Status Anxiety.

Alain de Botton. Status Anxiety. New York: Pantheon, 2004.

Alain de Botton defines "status anxiety" as "A worry so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are constantly occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one." To address the condition, he examines five causes of status anxiety and proposes five different solutions. The causes:

1. lovelessness (the predominant impulse to rise in the social order is the amount of love we stand to receive as a result of high status--money, fame, and influence are tokens of love);

2. expectations (William James, the father of American psychology, believed that failed expectations lead to anxiety);

3. meritocracy (failing to make it in a meritocratic system can cause shame);

4. snobbery (neglect and faraway looks are the emotional penalties that a snobbish world imposes on those bereft of the symbols of importance);

5. dependence (we are dependent on our talents and external conditions for success--an awareness that these attributes can leave us can cause anxiety).

To overcome status anxiety, De Botton suggests we make involve ourselves in:

* philosophy (this branch of learning can provide anxiety-reducing hypotheses--e.g., Heraclitus said, "Man is not disturbed by things, but by the view he takes of them.");

* art (works of art can furnish alternative views to traditional mainstream thought);

* politics (a knowledge of politics indicates that the ruling ideas of every age are always the ideas of the ruling class--high status is not natural or God-given);

* religion (religious doctrine can show us that there are more important things in life than societal status--e.g., behaving in a moral manner, contributing to one's community, etc.);

* bohemia (rebelling against social standards has a long and distinguished history).

This book offers an erudite yet reader-friendly analysis of a problem that rarely gets mentioned directly--an anxiety about what others think of us, about whether we are judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. De Botton is also the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life--a literary biography with witty self-help advice.

REVIEW BY MARTIN H. LEVINSON, PH.D.

Alain De Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy, an exploration of several seminal philosophers and the relevance of their ideas to everyday life, was reviewed in the Winter, 2000-2001, ETC.--Ed.