[How To Like Everything: A Utopia] [By: Shepheard, Paul] [July, 2013]

by Paul Shepheard

How To Like Everything is a utopia. 'Utopia' is a word invented five hundred years ago at the start of the modern age as a description of the ideal society. It's composed of Latin parts that taken together mean 'no place' or 'nowhere'. We now use the word utopia to mean an impossible dream of perfection. How To Like Everything recasts the actual world, the forever-changing world we live in, as to make the impossible possible. This is not a dry academic debate. Paul Shepheard takes on his subject by threading questions, evidence and logic through hilarious, moving and thought-provoking stories. The action is set in the complicated city of Amsterdam, where he gets stuck in the briars of love affairs, existential decisions and conflicts with complete strangers. And the philosophy? He is a materialist. His utopia hinges on the question of whether there can be anything other than the present moment.

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published July 16, 2013

Reviews

[Lucas Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get drawn in by Zero books often. It is a mixed bag, but this little book was fun. It is an extended personal essay/meditation that skews more towards metanarrative than philosophical inquiry. This slots into what I am beginning to think of "new new atheism." A materialist perspective that skews away from the virulent anti-religious attitude of a Hitchens or Dawkins and is more focused on getting through the night. Maybe even on borrowing the ritual of religious communities and recontextualizing them in a way that serves the "actual world."

There is a nagging sense that the unspoken key to liking everything is to be white and affluent. I don't think the author is very interested in dissecting his privilege or making Utopia for everyone. He's just trying to take the world as it comes and see it for the wonder that it is, warts and all. My life isn't changed, but a thoughtful and intriguing diversion.

[Mascha · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a philosophy book, and neither is it utopian in any recognizable way. I can best describe this as a badly-written memoir of some dude who spent time on grant-money in Amsterdam to write a book called “How to like everything” that he thinks will be really awesome but he never actually writes it. Instead, he writes a lot about why he thinks his ground-breaking philosophy of everything is the best thing to come to humanity and how important his book is. His epiphanies and jokes are juvenile, and don’t get me started on when he quotes Adam Sandler for two pages to end a meaningless chapter. I wouldn’t have finished this book had it been any longer.