EVERY SPOKEN WORD
110 min read · 21,930 words- 0:00 – 2:27
Cold open banter before the show begins
- TFTim Ferriss
To kind of optimal minimal
- ABAlain de Botton
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
- TFTim Ferriss
Can I ask you a personal question? Now wait to see the next project coming up. What if I give the algorithm that? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
- ABAlain de Botton
The Tim Ferriss Show.
- TFTim Ferriss
This episode is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. And in fact, a bunch of my startups already use Vimeo Pro, including Wealthfront, who uses it to explain how Wealthfront works. TaskRabbit uses it to tell their company story. And there are many other names you would recognize among their customers, Airbnb, Etsy, etc. Why do they use it? Well, Vimeo Pro provides enterprise-level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost. Features include gorgeous high-quality playback with no ads, up to twenty gigabytes of video storage every week, unlimited plays and views, and a fully customizable video player, which can include your logo, custom outro, etc. You also get VIP support. And you get all of this for just one ninety-nine per year. That's seventeen dollars a month with no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. And you can try it risk-free for thirty days. So check it out, vimeo.com/business. That's V-I-M-E-O.com forward slash business and use promo code Tim to get twenty-five percent off. That's a special discount just for you guys. So check it out, vimeo.com/business, promo code Tim. This episode is brought to you by Ninety-Nine Designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic design related. I've used Ninety-Nine Designs for everything from banner ads to book covers, including sketches and mockups that led to The 4-Hour Body, which later became number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world. And here's how it works. Whether you need a T-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project, and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mockups and designs. You choose your favorite, and you have an original that you love or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as well as get a free ninety-nine dollar upgrade, go to ninety9designs.com/tim.
- 2:27 – 6:11
Tim frames the episode, giveaway, and introduces Alain de Botton’s work
- TFTim Ferriss
That's ninety9designs.com/tim. Hello, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I am recording this from my secret hideout in the mountains of Utah [laughs] at an undisclosed location doing undisclosed things for perhaps future book experimentation. In any case, this is The Tim Ferriss Show where I deconstruct or attempt to deconstruct world-class performers of all types, hedge fund managers, chess prodigies, military strategists, you name it. And we do have a very exciting episode. We have Alain de Botton as a guest, and I'm going to describe him and explain why you should stick around. But first, some house cleaning real fast or housekeeping, I suppose, and that is a giveaway. Uh, it's been a long time since I gave away a trip, and I've been thinking about escaping to Australia, for instance, and other places. So I thought maybe you'd like to do the same. And by that, I mean I'm giving away a vacation anywhere in the world. I've partnered with Stack Social and Bootsnall to offer you a free ride around the globe. Plus, there are tons of other awesome prizes. So check it out, 4hourworkweek.com/trip. Spell it all out, 4hourworkweek.com/trip. Doesn't cost anything. And if you sign up, you'll get a unique link. Every time you share that on social, you receive another five entries to improve your odds. So hope to see you on the road. Check it out, 4hourworkweek.com/trip. It's pretty sweet. The guest that we have today is Alain de Botton, A-L-A-I-N D-E B-O-T-T-O-N. He is many things, but I think of him as a philosopher of the most practical breed. And as I've mentioned before and written about quite extensively, I view pragmatic philosophy as a set of rules for making better decisions in life, ideally in high-stress environments. So as you know, probably I'm a huge fan of Stoic philosophy. Alain, in nineteen ninety-seven, he turned away from writing novels and instead wrote an extended essay with the funny title, How Proust Can Change Your Life, which became an unlikely blockbuster in the self-help genre. No one expected it to happen, and bang, suddenly he was on the map. His subsequent books take on all sorts of fundamental worries of modern life. Am I happy? Uh, what do I do with status anxiety, etc.? And this is informed by his deep reading in philosophy, but also by his novelist's eye for small, perfect moments. It's a very cool combination. His books have been described as, quote, philosophy of everyday life and are on a diverse range of subjects, including love, travel, architecture, religion, and work. His bestsellers include Essays in Love, How Proust Can Change Your Life, Status Anxiety, and The Architecture of Happiness. And I'm going to include links to all of these in the show notes at 4hourworkweek.com/podcast. So everything we mention in the episode, all of the goodies will be there, 4hourworkweek.com/podcast. In two thousand eight, de Botton also helped start The School of Life, which is awesome. He's, he-- This began in London, and it's a social enterprise determined to make learning and therapy relevant in today's uptight culture. His goal through any and all of his mediums is to help clients learn how to live wisely and well. And since I am also a student in that realm, I wanted to get him on the phone. Many of you asked for this conversation, this interview. I loved it, and I hope you do as well. Say hi to him on Twitter. Let him know what you thought of the interview. If you have any follow-up questions, it's at Alain de Botton, A-L-A-I-N D-E B-O-T-T-O-N on the Twitters. Please enjoy our conversation. Thanks for listening. Good sir, welcome to the show.
- 6:11 – 11:34
Name pronunciation, identity, and how Alain describes his work
- ABAlain de Botton
Thank you so much.
- TFTim Ferriss
I appreciate you making the time to have a conversation from the other side of the pond, and I will admit something very embarrassing. The good sir, the kind sir, the, uh, the so on and so forth is because I've, I've searched far and wide-
- ABAlain de Botton
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... to discover how to say your name correctly and didn't wanna say it incorrectly because I've had guests on like Maria Popova, Pavel Tsatsouline, who have had their names massacred every time that I've actually heard it said. So how do you s- pronounce your name properly?
- ABAlain de Botton
Tim, you're so lucky to be called Tim. Um-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
... I was born on this earth with the name Alain de Botton. Alain de Botton. So I mean, anything you can manage. Just don't call me Alain. You can call me Alan. Um, but I don't, I don't care. It's just one of those things that happened. Um-
- TFTim Ferriss
Do you... When you're speaking with native English speakers, how do you introduce yourself?
- ABAlain de Botton
I just say I'm Alain de Botton, you know, see what they say. Um-
- TFTim Ferriss
See how they respond. [laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
Um, yeah. But you know, every, every, every school kid i- in England has, has done, you know, four or five years of reluctant French.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
And, and there's always a, there's always a f- a f- a French teaching book with, with a character called Alain, so they can just about manage that.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
Um, but, but I mean, it's really all my fault, and I'm deeply apologetic.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
And, um, what can I say?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- ABAlain de Botton
It's one of those things. That's what globalization brings us.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's like Pavel, uh, when he orders coffee at Starbucks, he just says Pablo because that's what they're gonna come up with anyway.
- ABAlain de Botton
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, well, well, that, that also leads me to ask, and of course we'll dig into a lot in this conversation, and I'm very excited to finally be chatting. This has been a long time in the making. When people ask you, what do you do, how do you answer that?
- ABAlain de Botton
Well, look, the easiest thing i- to say is that I'm a writer, but, but that doesn't really cover it because, um, writers come in all shapes and sizes. I- I- if the conversation is allowed to go on a little longer, what I tend to tell them is I'm interested in emotional intelligence, in emotional health. Um, it's, it's a kind of topic that broadly pertains to all the things that make life difficult that are coming from the kinda emotional centers of our brain and functioning. Um, y- you know, sometimes people joke about first world problems, right? They, they kind of... They, they laugh at how we are in the United States or the UK, and they say, you know, "You guys just, uh, uh, have got first world problems." And it's supposed to be a joke. It's, it's like people who are, you know, quibbling because the, uh, you know, the Chardonnay is not chilled enough or whatever. Um, I actually think that there is such a thing as first world problems not seen as a joke, but seen genuinely, which is really the problems of advanced civilization, uh, that we're living in now, when the majority of people have got enough food, they've got a, a secure shelter, but life is still very tough in all sorts of ways. So it's not the old kind of toughness when it was really about survival. It's toughness of a different sort. It's about, uh, trying to, um, make sure that your brief time on Earth is well spent, that your talents have been properly explored, that you're in a satisfying relationship, that you understand yourself, that you have a purpose, et cetera. Now, in many parts of the world, these sounds, these things sound like luxuries, and indeed they are. But they are daily realities in, in countries, you know, like the United States. There are about 20 countries in the world where these kind of concerns are active. Um, and these are the concerns that interest me. You know, um, they're concerns, as I say, around, uh, relationships, workplace satisfaction, ambition, community, meaning. I mean, these words, we can go into them. They sound a little nebulous when you first mention them. But it's the kind of higher order, uh, questions that people start to ask themselves once the basic supply of food and shelter have been assured.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right. And it seems like, uh, when I look at, for instance, the cases of suicide that I've encountered in my own life, uh, friends who've committed suicide, in, in every case, they're far enough up Maslow's hierarchy of needs that they've satisfied shelter, hunger or food, et cetera. And they... I, I think one of the ch- challenges perhaps is that when people get to a certain point and they're grappling with self-actualization and so on, there, there are a few, uh, sort of flies in the ointment, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Um, and feel free obviously to, to, to strike me down with a sharp blow. But the [laughs] number one is that many of the terms they're grappling with, like you pointed out, are in some ways nebulous. They don't have... The topics or challenges don't necessarily have clean, clear, uh, evolutionary answers, uh, like, "I am hungry, therefore I should find food." And in some cases, we realize that what we thought would, would address the angst or anxiety that we have, such as, uh, status or money, in fact, uh, appears not to provide any type of lasting relief from those types of dilemmas. Um, how did you become interested in these questions? And of course, I mean, your, your books, for instance, have been described as a philosophy of everyday life, and, uh, you've written about all sorts of things across the board. But how did you, how did you fall into or become attracted to these types of questions and the philosophy of everyday life, if you think that's a fair description, um, in the first place?
- 11:34 – 15:49
Why love and work became Alain’s core subjects (and the gap in guidance)
- ABAlain de Botton
Sure. Sure. Well, I, I tend to, um, start always with myself. So I'm a very personal writer. I'm not... I'm the opposite of an academic. Um, I'm looking for, uh, answers to the problems that I experience. I start with myself as the first case study, and I think if I'm getting myself right, if I'm understanding myself right, by definition I'll be getting lots of other people right as well. So, you know, I, I'm a, I'm a laboratory of one. Of course, I step out of that. I read a lot. I meet a lot of people. I talk, et cetera. But as it were, I tend to start the emotional energy comes from, you know, the first patient, me. Um, and, uh, you, you know, I, I'm the one with all the problems, and, um, they tend to also just happen to be problems that other people have as well. So quite early on in my life, I realized that there were two things which were deeply problematic for me. The first one was the area of love and relationships, and the second was the area of work, that these were things that were giving me real trouble. Um, I think, you know, I've come to see with age that these are thi... that there wasn't a coincidence, that these are the two areas of massive insecurity, doubt, and most importantly, lack of guidance. You know, we, we, we, we live in a society where we very much believe in freedom and individual, um, self-realization, which is fantastic from one point of view and leaves us desperately searching for guidance, clues, et cetera. And we're left very much alone. You know, I had a so-called elite education. I went to, uh, Cambridge University in the UK. I, I got a good degree, et cetera. So I was a kind of well-educated citizen of the modern world, and yet boy, oh boy, I was so lost. Um, I just didn't know... You know, I hadn't had enough of the right sort of conversations. I hadn't met the right sort of people. Broadly speaking, I wasn't living in a therapeutic environment. I, I don't mean Oprah. I don't mean a psychoanalyst.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
I mean, uh, uh, um, literally in the ancient Greek sense, therapy, which is the kind of nourishment and nurture of the soul, the inner bit, the precious bit of you. Um, there just wasn't any support. Uh, I was-- I felt very cut off from that, and gradually I felt my way through books, through conversations, um, to a kind of way of living where I could just begin to understand some of the things that I was suffering from. But if I were to diagnose my younger self, I was a classic example of, you know, somebody living in, uh, you know, a prosperous world city in the middle of a kind of heyday of capitalism, um, uh, suffering from all the angst that comes with that. Uh, I'd been taught that happiness, k- personal happiness came from w- finding one very, very special person with whom there would be an ecstatic sense of communion. Um, and, uh, she, it happened to be, and I would meet. It would be wonderful. My all sense of loneliness, loss, and drift would be healed. Uh, there would be... It would be like a, a, a sort of secularized version of a meeting with a deity. And I was on the lookout in bars, clubs, dinner parties for this person, this, this angelic deity who'd, who'd graciously come down to earth. And that, that w- that was gonna solve my, my love problem, that I also was facing a work problem. And the, the kind of ideology I'd grown up with was you're gonna work very, very hard, uh, and then you will find a precious bit of you, and you will put that on a commercial basis. Whatever it is, that inner precious core, you will turn into money in, in good time. Uh, you know, you will be both creative and also financially productive, et cetera. Now, I'm not saying that either of these things is impossible, but they're very hard, and we're very alone with them, very alone indeed. Um, and this struck me, and, uh, my career in many ways was designed to try and find some answers that would work for me and would work for others. And by answers, I don't only mean solutions, I also mean interpretations. You know, when you're, when you're suffering from something, you don't necessarily always want or expect there to be a fix, but at least just understanding what it is that's the problem, uh, and, and expressed kind of eloquently, that's at least half the battle. And I didn't have any of that, and that's what my career has been spent trying to do.
- 15:49 – 18:35
Cambridge “History of Ideas” and committing early to writing
- TFTim Ferriss
What did you study in undergrad? Where-- Was it your undergraduate studies at Cambridge?
- ABAlain de Botton
I studied, uh, what they called over there History of Ideas, which was a wonderful course that really looked at the evolution of big concepts through time, um, and how attitudes to different things have changed. So we would study a word like freedom and look at all the different ways in which that word has changed and, you know, how differently it was interpreted, say, in the fifth century AD to the way it was interpreted in the eighteenth century, the way it was interpreted in America versus in China, et cetera. So that was really fun and, and, and really good.
- TFTim Ferriss
And from, from that point, grappling with all these issues, as many people do, um, what put you on the, the, uh, the map, so to speak, f- as a, as a discusser, uh, explorer of these ideas? Uh, you have o- of course, uh, a, a very well-known extended essay called How Proust Can Change Your Life. That's another one I had to look up before this interview. I'm gonna admit, I had to look up [laughs] P-R-O-U-S-T to double-check and make sure that it... I would be pronouncing it somewhat close to correctly.
- ABAlain de Botton
Perfect.
- TFTim Ferriss
How Proust Can Change Your Life. Is that the essay that kind of put you into the mainstream or slipstream, or, or were there other ways that you sort of were able to test your ideas on a, on a large public scale before that?
- ABAlain de Botton
So I, when I f- graduated, um, I was very aware that time was short and that there are immense pressures on young people to prove themselves pretty early on, and I felt that, um, very much. I, I'd come from a family of high achievers, and I was born with a sort of sense of like, you know, you've got to prove yourself. And, um, it w- it, it was a kind of madness I now recognize. It was, it was not easy or the best thing. I don't think that's a, a great ideology to have, but, but there we have it. So no sooner did I, uh, graduate that I, I really started ask-asking myself the biggest questions, like where do I want my life to go? I applied for various jobs, but I'd graduated in the midst of a recession, and it was very hard to find-
- TFTim Ferriss
Wh- when was this?
- ABAlain de Botton
This was '91.
- TFTim Ferriss
Is it, uh-
- ABAlain de Botton
This was the summer of 1991. And, um, a lot of my friends were just, you know, finding things to do, taking jobs in bars, et cetera. And I asked myself, "What do I really want to do?" And I thought, what I really want to do is write books. Um, and I dared to admit that to myself in a kind of late-night session of, of self-honesty. And I thought, well, I... why don't I just start now? And I'd been thinking a lot about writing and self-expression and all the rest of it. And so I kind of Gradually felt
- 18:35 – 21:10
Breakthrough with Proust and making “high culture” usable for everyone
- ABAlain de Botton
my way to writing my first book, which was published when I was just twenty-two. Um, and it was a book called Essays in Love. In the US it was titled On Love. And, um, I put my heart and soul into it. It's a very intimate d-dissection of a love story. And, um, the book did very well. I mean, very well certainly for a twenty-two, twenty-three-year-old, and it gave me the confidence and the courage to carry on. And relatively soon after, I then wrote what turned out to be my breakthrough book, which was called How Proust Can Change Your Life. And thanks to American readers and, uh, reviewers, that book did extremely well, and it was an unlikely moment, um, because here was a book written about a early twentieth century great French writer that was at the same time a self-help book. Um, and I deliberately chose to kind of mash up these two genres, a kind of scholarly essay and a self-help book. It wasn't just a, a kind of, um, a sly commercial trick. There was serious intent, which is that I always felt that high culture, by which I mean, you know, literature, philosophy, uh, you know, plays, et cetera, these things do not just belong in the ivory tower. They have a richness to them which can be absorbed and should be transmitted to the widest possible public. This is heresy among the universities that believe, uh, partly for economic reasons, that only if you enroll in their sacred, uh, fraternity do you really have the right tools to be able to interpret and enjoy the masterpieces of civilization. I passionately disagreed with that. I am by nature a popularizer and a democrat of the mind, and I did not appreciate that kind of cloistered vision of knowledge. So I took a lot of what I'd been thinking and reading and really tried to express it so clearly, and I would write sentences twenty times to make sure that they could be understood by everyone. Um, I would try material out on people who'd been educated and people who hadn't been educated at all, and I wanted to make sure that it would work at all levels. And so that was a-an extra layer of work, and I'm, you know, really proud and happy to say it did work, and the book proved itself a-around the world. And so I was in the very odd and fortunate position that come the age of twenty-seven, I'd had this, you know, book that had worked. Um, and, and I was kind of, uh, you know, I was aloft, um, at least, you know, for a time. So that's, yeah, that's how I ended up doing what I do.
- 21:10 – 24:19
Blending analysis with storytelling, and the writers who shaped his voice
- TFTim Ferriss
And if-- and for people who have not read, uh, let's just take On Love and How Proust Can Change Your Life, was On Love autobiographical? Was it a novel? Was it a mix of the two? Neither?
- ABAlain de Botton
It, it, it was a mix of the two, 'cause Tim, you know, what I love about novels is the local color, the intimacy of language, the kind of the sense that you're suddenly in a real place and you know what the weather's like and et cetera. What drives me crazy about novels is that sometimes you feel that the novelist is cleverer than they're allowing their characters to be. You feel that there's all sorts of stuff that is discussed in nonfiction ways that somehow just doesn't find its way into the novel where it's all supposed to be about showing, not telling. And I didn't like those rules, so my novel was explicitly an attempt to tell a love story as well as show it, to have a mixture of analysis and also more sensory descriptive bits, 'cause I wanted to touch the reader and make them think. I didn't want to tell just another ordinary love story. I wanted to analyze love in the course of a love story so that the kind of the, the, the knowledge bits would be well wrapped up in some of the excitement of a love story. So it was, it was kind of trying out a genre. And in all my works, I've always been a little impatient by the, the kind of models out there for how to write, like a classic novel must be, you know, X pages long, must feature da da da. I, I've, I've always been provoked to slightly pull at those rules. And, um, so just as I wrote a self-help book, but, you know, it was half about this great twentieth century writer, and that's not normal. So I was writing a novel, but that wasn't quite the normal way of writing the novel. So I was impatient with some of the, the rules that writers get given.
- TFTim Ferriss
What, um, which, which writers or books most influenced your approach or thinking about, uh, those two books, On Love, or we could focus on How Proust Can Change Your Life.
- ABAlain de Botton
Um, look, the books that I always most enjoyed were the books, first of all, where you feel the presence of an author in the text who feels like a nice person. I know that could sound kind of trivial, but, um, it, it just sounds like someone that you could kind of get to know and have a, have a chat with. I mean, if we think of someone like Thoreau, um, Thoreau sounds like a really great guy. Uh, he's friendly. He's sometimes sarcastic, but he's always witty. He's humane. He's generous. He's sometimes impatient, et cetera. But you kind of get a sense of a person. Um, you get that sometimes reading great writers' letters. You know, if you read, I don't know, the journals of, uh, Nathaniel Hawthorne, for example, um, you get, you get a flavor of, of a person. So, uh, um, someone like the French philosopher Montaigne was a great influence. He was a man who-
- TFTim Ferriss
Definitely
- ABAlain de Botton
... writing in the sixteenth century, again, just spoke in this wonderfully direct, intimate way. So yes, he was telling you about Plato, and he was telling you about history, et cetera, but you always felt, "I'm actually with someone." And I've always really appreciated the personal voice, and, um, and that really influenced how I wanted to, to, to write and be with my readers.
- 24:19 – 35:17
What Proust “teaches”: status, love, art—and learning to ask culture for help
- TFTim Ferriss
And I, I will admit, when it comes to, uh, most philosophy, I'm kind of a one-trick pony. Uh, I've, I've really read a lot of Stoic philosophy, but outside of that, uh, I'm woefully inadequate. So I'm gonna ask a question that you've no doubt been asked before that maybe Really irritating. But how can Proust change your life? What is the, uh, so what is the structure of the book, or what is the, um, what, what are some of the theses or, or concepts discussed?
- ABAlain de Botton
Sure. So, um, Proust is really a philosopher more than a novelist, and his book is about the search for how you can stop wasting your life and start to appreciate life and live fully. So the title is very accurate. The title of his long book is In Search of Lost Time, and it's literally one man's search for how you can stop wasting your life. And it follows the, uh, narrator hero as he tries out three things that he thinks may turn out to be the meaning of life. The first things he-- first thing he tries is social status, a position in society. And, uh, a lot of the book follows how he tries to get in with the top people in Paris. He wants to get in with-- uh, nowadays, they would be the celebrities, the business people, et cetera. But in those days, they were the aristocrats. And so he's trying to get in with them. He's trying to make a name for himself, et cetera. And it follows-- It's very funny. It's warm. It's self-deprecating. But essentially, the search for the journey, he does manage to get into the inner sanctum, but he discovers that actually these people are often brutal, brutish, not that interesting, and not really interested in him properly. And he has a kind of moment of, uh, s- existential despair around this goal of social status. He then moves on to another possible goal of life, which is romantic love. And a lot of the novel is spent tracing the love affair of the narrator for a beautiful late teenage girl called Albertine, who's charming, headstrong, gamine, the kind of boyish, uh, charmer. And, um, it-- gradually, there are all sorts of disappointments, and he realizes some of the real limitations of love, which is that we go to love because we think that someone will understand us fully, that we can be fulfilled totally in the arms of another person, et cetera. And gently and with humor and generosity, Proust unpicks some of these hopes. And again, gradually, we realize that love, like social status, is perhaps not the meaning of life. So what is? Well, Proust ends up, like many writers, defending his own art and craft. He defends art as the meaning of life.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
And what he means, what, what he means by art is-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] It's kinda like don't ask a barber if you need a haircut kind of situation.
- ABAlain de Botton
Exactly. Exactly. So it's a big, big PR job on, on, on art, but he's more generous. You can certainly read him in ways that are more generous than merely art, as in, you know, you've got to immediately enroll on a fine art degree or something. He's not saying that. He is seeing th-the great works of art, not all art, but the great works of art as examples of life as it's lived to the full. And he's interested in, in particularly in certain artists. So he talks a lot about the painter, the Dutch painter Vermeer, who he thinks-
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, amazing. Vermeer.
- ABAlain de Botton
Right. That's right. And what he appreciates is that Vermeer painted daily life, but he saw in daily life an extraordinary richness, uh, and, uh, and, and, and, you know, level of kind of psychological involvement, et cetera, that he was, he was living life to the full. So, uh, he-- another painter he really liked was a French eighteenth-century painter, Chardin, who rather like Vermeer, painted modest interiors, um, families around the kitchen table, loaves of bread. He painted about twenty loaves of bread. Um, one of the first painters to kind of spend so long with bread. And really, it's a kind of, you know-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] It's very French.
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah, it's very French.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
But it, but it's also, you know, it's also a kind of secularized Christian message, which is really that ordinary, modest life has grace, has, you know, is in contact with the glory and dignity of the universe kind of thing, to put it-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right. The sacred and the profane.
- ABAlain de Botton
Exactly. Exactly. And, um, and, and this is what makes Proust such an enchanting writer, that he, he is so interested in daily life, and he wants to make daily life magical. And that's what he resents and hates about snobbery, because snobbery constantly s- makes you think that there's a group of people out there who are special, more special than the ordinary people, um, et cetera. And Proust, you know, the son of a kind of haute bourgeois, a wealthy family, et cetera, has this tremendously, deeply, profoundly democratic vision, um, about the value of each individual and the capacity of an artistic gaze to tease out that value, and therefore, thereby make, uh, life meaningful. So, you know, that's some of what, um, I discovered and that provided the spine for my own, uh, study of Proust, uh, that, that I wrote.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I have two, uh, immediate responses. The first is, have you seen a documentary called Tim's Vermeer by any chance?
- ABAlain de Botton
I haven't.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, it is spectacular. It is about a computer scientist and a very famous entrepreneur in the desktop editing world who is an incredible inventor also, uh, outside of those fields, and decides he wants to determine how Vermeer painted the way he painted and goes through many different attempts, builds many different tools to try to replicate Vermeer paintings.
- ABAlain de Botton
Fascinating.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's, it's a very fascinating, hilarious, uh, and, um, insightful look at, uh, yet another obsessive. [laughs] Not saying you're obsessive, but the world is full of interesting obsessives. The second, uh, is, uh, how did reading Proust or writing this book as, as you really dug into it, uh, affect how you prioritized or lived your life? How did you, how did you incorporate that into your decisions, priorities, or life?
- ABAlain de Botton
Well, look, I think the liberation of that book for me was, um, going up to a really big name, an authority that was spoken of by professors in reverential tones. And what I did with that is to fire some pretty naive questions at this kind of colossus of kind of Western culture. And I really asked the most essential but the most naive question, which is, "How can you help me to live?" Uh, and I think in a way this is the best question to ask anyone one meets. In many ways, that's what you tend to ask in your podcasts. Um, it's such a valuable question to ask. Very often we're too shy. We, we're, we're reserved. We think that other people are gonna be bored by that question or, um, everyone else knows it already, et cetera. The book liberated me to be a kind of person who would be able to go up to works of high culture and culture generally and kind of shake down the tree and, and see what there was for all of us. Uh, and, um, uh, so that's... That, that was the kind of personal, uh, discovery.
- TFTim Ferriss
And d- and that... So in sort of knocking at the door of this colossus and, uh, daring to ask these questions about practicality that opened the door to then your career as a writer and exploration of that i-i-in, in, in that sense? Is that what you mean? Or is there... Are there ways that, that, uh, Proust impacted in the answers that you got back in your exploration, your day-to-day living?
- ABAlain de Botton
Yes. I mean, uh, I, I guess both. Um, uh, to, to, to address the kind of the... your second very good point, I, I think that there were many attitudes that I found in Proust that were incredibly seductive and charming in the, in the best sense. So Proust's, um, anti-romanticism. But, but I mean by romanticism, um, Proust was reacting against many of the things that he saw in the 19th century that he disagreed with. The idea of the individual as a hero, the idea of love as the answer to everything, the idea of, um, certain kinds of career success as being, you know, the only way to live, et cetera. He, he, he took, uh, kind of a, a skeptical position vis-a-vis a lot of these things. Um, he wasn't that he rejected them wholeheartedly, but he was a little skeptical, beautifully skeptical. And, um, and I found in him a kind of, you could say a kind of maturity, uh, that I didn't necessarily possess at that age. I was 26, 25, 26. And, um, and I learned from him. It was like sitting at the feet of a kind of wise person who's seen a few things and who says, "You know, steady on. Calm down. Maybe, you know, look at it this way." Um, and, uh, he, he... Yeah, he, he gracefully pried me from certain of my more immature positions, uh, in relation to a, uh, a number of things.
- TFTim Ferriss
Could you give, uh, some examples?
- ABAlain de Botton
Well, for example, you know, I, I'd mention love, but it's not that I'm now cynical about love. But, um, in a way, he, he rather dark... Proust rather darkly says, you know, all of us cannot be understood by another human being perfectly, that there is an area of loneliness inside everybody. And to blame someone for not understanding you fully, um, is deeply unfair because first of all, we don't understand ourselves, and even if we do understand ourselves, we have such a hard time communicating ourselves to other people. And therefore, to be furious and enraged and bitter that people don't get all of, you know, all of who we are is, is a real, is a really kind of cruel piece of immaturity. And, um, that came as a real shock to me, you know, as a, as a, as a guy in his 20s who, who really thought, "No, no, love is this sort of magical communion where, um, you know, I see into their soul, they see into mine. There are no secrets, and there is no more loneliness." Um, and I've realized that there's a kind of beautiful intolerance, so both beautiful but, but really kind of negative. It's, it's, it's the breeding ground of a certain kind of impatience, and that's kind of dangerous. And that helped me a lot in my personal relationships. I think it made me a slightly more, more, more patient, more humble kind of person to be around.
- 35:17 – 39:34
Mature expectations: “cheerful pessimism” and living with darkness without losing ambition
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. And, uh... Well, I have so many questions for you. The, uh, the, uh... This is mostly just a, uh, a, a therapy session for myself disguised as a podcast. But the, [chuckles] um, the, the first, uh, question that, uh, that I'd love to ask, um, is building on that. I, I re- I remember at one point, um, there was a poll or a... some type of research done. I don't know how well it was put together. And it said that, uh, you know, the, the happiest country in the world is Denmark. So based on these various surveys and, uh, the data that's been gathered, the Danish are the happiest people. And [chuckles] I got a comment on a post I put up about this from a Danish person who said, "The secret to happiness is low expectations. That's a pretty common belief here in Denmark." And I, I, I thought it was very funny, and then I, I... then I, upon looking at it a second time, began to ask, is there actually something there, right? And if there is, how do you bu- how do you combine ideally low expectations so you're not constantly disappointed, i.e., the, the opposite of expecting your loved one to solve all of your loneliness and A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, while still striving, um, or, or, or doing great things for yourself or other people? Um, and you of course have written a lot since and done many things, and, and we'll dig into some of them. But- How do you think about that?
- ABAlain de Botton
Um, I think it's such a key question. Um, I, I think you're, you're putting your finger on, on a key thing, which is that very often people think that having mature, we could call them mature expectations or slightly low expectations in some areas, um, is going to mean that you lose ambition, that you cannot have ambition and realism. You cannot be sober in some areas and still deeply excited to get out of bed, you know, in, in the morning. Um, I think that's not really true. I think there is-- y-you can have these what you could call paradoxical positions on issues. For example, you know, I, I like to explore the idea of being a cheerful pessimist, and you go, "Hang on, how, how can you be a cheerful pessimist?"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
Right? But, but if you explore that, you know, um, if you're a little pessimistic about, about how a lot of things go, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna be gloomy all the time. You may encounter moments of pure ecstasy as you realize, um, that there are some very fine things in a world which is otherwise very dark. Um, I don't think a backdrop of stark realism/pessimism about all sorts of things that, you know, death and illness can visit us very suddenly without warning, that all our grandest plans can be undone by, you know, a blood clot in under a minute, um, that some of the finest ambitions fall prey to, you know, the meanest realities, et cetera, that, that many of us, perhaps all of us, are gonna go to our deathbeds with some very important parts of us still unexplored. Um, I think it's because things are so dark, because we are operating against a backdrop of, of darkness that, you know, a glass of beautiful lemon juice or a sincere conversation with a friend or a moment when, yes, things do go right and everything does go right, why these things matter so much and perhaps much more intensely. It's, it's like the joy of the convalescent who's come out of the hospital, and they are seeing the sunlight strike, you know, the leaves of a daffodil, and that daffodil seems more beautiful than it's ever done to the robust, you know, football player who hasn't ever, you know, paused to, uh, to appreciate these things. So I, I, as I say, um, I think it's, it, it should be utterly compatible with ambition, appreciation, uh, tenderness, et cetera, to, to keep the really grim things not far from the top of consciousness kind of pretty much every day.
- 39:34 – 52:00
A “gateway” to philosophy—and why modern academic philosophy lost the public
- TFTim Ferriss
The-- who are some philosophers or thinkers, uh, that for those people who have, uh, a lifelong aversion to the word philosophy and the, the concept of philosophy, uh, for, just from a utilitarian standpoint, a readability standpoint, maybe they're not the same, but who, who are s- who are some names that come to mind that you would recommend to folks as a gateway drug to, um, to philosophy?
- ABAlain de Botton
Sure. That's such a good question. I mean, first of all, I'd like to apologize on behalf of philosophy [laughs] .
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
It's not my role to, but I'll do it anyway playfully. Um, the general public's disinterest and suspicion of philosophy is well earned. It's deserved. The general public hasn't just forgotten about philosophy by mistake. Philosophers operating today have, on the whole, forgotten about the public. Um, insofar from my point of view as philosophy is interesting, um, I think it's, it's most interesting at its very-- in its very opening moves. When philosophy begins in ancient Greece and Rome, uh, it sets out to be therapy for the soul. It sets out to be a, a practical tool that can help you to live and die well. Philosophers in those days are interested in finding out how families work, how money works, how status works, what we should do about public opinion, what we should do about death and illness and ambition, and all of these things that trouble us every day. That was, you know, centrally what philosophers were interested in and, and discussed. And the great philosophers of those days, people like Epicurus, like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, you know, these people are all very much, uh, worth, uh, reading. Um, philosophy continues to be interesting for many, uh, centuries. Uh, I mentioned, uh, the name of Montaigne early on. He's fantastic. Uh, in the nineteenth century, you've got a, a great German philosopher, Schopenhauer. He's fantastic. You get Nietzsche, w-who can be read with, uh, very rewarding, uh, results. When we hit the twentieth century, the number of interesting philosophers tails off because something happens to philosophy that is not often remarked upon, which is basically it splits in two. And for my money, the interesting stuff goes into psychology. Freud says that he is a philosopher. Um, and, you know, the whole tradition that comes out of Freud, not just psychoanalysis, but, but psychology more generally, um, the, the interesting stuff about how to live, how our minds work, how to actualize ourselves, how to relate to others, et cetera, these things become the province of psychology. And throughout its history, philosophy's had a habit of casting off bits of itself and kind of the, the, that spurn-- the, the, the spur on sort of subgenres. It used to be that the study of the stars was what philosophers did. Uh, now, you know, that's astrophysics. So, um, philosophy has this split in the twentieth century, and nowadays philosophers tend to be really only ever employed by universities. Always a danger sign when your, when, when your subject matter-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
...when your subject matter-- when no one will pay directly for your subject matter, that's often-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
...a sign that something's gone wrong. Um, so no one-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right. The canary in the coal mine is getting a little wobbly.
- ABAlain de Botton
That's right.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- ABAlain de Botton
That's right. So, and, and, and, and that's deserved because philosophers don't tell us how to live and die anymore. There are a few. There's a great philosopher who was at Princeton called Martha Nussbaum. She's terrific. There are a few others out there who are doing good work, but really not very many. Not very many that you would recommend, let's say, I don't know, you had a friend who was interested in philosophy and- Was having a little hard time in life. There's very few names that you would recommend. Nevertheless, what philosophy really is, is a discipline that's distinct from, say, poetry or religion. But like poetry, it wants to talk about the things that are meaningful. Um, and like religion, it wants to give us guidance. But unlike religion, it's not using the supernatural. There's no appeal to supernatural or, or, or, um, you know, mysterious forces, forces you can't define. Um, it's, it's based on anything that you can kinda reason with. Um, and, uh, and unlike poetry, it's not merely interested in kind of beautiful phenomena. It wants to take those somewhere. It wants to inform and, and reform us. So the, the book I wrote after, uh, I, I wrote How Proust Can Change Your Life was a book called The Consolations of Philosophy. And in that book, I looked at six great philosophers. I looked at Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, uh, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. And, um, I, I looked at these guys as for very practical guidance. It, it was an attempt to say to these great names, "How can you show us, you know, what to do and, and, and how to live?" Uh, and, um, uh, you know, so that was a kind of classic, uh, style that I was developing and, um, and that I was getting good results from. And, uh, you know, that's, that's a book of mine that, that won many readers around the world, and it's still probably the book of mine that sells the best. Um, and it, it's... you know, it does, um, what it says on the tin, which is to look for consolations among the work of some great philosophers.
- TFTim Ferriss
Do you, uh, consider Bertrand Russell a philosopher?
- ABAlain de Botton
Absolutely. Um, he-
- TFTim Ferriss
I was, I was always very impressed. I was introduced to Bertrand Russell before I was introduced to Seneca, and then vis-a-vis Seneca in delving into stoicism. Uh, of course, he has a very interesting, uh, he has a very interesting style of prose and discourse. So he throws in his [chuckles] comp-
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... his competition, right? He throws in Epicurus quite a bit as a way to pull in defectors, which is v-very clever of him and not too surprising if you look at his political [chuckles] hardwiring.
- ABAlain de Botton
Exactly.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, but Bert- but Bertrand Russell was the first one, and I'm not sure if it was... Uh, there's a, there's a... I've read several of his books, but, you know, Why I Am Not a Christian was one. Uh-
- ABAlain de Botton
The Secrets of Happiness? W-was it-
- TFTim Ferriss
The Secrets of Happiness also.
- ABAlain de Botton
Oh.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yes, that may have been the first. And I, I was struck by how much it, uh, it-- how strongly it contrasted to most of the philosophy I'd been exposed to. I went to Princeton undergraduate. I did take one philosophy class that was very, very, very good with a Professor Rosen, and I'm, I'm blanking on the, uh, I think it was Metaphysics and Epistemology 101, which I probably couldn't d-define either of those terms at this point. But Professor Rosen was very good. And then the rest that I ran into really seemed like a lot of intellectual masturbation, um, where a vast majority of it seemed to focus on, uh, semantic tail chasing.
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, sort of the, the, like, what does is really mean?
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And then they'd go on for six hundred pages of rhetoric, and at the end you're like, "I don't think that added any value to my life." [chuckles]
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah. I mean, Tim, I, I so sympathize. That was my experience as well, and it enrages me and saddens me. And I think that, um... Look, I'm-- you know, the, the older I get, the more I realize that the great challenge of our own age is to take the good ideas and make them available to a wide public. And the universities often do weirdly the opposite. I mean, they, they inform a kind of narrow coterie of students, but there are-- they stand outside the kind of democratic project. And that's critical because we live in a mass culture. We live, we live in a world where ideas have to have followings in the millions if they're ever to get traction. And when people, you know, wring their hands in despair and go, "Why don't we do this?" or, "Why don't we do that?" or, "Why is the world..." et cetera, um, a, a, a lot of the reason is that the good ideas are not on network TV. They're not on the mass channels of communication, so that a few people in the Ivy League universities have got full command of, you know, Wittgenstein's later philosophy. But out in the street, there isn't, you know, that democratic pool of knowledge. And, you know, I've always been attracted to the great democrats of knowledge. So someone like Voltaire in eighteenth century France, he wanted to write for everybody. Um, uh, you know, someone like Emerson in the American tradition, again, he was a man who, you know, toured the country and gave impassioned speeches about the highest and most meaningful things. But he was, you know, in, in the church hall talking, uh, you know, the language of ordinary people to get his message across. And that seem-- that seems to have been so hard for many twentieth-century philosophers. And Bertrand Russell is, you know, in a company of almost just one in, in, in his decision that, you know... He was a guy who-- he, he, he wrote a-- he had a column in, in, in a, in a, in a daily newspaper in England. He wrote articles for American Vogue. He appeared on television. He had a regular radio program. Many philosophers attacked him for this. They said that he was cheapening and, and deadening his subject, but this was a man who knew his stuff. He wasn't gonna be bullied and patronized, and he understood that the things he cared about would only live if he managed to get ordinary people properly engaged. So he was a wonderful, wonderful vulgarizer in the best sense.
- TFTim Ferriss
[chuckles] No, I, I, um, I agree. And I think that one of the challenges is that when you had, say, s- the, the Stoics, right? Stoa, as I understand it, referring to porch, and they would sit in these informal classrooms and talk. I mean, there are other forums, of course. Fora, maybe. I don't know. [chuckles] I'm not up to speed with my etymology. But the-- when that translated into a more structured academic setting- Uh, and say the hard sciences had a progression in difficulty, right? Where you-- if, if you're going to study at the graduate level, uh, in mathematics, you need to master the prereq- the prerequisites in undergraduate, and then algebra and so on before that. And when you take philosophy and force fit it into that type of progression, you go from, uh, not striving to make something useful, but striving to make something difficult. And I think when it becomes difficult, it, it's inversely correlated to its usefulness. Does that make sense? It's like, well, you can't be a PhD in philosophy until you've made it sufficiently arcane and made the rhetoric so convoluted that only five people at this university are willing to sit down and talk about it for three hours. And it's, uh... it becomes this very unfortunate, uh, sort of self, um, cauterizing structure. Uh-
- ABAlain de Botton
Totally. Totally. And I, you know, the unfortunate thing is that the humanities, so all the great, you know, the great wisdom of the ages, um, at a professional level, they started to have to compete in the twentieth century with the sciences for money and attention in universities. And the way that they decided to take the battle is that they sort of tried to turn themselves into pseudo-sciences so that they suggested that you would study them like a scientist would, would study. So you would do things like research. You, you would find a poet, and you would research the poet, and you would do some kind of complicated, weird stuff in the, in the back engine room around th- you know, this person. Previously, the humanities was- wasn't handled-- they weren't handled like this. They were handled by, by ordinary laypeople who would spend half an hour in the evening dipping into, you know, a, a volume of philosophy or poetry. Um, suddenly, this stuff became the, the, the subject of kind of y- you know, study that was akin to studying nuclear physics. Um, and that was all to make sure that the professors would get tenure, and the departments would get funding, and the governments would be suitably impressed. I can understand and sympathize with, you know, people's need to, you know, progress up the career ladder, but it's been a complete disaster for the rest of us because it's meant that wisdom that was supposed to circulate freely and democratically around the nation has become, you know, bunched up in some kind of centers, um, uh, in the universities and, and is, is not doing its job. And, uh, meanwhile, you know, uh, well, we know, we know what happens on TV and down the, down the airwaves.
- 52:00 – 59:41
Popularizers, Stoic fear-training, and the freedom that comes from rehearsing failure
- TFTim Ferriss
How, um... Not how. Who do you think, uh, uh, the contemporary thinkers who are doing a good job of popularizing what you might consider philosophy, um, who are names that come to mind? Of course, you're-- you are one of the first names that come to mind for most people, but who else would you put on that list?
- ABAlain de Botton
Um, well, I have a colleague that I like very much called John Armstrong, who operates out of Australia, and he's, he's, he writes some wonderful things. Um, there are also, as I, I mentioned, uh, someone called Martha Nussbaum, who's, who's doing a really, uh, nice job. Um, you know, there've been-- there, there've been others. Um, but it's, you know, it, it, it is hard. Um, popularization is, is hard. Um, one of my favorite popularizers is Jamie Oliver, the cook, chef. And what I love about the guy is that he's taught the UK how to cook. Um, and the way he's done that is to speak in the language of ordinary people-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- ABAlain de Botton
...about some pretty unordinary things, like how to cook a, you know, duck a l'orange or something. And he's got working class English males to kind of put on an apron and do some weird stuff. And I think that's what a good teacher is. A good teacher is the person who takes your fear. And we tend to have these fears like, "I'm a woman, so I can't," or, "I come from a working class background, so I can't," or, you know, "I'm, uh, you know, an elite person, so I can't." We, we-- there are a lot of people have these kind of blocks. I can't do this because of that in my past. And a good teacher says, "No. How do you mean? You, you can't do engineering and be a woman? Of course you can." Or, you know, you, you can't be a working class, uh, guy and, and read poetry? Of course you can, et cetera. And that's what a good teacher does, shakes you free from some of these kind of dichotomies. And, uh, so for me, a, you know, a good teacher of philosophy is someone who calms down the audience. Like, you know, you thought that because you're a busy dentist, you can't read philosophy. It has no place in your life. Of course you can. Uh, so that's, that's what a good teacher does. And, and, you know, there, there are some out there, and, and, and we need more.
- TFTim Ferriss
I agree on Jamie Oliver. I have, uh, one of his books, Cook with Jamie, about fifteen feet in front of me on a shelf next to a couple of other people I would put in that same category of teacher. Uh, you have, uh, Seven Fires, which is one many people probably haven't heard of, which is by a Patagonian chef trained in France about how to use fire to cook.
- ABAlain de Botton
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
But the, the underlying, uh, the underlying principles are the same, whether it's Richard Feynman, the physicist, one of my favorite books, you know, Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman, uh, or Seven Fires or Jamie Oliver. I mean, they're-- they are making the, the, the potentially complex simple to encourage the free flow of, of ideas and action. And it's the opposite of making the potentially simple complicated to constrain the flow because you have a scarcity mindset. You have a defensive mindset, which would be the case, I think, for, for many people at the highest levels of academia, which is unfortunate. They feel like if, if they were to popularize, it would, uh, it would sort of loosen the soil beneath their feet and remove some stability-
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
...in some way.
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, or ch- or cheapen it. And I'm not sure when that happened. I mean, in the day of, say, I'm su-- I, I, there's, there's a book I really need to read called, I think it's Dying Every Day. It's a book about Seneca in the court of Nero. But was-- Seneca was a very, very popular writer. Uh, do you have any idea if he was Ridiculed and scoffed at by the highbrow philosophers of his day? Or did that-- was that a recent development?
- ABAlain de Botton
Um, well, he, he was ridiculed, not for p- not for that issue, but he was ridiculed for, um, making a lot of money, uh, which he did-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep
- ABAlain de Botton
... um, in, in politics and business, and also, um, having a pretty luxurious lifestyle. And people said, "How do you mean? Hang on. How do you mean? You're supposed to be a Stoic. You're supposed to be a philosopher. You're supposed to have one cloak and, and live in a thing, and your, your, your house is pretty nice." And so there was some mockery.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
And he has some funny answers to that. I mean, he, he, he rebuts the charges head-on, and, um, he says [laughs] the true philosopher-- it's not the true philosopher, uh, must have no money. It's just that he must be ready to lose it, that he must-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
... his hold on it must be relaxed.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep.
- ABAlain de Botton
And, um-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right
- ABAlain de Botton
... and in fact, uh, you know, this could sound like, oh, oh yeah, you know, pull the other leg. But, but i-in fact, he did practice what he preached because, um, twice in his life he did lose everything. He was exiled. He fell into political disgrace, et cetera. And, um, he, he behaved pretty well. Um, and so Stoicism is not necessarily-- Stoicism attracted a lot of support among the very wealthy and the very successful because it taught them that they could survive without their wealth and their success. And very often, when people get wealthy and successful, they become very scared of what would happen, and they feel the need for ever more success and ever more wealth from a fear that if they would have to go backwards, it would be catastrophic. And what's very relaxing and nice about Stoicism is that it partly says, well, you know, uh, it, it, it's survivable. Of course it is. And one of the favorite Stoic exercises that they would perform was that once a month or so, um, a Stoic was advised to wear their dirtiest cloak and sleep on the kitchen floor, Seneca advised, in the dog basket. Uh, I don't know how big that, that might be.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
And you would drink the dog's water. And the idea was that for, for, for a few days you'd live like a dog, and you realize that that's possible, and it's fine. And that removes, um, fear. And as they understood, coming back to your earlier i-issue about ambition, they realized that often what stops us from realizing our ambitions is fear. And therefore, if we make ourselves totally at home with failure, totally at home with our utter disgrace, we will feel a curious lightness and sense of possibility because we won't be held back by the constant thought, what happens if? We will have fully explored-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right
- ABAlain de Botton
... the question, what happens if? We'll have made ourselves so at home and seen that there is nothing so bad about failure, and that will free us to advance more likely and with greater courage towards some of our goals.
- TFTim Ferriss
I couldn't agree more. And y-you were mentioning pessimism earlier. I g-gave a presentation, I think in two thousand eight, two thousand nine, it's only five or six minutes long, called, uh, Practical Pessimism. And it made the point, like, like you just did very eloquently, that if you practice the worst case scenario, and even if you were to view that as pessimism, but a very practical version of it, it actually frees you to be more ambitious. It doesn't teach you to drop your expectations. It just teaches you not to be attached to the expectation of a best case scenario. So it frees you up to swing for the fences because you're not afraid of striking out. At least I've found that to be true for myself. And there's a, there's a great essay also out there on the, uh, the, the discussion and the, [laughs] the, uh, stone-throwing, uh, related to Seneca and his wealth. I mean, he was very well known for being wealthy and, uh, had his ivory-legged tables and so on. There's an essay called The, The Case of the Opulent Stoic, which is a very interesting read on, um, how that controversy evolved and where it may be a fair accusation and where it may be an unfair accusation. Um, but, uh-
- ABAlain de Botton
What a wonderful essay. Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... some-- Oh, yeah. It's a great, great name, too.
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah.
- 59:41 – 1:07:42
Family history, immigrant anxiety, and reframing status anxiety in modern individualism
- TFTim Ferriss
Just like the In Search of Lost Time. Um, the, uh, where did all this come from? I'm so-- I mean, in so much as where did you grow up? What did your parents do? Could you give us some color as to your, your upbringing?
- ABAlain de Botton
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
The pre-Ca- the pre-Cambridge years.
- ABAlain de Botton
The pre-Cam-- Um, so I came from a family, uh, of, um, very displaced, uh, and, and very neurotic and anxious immigrants. My father was born in Egypt. He was part of the Jewish community in Alexandria that got kicked out in the fifties from one day to the next. He then drifted around the Middle East. He eventually wound up as a, as an immigrant, as a refugee, more or less, in Switzerland, um, was utterly penniless and desperate. Met my mother, who was a part of the Swiss Jewish community, and she, for all her own reasons, her, her family had-- her father had recently died. The family had lost everything from having come from quite a privileged background. They then lost everything, and she was living, um, in very humble circumstances. Anyway, they found each other. They clung to each other, and they were united in their desire to make it in life and to, to be, you know, ambitious and achieve great things. Um, they did manage to achieve great things. Together, they built up a business. Um, uh, my father, you know, made it big in the world of finance. He always retained a kind of immigrant panic mentality. Um, he got-- he had a Swiss-- Having not had a passport for long periods of his life, he eventually got a famed Swiss passport, and he would treasure that item like nothing else. And every time he crossed a border, every time he went in and out of a country, there would be panic in his eyes as he just thought, "Is this gonna be the moment when they grab me and put me somewhere else?" et cetera. So that was kind of part of his DNA. So it was a fou-- I was growing up in a family that was at one level, uh, comfortable and, you know, had, had all the things in life. At another level, there was a deep psychological kind of disturbance and fear. I would say that the dominant mood of my parents was anxiety. And, you know, if I returned home in the evening, they would sort of think, "Oh, you're still alive." And I would go, "Yeah, sure, I'm, I'm still alive." And they were amazed. Um, and they believe above all in hard work, but to a slightly crazy degree. And I, as a child, I observed them, and I observed both their successes and their strengths and also some of their vulnerabilities. I realized that these were people who didn't have a very good grasp of their own psychology and, um- They did love the arts. Both of them loved the arts very much, um, and that I inherited from them. Anyway, I inherited, you know, various things. One always-- every, every childhood is such a sort of mixed bag of, of things. But, um, I came out of that childhood thinking success is important, but at the same time aware enough of the limitations of success to not swallow uncritically some of the messages about what it means to kind of make it in this world. And so, you know, a lot of my work has been kind of exploring and probing what we mean by success and the challenges it brings, et cetera. So yeah, I don't know if that explains some of it.
- TFTim Ferriss
No, no, it, it adds a lot of very helpful context. I mean, you've written, of course, Status Anxiety, The Architecture of Happiness, The News: A User's Manual. You, you're prolific, uh, [laughs] certainly compared to me. Uh, and have you, have you, uh, developed any practices or reminders that help you to mitigate or minimize status anxiety, the keeping up with the Joneses or the fear of missing out, all these issues that seem to really plague at least a lot of my friends, and I know I, I grapple with these myself?
- ABAlain de Botton
Sure. I mean, um, I think, you know, a, a, a very vital kind of realization was it's not just me. It's, it's part of being alive today that we, we, you know, we, we, we've got this ideology of individualism, you know, what, what historians of ideas call individualism, which is a kind of new idea because we've come from collective societies where your sense of well-being did not depend on anything that you particularly did. You, you were first and foremost part of a tribe, part of a village. You were part of a family. It-- your own achievements was only one part, and perhaps even only the most minor part of that other, those other sources of identity and sense of self. We've done away with that. Everybody is meant to reinvent themselves. Um, and that's wonderful and liberating and, and, and was part of, you know, the European and American story in the eighteenth century. But it's also deeply troubling for many of us. It crushes us because what a burden to bear. You know, what, in a way, what unwitting cruelty to say to everyone, "You can't rely on where you have come from. You can't define yourself by your group, by your family, by your ancestors, by the nation. You can't believe in nationalism. It isn't enough for you to feel proud of, you know, your group. You have to be proud only of yourself and what you've achieved in the years since you finished your college education or, or, or whatever." That is a heavy and sometimes just overwhelming burden. It's, it's good to realize that we are under this pressure. It's not that that will magically make that pressure disappear, but just to, to be able to know, hmm, no wonder I'm a little twitchy on Sunday evenings as the sun goes down.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
No wonder I get that Sunday feeling when I'm thinking, "My God, I've got my dreams on the one hand and my reality on the other, and the gap is too large, and I feel desperate." You know, no wonder we feel that because that is what the whole system helps us and makes us feel. And I don't want to say that it's all wrong, um, but it is certainly very demanding. Look, my experience of envy and status anxiety, et cetera, it's a very simple idea. The more you know what you really want and where you're really going, the more what everybody else is doing starts to diminish. It's at the moments when your own path is at its most ambiguous that the voices of others, the distracting chaos in which we live, the kind of, you know, the, the, the social media static, that starts to loom large and become very threatening. Um, the thing about ourselves is, you know, as you know, we're not very good at understanding what it is that we really want. We're extremely prone to latch onto suggestions from the outside world. You know, like, you know, when every- when everybody was saying, you know, tech was big, uh, a lot of people who never thought about it thought tech was really for them. Uh, when banking was big, people thought banking's, you know, for me. When people tell-- were telling you that, you know, romantic love is perfect, you think, well, I must be finding and perhaps even feeling romantic love, et cetera. So we've got a lot of models out there that don't necessarily suit us but are deeply powerful. And I think that to c- to calm down, first of all, you know, you have to realize that your ultimate responsibility is to yourself, not the neighbors, not your parents, um, not the expectations that were put upon you. This is where the thought of death is tremendously releasing, that your only real responsibility is to, you know, yourself as a kind of mortal, very temporary being, a constellation of, uh, you know, particles and proteins that are hanging together in a particular shape for a few years before disappearing forever. That's you. Um, and there are, you know, more ways to be than, you know, your college, um, you know, graduation speech led you to think. Um, so yeah, these are some of the tensions of, of the modern, modern soul.
- 1:07:42 – 1:16:04
From books to institutions: The School of Life, religion’s “machine,” and other channels for ideas
- TFTim Ferriss
And I, I, I found a lot of-- this is something I sometimes have trouble, uh, verbalizing to people, but, um, I find that a lot of Buddhist thought has parallels with, with Stoic thought in terms of whether it's Marcus Aurelius saying, at the end of, uh, at the end of a very short period of time, I will be bones and dust on the ground, and that's his, like, uplifting note to himself in his journal before he goes off to battle. Uh, or it's like a, a Musashi, uh, Miyamoto, who is one of the The one of, if not the most famous swordsman in Japanese history, who would say probably more or less the exact same thing, uh, before setting off on his day. And it sounds very depressing, and it sounds like a downer, but it, it's, it for me has been such a helpful reminder, and it's, it's, um, sad circumstances, but I've had two friends, uh, die of, um, unexpected causes very suddenly in the last month. And it just-- it, it seems to be all the more important that we have some type of memento mori, right? Some type of reminder of death that, uh... And in fact, I have a friend who's in finance. Don't hold that against him. He's a good guy. Uh, but, uh, he has a, an Excel spreadsheet that calculates and displays on his desk the number of expected hours he has left in his life, so that he sees that every day. I don't have that, but in the, for instance, The 4-Hour Chef, in the author photograph, I put a small skull in the very bottom corner. It's kind of hard to see, but that's what a lot of artists used to do. Not to say that I'm an artist, but that was one of the ways I wanted to constantly remind myself that time is of, uh, time can be very short. You don't, you don't know how much, how many hours you have left on the planet. Um, where do you... I, I'm sorry. I, uh, I was just gonna ask, and feel free to, to, to take this in a different direction. But w- uh, with the, the recognizing that the clearer you have defined what you want, the less fear of missing out, the, the less status anxiety, the less suggestive you will be to the, the, the madness of the mob, uh, where would-- wh-what do you-- where do you wanna be in three years' time, for instance? Like, what, uh, what would you like your sort of day-to-day existence to be like, or what would you like to have achieved, doesn't have to be professional, uh, in the next three years?
- ABAlain de Botton
Sure. Well, I mean, if I can mention the, the, the professional, one of the things that's been really absorbing me in the last few years is, um, well, I was a writer for most of my, uh, professional life, and then I always had a sense that writing books wasn't quite enough. And what I mean by enough is I didn't feel that sending people, you know, two hundred pages glued together was necessarily always gonna be the solution to many of the issues that I cared about. I, I, I felt a sort of crisis of the soul, where I realized that, you know, this idea of being a writer that I'd wanted so badly when I was younger, um, was no longer fully satisfying me because I realized that so many problems, um, were not gonna be amenable to treatment by books, that you needed other things. Um, and that led me to begin an organization, um, which I call The School of Life, which was very much in line with things that, uh, I, I've been caring about in my books for a long time. But there were a few differences. For a start, it wasn't just about me. Um, it was actually about gathering, gathering together with a group of like-minded but, but different people with different talents and different skills and starting something that, um, you know, could be a, a proper collective and an institution. W- the reason I started where I did was that I read a lot about religion, 'cause at a certain point in my kind of crisis about, you know, the meaning of being a writer, et cetera, I got very interested in religions 'cause I thought relig-- I, I'm, I'm an atheist, I don't believe, but I'm very interested in religions and very sympathetic to many of the things you find in religion. And what I realized that you find in religion is a machine, organization. Religions don't just believe in writing their deepest thoughts down in a book, and that's it. They support, uh, things by having communal activities, group activities, um, getting very involved in the arts, getting involved in this thing which we call ritual. I mean, we can talk more about that, what is a ritual, but, um, ritualized actions, repetition, the repetition of ideas, not just-- you don't just read them once. You, you repeat them maybe with other people. Um, uh, you u- you might use music to, to get a point across. Um, all of these things fascinated me, and I realized that as religion declined in, uh, you know, in Europe in the nineteenth century, in many parts of the United States, even now, et cetera, um, a-as religion disappeared, it was in many places, uh, uh, replaced by culture. You know, people who in previous ages would have been religious got very interested in music and literature and philosophy and all these sort of things. Um, but I realized that those things were missing one thing that religion really did well, which was the kind of the group bit, the institutional bit, the, the embedding in daily life bit. Um, and I thought, "Couldn't we do some of that now?" And I, I also looked backwards to ancient Greece, and I realized that philosophers, many of them had started up schools. Epicurus had started a school called The Garden. The Stoics had, you know, the Stoa. Plato, uh, uh, uh, had, uh, the, the, um, had, had, had his school, The Academy, et cetera. And, um, it's not that I wanted to directly imitate that, but I thought how interesting that these were people who thought you-- it isn't enough just to be you in a book. Anyway, many of these thoughts contributed to my beginning this thing, um, that I call The School of Life, and it's been the focus of a lot of my energy in the last four years. Um, to give you just a sense of it, uh, this thing has its HQ in London, but we now have ten branches around the world, including in Australia and the Far East and Europe, et cetera. Um, not in the United States yet, but what we do is, um-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] We don't, we don't care about that.
- ABAlain de Botton
No, I, uh, you ca-
- TFTim Ferriss
We just want big-bigger cars. [laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
You care, you care so much, but, you know, I can explain why we're not in the United States in a minute, but if you want to-
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm just kidding. [laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
No, no, I'd love, love to be one day, but we're not yet. Anyway, we, um, uh, we run classes. We, we publish books. Uh, we put on events. Uh, we run a YouTube channel. Uh, we do all sorts of things. And, um, and it's just-
- TFTim Ferriss
You have some great, great videos on the YouTube channel.
- ABAlain de Botton
Thank you.
- TFTim Ferriss
I highly recommend it to people.
- ABAlain de Botton
Thank you. And, and, you know, really what all we-- what, what we're trying to do is to take a lot of the stuff that I care about but, but Try and find other channels, Dan, which to, to distribute it. I mean, your career more than anyone shows, you know, how that can be done and that is done. And so I, I felt a kind of restlessness, which perhaps you felt as well at, at, at a certain point about, you know, what it means to be a writer and, um, and it's perhaps an intersection of writing and business for me and, and, uh, learning how to create a business out of something that might previously have just been seen as a kind of romantic inspiration of the kind of lone artist. Um, anyway, all of that's been very interesting and, and, you know, you ask about the goals in the next few years. I, I really hope to continue to make a contribution there and to make School of Life as good as it can be for us to touch as many lives as we can in as diverse a way as we can, um, to, to invite more and more people into this kind of little home we've built.
- TFTim Ferriss
And, uh, that was started in 2008?
- ABAlain de Botton
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Is that right? Or was it started later?
- ABAlain de Botton
Yes, yes, 2008. Yes, yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
So that's, that is around the time, 2008, 2009, uh, after I think partially instigated by the cultural, uh, well, I shouldn't say cultural, existential and financial insecurity caused by the, um, mortgage-backed securities crisis of that time. But I, I developed quite a high degree of restlessness about being an author, which led to starting the angel investing and looking
- 1:16:04 – 1:25:04
Personal work-in-progress: communicating clearly, listening deeply, and the power of simple truths
- TFTim Ferriss
at startups as a way to, um, using as a means of leverage. So using startups as an Archimedes lever of sorts to translate some of these concepts into the real world in a way that could scale at a very high level. Uh, but let, let me ask you a, a slightly more personal question. So what, for instance, bad habits are you working to overcome at the moment or hope to work on? Let, let's, let's look at the, the present day.
- ABAlain de Botton
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
I have a million of my own that I usually overshare in Facebook Q&As and things like that, especially if wine is involved. But, uh, what, what bad habits are you currently working on, if, if any?
- ABAlain de Botton
Um, look, it's a very classic one that, that, you know, so many people, so many of us are, are guilty of, which is not properly communicating. And what I mean by properly is not properly teaching others about myself, what I'm feeling, what I would like, what bothers me, and instead of properly communicating, merely acting out and symbolizing things and expecting to be understood. And this is a constant effort really to, um, to not imagine that those around me should mind read. They can't know what I feel unless I tell them. And also, they won't hear me unless I speak in a certain way. Um, if I'm agitated and get annoyed quickly, that immediately shuts off communication. If I blame them, that shuts off communication. They will not hear. If I humiliate anyone, that, that message will get lost. So if you're trying to get something across, you know, resist all those bad habits that we all have around communication. I think it's trying to learn how to be a better teacher and a better student. You know, teaching has these sort of weird connotations. You think of like some guy teaching history in a high school or something like that. But i-i-in order to have a good life, all of us need to learn how to be good teachers and good students of one another. 'Cause every day creates moments when we need to teach something. We, we need to give somebody a lesson. It may be in, you know, what time we're gonna be home tonight, or how we're feeling about, um, you know, some event on the horizon or whatever it is. But we're gonna need to get something across, and that requires kind of rules and disciplines, and just simply blurting it out, simply kind of exploding in some way or emoting in some way is normally the worst way. And at the same time, we have to learn to become students, which is, you know, to listen properly, to interpret. You know, maybe somebody's making a bit of a mess of trying to tell you something, but try and listen to what they might be telling you beneath the surface. I've got relatively small kids. They very often don't tell you what they feel. They can't tell you directly what they feel. You have to do some guesswork, and a lot of what-
- TFTim Ferriss
You have to deduce.
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah, you have to deduce. But I think, I think you have to deduce from everybody's, uh, sake. And, you know, very few of us learn on the spot. You know, if, if somebody told me or told you a big central truth about you. "You know, the thing about you, Tim, is da, da, da." Or, "The thing about you, Alain, is da, da, da." If that was said even just vaguely brutally or, or, or, or just even with a little whatever, we would shut down. We get defensive. We go, "No, that's not true. How do you know? What are you trying to do?" Et cetera. We shut down quickly. We don't absorb that information. And, um, we should. We should try and get less defensive, and at the same time, when we're in the kind of giving feedback role, we should really think carefully. So I, I, I think this whole business of, of listening and feedback is a, is a key issue that I'm, I'm, I'm always trying to work on.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm trying to do the same thing, and that was, that was my newly adopted puppy also trying to [laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
To make his feelings known.
- TFTim Ferriss
To trying to, trying to communicate. Uh, I've taught her to kick the bells on the door. But, uh, aside from that, I'm s-so far failing at, at speaking dog. But the, uh, I'm trying to do the same thing, and I think that, uh, y-you mentioned the young children. I think if you, if you could-- You can recognize that if you, uh, if you were to keep someone from having lunch, keep anyone from having lunch for three or four hours and, uh, give them, uh, an argument with a spouse or loved one or coworker 60 minutes earlier, that their emotional state will pro-probably be closer to your children than anything else.
- ABAlain de Botton
That's right.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] And, and if you assume that when you read their email as opposed to, uh, reading malicious intent, I was always, um I shouldn't say always. I was told quite some time ago something that I've, I've enjoyed trying to remind myself of so I don't respond in kind, so I don't volley back something nasty with something nasty, that, uh, y- don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence [laughs] .
- ABAlain de Botton
That's very nice.
- TFTim Ferriss
And, and a close, a close cousin of that, which I've had to add to it, is don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence or busyness.
- ABAlain de Botton
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? Uh-
- ABAlain de Botton
That's right. I, I mean, I often think s- someone once said to, to... this to me, and I... it's really stuck in my mind, that when people seem like they are mean, they're almost never mean. They're anxious. That's what, that's what inspires the behavior-
- TFTim Ferriss
Ah, that's good
- ABAlain de Botton
... that we read as meanness. But it, it very frequently is not meanness. And these are very basic bits of psychology, but, you know, I should say, you know, again, the older I get, the more I think we are relatively simple creatures. Just as, you know, to nourish us physically, we need quite basic things, some bread, you know, an olive or two, some water, and off we go. So when it comes to our kind of inner psyches, um, many of the things that we need have an almost breathtaking simplicity. It is things like the person is mean, not worried. They're almost like mantras. They are simple things, and I think we are so highly educated. We, we, we over-educate ourselves out of connection with these simple truths. Um, and they are so key, and this is something, you know, you mentioned Buddhism. This is something the Zen Buddhists are very keen on, is Zen Buddhist philosophy and poetry is often unbelievably simple. Y- and, and you... you know, rather than seeing that as an argument against it, um, you know, the great masters will ponder a sentence, turn it over, write it down in ever more, you know, beautiful, refined, but simple ways on a piece of paper, et cetera. And, and I think that we've got, unfortunately, because of science and the glamour of science, this addiction to the idea that the most valuable things must be very complicated and constantly new, rather than perhaps very simple and repetitions of some basic, quite old truths. And it, it's just... I think we're mixing up, uh, a, a kind of source of wisdom in one area, which is, you know, flying rockets, with, uh, a, a source of wisdom in another, which is, like, how to get through your day. And we're, we're misinterpreting what we need for both realms. We're thinking we need the kind of scientific version i-in personal life, where actually it's really super unhelpful.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. And I think also we tend to, as, uh, higher primates with big prefrontal cortexes, uh, cortices [laughs] I have no idea.
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
In any case, we want to, uh, if we're having a bad day, we look at these big e-existential questions as opposed to, did I have five olives or should I have five olives? Maybe my blood sugar's just low [laughs] .
- ABAlain de Botton
That's right. That's right.
- TFTim Ferriss
Or something [laughs] .
- ABAlain de Botton
I, me... you know, I love that. Wasn't it Clinton who said that, uh, w- you know, before... when dealing with anyone who's upset, he always asks, "Has this person slept? Have they eaten?" You know, "Is somebody else bugging them?" He goes through this kind of simple checklist. But we are... you know, we know so much. When we're handling babies and the baby is kicking and crying, we r- almost never one, never does one say, you know, "That baby's out to get me," or, you know, "She's got evil intentions." We go, you know, "She's probably tired," or, "He's..." you know, "He hasn't had enough sleep," or, "Maybe it's too tight around his collar," or whatever. We, we, we look for pretty benevolent, often pretty basic explanations. When we... once we reach adulthood, we almost never... I mean, when have we been in a situation with an angry person who's, you know, whatever. Uh, we always look at, at the intellectual level. We very rarely go, "Wow, this is probably someone who's really pretty tired," or, you know, "It's, uh, you know, it's 1:00 and they've not had anything to eat." So that's where the explanation... It, it offends our self-knowledge. It o- it offends our dig- our sense of dignity, but it really shouldn't. And as you say, we are a, you know, an amazing computer sitting on some very, very basic bits of, of, of software. And not to accept how basic we are is its own version of kind of pretension, and, and, and we should resist it.
- TFTim Ferriss
And self-sabotage-
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah
- 1:25:04 – 2:00:31
Lightning-round reflections: defining success, “nanny state” guidance, AI/VR ethics, rituals, and closing recommendations
- TFTim Ferriss
... in a way. Um, for sure. Uh, I would love to shift gears a little bit and, uh, lob some rapid-fire questions your way. The answers don't need to be rapid. But, um, when you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why?
- ABAlain de Botton
Hmm. I, I, I didn't want it [laughs] to, but, um, but unfortunately, Steve Jobs came to mind, and I'm really annoyed about that because I don't actually see, see him as, as the quintessence of, of success. Um, look, I think a successful person is somebody who has taken hold and fathomed their talents, made the most out of those talents, and reconciled themselves to their weaknesses. They're not ranting and raging about their weaknesses. They have a sense of what those weaknesses are. They're not blaming the world for them. They know them. They own them. At the same time, uh, they, they've had a sense of their strengths, and they've been able to make something of those strengths. And maybe that thing's relatively modest, but they've still managed to externalize those strengths. That's asking a lot. That is a successful life. Very few of us are lucky enough to get there. Um, but I think that's what it might be.
- TFTim Ferriss
Who, who would be a someone, not Steve Jobs-
- ABAlain de Botton
Hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... uh, who certainly was prone to ranting and raving, and I'm not sure how aware he was of [laughs] many of his weaknesses. But, uh, who, who would be an exemplar of that for you?
- ABAlain de Botton
It's funny, I've, I've... I, I was recently in, in Switzerland, where I, I come from. And, um, when I was little, I was partly brought up by my parents, but also part- also partly brought up by a very kindly lady who lived with us in the, in the family. She was helping the family, et cetera. And she was almost like a second mother to me. And she's now 83 years old and lives in an isolated Swiss village. She's in- Amazing health, uh, for her age. And she is a true saint in-- She's not religious, but, you know, if you wanted to offer somebody up to science as somebody who is well-balanced, you won't read about her in the newspaper, you won't, you know, see her face, et cetera. But you actually sit in her kitchen, and you talk about politics with her, you talk about child raising, you talk about the meaning of life. This is a person with an inherent ballast, who's no nonsense, who knows how to be kind, who knows how to laugh, who knows, et cetera. And, you know, the world is full of such people, people who represent what you might call an ordinary genius, an ordinary genius of the business of living.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, I like that.
- ABAlain de Botton
And, and we, we, we walk past these people because th-they don't star in any of our, you know, uh, calendars. I-I'd go so far as to say that perhaps a few more of them are women than men. Um, and, uh, they are utterly unheralded, uh, but, but they are out there, and they are the true philosophers.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, I guess that could be contrasted with the extraordinary hubris that we seem to worship, uh, oftentimes, sadly.
- ABAlain de Botton
That's right. That's right. I mean, that, that's why I was kicking myself when, you know, the very word success has become contaminated by our ideas of someone extraordinary, very rich, et cetera. And, um, and that's really unhelpful, that ultimately to be properly successful is, you know, to be at peace as well. You know, I, I've seen too many people who are so-called successful who are not at peace and, um-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right
- ABAlain de Botton
... you know, that's a problem.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, and, and not to be too clichéd about it, but I think that, uh, it's easy to define success as, uh, is getting what you want. Uh, but for those people you mentioned with that internal ballast, that ordinary genius, they also want what they have, right? They appreciate what they have, which I think is, uh, not nearly as taught or studied as the achieving of what we want, unfortunately.
- ABAlain de Botton
Absolutely. And, and, you know, you say taught. I mean, we need reminders of this. We-- That's, you know, we're-- Otherwise, people go, "Oh, yeah." You know, when you tell someone that, they go, "Oh, yeah, that's obvious. I knew that." And you go, "Yeah, but is it alive?" There's such a difference between an idea being in theory in your brain and alive in your brain. And those kind of ideas about appreciating every day, et cetera, are generally not alive in our brains, and that's a problem of art, really. They are not artistically alive, and, um, that's something to bear in mind.
- TFTim Ferriss
What is the book that you've given most as a gift, aside from your own? Book or books.
- ABAlain de Botton
Hmm. Well, there was a stage, um, before I, I got married and when I was on the dating scene, um, when I gave a lot of copies-- This was the nineties. I gave a lot of copies of Milan Kundera to people. It, [laughs] it suggested The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a, a book that I ca- [laughs] I gave out a lot. Um, I don't know if I still would, but I do admire, uh, this Czech writer very much and, um, and, and it, and it has all kinds of wisdom and, um, and it's beautifully written and, and impactful as well. I've given quite a lot of copies of Montaigne's essays to people down the years, um, and, um, I've not given Proust 'cause it's a little heavy. Um, but yes, that, that kind of thing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Thank you. And for th-those people w- his name has come up a bit, uh, or, or several times in this conversation, Montaigne. There's a, uh, there's a post by Ryan Holiday, an introduction to Montaigne on the blog for those of you who wanna check it out at fourhourworkweek.com, and I'm sure that, um, that will be linked to in the show notes as well as everything that we've talked about so far. Uh, what is something you believe that other people think is insane?
- ABAlain de Botton
Hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Or many other people. It doesn't have to be everyone. But what is something you think that m-most other people think is insane?
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah. Um, I believe in the nanny state. We live in a very-- You have that, you have that expression in the States, right? The nanny state.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, yes.
- ABAlain de Botton
Yeah. So I believe in the nanny state. Um, it-- Uh, I'm not coming at it from the left or the right. It's almost, you know, irrespective of that. But I believe essentially in a public sphere which should offer guidance. I think the idea of the neutral public sphere where, for example, um, it's just completely left to the market to decide, you know. And i-if you've got the money, you buy an advertisement. You know, if you, if you, if you wanna pay for a billboard, pay for a billboard, et cetera. Um, and I think that, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in the way that we went from religious societies which guided people towards important truths to a soc- to societies that have just left everyone completely alone. So in my utopia, um, there would be a lot more guidance. Um, I, I, I am a believer in-- Because I've needed so much guidance. Um, I would, I would be re-- I would pay, you know, real attention to what's on the airwaves, for example. Um, i-in the UK at the moment where I'm based, um, the government is thinking hard about what it should do with its gigantic television station, the BBC, that it gives millions, in fact, billions of pounds to every year, and it's wondering what it should do with it. And the argument seems to be, seems to res- be quite a sterile one. But my view should be on the national broadcaster should be programs that systematically address all the largest failings and dilemmas of the nation, including, you know, for the failures of p- around parenting, around, uh, family breakdowns, around violence, around anxiety, a-a-around loneliness, et cetera. We know-- Government statisticians know what the problems are in, you know, large populations, but we-- they refuse the tools that they have, like, say, the BBC. And the idea is, well, no one should tell anyone how to live. There's such a fear of fascism, communism. Um- And I can't help thinking that we have made a bogeyman here, that that isn't really the threat. Um, the real threat is that we are drowning in chaotic noise and unable to find a kind of balance. Um, and I think that, um, you know, I'd be up for a little bit more vigilance about that and a little bit more nannying of the best kind. So that's the kind of thing that I'm very careful not to tell you. I don't know why I've told you and your millions of listeners now.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- ABAlain de Botton
But, but, but, you know, it's, I, I, I'm aware, you know, because I, I use YouTube a lot, and I'm aware that if you, if you put anything out there that says even anything like that, an unbelievable torrent of messages comes through along the lines of you're a communist or you're a fascist or, um, you're trying to infantilize me or blah, blah, blah. And my view is always, hang on a minute, you know, we're all adults, and when you know you're an adult, you can also admit that actually seeking help, therapeutic help in the broadest sense, is part of adult life. That saying, you know, no one teaches me anything. I'm just my own person, totally, uh, i- is a kind of slightly brittle version of, uh, maturity, and I'm interested in a more dependent relationship on others where we can seek help, where we're not offended if someone offers help to us because we can turn it away, but we're not offended by the offer of help. And so these are some of the things that I think about late at night, and it would offend and frighten everybody.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] So a couple of, a couple of thoughts. The first is, um, on the art of asking. I think Amanda Palmer, the musician, has a lot of interesting things to say that, uh, people could benefit from, from checking out. The second is, um, on the, uh, being called a fascist. I think that YouTube, uh, I love it, God bless it, but if you scroll to page four or five of comments, I think on any video, even if it's kitten playing the piano, you're gonna have Hitler and fascism in there somewhere.
- ABAlain de Botton
Of course. Of course.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, the, the, uh, then the third piece I would say is in terms of this, the, the state or the government offering guidance or maybe even differing positions on some of these bigger moral questions and life questions, I think that there might be a forcing function, and that forcing function, uh, could be artificial intelligence-
- ABAlain de Botton
Yes
- TFTim Ferriss
... and things like autonomous cars. I think technology, oddly enough, the most cutting-edge technology, is going to drive a reversion in some ways or return to some of the oldest philosophical quandaries and thought experiments, uh, that, that we have, that we, that, that we visit in, say, a freshman seminar and think of as irrelevant, like, uh, you know, the trolley scenario or the fat man blocking the cave with four people inside who are going to starve. But when you translate that to modern day, I mean, even right now, uh, there are tech companies hiring, uh, what they might consider utilitarian philosophers like the, the, um, along the lines of, say, a Peter Singer, uh, to advise them on some of these questions. For instance, if you have to program a car that is going to make decisions in, um, disaster scenarios like, uh, there's, there's something in the middle of the road, I have to swerve. Do I choose to hit the six old ladies on the right-hand side or the two schoolchildren on the left side? How do you make that calculus? Right? And so I think that in, in some ways, technology might force the state, uh, or, or governments of various types, uh, to take a more active role in this type of conversation because-
- ABAlain de Botton
I, I, I, yeah, I think you're, I think that's absolutely right and fascinating, and I, I too have been very interested in, in artificial intelligence of late. And I think that, um, what we're talking about is the broad recognition that we are not very good at making decisions, that our brains are extremely faulty in all sorts of ways. At the same time, we have this idea that no one should tell us how to live. And what can slightly break the logjam is, uh, big data, scientific information, so that in the Google of, you know, in fifty years' time, you will say, you know, "Who shall I marry?" And the answers will really be quite accurate and personally attuned to you and akin to having gone to psychotherapy for ten years in their level of awareness of, you know, the issues facing you. Um, so I think you're absolutely right that artificial intelligence will, um, break through many people's resistance to insights which currently, because they're not based on science and hard data, seem, are just too vulnerable to being shot down by the, by the kind of line of, like, you know, who are you to say?
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