Vacillating, Faithless

According to Darwin via Alain de Botton, the weaker members of society naturally fall by the wayside. Those with just enough strength to remain alive, but not enough to live with any intelligence or grace, manage to survive but it would be better if they did not (that last part is my opinion).

I'm reading Status Anxiety by de Botton. While I hold it, a well-designed and reasonably current paperback, in my hands I feel my own status is elevated. The book is one of those less-is-more affairs that uses a lot of pictures and full-page chapter headings to disguise the slim content. It flatters the reader by making her feel she sees into the heart of issues like snobbery, natural selection and Marxist determinism while not being consumed by them at the exact moment she reads the book. It's like chatting with a charming conversationalist who deftly tucks assurances of your superiority into his/her every utterance.

But who can gainsay that in this season of dire cheer? The book is like a bauble of semi-precious tissue paper fashioned into a scented rose. Or sommat.

I know the above makes no sense at all. I composed it on a vile hangover -- the kind that interferes with cognitive functioning. Last night, for instance, while trying to sleep I kept thinking that I needed to keep bananas in the house to eat if I get hungry in the night, but I kept calling them "yogas" in my mind. Bananas. Yogas. This is why I feel good propping Status Anxiety in front of me on the subway. I can't make heads or tails of it, but it looks like I have the capacity to read printed text.