Status Anxiety

Status Anxiety is a nonfiction book by Alain de Botton. It was first published in 2004 by Hamish Hamilton; subsequent publications have been by Penguin Books.

Central thesis
Status Anxiety discusses the desire of people in many modern societies to "climb the social ladder" and the anxieties that result from a focus on how one is perceived by others. De Botton claims that chronic anxiety about status is an inevitable side effect of any democratic, ostensibly egalitarian society. De Botton lays out the causes of and solutions to status anxiety as follows:

Causes:
 * Lovelessness
 * Expectation
 * Meritocracy
 * Snobbery
 * Dependence

Solutions:
 * Philosophy
 * Art
 * Politics
 * Religion
 * Bohemianism

Film
A two-hour documentary film about this thesis, also called Status Anxiety and written by Alain de Botton, was released in 2004.