How Should We Face Ubiquitous Modern Anxiety? — Lessons from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety

In terms of recent reading preferences, Alain de Botton is probably my second-favorite contemporary author. Most of his works are elegant, crisp essays that talk through some particular problem of modern society. His discussions draw on sweeping references to human history and culture, filled with logic and evidence that convince even skeptical readers — yet never so heavy as to be intimidating. Instead, he chats along in a remarkably accessible, witty, and warm tone that feels like talking with a friend. Essays in Love and On Love deal with the encounters and confusions of modern romance. The Consolations of Philosophy is a tour through philosophical history. How Proust Can Change Your Life extends and unpacks In Search of Lost Time. A Week at the Airport is a sketch of one corner of modern life. And Status Anxiety takes on the theme of anxiety in modern life — though from a rather different angle than his other works.

In simple terms, Status Anxiety divides into two parts. The first explores why modern people are so anxious — where the anxiety comes from. The second examines several approaches for coping with it. But this isn't one of those quick-fix "change your life" self-help books. The author doesn't hand you a step-by-step guide. Instead, he paints a much larger picture, helping us understand our own situation and prompting reflection. The insights may not produce instant results, but they may leave a far deeper and longer-lasting impression.

The author begins by exploring the origins of anxiety, arguing that our anxiety stems primarily from the desire for others' love and recognition. Humans need "status" to define themselves — we need to be "noticed, cared for, and to receive sympathy, praise, and support from others." This "love from others" is a fundamental need for people living in society, and "status" is its tangible expression. As the author writes: "In a snobbish society, if poverty is the material suffering of those with low status, then being ignored and looked down upon is the spiritual suffering of those lacking important markers of identity."

For most of human history spanning several millennia, changing one's social identity was extraordinarily difficult. Barring dynastic upheavals or extreme revolutions, the gap between commoners and aristocrats was virtually uncrossable. The gap between rich and poor was much the same. This chasm — hard for modern people to even imagine — only began to shift with the Industrial Revolution over the past century or so. "The old view of the world — that life simply cycled day after day, year after year, that next year would be just like this year — gave way to an optimistic worldview, with people believing that life would keep improving until it reached perfection." This material abundance created a sense of equality on the physical level, blurring the once-impassable boundaries of traditional social identity. Yet paradoxically, it intensified ordinary people's status anxiety. "Compared to those ancestors who toiled in medieval European fields with no certainty of the year's harvest, these European descendants — living lives of wealth and opportunity — feel far more anxiety about their status and far more worry about their possessions than their forebears ever did."

Some say that since the Industrial Revolution, crimes of desperation like Jean Valjean's have largely disappeared. Yet people developed even more intense status anxiety from the material abundance. This largely stems from what David Hume described in A Treatise of Human Nature: "It is not the great disproportion between ourselves and others that produces envy, but on the contrary, our proximity." Without aristocratic titles, without fundamental gaps in status and wealth (in the traditional world, the reaction to such extreme gaps was probably more admiration than envy), even the smallest differences become glaring — chips in the game of measuring our identity and value against others. It's these omnipresent minor differences that make modern people, unable to assert their status, restless and anxious. And humanity has no historical precedent for balancing this new reality. The author invokes Rousseau: "There are two ways to make a man rich: give him a lot of money, or curb his desires." Yet modern commercial society does the exact opposite — commerce thrives by constantly awakening inner desires, and those desires bring inescapable anxiety in their wake.

In Status Anxiety, the author contrasts three ways traditional society reassured ordinary people with how modern society instead goads them. In traditional society, the prevailing beliefs went something like this:

• The poor are not poor through any fault of their own; they contribute the most to society. Therefore the rich should support and care for them.
• Low status does not mean low morality. The poor are closer to truth and virtue.
• The rich are corrupt and wicked, their wealth built on plundering the poor — so they aren't truly happy.

These perspectives, even amid extreme class and wealth inequality, gave different social strata a psychological sense of worth and recognition, maintaining social stability. After the Industrial Revolution, in our commerce-driven modern world, the prevailing narrative flipped to three new angles: The rich are the ones useful to society, not the poor. The rich became heroes in economists' writings — they're the ones caring for the lower classes, providing housing, jobs, and bread. Status correlates with virtue. Only the morally worthy become wealthy. The elite succeed because they're excellent, smart, and capable. The poor are guilty and degenerate — they're poor because they're stupid. When these new beliefs are broadcast through omnipresent media and accepted as truth, status anxiety intensifies dramatically. "Poverty is painful in itself, but in a meritocratic society, it is also a humiliation."

So how should we, as ordinary people powerless to change the world's direction, face this pervasive anxiety? In Status Anxiety, the author devotes equal space to five possible approaches: philosophy, art, politics, religion, and Bohemia. These are tools and weapons humanity can deploy. While none produces instant results, each can play a positive role in alleviating modern anxiety.

Philosophical awareness may address anxiety at its root. "Once we are properly alive to the narrowness and boredom of others' minds, to the smallness of their opinions, the triviality of their feelings, the absurdity of their thoughts, and the frequency of their errors, we will cease to attach much importance to whatever goes on in their heads... and we will see that anyone who attaches great value to others' opinions flatters them unduly." The author cites Schopenhauer's argument to propose a moderate, rational philosophy of withdrawal from the world's noise — a fundamental relief for modern anxiety. Though admittedly, for most people, philosophy still demands too much inaccessible thought and wisdom to be an easy solution.

Then there's art. In discussing art's role, the author draws on Matthew Arnold's view: "Great art is never unintelligible gibberish, but rather a path that can help us resolve the tensions and anxieties hidden deep in our souls." Literature, music, painting, sculpture, film, and even comics — each speaks in its own language about the human condition, creating new perspectives on our situation. Like the brief, pleasant relief we feel in nature, art can in some sense create a new world that channels away the anxiety of the real one.

The author's discussion of politics is more abstract — he's not describing how specific political activities ease anxiety, but rather "pursuing an understanding of ideology, analyzing it to strip it of assumed legitimacy and thus its influence." This, too, requires individuals to think independently enough to resist the widely promoted but perhaps misguided doctrines of "materialism, entrepreneurial spirit, and material meritocracy." Understanding these things won't magically erase the worries that status anxiety brings, but it can at least guide us toward a first step.

Religion and Bohemia may feel more foreign to us, but at their core they're no different from the other approaches. All the paths the author describes ultimately converge on the same thing — the ability to think independently. To pursue what is deeper and more valuable, rather than drifting with the current and echoing the crowd. As the author points out: "The best remedy for status anxiety is travel — in reality or through works of art — to feel the vast expanse of the world." When we recognize both the world's vastness and our own smallness, perhaps then we'll have a chance to think more clearly about our own fate.