Status Anxiety

Status Anxiety is a nonfiction book by Alain de Botton. It was first published in 2004 by Hamish Hamilton; subsequent publications have been by Penguin Books.

Central thesis

Status Anxiety discusses the desire of people in many modern societies to "climb the social ladder" and the anxieties that result from a focus on how one is perceived by others. De Botton claims that chronic anxiety about status is an inevitable side effect of any democratic, ostensibly egalitarian society. De Botton lays out the causes of and solutions to status anxiety as follows:

Causes:

Solutions:

Film

A two-hour documentary film about this thesis, also called Status Anxiety and written by Alain de Botton, was released in 2004. A version of it was shown in 2008 on Public Broadcasting Service channels like Boston WGBH-TV's digital channel WGBX-TV in the United States.

See also

Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton, FRSL (/dəˈbɒtən/; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born, British-based philosopher, writer, and television presenter. His books and television programmes discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. At 23, he published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).

He co-founded The School of Life in 2008 and later that year was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

He co-founded Living Architecture in 2009, and in 2015 was awarded "The Fellowship of Schopenhauer", an annual writers award from the Melbourne Writers Festival, for this work.

In 2011, de Botton was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL).

Early life and family

He was born in Zurich, the son of Jacqueline (née Burgauer) and Gilbert de Botton, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt and expelled (along with the rest of the Jewish community) under Nasser. Gilbert went to live and work in Switzerland, where he co-founded an investment firm, Global Asset Management; his family was estimated to have been worth £234 million in 1999. De Botton's Swiss-born mother was Ashkenazi, and his father was from a Sephardic Jewish family from the town of Boton in Castile and León.

Status

Status (Latin plural: statūs), is a state, condition, or situation.

Status may also refer to:

Anxiety

Anxiety is an emotion characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil, often accompanied by nervous behavior, such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints and rumination. It is the subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over anticipated events, such as the feeling of imminent death. Anxiety is not the same as fear, which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat, whereas anxiety is the expectation of future threat. Anxiety is a feeling of fear, uneasiness, and worry, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue and problems in concentration. Anxiety can be appropriate, but when experienced regularly the individual may suffer from an anxiety disorder.

People facing anxiety may withdraw from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past. There are various types of anxiety. Existential anxiety can occur when a person faces angst, an existential crisis, or nihilistic feelings. People can also face mathematical anxiety, somatic anxiety, stage fright, or test anxiety. Social anxiety and stranger anxiety are caused when people are apprehensive around strangers or other people in general. Furthermore, anxiety has been linked with physical symptoms such as IBS and can heighten other mental health illnesses such as OCD and panic disorder.