ReThinking: Overcoming status anxiety with Alain de Botton and RaQuel Hopkins

Summary

Podcast Summary: ReThinking – Overcoming Status Anxiety with Alain de Botton and RaQuel Hopkins

Podcast: WorkLife with Adam Grant (TED)<br> Episode: ReThinking: Overcoming Status Anxiety with Alain de Botton and RaQuel Hopkins<br> Date: December 30, 2025

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Main Theme / Episode Purpose

This episode explores the topic of status anxiety—the complex emotional landscape around our desire for recognition, the pursuit of happiness, and the challenge of finding purpose in a world fixated on measurable success. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is joined by philosopher and author Alain de Botton and therapist RaQuel Hopkins. Together, they examine how status anxiety manifests in modern society, the cultural underpinnings of our relentless striving, and strategies for developing a more meaningful, psychologically fulfilling life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing the Guests & Their Connection to Status Anxiety

• Adam introduces Alain as a "rock star philosopher" (02:02), celebrated for making life’s messy topics accessible.
• RaQuel nominated Alain because his practical approach and focus on real wisdom resonates with her own work in mental health (03:07).
  • Quote, RaQuel Hopkins (03:07): "His approach is practical... Information and knowledge should be used to help people live better and meaningful lives."

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2. Rethinking "Wisdom" and the Value of Pessimism

• Alain describes the founding of The School of Life to bring wisdom, especially emotional wisdom, back into public life (03:52).
• He argues for a nuanced embrace of pessimism:
  • Quote, Alain de Botton (04:26): "A certain degree of pessimism is a friend to all sorts of good things."
• Suffering often results from the mismatch between expectations and reality; we "suffer twice"—once from an event and again from expecting a different outcome (06:55).

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3. The Myth of Deserved Happiness & Its Consequences

• RaQuel highlights how the modern myth that "we deserve happiness" sets unrealistic expectations (06:27).
• Alain agrees and points out it underestimates the required effort and luck involved, much like learning the violin (06:35).
• Adam elaborates on "suffering twice," describing it as a self-inflicted wound (06:55).

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4. Rage, Melancholy, and Managing Emotional Gaps

• High ideals often lead to rage when reality doesn't match up. The U.S. is a paradox: successful yet full of anger caused by the unmet promises of happiness (07:23).
• Promoting "melancholy"—one of Alain’s favorite words—as a space between happiness and tragedy (08:28).
  • This allows recognition of grief and suffering without total despair, encouraging adaptive rather than reactive coping.

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5. The Pursuit of Happiness vs. The Pursuit of Status

• Adam distinguishes between the "pursuit" and "attainment" of happiness, drawing on the U.S. Declaration of Independence (10:06).
• He introduces the "sociometer theory": our evolutionary tendency to monitor status and social belonging (10:42).
• Social media intensifies relentless comparison and status measurement (11:18).

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6. The Complex Relationship Between Utility, Philosophy, and Flourishing

• Alain urges a broader notion of "psychological utility," not just material or financial, where art, philosophy, and literature can foster flourishing (12:41).

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7. Understanding Snobbery and the Difficulty of Measuring Virtue

• Alain defines snobbery as passing rigid judgment based on superficial details (17:15).
• Nietzsche’s provocative idea: we should be elitist about virtues like kindness, courage, and generosity—an "aristocracy of the soul" (17:15).
  • Quote, Alain de Botton (17:15): "The real elites were people who knew how to love, who knew how to be courageous... an aristocracy of the soul."
• Adam references Will Storr's "status games": dominance, virtue, and success—criticizing how society defaults to measuring the most visible (wealth, professional achievement) over character (19:16).
  • Quote, Adam Grant (19:16): "The things that count most are the hardest to count."

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8. The Toll of Status Anxiety: The Illusion of Attainment

• Alain discusses de Tocqueville and Durkheim: capitalist societies tend to equate status with money because it's quantifiable, increasing anxiety and even suicide risk during economic downturns (21:11).
• The pressure to find meaning and dignity through work is a uniquely modern, often toxic expectation (21:11).

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9. Strategies for Managing Status Anxiety

• Adam observes that many (especially students) attempt to counteract status anxiety by accumulating more markers of success, which never satisfies (24:18).
• RaQuel advocates radical acceptance—everyone is complex and imperfect; real growth comes from embracing this (25:23).
  • Quote, RaQuel Hopkins (25:23): "Everyone else is as complicated and imperfect as I am."
• Alain adds that transformative experiences, like illness or caring for others (children, animals), can loosen the grip of "MBA-vision" status obsessions and point us toward deeper satisfaction (26:23).
• Both agree: instead of asking "what do you want to do?" organizations should ask "who do you want to become?" (29:04).
  • Quote, RaQuel Hopkins (29:04): "Who do you want to become? And what do you want to consistently produce?"

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10. The False Dichotomy Between Virtue and Success

• Alain references Jane Austen: some wealth is helpful, but loving money too much is corrosive; wisdom is the balance (30:14).

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11. What Are We Snobs About? Humility, Therapy, and Judgment

• Alain admits to being a "therapy snob"—quickly judging those who dismiss therapy (34:20). Adam jokes this makes him a snob about snobs—a "meta-snob."
• RaQuel worries that therapy itself has become a status marker and urges more curiosity and openness to diverse paths to growth, beyond therapy alone (35:19).
• Both stress the importance of holding judgments lightly and remaining curious about the whole person (36:30).
  • Quote, Alain de Botton (36:30): "To know that you don't know about a human being is... the gateway to real tolerance."

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12. Tragedy, Empathy, and Humor in Life

• Alain lauds the ancient Greeks' tragic sensibility—following decent people into disaster fosters pity, empathy, and kindness, a mindset modern societies often lack (37:58).
  • Quote, Alain de Botton (37:58): "We've really lost the tragic mindset, which is such a generous mindset. A dark but generous mindset."
• Gallows humor is championed as an adaptive mechanism for communal humanity in the face of adversity (39:43–40:15).
• Alain observes how life experience allows us to appreciate small joys, like daffodils, and the beauty of fragile happiness—something rarely valued by the young but essential to meaning as we age (41:56).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "A certain degree of pessimism is a friend to all sorts of good things."
  —Alain de Botton (04:26)

• "Rage is often the result of high ideals."
  —Alain de Botton (07:23)

• "Happiness is something that lasts for 15 minutes."
  —Alain de Botton (07:23)

• "The things that count most are the hardest to count."
  —Adam Grant (19:16)

• "To know that you don't know about a human being is... the gateway to real tolerance."
  —Alain de Botton (36:30)

• "Happiness gains its intensity from an acquaintance with grief."
  —Alain de Botton (40:15)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:52: Adam introduces the theme; Alain and RaQuel introduced
• 03:07: RaQuel on why Alain’s philosophy resonates
• 04:26: Alain on pessimism as emotional wisdom
• 06:27: The myth that we deserve happiness
• 07:23: Alain on rage and high ideals
• 08:28: On melancholy as a healthy mindset
• 10:06: The difference between pursuit and attainment of happiness
• 11:18: Status barometers and social comparison
• 12:41: Alain on psychological utility vs. material gain
• 17:15: Alain’s definition of snobbery
• 19:16: Adam on the three "status games" (dominance, virtue, success)
• 21:11: Alain on money as the observable status marker
• 24:18: Discussion on managing status anxiety
• 26:23: Alain on transformative life experiences
• 29:04: RaQuel’s two crucial self-reflection questions
• 30:14: Alain on Jane Austen, wealth, and virtue
• 34:20: Alain’s therapy snobbery admission
• 36:30: Importance of humility and openness in judgment
• 37:58: Alain on tragedy, empathy, and kindness
• 41:56: Appreciating fragility and beauty in later life

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Tone and Style

This episode maintains a warm, thoughtful, and gently humorous tone, with Alain de Botton’s philosophical elegance balanced by Adam’s playful but incisive insights and RaQuel Hopkins’s grounding focus on practical wisdom and emotional complexity.

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Takeaways

• Status anxiety is exacerbated by modern society’s tendency to rely on measurable markers.
• Authentic happiness and flourishing come from a blend of acceptance, humility, meaningful connection, and balanced ambition.
• Wisdom—and humor—in the face of life’s tragedy and imperfection is essential to both individual and collective well-being.
• The quest for virtue and character should be central in redefining what it means to “succeed.”

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode offers nuanced strategies to rethink how we judge ourselves and others, aiming for a fuller, kinder, and more flourishing life experience.

Transcript

[Adam Grant]

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[Alain de Botton]

Elitist, please could you be an elitist about the really important things you know, which is is someone kind, is someone nice, is their soul open, are they thoughtful? And maybe we can afford to pass judgment, as it were, on where people are according to this scale of values.

[Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with TED on the Science of what Makes Us Tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Alain de Botton has been called a rock star philosopher in part because of the way he fearlessly engages with the messy, complicated ways we live our lives and how he makes those ideas engaging and accessible for widespread audiences. He writes and speaks on a range of topics, including love, happiness, work, religion, status, anxiety, and therapy. We're trying something new on the show, where we invite a past guest to nominate a future one, and one of our former guests, therapist and social media phenomenon Raquel Hopkins, suggested a lot. I was excited about the idea, so I brought them together for A conversation about status anxiety and more. So this is a little bit of an experiment. Raquel, I think you might be our first guest co host to nominate your dream guest. And we got him.

[Raquel Hopkins]

Thank you.

[Adam Grant]

Raquel, tell me first why this bald man made the top of your list.

[Raquel Hopkins]

So I think that his approach is practical and I think that we've lost a lot of confidence, common sense. Today I think I was reading about the intellectual elite. Alon spoke about how knowledge is not being used in the most effective way today. And that really caught my attention because I thought about how information and knowledge should be used or can be used, and it's to help people live better and meaningful lives. And I think that that resonates with me when I talk about mental health in general. And I like the whole concept of school of life, integrating wisdom back into society.

[Adam Grant]

Well, there it is, your life's work just narrated back to you.

[Alain de Botton]

Fantastic. That's very kind of you to say so. Yes, I started the school of life together with colleagues many years ago and 15 more years ago. And the idea was to try and find a home for a word which sounds really strange, but wisdom in relation to many of life's challenges, chiefly in the emotional arena, could we try and capture some of the wisdom that's out there and diffuse it effectively?

[Adam Grant]

So is there a particular lesson that you've found counterintuitive when trying to think about inculcating wisdom?

[Alain de Botton]

Yes, yes, I'll give you one.

[Adam Grant]

I'll give you one.

[Alain de Botton]

The concept of pessimism. We tend to think that pessimism is a one way street, one way route to despair, nihilism and a bad life. And it's striking the ways in which a certain degree of pessimism is a friend to all sorts of good things. You know, if you embark on a relationship, let's say, and you're aware that the person you're with is going to be really, really imperfect, they're going to let you down, they're going to madden you at points. At some points you'll wish you never met them. And yet they may still be absolutely a really good person for you. That could be a very sound basis to embark on a relationship with someone. A lot of the reason why we suffer is we suffer twice. We suffer because things don't go our way and then we suffer a second time because we think they should have done. And to remove certain beliefs in the inevitability of, you know, things being wonderful can really alleviate, you know, people's sense of having been singled out for Punishment. I think so many of us are suffering inside, right lonely way thinking, what's wrong with me? I don't see any evidence around me for the level of self doubt, anxiety, suffering, unkindness that I experience. What's gone wrong with my life. And so often you just want to say to this person, welcome to the human experience. It's just we're describing it wrongly.

[Raquel Hopkins]

That's what I say.

[Alain de Botton]

And so we've got this notion of normality that is not normal and we suffer from it. And we think we're the only ones when we're in fact in a vast majority. So we're far lonelier than we ever deserve to be because we don't really know the reality of others. Even in an age that's so hyperconnected and that's so big on the transfer of information, there is still an enormous mystery about what it is to be human and an enormous editing about what a decent life will inevitably involve.

[Raquel Hopkins]

You have this. I think I read you have this. You refer to this modern myth as a lot of us believe that we deserve happiness.

[Alain de Botton]

That's right. And it seems, I mean, it seems like such a generous idea. Everybody's gonna be happy. Of course you'd want this. But you know, partly it's also the effort that's required to achieve it. I mean, it's like saying everybody can play the violin. And that's technically true, they can, but they're gonna have to work very hard at it, needs to be quite lucky, et cetera. So we underestimate the effort that's required.

[Adam Grant]

Alon, what you were describing as the suffering twice problem of, you know, things didn't go the way I wanted. And I'm upset about that. And then I'm upset also about the fact that I'm upset. And when I see people fall into that trap, it just seems like a self inflicted wound. Like you're taking the whatever small amount of suffering you've encountered and then you're magnifying it and choosing to suffer about your past suffering.

[Alain de Botton]

What do you do if not everything is as beautiful as you know, it was promised? Get very angry and cross. So rage, rage is often the result of high ideals. And you know, if you look at the United States now, it's such a paradoxical country, wildly successful in all sorts of ways, in all sorts of areas, and also widely rageful and full of disappointment and pockets of anger and fury that are sometimes hard for others to understand. But I think the two go together. I think they are part and parcel of the Same thing if you tell people everybody has the right to happiness. It's beautiful. That's a lovely thing to hear, but, boy, oh, boy, you're gonna have some trouble on your hands as well. I mean, happiness is something that lasts for 15 minutes. Beyond that, you've got the next problem on your hands. So, yeah. Tricky, tricky, tricky.

[Adam Grant]

The statement rage is the result of high ideals is very powerful. I think you're saying it's not the ideals themselves, but it's the gap between the ideals and reality.

[Alain de Botton]

That's right.

[Adam Grant]

That causes the reaction. And is the reaction rage, or is it outrage?

[Alain de Botton]

A bit of both. Outrage at somebody else's rage and rage at your own ideals being trampled upon. So that's a little bit of both. But high emotion as opposed to adaptive strategies. I mean, let's hear it for an unusual word, melancholy. It's one of my favorite words, melancholy. What an odd word. Melancholy is situated somewhere between happiness and tragedy. It's grief. Well worn. It's like, how are you feeling? Ah, a little bit melancholy. You know, it's like, I'm aware that life's got a lot of suffering in it, but. But I can smile as well. I can help out. I can be of use. I've not given up, but I've certainly taken a knot. And No1Over40 is going to escape that, or at least that possibility. So one of the big questions is, what are you going to do with your grief? Whose fault is it? How are you going to wear it? How are you going to handle it? Where are you going to put it? How do we mourn properly when things go wrong? Yeah, big questions.

[Adam Grant]

When you say melancholy, I can't help but think of Lincoln, who was probably the most famous quote, unquote, victim of it. And it was clearly, if you read his journal entries, it was very unpleasant for him. He did not enjoy the state of melancholy, but he did extraordinary things for his country and the world. And I can only imagine if Lincoln was pathologizing his melancholy and spending several hours a day in therapy, that might have inhibited his ability to be of service as he was.

[Raquel Hopkins]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Adam Grant]

You know, the other thing I'm just thinking about is, lan. When you talk about the. The right to happiness on this side of the Atlantic, there is no right to happiness. The Declaration of Independence promised people lives, liberties, and the pursuit of happiness. Not the discovery of happiness, not the realization, not the attainment of happiness. And I think that's an important distinction that's often overlooked.

[Alain de Botton]

So a space was opened up, but no necessary route to it, which perhaps even aggravates that restlessness, which, of course, has given the American spirit its unbelievable vivacity and energy, because there is such curiosity.

[Adam Grant]

I'm wondering if what's happened to a lot of people is that the pursuit of happiness has been linked too closely to status. Raquel, I don't know if you've come across sociometer theory in your study of psychology, but the basic concept is that evolutionarily, we have a status barometer that was very important to monitor social exclusion from groups, and that prehistorically, or at least in our more distant past, if you didn't read the fact that you were about to get ostracized, you might forfeit the opportunity to drink, eat, and live and survive, to pass on your genes.

[Alain de Botton]

And.

[Adam Grant]

And so we are very acutely sensitive to signals of do we belong? Are we respected? Are we important? Are we going to maintain our standing in the group that is no longer essential to survival? And yet the barometer continues to monitor. We get this ongoing, constant feedback, thank you, social media, about whether we're liked and followed and validated or not. And I guess what this leaves me wondering is like, what would a country look like that guaranteed the rights to life, liberty, and the opportunity to muddle through?

[Alain de Botton]

Yeah, I was going to add that. Exactly. The opportunity to be sad, to fail. The opportunity to fail. The opportunity to succeed, and inevitably, at points, to fail. That's how we might amend the Declaration of Independence.

[Raquel Hopkins]

People have to be able to hold the complexities of life. You have to be able to hold the heart and the happiness. I always say that. I guess in my pursuit of happiness, it every day. Not at the end of life, but every day. Do I have any regrets? How I've shown up? Did I lean into the things that I probably wanted to shy away from and. Or avoid? And if I haven't, I don't have any regrets. And for that reason, whether today was a really tough day where I was experiencing grief, for me, it's still a day of happiness.

[Alain de Botton]

You know, we human beings are so good at making life into a prison. We're so good at suffering for reasons that have no, you know, a priori basis. And let's try and at least remove some of these blocks. And people box themselves in, and then it's impossible to have a notion of utility. That is what I think it should always be, as well as other things, which is psychological utility. Not just material utility, not just financial utility, but psychological utility. In other words, philosophy, art, literature, poetry, et cetera, as a route to what the ancient Greeks were unembarrassed to call eudaimonia flourishing. A broad vision of flourishing that's very different from saying what is this going to earn? Or let's compare this to being a lawyer. It's an attempt to say if these things are higher, then part of what they should be doing is having a practical impact on our lives.

[Adam Grant]

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[Raquel Hopkins]

Well, Alon you talked about people are so focused on the surface of life and not its deeper purpose which goes into this whole concept of being a snob. And I'm curious to hear if you could elaborate or communicate to us what does it mean to be a snobbery.

[Alain de Botton]

I define snobbery as a way of judging another human being according to a relatively small detail which then becomes the basis for a very rigid and very all encompassing verdict on their value as a human being. So if you were to meet a so called clothes snob, they would take one look at what you were wearing and would go, you're not a decent person because look at your jumper or look at your trousers or look at your shoes. And however much you try to persuade this person that your soul was rich and complex, they wouldn't be interested because they'd just taken a look at you and they don't want to know anymore. So it's very dispiriting to be on the receiving end of other people's snobbery because you feel there's nothing you can say. You've been muted, as it were. But that said, how can we rehabilitate a certain kind of value system? I mean Nietzsche in the 19th century, the philosopher Nietzsche was wrestling with this. He proudly called himself a lover of the aristocracy. And everybody thought, oh my God, this guy likes people with titles and, you know, dukedoms or whatever. And he was doing it provocatively. He called himself elitist. Provocatively. He wanted to redefine what we could understand. He thought that the real elites were people who knew how to love, who knew how to be courageous, who knew how to dance. He was very keen on dancing, who knew how to be generous with Their spiritual. Nothing to do with, you know, the standard European notion of an aristocracy. Almost an aristocracy of the soul, you might say. And I think that's a very beautiful idea, very provocative idea.

[Raquel Hopkins]

How this resonates with me is I think about how people will take a small portion of your life or demographics or these labels, and they have this complete vision of who you are. And I think it's very reductive in that sense. So I find that very interesting. I'll let Adam go ahead and jump in here, because I know that he wanted to ask about status anxiety a little more.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I was just thinking, you know, as we talk about snobbery, the question of what are you a snob about? Is so interesting. So clothing came up. I think when talking about universities, we're referring to intellectual snobbery. And I guess I'm reminded of in status research, when sociologists and psychologists try to break down, what do you gain status on the basis of? I think Will Storr did a nice job summarizing basically the three kinds of status games that people play, which he called dominance, virtue, and success. And I think that, you know, all of us might have a little bit of an allergic reaction to the idea that status is gained via dominance, via shows of, you know, physical or interpersonal force, and maybe some concerns about how in modern society, status comes too much from the, you know, the wealth and maybe achievement markers of success. And maybe we would want status to come more from virtue. To say, being a person of character is what earns you respect and standing. The hard part of that is it's much harder to measure people's character. I think the things that count most are the hardest to count. And so people instead say, look, I want to be seen as important. I want to gain respect. And the way I'm going to do that is I'm going to rack up accomplishments and I'm going to accumulate financial resources that allow me to signal my status to other people, as opposed to living in a world where my virtue is uncertain and nobody knows what I really stand for? And I wonder, is that one of the major drivers of status anxiety? In the past, when status was driven more by dominance, was it easier for people to gain it because you knew who was stronger than whom? In smaller societies, in a more tribal world, was it easier to gauge virtue because we knew the same, know 100, 150 people, and we all had repeated interactions with everyone? And do we live in a world now that essentially disincentivizes us to seek status via character?

[Alain de Botton]

That's such a fascinating analysis, and I think it has to be true. I mean, I'm thinking now of de Tocqueville's thoughts in democracy in America, where, you know, this French, he was an aristocrat, though a very disenfranchised one, following the French Revolution, but he goes to the new United States and he realizes that there is one determining factor of success in this country and that is money. And he analyzes it as saying that this is the only point of agreement of a very disparate set of people. And it's precisely as you say, that it's the most clear, it's clearly observable way of ranking people because it's just a number. It's like how many zeros after your name, as it were. And he or she who has the greatest number wins, you know, and that's the way it is. Whereas, as you say, precisely the virtues of character are harder to discern and they rely on close up intimate knowledge. You know, which is why you get these fascinating dichotomies where somebody who may have made a lot of money finds themselves among their friends or among their intimates, having perhaps a more questionable reputation. Because these people have to sort of live among this character and they may find that, you know, actually in the kitchen and at the family gathering, this person has all sorts of deficiencies of character. But that's not the way in which society generally operates. Which is, you know, one of the first questions that anyone faces in a new social environment in the modern world is what do you do? And according to how you answer that question, that will be who you are. And of course, you're talking about mental illness. This literally drives people crazy because it means that our work is not just a source of income, it's also a source of respect, dignity and honor. And that's hard to take because, you know, it's hard enough to find a job that, you know, satisfies you and pays a decent wage. But then if on top of it all, it also has to be the conduit to your kind of psychological assessment in your entire society, that becomes very difficult. Which is why, you know, the French 19th century sociologist Emile Durkheim made this famous observation, very chilling observation. He said that, you know, in the modern world, the post religious capitalist world, when people suffer economically, they are much more inclined to take their own lives than in pre modern societies where financial reversal is obviously unpleasant and regrettable. It doesn't have to be the end of your sense of identity in the group. You are not Necessarily what you do, you exist in other registers. So this is some of the difficulties of living in the modern world. And also explains, I think, why mental health, mental well being, might be particularly challenging in an age which, from many points of view, has so many more material advantages than the ages that have preceded it. Why survival, psychic survival is especially challenging.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so this raises a question for both of you, which is I want to talk about how to manage status anxiety. So I think we've established to some degree that we live in a world where there's both increasing clarity and increasing uncertainty about how to gain respect and standing. And the basic strategy that I watch my students at Wharton follow way too often, actually, I would say the vast majority of our undergrads and our MBAs think that the key to solving status anxiety is basically to accumulate as many of the objective symbols as possible that will send a clear message to other people. I've made it. I'm important. I have a fancy title. I have a corner office. I'm rich, I'm powerful. And then at some point, the status anxiety doesn't go away, it just morphs because now they have a reference group of people who share their titles and share their wealth, and they have to stand out in that group. And so what are the alternative ways of managing status anxiety other than saying, I have to get as much status as I can?

[Raquel Hopkins]

I think that the greatest thing that we can do as humans is learn to accept the world and people as they are and as it presents itself. And then you start to work on those virtues that you say align with what your values are. I like to think about it from the perspective that life is complicated. And if life is complicated, everyone else is as complicated and imperfect as I am. I think that going after status anxiety is a part of people getting to a place in their lives where they start to ask more of those existentialism questions. And they're like, all right, how do I start to contribute in a much more meaningful way? But the only way to do that sometimes is one to go through the process. And then I think that once you've gone through the process, you kind of circle back and you're like, well, it's all complicated. Everyone is as complicated as I am. So for me, it's interconnectedness of all things.

[Alain de Botton]

It's very beautiful. If you think of the experiences that people go through that loosen them from the standard MBA obsession, it might be a severe illness.

[Raquel Hopkins]

Why?

[Alain de Botton]

What's the relationship between a severe illness and a questioning of values? Partly, it's Got to do with the idea that we're recognizing our dependence on something that's completely out of our control or largely out of control, which is our bodies, our biological natures, which do not subscribe to the MBA vision of success. I mean, it doesn't matter how much you've accumulated. Children are a fascinating, you know, challenge to this system. Animals. Great thing about buying a dog is that the dog is, again, very happy to see you and will look at you through very different eyes. The natural world in general. It's always amazed me that the United States, which in some ways has such an MBA view of the world, also contains most extraordinary landscapes and most sublime elements of nature. I mean, if you think of the New Mexican or Arizona desert, that's a very different place to New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, et cetera. Not just in terms of visible, but in terms of what the thing is speaking to you about what matters, what are we doing on this planet, et cetera. So some of it just depends on what you're looking at in your imagination or out of the window and on and on. It's important to say it's about stages of life. I don't think that anyone can go through life without at some point shuddering before the altar of the MBA view of life. It's just so dominant, it determines so much, so many of the prices that we have to pay for things. So let's not delude ourselves into thinking we can just sidestep this easily. But I don't think anyone goes through life without a set of experiences that also severely leads them to challenge that MBA vision. And we can reverse engineer from that, and we can make a list. Think, what are the things that draw people towards another vision of the good life?

[Adam Grant]

So what does that look like practically? Alain? I guess one of the things that a lot of us have struggled with is helping people realize that there's another false dichotomy here, that you don't have to choose necessarily between virtue and success as bases of status. That if you think about the right ways to cultivate character, you can do that in a way that allows you to still, you know, succeed at your job, rise up a hierarchy, earn a living, support your family. I still see a lot of people subscribing to the myth. So any thoughts about how to get past that?

[Raquel Hopkins]

So I think of two questions. Who do you want to become? And what do you want to consistently produce? And I think that when you're asking people who do they want to become, I think it sort of forces you to Find the balance between chasing the status and or the success while also looking at your character as well. I know that for me, when I think of like, who do I want to become? It's almost like this inner conviction that it can't be all about success. You have to be able to find the balance between also giving back and not chasing those things. And then the other thing is, is what do you want to consistently produce? The first thing that comes to my mind is burnout. Well, if you're always chasing success, then you run the exposure of burning yourself out. But if you find the balance between the success and then building your character, it's almost like it's the perfect recipe for creating a meaningful life. So I think it's at the forefront, like organizations can ask those questions. Who do you want to become? Not necessarily. What do you want to be doing in the next three to five years? Years.

[Alain de Botton]

You know, I think a lot of the myth comes down to early Christianity and this idea that you really have to make a choice between wealth and virtue. You can't have both. But as you rightly say, why not? The ultimate guide I've always found on this is Jane Austen. English 18th century novelist Jane Austen, who comes down to a very wise. It sounds almost dumb in its wisdom, but it's very sophisticated, much more sophisticated than what we've got now, which is if you have some money that really helps your emotional life because it means you're not forever, you know, scrambling for basic necessities. If you've got a bit of money, that's really helpful. However, Jane Austen is extremely tough on any of her characters, and there are quite a few in most of her novels who love money too much. And as soon as you love money too much, you're in also another kind of trouble. So you've got trouble on both sides of the spectrum. You don't love it enough or you don't respect it enough and you respect it too much. And that's such a beautifully. It sounds like common sense. We've really lost the plot on this one.

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[Adam Grant]

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[Alain de Botton]

I think we can't escape it. The question is what? I mean. Look I'll tell you one piece of snobbery that I have. If I'm in a conversation with someone and the topic goes to psychotherapy therapy, and someone goes, therapy's hopeless. I hate the whole thing. I have snobbish reaction. Yeah. I'm like, I find it a little bit harder to connect. I'm little bit more wary. Yeah. I'm passing a judgment here. You know, I wouldn't die on that hill, but maybe I'll take a small injury on that hill.

[Adam Grant]

It sounded like you're a snob about people who are snobs against therapy.

[Alain de Botton]

That's right. I mean, there are lots of good reasons why one might be suspicious of therapy. Some therapists are not great. You might have had a bad experience. Everyone's got a personal take on this. But if, you know, the thing about snobbery is that it is. It's a quick way of judging. And sometimes one does need to have a quick way of judging, and that might be one of them.

[Adam Grant]

But, Raquel, people are starting to use having a therapist as a status symbol, aren't they?

[Raquel Hopkins]

Yeah, in a. In a lot of ways, it's become very performative. And I was thinking about, what am I a snob about? So whether we're questioning religion or professionals, I'm a snob about that. I'm like, well, why do we do it this way? Does it have to be this way? Is therapy the only gateway to growth? Can you use coaching? What does it look like to create communities to further your learning and education? I believe in therapy, but I think that where we've lost the plot is understanding what therapy is supposed to help us facilitate.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. I've heard people say, I won't date anyone who's not in therapy. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

[Alain de Botton]

Wait a minute.

[Raquel Hopkins]

Which doesn't mean a whole lot because people can learn from just having a conversation in the same way that we're having right now. You don't need therapy in order to grow. And I think that's probably a big myth that's out there. Like, I don't know, that you have to do anything. You can try it. Be curious, be open to it. Don't close your mind off to it.

[Alain de Botton]

That's the problem of snobbery is that it's an instant, blanket, rather rigid judgment. And as you say, as soon as you start to examine it, you start picking holes in it, and you go, well, that person tried therapy, and you know, they're a monster. And this one hasn't had therapy, and they're hugely thoughtful, et cetera, et cetera. So that's why one needs to hold judgments very lightly. To know that you don't know about a human being is, I think, the gateway to real tolerance. You know, someone seems to be like this, but are they really? Are they? We don't know. Maybe you don't know. You just don't know. That is the beginning of kind of generosity of spirit.

[Raquel Hopkins]

I think maybe I have a few snobbish ways, because as I was listening, what came to my mind is this concept that we do in therapy, which kind of comes from the Freud age. It's like, well, you've been through this, or you've had this experience with your parents. And then we make that to be all that you are in a lot of ways. And that just drives me nuts. I'm like, well, couldn't they be more than what this set of experiences have shown them? So to your point, we're so complex as human beings, to make this blanket statement that you're this way because you had this experience with your mother, you had this experience with your father. I don't think it opens us up to the richness of all that life is offering us.

[Adam Grant]

I can't disagree with that.

[Alain de Botton]

I mean, let's look back at history. So the ancient Greeks, you know, their highest art form is tragedy. And the whole societies were built around festivals where people would put on tragic plays. And the notion of a tragedy is you follow someone who's basically decent, who makes a few mistakes, and their life turns into the aforementioned tragedy. And the notion there is, if you watch people's lives like this, you will feel pity for them, you will feel sorrow, you'll feel empathy for them and fear for yourself. This is what Aristotle defines the effect of tragedy as. Pity for the other. Worry for yourself that this may happen to you. And the idea is summed up, really, ultimately, what this is a route to is kindness. It's sort of like this is the way in which people learn to be kind. They go, oh, my God, someone else is suffering. And I might. That's going to be the way I go too. This is the human condition. We've really lost the tragic mindset, which is such a generous mindset. A dark but generous mindset. I mean, gallows humor. Let's hear it for gallows humor. What is gallows humor? Humor that you use on the way to the gallows, to the way to be executed. You know, there was a tradition of laughter, you know, on your way to your death. And I love that I love that. It's fantastic. It's so human and humane. It's like that's the kind of humor we need, that dark humor that doesn't deny what it is to be on this planet, but at the same time, you know, laughs, in other words, is tender at the absurdity of it all and invites communal gathering around the mess.

[Adam Grant]

I think Mel Brooks put it best when he said, tragedy is when I cut my finger and comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die.

[Raquel Hopkins]

That's very good laughter today for some people, you hear it's a defense mechanism. And to your point, it's not always a dispense mechanism. It's I would say, an adaptive coping skill that is very necessary and we don't have to make it good and or bad because people laugh their way through pain or tragedy.

[Alain de Botton]

Yeah, I mean, let's hear it for adaptive mechanisms. Nothing wrong with those things. I mean, there are better and worse ones, but yeah, I mean, the whole of philosophy is essentially should be a giant adaptive mechanism. What is literature? What is art other than a giant adaptive mechanism? And you know, to add to that, happiness gains its intensity from an acquaintance with grief. I mean, I sometimes think of this in relation to children's stories, which are often very heartwarming stories about love and family and kindness, et cetera. And I don't know if you've had this experience, but when you read these stories as a child, you think, oh, well, it's quite nice. You know, sometimes as an adult, especially if you've been through dark stuff, you read one of these stories to a kid and you have to fight back the tears and you cry not because it's sad, because it's so beautiful, because it's something so tender and lovely in a world which, you know, at this point in your life is really pretty tough. And so there's a way in which the more, you know the world is tough, the more its tender and fragile and delightful elements become not just nice like they always were, but amazing life saving. Which is why past 70, you don't really catch a person walking past some flowers without a little bit of appreciation. At 20, no one notices flowers. Why on earth would you notice flowers? You got your whole life ahead of you, you've big plans, you're going to take over the world, et cetera. By 70. Good luck to you. Something pretty amazing about a daffodil. Let's hear it for the daffodils. So maybe we can learn that lesson a little bit earlier too, because it'll actually make our lives more cheerful.

[Adam Grant]

I could get behind that. Good.

[Alain de Botton]

Daffodil Appreciation Society coming up. Let's do it.

[Adam Grant]

Excellent. Well, I want to thank you both for joining us today.

[Raquel Hopkins]

Thank you, Adam, for making this happen.

[Alain de Botton]

Thanks to both of you.

[Adam Grant]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Seller. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown. So you're a snob about snobbery. Maybe on superficial dimensions at least. You're a meta snob.

[Alain de Botton]

That's right. That's right, a meta snob. Exactly.

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