Right. And they're already I mean, you know, and it probably won't because they're already in like disproportionately safe neighborhoods where there isn't much crime anyway. So you can talk

all day about defunding the police. And you can, you know, I've made this point before that like you can have any belief you want if you're highly educated and affluent and

you can hold whatever belief you want and in all likelihood you'll be fine. But it's just, you know, your beliefs matter more in terms of like the impact on the culture and on policy and all of those things. And the people who are affected by it are, you know, the sort of people who maybe don't have as much influence. And so, you know, one of the points I try to make with this luxury belief idea is that like people who wield any kind of like cultural or societal influence should think very carefully about like who will be impacted the most by this,

and how your own personal life may not be reflective of the lives of the vast majority of Americans. Well, let's talk about one that to me doesn't necessarily seem to be about bolstering someone's social rank or giving them radical chic points, but I think is coming from a genuinely well-intentioned place, which is this idea of

you know, crudely that, you know, societal forces are more important than hard work in determining your success in life. And I think the reason that a lot of people glom on to that idea is that it's almost a way of expressing empathy. And it's true. It's true that societal forces and luck are

play a huge role in where you end up in life. And so there's some truth encoded in that view. But I think you would say that the downstream effects of it perhaps are disempowering to the very people that, you know, are that ostensibly are being sort of shielded and protected from personal responsibility through the proliferation of that view. Yes, it's exactly as you say. I mean, if you're

If you're an upper class person and you want to be seen as empathic and compassionate and caring, then you can talk about all of these things, you know, it's the sort of societal forces or sort of systemic or whatever. But if you're a person who's trying to get out of the situation you're in, if you're sort of lower income or you're trying to make it in the world,

I mean, being told that, oh, there's all these forces against you and, you know, like, you know, the odds of you making it. And, you know, we live in a whatever, like an oppressive society full of discrimination and prejudice and all these things. Like, I mean, that's going to hold you back. I mean, I'm thinking about I was talking to a fellow student here at Cambridge and I was saying that. So there's a friend of mine growing up in high school, his kid Antonio. He was on the football team and he was.

could have been recruited to play football for like a state school in California. He was pretty good.

And but he was failing one of his classes. And so he had to go to this remedials course during our spring break, you know, this two week course, you just got to go for two weeks. And he just had to get like a B average in this course. And he would have qualified to stay on the football team and possibly get recruited. But, you know, he went for like the first three days. And then like he just ditched after that and just hung out with us and did all the dumb things that we were doing. Yeah.

his parents weren't really looking out for him, like just, you know, nothing. And so I told the Cambridge student about this, you know, this story and, you know, she replied like, well, you know, maybe that's okay. Like if that's who he really was and that's what he really wanted to do, then, you know, maybe that's okay. Like, you know, she, I told him, you know, they were talking,

about how hard my friend's life was and all this other stuff going on. And, you know, she said like, well, if he went through all that and he, you know, so maybe it's okay that that's who he was. And I said, well, what would you do? You know, what if that was your kid who, you know, was failing a class and, you know, he could have gone to college, but all he had to do was attend this course for two weeks. What would you have done? And she said, oh, I would have made sure he got, you know, he was in that desk every morning and I would have threatened to kill him if he didn't. Like that was, that was literally her words.

And then I pointed this out to her, they're like, okay, so if it's your kid, then it's okay to drill them and make sure that they do the right thing. But if it's the sort of the kids of the underclass, you know, these kids, you can just sort of ride them off because that's what they want to do anyway. And that's, you know, they have tough lives. So it's okay, like, they can do whatever they want. Basically, they're accepting a kind of behavior that they would never accept for, you know, their own family or for people within their own class.

And in the long run, I think like this absence of judgment and this absence of expectations and norms like disproportionately affects, you know, people like me and my friends who, you know, need some kind of guidance. I mean, if we're not going to get it from our families and from our parents, like and we're not going to get it from like cultural people who wield sort of cultural and societal power to shape the norms, then we're not going to get it from anywhere. Then, of course, like, of course, like it makes sense that like most of my friends like dropped out of school and ended up like in jail or dead. Right.

I can't help but think of this idea of like the soft bigotry of low expectations. And it's also like, you know, elite institutions, like I'm sure you remember this summer that one of the Smithsonian institutions put out this pyramid of white supremacy and things like hard work and timeliness are coded as white supremacy, you know.

And it's astonishing to me how fast and far this idea has gone. And it's being propagated by people who are doing exactly the opposite. You know, they're working hard. They're saving and investing money. They're spending tons of time and attention and resources on their children. They're teaching their kids to show up on time and work hard. Yeah.

And yet they're pushing this other idea. And this leads me to a, you know, we could talk for hours about examples of luxury beliefs. Other ones come to mind, like the idea of body positivity, healthy at any size. Maybe we'll save that for another conversation. I want to, though, get a little deeper into the question of motivation here. Like, it's a good thing to not fat shame people and to not use shame as a weapon. But it's like,

in this view of the world, it goes like a step too far. You know, dropping out is perhaps an expression of someone's true nature and so on. So why are they pushing these ideas?

You've mentioned a few times that it sort of grants people social status. But is there something maybe darker at work here that's driving people to push ideas that genuinely hurt other people in the world? Yeah, I think for the most part, it's not necessarily malicious and intent. You know, a lot of these...

students and graduates of these kinds of places, these elite institutions, I think they want to believe they're doing the right thing for the most part. And then the other is to basically increase their social status, their esteem in the eyes of other people. I'm not sure they're necessarily, most of them, I don't think, are trying to intentionally hobble people who are trying to climb up the ladder

But if we just stick with like the malicious intent of the luxury beliefs, I think a lot of it is actually not aimed at the lower classes, but aimed at one another. There's a lot of like anxiety and social status and anxiety and like backbiting among these people and a lot of competition among them.

And so if they can like use a belief or an idea as a weapon to hobble their competition, you know, they're sort of like the person right next to them. You know, for example, when I was an undergrad,

I heard a lot of people say, you know, so, so like, you know, of course, like you're a lot of your listeners will know that like, you know, the most common, uh, career paths for graduates of these kinds of schools, it's like, you know, finance and consulting and tech and those kinds of things. And so a lot of students would say like, you know, why would you work for Bain or what, you know, why would you work for this consulting firm? You know, that those are just like emblems of capitalist oppression and these kinds. And so,

But then I would learn later on that those same students who were saying those things would be at like the recruitment session for Goldman Sachs. And like, you know, those and so like it took me a little while to like understand what was happening there of like, OK, so this is Goldman Sachs is evil, but now they're at the. And then over time, I my understanding of what was happening here was that.

They were using this kind of fashionable belief to attack capitalism, you know, number one, because it made them look good to their peers. But then number two, it hindered the competition, because if this person could convince me not to go apply for that internship, then this will increase, you know, their chances of getting it. Hmm.

After this, we'll be back with more of Rob Henderson and hear about how the musical Hamilton became an example of a luxury belief that lost its luster. Stay with us.

One thing that you write that really struck me, and I love these two examples, is you talk about how one of the function of luxury beliefs is that they distinguish elites sort of from like the sort of like suburban middle class or the unwashed masses. And two examples that come to mind are Canada Goose Coats and also the musical Hamilton. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, well, the Kennedy goose coats. So those were that was an interesting phenomenon. That was the first winter that I was that was on campus. I saw these coats around and I'm like, what is it with this jacket? I've never seen it before. And then I looked it up and saw how expensive it was. And I was like, are you serious? One of my friends had one and I put it on and I'm like, all right, this is like a pretty good coat. But is it worth a thousand dollars? I don't think so.

And so that was like, you know, very clearly a status symbol. But by now you're seeing like very few, you know, sort of those same people are not wearing those jackets anymore. And I think it's because like it's sort of, you know, it's literally like that's clothing. That's like a fashion, right? Like once the mass is adopted and you can kind of like find them at secondhand stores and get discounts on them and whatever, then, you know, the tastemakers and the upper class are not going to be so interested in wearing them anymore anymore.

And, you know, sort of the same with beliefs. Like once the beliefs trickle down, then the elites have to adopt new beliefs. And Hamilton, that was another big musical thing that was coming out, you know, in 2015, you know, it was like this big thing to see it. And I saw how expensive the tickets were. And I couldn't, you know, I was going to school on the GI Bill, like sort of like I was getting this stipend that was just like barely enough to pay my rent. And I'm like, I can't afford to pay for these tickets to go. And so when...

When I saw, you know, I think it was in 2020. Yeah, 2020 when Hamilton was like available on Disney Plus. And, you know, I think by that point it was easier to get tickets. And so, you know, more of the sort of like regular people were able to see this. And suddenly Hamilton became unfashionable and like a lot of the fans turned on it.

And in my view, this is just a sort of an example of this like tastes trickling down. And, you know, once something becomes too popular, the upper class abandons it. Like, oh, all these people are doing the same with the Canada Goose jackets. Like, you know, if you're like one of the few people who can wear it, then, you know, then you feel good wearing it. But like once everyone else can get one, oh, I have to distance myself from it. I'm not going to wear this thing anymore. I think this is I think this is so brilliant because, you know.

It's like just as Hamilton had left Manhattan and stopped being a thousand dollars a ticket that you had to get a year in advance. And now Hamilton's being performed all around the country and all around the world. You know, it went from winning all of the Tonys and being praised as the greatest thing ever by everyone important, the portrait of American progress. And then all of a sudden, conveniently, it becomes problematic to like Hamilton.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, I think this was like an example of this sort of like trickling down of tastes. And this is sort of like this cycle where, you know, whatever you like, if only a few people in the upper class, you know, your group likes it, then you'll be happy to show that you're watching it or consuming whatever it is too. But

the moment it trickles throughout the rest of society and other people can see it then you're going to distance yourself from it and you know i think this is part of what's going on with beliefs as well that if you hold if you hold conventional beliefs that a typical middle class or working class person holds then you're seen as like kind of simple-minded or you're seen as like yeah you're holding this kind of like you know cheap belief or something

But if you hold like an unusual or unconventional belief, then you're sort of like signaling that you are not one of those people. You're an educated, thoughtful, interesting member of the upper class. And I think this could be dangerous because a lot of conventional beliefs are good. Probably most of them are good. There's a reason why they've been around for a long time.

So as these kind of like unusual beliefs trickle down, the upper class quickly changes to a new one. My friend Andy has a really interesting theory that I want to test on you about the very thing that sort of ended up crippling Hamilton or the cachet of Canada goose coats. The same thing could sort of apply to wokeness. In other words, you know, wokeness won't be defeated because of, you know, great argumentation.

arguments from Ben Shapiro or, you know, debates. It's that when wokeness moves from the kind of Twitter accounts of the blue check elite to people's lowly Facebook feeds and fly over country, like when woke becomes unfashionable, that will be the thing that ultimately defeats it. I'm curious what you make of that theory of his.

So I agree in terms of the term itself, you know, 2015, 2016, when very few people were using the term woke, the people who were woke, you know, were throwing it around a lot and embraced that label with pride. And by now, a lot of those same people aren't identifying as woke anymore. The term has spread throughout society. And now, you know, people on Fox News are using the term and whatever, like it's not fashionable. It's not new. It's not hip or trendy. And so...

The movement itself, I'm not entirely sure if it'll go away, you know, may return in a different kind of form unless the rest of society actually adopts those same beliefs. Because once you actually adopt them, then maybe they'll change their minds and sort of like move on to something else. But it's possible that just because the term itself has spread so much that these people will want to distance themselves from it and move on to something else too, which would be nice.

You made it by all accounts. Like you were like the prototypical story of a person that, you know, came from...

nothing and made it to the somewhere. You know, you're talking to me from Cambridge. You're a star. And hearing you talk and reading what you write, I hear a decent and I think also really justifiable amount of sort of disdain from what you look around and see at the top and in the people there. And I guess I really want to ask you about how you think of yourself and

Now that you are sort of a member, let's say, of the elite class, for lack of a better term, and what you view as your place in that world. Like, does it feel like you're a kind of spy in a foreign country? Or do you think of your role as sort of pushing elite culture in a kind of more productive, positive place while trying to immunize yourself from the parts that you rightly see, I think, as hypocritical and toxic?

you know, it's surreal, honestly, you know, when I ride my bike through Cambridge or something, I'm like, wow, I can't believe that I'm here. I still have that feeling. Yeah. Like,

can't believe that I was ever at Yale. Like that almost feels like a dream that I was ever there. So I don't necessarily like, I'm not sure, like, am I a member of the elite or not? Like, there's some interesting, like, sort of like sociological research about this. Like there's some people who say that you're, you're sort of like permanently in whatever class you're born into in so many ways. And I definitely feel that, like, I don't feel like at necessarily like a hundred percent at ease with, with my peers in a lot of these kinds of places. But when I go back home and

I also somewhat feel out of place too, just because my life experiences are so different. I'm still in touch with some of my friends from high school, some of my friends from the military, and I feel like this awkwardness because of the direction that my life took and how I struggle. The longer time passes between that period of my life, the harder it is to find common ground.

And, you know, I find like one way to do it is just, you know, it's like through pop culture, like movies and music and TV and those kinds of things. Like I can always talk about those things. But yeah.

you know, I'm trying to like, basically, you know, the way if I were to think about like, how would I view myself, it would be just to like, share my observations, you know, I'm not, I don't even necessarily have a goal in mind, other than to like, make people more aware of class divisions, and for people who wield some kind of influence in society to understand like, what

people are like from other places that maybe they don't have much exposure to. I mean, it's kind of funny. A lot of people accuse my luxury beliefs idea of, you know, being this sort of like vehicle to secretly undermine liberals or progressives or something. And it's not it's not actually true. It's very much about class. When I was at home about about six weeks ago, I was in California visiting my mom and her partner.

And, you know, they're they're sort of like centrist Democrats, you know, working class Democrats. Neither one of them went to college. And, you know, they were like saying things that would like immediately get them castigated by like any kind of college educated group, like Democrat or Republican. Like, you know, like making sort of like stereotypical, like casual remarks about like based on gender issues.

or like imitating, I don't know, I don't want to like, whatever, but like, I've seen this like imitating accents of other ethnic groups or like, whatever, like, this is like how normal people are outside of these like, rarefied circles, regardless of their political party. Like, that's just how normal people are. And there's no malice behind it. That's just like everyday life, you know? And so,

You know, when I when I talk about like wokeness and like all of these kinds of like, you know, the neologisms, these like weird terms and stuff, like one of my favorite things to do every time I see my mom is like, have you heard of this term? What about that term? And she's just like, what are you talking about? Like, no. Has Latinx made its way to...

To her yet? No, no. No, that one hasn't. BIPOC was another one I asked her about. She hasn't heard about that. Like I figured like, you know, by the time she hears about it, then that will be when the next one is coming soon. Rob, I could talk to you forever. And at some point, I'd love to have you on for more conversations like this. But for now, I imagine you have lots of work to do. So I'll just say thank you so much for coming on and for making the time. Thank you, Barry. I enjoyed it.

Thanks so much for listening. As always, we are open to guest suggestions and tips at honestlypod.com. For more from Rob, go to our newsletter at barryweiss.substack.com. You'll find an essay there by Rob about America's lost boys. We'll be back soon.

My grandfather was a fire and brimstone teacher. But there are things that the homilies and hymns won't teach you. My mother was a genius. The command did respect. When they died, they left no instructions. Just a legacy to protect.