Mister De Botton has occupied a prominent position in recent journalistic and academic circles. I'd never heard of him until a fortnight ago, when his notions of 'Status Anxiety' were brought to my attention. Apparently he'd been proclaiming modern-day London as the prime breeding ground for this phenomena. Interesting. It’s always nice to have someone throw some light on your behaviours. Unless it's your psychologist housemate, and then you tell them to **** off. But having heard the name more and more frequently, I jumped at the chance to get my mitts on a free copy of the book at a promotional publishing event last week.
At first I was more than pleased. The book itself is beautiful. Something in the proportions of the thick smooth hardback made it a dream to hold. The spine is deliciously square to the book, bound beautifully, and with thick, sumptuously silky paper nestled between the chunky canary covers. To a book enthusiast such as me it seemed a promising start. Four days, 303 pages and some face pulling later, I am here to tell you why none of us should feel status anxiety in relation to Alain De Botton...
The book itself is laid out in a very clear way, reminiscent of scientific journals, with chapters broken down into sections and then numbered paragraphs. This makes it easy to read, with bits given to you in bite-sized, easily digested chunks. It also makes it easy to put down at any point. Which is a blessing from pretty soon in.
First off we get some brief definitions – not really very comprehensive but a quick skirting of what ‘status’ actually means - of the human desire to be treated with respect and not to be humiliated, and the subsequent advantages reaped from 'good' status. And how most of us appreciate that having good status satisfies these desires, resulting in a struggle to achieve status and avoid the opposite.
Essentially the book is divided into two sections: Causes and then Solutions, each containing self-headed chapters, with the solutions seeming to take up significantly more of the book than the causes, which sparked a small flicker or fear in me that this might be self-help masquerading as something marginally less sinister, but fear not: there’s nothing even remotely helpful in what’s to come.
The first ‘causal’ sections are covered rather thinly, often stating the obvious, and often skating around issues and emotions. In addition the examples and descriptions used are unsuited to appeal to many people - possibly his way of drawing attention to his own very high status (hardly apt for such a person to be advising us not to worry about attaining such things). These five causes take pretty obvious forms, they are: Lovelessness; Snobbery; Expectation; Meritocracy and Dependance. All pretty standard human fare, and all, according to DeB, contributing factors to our angst.
Most of the book is in reality an historical backdrop to status anxiety - how it has changed through the ages. Mildly interesting in parts, but long-winded, with a spattering of irrelevant pictures thrown in. He fails to root it all to modern day versions of the problem, which are exacerbated to new levels. Does it surprise you to know that your wants and material envies are different from those of your great grandparents? It’s not exactly rocket science is it. He takes us through different civilisations and the qualities in each that resulted in the high status humans crave. Ours rests on wealth and professional standing, but historically it has been on strength, fertility etc, varying according to the society and its needs. The rewards though are mostly the same: Love, deference, acceptance and a general warm fuzzy sense of valued well-being. All very well for the ladder toppers, but the other end of the spectrum contains misery, low self-esteem and probably a dash of poverty too. This could all have been hugely entertaining, but somehow it manages not to be, especially when accompanied by condescending little smiley-faced diagrams.
Equally the ‘solutions’ on offer are badly drawn - handing us: Philosophy; Religion; Politics; Art and Bohemia as potential 'cures' for status anxiety. Again these chapters are long winded and again, overly historical. There is no link to modern living and how these approaches might be viable. Parts of the Christianity section read like born-again brainwashing, and DeB seems to have forgotten that the Church is not averse to symbols of status itself, often rich beyond the wildest dreams of its congregants, and having through history been discriminatory as much, if not more, than the next powerful institution.
The part of the book which made me laugh out loud at the dumbed down popular brand of philosophy that DeB seems to be pedalling was the part reminding us in essence to 'keep a chin up cos basically we'll all be dead one day'. DeB thinks death will be 'more of a lesson' to those who have amassed wealth, status, and the accompanying blessings of luxuries and love in this life. I hardly see how. Being a non believer in any kind of afterlife I don't subscribe to the theory that death in it's physical manifestation can be a lesson for anyone, since you are not able to reflect on it after the lights go out. And even in the run up to death, I think riches and the knowledge you have a) been successful and b) provided amply for your heirs would generate more of a smile on your death bed than to be one of life's status-angsty losers. I don't think there's any last laugh to be had in knowing those who do better than you in life will still join you in a pile of deathly dust and ash. In fact I think it would make me more likely to want to be one of those wealth amassers.
And all this is odd, because I should be DeB's precise target audience, I exactly fit his perfect demographic. I'm mid twenties, I went to a private school, top uni. This means all my friends and social acquaintances are your proverbial high flyers, the city boys, lawyers, doctors, the ones raking in the money and scaling to ever headier heights on the status ladder. Conversely I earn roughly enough each month to pay my rent, and very little else. I have no set career plan, and am stuck in a bumbling phase where I don't know where I will end up. And yes, I look at people and often feel envy. I have mild panic attacks in front of the estate agents when I realise I will never be able to afford a property here in London. But this work of populist waffle did little to elicit empathy or understanding from me. In fact it made me bored and positively cynical in places, traits I employ a lot of the time anyway, but he helped me take them to new levels. Perhaps my status anxiety is too mild, but I saw nothing in any of the 'solution' chapters that could be followed and employed in an unhappy angst ridden life to make it less so.
If you're looking for answers, DeB cannot provide them. He skirts around them, padding you with historical tracts of how other groups have apparently avoided status anxiety. But isn't it, at the end of the day, an unavoidable human emotion? Yes, I can immerse myself in the tatty Bohemian mindset I have hidden in the closet. I could even bring it out of the closet and declare that for all my high brow education, my wealth of qualifications, I am actually quite happy with my low achieving life. DeB has at least instilled in me a fleeting feeling thus: I don't care how little I earn, because I'm a different kind of person. I shall embrace my version of Bohemia. And write more poetry.
Yet for all that, I'm only human, I'll still feel sick when friends buy houses, get promotions, take exotic holidays. And no amount of DeB’s brand of social history is going to cure me of that.
It's not a bad read, for a little watered down history and even waterier philosophy, the writing is nothing special, but perfectly readable. But for answers, or a real meaty take on life, it's not the book for you. This is populist nonsense at it's very best. He and his publishers have latched on to a current phenomena and taken advantage of their high status to churn out a book to cash in on it. Cynical, me? Possibly. Status anxiety ridden? Who knows.
If this all grabs your attention you can catch DeB at a multitude of literary festivals over the coming months, starting this weekend in Oxford. And do please ask him: why?
The press snippets are engaging and interesting, but the book they have been distilled from is turgid and in essence, pointless.
‘Status Anxiety’ by Alain De Botton, £16.99 Hardback.
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