Alain de
Botton writes books that take the reader on fascinating philosophical journeys. 
They are filled with short sections of discussion and illustrations or
photographs, with nuggets of information and interpretation of such that are
easy to digest. The books are not scholarly, and have no bibliography at the
end, but they reveal a well-read man with a thoughtful mind.  He has written
three novels and four non-fiction volumes, the latest one being The
Architecture of Happiness, about what makes a beautiful building.

Status
anxiety is divided neatly into two
sections: one examining the causes of status anxiety [lovelessness,
expectation, meritocracy, snobbery and dependence] and the other it’s possible
salves [philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia]. At the beginning, de
Botton states that the striving for status can be both useful and detrimental,
and that the best way to deal with it is to do what he has done: ‘attempt to
understand and to speak of it’.

Within
those categories are discussions on material progress, notions of equality and
equal opportunity [and how they are not the same thing], old and new stories
about failure and success, and ideas of what is really valuable in life. The
author quotes from Aristotle, St Paul, Rousseau, Matthew Arnold, Adam Smith,
George Eliot, Austen, Thoreau and Ruskin. De Botton even quotes Anthony Robbins
— as an example of the person who starts with nothing and attains wealth and
status, writes books and does presentations about how we can do the same, and
thus plays a part in inducing anxiety in those of us who haven’t been able to
emulate his success. 

Status
Anxiety is really based on an eternal
question: how are we to live? Everything he discusses involves how best human
beings should conduct themselves, both for their own benefit, and in relation
to others. I found the section on meritocracy the most interesting and complex
in part one, as he traces how our attitudes to the rich and the poor changed
around the mid-eighteenth century. Essentially, the poor went from being
regarded as essential members of society, despite their low status and their
hard lives, to being a drain on society and morally corrupt because of their
poverty; the attitudes towards the rich changed from them being regarded as
lazy good-for-nothings who stole from the poor, to the drivers of society who
deserved their wealth and prestige. De Botton puts the fulcrum for this change
around the middle of the eighteenth century, during the Industrial Revolution
in Britain.

Strangely,
he doesn’t actually mention the revolution in technology and agriculture in so
many words. He tells us of the change in stories [from the old ones about
failure to the new ones about success] that saw the change in status of rich
and poor as being caused by Bernard Mandeville’s book The Fable of the Bees,
in which the concept of ‘private vices, public benefits’ is mooted. That is,
the rich spend money and keep the poor in employment. De Botton doesn’t take
this argument further to mention that it is the profligate use of resources
that has led us to energy and water crises, and the despoilation of air, soil,
forests and wildlife.

Another
aspect of meritocracy was the removal of hereditary privilege and the idea of
an aristocracy of talent instead, as Thomas Carlyle put it. Once this
was established status then came to have moral connotations as those with merit
for positions became successful and [it is assumed] wealthy, then wealth of
course was looked upon quite differently. As de Botton notes: ‘If the
successful merited their success, it necessarily followed that the failures had
to merit their failure’, and ‘[t]o the injury of poverty, a meritocratic system
now added the insult of shame’. 

There is
a lot which provides enjoyment in this book, but there are problems too. The
author needs to clarify or extend his arguments sometimes: how and why did
Hobbes and Locke develop their ideas to change political thinking, for example.
He mentions the story about the rich being sinful and corrupt having its
greatest influence from 1754 to 1989, but then leaves us hanging on this
important year. We know what happened, but I would like de Botton to discuss
the events in terms of his thesis. There is not much reference to the latter
half of the twentieth century, so that the argument feels patchy and
unfinished. In part two there are some satisfying sections on religion, art and
bohemia, with lovely writing, humor and captivating historical facts and
musings. So, generally, it is a book I can recommend, but with some
disappointments and reservations. It certainly leads the reader out to other
authors and their books.

During a
discussion of literary presentations of questions of status, the author quotes
George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and the magnificent final sentence:

‘But the effect of her being on those around her was
incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent
on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they
might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life
and rest in unvisited tombs.’

I think Eliot manages to put our
strivings for high status in perspective with these words alone.

© 2006 Sue Bond

Sue Bond has degrees in medicine and
literature and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing. Reviews for online and
print publications. She lives in Queensland,  Australia.

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