Status Anxiety – Alain de Botton

Since I was young, I’ve enjoyed dabbling in philosophy. My favourite book of all time is Sophies World by Jostein Gaardner, which takes the reader on a unique journey through the history of philosophy (and has a special twist at the end which does your head in – somewhat akin to The Matrix where I came out of the cinema expecting cracks to start appearing in the sky). I used to borrow treatises about logic from the library and pour over them, usually not understanding a word but still enjoying being in the company of big ideas that go to the core of our existence.

I first came across Alain de Botton while exploring my friends book collection during my year in Laos (something I always do when first visiting a house – it tells a lot about character!) The Art of Travel was a revelation, although many of its specific ideas elude me now – I put this down to bad memory. While I had always felt that being in Laos was about more than enjoying myself and ticking the ‘travel’ box on the life experience list, it was good to feel that someone else believed that travel, and the reasons behind it, were much more complex and deserving of thought.

I came across Status Anxiety while searching for more. It felt as if he had a window into my soul – with almost every page came another thought that would challenge many well-worn preconceptions. Perhaps the most fundamental belief that was shook (which was the focal point of the whole book) was that it was ok to be ‘ordinary’. This was a little hard to swallow, considering I spend a lot of time thinking about how to be (and sometimes trying to be) extraordinary.

de Botton spends the majority of the book pouring scorn on how we evaluate status and worth. For example,  he compares the requirements for high status between different societies in various time periods, emphatically making the point that today’s measure of status in the Western world (e.g. wealth) is not absolute. He also makes the point that while wealth can often be a indicator of merit – of ‘creativity, courage, intelligience and stamina’ – there are plenty of rich people in the world who got their money through deceitful means, or because their parents left them a large inheritance. The discussion on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and George Eliot’s Middlemarch was brilliant – where characters without some of the traditional merits that were held in high esteem, but rich moral lives, end up trumping those around them with far more external riches and moral emptiness. This framework for evaluating ourselves is far more comforting.

The novelist [Austen] exchanges the standard lens through which people are viewed in society, a lens which magnifies wealth and power, for a moral lens, which magnifies qualities of character. Through this lens, the high and mighty may become small, the forgotten and retiring figures may loom large. (pg 139)

de Botton also seeks to reassure us that comparison with others, and the instant belief in their opinions, has no value either. He seems to rejoice in sharing Schopenhauer’s acidic comments about ‘the earth swarming with people who are not worth talking to’ (pg 127) and laughs at the ridiculousness of times when men would duel to defend their honour against others’ negative opinions (for example, a floppy moustache). It is not the value that is placed on us by others that matters, but rather the value that we bestow on ourselves. Furthermore, we don’t actually need the praise of others for that value to exist.

The Christianity argument was interesting too. As someone who has counted themselves Christian for eight years, I didn’t expect this book to provide new insights into my own religion that would go straight to the heart of my faith. Jesus repeatedly discusses in the Bible about the similarities between all people (e.g. our creation by God in his image) and even talks of the poor in spirit being first to enter heaven, which is completely countercultural – but not ideas that I had not heard before. de Botton summarised this equality in one terrifying sentence:

We can overcome a feeling of unimportance not by making ourselves more important, but by recognising the relative unimportance of everyone (pg 249).

The little, constant voice in my head piped up saying ‘But I want to be important!’ In fact, it is not about being important – God already views me as important, but what I really wanted all this time was to be more important. It seems like God has a lot more work to do with me yet.

de Botton discussion’s of the differences between the earthly and the spiritual realm also shed light on the worthlessness of status here on Earth, as well as providing another alternate framework to evaluate ourselves:

One might be powerful and revered in the earthly realm, while barren and corrupt in the spiritial one. Or, like the beggar Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke, one might have only rags to ones name while glorifying in divine riches(pg 263).

However, there are a few challenges that Status Anxiety threw my way that I am still trying to resolve. To start with: just as I may feel there are those who might rank themselves above me, am I also guilty of this? Do I assume that those who haven’t had my education or earn as much money as me are somehow worth less than me? While the book did wonders at elevating my self esteem, I don’t feel like I was left with any strategies to actually stop perpetuating these status myths.

I’m also still struggling with the idea that the opinions of others should have no impact on how I view myself. If their opinion is worth nothing, then why is my opinion necessarily somehow worth more? After all, I am an ‘other’ to everyone else but me – so is de Botton saying that the only person that my opinion should matter to is myself? How am I to know that my opinion is not full of the alleged garbage spouted out by these others? There seems to be no objective source to ask.

My final challenge from Status Anxiety came from the very premise of the book itself – that it was ok to be ‘ordinary’. For example, de Botton explores the idea of tragedy in art, and how it allows us to share and empathise with a common human condition – failure. He goes on to say:

‘A world in which people had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily’ (pg 165).

The line between not allowing my failures to affect my self-esteem,  and not trying at all, convinced in my own self-worth, feels far too fine. Could this book have swung me around from pushing too hard for things that perhaps don’t matter, to not standing for anything at all and revelling in ‘ordinariness’? The fact that I am having that argument with myself convinces me that this is not the case.

I have Consolations of Philosophy sitting on my bookshelf at the moment, waiting to offer me more insights. But for the moment, I am giving myself – and my conscience – a break.

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