Although he’s written books on Proust, love, travel, philosophy and architecture, what Alain de Botton should really be doing is pursuing a midlevel job in the hospitality or sales industries. At least, that’s what the careers counselor he met while researching his latest book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, told him to do. Fortunately, Botton ignored that advice, and is still, happily for us, an author. He was at the New York Public Library yesterday evening to chat about small subjects like the insincerity of human relations, what philosophy can contribute to our daily existence, and, most of all, how jobs can improve or radically stifle our lives.
He began research for the book “before the world economy fell off a cliff,” but now, of course, any discussion on the meaning of work and employment is especially relevant. Work, he said, was largely absent from literary discussions on life. “If you look at most novels, people don’t have jobs,” he said, unless they’re lawyers. If the workplace does appear as a topic worthy of discussion, then “it must always be a place of exploitation.”
The idea of work having the potential to be fulfilling and even fun, Botton noted, only emerged in the middle of the 18th century. Benjamin Franklin posited the idea that work was not penance, but rather a means of liberation. At roughly the same time in history, argued Botton, marriage became about love, rather than a question of property inheritance: “Two incredibly demanding ideas…they let down 50 to 80 percent of us at some time in our lives…they let us down, but yet we cling to them.”
Which brought him to the question of happiness. “If you’re feeling down in the dumps, the worst thing you can do is hang out with a cheerful person.” Work, when it’s done right, can bring happiness: “Work distracts us from the larger questions of life…with relatively achievable small-scale goals.” With time on our hands, we’re left to ponder big questions. “We are creatures headed for death,” he noted gleefully. “There’s something very bad on the horizon.”
But don’t think about that right now. Get back to work!
