The first question most of us face when we meet someone new is: what do you do? Alain de Botton thinks the way we answer it, and the way people react, tells us a great deal about the world we have built.
In this clip from his 2020 London Real interview, the philosopher and founder of The School of Life talks to Brian Rose about status, snobbery and the “materialistic” world. His argument is that we have made an ordinary life feel like a failure, and that this is quietly making people unwell.
▶ Watch the full episode: Alain de Botton – The School Of Life: How To Apply Philosophy To Real Life
A world of snobs
Depending on how you answer the “what do you do?” question, de Botton says, you will either become a subject of interest or be left alone by the peanuts. To him, that suggests “we live in a world of snobs.” A snob, in his definition, is anyone who takes one small part of you and uses it to decide who you are and how much you matter.
Snobbery used to be about bloodlines and closeness to royalty. Today, he argues, it is about your job, and above all about how much money you can make.
Not greed, but a need for love
This leads to one of his best-known ideas. He does not think we live in a materialistic world. We live in a world where money and possessions have become the gateway to the respect and love we all want. It is not the fast cars people crave, in his view, but the honour they seem to bring.
So the next time you see someone in a Ferrari, he suggests, do not think “greedy”. Think of someone with an intense need for love, who has not found respect in ordinary ways. By the same logic, if you are happy riding a bike through town, something went right in your past.
The danger in “anyone can achieve anything”
Brian asks whether social media is making this worse. De Botton points to what he calls a beautiful but dangerous idea: that anyone can achieve anything. If you truly believe that, and you have only done a bit, you will feel crushed.
He describes the self-help shelf in an American bookshop: books on making a million dollars in an afternoon, and books on coping with low self-esteem. The two, he says, are closely related. Most of us will be part of the 99%, not the 1%, and he calls the alternative belief the illusion of meritocracy.
An ordinary life is a good life
His central point is that an ordinary life today is materially better than ever: a car, a roof, decent food, a hot bath. Yet we have told ourselves that this is psychologically not good enough, and that we must become someone extraordinary. He praises the Danes for building good schools, trains and kindergartens for everyone, on the understanding that most people will lead ordinary lives. “An ordinary life is a good life,” he says.
Why it matters
Brian recalls the line from the film Patton about Americans loving a winner. De Botton says a bit of ambition is fantastic, but the real risk now is people feeling so inadequate that some take their own lives. “Our lack of acceptance of ourselves has made us sick,” he says. The message he wants people to hear instead is that it is OK to fail and OK to be ordinary. Joy, he says, is a drink with a friend, or a day with no crisis.
If you are struggling, please talk to someone. In the UK, Samaritans are available any time on 116 123.
Who is Alain de Botton?
Alain de Botton is a Swiss-born British philosopher and author who writes about the philosophy of everyday life. His books include Essays in Love, Status Anxiety and The Architecture of Happiness. In 2008 he co-founded The School of Life, which teaches emotional education through classes, books and a popular YouTube channel.
This clip comes from his 2020 London Real episode, The School Of Life. You can also watch his Success Secrets episode.
See everything Alain de Botton has done with London Real on his guest page: Alain de Botton on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Alain de Botton – Why An Ordinary Life Is A Good Life
0:00 Brian Rose: Talk to me about status and snobbery, and how, again, you show these kind of cognitive biases that we’re living in when you talk about this stuff. A lot of people say: oh yeah, maybe that’s why I’m doing that. What do you see?
0:13 Alain de Botton: I mean, look, the first question we’re likely to encounter in a new meeting with somebody is: what do you do? And according to how you answer that question, you’ll either be praised and become a subject of interest, or you’ll be left alone by the peanuts. And this suggests to me that we live in a world of snobs. And a snob is really anyone who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a universal and rigid sense of who you are and how much you matter.
0:41 Alain de Botton: And the kind of snobbery that is dominant in the world today is not around bloodlines or lineage or your closeness to the Queen of England, as it used to be, but what job you have, and in particular how impressive your powers of financial accumulation are. And according to that criterion, people will judge you immediately.
0:56 Alain de Botton: So it’s sometimes said that we live in a materialistic world. I don’t think we do live in a materialistic world. We simply live in a world where material accumulation has become the gateway to the respect and love that we all crave. It’s not really the riches and the fast cars et cetera that we crave. It’s the honour and love, if you like, that they are a conduit to, that they are perhaps the only conduit to. And that’s a different way of looking at so-called greed.
1:25 Alain de Botton: The next time you walk down the road and you see somebody driving a Ferrari, don’t think: this is somebody who’s greedy, who’s materialistic. Think first and foremost: this is somebody with an incredibly intense need for love, who has not been able to find the honour and respect they need in normal ways, and therefore they’re needing so much more stuff in order to feel they have the right to exist.
1:52 Alain de Botton: If you can deal with just riding a bike through town and that’s OK, something’s gone right in your past. If you’re a parent and your child has no ambition to become famous, you’re doing something right, because that means that that person is able to deal with being them without too much other stuff.
2:11 Brian Rose: And a lot of these things are now magnified by social media. And you never finished where you were going to go with the Americans as well, so we’ve got to get back to that. But do you see this stuff getting worse? What do you see social media doing to these things you’re talking about?
2:25 Alain de Botton: Look, I think one of the most beautiful but also dangerous ideas, it’s an American idea, is the notion that anyone can achieve anything, right? And we hear these messages from everywhere. That is the spirit of our times. It’s a beautiful message, but it’s a dangerous message. Because if you really believe in a world where you can do anything, and you’ve only done a bit, you’ve only done something, my goodness, how crushed you will feel. The possibilities for humiliation are so much greater now.
2:55 Alain de Botton: If you go to an American bookshop and you look at the self-help section, there are basically two kinds of books on that shelf. The first kind is books telling you how to make a million dollars in an afternoon. And the other books are books telling you how to cope with what they call low self-esteem. And the two are totally related. If you live in a culture that’s telling you how to make a million dollars in an afternoon, you’re going to have a massive self-esteem problem. Because how can you achieve esteem of yourself when you’re going to be part of the 99%, not the 1%? That’s the flaw of the meritocracy illusion, right there.
3:28 Alain de Botton: Most of us are going to have an ordinary life. So what have we done, building a world in which an ordinary life is not good enough? This is crazy. This is a form of self-torture. We’ve now created a life where an ordinary life is materially more comfortable than it’s ever been. An ordinary life: you’re going to get a good car, you’re going to be able to have a bath every night, you’re going to have a roof over your head, you’re going to have pretty nourishing food, right? So materially, an ordinary life is terrific.
3:52 Alain de Botton: But then we’ve put a snake in the grass. We’ve ruined the paradise that we’ve built, and our ancestors have built for ourselves, by telling ourselves that actually, contrary to everything we hoped for, an ordinary life is psychologically not good enough. It’s not good enough just to drive an ordinary car and have an ordinary house and have an ordinary bath once a day and have an ordinary meal. No, that’s not good enough. You need to be extraordinary. Become Mark Zuckerberg. Become somebody else, right?
4:20 Alain de Botton: This is a kind of torture that we’ve imposed on ourselves. We’re insane. How have we made a life where the statistical odds of you leading that life, the 99% surety that you will lead that life, has come to seem like a humiliation and the wrong sort of life? This is setting yourself up for disaster.
4:37 Alain de Botton: The Danish are clever. The Danes have built a society for themselves, I was in Denmark recently, they’ve built a society for losers, right? They have understood, unlike the Americans or the Brits, that most of us are going to be losers. So they’ve made sure that schools for losers are going to be fantastic, and trains for losers are going to be beautiful, and kindergartens for losers. I’m using the word loser with irony. I’m using the word loser to define that actually all of us, the 99%, are going to be. We are, all of us, almost fated, and in every area of life we will encounter failure. We’re fated to be ordinary. And an ordinary life is a good life. And let’s not torture ourselves that the only way to be good enough is to be extraordinary. This is poison.
5:29 Brian Rose: There’s a famous line from the movie Patton, where George Patton is [unclear] on stage, and he says: Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. And I grew up there, and it’s all about that. It’s like: what have you done? That’s the way you’re going to be judged.
5:47 Alain de Botton: Sure. And look, don’t get me wrong. A bit of ambition is fantastic. A bit of get-up-and-go is fantastic. We’re not in any danger of being unambitious. The danger now is suicide. I’m putting it at its darkest. The danger is that we will feel so inadequate in relation to the expectations placed upon us that we may choose to end our own lives. And this happens in huge numbers, right?
6:12 Alain de Botton: We are suffering from an epidemic of mental unwellness, largely bred by the expectation that our lives will be stellar when in fact they are far more likely only to be ordinary. Our lack of acceptance of ourselves has made us sick. So we don’t need any more reminders from General Patton or anyone else to get up and go and be a winner. We know that that’s in our DNA now as modern human beings. We’ve had that message and it’s making us sick. We know it so well. We know it too well.
6:41 Alain de Botton: And we need to hear another message, and that message is: you’re OK. It’s OK. It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to be ordinary. It’s OK not to know what’s going on. It’s OK to be lost in the universe, most of whose recesses will always be darkness to us. That’s all of it, OK?
7:00 Alain de Botton: And joy is not going to be making ten million dollars. Joy is going to be a drink with a friend. Joy is going to be a meal that turns out OK. Joy is going to be a day at the end of which no one’s died. There’s been no crisis. It’s been more or less all right. Love is not going to be perfection. Love is going to be occasionally being held by somebody who understands bits of you, never the whole of you, but has charity towards your darkest moments. That is the life we’re going to lead. And let that be OK.
