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I've just read the book.
To maybe more accurately re-state de Botton's thesis:
Human beings tend to care deeply about what "people in general" think about them. For example, being snubbed by a snotty record shop owner can leave you feeling really shitty, even though you know it shouldn't matter. And getting a smile from an attractive stranger can make your day.
This sense of what people think of you tends to impact on your own view of how "good" you are, i.e. how deserving of love.
We can sum up this sense of what "people in general think about you" as your "status" in society. So, in ancient Sparta, being muscular and unable to read led to high social status. In Samoa being fat might lead to high status etc.
According to the theory, human beings have always had a sense of status. But, in medieval days, when a peasant was a peasant for life, and a noble was a noble for life, one's status was less psychologically impactful because there was very little you could do about it. So nobody had to feel ashamed just for being a peasant. They might be impoverished and/or downtrodden, but they didn't have to feel it was their fault. God and/or the king had ordained it, and they were powerless.
However, in modern-day "meritocratic" society, the common belief is that if one is rich, one has earned it. Ergo, if one is poor, one must be worthless.
Add to this the effect of the mass media which continually presents us with images of the better off, inviting us to make negative comparisons with our own lifestyle, and you have a recipe for "status anxiety".
De Botton studiously avoids making any value judgement about which age was better, but states his aim as a discussion of the issue in the hope that eventually some of this anxiety can be alleviated.
He concentrates very thoroughly on the economic part of the equation, making the assumption that status in the modern world is primarily economically driven.
I think the concept of "status anxiety" is a valid one, and not one with strong implications, but more an interesting area to discuss.
The hole in de Botton's formulation, to my mind, is the conception of status as monolithic and focused on money.
I'd see it more as a series of discrete groups within society. In some status is driven by education and employment in an intellectual field. In some by a measure of artistic success. In some by criminal notoriety.
I find this last one key to explaining the cycle of ethnic minority crime - if a group is discriminated against and prevented from achieving status in mainstream society, it makes perfect sense for people to try and achieve status in criminal society instead. Which is a (maybe too) neat explanation for why, despite all the evidence that crime does not pay particularly well, people still get pulled into it.
Finally, I'd really like to see the concept of fame integrated into this analysis. I don't think it makes much sense without it. |
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