The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*CK: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

This chapter includes three subchapters: “Things Fall Apart,” “The Tyranny of Exceptionalism,” and “B-b-b-but, If I’m Not Going to Be Special or Extraordinary, What’s the Point?” As in the previous chapters, Manson begins with a story, this time about a guy named Jimmy who, it seems, is based on a person Manson knows. Jimmy is ambitious, to be sure, but he has a one-sided view of himself that is entirely positive. Anything bad that happens to him is always someone else’s fault, never his own. Jimmy is a model of positive thinking run amok. Manson uses his story as a way of pointing out how Western culture creates and then exploits the notion that being normal or average is distasteful. The title of this chapter is blunt—“You are Not Special”—and Manson breaks down why this is true but also provides justification for why not being special isn’t a bad thing. Using simple logic, he effectively claims that if everyone is special, then nobody is special. Manson provides a brief historical perspective on the so-called “self-esteem” revolution that began in the late 1960s and saw psychologists generally shift their focus to improving a patient’s self-esteem. Manson thinks this ultimately led to an unanticipated consequence—namely, it deflected away from reckoning with one’s shortcomings.