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STATUS ANXIETY

Name: STATUS ANXIETY
Author: Alain de Botton
ISBN: 0-375-42083-5

by Alain de Botton ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2004

An intelligent breath of fresh air, sans the usual ax-grinding.

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A novelist (Kiss and Tell, 1996, etc.) with a flair for gleaning self-help from across the ages (The Consolations of Philosophy, 2000) cleverly deconstructs and demystifies that sinking feeling of material inferiority.

First of all, the author insists, this is not all our fault. For almost two millennia society actually celebrated the poor who were—fortunately for society—locked down in place on the agrarian, feudal landscape doing its dirtiest and most essential jobs. Comes industry, capitalism, and upward mobility, and suddenly it’s the rich who dominate the “meritocracy” they rigged in the first place based on the constant that society is more likely to reward the appearance of merit than merit itself. While defining the toll taken on the human psyche by constant uncertainty of where one stands or is trending, de Botton amusingly stresses that the real problem is the presumed need to find external reflections of one’s own self-worth. In a historic breakout, he notes, hundreds of thousands of Europeans died in duels attempting to either retain or regain sense of self as affirmed in the opinions of others: “In Paris in 1678, for example, one man killed another who had said his apartment was tasteless; in Florence in 1702 a literary man took the life of a cousin who had accused him of not understanding Dante.” The problem posed, the author commences potential solutions with the idea of settling into a stance of “intelligent misanthropy” as adopted by some of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition, which is free of both defensiveness and pride. (A key adjunct: public opinion, as such, is rarely rational, therefore hardly worth a damn.) He waxes more eloquent, however, in proposing that art—novels, paintings, songs, films—has the capacity, through both laughter and tears, to “rebalance one’s moral perspective,” while citing (monochrome illustrations throughout) a number of thought-provoking examples.

An intelligent breath of fresh air, sans the usual ax-grinding.

Pub Date: June 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-375-42083-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
NATURE AND ME
edited by Alain de Botton ; illustrated by Tyla Mason

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT CAN I DO WHEN I GROW UP?
by The School of Life ; edited by Alain de Botton ; illustrated by Tyla Mason

- BOOK REVIEW
THE COURSE OF LOVE
by Alain de Botton

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AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF HUMANITY

by Theodore Zeldin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 1995

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A courageous, often profound, and extraordinary attempt by one of England's best historians to cut through the pessimism and parochialism of the profession and to find the bonds of humanity underlying its conventional divisions. Zeldin (History/Oxford Univ.; The French, 1983, etc.) ranges with prodigious learning over different civilizations and epochs, dealing with subjects as disparate as why men and women find it difficult to talk to one another and why political scientists have misunderstood the animal kingdom. His method is anything but academic: He starts most chapters with an interview or description of a person, usually French and usually a woman (``because many women seem to me to be looking at life with fresh eyes'') before broadening the discussion to analyze the nature of the concerns expressed, their historical origins, and the ways in which different civilizations have dealt with them. In doing so, he raises some questions shunned by the academic world and asks others more likely to be raised in magazines and self-help books: ``Is it inevitable,'' he asks, ``that as women become increasingly adventurous and have ever higher expectations of life, they will find men less and less adequate?'' Why are humans ``still so awkward...with even 40 per cent of Americans...complaining that they are too shy to speak freely?'' In answering questions like this, he repeatedly produces the unusual fact or the revisionist view: Writing of Islamic societies, for instance, he notes that sociability, not war, is considered the defining element of the good life. Ultimately, this is a call for a sense of the richness of life and for optimism, which he defines as ``awareness that despite nastiness and stupidity, there is something else too. Pessimism is resignation, an inability to find a way out.'' Not always as skeptical as he might be (Stalin and Hitler, he says, ``remained desperately hungry for respect''), but no short review can do justice to the richness, humor, humanity, and range of this important book.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1995

ISBN: 0-06-017160-X

Page Count: 416

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994

Categories:

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY

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AWARE

THE SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF PRESENCE—THE GROUNDBREAKING MEDITATION PRACTICE

by Daniel J. Siegel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 21, 2018

If Charles Reich is your bag, then this may be your book. If you want your neuroscience qua science, then head over to where...

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A head-spinning guide to supercharged meditation.

If life is like a box of chocolates, to quote the philosopher Forrest Gump, then, to quote Siegel (Clinical Psychiatry/UCLA; Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human, 2016, etc.), “consciousness is like a container of water”—undrinkable if a tablespoon of salt is put into an espresso cup but just fine if the container is a bathtub. And why is it like a container of water? That’s never quite explained, except to say that cultivating the mind to maximize awareness makes our experience of things different. That heightened experience can be a deeply positive thing, for, as the author points out, neural integration makes problem solving easier, and “open awareness” boosts the immune system. Siegel delivers a “Wheel of Awareness” to visualize the process, with attention as the spoke, knowing or awareness as the hub, and “knowns” on the rim. But those knowns can be awareness-inhibiting prejudices as well as hard-won knowledge of how the world works. Siegel favors a murky, circular style: “When we open awareness to sensation, such as that of the breath, we become a conduit directing the flow of something into our awareness.” Well, yes, that’s how breath works, but Siegel means something different—“enabling the sensation of the breath at the nostrils to flow into consciousness.” Further along, the author complicates the picture: “And so both focal attention involving consciousness and nonfocal attention without consciousness involve an evaluative process that places meaning and significance on energy patterns and their informational value as they arise moment by moment.” Can there be meaning without consciousness? That’s a question for Heidegger, but suffice it to say that it’s a clear if empty statement relative to the main, which is laden with jargon, neologisms (“plane-dominant sweep”; “SOCK: sensation, observation, conceptualization, and knowing”), and lots of New Age cheerleading.

If Charles Reich is your bag, then this may be your book. If you want your neuroscience qua science, then head over to where Damasio and Dennett are shelved.