Status Anxiety

Reviewed by Kristy Dolson.

When January’s shiny promises for a new year wear off and February offers up the cold embrace of reality, you may find yourself returning to the same routines and thought patterns that you wanted to leave behind on New Year’s Eve. If you need help breaking out of this rut, this month I have a non-fiction book to recommend. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton takes aim at the concepts of “status” and “status anxiety” in the modern Western world and sets out to navigate the causes and solutions for this widespread problem in today’s economic, political, and social climate.

This book had been on my to-read list for some time. A coworker mentioned the author’s name offhand once and I was curious. So I did some research and discovered that he had a number of intriguing books. After some library shenanigans, I finally got my hands on a copy and finished it in three days. At just under 300 pages with images throughout, it was a very quick reading experience. I found it very interesting, although to my mind it did not propose any radical or revolutionary solutions for how to solve the problem of “status anxiety.” But I found it an enlightening read regardless, and useful as a historical primer on this issue.

The book opens by tracing humanity’s quest for love. Not the sexual love that is so well documented in songs, literature, and films, but the love we seek to gain from the world. The changes in perspective of and between the “rich” and the “poor” in the United States are outlined. Specific focus is given to the rise of American meritocracy and how its pursuit of total equality raises expectations to unrealistic levels. These unrealistic ideals, Botton argues, produce an underclass that must be poor in order to maintain the reigning capitalist economy. However, the persistent drive of the middle and working classes towards achieving equality blinds them to their immutably inferior status. Everything around them proclaims they have a right to equal riches – while encouraging them to look down on those who will not make the effort to attain higher status. Without calling for an economic revolution, Botton puts forth solutions for dismantling this harmful ideology drawn from philosophy, art, politics, religion, and bohemia.

As a new teacher, I was a firm believer in meritocracy, but over the years – and especially given today’s political and social climate – I have come to see that that ideology has many flaws. Even though everyone is given an equal chance to prove themselves, success still favors those who have certain financial and/or ethnic backgrounds that are subliminally rewarded because they were built into the system. Those people who are subliminally rewarded are usually those with access to the resources needed to shine, i.e., money and time. Along with deconstructing meritocracy, Botton also calls for a change in our perspective of “success.” If we can be happy with little, then we can scale down our anxieties to manageable obstacles. In essence, we can avoid creating monstrous mountains, which demand a continual climb over the decades of our working years, by lowering our own expectations.

I find it fascinating that this book was written sixteen years ago and remains so prescient of our current time and the culture of anxiety and burn-out that so many young people now find themselves fighting. With the near-inescapability of social media, the issue of “status anxiety” is becoming more and more popular. However, the more it gets bandied about as an excuse for the growing “treat yourself” trend, the less will be done to change the problematic systems at the root of it. It takes a strong individual to stand up in our modern day of non-stop advertisements, networking, and high expectations to declare “I will not submit myself to these standards. I am rich because I say I am rich.” I do not see Western societies heading for any mass economic or social revolutions anytime soon, but this book is a thought-provoking reflection of and warning for our time. Let’s take heed of it and put the power of positive thinking to good use in this new decade: Say “No” to status anxiety, and “Yes” to self-care, gratitude, and lower expectations.

THE AUTHOR

Kristy Dolson lived in South Korea for five years before taking a year off to travel, read, and spend time with her family in Canada and Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Education and has now returned to Gwangju where she splits her time between teaching at the new Jeollanamdo International Education Institute and reading as much as she can.