Wot me worry?

June 22, 2004 3:14 AM

Status anxiety 'Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well-charted. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first.'
posted by johnny7 (9 comments total)

Seen the television program and read the book. Must say I preferred the program and felt that the book ended very abruptly.

Think that you might get into a little trouble for posting a book review though!
posted by kenaman at 3:35 AM on June 22, 2004

Weird, I just started reading the author's earlier book, How Proust Can Change Your Life. Enjoying it so far, and well worth checking out.
posted by Meridian at 3:58 AM on June 22, 2004

Review for another perspective.
posted by rainbaby at 6:31 AM on June 22, 2004

I'd love to discuss this but I haven't read the book or seen the show and there are no other links that might relate to the subject . . .

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Right - guess I'll move along then.
posted by ashbury at 6:55 AM on June 22, 2004

I love that cover! Looks like an interesting book, johnny7. I'll have to check it out (though I must admit I couldn't make it through The Art of Travel with all the vomit franticly trying to escape my esophagus at every page turn).

And ashbury, there are a bunch of links to reviews of the book at the bottom of the page which might give you something to chew on. See also the vid clips.

metafilter: "we're prone to chronically over-rate the opinions of others" (Schopenhauer)
posted by shoepal at 9:40 AM on June 22, 2004

Rainbaby, thank you for providing that link related to the subject. But since this is a land where the greatest favor is won by those who posture most pleasingly, I'm dubious that we'll get much discussion on the matter.

For what it's worth, Metcalf might be missing a point about that "love" thing. We can speak only imprecisely about so many of our reasons for doing anything, not least because the web of influences is so complex; but also, because so many of our reasons for doing things can be understood as different vantages on another reason -- enhanced transformations, if you will. Rotations into another dimension, where features can be manifest that cannot be manifest, elsewhere.

In the blogosphere, it's easy to see how this plays out: We can posture ourselves as superior, cool, well-informed; we can elicit sympathy by portraying ourselves as wounded children. And to be sure, we mostly pretend we don't care what anyone else thinks -- it wouldn't be cool to actually ask for love, we've got to make people volunteer it.

So if my "desire" for one of those sleek new iRiver video players I saw on Gizmodo is a manifestation of my quest for love from the world, what would that mean? How would it connect? There are obvious ways, of course: By flashing it in a coffee house or in the break room; by displaying it in some clear plastic skin while we bop down the street; all in a quest to win the envy of others.

But that lacks imagination. After all, since we really do live within our own minds, imagining the envious stares may be enough (and they'd better be, because who wants to walk around my neighborhood showing something like that off?).

Or is this all just another instance of profoundly mistaken neo-marxism? Can't we even get one person to mention some over-rated French post-modernist tome?
posted by lodurr at 9:56 AM on June 22, 2004

I haven't read this one - the subject seem to be of any interest to me - but I wonder how honest I'm being with myself there, so I might.

I thoroughly enjoyed De Botton's "The Consolations of Philosophy" an utterly accessable (something I really appreciate) look at several major philosophers. Loved the tv series, too.
posted by Blue Stone at 11:07 AM on June 22, 2004

* seemed not to be of any interest to me ...
posted by Blue Stone at 11:09 AM on June 22, 2004

I don't like this author much. The review posted above by rainbaby confirms it. Read some his low-star reviews on Amazon for more. This topic of how people are motived by the need for recognition ("status" he calls it) has been covered since time immoral by the great thinkers from all disciplines. Freud and the Ego is the most obvious. It is one of the schools of thought in Historical writing, the "Great Man" theory, that one can write history by writing about individuals and how individuals can change the course of history. Indeed that history is driven by mans need for recognition. Philosophers also cover this topic in the realm of Metaphysics. Do I exist? It's all part of the human experience and now we have Alain de Botton to discover it for us.
posted by stbalbach at 11:19 AM on June 22, 2004