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 ____________ - 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
___________, 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 _________________ times. But it’s more poignant than
that. We live in times where emotional ___________ 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 ___________ 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 ____________ 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 ______ minutes’ and ‘Be an overnight millionaire.’
 The second have titles like: ‘How to cope with low _____________.’ 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 -
___________ 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 ____________ 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 ‘______________’.
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-____________ ‘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 __________ 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
____________ 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 _____________ by that maddeningly blunt and
unimaginative question, ‘So what do you do?’
2. Write a short summary for the audio: