How to Fail - Alain De Botton Flashcards
The single greatest enemy of contemporary satisfaction may be the belief in human perfectibility. The key is to accept life as a hospice rather than a hospital but one we would like to render as comfortable, as interesting and as kind as possible.
The notion of human perfectibility has a cruel sting in the tail because it breeds enormous inadequacy.
Broadly speaking we have a problem with the ordinary: an ordinary life, an ordinary marriage or an ordinary car. But this is the statistical norm.
We have hugely over-privileged the peak of achievement in a few rare fields over the more everyday qualities and virtues.
Throughout history, many societies had the opposite idea: human imperfectability. The Ancient Greeks had burnt into their culture the notion that human life is tragic. Human success and failure takes its place amidst all sorts of machinations of the Gods, which are outside of our control.
Christianity has right at its heart the notion that we are fallen creatures and that we cannot be made perfect, and it’s sinful to even aspire to perfection.
This has been lost, largely because of a scientific worldview, which begins in the 18th century. The US was founded on a religious utopianism that we can build the city on the hill right here, right now (not in the next life like Christianity). America did away with failure: this is an inspiring idea but a deeply cruel one. As we know, fulfilment can be counted in minutes rather than years in most people’s lives. It’s just the way we’re wired: we’re not wired for enduring contentment, but for anxiety and longing.
Our age has a real problem with the brevity of satisfaction. We have this problem with relationships: we have taken the notion of ecstatic love and projected it onto a lifetime. Undiluted enduring bliss is not available.
Consolation is a word we must rehabilitate. Most of the big problems in life, such as death, have only got consolations available. We also do not like the word compromise, but this is a word we should embrace because of who we are.
Romantic love places far too much importance on the individual. It imposes an enormously heavy burden when we expect our partner to be our best friend, our ideal sexual partner, our co-parent, our business manager, our travel companion, etc. If we knew we could rely on other people to meet some of these needs, it would be deeply loyal to the reality of another person. We have an impatient perfectionism: this person must be right across all areas.
The ability to admit to ambivalence in a couple can really cement two people together. Relationships need only be ‘good enough’.
Psychotherapists talk about the notion of a rupture and a repair. In any good relationships, there will be constant ruptures but what matters is how good you are at repair.
The Ancient Greeks built theatres near their cities, and put on ‘tragedies’, which were depictions of stories of failure. These stories were about Kings and aristocrats (nobility) and it followed their path from success to ignominy to failure to disaster and death. Aristotle observed this and said the reason that people wanted to watch stories of failure was because it was CATHARTIC in 2 ways:
1/ It allows us to see the connections between yourself and somebody else.
2/ It teaches us compassion and fellow feeling
If you have tragedy at one of the spectrum (compassion and complexity), then at the other end you have the modern media. The modern media is essentially a collection of stories about people’s failure.
The modern world is so harsh on failure because it essentially sees both success and failure as deserved.
Unlike other societies, we have done away with the notion of luck.
There is no awareness that we are all on extremely thin ice. The Ancient Greeks were doing something pretty sophisticated. They were trying to educate our moral sentiments in a more compassionate direction through art. We have lost sight of this tragic background.
Love, properly understood, is to look at another human being with awareness of the many different reasons why they have ended up like they are. What was it that produced this person?
We have a limited understanding of love. It’s not just about admiration for another person.
Imagine a version of Christian Tinder where the screen crashes and you see a leper. We are very impatient with imperfection and we don’t have much tolerance for the failed aspects of ourselves. This leads to a shame-filled culture.
We tend to have a very single-track view of success. We cannot define somebody as a success or failure because there are so many trade-offs and choices being made. There is not only one script for success.
Which of the many areas in which I operate do I invest my self-worth in?
We tend to imagine that the only viable relationships are the ones that last forever. The true test of a relationship is its longevity, which is very peculiar. We would not apply this standard to other things like the best holiday or the best meal. There can be other things, which are valuable but short-lived.
Relationships are a great opportunity to learn from another person. The notion of outgrowing someone is seen in very dark terms. However, it does not have to be this way. A child outgrows their parents and this is ok. People torture themselves unnecessarily when long-term relationships fail.
So much of what we define as failure is an interpretation of facts. Your fear is not a fact. We too often apply interpretations, which are too punitive. Let’s stop torturing ourselves.
We always imagine that other people’s lives are perfect. We should always remember that it’s much more probable that others have the same level of ambivalence, jealousy and anxiety as we do. We do not have direct access to other people’s minds.
We are constantly presenting edited versions of ourselves to others and vice versa. If you want the clearest indication of what another human being is like, take it from yourself.
Romanticism is a whole set of ideas embodied in poetry and songs which crops up in the mid 18th century. It places romantic love at its centre and gives it a very particular spin. It’s seen as the pinnacle of what humans are capable of. There is a huge downgrading of friendship.
A lot of Romantics died very young.
One of the reasons to get married is to stop thinking of love.
We’re very bad at statistics. The statistical norm is that you will have an average job, an average car, you’ll get divorced once and that you’ll die in your 70s, probably of something horrendous.
We need to stop generating societies that are so focussed on the outliers. We need societies that are based around averageness and ordinariness.
Broadly speaking we are all still very lonely. There is a lot of work to be done by artists. Art holds up a mirror and tries to find the inner life within us all.
