Alain de Botton on success, failure, and being kinder to ourselves

Some quotes that stood out for me:

A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are.

I don’t think we are particularly materialistic. I think we live in a society which has simply pegged certain emotional rewards to the acquisition of material goods. It’s not the material goods we want. It’s the rewards we want.

I think it would be very unusual for anyone here, or anyone watching, to be envious of the Queen of England. Even though she is much richer than any of you are. And she’s got a very large house. The reason why we don’t envy her is because she’s too weird. She’s simply too strange. We can’t relate to her. She speaks in a funny way. She comes from an odd place. So we can’t relate to her. And when you can’t relate to somebody, you don’t envy them. The closer two people are, in age, in background, in the process of identification, the more there is a danger of envy.

It’s made to feel, by magazines and other media outlets, that if you’ve got energy, a few bright ideas about technology, a garage, you too could start a major thing.

A meritocratic society is one in which if you’ve got talent and energy and skill, you will get to the top. Nothing should hold you back. It’s a beautiful idea. The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication, and in a far more nasty way, believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there. In other words, your position in life comes to seem not accidental, but merited and deserved. And that makes failure seem much more crushing.

The idea that we will make a society where literally everybody is graded, the good at the top, and the bad at the bottom, and it’s exactly done as it should be, is impossible. There are simply too many random factors. Accidents, accidents of birth, accidents of things dropping on people’s heads, illnesses, etc. We will never get to grade them. Never get to grade people as they should.

In other words, hold your horses when you’re coming to judge people. You don’t necessarily know what someone’s true value is. That is an unknown part of them. And we shouldn’t behave as though it is known. There is another source of solace and comfort for all this. When we think about failing in life, when we think about failure, one of the reasons why we fear failing is not just a loss of income, a loss of status. What we fear is the judgement and ridicule of others. And it exists.

You know, the number one organ of ridicule nowadays, is the newspaper. And if you open the newspaper any day of the week, it’s full of people who’ve messed up their lives. They’ve slept with the wrong person. They’ve taken the wrong substance. They’ve passed the wrong legislation. Whatever it is. And then are fit for ridicule. In other words, they have failed. And they are described as “losers.” Now is there any alternative to this? I think the Western tradition shows us one glorious alternative. And that is tragedy.

And I suppose I’m arguing that we should learn a little bit about what’s happening in tragic art. It would be insane to call Hamlet a loser. He is not a loser, though he has lost. And I think that is the message of tragedy to us, and why it’s so very very important, I think.

I think it’s merely the randomness of the winning and losing process that I wanted to stress. Because the emphasis nowadays is so much on the justice of everything. And politicians always talk about justice. Now I am a firm believer in justice. I just think that it is impossible. So we should do everything we can, we should do everything we can to pursue it. But at the end of the day we should always remember that whoever is facing us, whatever has happened in their lives, there will be a strong element of the haphazard. And it’s that that that I’m trying to leave room for. Because otherwise it can get quite claustrophobic.

Sometimes I wonder why it’s such a big deal to be the “best”, to do the “best”, instead of just going as far aw you feel like it. I’ve definitely seen the envy part play out with blog wanks, often from people in the same demographic as the “Wanker”. I like what he said about Hamlet – he may have lost, but he’s not a loser. It is not all his fault.

How would the world be if we were a little gentler to each other and didn’t expect superhuman prowess or nothing? Where you don’t have to work overtime to show your “loyalty”, where it didn’t take extra tuition classes to make it in school? Where failure and success weren’t attached with value judgments, but are just passing moments in life – like a breeze through the sea or a splash of rain?