Status Anxiety

In his book Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton defines status as a person's value or importance in the eyes of the world. Since the founding of the United States in 1776, however, status has increasingly been linked to economic success.

Status anxiety, on the other hand, is a type of anxiety experienced by an individual regarding their failure to meet society's accepted criteria for success and their fear of not receiving respect in society.

Botton states that the drives pushing people to seek high status are a yearning for money, fame, and power, but the underlying root cause of all these is the search for love. In other words, an individual may accept achieving money, fame, or power as a way to receive love. However, we should think of the word 'love' here not as the emotional affection we receive from our families or loved ones, but rather as social acceptance and validation by society.

We can better understand the lack of being loved by society through an example from William James's book The Principles of Psychology: if no one turns round when we enter, answers when we speak, or minds what we do, and everyone we meet acts as if we did not exist, a kind of rage and despair would ere long fill this person's heart. It is precisely for this reason that status can be perceived as a means of being loved by society.

Since people naturally take the people around them as a reference point when measuring their own worth, what those around us think about us affects how we evaluate ourselves. For this reason, when deciding on the importance of concepts like wealth or reputation in our lives, or how much of them is enough, we take the people around us whom we consider our peers as our reference. We consider ourselves successful and important when we achieve as much as, or slightly more than, these people we live and work with; otherwise, we fall prey to status anxiety. Another interesting point is that in today's world, where there are massive inequalities in income distribution, we do not reference those who are far above us in terms of wealth and fame, but only those whom we see as our equals.

Moreover, according to James, not every subject in which we fail triggers our status anxiety. We only experience status anxiety if we fail to achieve success in an area that we value and upon which we have staked our pride. Imagine that, despite having no experience, a coworker invites you to a fishing trip. Even if you return empty-handed, you won't feel any anxiety, belittlement, or exclusion; but if that same coworker snatches away the managerial position you've had your eye on for a few years, status anxiety will eat away at inside you. In other words, the measure of status anxiety is our own goals.

French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that wealth is achieved not by having many 'things,' but by having the things we long for. Botton's view, on the other hand, is that whenever we desire something beyond our reach, regardless of our resources, we become even poorer; whereas whenever we are content with what we have, no matter how little we possess, we can be considered rich. Rousseau says there are two ways to make people rich: give them more money or rein in their desires.

Status can be attained through our personal characteristics, physical abilities, artistic skills, wisdom, power and patronage, or bullying. As these determinants of high status continue to change over time, the triggers of status anxiety will likewise undergo transformation. In the Spartan city-state around 400 BC, the individuals with the highest status in society were warriors and daring men who attached very little importance to the family and avoided commerce and luxury. From AD 476, when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, status in Europe began to be deemed worthy of people who dedicated themselves to Jesus Christ, were unassuming, had never taken up arms, and had not harmed any living creature. After 1096, when the First Crusade was launched, the determinants of status shifted once again; this time, high status was granted to wealthy knights living in castles. By the 1760s, during the Industrial Revolution, knowing how to dance rather than how to fight mattered; the most respected individuals in society were wealthy gentlemen who ran their factories and engaged in commerce.

While philosophers in the ancient world argued that basic food and shelter were necessary, but that luxury homes and meals should be disregarded by people of philosophical thought, Adam Smith—the witness to the Industrial Revolution, regarded as the father of capitalism, and author of The Wealth of Nations—asserted that in modern materialistic societies, many things unnecessary for mere survival are nonetheless essential for people, and that gaining respect is tied to these 'many things'.

In the 16th century, after their contact with the Native Americans, the Spaniards described them as a materially simple yet spiritually rich people. Just a few decades after the arrival of Europeans, status for Native Americans no longer depended on a person's wisdom and grasp of the balances of nature, but on the possession of weapons, jewelry, and alcohol. These new desires did not emerge by coincidence. European traders had intentionally stimulated the desires of the Native Americans in order to motivate them to hunt the animal pelts demanded by the European market. Robert Beverley, a historian who lived in those years and was the child of an English family that migrated to America, wrote: 'Europeans taught the natives luxury. This multiplied their desires and caused them to long for thousands of things they had never even dreamed of before'.

We want to believe that certain achievements and possessing 'things' will provide us with lasting satisfaction. However, we forget that once we attain them, our reference point will shift again, potentially giving rise to brand-new status anxieties. Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors, wrote in his work Meditations: '...if you have grasped the truth clearly, do not care what anyone thinks of you... For your past experiences show that you have never found a happy life in wealth, in fame, in entertainment, or anywhere else...'

As Alain de Botton says, attaining status is difficult, and maintaining it for a lifetime is even harder. What matters is not how we appear in the eyes of a random group, but knowing who we are.

* The image used is an illustration from Puck magazine showing Schwab, the president of U.S. Steel, asking Andrew Carnegie, the monopolist of the American steel industry, whether it would be wiser to use the wealth they gained from industry for the benefit of the workers rather than donating it to institutions catering to a privileged minority.

References

[1] Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety.

[2] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.