The wealthy elite once signalled their status with expensive handbags and super yachts. Now they do it with what Rob Henderson calls “luxury beliefs” - so-called politically correct pronouncements that, in reality, only the rich can afford to live by and thusly differentiate them from the rest of us. We’re talking about such wokenesses as “defund the police” and calls for drug legalisation, death to marriage and putting “polyamorous” on your dating profile. Of course, defunding the police is all very well if you can afford to live in a gated community with low crime and security guards.
It should be said, Rob, now a moral philosopher at the University of Cambridge, comes at this wild idea from a very unique perspective. He grew up poor, a foster kid who was doing drugs at the age of 9 and who had to learn to decode elite signalling as an outsider once he hit the liberal US university scene. This is a super juicy and confronting thesis, evidence of which I can’t stop noticing everywhere and I loved the way Rob applies the wild idea to online dating, cancel culture and conservative politics.
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Check out Rob's Website
And you can read the New York Times op-ed we talk about.
His book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class will be published in the European fall of 2023.
We chat about Joseph Henrich’s WEIRD theory and class myths in Australia from my Lech Blaine chat, both ran a few episodes back.
If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page.
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