Everything Is F*cked

NEWTON’S FIRST LAW OF EMOTION
For Every Action, There Is an Equal and Opposite Emotional
Reaction
Imagine  that  I  punch  you  in  the  face.  No  reason.  No  justification.  Just  pure
violence.
Your instinctual reaction might be to retaliate in some way. Maybe it’d be
physical: you’d punch me back. Maybe it’d be verbal: you’d call me a bunch
of four-letter words. Or maybe your retaliation would be social: you’d call the
police or some other authority and have me punished for assaulting you.
Regardless  of  your  response,  you  would  feel  a  rush  of  negative  emotion
directed toward me.  And rightly so—clearly,  I’m an awful  person. After all,
the  idea  that  I  get  to  cause  you  pain  with  no  justification,  without  your
deserving pain, generates a sense of injustice between us. A kind of moral gap
opens  between  us:  the  sense  that  one  of  us  is  inherently  righteous,  and  the
other is an inferior piece of shit.
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Pain  causes  moral  gaps.  And  it’s  not  just  between  people.  If  a  dog  bites
you, your instinct is to punish it. If you stub your toe on a coffee table, what
do you do? You yell at the damn coffee table. If your home is washed away in
a flood, you are overcome with grief and become furious at God, the universe,
life itself.
These  are  moral  gaps.  They  are  a  sense  that  something  wrong  has  just
happened  and  you  (or  someone  else)  deserve  to  be  made  whole  again.
Wherever  there  is  pain,  there  is  always  an  inherent  sense  of
superiority/inferiority. And there’s always pain.
When  confronted  with  moral  gaps,  we  develop  overwhelming  emotions
toward  equalization,  or  a  return  to  moral  equality.  These  desires  for
equalization  take  the  form  of  a  sense  of  deserving.  Because  I  punched  you,
you feel I deserve to be punched back or punished in some way. This feeling
(of  my  deserving  pain)  will  cause  you  to  have  strong  emotions  about  me
(most  likely  anger).  You  will  also  have  strong  emotions  around  the  feeling
that  you  didn’t  deserve  to  be  punched,  that  you  did  no  wrong,  and  that  you
deserve  better  treatment  from  me  and  everyone  else  around  you.  These
feelings might take the form of sadness, self-pity, or confusion.
This whole sense of “deserving” something is a value judgment we make

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in the face of a moral gap. We decide that something is better than something
else; that one person is more righteous or just than another; that one event is
less desirable than another. Moral gaps are where our values are born.
Now,  let’s  pretend  I  apologize  to  you  for  punching  you.  I  say,  “Hey,
reader,  that  was  totally  unfair  and,  wow,  I  was  way  out  of  line.  That  will
never,  ever  happen  again.  And  as  a  symbol  of  my  overwhelming  regret  and
guilt—here, I baked you a cake. Oh, and here’s a hundred bucks. Enjoy.”
Let’s also pretend that this is somehow satisfying to you. You accept my
apology  and  my  cake  and  the  hundred  dollars  and  genuinely  feel  that
everything is fine. We’ve now “equalized.” The moral gap that was between
us is gone. I’ve “made up” for it. You might even say we’re even—neither of
us is a better or worse person than the other, neither of us deserves better or
worse treatment than the other any longer. We’re operating on the same moral
plane.
Equalizing  like  this  restores  hope.  It  means  that  there’s  nothing
necessarily wrong with you or wrong with the world. That you can go about
your day with a sense of self-control, a hundred bucks, and a sweet-ass cake.
Now let’s imagine another scenario. This time, instead of punching you, let’s
say I buy you a house.
Yes, reader, I just bought you a fucking house.
This  will  open  up  another  moral  gap  between  us.  But  instead  of  an
overwhelming  feeling  of  wanting  to  equalize  the  pain  I’ve  caused  you,  you
will  instead  experience  an  overwhelming  feeling  of  wanting  to  equalize  the
joy  I’ve  created.  You  might  hug  me,  say  “thank  you”  a  hundred  times,  give
me a gift in return, or promise to babysit my cat from now until eternity.
Or, if you’re particularly well mannered (and have some self-control), you
may  even  attempt  to  refuse  my  offer  to  buy  you  a  house  because  you
recognize  that  it  will  open  up  a  moral  gap  that  you  will  never  be  able  to
surmount.  You  may  acknowledge  this  by  saying  to  me,  “Thank  you,  but
absolutely not. There’s no way for me ever to repay you.”
As with the negative moral gap, with the positive moral gap you will feel
indebted to me, that you “owe me” something, that I deserve something good
or  that  you  need  to  “make  it  up”  to  me  somehow.  You  will  have  intense
feelings of gratitude and appreciation in my presence. You might even shed a
tear of joy. (Aw, reader!)
It’s our natural psychological inclination to equalize across moral gaps, to
reciprocate  actions:  positive  for  positive;  negative  for  negative.  The  forces
that  impel  us  to  fill  those  gaps  are  our  emotions.  In  this  sense,  every  action

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demands  an  equal  and  opposite  emotional  reaction.  This  is  Newton’s  First
Law of Emotion.
Newton’s First Law is constantly dictating the flow of our lives because it
is the algorithm by which our Feeling Brain interprets the world.
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If a movie
causes more pain than it relieves, you become bored, or perhaps even angry.
(Maybe  you  even  attempt  to  equalize  by  demanding  your  money  back.)  If
your mother forgets your birthday, maybe you equalize by ignoring her for the
next  six  months.  Or,  if  you’re  more  mature,  you  communicate  your
disappointment  to  her.
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 If  your  favorite  sports  team  loses  in  a  horrible  way,
you  will  feel  compelled  to  attend  fewer  games,  or  to  cheer  for  them  less.  If
you  discover  you  have  a  talent  for  drawing,  the  admiration  and  satisfaction
you  derive  from  your  competence  will  inspire  you  to  invest  time,  energy,
emotion, and money into the craft.
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If your country elects a bozo whom you
can’t stand, you will feel a disconnect with your nation and government and
even other citizens. You will also feel as though you are owed something in
return for putting up with terrible policies.
Equalization is present in every experience because the drive to equalize