At a dinner party recently, I got chatting to the twentysomething children of some acquaintances. I asked them what they thought about a range of subjects and was intrigued, and slightly startled by their opinions, which ranged from a total disrespect for the police, to a rejection of marriage as a concept and a desire to legalise drugs entirely. Despite attending elite universities, they told me exam results didn’t matter. Without a hint of irony they told me they thought eco-activists should protest continually at airports to “educate” people about the harm to the environment from flying, while later telling me of their impressive long-haul holiday plans.
This conversation came back to me as I read Rob Henderson’s masterpiece, Troubled, a story of his life growing up poor in foster care in America, which has taken the US by storm. Henderson later joined the military, and then made it to Yale, where he encountered the top one per cent of society, and became fascinated by their affectations and mores which informed his theory of “luxury beliefs”, opinions which confer social status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on those beneath them.
