Status Anxiety - Alain De Botton Finished reading 30-Oct-04

Causes

Lovelessness

Snobbery

Expectation

Meritocracy

• This leads to feeling a failure if one is not successful, since there is no one to blame but your own stupidity/laziness in a truly meritocratic society.

Dependence

Solutions

Philosophy

Art

Politics

Christianity

• Christians avoid typical capitalist status anxiety by constantly reaffirming the idea that aside from our physical reality there is a spiritual reality for all of us.

Bohemia

• Bohemians were/are more worried about substance than status. They go to great lengths to examine somethings intrinsic value.