Analysis Of Status Anxiety By Alain De Botton

In the book Status Anxiety, the author Alain de Botton introduces different thesis on Status in his words status is something that people desire. He often reflects on how people gain status through the eyes of others if people could obtain status in the eyes of their own self than the world might be a better place to live in. He compares status to personal needs of human: such as love, the expectation that society has for people, how status is obtained by snobbery, the meritocracy people live in, and how people use their dependence for advantages and disadvantages. At the beginning of the book before chapter one begins the definition of status is displayed the books definition of status is “One’s position in society” After reading this the

question arises, who determines one’s position? Further into the reading the word CAUSES appears. The mind may wonder to thinking, there can be a cause for status? De Botton open the mind to see that Status is something that is obtained through people’s needs, wants, and desires he exemplifies what causes the need and throughout the book gives a solution to the anxiety of status.
Chapter one is titled Lovelessness De Botton says that “Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories.

The first-the story of our quest for sexual love and the second-the story of our quest for love from the world” He explains that the first type of love that people seek is shared amongst people they are more likely to share this type of love with others. The second type of love people are ashamed of its kept a secret amongst themselves. While its clearly stated in the text as to what he means by these statements as he references the need for love is no different from the need for status. He is picking at the idea that the human desire for love is obtained through their desire to noticed in the world. If a person has the affection of another they feel as if they are at a higher status than those who are still searching for love, but those who may have found love may not be at the same position in life as the one who are still seeking that affection. De Botton uses quotes from William James a great philosopher to keep his argument going about not having affection he says that a “rage of impotent despair” would began inside a person causing them to feel less worthy. He then inserts that do to people not knowing their own self value they seek a continuing approval of others “self-conception could be pictured as a leaking balloon, forever requiring the helium of external love to remain inflated” reading that quote it almost sounds as if De Botton is expressing a disapproval of the way people thinking wishing that the concept of self-approval would come before the approval of

others.
The second chapter talks about expectations, what would expectation have to do with status? De Botton starts off with material progress. The more technology grew making the home, less self-efficient and more product reliable the more need there is for the new and improved appliances. When president Nixon to Moscow to exhibit a display of the average American home the displayed had major appliances that the average American could not afford. Nikita Khrushchev called president Nixon out on his foolish accusation stating that a lemon squeezer wasn’t something a person would want. According to De Botton and his inserts about new technology being built in England status now depending on the expectation of what a person had. The more stuff a person has increases their status “Luxuries became decencies, and decencies necessities.” Another expectation that determines status is equality and envy. When comparing self to one’s on expectations the feeling of not having enough can occur “Neither who we are nor what we have is quite enough,” a person can have more than enough money than they can spend in a life time, but still have a feeling of not amounting up to anything. When a person can recognize their own self within somebody else that’s when status expectation has been meet. When a person can identify with another and recognize that they have similar qualities, but another person may have more than they have that when envy enters the picture. A person begins to envy the one who has more than they do thinking that they are equal. Envy leads to the anxiety of status De Botton used David Hume’s quote to justify this assertion “it’s not the disproportion between ourselves and others that produces envy but the proximity” a person now takes envy to accomplish the same goals someone else may have. The lower a person ranking is those who are above do not envy. De Botton notes that inequality has been accepted since the beginning of the 18th century. Many believed that inequality was acceptable, or that there was no other way around it. The center of Christianity was built on inequality that God may see all humans as equal, but equality was something that wasn’t meant to be practiced. God placed people in ranking order from superior to inferior and that line was predestined and not meant to be broken. De Botton explains, expectation as a person may not be where they should be creating an anxiety of status causing the desire to get where they want to be.
When De Botton talks about meritocracy he talks about the view of the poor and the wealthy from two different point of views. One being that the poor are the gold mind to society the condition that they are in are not their own fault, but the fault of society with them being so low they are the most useful. It can be said to say that the lower class makes life easier for the upper classes. The second view being that the wealthy are the ones to praise for the success of society because of their hard work and life style they hold the key to how society to should be. According to Rousseau a person who De Botton frequently refers to in his book as well as Karl Marx (Ideology) it’s because of the poor that the world has sin. The argument that De Botton is trying to make is that living in meritocracy the blame for society rather going good or bad must be placed on somebody, and that somebody is either the poor or the rich. Looking from the Christian point of view wealth is something that is obtained and all who are deserving of it will have it. While meritocracy from another point of view is simply survival of the fit those who can make their way through by proving themselves have shown that they are worthy enough to obtain status in society.