TRIGGERnometry - How Elites Hurt the Poor With Terrible Ideas - Rob Henderson

00:00:00.000 The whole white privilege idea is itself a kind of luxury belief because, I mean, first what's happening is that the people who seem to be most strident and in favor of this white privilege idea are themselves white.

00:00:11.120 And what they're doing is they're elevating their own status, right?

00:00:13.640 Like if a white person at, you know, some fancy college or whatever in sort of a position of prominence says, you know, oh, I decry white privilege, is that white person losing status or gaining status, right?

00:00:24.900 Are they hurting themselves or are they actually elevating themselves even more

00:00:28.080 among their peer group around the people whose opinions they care about?

00:00:38.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:42.220 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:43.360 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:49.160 Our brilliant guest today is a man who coined the term luxury beliefs.

00:00:52.600 He's a PhD student at Cambridge.

00:00:54.240 Robert Henderson, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:56.140 Thanks, guys. Great to be here.

00:00:57.340 It's great to have you on.

00:00:58.660 Before we get into talking about luxury beliefs,

00:01:01.360 I mean, it's a fascinating concept that you've described,

00:01:03.820 and I really can't wait to talk about it.

00:01:05.720 But before we do, who are you?

00:01:07.520 How are you where you are?

00:01:08.480 What has been the journey through life

00:01:10.020 that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

00:01:12.120 Right. So my name is Rob Henderson.

00:01:14.140 Like you said, I'm a PhD student at Cambridge

00:01:15.800 in my final year studying social and evolutionary psychology.

00:01:19.240 Before this, I was studying at Yale,

00:01:21.860 also studying psychology for my undergrad. I worked in the lab there as well in the psychology

00:01:26.420 department. And so this is just my sort of broad areas of interest, human nature, psychology,

00:01:31.500 evolutionary theory, this kind of stuff. I mean, before this, I suppose part of what contributed

00:01:38.160 to my coming up with this idea of luxury beliefs is my unusual path to higher education. So

00:01:43.900 to back way up, I was born into poverty. I never knew my father. I grew up in Los

00:01:51.700 Angeles. My mother, when I was three, became addicted to drugs. She wasn't able to care for me.

00:01:58.120 And so I spent the next few years living in foster homes around Los Angeles. I lived in

00:02:02.400 seven different homes throughout my childhood. I was adopted by this working class family

00:02:09.240 where we settled in Northern California. I was eight years old. And yeah, so we grew up in this

00:02:15.980 kind of dusty town, very poor crime ridden town. And yeah, I mean, there was still, even though I

00:02:22.880 had been adopted, there were still divorces and separations and more sort of turbulence. And

00:02:26.740 you know, all of this led me to really not care about school, about my studies. I got into a lot

00:02:32.360 of trouble and barely graduated high school, enlisted in the military when I was 17, right

00:02:39.180 after I graduated and got out of there. And yeah, that sort of helped me to redirect my life in a

00:02:45.300 better direction. And from there, I went to Yale on the GI Bill, which paid for tuition. And that's

00:02:51.580 where I ended up here today. And so I lived my life through a series of basically along the

00:02:59.720 American status ladder, different social classes, starting off about as poor as you can be in a

00:03:05.000 modern Western country and sort of grew up maybe more working class after I'd been adopted. When I

00:03:10.480 was in the military, I had a lot of friends who were maybe more sort of middle class or middle

00:03:13.940 class. And then by the time I got to Yale, I had this extreme culture shock being around these

00:03:20.220 students who were, you know, very affluent, upper middle or upper class, and of course,

00:03:24.220 Cambridge as well. And so I suppose my unusual experiences sort of really informed my views

00:03:31.380 about class and later luxury beliefs. Wow, that is so fascinating, man. That is,

00:03:37.300 you're a young guy, you've already had, you know, a couple of lifetimes worth of experiences,

00:03:42.020 haven't you? And I suppose you talk about how that that shapes you. I think an outsider's 0.96

00:03:47.320 perspective is always valuable. And you've had an outsider's perspective to many different worlds,

00:03:52.380 as opposed because of your background, right? Yeah, I guess, you know, it's funny when I when

00:03:57.300 I first got to Yale, and, you know, started seeing just just how different things really were.

00:04:02.880 I'd never actually thought of my life as that unusual or strange. I mean, the reason is because

00:04:08.220 it was all I ever knew. So my, my friends in high school had very similar lives to me. You know,

00:04:13.140 I had like five good friends in high school, my five close, you know, circle of friends. And

00:04:17.300 they were also raised by, you know, like one of them, his mother was addicted to drugs. His father

00:04:21.860 went to prison. He was raised by his grandmother. I had another friend who was raised by a single

00:04:24.920 mom. Another one who was raised by basically a single dad who had been married five times

00:04:28.660 throughout our childhood, like married and divorced, just sort of revolving door of step

00:04:33.180 parents. And so this was like what I knew. This was my life, you know, up until age 17.

00:04:37.580 and the military was a little different.

00:04:39.640 You know, I met some friends

00:04:40.600 who had maybe somewhat similar lives to me.

00:04:42.480 Some were better.

00:04:43.980 But, you know, I just didn't really think

00:04:46.680 of my life as that strange

00:04:48.000 until I, you know, entered these sort of more,

00:04:50.180 you know, fancy universities

00:04:52.780 and meeting people who had never met anyone like me.

00:04:55.980 And that was like when I realized like,

00:04:58.000 oh, like the people who are responsible

00:05:01.260 for shaping culture,

00:05:03.220 for, you know, responsible for shaping politics,

00:05:05.100 the sort of future leaders of the world

00:05:06.380 have no idea what's going on among sort of poor and working class people and what's going on with

00:05:11.860 the families and with you know with the kids and just the sort of level of disorder and instability

00:05:17.300 and why do they not have an idea is it because they're so wealthy and privileged they're divorced

00:05:23.020 from it is it because they have a disinterest what are the reasons yeah I'm not okay so why

00:05:28.580 why would I mean I think part of it is just um living in a bubble um whether you live in a sort

00:05:34.680 of suburb or a gated community or a place where money can shield you from the day-to-day

00:05:40.600 sort of, you know, what's happening with people who maybe aren't as fortunate as you.

00:05:49.280 I mean, I saw a lot of this when I was, you know, I was at Yale, for example. So it's,

00:05:52.900 this university is located in New Haven, which is one of the poorest, you know, cities in the

00:05:57.080 Northeast, very rundown. I lived downtown in this area. My apartment was, you know,

00:06:03.820 like two or three blocks from from the campus but i on the way there i had to walk through a lot of

00:06:07.540 poverty a lot of homelessness drug addiction mental illness and so on and what i noticed

00:06:11.800 that the students very seldom left like the bubble of this university you know like around the campus

00:06:16.900 there's a lot of security and police and um you know gates where you have to like use your student

00:06:23.040 card to access or and so it's like very safe and secure it's like it's a fort it's a fortress yeah

00:06:27.820 literally that's how it is it's fortress and you know i sometimes i mean it was really funny to me

00:06:32.420 I would like, you know, go off campus and sometimes I'd advise some of the other undergrads and we'd go like, you know, downtown to eat or something, go to a restaurant.

00:06:39.720 And I could see like they suddenly became very wary, like because they're not used to it.

00:06:43.460 You know, they're not used to being in like a city where so with that sort of level of uncertainty and, you know, is it their fault?

00:06:51.400 I don't know. But yeah, there is this sort of distance.

00:06:53.420 And I think a lot of their experience of, you know, poverty and what's going on is through, you know, it's sort of filtered through media, through the sort of content they choose to consume, which is often sort of tailored to flatter their own viewpoints, rather than actually seeing it up close and seeing what's really going on.

00:07:16.100 So, yeah, I think those are just, yeah, a few of the reasons.

00:07:19.260 Okay, and what are these luxury beliefs that these students had?

00:07:24.420 Yeah, so luxury beliefs I define as ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class

00:07:29.920 while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.

00:07:33.460 There are a few different pieces to this for how I came up with this.

00:07:36.540 I mean, one, I've sort of been discussing just my sort of firsthand experiences.

00:07:41.020 But at the same time, I'd also been reading a lot of like sort of old school sociology

00:07:45.300 from Thorstein and Babelin and Pierre Bourdieu.

00:07:47.660 And, you know, basically they said that the way that people used to demonstrate their social class was through material goods, through sort of expensive items, luxury goods.

00:08:01.680 And so, you know, for example, if you walked through the streets of New York or London, too, you know, 100 years ago, you could tell immediately just by how people were dressed how much money they had.

00:08:12.580 You know, this person is wealthy, this person maybe not so wealthy.

00:08:15.580 Today, it's not necessarily the case.

00:08:17.500 You don't really, it's a much noisier signal, what someone is wearing and how it correlates to how much money they have in the bank.

00:08:26.200 And so this was puzzling to me because I also saw a lot of this too, where students would sort of downplay their wealth or even lie about, you know, how rich their parents were.

00:08:35.420 And so what's going on here?

00:08:36.900 But then at the same time, I was also reading sort of more modern social psychology papers within the last just couple of years.

00:08:44.420 and what social psychology research indicates is that the people who care the most about wealth

00:08:49.900 and status are the people who already have it so if you basically take these these measures of you

00:08:54.120 know you ask people you know basically your socioeconomic status your level of income

00:08:57.980 your sort of position in society how well you're doing at your job occupational success and so on

00:09:02.220 and then you ask people questions like you know how much would it interest you to hold a position

00:09:07.380 of power how important is it for you to have influence over other people sort of measurements

00:09:11.360 of your interest and status um and wealth and so on those two things are positively correlated

00:09:16.640 meaning sort of the higher up in society you are the more you care about those things and so this

00:09:21.000 was puzzling to me because i saw okay so people these you know sort of affluent upper middle

00:09:25.020 class and upper class people really care about status um based on this research but they're not

00:09:30.240 doing it through their material goods you know the way that they dress they sort of downplay it

00:09:33.620 they sort of dress down in a way so what's going on here and then i realized oh it's luxury beliefs

00:09:37.980 It's the unusual and novel viewpoints that they're expressing to sort of distinguish themselves.

00:09:44.640 You know, they crave distinction. That's the key goal here.

00:09:46.640 Distinguish themselves from the sort of middle class or working class people who, you know, if someone in society holds a conventional opinion,

00:09:54.040 a very easy way to show that you're not a member of the sort of the riffraff or the masses or something is to hold the opposite opinion

00:10:00.620 or hold a strange opinion that maybe doesn't make sense because it shows like you, you know, you're not one of them.

00:10:07.180 and then the way that it's not just the opinion itself but it's the way that you express it if

00:10:11.120 you express it in you know using using vocabulary no one has ever heard of for example and i can

00:10:17.400 tell a couple of stories about that too you know sort of my you know the culture shock that i had

00:10:21.020 uh learning this you know strange words and lexicon and tell us some of those well okay so

00:10:26.920 so one example my first my first year i um i try to join this like humor writing magazine on campus

00:10:35.080 It was just a student-run thing.

00:10:37.260 And we were brainstorming ideas for headlines for that month.

00:10:41.800 So the month's theme for that magazine issue was puberty.

00:10:45.420 And so we were just spitballing ideas, putting them up on the whiteboard.

00:10:47.880 And I think it had been like four months since I'd entered the university and still pretty new to me.

00:10:56.840 And I came up with this headline of something like, 0.76

00:11:01.160 Area Male Discovers Porn Goldmine in His Front Right Pocket.

00:11:05.080 Um, and, and then the student editor, uh, looks at me and he raises an eyebrow and he's like, 0.94

00:11:11.560 why does it have to be gendered? And I look at him like, what? Like what's gendered? Like I,

00:11:17.840 I never heard that. I knew what gender was, you know, male, female, whatever, but gendered,

00:11:21.460 ED, like with, why would you make it into an adjective? Um, and I just sort of, you know,

00:11:25.620 like, okay, slunk back, like, okay, what is he talking about here? But yeah, there were other

00:11:29.240 cases, you know, eventually I grew to learn like all kinds of terms that I had never heard before.

00:11:35.080 You know, heteronormative, cisgender, cultural appropriation was another one that I learned.

00:11:41.260 Well, were you not talking about that when you were growing up poor?

00:11:43.660 You weren't talking about heteronormativity?

00:11:45.280 I'd never heard that.

00:11:46.160 You know, and what's funny is that for a period of my youth from, you know, basically like through my high school years,

00:11:51.960 my like middle school, high school years, my adoptive mother entered a relationship with a woman 0.79

00:11:56.680 and they raised me together for like a few years.

00:12:00.480 And so they were gay. 0.98

00:12:01.480 i mean but they were they were like working-class democrats my you know my my mother and her

00:12:08.640 partner and and so you know i i had like familiarity with like gay culture and stuff

00:12:15.220 just through living you know living with them but i'd never heard any of these terms before

00:12:19.220 and you know even now sometimes i'll go visit my mom and ask her some questions and stuff and she's

00:12:24.160 like what are you what are they talking about at that school of years like what's going on over

00:12:27.280 there um it's almost like you can be gay without having the language well like a lot of it is like 0.99

00:12:33.740 it's it's it's based on on class right like it's sort of if you you know straight people at these

00:12:40.260 schools learn this vocabulary right like it's it's more a matter of who you're around what um

00:12:46.720 what kind of culture you're exposed to the amount of money people have around you whether you have

00:12:51.500 time to consume like whether you have time to like sit around all day and like scroll twitter

00:12:56.860 social media keep up with the latest fashionable trends reading op-eds and whatever the latest

00:13:02.780 news that you know this whole this right now there's this whole thing about like the current

00:13:05.420 thing right like you know can you keep up with the current thing well if you work a blue-collar job

00:13:09.880 and you can't look at your phone all day because you're i don't know you're a bus driver i don't

00:13:13.700 know whatever it is like you can't like you know oh let me check my phone every hour and see what's

00:13:17.540 you know what's trending um and so that was something new too like i would have these

00:13:22.500 encounters with with students where they would say you know oh did you read this by so and so

00:13:26.520 some op-ed or something at the atlantic or something and i would say no like what are you

00:13:30.420 guys reading the news for like what's like why do you care you know you're 19 why do you care

00:13:34.200 what's going on like shouldn't you be like having fun and whatever and and uh and then i grew to

00:13:38.260 realize like oh part of part of um enculturation you know sort of assimilation into this upper

00:13:43.940 class is sort of being very aware like what's going on politically what's going on the news

00:13:49.020 what are the and and so you know listening to the right podcast reading the right periodicals

00:13:53.780 uh the right tv shows and movies what's what's sort of hot right now in terms of the sort of

00:13:59.480 latest luxury belief trend and and so that was that was new to me you know i grew up we had never

00:14:05.360 really like consumed that much political content i mean we couldn't afford cable so we didn't have

00:14:10.640 like msnbc or fox news or any of this we subscribed to the local paper you know like red bluff daily

00:14:15.240 news but then i get to you know to yale and it was like reading the new york times or the wall

00:14:19.540 street journal they have stacks of this they're trying to give these papers away to these students

00:14:23.040 they offer these steep discounts because they want to hook the students in and become lifetime

00:14:27.160 subscribers to the end so you can constantly keep up with what's going on and this is

00:14:31.220 an indicator of of uh of your class right like do you know what's going on uh can you sort of

00:14:38.140 describe events that are happening far removed from you do you have the time the ability to

00:14:42.380 consume all of it it's sort of an indicator of your you know the comforts of your everyday life

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00:16:02.800 Back in the day, so Veblen, he was a sociologist and economist.

00:16:10.120 He wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899.

00:16:13.260 And he wrote about how, you know, like even things like soft hands,

00:16:17.400 you know, these are indicators of sort of your social rank in society

00:16:21.600 because, you know, you clearly don't do manual labor.

00:16:26.040 Like, do you wear sort of delicate and restrictive clothing,

00:16:29.040 tuxedos, evening gowns?

00:16:30.580 Do you go golfing and beagling?

00:16:32.000 do you sort of partake in these activities that require a lot of investment of time to learn how

00:16:37.960 to do? Like, you know, mastering golf takes a lot of time and wearing certain kinds of clothes and

00:16:43.520 so on. And today it's sort of shifted away from expensive and time-consuming hobbies or expensive

00:16:52.600 clothes and towards sort of your luxury beliefs. And I can give you like specific examples of the

00:16:59.140 beliefs that i was seeing too okay well i was going to say i suppose the difference would be

00:17:04.000 that in the past with a luxury uh luxury set of behaviors you were the one paying the price if

00:17:10.800 you went out and you golfed for or you had to be able to afford that if you went out and you bought

00:17:15.880 a tuxedo and walked around it you had to be able to afford it you had to be invited to places where

00:17:20.260 tuxedos were welcome you paid the price you paid the price but with luxury beliefs it ain't you

00:17:27.180 paying the price, is it? Yeah, well, okay, so you often are not paying the price for your luxury

00:17:33.900 beliefs. But my claim is that, you know, in the articles I've written about this is that even

00:17:39.760 if you do, you know, pay a price for it, it's still not nearly the same as the cost inflicted

00:17:46.000 on the lower classes if they were to adopt those luxury beliefs too. So give us the examples now

00:17:51.580 Let's talk about them.

00:17:52.780 Okay, so for example,

00:17:54.800 so I had this conversation recently with,

00:17:58.140 this was a couple of years ago now,

00:17:59.440 with a former classmate of mine.

00:18:02.240 She went to Yale.

00:18:03.860 She works at sort of a well-known technology company.

00:18:06.120 She's doing very well for herself.

00:18:07.400 But she was telling me that she thinks that monogamy is outdated 1.00

00:18:10.020 and that marriage is this kind of like patriarchal,

00:18:14.160 oppressive institution.

00:18:15.840 Our men's sister.

00:18:17.820 And so I'm listening to her.

00:18:19.240 I'm like, okay.

00:18:19.980 And then I asked her, well, how did you grow up?

00:18:23.200 Like, how were you raised?

00:18:24.300 And she said, well, I was raised by my mom and dad

00:18:27.320 in a kind of conventional, typical, you know, intact family.

00:18:31.400 And then I asked, okay, so then are you going to do something different?

00:18:36.140 Or are you going to do, like, what do you plan to do with your family later on?

00:18:39.420 You know, and she said, I'll probably do the same thing.

00:18:42.380 I'll probably get married, I'll get a husband and have kids like that.

00:18:45.320 And I said, but then why are you talking about marriage being outdated?

00:18:47.540 You know, it just didn't make sense to me.

00:18:48.680 like why are you saying one thing but then you're going to do this other set of behaviors and she

00:18:52.740 said well I'm just like she said like well just because my preferences I mean has to be for

00:18:56.720 everyone you know like I think society can evolve beyond you know this this norm having to be

00:19:01.960 you know sort of implemented and and and sort of promoted in society you know just because I want

00:19:07.900 to do it is just my preference but you know I think we can evolve beyond it and I'm thinking

00:19:11.980 to myself like so you were raised by this intact family you did very well in your life you're going

00:19:17.720 to have probably an intact family and your kids are going to inherit a lot of the benefits of

00:19:22.040 like that kind of lifestyle. But you're promoting this other view, you know, she's sort of amplifying

00:19:27.320 this opposing view of, you know, we need to get past monogamy, we need to get past marriage and

00:19:32.920 so on. And this is a luxury belief, this belief that family doesn't matter, we should evolve

00:19:38.780 beyond monogamy or that like sort of the stability that that cultivates is unimportant. And this is

00:19:46.720 like, you know, probably my original observation of a luxury belief. I remember distinctly when I

00:19:51.660 was, um, was in this classroom, uh, Yale and there was a seminar of about 20 something students

00:19:57.000 and the, the professor administered this anonymous poll, um, to the class. And the question was

00:20:04.920 basically, um, you know, were you raised by both of your birth parents? And, you know, none of,

00:20:10.060 like I wasn't talked about that, but none of my friends were either like that. The group of six

00:20:14.220 of us none of us were raised by both of our birth parents this professor administered this poll and

00:20:18.040 I wasn't sure what to expect but when the results came in you know she put it up on the on her slides

00:20:22.180 and it was um out of 27 students only two said no it was just me and one other student I didn't

00:20:26.140 know who it was in the class and the rest you know more than 90 percent and I was like what like

00:20:31.260 what's going on here and so this was shocking to me because I'd I'd already known that a lot of

00:20:35.900 these people came from like well-to-do families they had a lot of money but I didn't realize just

00:20:39.380 how different their lives were in terms of their family structure. And to me, that's not a

00:20:44.360 coincidence that the kinds of people who tend to get into these kinds of universities are raised

00:20:49.400 in sort of stable, married parents in this sort of monogamous relationship, outdated, oppressive,

00:20:56.900 but somehow they got into this. And so if you look at the data, for example, of sort of what's

00:21:04.420 going on with working class and poor families. So in 1960, regardless of social class in the US,

00:21:12.040 95% of children were raised by both of their birth parents. Whether you're rich, whether you

00:21:16.360 were poor, this was just the sort of cultural norm. It was the expectation. And then if you

00:21:20.440 fast forward to 2005, the upper class, you know, sort of educated affluent people, it dropped

00:21:26.360 slightly to 85%. So it was 95% 1960, and then dropped to 85% in 2005. Whereas if you look at

00:21:33.300 working class and poor people. It was 95% in 1960. And by 2005, it had plummeted to 30%.

00:21:38.180 30?

00:21:39.400 30. Yeah, 30%. Meaning it's, you're an anomaly now, if you grow up in a low income community,

00:21:46.460 and you're raised by both of your parents. To me, even that number seemed high, because I didn't

00:21:50.360 really know, I knew, I think one kid who was sort of like in my sort of social circle or whatever,

00:21:55.160 who had that. But, you know, that was like, very unusual. So even 30% seemed a little high to me.

00:22:01.320 and so it's really just night and day you know if you walk around a sort of upper middle class

00:22:07.180 neighborhood like you'll see a lot of married parents but then if you ask a lot of those people

00:22:11.340 what do you think about marriage monogamy norms and so on a lot of them will sort of express this

00:22:15.120 view like it doesn't have to be for everyone or like all you know whatever works you know families

00:22:20.360 are kind of all the same and it you know what we what we do doesn't necessarily have to be for

00:22:24.500 everyone, that kind of thing. And that belief, like, you know, much of it originated in the

00:22:31.160 early 1960s and later the sort of cultural and sexual revolution during that time. A lot of it

00:22:38.220 from college campuses, highly educated people were promoting this view that, you know, marriage is

00:22:43.720 oppressive and all of this kind of stuff. And the belief trickled and was amplified throughout

00:22:50.180 society through the media, through pop culture, through movies and so on. And the norm eroded

00:22:57.460 and the people who promoted the view that the norm should be eroded continued to get married

00:23:03.040 at very high rates and sort of adhere to this set of practices and beliefs that benefited

00:23:09.120 themselves and their own children while inflicting costs on the lower classes. I'll give you a modern 0.99

00:23:15.760 kind of uh version of this i talked to a friend of mine who um you know he was telling me you know

00:23:21.500 when i set my uh my tinder radius to one mile just outside of the you know basically just around the

00:23:27.280 university and i see the the bios of you know the women that he's you know swiping on or whatever

00:23:32.180 he says that like a lot of their profiles you know they say things like uh like poly or or you

00:23:37.720 know uh keeping it casual basically saying like you know they're not interested in anything too

00:23:42.300 serious um he says like something like half of them have like something like that in their bio

00:23:46.500 and then he said but when i expand the radius on my tinder to like five miles to include sort of

00:23:53.020 the rest of the city and its outskirts a sort of more rundown area beyond the university bubble

00:23:57.800 he says like half the women are single moms you know and basically the luxury beliefs of the 1.00

00:24:03.160 former group the educated group trickled down and ended up having this outsized effect on the people

00:24:08.420 who are, you know, less fortunate, who don't have high levels of education, economic capital, who

00:24:14.060 can, you know, basically, uh, the people who can afford that belief, you know, because even if

00:24:18.360 you're, even if you are a single mother, uh, but you're doing very well for yourself economically,

00:24:23.160 you can sort of make that work for you. But if you're very low income, very poor,

00:24:28.000 and you're a single mother, you have a completely different experience, right? And so maybe it is

00:24:33.100 the case to some degree um that if you're very affluent uh you can sort of choose your family

00:24:38.620 and you'll in all likelihood your kid will be okay but if you're very poor um it's a completely

00:24:43.180 different experience right and so this was sort of the original view that i found for for for

00:24:47.680 luxury beliefs a sort of prime example of it do you think these people are utopians rob they've

00:24:52.900 got this idea of you know we're all going to get to this incredible magical place with these beliefs

00:24:57.920 but real life doesn't work like that yeah i mean i think much of it is uh sincere i don't you know

00:25:06.860 i think like a lot of it is like uh if you sort of let people live their lives and you don't have

00:25:12.400 to have cultural guardrails or sort of um you know norms that kind of serve as safety nets for people

00:25:18.800 that you know they'll they'll be okay um and i think there is maybe a utopian undercurrent to it

00:25:25.520 um but to me it it more reflects a sort of abdication of responsibility you know if you

00:25:33.680 if you uh are fortunate enough to you know have some influence and some wealth and some uh kind

00:25:41.620 of status in society you know like you i think you have some some duty to think like well what

00:25:47.320 are like good norms like what's a good way to live your life and to promote those norms you know like

00:25:53.720 I noticed that a lot of, um, sort of affluent people, they're very, um, they're, they're sort

00:25:59.280 of, uh, okay with, with promoting things like, like financial assistance, for example, you know,

00:26:04.300 whether it's the welfare state or what have you sort of state benefits for people. And, you know,

00:26:08.960 I'm not opposed to that. Fine. Like if people need financial assistance, that's fine. Um,

00:26:13.920 but at the same time, like money is not the only thing that can give rise to a good life,

00:26:19.260 right? Like you can't just give everyone a, you know, UBI or something and then expect them

00:26:23.680 to live happily ever after like also what contributes to a happy life is sort of living

00:26:28.580 by a set of norms and behaviors and so forth um and also to like you know a lot of a lot of this

00:26:36.580 is also for for kids right like kids don't get a choice for how they live their life right like

00:26:40.980 you know most kids would rather live in a sort of stable secure safe family environment

00:26:45.760 and so yeah and so so a lot of these luxury beliefs not only do they affect sort of adults

00:26:53.240 who are sort of poor and working class,

00:26:55.140 but the kids are the ones who actually suffer.

00:26:56.940 Well, they hurt the kids the most.

00:26:58.380 And this is kind of, I mean, we're joking around

00:27:00.600 as we want to do,

00:27:02.100 and you're a very sort of cheerful academic guy 0.99

00:27:05.160 and you talk about, but this is fucking awful. 0.99

00:27:08.380 Yeah. 0.99

00:27:08.740 This is awful.

00:27:09.720 You've got rich and privileged and wealthy people

00:27:12.360 essentially destroying the very things

00:27:15.240 that poor people need to make their lives better

00:27:18.020 in order to make the rich and wealthy people 0.99

00:27:20.760 and powerful people feel higher status at their dinner party it's fucking awful yeah yeah yeah i 0.90

00:27:27.000 mean it is so so if you express these views you will often sort of elevate your status among your 0.89

00:27:32.380 you know similarly educated and affluent peers who will say like yeah yeah of course monogamy

00:27:37.100 is outdated this is great and you sort of give yourself a little status boost but as that belief

00:27:42.420 sort of percolates throughout society it does have have detrimental consequences i mean going

00:27:46.720 back to that that idea about like you know financial assistance and living a good life

00:27:50.220 and so on. I mean, there's some interesting research in, I think these were done by economists

00:27:55.200 who basically sort of calculated the monetary value of sort of certain aspects of sort of

00:28:01.740 social life, for example. So they calculated that being married has the same effect on happiness as

00:28:07.980 earning an extra $100,000 a year. And so one sort of simplified interpretation of this is,

00:28:15.620 well if you want to make people happier you can give them a hundred thousand dollars a year

00:28:19.580 or you can promote marriage right like if both of us have the same effect on happiness like what is

00:28:24.560 the sort of metric of interest here is it sort of making people have a lot of money or is it

00:28:29.560 making people happier right like i think happiness is probably more right life satisfaction or

00:28:34.140 well-being and there's other sort of aspects to this too like having a having a friend that you

00:28:37.920 see on a regular basis was worth i think ninety thousand dollars a year talking to your neighbors

00:28:41.960 regularly was worth $40,000 a year. So basically cultivating social cohesion and marriage and

00:28:48.080 friendship and all this stuff, like having an active and good social life seems to have like

00:28:53.600 this sort of outside. So if you do all those things, I mean, even things like religion,

00:28:57.440 I mean, I'm not a particularly religious person, but the benefits of religion are pretty clear that,

00:29:02.380 for example, if you go to a religious service once a week, it has the same effect on happiness

00:29:07.140 as moving from the bottom income quintile to the top income quintile, right?

00:29:11.560 And so basically, if you're a relatively low-income person,

00:29:14.920 but you're married and you have a friend and you talk to your neighbors

00:29:17.300 and you go to a religious service,

00:29:19.400 your level of happiness is the same, basically,

00:29:21.900 as like a very sort of wealthy person.

00:29:24.420 But we spend a lot of time talking about sort of wealth inequality and so on,

00:29:28.280 which I think that is an important topic.

00:29:30.180 But often these other sort of norms that give rise to happiness are often overlooked.

00:29:34.880 Rob, when I started to become aware of these subjects, these luxury beliefs, as you said,

00:29:43.400 someone put forward this argument about privilege. And it always stuck with me, actually,

00:29:48.300 which was one of the things about having privilege is that you're not aware that you have privilege.

00:29:53.760 And to a certain extent, I'm sympathetic to that idea. Don't you think that we can also use our

00:29:59.340 argument with these people who put forward these luxury beliefs? If you've always grown up

00:30:04.340 wealthy, if you've always grown up in stability, you don't realize in many ways how lucky you are

00:30:10.740 because you've never seen the flip side of it. So you're putting forward these arguments

00:30:15.120 and it's coming from ignorance, really, because you've got no idea of the ramification that

00:30:21.620 these things are going to have further down the line.

00:30:24.340 That's a good point. You know, one of the things I've been thinking about is how,

00:30:28.560 So, I mean, so a lot of affluent people, I think, have like at least attempted to imagine what it's like to be poor.

00:30:36.560 Maybe through, you know, watching movies or TV shows or something.

00:30:38.800 Like you see, like, oh, this might be like, you know, because I think that's like a lot of like, you know, sort of where people get their views from, right?

00:30:47.060 It's sort of entertainment and pop culture.

00:30:49.300 And so they at least attempt to put themselves in that position of what would it be like to have no money.

00:30:55.240 I don't think I've ever met a sort of upper middle class or affluent person who has ever tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up without their family, you know, without their parents, without sort of that kind of stability of reliable caretakers.

00:31:08.940 And to me, this is important because if you look at, so for example, so developmental and evolutionary psychologists make this distinction between childhood harshness and childhood instability.

00:31:25.860 And harshness is basically low income, low socioeconomic status in your family.

00:31:30.200 and childhood instability includes things like a number of relocations in your childhood whether

00:31:36.900 there was a father present in the home whether the parents were divorced how many different

00:31:41.080 romantic partners the child's parents had when they were growing up and so on just sort of the

00:31:45.660 day-to-day disorder that they experienced and literally every single paper I've looked at

00:31:52.540 investigating these two things it finds that childhood instability is a much stronger predictor

00:31:57.480 of harmful and risky behaviors in adulthood compared to childhood poverty or low income.

00:32:04.700 So there was a pretty widely cited 2012 study showing that childhood instability was a significant

00:32:11.140 predictor of, you know, in adulthood, so sort of the number of short-term sexual partners,

00:32:16.340 teen pregnancy rates, rates of addiction, likelihood of committing a crime, and so on,

00:32:21.420 And whereas childhood socioeconomic status was not associated with any of those outcomes in adulthood.

00:32:28.380 And there was another study in 2016 which found that regardless of family income, adolescents who were raised in instability were more likely to be committed to drugs.

00:32:39.640 And this was across socioeconomic lines.

00:32:42.180 So basically a rich teenager who grows up in instability is more likely to be committed to drugs than a poor teenager raised in a stable home.

00:32:48.960 um and so basically like this sort of day-to-day disorder and instability has a much stronger

00:32:54.080 effect i mean there's even some interesting research on on personality and it sort of

00:32:59.000 links with with instability so uh there's this um idea in in psychology called a dark triad

00:33:06.220 personality traits um so narcissism psychopathy machiavellianism and you know this is like

00:33:12.780 associated with like cynicism, hostility, disregard for other people. And again, so childhood

00:33:19.220 instability was significantly associated with these dark triad traits in adulthood, whereas

00:33:25.600 childhood poverty was not associated with any of them. And if anything, I've actually seen kind of

00:33:29.720 the reverse. There's this interesting finding that low childhood socioeconomic status was

00:33:35.200 associated with slightly higher scores on empathy in adulthood. So people who grew up poor seem to

00:33:40.700 actually have slightly higher levels of empathy than people who grew up rich whereas childhood

00:33:44.600 instability had a completely opposite effect like if you grew up in instability um your ability to

00:33:49.180 feel empathy for other people is is um very much declined uh diminished in adulthood which might

00:33:55.320 explain why there's more violent crime particularly in some of those areas potentially you know we had

00:33:59.700 dr diana fleischman one of our favorite guests great uh on the show and we in the first interview

00:34:04.940 do you remember we talked about in that particular context we talked about why women were more

00:34:09.420 attracted, some women were more attracted to people with the dark triad characteristics.

00:34:14.340 And she talked about how if you grow up in an unstable environment and you see people

00:34:18.540 cheating each other, screwing each other over, lying to each other and whatever, you sort

00:34:22.620 of learn that to survive in that environment, you have to be like that. 0.96

00:34:26.100 So that makes perfect sense.

00:34:29.420 But, you know, particularly the family, the lack of family intactness issue.

00:34:37.540 do you think part of the reason

00:34:40.700 that the luxury beliefs around that

00:34:42.520 have shifted over time

00:34:43.620 and maybe I'm curious to know

00:34:46.360 why you think it's happened

00:34:47.360 we've got to a point where I think

00:34:48.780 people in sort of the chattering classes

00:34:51.320 as we call them in the UK

00:34:52.560 it's become sort of like

00:34:55.320 you can't tell other people

00:34:57.440 how to live their lives

00:34:58.500 it's much better to just give them money

00:35:02.060 and benefits than it is to go

00:35:04.120 maybe we should all do this

00:35:05.620 where's that

00:35:07.020 like i know i feel uncomfortable i feel uncomfortable sitting there going maybe people

00:35:11.260 should get married before that you know like what i'm some sort of like conservative from the 1980s

00:35:16.240 i'm gonna start shutting down comedians and whatever like that's not who i am and i feel

00:35:21.100 that so where's that coming from yeah i mean i think it's uh i mean i feel it too you know

00:35:27.120 whenever i talk about this stuff especially early on when i first started publicly

00:35:30.660 expressing these views like yeah there was something and i and i think it's just um

00:35:34.820 you know for better or worse people uh desire like they don't want to be ostracized they don't

00:35:41.300 want to be vilified or ridiculed for their views and i think like this is actually part of part of

00:35:47.280 like this is how how sort of norms rise and fall is is not just through um sort of people who are

00:35:55.100 are unwilling to impose them but also uh another normalizes in itself that that uh you will be

00:36:01.660 punished for for trying to promote it right and so this is sort of what happens where like

00:36:05.920 initially it was just uncool to talk about marriage and stuff and then uh and then pretty

00:36:10.080 soon like if you talked about it other the norm became like how dare you say that you know and

00:36:13.840 this actually sort of further uh uh accelerates the erosion of that norm and so so yeah a lot of

00:36:19.820 the the behaviors that that that are you know on average pretty beneficial uh not just for the

00:36:24.440 people but for kids and so on uh one contributor was was this view that like oh like now no one

00:36:30.360 wants to speak out about it no one wants to express the view and and this is you know why

00:36:33.800 why a lot of people are are sort of pushing back now and I think saying that like it is important

00:36:37.360 to express your viewpoints and and so on so yeah I think that is you know people people who believe

00:36:44.080 in these things they need to get over it and start talking more about it you know one concept that

00:36:48.340 always boils my urine to put it mildly is when I see wealthy middle-class white people talking

00:36:55.600 about white privilege. And I'm like, you have never stepped foot outside of the city of London. 0.81

00:37:02.360 If you do, it's because you're going on holiday to a very nice part of Europe or to your summer

00:37:08.680 residence. You've never been to a part of the UK like Cornwall, where people grow up in poverty,

00:37:15.120 where towns are depressed. There are no jobs. So it's just generation after generation of

00:37:20.440 unemployment or in the northeast for example and the fact that they just sit there and spout this

00:37:26.640 just makes me so angry yeah yeah it really is a kind of a like a narrow-minded blinkered view

00:37:33.840 of yeah i guess of just race and culture and society is just because what they're really

00:37:40.480 saying is like the only the only white people i interact with are the rich ones you know and a lot

00:37:45.880 of those people themselves who are expressing this view are themselves like rich and white you know

00:37:49.940 So, I mean, what's interesting is that a lot of the sort of non-white people they interact with are also sort of much better off than their, you know, counterparts in, you know, more deprived areas. 0.77

00:38:00.240 And so, you know, the whole white privilege idea is itself a kind of luxury belief because, I mean, first what's happening is that, like, the people who seem to be most strident and in favor of this white privilege idea are themselves white.

00:38:12.540 And what they're doing is they're elevating their own status, right?

00:38:15.020 Like, if a white person at, you know, some fancy college or whatever in sort of a position of prominence says, you know, oh, I decry white privilege, is that white person losing status or gaining status, right?

00:38:26.320 Like, are they hurting themselves or are they actually elevating themselves even more among their peer group around the people whose opinions they care about?

00:38:33.260 And by the way, are they getting more privilege as a result, right?

00:38:36.900 Because if you're a white person who's in the creative industries, as we once were, before we self-cancelled, then the more you talk about the stuff, the more opportunities you get, the more money you get paid, right?

00:38:49.420 So you are actually entrenching your privilege by advancing this concept.

00:38:53.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:38:54.020 You get invitations and you, at the very least, you're not inhibiting your own opportunities.

00:38:59.940 Because if you deny white privilege, you may actually hurt yourself to some degree.

00:39:02.900 So by espousing it, you're actually sort of maintaining and elevating it.

00:39:05.460 and and you know this whole concept of white privilege was mystifying to me when i first

00:39:11.860 encountered it because yeah like where i grew up in you know northern so when i was growing in the

00:39:15.800 foster homes probably most of my foster siblings were you know they were like hispanic black and

00:39:19.680 a couple white kids here and there but uh in red bluff it was like much more sort of working class

00:39:24.260 white and hispanic and you know my best friends some of them were like basically poor white kids 0.99

00:39:29.040 you know like raised by you know single moms or alcoholic stepdads or whatever and i'm like okay

00:39:34.940 well whatever like that wasn't privilege for them you know like what what is this like this

00:39:39.500 whole white privilege idea it really just seems to be wealth privilege and people are just trying

00:39:43.680 to like use this concept to i guess sound sophisticated or to elevate themselves or to

00:39:49.560 undermine competitors um the whole the whole concept of it is just um yeah it's it's it's very

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00:41:01.040 Do you think part of this, what we're talking about here,

00:41:04.460 and I think maybe it's less applicable for America

00:41:07.280 than it is for the UK, but it's rooted in classism.

00:41:10.280 You've got the upper classes who go,

00:41:12.340 we're the thinkers, we're the intelligent ones,

00:41:14.600 we're the Harvard, Yale educated people.

00:41:17.100 Correct.

00:41:17.720 Yeah, we know what's good for you.

00:41:21.760 The working classes. 0.98

00:41:23.380 So we'll do the thinking and we've got these ideas.

00:41:26.900 Do you think part of it is that

00:41:27.880 or is that my chip on my shoulder?

00:41:29.140 I think there's some truth to that. I mean, yeah, there's this sort of overconfidence, this arrogance that is sort of pervasive among highly educated and affluent people who think that they know better, who have more time to spend on utopian ideas.

00:41:47.960 And I mean, like, I'd never met someone who had like this whole sort of like political theory before about how society should be run until I sort of joined this new social environment and this new class and interacting with different kinds of people.

00:42:02.380 And that's just like not something, you know, first you don't have time, but then you just, I think there's also this craving for like power to exercise over people.

00:42:10.320 I think the vast majority of people just want to be left alone.

00:42:12.300 You know, they just want to sort of live their lives, go to work, you know, spend time with their loved ones and so on.

00:42:18.780 But a lot of elite institutions attract the kind of personality who is interested in power.

00:42:24.800 I mean, I mentioned that study before.

00:42:25.840 People who are interested in wealth and status already have it and they're interested in getting more of it.

00:42:29.980 And so they sort of collect the credentials and inhabit elite institutions and so forth.

00:42:35.540 And part of the reason for that is because they have an idea in mind about how things should be.

00:42:39.600 and they're very interested in in attempting to to enact their favorite policies and so on and

00:42:45.480 so i think there is um there is some truth to that and and again like i think a lot of this

00:42:50.660 isn't necessarily due to malice you know there's not but they their hearts are you know many of

00:42:55.280 them they're in the right place but they just don't um they're not thinking of the sort of

00:43:02.240 downstream second order effects of their views that maybe sound good that maybe uh you know get

00:43:08.180 get accolades from their peers but then when the rest of society adopts it they they don't think

00:43:13.520 through okay well what would happen if this view were to become popular right this has always been

00:43:17.600 my frustration because i've always been you know i think i'm probably one of those people in the

00:43:22.040 sense that i'm interested in thinking about how society ought to be structured how do we solve

00:43:25.680 this problem how do we solve that problem i've always been since i was a kid but what bothers

00:43:31.500 me about a lot of this discourse is i think we're not really asking how do we solve this problem

00:43:36.280 were asking, what makes me feel good and look good if I express about this problem? I just

00:43:44.000 don't see that as a practical answer. And that's always been like the thing I couldn't get my head

00:43:48.000 around. These people claim to be wanting to solve the problem, but the moment anyone actually

00:43:52.800 mentions the actual solutions, everyone has a meltdown and freaks out and says, well, you can't

00:43:57.840 say that and we mustn't talk about this. So there's a kind of impracticality to it. And what worries

00:44:02.400 me based on what you're describing is of course our media class our political class our educational

00:44:08.180 system all of those institutions are largely staffed and populated and run by the very people

00:44:14.980 you're talking about right yeah yeah i mean it's uh i think it's to some degree it is concerning

00:44:20.360 uh that the people who you know there's there's a sort of a competing competing motives i suppose

00:44:29.020 You know, on the one hand, people do care about what's going on in society and how to improve lives for other people.

00:44:35.720 I mean, very few people are like, how do I make things worse?

00:44:38.020 You know, they want to make things better.

00:44:39.760 But then there's this other motive of sort of obtaining validation from your peers, of doing well in your career.

00:44:47.440 And in many of these institutions, your career hinges on the opinions of other people.

00:44:53.080 And so oftentimes this sort of self-interest wins out, right?

00:44:56.840 Like, or you're able to do the intellectual acrobatics necessary to convince yourself that this sort of silly sounding idea, this luxury belief will somehow make things better.

00:45:07.400 You can sort of talk yourself into it.

00:45:09.360 And, you know, coincidentally enough, it just happens to align with your self-interest and will advance your career when you espouse it at the same time.

00:45:15.420 And I think a lot of people don't take the time to step back and think like, okay, am I expressing this to you because I really believe it?

00:45:20.480 Am I expressing it because it benefits me?

00:45:22.580 Am I expressing it because, you know, other people around me seem to like it and it's helping my career?

00:45:26.340 I mean, what is really going on here?

00:45:27.780 What would really help other people?

00:45:30.200 And I think more people should maybe step back and reflect.

00:45:33.640 Rob, I'm going to ask a question now,

00:45:35.440 which is a question I ask myself,

00:45:37.680 and it's starting to happen every day.

00:45:39.480 Look at the way we're dressed.

00:45:40.600 Look at who we are.

00:45:41.900 Am I conservative?

00:45:44.240 Is that what's happening here?

00:45:45.940 Well, I'm dressed like a conservative.

00:45:48.120 Mate, I get an email every day from someone who goes,

00:45:51.440 T-shirt and blazer, dress up a bit, mate, what's wrong with you?

00:45:54.500 there's a guy in india messages me once a month just to say that

00:45:59.900 says in india only criminals dress like this correct mate oh all right but hold down to my

00:46:06.020 wallet but but but but it's do you see what i mean are we just are we just conservative

00:46:12.180 are we just becoming those those middle-aged guys who are railing against young people i'm still

00:46:18.860 young what what is this why are you trying to destroy me did you know what i mean yeah i mean

00:46:25.780 maybe i you know it's it's funny like i people okay so i mean of course in like the sort of

00:46:31.800 political science political psychology research a lot of it does seem to indicate that as you

00:46:35.540 grow older people do tend to become you know somewhat more conservative in their their

00:46:39.380 attitudes i mean the other thing is like maybe maybe societal trends have gone so far in a

00:46:46.900 direction that we didn't anticipate that you know i mean what is this whole term conservative i mean

00:46:53.620 there's so many you know contentious debates about what it even means but i mean if you

00:46:59.280 if you study you know history and cultural anthropology and sort of how have people

00:47:06.900 lived their lives i mean marriage as an institution arose independently in multiple different places

00:47:12.920 across multiple different cultures and different times and so forth and to me you know I don't know

00:47:17.960 if it's conservative or not but there is something um you know worthy of our attention that if all of

00:47:22.880 these different cultures came up with the same idea independently and it seemed you know maybe

00:47:26.560 to have solved some kind of societal problem for them that maybe we should think very carefully

00:47:31.960 before we start to dismantle it and erode it and so on and so I mean there I mean there are other

00:47:37.480 examples of this but but yeah if if uh if something has endured and stood the test of time

00:47:42.580 then maybe it arose for reason and not just out of you know ignorance or or just from being sort

00:47:48.920 of backwards or something and i'm just you know oftentimes very skeptical that you know we're the

00:47:54.720 ones who have it all figured out and you know every other culture throughout history across

00:47:59.160 time around the globe like they're they're the ones who are wrong and i'm you know we're the

00:48:03.040 ones who get it right it just seems very unlikely but here's the thing with your question as well

00:48:06.040 francis i've been thinking about this a lot like the idea that one side of the political debate is 0.64

00:48:12.360 right and the other one is wrong it's the most moronic thing i've ever heard right because 0.70

00:48:15.900 the the discussion between more change or less change which is essentially the debate right

00:48:21.060 conservatives want things to stay more the same and progressive people tend to want things to

00:48:25.800 change faster that's always existed in society and there would have been times in society in the

00:48:30.900 history of different societies where you absolutely needed to be progressive you needed to change

00:48:36.160 things because the status quo was awful right and there's times when actually you got to a place

00:48:41.100 where things are pretty good

00:48:42.000 and you'd want to keep them stable, right?

00:48:44.180 So the idea that you in your own life

00:48:46.780 over a period of 80 years

00:48:48.380 are going to be like have one position

00:48:51.180 and that position is going to be the right one.

00:48:54.020 You might get lucky in that you live in a society

00:48:56.280 where like, you know, everything's great for 80 years

00:48:59.100 and you don't ever need to change anything,

00:49:00.900 but that's unlikely, right?

00:49:02.440 So that's why I always refuse to commit myself

00:49:04.820 to either of these tribes

00:49:05.780 because I'm like, well, on some things

00:49:07.540 at some points in time,

00:49:08.740 in some geographical locations,

00:49:10.080 being progressive is brilliant. Like in Russia, where I come from, I'm a progressive, right? In

00:49:15.680 the UK, people think I'm on the right, right? I'm actually neither. I'm just going like, this

00:49:19.700 society is pretty good. Let's kind of like maybe not destroy it. Whereas that society, it's got

00:49:24.620 some good things about it, but it does need a lot of, you know, change to move into the 21st century,

00:49:30.100 please, at some point. You know what I mean? And that to me is really like the sensible way to look

00:49:35.760 at politics because what is appropriate today in the uk may be completely inappropriate what is

00:49:42.320 you know to to what was happening somewhere in sri lanka 20 years ago do you know what i mean

00:49:46.940 i do so we are conservatives i mean it's interesting i mean like you're saying these

00:49:52.260 terms are are are flexible they're fluid depending on where you are depending on the point in history

00:49:56.960 where you are i mean even you know uh i mean if you existed 20 years ago you would probably be

00:50:04.360 on the left right but things are changing i was on the left yeah i mean yeah so so i mean i was

00:50:10.480 yeah i was probably more on the left you know 10 or 15 years ago whatever too and and things change

00:50:14.300 i mean people individually change but then the culture changes around them too and like you said

00:50:17.980 even by country you know in one country or this and another country or that and so the labels don't

00:50:22.560 always map on to anything uh stable or concrete and so yeah i mean i think often these are just

00:50:29.480 convenient ways to divide people and to get them to bicker and go back and forth and for people to

00:50:37.060 make money off of this. Rob, we've got to wrap up in a bit. But one thing that I wanted to ask you

00:50:42.200 at the beginning, but I wanted to talk about your academic work. But if you forgive me for saying

00:50:47.020 this, you're a remarkable guy. The life you've had already is incredible. Like growing up the

00:50:54.840 way you did with all of that instability and you talk about statistically speaking that can cause

00:50:59.560 a lot of difficulties and yet you sit here as a phd student in your last year to cambridge you've

00:51:05.380 been at yale you've been in the mid like you've had an extraordinary life like what are some of

00:51:09.560 the qualities or some of the approaches or some of the ways of thinking that you think are important

00:51:13.700 for people who face some of the challenges that you faced as a kid i mean you know so this is a

00:51:19.100 question i get and it's it's uh it's always like i'm always i guess reluctant to give an answer

00:51:23.680 because there's no like one size fits all.

00:51:25.600 This is what works for every kid.

00:51:27.020 I mean, for me, it was really like, you know,

00:51:29.260 I joined the military right out of high school.

00:51:32.320 And that was, you know,

00:51:33.320 the military is like the most sort of intense,

00:51:37.000 coercive environment you can be in

00:51:39.280 where every aspect of your life is tightly controlled.

00:51:42.820 And that was exactly what I needed.

00:51:45.160 But that's not what most people need

00:51:47.060 or many people do, right?

00:51:47.880 Like I wouldn't necessarily recommend

00:51:49.180 going through that path that I went through,

00:51:50.780 but it was what I needed at that time.

00:51:52.240 given the sort of level of chaos and instability in my early life i needed basically the opposite

00:51:57.340 of that in the military where like you know here's step by step here's what you're supposed to do like

00:52:01.080 you know your uniform the way you make your bed like all this stuff was just so tightly controlled

00:52:05.600 was that a difficult adjustment for you it was very difficult i mean i thought it was ridiculous

00:52:10.220 but but at the same time like there was something attractive about it because like my supervisors

00:52:15.820 and mentors and commanding officers and so forth like these were you know like male figures like

00:52:21.440 father figures or whatever like these were guys that i respected you know oftentimes it was

00:52:24.840 begrudging respect but i understood like you know these this is the first time that i've met like a

00:52:30.000 you know an adult male who i would want to emulate or that i admire in some way or something and

00:52:34.300 so you know and then part of it was like i knew that they had to do all of this stuff that i'm

00:52:38.760 doing too and they would tell us like you know we had to do that too like you know so shut up and do

00:52:42.280 it and and and so like that also sort of added to my respect that like they sort of walked the

00:52:47.560 walk kind of thing. But yeah, like, and it took a lot of work too. I mean, I was in, I, you know,

00:52:53.180 it was just, it was a long process of sort of self-development, self-improvement and so on to

00:52:58.500 get, you know, to sort of what, like leave behind the sort of mindset and the bad habits and

00:53:03.100 everything that I had picked up throughout my childhood and adolescence. But I mean, for a lot

00:53:08.820 of kids, I mean, I think just finding that stability in any form, whether it's through

00:53:12.100 sports or finding a mentor finding someone who takes like an interest has a stake in your future

00:53:18.260 who cares about you yeah that would be that would that would go a long way I think to helping a lot

00:53:23.460 of kids I found your answer really illuminating because the one thing you pointed out was this

00:53:28.260 is the first time I met male role models that I wanted to emulate that is so powerful Rob because

00:53:34.100 when I taught in underprivileged schools and really poor areas of London the kids who were

00:53:39.040 all struggling I'd be able to go father ain't at home dad isn't around blah blah blah yeah yeah I

00:53:45.140 mean it's it's fatherlessness is a is a huge problem that that very few people are talking

00:53:49.580 about I mean I of course I saw it but then you know I volunteered um as a tutor too for for

00:53:54.500 underprivileged kids and it's it's the same story very few of them have have fathers at home and

00:53:58.980 it's uh yeah it's this is a huge problem having role models I think for for young males um you

00:54:04.480 know that that absence that sort of lack even if even if young boys or males can't like consciously

00:54:11.760 express it whether because they're not aware of it of that absence and the importance it plays

00:54:16.600 you know that that role or or or just out of pride that they don't want to admit that they want it

00:54:20.740 i mean but that that does sort of have a detrimental effect on a lot of kids i think

00:54:25.240 absolutely rob it's been an absolute pleasure i'm sure you're going to write a book about

00:54:29.580 luxury beliefs at some point and we'll we'll good love to have you back on to talk about it in more

00:54:33.860 detail. I know you've, before that book, which you'll write eventually, you've got another one

00:54:38.200 coming out soon. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I'm writing a memoir based on my early life

00:54:43.760 experiences growing up in foster homes in Los Angeles and sort of my unusual path to higher

00:54:49.600 education. And the book also contains some commentary and observations about society and

00:54:56.460 culture and maybe some things that we should be thinking more about. Well, I can't wait to read

00:55:00.600 Send us a copy, would you, when it comes out?

00:55:03.560 And before we let you go, we've got, as always, one final question for you.

00:55:07.080 Before we do our questions for our local supporters, of course,

00:55:09.480 which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society

00:55:12.720 that you think we really should be?

00:55:14.680 Yeah, I mean, I think we've touched on a lot of the, you know,

00:55:19.280 important topics, to me anyway.

00:55:20.820 I mean, I think childhood instability would probably be the number one question.

00:55:24.900 You know, I mean, again, like we talk a lot about poverty and economic deprivation,

00:55:29.800 but I think sort of instability for children

00:55:32.020 is something we should be thinking more about.

00:55:34.020 Rob, it's been an absolute pleasure.

00:55:35.900 If people want to find you online,

00:55:37.460 where is the best place to do that?

00:55:38.920 Yeah, I launched my Substack a few weeks ago,

00:55:41.380 robkhenderson.substack.com

00:55:43.500 and they can follow me on Twitter at robkhenderson.

00:55:46.400 Fantastic.

00:55:47.060 Thanks for coming on, Rob.

00:55:48.100 And thank you guys for watching and listening.

00:55:50.280 We'll see you very soon

00:55:51.380 with another brilliant episode like this one

00:55:53.320 or also all of them go out at 7 p.m. UK time.

00:55:56.620 And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go,

00:55:59.180 it's also available as a podcast take care and see you soon guys

00:56:03.120 of all the luxury beliefs you've identified which strikes you as the most luxurious and why oh man

TRIGGERnometry - June 27, 2022

How Elites Hurt the Poor With Terrible Ideas - Rob Henderson

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