Everything Is Fucked is a social and philosophical analysis of the meaning of life.
Mark Manson, the author, says that hope must rest on cynicism and nihilism first, and we must first accept that our lives have no inherent meaning.
TPM Strategic Take: Hope built on nihilism is the ultimate floor of mental power
If you accept that “nothing matters” while still being able to care about things, work on yourself, and work on your goals, you’re indestructible. You become depression and crisis-resistant because you already accept nihilism.
And you gain Maximum Walk-Away Power because the “cost” of failure is zero in a meaningless universe. Nihilism alone can make you depressed. Power built on nihilism makes you a High-Stakes Operator.
Summary
About the Author:
Mark Manson is an American author who originally started out as a dating coach and then veered into more general self-help and long-term relationships.
He is also the author of “Models” and “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck“
1. There Is No Meaning In Life
Because we care about things, we believe they are important. But just because you care doesn’t mean they do.
As a matter of fact, they’re not.
We elevate the value and importance of events because we need that sense of importance, but in the grander scheme of things, they’re meaningless and insignificant.
We are meaningless.
And that’s OK.
2. Hope Is Built On Nihilism
Hope—real hope—can’t be built on lies.
And telling yourself you are important is a lie.
Real hope must start by acknowledging and appreciating our insignificance.
From there, we can build a good case for hope and a meaningful life.
3. The World Is Not Good
Mark Manson doesn’t like self-help.
He says that the typical “feel good” speech from positivists like Peter Diamandis or Steven Pinker is that today it’s better than it’s ever been before.
But that’s a lie, he says.
Sure, we’re richer, but we’re also more anxious and depressed than we’ve ever been. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are at a record high, and social trust is at its lowest and keeps going down.
And that’s without even mentioning extremism or the environment.
TPM Note: WE completely agree and we call this ‘naive self-help’.
Learn more:
- Naive self-help: listing the categories of self-help you better ignore
3. The 3 Pillars of Hope
To develop and keep hope alive, we need three things:
- Sense of control (feeling like we’re in control of our lives)
- Belief in the value of something (something worth striving for)
- Community (being part of a community that values what we also value)
At TPM, we prioritize the Sense of Control (Autonomy) as the most critical pillar, foundational for both mental power and real-world outcomes. Without it, you are a ‘follower’ in someone else’s community. Also see ‘agency over communion‘.
4. Don’t Try to Change Yourself
Mark Manson is very critical of the self-help industry, which, he says, he is “unfortunately” part of.
He says that when we try to force ourselves to change under the mantra that “yes, you can change and yes, you must”, we often feel worse off.
The self-help industry fills people with inflated hopes and expectations, and when people fail to meet those unrealistic promises, they feel worse off.
TPM Note: Agree. Many gurus sell lottery tickets,
telling everyone ‘they can make it’, while mathematically only a minority will. Then, they use those few winners as ‘evidence testimonials’ to attract even more hopefuls.
Empty boosterism is also useless to the empowered man. It only boosts weak Narcissism without matching mental power. TPM advocates for Strategic Realism: focus on action, without the BS motivation.
Also see:
Lucio: Self-help based on boosterism and motivation is weak. What’s strong is focusing on repeated behavior over time that boosts your odds of winning, while you don’t even strictly need the win
5. Don’t Try to Get Rid of Pain
Pain is part of human existence, it’s useless trying to get rid of it.
Human nature leads us to seek the negative in any case.
So if you remove the biggest stones from someone’s path, we will still be focusing on the pebbles.
And it’s unhealthy to believe that you can -or should always be happy. As a matter of fact, Manson says that pain can give significance to our lives.
Says Manson:
The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our character, and teh quality of our character is determined by the our relationship to our pain
6. Change Your Values To Become Better, Not Richer
Mark Manson says you can change your values in two ways:
- Re-interpret your past events
- Imagine the future the way you want to be (visualization)
He says that unfortunately, poor self-help uses the narratives of future visualization for material stuff, like “imagine how rich you are”.
I couldn’t agree more, and it’s something that “Think and Grow Rich” also does, as do, of course, all the copycats.
He says that type of visualization does not improve yourself. If anything, you should visualize “what not having a yacht would feel like and how you’re OK with it”.
Golden Nuggets
Here are a few great insights from “Everything is Fucked“:
- To start a new religion, sell hope to the hopeless (a dark psychology trick and what Machiavellian marketers do)
- Manipulators use in-group and out-group dynamics to gain followers (I agree, also read corporate manipulations)
- Sports are a form of religion that gullible individuals follow (mostly for extreme fans and ego-projections, exceptions apply!)
About that last one, see Lucio’s reel ↗ (opens in new window)
Criticism
This is what I didn’t particularly enjoy about “Everything Is Fucked“:
1. Lacks A Coherent Structure
The author jumps from Nietzsche’s biography to the risks of AI to self-development topics.
I don’t see a connecting thread, and there is no coherent message. Maybe the author didn’t want to have a message, which is OK.
But still, any book without well-defined messages are almost by definition, forgettable.
2. Somewhat Lacking in Social Analysis
I found the analysis on religions and ingroup-outgroup interesting and at times even insightful.
But also imprecise, at times, as Manson tried to analyze our whole society and human nature in light of the ingroup-outgroup dynamics.
The spin he gave on “how to start a religion” was quite hilarious though.
3. Bro-Talk Gets Old (& Undermines Your Authority)
Manson uses “The F-Word” and “Bro-talk” as a signaling device to appear “authentic” and “unfiltered.”
However, for smart readers, this often reads as Low-Status Try-Hardism. A man with confidence doesn’t need to cuss to prove he’s “real”.
Mark Manson found huge success with his catchy-titled book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck“.
And probably he felt like he had to deliver something similar. At least when it comes to language.
I didn’t particularly enjoy the “bro philosophy” in “The Subtle Art”, and I enjoyed it even less here, where it felt forced, unnatural, and also undermined the author’s authority.
For example:
This is basically what good therapy is. Self-acceptance, emotional intelligence and all that
“All that?” To come across as “cool”, the author may also appear more uninformed and superficial.
Or:
Thank you Francis Bacon, thank you Isaac Newton, you fucking titans
Feels like unneeded bro-attitude.
And since he was talking about the founders of the scientific method, Galileo and Copernicus might be worthier recipients of Manson’s cussings.
Takeaway: use Manson for the good insights, but drop the “edgy teenager” tone if you want to be taken seriously in high-status circles.
PROS
There is much I liked about “Everything Is Fucked” because there is much I agree with Mark Manson.
This goes from high-level stuff like his criticism of the self-help industry (also check “self-help myths“) to his (low) opinion of sports and fandom to his thoughts on pyramid scheme companies (read my review of “Go Pro“).
- Hope must rest on understanding and accepting nihilism
Most of all though, I agree with Manson’s view that a meaningful life must rest on first accepting the inherent nihilism and meaninglessness of our lives.
This is something that is also central to my view of life.
Review
Everything is Fucked, in Mark Manson’s typical style, delivers good quality self-help for intelligent men who want something different than ‘typical’ self-help motivation and boosterism.
You can see that Manson is a smart guy and a rather independent thinker.
I appreciated “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck“, the book that gave him notoriety.
And I even liked his first book “Models” when he was still a pick-up artist.
When it comes to his philosophy, I can say that I very much like -and agree- with Manson’s approach to self-development, which partially rejects many of the empty self-development mantras.
However, while there are some golden nuggets that we extracted in this review, “Everything Is Fucked” fell flatter on me.
A disjointed book of interesting tidbits mixed with insightful ones and some less-than-stellar social analyses.
Check the best books collection or see our foundational guide on men’s empowerment:
- Foundations of self-development: the ultimate guide for ambitious men
