Sunday, June 05, 2005

Status Anxiety - Alain De Botton

I have just finished reading the book by Alain De Botton, who has written several books combining popular, daily problem with more philosophical touch. In a way this is a good example of writing exercise since it makes us think more deeply about our daily life. When written on pages, the daily, unobserved things will seem different and not-so-usual!

De Botton organizes the books into 5 causes and 5 solution of status anxiety, namely: lovelessness, snobbery, expectation, meritocracy and dependence as the five causes; philosophy, art, politics, christianity, and bohemia as the solutions. The book is full of anecdotes from many interesting sources. The combination of important and interesting sources into a meaningful, orderly written text is the strength of the book. Although I am not very very impressed with the solution he proposes, I still found many good ideas in it.

A quote from the book:
"However unpleasant anxieties about status may be, it is difficult to imagine a good life entirely free of them, for a fear that one might fail and disgrace oneself in the eyes of others is only a natural consequence of having ambitions, a preference for one set of outcomes over another and a respect for individuals besides oneself. Status anxiety is the price we pay for acknowledging a public difference between a successful and an unsuccessful life.

Yet, though our need for status may be fixed, we retain a choice of where to fulfill the need, we are free to ensure that our worries about being disgraced will arise principally in relation to a public whose methods or judgement we both understand and respect. Status anxiety could be defined as problematic only in so far as it is inspired by values that we follow because we are fearful and preternaturally obedient, because we have been anaesthetized into believing that they are natural, perhaps God-given, because those around us are in thrall to them or because we have grown too imaginatively timid to conceive of alternatives. "

See how I stress on the "imaginatively timid" phrase. Look around you, and you will find this a lot!

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