Status Anxiety

This means anxiety about your status in life, and is the title of a new book from philosopher Alain de Boton, who is in Sydney this week for the Sydney Writers Festival . There are also some other interesting people here for the festival - from the web site:

From Iraq we have a young man with the pseudonym of Salam Pax. He’ll talk about that famous weblog and what's really going on in his war-torn country now. John W. Dean, former Nixon counsel, has an insider's view of US politics and will discuss his new book, Worse than Watergate.

I just got back from the talk given by de Boton. The Sydney Theatre in The Rocks was pretty well packed out. A very entertaining talk and question time afterward. He basically gave an overview of the ideas in his book, which I am about one third of the way through. De Boton has a knack of finding lessons to learn from even the most depressing philosophers of the past, and interpreting and applying a positive lesson to today's issues - all in plain English!

A point I thought was very interesting came out of a question from the audience related to Iraq. The lack of attention paid to matters of "status" (read pride, self esteem, national history ...) led the Coalition to believe that Iraqis would simply welcome the invasion force because after all, isn't getting rid of Saddam and then building new hospitals obviously a good thing? A whole host of factors has simply been missed out, resulting in a complete misinterpretation of what might happen.

I do want to try and hear John Dean's speech at the town hall next.