Everything Is F*cked

part 4, section 1).
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A  God  Value  is  not  the  same  thing  as  Blaise  Pascal’s  “God-shaped  hole.”  Pascal  believed  that
because  man’s  desires  were  insatiable,  only  something  infinite  could  ever  satiate  him—that  infinite
thing being God. A God Value is different in that it is simply the top of one’s value hierarchy. You might
feel miserable and empty and still have a God Value. In fact, the cause of your misery and emptiness is
likely your chosen God Value.

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For  further  discussion  on  how  superficial  God  Values  such  as  money  affect  your  life,  see  Mark
Manson,  “How  We  Judge  Others  Is  How  We  Judge  Ourselves,”  MarkManson.net,  January  9,  2014,
https://markmanson.net/how-we-judge-others.
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Like money or government or ethnicity, the “self” is also an arbitrary mental construct based on
faith. There is no proof that your experience of “you” actually exists. It is merely the nexus of conscious
experience,  an  interconnection  of  sense  and  sensibility.  See  Derek  Parfit,  Reasons  and  Persons
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 199–280.
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There  are  a  number  of  ways  to  describe  unhealthy  forms  of  attachment  to  another  person,  but  I
went with the term codependence because of its widespread mainstream usage. The word comes from
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
Alcoholics  noticed  that  in  the  same  way  that  they  were  addicted  to  the  bottle,  their  friends  and
family  were  seemingly  addicted  to  supporting  and  caring  for  them  in  their  addiction.  The  alcoholics
were dependent on alcohol to feel good and normal, and these friends and family members who were
“codependent,” as they used the alcoholics’ addiction to feel good and normal as well. Codependency
has  since  found  more  widespread  use—basically,  anyone  who  becomes  “addicted”  to  supporting  or
receiving validation from another person can be described as codependent.
Codependence is a strange form of worship, where you put a person on a pedestal and make him the
center of your world, the basis of your thoughts and feelings, and the root of your self-esteem. In other
words, you make the other person your God Value. This, unfortunately, leads to extremely destructive
relationships.  See  Melody  Beattie,  Codependent  No  More:  How  to  Stop  Controlling  Others  and  Care
for Yourself (Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing, 1986); and Timmen L. Cermak, MD, Diagnosing
and Treating Co-Dependence: A Guide for Professionals Who Work with Chemical Dependents, Their
Spouses, and Children (Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing, 1998).
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See discussion of “Hume’s guillotine,” from note 33 in
chapter 2
.
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The  Black  Death  killed  one  hundred  million  to  two  hundred  million  people  in  Europe  in  the
fourteenth century, reducing the population by anywhere from 30 to 60 percent.
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This  refers  to  the  infamous  Children’s  Crusade  of  1212.  After  multiple  failed  Crusades  by
Christians to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims, tens of thousands of children journeyed to Italy to
volunteer  to  go  to  the  Holy  Land  and  convert  Muslims  peacefully.  A  charismatic  leader  promised  the
children  that  the  sea  would  part  once  they  reached  the  Mediterranean,  allowing  them  to  walk  to
Jerusalem  on  foot.  Spoiler  alert:  it  didn’t.  Instead,  merchant  ships  gathered  up  the  children  and  took
them across the sea to Tunisia, where most of them were sold into slavery.
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Interestingly,  you  could  say  that  money  was  invented  as  a  way  to  tally  and  track  moral  gaps
between people. We invented the concept of debt to justify our moral gaps—I did you this favor, so now
you  owe  me  something  in  return—and  money  was  invented  as  a  way  of  tracking  and  managing  debt
across  a  society.  This  is  known  as  the  “credit  theory”  of  money,  and  it  was  first  proposed  by  Alfred
Mitchell  Innes  back  in  1913,  in  a  journal  article  titled  “What  Is  Money?”  For  a  nice  overview  of
Mitchell Innes and the credit theory of money, see David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Updated