Everything is F*cked is another book by Mark Manson. I’ve exhausted his current book catalog now. I think this book has a tendency to get a little silly even though it tackles some extremely important philosophical issues. It references Kant and Nietzsche a lot along with some other thinkers.
As an example of the silliness, he creates an alternative universe version of Isaac Newton that he calls Emo Newton and basically references his laws of motion, but turns them inward as Emo Newton’s Laws of Emotion. Does it get your attention? A little, but I think the silly roundabout way of making the point detracts from the points more than it helps remember them. The author later mockingly talks about how to create a religion. Again, he has some good points, but it’s a little too long of a journey to get to the point.
There are a lot of good points made in the book. He talks about the paradox of progress not actually making people feel any better. That our actions are all emotions based, not logical. He talks about the failings of Hope itself. And there are plenty more interesting topics that aren’t always intuitive and if you’re not down the philosophical rabbit hole, you probably haven’t heard before.
He honestly identifies a lot of issues that I have in my own life. It was quite impressive to look at some of the things he identified and just say, “Yeah, he nailed it.” As I was reading the book, I was getting pretty excited, waiting for the answers on how to fix it. I mean, I read self-help books to help myself most of all. And that’s the second area where this book misses. It fails to have a real gameplan for resolving the issues brought up in the book.
I think the core thesis of what to do could be summed up as “Do good for the sake of good.” Those are my words, not his, but that’s about it. He also welcomes our robot overlords and doesn’t think we human beings are particularly suited to leading the world. Fair points, but not exactly helpful for us humans.
I’d still recommend the book for people who want to dabble in philosophy or want a relatable entry point, but don’t want to go too far off the deep end. However, I don’t recommend it strongly as a fix to much of anything. It’s much better at identifying problems than identifying solutions.