Mark Manson is back with a new book. You may remember him from the gem Models: Attract Women Through Honesty about pickup, or more recently his best-selling The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

What's the book about?

If you've read anything by Mark Manson before, this has the same 'voice'; he has a no-nonsense approach to presenting topics I find refreshing. This starts out with some of the same data presented in Stephen Pinker's latest books about how by any objective measure, mankind is doing very well. Fewer and fewer humans are living in abject poverty, violence of all kinds is down and trending further downward, wars are fewer and smaller than in the past. Yet people feel bad, and perceive things to be worse than they really are. Why is that?

Manson has some ideas, and he presents psychological research basically suggesting that if there is not actual adversity in our lives, our brain will hamster up some adversity, and treat it as if it was real. If you've ever seen a grown adult throw a temper tantrum in a restaurant over there being too much kale garnish plated alongside their chicken piccata, he has examples like that. In short, the better we have it, the more we feel like there are things that would make us happier that we will never be able to acquire / achieve / experience. This is not just an American problem; it's a wealth and comfort problem, and international data show this to be true. Lots of wealthy people all over the world have a lot of pessimism.

What's red pill about the book?

The first chapter is incredible; if you don't want to read the whole thing, just read that.

Most of the book is red. He uses different vocabulary to accomplish the same meaning. Thinking brain versus feeling brain rather than 'rationalization hamster'. He talks a lot about 'religion' and defines it in a very expansive way that covers anything that we take on faith, such as 'paper money has intrinsic value'. He makes a lightning-fast pass over several philosophical writings about stoicism, what's worth pursuing in life, how we find meaning, whether short-term discomfort is worth it in achieving progress toward a distant goal in the future. Manson has an expansive definition of 'hope', by which he means something closer to 'life purpose'.

What's annoying in the book?

The last chapter, where he speculates about the future, especially with regards to mankind interacting with technology. I suspect his predictions published in 2019 will not age well. Sometimes wild guesses come true, but we're still not wearing jetpacks or riding hoverboards (the kind that actually hover).

Should we recommend this book?

I don't think it's quite at the level of sidebar canon, but it rhymes with what we teach here. It's more akin to something you would see recommended in a future edition of BluePillProfessor's book. If you're a person who actually read all the book recommendations there, this should go on your to-read list.