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.

If you’re angry or sad, that means you still give a fuck about something. That means something still matters. That means you still have hope.2

All human systems eventually reach equilibrium by clustering and conforming into constellations of mutually shared value systems—people come together, altering and modifying their own personal narratives until their narratives are one and the same, and the personal identity thus becomes the group identity.

“All peoples are more the same than they are different. We all mostly want the same things out of life. But those slight differences generate emotion, and emotion generates a sense of importance. Therefore, we come to perceive our differences as disproportionately more important than our similarities. And this is the true tragedy of man. That we are doomed to perpetual conflict over the slight difference.

And values cannot be changed through reason, only through experience.

People who lose faith in their government or country will look to extremist ideologies to give them hope.

Religious leaders preach to the poor and downtrodden and enslaved, telling them that they deserve the kingdom of heaven—basically, an open “fuck you” to the corrupt elites of the day. It’s a message that’s easy to get behind.

You cannot verify values. They are, by definition, subjective and arbitrary. Therefore, you can argue about facts until you’re blue in the face, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter—people interpret the significance of their experiences through their values.

There are those who get “it” and those who do not get “it.” Those who get it are going to save the world. Those who do not get it are going to destroy it. End of discussion. Whatever “it” is depends on whatever belief you’re trying to sell—Jesus, Muhammad, libertarianism, gluten-free diets, intermittent fasting, sleeping in hyperbaric chambers and living off Popsicles. Also, it’s not enough to tell your followers that nonbelievers are bad. You must demonize them. They are the downfall of everything that is good and holy. They ruin everything. They are fucking evil.

They were warrior civilizations; they celebrated guts, glory, and bloodshed. Nietzsche also argued that the Judeo-Christian ethic of charity, pity, and compassion ushered slave morality to prominence, and continued to dominate Western civilization up through his own time. For Nietzsche, these two value hierarchies were in constant tension and opposition. They were, he believed, at the root of all political and social conflict throughout history.

Nietzsche, understanding that existence is inherently chaotic and unknowable, believed that we were not psychologically equipped to handle the task of explaining our cosmic significance. He saw the spate of ideological religions that spewed forth in the Enlightenment’s wake (democracy, nationalism, communism, socialism, colonialism, etc.) as merely postponing the inevitable existential crisis of mankind.

If there were ever to be a single rule to describe all desirable human behavior, the Formula of Humanity would probably be it. But here’s the beautiful thing: unlike other moral systems or codes, the Formula of Humanity does not rely on hope. There’s no great system to force onto the world, no faith-based supernatural beliefs to protect from doubt or lack of evidence. The Formula of Humanity is merely a principle. It doesn’t project some future utopia. It doesn’t lament some hellish past. No one is better or worse or more righteous than anyone else. All that matters is that conscious will is respected and protected. End of story. Because Kant understood that when you get into the business of deciding and dictating the future, you unleash the destructive potential of hope. You start worrying about converting people rather than honoring them, destroying evil in others rather than rooting it out in yourself.

The willingness to engage in conflict with others will free you to talk to anyone, to see if they share your values and beliefs, to discover what they can add to your life and what you can add to theirs.

Democracy can exist only when you are willing to tolerate views that oppose your own, when you’re willing to give up some things you might want for the sake of a safe and healthy community, when you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your way.

Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with their own. The lower our tolerance for pain, the more we indulge in fake freedoms, the less we will be able to uphold the virtues necessary to allow a free, democratic society to function.