Book SummaryEverything Is F*cked, by Mark Manson

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Everything Is F*cked

Although our living conditions are generally better than they’ve ever been, people are getting steadily unhappier. Depression, anxiety, and overall dissatisfaction with life are all statistically on the rise.

According to Mark Manson, this paradox is due to the fact that our physical living standards don't determine our happiness. Rather, we’re happy if we have something to hope for—in other words, if we believe that we can change things for the better. Our mental health crisis is due to many people losing hope and feeling that their lives are increasingly meaningless.

The solution to this problem is complicated. Many assume that to feel fulfilled, we need something to hope for—to discover meaning by focusing on the positive impact we can have on the world. However, Manson argues that the hope that makes us feel fulfilled inevitably leads us to harm ourselves and others. Thus, to be happy as individuals and thrive as a species, we need to find a source of fulfillment that doesn’t rely on hope for a better future.

(Shortform note: Manson cites many sources showing that people in wealthy countries are getting unhappier, supporting his argument that high standards of living aren’t the key to happiness. However, there’s less research to back up his assertion that this mental health crisis is due to a lack of hope, and many experts offer other theories. For example,...

Everything Is F*cked Summary What Is Hope, and Why Do We Need It?

Before we discuss how our relationship to hope changes as we mature, let’s clarify exactly what we mean by “hope” and explain how it functions.

Manson defines hope as the belief that you have the ability to progress toward something valuable and create a more pleasant future. Additionally, he asserts that you need other people to recognize that what you do matters to sustain hope—social validation is a core psychological need.

We feel like we need hope because we understand we’re mortal, according to Manson. If you zoom out in time long enough, you and everyone whose life you’ve ever influenced will eventually die, and nothing you do can change that. This is an inherently depressing thought.

For this reason, to feel motivated to do anything, we need hope. Hope empowers us to cope with the inherent pain of existence. If we believe that we’re successfully creating a more pleasant future for ourselves and those around us, we’ll feel fulfilled, even if life at the moment is unpleasant. As long as we believe pleasure is coming later, working toward that pleasure provides a deeper satisfaction that transcends pain now—we feel good about what we’re doing even if it...

Everything Is F*cked Summary Stage 1: An Unhappy Life Without Hope

Manson explains that we all begin life without hope: As young children, we lack the ability to imagine the future, so we can’t comprehend the idea of doing something unpleasant for a greater purpose. Instead, we try our best to move toward immediate pleasure and away from immediate pain.

With this in mind, you may assume that as soon as our brains develop enough to imagine a better future, we’ll learn how to hope. Unfortunately, for most people, hope is not this easy to attain. In the next few sections, we’ll explain why it’s difficult to find hope, describe the painful consequences of a life without hope, then detail what a hopeless person can do to find hope.

When Do Children Learn to Hope?

Research shows that children can learn to imagine the future at around age four, although some three-year-olds develop this ability early. By Manson’s logic, this should also be the time when children can learn to hope. However, experts have found that at this stage of development, children typically struggle to imagine the future if it’s likely to be significantly different than the present. Specifically, one study found that if they were...

Everything Is F*cked Summary Stage 2: A Hopeful Life

Once you manage to align your emotions and values, you reap the benefits of a life with something to hope for. It feels like your life matters, and you find satisfaction in trading pain in the present for a future without pain. Unfortunately, Manson argues, this worldview also results in a life of suffering—and the vast majority of people live by it. The even worse news is that hope is what motivates us to make others suffer, as we’ll see.

Hope Causes Us to Suffer

To explain why hope causes us to suffer, we have to clarify how hope operates in a little more detail.

Hope Requires Ideology

Recall Manson’s definition of hope: You believe that you have the ability to pursue something of value and have others recognize you for it. People often disagree on what constitutes the “something of value” that you should pursue. Further, people clump together in groups based on shared values, reinforcing each other’s beliefs and encouraging one another to keep pursuing what they believe is valuable.

Manson calls these groups “religions,” but we’ll use the broader term “ideologies,” since they include both spiritual groups and secular groups. Ideologies like this include...

Everything Is F*cked Summary Stage 3: A Happy Life Without Hope

If we need hope to cope with the pain of existence but hope inevitably causes us to suffer and to force other people to suffer, what’s left for us to do? Manson argues that the only moral way to live is to return to a life without hope—that is, to pursue a life of pain without expecting it to result in a less painful future. Instead of finding meaning by trying to bring about a more pleasant future, you can find meaning by having a positive impact right now.

But how do you define a “positive impact”? Manson acknowledges that this “hopeless” worldview is an ideology, like the others, in the sense that it has a primary virtue: meaningful human life. He argues that this is the only primary virtue that doesn’t require you to cause suffering to attain it. At every second of the day, work to help yourself and all others 1) live a meaningful life and 2) protect everyone’s ability to live a meaningful life.

This philosophy is unique compared to the hope-based ideologies we’ve been discussing in that it involves living for the present moment. Instead of working toward a better future, strive to immediately make someone’s life better at all times. Manson acknowledges that...

Shortform Exercise: Apply Everything Is Fcked to Your Life

While Everything Is F*cked makes broad statements about humanity at large, its ideas apply to us as individuals as well. Reflect on how Manson’s ideas apply to your life and consider how you could follow his advice to live a happy life without hope.

Which of Manson’s three stages are you in now—an unhappy life without hope, a hopeful life, or a happy life without hope? How do you feel about being in that stage? If you’d like to move to the next stage, what’s something you could do in the next couple of days to help you do so? (For example, if you feel like you’re in Stage 1 and you’re depressed due to a lack of hope, you could resolve to spend 10 minutes journaling every morning to become more aware of your emotions.)