This Anglo-Swiss philosopher provided me with the verbal couplet ‘status anxiety’ in 2004 with his highly readable book of that name. I reviewed it for Doctrine & Life in the article ‘Is there an Haute-Cuisine Catholicism?
See also On Exodus? From What? for the argument that status anxiety is our ‘original’ and everlasting problem and ‘the root of all evil’ – and Why Did Jesus of Nazareth Accept Crucifixion? for the argument that Christian understanding of the cross needs to understand God’s compassion for this human problem, and the determination of the Trinity to help us overcome it.
The connection between status anxiety and mimetic desire (covetousness) – and therefore its role in all drama, tragedy and conflict – is traced in What underlies Mimetic Desire?
For the importance of status anxiety to an understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion – and therefore to the adoption of a truly missionary understanding of the atonement – to counter the far too easily misunderstood Catechism Article CCC 615 ( which implies that God the Father needed ‘satisfaction’ for sin, and therefore required Jesus to die to satisfy this need, by ‘substituting’ himself for ourselves) – see Church is Mission?
As the term ‘anxiety’ is non-judgemental it is supremely useful in describing our chronic and almost invincible dissatisfaction with our own status as diminutive children of the world and the universe. Julius Caesar’s need to be first was outstanding merely in its intensity, and that need both destabilised the ancient world and set the scene for the arrival of the one who insisted that the first will be last in the Kingdom of God.
Christendom from 313 CE could not critique the status anxiety of nominally Christian rulers and their governing elites – with the end result of the climactic scandal of the Great War of 1914-18 and all of the reverberating scandals of church-approved imperialism, not yet complete in their historical impact. When our ego-driven status anxiety is finally recognised by most Christians as the main lever of the Adversary of the Trinity, that Kingdom may come – but not, I fear, without more travail.
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