Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope

by Mark Manson

being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none. To strike a match to light up the void. To show us a possibility for a better world—not a better world we want to exist, but a better world we didn’t know could exist. To take a situation where everything seems to be absolutely fucked and still somehow make it good.

“I have tried to live my life such that in the hour of my death I would feel joy rather than fear.”

One day, you and everyone you love will die. And beyond a small group of people for an extremely brief period of time, little of what you say or do will ever matter. This is the Uncomfortable Truth of life. And everything you think or do is but an elaborate avoidance of it. We are inconsequential cosmic dust, bumping and milling about on a tiny blue speck. We imagine our own importance. We invent our purpose—we are nothing. Enjoy your fucking coffee.

No, the opposite of happiness is hopelessness, an endless gray horizon of resignation and indifference.3 It’s the belief that everything is fucked, so why do anything at all?

Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. It is the source of all misery and the cause of all addiction.

Chronic anxiety is a crisis of hope. It is the fear of a failed future. Depression is a crisis of hope. It is the belief in a meaningless future.

It’s a paradox of progress: the better things get, the more anxious and desperate we all seem to feel.

the wealthier and safer the place you live, the more likely you are to commit suicide.

Hope doesn’t care about the problems that have already been solved. Hope cares only about the problems that still need to be solved. Because the better the world gets, the more we have to lose. And the more we have to lose, the less we feel we have to hope for.

To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community.

The Classic Assumption says that if a person is undisciplined, unruly, or malicious, it’s because he lacks the ability to subjugate his feelings, that he is weak-willed or just plain fucked up.

Emotion is the biological hydraulic system that pushes our bodies into movement.

Every problem of self-control is not a problem of information or discipline or reason but, rather, of emotion. Self-control is an emotional problem; laziness is an emotional problem; procrastination is an emotional problem; underachievement is an emotional problem; impulsiveness is an emotional problem.

When you offer something easy with an emotional benefit (e.g., feeling good after a workout; pursuing a career that feels significant; being admired and respected by your kids), the Feeling Brain will respond with another emotion, either positive or negative. If the emotion is positive, the Feeling Brain will be willing to drive a little bit in that direction—but only a little bit!

Self-worth is an illusion.21 It’s a psychological construct that our Feeling Brain spins in order to predict what will help it and what will hurt

Fruitful visualization should be a little bit uncomfortable. It should challenge you and be difficult to fathom. If it’s not, then it means that nothing is changing.

Without these narratives—without developing a clear vision of the future we desire, of the values we want to adopt, of the identities we want to shed or step into—we are forever doomed to repeat the failures of our past pain.

Master morality is the moral belief that people get what they deserve.

Slave morality believes that people who have suffered the most, those who are the most disadvantaged and exploited, deserve the best treatment because of that suffering. Slave morality believes that it’s the poorest and most unfortunate who deserve the most sympathy and the most respect.

Whereas master morality believes in the virtue of strength and dominance, slave morality believes in the virtue of sacrifice and submission.

So, we’ve got it backward: everything being fucked doesn’t require hope; hope requires everything being fucked.

The Blue Dot Effect suggests that, essentially, the more we look for threats, the more we will see them, regardless of how safe or comfortable our environment actually is. And we see this playing out in the world today.

Trying to eliminate pain only increases your sensitivity to suffering, rather than alleviating your suffering.