Among many class differences, one is that the vast majority of educated people have never been in a real fight or experienced serious physical injury. On occasion, I’ve wondered if this is why many of them believe words are violence. They have never known serious physical pain.
Months ago, I spoke with an editor at a prestigious magazine who explained how shocked he was upon reading Tara Westover’s memoir Educated, and learning how frequently people who worked in junk yards experience cuts, scrapes, bruises, burns, and so on. Physical pain—even bodily soreness—was just not a reality in this editor’s world.
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Recently, two high-profile supporters of “justice reform” have been murdered. And two others have been violently assaulted.
Ryan Carson, a 32-year-old social justice and climate change activist, was walking with his girlfriend in Crown Heights, Brooklyn at around 4:00am and was stabbed to death by a stranger in front of her.1
And 39-year-old journalist and activist Josh Kruger was shot to death in his home in Philadelphia.
Recently, two members of Congress who voted to “redirect funding to community-based policing reforms” were victims of random violent crimes.
Angie Craig was attacked in an elevator at her home in Capitol Hill. A homeless man demanded she allow him into her home to use the restroom. The man punched her and grabbed her around the neck but she escaped after throwing hot coffee on him.
And blocks away from the Capitol building, Henry Cuellar was carjacked at gunpoint by three men.
Several people have asked me if these tragic events contradict the luxury beliefs framework.
Not at all.
The fact is that poor people are far more likely to be victims of violent crime.
For every one upper middle class person killed, 20 poor people you never hear about are assaulted and murdered. You never hear about them. They don’t get identified by name in the media. Their stories don’t get told.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, compared to Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year, the poorest Americans are seven times more likely to be victims of robbery, seven times more likely to be victims of aggravated assault, and twenty times more likely to be victims of sexual assault.
Expressing a luxury belief is a manifestation of cultural capital, a signal of one’s fortunate economic circumstances.
Compared with neighborhoods where less than 10% of residents live in poverty, people who reside in areas where more than 20% of inhabitants live in poverty are more than 100 times more likely to be murdered.
The massive spike in violent crime across the U.S. is the result of the power of elite opinion.
A study from 2014 found that strong support for a policy among the middle class has virtually no effect that a policy will be adopted.
In contrast, strong support among Americans in the top income decile—those who earn at least 173 thousand dollars a year—doubles the probability that a policy will be adopted.
But these individuals, the people who wield the most influence in policy and culture, are often sheltered when their preferences are implemented.
Luxury beliefs can stem from malice, good intentions, or outright naivete.
The other day, a person I went to college with announced that passing the bar to become a lawyer was the hardest thing she ever did. She has also posted about the need for “criminal justice reform.” I find it hard to enter into the sheltered mindset of a person like that, of someone whose greatest obstacle in life is to pass the same test every other attorney has passed.
Of course, I have friends from fortunate circumstances but somehow (unintentionally) the people I’m most drawn to are those who have some difficulty in life, sometimes voluntary, sometimes not. People who play sports, or served in the military, or endured family tragedy, or served jail time, or survived life-threatening medical maladies or injuries. They have had contact with reality.
A core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is comfortably insulated from the risks and consequences of the belief. This echoes Bourdieu’s idea of “distance from necessity” signaling high social class. Similarly, in his book Class: A Guide to the American Status System, Paul Fussell points out that the presence of physical danger is a marker of low social class. For instance, among occupations, the reason why (despite higher pay) being a diesel mechanic or an electric powerline installer is considered to be working class while being a schoolteacher is middle class is that the former jobs are more dangerous.
A cynical interpretation of why the luxury belief class proposes policies that put the rest of society in danger is to highlight the boundaries between them and their relative safety and others who must live in fear. Granted, sometimes one of their own members is victimized, but they might calculate that trading 1 affluent person for 20 poor might be a small price to pay for an increase in distinction. To be sure, I don’t think this is how most luxury belief holders think. But a small percentage of them (high on the Dark Triad personality traits) do.
Who was the most likely to champion the fashionable defund the police cause in 2020 and 2021?
A nationwide survey from YouGov found that Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police. Among Democratic voters, white Democrats were more likely to support reducing police funding than Black or Hispanic Democrats.
In response to elite opinion in 2020, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, and many other major cities in the U.S. subsequently reduced police spending.
Most people didn’t want to defund the police; but the most affluent sector of society did. And thus it was implemented into policy.
I had a professor in college who liked to say that common sense is like air: The higher you go, the thinner it gets.
Sadly, it will probably take more high-profile deaths and attacks for people to wake up. When a bunch of peasants are killed, the luxury belief class shrugs. But when fellow travelers among the nobility and petty nobility are targeted, suddenly the narrative shifts.
As history has often shown, it is only when those in positions of influence and privilege feel the consequences of their beliefs and policies that real change is seriously considered.
As an aside, in the video you can hear Carson’s girlfriend pleading with the killer to stop. He momentarily feigns a lunge toward her but doesn’t harm her. The whole thing plays out as a high-stakes version of the male monkey dance. For the killer’s ego, there was nothing to be gained from hurting a pleading woman, but the killer was noticeably smaller than the 6’4” Carson, so he likely took some satisfaction in taking out a much larger man. My strong hunch is that Carson would not have confronted the killer the way he had if his girlfriend had not been present. He was probably tipsy if not drunk, and wanted to look tough in front of her. This is always a stupid move, and I say this as someone who has intentionally put himself in similar dangerous situations. Avoid violence. Always be respectful and cool because you never know who doesn't give a fuck about going to prison, or worse.
My husband owns a diesel repair ship after 25 years of working as a diesel tech. He has had cuts, bruises, stitches, skin chunks removed. We both grew up in lower middle class homes, so we've both been in fights, especially in our youth. We decided to raise our boys in better circumstances and we did, but I won't lie when I say I'd be worried about them in a fight.
Great observations.
Hard times create strong men that create good times that create weak men that create hard times. We are living in the age of weak men creating hard times for everyone. It won't be until those hard times leak into their lives that the weak men will become strong.
It seems to me that optimum human capability and capacity requires walking a razor's edge of struggle that on one side is debilitating trauma and the other side is facilitating growth. People are born with some level of innate coping capability (the sensitive child that only needs a look from a parent to cause them to melt, vs the child that need a sharp smack on the behind to get their attention), but coping skills can be learned... excess sensitivity and vulnerability are constraining maladies that should be resolved in a lifetime. But if not presented with enough real life struggle there is not enough opportunity to grow coping skills. And then I think the vulnerable narcissist evolves from that as basic human interactions that should be considered normal and acceptable cause overheated emotions of harm and resentment.
This is a great example from a Jordan Peterson interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTk-69f64KU
This female in the audience is the epitome of a vulnerable narcissist. Peterson asks "Do you think you are worse off than your grandparents?" Look at her reaction when Peterson explains that she, like her peers, avoid their personal growth needs by adopting pseudo moralistic stances on large-scale social issues that look good to their friends and neighbors.