Everything Is F*cked(66)
We will worship at AI’s digitized altars. We will follow their arbitrary rules and play their games not because we’re forced to, but because they will be designed so well that we will want to.
We need our lives to mean something, and while the startling advance of technology has made finding that meaning more difficult, the ultimate innovation will be the day we can manufacture significance without strife or conflict, find importance without the necessity of death.
And then, maybe one day, we will become integrated with the machines themselves. Our individual consciousnesses will be subsumed. Our independent hopes will vanish. We will meet and merge in the cloud, and our digitized souls will swirl and eddy in the storms of data, a splay of bits and functions harmoniously brought into some grand, unseen alignment.
We will have evolved into a great unknowable entity. We will transcend the limitations of our own value-laden minds. We will live beyond means and ends, for we will always be both, one and the same. We will have crossed the evolutionary bridge into “something greater” and ceased to be human any longer.
Perhaps then, we will not only realize but finally embrace the Uncomfortable Truth: that we imagined our own importance, we invented our purpose, and we were, and still are, nothing.
All along, we were nothing.
And maybe then, only then, will the eternal cycle of hope and destruction come to an end.
Or—?
Acknowledgments
This book, in many ways, lived up to its title while being written. There were many occasions when it seemed as though everything was irreparably fucked because I had fallen victim to my own overzealous hopes. Yet, somehow—often late at night, with me staring bleary-eyed at a mush of words on my screen—things came together. And now I am incredibly proud of the result.
I wouldn’t have survived this ordeal without the help and support of a great number of people. My editor, Luke Dempsey, who lived with the same gun to his head for six months (or more) that I did—you really came through in stoppage time, mate. Thank you. Mollie Glick, who is more like a fairy godmother at this point than an agent—I wake up, and amazing shit just appears in my life out of nowhere. It’s incredible. To my Web team, Philip Kemper and Drew Birnie, who continue to make me appear far more competent and knowledgeable than I actually am—I’m extremely proud of what the three of us have built online and I can’t wait to see what you two are capable of in coming years.
And then there’s the smattering of friends who showed up big when it counted: Nir Eyal—for getting me up and writing during many frigid New York mornings when I could easily have stayed in bed. Taylor Pearson, James Clear, and Ryan Holiday—for listening to me vent and ramble and freak out when I needed to (which was fairly often) and for patiently offering advice. Peter Shallard, Jon Krop, and Jodi Ettenberg—for dropping everything to read some maimed chapter and then sending me notes and feedback. Michael Covell—for being a top-shelf bro. And WS, who somehow managed to be both the cause and solution to this whole fucking mess—you were an unexpected inspiration without even trying to be. “The trick is you bite off more than you can chew . . . and then you chew it.”
I’d be remiss if I did not give a shout out the NYC Chapter of the Gentleman’s Literary Safari—how could I have known that a nerdy book club started in my kitchen last summer would regularly be the highlight of my month? Much of this book was born from those long philosophical meanderings with you guys. Thank you. And remember, lads: “Being is always the being of a being.”
And finally, to my wonderful wife, Fernanda Neute. I could fill an entire page with superlatives about this woman and how much she means to me, and every single one of them would be true. But I will spare the ink and extra paper—just as she would want—and keep it short. Thank you for the gift of commitment and self-limitation. If I’m ever able to hope for nothing, it will be for the simple reason that I’m already with you.
Notes
Chapter 1: The Uncomfortable Truth
1. A. J. Zautra, Emotions, Stress, and Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 15–22.
2. I don’t use the word hope in this book in the way it is typically used academically. Most academics use “hope” to express a feeling of optimism: an expectation of or belief in the possibility of positive results. This definition is partial and limited. Optimism can feed hope, but it is not the same thing as hope. I can have no expectation for something better to happen, but I can still hope for it. And that hope can still give my life a sense of meaning and purpose despite all evidence to the contrary. No, by “hope,” I am referring to a motivation toward something perceived as valuable, what is sometimes described as “purpose” or “meaning” in the academic literature. As a result, for my discussions of hope, I’ll draw on research on motivation and value theory and, in many cases, try to fuse them together.
3. M. W. Gallagher and S. J. Lopez, “Positive Expectancies and Mental Health: Identifying the Unique Contributions of Hope and Optimism,” Journal of Positive Psychology 4, no. 6 (2009): 548–56.
4. This is almost certainly an overstatement.
5. See Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973).
6. Am I allowed to cite myself? Fuck it, I’m going to cite myself. See Mark Manson, “7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose,” Mark Manson.net, September 18, 2014, https://markmanson.net/life-purpose.