Rating: 
Summary: On the Unalienable Right to the pursuit of Happiness
Review: The skill of Swiss-born Alain de Botton lies in his ability to peel back the layers of complexity surrounding human relationships and lay bare the kernel. In "Status Anxiety" he looks for the source of modern angst-not to mention obsession-about our social rank. In particular, he examines the stories we tell ourselves to explain the righteousness of our situation and how those stories affect our happiness. De Botton looks back at a time long ago when peasants led a far harsher existence in material terms, but rarely worried that their difficulties were "their own fault." Thus had God made the world, and such were the affairs of men supposed to be. When we could not improve our social rank or material worth, there was no tendency to confuse riches with saintliness. Starting from that idealized Rousseau-esque time, the author follows changing ideas about personal rights and responsibilities and finds a distinct downside to the whole concept of Western meritocracy. If we can be anything we want to be, our current relative lack of wealth, power, beauty and fame must be our own fault. No longer able to blame God, bad luck or the stars for misfortune, we see the world split into winners (virtuous, hard-working and strong) and losers (evil, lazy and weak). Where we once understood the complexity and frailty of human existence, we now see the world in terms of newspaper headlines: "Oedipus the King: Royal in Incest Shocker." Finally, "Status Anxiety" looks at some of the ways that modern humans have tried to escape this social trap. It considers both bohemian and Christian philosophies and finds merits in both, if notably fewer in bohemianism. Ultimately, the book concludes, if our current set of values offers true happiness and contentment to only an elite minority, the democratic solution is to change those values. De Botton's contribution to that end is this book.
Rating:
Summary: The Art of Self-Examination--An Elegant Argument
Review: This work is best understood as an uncommonly well-reasoned argument in favor of meaningful and honest self-examination. Far from attempting to summarize the "great ideas", the author skillfully advances a thesis by citations ranging from Aristotle to cartoons from the "New Yorker". I found this book to be a very tight and persuasive argument and a model of clarity. Everything about this work, from the selection of illustrations to the orderly development and resolution of the thesis question, evidences a polished elegance that only the uninformed pass over without appreciation.
The author delivers on his promise to demonstrate that status anxiety has an exceptional ability to cause sorrow. He opines that status anxiety is a uniquely human condition and argues that we can avoid a great deal of pain by seeking to understand this basic human need to belong. De Botton's genius--what makes his books both enjoyable and thought-provoking--is his ability to advance his thesis in a manner that is at once familiar and profound. We are, for example, invited to ponder on the issue of whether a room full of salesmen from 1902 can be considered successful, whether their achievements are worthy of emulation, of how well our own hopes and desires will weather time; we are invited to examine a work of art and consider how a painting of a weathered building can move us to consider the unseen and often unappreciated complexity and depth of the world in which we live--the questions posed are not amenable to simple resolution. It is a pleasure to encounter a work that makes demands on its reader in which the reader does not fail to recover the investment.
De Botton does not shun the controversial nor is he afraid to make big statements. In the fashion of his book "The Art of Travel", "Status Anxiety" invites us to slow down and take a good hard look at where our efforts are taking us--whether we have chosen to pursue goals in philosophy, art, politics, religion or merely to do the opposite of what we believe society regards as "correct". The book teaches that our choices--both large and small--are significant and they have far-reaching consequences that we would do well to consider.
This book was an absolute pleasure to read; I give it my highest recommendation.
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