“Society is necessary, yet inevitably corrupting.” This is a theme that appears repeatedly in Joseph Conrad’s novels, according literary critic David Daiches. One of the worst things that can happen to us is to be destined to live in a society that blatantly refuses to recognise our achievements. It becomes worse still when there is a concerted attempt to belittle us for reasons like jealousy. The plain truth is that we all seek to be loved by the world whether we admit it or not. We need the attention of other people though it may not be in the form of love. The human ego is a “leaky balloon, forever requiring helium of external love to remain inflated, and ever vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect,” as Alain de Bottom said in his book Status Anxiety . Society is the place where we get that indispensable helium from. When we buy a car that’s better than the neighbour’s or send our child to a better school, we are in fact inflating the ego-balloon. Accor
Cerebrate and Celebrate