The opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness. If you’re angry or sad, [...] That means something still matters. That means you still have hope. No, the opposite of happiness is hopelessness, an endless grey horizon of resignation and indifference.
Everything is F*cked: a Book About Hope by Mark Manson is a weird self help book, it is about learning to be an adult, learning to give up your childlike values and moving forward towards virtue. Manson argues that we have abandoned our search of virtue and replaced it with a toxic pursuit of happiness, creating alongside it a world of diversions that give us the impression of freedom but instead just end up making us feel imprisoned.
At times the book is excellent, providing interesting insights backed by academic research, expanding on the works of philosophers and writers (Including: Nietzsche, Kant, the Stoics, Freud, Taleb...). I found myself re-reading some of the most interesting points, as well as diving into the cited works to get a better grasp on the topic.
However, more often than not the book falls into Manson's more vulgar style, that seems to be used more for shock rather than to provide something useful to the reader, during these parts I felt compelled to just throw the book away and go read something else.
The books feels very loosely tied together, which is understandable when you realize that plenty of the material was taken from his blog and edited a bit to fit into the book format.
If this is your first time reading Manson, I would advise you to go with his previous book The subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck first. If you are not into Manson's writing style but find the topics interesting, you should try reading something from the Stoics, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Skin in the Game or maybe 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson.
See below for some of my favorite quotes from this book:
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.
So begins We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a fascinating Gothic tale by the hand of Shirley Jackson. Jackson is better known for her short story The Lottery which first appeared in the New Yorker and was quickly surrounded by criticism and outrage, I encourage you to give it a read if you haven't yet. You can find the full story here.
After a fatal incident that killed most of the family, the two Blackwood sisters and their uncle decide to live isolated from the town, which has turned hostile towards them. We discover their world through the voice of Merricat, the younger of the two sisters, who playfully shares with us the dark secrets of the town and her family. Their secluded life is turned upside down when a distant cousin comes to visit, setting the way for some gruesome developments.
Sinister, dark, twisted, horrifying, childlike, funny... these are some of the ways we could describe this novel. Jackson succeeds on creating a sense of uneasiness and horror through the novel, the kind of psychological horror you get by unearthing the dark sides of human nature.
The narrative of the book is superb, and the characters have a live of their own, it is hard not to feel charmed by the voice of Merricat, even when you know she is actually in the wrong.
So, If you are in the mood for a Gothic/Horror tale, look no further, you will be glad you gave We Have Always Lived in the Castle a chance.
You can find some of my favorite quotes from the book below.
DUTIES AND PURPOSE ARE THE VEIL THEY USE TO BLIND YOU TO REALITY.
The following is a Spoiler free review of The Fires of War: The Tyranny of the Archangels. If I ever get around to making a spoiler version of the review I will update with a link here.
The Fires of War: The Tyranny of the Archangels is the debut novel by Steve Sands (@vengefulseven). I wasn't sure what to expect when I first started reading the novel, seeing it described as a Heaven vs Hell story, I feared it would rapidly become a story filled with the same old tropes that are all too common to the Fantasy setting. I can say I was pleasantly surprised.
Steve Sands introduces some interesting concepts into his fantasy world, a mix between ancient myths and different religions, from the way religions develop into our world to how Heaven really works. During the journey, the protagonists stumble into interesting revelations that I felt they could have been explored more deeply, while these revelations do end up affecting the plot and shaping up the characters, they presented the opportunity to delve into interesting philosophical questions that remained unexplored.
As for the plot, it moves along at a nice pace, providing the necessary explanations behind most of the events, and aside from a few instances where things happen a certain way or at a certain time just because the plot needs them to, it blends together as a logical chain of events while setting the stage for a follow-up novel.
The writing is pretty simple and easy to follow along, It has some funny/witty lines every now and then, and it shows us that there are good and bad characters in both sides of the struggle, each with his own unique strengths and weaknesses. That being said I did find some issues with the writing. Most characters that we are presented with do not have a distinctive enough description, sure, some are tall or yellow, but for the most part we are left with little indication as to how we should picture these characters. Aside from that, the novel needs some polishing as you run into typos and other minor errors that subtract from the enjoyment of the story, although I'm told that at least the ones I ran into have been fixed so far.
Overall the novel is a fun, fast-paced read with some interesting concepts that could have been a lot better if it had been further polished.
Would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity? Philosophy offers counsel.
This is one of the books I have enjoyed the most during the current year.
Often criticized by his riches, power, and opulent life-style, sometimes viewed as a Stoic more in name than in practice, Seneca, one of the greatest figures of Stoicism, shows us the core of his philosophy throughout these letters.
But please do not confuse this with modern philosophy which mostly deals with theoretical problems, Seneca views philosophy as a way to attain virtue and lead a good life regardless of the circumstances surrounding oneself. As such, each of these letters concerns itself with a different topic or emotion that Seneca is discussing with his friend Lucilus, providing valuable insight to deal with real life problems. Seneca deals with topics such as: friendship, riches, death, misfortune, suffering...
You want to live—but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying—and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?
In spite of his renown as a Stoic, Seneca is often quoting from other schools of thought, arguing that what is important is what is being said, and not the one who says it.
For Seneca, the key to a happy life lies in attaining wisdom, but this cannot be attained by accident or gifted by fortune, it requires daily practice and hard work, it require us to be aware of our own failings so that we may rose ourselves out of our errors.
There are plenty of lessons to be learned from this books. You can find some notable quotes below:
Reading Principles proved to be a pretty bittersweet experience. As a book, it is pretty bad, being very long and highly repetitive; however, the ideas presented are valuable enough to warrant a read.
The idea behind the book is pretty simple, billionaire Ray Dalio tell us the story about how he founded Bridgewater and the key principles that ensured its success.
Ray believes the best way to run a company is through and idea meritocracy, the power residing in the reasoning, not the position of the individuals. To achieve this you need 'Radical Transparency' and 'Radical open-mindedness', meaning that you need to make most information available to your employees, and that people should be more focused on finding what is true and how to achieve the goal rather than arguing over who is right.
Over the course of the book we learn about the different techniques used at Bridgewater in order to maintain their high standards, such as using personality test to asses their employees, having 'baseball cards' for each person displaying their skills, as well as Ray's 5 step process to get what you want out of life:
“1. Have clear goals. 2. Identify and don’t tolerate the problems that stand in the way of your achieving those goals. 3. Accurately diagnose the problems to get at their root causes. 4. Design plans that will get you around them. 5. Do what’s necessary to push these designs through to results.”
Overall the book provides some good advice, as it seems to have helped Ray achieves his goal as he steps down from his role in Bridgewater
“The greatest success you can have as the person in charge is to orchestrate others to do things well without you. A step below that is doing things well yourself, and worst of all is doing things poorly yourself.”
(Book Review) Everything is F*cked
