BITESIZE | The Truth About Modern Anxiety & A Surprising Way To Find Joy and Meaning | Alain de Botton #558

Summary

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Episode Summary: BITESIZE | The Truth About Modern Anxiety & A Surprising Way To Find Joy and Meaning | Alain de Botton #558
Release Date: May 22, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Feel Better, Live More, host Dr. Rangan Chatterjee presents a Bite Size segment featuring a profound conversation with Alain de Botton, the internationally renowned philosopher and founder of The School of Life. The discussion delves into the complexities of modern anxiety, the pitfalls of contemporary ambition, and introduces the intriguing concept of cheerful pessimism as a pathway to greater fulfillment and joy.

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Alain de Botton on Modern Anxiety and Status Anxiety

Status Anxiety, a term coined by de Botton, examines the pervasive fear in modern society of not measuring up to societal standards. De Botton reiterates that this anxiety has intensified over time:

“I was calling it in those days. I mean, I wrote a book on this called status anxiety… In the modern world, people are defined primarily by their activities, by their jobs.”
— Alain de Botton [02:11]

He highlights how societal definitions of success lead to a punitive system where only a select few can achieve high status, fostering feelings of inadequacy and failure among the majority.

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Meritocracy and Self-Worth

De Botton critiques the meritocratic ideal prevalent in societies like the United States, where success is often seen as a direct result of personal effort and talent. This belief implicitly blames individuals for their failures, ignoring systemic barriers:

“If you really believe that those who at the top deserve their success, you have to believe that those who are at the bottom deserve their failure.”
— Alain de Botton [04:58]

He contrasts contemporary views with historical perspectives, such as the Middle Ages' term "unfortunate," which attributed one's social standing to fortune rather than personal failings.

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The Role of Nature and Relationships in Easing Anxiety

De Botton emphasizes the decentralizing effect of nature and personal relationships in mitigating the stress of modern life. Unlike human interactions that often revolve around status, nature and genuine relationships offer a sense of impassivity and unconditional acceptance:

“Your dog doesn't care if you were promoted. Your child's not interested in if you've just made it to the C suite… The forest isn't interested in your recent reversal.”
— Alain de Botton [06:19]

He argues that these non-human interactions allow individuals to feel insignificant in a comforting way, reducing the relentless pursuit of external validation.

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Pessimism vs Optimism: Stoic Philosophy and 'Cheerful Pessimism'

The conversation shifts to the interplay between pessimism and optimism, drawing from Stoic philosophy. De Botton introduces the idea of cheerful pessimism, where anticipating potential setbacks fosters a more resilient and grateful mindset:

“Stoic philosophers recommend that every morning… you should premeditate the whole day that you're going to face.”
— Alain de Botton [09:10]

This practice, known as praemeditatio, encourages individuals to prepare for adverse outcomes, thereby enhancing their ability to appreciate positive events and maintain emotional equilibrium.

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Perfectionism in Modern Society

De Botton explores the roots of perfectionism, attributing its rise to humanity's extraordinary achievements juxtaposed with inherent flaws:

“We put humans on the moon… have extraordinary, beautiful, amazing things that human beings do… How can we reconcile human greatness with human folly?”
— Alain de Botton [15:05]

He argues that society's celebration of monumental successes intensifies individual perfectionism, making it challenging to acknowledge and accept personal imperfections.

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Happiness vs Fulfillment

A significant portion of the discussion contrasts happiness with fulfillment. De Botton posits that happiness is often a fleeting and superficial state, while fulfillment encompasses a deeper sense of purpose that can coexist with life's inherent pains:

“I like the word fulfillment… it's very possible to imagine a fulfilled life that actually has a lot of pain in it.”
— Alain de Botton [20:21]

He suggests that redefining success in terms of fulfillment rather than perpetual happiness allows individuals to embrace life's challenges without feeling inadequate.

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Final Advice to Listeners

In his concluding remarks, de Botton offers heartfelt advice to those feeling unhappy or unfulfilled:

“We are all far more lonely than we need to be because we buy into the self-presentation of others… If we just allow ourselves a broader sense of what it means to be human, our spirits will lift.”
— Alain de Botton [22:19]

He encourages embracing the totality of human experience, acknowledging both strengths and vulnerabilities, to foster genuine connections and personal well-being.

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Conclusion

This episode presents a compelling exploration of modern anxiety through Alain de Botton's insightful perspectives. By challenging the obsession with status and advocating for a balanced understanding of human imperfection, de Botton provides valuable tools for listeners to redefine happiness, embrace fulfillment, and navigate the complexities of contemporary life with greater resilience and joy.

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Notable Quotes:

• “If you really believe that those who at the top deserve their success, you have to believe that those who are at the bottom deserve their failure.” — Alain de Botton [04:58]
• “Your dog doesn't care if you were promoted. Your child's not interested in if you've just made it to the C suite.” — Alain de Botton [06:19]
• “Stoic philosophers recommend that every morning… you should premeditate the whole day that you're going to face.” — Alain de Botton [09:10]
• “We are all far more lonely than we need to be because we buy into the self-presentation of others.” — Alain de Botton [22:19]

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For more insights and episodes, visit Dr. Chatterjee's Podcast and follow him on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Transcript

[Simon Thomas]

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[Alain de Botton]

I mean, perhaps even more so. I mean, I was calling it in those days. I mean, I wrote a book on this called status anxiety, which is really, it's a feature of what we call the modern, which the modern world's existed for 200 years in the West. You know what we call the modern world, which is a world where people are defined primarily by their activities, by their jobs. Nowadays, if you meet somebody for the first time, you say to them, what do you do? And according to how you answer that question, people will either be really pleased to see you, or they'll kind of leave you aside and think of you as that quintessential punitive modern word, a loser. And the thing about the modern world is that it accords status according to a professional race, which by definition not everybody can win. I mean, that's the whole point. It's a race and there can only be a selective number of winners. This is an incredibly punitive system. Furthermore, we insist particularly Find this in America, but really all over the world on the idea that everybody has an equal chance to get to the top. And if you listen to politicians, right, left, all sides of political spectrum, they're always trying to build a world which is meritocratic, in other words, where those who get to the top deserve their success. But there's a nasty sting in the tail of that argument, because if you really believe that those who at the top deserve their success, you have to believe that those who are at the bottom deserve their failure. So in other words, the modern world adds to poverty and low status a condemnation, an implicit condemnation, that you have failed because of your own deficiencies rather than, you know, because of the system. I mean, you know, in the Middle Ages, let's say in Britain, the poorest were known as unfortunates. Right? Now, that's a really fascinating word, unfortunate. If you unpack that word, unfortunate, it literally, there's the word fortune in there. In other words, these people have not been blessed by fortune. And fortune was originally a Roman goddess and she was believed to determine people's careers. So if you ended up with a really high flying position in the Roman world, at least you acknowledged that at least half of your success was down to fortune. Nowadays, it's a very odd concept. You know, if I said to you, oh, I've been doing really well lately, you know, great business, etcetera, But I said, oh, it's not me, it's just I've been blessed by fortune, you'd go, odd guy? Is it oddly modest? Is he arrogantly modest? A bit odd. Similarly, if I said to you, well, things are really actually not going so well for me, I've been sacked, my income's dropped, et cetera. But it's not my fault, it's fortune turned against me. You think you're making an excuse here? We hold people incredibly tightly to their own biographies. As communal structures dissipate and as religious explanations for people's destinies fade, what you find is that people are held so responsible for what happens to them that it becomes unbearable. And if it's only your fault, at some point people will break. And that's why we've moved from that term unfortunate now to that much more punitive term, loser. If you think somebody's failed or lost in their jobs, you might call them, especially in America, a loser. And why is that word particularly used in the United States? Because the United States is the most meritocratic society which believes that people's destinies are in their hands.

[Simon Thomas]

And there's upsides to that as well, though, 100%.

[Alain de Botton]

But there's also serious downsides like most things, and so we need to keep a handle on those downsides.

[Simon Thomas]

Yeah. Either in this book or one of your videos I was watching yesterday, you said that actually many societies now are living in a world where there is nothing at its center that is non human.

[Alain de Botton]

I think that is a major source of stress and difficulty. And that's why, you know, very anecdotally, people will say, the things I love are nature, my dog and my child. Now, let's look at nature. Dogs and children, they've got one thing in common. They decenter the adult human. They recalibrate the importance of adult purposeful life as we define it in the modern world. Your dog doesn't care if you were promoted. Your child's not interested in if you've just made it to the C suite. They care about other things. Can you throw a ball? Have you got any jokes?

[Simon Thomas]

Fun to be around, Are you around?

[Alain de Botton]

Are you around? Are you around? Are you around? Are you nice? Similarly, when you go out into nature, you know, the forest isn't interested in your recent reversal the cliff face doesn't care that, you know, you didn't get what you wanted in the office promotional race. There is a kind of impassivity to human destiny in the natural world, which it could look like it's going to humiliate us. Like, you know, look, there are many ways of feeling small. If you go to a grand hotel and you say, I'd like a cup of tea, you may be made to, in inverted commas, feel small by the people at the desk. And no one likes that. And we think, my ego has not been respected. So constantly the human ego is looking to be respected by other human egos. And this is a terrible sort of zero sum game in which everybody is competing for a limited amount of attention, for the recognition of their own self. The wonderful thing about nature is that it takes us out of that and introduces us to an older, grander, slower, different dimension, which, rather than crushing us, actually helps us. We are longing to be made to feel small and insignificant. It's delightful to be made to feel insignificant, because what we suffer from is our foiled desire for significance in a world which we'll never be able to accord everyone the significance that they crave. It will only be called a very narrow elite, and even them, it will not satisfy them.

[Simon Thomas]

One of the things I wanted to explore with you today was pessimism versus optimism. So can you just Sort of unpick that, Tim.

[Alain de Botton]

I mean, if you look at the Stoic philosophers, they do a fascinating analysis of anger. Their argument is that behind every angry outburst lies, rather surprisingly, optimism. We may think of angry people as rather pessimistic, dark people who are losing their temper, but, no, their view was the Stoic philosophy is that scratch the surface of any angry person and you will find a demented optimist. Take rain. Imagine we're recording in the UK it's raining again today. I don't think anybody's angry about the rain. And the reason is that it rains almost every day in this country. So you would not get angry about rain because it's. Now, are you happy about the rain? No. Almost everybody in England is unhappy about the rain, but no one gets angry about the rain. Now, the Stoke philosopher would be clapping at this point. They'd be really excited about this because this shows exactly where they're trying to get us to across a range of areas. It's not that the sun will always shine, but there are better and worse responses to reality. And what the Stoic philosopher's trying to get us to do is meet reality without rage, because we've got a richer sense of what reality is, is actually made of. So they counsel a fascinating exercise called, in Latin, a praemeditatio, a premeditation. And Stoic philosophers recommend that every morning before you get up, you should lie in bed and premeditate. In other words, look ahead at the whole day that you're going to face, and you should tell yourself. And they wrote some beautiful meditations on what you should tell yourself. And there's one from Seneca who basically says, expectations, everything, be certain of nothing. And in the day, you may witness everything from your plans being foiled, your enemies gossiping about you, your reputation destroyed, all the way to you and your children dying. You might think, oh, my goodness, this guy's advocating that you should think every day that you and your children might die. The reputation might blow up, you might lose all your money. That's cheerful. Well, these guys think, and I don't think they're entirely wrong, and they may be very right, in fact, that this kind of scoping of the darkest possibilities belongs to health and belongs to calm, because it widens our sense of possibility. It also, incidentally, makes us a huge lot more grateful, because if these things don't happen, then, you know, we'll be focused on the upside.

[Simon Thomas]

Every day's a great day because that didn't happen.

[Alain de Botton]

Because that didn't happen. And I don't think this is a delusion. I mean, we live extremely as, you know, prone to accident, all of us. And the number one thing is we don't expect it. I mean, who has a car crash thinking, oh, today I might have had a car crash? We don't. We don't expect this.

[Simon Thomas]

Is it pessimism v. Optimism? Or is it more the difference between reality and expectation? And you're gonna get anger every time it rains. You're gonna struggle living in the uk, Right. But if you expect every day to be sunny and you wake up and it's raining, that's where the disappointment is, isn't it? Because you thought it was gonna be sunny. I believe I'm an optimist, but I don't think optimism means that. I'm optimistic that tomorrow it's gonna be really, really sunny. When I think of what being an optimist means, for me, it's really this belief that most, if not all situations in life are neutral. And really, the optimist in me is that I get to put the story on that situation, and the story I choose to put on it will ultimately determine its outcome on me. I didn't used to have that mindset. It's something that has intentionally been cultivated. So for me, that's an optimistic mindset, but it's based on a realistic expectation. Does that make sense?

[Alain de Botton]

Yes. I mean, absolutely. You know, one can be. I mean, the thing we're not mentioning here, but it's coming up in your face, is humor.

[Simon Thomas]

Yeah.

[Alain de Botton]

I think that the collision between hope and reality is always the moment when there is possibility of a smile. There's also possibility of a tear. But if we can make it, angle it towards smiling. I mean, look, the area where people experience rain most regularly is their relationships. I mean, if we're talking about an area of hope. We live in a romantic age that promises people that they will all find a soulmate who will understand them perfectly, who will completely combine a sexual existence and a psychologically rich existence. This will go on throughout a lifetime and that you'll know from the first moment, etc. Now, these expectations are responsible for more unhappiness than almost any other feature of the modern world, because people constantly feel that they have done personally something wrong, rather than their existing within an ideology, which is incredibly complicated. And so the moment you say to people, no one's perfect. That means your partner and you will not be perfect immediately the temperature goes down. Ah, okay. You know, at the school of life, we have this. We Give people advice on relationships at various points. And we say right at the beginning of relationships, a really useful thing for two people who are meeting for the first time to do is to go, I don't mean this pejoratively. How are you crazy? To be able to. How are you crazy? To ask somebody on a date, how are you crazy? We could go, that's a bit rude. What does that mean? How are you crazy? Well, the assumption is we're all crazy. So if you're not answering that question, you're really crazy because you're in denial of your possibility, of your crazy nature. So already it's a real win if you're able to go, hmm, the ways in which I'm crazy are this, that, and the other. So the acknowledgement of one's imperfection plays a vital role in accommodating oneself to reality. We don't need people to be perfect. We need people to have a sense of their varied imperfections and to be able, on a good day, to either warn us of them or at least apologize for them once they've had a run around. But, you know, that's already asking a lot, and most of us are not ready for that.

[Simon Thomas]

One of the things you write about is perfectionism. And perfectionism, we know, has been going up dramatically since the 1980s in relation to what you just said about relationships and this idea that we're all imperfect. Why do you think so many of us are struggling with perfectionism?

[Alain de Botton]

Okay, I'll tell you the reason. Because we put humans on the moon. If you put humans on the moon and then tell people, oh, humans are a bit silly, and they're not really that impressive, you want to go, have you seen the Apollo space program? Of course it's impressive, right? Once we've, you know, managed to send data across the Atlantic in 1 second millisecond, are you really going to expect that? Everything goes wrong in a human life? No wonder we've got runaway perfectionism. Let's be generous towards perfectionism. It's really hard to think about our imperfections in a world where we are daily reminded of extraordinary, beautiful, amazing things that human beings do. How can we reconcile human greatness with human folly? It's a problem that we have, as it were, at a collective level and an individual.

[Simon Thomas]

How do we.

[Alain de Botton]

By reminding ourselves that we really are both angels and beasts, that we are both wonderful and appalling. And the two are true. The two go together. And we have too much pride. We can't quite acknowledge this. It's very Hard, as I say, individually and collectively. I mean, let's go back to religions. What's the number one dictum of Buddhism? Life is suffering. These guys start with the dictum, life is suffering. Right? Life is not, you know, a penthouse in Monaco and a jet, et cetera. It is suffering. Okay. And it's not just for you or for me. It's for everybody. Everybody. Life is suffering. What's the central dictum of Catholicism? Central dictum is we are all sinners. Life is suffering. We're all sinners. Now, you might go, that's a bit mean. Well, we're all sinners. I'm not. I'm nice. You know, life is suffering. Maybe for you, but I'm intended to have a nice life. Well, imagine if we started somewhere more in that zone. Not necessarily exactly in that zone, but more in that zone. Let's go back to dating. Imagine you've got two people. Let's caricature Californians. Bless Californians. But they are some of the most optimistic people in the world. Right? So you're meeting in California for the fact you're on a date with a Californian. So how are you? You know, great, terrific, you know, what's your character like? Well, I really believe in myself, my potential, and I'm advancing ever further towards, you know, achieving my goals. Wow. It's amazing, you know, do you have any flaws? I'm ironing them all out. And both physically and mentally, I'm on top of things. This could sound like an amazing person, but might one also detect a certain brittleness? Might one detect a perfectionism that might have a curdle side, maybe? How much more relaxing to meet someone who goes, I'm a bit broken, actually. I'm not a perfect human. I mess up. My life's been suffering in lots of areas. You think, oh, this person might be a little bit more livable. I'm advocating a philosophy of cheerful pessimism. Another word for it is a word I really like is melancholy. If we look at what's the UK contributor to World Civilization, not much, food's lousy, et cetera, but one area that the UK really excels at is melancholy. Now, melancholy is an interesting thing because melancholy is not depression, it's not despair, but nor is it cheerfulness. It somehow hovers between the two. It's like a kind of wry acceptance that life's kind of difficult at many points, but it's always quite beautiful too. You know, you could be very cheerful person and quite melancholic. So melancholy is tragedy. Well, Handled. It might be an emblematic word for what it means to be mature. You know, that's really what maturity is. It's hard to imagine good maturity without an element of melancholy. How can you look at the facts of life without an element of melancholy?

[Simon Thomas]

What do you think of happiness?

[Alain de Botton]

It's a coercive concept. Of course we all want it. Of course it's lovely. But it's a dangerous thing to wield around. I think we need to whisper that word rather than shout it from the rooftop, really, because whenever someone sets out to be happy, you know, the gods laugh, the spirits laugh, the hubris. I mean, let's go back to our friends, the ancient Greeks, right? They were really fascinated by overreach, by human overreach. All their stories in one way or another, all their legends, all their myths are about people who have forgotten that human beings come below the gods. Think of famous story of Daedalus and Icarus, right? Icarus rides too close to the sun, falls in sea. That's the emblematic ancient Greek story. And, you know, we think of it, oh, it's an old story. Doesn't have much to teach us. Oh, boy, oh boy, does it have a lot to teach us. You know, we're all Icarus in different ways. In different ways, we're all Icarus. And so it doesn't mean an end to ambition, it doesn't mean an end to hope. After all, the ancient Greeks, I mean, they contributed hugely to civilization and progress in all sorts of areas, but they never forgot the dangers of overreach and the moment when the human mind forgets its limitations.

[Simon Thomas]

Yeah, it's fascinating. So I do like the term happiness, but I. But I also believe that it can be. I believe it can be misinterpreted. I think also we have to be careful. What do we mean by happiness? Because I think you could say the word happiness to 10 different people and they may understand it in 10 different ways. So some people may believe that happiness is that state where you wake up every day with a smile on your face and everything is fantastic and all the time. I don't believe that's happiness.

[Alain de Botton]

Can I sell you another word?

[Simon Thomas]

Please, please.

[Alain de Botton]

Fulfillment. Because I like the word fulfillment, because it's very possible to imagine a fulfilled life that actually has a lot of pain in it. You know, you could stop someone who, let's say a busy doctor, and you go, are you happy today? Oh, no, not really. Are you fulfilled today? Yes. Yes. So do you mean it allows one to encompass pain, which, I mean, there are lots of ways of defining the word happiness. But for me, it's hard to imagine too much pain in a happy state. Whereas in a fulfilled state, you could be quite grumpy, you could be having quite sort of difficult, tetchy day, but basically still feeling you're leading the right life. I mean, look, part of the problem is that we don't, at a societal level, admit the difficulties involved in many worthwhile tasks. We can't quite bear it. And so people who then engage in those tasks will panic too early. Think of writing. You know, when I started off as a writer, I thought, God, this is hard. And the fact it's so hard means that it can't be going right because it's going so hard. And then I was in a museum in Paris and I looked at the manuscripts of Proust, French writer Marcel Proust, who'd spent years trying to get a novel off the ground. And you look at the manuscripts and you think, oh my God, this guy can't write one sentence without crossing it out and having to start again. And I thought, that's what I have to go through. But he became Proust. And I thought, oh, okay, that's a cheerful story. In other words, the fact that I'm in pain and the fact it's all going wrong is not a conclusive proof that the whole enterprise is going wrong. But in lots of areas we don't admit to, the difficulties actually entail in being a writer and being an entrepreneur and being a doctor and being whatever it is. And so people who start down that road will panic too soon. So I'm only selling rain again. It's knowing how much rain is likely to fall and has to fall so that we don't panic when we meet it.

[Simon Thomas]

For someone who has heard our conversation and they feel like they're struggling in their life, they're lost, they feel unhappy, they. They don't have fulfillment. What would your final words of them be?

[Alain de Botton]

You know, welcome to the suffering spirit in which, you know, we all share that we are all far more lonely than we need to be because we buy into the self presentation of others. No one wants to present themselves in the way they do. We're just forced. We collectively keep lying to each other about what it means to be. And I think what we've been discussing is what's it actually like to be human. And the reality is that we are far more silly, far more hopeful, far more desperate, far more sad, far more beautiful than we admit to ourselves and to others. And if we just allow ourselves a broader sense of what it means to be human, our spirits will lift.

[Simon Thomas]

Hope you enjoyed that bite sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and I'll be back next week with my long form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.