The keys to happiness are money, fame and status, regardless of what the romantics say

2 January 2010

Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety

I recently received an email from a friend asking if I would contribute to a book he’s editing entitled What Matters Now: prescriptions for a simpler life. ‘A new genre of literature is emerging about the roots of happiness,’ it began. ‘Authors like Alain de Botton, Oliver James and Naomi Klein argue that the materialist/celebrity culture has left people unhappier than ever. They argue that older and simpler pleasures — a walk in the country, the companionship of family and friends, a beautiful view — provide better oxygen for the soul than the acquisition of more branded goods or the pursuit of money, fame and status.’

I told him I would be happy to contribute provided I was allowed to take a slightly different tack: ‘If you want an essay rebutting your central thesis, saying people like Naomi Klein are talking rot and that the keys to happiness are money, fame and status, I’m in.’

I suspect that these bad-tempered attacks on ‘materialist/celebrity culture’ will become more and more commonplace over the next 12 months. Indeed, it is ironic that the new decade should be called ‘the Teens’, given how middle-aged and curmudgeonly the zeitgeist is at present. Britain appears to be going through one of its perennial bouts of romanticism in which the modern world, with its Tesco superstores and dumbed-down reality shows, is compared unfavourably to a mythical past in which people spent their days growing vegetables and their evenings reading poetry. I blame Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Come to think of it, maybe we would be better off in a pre-industrial society — even if, as one historian pointed out, the most salient fact about the 18th century is that people were in pain 50 per cent of the time. At least in the 18th century it is hard to imagine Alain de Botton being considered an intellectual. I cannot take seriously a man who lectures me on the unimportance of money while sitting on a pile of over £300 million. He may be right in asserting that money can’t buy happiness, but the reason most of us are obsessed with the stuff is not because we’re labouring under any such illusion. It’s because we need to keep earning it in order to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads.

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