The Real Agenda Of Those In Power - Rob Henderson

Chris Williamson 0:00 What do you make of the last few months of fallout from Yale and Harvard and such?

Rob Henderson 0:05 I mean, yeah, we saw that big, uh, testimonial from the presidents. Yeah, it was- it was Harvard, MIT, Penn. Uh, I mean, I wasn't surprised by it. I mean, a lot of people, I think, are finally fully realizing, they're coming to their senses. People have been saying this for a while now, "Oh, you know, eventually the pendulum will swing back and people will finally figure out what's really going on in these institutions, and this sort of ideology that's been spilling out of the universities." And now I think they finally are actually truly realizing it. But yeah, I saw the- it's kind of the birth of what a lot of people call wokeness, uh, in 2015 when I arrived on campus at Yale. And that was my first semester, I saw what was happening there, and yeah, I mean, I think you can draw a straight line from some of those events in 2015 to what we're seeing now. And yeah, it's been really ugly, but you know, kinda- kind of amusing, you know, from my perspective because I- I- you know, I was one of the... I- I'd like to think that I was one of the sort of early, uh, observers and people who could recognize what was occurring. And then later on, you know, so Jordan Peterson was- was another, and- and there have been other critics of higher ed and especially these elite universities. Um, but yeah, it's been, uh, really, really amusing and- and- and also sort of disheartening to- to see it.

Chris Williamson 1:17 It's this- this sort of odd blend of fatalism, schadenfreude-

Rob Henderson 1:24 (laughs) Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:25 ... nihilism-

Rob Henderson 1:25 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:26 ... sort of pleasure, displeasure-

Rob Henderson 1:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:28 ... like, ick, pity.

Rob Henderson 1:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:30 Uh, it's a real concatenation of- of things.

Rob Henderson 1:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:32 And obviously we've got a couple of mutual friends that have either been directly or tangentially involved.

Rob Henderson 1:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:38 Vincent, uh-

Rob Henderson 1:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:39 ... our mutual friend, I managed to get removed from a higher education institution-

Rob Henderson 1:42 (laughs) Yeah, that's-

Chris Williamson 1:43 ... uh, because of him appearing on this podcast.

Rob Henderson 1:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:45 Carol Hooven-

Rob Henderson 1:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:46 ... uh, who is, you know, a really good mutual friend-

Rob Henderson 1:48 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:49 ... um, ha- has kind of been thrust into the middle of this.

Rob Henderson 1:51 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:51 She told me that she basically felt like she'd been used like a- a football. Um, and, uh, for the people who know who Carol is, she went on Rogan, I think she cried like six times on Joe's show, she cried at least three times on mine. We went for breakfast, I'm pretty sure she cried like three times at breakfast. She's just a very sort of emotional person.

Rob Henderson 2:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:10 She is- she- she's really sort of feeling this, and uh-

Rob Henderson 2:13 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:13 ... yeah, you realize in a sort of proxy fucking battle like this, the people that are useful political footballs to be kicked around-

Rob Henderson 2:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:24 ... often end up paying a pretty high price, and no one ever thinks about them-

Rob Henderson 2:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:27 ... because you're like, "Oh, no, but you're- you know, you're a flaming warrior for free speech or whatever." And you go, "Well, yeah, but I didn't ask to be."

Rob Henderson 2:34 Yeah, yeah. Very few people want to be fired. I mean, it's... I mean, a lot of people may not be familiar with just how difficult it is to get an academic job in the first place. I mean, I... you know, I'm friends with Vincent, I saw, I mean, he was hustling hard, and he had a very impressive academic record, and no one wants to be in that position. I think the... their- their critics or their detractors say, like, "Oh, you know, oh, poor me with your cancel culture, and now look at you going on all these podcasts and playing up your victimhood and all of this," but that's not what it is. I think it's... for some people it's just a consolation that, "Well, I lost my dream job. At the very least, I can sort of communicate these horrible experiences."

Chris Williamson 3:07 "Let me salvage fucking something."

Rob Henderson 3:09 Exactly. And yeah, I was observing all of this from afar. I mean, one thing that I've pointed out before is that for every, like, public academic cancellation you see, there are probably 5 to 10 others that are not covered in the media. Most people actually don't enjoy the limelight that much, especially academics who tend to be kind of weird nerds with their obscure niche interests. They just want to keep their head down, do their research, be left alone, and then suddenly they are accused of X, Y or Z, and they just want to silently, you know, uh, have it blow over. Um, and that's, like, the sort of modal case, that's the usual case. Um, and so yeah, it's been, uh... Yeah, I mean, we can see it now that, uh, finally people are recognizing that there's a- there's a serious issue. I didn't even want a- an academic job. I mean, by the time... I was probably about halfway through my PhD, I saw what was happening. I remember, uh, yeah, I would have very contentious discussions with other PhD students and post-docs and kind of early career researchers, and I would tell them, like, "I don't think that... you know, if you color outside the lines, if you are (laughs) an independent thinker, it will be very difficult for you to get a sort of typical tenure track academic job now. Um, not impossible, but just much harder than it would have been maybe 10 or 15 years ago." And people would say, "Oh, no, that's ridiculous, it's ridiculous." And now, you know, four- four-plus years later, I'm seeing, like, some of those friends are having difficulty, some of them have been hired and fired by now. (laughs) I mean-

Chris Williamson 4:33 Oh, wow.

Rob Henderson 4:33 ... it's been... you know, I've seen the whole- the whole spectrum of- of outcomes. Some of them have successfully obtained jobs and just, you know, keep their mouth shut. But for me, I just... that wasn't what I thought academia was going to be like.

Chris Williamson 4:44 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 4:44 Um, I thought it was going to be, you know, this little kind of contained bubble. You know, the... I guess some people call it the ivory tower, right? Where you can live that life of the mind, and communicate interesting ideas, and debate, and disagree, but still sort of inch your way towards the truth, or at least inch your way- inch your way towards interesting ideas, but... You know, that's interestingly happening more on places like podcasts, and Substack, and, uh, alternate sort of parallel institutions.

Chris Williamson 5:10 Yeah, it's fascinating to think, uh, as well about, I guess, soft cancellations. I had-

Rob Henderson 5:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:15 ... Rikki Schlott on who co-authored-

Rob Henderson 5:17 Mm-hmm. That's right.

Chris Williamson 5:18 ... The Canceling of the American Mind with Greg Lukianoff.

Rob Henderson 5:20 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:21 And, um, she was talking about all of the different ways that people kind of get soft canceled, and it's- it's just not being invited to the end of year party-

Rob Henderson 5:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:32 ... uh, you know, it's people sitting in different locations to you. I think she went to maybe NYU Stern and, um-

Rob Henderson 5:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:38 ... she was hiding Jordan Peterson books under her bed, um, you know, like fucking Anne Frank in the attic-

Rob Henderson 5:43 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:43 ... that philosophical Anne Frank. Um, and she was saying that, you know, it's... there's lots of, um, sort of ideological shit tests-

Rob Henderson 5:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:51 ... she called them, which I thought was a really great name.

Rob Henderson 5:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:53 Uh, "You know, what do you think about Ben Shapiro?"

Rob Henderson 5:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:56 You know, just, like, fucking...... throw that hand grenade into the room and see if anyone pipes up.

Rob Henderson 6:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:02 And, uh-

Rob Henderson 6:02 Or doesn't pipe up. That was something that I learned when I was in grad school, was does anyone just remain silent and not say, "Oh, he's a, he's an evil right wing whatever."

Chris Williamson 6:08 Correct.

Rob Henderson 6:09 Right? If they just kinda keep their head down and don't say anything, you know, I sort of, oh, I observed that they're like, "Yeah."

Chris Williamson 6:13 Silence is compliance or whatever.

Rob Henderson 6:16 (laughs) Yeah. Silence is violence or yeah, yeah, whatever, yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:17 Yeah, whatever it is. What about the, um, you had this interesting idea about the hidden hierarchies of the Harvard Extension School thing.

Rob Henderson 6:25 Yeah. Yeah, well, I saw that with, you know, I was, I was, you know, observing what was occurring on Twitter/X with Christopher Rufo, who was one of the sort of

Rob Henderson 6:35 architects of, uh, pointing out and removing the, the Harvard professor after her comments about, you know, kind of condoning antisemitism on campus, and then (laughs) discovering her plagiarism and all of this. But, you know, af- after he, you know... He was perceived to be successful. I mean, she was, she was ousted, she was pressured to resign and she did. All of these professors at elite universities and all of these, you know, these, you know, university-supporting members of the chattering class were saying, "Oh, Christopher Rufo got a degree from the Harvard Extension School," and, you know, did... Are people aware that that's not the real Harvard and people... Do people understand that that's not typically what we think of as, uh, a real graduate studies degree at a master... Or it's not a real master's degree from Harvard. Uh, and it's... You know, they, they just wanted people to be very aware that this, you know, this, this sort of outsider, this pleb who got this degree-

Chris Williamson 7:30 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 7:30 ... from this extension school, he's not a real academic. He's not a real serious thinker. Yeah, he's written books. Yes, he works at a, at a very prominent think tank. And yes, he's, like, very successful in the real world, but he has his degree for... Which is sort of getting things backwards, right? You want the degree, um, in order to signify that you're capable in the real world, but, you know, they have the, "Oh, this guy's capable in the real world," but now they're looking at the, the d- the degree as if it's, it's somehow, um, it's fraudulent and therefore this, uh, nullifies all of his accomplishments, yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:57 That's indicative of his real value.

Rob Henderson 7:59 Exactly, yeah. They're, they're placing his value on the, the educational credential rather than, uh, on his effectiveness in, in his life and in his career. So, you know, I'm watching this and I'm thinking like, "Yeah, this is exactly..." I mean, I'm, I'm s- I've seen this, you know, since entering college, since entering higher ed, this strange status anxiety, particularly among people who attend these kind of institutions. I mean, the people who were pointing this out about Rufo's degree were professors or graduates of whatever, Harvard or Oberlin or Stanford, whatever, like these, these kinds of places that... Yes.

Chris Williamson 8:29 People that knew the language. They understood what an extension school was.

Rob Henderson 8:33 Yes, exactly. And, and it's just amazing to me that Harvard even has this program in the first place because it relies on that duplicitous game of, uh, you know, if you're, if you're a, what, a member of the unwashed masses and you go to the Harvard Extension School website, it actually says, "We are Harvard. You will have the Harvard degree. You can put it..." It even says something like, "You'll have the..." You know, "You'll be able to put Harvard on your resume."

Chris Williamson 8:55 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Rob Henderson 8:55 This is on the official website, um, while simultaneously communicating the coded message to everyone else at Harvard and everyone else in this sort of rarefied segment of society that co- You know, we have to do that.

Chris Williamson 9:06 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 9:06 You know, we have to put that on the website, but it's not really Harvard.

Chris Williamson 9:08 You're not on the main stage.

Rob Henderson 9:09 It's not...

Chris Williamson 9:09 You're kind of on the second stage in the festival. It's like the overflow room.

Rob Henderson 9:12 Yeah. Why would... Like, it's just... It shocks me that they're willing to take the reputational hit to operate a degree mill. I mean, to me it's just very, like, tawdry. Like, it's almost like... You know, I have this, maybe this, uh, judgmental attitude about it. Like, this is, like, very kind of vulgar that you guys would even do this in the first place, that you're playing this game. And yeah, I thought it was very, yeah, very ugly the way that they were, they were pointing this out about Rufo. And it also ended up backfiring, I think, because they felt this sort of... This faction of cultural elites in these legacy institutions felt threatened. They felt like they had received an L, and so they had to lash out and get back at him.

Chris Williamson 9:47 Yeah. Well, it's the same as, you know, someone does something to you, a, a really cutting jibe, and you're like, "Uh, uh, shit shoes."

Rob Henderson 9:57 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 9:57 Like, it's just... You know, it's the only thing-

Rob Henderson 9:59 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:59 ... that you, like... You're fucking just grappling at something. I remember once there was this guy, it's so funny. There was this, uh, dude stood in the front door of a nightclub-

Rob Henderson 10:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:06 ... complaining about the fact that he couldn't get in, and he just kept on chirping and kept on chirping and kept on chirping. And I was feeling particularly pissy that day or whatever, so I said something back to him, and I've got, like, two or three 6'4" Geordie gorillas-

Rob Henderson 10:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:21 ... either side of me that are working, and I'm busy trying to organize clipboards or something else. And he couldn't think of anything to do, so I had a, a necklace on of some kind, like, on the outside of a T-shirt, and he sort of reached forward and, like, grabbed, grabbed that, and, like, that was the one thing, and then sort of sc- scuttled off. And I was like, "Bro-"

Rob Henderson 10:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:38 "... like, my 35-pound, like, fashion net- necklace isn't a big deal," but just that, that's the one thing, and it's kind of the same as Christopher Rufo's, like, "W, W, W, W, uh, uh, uh, extension school."

Rob Henderson 10:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:52 "Like, it's not... You're not part of the real chattering classes."

Rob Henderson 10:54 Yeah. Yeah, that's exact- Yeah, it was very, like, short-sighted and, and ultimately I think it was damaging to them.

Chris Williamson 11:01 Oh, cool. Oh, anyone else that's got-

Rob Henderson 11:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:02 ... that degree-

Rob Henderson 11:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:03 ... or is thinking about going to that place, it's like, "Oh, well, they said that ultimately when the rubber meets the road, Chris Rufo's, like, just one of the fucking"-

Rob Henderson 11:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:10 "... like, peasants, the same as the rest of us."

Rob Henderson 11:12 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:13 "So maybe I shouldn't think about..."

Rob Henderson 11:15 Oh, that's interesting. So you're saying that, that anyone who might want to apply for the Harvard Extension School will see that, and so they'll have fewer applicants, you know, the institution will ultimately be less profitable. I didn't even think about that part.

Chris Williamson 11:27 Definitely less prestigious.

Rob Henderson 11:28 I was, I was thinking more on the reputation end of it rather than the sort of economic end, but yeah, this, this idea that, um, that people will observe... I mean, there w- It w- I thought it was a, an error for two reasons. One was that it was... Most people don't like snobs, right? So they see this and they just feel, like, icky about it-

Chris Williamson 11:42 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 11:42 ... that they're even pointing this out in the first place or that they think that they're somehow superior. Um, they don't like that attitude. And then the second was that, uh, it... To me, it kind of exposed the, the hollowness of the egalitarian dogma, the supposed egalitarian dogma of elite academia that, you know, "Oh, we're all for equity and, you know, DEI or whatever it is, that we're so accepting and tolerant and welcoming." Uh-But by the way, like, you know, your- your aristocratic title is fraudulent and you're a fake. And, you know, so... You know, I- I was texting a friend earlier about this. He's- he's a- actually a grad student at Harvard, and I was like, my impression of this was basically like, the attitude at elite universities is everyone is equal, but some people are less equal than others, right? It's this sort of-

Chris Williamson 12:25 So perfect.

Rob Henderson 12:25 ... a- a spin on- on the- the, uh, the Animal Farm idea.

Chris Williamson 12:28 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 12:28 We're all equal, but some people are more equal.

Chris Williamson 12:29 Well, you had- you had that George Orwell quote.

Rob Henderson 12:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:31 Um, you said how in The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell's explaining how upper-class snobs, while theoretically pining for a classless society, cling like glue to their miserable fragments of social prestige.

Rob Henderson 12:44 I love that. Yeah, I love that line. I mean, the whole... Yeah, the- the book is great. Orwell was so astute in his analysis of class, but that was just... Yeah, I mean, this has been going on for, you know, 100 years now. And that was the first thing that came to mind when I was seeing this, that, you know, these- these supposedly open-minded, tolerant, welcoming people were suddenly pointing out that he got a degree, from- from the institution, right? Like, it's your website, it's your institution, you're-

Chris Williamson 13:08 It's like you got over the- you got over the bar that everybody asked for, but you kind of landed in an awkward place on the crash mat.

Rob Henderson 13:15 Yeah. Yes.

Chris Williamson 13:15 You know? And... Yeah, you're so right, it's this... And this is why, fundamentally, I think that people are so skeptical and critical-

Rob Henderson 13:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:23 ... of anyone who proselytizes about their morality or how ethical or how caring they are publicly-

Rob Henderson 13:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:29 ... because you go, "What are you covering up for?"

Rob Henderson 13:31 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 13:32 I don't believe that you actually think that. And sure enough, when the gloves are off and you see someone in a little bit of pressure or-

Rob Henderson 13:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:39 ... receiving a little bit of heat, where do they go?

Rob Henderson 13:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:41 Well, all of the inclusivity and egalitarianism and care for the beauty of academia overall, all of that's out the window.

Rob Henderson 13:49 Yeah. Yeah, when the pressure's on, right? When people feel threatened, when they feel in a sense of sort of emotional intensity, a lot of negative emotion, suddenly, you know, the mask slips and you can see what they really think about people.

Chris Williamson 13:59 Yeah, the toys are out of the pram, they're just as... And you know, this is the concern that people had all along.

Rob Henderson 14:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:07 It's like, "Oh, that's what we thought you were like. We thought that you were highfalutin, not actually caring-"

Rob Henderson 14:15 Snob. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:15 "... Adrenochrome-drinking, long-hooded nose, pentagram-dancing, like, dickheads."

Rob Henderson 14:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:20 "And sure enough, your- your mask has slipped." So I mean,

Chris Williamson 14:23 this... You've got your brand new book out, which everyone can go and buy right now. They should go and buy it this very second. We haven't ever spoken about this, because pretty much since I've known you, at some point, you've been working on your memoir, Troubled.

Rob Henderson 14:36 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:37 Luxury beliefs.

Rob Henderson 14:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:38 That is a kind of, uh, example of luxury belief, although it's not patient zero. How do you explain to my audience that hasn't yet heard you talk about a topic that you've repopularized-

Rob Henderson 14:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:50 ... how do you explain luxury beliefs?

Rob Henderson 14:51 All right. Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the affluent, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. And a core component of a luxury belief is that the believer is often sheltered from the consequences of his or her belief. Um, and, you know, we can get into specific examples. But yeah, I like this one that we've been sort of touching on, this snobbish attitude about higher ed and how... Yeah, so on the one hand, I mean, you're- you... When- when people are pointing out that this school or that school is better than the other, um, you are sort of bo- boosting your own status, right? Especially these people who are already graduates of or teaching at these institutions, they're bolstering their own status. Uh, and then, you know, they're... By- by speaking in this way about the hierarchies and, you know, which school is actually above which other school, they are sort of inflicting costs on everyone else who would like to ascend the educational ladder, who would like to get a degree. Um, but a lot of these people just don't interact much with people who, uh, are upwardly mobile or trying to be upwardly mobile, who are trying to go to university, trying to get a degree. Um, the vast majority, and I- and I talk about s- a lot of the statistics in my book about this in the later chapters, about how more than 80% of Ivy League graduates have at least one parent who went to university. I mean, that's... They're sort of immersed in it from birth. They've never actually interacted with a person or had a 15-minute conversation with someone who doesn't have a degree or on their way to getting a degree, uh, and it's just not on their radar. And so in their world, you know, everyone went to university, or everyone should go, or, you know, anyone who d- doesn't go to the same category of university that they went to, there's something wrong with them.

Chris Williamson 16:24 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 16:25 And I noticed this a lot, uh, when- when I arrived on campus. I mean, and it's very subtle. I mean, at first, I was sort of... You know, to some degree, I think (laughs) I was duped because I fell for the, "Oh, everyone's equal, everyone's fine, everyone..." And, you know, also, the other thing about these- these institutions now is that they don't- they don't look the same, right? One of the- the ideas about... Or one of the components of the luxury belief idea is that luxury beliefs have, to a large extent, replaced luxury goods. Uh, which isn't to say that luxury goods don't still signify status. Brand names and all of those things still matter, but my claim is that luxury goods have become a noisier signal of status. You can't tell right away necessarily anymore when you just go about your life in public who's rich and who's poor just by how they look.

Chris Williamson 17:08 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 17:09 Um, and so, you know, I build on these sort of sociological frameworks, uh, in my writing and in my book, um, work from Thorstein Veblen at the turn of the 20th century. He wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class. He wrote about how, you know, the upper class, the aristocrats of his time, uh, they demonstrated their status through, you know, tuxedos and evening gowns and pocket watches and monocles and, uh, expensive and intricate hobbies and, uh, attending lavish events, uh, hiring servants, those kinds of things. And then by the mid-20th century, there was a sociologist named Pierre Bourdieu who wrote a book called Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, uh, and one of his insights in that book was that, um, rich people, affluent people, they'll convert their economic capital into cultural capital. Uh, and so they'll spend money in order to demonstrate their class or exhibit their membership into this rarefied strata of society. And so in his day, you know, again, in the mid-20th century, and he was mostly commenting on French culture, but people can sort of understand what, you know, what he's getting at, where people would spun- spend money to, uh, learn about the subtleties of wine or the intricacies of art or, uh, fashion-

Chris Williamson 18:20 Falconry or something.

Rob Henderson 18:20 ... yeah, falconry or- or beagling or golf or these kinds of... You know, that you have to have money, you can't...... uh, be the kind of person who works a manual job or who, you know, is a blue-collar-

Chris Williamson 18:31 Soft hands.

Rob Henderson 18:31 Yeah, soft hands.

Chris Williamson 18:31 You see the same thing in almost, uh, the reverse in, uh, Asian societies at the moment.

Rob Henderson 18:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:36 When I went to Thailand for the first time, all of the receptionists were wearing lighter makeup on their face.

Rob Henderson 18:41 Mm-hmm, oh, right.

Chris Williamson 18:42 And I thought to myself, "Why?" Because it's so silly, because the, you know, the face finishes on whatever the jawline here, and, you know, the blending between the face and the neck is difficult to do. And I thought, "Why?" And I asked someone, "Why the fuck are they, their face, making... Their faces paler?" And they said, "Oh, well, it's because the indigent laborers, the people that work out in the fields are heavily tanned."

Rob Henderson 19:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:01 "So the higher class jobs are the ones that are inside, which means that the paler you are, the more status, uh, you, is conferred on you by your profession."

Rob Henderson 19:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:10 But then I also realized, uh, how stupid of me.

Rob Henderson 19:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:13 And how, uh, you know, s- myopically Western of me to do that, coming from Newcastle upon Tyne, the Jersey Shore of the UK, where girls turn themselves orange-

Rob Henderson 19:23 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:23 ... to signify, "I have all of this leisure time. I'm able to go away on holiday to exotic places and lay by the beach and get sun on me."

Rob Henderson 19:30 I like that i- Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah, yeah, so if you, if you live in, like, Northern Europe, or somewhere cold where there isn't a lot of sun, having a tan is the, the signifier of status. So yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, that's an important point here, that, you know, it, it does vary from culture to culture. I mean, I point, you know, I point this out, the research and everything in my writing about how status itself, the specific examples and manifestations can be ephemeral. They can be, they can vary by time and place and culture and generation and so on. But the desire for status, the desire to exhibit it, to show other people how prestigious or how dominant or how, um, you know, how important you are, that that remains. And so my, my claim is that luxury beliefs, I mean, they're mostly confined to that sort of highly educated, people who attend elite universities, people who study there, people who are graduates of these places, uh, who tend to operate, uh, legacy institutions, who run, uh, media and, and, and academia, and who generate knowledge, people who work in sort of culturally influential, um, organizations, and a lot of them hold these luxury beliefs. I think we saw this, uh, in 2020 and 2021 with the Defund the Police movement. I mean, I coined the term luxury beliefs in 2019 and started, uh, to, to write about it and do the research to sort of support this idea and point everything out that, um, uh, sort of all of, all of the, the, the, the sociological concepts undergirding it, and then the... Like six months later,

Rob Henderson 20:58 people started talking about defunding the police. (laughs) I was like, I don't even have to, like... I felt like I didn't even have to, like-

Chris Williamson 21:03 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 21:03 ... you know, here's the reasoning behind luxury beliefs. It's just defund the police. Like, it's right there. You don't even have to-

Chris Williamson 21:07 It's the most... Whenever somebody brings up your work to me and talks about luxury beliefs-

Rob Henderson 21:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 21:11 ... the patient zero example-

Rob Henderson 21:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 21:14 ... is Defund the Police.

Rob Henderson 21:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:16 Can you-

Rob Henderson 21:16 Because it's so intuitive, right?

Chris Williamson 21:17 Of course. Can you explain why that encapsulates luxury beliefs sort of-

Rob Henderson 21:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:21 ... structurally or functionally so well?

Rob Henderson 21:23 Yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah, the, the luxury beliefs idea, if you say defund the police, you are increasing your own status because, I mean, you look like a caring person. You look open-minded and interesting and, and, uh, and highly educated. Um, and so, and, and it also signifies that you're the kind of person who went to certain kinds of schools, you consume certain kinds of media, you listen to certain kinds of podcasts and so on. Um, and so it makes you look a certain way to your peers, but once the support for Defund the Police becomes implemented into policy, once police stations and police departments, uh, have reduced funding, once you cultivate an attitude, so it's not just the policy, but you're also cultivating the culture and the attitude around law enforcement that, "Oh, we don't need police," uh, you sort of give permission to people to be suspicious of police or to be derogatory towards police. Um, as a result, we saw that a lot of, a lot of police officers started retiring in large numbers. Uh, there's reports in, in major US cities that they're having difficulty with recruitment, because if you're a smart, capable young person who wants to make a difference in your community, like, why would you want that job, uh, if you know that people are going to view you with suspicion or with some kind of, you know, that, that you're sort of mo- malicious or, or evil? I mean, cops, I mean, they get paid okay, but it's not like a... Considering the, the potential danger they face in their job, part of the reason why people would want to do it is because cops formerly used to be seen as respectable and, and, and admirable, and people conferred a lot of status onto them.

Chris Williamson 22:59 Well, think about the difference between when a policeman currently in, in, in the sort of current Defund the Police era that we're in, a policeman turns up at a scene-

Rob Henderson 23:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:07 ... versus a firefighter or an ambulance A&E person.

Rob Henderson 23:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:12 You know, the other two emergency services are seen, uh, heralded as heroes.

Rob Henderson 23:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:18 And the police, like, is it ACAB?

Rob Henderson 23:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:21 ACAB, all cops-

Rob Henderson 23:21 Oh, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:22 All Cops Are Bastards.

Rob Henderson 23:23 I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the, and so who wants that job? And so gradually, and we saw this, uh, in the aftermath of the Defund the Police movement, that violent crime spiked all across the US, especially major cities. Uh, homicide rates increased to levels not seen since the early 1990s. Um, and so when all of this was unfolding, I actua- I tried to find some survey data to see, like, who's actually... You know, like, 'cause I don't know anyone in my personal life who thinks that we should defund the police. I mean, other than, you know, some, some people at Cam- Cambridge and other elite universities, (laughs) but ordinary people who are outside of these institutions, I didn't know anyone who was supporting this movement. So I had a suspicion this was, you know, actually a, a legitimate luxury belief. I looked at survey data for it, um, found one in YouGov in 2020, which found that they, they collected data from a representative sample of Americans, and they broke down the data by income category, and it was the highest income Americans who were the most supportive of defunding the police.

Chris Williamson 24:16 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 24:17 And it was the lowest income Americans who were the least supportive. Uh, and then when, when, um, later the, uh, different, different, uh, findings were...... uh, reported for major U.S. cities like Minneapolis and Detroit, uh, one in New York City. Uh, they found that White Democrats were far more supportive of defunding the police than Black and Hispanic Democrats. And so it was like the, the, the people who were supposedly, uh, so, so kind and so, uh, sympathetic towards, uh, the marginalized and the dispossessed and the poor and so on, they were supporting something that actually those groups didn't even want, and the, I mean, an increased number of them were being victimized as a result of it. Um, in my book, I point out that, uh, if you compare the lowest income Americans to Americans who earn the median income, there's, what is it? They're two to three times more likely to be victims of, of violent, uh, crimes, they're, uh, seven times more likely to be victims of assault, they're 20 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault. Like, essentially across the board, the lower your income, the more likely you are to be a target of crime.

Chris Williamson 25:24 Could do with the police.

Rob Henderson 25:25 Yes, exactly. You could... Yeah. It would be nice to have someone you could call if you're being burglarized or, or assaulted. Um, and so yeah, it was a, it was a complete, uh, uh, sort of backfiring, and I haven't seen... You know, there hasn't really been any sort of accountability or any kind of, um, acknowledgement of what happened in the aftermath of that movement.

Chris Williamson 25:46 Yeah. It's wild. And then obviously the, the big elephant in the room here is that the people who were supporting it are the ones who are the most likely to live in a gated community, in an area or a neighborhood that has not called the police in a decade, since the last time that someone from the community that they're probably talking about trying to protect accidentally wandered through their-

Rob Henderson 26:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:09 ... gated community. Uh, so it's, "Rules for thee but not for me," and, "Let me explain to you, poor underclass peasant person, what is best for you from my vantage point out here in my very comfortable home."

Rob Henderson 26:24 Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. So that's, yeah, that's one of the components of the luxury belief is that the believer is sheltered from the consequences of the belief. And so yeah, the people who were supporting the Defund the Police movement, uh, largely college-educated, living in safe communities, living in gated communities. There were reports, um, during the, the political unrest in 2020 and all of the BLM demonstrations and so on, all of the riots, that people in Chi- like, rich people in Chicago were hiring private security to patrol their neighborhoods because, you know, the police were either distracted due to all of the, uh, social unrest and crime that was occurring, uh, or because police were retiring and so on. And so they were hiring private security in these, um, rich neighborhoods. And then in New York City, there were reports of people just fleeing to the Hamptons like, you know, if you have money and you have resources, you can just flee to your private little gated area and from home start tweeting about Defund the Police and get all the likes and plaudits from your-

Chris Williamson 27:18 Oh my God, you're so caring.

Rob Henderson 27:19 ... yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:19 "I know the cops are so wrong."

Rob Henderson 27:21 Yeah. Or-

Chris Williamson 27:21 "Like, they're treating these poor Black people so badly."

Rob Henderson 27:24 And you can... I mean, uh, I think people who are, um, sort of affluent, upper middle class people, they have a mistaken view of what sort of poverty looks like. Their only exposure to it is when they see, um, when, when they see it reported in the media, when it's a criminal who's committed some kind of, uh, transgression, and that surfaces up, and then they learn about the criminal's backstory and they start to feel sympathetic and so on and so forth, and there's not nearly as much time spent on the victims of that person's crime. And so in, in often what happens is that the in, in at least the, the imagination of this, uh, uh, strata of society that, you know, they conflate poverty with criminality, and the reason why someone commits crimes is because they're poor without really digging into the data or the research and understanding that the vast majority of poor people never commit any crimes. They're more, they're far more likely to be victims of crime than a perpetrator, and they don't really think about this. And then through the sort of portrayal of poverty, I think, in pop culture as kind of mistaken too, at least in more sort of recent media where... You know, very few TV shows, it's just not exciting to see some working class person making, you know, minimum wage, going to work, clocking in, clocking out, going home to their family and living a normal life. But it's more interesting to see, you know, the, the struggling school teacher who decides to break bad and start cooking meth-

Chris Williamson 28:45 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 28:45 ... and lashing out at the system, and that's just a much more interesting story. Uh, and so that is... I mean, there was this movie that came out, I think it was last year or the year before, Emily the Criminal with, uh, Aubrey Plaza. I don't know if you saw it, but-

Chris Williamson 28:56 No.

Rob Henderson 28:57 ... it was, I mean, it was like the perfect kind of movie for this, for this, you know, the luxury belief class. It's this young woman who works in food catering and she has this dickhead boss and she has dream... I think she, she is a college graduate, she has dreams of being an artist, but she has difficulty monetizing her artwork and so she caters food, but then she, like, gets hooked in with this gang and, like, learns how to shoplift and, you know, the whole thing is like, you know, "Well, you know, screw the system, you know, I can't make money off my artwork and I have to work in food catering, and this is just ridiculous, and so I'm gonna, you know, start stealing and, and robbing people," and, and the movie is portraying this as like a perfectly reasonable course of action. Right? And, uh, and it's just like, it's basically like Breaking Bad, but the young woman version.

Chris Williamson 29:37 For art.

Rob Henderson 29:37 Yeah, yeah. And, uh, yeah, I just think it's, uh, that, that's, that's part of what drives the luxury beliefs phenomenon.

Chris Williamson 29:44 Yeah, it's wild, man. And when you see that, you, you really can't unsee it. Uh, Mary

Chris Williamson 29:49 Harrington had this about, uh, a lot of the advances that were proposed by the feminist movement in the '50s, '60s and '70s were, um, put forward by women for whom the impact wouldn't affect them. So a perfect example is, I guess, the push toward independence and, uh, the derogation of chivalry by men-

Rob Henderson 30:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:12 ... because chivalry, in some ways, can be patronizing, must be patronizing to women.

Rob Henderson 30:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:16 Like, I can open the door for myself.

Rob Henderson 30:17 Right.

Chris Williamson 30:17 I can carry my own bags. Right? Like, I can pull my own chair out. I can pay for my own dinner. And in a world where women are trying to find and establish themselves socioeconomically as independent agents aside from the husband or partner that they're supposed to need, I can understand why that would be the case. But sh- as she said, it is a direct line from...... men shouldn't open the door and don't need to, to why you shouldn't hit your wife, right? Because the consensus is women are more fragile, vulnerable, and need to be protected-

Rob Henderson 30:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:50 ... and men should be the ones that do that protecting. And it's the women who are married to men who had a two-parent household, who had a relatively good example of how to treat women when they were growing up, who have been through all of the institutions that have kind of softly embedded what chivalry is in any case-

Rob Henderson 31:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:09 ... because that's just the way that a, a more sophisticated social life goes.

Rob Henderson 31:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:15 But that doesn't think about women who are in an underclass or working-class environment, who are in a relationship with a guy who never knew his father, whose mom was cycling in and out of different boyfriends or partners or whatever in the house, who was maybe abused physically or verbally or emotionally or whatever while they were growing up, all of whom friends are ruffians that are going about and antisocial behavior and all of this stuff. And it's like, well, I know that for you, lady that drives a Mercedes-Benz, you might like the idea of being liberated from men holding the door open for you, but downstream from that, you've also liberated women from being protected from their underclass partner from hitting them when he gets annoyed on a nighttime.

Rob Henderson 31:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:54 And, uh, I really... I just thought that that was such an interesting frame. The same thing goes for, uh, support for, um, a- abortion rights.

Rob Henderson 32:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:03 Right? When you think about that is that I think that it is skewed toward the people in the upper class believe that it is a great idea to restrict abortion rights overall-

Rob Henderson 32:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:14 ... to give less access. But you think, "Well, maybe if you were woman 213 of one particular village somewhere who's six kids deep-"

Rob Henderson 32:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:27 "... to three different men, maybe easy access to birth control would be a good thing for them to have."

Rob Henderson 32:33 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:33 And, uh, yeah, it's just, it's so interesting how it can be split up by race-

Rob Henderson 32:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:38 ... or it can be split up by class-

Rob Henderson 32:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:39 ... or it can be split up within gender.

Rob Henderson 32:41 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, that was... I mean, it's, it's interesting because I think that a lot of the people who promote these views or who think that these are sort of progressive or fashionable or enlightened, they don't think about how it would affect someone outside of their social strata, or they mistakenly overextend the way that they think to everyone else that, "Well, here's what would be good for me," or, "Here's what would be good for my class or my group, and therefore it would be good for everyone," or, "The only reason why other people aren't thinking like me or aren't pursuing the same kind of life as me is because they don't have the same..." uh, or, or, "Because my preferences aren't, aren't implemented in society or throughout culture." I mean, that, yeah, what you said earlier about, about Mary Harrington's point is interesting. I mean, I, I saw this firsthand that where I grew up, basically anyone, anyone like, you know, who was remotely sort of academically inclined, you know, went off to some state university, everyone who, who wasn't but still had some sort of, uh, restlessness or ambition, they joined the military, and then all the guys who were left behind, I mean, there's, there's, you know, not, not much left for the women there to, to pick from. And a lot of these guys did grow up without dads or without good sort of male role models around. And, yeah, I mean, what we have, what ends up happening often is like, you know, women get impregn-... You know, they, they have children with multiple men, or the men, uh, you know, they, they have multiple partners and don't interact with their kids. I mean, I, you know, I ha- now have friends that I graduated from high school with who are these guys. And, yeah, it's just... It looks very different, right? Like that, um, the sort of liberation and the belief that, you know, women don't need a man or men shouldn't, uh... You know, women can live the same kind of life as a man. And maybe it's true if you are affluent and you go off to college and you're going to be a young professional, uh, career-driven person.

Chris Williamson 34:26 Earning six figures.

Rob Henderson 34:27 But if you're just working a menial job and you're n-... I mean, most people aren't going to derive a ton of satisfaction from the way that they make money. Um-

Chris Williamson 34:36 Well, there was a story that you... I remember you telling me maybe about some lady friend that you'd spoken to about she said that we should be able to move beyond the nuclear family because it's restrictive and constraining.

Rob Henderson 34:49 Yeah. Yeah, this was, um, someone I graduated from Yale with. We were... Somehow got on the topic of family and future and this kind of thing, and she was basically telling me that, yeah, marriage is this outdated patriarchal institution, and we should... Society should move beyond it, we should evolve, get past it. And so I asked her, "Well, how did you grow up? What was your, like, family life situation when you were a child?" And she said, "You know, I was raised by my mom and my dad, and, you know, I did have that kind of, you know, conventional family." And then I asked her what she planned to do later in her, you know, o- once, you know, because she was planning to... She was working at a technology firm, she was going to go to law school, but I asked her in her future, when she has a family or if she wanted a family, what would she do? And she said, "Oh, yeah, you know, I do want a family someday, and I'll probably get married and have a husband," and, you know, essentially get married and like, you know, partake in this outdated patriarchal institution. And so I was thinking that, okay, you benefited from this, uh, age-old ancient sort of patriarchal but, you know, this institution, and you plan to carry the benefits of that, uh, arrangement forward for your own children, but your official public position is, "No one should do this. It's outdated." She was sort of denigrating it-

Chris Williamson 36:06 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 36:06 ... trying to downplay it, saying other people shouldn't do this, and to me, it seemed very duplicitous that, you know, this... Clearly marriage has positive benefits. I mean, that was something that I learned when I got to college was almost every single one of my classmates and peers came from two-parent families, whereas where I grew up, it was b- basically zero. And so clearly marriage had some, you know, some kind of effect here. Um, and yet the place... The, the, the, the group that is the most likely to downplay the benefits of marriage are the most likely to be products of successful marriages and are the most likely to form marriages themselves.

Chris Williamson 36:41 Mm-hmm.How come you're not more bitter about your childhood?

Rob Henderson 36:47 (laughs) Uh, I mean, I, I used to be. I used to actually be more angry, uh, when I was in my late teens, early 20s. Um, I mean, I think part of it was just getting older. Um, I think just age. You, just things just kind of tend to like burn out and dim over time anyway. Um, and I think, you know, the other was just a lot of sort of self, uh, focused work, uh, self-improvement, um, trying to, you know, get past it and put it all into context, and realize, you know, that, that on the one hand people are sort of responsible for what they do in their lives. Um, but on the other, I mean, to understand the sort of, to understand the genealogy of the ideas that led us to this point, that's been helpful too. To understand that, yes, like day-to-day we have agency over our lives, but the sort of, there are these decisions, and, and cultural trajectories, and all of these other forces that are in place that, that play a role too. And so, you know, when I start to dig to, at the root of this, of, you know, who is responsible for some of these ideas, who, uh, promotes the luxury beliefs and so on, and entering into institutions where I can see it, you know, I can... It helps me to just understand it, and I think that sort of settles my, you know, settles my anger a bit too.

Chris Williamson 38:10 It's very interesting-

Rob Henderson 38:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:11 ... thinking about that. Uh, I had, uh, Seera Chawla on. She's a psych therapist.

Rob Henderson 38:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:17 Pushing back very hard against, uh, what she calls Instagram therapy. Which is identifying everybody as a victim, and, uh, that they've got trauma and stuff. And she said, um, "Remembering that you experienced trauma isn't being a victim, making your identity out of it is."

Rob Henderson 38:36 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think that's well put. I mean, I didn't really, I didn't really think of myself as a victim. And, and people didn't call me a victim. I never thought in those terms until I got to college. Before that, it was just day-to-day life. I mean, it was just, you know, trying to, struggling to get by, trying to make money, trying to whatever, living paycheck to paycheck, and then later joining the military, and you know, just my, my, uh, plate was full. Later, um, you know, sort of towards the end of my enlistment before I entered college, I did, um, do a stint in, in rehab, and I talked to, uh, therapists, and, you know, I did sort of address a lot of the issues that I had experienced when I was a kid. And that was helpful too, I think, to just sort of contextualize it, and also to, um, I don't know, just sort of be more open with the people I grew up with and close with, you know, my sister, and my mom, and all these people, to just... and my adoptive family, to, to talk to them about all of this. I mean, that's helpful too. I think there is this, um, this tendency for young people, young men in particular, that, you know, self-sufficiency will solve all your problems, to just be completely self-reliant. You don't have to rely on anyone. You know, your, your relationships are sort of peripheral. Um, and I lived that way for a while, and it probably did help, um, to sort of, I don't know, led me to equip myself to be, you know, a self-sufficient person. But later, you know, I did realize that actually relationships are important. I mean, I went through I think the first six years, um, after I left home, I never visited. Um, I never visited for the holidays. I never visited her for any kind of special occasions. I mean, I, I did visit like, you know, on and off whenever, you know, really whenever it suited my schedule. I was very selfish. Um, but then later, you know, now I make an effort. Now I make an effort to do all of those things, and, um, realize that actually, you know, all of these things, relationships are more important than, than you think, especially when you're young, right? There, there is a, there's value there, um, even if you think there isn't.

Chris Williamson 40:36 Yeah, there's a degree of Romanticism-

Rob Henderson 40:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:37 ... about monk mode and Lone Ranger-ing. Uh, and I think my current theory on this is that monk mode is a great tool, but a bad master.

Rob Henderson 40:48 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 40:49 Because i- if you continue to pray at the altar of it over a long enough amount of time, the reason that you're doing some equivalent of monk mode, right, which is, uh, a over-reliance on self-sufficiency, introspection, and isolation so that you can focus on making yourself into a better version of you... Because quite rightly, there are a lot of distractions out there in the world, and if you're trying to do a ton of self-work, or you're going to therapy, or you're in rehab, you're probably not gonna have the most flourishing social life. It's gonna be difficult for you to juggle all of these plates. And if you do try and juggle all of the plates, you're going to restrict your progress in that area. Like committing yourself to one thing or a very narrow band of things is more than... It's not additive, it's multiplicative, right?

Rob Henderson 41:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:30 It allows you to triple down, quadruple down all of your efforts into one very tight area.

Rob Henderson 41:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:35 And I found myself toward the end of my 20s through my menopause-

Rob Henderson 41:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:38 ... that I, I really, really enjoyed monk mode. But I saw, especially for someone that has introverted tendencies, and I get my energy mostly from being on my own a lot of the time-

Rob Henderson 41:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:50 ... that it started to become more alluring to me than being back out into the world. But the problem with that is the reason that you're doing the monk mode thing or the rehab thing or whatever, is to form yourself into a functional member of society who can then go and reintegrate.

Rob Henderson 42:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:04 And that's the problem that it, the progress can become addictive to the point where it stops you from doing the thing you're like, the thing that you're doing is sacrificing the thing that you were doing it in order to get.

Rob Henderson 42:16 Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You sort of mistake the, the means for the end, the end goal. You're sort of... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, um, and I think it's difficult to, to keep that in mind. I think a lot of people have difficulty with that, especially when you're young. You, like what, what are your actions attempting to accomplish? What's your overarching goal? Um, you know, Robert Greene makes that distinction between tactician versus strategist, right? The tactician is just what's directly in front of you, what do you need to do next? And the strategist is, well, what's all of this for? Like what are each of those steps trying to get you to? And I think, yeah, when you're young you just think, oh, I want to make money. And like money becomes the thing, and it's like, well, what's the money for? (laughs) Like what, what do you want to do with that money when you build up your bank account? What... Is that the goal is just to have a big number, uh, on your, uh, balance? Or is it to take care of your loved ones, to have the freedom to be able to interact with people that you care about and to provide and those kinds of things? And I, I...... think I, I mean, I kind of came to that realization when I was in my mid-20s, but it wasn't until my later-20s, really probably right, not until I w- was about to start grad school, I was, I was like 20, 28, that I really had that realization that, oh, the reason why I'm working so hard and trying to get educated and successful and trying to make money and all of these things is so that I could take care of my, my current family, my adoptive family. But then also for if and when I have a family later, don't say when, that, um, I'll be able to take care of them too in a way that I lacked when I was a kid. Um, and that's what ultimately all of these things are for. It's not just to whatever, increase the, the numbers on, on my, you know, social media or on my balance or something like that.

Chris Williamson 43:50 So your background-

Rob Henderson 43:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:51 ... the life that you went through to where you ended up, uh, Air Force?

Rob Henderson 43:58 Yeah, Air Force.

Chris Williamson 43:58 Air Force, US Air Force, GI Bill, Yale, Cambridge, PhD, book, you know, going to be an amazing selling book, all the rest of the stuff. What do you attribute that trajectory to, given that you're friends with so many of the people that you grew up with that are still, th- they're the guy, they're that guy with three baby mamas and a bunch of alimony or whatever, and they're in the same town, in the same whatever. What was formative or what, wha- what do you attribute the change in you to that the other people didn't?

Rob Henderson 44:35 I mean, there are probably, you know, there's a variety of factors. I think one is, um, you know, you, you do need to have, like a, a certain amount of, like innate drive or ambition in the first place. And that, I, I'm not entirely sure you can, you can, you can drill that into people. Um, so you have to have that sort of raw material in the first place. But one point that I try to make in the book is that things could have very easily gone a different direction. Um, I think having sort of aptitude and drive and ambition, those are necessary but not sufficient, that there are a lot of guys, I think, who are sort of smart and talented and ambitious, but they're just surrounded by chaos and disorder and, you know, lack opportunity or, or they've just been sort of beaten down by life so much that they don't even think to, like, spot the opportunities that are around you, um, and capitalize on them. And so, so that was there. So I think some of the raw material was probably there. Um, and then the other thing was just, uh, making this, you know, kind of halfway impulsive decision when I was 17 to just enlist and get out of my hometown, and I kind of knew that, you know, I, at this point, you know, I'd, I'd had two jobs when I was in high school. I was a dishwasher at a restaurant, and then I was a bag boy at a grocery store, and I kind of looked around at my coworkers who were a little older than me. These were guys, you know, this kind of guy in their early to mid-20s. You know, maybe they, like some of them, like, they were like 24 but had a girlfriend in high school, and they were just like kind of creepy, weird stoner guy or the guy who, you know, would ride a dirt bike and, you know, just like smoke a lot of weed in the parking lot and just, you know, kind of aimless and adrift. And I thought, like, I, I think now when you're 17 or 18, that's kind of cool to live that life, but when you're 24, 28, like that's kind of pathetic. And even when I was a teenager, I had that thought that, you know, sometimes my friends and I would ask these guys to like get us beer or hook us up with weed or whatever, and, you know, some part of me, I was, I was like happy they were doing it, but on the other hand, I was like, "W- why are you doing this for us, man?" (laughs) Like, what kind of loser is hanging out with a bunch of high schoolers, and I don't want to be like the weird old guy at the high school party when I'm that age. Um, and so, you know, a variety of factors led me to, uh, just enlist right away. I barely graduated high school. I mean, I, I was smart, and that, that's the other point that I, I try to make in the book is that a lot of people want to blame the school system or that there's something wrong with teachers or we aren't paying them enough, and s- and maybe some of those things are true, but teachers aren't d- dumb. Like th- most teachers get into that profession because they care about kids and they want them to do well, and they're usually pretty observant about like which kids are sort of curious and academically inclined. And my teachers could see that in me, but I just had no motivation or desire to do well in school. It just wasn't there for me. Um, and so my teachers were just, you know, uh, continually frustrated by me. And so yeah, I enlist, I get out of there, basic training, I get stationed, I spend some time overseas and sort of have that structure, uh, around me. Uh, a couple days ago, I spoke with, uh, a mutual friend of ours, Paulina Pompliano, and she asked me this question of, "When I read your book and I read about what you were like when you were a teenager, when you were in high school, and then I meet you now, like it just doesn't, like there's a disconnect. I don't understand it." And I explained that (laughs) I was in the Air Force for eight years. Like, that's a long time. Like, I was in from 17 to 25. And, you know, in the book, I kind of like gloss over it because it's, it's kind of mind-numbing and boring, but it's like, you know, make your bed, you know, like make sure your uniform is, you know, perfect, and ev- like every, you know-

Chris Williamson 48:05 It's Jordan Peterson boot camp.

Rob Henderson 48:06 Exactly. It, it is kind of like that, especially for the first six months to a year when you're in training, it's like you're not a, you're not a person. You're just like a cog in this machine of just like, you know, what, like cleaning and, and, and, and being meticulous about every little aspect of your existence. Um, and I hated it. I hated every second of it. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 48:27 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 48:27 But it was, it was important for me to go through that, uh, to like learn the skills that I kind of lacked when I was growing up of just like, here's how to be an adult, here's how to take care of yourself, here's how to dress properly, and like even basic things, right? And...

Chris Williamson 48:40 What, what were the most surprising... I, I think this would be a nice framing actually, as you move up through the cacophosphere of different social strata, what were the most surprising realizations going from Rob 1.0 to Rob 2.0, which is, I guess from teenager to, uh, being in the Air Force? What were the things where you're like, oh my God, like that's, uh, an expectation or a, a social convention, or that's a way of operating, or it's a belief or whatever?

Rob Henderson 49:10 I mean, I think one, probably one of the bigger ones was, um...It's like learning the distinction between, like, self-discipline and motivation, uh, because I, I lacked, I really lacked both when I was a teenager. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:23 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 49:24 Um, you know, I didn't feel motivated to do well, but I also had, I had no external discipline around me, really. I mean, I had it in sort of fits and starts in different periods, it was just a very sort of chaotic early life, but I had no self-discipline, certainly, like, I couldn't impose on myself, it just w- you know, I didn't, I didn't have the, the tools to do that. But then in the military I learned it, that, you know, at first it was imposed from on high that this is how you will do things, and then it gets drilled into you, and then you just learn on your own, like, "Oh, this is how you get things done" is motivation is, you know, so there's the distinction, the motivation is just a feeling, it's like, "Do I wanna do this or not? And if I don't wanna do it, I lack the motivation and I'm just not gonna do it." Whereas self-discipline is, "I'm going to do this regardless of how I feel." Uh, and so, you know, for, for l- some people it may make sense in th- in the context of, like, going to the gym, that, "I don't feel like going to the gym today." But self-discipline is it doesn't matter how you feel, like, oh, you have a feeling, who cares? Like, what are your actions? What are you actually going to do now? Ignore those feelings and d- and do what you've set out to do. And so it was like that for my work, for things like, I mean, even showing up to work on time, um, I mean, it's, it's kinda sad but I was one of the better workers, uh, at my jobs in high school, and even then, I was, like, not on time half the time, like, it didn't matter, I didn't feel like it, or, and then the military was, "If you don't show up to work on time, you get court-martialed and you go to military prison." (laughs) Like, that's the life. And once I learned, like, to, to operate by those standards and those regulations, those policies, that it dawned on me that actually, you know, Jocko has this phrase, "Discipline equals freedom," that once you sort of outsource all of your decisions to this sort of regimented system, then suddenly, like, life gets better, and you do have more freedom, you have the freedom to think about other things, or to, uh, direct your attention to certain projects or goals or ideas, and you don't have to live your life in this constant state of chaos of, "Oh, I don't have any money, now what?" You know, like that, you just, you know, set the, set, set the system so that your money goes here, and this is what you're going to do, and you go to work at this time, and this is when you leave, and this is what's... And having that regimented system was really, uh, important for me. And now I just, uh, you know, I do it, it's second nature to me. But it took eight years (laughs) to get there. So, yeah, I think those, those, those kinds of things, discipline was the big one.

Chris Williamson 51:36 What

Chris Williamson 51:37 do people who didn't grow up in poverty not know about what it's like to grow up in poverty?

Rob Henderson 51:44 Um, I mean, I think, I think poverty, poverty is ... it's an interesting question because I think a lot of people actually attempt to, they attempt to imagine it. I, I know a lot of people, actually, who didn't grow up poor but who at least tried to imagine what it would've been like to be poor. Um, and I think, like, the, the imagination probably isn't too far off from the reality that there are certain things that you want but maybe you can't get, or if you want a, a, a toy, or a certain food, or a certain thing that, you know, I think poverty now for, at least in sort of developed first world countries, very few people are actually starving in the street. But it's more like, you know, I, I want to get, um, you know, may- maybe it's, like, a special occasion and I want to rent a video game at Blockbuster, but that's $6 and we're only gonna let you rent a movie because it's $3. Like, those kinds of, like, weird small things, um, and you can only go on a special occasion for your birthday or something, it's not like a weekly, uh, occurrence. Um, the other thing is, like, the, I think, like, the, the social environment is something people don't think about as well, that what family life and communities look like in poor and working class areas now are much different than, than they u- than they used to look like. I mean, I cite this statistic in my book about how in the 1960s, 95% of children in the US regardless of social class were raised by both of their birth parents, and then by 2005, for the upper class it had dropped to 85%, so there was a slight dip, but by and large, that's the norm still. Whereas for working class families in the US, working class children, um, it dropped from 95% to 30%, and that was 2005. My guess is it's dropped a little bit further than that now. Um, and so just to give a, sort of a glimpse into this, I mean, there was, w- I had five close friends growing up in high school, and so there was me, sort of raised in foster homes and adopted, but there were divorces and other kinds of drama, uh, I had two friends raised by single moms, uh, one friend raised by a single dad, I had another friend who was raised by his grandma because his dad was in prison and his mom was, like, addicted to drugs, and that's kind of, like, the normal situation when you go to, like, a, if you go to a high school in one of these areas and just start asking people about their parents or their families, they'll start describing about, "Dad's in prison," or, "Mom's in drugs," or, you know, "I'm staying with my aunt right now because my mom is in rehab," or whatever.

Chris Williamson 54:24 Very chaotic.

Rob Henderson 54:25 Yeah, it's just total, yeah, it's just totally chaotic and disorderly. And this is, um, that, uh, uh, a point that I've made in my writing is that, you know, childhood poverty is not, and again, this is in the context of the US and, you know, first world countries, that childhood poverty is not really a very strong predictor of harmful or detrimental outcomes later in life. Um, the correlation is either very weak or not significant at all between growing up poor and growing up to, uh, commit crimes or self-defeating behaviors, harm, violence, um, drug addiction, unemployment, all of these kinds of social pathologies. There's a very sort of tenuous connection there. But for childhood instability and those, uh, undesirable outcomes, there is a strong and consistent, uh, correlation there. Uh, and so childhood instability is measured by things like, uh-... you know, were you raised by both of your birth parents? Was there a divorce? How many different adults moved in and out of your home? How frequently did you relocate? Um, basically, how much day-to-day disorder was there in your life? How much uncertainty was there? And that actually does seem to have a very strong effect on the- on childhood development, on their expectations, on their goals for themselves. And- and what's interesting is that when researchers control for childhood family income, the link remains- remains strong, it remains significant between instability and outcomes. And so one way to think about this is, um, you know, if- if there's a rich family, um, but there's a lot of drama and chaos and divorce and addiction and domestic issues, uh, a child raised in that environment is much more likely to have detrimental outcomes, more likely to commit crimes or become addicted to substances or, um, uh, or just, yeah, have- have issues ch- you know, children out of wedlock, or multiple- with multiple partners, versus, uh, a child who is raised by two very low-income parents who are married, who, uh, are very focused on creating a stable and secure life for their kids. And you can kind of see this, I think, with, like, immigrant families and, uh, low income families that, uh, haven't really been quite, uh, afflicted by a lot of the pathologies that have occurred in- in the US, um, and so I think that's important to remember too. It's that, yes, there's this poverty component, but there's also just this kind of... Sometimes I wonder if poverty is even the right word for the way that I grew up. I think squalor is probably a more accurate term, is like, yeah, there was a bit of that material impoverishment, but it was more just people, like, living in a very, um, kind of ugly and almost, like, masochistic way of just, you know, uh, careless and, uh, impulsive and, you know, sort of drug addled.

Chris Williamson 57:14 What's the mechanism-

Rob Henderson 57:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 57:15 ... that you think is causing that to happen? What is it about... Uh, it's so universal that this, uh, unstable, disorganized upbringing, regardless of class or material wealth-

Rob Henderson 57:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 57:29 ... seems to have such negative impacts predictively down... What- what- what do you think is the mechanism there?

Rob Henderson 57:34 I mean, you know, I- probably some of it, uh, would be genetics, but I'm not sold that it's 100%.

Chris Williamson 57:41 Ah, right, people that- people that are-

Rob Henderson 57:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:42 ... uh, quick to anger, externalizing behavior as parents give the raw materials of externalizing behavior to kids, right? Okay, yeah.

Rob Henderson 57:49 Yeah, and I think that's-

Chris Williamson 57:50 Yeah, that's really good.

Rob Henderson 57:50 ... I think that's a- a- like one- one piece of it, but I think that it-

Chris Williamson 57:53 Robert Plomin reigns supreme.

Rob Henderson 57:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:55 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 57:55 Exactly. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 57:56 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 57:56 Um, and I think, yeah, that- that would be the Robert Plomin answer. Um, you know, and- but I- I- I do think that that- that can't explain 100% of it because, you know, if you- if you just- so for example, if you just look at White Americans over time, like, all of the same things have occurred, uh, across social classes that actually, you know, 50, 60 years ago, um... I mean, like, I'll give you an example just from my adoptive family. So, um, my adoptive family are basically White working class people, um, on my mother's side. And so my grandparents, uh, you know, they were ra- you know, they- they grew up basically during the Great Depression, and they got- you know, but they got married. You know, my- my grandfather and my grand- they- they would tell me this story about how my grandfather asked my grandmother to marry him, and I think sh- he was 18 or 19, and she was, like, 17, and she- you know, they were just like two- the only two young people in this town and, you know, and she was like, "I'll marry you, but you have to-" what is it? "You have to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop gambling." And he was like, "Done and done." They got married, and they had a 60 plus-

Chris Williamson 58:58 Deal, let's have sex.

Rob Henderson 58:59 (laughs) Yes, exactly. Well, they- yeah. And then they had how many? I think they had four or five kids, yeah. They had four kids-

Chris Williamson 59:04 Lots of sex.

Rob Henderson 59:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:05 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 59:05 And, um, and they were, uh, married for 60 plus years, no issues. You know, I'm sure they had issues, but, like, you know what I mean? And then they had four kids. All four kids divorced, um, and, you know, I just- you know, they- they had marri- they- they did get married, but then they ended up getting divorced. You know, some of them had, you know, kids, step-kids, that kind of thing. Now, I'm a member of the next generation, and I'm seeing my cousins, and it's like, it's not even marriage, it's just like, oh, they hooked up and had a kid, but he hasn't spoken to his kid in, you know, three years. And, you know, so that's what it looks like now. And I don't think the genetics in this family lineage changed much. It was the social environment, it's the incentives, it's the denigration of marriage, it's... Um, and I don't even- you know, people will point to economic factors, but my grandparents were very- they were probably poorer than- they're definitely poorer than my cousins now. You know, like, they could not afford the things that my same aged, you know, 30-year-old cousins could afford.

Chris Williamson 59:59 Oh.

Rob Henderson 59:59 Um, so it wasn't a- an economic issue. I think a lot of it was just cultural, uh, what are your expectations? I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of the stuff that you and I have talked about and you speak about on your podcast around incentives, around sex and romance and dating and just, um, yeah, uh, in the 19... What is it? The 1940s, 1950s, my grandparents' generation, it was like (laughs) , you know, if you wanted to have sex, you had to, like, live a certain kind of life.

Chris Williamson 1:00:22 Put a ring on it, baby.

Rob Henderson 1:00:22 Exactly. And that was- uh, that was just the reality then, and now, it's, um, it's completely different. And I've presented this thought experiment before. I think I posted this on- on, back when it was still called Twitter, which was if you traveled back to 1945, just got in a time machine and walked out in, you know, the post-war era, and you said, and, you know, very soon... I think it was 1960 when the birth control pill was invented. If you say very soon, there's going to be this magical technology, the birth control pill, um, so contraceptives will be widely available. Abortion will be, you know, it'll be more accessible def- certainly than it is now. Um, so you'll have, you know, the- all of these reproductive options before you. Do you think, in the future, there will be more children born out of wedlock or fewer? Do you think that there will be more abortions or fewer? Do you think there will be more children raised in foster homes or orphanages, living in chaos and squalor, more or less? And I think, you know, almost everyone that you speak to in 1945, you present this survey, um, I think almost every one of them would say less. They would say fewer. And then-... you know, I (laughs) but that's not the case.

Chris Williamson 1:01:35 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 1:01:35 It was very much the opposite of that, that I think even these technologies and, you know, and- and the culture and everything sort of went in a- in a very different direction than I think people had predicted-

Chris Williamson 1:01:46 Mary Eva Start came on the show-

Rob Henderson 1:01:47 ... or predicted.

Chris Williamson 1:01:50 ... and, uh, Adam and Eve and the Pill Revisited, her new version of her old book-

Rob Henderson 1:01:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:54 Fantastic. Just so great. And it's true, man. Like, you know, we look back, and it's kinda cool in the red pill manosphere, even in the AP world, you know, the social psychology world-

Rob Henderson 1:02:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:05 ... for people to almost laugh, snigger at how rudimentary the thinking was in the 1960s that introducing birth control would result in better outcomes in terms of abortion, better outcomes in terms of out- out-of-wedlock births. Uh, but who then would've been able to predict that that was what was going to happen? You're talking like a fourth order effect.

Rob Henderson 1:02:33 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:34 Right? Now, okay, so you're gonna decrease shotgun weddings because the onus is going to go from the male that accidentally impregnated to the woman who, quote-unquote, chose.

Rob Henderson 1:02:42 Yeah, chose to have a kid.

Chris Williamson 1:02:42 Right? It went from a man's mistake to a woman's option.

Rob Henderson 1:02:45 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:45 And you go, okay, right. And then- and then what's gonna happen to that, and what's gonna happen to that? But it's like a- it's so far down the line. Uh, I was talking to Scott Galloway.

Rob Henderson 1:02:54 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:54 And, uh, and he was talking about the predictive power of stuff in the past, and he was saying, you know, he'd looked through, combed through some research about the Great Depression, and had looked for anybody. Anyone predict this? It's like the year before the Great Depression in the '20s, no one, nothing. No- not a Cassandra in sight. And yet in retrospect, you go, "How could no one have seen this coming?"

Rob Henderson 1:03:18 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:19 You know, i- i-

Rob Henderson 1:03:19 Hindsight bias, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:20 ... hindsight is- hindsight is a wonderful thing-

Rob Henderson 1:03:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:22 ... with regards to that.

Chris Williamson 1:03:23 One- one question that I've got that I think is kind of interesting is, so squalor, your word.

Rob Henderson 1:03:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:28 Uh, up until the age of 16?

Rob Henderson 1:03:31 17.

Chris Williamson 1:03:32 17.

Rob Henderson 1:03:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:32 Up until the age of 17, that should set a pretty low hedonic threshold, right? That, uh, you're in a nice air conditioned room.

Rob Henderson 1:03:43 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:44 And your jeans fit and don't have holes in, and you're not worrying about whether or not you can pay for the Uber to get from here to the airport.

Rob Henderson 1:03:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 How have you found your ability to, uh-

Rob Henderson 1:03:53 Hedonic.

Chris Williamson 1:03:54 ... hedonically adapt over time? Like, can you recall that as an anchor for your quality of life, or does it almost seem like it's someone else that lived that?

Rob Henderson 1:04:05 That's, oh, that's an interesting question. Um, I- I guess it's- it's a bit of both. I mean, it's- it's so day-to-day, I think. I don't re- yeah, I- I don't really reflect in that way. You know, you just sort of live your life. But when I reflect back, and when I think about it, and I realize, you know, there are those moments where like, wow, like I can do this thing that I couldn't have done, you know, even- even after I- I was in the mil- I mean, the- the- I think it's- the pay structure's probably changed a bit. When I enlisted in 2007, I was p- I think the- the- I was making like $1,200 a month was the- the pay. And so I couldn't afford a belt, you know?

Chris Williamson 1:04:40 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 1:04:40 Like (laughs) it was like small little things like that, like, you know, once I cover ... you know, 'cause I moved, yeah, once I moved off base, I got this house with my friends, but, you know, you have to pay like first on- yeah, it's so funny, now like it doesn't matter to me 'cause I can, you know, can ... I have money, but back then it was like, like panicking. I was like, you have to pay the first month and the last month's rent upfront?

Chris Williamson 1:04:57 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 1:04:58 And then it's like the security deposit, and then it's this.

Chris Williamson 1:05:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Henderson 1:05:00 And then you have to ... and then like gas to commute back and for- and all of these kinds of things, and calculating all of this, and it's like, oh, well, I guess I can't wear a belt for a couple of weeks-

Chris Williamson 1:05:08 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 1:05:08 ... until my next paycheck. It's like that (laughs) , that sucks. And, uh, and so-

Chris Williamson 1:05:14 (laughs)

Rob Henderson 1:05:14 ... you know, so there are times like that where I'm like, oh, I could just buy this without thinking about it, and that- that part is nice. Um, so I think it is that kind of, um ... you know, so like happiness researchers will do this, um, what is it? Like, uh, they have terms for this. It's like li- life satisfaction versus, um ... I think they may just call it happiness, where like happiness is like your- your actual affective state in the moment day-to-day.

Chris Williamson 1:05:37 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 1:05:37 How much positive versus negative emotion are you experience subjectively throughout the day or the week or whatever? And then there's the life satisfaction component, which is basically when you step back and view your life as a whole, how satisfied are you? And those two things are correlated, but they're not quite the same in some ways.

Chris Williamson 1:05:51 Yeah, I think parents often report much lower levels of happiness-

Rob Henderson 1:05:54 I- yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:54 ... but higher levels of life satisfaction.

Rob Henderson 1:05:56 Yeah, yeah, yes.

Chris Williamson 1:05:56 Yeah.

Rob Henderson 1:05:57 And- and I think in that regard, it's like, you know, my happiness, I don't know if it's actually changed much. Maybe there is a bit of that hedonic adaptation where, you know, 15 years ago, it was like, oh, I can, you know, I can go to Wendy's, cool, like I'm happy. Whereas now it's, um, you know, something else and- but it- but ultimately, that hasn't changed, but the life satisfaction I'm sure is- is much higher that like, oh, I've had a few accomplishments and I can afford things, and I don't have to think about money as much anymore. And so, yeah, I think there is that. And yeah, and also like reminiscing too, like when I talk to my sister or some of my- my old friends from high school and just sort of thinking about those days, it's like, you know, I- I do feel a bit better now about my life compared to what it was.

Chris Williamson 1:06:33 Yeah, I was- I was talking to a friend, and uh, they were asking me stuff about my childhood, and my memory's really patchy-

Rob Henderson 1:06:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:40 ... from my childhood. It's not fantastic, uh, especially not sort of pre-10.

Rob Henderson 1:06:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:46 And, um, I said, "Look, like what- what do you remember?" He said, "Well, I remember a good bit because of my sister, because we'll prompt each other -"

Rob Henderson 1:06:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:57 "... about the, oh, do you remember that? Oh my God, yeah, we did do that thing, and- and we were in that car, or we got stuck in the- the mud or whatever," right? And, um, yeah, there's a degree where I wonder how much is just one good ChatGPT prompt away from, uh, me-

Rob Henderson 1:07:13 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:07:13 ... you know, opening out into this really beautiful answer about some insight or whatever, some experience that I had as a kid.

Rob Henderson 1:07:18 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:19 Um, but yeah, George Mack, my friend-

Rob Henderson 1:07:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:22 ... uh, once a month lies in bed before he wakes up for 10 minutes and imagines what it would be like to live with no arms or legs.

Rob Henderson 1:07:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:28 That's one of his favorite meditations among- among a bunch of other weird ones.

Rob Henderson 1:07:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:31 So he's trying to dial up contrast as much as possible.

Rob Henderson 1:07:35 Interesting.

Chris Williamson 1:07:35 Think about all of the challenges that I would have to face, think about what this day is going to entail, think about all of the things that would be difficult for me, think about how grateful I would be if only I could just, you know-... wash my own back, if only I could brush my own teeth, if only I could do these things. So what he's trying to do-

Rob Henderson 1:07:51 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:51 ... is- is give himself gratitude for the things that he takes for granted that are very normal. Now, the interesting thing with your example is that you don't need to imagine what it would be like to live in squalor-

Rob Henderson 1:08:01 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:02 ... because you did.

Rob Henderson 1:08:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:03 But the way that our sense of self works, you know, what is it, every seven years, every cell in your body has turned over.

Rob Henderson 1:08:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:12 So there isn't even, you're like the two Ship of Theseu- three, three, three Ship of Theseuses away from the person that you were then.

Rob Henderson 1:08:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:19 And e- even for me, now being in Austin for two years, I went back home for Christmas, and it's like, it's kind of like a fever dream. I'm being back in this place that I know so well but I'm different but I'm not, and then I find triggers, environmental triggers causing me to fall back into other different ways of thinking and stuff like that. Um, so I was interested in whether or not basically you have been able to lock in a degree of gratitude, uh, uh, like relativistic gratitude I suppose, based on where you came from to where you are now, but it's a permanent- a permanent battle. Like in some regards, from a poverty perspective, like you were a guy who was born with no arms or legs and then grew them.

Rob Henderson 1:08:58 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it... yeah. Those... I think they... yeah. That's- that's right. Where I- where... if I think about what it was like back then and I compare it to now, of course, like, things are much better for me. And yeah. I mean, it's... it would be- it would be, I think, shameful to be anything other than completely grateful and, you know, just full of gratitude for the direction-

Chris Williamson 1:09:20 And proud as well, I would like to think.

Rob Henderson 1:09:22 Yeah. I mean, that's a weird one. Like the pra- like, you know, it's... I think when... that- that's one of the things that, you know, in- in the book I point this out that like, you know, when you don't really grow up with parents and you don't really ha- c- I mean, 'cause I grew up in foster homes before. I think like that criti- there's like the developmental window where if you don't really receive like positive feedback, like I think I just like... I receive compliments in a very weird way-

Chris Williamson 1:09:44 Mm-hmm.

Rob Henderson 1:09:44 ... where it's like very hard for me to accept it. I, uh...

Chris Williamson 1:09:46 It's a skill. It's a real skill, man.

Rob Henderson 1:09:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:49 Who was it that I... I gave someone a compliment. Fuck, I can't remember who it was. I gave somebody a compliment-

Rob Henderson 1:09:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:57 ... and I've never seen anyone... I wish I could remember who it were, but it would probably be a good idea that I couldn't call them out in any case. Dude, it's like the worst way that I've ever seen anyone take a compliment.

Rob Henderson 1:10:06 Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:06 Just, you know, you say this thing that you think is a nice gift that you're giving somebody, and even giving compliments is a skill that I've had to learn-

Rob Henderson 1:10:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:12 ... because I'm... doing something that's nice for somebody else is- is a nice thing to do.

Rob Henderson 1:10:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:16 Um, Gwynder. It was fucking Gwynder.

Rob Henderson 1:10:19 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:19 It was on an episode that I did recently.

Rob Henderson 1:10:21 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:10:21 And uh, I was like, "Dude, I fucking adore your writing, I adore your Substack, you've got two books coming out. I can't wait to read them. I'm fired up every single time I speak to you on the podcast. I love it. It's like a- it's a fugue state we drop into for two hours. Brilliant." And I (laughs) just saw his face. People can go watch the episode.

Rob Henderson 1:10:37 (laughs) I wanna watch it now.

Chris Williamson 1:10:38 And it's very ch- it's- it's very charming.

Rob Henderson 1:10:39 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:39 Like it's very charming because-

Rob Henderson 1:10:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:40 ... obviously