Status and the city

London may be a great world city, but living here does have a few inconveniences, one of which is a higher than average chance that we'll end up suffering from a bout of 'status anxiety'.

It seems almost impossible to live in the capital and not be afflicted, to a greater or lesser extent, with a worry about where we stand in society, whether we're going up or down on the ladder of life, whether we're winners or losers, a stress we might conveniently capture with the term 'status anxiety'.

It's status anxiety we feel when a friend is promoted ('Every time a friend of mine succeeds, a small part of me dies,' knew Gore Vidal), when we read about a glamorous West End party to which we haven't been invited or when an acquaintance buys a house substantially bigger than ours.

You might say that there are two kinds of love that we all need, romantic love and love from the world: from our neighbours and friends, our colleagues and acquaintances. We talk about the first kind of love very often. Every pop song and film is about it. But it's also worth mentioning the other kind of love that's no less essential and no less sad to be without.

The point of this article isn't to give us yet another new thing to worry about, it's to help us find words for a familiar need that we nevertheless often find rather awkward to discuss.

The tricky thing about living in any city is that we have a stream of opportunities, whenever we leave the house or pick up a paper, to look over our shoulders at how other people are doing - and hence to suffer at any sign that they're doing better than we are. We tend to judge ourselves not in relation to what we have per se, but in relation to what others who are a bit like us have: our sense of an appropriate limit to anything - for example, to wealth and esteem - is never decided independently.

It is decided by comparing our condition with that of a reference group, in this case, our fellow Londoners. We cannot appreciate what we have in isolation, nor judged against the lives of people in other continents. We cannot be impressed by how prosperous we are in historical terms (we quickly stop feeling privileged at a comparison with our great-grannies who could never have regular

Causes of status anxiety

City life
The tricky thing about living in any city is that we have a stream of opportunities, whenever we leave the house or pick up a paper, to look over our shoulders at how other people are doing - and hence to suffer at any sign that they're doing better than we are. We tend to judge ourselves not in relation to what we have per se, but in relation to what others who are a bit like us have: our sense of an appropriate limit to anything - for example, to wealth and esteem - is never decided independently.

It is decided by comparing our condition with that of a reference group, in this case, our fellow Londoners. We cannot appreciate what we have in isolation, nor judged against the lives of people in other continents. We cannot be impressed by how prosperous we are in historical terms (we quickly stop feeling privileged at a comparison with our great-grannies who could never have regular baths and never shopped at Harvey Nichols).

We will only take ourselves to be fortunate when we have as much as, or more than, those in our own time in our own district - and the difficulty with London is that it's such an affluent, successful corner of the globe that there's constant evidence of people with more than we have.

The shops
With Bond Street, Sloane Street, Selfridges or the local boutique on our doorsteps, we're never far away from something we might want to buy. But this also means, rather alarmingly, that we're never far from feeling that there's something we lack. Being wealthy doesn't really involve having many things. It involves having what we long for.

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we want something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as affluent, however little we may actually own. There are, therefore, two ways to feel richer: to have more money or to curb our desires.

London succeeds (sometimes spectacularly) at the first option but, by continuously inflaming our appetites, the net effect of London may be to impoverish us. By fostering unlimited expectations (ie, City bonuses), it keeps open a permanent gap between what we want and what we can afford, who we are and who we might be.

Opportunity costs
To people from all over the world, London is a beacon of opportunity. Here, more than anywhere, it seems that with hard work and talent you can make it to the top. Ragstoriches tales abound - they encourage people to move here and spur them on.

But this meritocratic spirit does have the side-effect of leaving us little excuse if, for whatever reason, we don't happen to make it. In other places, we could blame someone else: the government, the system, the corrupt authorities.

But such explanations lose their force in a place where the restaurants and shops are filled with the newest money. The question of why, if you're in any way clever or able, you're still unsuccessful is a little harder to answer in London than in other, less meritocratic places.

Snobs
It's hard to go far in London without running into a snob, that is, a person whose entire behaviour towards you is determined by what they can see of your social position, what clothes you're wearing or your taste in music. More so than in other places, it's not what's inside you that counts, it's what people can read of your status.

It is according to how we can answer the question of what we do - normally the first enquiry we will field in a new encounter - that the quality of our reception is likely to be decided.

In his pioneering essay, The Book of Snobs, the 19th-century novelist William Thackeray estimated than one in five people in London was a snob - a frightening number to think about the next time we head into a party.

A high cost of living
The great freedom of living in the countryside (until quite recently) came from the knowledge that if ever you were sacked, you could always get by on not very much.

Until the middle of the last century, most country-dwellers grew a lot of their own food in small plots. But in London, no one can survive growing potatoes on their terrace. We depend on our employers and self-sufficiency isn't an option. It means we have to grovel and fear those in authority. We don't have the low rent and vegetable patches that would enable us to tell our bosses what we really think of them.

Solutions to status anxiety

Think of death
Because we're prone to worry too much about what the neighbours think, it may be wise to dwell a little more on the prospect of our own death. The thought of death can bring authenticity to social life.

There may be no better way to clear the diary of engagements than to wonder who among our acquaintances would make the trip to the hospital bed. The thought of death can lend us the courage to unhook ourselves from the more gratuitous of society's expectations.

Before a skeleton, the repressive aspects of others' opinions have a habit of shedding their powers of intimidation. It can also be a relief from status anxiety to dwell on the death of other people, in particular on the death of those whose achievements are now apt to leave us feeling most inadequate and envious.

However forgotten and ignored we are, however powerful and revered others may be, we can take comfort from the thought that everyone will ultimately end up as that most democratic of substances: dust.

Fortunately, London is well stocked with poetic reminders of death: not only the many cemeteries (Highgate is perhaps the best), but also the current Living and Dying exhibition at the British Museum - and, of course, the mummies of the Egyptian rooms.

Go to football matches
It sometimes seems as if there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else'; for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban.

The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves out from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow. But there are times, often at football matches or pop concerts, when being like everyone else seems like the most beautiful and honourable thing to be; other people cease to be objects of competition.

Under the spell of a game or a song, as Arsenal or Chelsea fans have always known, we get a taste for the happiness that comes from being just one of a crowd.

Find religion
Whatever we may think of organised religions, they all contain one helpful idea for anyone concerned about status. They tend to draw a firm distinction between worldly and spiritual status.

Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism all bear in mind that someone can be very wealthy and powerful but have a rotten soul - or vice versa. That we still ask whether people are 'nice' rather than just important is to a large extent the relic of a religious way of looking at power and position.

Dig out the classics
Our ideas are often heavily influenced - more than we like to admit - by what we're reading or watching on TV: and much of what we hear about insidiously promotes high-status values.

However, many books (particularly classic ones) take a quite different line to that found in most media. The heroes and heroines of most great novels don't have high status in the traditional sense, and yet the way the story is told leaves us full of admiration and esteem for them.

Their example can help us to take a different perspective on the value of 'ordinary life'.

Acquire unsuccessful friends
The most effective way to feel wealthy isn't, of course, to try to make more money. It is to distance ourselves - practically and emotionally - from anyone whom we both consider to be our equal and who has become richer and more desired than we are.

Rather than trying to become bigger fish, we should concentrate our energies on gathering around us smaller companions next to whom our own size will not trouble us.

We should hence never pass over an opportunity to hook up with people less successful than we are. Next to them we will feel proud of our own achievements. That's quite the fastest way to go up in the world.

Alain de Botton's programme Status Anxiety is on Channel 4 on 6 March at 7pm. His book of the same title is now on sale