SOLVED with Mark Manson - Snake Oil or Self-Help?, Minimalism’s Real Value, and Atheists Who Go to Church

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Self-help is supposed to, you know, help. But what if, sometimes, it actually makes things worse? In this episode, we take a hard look at the self-improvement industry that promises transformation but often sells little more than feel-good illusions. From outdated advice that preys on your insecurities to the dopamine hit of "life-changing" content that changes nothing, we break down why self-help often fails the people who need it most. Along with unpacking the biggest traps of self-improvement, Drew and I also tackle whether or not minimalism was just an aesthetic rebellion against our parents’ McMansion dreams. We were both once staunch minimalists and we look back on what we learned and what principles still apply to our lives today. We wrap up with a listener question about the ethics of going to church if you’re an atheist. It’s another grab bag episode full of rabbit holes. Check it out. Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person:https://markmanson.net/breakthrough Follow me: https://instagram.com/markmanson/ https://twitter.com/IAmMarkManson https://facebook.com/Markmansonnet/ https://linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iammarkmanson Chapters 00:00 Drew's legs are too short for his chair 00:40 The F*ck of the Week: Self-Help that doesn't help26:23 Brilliant or Bullshit: Minimalism43:05 Q&A: Is it ok for atheists/agnostics to go to church? Theme song: Icarus Lives byPeriphery, used with permission from Periphery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction.

So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose. That is purpose. Dot app. Drew, I cannot wait for the day that we can finally get rid of these chairs. Oh,

yeah. I cannot help but slouch in these chairs. And I've noticed with guests too. They've been, yeah. I didn't see that's on the footage too. Yeah, they're on the struggle bus when they come in.

It gives us a bad reputation. Well, I have to use this pillow because my legs are so, short too. If I don't, my legs stick out. Yeah, we got to fix this. We are going to fix it. Soon. Oh. Stay tuned. Things are going to change around here. We're foreshadowing. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. What are we talking about today? Oh, Mark. We're giving a huge fuck this week about our own industry and what we do. The self-help board. When self-help is not helpful, I think.

That's the tagline I came up with. Is that a good tagline? I don't know. That's pretty good. It's not too bad. That's pretty good. There was about 12 years, more than 12 years ago now, back in 2012 12, you wrote this article called five problems with a self-help industry.

And came up with these five points about, you know, what's wrong with your own industry that you're kind of self-criticking it and maybe even some of the stuff we do. It's interesting because in 2012, I was like the feisty upstart that nobody had heard of and I'm like sticking the middle finger. to every, you know, all the big established people in the industry. And now I am one of those biggest established. Yeah. So, yeah.

I'm very curious to actually go through these, see if I still agree with them. Maybe turn the spotlight on ourselves a little bit here throughout all of this. I don't know. Is this going to be our, what's it called when you like, there's a word for it, where you like audit yourself. Am I making, never mind. You might be making this. I have no idea. I don't know.

We're self-owning ourselves. I don't know. No, isn't there like a process like in Catholicism or something where you like a catecatechism? Oh, is that what that means? I've never known what that word means. It's like where you like audit yourself and like you like read to all of your faults. Like your confessions and that you do. But there's like a whole process.

See, I wasn't imagining things. It's something like that. Well, I mean, okay. And the way you start this article out though, it is a little bit like that where it's the self-help industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Still true. Yep. Fills up bookstores and conference rooms. Still true.

It's made media celebrities out of people and capitalized wildly off the growing self-conscious self-consciousness of recent generations. Still true. Still true. And all those changed millions of lives of people, mostly for the better, it still lacks a certain credibility. Still true. Yeah.

Yeah. Could be, is it snake oil? Is it, you know, there's a lot of that going on? There's some of that, yeah. A lot of people think it's just kind of a laughing stock of an industry, which, you know. Can't blame them for that. I can't learn for that either. So you introduce these five ideas throughout this of like kind of five problems that you've seen.

And I want to see how much you think these still hold up. I think most of them still do. And maybe if you'd have any changes, maybe additions. Yes. Maybe turn them on ourselves a little bit too. Sure. You're going to critique ourselves. And yeah, we'll jump right into it if you're ready.

Let's do it. All right. The first one is self-help reinforces perceptions of inferiority and shame. To kind of set that up, we've talked about this on the podcast before, too, though. There's what you call the bad to okay and the okay to, great people that come to self-help. Lay that out for us first, I think. I think what a lot of people miss is that self-help is secretly two different industries. Right? So I've always thought of it two classifications. So there's like people who are in a really bad place in their life and they're

really struggling and suffering and they just want to feel okay again. You know, it's just like just make the pain go away. And then there are people who their life's okay, but you know, they're kind know, like, things are stagnant or they feel like they're missing out on something or things could be better or they're not, you know, living up to their potential. And I call those the okay to great people, right? It's like, my life's fine, but I really would love to be doing something amazing that I'm excited about, right? And those two groups, those two cohorts of people often get completely mixed up and treated the same way, which is from, I guess, an intervention point of you horrible. Like, for example, somebody who's in the okay to great camp, it might be good

to be hard on them. It might be good to be like, you know what, like pick your ass up, get your shit together. Like stop, stop being such a lazy, lazy asshole and, you know, you deserve more in this, blah, blah, blah. If you take somebody who's like very deep in depression and has struggled with mental health issues for many, many years, and you say that same thing, Like, you might push them over the edge, right? So the messaging is actually very different between those two groups. The goal is very different between those two groups. But because the same kind of marketing appeals to those two groups, they often get lumped together in audiences and customer bases.

And so for a long time, I've always felt just a lot of mixed feelings over just the responsibility that, quote, gurus or, you know, thought leaders in this space have to recognize the sensitivities that come with the bad to okay group, like you have to treat them differently. You can't, you can't, there's no one size fits all. Right. And the point you were making in this section about the industry reinforcing perceptions of shame and guilt. Yes.

Are really pertinent for that okay or the bad to okay people. Yes. Because like you read a book on happiness or something like that. I think this is an example you've given the article actually. Read a book on happiness. The good or the okay to great people are like, oh, okay, yeah, I can do this. Cool. But the bad to okay people are like, well, shit, these are all the things I'm not doing right and I'm a loser and I can't wrap my head around this even and I just may as well give up and I'm a piece of shit. I think the simplest way to sum it up is that you can, an okay to great person, you can tell them that they're fucking up and that will probably create a good result, right? Because they want to hear that. They want to know what they're doing wrong. They want to know what they could be doing better because they have a baseline self-esteem and self-worth that they can handle it, right? Whereas if you say, if you tell a bad to okay person that they're fucking up, that's part of the reason they're in such a hole is like they feel guilt and shame and just absolutely awful

about themselves because they feel like they've wasted their life. And so if you show up and start saying, well, you know what, you're fucking all this up because you should be doing this and that and the other thing. And like, they're just going to hear that as like a validation of what they already feel about themselves. The worst problem about that is that it's those bad to okay people that tend to, like, let's say one of these people who's like in a very, very dark place goes to a generic self-help seminar, right, and starts hearing these messages.

And obviously it makes them feel worse. That person, the nature of being a person in that dark spot is that you think you're at fault for everything, right? So it's like, if they go to the seminar and the guru is giving all this advice and that advice isn't working and it's making them feel worse, their assumption isn't going to be, oh, this guru sucks, I should go somewhere else. Their assumption's going to be, wow, I really am a loser. Even this self-help seminar is not fixing me, right? Because that's just how their brain works. That's where their mind is at that moment. It's just, it makes me feel icky. No, yeah. Do you think there's also a risk of developing kind of like a codependent relationship

there too. Like you're, especially with those bad okay people, they're going to develop this kind of codependency with a figure or guru or whoever.

Right. Absolutely. And it's, especially because it's like, okay, let's say you've, nothing's worked, and then you go to this seminar

and that seminar makes you feel good for the first time in five years, right? And then you leave the seminar and you start feeling bad again, which is usually what happens. It's logical that you start

assuming like, well, okay, this guy's got the answer. I need to follow them everywhere and do all the stuff and sign up for all the things and spend all my savings because it's like this is the only thing that's working. And it's part of, I think this is the thing that the general population intuits about self-help that makes them squirm a little bit, which is that the best customers tend to be the most hopeless people. So a lot of marketing gets optimized to take advantage of those people. And a lot of the money comes from those people. And so it just, it feels really gross.

And in my business, in our business, like, I've always been very careful of, like, A, making sure the messaging is, like, clear, like, differentiates between those two groups within a single piece of content, whether it's an article or a book, you know, just making sure it's, hey, I'm addressing the okay to great people now. Okay, now if you're, like, in a really dark place, this is different. So I'm going to address that now. But also, I just, I don't think I'm qualified or credentialed to be dealing with bad to okay people for the most part, right? So I get emails all the time from people who are deeply depressed, suicidal, have like a pretty severe anxiety disorders, right? And it's like, my response is you need to go find a professional. Like, I'm just a guy with a podcast, you know? So like if you want to, if you want to like figure out how to be 10% more effective in your,

your career or your relationship, like, I'm your guy. If you want to know how to get over a breakup, like, yeah, I got tips for you. If you are so depressed, you can't get out of bed, you should probably go talk to somebody more serious than I am. That said, there's been, I mean, probably dozens of people over the years who have come to you and said, hey, I was actually thinking about killing myself or, you know, harming myself in some way. And it does help. So they can break through sometimes. But that's the exception. And I get that. You can't plan on that. No, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah, I can't bank on that for sure. Yeah. Okay. We'll get to kind of what the, uh, what we can maybe do about that. Uh, and another step here. We'll keep moving through this. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Oh, okay. Not really. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, the next one, though, you said self-help is often yet another form of avoidance. This one is near and dear to my heart. Well, I'm, I mean, what I've noticed is that a lot of people, a lot of self-help content is subtly specialized to make you feel as though you are, having a transformation rather than actually having a transformation.

Infiltainment, yeah. Yes, yes, it's exactly. It's kind of like, it's like the cable news of growth. You know, it's like you've, like you watch cable news, you feel like you're being informed, but you're actually not being informed. You know, it's like a lot of self-help. You feel like you're growing, but you're not growing.

You're like literally doing all the same things and making the same mistakes you always made. So, and what I notice is that there are some people that actually get kind of hooked on that feeling of transfer. Because they always feel like it's you know it's just around the corner. It's the next step like I'm a new person. Oh my God, I did this other thing and now I'm a new person again and it's meanwhile their life still mess and they're taking no responsibility and they like you know can't figure any of their shit out. So there's a lot of that that goes on and I and I do think some of that kind of addictive quality to the feeling of transformation is another like any addiction is it's a way to avoid the discomfort of actually confronting your own issues. Right. Why does this bug you so much? Well, I think one of the thing, like one of my just kind of like core values in life for whatever reason that almost didn't even choose it myself is learning. And it's just like this I, I like psychology and I like human behavior

and I like learning about myself. And you just get caught in that. Yeah. I just like to learn. Yeah. You know, and there's a lot of information in this space. So you can learn until you, you can not do anything but learn. Yeah. And that's what's, that's what bothered me so much about it. I think is just I get too much in my head. I've talked about this before. I over intellectualize everything. Analysis paralysis kicks in at that point too where you just, you have all this information.

You don't even know where to start. So I would agree that the industry itself, especially around, you know, there's so many books and just content that you can passively absorb that without taking any action. And so, yeah, that's been my problem. Learning is a smart person's favorite way to procrastinate. That's what I've found.

That hits home. And it's funny because I honestly think most, most of these problems are actually very, they're intellectually simple. They're just emotionally very difficult. Right. And so I think the tendency is that when something feels emotionally difficult, we assume that it must be intellectually complicated. And so we set ourselves like, okay, I need to like buy a couple books about this. And, you know, maybe I should, maybe I should watch this lecture on YouTube to, like, really understand this and, and take notes and, like, journal for a few weeks and before I can, like, know exactly how to break up with my girlfriend or whatever, right? And it's like, no, you just fucking break up with your girlfriend.

Right. Like, it's just, it's not going to make it any easier. But that's the avoidance you're talking about. Yes. Which is the emotional avoidance. And you do that through intellectualizing all this content or whatever. Yes. Yeah.

I will say for my over-intellectualizing brain, what helped was just realizing that experience and action is the best teacher. You want to learn? Oh, okay. You're motivated to learn. Then get your ass off the couch and go do something. Right. So I don't know. That helped me anyway.

Yeah. Okay. Speaking of, you've already mentioned marketing. Yep. Once. In this next point, you say self-help marketing creates unrealistic expectations. I think that's been driven home. Most people know that by now.

Yes. But what were some of those back then and now that you see the over-promising under-delivering? There's a short version of this, which I think most people kind of implicitly understand, which is it's just the magic bullet marketing, right? Like it's this idea that you can go to a seminar or read a book and, you know, a light bulb's going to go off and everything's going to change overnight. Like that is so, so intensely rare of an experience. yet that I think most consumers in this market assume that that's the baseline.

And I think there's a lot of self-delusion that people try to go through to convince themselves that that has happened. You know, I talked earlier about how people will, you know, go do all this stuff and go to retreats and seminars and do all these new practices and stuff and claim they're a new person. And then meanwhile, it's like they're still unemployed, their relationships falling apart. They're broke, like they still have terrible habits. Like, nothing, nothing of substance has changed. It's like all of the, you know, fun, sexy stuff is, is changing. In my experience, and this is very much reflected in the literature, psychological literature, and behavioral, like the literature around behavioral change is that the vast majority of change

is small, tiny iterations over a long period of time. Boring. Right. Yes. It's like adding one little thing every couple weeks that like you, nobody's going to notice and you might not even notice the benefits. But it's like once you do like eight or ten of those things over a long period of time, you suddenly look back and you're like, oh, wow. I'm like, I'm actually a very different person than I was a year ago or six months ago, you know. But you certainly can't, you can't write a marketing campaign for that. And you certainly can't cram that into a weekend and charge $5,000 for that. Exactly. Like an honest pitch in self-help would be like, try these 17 small iterative changes over a long period of time to maybe be able to perceive a significant growth in your life. You know, and it's like. Mark Manson in the next book right there. There it is. There's the title. And you probably put an asterisk there with a bunch of fine print, like clarifying like what change means, what growth means, what iteration means. So like that's that's the honest truth. And it's not a sexy message.

I mean, I will say again, that the biggest thing I can say since that I wrote that article is like, things have gotten much better. You know, all the bullshit is still there. It's still very prevalent. There's still a bunch of like really shady, creepy people in this industry. There still are absolutely like frauds and charlatans making a lot of money. But the science-based science. of the industry, the evidence-based side of the industry, the realistic side of the industry has grown substantially. And I do see that message of just like consistent, small,

unsexy things is actually what moves the needle. That is becoming more prevalent. Yeah, there's at least a market for that now. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Totally. Which is good. Yeah, I would agree with that too. Yeah. Okay, I want to keep moving here. You mentioned this one a little bit already too self-help is usually not scientifically validated so just yes coming right off of that yeah you noted that most of the self-help practices especially back then and i would say in the like the 90s 2000s was the case they just weren't backed by scientific evidence there was some evidence coming out around then about like meditation journaling that was kind of starting back then it was like oh these things are actually helpful gratitude practices stuff like that there are some some of that

and i think that's that has come online a little bit more um as long as you're not using it as a form of a avoidance. Right. Yeah, what's your take on that now? Again, I think it's gotten a lot better. What's interesting about all that stuff, you know, you mentioned meditation and journaling, like both of those kind of had their heyday of like, you know, all these studies came out. It's like, oh my God, this is like the big new thing. It's everybody should be doing this. And of course, you see that effect as more people start doing it, the milder the benefits become. Right. And I guess one thing that like I've kind of, I don't know if I've changed my views. on this, but it's more like my views have evolved on this, which is that most things work a little

bit. Yeah. Nothing works completely. And the things that work for each individual are going to be completely different. And so really, like, if you approach this industry or this project of improving your self-improvement, really, like, the right framework you should be working from is just treating everything as, like, an endless series of small experiments, right? I'm going to try journaling every morning for 30 days,

and I'm going to see, and I'm just going to note, like, if I feel better, if I don't feel better, if it's useful, if it doesn't feel useful, everybody's mileage is going to vary. Like, me personally, I've messed with journaling on and off, you know, my entire adulthood. I discovered relatively early that, like, I'm what I call a crisis journaler,

so I don't journal every day. Yeah. I journal when shit hits the, You know, it's like when something is like a huge mess in my life or something is like I have a really stressful problem that I need to work through a journal of shit out of my You're right to the blank page. Yeah. Oh yeah, I'm like I'll go through like 10 pages in my journal. But then I'll sit there for eight months and not be touched and I've just found that like that's what works for me and I think I think if more people understood how

I don't want to say flimsy the research is, but like how mild the effects. sizes are in most of the research and most of the interventions, they would probably take that approach as well, like just understanding that like even even the tried and true things like therapy and like pharmaceutical interventions, like even those like don't have massive hit rates, right? Even those like people's mileage varies drastically from person to person. So it's like take everything as a small experiment, be very conscious of like, I'm going to do this for X amount of days or X weeks, and I'm going to see how I feel at the end compared to the beginning, and I'm going to try to be really honest with myself of like, is this moving the needle

at all? Is this worth it? Am I going to keep doing it? And like, and if not, that's fine. That's still information. Like you didn't lose anything. You journal for 30 days and it didn't do anything for you. That's not a loss.

That's actually, that's still a win because now you know that that's just not a thing that works for you. So you go try something else. Yeah. Yeah, and I think over the last like decade or so, too, you and I have both, we've, we've seen this, the replication crisis in psychology especially. And at first, I was very disillusioned by that. I was like, oh, no, this, like, the whole field's in trouble. But when I, you step, if you step back and you think about it.

Yeah. I'm still, I'm not giving up on the scientific project here at all because that's how it goes. It's just a long time. And then when you try to, but when you try to apply that to an individual life, right? That's a shorter time span we need to deal with. Whereas the arc of scientific discovery is much longer. And we have to still believe in that, I think, just on principle. But it's like you're saying, take it with a grain of salt.

Be a skeptic in your own mind. Be a scientist in your own mind. Be like, well, let's see if this works for me. Totally. So I arrive at the same place that you do. And just to give context for listeners who aren't aware, like the replication crisis is it's happened on most of the social sciences, but basically it's somewhere around 60%. You know, when they run a psychological study, it's usually with a bunch of college students

in the U.S. And at some point, around 10, 15 years ago, they started taking some of these common psychological experiments and running them in like, you know, Indonesia and the Amazon rainforest. Or sometimes in the U.S. again. Or sometimes in the U.S. again. And they find that it doesn't replicate. Right. You get totally different results.

And so there's been roughly around 60% of, you know, you know, there's been a roughly around 60% of what was considered like scientifically true in psychology is does not replicate. And so it's actually been called in the question. And so a lot of there's a, I would just say this, like if you've read a lot of a science-based books on like happiness and motivation and improving your life that were written, say, in the 2000s to early 2010s, there's a good chance that a lot of that does not hold on. So yeah, yeah. So yeah, being a scientist on a personal level though, good, that's-

Yes. Experiment on your own. Absolutely. That's where I end up with that too. Absolutely. Okay. Last one. Self help is a contradiction.

And this goes back to the bad okay and okay to great people. You say that the fundamental, kind of the fundamental project of improvement is self-acceptance. And that, you can't get that. By definition, you can't get that externally. Yeah. Right. And so self-help ends up being the most useful for the people who needed the least. You've kind of already mentioned this a little bit.

what so what does someone do if they are in that like you said you know of course therapy and all of those kind of things too but what are what's the project is that the project i guess is if you're bad okay if you're a really bad spot just getting yourself to the point where yeah you could use these things this is the only one i don't know if i stand by this anymore i think this it's interesting hearing this 12 years later in my 40s that one i I think the first four are totally legitimate, especially for the time. That one kind of sounds like a guy in his 20s trying to sound really smart. Okay.

It's not that he's wrong, but it's just like I think it's overstating the case a little bit. Like, it's true. The goal is to achieve a level of self-acceptance, but like you're not going to get there overnight. And there are all, I do think there are a lot of things that you can do to help, like, help guide people in that direction or like help teach them the tools to develop that in themselves without demeaning them, without like robbing them of their agency or, um, preventing them from taking responsibility for themselves. There is a lot of stuff in the

self-help industry that does those things to people, but there's a lot of healthy ways to go about it as well. Um, so yeah, I think, I think that's overstated. Okay. I think, I think there, there is a healthy path to help people get to a place of self-acceptance. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, overall, I'm like, I'm optimistic. Yeah, I am. We're still here. I mean, I mean, we're still doing this. Still doing it. I mean, the industry is bigger and it's ever been. And the demand.

I mean, what's interesting is that it really has become mainstream. Yeah. It is, it's almost like, you know, the same way people listen to sports and weather and read the head, you know, read the news. I had, you know, read the newslet headlines for the day. They've got their little inspiration practice or the person they listen to or the, you know, whatever Facebook account they follow. You know, I used to, I used to kind of hide myself help books. I would, you know, kind of, you kind of bury them. Now they're up on my bookshelf.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously they are, but yeah, yeah. That's changed a lot, yeah. Cool, which is good. Yeah. All right, we'll be right back. And we're back. What are we, uh, what are we calling bullshit on today, Drew?

Oh, brilliant or bullshit this week, Mark. Minimalism. Oh, God. Near and dear to our hearts. We really are digging into the old Manson archive. Well, this one, it's like kind of, this one I've thought a lot about, I mean, you and I, we'll get into our stories, I think, I think, okay here, but we've been, been...

We should define minimalism first. People who have not heard of it. We'll define minimalism. The core premise of minimalism, let's just say, is owning fewer things will create less stress and more freedom in your life. Yes. Right? Okay.

I think even you, you wrote an article about this. I think it was in 2012 as well. So it's been 12, 13 years. Yeah. So. It's a strong Manson year. Yeah. Yeah.

And there was still a very, kind of in the zeitgeist. you know, fight club was still out, right? Like the things you end up owning you, that famous line from, from Chuck. So, and you and I both were at one point in our lives, very staunch mentalists. We no longer are. Right. So maybe we can go through your experience with it first. And I can pepper in mind as well.

And what you learned from that. Well, just to zoom out. Yeah. I really, in hindsight, I really do think minimalism, was kind of a cultural trend that probably hit, it was probably some combination of two things. One is I think our generation grew up, like I don't know about you, but like,

our parents, our parents, our generation's parents. You know, it was all about the beautiful house and the white picket fence and you know, yeah, and like going to the mall and getting all the shit on sale and having all these like beautiful things, you know, outside and around and the garage got boxes piled, you know, to the ceiling with extra stuff.

And I grew up around that. I was like a little bit disillusioned by it. I thought it was a little bit ridiculous. Like just growing up with the amount of consumerism that we grew up with, I think there was kind of a natural propensity to rebel once we hit young adulthood. So I think that was a huge part of the trend. I also think part of it was the great financial crisis. You know, you basically had this generation of 20-year-olds who, uh,

A, had no money or possessions already, and then B, had no immediate opportunities for financial advancement. And so, of course, they, like, come together and create a owning nothing as a status symbol. Right. You know, like, it kind of makes sense. Maybe that's a cynical way to look at it. But at that time in my life, you know, I was living as a nomad. I was young, self-employed, worked off my laptop. I didn't really need a whole lot, right?

Like to be happy, I really just needed some clothes, my computer, an internet connection, and, you know, that was kind of it. Yeah, a few bucks to buy beers here and there. Exactly, exactly. So it was an easy, again, this is not to like discount it as a philosophy. And I do think there, I'll get to some principles that I do think are valuable that came from it. But again, looking back at who I was when I was 25, it was, I was not risking a whole lot. Like, there was not much doubt. That was a conclusion I came to too.

Yeah. It's not like I was like selling my cars and like moving into a tiny studio apartment with like no furniture. It's like I didn't have anything to begin with. So of course it was easy to like give everything away. As I got older, you know, I met my wife. I settled down. I started developing a career. I started taking my writing way more seriously, which meant that, like, okay, I actually want to have a comfortable office chair.

I want to have a desk with, like, stuff on it that I like. I want to have pictures on the wall of, like, things that make me happy because I'm going to spend 10 hours a day in this room, like, staring at this wall. So might as well be something really nice on it. You start seeing the reason why you, like, certain possessions are nice to have, like they add value to your life. that said, the principle that I try to hold from the minimalism days that I do think is true is that owning a possession is not always a net positive. I think our parents' generation and earlier generations that grew up with very little, it was just kind of implicit that like owning something is going to add value to your life.

Whereas I think we were the first generation that had the experience of like recognizing that like just because you own something doesn't mean it's a net positive. It can actually make your life more difficult than not. So I try to remember that. And I try to really ask myself, you know, before any major purchase or, you know, when accumulating junk, I just try to like, do I really need this? Is this adding anything to my life? You know, the Marie Kondo blew up 10 years ago. You know, she had this great phrase which she said, like, does it bring joy?

Great question. Like, you should ask that about everything in your life. And if it doesn't bring joy, you should probably consider getting rid of it. the core principle of minimalism, that owning less gives you more freedom and alleviate stress, I do think is true. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's tons of benefits from minimalism as well.

You get a few that I've come across and came up with. Cognitive clarity, cluttered environment. Your brain's all over the place. Decision for fatigue. Yep. You know, there was a classic. So this was like early 2010s, you know, the CEOs who wore the same thing every Yeah, you know, that was touted.

Obviously, the financial benefits, you're going to save money. Totally. You have more time and freedom. I'm sure you have less maintenance of things and stuff like that. Mental health benefits, where you just don't, some people anyway, like you already mentioned, don't just have a relief when they don't have all these things. Lack of paradox of choice, I would say. Lack of paradox of choice.

That definitely goes with the decision fatigue type bucket. It's just less wasteful, too. That too. You know? Yesterday we were talking about. You know, the studio is kind of a mess right now, right? And I was talking about getting rid of something. And our social media manager, Jess, she said, you American, she's Australian.

So in her cute little Australian action, you Americans, just always throwing shit away. I was like, oh, yeah, you know, that's true. Yeah. We're a throwaway society at this point. So there's all those benefits, sure. Some of the downsides I came up with, though, as well, you can take it like anything. You can get way too far into it. The stress of minimalism, like, oh, my God, I have 10 things.

And I swore I was only going to have, you know, nine or whatever it is. So there's that there was also, and I think I fell into this trap that minimalism equals happiness. So like, well, if possessions don't make you happy, then no possessions will make you happy. Right, right, right. And that's just a false dichotomy that comes to bear. And you already mentioned too, minimalism as a status symbol too. Yes. That was that can get to be like, oh, look how few things I can own.

Yeah. Becomes a status symbol or it can even turn into the things I own need to be, you know, really good quality, whatever. And you end up spending $300 on a plain white t-shirt or something like that. Like, come on. That's right. And there's, there's times where more is better, right? Like you said, we were young, 20-year-old stupid dudes, right? If I was a parent, there's no way I would. No way. What are you? You can't argue for that. You can argue that you need to be more intentional with the things you buy your kids, the toys, the clothes, that all of that. Sure. But, you know, hobbyists too. They get a lot of joy out of things they make or whatever and they need lots of like tools like my you know my my wood shop has tons of tools in it right uh collectors just people who like just having things too is there anything inherently

wrong with that i don't think so as it goes back to the joy thing yeah marie condo i buy books compulsively like now i do too yeah i like for every book i read i like own probably five i love books too physical books i have a beautiful library it's awesome i love it's great yeah yeah i mean honestly i think minimalism is probably a little bit of a misnomer like really the, what it should have been called is just anti-consumerism. You know, it's just like, don't just buy shit compulsively. Don't buy shit that you don't need. Don't buy shit for stupid status reasons. Right. You know, be conscious of what you're purchasing. Be conscious of what you own. Make sure it's adding value to your life and not detracting it. And then do your thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But beyond like the loss ofversion and the maintenance costs and all of that, I think there's even kind of more insidious attachments that we we have to our things. And you mentioned in the article again, the identity investment. When you start attaching your identity right to your possessions, that can be a big problem too, right? Like, um, and you say, or if you attach your identity to the lack of possessions. Ah. Ah. Gotcha. 25 year old Mark. You fucking punk. We did. We were definitely not thinking about that. Because what that was for me. That was it. I pride of myself. I lived down two bags for two years. And I didn't own a car. Yep. I left. I left, The one thing I left my guitar, like at my friend's house and like everything else, that was my, and I went around telling you, I was an evangelist. Badge of honor.

Evangelist, yes, very much so. I live out of a suitcase. I thought everybody should live this way. Yeah. Yeah. And I got so attached to that identity. You're absolutely right. It's the same thing as a person who's like entire identity is his car.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Same shit. Yeah. You did mention though, okay, the sentimental, the sentimentality. around some objects and stuff like this. This is what I've come around on quite a bit too. My grandmother is a very sentimental person around objects, especially. And I just never, never understood it until recently, I think I started getting a little older too. And what I

realized is that she connects those objects to a person or a place or a time or something like that. And I realized that because when my grandfather passed away, her husband, my grandpa passed away, she gave me some of his clamps and I use them in my in my shop sometimes. And every time I pull those out, I think about my grandpa now. And I'm like, they're, they're not great clamps. They're not fancy, expensive ones or anything like that. But I'm like, oh, shit. Yeah. I love those fucking clamps. I got a set of chisels from one of my uncles who passed away too. And they're crappy little shizzles, but I think about him every time I pull those out, you know? Yeah, totally. That to me is like, oh, okay, I get that now. It's not, that is not like a, you're not attaching your

identity to something, but you are, there's like this little story around it that you can connect to emotionally and remember people and honor them in a way that's like, okay, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it is absolutely. It's the attachments to relationships. It's also attachments to a certain period of your life. It's interesting. Next week we have Randy Blythe on who is the lead singer, one of my favorite bands ever. And it's interesting because one of the first times I hung out with him, I kind of, I was like,

I was backstage with him at one of his shows. And I got into this very philosophical conversation with him about like, what is fandom. Like, why are you a fan of somebody or something of, like, art or whatever? And and as we were talking, I told him, I was like, you know what's funny? Like, your band, when I was in college, your band is like the soundtrack to my university experience. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. And he, like, immediately was like, that's it. That's it. And I was like, don't get me wrong. Like, I like all this stuff you guys have done since. But, like, there's, like a four-year period in my life that you were like the sound if my life was a movie you were the soundtrack

during those scenes and and it's like there is just this emotional attachment that is there the same way I'd be emotionally attached to like a you know as a stuffed dog I grew up with or you know a dish that my grandmother used to make you know and it is it is super fascinating that emotional attachment that we develop at certain times and with certain people in certain places that that is what that's the value of an object right yeah that is other than the utility right uh like that is that is what makes it valuable yeah i had a very similar experience that recently i dug up an old playlist that i made oh yeah oh yeah when i was living in chili and uh like it took me straight back i'm walking through the streets of santiago while i'm listening to

dude is there is there nothing better than like rediscovering uh music that you loved like 10 or 15 years ago and then forgot about. Yeah. And it just it transports you. Exactly. It takes you right back. Oh, it's insane.

Yeah. No. And this, that's what I was, that happened with music. That's happened with music with me before or even like movies and stuff like that. Yeah. I didn't make that connection with physical objects for the longest time.

I think some people are more prone to do that. Yeah. Like my grandmother definitely is. Sure. But she also grew up with nothing too. You know, so like the things in her life meant a lot. And I think that's another point we forget too is that.

for some people there is like a psychological security around their things. And if it doesn't get into your identity, I think that's okay too. Well, I'll add this, is that some people really struggle with waste. And so my wife is she also is very interested in kind of minimalist philosophies. But her inspiration is completely different. For me, it's very much, it's like a very Buddhist, like, I don't want to be attached to anything. For her, she really struggles with wasting things. My grandma too, yeah.

Yeah, it tortures her. Yeah. And so she is, for her, the cost of wasting an object is so high that like she is really, she thinks very, very, very hard before she gets something for that reason. And it's funny because there have been times in our relationship where like for months, I'll keep telling her, I'm like, you know, we really need to get one of these things. And like she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I know. And then like, six months go by.

I'm like, why have we not bought this thing yet? And she's like, well, I don't want to get the wrong one and then we have to throw it out or like sell it and you know I'm just like just buy the fucking thing right so some people some people really struggle with the idea that like they have not taken full advantage of you know what they've spent their money on yeah and then that kind of tortures them and so then they they would rather just not buy it at all right right yeah and there's this is somewhat related I guess there's this minimalist principle some people call it the 10 10 rule or there's a 2020 rule if it can be replaced for $20 within 20 minutes just get rid of it now yeah that's a very wasteful mindset though too

if you think about it. It's like, well, do you... Are we, you know? I mean, now we're getting into like sub philosophies of minimalism. Like, because there is kind of a minimal, there's like the sustainability minimalism. And then there's the, I guess, like the ego attachment minimalism, which I was always the latter.

Yeah. Yeah, same. I would throw stuff away all the time. No, same, for sure. For sure. I'm very American. Yeah. Again, yeah, that's...

My dad had always said this growing up. It's like we've become, we've transferred from a fixed society to a throwaway society. And I think that's where we need to get. We do need, you do need to be more intentional around what you own for all sorts of reasons. And that's, I mean, that's one of them. We can't like being so wasteful. They say something like if, uh, if everybody on the planet live like Americans, we'd need like 20 planets or something like that, you know.

And if it's, if it's the equivalent in France, we'd need like six, you know, or something like that. It's insane. So there is that argument around, which I totally get and find into it. We'll be right back. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road. And the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams.

Or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going. Start your search at Autotrater.ca Canada's Car Marketplace. All right, we're back. What is the listener question of the day? Yes, this one comes from Tyler,

not Tyler Durden, but Tyler, just Tyler. Okay. This is an interesting one, and it actually came up in a recent episode, so I like this one. Is it okay for an agnostic person to go to church with the intent to learn and socialize

if they do not intend to convert? being respectful applies throughout. So he puts that condition. I really like this question. Okay. I feel like this question came up because of the Arthur Brooks episode. That's exactly what it was, yeah.

And it's interesting because I've been thinking about this ever since that episode. And it was funny too, because I saw we got some comments who kind of trashed him for trying to convert me. Yeah, right, right. I didn't feel like he was trying to convert you,

but I mean... It was good. I mean, he was very, he was very respectful. But there was definitely like some like nudges. I mean, I kind of called them out on it. Yes, you did. And there was one you said in there, something along the lines.

You said like as an atheist I could argue God is not real. And he said, and you could be right. Yes. Which I thought was, oh, okay. Yeah. Even he's a devout Catholic. And he acknowledges doubt as part of faith and all of it. I did not think he crossed any lines.

But it was funny because he was definitely kind of like nudging like, hey, you should go go to church. Go see what it's about. He recommended that to be. He's like, go. And he's like, people will, you know, they'll engage you for the most part. You will run into a zealots and assholes just like you will anyway. Yeah, pick the right church for sure. But what do you think about this as a, I don't know the context.

It's a short question and he doesn't give a whole lot of context. He just wants to learn and socialize is what he says. I think if you've never been exposed to Christianity or church, I think it's a great exercise. I would definitely recommend it to anybody who's curious. to do it at least once. Just go see what it's about. See what a church service is like. See what they talk about.

Listen to the Bible verses. It could be temple or synagogue or whatever. Actually, one of my favorite things that I did, I had a really cool youth group leader when I was a teenager. Great guy. And one of the things he did for us is we took a, I think there was a month. And it was every Sunday we went to a different religious service.

So we went to a Jewish temple one week. And then we went to like a mosque one week. And then we went to, I think we went to like a Mormon church one week and it was really cool like just and like he had called ahead of time. It was like, hey, I'm just going to bring a bunch of these like Christian kids and it's just to learn about your religion and just like see, be exposed to the different beliefs. It was really cool.

It was like very. Yeah, it was awesome. And so I think just from a purely like educational perspective and empathetic perspective of like learning and understanding different types of people and different philosophies and religions, I think it's a great exercise. Should you go regularly and try to become part of that community while not while being atheist or agnostic? I don't know. That's like, so that's the question I struggle with.

It's actually funny because, you know, I actually live two blocks from a church. And since my wife and I moved here, we like make jokes that we're going to like, oh, it's Sunday morning, time to go to church. You know, like, we'll walk past like go get our breakfast or something. and we're like, ah, we should stop in and go to church. Yeah. We kind of like laugh about it. But it's like after the Arthur Brooks episode, I had a conversation with it. I was like, maybe we should go sit in church.

I don't know. Like it is, I do agree with him that like you and I, we've done so many episodes on the loneliness epidemic, on the atomization of society, how people are like seem to be getting worse at maintaining community and relationships. And like that is such a huge problem. It's a problem that I experienced my own life. And, and I, I. I can't help but look at it and just see a church-sized whole in society.

Like that it's just all this stuff like church was kind of the and not just church, but religion in general. It was like the binding force that like solved all these problems. And and so I lament that. And I mentioned on that episode like I think back to my parents' church community when I was a kid. And, you know, as an adult now, I remember. it with envy. Like, I'm like, man, I wish I had a group of friends like that that I got to see every Sunday and do all these cool things with and that I could rely upon and that would show up, you know,

at all times, all hours and pitch in and help with whatever it was needed. I get the draw. I'm just very, very skeptical that you can synthetically recreate that. Yeah. Without the buy-in to the Jesus stuff. Right. And also to try to embed myself or, or oneself into that community without that buy-in, on some level feels disrespectful. Right, but yeah. And so, like, initially, I think the question is, like, initially going to learn and socialize.

Yeah. Sure, that's okay. Yeah. One of the things I like about this question, though, is it's somebody who's intentionally putting themselves in a situation with people that they disagree with. And I think, like, a lot of the comments we got to the, Arthur, is a polarizing episode.

did really well. Like the people liked it, loved it. The people who didn't had a lot to say about it. And it just, it kind of shows you how uncomfortable people are sitting with ideas that they disagree with and don't want to engage with. And I just, I commend Tyler here for just being so proactive about being like, I'm going to, I'm going to go see what this is all about. That's go check it out. Go check it out. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, there was, there was this period, probably like 15 years ago. You know, In the late 2000s, early 2010s, where there was kind of this virulent atheism. It was like Sam Harris was bursting on the scene. Dr. Dawkins was doing his thing, and Hitchens was still alive. And so it became very fashionable to be not militant atheists, but uncompromisingly atheists. Because before that atheists were just kind of chill. They were just like, yeah, just don't make me go to church. But then in the 2000s, it became kind of like a not only,

my atheist, but I think religion is bad. And that never sat right with me as somebody who grew up in a religious community. Just because I've seen firsthand how beneficial it is to so many people's lives. And again, from the community aspect, the social aspect, the emotional support aspect. So I think for people who have never been exposed to a religious community, it's probably a useful exercise to go check one out, see what it's all about. See what it's all about. See what. But the people are like, chances are, unless you find a real shitty denomination with a bunch of assholes, chances are you're going to meet the nicest people of your fucking life. You're going to be blown away by how friendly they are. Right.

And that's something that gets missed, I think, a lot in the secular side of society. Right. Right. And to be sure, there are downsides and there's assholes. And there, yeah, the dogma can, you know, get in and hook its claws into you and stuff like that. Yeah, sure. There's that. There's that side of it. That can happen without religion, too. Totally. So, you know, you see those political movements now, which are basically, like you talked

with Arthur Brooks, they're basically religious movements now. And we see the fallout from that. And that's what we're trying to replace this church size hole. Yeah. You talk about. We're replacing it with things that could be scarier. Tim Urban said that, too. And there's another polarizing episode there, too.

Tim Urban said that too. It was like, yeah, yeah, there's a lot about religion he doesn't like and he's agnostic atheist as well. But he's like, what are you replacing that with? Right. Because it could be a lot worse. than than what we've done for the last 2,000 years or more actually. So I yeah to be curious and you don't you know you don't have to you're sure you

don't have to sign up you don't have to drink the Kool-Aid. Yeah. I don't think it's such a bad idea. Yeah. I don't know what do you think about like you know like Unitarians or like these do you think anything like a like us almost pseudo religion could replace that you have already kind of noticed that or mentioned that. Probably not.

Uh, you know there's a theory. And they've actually found this in the research that's basically like the more strict the belief system of a movement The the more binding it is like the more the stronger the community is And the more resilient the community is because there's just a higher bar to entry and there's more You lose more by failing and and everybody's behavior is kept in check through accountability I don't know I think there's some threshold of like you need to buy in to something That's like hard to buy into right like you can't just show up and be like oh well maybe we believe the same thing Maybe we don't but it doesn't matter because we're all just here to hang out like no group based on that

Ever laughs or sticks around like it's it's when people have skin in the game by believing something that is Potentially embarrassing or Punishing in some way sets them apart right that sets them apart like that's also the glue that binds them together Right and so and then that's where you get the benefits all the social and emotional benefits of like having a community and relying on each other. And so I don't think you can recreate it. I think it's it's and it's it's interesting because I think a lot of there's there's a lot of I guess secular organizations that are like behaving more like religions, right? Like if you think about things like CrossFit or yoga studios or like veganism, you know, the or the effective altruism,

Like there's all these secular movements that are like trying, are being like religious, is. Yeah. And it doesn't really work. Yeah. Doesn't really work. It's actually, it's funny. You kind of get the worst aspects of religion, which is like you get, you get the zealotry and the judgment.

But you don't get the good aspects. You don't get the community and the like the reliance and all the good vibes and stuff. So it's hurting cats a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I don't know.

Maybe we should create a religion, Drew. call it Bernieism you tried to do that an article a long time ago remember that I love that article

I know you did a lot of people did and I was like I don't know you hated it this is mine honestly that was not my

best article a lot of people did not like that article well okay all right what's the I got some wisdom of the week

for you yeah what's the what's the quote this one's it's going back to the self-help stuff and the self-acceptance

the great Carl Rogers the humanist psychologist. He said the curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. Mike drop moment. All right. We'll be back next week, folks. The subtle art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishamura.

Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.