Not giving a f*ck with Mark Manson

0:02 A listener production. Hey guys, you're listening to Crappy to Happy. I'm cash done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy to Happy books. In this series, we look at all of the factors that might be making you feel crappy and give you the tools and the techniques that will help you to overcome them. In each episode, I introduce you to interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field, and my hope is that they will help you feel less crappy and more happy. This episode of Crappy to Happy contains a little adult language, so if that's not for you, you might want to switch to another episode. And if you've got little ears around, you might want to put in some earbuds. So today we are speaking to Mark Manson, who is the best selling author, most famous for his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and more recently, his new book Everything Is Fucked, a book about hope. He describes himself as a writer who gives advice that doesn't suck, and says some people think he's an idiot, whereas other people say he saved their lives Mark and I unpacked the paradox of progress, what he hopes his books will give to readers, and why you've been doing happiness all wrong marks. Such a pleasure to have you on the crappy a happy show.

1:15 It's good to be here. Look, I think that you need no introduction. Really, your first book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. If people haven't read it, they have certainly heard of it. And it was an astonishing success, right yeah? Yeah? How many copies were actually done? Here? A total worldwide? I think it's nine million, it's amazing, and then I think down here it's one million. Oh wow, so we're a huge, huge proportion. Yeah, I mean, well it's a country, what twenty five million? Yeah, so it's like one out of yeah, one out of twenty five Australians has it, which is nuts, absolutely nuts. Everybody has certainly heard of it. And now you've obviously just followed up with the second one, Everything is Fucked a book about hope. Yes, and I have read both of them, and obviously so I have quite a lot of Australians. But for anybody who hasn't, I just thought maybe we should start with just is it possible to give a little summary of what the books are about and how they're different, and then we'll talk more in more detail.

2:19 I joke, my joke elevator pitch is that I write self help for people who hate self help. I like to think of it as kind of like a pessimistic self help. You know, most personal development material is like it's very positive, it's very idealistic. It's like, hey, you can do anything, just believe in yourself, you know. And I, you know, I've blogged for ten or twelve years, and I spent a lot of time, you know, reading psychological research, and I just I think humans are kind of awful and and so I wanted to write a self help book that kind of that was the starting point, is like, hey, we're awful, and let's try to be a little bit less awful. How about that?

3:06 I like that. And it's very clear to me that you have read a lot of psychological you know, research, and that you know a lot about psychology. And I really what I liked about the first book is that there's a lot of psychology in there, and you have expressed it in a way that a lot of people will really who perhaps like you, said, wouldn't normally be into self help? Can really grab a hold of those ideas and relate to them? Yeah? Absolutely. And so the second book goes a lot deeper, doesn't it. Yes, can you do? You want to talk a little bit and we'll talk a bit about that. I think, Yeah, it's a denser read, it's a more intellectual read. The success of the first book gave me a little bit of an identity crisis. Can we talk about that for sure? Absolutely, which then kind of inspired the second book. And so I think the second book there some things are taken much further in certain ways.

3:59 And whether that's a good or bad thing, I have no idea. I really enjoyed the second book. I really liked it. Yes, thank you. It's interesting. The second book I knew I was going to It's a harder it's a more difficult read. It's a more challenging read. But I think there's more fruit there. And so I kind of you know, when you have a huge runaway success like the first one, there's this pressure to like reproduce it, like just just copy and paste and do the next one. You know, let's just let's all cash more checks. And I really didn't want to do that, and so I very much looked for ways to both challenge myself but also challenge the reader in new ways, understanding that I would probably alienate some people who love the first book, and being okay with that.

4:46 Have you had much feedback so far? Yeah, So it's interesting. I would say maybe twenty twenty five percent of the fans love the second one even more than the first one. Yeah, and then there's probably about twenty twenty five percent who are like, what the hell are you doing? Just rewrite the first one? You had a good thing going, Mark, why did you mess it up? But overall people like it. It's just it's not having. It doesn't seem to be having, you know, like the subtle Art had this viral impact. Yeah. I think it was so different when it came out and so kind of in your face that people really wanted to talk about it. The second one is more, you know, sit by yourself in a room and stare out the window for.

5:41 A few hours to think about your life, think about what you think, about what you've done exactly. It is a bit like that. It is it is, and I think that it's I like that about it. It challenges us, challenges us all to look at our own I don't know a position about a lot of things in the We live our loves, So now I want to get to talking about that. So the main message of the first book, which you extend on, I think in the second book, is to and for a show called Creptita Happy. And I've written books called Crepta Happy. To stop trying to chase happiness. If the definition of happiness is to never feel uncomfortable, to never feel discomfort, yeah so, And basically that pain is the universal concept.

6:26 Do you want to talk sure about that? Yeah? Yeah, so. I the argument I make is that, and I make it in both books. I think I drill deeper into it into this in the second book. But it's basically that there's no there's no kind of permanent state of satisfaction like this. Satisfaction is a built in component of our psychology. No matter how good things get, no matter how great your relationship is, how much money you make, like whatever, there's going to be dissatisfaction and and there's gonna be certain letdowns and pains and disappointments that come along with that. And so for me, and this is kind of what I was like, this is why it's a pessimistic form of self help, is that instead of running from the pain or running from the dissatisfaction, like, the more important question is is finding dissatisfaction that is worth having? Yes, another way to put it is is find find the crappy that has a good reason for it exactly.

7:28 So it's and I think the phrase that I've heard you use and others use is like, what is it that you're willing to struggle for us? What matters enough? Yes, that you're willing to tolerate the discomfort? Absolutely yes, And it's you know, I rip on happiness a lot, but a lot of that is uh, I just feel like I feel like happiness as a concept has been it's become a cartoon of uh, you know what we should be talking about. You know, it's just this very kind of flippant like, you know, do X, y Z and you'll be happy, you know, type of thing where it's like, no, the human condition is very complicated. Happiness is you can be happy for horrible reasons, you can be happy for great reasons. And so there are a lot more philosophical discussions that need to happen around happiness for sure.

8:19 And some of that is just about your definition of happiness. I tell people, because I've had people have a go at me too about you selling happiness. And what I say is I sell people what they want, but then I give them what they need, sure, of course. And one of the first chapters in my book is if you expect me to feel happy all the time, you screw bad luck. And I talk about the idea and you talk about this as well, you know, this idea of finding meaning. And one really good example. I don't think you haven't had kids yet, no, but think about parenting. Probably some of the shittiest experiences, like the most painful, the most uncomfortable, absolutely, but the most joyful and meaningful. And that's just one example of the ways that we tolerate discomfort in the service of something. Yeah that matters.

9:04 It's funny because there's a there was a famous study that came out like ten years ago, and I remember there were headlines on all these publications where it found that, uh, new parents of newborns are the unhappiest demographic, like in society, I believe it and so and the articles were like, so scientists say that you shouldn't have kids because you won't be happy. And I'm like, that is the stupidest conclusion you could, like exactly if there's anything that shows that happiness is a poor metric to measure everything by, you know, like that's a perfect example because if you if you talk to any parent, they're like, it's the most important thing I've ever done. It's the best thing I've ever done. And yeah, it's miserable sometimes.

9:45 Well any relationship really absolutely, you know, and you know, there's lots of other examples. I just think that's that one really kind of feels it well, but there's lots of other things. It's interesting. I was talking to a friend like a week ago about this, Like it's the original, like the definition of happiness. Originally it had two separate definitions. So like if you dig back into like ancient philosophy, like Aristotle said, there are two forms of happiness with hidonia and youd aemonia, and like the hedonia is like pleasure based, you know, it's like feeling good like drinking a beer and buying a new car or something like. It's very pleasure simplistic and superficial, and it's very temporary and then the other form of happiness is like this deeper fulfillment that you have, this deeper purpose, you have, this this struggle or meaning behind your actions, that it will sustain you over a long period of time. And if you look at you know, a lot of people, so like in the US, we have in baked into our like constitution and declaration of independence is the right life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. So it's a huge part of American creatures, this pursuit of happiness. But really, like what they were referring to is that that second more fulfillment based you know, it's it's basically like a modern translation, it would be you have the right to life liberty in the pursuit of purpose, the pursuit of finding something important to yourself.

11:19 But I think through like commercialism and advertising and consumerism and everything that's gotten caricatured into you know, feeling all the time, feeling good constantly, which is the wrong approach. Can we talk about the paradox of progress. The wealthier we get, the unhappier we are. That's one of the points in your second book. Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because there's a lot of research and a lot of it's very recent that's coming out, that's finding. You know, there's talk of like a mental health crisis, rates of anxiety, depression, suicide. I'm not sure about here, but like in the US, drug overdoses, like it's becoming. These are all growing problems. And what's fascinating is is these things are happening in some of the wealthiest and most comfortable parts of the country, but also the world. You know, if you look at rates of suicide, you know, they track pretty well to how developed and safe a country is. There's also a lot of like global studies on a sense of meaning or purpose, and it's the wealthiest countries report the lowest sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. The wealthiest countries have the highest rates of pessimism. I think in the US it's only six percent of people think that the country is going to be better off in twenty years than it is today. And it's so's there's this weird thing where it's like the safer and more comfortable we all get,

12:52 the more we start freaking out about stuff. And I think that the starting point for the new book. Although there's a lot of psych personal psychology in it, was very much like what the hell's going on? Yeah, like why what is it about? And it kind of like, I think, on an intuitive level, it kind of makes sense. Like if you're if you're like a subsistence farmer in India, it's very easy to be motivated, like you need food, you know. So it's like you wake up every day and there's no abstract question of like what is the point of my life and what should I work on today? It's like, no, you gotta go get food, like there's or you're gonna starve. Whereas when you're sitting in like a nice air conditioned apartment with five hundred shows on Netflix and twenty five different types of food can be delivered to you from a push of a button, this question of like what what is the value of my life?

13:53 What is the purpose my life? What should I hope for? Like these are these actually become very difficult questions to answer because because it's almost like the the amount of opportunity and in possibility is paralyzing. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it. It's I was just thinking about the whole you know, Maslow's hierarchy, where you have your basic needs met and then you then can you move up to the next one, like when you're safe and when you're fed, and when you you know, then there's love and sex and whatever, and so almost like when you get to the peak of the self actualization, there's this existential. Crisis totally, and it's I think what's interesting too is if you think about those higher levels of the hierarchy, like the belonging, the self esteem, and the self actualization, like those are difficult personal questions that you have to answer for yourself, and I think modern life complicates those things.

14:48 You know, it's when you're being blasted by five hundred different messages every time you go online, it's hard to know what you want to belong to. It's hard to know what you should be proud of. And so in a weird way, I think it's the connectivity of the twenty first century has made it more difficult to define ourselves and define what we want for ourselves. And you talk also again you just reminded me then about which I thought was really interesting, the difference between freedom and variety. Yeah, and people think they have more freedom and all they've actually got is more variety. Do you want to just talk sure about that? A bit.

15:30 Yeah, I think this is another I don't know how how much this resonates down here, but in the US there's you know where Americas we love freedom. You know, yes, we got our guns, we got our beers, we got our freedom. It's a huge part of our culture. And I think the consumerism is a big part of that as well. And I think implicit in that kind of love of freedom is I think people mistake having more options as being more free. And I think that's true up to a certain extent. So you know, if you don't, like if you're if a kid has no school that they can go to, giving them one school that they can go to is an increase in freedom. If a kid only has one school they can go to and you give them an option like two or three, that's an increase of freedom. If you give them an option of like fifty, at some point, you're not increasing their freedom anymore. In fact, you're actually you're creating more anxiety in uncertainty around whatever choice they make. And so I think there's kind of there's like a bandwidth limit our in our brain in terms of the amount of options that we're able to comprehend and handle and I think once we exceed that limit, more options actually reduces freedom because we know paralizing, Yeah, because we no longer feel

17:00 confident in our own choices. Yeah, and we know no longer we start experiencing fomo and anxiety that we didn't pick the right thing and that maybe this was better. And you know what, I can't I can't decide. It's too overwhelming. And so the argument I make in the book is that I think we need to reconceptualize freedom as it's not having more options. It's it's choosing to limit ourselves to less, like very consciously being like, Okay, I could do these twenty things, but I'm going to focus on these two. Like that's the new kind of twenty first century form of freedom. That coming back to the idea of knowing what matters, like choosing your values and then making your. Decisions, knowing what to give a fuck about, knowing what to give a fuck about exactly, yeah, exactly, because it's it's it is paralyzing, you know, and it's like I think everybody. I think this is part of what made the first book resonate so much, is that everybody is feeling this, but nobody it's hard. I think, you know, not to pat myself on the back, but maybe I'm one of the first people that's kind of putting language to it. Of like, people know they care about this one thing, but there's so much other stuff.

18:12 Going on in their life. You know, they every time they open their phone, all the people they're talking to, every time they turn on the TV, that they feel pulled away from that one thing they care about constantly, and they don't they don't realize it, and it causes a lot of stress and despair because they feel like they're incapable of focusing on that one thing they care about. And so in subtle Art, Subtle Art was very much about figure out what that one thing you care about is, become conscious of that. And then this new book, at least the part two of this new book is very much about, Okay, how do we cut out all the crap? How do we limit ourselves and limit our exposure to all the noise and nonsense that's going on all the time.

19:00 Mark there is a quote in the second book which is that your identity will say your identity until a new experience acts against it. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Sure? So you know, we love to believe that we could think our way to being different. You know, we love to think that, Man, if I just read this book, or if I just learn, you know, what to eat, I'll be a different person. And it doesn't work that way because basically, you know, who we are is is essentially just what we value. And so if you want to value different things, you can't think your way to new values. You have to experience have experiences that promote those new values in your mind. And the nature of those experiences whenever you experience something that's kind of contrary to your current values is by definition stressful and uncomfortable.

20:04 So it's like if I, you know, like let's say I'm going to use like a really silly, superficial example, but like let's say I struggle to get up in the morning and I decide, you know, you know what, I'm going to be the type of person that wakes up at five am every day. Well, I can read books about sleep patterns, sleep habits, morning routines, I can listen to podcasts, I can do whatever. None of those things are actually going to get me up in the morning. I have to have the experience of getting up in the morning. And because that experience is contrary to who I already am, it's going to be a painful experience. By definition, it will be a painful experience. And this is true of everything. If you want to you know, if you want to emotionally let go of a partner, or if you want to change careers, like you have to seek out contrary experiences to your current to your current values. And because those are contrary experiences, they will be uncomfortable, they will hurt, they will be difficult, you will freak out and uh, and so by by that, like this is why I I I shot on like the the kind of the airy fairy woo woo flavors of self help, you know of like this idea that you can walk in a room and uh jump and cheer and dance and then come out three hours later a new person. Like it's it doesn't work that way, Like personal change is a I think in so art, I call it a contact sport. Like it is. It's ugly,

21:37 it's uh, it's it's dirty, it's there's a lot of uncertainty. There's you have relapses, you have self doubt, you lose your confidence. But this is part of it, like you have to live through that to come out the other side a different person. Yes, completely agree. And I guess going back to the original point, if you're not willing to tolerate that discomfort, yes, you're never going to have that change. You're never going to make those important change. Absolutely. It's there's a certain tolerance, tolerance of discomfort or tolerance of pain that's required to make those changes. And I think that's why. I mean, it's interesting when you look at habit research, you find, like there's a there's this book called Power of Habit by Charles S. Douhigg, and it's one of the things he talks about that's really remarkable is that you have a lot of people who you know their life will be kind of a mess, and once they get the first big change, like it kind of creates this domino effect. So you'll get somebody who's like a couch potato, unemployed, no confidence or whatever, and they manage to start jogging and they develop a jogging habit and suddenly they stop smoking, they get a job, they like, get their finances together, like suddenly everything else starts falling into place. And I think a big reason for that is that it's not only are you just

23:10 taking up jogging, but you are You're building that that pain tolerance, You're building that ability to weather through the uncertainty and the self doubt and the discomfort, so that attacking those other habits and those other behavioral changes no longer feel impossible to you. And I think in any underneath all of that is knowing why, right, not knowing why that change matters. Why do you want to be a jogger? Why do it? Because in the space that I work in too, like people will say, I want to do this differently, want to break this habit, I want to eat better, I want to lose why, Because you're not going to do that hard work and tolerate that discomfort unless there's something that's much more important than that is temporary feelings of.

23:54 Yes, discomfort, absolutely, And it's a values question, yeah, totally. And if your why is like you know, I want to fit into my swimsuit next month, you know, it's it's sustainable, sustainable, it's it's yeah. The why has to go much deeper than that, you know, And it's I think it's why you see people who have like real serious health scares, like I had a friend who had a stroke at a very young age, like four or five years ago, and man, it's just everything snapped in the shape because it's you're confronted with that mortality. It's like, wow, I can't I can't get away with like standing up drinking the three am a bunch, you know, It's like, I I've got to take care of myself.

24:43 It's a difference too between because what you said is so true. We are not lacking information. No, if anything, we have too much exactly. But the thing that makes the difference is that, well it's the it's the why. But it's an insight that comes from sometimes unexpected places. But it's an insight that shifts something fundamentally. Right, Yes, yeah, and that's what That's what gets people to do things differently. And and I think that the why, the important thing is that the why it comes from something deeper than simply you know what people are going to think about you, which is I think where most people's why comes from.

25:25 Most of the time, it's it's like, all right, I'm going to do this so my co workers are impressed, or I'm going to do this to because it's you know, my parents will approve of me, Like that's a never ending hamster wheel, Like you can never scratch that itch completely. Like there's got to be something deeper going on to motivate a lot of this stuff. And I think this all also goes back to it. We haven't really talked about it just yet, but I think this also goes back to your whole idea. You spend a lot of time talking about the difference between the thinking brain and the feeling brain. Yeah, yeah, I've got a nice little metaphor. It's funny. So the second chapter of the book, I create this metaphor about the thinking brain the feeling brain. They're like, they're like a disgruntled couple on a road trip, and and that road trips called your life. And I basically just see how long I can keep this ridiculous metaphor going.

26:22 And it works well. It did work well. It did work well. So basically, you know, if you look at kind of how our psychology is constructed, we have a thinking brain, a feeling brain, feeling brains, motions, impulses, desires. Very primitive, very like low right lizard brain. Yes, yeah, it's unconscious, or most of it's unconscious. And then the thinking brain is is very much a conscious rational like you know, it thinks ahead, thinks abstractly about the future and the past and who we are and all these things. You know, most of our assumptions are that our thinking brain is if our life is a car, our assumptions tend to be that our thinking brain is driving, and our feeling brain is like this obnoxious person in the passenger seat who's like screaming and pointing out the window, and you're like, shut up, feeling brain, Like adults are driving, I know where I'm going, And I think when we talk about the subjects of like self discipline and habits and willpower, like they're always portrayed through this idea that your thinking brain that like you intellectually know what you should do, and so you just have to exert enough force and power on your emotions to get them shut up long enough for you to go do it. And it turns out that this is like, not only is it a wrong assumption, but it's actually very damaging in

27:54 many ways, because really what's happening in our brain is the feeling brain's driving, and the thinking brain is sitting in the passenger seat with the map, and it doesn't matter how good your map is. The feeling brain's going to go where it wants to go, and anybody who's set you know, I'll use myself as an example. I've probably read like fifteen books on fitness and nutrition, and you know I still order the burger and fries when I check in the hotel each night. So it's u you know, my thinking brain's got the map. Map's not the issue. It's so true. You just reminded me too of something that we learn in like sales and selling. It's the you purchase with your emotions and you justify yes with your absolutely thinking brain. I hope you're enjoying season four of the show, and hey, I would love for you to check out my brand new YouTube channel where I'm sharing even more tips on how you can feel less crappy and more happy. It's YouTube dot com Forward slash cast Done, so come over check it out. I'd love for you to subscribe, And if you haven't already taken my free seven day happiness challenge, you can sign up for that at cast doone dot com Forward slash Happiness marking your experience. Why do you think that it is that some people are much more inclined to to move

29:25 towards those challenges, to put themselves out there and embrace those challenges on that discomfort, and other people run do anything to avoid. I think so some people never never get that experience early on that pursuing challenge or discomfort is healthy actually helps them. So if you think of somebody that grows up in like a very positive environment, loving family, all this stuff, Like if you like one of the things I talked about, it's like basically what good parenting is is you give your kids modest challenges that you're pretty sure they can overcome, because once the kid takes on that challenge and overcomes it, it builds confidence, it builds self reliance, It helps them develop their emotional maturity, all these things. If you grow up in a really fucked up environment where the my goodness, my stomach scrumbling.

30:23 Apologies, I had a half a silize the pates for breakfast. Speaking of burger and fries. But like, if you're somebody who grows up in like a really fucked up environment as a kid, like the challenges put in front of you are way too big for you to handle, And I think that that's that could be like a very simplistic way of describing what trauma is is that it's it's challenges and pain that are way past your ability to cope and deal with them. And so people who experience that, what they learn is that challenging pain is dangerous, avoid at all costs. And and again, thinking brain feeling brain.

31:15 You know, they can read, they can go to therapy, they can read books, they can understand intellectually that they need to be challenging themselves, they need to get off the couch and do this, and that their thinking brain can have the map completely laid out, but they're feeling brain, because it's sustained those traumatic experiences will just have such an aversion to any sort of discomfort that will be incredibly difficult for them to actually do it. Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that too, because I think that is another criticism of some of the more popular self help you can do anything kind of messaging, because there are some people who really are why not that they can never overcome them, sure, but they certainly have a lot further to go in overcoming those experiences and rewiring that absolutely.

32:09 And I like to think of I mean, I think of it in a very Buddhist way, which is that we all have our own journey. We all have our own path, and some of our paths intersect and combined for a while, but they usually split off at some point. And some people's paths are much longer and deeper. And I think when you look at, like say mental health issues, people, their paths are very different, you know. So somebody who struggles a lot with anxiety is going to have a very different path than somebody who, say, struggles with apathy or depression. And so this kind of one size fits all model, I think is not only disingenuous, but I think it can actually it can be dangerous, yes, especially when you're you're talking about like deeper mental health issues.

32:59 And that's It's one thing that I'm always very adamant about in my interviews and when I do press and when I'm on stage is like I tell people, I'm like, look, I don't have all the answers, and I'm also like I'm often I often get asked things that it is just out of my pay grade, you know. People. I did an event like a couple of weeks ago, when somebody got up and she was like, I suffer from bipolar disorder and I've you know, tried to kill myself and I just looked at her. I'm like, I'm not the person you should be talking to. I mean, I'm glad, I'm glad you like my books, but like, I'm not qualified for this, And uh.

33:41 Well, can I just say I am qualified? And I still would not answer a question from an audience member off a stage on a Facebook message in absolutely because I get them too. Yeah, And I am a psychologist and I have to say to people, this is not this is not the space, this is not I would lose my registration if I attempted to. Yeah, right, it's unethical. Absolutely, and it's I think people, you know, the classic therapeutic context of like one on one in a private room, confidentiality, like that meeting every week, you know, like that exists for a reason because these are long term things that you require a relationship with a person to to help you cope and overcome a lot of these issues. Yeah, and yeah, the self help industry in general just kind of completely ignores that.

34:31 And we have a thing, you know, in psychology. You know, there is a thing called psycho education, which is this like sharing general information much like we would find in a book or on a blog or a podcast, which is general information, which is broadly applicable, but it is no replacement, no substitute for individual Yeah. I always tell people, I say, like I'm I'm a mild problem expert. So like, you know, if you got fired girlfriend, dumb to you like, I'm your but if you got serious shit like serious, they don't. Not your guy. No, I'm not your guy. No fair enough to So like in the second book, there's a lot in there about there are a lot of problems in the world at the moment, and a lot of those solutions would require us to be united in our approach to dealing with them. I'm talking about big things like there's climate change, and there's all sorts of stuff going on. We seem to be more divided, particularly politically, than we ever have been. Why do you think that is?

35:38 This is something that's bothered me, and I've spent a lot of time reading and thinking about, especially because I've noticed it in my own career. You know, I've I've written, I've blogged and published online for twelve years now, and I've always gotten I've always gotten criticized. But like the first eight or nine years of my career, those criticisms were like, you know, hey, stop using the F word, or like you're an idiot, just kind of generic trolley Internet stuff. And like the last couple years, the criticisms have been incredibly politicized. So you know, I get called racist, homophobic, socialist, communist, fascists like you name it. I've been called it, wow, And my writing is not even political. And so I've this it's a subject that's very close to home for me, and I've and I've been researching and thinking about it a lot. I mean, the conclusion I basically came down to is I think it's it's a combination of two things.

36:44 The first one is what we were talking about earlier in terms of people are the more information you give people, the more it actually complicates their ability to define themselves and fulfill some of those higher needs on Maso's hierarchy. So it's harder to know what I should be proud of when anything I can do there's like an eleven year old on the Internet that's better than me at it. It's hard to know who I want to belong to when every single group that I'm aware of is constantly being criticized and attacked, and so I think the easiest way to kind of create an identity for yourself is to jump into one of these US versus Them dichotomies.

37:32 It's like the bare minimum easiest human function that we kind of fall back to when we don't really know what else to do. It's like, well, everything's confusing and seems threatening, and I'm anxious all the time. So I'm going to find a bunch of people who seem like they're the way I am, and it's going to be us against the world. And I think we're all kind of unconsciously like nudging ourselves into one of those corners. So that's I think the first issue is just it's that human bandwidth problem that I talked about earlier. The second issue is, I think just the nature of the Internet. Unfortunately, it creates incentives. So like, let's say you write a really powerful, profound article and it goes viral and it gets tons of attention and people are like, oh my god, Cass is amazing. The easiest, the lowest hanging fruit. Let's say I'm another writer. The lowest hanging fruit for me, as another writer who wants the same attention you're getting is to just shit all over whatever you're saying, because then now my article is going to go viral because everybody read yours and liked it is going to read mine, And so then people just start instinctively picking sides because everything is contradicted. So no matter what you commit to, if that commitment, if that, if that position or that identity starts to become validated and become popular, it's now

39:06 in everybody else's interest to attack that and contradict it so they can siphon off that validation and popularity themselves. And so it just creates this incredibly fragmented and contentious culture where all of the incentives are lined up to not cooperate, to not listen to each other, to not have good faith towards the other person. And then you combine that with a bunch of increasingly lonely people with identity crises, and I think you get our modern political situation. Mark. I want to pick up on something you said there because that is so true. Particularly you know, I've got a podcast down, I've got books out, and there is that it's a fear that I'll put something out there and somebody's going to judge me, criticize me. Now, some people care more about that than others. You said, You've got a lot of people who just told you that you're stupid, and that didn't bother you. But it does.

39:56 It does bother a lot of people. Yeah, Like, and everybody's everybody's a critic. Yeah, And that's a huge platform now for people to jump all over. So how do we what do we do about that? So there, I think there's two things here. I mean, one is just anything you do, there's there's gonna people some people are not gonna like it. And I think that that is just a fundamental fact of doing anything in the world that we all have to overcome to a certain extent. And I know, as a creative person, you know, putting my work into the world, like it took me a while to kind of come to terms of that. Are like, look, you know, no, not everybody's gonna love my books. Some people are going to really dislike it. That's fine. Some people are gonna think I'm stupid, that's fine. That's one level. I think that the second level that is starting to happen today is that there's this moral criticism that is becoming commonplace. So it's not just that somebody dislikes my writing, it's that I am a fascist. It's not just that somebody thinks disagrees with me, it's they think I'm a liar and uh, knowingly exploiting people.

41:03 And that's becoming much more commonplace today. And so that that to me is a social issue, Like there's something what is it about our culture today that is making it okay too to moralize everything? Because I don't think we want to moralize everything. I think we need that we should be very careful about what we moralize. But for whatever reason, you know, the the nature of the internet and technology right now is it's it's pushing us towards moralizing everything. I see that a lot too, and I do. I think that is such a big problem today. And reading your book really gave me a kind of a pose to reflect on myself, because we do we moralize people for their political No longer just disagree politically. We moralize people for their political preferences. Yes, we are in such and not just politics, you know, religion, there's a lot of that us versus them. Do you think we seem to be losing the ability to respectfully disagree, to be able to hold space for a bunch of different viewpoints.

42:13 Either you're right or you're wrong, and if you're wrong, you're lose it and you're an awful person and you're a bigot and you're yes, you know absolutely, And the Internet, I think you would you agree that social media has particularly exacerbated that. Oh totally, yeah, because it's people don't even read the article half the time, they read the title and they're just like, ah, this journalist is a bigot, you know. It's it's a yeah, it's a huge problem. And it's what's interesting too, you know, I think it's a misconception. People think that we're becoming more polarized. When I was doing research for this book, like I what fascinating me is that we're actually, at least in the US, we're not more polarized than we were thirty forty years ago.

43:00 It's what's changed is the moralization. So in the nineteen eighties, conservatives still were pro life and wanted small government and you know whatever, Liberals still wanted more welfare programs and whatever. It's just they were willing to talk to each other. They didn't think the other side was evil and like fucking everybody over and today that like, that's what's changed, is that there's this moralization of different political viewpoints, I think. So, I think there's a few things that we need to be aware of and we need to be doing to kind of attack this. But I think one of them is simply reprioritizing face the face engagement with people, especially people that we wouldn't normally engage with or or talk to.

43:52 I think part of the problem of you know, social media has a lot of problems in and of itself, but I think there there are some unnoticed side effects, which is just that people don't go out and hang out with random strangers that they wouldn't normally meet as often. People stick within the same groups that they're comfortable in, and this kind of comes back to like seeking discomfort. So, Mark, what I'm really interested to know is, like for you in writing the book, in coming around and speaking on stages, like what is the message that you really want people to take away? What do you want people to go and do differently or think about differently? I think I would sum it up with the goal for most of human history was to do more, accumulate more learn more, just more and more and more. I think in the twenty first century, given the abundance of all the information opportunities, the name of the game is finding less, finding your less, you know, what are the handful of things that you trust, that are important to you and that matter to you, and then getting good at cutting out all the distractions. And again it's on a personal level, I think it's it's the only way to combat a lot of you know, the kind of the epidemics of distraction, anxiety, FOMO, a lot of these things that we're seeing. It's it's the only way to kind of maintain your productivity in purpose in the face of all the noise going on. And then more socially,

45:24 it's it's it's I mean, I think if if the incentives are lined up in our culture to radicalize us, cut us off from each other, take like double down on our views and not listen to each other, then we need to opt out of that system, you know, like get off social media. Not you don't have to get off completely, but like cut out your use, read less news, only read things that are really important or that are well researched, go outside, see people face the face, join groups, meet people, find people who have different views and like hang out with them, go get a beer or something, you know, Like it's it sounds so fashion and basic, but like it really is. I think it really is an issue. It's people aren't getting that classic face to face contact and sense of community that they once had, and we need to try to get back to that.

46:27 Yeah, that's really interesting. It's a great point. And I think for so long we've talked about we know the importance of social connection and belonging in and we've often said, you know, well, you know, find people with really similar values, and maybe we need to shift it back in the other direction a little bit and find people who well, not that they don't have different values, but different but different opinions. Sure, and get back to that willingness to be able. To because we could have the same we could have the same value, but just disagree on how to get. There, how to get there exactly. Mark, I so appreciate you making the time to come on. This has been a really, really great discussion and I know our listeners are going to love it. Thanks for having me. If you haven't read Mark's books, they are available at all good bookstores or You can find more of his work online at Markmanson dot net. My new book, Crappy to Happy, Love What You Do is out in all good bookstores, so if you want to find more happy in work, go and check it out. Coming up on the next episode is Amy Shepherd from the band Shepherd, who is taking the world by storm with her kiss My Fat Ass movement, encouraging women everywhere to love the skin they're in.

47:40 Crappy to Happy is presented by Cast Dunn, produced by Davis Vilenski, Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener