In chapter two, “Equality, Expectation, and Envy,” of Alain de Botton’s novel, “Status Anxiety,” Botton argues that even though the rise of western civilization had some benefits, it was also the cause of static anxiety, increasing anxiety about how one is perceived in society. Botton articulates that people feel that they require an ever expanding amount of superficial things to be satisfied and that without those things they feel inferior to the people they deem their equals. Botton addresses many concerns related to his observation, such as: why people suffer from status anxiety, how an individual overcomes society’s high expectations and achieves a high self-esteem, how does religion or a lack thereof tie into this, and what are media’s …show more content…
When a person of mostly equal standards is able to achieve something, we get envious and feel inferior to them, causing us to constantly worry about our own status. History has always told us that we are born into certain societal standings and if you try to question this you were an absurd outcast, so it’s better to just accept the work you’re given, fair or not. When Thomas Hobbes accuses the individual of “willingly surrendering his natural rights in exchange for the protection offered by a group or sovereign”(Botton 31) in his book Leviathan, people began to question their “rightful” place.
People also accepted these unfair, and often cruel, treatment in the name of God. They were taught that their places were predetermined by God and by trying to change that, you were challenging God’s will. In John Locke’s book Two Treatises of Government he writes that God had not endowed Adam with rule over the earth, but rather had given it to the entirety of mankind for their enjoyment. This got people thinking that maybe their places weren’t predetermined and that by doing something other than what they were born into wasn’t challenging God’s will at