While browsing around at my local bookstore, I came across this eye-catching, offensively-orange, decidedly ugly book cover. “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” by Mark Manson. Not only is the cover incredibly off-putting, the title of the book is quite vulgar as well. Nevertheless, if it is near the entrance of the store, it must be good. After reading it, I can conclusively say this book was worth every penny.
I think this is one of the most poignant and succinct self-help books I have ever read. The issues raised is highly relevant for our generation and points were masterfully presented with abundance of colorful language, delightful superlatives and creative metaphors. I mean just look at this prose below. You cannot say that is not brilliantly entertaining.
“Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two-and-a-half kid goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day”
This was quite a light read as well. You do not get the usual references to scientific journals or psychology experiments to substantiate claims, and the tone can be overly dogmatic at times. But in exchange, you get an easy read book that is funny and surprisingly insightful.
The main theme of this chapter is that we should accept our shortcomings, and be honest with ourselves. Manson argues that our culture places upon us unrealistically positive expectations that will not be met. It lasers in acutely on what you lack instead of what you have. It magnifies your own perceived shortcomings and emphasize them for you. There is an infinite amount of ways we can discover that we don’t measure up, and this rips us apart. But the truth of the matter is, everyone has these shortcomings, and noticing them is not tantamount to fixing them. At some point, we have to acknowledge that we are given what we are given, it is good to put in effort to improve an aspect of your life, but being fixated on them for a prolonged period of time will lead to an incredibly unhappy life.
Consumer culture makes us want more – not just in material wealth, but also personal and emotional – by magnifying all of our flaws.
Manson then goes on to talk argue that our shortcomings are not only magnified by our culture, but also magnified 100x by social media. Sites like Facebook and Instagram takes a collage of our friend’s best life moments and make us believe that having negative experiences such as anxiety, fear, and guilt is not okay. It imposes the belief that if you are not feeling positive, then something must be wrong with you.
Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent! In fact, we are biologically wired to care. People attempt to be indifferent because in reality they give way too many fucks. They give a fuck about what everyone thinks of their hair, so they never bother washing or combing it. They give a fuck about what everyone thinks of their ideas, so they hide behind sarcasm and self-righteous remarks. In short, they are in denial. The key is that Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different. Pick carefully what you should care about, and remain true to your values.
Here are some memorable quotes from this chapter:
You are always choosing what you give a fuck about. Maturity is when you become more selective about the fucks you are willing to give.
“Everyone and their TV commercial wants you to believe that the key to a good life is a nicer job, or a more rugged car, or a prettier girlfriend, or a hot tub with an inflatable pool for the kids. The world is constantly telling you that the path to a better life is more, more, more, buy more, own more, make more, fuck more, be more……. But the problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health. It causes you to become overly attached to the superficial and fake, to dedicate your life to chasing a mirage of happiness and satisfaction.”
“Conventional life advice is actually fixating on what you lack. It lasers in on what you perceive your personal shortcomings and failures to already be, and then emphasizes them for you.”
“[When you give too much f***], you will feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the fucking way you want it to be. This is a sickness. And it will eat you alive. You will see every adversity as an injustice, every challenge as a failure, every inconvenience as a personal slight, every disagreement as a betrayal.”
“There’s a saying in Texas: “the smallest dog barks the loudest”. A confident man doesn’t feel a need to prove that he’s confident. A rich woman doesn’t feel a need to convince anybody that she’s rich. Either you are or you are not”
“No matter where you go, there’s a 500 lbs loads of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.”
The main message of this chapter is that life is full of suffering. Although to different degrees, there is no value in suffering when it’s done without purpose. To be happy, we should choose our suffering such that it is meaningful to us; not avoiding it entirely. The chapter can be summarized with the following quote.
“Don’t hope for life without problems, there is no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems”
Happiness is not a destination, it is a journey. Because the constant desire for more is biologically ingrained in us. We are only satisfied by what we don’t have. Once we have it, it is not satisfying anymore and we chase for more and more. In other words, problems never go away, they just improve.
If problems are a constant of life, then we should derive happiness by resolving problems. The issue arises when people do one of two things when confronted with a problem:
Denial – Deny that your problem even exists
Victim Mentality – An attractive option where one chooses to believe that there is nothing they can do. That they’ve done everything the can (sometimes in a delusional manner). They seek to blame other or outside circumstances for their problems. It is easy and it feels good, but it will lead to a life of anger, helplessness, and despair
In life, our struggle determines our success. By solving problems, we create happiness; its solution also lay the foundation for newer, slightly upgraded problems. So choose what you will willing to struggle for in life and extract joy from it.
Here are some memorable quotes:
“There is a premise that underlies a lot of our assumptions and beliefs. The premise is that happiness is algorithmic, that it can be worked for and earned and achieved as if it were getting accepted into law school or building a really complicated Lego set…….. Happiness is not a solvable equation. Dissatisfaction and unease are inherent parts of human nature and, as we’ll see, necessary component to creating consistent happiness.”
“Happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Joy doesn’t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows. Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles”
The main point of this chapter is that our generation has been fed a constant diet of “high-self-esteem” to positive thoughts. From participation medals, to creed that we are all unique and capable of achieving magnificent things. As it turns out, this is not true, and it has had a lasting impact on our mental psyches over the years.
We pamper every kid and tell them that they are special in their own way. We try to block out all failure and adversity. But it turns out those things are the most important and useful aspect that illicit personal growth. When these kids grow up and meet with insurmountable struggles, they start to believe that somehow their struggles are unique to themselves. They become entitled with the mindset that:
I’m awesome and the rest of you suck, so I deserve special treatment
I suck and the rest of you are awesome, so I deserve special treatment
However, the truth is that if you have having the problem. Millions of others have had it in the past, is having it now, or will have it in the future. There is no such thing as personal problem.
The next point the chapter talks about is the fact that we are, for most part, average people. Yet we are constantly bombarded by the tyranny of exceptionalism; that we all deserve greatness. Being average all the sudden became a new standard for failure. Often times, people are afraid of mediocrity because they believe it akin to accepting defeat and never achieving anything. The thinking that life is only worthwhile if you are exceptional at something is dangerous.
Some memorable quotes:
“The truth is that there’s no such thing as personal problem. If you’ve got a problem, chances are millions of other people have had it in the past, have it now, and are going to have it in the future. Likely people you know too. That doesn’t minimize the problem or mean that it shouldn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean you aren’t legitimately a victim in some circumstances. It just means that you are not special. Often this realization is the first and most crucial step towards solving them”
“Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems. The internet has not just open-sourced information; it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt, and shame”
“All this “every person can be extraordinary and achieve greatness” stuff is basically just jerking off your ego. It’s a message that tastes good going down, but in reality is nothing more than empty calories that make you emotionally fat and bloated. The proverbial Big Mac for your heart and brain”
The point that this chapter constantly tries to drive home is that life’s struggle, suffering, and problems are endless. The solution to one’s problem will yield new ones. So instead of asking the question “How do I stop suffering?”, one should ask “If suffering does not end, for what purpose should I suffer for”.
In the face of constant struggle, it is incumbent for us to define values that create good problems for us to tackle. There are 3 common values that are insidious:
Pleasure – Do not prioritize your life around pleasure. Though it is essential for us to indulge in pleasure once in a while, too much of it will lead to more anxiety, depression, and emotionally instability. Long-lasting pleasure is the result of getting stuff right. Inundating oneself in superficial pleasure is numbing and short-lasting.
Material Success – Do not measure your self-worth through material possession. Once one is able to provide for their basic needs, any marginal increase in more material possession does not increase happiness
Always Being Right – We are not always right. In fact, our brain is inefficient so it tends to make poor assumptions, give in to cognitive biases, give in to emotional whims. So we tend to be wrong more often than we are right
Staying Positive – It is okay to admit that life sometimes sucks
Good Values: honesty, innovation, vulnerability, standing up for oneself, standing up for others, self-respect, curiosity, charity, humility, creativity
Bad Values: Dominance, manipulation, violence, indiscriminate behaviors, seeking pleasure, being center of attention, not being along, being liked by everybody (impossible), being rich for sake of being rich.
“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful” – Sigmund Freud
“When we force ourselves to stay positive all the time, we deny the existence of our life’s problem, when we do so, we rob ourselves of the chance to solve them and generate happiness. Problem adds a sense of meaning and importance to our lives…. In the long run, completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends while struggling to make ends meet makes us happier than buying a new computer. This activities are stressful, arduous, and often unpleasant. Yet they are some of the most meaningful moments and joyous things we’ll ever do. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair – yet once they’re accomplished, we look back and get all misty-eyed telling our grandkids about them”
“People who are terrified of what others think about them are actually terrified of all the shitty things they think about themselves being reflected back at them”
The central theme this chapter revolves around is the fact that we are mostly responsible for everything in our lives. We choose our values, our career path, our interpretation of the events that occur. As we are always choosing, being passive and having problems forced upon us feels miserable, and make us prone to excess victimization. Personal growth and improvement emerges when we realize that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives. So take responsibility, shoulder it in all its associated sufferings.
The next section is highly relevant in our current political climate. The section is called “Victimization chic”. Essentially, our culture almost encourages people to pass their responsibilities to solve their own problems to others. It is the ability to alleviate responsibility through blame that gives people a temporary high and a feeling of moral righteousness.
In the age of social media, this phenomenon has gone out of control. Now it is easier than ever to push even the tiniest amount of responsibility onto another group or person. The truth is, we are all victims in one way or another, so just about anybody can play the oppressed. Victim chic sucks attention away from real victims
Some memorable quotes:
“We all love to take responsibility for success and happiness. Hell, we often fight over who gets to be responsible for success and happiness. But taking responsibility for our problems is far more important, because that’s where the real learning comes from. That’s where the real-life improvement comes from. To simply blame others is only to hurt yourself”
“Unfortunately, one side effect of the Internet and social media is that it’s becoming easier than ever to push responsibility – for even the tiniest of infractions – onto some other group or person. In fact, this kind of public blame/shame game has become popular; in certain crowds it’s even seen as “cool”. The public sharing of “Injustices” garners far more attention and emotional outpouring than most other events on social media, rewarding people who are able to perpetually feel victimized with ever-growing amounts of attention and sympathy…. Victimhood chic is in style today. In fact, this may be the first time in human history that every single demographic group has felt unfairly victimized simultaneously, and they’re all riding the highs of the moral indignation that comes along with it”
“People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good.”
“Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but over time devour us from the inside out. And it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously acknowledge that it’s a pleasure.” – Tim Kreider NYTimes.
This chapter focuses on a very relatable idea that we are almost always wrong about something (some more wrong than others), but that is a good thing. Manson states that when we reflect on our past self, we realize how wrong we are with just about everything. It is essential for us to look back at our younger selves and realize mistakes and flaws, because that indicates growth in character. It is a unending process with no destination.
Instead of striving for certainty, we should strive for doubt. Because they more we doubt, the more we think and reflect on ourselves, and the more we improve. Being wrong opens the opportunity for change and growth. Instead, we limit ourselves so as to avoid threatening our identity.
Because of this, Mason suggests a unique perspective that we should not try to “find ourselves” or “know ourselves”. Doing so saddles you with unnecessary expectations and close you offer to your inner potential and outer opportunities.
Again some memorable quotes:
“The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it”
“If it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself”
“It’s easier to sit in a painful certainty that no body would find you attractive, that nobody appreciates your talents, than to actually test those beliefs and be proven right. [The fear of being proven right and so staying in one’s comfort zone] gives us moderate comfort now by mortgaging greater happiness and success later on. They’re terrible long-term strategies, yet we cling to them because we assume we’re right, because we assume we already know what’s supposed to happen. In other words, we assume we know how the story ends.”
The central theme of this chapter is to reiterate that success comes from one’s willingness to fail. Furthermore, when someone is better at something compared to you, chances are he/she has failed at it more than you. This is a much better mindset to have instead of attributing it to something that is congenital. To deny ourselves the chance to fail and deny pain, sadness, and anxiety is to deny our own potential.
The next section of this chapter talks about the “Do Something” Principle, which I believe is the most pertinent and relatable bit of wisdom this book has offered so far. We grow up believing that a chain of actions goes like this:
However, such model is inadequate in that as soon as you run out of motivation, it is next to impossible to continue your action. More likely, the model looks something like this:
Therefore, when you are stuck on a problem, don’t just sit there. Do something. The answer will follow. The main point – as it relates to me – is that we should just start and stop vacillating on the small stuff. Learn as you go. Don’t strive for 100% readiness. It’s a waste of time.
Quotes:
“Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it’s likely because he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.”
“We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed”
“Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyways. All of life is like this. It never changes. Even when you’re happy. Even when you’re farting fairy dust. Even when you win the lottery and buy a small fleet of jet skis, you still won’t know what the hell you’re doing. Don’t ever forget that. And don’t ever be afraid of that”
The chapter starts by stating that sometimes commitment offers us greater meaning and happiness than freedom. To truly gain full appreciation for something, we must reject the alternatives, and we tend to stay away from that. There is an associated freedom when we commit to our decision. Consumer culture is good at making us want more, but more is not always better. There is a known concept in psychology called The Paradox of Choice, whereby the more options we are given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose, because we’re aware of all the other options we’re potentially forfeiting.
The paradox of choice applies to our career, home, schooling, partner, etc. We become so anxious of getting the “right” choice, that we either vacillate for a prolonged amount of time, or we avoid choosing for as long as possible. We avoid commitment. One should stop this madness and know that, although counterintuitive, there is a lot of freedom and liberation in commitment.
The next theme of the chapter talks about boundaries within a romantic relationship and our culture’s unrealistic portray of romance. An interesting point that it brought up was that Romeo and Juliet, often considered synonymous with romantic ideals, is actually not so. In fact, many scholars believe Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet not to celebrate romance, but to satirize it and show how insane it was. Our culture today is dominated by bat-shit crazy, and over the top emotional display of romance. This sort of love is a lot like cocaine. It activates the same part of the brain as cocaine, you get high and feel good like cocaine, and it creates more problem than it solves like cocaine.
Healthy relationships have distinct boundaries, and are not based on two people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other.
Quotes:
“We need to reject somethings, otherwise we stand for nothing”
“Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it. Ultimately, the only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance is one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one play, one belief, or one person.”
The last chapter of this book basically pays homage to Ernest Becker’s “Denial of Death” which brought up two important points:
Humans are unique in that we are sentient and can conceptualize a world without ourselves. Our unique mental capacity allowed ourselves to become aware of the inevitability of our eventual death. This evokes in us a phenomenon called “death terror”, which is at the heart of all human civilization
Each person has two selves: a physical self, and a conceptual self. We are aware of the fact that our physical self will eventually vanish; therefore, in order to compensate for our fear of inevitable loss, we try to construct a conceptual self that will live on forever (i.e. a legacy). Becker calls this the “immortality project”, and he argues that this lies at the heart of human civilization and everything we do. Cities, buildings, monuments, governments, authorities in place, are all examples of immortality projects of men and women that came before us. The meaning in our life is shaped by this innate desire to never truly die.
Religion, politics, sports, arts, innovation in technology, are all immortality projects. The bloodbath in the wars of the past are just immortality projects of different groups rubbing against each other.
And this goes back to the main thesis of the book. Our own immortality project is our values. We are driven by fear to give way too many fucks about everything that it distracts us from the inevitability of our eventual demise. However, confronting our own mortality is important because it obliterates all the fragile and superficial values we have in our lives. Only by confronting death can we reorient and readjust our values appropriately.
Quotes:
“You are, unfortunately, going to die. And it is because you were fortunate enough to live”
“Death scares us. And because it scares us, we avoid thinking about it, talking about it, sometimes even acknowledging it, even when it’s happening to someone close to us. Yet, in a bizarre, backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life’s meaning is measured. Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero.”
“Without acknowledging the ever-present gaze of death, the superficial will appear important, and the important will appear superficial. Death is the only thing we can know with any certainty. And as such, it must be the compass by which we orient all of our other values and decisions…..The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself…..
“We are so materially well off, yet so psychologically tormented in so many low-level and shallow ways. People relinquish all responsibility, demanding that society cater to their feelings and sensibilities. People hold on to arbitrary certainties and try to enforce them on others, often violently, in the name of some made-up righteous cause. People, high on a sense of false superiority, fall into inaction and lethargy for fear of trying something worthwhile and failing at it”
“The pampering of the modern mind has resulted in a population that feels deserving of something without earning that something, a population that feels they have a right to something without sacrificing for it. People declare themselves experts, entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators, mavericks, and coaches without any real-life experience. And they do this not because they actually think they are greater than everybody else; they do it because they feel that they need to be great to be accepted in a world that broadcasts only the extraordinary.”
“We’re all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by life’s trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing” – Charles Bukowski