16 Lessons from The School Of Life - Alain de Botton - #1015

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Where do you think self-esteem comes from?

**Alain de Botton** (0:05)
Gosh, I wish we knew. I mean, I think the first thing to say is, is a bit of a mystery if we knew how to bottle this stuff. You know, if you look at the differences between what human beings achieve, it isn't easily explained by intelligence. Everything shows that, that broadly speaking, intelligence accounts for the smaller portion of the massive differences in achievement. And that's galling.
It isn't what the school system is really about. And I think, you know, a lot of achievement is about imagination and is about breaking through obstacles to dreaming of a better world, a more interesting world, etc. Self-esteem is somewhere in that story, because I think self-esteem is about saying, it might happen with me. This thing could be, I could be in charge of this thing, whatever it is. And I think class plays a role here. One of the great injuries of a working class background is that it tends to give you a sense that other people are controlling the world, and you have to negotiate the obstacles they put in place, but you don't get to remove those obstacles. You just have to work your way around them. Typical middle class upbringing, middle class in the UK sense, you get imbued with a feeling that human beings like you make the world, and that raises your self-esteem. Traditionally, it's an enormous difference to, if your uncle happens to be the guy in the civil service who does whatever, or your slightly annoying second cousin works in the treasury or something. This changes your sense of reality because you think, well, of course, I can do something. Because look at those not that impressive people who I once saw around the kitchen, etc. A lot about self-esteem is thinking, how do I stack up next to other people?
Is the world shaped by gods or broadly speaking by people like you and I? I know we're in a religious place and you must be seeming godly to the audience. But the good thing is you're not. I think that's one of the good things about modern technology is that it's helped to show the world that those, because it's given a very granular close-up sense of people in so-called positions of power or authority, etc. That's helped to level the imaginative playing field in a way.

**Chris Williamson** (2:45)
You feel closer to them?

**Alain de Botton** (2:46)
You feel closer to them, you see that they're humans too, and that can be inspiring.

**Chris Williamson** (2:52)
There was an incident that a friend had when recording a podcast, which I needed a name for and we've come to call it a Yoghurt Lid moment. He was sitting down to record with a very famous author, and he's idolized this guy for a very long time, and a titan of literature. Sitting down, his camera team are all setting everything up, and he's in the guest's house, and the guest says, would you mind if I went and got a yogurt? He's like, what's your house? Your yogurt? Please continue. The guest walks away, goes to the fridge, opens it up, gets a yogurt out, sits down opposite my friend. Everyone's still pottering around, and my friend sat opposite this guy that he'd revered for decades, just saw as this untouchable demigod, watched him look at the yogurt, take the lid off, put it up to his face, and then lick the lid of the yogurt. He said, at that moment, the veils fell from my eyes, and I saw him as the fallible human. It's that yogurt lid moment, this weird mortal trip.

**Alain de Botton** (3:53)
Think of the way that we're introduced to life, really. We start off very small and we're surrounded by very large people who seem to know how to do extraordinary things. They can throw a ball over a tree, they know how to speak a foreign language, they can do very complicated math, etc. We are tiny. It takes such a long time to think, actually, these gods, these colossi are just human.
The number one class differentiator is childhood, as it were, because we all start in this very subordinate class which is the child, and we look up to the adult. Think of those times when, I don't know if you had this, but you're at school and then it's the weekend, and you go to the shops and suddenly you see the French teacher in the aisles of the shop, and you think, what's that person doing there? There's Mr. Gregory, he's buying cereal, and you think, that guy is just, it comes back to your yoga point, that guy's human, and we're always catching up with that idea, X or Y is human, and isn't it interesting, that very basic thought is still always a bit of a surprise. We're always on the back foot with that insight.