Maiden Mother Matriarch, The True Believer, Pillars of a Good Life
Podcast appearance + links and recommendations
You can now listen to my recent conversation with Louise Perry on the Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast:
Links for Spotify and Apply Podcast.
New from me in The Free Press
A deep dive on The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, perhaps the most important nonfiction book I’ve ever read:
There were passages—published in 1951!—that seemed to describe how the rise of intellectual and social orthodoxy on campus, and across a growing number of institutions, stifles debate and free expression. More than that, Hoffer captured how in the age of smartphones and social media, people fear the consequences of uttering a single wrong word. He wrote:
“[I]n a mass movement, the air is heavy-laden with suspicion. There is prying and spying, tense watching, and a tense awareness of being watched. The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension but to strict conformity. Knowing themselves continually watched, the faithful strive to escape suspicion by adhering zealously to prescribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith.”
He warned in The True Believer, and in later books and interviews, about the dangers for American society of the rise of the intellectual elites. A biographer of Hoffer, Tom Bethell, quotes Hoffer saying that nowhere else was there “such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America” and that this elite want America to be “not a melting pot but a seething cauldron.” These self-anointed experts sought a society “in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount, and the prerogative of the educated.”
[…]
One of the key and enduring insights of The True Believer is that frustration is the fuel of mass movements. Frustration, though, doesn’t arise solely from bleak material conditions. Hoffer argued, “Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some.”
He points out in the years leading up to both the French and Russian Revolutions, life had in fact been gradually improving for the masses. He concludes, “The intensity of discontent seems to be in inverse proportion to the distance from the object fervently desired.”
[…]
In a passage in The True Believer that is reminiscent of today’s idea of the “horseshoe theory”—that is, political extremes have more in common with one another than with moderates—Hoffer wrote, “When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any movement. . . . In pre–Hitlerian Germany, it was often a toss-up whether a restless youth would join the Communists or the Nazis.” One of his most famous aphorisms is this:
“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. . . . Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.”
You can read the whole thing here.
The New Statesman Profile
Sophie McBain recently interviewed me for The New Statesman:
Henderson, who is 34, had a formal, military bearing, wore a crisp blue suit and had his hair neatly parted. His first book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family and Social Class, published in February, is both a harrowing account of his early years and an insider-outsider critique of the political culture he first encountered at Yale. As an undergraduate, Henderson realised that while almost all his peers in Red Bluff came from broken homes, almost all his Yale classmates had parents who were still together. These children of the elite had ideas about privilege and victimhood that he found baffling.
[…]
Henderson is an interesting and provocative thinker, whose writing has caught the eye of prominent conservatives. His book was blurbed by the pro-Trump senator and Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, and the psychologist and right-wing commentator Jordan Peterson. And he is a fellow at the University of Austin, the “free speech” university founded by figures including Niall Ferguson, Pano Kanelos and Bari Weiss, for students who “dare to think”. When he moved to Cambridge in 2018 he was disillusioned with elite US universities – where he perceived rampant cancel culture and a rising intolerance for ideas that challenge progressive orthodoxy. He imagined that Cambridge would be full of “stern Oxbridge dons” too absorbed by research to bother with culture wars. Then, soon after he arrived, the university rescinded a visiting fellowship offer to Peterson after student complaints. Henderson abandoned plans to pursue an academic career, focusing instead on his writing, a Substack newsletter that has more than 50,000 subscribers, and Troubled.
[…]
Henderson believes most people who hold luxury beliefs aren’t malicious (maybe 10 to 20 per cent, he said, which feels like a lot): they adopt such opinions because “they just want to be thought well of by others, they want to advance professionally and socially”. I told him that I thought some luxury beliefs could be characterised as old-fashioned corporate greed – maybe today’s tech bros are like yesterday’s tobacco salesmen – while in other cases a “luxury belief” might hinge on a factual disagreement over how a policy will work. Don’t defund the police activists, for example, sincerely believe their policies will benefit low-income communities? Henderson responded with a lot of crime and police statistics; while he didn’t clarify whether he doubted activists’ sincerity, it was apparent that he at least doubted their intelligence. What is hard to argue with is Henderson’s view that much of the intellectual elite – “the chattering classes” as he calls them, with obvious derision – have almost no experience of the working-class communities they claim to speak for.
You can read the whole thing here.
Links and recommendations
As obesity rises, Big Food and dietitians push “anti-diet” advice by Sasha Chavkin, Caitlin Gilbert, Anjali Tsui, and Anahad O’Connor
Everyone’s a sellout now by Rebecca Jennings
Carl Jung's Five Pillars of a Good Life by Arthur C. Brooks
Maybe You’re Not Anxiously Attached by Freya India
Equal, Not Identical: In Sharing Family Tasks, Consider the Preferences of Men and Women by April Bleske-Rechek
I'm a neuroscientist. Our presidential candidates have shrinking prefrontal cortexes. by Erik Hoel
Three interesting findings
1. The rated strength of a male body accounts for 70% of the differences in women’s attractiveness ratings of male bodies. None of the women produced a preference for weaker men. In both samples, the strongest men were the most attractive, the weakest men were the least attractive. (source).
2. People around the world rate their moral reputation as more important than any other value except their physical security. (source).
3. Harvard's Study of Adult Development followed 800 people throughout their lives and identified 6 key predictors of happiness and longevity (source):
Having a happy childhood
Avoiding smoking/alcohol
Education
Quality relationships
Healthy coping skills
Giving back
The overall picture: Spend your first few decades building a good life and a well-rounded self. Then spend your remaining decades sharing with others what you have learned and gained.
Reading list
I’ve spent several months compiling a list of the most interesting and impactful books I’ve ever read.
The list contains my mini-reviews summarizing each book and explaining its importance.
If you are interested in getting it, just follow these two steps:
1. Order a copy of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class in whatever format you want (print, ebook, or audiobook)
2. Send a screenshot or photo of your receipt or proof of purchase to the email address troubledmemoir@gmail.com and use the subject line SECRET READING LIST
Already purchased a copy? Just send a screenshot of your receipt to troubledmemoir@gmail.com with the subject line SECRET READING LIST and you’ll get the secret reading list right away.
That's it!
And if you don’t receive it within 24 hours, please check your spam/junk.
Rob, your Eric Hoffer prophet drop yesterday on TFP was a really great piece. Well done!
Hi Rob,
I love reading your articles. Your writing is doing what many of us are not quite ready to do. By bravely exposing the rampent hypocrisies fueling “virtue signaling” and “cancel culture” we have hope that shaming, divisive Marxist ideologies will be overcome.
Will your book tour come to Canada?