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Everything Is F*cked: Two Transformative Guides to Finding Happiness Amidst Life’s Chaos (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2 Book Series))
Men's Personal Growth, Personal Growth, Spirituality
What happens when having more freedom, wealth, technology, and comfort still leaves us feeling hopeless? In *Everything Is F*cked*, Mark Manson turns his attention from personal struggles to the larger problems shaping modern life. Drawing on psychology and the ideas of thinkers such as Plato and Nietzsche, he explores our complicated relationships with politics, religion, money, entertainment, technology, happiness, and hope. With his characteristic blunt humor and unconventional perspective, Manson challenges the assumptions behind the way we live and encourages us to face uncertainty, suffering, and the world around us with greater honesty.
- Release Date
- 2019
- Length
- 288 pages
- Publisher
- Harper
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Our Review
About the book
Mark Manson follows his previous bestseller with a broader look at hope, meaning and modern anxiety. Drawing on philosophers, psychology and history, he argues that our comfortable age still leaves people feeling hopeless, and explores why we need hope and how it can mislead us.
Our review
Manson goes bigger and darker, trading life advice for an ambitious, uneven essay on hope in an anxious age.
This is a more ambitious book than its predecessor. Manson tackles the paradox of feeling hopeless amid unprecedented comfort, and he ranges across Kant, Nietzsche, Freudian ideas and attention-economy critique to get there. His framing of the thinking brain and feeling brain is a memorable device, and his chapters on technology and the pursuit of pleasure land some sharp punches at modern life. When it works, it reads like a provocative late-night conversation.
When it does not, it reads like a lecture stitched together from too many sources. The structure wanders, the philosophy is summarized loosely, and the profane, jokey voice sits awkwardly beside heavier material. Readers who loved the first book for its practicality may find this one more abstract and less actionable. It is thought-provoking, but less focused and less satisfying than its predecessor.
What we loved
- An ambitious attempt to tackle meaning and hope
- The memorable thinking-brain versus feeling-brain framing
- Sharp critique of attention-driven technology
Keep in mind
- Wandering structure and loose handling of philosophy
- Less practical than The Subtle Art
Read it if you like
readers of Sapiens, fans of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, readers interested in philosophy for a general audience
The verdict
Bigger ideas, looser execution; worthwhile for Manson fans, though not his best.
