He's a young, successful, rich, philosophically-adjusted, eminently talented writer and broadcaster. But that's nothing to be jealous of, Alain de Botton tells Belinda McKeon
The day after meeting Alain de Botton, I am having coffee with a friend. He's a young university lecturer, has a permanent position, gives regular conference papers, and has just sent his second book - on a subject in philosophy - to the publishers. He takes up the copy of de Botton's new book, Status Anxiety, which I've taken from my bag, and heads straight to the page marked "By the same author". It's instinctive; I always do it, too. Then the inevitable happens. "Alain de Botton is 34!" my friend exclaims. He's looking over the list of previous publications; there are six of them, including the highly successful How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Art of Travel. "I thought he was older. That's my age. I'm so useless," he groans, with exaggerated angst.
And I laugh, partly to make clear that I take it he's joking - nodding in agreement is hardly the etiquette for this situation - partly because he has illustrated perfectly de Botton's whole point in Status Anxiety - that no matter what we achieve, the achievements of other people, especially other people with whom we try to identify, will always make us doubt ourselves - but mostly because my friend, all things considered, is exactly the sort of person around whom the author himself admits to feeling insecure.
"The people I envy," de Botton says, in a hushed tone that implies he's confiding a secret, "are the people who are around 34, maybe living in London, male, writing about philosophy or whatever it happens to be. Not female writers, for example, in their sixties, living in Australia and writing about gardening. Because it's what you identify with in a person that makes you feel envious. People in England don't envy the queen, they envy the person they went to school with who has that little bit of a bigger house, not Buckingham Palace, but something closer to their own." Beckingham Palace, of course, is another story, of which more (and more) anon.
Status Anxiety sits neatly with de Botton's previous books, in that it explores an everyday reality through the lens of the philosophical and cultural analysis which has become his trademark. With a light touch, he surveys the history and psychology of phenomena such as snobbery, expectation and dependence, the changing relationship between privilege and poverty, illustrating his discussions with 19th-century cartoons from Punch, early advertisements for such domestic conveniences as toilet bowls and vacuum cleaners, medieval depictions of social hierarchy, and the cheesy cover illustrations of late 20th-century self-help manuals. We're told what Socrates and Schopenhauer had to say on the challenges of living amidst the opinions of other people (Socrates: think for yourself, Schopenhauer: bolt the door and throw away the key), and possible answers to the problem of status anxiety, from first the political and then the Christian arena, are examined.
Ultimately, de Botton ends up plumping for a sort of bohemian lifestyle, and for an appreciation of art and literature, as the solution to the social jitters. It's an attractive solution, but the criticism it has drawn seems understandable.
He's a successful author and broadcaster, born in Switzerland to a wealthy family, sent for his education to top English schools, and to Cambridge, and lucky enough to have had his first book, Essays in Love, published at the age of 23, so that he could afford to concentrate less on bread-on-table situations and more on "studying, thinking, reflecting" on the things that interested him. OK, Alain, we're all smartingly jealous, but who are you to offer solutions to those less fortunate than you? Who are you to tell the harried masses to chill and see some sculpture?
De Botton nods and murmurs in agreement as I put the question; he does this throughout the interview, even when I get my words mixed up somewhat, so that the first version of the question doesn't actually make full sense (now you know a little bit about my status anxiety). It's a habit clearly born of a desire to appear as open, and perhaps even as likeable as possible, and seems genuine; agreeability fakers will usually flag eventually, perhaps only for an instant between questions - their mouth hardens, or their eyes glaze over - but this doesn't happen with de Botton, even when, attempting an experiment with his solutions to status anxiety, I dump a pile of Vogue and Now magazines on the table in front of him. He's tirelessly earnest, and scrupulously polite, even as he turns my question back onto me.
"Well, who do you think you are to tell me this?" he says quietly. "I mean, it's a problem you could charge any author with, who they are to say life is like this? Who's Joyce to tell me about life in Dublin? And the only answer any author can give is, try it and see. If you think it's horrible, then fine. But I don't think background totally rules you out."
In fact, he argues, coming from a privileged background renders him particularly qualified to discuss this phenomenon. "No one, whether poor or privileged, is spared status anxiety. And looking at it on a societal level, the societies with the greatest status anxiety are the most prosperous ones. I mean, take Ireland now, it has much more status anxiety than a few years ago. And the reason is that, with more opportunities, there are more expectations placed on everyone. And so the more you are liable to feel guilty about, the more likely you are to feel ashamed about what you haven't done. I grew up in a world where it was expected of me that I should do something great and brilliant, not that I should relax and do nothing. So I did have a very privileged background in that I went to good schools, was paid for at university and went on nice holidays, but that is very different to inherited privilege."
Inheriting privilege now, he says, is a matter of inheriting not "the thousand-year history of your family", but the means and the confidence to master the education system. "That's how the elites perpetuate themselves, these days, I think. And then the model of achievement is achievement by yourself. The individual's self-realisation. You know, people who have high status in our society are not the people who have won the lottery, or inherited a title, or just got rich for having a pretty face. The real heroes of our society are those who, through some talent, have achieved success."
This is the point at which to splutter in disbelief and point to the cover of Now, all Beckhamania and bikini bodies, and to Vogue with its screams of "Wish List" and "The making of an It-bag". These, like it or not, are the bibles of contemporary, mainstream female culture and they're bursting at the seams with role models who use their make-up artists, their inheritance, their social circle or their marriage to fuel their, ahem, careers (Sadie Frost, you can sit down now).
De Botton is refreshingly clueless about this scene - "Is that her wedding dress?" he asks, looking at a recent picture of Victoria Beckham - but he can hardly deny the enormity of its impact on the way people see themselves in the mirror now.
"That is the problem with the modern world - because of the media, we can identify with so many more people," he says. "In previous ages, you would have known nothing about these people, and suddenly you read about where they have gone on holiday, and what they are up to, and you think, oh, why is that not me? I know that if I read a certain kind of magazine, it can change my world view for an hour, or for the day. We are very porous to these messages."
He takes up a copy of Now. "Initial point - everyone here, on the cover, is having a lovely time. And if you read this - and it's really quite gripping, now that you have this here, I want to flick through it - and you're feeling shit, instantly this is going to make you depressed. You thought it was quite nice to go out to the park with a sandwich, and then you see this, and you think, 'Oh, I lack a barbecue, I am unhappy in the barbecueing area'. So you're suddenly aware of a lack."
Society's obsession with celebrity seems to have climbed to hysterical levels in recent years. Isn't it unhealthy? "Yes, I think it's totally pathological the way modern society treats so-called celebrities." Key to this distorted view, he thinks, is an illusion about the relationship between money and happiness. "Happiness is complicated, yet we're often presented with such a simplistic model of it."
Like the Beckhams, for example? "Yes. Until their recent debacle we were presented with the idea that they had the perfect marriage. You only have to think about one's own relationships to know, that's got to be a myth. Relationships are full of weird stuff, you know, boredom but love, longing, despair, anger, a whole mixture of things going on. And now all you can feel for these people is, like, Oh my God, how sad. But we're not encouraged to think that, we're encouraged to take sides."
Do philosophy and art really offer viable solutions to this mess? How practical is it to advise people to look less to Heat and more to Heidegger as they seek the solutions to that anxiety which is a feature of their everyday lives? He's not advocating advanced studies, he says; he's just passing the message on.
I hate to put him through this Beckham wringer, but does he have any advice for poor, frantically grinning Victoria? "Hmm. I guess I would suggest first of all that she recognises the place in which she finds herself, that she understands the history of how she came to be here. She should do a crash-course in media studies, understand where the media comes from, and a course in psychology to understand the psychology of envy, of admiration, so that she gets a sort of perspective on what is happening to her. And the result should be that she should care less."
Phew, sounds like a lot of hard work. Any shortcuts? "Well, the thought of death is quite helpful in getting us to focus on what we, rather than others, care about. So I think placing a skull on her mantelpiece." Apparently, Gucci does a great one.
Status Anxiety is published by Hamish Hamilton, £16.99 in UK