A kinder, gentler philosophy of success
Someone linked to this talk on TED from Alain de Botton on facebook (can’t even remember who) and so I just rather randomly flagged it for a listen here at work (then discovered I can’t hear the audio but that you can read the transcript on the right). It’s interesting to listen to a “secularist” work this idea through (and he actually gives a strange thumbs up to Augustine and also to the idea of a “day of Judgement”, believe it or not). Some of my favourite bits:
You know, we're often told that we live in very materialistic times, that we're all greedy people. I don't think we are particularly materialistic. I think we live in a society which has simply pegged certain emotional rewards to the acquisition of material goods. It's not the material goods we want. It's the rewards we want. And that's a new way of looking at luxury goods. The next time you see somebody driving a Ferrari don't think, "This is somebody who is greedy." Think, "This is somebody who is incredibly vulnerable and in need of love." In other words -- (Laughter) feel sympathy, rather than contempt.
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I'm drawn to a lovely quote by St. Augustine in "The City of God," where he says, "It's a sin to judge any man by his post." In modern English that would mean, it's a sin to come to any view of who you should talk to dependent on their business card. It's not the post that should count. And according to St. Augustine, it's only God who can really put everybody in their place. And he's going to do that on the Day of Judgement with angels and trumpets, and the skies will open. Insane idea, if you're a secularist person, like me. But something very valuable in that idea, nevertheless.
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In a way, if you like, at one end of the spectrum of sympathy, you've got the tabloid newspaper. At the other end of the spectrum you've got tragedy and tragic art. And I suppose I'm arguing that we should learn a little bit about what's happening in tragic art. It would be insane to call Hamlet a loser. He is not a loser, though he has lost. And I think that is the message of tragedy to us, and why it's so very very important, I think.