Man-Eater

Swim Too Close to the Big Fish, And Risk Being Consumed by Doubt

Walk into any Washington party and The Question inevitably comes: "What do you do?" It's a rude but efficient query, a way of quickly establishing your place in the hierarchy of the people worth talking to -- or not. The conversation flows or falters depending on the answer, complete with a proffered business card or a swift escape to the bar.

Sounds awful, and it is. Visitors to the nation's capital often remark on the lack of polite small talk, the swift sorting of people into the valuable and the superfluous. The rote humiliation is all too familiar to political spouses. "There's a level of impatience that is striking," says philosopher Alain de Botton. "The feeling you get is, 'Who are you and what can you bring me?' The timeline is particularly short and almost aggressive."

Washington is full of very bright, highly successful people who act like spoiled, greedy children. De Botton has a theory about this. He calls it "Status Anxiety," which happens to be the title of his newest book. He argues that in our lifelong quest for love and respect, we are all secretly nervous wrecks -- constantly clawing our way up the ladder, comparing our success to others' and looking over our shoulders. The more successful we become, the more anxious we get.

This has always been true, of course, and philosophers long before de Botton have pondered the reasons why. But, he says, this is especially true in the United States, where anyone can grow up to be president if he's smart enough, strong enough, disciplined enough -- at least, that's the official mythology. Just listen to the politicians who promise that you, too, can have everything you ever wanted -- if you're talented, hardworking and honest, and vote for them. Virtue is always rewarded in a meritocracy.

But there's a dark side to the American Dream: If we deserve our success, then we deserve our failures, too. No one wants to be a loser, especially if it turns out to be our own fault.

No wonder we're nervous.

Somebody Like You

Americans didn't invent status anxiety, but we excel at it. The very stories that inspire us also make us insecure.

Two college computer geeks create an Internet search engine; less than a decade later, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are poised to become instant billionaires when the company goes public. An obscure author pens a thriller about the Catholic Church and Mary Magdalene; Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" has dominated bestseller lists for more than a year. A trial lawyer from North Carolina decides to try politics; six years later, freshman Sen. John Edwards just became his party's nominee for vice president.

How many students, writers, lawyers read about Google, Brown or Edwards and think, "Why them and not me?" Even multimillionaires, best-selling novelists and U.S. senators can be threatened by others' greater success.

De Botton, 34, brings a distinctly European perspective to the subject -- he was born in Switzerland, educated at Cambridge and resides in London. He is best known for "How Proust Can Change Your Life," a meditation on the consolations of literature. In "Status Anxiety" he examines the baser bits of human nature that cause us to grab what we can, envy our fellow man and crave more and more.

Basically, he says, we're just big babies. Everybody secretly wants to be loved for just existing, the way parents adore their children. So it's not the stuff or titles we want, per se: The money, fame and power are means to becoming a "somebody" who deserves love from the world.

Being a someone used to be simple. You were born into it, or you weren't. And if you weren't, it wasn't your fault. "Why am I a serf? Dad was a serf. No shame in being a serf," says conservative pundit Grover Norquist. "That was the great comfort of a feudal society."

The poor were not considered responsible for their condition, says de Botton, and had little expectation of changing it. It may not have been fair, but everybody knew where they stood.

The Revolutions -- American, French, Industrial -- upended this class system. Lineage was no longer the deciding factor; where you started did not predetermine where you ended up.