We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
"People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors, for we are all, by necessity, individuals with distinct identities and comparable claims on existence. Such words are nevertheless an apt vehicle for conveying the disparate treatment accorded to different groups. Those without status are all but invisible: they are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled upon and their singularities ignored."
We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.
Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.
Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the judging process, lending legitimacy to theidea that themainstream value system may unfairly consign some people to disgrace and others to respectability.
The essence of the charge made against the modern high-status ideal is that it is guilty of effecting a gigantic distortion of priorities, of elevating to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation that should instead be only one of many factors determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves.
Money is precisely an object whose status depends on how we 'think' about it: if people no longer treat this piece of metal as money, if they no longer 'believe' in it as money, it no longer is money.
What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway?
There are at least three moments a month when you are ready to leap across a counter or a front seat to strangle someone: the woman at France Telecom who won't give you the fax ribbons that are there on the counter in front of her because she can't find them on the computer inventory ... the bus driver who won't let an exhausted pregnant woman out the front door of the bus (you're suppose to exit from the rear) from sheer bloody-mindedness. ... My trouble is that I think like a Frenchman: I transform every encounter into a competition in status and get enraged when I lose it. -100
There are at least three moments a month when you are ready to leap across a conter or a front seat to strangle someone: the woman at France Telecom who won't give you the fax ribbons that are there on the counter in front of her because she can't find them on the computer inventory ... the bus driver who won't let an exhausted pregnant woman out the front door of the bus (you're suppose to exit from the rear) from sheer bloody-mindedness. ... My trouble is that I think like a Frenchman: I transform every encounter into a competition in status and get enraged when I lose it. -100
There are at least three moments a month when you are ready to leap across a conter or a front seat to strangle someone: the woman at France Telecom who won't give you the fax ribbons that are there on the counter in front of her because she can't find them on the computer inventory ... the bus driver who won't let an exhausted pregnant woman out the front door of the bus (you're suppose to exit from the rear) from sheer bloody-mindedness. ... My trouble is that I think like a Frenchman: I transform every encounter into a competition in satus and get enraged when I lose it. -100