00:01:43.720He sort of segues into general advice blogging.0.96
00:01:48.940In 2015, he writes a blog post titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, which gets very popular and, of course, scores him a deal for a book by the same name.
00:13:20.600Did he? Because what does that have to do with not trying? I don't really understand. I honestly
00:13:27.260think he, like the Bukowski anecdote is not in the blog post. He does the classic airport book
00:13:33.420thing. Every chapter opens up with an anecdote that's illustrative, right? But in this case,
00:13:38.480he's sort of building around this pre-existing blog post. And so a lot of the anecdotes are just
00:13:44.400a little bit forced. Also, we're already in It Depends territory, right? Which all of these
00:13:50.520books come down to It Depends. So it's basically like you should give a fuck about some stuff and0.98
00:13:55.360not other stuff. Yeah. I sort of put aside some of this because it's so generic, but he very0.99
00:13:59.840quickly is like, people these days care too much about social media. And it's like, yeah, okay.
00:14:04.720Yeah. You know, like, sure. Kids be on their phones. So this made me think about filler because I was like, the Bukowski thing sort of feels like filler. Yeah. It's not part of his original post, but he needed an anecdote to open the book. And so he sort of jams this in, even though it's not a perfect fit. Right. Usually the filler in these books, as you know, is like fucking worksheets. Poems. Yeah. Right. Like incredibly obvious. But with this book, there's none of that.
00:14:30.120The substance of the book is like his original blog post, and the filler is everything else, right?
00:14:40.000So the core content of the book is filler.
00:14:42.720So I think because he's like forcefully stretching a very simple idea out to book length, there's a lot of like general incoherence, unresolved tensions within his ideas.
00:14:55.580even in the opening chapter where he's laying out the thesis it feels a little bit like he's
00:15:00.280rambling at times and saying different things at once first he gives the bukowski anecdote saying
00:15:05.700don't try then he concedes that bukowski was a bad person right then he says like you know when i say0.99
00:15:10.760don't give a fuck i mean it's about being different and then he sort of pivots to not giving a fuck0.98
00:15:15.120about adversity it feels like the difference between wanting to write a book and writing a0.99
00:15:20.960blog post and being told you should write a book right you know this is the same dilemma as having
00:15:25.340a podcast about bad books when all of the bad books are the same. It's like, how do we not say
00:15:30.540the same thing over and over again? There is one substantive part of the book that I want to drill
00:15:35.300down on. It's the idea that you shouldn't try to avoid suffering or adversity. If you are suffering
00:15:42.680in service of some greater goal, it is character building and also a gateway to happiness and
00:15:48.060satisfaction. That is a key part of this book. I don't really have a problem with it as a broad
00:15:53.680principle i do think it's worth noting that it's some of the most common advice on planet earth
00:15:58.560yeah no pain no gain or a league of their own what what makes it hard is what makes it great
00:16:03.920that's right there's no crying in baseball that's the bait and switch of the book right it's got
00:16:08.220cool curse words on the cover and he's saying he's going to teach you the art of not giving a0.99
00:16:12.780fuck and then very quickly it's like okay it's not actually about not giving a fuck it's about how0.99
00:16:17.120adversity makes us stronger sure it's like yeah i've seen brave art now i get it and i've seen1.00
00:16:23.440La Liga of Their Own. I love how we have the most quintessential straight and gay.
00:16:29.280Those are our two touchstones. I'm like, let's bring it back to Dottie.
00:16:34.540I did just think of Braveheart off the top of my head and the idea that La Liga of Their Own
00:16:38.740came to your mind. It's so good. And I had some Mariah Carey lyrics ready.
00:16:43.720All right. And a lot of his attempts to illustrate this point are just sort of forced,
00:16:49.320half-baked i'm gonna send you some illustrative examples oh no okay he says
00:16:56.580the misadventures of disappointment panda if i could invent a superhero i would invent one
00:17:03.160called disappointment panda he'd wear a cheesy eye mask and a shirt with a giant capital t on it
00:17:08.840that was way too small for his big panda belly and his superpower would be to tell people harsh
00:17:14.520truths about themselves that they needed to hear but didn't want to accept oh i don't even know
00:17:20.960really what he's saying here but it's just annoying his whole point is that like people
00:17:24.480need to hear harsh truths or whatever but yeah we do not need disappointment panda to illustrate
00:17:30.200this point you know what is it doing mark yeah and all he's really saying here is just you should
00:17:38.400have a realistic assessment of your like skills like if you want to be a singer yeah and you're
00:17:42.780not very good at singing you probably shouldn't try to do that i guess sometimes he just sort of
00:17:46.480rambles on for half a chapter like this people need to be aware that they're not good at everything
00:17:51.840there is a chapter called the value of suffering okay where the primary anecdote he uses is the
00:17:58.420story of the holdout japanese soldiers after world war ii do you know that story uh i think vaguely
00:18:04.480but i feel like if i try to summarize that i'm going to get something egregiously wrong and
00:18:07.880embarrass myself. So why don't you tell me? Yeah. So there were Japanese soldiers deployed
00:18:12.440throughout the South Pacific. And when the war ended, many of them did not get word. And when
00:18:19.780they were told that the Japanese had surrendered, they thought it was propaganda from the enemy to
00:18:26.200get them to surrender. And so there were several people who just held out for decades. And the
00:18:31.320last holdout is Hiro Onoda. He returns to Japan in the 1970s. And, you know, he had spent the
00:18:37.720whole time, bending for himself, launching attacks on local populations. He says that he doesn't
00:18:44.440regret staying in the South Pacific. And in fact, he was proud. He was content because even though
00:18:50.300he suffered, he suffered in service of a goal that he felt was admirable. Right. He thought he was
00:18:56.400doing a good thing. So I'm going to send you. I feel a lesson coming on. He says Hiro Onoda's
00:19:02.840highest value was complete loyalty and service to the Japanese empire. This value, in case you
00:19:07.600couldn't tell from reading about him, stank worse than a rotten sushi roll. It created really shitty0.99
00:19:12.420problems for Hero. Namely, he got stuck on a remote island where he lived off bugs and worms for 30
00:19:17.840years. Oh, and he felt compelled to murder innocent civilians too. So despite the fact that Hero saw
00:19:23.940himself as a success, and despite the fact that he lived up to his metrics, I think we can all agree0.85
00:19:29.500that his life really sucked. None of us would trade shoes with him given the opportunity, nor would we0.87
00:19:35.620commend his actions okay i mean he's reached the i guess correct conclusion from this weird racist
00:19:42.420sushi roll yeah that's a weird in the middle of it could have picked anything could have picked
00:19:47.380anything that smells bad anything so he's basically said so far that facing adversity
00:19:52.840is character building it's affirming and now he gets to this example that sort of shows the
00:20:00.220inadequacy of it. Right. You know, Onoda was content, but he wasn't a good person. Right. And
00:20:05.880so you want to face adversity, yes, but you want to face it in service of good values. And Manson
00:20:15.100gives five. One, taking responsibility for everything that happens to you. Okay. Two,
00:20:21.940acknowledging uncertainty. Three, willingness to accept failure. Four, the willingness to say and
00:20:27.860here no okay and five awareness of one's own mortality uh that one's a bizarre outlier but
00:20:35.260he says paying vigilant attention to one's own death is perhaps the only thing capable of helping
00:20:41.080us keep all our other values in proper perspective i want to be better at tennis but okay if you paid
00:20:46.780attention in like a sophomore year philosophy some shades of stoicism here a lot of a lot of
00:20:53.560people pointed this out when the book came out and then he like wrote a blog post being like
00:20:57.560i'm actually not an adherent of stoicism and here's why and then and then other uh actual
00:21:03.180adherents of stoicism were like he completely misunderstands stoicism yes you are so we've0.78
00:21:11.780transitioned from don't give a fuck to actually there are five values that we must all care about0.98
00:21:19.160in order to be good and valuable people right this is the opposite of not giving a fuck right1.00
00:21:23.260This is giving a very specific type of fuck.0.99
00:21:26.320But then, of course, it is because, like, even in his opening example from his blog post, he's like, we all love people who don't give a fuck.1.00
00:21:34.260We like people who selectively don't give a fuck or don't give a fuck about things that don't really matter.0.99
00:21:39.460But somebody who doesn't give a fuck about anything would be like Bartleby the Scrivener.0.99
00:21:43.120I want to hone in on one of Manson's ideas, one of his values, the idea that you should take responsibility for everything in your life.0.97
00:21:53.720It's nice to see a self-help book finally advocating for individual responsibility.
00:22:28.980There are a lot of things in this book that are presented as harsh truth, but I think a lot of people want to believe that just because something is harsh, that means it's a harsh truth.
00:26:19.220But he never quite gets there and he never squares it with his, like, take responsibility bullshit because it's not really meaningful advice.0.97
00:26:26.760You need to become one percent better at ignoring your son's death every day.0.95
00:26:33.520Obviously, what was happening here is that that guy's comment shook him up a little bit and made him realize that there was something inadequate about what he was offering, what he was saying.
00:26:44.320And rather than try to look inward and think about what was like missing from his philosophy.
00:27:49.620At one point, he even uses the phrase, the pampering of the American mind, which made me think that he was inspired by the original essay, The Coddling of the American Mind.
00:27:59.440And also, Mark Manson now recommends the book.
00:28:03.740Oh, is he about to take us to Oberlin?
00:28:05.520Don't worry. He doesn't get that detailed. That would require a level of research that Mark is deeply unwilling to engage in.
00:28:12.640The eight minutes of Googling that the authors of The Coddling of the American Mind did to
00:28:42.640Sometime in the 1960s, developing high self-esteem, having positive thoughts and feelings about oneself, became all the rage in psychology.
00:28:51.260Research found that people who thought highly about themselves generally performed better and caused fewer problems.
00:28:56.480As a result, beginning in the next decade, the 70s, self-esteem practices began to be taught by parents, emphasized by therapists, politicians, and teachers, and instituted into educational policy.
00:29:07.700Grade inflation, for example, was implemented to make low-achieving kids feel better about their lack of achievement.
00:29:13.380Participation awards and bogus trophies were invented for any number of mundane and expected activities.
00:29:20.460The funniest thing about this is that he says, like, in the 60s, self-esteem.
00:29:24.100And he's like, the next decade, the 70s.
00:30:02.840The causes are complex. The consensus seems to be that it's the result of perverse incentives among the schools, right? Schools want high graduation rates. They want to place students in good colleges. Colleges want to place students in good jobs. All of that creates upward pressure on grades. It's not because they're just trying to be nice to the kids.
00:30:20.900Yeah. Like, oh, they can't handle getting a D. The participation trophy thing. I mean,
00:30:25.020barely worth addressing. But someone over at Slate looked into this a few years ago and traced
00:30:30.760participation trophies back like 100 years. It's just a way to encourage kids to get into sports.
00:30:36.700So all of this is just bullshit. And he he like hits on all of the dumb conservative talking1.00
00:30:45.480points here. He says, numerous professors and educators have noted a lack of emotional resilience0.98
00:30:51.540and an excess of selfish demands in today's young people. It's not uncommon now for books to be
00:30:56.940removed from a class's curriculum for no other reason than that they made someone feel bad.
00:31:02.400Speakers and professors are shouted down and banned from campuses for infractions as simple
00:31:07.000as suggesting that maybe some Halloween costumes really aren't that offensive.
00:31:10.860Oh my God. Chapter 12. What is a woman? Can you define it?
00:31:42.940My – it's also so fucked up that like my brain is so fried that when he says Halloween costumes, I actually know the specific incident that he's talking about.0.98
00:31:53.640It's like I have all these fucking fake anecdotes bouncing around in my head and I'm like, oh, yeah, that was the one at Yale where like the guy was reacting and got in fire.1.00
00:32:03.800Mariah Carey lyrics and fucking cancel culture anecdotes is all I have left.0.96
00:32:08.380And then you're like, tell me about World War II.0.96
00:32:10.120And I'm like, well, no, tell me about it.
00:32:11.980The more cancel culture anecdotes enter your brain, the more you lose your grip on Mariah.
00:32:17.700One day you'll be listening to All I Want for Christmas is You and not quite remembering the lyrics and you will know that you have gone too far.
00:32:23.920It's very funny to me that that's the only Mariah Carey song that you can name.
00:42:30.760And I think a lot of self-help is like that, where it's just getting people at a time when
00:42:37.100they need advice more than they need any specific advice and are using advice it's like the feeling
00:42:45.200that you're receiving advice is itself therapeutic right and so a lot of people i think are just at
00:42:51.320like a you know crossroads in their life for whatever reason they read a book like this and
00:42:55.720they come away with like a good impression because they just needed to be like talked to but this is
00:43:00.720also why i have like basically no contempt for people who read and enjoy these books but
00:43:06.720bottomless contempt for the authors because like they're fulfilling a real emotional need
00:43:11.220for people and sometimes you just need a little pep talk absolutely like i think that's totally
00:43:14.880fine and i think yeah honestly there's there's ways of writing these books that are like not
00:43:19.540that shitty and like i get that they're in an individualistic frame and they never cover
00:43:23.260structural solutions etc and like the sort of limitations of the genre are kind of inherently0.61
00:43:28.220baked into these books and that's fine but there's like a responsible way to do this tell people like0.97
00:43:33.460you're not a piece of shit and like you can do stuff and like everything's going to turn out0.70
00:43:37.300okay i think fulfilling that emotional need is totally fine yeah and even like in this book it0.98
00:43:42.460sounds like the actual core advice is like set a goal and like try to work through adversity and
00:43:47.840it might be hard sometimes and like that's that's like at the bottom of it pretty reasonable advice
00:43:53.420The problem is when you then package it with this weird worldview stuff and this weird like, wow, kids have like too much participation trophies and stuff that is basically misinformation or a way of looking at the world where it's like you're not just getting this pep talk.
00:44:08.840You're getting a pep talk that makes you think that it requires you to like step on other people or that like other people are doing this wrong as opposed to like, hey, everybody's going through it.
00:44:18.180You're going through it. Other people are, too. And like, let's all just be kind of as nice to each other as we can while we're trying to achieve, you know, the goals that we have.
00:44:26.780Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I understand wanting to read a book about functionally bettering yourself. That's a very that's a very normal impulse. I can't look down on people who do that. I watch probably three hours a month of Kansas City Chiefs highlights from the 2019 playoffs. That's I watch them and I'm ready to tackle the day.