How to Survive the Modern World, written by The School of Life, is a guide that explores the challenges of living in the 21st century across a range of different themes. It helps us understand how we got to where we are, digging deeply and fascinatingly into the history of ideas, while...

How to Survive the Modern World, written by The School of Life, is a guide that explores the challenges of living in the 21st century across a range of different themes. It helps us understand how we got to where we are, digging deeply and fascinatingly into the history of ideas, while pointing us towards a saner individual and collective future.

The modern world has brought us a range of extraordinary benefits and joys, including technology, medicine and transport. But it can also feel as though modern times have plunged us ever deeper into greed, despair and agitation. Seldom has the world felt more privileged and resource-rich yet also worried, blinkered, furious, panicked and self-absorbed. This book emphasizes on understanding modern times, but also knowing how we can best relate to the difficulties these present.

Details

Measures 15,5 x 22,2 cm
Counts 320 pages with 177 color illustrations 
Features hardcover

The School of Life x Misc Store Amsterdam

Alain de Botton founded The School of Life in 2008. His aim was to make philosophy — long seen as the inaccessible, inauthentic stuff of academies and archives — a functional aspect of modern life. The care with which ancient philosophers thought about their lives remains a valuable antidote to the generalised anxiety of our era.

The school thus posits that ideas of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics are as relevant to us today as they were in ancient Greece. Even if Epicurus never had social media burnout, understanding his thinking can lead us to a healthier relationship with , for example, our phones — and by extension, with one another.

We began stocking The School of Life’s series on work, gratitude and pleasure as a way of thinking through modern day issues. We admire their series for the capacity to stimulate reflection, and their ability to give a new perspective on age old problems. At its core, it is a set of strategies for finding meaning in the modern world — so that we can appreciate small pleasures and the things that might go unnoticed.