Everything Is -

a Book about Hope

by Mark Manson

288 pages

English language

Published Nov. 10, 2019 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-295771-9

(12 reviews)

We live in an interesting time. Materially, everything is the best it’s ever been—we are freer, healthier and wealthier than any people in human history. Yet, somehow everything seems to be irreparably and horribly f*cked—the planet is warming, governments are failing, economies are collapsing, and everyone is perpetually offended on Twitter. At this moment in history, when we have access to technology, education and communication our ancestors couldn’t even dream of, so many of us come back to an overriding feeling of hopelessness.

What’s going on? If anyone can put a name to our current malaise and help fix it, it’s Mark Manson. In 2016, Manson published The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, a book that brilliantly gave shape to the ever-present, low-level hum of anxiety that permeates modern living. He showed us that technology had made it too easy to care about the wrong things, that our culture had convinced us that the world owed us something when it didn’t—and worst of all, that our modern and maddening urge to always find happiness only served to make us unhappier. Instead, the “subtle art” of that title turned out to be a bold challenge: to choose your struggle; to narrow and focus and find the pain you want to sustain. The result was a book that became an international phenomenon, selling millions of copies worldwide while becoming the #1 bestseller in 13 different countries.

Now, in Everthing Is F*cked, Manson turns his gaze from the inevitable flaws within each individual self to the endless calamities taking place in the world around us. Drawing from the pool of psychological research on these topics, as well as the timeless wisdom of philosophers such as Plato, Nietzsche, and Tom Waits, he dissects religion and politics and the uncomfortable ways they have come to resemble one another. He looks at our relationships with money, entertainment and the internet, and how too much of a good thing can psychologically eat us alive. He openly defies our definitions of faith, happiness, freedom—and even of hope itself.

With his usual mix of erudition and where-the-f*ck-did-that-come-from humor, Manson takes us by the collar and challenges us to be more honest with ourselves and connected with the world in ways we probably haven’t considered before. It’s another counterintuitive romp through the pain in our hearts and the stress of our soul. One of the great modern writers has produced another book that will set the agenda for years to come.

13 editions

Pentapod reviewed Everything Is F*cked by Mark Manson

Review of 'Everything Is F*cked' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I picked up this book because his previous book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, was at least an entertaining read. This book was a bit all over the place, however. It's more focused on how our perspective on the world and life is inherently biased and messing us up, and he highlights some interesting studies illustrating this fact. Some chapters are quite interesting; I particularly enjoyed chapter 6, which talks about Kant's formula of humanity and raised some really thought provoking ways of looking at the world. But then chapters 7 and 8 seemed a little rambling, and the final chapter was just utter bullshit in every possible way.

Why was the last chapter complete rubbish, you may ask? I dunno, because Manson is more interested in writing a book to make money off pop science than in actually understanding the subjects he's talking about? After the rest of the book covers all sorts of thoughts about human nature, philosophy, the state of the world, and so on, Manson tries to wrap it all up in a chapter predicting the future of humanity, literally called "The Final Religion". To do this he brings in Artificial Intelligence, and claims that AI controlling our lives in every way is our future. Somehow he tries to support this theory via evolution, which he claims the humans are the pinnacle of evolution because we are the only creature that can process information best.

Now, I may not be an expert on AI, but I have two degrees in biology and I can definitively say that based on what Manson writes in this chapter, he doesn't have the foggiest understanding of how evolution actually works, and pretty much everything he's claiming here about it makes no sense whatsoever. So I can only assume that if his grasp of AI is as tenuous as his grasp of evolution (and even in my limited understanding of AI I'm pretty sure that's the case), he's talking utter bullshit throughout this entire chapter. Like, I don't need to be an expert on AI to notice that he didn't even touch on the inherent biases that all AI systems have inherited from their programmers, and that seems like a pretty damn huge flaw that should be addressed before claiming they will solve all our problems and become our new gods. Ugh. I don't have enough words to describe how utterly stupid and ignorant this last chapter is.

So ... do not recommend the book, despite the fact some of the other chapters were quite interesting. If you do read it, I highly suggest you just stop before chapter 9 and pretend the book ended there.