Everything Is F*cked

NEWTON’S SECOND LAW OF EMOTION
Our Self-Worth Equals the Sum of Our Emotions Over Time
Let’s  return  to  the  punching  example,  except  this  time,  let’s  pretend  I  exist
within  this  magical  force  field  that  prevents  any  consequences  from  ever
befalling  me.  You  can’t  punch  me  back.  You  can’t  say  anything  to  me.  You
can’t  even  say  anything  to  anyone  else  about  me.  I  am  impervious—an  all-
seeing, all-powerful, evil ass-face.
Newton’s First Law of Emotion states that when someone (or something)
causes us pain, a moral gap opens up and our Feeling Brain summons up icky
emotions to motivate us to equalize.
But  what  if  that  equalization  never  comes?  What  if  someone  (or
something)  makes  us  feel  awful,  yet  we  are  incapable  of  ever  retaliating  or
reconciling?  What  if  we  feel  powerless  to  do  anything  to  equalize  or  “make
things right?” What if my force field is just too powerful for you?
When moral gaps persist for a long enough time, they normalize.
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 They
become  our  default  expectation.  They  lodge  themselves  into  our  value
hierarchy. If someone hits us and we’re never able to hit him back, eventually
our Feeling Brain will come to a startling conclusion:
We deserve to be hit.
After  all,  if  we  didn’t  deserve  it,  we  would  have  been  able  to  equalize,
right? The fact that we could not equalize means that there must be something
inherently  inferior  about  us,  and/or  something  inherently  superior  about  the
person who hit us.
This,  too,  is  part  of  our  hope  response.  Because  if  equalization  seems
impossible,  our  Feeling  Brain  comes  up  with  the  next  best  thing:  giving  in,
accepting  defeat,  judging  itself  to  be  inferior  and  of  low  value.  When
someone  harms  us,  our  immediate  reaction  is  usually  “He  is  shit,  and  I  am
righteous.” But if we’re not able to equalize and act on that righteousness, our
Feeling Brain will believe the only alternative explanation: “I am shit, and he
is righteous.”
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This  surrender  to  persisting  moral  gaps  is  a  fundamental  part  of  our
Feeling Brain’s nature. And it is Newton’s Second Law of Emotion: How we
come  to  value  everything  in  life  relative  to  ourselves  is  the  sum  of  our
emotions over time.

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This  surrender  to  and  acceptance  of  ourselves  as  inherently  inferior  is
often referred to as shame or low self-worth. Call it what you want, the result
is the same: Life kicks you around a little bit, and you feel powerless to stop
it. Therefore, your Feeling Brain concludes that you must deserve it.
Of  course,  the  reverse  moral  gap  must  be  true  as  well.  If  we’re  given  a
bunch  of  stuff  without  earning  it  (participation  trophies  and  grade  inflation
and  gold  medals  for  coming  in  ninth  place),  we  (falsely)  come  to  believe
ourselves inherently superior to what we actually are. We therefore develop a
deluded version of high self-worth,  or,  as  it’s  more  commonly  known,  being
an asshole.
Self-worth  is  contextual.  If  you  were  bullied  for  your  geeky  glasses  and
funny  nose  as  a  child,  your  Feeling  Brain  will  “know”  that  you’re  a  dweeb,
even if you grow up to be a flaming sexpot of hotness. People who are raised
in  strict  religious  environments  and  are  punished  harshly  for  their  sexual
impulses often grow up with their Feeling Brain “knowing” that sex is wrong,
even though their Thinking Brain has long worked out that sex is natural and
totally awesome.
High and low self-worth appear different on the surface, but they are two
sides of the same counterfeit coin. Because whether you feel as though you’re
better than the rest of the world or worse than the rest of the world, the same
thing  is  true:  you’re  imagining  yourself  as  something  special,  something
separate from the world.
A person who believes he deserves special treatment because of how great
he  is  isn’t  so  different  from  someone  who  believes  she  deserves  special
treatment  because  of  how  shitty  she  is.  Both  are  narcissistic.  Both  think
they’re  special.  Both  think  the  world  should  make  exceptions  and  cater  to
their values and feelings over others’.
Narcissists will oscillate between feelings of superiority and inferiority.
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Either everyone loves them or everyone hates them. Everything is amazing, or
everything  is  fucked.  An  event  was  either  the  best  moment  of  their  lives  or
traumatizing. With the narcissist, there’s no in-between, because to recognize
the  nuanced,  indecipherable  reality  before  him  would  require  that  he
relinquish his privileged view that he is somehow special. Mostly, narcissists
are unbearable to be around. They make everything about them and demand
that people around them do the same.
You’ll see this high/low-self-worth switcheroo everywhere if you keep an
eye  out  for  it:  mass  murderers,  dictators,  whiny  kids,  your  obnoxious  aunt
who  ruins  Christmas  every  year.  Hitler  preached  that  the  world  treated
Germany so poorly after World War I only because it was afraid of German

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superiority.
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And in California more recently, one disturbed gunman justified
trying to shoot up a sorority house with the fact that while women hooked up
with “inferior” men he was forced to remain a virgin.
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You  can  even  find  it  within  yourself,  if  you’re  being  honest.  The  more
insecure you are about something, the more you’ll fly back and forth between
delusional feelings of superiority (“I’m the best!”) and delusional feelings of
inferiority (“I’m garbage!”)
Self-worth is an illusion.
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It’s a psychological construct that our Feeling
Brain  spins  in  order  to  predict  what  will  help  it  and  what  will  hurt  it.
Ultimately, we must feel something about ourselves in order to feel something
about  the  world,  and  without  those  feelings,  it’s  impossible  for  us  to  find
hope.
We  all  possess  some  degree  of  narcissism.  It’s  inevitable,  as  everything
we  ever  know  or  experience  has  happened  to  us  or  been  learned  by  us.  The
nature  of  our  consciousness  dictates  that  everything  happen  through  us.  It’s
only natural, then, that our immediate assumption is that we are at the center
of everything—because we are at the center of everything we experience.
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We all overestimate our skills and intentions and underestimate the skills
and intentions of others. Most people believe that they are of above-average
intelligence and have an above-average ability at most things, especially when
they are not and do not.
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We all tend to believe that we’re more honest and
ethical  than  we  actually  are.
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 We  will  each,  given  the  chance,  delude
ourselves  into  believing  that  what’s  good  for  us  is  also  good  for  everyone
else.
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When we screw up, we tend to assume it was some happy accident.
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But  when  someone  else  screws  up,  we  immediately  rush  to  judge  that
person’s character.
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Persistent low-level narcissism is natural, but it’s also likely at the root of
many  of  our  sociopolitical  problems.  This  is  not  a  right-wing  or  a  left-wing
problem. This is not an older generation or younger generation problem. This
is not an Eastern or Western problem.
This is a human problem.
Every  institution  will  decay  and  corrupt  itself.  Each  person,  given  more
power and fewer  restraints, will predictably  bend that power  to suit himself.
Every  individual  will  blind  herself  to  her  own  flaws  while  seeking  out  the
glaring flaws of others.
Welcome to Earth. Enjoy your stay.
Our Feeling Brains warp reality in such a way so that we believe that our

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problems and pain are somehow special and unique in the world, despite all
evidence  to  the  contrary.  Human  beings  require  this  level  of  built-in
narcissism  because  narcissism  is  our  last  line  of  defense  against  the
Uncomfortable  Truth.  Because,  let’s  be  real:  People  suck,  and  life  is
exceedingly difficult and unpredictable. Most of us are winging it as we go, if
not  completely  lost.  And  if  we  didn’t  have  some  false  belief  in  our  own
superiority  (or  inferiority),  a  deluded  belief  that  we’re  extraordinary  at
something, we’d line up to swan-dive off the nearest bridge. Without a little
bit  of  that  narcissistic  delusion,  without  that  perpetual  lie  we  tell  ourselves
about our specialness, we’d likely give up hope.
But our inherent narcissism comes at a cost. Whether you believe you’re
the best in the world or the worst in the world, one thing is also true: you are
separate from the world.
And  it’s  this  separateness  that  ultimately  perpetuates  unnecessary
suffering.
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