Everything is F*CKED

 

summary of Everything is F*cked

Part one: Hope

Chapter one: The uncomfortable truth

Bravery is common. Resilience is common. But heroism has a philosophical component to it. There is some great "Why?" that hoes bring to the table some incredible cause or belief that goes unshaken, no matter what. And this is why, as a culture, we are so desperate for a hero today: not because things are necessarily so bad, but because we have lost the clear "why?" that drove previous generations.

we are a culture in need not of peace or prosperity or new hood ornaments for our new electric car. We have all that. We are a culture in need of something far more precious. We are a culture and a people need hope

How may I help you?

If I worked at Starbucks instead of writing people's names on their coffee cups. I would write the following:

One day, you and everyone will die. And beyond a small group of people for an extremely brief period of time, a 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.

Seriously how could you say someone, in good conscience to "have a nice day" while knowing that all their thoughts and motivations stem from a never-ending need to avoid the inherent meaninglessness of human existence?

Our psyche needs to hope to survive the way a fish needs more water. Hope is the fuel for our mental engine. It is the butter on our biscuit. It is a lot of really cheesy metaphors. Without hope, our whole mental apparatus will stall out or starve. If we do not believe there is any hope that their future will be better than the present, that our lives will improve in some way, then we spiritually die. After all, if there is no hope of things ever being better, then why live- why do anything?

Here is what a lot of people do not get: the opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness. If you are angry or sad, that means you still give fuck about something. That means something still matters. That means there is still hope. So, the opposite of happiness is hopelessness.

Depression is a crisis of hope. It is the believe of meaningless future

The paradox of progress

We live in an interesting time in that materially, things are arguably better than they have ever been before, yet we all seem to be losing our minds thinking the world is a giant toilet bowl about to be flushed. An irrational sense of hopelessness is spreading across the rich, developed world. It is a paradox of progress The better things get, the more anxious and desperate we all seem to feel.

Basically, we are the safest and most prosperous human 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 is the paradox of progress.

The welthier and safer you live, the more likely are to commit suicide.

To build and maintain hope, we need three things:

1. A sense of control.
2. A belief in the value of something.
3. A community.

Chapter 2

Self Control is an illusion

To generate hope in our lives, we must first feel as though we have control in our lives. We must feel as though we have control over our lives. We are not chasing after "something better". Yet many of us struggle with the inability to control ourselves.

The classic assumtion

There is pretty much always been a tacit assumption that our emotions cause all our problems and that our reason must swoop in to clean up all mess.

This assumption (that we must use our rational mind to dominate our emotions) has trickled down through the centuries and continues to define much of our cultures today. Let us call it the "Classic Assumption".

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.

Emotional problems are irrational, meaning they can not be reason with. and this brings us ven worse news: emotional problems can only have emotional solutions. It is all up to the feeling brain.

Our crisis of hope often start with a basic sense that we do not have control over ourselves or our destiny.

Chapter 3

Newton's first law of emotion

For every action. There is an Equal and opposite emotional reaction.

Pain causes moral gaps. And it is not between people. If a dog bites you, your instinct is to punish it. If you stub the coffee table, what do you do? You yell at the damn coffee table.

These are moral gaps. These are a sense of something is wrong has just happened and you ( or someone else) deserve to be made whole again.

It is our natural psychological inclination to equalize across moral gaps, to reciprocate actions: Positive for positive, negative for negative.

Happiness is feeling liberated from pain, while guilt is the feeling that you deserve some pain that has never arrived.

Our thinking brain decides how things are , and our feeling brain decides how thing ought to be.

Newton's second law of Emotion

Our self-worth equals the sum of our emotions over time.

When moral gaps persist for a long enough time, they normalize. They become our default expectation.

Newton's third law of emotions

Your indentitiy will stay your identity until a new experience acts against it.

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. The stories of our past define our identity. The stories of our future define our hope. And our ability to step into these narratives and live them, to make them a reality, is what gives our lives meaning.

Chapter 4

How to makes all your dreams come true

How to start your own religion

An introduction to a proven system that will help your Achieve everlasting bliss and eternal salvation (or your money back)

Step one: sell hope to the hopeless

Remember that in order to feel hope, w need to feel there is a better future out there (values); we need to feel as though we are capable of getting a better future (self-control), and we need to find other people who share our values and support our efforts (community).

Young adulthood is a period when many people struggle with values, control, and community. for the first time, they are allowed to decide who they want to be. Do they want to be a doctor? study business?. And the inevitable frustration causes a lot of young people to question their values and lose hope.

we are most impressionable when things are at heir worst. when your life is falling apart, it signifies that our values have failed us

Step 2: Choose your faith

Nonreligious people bristle at the word faith, but having faith is inevitable. Evidence and science are based on past experience. Hope is based on future experience.

So, there is nothing as an atheist. my point is that we must all believe, on faith that something is important.

Some people's a God value is themselves- or rather, their own pleasure and empowerment. This is narcissism: the religion of self-aggrandizement. These people place their faith in their own superiority and deservedness.

My point is all values are faith-based beliefs. Therefore all hope (and therefore, all religions) are also based on faith, faith that something can be important and a or valuable and right despite the fact that there will never be a way to verify it beyond all doubt.

I have defined three kind of religions each type based on a different kind of God value:

1. Spiritual religions: Spiritual religions draw hope from supernatural belief, or believe things that exist outside the physical and material realm. These religions look for a better future outside the world and this life.
2. Ideological belief: Ideological religion draw hope from the natural world. They look for salvation and growth and develop faith-based beliefs regarding this world and this life.
3. Interpersonal belief: Iteerpersonal religion draw hope from other people in our lives.

Supernatural religion

Spiritual religion is incredibly resilient. They last hundreds, If not thousands, of years. This is because supernatural beliefs are never be proven or never be disproven. Therefore once supernatural belief lodged as someone's God value, it nearly impossible to dislodge it.

Spiritual religions are also powerful because they often encourage hope through death.

Ideological belief

ideologies are usually "isms": libertarianism, nationalism, capitalism, socialism, fascism, skepticism, etc.

What everyone is losing their shit about today is the fact that traditionalist, nationalist, and populist ideologies, are wining political power across the world, and these ideologies are seeking to dismantle much of the work accomplished by the neoliberal.

Interpersonal religion

Interpersonal religions are our familial and romantic relationships. The beliefs and emotion involved in these relationships are evolutionary in nature but they are faith-based in all the same. Romantic love. of course, can be a quasi-spiritual experience. We seem to lose ourselves in someone we have fallen for, spinning all sorts of narratives about the cosmic significance of the relationship.

Because, as we'll see religion is all about emotional attachment. And the best way to build those attachments.

Step three: Preemptively invalidating all criticism or outside questioning

The farther, the better. Lie a little bit if you have to remember, people instinctually want to feel as though they are fighting a crusade, to believe that they are the holy warriors of justice and truth and salvation. So, say whatever you need to say. Get them to feel self-righteousness to keep the religion going.

Step Four: Ritual Sacrifice for dummies-So easy, anyone can do it!

Emotions are actions; the two are one and the same. Therefore, to modify (or reinforce) the feeling brain's value hierarchy, you need some easily repeatedly yet totally unique and inflatable action for people to perform. That's where the rituals come in.

Step Five: Promise heaven, Deliver hell

If someone really could solve your problems they'd go out of business by next Tuesday (or get voted out of office next week).

Leaders need their followers to be perpetually dissatisfied; it's good for the leadership ness.

If everything were perfect and great, there would be no reason to follow anyone. No religion will ever make you feel blissful and peaceful all the time. No country will ever be completely fair and safe. No political philosophy will solve everyone's problem all the time true equality will never be achieved someone in somewhere will always be screwed over. True freedom does not really exist because we all must sacrifice some autonomy for stability. No one, no matter how much you love them or they love you, will ever absolve their internal guilt you feel simply for existing. It's all fucked. Everything is fucked. It always has been and always will be.

The only thing that can ever truly destroy dream is to have it come true.

Chapter 5

Hope Is Fucked

Nietzsche called his belief system, in which those who end up ahead do so because they deserve it, "maser mortality." Master mortality is the belief that people get what they deserve. It's the moral belief that "might makes right" that if you earned something through hard work or ingenuity, you deserve it. No one can take them for you; nor should they. You are the best, and because you have demonstrated superiority, you should be rewarded for it.

Science is arguably the most effective religion because it is the first religion that is able to evolve and improve upon itself. It is open to anybody and everybody. It is not moored to a single book or creed. It is not beholden to some ancient land or people. It is not tethered to a supernatural spirits whose existence cannot be proven or disproven. It is an ongoing, ever-changing body of evidence-based on beliefs, one that is free to mutate, grow, and shift as the evidence dictates.

Pandora's Box

What if hope is not the antidote to evil? What if hope is just another form of evil? What if hope is just left in the box?

Hope is also inspired by the communist revolutions and the Nazi genocides. Hitler hoped to exterminate the jews to bring about an evolutionarily superior human race. The Soviets hoped to investigate the global revolution to unite the world in true equality under communism

Like a surgeon's scalpel, hope can save a life. and hope can take a life. It can uplift us, and it can destroy us. Just as there are healthy and damaging forms of confidence. and healthy and damaging form of hope.

Experience generates emotions. Emotions generate values. Values generate a narrative of meaning. And people who share similar narratives of meaning come together to generate religion.

The source of hope that gives our lives a sense of meaning is the same sources of division and hate. The hope that brings us the most joy to our lives is the same hope that brings the greatest danger. The hope that brings people closet together often the hope that tears them apart.

Part 2

Everything is fucked

Chapter 6

How to grow up

Young children are like little tyrants. They struggle to conceive of anything in life beyond what is immediately pleasurable or painful for them at any given moment. They can not feel empathy. They can not imagine what life is like in your shoes.

Noting is done for own sake. Everything is calculated in the transaction, usually made out of fear of that negative repercussion. Everything means to some pleasurable end.

An adolescent will say he loves you, but his conception of love is that he is getting something in return, that love he is getting something in return, that love is merely an emotional swap meet, where you each bring everything you have to offer and haggle with each other for the best deal.

The best way to teach someone love is by loving them.

Enlightenment Philosophers, excited by the opportunities forded the world by growth, decided to remove spirituality from religion and get the job done with ideological religion. They jettisoned the idea of virtue and instead focused on measurable, concrete goals: creating greater happiness and less suffering; giving the people greater personal liberties and freedoms; promoting compassion, empathy, and equality.

To transcend the transactional realm of hope, one must act unconditionally. You must love someone without expecting something in return otherwise it's not true love. You must respect someone without expecting something in return, otherwise, you don't truly respect them.

Lying is wrong because you are misleading someone else's conscious behavior in order to achieve your own goal. You are treating this person as a means to your own end. Cheating is unethical for similar reason.

Modern democracy was invented under the assumption that the average person is a selfish and delusional piece of shit, that the only way to protect us from ourselves, is to create systems so interlocking and independent that no one person or group can completely hose the rest of the population.

Chapter 7

Pain Is The Universal Constant

The more we look for threats, the more we see them, regardless of how safe or comfortable our environment actually is. And we see this playing out in the world today. The more comfortable ad ethical society became the more than small indiscretions would become magnified in our minds.

Nobody is fully happy all the time, but similarly, nobody is fully unhappy all the time, either. It seems that humans, regardless of our external circumstance, live in a constant state of mild but not fully satisfying happiness. Put another way things are pretty much always fine, but they could also be better.

The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our cultures. It is self-defeating and misleading. Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons.

The Buddha said that suffering is like being shot by two arrows. The first is the physical pain- it's the mental piercing of the skin, the force colliding unto the body. The second arrow is the mental pain, the meaning and emotion we attach to the being of struck, the narratives that we spin in our minds about whether we deserved or didn't deserve what happened. In many cases, our mental case is far worse than any physical pain. In most cases, it lasts far longer.

Pain is the currency of our values. Without the pain of loss (or potential loss), it becomes impossible to determine the value of anything at all.

But we seem to have forgotten what the ancients knew: that no matter how much wealth is generated in the world, the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our characters, and the quality of our character is determined by the relationship towards our pain.

Chapter 8

The Felling Economy

Trucks are marketed to men as ways to assert strength and reliability. Makeup is marketed to women as a way to be more loved and garner more attention. Beer is marketed as a way to have fun and be the center of attention a party.

This is the problem with exalting freedom over human consciousness. More stuff doesn't make us freer, it imprisons us with anxiety over whether we chose or did the best thing. More stuff cause us to become more prone to treating ourselves and others as means rather than ends. It makes us more dependent on the endless cycles of hope.

The truly from of freedom, the only ethical form of freedom is through self-limitation, It is the privilage of choosing everything you want in your life, but rather, choosing what you will give up in your life.

You can be freer right now simply by chossing the limitations you want to impose on yourself. You can choose to wake up earlier each morning, to block your email until midafternoon each day, to delete social from your phone. These limitations will free you because they will libertae your time, attention, and power of choice. They treat at you conscious as an end in itself.

Fake freedom is addcitive: no matter how much you have, you always feel as though it's not enough. Real freedom is repetitive, predictable and sometime dull.

They lac freedom not because the y are unable to choose their pleasures but because they are not allowed to choose their pain. They are not allowed to choose their commitments freely.

Don't hope for better. Just be better.