Status Anxiety

How are we affected by an absence of love? Why should being ignored drive us to a ‘rage and impotent despair’ beside which torture itself would be a relief?

2

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Edinburgh, 1759): ‘To what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power and pre-eminence? Is it to supply the necessities of nature? The wages of the meanest labourer can supply them. What then are the advan

Similarly, philosophy does not deny the utility of certain kinds of anxiety. As successful insomniacs have long emphasized, it may be the anxious who best survive.