Status Anxiety

# The Death of Ivan Ilyich is, in the best tradition of the Christian memento mori, a study in how the thought of death may reorient our priorities away from the worldly and towards the spiritual, away from whist and dinner parties towards truth and love. (229)# We seldom have the courage or cynicism to wonder, ‘Is it me or my postion in society?’ Yet, by felling the conditions of worldly love, illness renders the distinction quickly and cruelly evident... The thought of death brings authenticity to social life. (원문 강조 231)# The prospect of our own extinction may draw us towards the way of life we value in our hearts. (232)# [W]e can take comfort from the thought that everyone will ultimately end up as that most democratic of substances: dust. (238)# Ruins speak of the folly of giving up our peace of mind for the unstable rewards of earthly power... Everything is in any case fated to disappear... Judged against eternity, how little of what agitates us can matter... If this prospect has a power to console, it is perhaps because the greater part of our anxieties stems from an exaggerated sense of the importance of our projects and concerns. We are tortured by our ideals...To consider our petty status-worries from the perspective of a thousand years hence is to be granted a rare, tranquillizing glimpse of our own insignificance. (248)# Vast landscapes can have an anxiety-reducing effect similar to ruins, for they are representatives of infinite space, as ruins are the representatives of infinite time, against which our weak, short-lived bodies seem no less inconsequential than those of moths or spiders...By spending time in vast spaces, a sense of our insignificance in he social hierarchy can be subsumed in a consoling sense of the insignificance of all humans within the cosmos. We can overcome a feeling of unimportance not by making ourselves more important but by recognizing the relative unimportance of everyone...A fine remedy for anxieties about insignificance may be to travel, in reality or in works of art, through the gigantic spaces of the world. (249)# The more humiliating, shallow, debased or ugly we take ordinary lives to be, the stronger will be our desire to set ourselves apart. The more corrupt the community, the stronger the lure of individual achievement. (258)# Since its beginnings, Christianity has attempted to enhance, both in practical and in theoretical terms, our sense of the value of belonging to a community; and one way it has done so is through the ritual of the Church service and performances of Church music, occasions when large groups of strangers may feel their suspicions of others abate thanks to a transcendent intermediary. (259)# In an ideal Christian community, the dread of what it will be like to live beside the winners will be tempered and contained by a basic equality of dignity and resources. The dichotomy, to succeed and flourish or to fail and wither, will lose some of its excruciating sharpness. (261)# Christianity did not do away with the concept of a hierarchy, its contribution was rather to redefine success and failure in an ethical, non-material way, to insist that poverty could coexist with goodness, a humble occupation with a noble soul. (264)# In a world where secular buildings relentlessly whisper to us of the importance of earthly power, the cathedrals on the skylines of great towns and cities may continue to provide an imaginative holding space for the priorities of the spirit. (270)# [B]ohemians claimed a ferocious dislike of almost everything the bourgeois stood for, and prided themselves on the extravagance of their insults against them... From the outset, bohemians were those who, whether they owned a mansion or a garret, pitted themselves against the economic, meritocratic status system to which the early nineteenth century gave birth. (279)# Bohemian status is more likely to be earned through an inspired conversational style or the authorship of an intelligent, heartfelt volume of poetry. (284)# Thoreau preferred the word simplicity, this, he felt, conveyed a consciously chosen rather than an imposed material situation. (285)# Bohemians have also carefully redefined their understanding of the word failure... There may indeed, bohemians have suggested, be no more damning sign of a persona’s ethical and imaginative limitation than a capacity for commercial success. (289)# Like the Christian pilgrim, the bohemian poet would be tortured by the uncomprehending masses, but, as in the Christian story, neglect was in itself evidence of the superiority of the neglected party. That one is not understood is a sign that there is much to understand. (293)# To the role-model of the lawyer, the entrepreneur and the scientist, bohemia has added the poet, the traveller and the essayist...Status anxiety could be defined as problematic only in so far as it is inspired by values that we follow because we are fearful and preternaturally obedient, because we have been anaesthetized into believing that they are natural, perhaps God-given, because those around us are in thrall to them or because we have grown too imaginatively timid to conceive of alternatives.Philosophy, art, politics, Christianity and bohemia did not seek to do away with a status hierarchy; they attempted to institute new kinds of hierarchy based on sets of values unrecognized by, and critical of, those of the majority...They have provided us with a set of persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way, and more than a judge or pharmacist’s way, of succeeding at life. (303)
불안 은 하루에도 몇 번씩 경험하는, 현대를 사는 우리에게는 매우 밀접한 개념이다. Alain De Botton의 말대로, 우리의 삶은 불안을 떨쳐내고, 새로운 불안을 맞아들이고, 또 다시 그것을 떨쳐내는 과정의 연속인지도 모른다. Status Anxiety 은 우리가 일상 속에서 겪는 다양한 종류의 불안 중 사회적 지위(status)와 관련된 불안을 집중적으로 탐구하고 있다.

경제적 성취 정도에 의해, 즉 돈을 얼마나 벌었느냐에 따라 자연스럽게 지위가 구분되기 시작한 시기가 있었다. 그 시점부터 인간은 새로운 불안의 영역에 들어서게 된다. 여기에서 중요한 것은 내가 나를 어떻게 보느냐 가 아니라, 세상이 나를 어떻게 보느냐 다. 저자는 세상의 눈으로 본 자신의 가치나 중요성에 의해 불안이 촉발되는 것으로 보았다.

Alain De Botton은 그 불안이 생기는 원인을 총 다섯 가지로 분류한다 - 사랑결핍, 속물근성, 기대, 능력주의, 불확실성. 또 여기에 철학, 예술, 정치, 기독교, 보헤미아 등 Alain De Botton이 연구한 불안 해소의 해법이 더해진다. 저자는 이 책에서 2000여 년의 역사를 지탱해온 철학, 문학, 종교, 예술 등 방대한 자료를 훑으며 경제적 능력에서 비롯된 사회적 지위로 인한 불안, 그 처음과 끝을 파고 든다.

We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer - to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment - from status anxiety.

For the first time, Alain de Botton gives a name to this universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art and politics - and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries. The result is a book that is not only entertaining and thought-provoking - but genuinely wise and helpful as well.

Causes
1. Lovelessness
2. Snobbery
3. Expectation
4. Meritocracy
5. Dependence

Solutions
1. Philosophy
2. Art
3. Politics
4. Christianity
5. Bohemia

금수회의록 . 공진회 (안국선 소설 전집

[영어완전정복] redeemable,comment,taxa,anglian