Everything Is Fucked by Mark Manson: Why You Should Read It
Everything is Fucked by Mark Manson is a book about hope and how we shouldn’t be too dependent on it. Rather, we should create a world in which hope is not a means to an end but an end in itself.
Hope should stem from admiring our unimportance in the grand scale of things however uncomfortable the truth is.
This book is about hope and much, much more. Manson takes the reader into the existentialist territory by first reflecting on what hope is and its relationship to meaning, and then expertly painting a picture of how hope fits into the world we live in today.
Find more Related books Lessons from ‘Everything is F**ked: A Book About Hope
No matter our circumstances, we all hope for a better life. But before we can build a strong sense of hope, we have to have a solid foundation.
In the book Everything is F*cked, Manson takes the reader on a tour of all things “hope.” Where it comes from, how we build it, how we lose it, and of course, all the while acknowledging that our existence means nothing—which is why we need hope in the first place.
The Uncomfortable Truth
In Everything is F*cked, Manson argues that hope is the coal that keeps the existence train rolling. It’s hoped that gives a reason to continue and find meaning in a seemingly meaningless existence.
The message is long and would undoubtedly lead to longer wait times. But it’s also profound. It’s Manson’s take on the philosophy of memento mori.
We’re all guilty of fabricating our meaning. We assign ourselves goals, aspirations, and anything that gives us something to look forward to. What keeps us from getting out of bed every morning? The hope is that we’ll achieve those goals.
The basic assertion is that life is utterly meaningless. But Manson is insisting the opposite. Once we acknowledge this Uncomfortable Truth, that our existence is objectively insignificant, then we can slowly begin to build a hopeful and meaningful life.
Not just any kind of hope or meaning, Manson adds, but one that is sustainable and benevolent. Meaning is derived from our subjective hopes—what we’re trying to do and accomplish.
The Classic Assumption
For thousands of years, philosophers and brilliant thinkers alike have asserted that reason must rule over our desires. As Manson points out, people like Kant and Freud both preached this in their works.
But somehow, after years and years of being told that reason is God, we’ve confused ridding ourselves of desire with ridding ourselves of emotion entirely.
The problem with such thinking is easily seen when applied to specific groups of people. For example, those who are obese are ridiculed for lacking self-control with food.
As a society, we’ve become emotion-shamers, according to Manson. “We see succumbing to our emotional impulses as a moral failing. We see a lack of self-control as a sign of a deficient character. Conversely, we celebrate people who beat their emotions into submission.”
The truth is that we need more than willpower or exaggerated reasoning to achieve real self-control. Our brains are separated into two parts concerning consciousness: the thinking brain and the feeling brain. The thinking brain is objective and factual, while the feeling brain is subjective and relative.
To make effective decisions across the board, we must utilize both aspects of conscious thinking. Otherwise, we’d be ridiculously cold and calculated with rationality, or an emotional train wreck that ignores objective truth and indulges every impulsive desire.
Manson’s concept of the Classic Assumption rings true in all of our lives. All of us—Stoics, philosophers, self-help seekers, and regular folks—have misunderstood what our emotions can do for us. We’ve all been caught up in the battle between the thinking brain and the feeling brain.
While logical reasoning certainly has its value in some parts of every decision, it cannot be 100% relied upon for every single decision. There’s a reason why feeling emotion has survived thousands of years of evolution and natural selection. It’s because we need it. We can’t successfully interact with others or live meaningful lives without the ability to feel.
So, where does hope come in? Hopelessness is the result of an uneducated feeling brain that has adopted and accepted poor value judgments about itself and the world, Manson writes. Put simply, somewhere along the line, in the trenches of life, something horrible happened to us. It robbed us of hope. And while we may have been entirely justified in losing hope, we failed to recognize that those incidents are still robbing us.
Newton’s Laws of Emotion
The name Isaac Newton is one of the most recognizable in history, certainly in the field of science. While there’s an enormous body of research and biographies on Newton, Manson creatively depicts the legendary scientist in an entirely new and entertaining way.
Newton was known for developing his three laws of motion. Manson asks his readers, for a moment, to pretend that we live in a parallel universe where Newton is obsessed with observing his psychological tendencies rather than the natural world, or as Manson lovingly refers to him, “Emo-Newton.”
Instead of the three laws of motion, Newton is known in this parallel universe for coming up with the three laws of emotion.
The second law of emotion focuses less on how we respond to things, but rather on how these things affect our sense of self-worth. As life goes on and we experience more and more, we start to make judgments about ourselves based on what happens to us.
Life puts us through the wringer and kicks us when we’re down. After a while, we eventually conclude that we deserve it. Of course, this works in the reverse as well. Say that we’re receiving praise constantly—even when we don’t deserve it—our self-worth will skyrocket, and we’ll have an inflated sense of self-worth. Newton’s second law of emotion highlights the importance of what we tell ourselves AND how we view ourselves.
The third and final law is perhaps the most important of the three. Manson writes that values aren’t just a collection of feelings, they’re also stories or narratives. And once we build these narratives in our minds, we cling to them with all our might. They become our identity.
But, as Manson points out, there’s a downside to this type of thinking. When we adopt such narratives, we react emotionally to them as if they are permanently ingrained in us.
If our narrative is challenged by someone, we become defensive and emotionally reactive. As Manson perfectly explains, “We react to protect the metaphysical body just as we protect the physical.” The longer we hold onto these values or narratives, the more fundamental they become to the way we view ourselves and the world.
11 important life lessons that “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” taught us
1) Life isn’t meant to go your way all the time, and that’s OK.
“When we give too many f*cks, when we choose to give a f*ck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life f*cks us.”
2) Pick your battles wisely. Invest your energy where it matters.
“Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a f*ck about what’s truly f*ck-worthy.”
3) Doing too much is the same as doing nothing at all.
“We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing we essentially have no identity at all.”
4) Failure is a part of life. Failure is how you learn and grow.
“If you think about a young child trying to learn to walk, that child will fall down and hurt itself hundreds of times. But at no point does that child ever stop and think, ‘Oh, I guess walking just isn’t for me. I’m not good at it.’”
5) And that your fear of failure is your biggest enemy.
“We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.”
6) You can’t ever really “find yourself” because who you are will constantly change, and that’s a good thing.
“I say don’t find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that’s what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgments and accepting of the differences in others.”
7) Not every “problem” has to be a negative thing.
“Don’t hope for a life without problems. There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”
8) Once you’re great at one thing, aim to be great at another. And another. And another.
“People who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re not already great – they are mediocre, they are average – and that they could be so much better.”
9) It’s important to stop and be content with what you have once in a while.
“The more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.”
10) Hard times are a necessary part of life.
“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”
11) And that caring less will only lead to better things.
“This, in a nutshell, is what ‘self-improvement’ is really about: prioritising better values, choosing better things to give a f*ck about. Because when you give better f*cks, you get better problems.”
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