This was an excellent dissection of what i believe to be a flawed theory.
I addressed luxury beliefs in the post below from November. Th defund police luxury beliefs theory was based on a you.gov poll taken soon after George Floyd and didn't even show a huge disparity by wealth. A more recent Pew poll showed that the wealthier one is, the more likely you are to NOT want to defund the police.
> But even then, what is going to impress people more: a guy who talks about having studied at Harvard and who has moderate views on police or someone who went to a random community college and is very passionate about police defunding? Again, the answer is clearly the first.
I couldn't help but be reminded of this recent tweet:
Maybe that's because young people (and young women in particular) lean increasingly progressive, and validation by the young is highly coveted by (typically older) people of high material status who struggle with saying good-bye to their youth? Haven't thought about this a lot, but my impression is that the tendency of high (material) status people to seek validation for how progressive they are is a force that shouldn't be easily dismissed.
"This is possible because sometimes the most powerful form of signalling is not to others, but to oneself: “Yes, I am a good person for believing this.”"
For a person who is largely self-directed, there is a big difference between what others think of them and what they think of themselves. For people who are not so self-directed, the difference is less sharp.
It strikes me that “luxury beliefs” is so problematic because it really isn’t a “theory” at all, but an attractive slogan that handily expresses frustration with the hysterical moralizing you identify. What makes the shared frustration of so many people I know so acute is that argument and discussion are not possible. In the worst instances (in academia, in the corporate world, in cultural presentation), the attitude seems to be “this is the way it is, and there is no such thing as another point of view so don’t bother articulating it,” a more extreme version of “if you’re not for us you’re against us.” Accusing someone of “luxury beliefs” is precisely the opposite of what you do in your writing. It’s a slogan that does the thinking for the speaker, taking a proud place alongside such conversation stoppers as “genocide” and “whose objectivity/free speech?”
Hi Ruxandra,
This was an excellent dissection of what i believe to be a flawed theory.
I addressed luxury beliefs in the post below from November. Th defund police luxury beliefs theory was based on a you.gov poll taken soon after George Floyd and didn't even show a huge disparity by wealth. A more recent Pew poll showed that the wealthier one is, the more likely you are to NOT want to defund the police.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-leisure-class
Oh tyvm! This is very important info.
> But even then, what is going to impress people more: a guy who talks about having studied at Harvard and who has moderate views on police or someone who went to a random community college and is very passionate about police defunding? Again, the answer is clearly the first.
I couldn't help but be reminded of this recent tweet:
https://twitter.com/MariGO2thepolls/status/1778246714274496513
Maybe that's because young people (and young women in particular) lean increasingly progressive, and validation by the young is highly coveted by (typically older) people of high material status who struggle with saying good-bye to their youth? Haven't thought about this a lot, but my impression is that the tendency of high (material) status people to seek validation for how progressive they are is a force that shouldn't be easily dismissed.
"This is possible because sometimes the most powerful form of signalling is not to others, but to oneself: “Yes, I am a good person for believing this.”"
For a person who is largely self-directed, there is a big difference between what others think of them and what they think of themselves. For people who are not so self-directed, the difference is less sharp.
The term 'elites' is often used but rarely defined. I have a post attempting to unpack the whole concept: What, Precisely, is the Issue with 'Elites'?
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/70852.html
It strikes me that “luxury beliefs” is so problematic because it really isn’t a “theory” at all, but an attractive slogan that handily expresses frustration with the hysterical moralizing you identify. What makes the shared frustration of so many people I know so acute is that argument and discussion are not possible. In the worst instances (in academia, in the corporate world, in cultural presentation), the attitude seems to be “this is the way it is, and there is no such thing as another point of view so don’t bother articulating it,” a more extreme version of “if you’re not for us you’re against us.” Accusing someone of “luxury beliefs” is precisely the opposite of what you do in your writing. It’s a slogan that does the thinking for the speaker, taking a proud place alongside such conversation stoppers as “genocide” and “whose objectivity/free speech?”