Alain de Botton - Status Anxiety

 

Alain de Botton is one of the most prolific writers on the popular philosophy shelves. When I was studying philosophy in uni I sniffed at such "accessible" writers and would never have been caught dead with a School of Life book in hand.

Now, however, having gone thick from years of corporate drudgery, I find de Botton's books interesting and relevant. Of course, he writes in a flitting sort of way way. With his books you get a digestible degustation of ideas, philosophers, cultural phenomena, and psychology. The samples are well-selected and interesting. And I like that he doesn't lay them all out in a central thesis or argument, which is dreadfully boring to me.

At the time I read this book I must have been a little troubled by my own "status", at least career-wise. From 2011 to 2021 my CV had followed that upward trajectory of ever-increasing pay and prestige, until my "career break" in 2022. 

As 2023 began I realised I'm settling into a new phase of my career - working in part-time, low-skill jobs. This no longer feels like one of the experiments I'm trying out for fun, but something that I might be willing to do in at least the medium term. In other words, I actually like low-status jobs and find that they suit me. But to accept this would mean resolving the anxiety I feel about my status. 

According to de Botton, status anxiety is pervasive in today's world because our status - being derived largely from career and income - is contingent on at least 5 external factors: 

1. Talent
2. Luck
3. Your employer
4. Your employer's profitability
5. The global economy

All of which are not within your control and, moreover, can change overnight. Now this sounds very different from the state-sanctioned narrative that we are individually responsible for our career success and therefore status. (Hence the entire adult training industrial complex. All the better to distract the unemployed with, lest they notice larger issues like the economy...)

The remainder of the book is an exploration of possible antidotes to status anxiety. Apart from, of course, realising that your status is mostly not within your control and therefore not worth dwelling on.

1. Philosophy

Arthur Schopenhauer:

We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.

Philosophers remind us that status is relative and lives in the mind of people - who are, themselves, shit and not worth caring about.

2. Art

Jean-Baptiste Chardin - Copper Pot

For every Hans Holbein, painter of kings, there is a Jean-Baptiste Chardin:

He was a gifted painter who had mysteriously decided to devote his attention to loaves of bread, broken plates, knives and forks, apples and pears, as well as working- or lower-middle-class characters going about their business in plain kitchens and living rooms.

While we are socially conditioned to equate value/beauty with status, art can make us realise that the two exist separately.

3. Politics

In modern capitalism wealth determines status, but the basic problem is that it

a gigantic distortion of priorities, an elevation to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation which should be only one of the many things determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves.

That was John Ruskin's complaint about economics in his essay Unto This Last, which, despite not being overtly political, was one of the biggest inspirations in the founding of the British Labour party.

4. Christianity

Christianity's great legacy is the memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death, which reorients us from daily, profane concerns (getting richer, keeping up appearances) towards what truly matters (?). 

5. Bohemia

From Stendhal's preface to On Love:

The active, hardworking, eminently respectable and positive life of a privy councillor, a textile manufacturer or a clever banker reaps its reward in wealth but not in tender sensations. Little by little the hearts of these gentlemen ossify.

This last quote was the one that hit home. I hadn't realised it before, but the reason I'm opting for a low-status career path right now is to preserve my capacity for "tender sensations". The feel of sunlight, the beauty of birds, the taste of ice cream, the transportative quality of a good book... I simply prefer to devote my attention to these things than to the acquisition of money or power.