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.

Bravery is common. Resilience is common. But heroism has a philosophical component to it.

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

in the infinite expanse of space/time, the universe does not care whether your mother’s hip replacement goes well, or your kids attend college, or your boss thinks you made a bitching spreadsheet.

the opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness.1 If you’re angry or sad, that means you still give a fuck about something.

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.

It’s difficult because there’s no way ever to know for sure if you’ve got it right. This is why a lot of people flock to religion, because religions acknowledge this permanent state of unknowing and demand faith in the face of it. This is also probably partly why religious people suffer from depression and commit suicide in far fewer numbers than nonreligious people: that practiced faith protects them from the Uncomfortable Truth.

And to successfully argue against nihilism, you must start at nihilism. You must start at the Uncomfortable Truth. From there, you must slowly build a convincing case for hope.

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.

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