Luxury beliefs and the rhetoricality of shootings

11 Mar, 2026

Shall we make a fairy tale together?

Once upon a time, there was an kind but ignorant prince. Due to his sheltered upbringing, he did not know that one had to grind wheat into flour to make bread, or that onions had to be cultivated in the ground. He disdained the farmers, those brats who made strange motions upon their useless land. That land could be used to make so many castles that everyone, rich and poor, could live in the grandiose manner he appreciated so much. Thus, when he assumed the throne, his first order was to kill all the farmers, and seize their land.

Your turn. What happens next? What would be satisfying?

Surely the prince should be punished. Perhaps the classic Brothers Grimm version of the tale is that he starves outright. In the Disney adaptation, maybe he sings out his dark night of the soul. Maybe his mother dies, I don't know. The point is that two things were true: (1) The prince held a belief, and (2) his life and comfort depended on the world around him believing the opposite. We will call this kind of belief a "luxury belief". In the same way that the rich can afford diamonds because the poor dig them up, the prince can "afford" to be misinformed about the nature of food precisely because his royal chef cannot.

Origins

I choose to open my discussion of "luxury beliefs" this way, in part, because I disagree with the existing literature. The term was coined by conservative pundit Rob K. Henderson. While Henderson has a Ph. D in philosophy, and does seem genuinely well-studied, he introduced his concept of "luxury beliefs" in an article for the New York Post¹. I find the article muddled. Henderson defines a luxury belief as any belief that "confer[s] status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class". In practice, he's more interested in building a characterological figure, the smug hypocrite liberal elite. For example:

...Steve Jobs prohibited his children from using iPads. Parents in Silicon Valley reportedly tell their nannies to closely monitor how much their children use their smartphones. Don’t get high on your own supply, I guess. Many affluent people now promote lifestyles that are harmful to the less fortunate.²

Henderson is insinuating that Jobs is introducing an evil so profound he wouldn't let his own kids use it. I find it more plausible that Jobs believes young people should have limited screen time for reasons related to cognitive development (a position shared by the CDC). I'm not even sure that what Henderson is mad at is a belief. It seems to me that what he disapproves of is the effects of the iPhone itself. It only fits his definition of "luxury belief" because his definition is mercurial enough to include "when a smug coastal elite does something hypocritical".

Not all of Henderson's work is so hazy. I agree, for example, that "religion should be abolished" is a luxury belief³. I also believe his basic premise: that those luxury beliefs that do exist are harmful, and that we should think deeply about them in the name of humility and bettering the world. But his articles propose, for example, that belief in white privilege is luxury. (That part is complete with a bootstrap-story about growing up around "poor whites"). They're only able to do so because, to Henderson, the definition of luxury belief ranges from "hypocritical belief that's only held as a status symbol" to "thing associated with this idea of the coastal elite". There is much bathwater to throw out.

Once more, with rigor

With that in mind, I'm pursuing a new definition of luxury belief, inspired by our fairy tale from earlier. Someone's belief is a luxury belief if:

(1) They believe it
(2) This belief is available to them because of other actors who disbelieve it⁴

For example, the prince from earlier (1) believes that food is created ex nihilo, and (2) has the privilege to do so because his royal chef knows that bread comes from wheat.

I find this definition useful because it's easy to flag beliefs as potential luxury beliefs. Here are some examples of such arguments (of wildly varying quality):

Alex believes that the Earth is flat. If it's true that Alex's ability to get sucked into a flat-earth YouTube rabbithole is made possible by pilots, satellite engineers, &cet. that believe in a round earth, then Alex's belief is a luxury belief.

Blaine, a trans person, believes that trans people owe it to society to "pass" as their assigned gender. If it's true that Blaine's acceptance is contingent on the kindness of allies with more expansive views, then Blaine's belief is a luxury belief.

Carla bemoans compulsory monogamy. If it's true that society would collapse without compulsory monogamy, then Carla's belief is a luxury belief.

Derek is a prison abolitionist. If it's true in a world where everyone agreed with him, Derek would be harangued by criminals and wish for jails back, then Derek's belief is a luxury belief.

Again, I think these arguments are valid, but they aren't all sound. That is, I think some of the assumptions following "If it's true that..." are suspect. The Carla example, for one, is adapted from Henderson's article, and I think it's rubbish. Beyond that, there are a few pitfalls to avoid. First, as is a common thread in philosophy, luxury belief suffers as an analytical tool because it depends on hypotheticals. How do we know that Alex wouldn't remain conspiratorial without YouTube? Well, we don't; the thrust is that we're assuming that culture partially determines his beliefs. Second, luxury belief is "scoped" to the believer. Here's a fun paradox that pops up as a result:

Blaine believes trans people owe it to society to "pass". Unbeknownst to her, Blaine doesn't pass. Since Blaine's is better off because of those who believe trans people shouldn't have to pass, Blaine's belief is a luxury belief.

Em believes trans people owe it to society to "pass". Em passes. Since Em would personally be fine if society believed what she believed, Em's belief is not a luxury belief.

What we've shown here is that luxury alone does not beget falsehood. In fact, a luxury belief isn't forbidden from being true! A better indicator for falsehood might be "luxury belief under the veil of ignorance", or something similar, but that's somehow harder to make broad claims about. Additionally, luxury beliefs aren't the only type of bad belief, nor is being a luxury belief the "original sin". Do we really need to prove, for example, that modern communications are possible only because GPS depends on the earth's roundness in order to denounce flat-earthers? It's amusing that the flat earther would prefer a world that wouldn't have created his opinion, but the actual flaw is much simpler and more fundamental. The earth is a globe, that's all you need; the rest is trivia.

Still, asking whether a belief is potentially luxury can be a useful framework, precisely because doing so hijacks our schadenfreude-seeking brains. Consider this story:

Derek III is a prison abolitionist who lives in a gated community. One day, Derek III recognizes an embarrassing fact about himself: "I might only believe in prison abolition because I've never experienced violent crime." Derek III has recognized a potential luxury belief, which he uses as a jumping-off point to make a bold claim: "If it's true that no just and productive society could exist without prisons, then I have a luxury belief!" Sheepish yet newly curious, Derek III engages seriously with literature about prison abolition. He reads and reads, and comes to some opinion or another based on theory rather than anecdata.

Indeed, while it's difficult to make broad formal claims about this framework⁵, we'll find it a useful tool for building intuitions. In the form I've described, a luxury belief isn't a logical state so much as a story-- but that can be just as powerful.

The rhetoric of shootings

Recently, conservative scoldfluencer Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while preaching to college students. I'll spare you my feelings about gun violence, my thoughts on the merits and demerits of death-cultism, Kirk's beliefs, and so forth, because nobody cares that much. The thing the media has latched onto, instead, is this:

The attendee... continued: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk replied before, just seconds later, he was struck by the bullet and fell from his chair, prompting the panicked crowd to disperse in terror.⁶

The Independent calls that detail "bitterly ironic". That's the first time I can remember that a media outlet called a shooting as a rhetorical act⁷, and not a symptom of psychological imbalance or an artifact of societal failure.⁸ That's unusual. Typically, this goes one of two ways: shooter as a strange mold growing on the underbelly of culture, or shooter as aberrant P-zombie with base impulses instead of opinions. If you openly considered any school shooter a rhetor, you'd be scolded and, essentially, told to shut up and focus on material conditions. So what happened here? What was uniquely rhetorically tangible about this whole affair?

Here's one explanation. Charlie Kirk held the belief that gun violence is an acceptable cost for a society with increased rights and less tyranny. He said so in those terms. We can identify this as a potential luxury belief. That is, it's possible that American gun violence isn't at the level of "unacceptable cost" (what a phrase!) because of the efforts of gun control advocates.

So let's say about half the country thinks Kirk has this luxury belief.⁹ That means that his privilege to hold this belief is contingent on good people who disagree. He spent enormous time and effort trying to convince those people (on whom his belief depends!) to revoke their beliefs. The logical next step is that, over time, the conditions for his belief to hold will erode.

Even under the best of conditions, we understand that assassination is arbitrary and cruel, understand that it rearranges some atoms rather than kills an idea. To paraphrase Gayatri Spivak talking about suicide bombing¹⁰, its success is that it cannot succeed. Or to quote Kendrick: "Everbody gon' respect the shooter, but the one in front of the gun lives forever."¹¹ Under normal conditions, most of us prefer to consider assassination an outgrowth of a greater wave of politics, rather than its driver.

But what happens when you assassinate a man who is actively undermining his own luxury beliefs? A man who is actively unmaking his world, and is succeeding? How did we feel when the story telegraphed that the prince would have to repent for his actions, and then killed him? I certainly didn't feel that we needed to examine the material conditions that led to the establishment of king's death or whatever.

For better or for worse, it's like our fairy tale. What happens next? What would be satisfying?