Courier-Mail 29/03/2010
Concerns about status and acceptance are clouding Australia’s traditional easy going ways
In terms of ‘‘worst house, best street’’ we’re right in the zone. It’s not the worst house and it’s not strictly the best street but you get the picture. I’ve been meaning to renovate but I just never got around to it. The global financial crisis gave me the excuse/reason to put it off for the 15th year in a row. We’ve always felt our house exudes a bohemian raffishness that sets us apart from the more vulgar displays of wealth, like those nicely painted ones up the street.
Perhaps I’m clinging to that romantic memory of years gone by when egalitarianism was in reasonable shape and Australia was a relaxed and easygoing place. And what your house was worth was not the leading topic of conversation. Perhaps I need to develop status anxiety to give me the motivation I need. In his book Status Anxiety, author and philosopher Alain de Botton explores its role in shaping our attitudes to one another.
He opines the search for luxury and the attendant status it brings us within society is akin to the search for love. He also argues that this pursuit ‘‘could be more accurately read as a history of emotional trauma’’ as the search appears never-ending once the ‘‘more you have, the more you want syndrome’’ kicks in.
My complete lack of this need of the love of others is a concern. It’s not that it wouldn’t be nice but would the pursuit be worth the huge amount of money required to buy their love? Can’t we just be friends? Or see other people for a while and find out if they require me to fork out hundreds a week in interest payments just so they’ll look sideways at me?
My confusion is not new. As de Botton points out, I’m in good company. In the days of ancient Greece, Epicurus argued ‘‘that simple food and shelter were necessary but expensive houses and luxurious dishes could safely be bypassed by all rational, philosophically minded people’’. So are McMansion owners irrational or just lonely?
Yet de Botton also cites arguments to the contrary. Legendary economist Adam Smith, while contemptuous of those pursuing ‘‘baubles and trinkets’’, suggests the less profligate of us might actually be dragging the chain and forcing those dedicated to seeking wealth to work harder for the less acquisitive. In the theory beloved by Conservatives, Smith’s ‘‘invisible hand’’ guides those who relentlessly pursue wealth and do the rest of us a favour with their efforts enlarging the economy – almost by accident, but enlarging it nevertheless.
Strange. I don’t feel like a burden on society and I like what we’ve done with the place over the years and it’s home and we own it. I guess we all need to have enough belief in our own self-worth to not need the approval of others, especially those we neither know nor will ever need to know. I think I like de Botton’s suggestion that a cure for status anxiety may be to travel, in reality or through works of art, to counter feelings of insignificance when balancing human wealth against vast natural landscapes or great public buildings.
Hmmmm. New kitchen or two months in Europe?
Arrivederci!