Everything Is F*cked

ourselves, become somebody totally new and different. This desire to change
ourselves then refills us with hope. The “old me” couldn’t shake that terrible
smoking habit, but the “new me” will. And we’re off to the races again.
The  constant  desire  to  change  yourself  then  becomes  its  own  sort  of
addiction: each cycle of “changing yourself” results in similar failures of self-
control,  therefore  making  you  feel  as  though  you  need  to  “change  yourself”
all  over  again.  Each  cycle  refuels  you  with  the  hope  you’re  looking  for.
Meanwhile,  the  Classic  Assumption,  the  root  of  the  problem,  is  never
addressed or questioned, let alone thrown out.
Like  a  bad  case  of  acne,  a  whole  industry  has  sprouted  up  over  the  past
couple  of  centuries  around  this  “change  yourself”  idea.  This  industry  is
replete with false promises and clues to the secrets of happiness, success, and
self-control. Yet all the industry does is reinforce the same impulses that drive
people to feel inadequate in the first place.
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The truth is that the human mind is far more complex than any “secret.”
And you can’t simply change yourself; nor, I would argue, should you always
feel you must.
We cling to this narrative about self-control because the belief that we’re
in  complete  control  of  ourselves  is  a  major  source  of  hope.  We  want  to
believe that changing ourselves is as simple as knowing what to change. We
want to believe that the ability to do something is as simple as deciding to do
it and mustering enough willpower to get there. We want to believe ourselves
to be the masters of our own destiny, capable of anything we can dream.
This  is  what  made  Damasio’s  discovery  with  “Elliot”  such  a  big  deal:  it
showed that the Classic Assumption is wrong. If the Classic Assumption were
true,  if  life  were  as  simple  as  learning  to  control  one’s  emotions  and  make
decisions  based  on  reason,  then  Elliot  should  have  been  an  unstoppable
badass, tirelessly industrious, and a ruthless decision maker. Similarly, if the
Classic Assumption were true, lobotomies should be all the rage. We’d all be
saving up for them as if they were boob jobs.
But lobotomies don’t work, and Elliot’s life was ruined.
The fact is that we require more than willpower to achieve self-control. It
turns  out  that  our  emotions  are  instrumental  in  our  decision  making  and  our
actions. We just don’t always realize it.