In this TED talk from 2009, he tackles the problem of success in modern life, in which the dominant emotion is envy, spurred by the spirit of equality.
As we are all, in theory at least, born equal, the social expectation is that we can achieve anything we desire if we only work hard enough and believe in ourselves. But for the vast majority of us, the reality of the world thwarts those ambitions.
Rather than having the psychological escape value of attributing our less-than-desirable status to fortune or class–as was the case in the past–contemporary meritocracies tell us that we alone are responsible for our social and economic position. Those who merit to get to the top get to the top; those who merit to get to the bottom get to the bottom.
“Your position in life does not seem to be accidental, but merited and deserved,” says de Botton. “And that makes failure all the more crushing.”
In the Middle ages, he continues, people at the bottom of the social ladder were referred to as “unfortunates.” Today we call them “losers.”
De Botton does offer a few ways to get some relief. Among them is to spend more time contemplating tragic art, which assumes that there are forces far beyond our control which determine the course of our lives.
“Hamlet is in no way a loser,” says de Botton, “although he has lost.”
He also encourages us to have something transcendent, sacred and non-human the center of our societies, and by extension, our individual lives. Spending time contemplating something larger than ourselves and humanity altogether, like nature for example, can provide much-needed solace.
De Botton also suggests that if we are concerned with our own success, we need to acknowledge that we can’t be successful at everything. The wise person recognizes that you can’t have it all, accepting that success also demands a certain element of loss.
He closes by stressing that we make sure our ideas of success are our own, and not those derived from our parents or our peers or advertising.
“It’s bad enough if you don’t get what you want,” de Botton finishes up. “But it’s even worse if what you don’t get wasn’t even what you really wanted.”