The Not So Subtle Art
by Marc Manson
Everybody is talking about this book.
Even the dean at my nephew’s graduation was touting it, although the almost constant f-bombs precluded him from giving the book to the students. For the faculty, it was required reading. This book is not written by an expert. It’s written by a blogger. Maybe everything is written by a blogger now… or every writer has a blog? Either way, this guy is not a psychologist, not even close.
That’s why it’s so striking that this book is so psychological, and so relevant to psychology. Especially my brand of positive psychology, which is not so much about symptoms and problems, but more about how to design your life to create fulfillment and even happiness. But constructs like happiness are slippery slopes and this book does a remarkable job explaining that, along with what to do about it.
I mean, even the chapter titles of the book just make me smile:
Don’t Try
Happiness Is a Problem
You Are Not Special
The Value of Suffering
You are Always Choosing
You’re Wrong About Everything (But So am I)
Failure Is the Way Forward
The Importance of Saying No
…And Then You Die
Unfortunately, this blogger guy really likes bad words. I wonder if anyone has counted the number of times Marc Manson uses the word fuck in this book. What I do know is that the number is just too high. It’s a little funny to even have it in the title of the book, and I get it. But it loses its funny, snap-you-into-the story value pretty quickly.
For my students and some of my clients, I went ahead and condensed the book, which is something I love to do (because who reads anymore?) And I will break down some concepts in upcoming posts. But if you really like the word fuck, and if you like to read, you can (and should) go read the book.
HERE’S THE GIST
Happiness comes from expecting and tolerating negative experiences (to make the positive ones that much better), learning to solve meaningful problems, and taking radical responsibility for our lives. We must establish values and define manageable goals. We must allow for disappointments, rejections, and for other people to figure out their own stuff.
Manson tells great stories, at one point invoking Ernest Becker to point out that most of what we care about, worry about, and try to do in life is really based in a deep existential anxiety as we contemplate mortality. Becker was a brief (due to an untimely death), unconventional, and famous professor of anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. Students loved him but the faculty dreaded him (my favorite kind of professor!). In 1973, he wrote The Denial of Death, in which he coined the term death terror; due to humans’ unique ability to contemplate death.
The premise of death terror is pretty interesting. Becker identified two selves: the physical self (our bodies) and the conceptual self (our identities). Because the physical self will surely die, we’d rather focus on the conceptual self, devoting our energy to what might live on forever. He called these our immortality projects. We try to get our names on buildings or to give ourselves to others, especially our children, so that our influence might live on forever through our actions. We wish to be remembered, revered, idolized. As you might guess, our immortality projects are based on our values, but too much of our energy goes into these projects at the expense of being present and finding everyday meaning in life. It’s hard to be curious and excited about the world when we are so focused on ourselves.
the meaning of life, the universe, and everything
Is 42…jk. At least Manson answers the question whereas Douglas Adams refused to (my apologies for the multiple-famous-author cross-referencing).
Ok, its this:
Realize you are going to die, get zen with it (remember: you were lucky enough to have lived in the first place), become less entitled, become more humble.
Here’s where I’d like to turn it back over to Manson, as this passage is quite something, and sums it all up. Maybe I will print it and make a poster for my wall. You can find it on page 200:
Death is the only thing we can know with any certainty. And as such, it must be the compass with which we orient all of our other values and decisions. It is the direct answer to all of the questions we should ask but never do. The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself, that are simple and immediate and controllable and tolerant of the chaotic world around you. This is the basic root of all happiness. Whether you are listening to Aristotle or the psychologists at Harvard or Jesus Christ or the goddamn Beatles, they all say that happiness comes from the same thing: caring about something greater than yourself, believing that you are a contributing component in some much larger entity, that your life is but a mere side process in some great unintelligible production. This feeling is what people go to church for; it’s what they fight wars for; it’s what they raise families and save pensions and build bridges and invent cell phones for, this fleeting sense of being part of something greater and more unknowable than themselves.
(Almost) not a single bad word in the whole passage! Well done.
Ps. At the end of the book, there’s a somewhat questionable story about Manson coming up against the edge of his life, literally, and why he is still here to write this book. Personally, I find that part gratuitous and maybe even ethically questionable, but I guess we all have our own values after all.
Pps. I don’t read his blog but I am guessing that this book is a compilation of cool blog posts, because I was looking up a great story he tells about William James (the father of psychology, and a true baller) and the whole story is right here, so check it out: