The essence of the charge made against the modern high-status ideal is that it is guilty of effecting a gigantic distortion of priorities, of elevating to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation that should instead be only one of many factors determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves.
Alain de Botton
Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.
respect political anxiety reasons status
We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.
happiness self-knowledge desire anxiety possessions materialism status achievements
Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the judging process, lending legitimacy to theidea that themainstream value system may unfairly consign some people to disgrace and others to respectability.
philosophy values status
Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.
life success status
We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance. We seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
insecurity self-esteem acceptance affirmation status
It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry we will have to field in any new acquaintance) that the quality of our reception is likely to be decided.
work status
As the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.
anxiety status
self-knowledge achievement priorities materialism status
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