Introduction to Luxury Beliefs

And Praise for Rob Henderson's Memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class

Credit: Simon and Schuster

Rob Henderson ‘s book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class was released last week both in physical stores and online for the US and UK markets. I’ve been a fan of Henderson for a few years since one of his essays about luxury beliefs hit my echo chamber and having pre-ordered the audiobook started listening it almost immediately upon release only pausing to take a few phone calls, eat lunch, and recharge my headphones. Holly MathNerd reviewed a pre-released copy a few weeks ago with praise as well.

Henderson comes from a fascinating background which he’s discussed in brief in previous articles and in podcast appearances but it’s in Troubled to which he uncovers the wounds from this background in greater detail. Born in Los Angeles to a drug addicted mother and an unknown father, Henderson’s youngest memory revolves around him being taken from her arms by police after social services decided he should be placed in foster care. Between that traumatizing event and his seventh birthday, he’d been in several unstable foster homes around the Los Angeles area. He was adopted by what started out as being a stable two-parent middle-class household in Red Bluff, CA which eventually devolved in many ways into something of less stability. At 17, he joined the Air Force, which kept him for the most part out of trouble but was also where he became exposed to a largely middle class group.

With the discipline and regimen famous pushed by several years of military service, Henderson eventually landed big in Yale on the GI Bill despite having had poor grades in high school and his non-traditional student status. At Yale, he was exposed to another rung on the class ladder: the upper class. It was these class ladder jumps, Henderson’s deep curiosity as an avid reader, and what he saw at Yale which caused him to develop the concept of luxury beliefs. He defines the term as “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class at very little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.” The upper class as defined by Henderson stems around whether the person went to an elite college and at least one of whose parents also attended one.

At Yale, Henderson encountered people with ideas that seems both contradictory for and hypocritical among those who espoused them. Being someone who experienced a stable two-parent household only for a brief moment of his life for example Henderson cites an example of a Yale student who believed monogamous relationships were “outdated,” “not for everybody,” and that society should “evolve,” yet this same student admitted she’d been raised by a two-parent family and planned on marrying as had most of their classmates. Henderson noticed a similar trend with people believing equating the military and trade schools with college for career success as an adult yet simultaneously admitted they would rather encourage their future children to consider college over trade schools or the military. These students also wrote off marriage as “a piece of paper” but obviously did not place such a dismissal on the piece of paper indicating their college credentials.

He also ran into what are to most people outside these elite classes nonsensical concepts such as white privilege. Henderson’s family in Red Bluff, one of the poorest and most violent cities in California, also comprised of a largely white population filled with poverty, substance abuse, and dysfunctional social relationships. Henderson writes, “White privilege is the luxury belief that took me the longest to understand because I grew up around a lot of poor white people,” and later “When policies are implemented to combat white privilege, it won’t be Yale graduates who are harmed. Poor white people will bear the blunt.” In Troubled, he also comments about heteronormativity, legalization of all drugs (the poor suffer the greatest harms from drug abuse and have the hardest time getting out of the cycles that encourage the use as well as have difficult access to rehab), the defund the police movement (poor suffer from the most amount of violent crime), polyamory and family unimportance.

Henderson’s book is eye-opening to say the least and his concept of luxury beliefs can arguably map onto many energy and environmental issues. Please stay tuned for future articles where energy and environmental issues will be tied (or at least attempted) to the idea of luxury beliefs. In the meantime please check out Rob Henderson’s book and/or Substack.