Mark Manson you really know how to fuck things up. I’m quite big into self reflection. I’m quite big into discovering my personality but I’ve never been big on self-help books.
Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, is big news. It’s floating bookshelves and checkouts everywhere and I’ve never read a self-help book in my life. I prefer my written words to be about naked Scottish highlanders, lone gunslingers in other worlds or magicians in parallel realms. Not on finding ways to examine the flaws in my nature while trying to escape the ‘hard’ thoughts of my real life while sunning myself on the sand.
So what on earth possessed me to pick up this book? The fact the masses are sprouting its philosophies as ‘life changing’ and that Chris Hemsworth is the one with the quote on the cover only fortified my academic snobbery that reading it was truly the shittiest idea ever. (Sorry Chris, it’s not that I don’t value your brain, I just like my philosophy referenced with credible sources.) So why? Well the answer’s simple really. It had ‘fuck’ in the title.
Manson’s text is devourable. It’s conversational, logically sequenced and littered with all of the fucks I could ever hope to put into a piece of text. The ideas are not new. The concepts not ground breaking. What is ground breaking is the honesty and brutlaity in the way he phrases them.
His approach to life takes influences from some pretty heavy religious and psychological fields of study but he tells them to you like Uncle Dave would leaning on the shed door with a beer in his hand. His blunt honesty is refreshing but it hurts more than nanny’s backhanded comments about how many lollies you’ve eaten before dinner.
If you’re going to read Manson’s book, hurry up. You might be the last person on Earth left who hasn’t. It’ll be you and that weird guy who has saved up all of season seven of GOT so he can watch them at once and hasn’t spoken to a single human in three months to avoid spoilers. And even then you won’t talk to each other because one of you’ll be afraid that the other will mention the dragon.
I won’t tell you it all. I will spoil bits, but I will give you my big take aways from my first, and let’s be honest, probably the only, self-help book I’ve ever read.
1. I’ve been wrong most of my adult life.
It’s as tough to write that statement as it is to read it. But if Manson’s right, I’ve put all my fucks in the wrong basket from the very beginning. I’m not very good at singing my virtues. I’m really quite shit at it. But I thought, at least internally, I had my deal sorted out. I was realisitic about my cognitive abilities, I knew I was funny sometimes, my personality was generally likeable and all round I believed I was a pretty affable human. I also believed that the body I came in did absolutely nothing to help any of those positives I believed to be true. I have/had (I’m still working on the tense of this issue) always been fat. Not overly pretty, not ugly, but I had a solid, concrete, unwaivalble belief that I am not ever going to be loved or appreciated for my skin folds and packaging.
Manson corrects my feedback loop. I know nothing. None of those things I believe about myself are actually true. My first response was ‘get fucked Manson, you don’t know me or what I’m like’ but I read a paragraph further and it turns out he anticipated that response.
Ultimately he thinks that unless every person in the world tells you consistently that those things are true then how can you believe that about yourself. So while I’m not affable, smart or sometimes funny, I’m also not a fat, almost ugly she-wench that is impossible to be loved or admired because her fat folds sometimes show through her t-shirt. Which leads to my second one.
2. Being an entitled twat has two ends of the spectrum. And I’m at one of them.
Manson tells a story of a spoilt brat who owns the world and believes he’s owed a place in it. I’m not that kind of entitiled. But he tells another story of a sad sack single woman who is desperate and lonely to be loved and of a short man who doesn’t think he’ll ever be loved because he’s short. (This is the part of the book that cut a little close, fuck you Manson.) I am not the first kind of twat. But I am the second. I believe/d (also still working on the tense of that one) that I will never meet anyone because I’m too fat to be dated or considered to be a serious long term option. Manson called bullshit.
Most of us are decidedly average. My facebook feed or my bumbler swiping would tell me differently tonight, but here in the real world, most of us are decidedly average people. Average looking, average wealthy, average fit, just plain fucking average. Am I average? Certainly. Has anyone suggested I’m a freak of a human being that would not be out of place in a season of American Horror Story? No, never. So my belief is just plain wrong and I am an entitled twat for thinking that my case is such a fat and ugly one that I’m more special than anyone else. Afterall, Roseanne Barr never had trouble finding a husband or two, why should I? There is nothing so special about me that I need to be set apart from the rest of the western world’s social norms. I am an entitled twat who needs to believe in her own averageness and just fucking get on with it.
The not so average men of Facebook feed… (The fireman was a volunteer at this year’s Miss Muddy in Brisbane. I’m signing up next year.)and this one came up in Bumbler. I swiped no. Those pecs would poke my eyes out – then where would I be? Face protected for his privacy. Don’t worry – it wasn’t his best feature.
Manson’s entire philosophy is based around the idea that sometimes life sucks. That everyone has shit and it’s all relative and all that you can do as an average human is not give less fucks, but concentrate your fucks into things that really matter. Pick your set of values, put all of your fucks in those baskets and leave the whining and pissing competitions to the those still reading How to Win Friends and Influence People.
This book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but those people will be so disgusted by the profanity in the title they’ll scoff and walk right on past and look for Dr Phil’s guide to conflict avoidance further down the aisle. What it might do is open a whole world of self-examination to a group of people that believe self-help books are wanky, for posers and insecure losers. It might help Davo and Gaz to have a discussion over the back fence about what their values are, and that can never be a bad thing.
For me, I’ve got some unlearning to do. I’m not about to start preaching Buddhism or running Mark Manson worship fan days but I do need to rethink some things. Embracing the idea that I actually know nothing is big, complex and yes, as wanky as it sounds, potentially life changing. There’s a few places I’d like to concentrate more of my energy and a few more I’d like to spend less of it. And if Mark Manson can convince a bunch of non-reflective, emotionally retarded Aussies to evaluate where their value lies, then what’s a few fucks between readers.
life in big frilly knickers 
Cannot wait to read this one xx thanks for the insight it didn’t completely scare me away xx although I do love a good self help book !!
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