The Subtle Art

Nobody asked but …

Be motivated by something beyond simply money or glory. — Mark Manson

Mark Manson is the guy who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and this is kind of a book review. Henceforth, if forced to reference the f-bomb, I will use the trick from The Good Place, substituting “fork.”  Actually, the use of earthy language in the book’s title and content is, to me, a marketing ploy, and to me, irritating.  But that doesn’t destroy the book as a source of useful information.  The message is that it’s all Kabuki theater so one should operate by one’s self-determined principles and sense of responsibility.  I hesitate to say that Manson is a voluntaryist, but I hesitate to say that he is not.

The main area in which I would debate Manson is where he holds that most of us are under the mountain of normalcy in the classic bell curve. I think he more correctly says it when he writes that even outliers, having one or two areas of exceptionalism, fall among the everyday in all other respects. This is another way to say that each of us is a unique individual, even if our uniqueness is difficult to see.  I often say that no two objects can be in the same place at the same time, therefore all objects are different, exceptional to some degree.

— Kilgore Forelle