Profound Tragedy.
Brevis ipsa vita est sed malis fit longior
Alain de Botton's main argument in his TED talk was basically that we live in a society in which we are judged for our own success and failure. According to Botton, we control each and every aspect of our lives, and because of this we take our failures very seriously. He contrasts our current society to old British society, in which someone who is poor would have been described as "unfortunate". He argues that in our society, the same person would instead be described as a "loser". He says that although it might be a good idea for there to be a world where everybody is in their place based on merit, perhaps we do not need as a society to take on such a harsh view of people's failures.
In this regard, Botton claims that we can borrow something from the tragic arts. In tragedy, bad things happen to the protagonists because somebody screws up. In essence, everything bad that happens is brought on by themselves. Unlike society today, however, the protagonists in a tragic story are not looked upon as losers. Instead, they are met with sympathy from the viewers. Botton argues that we can live in a better world if we borrowed some of the sympathy we have for tragic characters and give it to the people we meet. In addition, he argues we should look past someone else's materialistic goods and instead look at the person themselves.
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AuthorSuch sad. Much tragedy. Wow. ArchivesCategories |