Everything Is F*cked

The Clown Car
The  Feeling  Brain,  as  great  as  it  is,  has  its  dark  side.  In  the  Consciousness
Car,  your  Feeling  Brain  is  like  a  verbally  abusive  boyfriend  who  refuses  to
pull over and ask for directions—he hates being told where to go and he will
absolutely make you fucking miserable if you question his driving.
In order to avoid these psychological kerfuffles, and to maintain a sense of
hope,  the  Thinking  Brain  develops  a  tendency  to  draw  maps  explaining  or
justifying  where  the  Feeling  Brain  has  already  decided  it  wants  to  go.  If  the
Feeling  Brain  wants  ice  cream,  instead  of  contradicting  it  with  facts  about
processed sugar and excess calories, your Thinking Brain decides, “You know
what, I worked hard today. I deserve some ice cream,” and your Feeling Brain
responds with a sense of ease and satisfaction. If your Feeling Brain decides

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that your partner is an asshole and you’ve done nothing wrong, your Thinking
Brain’s immediate reaction will be to recall instances when you, in fact, were
a beacon of patience and humility while your partner was secretly conspiring
to ruin your life.
In  this  way,  the  two  brains  develop  a  really  unhealthy  relationship  that
might  resemble  your  mom  and  dad  on  road  trips  when  you  were  a  kid.  The
Thinking  Brain  makes  shit  up  that  the  Feeling  Brain  wants  to  hear.  And  in
return,  the  Feeling  Brain  promises  not  to  careen  off  the  side  of  the  road,
killing everyone.
It’s incredibly easy to let your Thinking Brain fall into the trap of merely
drawing the maps the Feeling Brain wants to follow. This is called the “self-
serving  bias,”  and  it’s  the  basis  for  pretty  much  everything  awful  about
humanity.
Usually, the self-serving bias simply makes you prejudiced and a little bit
self-centered.  You  assume  that  what  feels  right  is  right.  You  make  snap
judgments about people, places, groups, and ideas, many of which are unfair
or even a little bit bigoted.
But  in  its  extreme  form,  the  self-serving  bias  can  become  outright
delusion,  causing  you  to  believe  in  a  reality  that  is  not  there,  smudging
memories  and  exaggerating  facts,  all  in  the  service  of  the  Feeling  Brain’s
never-ending cravings. If the Thinking Brain is weak and/or uneducated, or if
the Feeling Brain is riled up, the Thinking Brain will succumb to the Feeling
Brain’s fiery whims and dangerous driving. It will lose the ability to think for
itself or to contradict the Feeling Brain’s conclusions.
This effectively turns your Consciousness Car into a Clown Car, with big,
springy red wheels and circus music playing over a loudspeaker wherever you
go.
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 Your  Consciousness  Car  becomes  a  Clown  Car  when  your  Thinking
Brain  has  completely  capitulated  to  your  Feeling  Brain,  when  your  life’s
pursuits  are  determined  purely  by  self-gratification,  when  truth  warps  into  a
cartoon of self-serving assumptions, when all beliefs and principles are lost in
a sea of nihilism.
The  Clown  Car  invariably  drives  toward  addiction,  narcissism,  and
compulsion.  People  whose  minds  are  Clown  Cars  are  easily  manipulated  by
whatever person or group makes them feel good consistently—whether it is a
religious leader, politician, self-help guru, or sinister internet forum. A Clown
Car will gladly steamroll other Consciousness Cars (i.e., other people) with its
big,  red  rubbery  tires  because  its  Thinking  Brain  will  justify  this  by  saying
they deserved it—they were evil, inferior, or part of some made-up problem.
Some  Clown  Cars  merely  drive  toward  fun—they’re  all  about  drinking

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and  fucking  and  partying.  Others  drive  toward  power.  These  are  the  most
dangerous  Clown  Cars,  as  their  Thinking  Brains  set  to  work  justifying  their
abuse  and  subjugation  of  others  through  intellectual-sounding  theories  about
economics,  politics,  race,  genetics,  gender,  biology,  history,  and  so  on.  A
Clown Car will sometimes pursue hate, too, because hate brings its own odd
satisfaction and self-assurance. Such a mind is prone to self-righteous anger,
as  having  an  external  target  reassures  it  of  its  own  moral  superiority.
Inevitably, it drives toward the destruction of others because it is only through
the  destruction  and  subjugation  of  the  outer  world  that  its  endless  inner
impulses can be satisfied.
It’s hard to pull someone out of the Clown Car once they’re in it. In the
Clown  Car,  the  Thinking  Brain  has  been  bullied  and  abused  by  the  Feeling
Brain  for  so  long  that  it  develops  a  sort  of  Stockholm  syndrome—it  can’t
imagine  a  life  beyond  pleasing  and  justifying  the  Feeling  Brain.  It  can’t
fathom contradicting the Feeling Brain or challenging it on where it’s going,
and it resents you for suggesting that it should. With the Clown Car, there’s no
independent thought and no ability to measure contradiction or switch beliefs
or opinions. In a sense, the person with a Clown Car mind ceases to have an
individual identity at all.
This is why cultish leaders always start by encouraging people to shut off
their  Thinking  Brains  as  much  as  possible.  Initially,  this  feels  profound  to
people  because  the  Thinking  Brain  is  often  correcting  the  Feeling  Brain,
showing it where it took a wrong turn. So, silencing the Thinking Brain will
feel extremely good for a short period. And people are always mistaking what