Q/A: Agent Provocateur

Alain de Botton

Profession: Philosopher of everyday life

Claim To Fame: Established a bookstore to change your life

Writer/philosopher/ intellectual adventurer Alain de Botton is, among many other things, founder of The School of Life, a therapy-slash-book store in London. Its mission is disarmingly simple; you can hire a therapist to recommend books that could change your life or take classes on topics like How to Find Love and How to Have Conversations, or both. Last year, de Botton was the first-ever writer-in-residence at Heathrow Airport.

What do you see when you live in an airport that you don't see when you're rushing to make a plane?

Pure anticipation. People who are rushing to their flights imagine a future without having to live it yet. On the ground, we are more likely to admit that the future will not deliver on its ideal prospects. We may never be as happy as we are in the moments prior to takeoff on a trip.

Why do we love to travel?

One thing it offers, but not everyone takes, is a new perspective on things. Traditionally, the idea is that it can give you a new view on your life.

You've written that we travel to find happiness but fail to get there.

In Western culture, there's a feeling that if you change the decor, or the landscape around you, you will easily be transformed into a calmer, happier person. But that's a crazy, naive, childish idea.

One problem with modern travel is that we don't meet people. People who traveled in premodern times would pitch up in a new town with a recommendation or a letter and find themselves having dinner with six interesting people. Today, most of us arrive and go to the Statue of Liberty or a museum. We don't have any human contact.

Why is that?

The basic question to put to the travel industry is, Are you addressing people's genuine needs? They would have to say, No. You want to transform your soul? You get a ticket to...Orlando. For a week. It's filled with unintentional humor.

Have commercial enterprises like the airline industry let us down?

Big businesses aren't asking the right questions or catering to the most important human needs. Why is Apple, for instance, so interested in speeding up how fast we can speak to our mothers on the next generation of phones rather than what we should be talking to her about and how we can talk to her better? Perhaps the people asking the important questions are those in popular culture, like Oprah Winfrey. Unfortunately, she's answering them in a way that's not very complex or subtle. So the dream is this: The faculty of Harvard sets out to answer the questions of Oprah Winfrey. The School of Life is almost purposefully vulgar and childlike, asking the big questions you never wanted to ask in front of the teacher, like, How do I deal with loneliness? How do I get along with my parents? How do I find a job I love?

How do you deal with loneliness? In a lot of your books, you sound lonely; I'm thinking of scenes in which you're eating sandwiches from plastic wrappers in hotel rooms.

The human condition is lonely by nature. I'm interested in real, emotional communication. I want to talk about vulnerability, fear, anxieties. Most people's conversational priority is to find some sort of neutral topic, like a new kind of car or gadget, and not touch someone emotionally. Such conversations are disappointing, so I often end up lonely.

Do you have a formula for good conversation?

At the heart of a satisfying encounter with another person is the willingness to feel a vulnerability, to reveal fear. The best way to start a conversation around a table is to say, "OK, so what was everyone frightened of today?" or "What's making you really sad in your relationship with somebody?"

In the New York Times, Caleb Crain accused you of being a snob. You sent him an email saying, "I will hate you till the day I die." When British journalist Sathnam Sanghera also accused you of being a snob, you called him a "coward" hiding "behind thick-set glasses and a byline." This doesn't sound like good conversation.

It's nothing to be proud of. The real point is that some people do not like the fact that I'm trying to change the world through popular culture.

Why are you trying to change the world through popular culture?

Because that's the way it can be changed. Literature, for example, is in the hands of the elite, university professors who don't value projects that are practical or that can directly change us.

You seek psychological wisdom from philosophy. Does modern psychology have anything to offer?

Yes. People have trouble understanding their own motives and feelings because they are too close to the source. Therapy can help. But modern psychology gets boring when it wants too hard to be a science. When psychology sells self-improvement as a formula rather than a process of discovery, it is deadening.

You rail against materialism, but your books delight in physical things—a good shoeshine, take-out dinners delivered to hotel rooms by overdressed waiters. What's the problem with objects?

The modern world has a peculiar faith in externals for delivering peace. In contrast, religious rituals often bring inner and outer events together: You reflect on something or make a commitment to someone and you mark the change by hearing a piece of music or drinking a cup of wine or putting on a ring. When the two go together, it's great. But we want to be happy through external changes and not much internal work.

Read Ilana Simons' PT blog: The Literary Mind.