How to be an Everyday Bohemian

Bohemians upend the social order by refusing to participate in society in a traditional way.

When you hear the word 'bohemian', you might picture a young hippy-ish man or woman with messy hair, baggy clothing and the job title of poet or artist. While bohemian fashion is now a modern fad, 'bohemia' itself actually began in the early nineteenth century. The term defined a loose group of people who dressed simply, lived in cheap areas, valued art over business, and sometimes had untraditional sex lives.

The bourgeoisie first came into prominence around Napoleon's fall in 1815. Shortly after, the bohemians rose up to oppose almost everything they stood for - primarily materialism and triviality. Most importantly bohemians challenged the traditional ideas of who deserved status and for what reason. While the bourgeoise saw material achievement as the height of greatness, bohemians valued sensitivity and devotion to art.

The ideal bohemian was someone who had turned their back on the financial security of a job, and instead, chose to spend their time writing, painting, travelling, or with friends and family.

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It might seem like a bit of a stretch to take a page out of Theroux's book and go live in the forest alone. So how can the bohemian attitude be applied in your everyday life? The key is to surround yourself with people who share your value system. Bohemians often chose to spend their time only in communities of people who shared their scorn for status and wealth. If you've heard the names Greenwich Village, Montparnasse, or Bloomsbury, you're already familiar with some of the most famous historical Bohemian enclaves in major cities. The enemies of the status quo living in these places reasoned that if you're successful in the current social climate, it just means you're good at pandering to everyone else's flawed value system.

But if you instead align yourself with a group of people who choose not to use a material standard to measure their achievements, you can distance yourself from the bourgeoise's promised land, and the anxieties that come with it.

Excerpt from 'Status Anxiety' by Alain de Botton