1.

Fill in the missing words:

 The first question you tend to get asked when you meet someone at a party
is “So what do you do?” And according to how impressive your answer is,
people are either keen to get to know you better, or swiftly leave you behind
by the nuts.
 We’re anxious because we live in a world of snobs, people who take a tiny
part of us - our professional _____identities_______ - and use these to come
to a complete verdict about how valuable we are as humans.
 The opposite of a snob is your mother. She doesn’t care about your
___status _______, she cares about your soul. Yet most people aren’t our
mothers - and that’s why we worry so much about judgement and
humiliation.
 It’s said we live in _______materialistic__________ times. But it’s more
poignant than that. We live in times where emotional ____rewards_______
have been pegged to the acquisition of material things.
 What people want when they go after money, big jobs or fancy cars is rarely
these things in themselves, so much as the attention and respect - if you like
“the love” – that are given to those who have them.
 Next time you see a guy driving by in a Ferrari, don’t think it’s someone
unusually greedy; think it’s someone with a particularly intense vulnerability
and need for love.
 We’re also anxious because we’re constantly told we could become
anything. We hear it from our ____earliest_______ days. It should be great
that there’s so much opportunity. But what if we fail in such a world - what
if you don’t manage to get to the top when there was said to be every
chance?
 The self-help ____shelves________ of bookstores are filled with two kinds
of books that capture the modern anxious condition. The first have titles like
‘How to make it big in ___15___ minutes’ and ‘Be an overnight
millionaire.’
 The second have titles like: ‘How to cope with low _self-esteem________.’
The two genres are related. A society that tells people they could have
everything, but where in fact only a tiny minority can, will end up with a lot
of dissatisfaction and grief.
 There’s a related problem: our societies are - to a large extent -
___deemed________ to be “fair”. Back in the olden days, you knew the
system was totally rigged. It wasn’t your fault if you were a peasant and not
to your credit if you were the lord.
 But now we’re told our societies are meritocracies, places where rewards go
to those who _____merit______ them; the hardworking clever among us. It
sounds lovely - but there’s a nasty sting in the tail.
 If you really believe in a society where those at the top deserve to get there,
that has to mean those at the bottom deserve to be there too. Meritocracies
make poverty seem not just unpleasant, but also somehow deserved.
 In Medieval England, people used to call the poor
‘_____unfortunates_________’. Literally, people who had not been blessed
by the Goddess of fortune. Nowadays, especially in the US (where
meritocracy is big), they call them - rather tellingly - ‘losers’.
 We scarcely believe in “luck” nowadays anymore as something that explains
where we end up. No one will believe you if you say you were fired because
of “bad luck”. Your professional position has become the central verdict on
your character.
 No wonder suicide rates rise exponentially the moment a society joins the
so-____called________ ‘modern world’. How can we cope? First off, by
refusing to believe that any society really can be meritocratic: luck or
accident continue to determine a ___critical_______ share of where people
end up in the hierarchy.
 Treat no one - not least yourself - as though they entirely deserve to be
where they are. Secondly, make up your own definition of success instead of
uncritically leaning on society’s.
 There are so many ways to succeed, and many of them have nothing to do
with status as it’s currently defined within the value system of
____industrial________ capitalism. Those who succeed at making money
rarely succeed at empathy or family life.
 Thirdly, and most importantly, we should refuse to let our outer
achievements define our sense of self entirely. There remain so many vital
sides of us that will never appear on our business cards that do not stand a
chance of being ____captured_________ by that maddeningly blunt and
unimaginative question, ‘So what do you do?’
2. Write a short summary for the audio: