Summary
Status Anxiety Alain de Botton Hamish Hamilton, (pounds) 16.99I doubt there's a single one of us, this side of a Tibetan monastery, who isn't in some way anxious about ourselves. The number of new 4x4s on the road, or the flock of Prada handbags at the airport check-in all bear testimony to the universal human need to tell people we are doing well for ourselves, and are really worth knowing.
The young turk of popular philosophy, Alain de Botton has turned his attention to homo sapiens' alarm about what social and economic rung we are, or should be, standing upon, an anxiety ruled directly by the way other people perceive us. "Our sense of identity," he writes, "is held captive by the judgments of those we live among." We all know, however, that public opinion is the cruellest and most fickle of arbiters. As Schopenhauer said: "other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat."See the full content of this document
Extract
When Happiness Is a Prada Handbag
Anxiety about what others think of us is an integral, sometimes creative part of being human. And there's nothing new in the fear...
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