October 24, 2024 • 55 mins
What if your beliefs about health and wellness are just status symbols in disguise? On this episode of the Mind Muscle Podcast, we explore the intriguing world of luxury beliefs, as coined by Rob Henderson, and examine how these ideas serve as modern-day markers of social status. With historical insights from the minds of Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu, we unpack the immaterial signs of wealth and how they shape our daily choices in nutrition and fitness, often at the cost of the less affluent. From the aspirational allure of fad diets to the exclusivity of youth sports, we peel back the layers to reveal how elite posturing influences areas meant to promote wellness for all.
Status signaling is everywhere, and it’s not just about diamonds or designer clothes. Through fascinating tales of spices and dueling, we discuss how individuals have historically projected their identities and maintained social hierarchies. Today, this manifests in the wellness industry where affluent individuals adopt luxury beliefs to flaunt their status, yet these choices often leave others to struggle with the financial and social costs. Our conversation also touches on the ways these behaviors have evolved, drawing a line from past to present in a way that reveals both the superficiality and the social power of luxury beliefs.
In the world of youth sports, financial capability has overshadowed raw talent, creating a class divide that further complicates the landscape of competitive parenting. We emphasize the need to return to community-focused sports that prioritize personal growth and community bonding over competitive spending. By questioning the true purpose of sports, we advocate for a system that fosters inclusivity and genuine talent development. Join us as we challenge the status quo and encourage listeners to embrace wellness practices that are not only inclusive but also meaningful. Let's reshape the narrative around health and fitness, ensuring that they are accessible and beneficial to all.
Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant
For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast.
Here's your host, simon DeVere.
Welcome back to Mind Muscle,the place we study the history,
science and philosophy behindeverything in health and fitness
.
Today, I'm Simon Devere, andthere's nothing new except all
(00:34):
that has been forgotten.
So today I should only have onebig topic I want to get into.
I think it's going to take me awhile, we'll see.
But yeah, no ranting on the gym.
People have been pretty goodthis last week, nothing making
me mad that I feel like I needto correct, but yeah, so no, I
don't have any preamble rantsToday I want to talk about.
(00:58):
It's a concept that I cameacross reading an economist blog
that I like, noah Smith.
Noah Opinion was talking aboutluxury beliefs, and this was
something that I was reading acouple years ago, and I don't
know why maybe it was one ofthose shower things, but I was
thinking about the concept, andI was thinking about how we
(01:19):
might be able to map this intothe health and wellness space,
but some potential luxurybeliefs that might be out there.
So, obviously, though, before Istart telling you what the
luxury beliefs in health andwellness are, we should probably
have a shared understanding ofwhat a luxury belief is in the
(01:41):
first place.
So anyway, for this we're goingto actually have to take a
little bit of a deep dive intosome sociologists, some
philosophers, some thinkers.
So that'll be fun.
We can do a little bit ofhistory, a little bit of
philosophy, and then, once we'vegot that down of what luxury
belief really is, then I'm goingto rant a little bit about
(02:03):
where I think that this ismanifesting itself in nutrition
and training today.
So anyway, guys, withoutfurther ado, let's go ahead and
dive right into it.
Luxury beliefs, these are ideasand opinions that can confer
status on an elite group or anupper class, while often
(02:24):
inflicting a cost on the lowerclasses.
This is a term that ispopularized by a guy named Rob
Henderson, and as he sets it up,he kind of points us back to an
economist and sociologist,thorstein Veblen, who published
(02:46):
a book called the Theory of theLeisure Class.
His basic idea was that youkind of can't be certain about
the financial status of people.
So a good way to size up theirmeans is to see whether or not
they can afford expensive goodsand leisurely activities.
So, like in Veblen's day,people would exhibit their
(03:09):
status with, you know, reallydelicate clothing tuxedos, top,
hats, evening gowns the type ofclothing that would just get
completely destroyed if you wereactually doing any real work.
That's why they confer statuson someone wearing it, because
obviously it costs a lot ofmoney and you can't do anything
(03:31):
with it.
So the visual appearance ofthings can just confirm status
on people.
Similarly, activities that arevery time consuming, like golf,
initially this would besomething that working people
wouldn't have access to becausethey wouldn't have access to the
free time.
So the mere just the fact thatyou have six hours of free time
(03:55):
kind of lets you know about theclass that somebody belongs to,
one that I think is interestingand kind of well, at least if
anyone here is in the UnitedStates like I am.
Um, you know, term we have inthis country is redneck.
Uh, this term is a.
It's all about status signaling.
There's actually two versionsof the etymology of the term
(04:19):
redneck.
The one that most people know,I think, is that obviously you
get a redneck as a result ofbeing outside doing labor, if
you have fair skin and you aresusceptible to the sunlight, and
(04:51):
so obviously the term redneckjust implies that to labor is to
be lesser.
You can't say that part outloud, but a lot of our cliches
do reveal the statusimplications is a status
signifier, and there's alsostories that there were these
red scarves that were actuallyworn by these miners in West
Virginia that were organizingtheir labor, and so the term was
(05:14):
a pejorative that was eitherthrown at people who were
getting a redneck from being outin the sun or the miners who
were organizing, for I don't'tknow I'll have to read up on
what they're, what they weregoing for, but I don't know.
They probably didn't want tobreathe like coal or something
like that.
Um, some crazy, like woke shit.
But uh, but yeah either.
(05:37):
You know etymology of the wordredneck.
It is completely a statussignifying term that is used to
uh, signify lower status uponperson with the red neck,
whether it be, you know, sun orscarf.
Uh, but yeah.
So redneck, in a way, is aninverse status signal.
Um, luxury beliefs that we'regoing to be getting into are
(05:59):
going to be more closely tied to, like goods or activities that
can only be purchased orperformed by people who do not
do manual labor, and theytypically are also going to be
things that tend to not have anypractical utility.
Distance from utility is also agood marker of elite status is
(06:25):
also a good marker of elitestatus.
So again, henderson, who kindof came up with the term, he
also points us in the directionof a French sociologist, pierre
Bordeaux, and his bookDistinction, social Critique and
the Judgment of Taste.
So this is kind of exactly whatBordeaux is talking about.
So this is kind of exactly whatBordeaux is talking about is
(06:56):
that distance from necessity isoften what characterizes the
affluent or elite classes, ifyou will.
But think about Maslow'shierarchy of needs.
Obviously the first layeryou're on is physiological needs
.
Once you have attained those,you can move up to higher levels
, ultimately arriving atself-actualization.
Obviously, folks that areconcerned with their
physiological needs, it's notthat self-actualization is
(07:20):
beyond them or maybe notimportant, it's just when you're
dealing with necessity youdon't have time for things like
self-actualization.
One other piece we want to addto this one more thinker, and
then we'll kind of have ourframework set up here.
Pardon me, so, biologistAmatasatas zahavi hopefully I
(07:48):
said that right, probably didn't, but he proposed that animals
can evolve certain displays,traits and behaviors because
they are physically costly.
What he's talking about here,in a sense you can almost call
it like conspicuous fitness.
But, um, you know, consider,like a aelle, they'll often
engage in what's called stotting, where they're repeatedly
(08:11):
jumping as high as they can,springing vertically as high as
possible, All the feet raised.
It's completely inefficient,burns a ton of energy, but it
what it's doing is actuallysignaling to any predators that
you know, essentially, I'm sofit I can afford to waste tons
(08:33):
of energy.
Um, if you give chase to me,not going to be anything to dust
you.
Um, so a predator who isobserving this is obviously
going to avoid targeting agazelle that was starting versus
one that looks a little lesslively and energetic.
So, no, we also have, I guess,just a biological basis, then,
(08:56):
for sort of displays, again, offitness or status In humans.
It's top hats, designerhandbags, watches.
In nature, it's going togenerally be a physical signal
displaying vitality.
So everybody we just talkedabout Viblin, bordeaux, zahavi
(09:19):
all claimed that humans oranimals flaunt certain symbols
and communicate in specific ways.
They will adopt costly means ofexpressing themselves in order
to obtain a distinction from themasses.
So, again, I think it's fair tosay that animals tend to do
(09:41):
this physically, or at leastit's fair to say that's what
we're capable of observing.
Humans obviously do iteconomically, culturally, with
symbols, activities we'll getinto this later diets, workouts.
I think that there's almost nodomain in our social sphere that
is completely immune from this,but I don't know.
(10:08):
Ironically, this reminds me ofa funny story of just kind of
how humans can signal.
So I remember being a teenagerand we're in Tahoe, and even
though I live in California now,at the time I was spending my
summers in Montana.
So, love coming to California,but I still thought of people in
California as Californians andwe set up for a day hike and
(10:35):
when I had just heard theitinerary that we're hiking up
to a lake to go swimming Idressed accordingly to what I
would wear in Montana, which wasboard shorts, flip-flops and
maybe I had a shirt.
I think I was into a big strawhat Back in those days, probably
no shirt, but yeah.
So when I show up to thetrailhead, everybody had a good
(10:59):
laugh and to me the Californianslooked like an REI cataloger.
They'd just gone in there andraided the place and yeah, it
was funny at the bottom of thehill that my attire was the butt
of the jokes there.
But then I actually was thefirst person up swimming at the
lake, since I wasn't carrying awhole bunch of useless crap that
I didn't need to get there.
(11:22):
So, anyway, I just wanted totalk about status signaling in
this.
Actually, was that what you had, in a sense, was two different
cultures status signaling ateach other and neither one
receiving each other's currency?
This happens a lot today.
But, yeah, some people were onthe mountain status signaling
with their new hiking gear.
I was status signaling with mylack of gear, basically
(11:48):
signaling to people this hike isnothing to me.
This is very easy, the type ofthing I would do in flip-flops.
But again, it was just funnybecause neither one of us
received the currency that theother was trying to pass.
If I was trying to impresspeople with my nonchalance and
ease moving up the mountain, Iwas hanging out with people
whose currency was gear and viceversa.
(12:10):
But anyway, I guess I'm goingto keep ranting just for one
second.
I want to actually interject adifferent idea.
Just this difference betweenhaving and being, difference
between having and being.
(12:30):
This is what I kind of feelpassionately about, because I do
generally think in today'sculture, one of the reasons why
we strive to have so much isbecause we are very little, and
I think this is why so manypeople get kitted out to go for
a hike or go skiing the one ortwo times that they do it.
(12:51):
Or I love playing basketball,so I can't tell you how many
times you go to pick up and theguys that have all the freshest
kicks and all the best gear alot of times you're just running
them off the court easily.
Um, and I I know like justanother pushing 40.
So I'm just like bemoaningthings.
But you know, actually doingthings is hard and takes time
(13:14):
and discipline, and buying thewardrobe is is really easy and
confers nearly all of the socialbenefits of actually doing the
thing without actually doing thething.
Yeah, so I don't know, you knowpositive thing I can spin on
this or how you can kind ofpragmatically be more in the
being orientation than thehaving Simple one, even in your
(13:37):
language.
Use more verbs, use fewer nouns,talk about things.
You're doing a lot more thanthe objects.
What do you do?
Um, there's actually a memefloating around that I like I do
mean this is a joke, but I kindof believe it no one's going to
remember how much money you hadthe clothes you wore.
(13:58):
What people are going toremember was what your bench and
squat maxes were.
I don't actually think anybodygives a shit about your bench or
squat maxes either, to be fair.
But I actually think there is abetter chance that people tell
stories about that when you'regone than about how many hours
(14:18):
you hit of overtime,particularly if it's your family
, because they're not going togive a shit about that time,
particularly if it's your family, because they're not going to
give a shit about that.
But yeah, somebody might careif you took an active interest
in their life or you didsomething impressive while they
knew you.
But no, anyway, I'll be donewith my commentary here in just
a second.
But modern consumers, I think,really identify themselves by
(14:41):
the formula I am equals what Ihave and what I consume.
Simon says bullshit.
You are what you repeatedly doPresent tense, not did.
You are neither what you havenor what you've done Present
(15:03):
tense verbs only the havingperson is going to rely on what
they have.
The being persons rely on thesimple fact that they are.
This is again why not to maketoo much of it.
But this is why, if you justthrow me on a trail out in the
middle of nowhere, why I don'tnecessarily need a lot of gear.
(15:26):
A being person doesn't rely onthings to get through the
situation.
A being person is going to relyon other things that kind of
come from being in the presentmoment that you can only become
aware of if you're actually inthere.
People might call itspontaneity, people might call
(15:47):
it creativity.
Those are nice words, but ifyou really want to engage that
state, you kind of have to getyourself deep into the present
moment and then whatever peoplecall that is up to them.
But yeah, key thing, I think,is up to them.
But yeah, um key thing, youknow, I I think to being truly
adaptive is again engaging moreof this being nature, um and but
(16:13):
all right, last amateurlinguistic point, and then I'll
move on.
But I will say that I honestlythink you know, tied to this,
when I'm talking aboutpossession, I think for most
people, except for parentstalking about their children,
the word love you know if youlisten to how people are using
it typically means more have orsomething closer to possession
(16:34):
being implied when they use it.
The only time I can honestlythink when I hear it is is again
when people are maybe talkingabout their, their children.
But when we talk about thethings we love.
We're mostly talking about thethings that people want to
possess and then even read someyou know philosophy, that that
maybe that even trickles intopeople's ideas of love.
(16:57):
But that's so far beyond myscope and not what I came here
to talk about today.
No, I guess what I do kind ofwant to say is I know these are
really divided times.
So, yeah, part of my interestis kind of throw everybody under
the bus in this and it's likehow do we get here, how do we
get to this place where peopleare so divided over basic things
(17:17):
?
And I kind of want to justpoint to this.
There's many things.
One of the factors might bethis having orientation, this
belief that I am what I have, Iam what I consume, and I
actually find this belief to bea shared ideology.
It's funny and I mentioned thisa lot I moved around and I've
(17:40):
lived in different places, soit's always funny for me to see
how people will treat me basedon these external circumstances
that I choose to present to them.
And it isn't hard for me tonavigate, because the easiest
thing in the world is to justchange external things about
yourself and just reflect whatpeople want to see when I'm in
(18:01):
coastal California, I can talkabout a certain set of issues
that when I am in Montana orNorth Carolina, I can just steer
the conversation in a differentdirection.
And for me, who grew up arounda lot of different people, it's
effortless to make this changeif I want to.
I spent most of my life doingthat, but no, so anyway, I'm
(18:23):
just spending all this timebecause, again, where we were
initially talking about washuman status signaling.
This is something that Ipersonally have lived, so I
don't want to only just sharethat.
There's these kind of academicsources that I've come across.
But part of why I find thisinteresting is this really does
map so much to my livedexperience.
(18:46):
I actually remember one timehaving a co-worker come to me
and she was conservative and shejust comes and gets in my ear
and just says oh God, you're theonly one I can talk to around
here.
Everybody else is whatever.
They didn't call it libtardback then.
This was like in the early2000s, it was softer language,
but she was convinced that Ishared all of her views.
And then, yeah, I'm sure anastute listener can probably
(19:11):
figure it out, but at this timethe Iraq war was the main thing
and I'm probably the only personshe spoke to that.
At this time.
The Iraq war was the main thingand I'm probably the only
person she spoke to thatactually protested the war,
never made a thing of it at work, apparently because she felt
very, very comfortable sharing alot of stuff with me and I just
never gave her a reason to notbelieve what she wanted to
(19:34):
believe.
And honestly, I've done this toso many people, and mostly when
I was younger.
But again, as people kind oftalk about how divisive and
intractable these problems arepart of me, who grew up around
people who have all of theseviews, has to call bullshit on
that.
There really is a lot ofperformative things that go on
(19:55):
in all of this is a lot ofperformative things that go on
in all of this.
And no, it's actually quiteeasy to have these conversations
.
There's something differentabout how the conversation is
being had, but intractable, hardto get past the gap not at all.
I think that you guys havereally been fed an illusion of
(20:15):
division, despite the fact thatwe all have different social
contexts.
It's actually quite easy tobridge the gap.
But anyway, let's kind of getback more to the topic, because
I do want to get into luxurybeliefs in fitness.
So I got to finish up on juststatus signaling in general.
So again, another differencebetween human status signals and
(20:37):
signaling in animals.
They tend to be copied ortrickled through the rest of
society.
So once a signal is adopted bythe masses, the affluent tend to
abandon it.
So one example might be spice.
When spice was a luxury andtrade was difficult, it was
(20:57):
common among the elites.
Once trade opened up, spice wasactually abandoned by the
elites and they decided it wasvulgar and put a time period on
this.
For you, court chefs had bannedsugar and spice from all meals
except dessert.
Dueling was also once only anelite thing, but then that
(21:21):
wasn't adopted by the masses.
Then it wasn't prestigiousanymore and then it was
vigilantism and bad.
But when gentlemen did it, itwas super cool and awesome.
Another contemporary examplediamonds, prized pretty much
only because of their scarcity.
You know, conflict free andfake diamonds exist.
(21:42):
A lot of people still preferthe real diamond, in spite of
saying that they are opposed tomurder, violence, rape, um, all
of the things that go along inthe diamond trade and certainly
a lot more than I mentioned.
But no, obviously it's not thesame status signal to have a
(22:07):
diamond that doesn't come from aconflict-free area.
So maybe you don't want to bethat blunt and put it out there
that well.
I need this thing to flex onpeople so that fake one just
isn't going to do it.
It's not about the hue or theshine, it's, it's about people
knowing, uh, that I am somebody.
Lobster another funny one, butalso follows the scarcity that
we've talked about.
When it was abundant, it wasconsidered cruel and unusual
(22:27):
punishment to feed to prisoners.
We passed laws on that in earlyamerica.
Um, regarded about as highquality of protein as rats,
becomes scarce, scarce, and thennow it literally functions as a
status symbol If they everrecover unlikely, but if lobster
populations were to recover, wewould probably not see it
(22:50):
considered fancy food.
The thing every one of thesethings share is again a yearning
for distinction.
That's the key motive in theswitches.
There's nothing changing withlobsters or rocks or two people
fighting.
The reason our tastes change onit just has to do with the
(23:12):
social context you live in andwhether you can gain a
distinction with the behavior.
The social context you live inand whether you can gain a
distinction with the behavior.
So this to me is going to be onekey part of the luxury belief.
I know I've been taking a longtime to set this up, but the
chief purpose of luxury beliefsis, first and foremost, to
indicate evidence of thebeliever's social class or elite
(23:33):
status.
Members of a luxury beliefclass promote the idea because
it advances their socialposition, and they know that
adopting these policies is goingto cost them very little.
Affluent people are againsusceptible to these luxuries
(23:54):
because they can't afford it.
That's precisely why, whenyou're affluent, even if
something has what, to otherpeople, might be a high cost
that's a barrier for entry it'sstill relatively low.
They can afford to have luxurybeliefs.
And if you're an elite group,you have to care the most about
status.
You're the most sensitive tochanges in status.
(24:16):
So this is going to be thegroup that is most fragile to
lacking distinction or, shall wesay it another way, the most
motivated to achieve distinction.
And again, distinction is goingto encompass not only clothes,
food, rituals.
It's also going to extend toideas, beliefs and causes and I
(24:36):
am soon to argue, health andwellness.
One important critique, though,of the entire idea of luxury
beliefs and you might havealready picked up on this
earlier but we are literallyfree to believe anything and it
actually costs nothing.
So just when we're talking inthe realm of beliefs and we're
(24:57):
drawing comparisons fromconsumer goods, things like that
, clearly we signal differentlywith beliefs than we do when we
choose to buy a BMW versus aMercedes.
There's a different set ofsocial contexts that go into
that choice and a different setof costs, and I already kind of
jumped into this.
But, as I had learned movingaround the country, the pressure
(25:20):
to conform is different indifferent regions.
The things that I'm supposed toconform to when I'm in
California are very differentthan when I'm in Michigan,
washington, north Carolina,montana, any of the states that
I've lived in.
I already admitted when I wasyounger I was a chameleon.
I just changed with the setting.
I bring that up just tohighlight.
I'm really, really familiar howchanging certain traits to gain
(25:42):
acceptance or social distinctionis something that humans are
going to do the process for me.
I was a new kid.
Every year, upon moving to anew place, you'd quickly figure
out what the regional norms were.
I was young, I valuedacceptance, and then I would.
One of the most obvious oneswas style.
So then you just go and copyyou know a couple of popular
(26:07):
styles, a couple of popularattitudes and then bang, you're
in and it really, you know, forme, who was, you know, athletic
and just you know good student,conventionally attractive, it
was that easy to get acceptanceanywhere in this country.
But people always ask me or saystuff like, oh, where are people
in ISIS and this and that?
And people don't like theanswer.
(26:29):
People are really the sameeverywhere.
There really isn't a difference.
That was what I picked up frommoving around.
So much was that people areactually startlingly similar.
I would say especially so whenin stress, in good times, that's
when you get to have some fun,variation and things.
But if people are ever goingthrough a tough time, they're
(26:50):
just insanely predictable, andpeople are so far more similar
than we are different.
Leave it at that, but again, wedo live in different social
contexts.
So what I wanted to say becauseI actually have seen how
particularly Rob Henderson kindof uses this concept of luxury
beliefs to pick out thepolitical beliefs he doesn't
like and call them luxurybeliefs.
(27:11):
To be quite honest, I agreewith some, disagree with others.
I think the issue of doing thatwith political beliefs, though.
Is that just the same thing Iwas talking about.
We really have to consider theregion somebody is coming from,
why they're taking on a view andwhat that full context is.
If we're really going to callsomething a luxury belief, I do
(27:32):
think it's a really useful ideathough, but if you're trying to
label somebody's politicalbeliefs luxury beliefs, I do
actually think you have to havea little bit of individual
context.
You can't say that this beliefis a luxury belief because it's
on any issue.
I got to be honest.
It's real different when you'rein North Carolina or California
.
Certain stances take courage inone spot and no courage in the
(27:55):
other, and vice versa, and sopeople in both again depending
on their constitution.
You got some people who arecontrarian types, like to be
different than the crowd.
They're going to counter signal.
You got people that want to gowith the group.
They're going to go with themain signal, and then those
signals get inverted indifferent regions.
So again, I know a lot ofpeople like to think that it's
(28:17):
the ideas and the ideologiesdriving this.
I actually think it's kind ofmore on how people relate to
groups and social contexts.
But again, a lot of that isjust anecdotal, based on my
experience of living indifferent places, meeting people
and seeing how they come tobelieve the things that they
believe.
But anyway, with that being said, I just want to acknowledge
(28:38):
that there's maybe somepotential issues with this whole
idea of luxury beliefs.
That being said, I think it'sreally useful and now that I
think we've got a solidunderstanding I know I was
thorough, but yeah, now I thinkwe can kind of dive into luxury
beliefs in health and wellness.
So I swear I am done with thenerdy stuff.
(29:02):
On the off chance that youliked any of that, I would
recommend David Marks' Statusand Culture how Our Desire for
Social Rank Creates Taste,identity, art, fashion and
Constant Change.
That's a really, really funread actually.
Actually, if you found any ofthis cultural stuff interesting
um, no relation to carl marx, ifthat triggers you, um.
(29:23):
And then again, I actuallythink noah smith has had some
good breakdowns of the concept,and he was actually my initial
sort of stepping point intothere.
So I think noah opinion is hisblog.
Maybe um, sorry, it gets sentto me from a newsletter and,
yeah, good blog, though, butanyway, I think one of the
clearest places that you canreally see particularly that
(29:45):
human status signaling that wasreally described by Veblen.
But this, to me, is the storythat I've really trying to tell
you guys about diet fads eversince I started this show.
Diet fads really do work, a lotlike tech or fashion fads.
There is this group of earlyadopters.
(30:09):
I guess there was somemarketing book I read a while
back.
They call them mavens.
Is that a Seth Godin concept?
I don't remember, but yeah, soyou got your early adopters or
them mavens.
Is that a Seth Godin concept?
I don't remember, but yeah, soyou got your early adopters or
your mavens.
And what these people again aredoing is they're trying to seek
a distinction.
These people are going to beconsidered tastemakers, so
(30:31):
they're going to be the first tomove on a trend.
Obviously, as the groupobserves these cool people doing
something and looking cool,they're going to adopt a trend
as everybody crowds in.
Then the people who needdistinction have to move on and
do something else, because oncethe mass is adopted, it is now
inherently uncool.
(30:52):
Mavens move on.
They regain their distinction.
The masses follow them.
Rinse, repeat.
So if I can, I just want to tellyou the story of fitness fads
in my lifetime.
I was born in 1985.
You can tell.
I've also done my researchbefore, but these are the ones
that I got to live through andsee firsthand.
(31:14):
So I was born into low-fatcrazes.
When I went around the grocerystore with my earliest formative
memories, everything waslow-fat.
The 80s fitness elites adoptedit, went low-fat.
Then the diet was adopted bythe masses and health
(31:34):
organizations and became thestandard advice.
Again, that grocery store thatI have memories of told you I
was born in 85.
So if I remember low fat, nowwe're into the 90s, now we're
getting into that massacceptance time.
And if you remember, rightaround the time that low fat got
to mass acceptance, that waswhen all of the diet and fitness
(31:57):
hipsters jumped over to lowcarb.
That's when I first startedseeing all that stuff pop up.
And again, when it started out,it was that type of thing that
you had to go to special grocerystores to source.
And then eventually it goesmainstream.
It's at all the grocery storesthat like Kroger and Albertsons
it's probably even one companythese days but uh, you know all
(32:20):
the oh and hey, I live in thesouth too.
Shout out food lion, piggly,wiggly.
Uh, michigan, we admire, butyeah, you get it by the time we
got into the big box stores.
It had gone mainstream and itwas time for something else.
So the elite started lookingelsewhere.
Get to the 2000s, if youremember.
That's when paleo hit and I wasall in on that.
I jumped in on that too.
We were eating like cavemen.
(32:43):
Back then, books got writtenand because I was in the midst
of my fitness hipsterdom, I willjust have you guys know I was
on that shit before everybody.
Yeah, honestly, kind of likeyour favorite bands too, I knew
about all them first, yeah, howmany concerts have you been to?
Oh, yeah, yeah, a week, no, butno, admittedly, that's how I
(33:08):
was with diet at this time in mylife.
So, 2000s I'm jumping earlyinto paleo.
But then I start to see allthese books getting written and
I start to see all the massescoming in and I'm like what I'm
special?
I'm a food hipster, so I had todump it.
No, actually that's not thereal reason.
I dumped it.
Told you guys a story.
It wasn't working out with someof the training I was doing,
(33:30):
but anyway, you get the pattern.
I'll start going a littlefaster now.
Early 2010s, keto hits.
That becomes all the rage.
Later in the 2010s, plant-basedcomes in that starts taking
over your grocery store by thetime you see that now we're
lions, now we're getting intocarnivore.
Check out last week's episodeif you want more.
(33:52):
Didn't catch the referencethere.
But again, what I honestly seegoing on in kind of what diet
becomes popular and when it mapsperfectly with the status
seeking cycle, people go intoone mode, it gains adoptance and
then they just have to go seekdistinction.
(34:12):
That again, we don't have to doit over again.
That's what is going on withdiet.
Diet is being used as a signal.
Status signaling is a majordriver of of the fad cycle.
It's for some people it's likehaving the latest model phone.
These are just highly visiblepublic ways to display some
(34:36):
distinction.
And again, this is mirror talk,not finger pointing.
I have done this for years, nomore than that.
While I was doing it, Ipersonally identified as a
scientist and I was runningexperiments and admittedly I do
enjoy doing that and I didcontrol them well.
But in truth I wasn't alsodoing this research in isolation
(35:01):
and coming up with ideas all onmy own.
I was testing, in some capacity, the diet du jour.
I read things that were alittle bit ahead of the
mainstream cycle, but that's it.
I still wasn't exactly doing myown research.
I was actually still partakingin this cycle that was being
driven by other forces than myown genuine investigation and
(35:22):
experiments.
I also got a social benefit forbeing an early adopter and a
fitness enthusiast.
I've been a trainer since my20s.
So when you're the guy thatalways has the newest gadget or
is on the newest thing, peoplejust come to you with the
questions.
It's all about relationships.
Once people know they can getgood answers from you, they come
(35:42):
back.
Yeah, so it was always an easyway to just kind of signal that
I was on the cutting edge andthat I was somebody worth
talking to.
But a lot of the behaviors thatI get into when you're kind of
in that cycle really do wind upkind of becoming useless things.
You adopt it and then you moveon Again.
(36:03):
That's what's led me kind of tothe approach we talk about now.
We're always talking about thebig boring shit like the big
rocks, but none of theseattempts were big game changers.
I've learned a lot, but again,that main thing was to become
less dogmatic.
Every diet works.
Pick one, stick with it.
I've probably gotten results onevery diet you're talking about
(36:24):
and ones that you think don'twork, and had other people do it
myself.
No, I mean, I've really triedto simplify that process of what
principles you actually need topay attention to in diets.
But that's literally how I gotthere.
But yeah, I was.
I was like a seriouslyinsufferable hipster for
(36:45):
nutrition for a long time.
Looking back, I don't reallythink it provided me any
critical edge in workouts and,yeah, it established me as an
expert in some people's eyesbecause I was always doing novel
, fun things.
So anyway, I can admit that thiswas, just frankly, a great
(37:06):
example of status signaling andgroup dynamics side for the
lower class is a little bit morenebulous here, I will admit.
But I'm actually stillconvinced that what I think the
downside of our fad diet cycleis, and why I consider it a
luxury belief, is it muddies thewater and it makes things
(37:26):
difficult.
There's so many people who aregenuinely confused when they're
trying to source a diet and I doblame this cycle.
So again, just to me, theaverage person going to the
grocery store who's confused ashell when they're in like the
milk aisle or any other sectionwhere there's like 17,000
(37:46):
different processed varietiesand they're standing in the
checkout and there's all thesemagazines with like 10 different
diets.
I think that's actually muddiedthe water and made it difficult
for people to fuel themselvesand to even know what's healthy,
and it's really annoyingbecause the truth is a lot
simpler than the lies.
(38:07):
So, yeah, anyway, slightlynebulous, but that's why I'm
willing to call this one aluxury belief.
The fad diet cycle in generalmuddies the water.
It's a bunch people like likeme, trying to be hipsters,
trying to be cool, trying togain some distinction and look
like an expert, at the cost ofjust reaping absolute chaos on
(38:28):
the general public'sunderstanding of what good
health practices are.
So anyway, um, consider that mypenance for my years of
perpetuating it.
I am no longer a member of thatcult and I've moved on, but no,
anyway.
Next one I'm going to talkabout is going to be sort of
(38:48):
nutrition space, and this onehas a much stronger connection
actually to downsides for thelower classes, and we're
actually going to talk aboutorganic foods.
Believe it or not, organicfoods really might be a luxury
belief.
So, first off, most consumersthat are going to be choosing
organic foods obviously aregoing to be a more affluent
(39:09):
consumer Not shaming you, by theway.
I don't think that they putthis stuff up in the grocery
stores.
So, yeah, it took me a while tolearn this too, but no.
2018 study found that if all ofEngland and Wales were to shift
entirely to organic farmingwhich in a lot of ways would be
a great thing crop rotation,taking care of the ecosystems
(39:32):
there's a ton of good reasons todo that.
I also don't want to pour abunch of cold water on this or
piss in the pool whatever termyou like, but yeah, so they
found some good stuff.
They found that it would cutemissions from livestock by 5%.
It would cut the emissions fromgrowing crops by 20% per unit
(39:53):
of production.
So what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with that is theyield.
The issue is that the yieldalso drops 40%.
So then you're going to be in asituation where, if you had
shifted everything over, you'vegot a couple options.
You can import food.
The resulting importation isgoing to negate the emissions
reductions that you did.
(40:13):
You could convert grasslandsand other areas over to farmland
, but then the issue there isthat those lands naturally store
carbon and plant tissues, soagain, you're going to lose your
emissions gain.
This is just kind of anunfortunate reality is that
(40:34):
lower yields they do createeconomic incentives that may not
be driving the intended outcome.
And so one, two, I kind of wantto speak up for the farmers for
a second here.
I'm not one, but I know some.
And farmers don't want todestroy the environment, believe
it or not.
(40:54):
But sort of when I see peoplecritiquing agriculture policy
without any experience orknowledge of people who do it.
I'm not an agriculture expert,I don't want to position myself
that way, but no, I just don'thave people to say confidently
that farmers really, really docare about the environment.
They're not trying to activelyfuck it up, they are trying to
(41:17):
make a living and economicincentives do play a role in all
of the choices they make.
So if they were to choose to goorganic, the economic
incentives are going to be apart of it.
They can't be ignored.
When you actually make thatswitch to become an organic farm
, what you're leaning on, you'renot buying more land, so you're
(41:38):
planning on selling less foodat a higher price point.
So again, particularly ifyou're most farming, it's done
by these huge farms.
If you're even thinking about asmaller farmer that's switching
over to organic farming, that'swhat they're going to have to
rely on, they're not going to beable to sell them at affordable
prices.
So, again, when we have alimited amount of farmland, the
(42:00):
people who will bear the cost inthis are going to be the lower
classes who don't have food topurchase.
Similarly and I'm really nottrying to trash organic foods I
think there's a bunch of greatpractices that we do need to
consider.
I mentioned some of those uptop Crop rotation.
You need to grow the righttypes of crops within ecosystems
to support them, make sure thatthey stay healthy, not negating
(42:22):
any of that.
But I just feel like a lot ofpeople think, when you get
organic food, that that meansthat there weren't pesticides or
anything like that.
That also isn't true.
So I think, in general it'stough to say because, again,
people live in different spacesI think broadly, though,
comfortable to say that I thinkthe health benefits of organic
food have probably beenoveremphasized.
(42:45):
There's a handful that are kindof worth getting if you will.
But just to give you guys ashort rule, because I don't have
the list in front of me Ifsomething has like a thick peel
or stock, it's really not goingto be that important in front of
me.
If something has like a thickpeel or stock, it's really not
going to be that important.
And again, it's not like theyaren't using pesticides on the
organic things too.
They're just certified organicpesticides and we can get into
(43:08):
what that process ofcertification looks like at a
different time, but you know howthat goes.
It's probably not as clean asmany people have been led to
believe.
So again, aspects that I reallyreally like.
The reason I'm sort of pigeoningorganic food as potentially a
luxury belief is that if we dosee continuing demand for more
(43:29):
organic food, what you're goingto see is more and more farmland
switched over to organic farms.
That's probably going to leadto the importation of food
coming from elsewhere.
And again, the people that aregoing to actually bear the cost
is actually going to be mostlylower income people.
If you shop at Air One Gelson'sWhole Foods, I don't think
(43:51):
these are going to be problemsthat you're going to have.
But anyway, I think I also gota couple for you guys in the
training realm.
I just looked at the clock.
We only got time for one more,and this one's much more
important to me.
So, off the top, when I wasfirst thinking about this
episode, I actually thought thatall that stuff that I talk
(44:12):
about in the majoring, in theminors camp, was what we were
going to do here, prepared awhole bunch of stuff like that,
and then I actually dumped itbecause most of those things I
was going to talk about they'rejust bad ideas.
For an individual Probably notgood, but they don't have a
downside for the non-user in adifferent class.
So again, I don't care ifactually people are buying
(44:33):
stupid fitness gadgets that Ithink are a waste of money, or
getting into workout fads thatare silly, stupid, potentially
harmful, because they're theonly person that can get hurt
the person doing it.
So that kind of is like my body, my choice.
That type of stuff I justlegitimately don't care about
(44:54):
that.
If it was creating a downsidefor other people, not them, then
I think there would besomething worth talking about.
But just to clear up why I'vetalked down in the past if my
clients are doing these things,then I have to badmouth them,
but if someone I don't know isdoing something like this, what
the hell do I care?
So, anyway, we're not actuallygoing to talk about stupid
(45:16):
products, silly fads, anythinglike that.
The place I actually want to go,because I think this is the
most important one is the waythat we develop young athletes.
In this country right now,that's a luxury belief.
Specifically, I'm talking aboutthe pay-for-play leagues that
are becoming the default methodto develop youth athletes.
(45:37):
I don't remember the show.
Sure, I've talked about this inthe past, probably just ranting
.
But my first point, welcome tomy TED Talk.
But it doesn't produce thestrongest national teams.
It frays our communities at atime where, again, everybody
agrees that we're incrediblydivided and the biggest cost is
borne on the non-users, thelower classes, the non-elites.
(46:02):
I said a lot there, so now I'mgoing to go point by point and
explain every single thing thatI just said.
So yeah, we've justthoughtlessly stumbled into
norms around youth sports that Ithink most adults that are too
old to have experienced it thatincludes me, by the way.
So if you're older than me, youprobably haven't experienced
this either.
You're not really going torealize how much things have
(46:25):
changed.
Tldr sports have shifted frominformal and school-based
programs to these expensivepay-for-play leagues.
There's consequences foreverybody involved for parents
being overscheduled, kidsburnout but the most profound
really are for the lower classes, arguably playing the highest
(46:47):
cost in non-involvement.
I want to quote Matthew Iglesiason this.
He's got a blog Slow Boringthat I like to check in on every
now and again blog Slow Boringthat I like to check in on every
now and again.
But he said that I thinkshifting from informal and
school-based sports to expensivepay-for-play leagues has landed
(47:07):
us in a pretty dysfunctionalplace where parenting is
unnecessarily complicated,society is unnecessarily
inegalitarian and communitiesare unnecessarily weak.
I love that and I want to echoa point that Iglesias was making
in this article.
But there really is no easypolicy fix.
This is why we have to talkabout it.
(47:29):
It's why we have to think aboutit.
There can't be like a YouthSports Act to save us from
what's going on.
People are going to have tofundamentally shift the way we
think about what's going on.
People are going to have tofundamentally shift the way we
think about what's going on.
And so one you know, payne, howdid we get here?
Because I think a lot of peoplekind of grew up where they were
.
You know, playing sports atschool was the highest
(47:51):
achievement and I wanted to letyou guys know that's a memory.
That's not the way it isanymore.
You know, in kind of just thisprocess of competing for spots
on those school-based teams,paid programs started to emerge
and incentives just droveparents to get in and be
competitive.
The benefits and rewards ofsports you know, from
scholarships to going pro, tojust the benefits to your brain
(48:14):
and social these are well known.
So parents have just beencompeting for quite a while now
and now we've kind of arrived ata world where again if you're
not in this, I don't know ifyou've experienced anything like
it these leagues don't functionlike leagues in other countries
.
There's no national priority ondeveloping the best athletes.
(48:36):
These are for-profit leagues.
I'm not against profits that'sawesome in a lot of places but
the issue with that in youthsports is that you develop the
athletes who can pay to bedeveloped.
This isn't an issue of takingthe top 1% in terms of talent to
an elite program to get evenbetter.
(48:57):
What we do is a fundamentallydifferent situation.
The criteria upon which you getselected to elite athletic
training is ability to pay, notelite athletic talent.
Studies have been done on this.
So a kid, say, at the 70thpercentile of ability, but the
(49:17):
90th percentile in householdincome is much more likely than
a kid at the 90th percentile ofability and the 20th percentile
of household income.
This echoes data that I sawmany, many years ago in a 2012
book by Nate Silver.
The Signal and the Noise chapterin there about NBA and implicit
(49:39):
bias plays a lot in perceptionsof the NBA.
Most people, I think, thinkthat that league is full of
people who have strived theirway out of tough situations, and
the facts don't actually bearthat out.
I'm not throwing people underthe bus.
Most people in the NBA comefrom two family homes great
educations, great supportsystems, all of that stuff.
(49:59):
If you think the NBA iscomprised of people who've
strived out of bad situationsagain, that's probably because
implicit bias and there's a lotof black guys in the NBA and you
assume that must be theirbackstory.
But no, most of the NBA starsthat you can rattle off your
head, with the exception ofLeBron James, don't have that
(50:21):
backstory.
You know I'll steal NateSilver's here, but the simple
sort of tell was would the namefit at a country club?
Michael Jeffrey, jordan,christopher Paul, stephen Curry,
kevin Durant, lebron James?
There's one that obviously youmight not see on the placard at
(50:44):
the old country club 30 yearsago, there's your outlier.
That's how you can spot him.
But anyway, more and more.
That story is actually becomingrare.
It's highly available andLeBron is so great.
Everybody knows that story, soI think they think it's the norm
.
Everything about that story isso far from the norm.
(51:04):
So, yeah, sports is so oftencited as the last bastion of
merit, but increasingly in theUnited States it isn't.
There's a growing class dividein sports participation.
Local and community teams arewithering while paid programs
are growing.
So this, again, is a luxurybelief.
As consumers use more and morepay-for-play leagues, there is
(51:26):
going to be less and lessresources.
The parks are going to keepgetting worse.
The school teams are going tokeep getting worse.
Also, beyond that, even if youdon't care about kids at other
schools, if you still only careabout little Johnny getting as
far as he can, even if he's onlya 70% talent, you want to push
him as far as he could possiblygo, get him into a league beyond
(51:50):
his ability.
That's your prerogative.
That's weird, but I can makeone more argument.
Even for you, it's also just abad idea.
On merit, you're worried aboutlittle Johnny, aren't you?
Well, early specialization alsoleads to more injuries, higher
likelihood of burnout and worsehealth outcomes.
So part of this is like we gotto just get back to kind of
(52:12):
being like normal people again.
Like, if little Johnny isn'tthe best on the soccer team,
that's not a terrible outcome,quite frankly.
If he is, that's great andlet's get him moving.
But no again, for those of uswho have the memory of playing
for our school team, the pridethat you felt making that team,
(52:34):
the pride the community felt inyou when you put on those colors
, how you felt as a memberwithin that community when
people came out to your games,again, I just want to let you
guys know that that's a memorythat's not really going on as
much as you might think it is.
And if that's a bad thing whichI think it is we might have to
(52:56):
shift one our values.
But, quite frankly, just some ofthis competitive spending that
that us parents I'm in thisgroup, I'm not there yet Um, but
yeah, you can tell I don'treally want to partake in this
for for so many reasons and Ivalue sports very, very highly,
(53:16):
um, so yeah, I'm going to dowhat I have to do, but I hope,
as we age into these things,that we can kind of get more
back into community-orientedsports.
And then initially, admittedlyalso, I was going to say parents
act a little normal.
I don't know.
I really don't believe much intheories of decadence kids these
days, but the way I see someparents freaking out about their
(53:39):
kids' performance in sports, Ido think the incentives have
changed.
People weren't making millionsback in the day, and so I think
we do have my wife's a castingdirector.
We got the equivalent of stagemoms over in sports and they
take this shit way too seriously.
I really think that we got toget real about what the purpose
(54:01):
of sport is.
One we want communities to cometogether.
We want to have great nationalteams to represent us, and we
want sport to uplift and enrichthe lives of the people who
participate and the people whowatch on every level.
Pay for play doesn't check anyof the boxes.
Luxury belief.
This is something that we gotto move on from.
(54:23):
Anyway, guys, I glanced overand thank you once again for
your time and attention.
Always appreciate when you guysspend it here.
Again, if you found anythinginteresting in today's episode,
make sure to pass it on.
Share it with someone else thatyou think might enjoy it.
I want to keep growing ourcommunity as organically as
(54:46):
possible.
My skin crawls even when I saystuff like that.
So apologies, fears did too,but yeah, always appreciate your
time and attention, guys.
And yeah, remember mind andmuscle are inseparably
intertwined.
There are no gains withoutbrains.
Keep lifting and learning, I'lldo the same.
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast.
Here's your host, simon DeVere.
Welcome back to Mind Muscle,the place we study the history,
science and philosophy behindeverything in health and fitness
.
Today, I'm Simon Devere, andthere's nothing new except all
(00:34):
that has been forgotten.
So today I should only have onebig topic I want to get into.
I think it's going to take me awhile, we'll see.
But yeah, no ranting on the gym.
People have been pretty goodthis last week, nothing making
me mad that I feel like I needto correct, but yeah, so no, I
don't have any preamble rantsToday I want to talk about.
(00:58):
It's a concept that I cameacross reading an economist blog
that I like, noah Smith.
Noah Opinion was talking aboutluxury beliefs, and this was
something that I was reading acouple years ago, and I don't
know why maybe it was one ofthose shower things, but I was
thinking about the concept, andI was thinking about how we
(01:19):
might be able to map this intothe health and wellness space,
but some potential luxurybeliefs that might be out there.
So, obviously, though, before Istart telling you what the
luxury beliefs in health andwellness are, we should probably
have a shared understanding ofwhat a luxury belief is in the
(01:41):
first place.
So anyway, for this we're goingto actually have to take a
little bit of a deep dive intosome sociologists, some
philosophers, some thinkers.
So that'll be fun.
We can do a little bit ofhistory, a little bit of
philosophy, and then, once we'vegot that down of what luxury
belief really is, then I'm goingto rant a little bit about
(02:03):
where I think that this ismanifesting itself in nutrition
and training today.
So anyway, guys, withoutfurther ado, let's go ahead and
dive right into it.
Luxury beliefs, these are ideasand opinions that can confer
status on an elite group or anupper class, while often
(02:24):
inflicting a cost on the lowerclasses.
This is a term that ispopularized by a guy named Rob
Henderson, and as he sets it up,he kind of points us back to an
economist and sociologist,thorstein Veblen, who published
(02:46):
a book called the Theory of theLeisure Class.
His basic idea was that youkind of can't be certain about
the financial status of people.
So a good way to size up theirmeans is to see whether or not
they can afford expensive goodsand leisurely activities.
So, like in Veblen's day,people would exhibit their
(03:09):
status with, you know, reallydelicate clothing tuxedos, top,
hats, evening gowns the type ofclothing that would just get
completely destroyed if you wereactually doing any real work.
That's why they confer statuson someone wearing it, because
obviously it costs a lot ofmoney and you can't do anything
(03:31):
with it.
So the visual appearance ofthings can just confirm status
on people.
Similarly, activities that arevery time consuming, like golf,
initially this would besomething that working people
wouldn't have access to becausethey wouldn't have access to the
free time.
So the mere just the fact thatyou have six hours of free time
(03:55):
kind of lets you know about theclass that somebody belongs to,
one that I think is interestingand kind of well, at least if
anyone here is in the UnitedStates like I am.
Um, you know, term we have inthis country is redneck.
Uh, this term is a.
It's all about status signaling.
There's actually two versionsof the etymology of the term
(04:19):
redneck.
The one that most people know,I think, is that obviously you
get a redneck as a result ofbeing outside doing labor, if
you have fair skin and you aresusceptible to the sunlight, and
(04:51):
so obviously the term redneckjust implies that to labor is to
be lesser.
You can't say that part outloud, but a lot of our cliches
do reveal the statusimplications is a status
signifier, and there's alsostories that there were these
red scarves that were actuallyworn by these miners in West
Virginia that were organizingtheir labor, and so the term was
(05:14):
a pejorative that was eitherthrown at people who were
getting a redneck from being outin the sun or the miners who
were organizing, for I don't'tknow I'll have to read up on
what they're, what they weregoing for, but I don't know.
They probably didn't want tobreathe like coal or something
like that.
Um, some crazy, like woke shit.
But uh, but yeah either.
(05:37):
You know etymology of the wordredneck.
It is completely a statussignifying term that is used to
uh, signify lower status uponperson with the red neck,
whether it be, you know, sun orscarf.
Uh, but yeah.
So redneck, in a way, is aninverse status signal.
Um, luxury beliefs that we'regoing to be getting into are
(05:59):
going to be more closely tied to, like goods or activities that
can only be purchased orperformed by people who do not
do manual labor, and theytypically are also going to be
things that tend to not have anypractical utility.
Distance from utility is also agood marker of elite status is
(06:25):
also a good marker of elitestatus.
So again, henderson, who kindof came up with the term, he
also points us in the directionof a French sociologist, pierre
Bordeaux, and his bookDistinction, social Critique and
the Judgment of Taste.
So this is kind of exactly whatBordeaux is talking about.
So this is kind of exactly whatBordeaux is talking about is
(06:56):
that distance from necessity isoften what characterizes the
affluent or elite classes, ifyou will.
But think about Maslow'shierarchy of needs.
Obviously the first layeryou're on is physiological needs
.
Once you have attained those,you can move up to higher levels
, ultimately arriving atself-actualization.
Obviously, folks that areconcerned with their
physiological needs, it's notthat self-actualization is
(07:20):
beyond them or maybe notimportant, it's just when you're
dealing with necessity youdon't have time for things like
self-actualization.
One other piece we want to addto this one more thinker, and
then we'll kind of have ourframework set up here.
Pardon me, so, biologistAmatasatas zahavi hopefully I
(07:48):
said that right, probably didn't, but he proposed that animals
can evolve certain displays,traits and behaviors because
they are physically costly.
What he's talking about here,in a sense you can almost call
it like conspicuous fitness.
But, um, you know, consider,like a aelle, they'll often
engage in what's called stotting, where they're repeatedly
(08:11):
jumping as high as they can,springing vertically as high as
possible, All the feet raised.
It's completely inefficient,burns a ton of energy, but it
what it's doing is actuallysignaling to any predators that
you know, essentially, I'm sofit I can afford to waste tons
(08:33):
of energy.
Um, if you give chase to me,not going to be anything to dust
you.
Um, so a predator who isobserving this is obviously
going to avoid targeting agazelle that was starting versus
one that looks a little lesslively and energetic.
So, no, we also have, I guess,just a biological basis, then,
(08:56):
for sort of displays, again, offitness or status In humans.
It's top hats, designerhandbags, watches.
In nature, it's going togenerally be a physical signal
displaying vitality.
So everybody we just talkedabout Viblin, bordeaux, zahavi
(09:19):
all claimed that humans oranimals flaunt certain symbols
and communicate in specific ways.
They will adopt costly means ofexpressing themselves in order
to obtain a distinction from themasses.
So, again, I think it's fair tosay that animals tend to do
(09:41):
this physically, or at leastit's fair to say that's what
we're capable of observing.
Humans obviously do iteconomically, culturally, with
symbols, activities we'll getinto this later diets, workouts.
I think that there's almost nodomain in our social sphere that
is completely immune from this,but I don't know.
(10:08):
Ironically, this reminds me ofa funny story of just kind of
how humans can signal.
So I remember being a teenagerand we're in Tahoe, and even
though I live in California now,at the time I was spending my
summers in Montana.
So, love coming to California,but I still thought of people in
California as Californians andwe set up for a day hike and
(10:35):
when I had just heard theitinerary that we're hiking up
to a lake to go swimming Idressed accordingly to what I
would wear in Montana, which wasboard shorts, flip-flops and
maybe I had a shirt.
I think I was into a big strawhat Back in those days, probably
no shirt, but yeah.
So when I show up to thetrailhead, everybody had a good
(10:59):
laugh and to me the Californianslooked like an REI cataloger.
They'd just gone in there andraided the place and yeah, it
was funny at the bottom of thehill that my attire was the butt
of the jokes there.
But then I actually was thefirst person up swimming at the
lake, since I wasn't carrying awhole bunch of useless crap that
I didn't need to get there.
(11:22):
So, anyway, I just wanted totalk about status signaling in
this.
Actually, was that what you had, in a sense, was two different
cultures status signaling ateach other and neither one
receiving each other's currency?
This happens a lot today.
But, yeah, some people were onthe mountain status signaling
with their new hiking gear.
I was status signaling with mylack of gear, basically
(11:48):
signaling to people this hike isnothing to me.
This is very easy, the type ofthing I would do in flip-flops.
But again, it was just funnybecause neither one of us
received the currency that theother was trying to pass.
If I was trying to impresspeople with my nonchalance and
ease moving up the mountain, Iwas hanging out with people
whose currency was gear and viceversa.
(12:10):
But anyway, I guess I'm goingto keep ranting just for one
second.
I want to actually interject adifferent idea.
Just this difference betweenhaving and being, difference
between having and being.
(12:30):
This is what I kind of feelpassionately about, because I do
generally think in today'sculture, one of the reasons why
we strive to have so much isbecause we are very little, and
I think this is why so manypeople get kitted out to go for
a hike or go skiing the one ortwo times that they do it.
(12:51):
Or I love playing basketball,so I can't tell you how many
times you go to pick up and theguys that have all the freshest
kicks and all the best gear alot of times you're just running
them off the court easily.
Um, and I I know like justanother pushing 40.
So I'm just like bemoaningthings.
But you know, actually doingthings is hard and takes time
(13:14):
and discipline, and buying thewardrobe is is really easy and
confers nearly all of the socialbenefits of actually doing the
thing without actually doing thething.
Yeah, so I don't know, you knowpositive thing I can spin on
this or how you can kind ofpragmatically be more in the
being orientation than thehaving Simple one, even in your
(13:37):
language.
Use more verbs, use fewer nouns,talk about things.
You're doing a lot more thanthe objects.
What do you do?
Um, there's actually a memefloating around that I like I do
mean this is a joke, but I kindof believe it no one's going to
remember how much money you hadthe clothes you wore.
(13:58):
What people are going toremember was what your bench and
squat maxes were.
I don't actually think anybodygives a shit about your bench or
squat maxes either, to be fair.
But I actually think there is abetter chance that people tell
stories about that when you'regone than about how many hours
(14:18):
you hit of overtime,particularly if it's your family
, because they're not going togive a shit about that time,
particularly if it's your family, because they're not going to
give a shit about that.
But yeah, somebody might careif you took an active interest
in their life or you didsomething impressive while they
knew you.
But no, anyway, I'll be donewith my commentary here in just
a second.
But modern consumers, I think,really identify themselves by
(14:41):
the formula I am equals what Ihave and what I consume.
Simon says bullshit.
You are what you repeatedly doPresent tense, not did.
You are neither what you havenor what you've done Present
(15:03):
tense verbs only the havingperson is going to rely on what
they have.
The being persons rely on thesimple fact that they are.
This is again why not to maketoo much of it.
But this is why, if you justthrow me on a trail out in the
middle of nowhere, why I don'tnecessarily need a lot of gear.
(15:26):
A being person doesn't rely onthings to get through the
situation.
A being person is going to relyon other things that kind of
come from being in the presentmoment that you can only become
aware of if you're actually inthere.
People might call itspontaneity, people might call
(15:47):
it creativity.
Those are nice words, but ifyou really want to engage that
state, you kind of have to getyourself deep into the present
moment and then whatever peoplecall that is up to them.
But yeah, key thing, I think,is up to them.
But yeah, um key thing, youknow, I I think to being truly
adaptive is again engaging moreof this being nature, um and but
(16:13):
all right, last amateurlinguistic point, and then I'll
move on.
But I will say that I honestlythink you know, tied to this,
when I'm talking aboutpossession, I think for most
people, except for parentstalking about their children,
the word love you know if youlisten to how people are using
it typically means more have orsomething closer to possession
(16:34):
being implied when they use it.
The only time I can honestlythink when I hear it is is again
when people are maybe talkingabout their, their children.
But when we talk about thethings we love.
We're mostly talking about thethings that people want to
possess and then even read someyou know philosophy, that that
maybe that even trickles intopeople's ideas of love.
(16:57):
But that's so far beyond myscope and not what I came here
to talk about today.
No, I guess what I do kind ofwant to say is I know these are
really divided times.
So, yeah, part of my interestis kind of throw everybody under
the bus in this and it's likehow do we get here, how do we
get to this place where peopleare so divided over basic things
(17:17):
?
And I kind of want to justpoint to this.
There's many things.
One of the factors might bethis having orientation, this
belief that I am what I have, Iam what I consume, and I
actually find this belief to bea shared ideology.
It's funny and I mentioned thisa lot I moved around and I've
(17:40):
lived in different places, soit's always funny for me to see
how people will treat me basedon these external circumstances
that I choose to present to them.
And it isn't hard for me tonavigate, because the easiest
thing in the world is to justchange external things about
yourself and just reflect whatpeople want to see when I'm in
(18:01):
coastal California, I can talkabout a certain set of issues
that when I am in Montana orNorth Carolina, I can just steer
the conversation in a differentdirection.
And for me, who grew up arounda lot of different people, it's
effortless to make this changeif I want to.
I spent most of my life doingthat, but no, so anyway, I'm
(18:23):
just spending all this timebecause, again, where we were
initially talking about washuman status signaling.
This is something that Ipersonally have lived, so I
don't want to only just sharethat.
There's these kind of academicsources that I've come across.
But part of why I find thisinteresting is this really does
map so much to my livedexperience.
(18:46):
I actually remember one timehaving a co-worker come to me
and she was conservative and shejust comes and gets in my ear
and just says oh God, you're theonly one I can talk to around
here.
Everybody else is whatever.
They didn't call it libtardback then.
This was like in the early2000s, it was softer language,
but she was convinced that Ishared all of her views.
And then, yeah, I'm sure anastute listener can probably
(19:11):
figure it out, but at this timethe Iraq war was the main thing
and I'm probably the only personshe spoke to that.
At this time.
The Iraq war was the main thingand I'm probably the only
person she spoke to thatactually protested the war,
never made a thing of it at work, apparently because she felt
very, very comfortable sharing alot of stuff with me and I just
never gave her a reason to notbelieve what she wanted to
(19:34):
believe.
And honestly, I've done this toso many people, and mostly when
I was younger.
But again, as people kind oftalk about how divisive and
intractable these problems arepart of me, who grew up around
people who have all of theseviews, has to call bullshit on
that.
There really is a lot ofperformative things that go on
(19:55):
in all of this is a lot ofperformative things that go on
in all of this.
And no, it's actually quiteeasy to have these conversations
.
There's something differentabout how the conversation is
being had, but intractable, hardto get past the gap not at all.
I think that you guys havereally been fed an illusion of
(20:15):
division, despite the fact thatwe all have different social
contexts.
It's actually quite easy tobridge the gap.
But anyway, let's kind of getback more to the topic, because
I do want to get into luxurybeliefs in fitness.
So I got to finish up on juststatus signaling in general.
So again, another differencebetween human status signals and
(20:37):
signaling in animals.
They tend to be copied ortrickled through the rest of
society.
So once a signal is adopted bythe masses, the affluent tend to
abandon it.
So one example might be spice.
When spice was a luxury andtrade was difficult, it was
(20:57):
common among the elites.
Once trade opened up, spice wasactually abandoned by the
elites and they decided it wasvulgar and put a time period on
this.
For you, court chefs had bannedsugar and spice from all meals
except dessert.
Dueling was also once only anelite thing, but then that
(21:21):
wasn't adopted by the masses.
Then it wasn't prestigiousanymore and then it was
vigilantism and bad.
But when gentlemen did it, itwas super cool and awesome.
Another contemporary examplediamonds, prized pretty much
only because of their scarcity.
You know, conflict free andfake diamonds exist.
(21:42):
A lot of people still preferthe real diamond, in spite of
saying that they are opposed tomurder, violence, rape, um, all
of the things that go along inthe diamond trade and certainly
a lot more than I mentioned.
But no, obviously it's not thesame status signal to have a
(22:07):
diamond that doesn't come from aconflict-free area.
So maybe you don't want to bethat blunt and put it out there
that well.
I need this thing to flex onpeople so that fake one just
isn't going to do it.
It's not about the hue or theshine, it's, it's about people
knowing, uh, that I am somebody.
Lobster another funny one, butalso follows the scarcity that
we've talked about.
When it was abundant, it wasconsidered cruel and unusual
(22:27):
punishment to feed to prisoners.
We passed laws on that in earlyamerica.
Um, regarded about as highquality of protein as rats,
becomes scarce, scarce, and thennow it literally functions as a
status symbol If they everrecover unlikely, but if lobster
populations were to recover, wewould probably not see it
(22:50):
considered fancy food.
The thing every one of thesethings share is again a yearning
for distinction.
That's the key motive in theswitches.
There's nothing changing withlobsters or rocks or two people
fighting.
The reason our tastes change onit just has to do with the
(23:12):
social context you live in andwhether you can gain a
distinction with the behavior.
The social context you live inand whether you can gain a
distinction with the behavior.
So this to me is going to be onekey part of the luxury belief.
I know I've been taking a longtime to set this up, but the
chief purpose of luxury beliefsis, first and foremost, to
indicate evidence of thebeliever's social class or elite
(23:33):
status.
Members of a luxury beliefclass promote the idea because
it advances their socialposition, and they know that
adopting these policies is goingto cost them very little.
Affluent people are againsusceptible to these luxuries
(23:54):
because they can't afford it.
That's precisely why, whenyou're affluent, even if
something has what, to otherpeople, might be a high cost
that's a barrier for entry it'sstill relatively low.
They can afford to have luxurybeliefs.
And if you're an elite group,you have to care the most about
status.
You're the most sensitive tochanges in status.
(24:16):
So this is going to be thegroup that is most fragile to
lacking distinction or, shall wesay it another way, the most
motivated to achieve distinction.
And again, distinction is goingto encompass not only clothes,
food, rituals.
It's also going to extend toideas, beliefs and causes and I
(24:36):
am soon to argue, health andwellness.
One important critique, though,of the entire idea of luxury
beliefs and you might havealready picked up on this
earlier but we are literallyfree to believe anything and it
actually costs nothing.
So just when we're talking inthe realm of beliefs and we're
(24:57):
drawing comparisons fromconsumer goods, things like that
, clearly we signal differentlywith beliefs than we do when we
choose to buy a BMW versus aMercedes.
There's a different set ofsocial contexts that go into
that choice and a different setof costs, and I already kind of
jumped into this.
But, as I had learned movingaround the country, the pressure
(25:20):
to conform is different indifferent regions.
The things that I'm supposed toconform to when I'm in
California are very differentthan when I'm in Michigan,
washington, north Carolina,montana, any of the states that
I've lived in.
I already admitted when I wasyounger I was a chameleon.
I just changed with the setting.
I bring that up just tohighlight.
I'm really, really familiar howchanging certain traits to gain
(25:42):
acceptance or social distinctionis something that humans are
going to do the process for me.
I was a new kid.
Every year, upon moving to anew place, you'd quickly figure
out what the regional norms were.
I was young, I valuedacceptance, and then I would.
One of the most obvious oneswas style.
So then you just go and copyyou know a couple of popular
(26:07):
styles, a couple of popularattitudes and then bang, you're
in and it really, you know, forme, who was, you know, athletic
and just you know good student,conventionally attractive, it
was that easy to get acceptanceanywhere in this country.
But people always ask me or saystuff like, oh, where are people
in ISIS and this and that?
And people don't like theanswer.
(26:29):
People are really the sameeverywhere.
There really isn't a difference.
That was what I picked up frommoving around.
So much was that people areactually startlingly similar.
I would say especially so whenin stress, in good times, that's
when you get to have some fun,variation and things.
But if people are ever goingthrough a tough time, they're
(26:50):
just insanely predictable, andpeople are so far more similar
than we are different.
Leave it at that, but again, wedo live in different social
contexts.
So what I wanted to say becauseI actually have seen how
particularly Rob Henderson kindof uses this concept of luxury
beliefs to pick out thepolitical beliefs he doesn't
like and call them luxurybeliefs.
(27:11):
To be quite honest, I agreewith some, disagree with others.
I think the issue of doing thatwith political beliefs, though.
Is that just the same thing Iwas talking about.
We really have to consider theregion somebody is coming from,
why they're taking on a view andwhat that full context is.
If we're really going to callsomething a luxury belief, I do
(27:32):
think it's a really useful ideathough, but if you're trying to
label somebody's politicalbeliefs luxury beliefs, I do
actually think you have to havea little bit of individual
context.
You can't say that this beliefis a luxury belief because it's
on any issue.
I got to be honest.
It's real different when you'rein North Carolina or California
.
Certain stances take courage inone spot and no courage in the
(27:55):
other, and vice versa, and sopeople in both again depending
on their constitution.
You got some people who arecontrarian types, like to be
different than the crowd.
They're going to counter signal.
You got people that want to gowith the group.
They're going to go with themain signal, and then those
signals get inverted indifferent regions.
So again, I know a lot ofpeople like to think that it's
(28:17):
the ideas and the ideologiesdriving this.
I actually think it's kind ofmore on how people relate to
groups and social contexts.
But again, a lot of that isjust anecdotal, based on my
experience of living indifferent places, meeting people
and seeing how they come tobelieve the things that they
believe.
But anyway, with that being said, I just want to acknowledge
(28:38):
that there's maybe somepotential issues with this whole
idea of luxury beliefs.
That being said, I think it'sreally useful and now that I
think we've got a solidunderstanding I know I was
thorough, but yeah, now I thinkwe can kind of dive into luxury
beliefs in health and wellness.
So I swear I am done with thenerdy stuff.
(29:02):
On the off chance that youliked any of that, I would
recommend David Marks' Statusand Culture how Our Desire for
Social Rank Creates Taste,identity, art, fashion and
Constant Change.
That's a really, really funread actually.
Actually, if you found any ofthis cultural stuff interesting
um, no relation to carl marx, ifthat triggers you, um.
(29:23):
And then again, I actuallythink noah smith has had some
good breakdowns of the concept,and he was actually my initial
sort of stepping point intothere.
So I think noah opinion is hisblog.
Maybe um, sorry, it gets sentto me from a newsletter and,
yeah, good blog, though, butanyway, I think one of the
clearest places that you canreally see particularly that
(29:45):
human status signaling that wasreally described by Veblen.
But this, to me, is the storythat I've really trying to tell
you guys about diet fads eversince I started this show.
Diet fads really do work, a lotlike tech or fashion fads.
There is this group of earlyadopters.
(30:09):
I guess there was somemarketing book I read a while
back.
They call them mavens.
Is that a Seth Godin concept?
I don't remember, but yeah, soyou got your early adopters or
them mavens.
Is that a Seth Godin concept?
I don't remember, but yeah, soyou got your early adopters or
your mavens.
And what these people again aredoing is they're trying to seek
a distinction.
These people are going to beconsidered tastemakers, so
(30:31):
they're going to be the first tomove on a trend.
Obviously, as the groupobserves these cool people doing
something and looking cool,they're going to adopt a trend
as everybody crowds in.
Then the people who needdistinction have to move on and
do something else, because oncethe mass is adopted, it is now
inherently uncool.
(30:52):
Mavens move on.
They regain their distinction.
The masses follow them.
Rinse, repeat.
So if I can, I just want to tellyou the story of fitness fads
in my lifetime.
I was born in 1985.
You can tell.
I've also done my researchbefore, but these are the ones
that I got to live through andsee firsthand.
(31:14):
So I was born into low-fatcrazes.
When I went around the grocerystore with my earliest formative
memories, everything waslow-fat.
The 80s fitness elites adoptedit, went low-fat.
Then the diet was adopted bythe masses and health
(31:34):
organizations and became thestandard advice.
Again, that grocery store thatI have memories of told you I
was born in 85.
So if I remember low fat, nowwe're into the 90s, now we're
getting into that massacceptance time.
And if you remember, rightaround the time that low fat got
to mass acceptance, that waswhen all of the diet and fitness
(31:57):
hipsters jumped over to lowcarb.
That's when I first startedseeing all that stuff pop up.
And again, when it started out,it was that type of thing that
you had to go to special grocerystores to source.
And then eventually it goesmainstream.
It's at all the grocery storesthat like Kroger and Albertsons
it's probably even one companythese days but uh, you know all
(32:20):
the oh and hey, I live in thesouth too.
Shout out food lion, piggly,wiggly.
Uh, michigan, we admire, butyeah, you get it by the time we
got into the big box stores.
It had gone mainstream and itwas time for something else.
So the elite started lookingelsewhere.
Get to the 2000s, if youremember.
That's when paleo hit and I wasall in on that.
I jumped in on that too.
We were eating like cavemen.
(32:43):
Back then, books got writtenand because I was in the midst
of my fitness hipsterdom, I willjust have you guys know I was
on that shit before everybody.
Yeah, honestly, kind of likeyour favorite bands too, I knew
about all them first, yeah, howmany concerts have you been to?
Oh, yeah, yeah, a week, no, butno, admittedly, that's how I
(33:08):
was with diet at this time in mylife.
So, 2000s I'm jumping earlyinto paleo.
But then I start to see allthese books getting written and
I start to see all the massescoming in and I'm like what I'm
special?
I'm a food hipster, so I had todump it.
No, actually that's not thereal reason.
I dumped it.
Told you guys a story.
It wasn't working out with someof the training I was doing,
(33:30):
but anyway, you get the pattern.
I'll start going a littlefaster now.
Early 2010s, keto hits.
That becomes all the rage.
Later in the 2010s, plant-basedcomes in that starts taking
over your grocery store by thetime you see that now we're
lions, now we're getting intocarnivore.
Check out last week's episodeif you want more.
(33:52):
Didn't catch the referencethere.
But again, what I honestly seegoing on in kind of what diet
becomes popular and when it mapsperfectly with the status
seeking cycle, people go intoone mode, it gains adoptance and
then they just have to go seekdistinction.
(34:12):
That again, we don't have to doit over again.
That's what is going on withdiet.
Diet is being used as a signal.
Status signaling is a majordriver of of the fad cycle.
It's for some people it's likehaving the latest model phone.
These are just highly visiblepublic ways to display some
(34:36):
distinction.
And again, this is mirror talk,not finger pointing.
I have done this for years, nomore than that.
While I was doing it, Ipersonally identified as a
scientist and I was runningexperiments and admittedly I do
enjoy doing that and I didcontrol them well.
But in truth I wasn't alsodoing this research in isolation
(35:01):
and coming up with ideas all onmy own.
I was testing, in some capacity, the diet du jour.
I read things that were alittle bit ahead of the
mainstream cycle, but that's it.
I still wasn't exactly doing myown research.
I was actually still partakingin this cycle that was being
driven by other forces than myown genuine investigation and
(35:22):
experiments.
I also got a social benefit forbeing an early adopter and a
fitness enthusiast.
I've been a trainer since my20s.
So when you're the guy thatalways has the newest gadget or
is on the newest thing, peoplejust come to you with the
questions.
It's all about relationships.
Once people know they can getgood answers from you, they come
(35:42):
back.
Yeah, so it was always an easyway to just kind of signal that
I was on the cutting edge andthat I was somebody worth
talking to.
But a lot of the behaviors thatI get into when you're kind of
in that cycle really do wind upkind of becoming useless things.
You adopt it and then you moveon Again.
(36:03):
That's what's led me kind of tothe approach we talk about now.
We're always talking about thebig boring shit like the big
rocks, but none of theseattempts were big game changers.
I've learned a lot, but again,that main thing was to become
less dogmatic.
Every diet works.
Pick one, stick with it.
I've probably gotten results onevery diet you're talking about
(36:24):
and ones that you think don'twork, and had other people do it
myself.
No, I mean, I've really triedto simplify that process of what
principles you actually need topay attention to in diets.
But that's literally how I gotthere.
But yeah, I was.
I was like a seriouslyinsufferable hipster for
(36:45):
nutrition for a long time.
Looking back, I don't reallythink it provided me any
critical edge in workouts and,yeah, it established me as an
expert in some people's eyesbecause I was always doing novel
, fun things.
So anyway, I can admit that thiswas, just frankly, a great
(37:06):
example of status signaling andgroup dynamics side for the
lower class is a little bit morenebulous here, I will admit.
But I'm actually stillconvinced that what I think the
downside of our fad diet cycleis, and why I consider it a
luxury belief, is it muddies thewater and it makes things
(37:26):
difficult.
There's so many people who aregenuinely confused when they're
trying to source a diet and I doblame this cycle.
So again, just to me, theaverage person going to the
grocery store who's confused ashell when they're in like the
milk aisle or any other sectionwhere there's like 17,000
(37:46):
different processed varietiesand they're standing in the
checkout and there's all thesemagazines with like 10 different
diets.
I think that's actually muddiedthe water and made it difficult
for people to fuel themselvesand to even know what's healthy,
and it's really annoyingbecause the truth is a lot
simpler than the lies.
(38:07):
So, yeah, anyway, slightlynebulous, but that's why I'm
willing to call this one aluxury belief.
The fad diet cycle in generalmuddies the water.
It's a bunch people like likeme, trying to be hipsters,
trying to be cool, trying togain some distinction and look
like an expert, at the cost ofjust reaping absolute chaos on
(38:28):
the general public'sunderstanding of what good
health practices are.
So anyway, um, consider that mypenance for my years of
perpetuating it.
I am no longer a member of thatcult and I've moved on, but no,
anyway.
Next one I'm going to talkabout is going to be sort of
(38:48):
nutrition space, and this onehas a much stronger connection
actually to downsides for thelower classes, and we're
actually going to talk aboutorganic foods.
Believe it or not, organicfoods really might be a luxury
belief.
So, first off, most consumersthat are going to be choosing
organic foods obviously aregoing to be a more affluent
(39:09):
consumer Not shaming you, by theway.
I don't think that they putthis stuff up in the grocery
stores.
So, yeah, it took me a while tolearn this too, but no.
2018 study found that if all ofEngland and Wales were to shift
entirely to organic farmingwhich in a lot of ways would be
a great thing crop rotation,taking care of the ecosystems
(39:32):
there's a ton of good reasons todo that.
I also don't want to pour abunch of cold water on this or
piss in the pool whatever termyou like, but yeah, so they
found some good stuff.
They found that it would cutemissions from livestock by 5%.
It would cut the emissions fromgrowing crops by 20% per unit
(39:53):
of production.
So what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with that is theyield.
The issue is that the yieldalso drops 40%.
So then you're going to be in asituation where, if you had
shifted everything over, you'vegot a couple options.
You can import food.
The resulting importation isgoing to negate the emissions
reductions that you did.
(40:13):
You could convert grasslandsand other areas over to farmland
, but then the issue there isthat those lands naturally store
carbon and plant tissues, soagain, you're going to lose your
emissions gain.
This is just kind of anunfortunate reality is that
(40:34):
lower yields they do createeconomic incentives that may not
be driving the intended outcome.
And so one, two, I kind of wantto speak up for the farmers for
a second here.
I'm not one, but I know some.
And farmers don't want todestroy the environment, believe
it or not.
(40:54):
But sort of when I see peoplecritiquing agriculture policy
without any experience orknowledge of people who do it.
I'm not an agriculture expert,I don't want to position myself
that way, but no, I just don'thave people to say confidently
that farmers really, really docare about the environment.
They're not trying to activelyfuck it up, they are trying to
(41:17):
make a living and economicincentives do play a role in all
of the choices they make.
So if they were to choose to goorganic, the economic
incentives are going to be apart of it.
They can't be ignored.
When you actually make thatswitch to become an organic farm
, what you're leaning on, you'renot buying more land, so you're
(41:38):
planning on selling less foodat a higher price point.
So again, particularly ifyou're most farming, it's done
by these huge farms.
If you're even thinking about asmaller farmer that's switching
over to organic farming, that'swhat they're going to have to
rely on, they're not going to beable to sell them at affordable
prices.
So, again, when we have alimited amount of farmland, the
(42:00):
people who will bear the cost inthis are going to be the lower
classes who don't have food topurchase.
Similarly and I'm really nottrying to trash organic foods I
think there's a bunch of greatpractices that we do need to
consider.
I mentioned some of those uptop Crop rotation.
You need to grow the righttypes of crops within ecosystems
to support them, make sure thatthey stay healthy, not negating
(42:22):
any of that.
But I just feel like a lot ofpeople think, when you get
organic food, that that meansthat there weren't pesticides or
anything like that.
That also isn't true.
So I think, in general it'stough to say because, again,
people live in different spacesI think broadly, though,
comfortable to say that I thinkthe health benefits of organic
food have probably beenoveremphasized.
(42:45):
There's a handful that are kindof worth getting if you will.
But just to give you guys ashort rule, because I don't have
the list in front of me Ifsomething has like a thick peel
or stock, it's really not goingto be that important in front of
me.
If something has like a thickpeel or stock, it's really not
going to be that important.
And again, it's not like theyaren't using pesticides on the
organic things too.
They're just certified organicpesticides and we can get into
(43:08):
what that process ofcertification looks like at a
different time, but you know howthat goes.
It's probably not as clean asmany people have been led to
believe.
So again, aspects that I reallyreally like.
The reason I'm sort of pigeoningorganic food as potentially a
luxury belief is that if we dosee continuing demand for more
(43:29):
organic food, what you're goingto see is more and more farmland
switched over to organic farms.
That's probably going to leadto the importation of food
coming from elsewhere.
And again, the people that aregoing to actually bear the cost
is actually going to be mostlylower income people.
If you shop at Air One Gelson'sWhole Foods, I don't think
(43:51):
these are going to be problemsthat you're going to have.
But anyway, I think I also gota couple for you guys in the
training realm.
I just looked at the clock.
We only got time for one more,and this one's much more
important to me.
So, off the top, when I wasfirst thinking about this
episode, I actually thought thatall that stuff that I talk
(44:12):
about in the majoring, in theminors camp, was what we were
going to do here, prepared awhole bunch of stuff like that,
and then I actually dumped itbecause most of those things I
was going to talk about they'rejust bad ideas.
For an individual Probably notgood, but they don't have a
downside for the non-user in adifferent class.
So again, I don't care ifactually people are buying
(44:33):
stupid fitness gadgets that Ithink are a waste of money, or
getting into workout fads thatare silly, stupid, potentially
harmful, because they're theonly person that can get hurt
the person doing it.
So that kind of is like my body, my choice.
That type of stuff I justlegitimately don't care about
(44:54):
that.
If it was creating a downsidefor other people, not them, then
I think there would besomething worth talking about.
But just to clear up why I'vetalked down in the past if my
clients are doing these things,then I have to badmouth them,
but if someone I don't know isdoing something like this, what
the hell do I care?
So, anyway, we're not actuallygoing to talk about stupid
(45:16):
products, silly fads, anythinglike that.
The place I actually want to go,because I think this is the
most important one is the waythat we develop young athletes.
In this country right now,that's a luxury belief.
Specifically, I'm talking aboutthe pay-for-play leagues that
are becoming the default methodto develop youth athletes.
(45:37):
I don't remember the show.
Sure, I've talked about this inthe past, probably just ranting
.
But my first point, welcome tomy TED Talk.
But it doesn't produce thestrongest national teams.
It frays our communities at atime where, again, everybody
agrees that we're incrediblydivided and the biggest cost is
borne on the non-users, thelower classes, the non-elites.
(46:02):
I said a lot there, so now I'mgoing to go point by point and
explain every single thing thatI just said.
So yeah, we've justthoughtlessly stumbled into
norms around youth sports that Ithink most adults that are too
old to have experienced it thatincludes me, by the way.
So if you're older than me, youprobably haven't experienced
this either.
You're not really going torealize how much things have
(46:25):
changed.
Tldr sports have shifted frominformal and school-based
programs to these expensivepay-for-play leagues.
There's consequences foreverybody involved for parents
being overscheduled, kidsburnout but the most profound
really are for the lower classes, arguably playing the highest
(46:47):
cost in non-involvement.
I want to quote Matthew Iglesiason this.
He's got a blog Slow Boringthat I like to check in on every
now and again blog Slow Boringthat I like to check in on every
now and again.
But he said that I thinkshifting from informal and
school-based sports to expensivepay-for-play leagues has landed
(47:07):
us in a pretty dysfunctionalplace where parenting is
unnecessarily complicated,society is unnecessarily
inegalitarian and communitiesare unnecessarily weak.
I love that and I want to echoa point that Iglesias was making
in this article.
But there really is no easypolicy fix.
This is why we have to talkabout it.
(47:29):
It's why we have to think aboutit.
There can't be like a YouthSports Act to save us from
what's going on.
People are going to have tofundamentally shift the way we
think about what's going on.
People are going to have tofundamentally shift the way we
think about what's going on.
And so one you know, payne, howdid we get here?
Because I think a lot of peoplekind of grew up where they were
.
You know, playing sports atschool was the highest
(47:51):
achievement and I wanted to letyou guys know that's a memory.
That's not the way it isanymore.
You know, in kind of just thisprocess of competing for spots
on those school-based teams,paid programs started to emerge
and incentives just droveparents to get in and be
competitive.
The benefits and rewards ofsports you know, from
scholarships to going pro, tojust the benefits to your brain
(48:14):
and social these are well known.
So parents have just beencompeting for quite a while now
and now we've kind of arrived ata world where again if you're
not in this, I don't know ifyou've experienced anything like
it these leagues don't functionlike leagues in other countries
.
There's no national priority ondeveloping the best athletes.
(48:36):
These are for-profit leagues.
I'm not against profits that'sawesome in a lot of places but
the issue with that in youthsports is that you develop the
athletes who can pay to bedeveloped.
This isn't an issue of takingthe top 1% in terms of talent to
an elite program to get evenbetter.
(48:57):
What we do is a fundamentallydifferent situation.
The criteria upon which you getselected to elite athletic
training is ability to pay, notelite athletic talent.
Studies have been done on this.
So a kid, say, at the 70thpercentile of ability, but the
(49:17):
90th percentile in householdincome is much more likely than
a kid at the 90th percentile ofability and the 20th percentile
of household income.
This echoes data that I sawmany, many years ago in a 2012
book by Nate Silver.
The Signal and the Noise chapterin there about NBA and implicit
(49:39):
bias plays a lot in perceptionsof the NBA.
Most people, I think, thinkthat that league is full of
people who have strived theirway out of tough situations, and
the facts don't actually bearthat out.
I'm not throwing people underthe bus.
Most people in the NBA comefrom two family homes great
educations, great supportsystems, all of that stuff.
(49:59):
If you think the NBA iscomprised of people who've
strived out of bad situationsagain, that's probably because
implicit bias and there's a lotof black guys in the NBA and you
assume that must be theirbackstory.
But no, most of the NBA starsthat you can rattle off your
head, with the exception ofLeBron James, don't have that
(50:21):
backstory.
You know I'll steal NateSilver's here, but the simple
sort of tell was would the namefit at a country club?
Michael Jeffrey, jordan,christopher Paul, stephen Curry,
kevin Durant, lebron James?
There's one that obviously youmight not see on the placard at
(50:44):
the old country club 30 yearsago, there's your outlier.
That's how you can spot him.
But anyway, more and more.
That story is actually becomingrare.
It's highly available andLeBron is so great.
Everybody knows that story, soI think they think it's the norm
.
Everything about that story isso far from the norm.
(51:04):
So, yeah, sports is so oftencited as the last bastion of
merit, but increasingly in theUnited States it isn't.
There's a growing class dividein sports participation.
Local and community teams arewithering while paid programs
are growing.
So this, again, is a luxurybelief.
As consumers use more and morepay-for-play leagues, there is
(51:26):
going to be less and lessresources.
The parks are going to keepgetting worse.
The school teams are going tokeep getting worse.
Also, beyond that, even if youdon't care about kids at other
schools, if you still only careabout little Johnny getting as
far as he can, even if he's onlya 70% talent, you want to push
him as far as he could possiblygo, get him into a league beyond
(51:50):
his ability.
That's your prerogative.
That's weird, but I can makeone more argument.
Even for you, it's also just abad idea.
On merit, you're worried aboutlittle Johnny, aren't you?
Well, early specialization alsoleads to more injuries, higher
likelihood of burnout and worsehealth outcomes.
So part of this is like we gotto just get back to kind of
(52:12):
being like normal people again.
Like, if little Johnny isn'tthe best on the soccer team,
that's not a terrible outcome,quite frankly.
If he is, that's great andlet's get him moving.
But no again, for those of uswho have the memory of playing
for our school team, the pridethat you felt making that team,
(52:34):
the pride the community felt inyou when you put on those colors
, how you felt as a memberwithin that community when
people came out to your games,again, I just want to let you
guys know that that's a memorythat's not really going on as
much as you might think it is.
And if that's a bad thing whichI think it is we might have to
(52:56):
shift one our values.
But, quite frankly, just some ofthis competitive spending that
that us parents I'm in thisgroup, I'm not there yet Um, but
yeah, you can tell I don'treally want to partake in this
for for so many reasons and Ivalue sports very, very highly,
(53:16):
um, so yeah, I'm going to dowhat I have to do, but I hope,
as we age into these things,that we can kind of get more
back into community-orientedsports.
And then initially, admittedlyalso, I was going to say parents
act a little normal.
I don't know.
I really don't believe much intheories of decadence kids these
days, but the way I see someparents freaking out about their
(53:39):
kids' performance in sports, Ido think the incentives have
changed.
People weren't making millionsback in the day, and so I think
we do have my wife's a castingdirector.
We got the equivalent of stagemoms over in sports and they
take this shit way too seriously.
I really think that we got toget real about what the purpose
(54:01):
of sport is.
One we want communities to cometogether.
We want to have great nationalteams to represent us, and we
want sport to uplift and enrichthe lives of the people who
participate and the people whowatch on every level.
Pay for play doesn't check anyof the boxes.
Luxury belief.
This is something that we gotto move on from.
(54:23):
Anyway, guys, I glanced overand thank you once again for
your time and attention.
Always appreciate when you guysspend it here.
Again, if you found anythinginteresting in today's episode,
make sure to pass it on.
Share it with someone else thatyou think might enjoy it.
I want to keep growing ourcommunity as organically as
(54:46):
possible.
My skin crawls even when I saystuff like that.
So apologies, fears did too,but yeah, always appreciate your
time and attention, guys.
And yeah, remember mind andmuscle are inseparably
intertwined.
There are no gains withoutbrains.
Keep lifting and learning, I'lldo the same.
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