Luxury Beliefs

One of the more valuable new concepts I’ve encountered over the past few years is Rob Henderson’s idea of “luxury beliefs”.

As he describes it, luxury beliefs are “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class at little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.”

Here are a couple of relevant additional excerpts from his book Troubled about Luxury Beliefs:

Asking someone if they’d apply what they promote to their own family or children is a surefire sign of a luxury belief. They are things that are supported from a distance, but not within the home.

This is part of the reason why showy things like land acknowledgments have taken off. A performative and low-cost display that effects the upper class little and is only likely to effect the lower class non-indigenous in a real way. 95% of the people who will eagerly tell you they are on the land of ….. will never take any action to actually help someone on a reservation.

For someone who lives in a gated community with private security, a defunded police force doesn’t pose much risk. This is similar to how many politicians argue against gun rights, but are protected by armed guards.

I think it is accurate (while also disheartening) that a large group of especially impactful people in society pick and choose their beliefs based on status positioning, and not on logic. Beliefs are like fashion, and they can come in and out of season. The fashion that gets you status is expensive, hard to get, and often very impractical. It signals that you have money and no need for functional clothing.

The more impractical and disconnected from reality your beliefs are, the more they show that you don’t live in a middle-class world. You don’t have to worry about things like working a job, dealing with clients, and protecting your family. That is why these beliefs become attractive terrain for status seekers.