Status anxiety is an interesting field of pyschological research, don’t you think?
I’ve just finished reading Alain de Botton’s book Status Anxiety. Yeah, yeah, I know. Dime-store philosophy for the IQ-challenged, but I can’t fault the guy for figuring out what sells and writing it.
Anyway, his basic thesis is as follows (from Wikipedia.com):
Chronic anxiety about status is an inevitable side effect of any democratic, ostensibly egalitarian society.
Anyone want to share experiences they’ve had with loss of status, or with gain in status, and how it affected you?
Sense of status seems to be an issue we touch upon quite a lot here on the boards, but often in an indirect way. So what do you think?
[quote=“Tomas”]Status anxiety is an interesting field of pyschological research, don’t you think? I’ve enjoyed more than a few hours of navel-gazing wondering about my own level of attachment to my status within the societies I’ve lived in.
So what do you think?[/quote]
Status in general? It sucks big time just behind organised religion in suckability.
Interesting thing in any negotiation is that each party will believe their moral position to be superior even if their status is perceived to be lower (imo).
Always being on top of any status mountains puts me in a position to never think about things like this.
Though, the Xbox360 has this thing called achievement points. When you beat levels, perfect games, etc. you get more points. I am somewhat addicted to collecting them and like to make fun of those with less than me (though I pay no mind to those with 10 times as many as I have.)
The Xbox360 achievement points made me (and a friend) realize that life achievement points would be pretty cool. It would allow a person to show off all the cool things they’ve done in their life, with points to go with it.
Losing virginity: 50 points
Graduating from High-school: 50 points
Two girls at once: 200 points
Walking on hands for 1 city block: 75 points
etc.
Though I’ve noticed that the inclusion of the points in the Xbox360 games have somewhat turned the focus of playing a game for fun to playing a game for points (aka status.) Though there is an element of fun to increasing ones status, nothing beats stopping to smell the roses (aka playing games because they’re fun.)
Life is to status as Xbox360 is to achievement points
that’s an interesting concept and would certainly weed out all the bullshit artists out-there
but the points awarding would need to be very carefully monitored,because if,as in your exemple,one gets more points for walking a block on his hands than for graduating high school,you know where that would lead?
[quote=“Tomas”]Status anxiety is an interesting field of pyschological research, don’t you think?
I’ve just finished reading Alain de Botton’s book Status Anxiety. Yeah, yeah, I know. Dime-store philosophy for the IQ-challenged, but I can’t fault the guy for figuring out what sells and writing it.
Anyway, his basic thesis is as follows (from Wikipedia.com):
Chronic anxiety about status is an inevitable side effect of any democratic, ostensibly egalitarian society.
Anyone want to share experiences they’ve had with loss of status, or with gain in status, and how it affected you?
Sense of status seems to be an issue we touch upon quite a lot here on the boards, but often in an indirect way. So what do you think?[/quote]
I haven’t read the book, but I did go to the Wikipedia entry on it:
[quote]Status Anxiety discusses the desire of people in many modern societies to “climb the social ladder”
[/quote]
I find that living on the outside (foreigner in Taiwan) puts me in a rare position of living outside of a class system. I can choose to have friends at pretty much every level of society, which is something I could not manage in my home country. My status with Taiwanese is largely artificial and not based on any real understanding of who I am, so I don’t take it too seriously. My status with other foreigners is based more on who I am than what I do or what sort of family I come from, so I’m more sensitive to their perception of who I am than I am of the Taiwanese perception of who I am. I’m not at all anxious about it though. I work hard and try to be good to my family and friends.
No status anxiety for me, and thank god. I have enough on my plate with about-to-hit-40 anxiety! I feel disappointed with what i have accomplished, which i guess is how most people feel.
