Most Replayed Moment: Alain de Botton - Individualism Is Making Us Miserable!

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/58d6ccdf325f615e

Uh
got me thinking about this concept of happiness as you're speaking and whether it's a
natural thing for our species to be aiming at, or whether it's a new
more modern thing that we've decided to focus upon? And are we causing ourselves immense distress in this pursuit of this thing that maybe our ancestors didn't
didn't ever think about this whole you know, we think about self actualization and they were probably thinking about survival and reproduction more.
Look, these all belong to the sort of paradoxes of modern times. Modern times have obviously brought us enormous advantages, but they've also brought us particular complexities that I think we'd be wise to to realise. And one of them is the disappearance of religion. I mean, we are
Still among the first generations in many parts of the world.
To be
um trying to live good lives without the support of religion.
Think of our religion's structure as
time and human experience in time.
As a religious person.
You
immediately feel the present moment is not as important as a hundred, two hundred, two thousand million year history that has come before and that will continue after. The present moment is a spec in time.
And and there's a whole narrative of which you're part of that immediately
diminishes you in scale.
Now nowadays all of us
want to be rather large, don't we want to be big big people.
We want to make a big impression.

But um
Arguably, this is a fast route to mental illness, because the graceful acceptance of your minuscule position in the cosmos is
Is
The gateway.
to common harmony.
And when people say, you know, I went into this hotel
Yeah.
That's the bad way of being made to feel small, but there's a good way of being made to feel small. Pick up an ancient text, read words that were written by someone in a f foreign tongue three thousand years ago. That'll make you feel small. Go into the desert. Notice the the age of the rocks inscribed in you know, time inscribed in sand.
That'll put you in your place. Um spend time with an animal.
that has no concern for your status, your sense of importance, your foiled narrative of your own success, all these things that drive
modern humans, Matt. These are not present in an older

Sphere. And
Uh as I say, what religions do is they tell us you're part of a bigger story. They also tell us many faiths tell us.
That life
And you particularly are imperfect.
Um
You know, think of Catholicism and its notion of original sin. Now
Also.
Lots of bad stuff associated with original sin. I'm not, you know, a huge fan of many aspects, but let's look at the good side, right? What it what Catholicism tells us is that everybody's broken.
Everybody is flawed.
it's quite a helpful starting point, right? Because
Um
If you think well, all right, I'm a bit broken, but so's somebody else, so' somebody else. So we're
Doing our best. That's the gateway to vulnerability, to friendship, if you like. Lower expectations. Lower expectations. But also to to connection with others, you know.
So often people who become successful
Find it.
really hard to make friends. Why? Because they associate success with invulnerability. And the more successful they get, the harder it is.
For them to admit
to the real truth about being human, which is that we're all
helpless children some of the time, at least frightened helpless children.
And it becomes harder to make
to keep up the contact with that, let alone admit that to somebody
else. So again, religions handily
reduce our expectations and our sense of ourselves. We are merely flawed humans. There is a perfect world. It doesn't exist in Beverly Hills. It doesn't exist in, you know, the the fancy parts of Singapore or or Sydney. It exists up there.
In a in another world. In other words.
The human realm is inherently imperfect.
Quite a good starting point.
I mean, even if you went on a date, right?
Imagine two characters you might got a date with, right? First one tells you
Yeah, I'm kinda perfect and I'm achieved I'm aiming to achieve total perfection.
Think wow, good for them, but
Slightly scary.
Next to somebody else who goes.
I'm kind of flawed, but I'm sort of managing my flaws and I'm interested in how to get to know my flaws and work with them.
Instantly one thing.
Hm. Life might be easier.
Around such a person. There's there's something
About
the pursuit of perfection which makes day to day life extremely hard. And religions
Slightly by the by
tick that box. They were able to reduce us in our own eyes, while raising us in the eyes of
you know, a divine being. Um and uh and that has helped us to have an e that helped us to have an easier relationship
with with ourselves. And
And the notion also was
You cannot perfect this life.
You know, life becomes perfect in another realm. We'll build Jerusalem somewhere else, not on this earth.
In the next world, again it takes the pressure off us. We modern, we modern people.
We think
The present moment is supremely important. Now is important. Everything that's going on right now is supremely important. Doesn't matter, remember a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago, now is the only criteria of time. You are perfectable.
Right. So if there's something wrong with you, you're failing against an ideal
of perfection.
Again.
Very, very hard.
Um
And
That you are made.
I mean
The biggest thing.
The biggest challenge of all, you're made to be happy.
as you suggested, that the true goal of every human is happiness, not fulfillment, not uh you know the realization of a grand scheme, not living for others, your own happiness.
And
Again, it's a beautiful idea.
But
Goodness me, does it cause problems? Goodness me. You know, think of Emil Durkheim.
Beginning of the twentieth century.
French sociologist.
Writes this book.
Um
So

Contrasting the differences between ancient societies and modern societies.
And he identifies
one troubling difference between ancient societies
uh pre modern agricultural, village based societies where religion plays a role, and modern urban technologically driven
success oriented individualistic societies, and that's the suicide rate.
He realizes in his book On Suicide, published in nineteen hundred,
That
Modern societies for all their advantages and

A share of their members, often the most ambitious of their members, to take their own lives. Why?
What's going on?
And this becomes
Well it's the birth of modern sociology, really.
It's it becomes a major inquiry into what modern times
Dust to the soul.
And I'm deeply fascinated by that. I can't let that one go.
Because
What's this paradox?
What's this paradox of
Suffering amidst plenty.
Of
Regress.
Amidst progress.
This fascinates me.
I spoke to the CEO of
Calm.
Campaign against living miserably, Simon Gunning.
And he shared some stats with me about exactly what you're talking about about suicide. He said someone dies by suicide in the UK every ninety minutes, six seventy six percent are male. There's twenty five attempts for every death.
um the single biggest cause of death for men under forty-five is suicide, single biggest cause of death for 15 to 49 year olds is suicide. That nineteen to thirty five year old category are twice as likely to report being in crisis than any other group in sixteen to twenty-four's is the fastest growing group in history to exhibit suicidality. And more recently
There's a big conversation emerging now around young women.
and suicidality, which is um a fairly
Recent
unfortunately exploding trend, this trend of young women now experiencing suicidality.
And look.
People
Don't
Just commit suicide when things are bad.
People commit suicide when things are bad.
And they think
It's a delicate point. They think it's their fault.
They cannot
Disassociate.
The trouble they feel from an intense sense of responsibility is
Which then also entails shame.
Now what's going on there?
When I say that we live in a individualistic world, what that really means is
We live in a world where people feel that they control their own narratives.
But
But what happens to them is
Is
Very tightly a reflection of
Of
Who they are and what they've done.

And this was not always the case. You see
For long periods of history.
Um
People were not necessarily
Tightly held.
to the observable outcomes of their lives.
This happened with money.
For example.
Um
In old English.
A poor person was known to
As an unfortunate
Right?
Um
What is an unf let's unpack that word unfortunate.
There's the word fortuna.
in there. What was Fortuna? For the Romans, Fortuna was the goddess of luck, the goddess of fortune. And the Romans were there for all the time sacrificing things to the goddess of fortune as a way of saying, you know, please
You know, it's not me.
It's
you know, this outside agency. Nowadays this sounds completely weird. I mean, what do we call
In the most individualistic country in the world, United States.
What are poor people called?
Not a nice term. They're called losers.
Right, you say that's a loser. So we've gone from unfortunate to loser. That's a trajectory of four hundred years. What's happened in that time?
is a story about who's responsible.
For people's
Fate.
And nowadays, you know, if I said to you, Stephen, things have not been going so well for me. I I've just been sacked, uh, you know, my my book hasn't sold, you know. But it's not me. I just had a bit of bad luck.
You.
Very nice person.
But a modern person.
Side of you be thinking.
Mm.
He must have done something wrong, right? You'd be thinking he must do something wrong because that's how we think. We don't allow people
The
benefit of luck, right? Similarly, if you said to me,
Oh, uh, you know, my my podcast will be doing brilliantly. We've now got eight thousand million, million, billion subscribe, how many you've got nowadays? Um and you said and you said to me, Oh, I it's just just a bit of good luck, right? I think oh Steven's really, you know, he's very modest, but you know, it's not true. He's done something. We believe that people do things and that that action
leads to results or failures. And that's why people take their own lies, because i in extremists people think there is nothing other than me to explain what happens to me. Of course, the reality is much more complicated. I'm not saying that's the truth, but that is the perceived
Truth. You know, look, we live in a world
That is
meritocratic.
Right? That word.
Meritocracy.
Is on everybody's lips.
If you p take politicians left and right,
In the United States, all over the world.
Everybody wants to create a world that is meritocratic. Some people think we've already got there. What does that word mean? I don't know.
Meritocratic.
Is
The concept of meritocracy.
Is
A a world in which
Um
People's
outcomes are dependent on their merit.
Rather than
on who their parents were, mm, some corrupt class in society, the influence of whatever. So, you know.
A left wing politician and a right wing politician say we want to make
A meritocratic world where your kids will go to where they deserve.
where if you work hard, you can get there.
And um you know, where everyone has a chance to succeed. We
You know, you know that kind of rhetoric. It's it's the rhetoric
Of
modern times. Now
It sounds great and in many ways.
It's an enormous advance. But again, let's just focus on
the psychological toll of that. Because if you really believe
In a world.
in which those who get to the top deserve to get to the top.
By implication, you are also positing the existence of a world in
In which those who are at the bottom.
Deserve.
To be at the bottom.
In other words,
A meritocratic worldview.
Turn success.
And failure.
From chance?
Two
A necessary fate.
And that's why it makes the winners
Quite.
Hard?
potentially quite heartless because they're thinking, Well, I got there on my own. Don't you thank anybody.
Might not need to pay man many taxes. Why why pay taxes? You know, it's it's fine.
And similarly those at the bottom are
Kind of crushed.
So
We've we've created
This very complicated ideology
Where
Um
There's a hidden toll.
And this has happened
within a couple of generations, doesn't it?'Cause I even think about my mother, she's from
I know it's a different country and there's different traditions there, but even
in my mother's generation, when she grew up in Africa
if they wanted good fortune, they would take their sheep, their animals, and they would take it to the local witch doctor and basically offer a sacrifice. They'd obviously pray, but they were they were so in the um
opinion that
their outcomes were determined by
A religious god of sorts. And even
her moving to the UK and starting businesses here, I think she's moved a little bit away from that thinking to the sort of
As you kind of almost posit it, it's
It's almost like the curse of personal responsibility, or at least the d the the pitfalls of personal responsibility. Where she now definitely thinks her outcomes are
Correlated to her hard work.
And it's so interesting. I've never considered the fact that that could be bad for us on a psychological level. Sure,'cause you know, we know that there are good sides of it. Of course we do. And so, you know, I'm I'm really pointing out something that is less often spoken about. Because we know the good sides. Of course, a world in which people take responsibility can be good. But at what moment does it crush the spirit? And you know, talking about your mother
And and
You know, moving away from an agricultural society, a rural society, to an urban, modern individualistic society.
In in the old world, in the pre modern world,
When people met each other.
For the first time. They would say, Where are you from?
Where are your ancest Who are your ancestors? Who who's your father? Who's your mother? That was
People's
identity. Nowadays, of course, as you know,
What's the first question that anyone asked anyone? What do you do? And according to how you answer that question, people are either really pleased to see you
Or they kinda gently sideline you and you're left by the peanuts and you know, no one wants to talk to you. We live in a world
It could sound like an old world.
We live in a world of snobs.
Now the word snob
is often associated with some kind of old English interest in like people with castles or you know ancient lineage. I don't mean that.
Snobbery is really just any way

According to one
But only one.
aspect of their whole identity.
Right, so if you meet a clothes snob.
And you say you know my my
my jumpers from you know wherever, they'll go, You can't be a good person because you know, you are so underinvested in your fashion taste, right? It doesn't matter how pure your heart is or how great your poems are or whatever.
You look you know, you close the roll. So it's a close snob. Now, the dominant form of snobbery in the modern world is of course
Job.
Snobbery. Um and that's why
You know, the opposite of a snob is your mother. Your mother, as it were, one's mother, the the ideal mother, right? The ideal mother doesn't care.
How you've performed.
She's maybe fictive.
Um
caring about who you are.
But most people do not care who we are. They care how we have performed. And so, you know, we're often told
We live in such materialistic societies, the world's so materialistic, you know, we're all chasing money.
I don't think.
We're actually chasing money.
I think we're chasing the love and respect.
that money in our society brings.
We have connected
The possession of material goods.
With the possession.
Of
Honor and respect. But you know, if you if you rearranged it a different way and you said, you know, you could own a plastic uh token and get love and respect, people would always want the plastic tokens. It's not
It's not the material goods we want, it's the emotional
Which actually
Yeah. Sometimes we think
People are very greedy. All they're doing is shopping for more things and buying fancy cars. But you know
The next time you see a guy driving a Ferrari.
Don't think
This guy's a greedy person, you know, he's so vulgar and greedy and what Just think this is somebody
With a really
Intense need.
For love.
Because
Often.
the avid pursuit of material goods is really masking something much more poignant, which is
The avid pursuit of love and respect. It was for my whole my whole life. I you know, I bought all the Louis Vuitton Range Rover mansion.
um in that chapter of my life where I was really trying to prove something to someone or be accepted by someone
And that's why I got it and in fact as the more secure I've got in myself
the more you'll see me every day just wearing all black, no watch, no sports car.
Um
leaning towards utility in the decisions that I make. That that's so fascinating. I think that is a journey.
You know.
What does it want to say?
These goods shouldn't be available to everybody.
Is your need for them coming from a wound?
Or coming from a genuine desire. And when it comes from a wound.
It's a problem because
It's not gonna solve the wound. That's the problem.
Um, because the you know, the love that you're gonna get look it's like it's like fame.
I was thinking you know
A sure sign of being a good parent.
Is that your children have no interest in being famous?
Because
You know, fame is trying to satisfy
Um a gap.
That should ideally be satisfied through
more intimate human connections. But we do live in a world which doesn't have much time for that.
And so
um both in the sort of economy of fame and the economy of material goods
We've we've created a world where people are hugely incentivized.
to move away from what they really want, which is
To be loved, to be seen, to be heard, and
And um into a kind of
Vortex of
Material acquisition.
What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.