Troubled by Rob Henderson

I didn’t initially intend to read this book, but I kept hearing about it and eventually succumbed to the marketing because I am a sheeple.

Overall, it was…

…Interesting, and a breeze to get through, but his reasoning about social issues is messy.

First the interesting:

On the military

The psychologist Joyce Beneson has written that, often, when a young male has been overlooked by his parents, he “will gravitate to the ubiquitous male peer-militaristic world. He will then join this world as a child soldier, a gang member, mercenary, member of a militia, or, if he is lucky, a well-resourced military unit.”

Henderson reflects that he is lucky by this account, as he joined a proper military, and he does seem to have gotten something out of serving. I do wish he had expanded more on why he thinks young men seem drawn to this—is it that young men are often impulsive and violent, but this is often curbed by external expectations of parents and peers? Or is this an outlet for rage? Some other option? The motivation for Henderson to join the military, at least as he tells it in hindsight (i.e. to have strict discipline imposed on you) seems a different reason than I might imagine for joining a gang.

I learned that so much of success depends not on what people do, but what they don’t do. It’s about avoiding rash and reckless actions that will land us in trouble. The military presses the “fast forward” button on the worst, most aggressive, and impulsive years of a young man’s life — the time when a guy is most likely to do something catastrophically stupid.

Seems insightful. I wonder, what other frameworks do we have to get through the impulsive late teens and early twenties for men? I could imagine some religious communities would curb the worst of it too.

And another insightful social point:

On the value of education vs. relationships

I’ve also heard graduates of top universities say marriage is “just a piece of paper.” People shouldn’t have to prove their commitment to their spouse with a document, they tell me. I have never heard them ridicule a college degree as “just a piece of paper.” Many affluent people belittle marriage, but not college, because they view a degree as critical for their social positions.

This is very well-said and my experience also. But isn’t it interesting that this is the social reality we ended up in? I could easily imagine the opposite sentiment being the case (consider for instance the stereotype of old European aristocracy).

Now onto the messy:

Henderson still misunderstands the class in which he’s embedded himself

Henderson seems to have done an admirable job of learning the culture of the educated people around him. Some of his observations are sharp. But other times I think he interprets his observations incorrectly, or at least imputes a definitive interpretation where less confidence is warranted. Some examples:

…upper-class people are more likely to endorse utilitarianism and the belief that “the ends justify the means.” One reason for this is that affluent people score relatively low on measures of empathy and favor cold calculations for decision-making.

He mentions this is only one reason for endorsing utilitarianism, and yet it’s the only one he gives—and a causal story, no less. But surely a big factor is that utilitarianism is a highly intellectual moral framework, and leads to repugnant conclusions that conflict with most people’s moral instincts? I would guess the vast majority of people wouldn’t come up with utilitarianism if they hadn’t read about it somewhere first, whereas some idea of natural law or deontology seems more intuitive.

Later on, he writes that

…working-class Americans are more likely to read local news, while the wealthy and highly educated favor national and global news. To me, it makes sense to keep up with what’s going on in your local community. But there seems to be less practical reason to regularly read about events far removed from you, unless you aim to show others how worldly and sophisticated you are.

Yes, seems plausible, but also: the more urban and geographically mobile you are, the more it makes sense to read about news of other places. There are many careers more likely to be open to wealthy and highly educated people which require some knowledge of world events (e.g. journalism, NGO work, politics, some kinds of law). Furthermore, wealthy urbanites may be more likely to have contacts in other places.

It wouldn’t surprise me if some of Henderson’s peers consume national or global news consciously as career prep, or to keep tabs on places relevant to people they know. Also, I admit that as someone who lives in a small country, it seems baffling to not read about other places; I suspect this is less true of people in the US and China.

On representation

Henderson writes,

Representation certainly benefits a handful of people who are chosen to enter elite spaces, but it doesn’t seem to improve the lives of the dispossessed. In fact, it might backfire. Elite institutions strip-mine talented people out of their communities. Upon completing their education, most of these graduates do not return to their old neighborhoods… if the original intent was to help languishing communities, then this particular solution is failing.

And yet throughout the whole book Henderson advocates for a sort of representation.

There’s a touching anecdote of a volunteer effort he was part of to help struggling kids learn to read, where he encouraged a second grader by sharing his own past and how he was also a late bloomer when it came to literacy. There’s also the way that people in his family and his former town look up to him for advice, even though I don’t believe he’s returned.

I think Henderson misunderstands what representation is purported to do. Of course having someone from a disadvantaged background in some position of power or influence doesn’t alleviate poverty directly for people from their background. But they get to do well, and the people around them get to have a success story who was like them. Henderson succeeded even though he didn’t know anyone like him who did—but does he really think it wouldn’t have meant something to him if he had?

After all, part of the reason he claims he wrote this book is as an example to kids like him that more is possible for them.

On gender discussions, or the lack thereof

What would Rob Henderson’s life had been like if he’d happened to be born a girl instead of a boy? This seldom occurs to him in the book¹ , perhaps because he wanted to stick to his own experiences.

The omission seemed glaring to me because when I first heard of the idea of “luxury beliefs”, I thought immediately of the pro-sex work position taken by many highly educated people, which pertains more to girls and women. Even the term “sex work” obscures the wildly different conditions and risk profiles of the different jobs under that umbrella.

In general, I was surprised at how little Henderson mentioned sexuality or romance, given how important he thinks marriage is, and how honest he seemed about himself throughout most of the book. He presumably believes that the women around him supporting polyamory (which he thinks is a luxury belief) will for the most part settle down and live in pretty conventional family structures, but how does this come about? How is courtship different for ivy league students versus Americans from poor small towns? Are the educated just much more scrupulous about using birth control?

Cause and effect

“Meanwhile, the less fortunate suffer as the beliefs of the upper class spread throughout society as a result of their disproportionate influence.”

This is the underlying assumption of the whole idea of luxury beliefs: that the upper class have a bunch of fanciful beliefs that they may or may not really live by, but then these ideas (though not the good behavior, which is hidden) trickle down to the masses, who bear the consequences. This comes up again and again, including about family, as Henderson assumes that the reason that lower class people have less intact families is social advocacy from the upper class:

Affluent people, particularly in the 1960s, championed sexual freedom. Loose sexual norms caught on for the rest of society. The upper class, though, still had intact families. Generally speaking, they experimented in college and then settled down later. The families of the lower classes fell apart.

But while this mechanism seems plausible, no evidence is ever really presented for this type of spread occurring. Whether various kinds of dysfunction (e.g. substance abuse, unstable relationships, crime) occur because of or are worsened by upper class people espousing libertine social norms is speculative, and perhaps even undercut by the first 200 pages of the memoir.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then

There are a few contradictions throughout the book. Nothing too glaring, but interesting.

Henderson gives Canada Goose winter jackets as an example of a luxury item worn by students at Yale: they definitely keep their wearers warm, but it’s possible to be as warm from a cheaper off-brand jacket. Yet on the other hand, he writes that “More than one student quietly confessed to me that they pretended to be poorer than they really were, because they didn’t want the stigma of being thought rich.”

While this isn’t necessarily a contradiction in ideas, I would have liked a comment on this. In Henderson’s experience, do the students wearing pricey branded jackets tend to be the same as the ones playing off their wealth? Or different? If so, is there some variance in how (and how much) different students at Yale like to show off their wealth?

At another point, he writes that

A common rebuke to those who are not fully up to date on the latest intellectual fads is “educate yourself”. This is how the affluent block mobility for people who work multiple jobs, have children to care for, and don’t have the time or means to read the latest bestseller that outlines the proper way to think about social issues.

Okay, but later he notes

A 2018 study found that people typically pursue higher levels of education because they believe it will lead to more leisure time. But, in fact, more educated people tend to have less leisure time. They earn more money, but also work more hours.

The “more time” hypothesis also seems to conflict with his descriptions of the people he grew up with (though not the ones in the military), who seem like they did pretty much have time. Which leads me to…

…the few places where I think he’s just wrong

Henderson correctly pinpoints a tension between what upper class people say they do (get lucky) versus what they actually do (be conscientious). One example is Yale students who talk about body positivity and fat acceptance while trying to be healthy and slim. I think Henderson misunderstands at least part of why they do this. While it sometimes may be to sabotage others or to signal humility, as he believes, I think Henderson often projects that it takes effort and self-discipline for these people to act like this because he’s had to learn self-discipline in order to to act like them.

I suspect that for many of them it doesn’t actually require much effort. He notes that the soda machine at Yale is mostly used to dispense water—but if you’re not used to soda, it tastes funny and kind of too sweet; a little odd to have with a savory meal.

“Only the affluent can afford to learn strange vocabulary, because ordinary people have real problems to worry about.” Firstly, a minor quibble that there are many real problems which wealth doesn’t inure one against (though of course it still helps). But more importantly, it’s not that they have the time and resources to afford to do these things, because frankly a lot of people whom he grew up around had the time as well, and it need not be that expensive. It’s that lower class people have to try; if you’re upper class these ideas are ubiquitous, and it would take more effort to not encounter them. They don’t have to seek it out; it’s in the water, it’s everywhere.

Henderson notes that the educated and less educated have different cultural tastes, for example in television programs. But watching a television program takes a similar amount of time and effort regardless of which it is. Watching Fox News takes similar time to listening to The Ezra Klein Show. And for educated people, it doesn’t take any effort at all to be interested in the latter rather than the former.

He muddles between recognizing that the upper class don’t need more time or money to acquire their tastes, that it is in theory open to all but still difficult or impossible to acquire, and stating that they are the only ones who can afford (via time or money) to acquire their beliefs. So which is it?

College kids are dumb and immature

Henderson comments on how sheltered and immature the Yale kids around him were compared with kids from his home town, or young men in the military. Yet they seem to be his only sample for his comments.

I really hope that as a research psychologist Henderson manages to give a “luxury belief” survey to members of different social classes to get a sense of how widespread these views actually are, especially at different ages. I suspect that in some cases his conclusions are too strong as his sample is young and naïve. Why is he relying on the opinions of twenty year olds about how they will raise the children they start having in at least eight years, when those children will be teenagers in at least thirteen more years?

It’s not a bad convenience sample, but it’s so unrepresentative that I don’t think it makes sense for it to be the only sample he has.

Not all people who have a college degree are elite

While Henderson explicitly states that people who graduate from elite colleges with at least one parent who’s a college graduate are elites (though not the only ones), when he provides statistics, he tends to give them for college grads in general, rather than this extra-elite group in particular. I understand that this is likely due to data availability, but I think it muddles his points. Yale alumni are atypical even among college grads, 98% of whom don’t attend elite schools. Many of that large majority presumably come from middle class backgrounds, and are perhaps more similar to the people he met in the military.

And finally:

Blatant lies

A question I wrestled with in the early stages of writing was “Who is this book for?” Whenever I thought about comfortable upper- and upper-middle-class people reading it, quite frankly, it made my stomach turn. Instead, I kept thinking about some kid like me out there who might pick this up and draw inspiration, the same way I did as a kid hanging out in my schools’ libraries.

So… he wrote this for representation? I think that’s basically what he’s saying here.

Also: I call bullshit. His main audience clearly seems to be the comfortable upper- and upper-middle-class people who are educated but don’t like woke stuff, and he seems smart enough to realize this.

After all, would he even have recognized his final outcome as a form of success as a boy? Even if so, would most of the boys he met in foster homes have recognized it? He may have read inspirational biographies as a kid, but the books he mentioned reading tend to be biographies of martial artists and fighters.

Maybe this is useful to some little kid who needs it, and if that’s the case then fine. But looking this guy up, he strikes me as someone whom bougie adults think is really cool, and teenage boys think is totally lame.

C’mon man, you’re a research psychologist who talks about family values. Why would teenage boys listen to you talking about the importance of self-discipline in your book, when they can listen to the much cooler (by teenage boy standards) Andrew Tate saying the same, minus the family values part?

Footnotes