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A review by morgan_blackledge
Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
5.0
British royal and socialite, Wallis Simpson once said:
“You can never be too rich or too thin”.
This terse little witticism summarizes this book as well as any.
Just as modernity killed god, and gave birth to existential dread, whereby death and change became the only certainty, and finding life’s value and meaning became the task of the individual.
Author Alain de Botton asserts that neo-liberal capitalism killed “the divine order” of individual class status, and promoted the toxic truism that an individual’s financial status is a true indication of their actual merit and worth.
Are you rich?
Are you successful?
Than you earned it.
And that means you’re talented in equal measure.
Are you poor?
Than that means you’re untalented in equal measure.
Particularly given the natural fact that anyone can become wealthy in America if they are smart, brave, industrious, or what ever.
de Bottan asserts:
Christianity in the age of the European cast system, valued the poor (peasant farmers) as noble and necessary in their support of artisans, scholars, clergy and the aristocracy.
Modern American meritocracy enabled class mobility, whereby anyone (in theory) could better themselves via hard work and education, but also smuggled in the inference that wealth and commercial success was an obvious measure of talent, intelligence, hard work, entrepreneurial verve and venture, or any other manner of elitist dog whistles.
The enlightenment age gave birth to the ostensibly unalloyed goods of: democracy, civil rights, access to education, industry and technology, and the American dream.
It also transformed a persons financial status, whether low or high, from a sort of divine ordination (a nearly value free marker of individual worth), to the primary indication of that individuals actual human worth.
After Reagan defeated Communism.
The case was closed.
American Capitalism was obviously the natural superior way.
The wholesale acceptance of the American meta-narrative means that, today: if you’re not keeping up with the Kardashian’s, than you’re basically worthless, and everyone will know it.
Rich people are superior, as evidenced by their wealth (Donal Trump), and as such should be afforded special rights, status etc. and poor people are inferior, as evidenced by their poverty (homelessness) and as such, should suffer, if for no other reason than as a living motivation for everyone else to get back to work.
The injunction is:
Stay young, fit, stylish and attractive, and display your status on every channel.
Or else…
Hence that pervasive sense of “status anxiety” we all feel and (oddly) rarely question anymore.
When we look back in history, to other cultures, at other times, their practices can seem remote, or foreign, or alien.
Take the practice of dueling, or any other type of honor killing for example.
Hopefully, most of us, no, hopefully all of us, find the notion of entering a death sport, with the intention of murdering another person, for the seemingly non issue of questioning, or insulting, or slighting your honor, FUCKING CRAZY AS FUCK.
But for people in an honor culture, where your reputation of character was (is) ABSOLUTELY imperative to your success and wellbeing. You might be compelled to do exactly that.
Lots of not at all crazy people did, and still do, particularly in communities or social structures that do not provide adequate, nonviolent, other means of dispute resolution.
That’s a long way of prefacing de Botton’s astute analogy that, for modern westerners, losing status may be as existentially threatening as loss of honor was to our ancestors, or our contemporaries who still live in cultures of honor.
Perhaps, period dramas if the future will reenact our contemporary death-march of status oriented consumerism, and they will see it as ABSOLUTELY CRAZY AS FUCK, in the same way we view dueling with pistols and sabers today.
In sum:
Just as honor culture impels death sports.
Status anxiety impels a death march.
These are the bullet points.
But this book as much more to offer than this.
Alain de Botton is a wonderful witty intellectual.
In many ways, he’s the contemporary Oskar Wild.
Great writing that somehow delivers fierce social commentary in a way that goes down like fine cognac.
5/5 stars
“You can never be too rich or too thin”.
This terse little witticism summarizes this book as well as any.
Just as modernity killed god, and gave birth to existential dread, whereby death and change became the only certainty, and finding life’s value and meaning became the task of the individual.
Author Alain de Botton asserts that neo-liberal capitalism killed “the divine order” of individual class status, and promoted the toxic truism that an individual’s financial status is a true indication of their actual merit and worth.
Are you rich?
Are you successful?
Than you earned it.
And that means you’re talented in equal measure.
Are you poor?
Than that means you’re untalented in equal measure.
Particularly given the natural fact that anyone can become wealthy in America if they are smart, brave, industrious, or what ever.
de Bottan asserts:
Christianity in the age of the European cast system, valued the poor (peasant farmers) as noble and necessary in their support of artisans, scholars, clergy and the aristocracy.
Modern American meritocracy enabled class mobility, whereby anyone (in theory) could better themselves via hard work and education, but also smuggled in the inference that wealth and commercial success was an obvious measure of talent, intelligence, hard work, entrepreneurial verve and venture, or any other manner of elitist dog whistles.
The enlightenment age gave birth to the ostensibly unalloyed goods of: democracy, civil rights, access to education, industry and technology, and the American dream.
It also transformed a persons financial status, whether low or high, from a sort of divine ordination (a nearly value free marker of individual worth), to the primary indication of that individuals actual human worth.
After Reagan defeated Communism.
The case was closed.
American Capitalism was obviously the natural superior way.
The wholesale acceptance of the American meta-narrative means that, today: if you’re not keeping up with the Kardashian’s, than you’re basically worthless, and everyone will know it.
Rich people are superior, as evidenced by their wealth (Donal Trump), and as such should be afforded special rights, status etc. and poor people are inferior, as evidenced by their poverty (homelessness) and as such, should suffer, if for no other reason than as a living motivation for everyone else to get back to work.
The injunction is:
Stay young, fit, stylish and attractive, and display your status on every channel.
Or else…
Hence that pervasive sense of “status anxiety” we all feel and (oddly) rarely question anymore.
When we look back in history, to other cultures, at other times, their practices can seem remote, or foreign, or alien.
Take the practice of dueling, or any other type of honor killing for example.
Hopefully, most of us, no, hopefully all of us, find the notion of entering a death sport, with the intention of murdering another person, for the seemingly non issue of questioning, or insulting, or slighting your honor, FUCKING CRAZY AS FUCK.
But for people in an honor culture, where your reputation of character was (is) ABSOLUTELY imperative to your success and wellbeing. You might be compelled to do exactly that.
Lots of not at all crazy people did, and still do, particularly in communities or social structures that do not provide adequate, nonviolent, other means of dispute resolution.
That’s a long way of prefacing de Botton’s astute analogy that, for modern westerners, losing status may be as existentially threatening as loss of honor was to our ancestors, or our contemporaries who still live in cultures of honor.
Perhaps, period dramas if the future will reenact our contemporary death-march of status oriented consumerism, and they will see it as ABSOLUTELY CRAZY AS FUCK, in the same way we view dueling with pistols and sabers today.
In sum:
Just as honor culture impels death sports.
Status anxiety impels a death march.
These are the bullet points.
But this book as much more to offer than this.
Alain de Botton is a wonderful witty intellectual.
In many ways, he’s the contemporary Oskar Wild.
Great writing that somehow delivers fierce social commentary in a way that goes down like fine cognac.
5/5 stars