Book Review: “Everything Is Fucked”

EVERYTHING IS FUCKED: A BOOK ABOUT HOPE by Mark Manson

The Book in 3 Sentences

• This book offers a social and psychological analysis of the meaning of life.
• According to the author, despite the advancement of society, we are still feeling hopeless, extremism is on the rise, and we are seeing more depression and a higher suicide rate.
• To understand the crisis of hope we are seeing today, the author explains the mechanism of hope, how it is generated and maintained.

Impressions

How Did I Discover It?

I found this book at a bookstore in the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam when I was waiting to board my flight home.

Having read a couple of summaries of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”, the previous book by Mark Manson, I was curious about what he had to say next.

(After finishing the book, I am more keen to read “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” entirely.)

Who Should Read It?

Anyone who’s feeling lonely, stuck, discouraged, tired, lost, hopeless … and fucked

How the Book Changed Me

Essentially, I did not find the book to be an astonishing discovery.

It was rather an “oh, someone finally said it” type of feeling that I received as I turned pages.

Growing up not religious, I probably have had more moments than those religious to ponder the purpose of life and feel slightly lost.

Until high school, I found the purpose in my parents.

As the author talks about how he in his early days found his grandfather’s death to be a reason for him to live his own life, to live to compensate for what his grandfather missed, I had a similar experience in my teenage years, that my purpose of life was to make my parents happy.

Back then, everything I was doing was about serving them, and how best I could serve them was what I was basing my decisions on. My life revolved around them.

And it was damn tiring.

So when I turned 16, I moved out to live away from my parents. I thought taking the physical distance would help alleviate the emotional damage. It did.

Then, I was on to finding the next purpose of my life.

However, I also found this tiring — the never-ceasing cycle of defining the purpose and achieving it to replace the old purpose with a new one.

When I try to set any purpose, I was directed to focus on the future and as a result, often found myself absent in the present. It felt like purpose was getting in the way to stay fully conscious of the moment I was in.

After all, I stopped looking for purpose.

I like this book for its extensiveness in examples the author provides to feature his arguments — he starts the book with a story of the WWII-resistance hero Witold Pilecki and later brings a story of the Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức who set himself on fire to protest in 1963.

While his writing is casual and thus easy to follow, the historical figures add to the dynamics of his discussions.

My Top 3 Quotes

• If we don’t believe there’s any hope that the future will be better than the present, that our lives will improve in some way, then we spiritually die. After all, if there’s no hope of things ever being better, then why live — why do anything?
• Basically, we are the safest and most prosperous humans in the history of the world, yet we are feeling more hopeless than ever before. The better things get, the more we seem to despair. It’s the paradox of progress. And perhaps it can be summed up in one startling fact: the wealthier and safer the place you live, the more likely you are to commit suicide.
• Pain is the universal constant of life. And human perception and expectations warp themselves to fit a predetermined amount of pain. In other words, no matter how sunny our skies get, our mind will always imagine just enough clouds to be slightly disappointed.