Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope

The problem isn’t that we don’t know how not to get punched in the face. The problem is that, at some point, likely a long time ago, we got punched in face, and instead of punching back, we decided we deserved it.

Because pain is the universal constant of life, the opportunities to grow from that pain are constant in life. All that is required is that we don't numb it, that we don't look away. All that is required is that we engage it and find the value and meaning in it.

You must love someone without expecting anything in return; otherwise it’s not truly love. You must respect someone without expecting anything in return; otherwise you don’t truly respect him. You must speak honestly without expecting a pat on the back or a high-five or a gold star next to your name; otherwise you aren’t truly being honest.

They forgot that the world doesn’t run on information. People don’t make decisions based on truth or facts. They don’t spend their money based on data. They don’t connect with each other because of some higher philosophical truth. The world runs on feelings.

So, instead of looking for hope, try this: Don't hope. Don't despair, either. In fact, don't deign to believe you know anything. It's that assumption of knowing with such blind, fervent, emotional certainty that gets us into these kinds of pickles in the first place. Don't hope for better. Just be better. Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined. [...] Be a better human.

The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture.<...> Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons.

Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. It is the source of all misery and the cause of all addiction.

The only true form of freedom, the only ethical form of freedom, is through self-limitation. It is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your life, but rather, choosing what you will give up in your life.

by experiencing our hopes, we lose them. We see that our beautiful visions for a perfect future are not so perfect, that our dreams and aspirations are themselves riddled with unexpected flaws and unforeseen sacrifices. Because the only thing that can ever truly destroy a dream is to have it come true.

No, the opposite of happiness is hopelessness, an endless gray horizon of resignation and indifference.3 It’s the belief that everything is fucked, so why do anything at all?

Self-control is an illusion. It’s an illusion that occurs when both brains are aligned and pursuing the same course of action.

Why don't we do things we know we should do? Because we don't feel like it. 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. Laziness is an emotional problem. Procrastination is an emotional problem. Underachievement is an emotional problem. Impulsiveness is an emotional problem. This sucks, because emotional problems are much harder to deal with than logical ones.

Ultimately, we are moved to action only by emotion. That's because action is emotion.

Don’t hope for better. Just be better. Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined.

When we deny ourselves the ability to feel pain for a purpose, we deny ourselves the ability to feel any purpose in our life at all.

I have tried to live my life such that in the hour of my death I would feel joy rather than fear.

The only true meaning in existence is the ability to form meaning

Science is arguably the most effective religion because it is the first religion that is able to evolve and improve upon itself.

If you feel okay only when life is happy and easy-breezy-beautiful Cover-Girl, then guess what? You are not free. <...> You are the prisoner of your own indulgences, enslaved by your own intolerance, crippled by your own emotional weakness. You will constantly feel a need for some external comfort or validation that may or may not ever come

People now had a ton of free time to sit and think and worry about all sorts of existential shit that they had never considered before.

The most dangerous extremists know how to dress up their childish values in the language of transaction or universal principle. A right-wing extremist will claim she desires "freedom" above all else...But what she really means is that she wants freedom from having to deal with any values that do not map unto her own...A leftie extremist will say that he wants "equality" for all, but what he really means is that he never wants anyone to feel pain, to feel harmed, or to feel inferior. He doesn't want anyone to have to face moral gaps, ever. And he's willing to cause pain and adversity to others in the name of eliminating these moral gaps.

fact, things were so bad in the old days that the only way to keep everyone sane was by promising them hope in an afterlife.

Today’s tyranny is achieved by flooding people with so much diversion, so much bullshit information and frivolous distraction, that they are unable to make smart commitments.

Moral gaps are where our values are born.

Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with their own. The lower our tolerance for pain, the more we indulge in fake freedoms, the less we will be able to uphold the virtues necessary to allow a free, democratic society to function.

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

There is no such thing as change without pain, no growth without discomfort. It’s why it is impossible to become someone new without first grieving the loss of who you used to be.

This is the fundamental problem of hope—not an educated Thinking Brain, but an uneducated Feeling Brain, a Feeling Brain that has adopted and accepted poor value judgments about itself and the world.