10/27/2017 0 Comments Success and Failure and TragedyAlain de Botton talks about failure in his TED Talk. He defines what it is, and how we are affected by it. He then goes on to discuss snobbery, and how it can impact us as humans. Using the premise that a 'snob' is someone that makes an assumption of someone or something at a first glance, de Botton then ties snobbery to envy. As humans, envy is a natural emotion for us. We are envious of the people that we can relate to, though we may have a harder time being envious of those we cannot. The natural thought process is "well he/she has done/has all that already, and we're the same age! I should be able to do/have that too!" The farther one gets from relatability, the harder it becomes to be envious. The example de Botton uses is the Queen of England. She has much more than the normal person, but she is so far removed from us that we cannot truly envy her. de Botton then goes on to tie this idea into the idea of a meritocratic society, or a society that rewards you based on your merits. The basic principle is that if you work hard enough, you'll be on top. If you deserve to be on the bottom, you will be. That seems like a good system, but it poses some problems. If we say people are where they are because of their work ethic, and essentially their choice, we also say that people choose to be on the bottom of society. You're a loser and a failure if you do not reach the top of the theoretical meritocratic society. The idea of a meritocratic society, that you are on the bottom because you are a loser and a failure, can be tied into tragedy. de Botton describes tragedy as how people fail. So, if failure makes you a loser, as it does in meritocratic society, then the classic tragedy heroes are all losers. This, however, cannot be true. Hamlet, for example, lost, but he was not a loser. His failure was not because he was a loser, it was because of the terrible circumstances of which he had little control over. As a society, we need to stop believing that these bad things happen to us because we are losers. Sometimes, things simply don't go the way we intend, and that's okay. We need to learn to define failure ourselves.
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