saturday march 20 2004
The beginning of a mature solution to status anxiety might be said to begin with the recognition that status is available from a variety of different audiences: from industrialists and from bohemians, from families and from philosophers - and that our choice of audience can be free and willed.
Philosophy, art, politics, Christianity and bohemia did not seek to do away with a status hierarchy based on sets of values unrecognized by, and critical of, those of the majority. While retaining a firm grip on a distinction between success and failure, good and bad, shameful and honourable, these five groups endeavoured to remould our sense of what could rightfully be said to belong under these weighty headings.
In so doing, they helped to lend legitimacy to those who, in every generation, will be unable or unwilling to follow dutifully behind the dominant notions of high status but who may yet deserve to be categorized other than under the brutal epithets of loser and nobody.
They have provided us with a set of persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way - and more than a judge or pharmacist's way - of succeeding at life.
Alain de Botton - Status Anxiety
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