All is lost. A sentiment rarely uttered, but commonly felt.

One can see it in the eyes of people from all walks of life.

One would expect the feeling to be acute terror. But terror has a remarkably short time constant: doom becomes dread, dread becomes apathy, and persistent apathy can lead to mania.

In my experience, failure never arises from acute terror; it is triggered by apathy. The sound of man's defeat is not a gasp, but a whimper.

The positive side is that you never lose if you never give up; however, this also means that to lose, one must surrender.

And frankly, there's nothing more depressing than seeing a person who has given up completely. Many sad souls spend their whole lives quitting, never persevering, and surrendering to apathy.

If I've learned one thing in life, it is that the quitter never ends up happy. From the poor Irish farmer to the Silicon Valley billionaire; from the high school dropout to the quantum physics PhD; I've met them all. The one throughline I can draw is that the "successful" quitter is chronically depressed, while the perseverant man becomes content.

A chronic quitter may attain success through luck, but they will never be satisfied. They will always yearn for something better in life, something they will never find, because purpose is intrinsic, and purpose cannot be developed without perseverance.

Purpose is crafted on the final rep, the painful last push, the stressful all-nighter, the frightening big leap. This is obvious to the perseverant, but lost on the quitter. Like an addict, they are strapped to the hedonic treadmill, yearning for the comfort of safety and mediocrity.

The prior content is background knowledge for what I term "All is Lost" syndrome. When one loses conviction, defeat becomes inevitable.

In 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan went to visit the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. The congressman was on a mission to determine if the people of this settlement were being held hostage. There was significant critical media coverage of the settlement, which caused the leaders of the Peoples Temple to plan the visit meticulously.

The situation was particularly tense as Ryan had brought relatives of several residents, many of whom believed their family members were being held against their will.

However, after interviewing the residents, Ryan came away surprisingly impressed. Ryan conveyed to the leaders of Jonestown that he thought the place was beautiful and though some wanted to leave, that his report back to the U.S. would be broadly positive. For a cult under federal scrutiny, Ryan's approval was a resounding success.

That night, Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones proclaimed "I have failed... all is lost". He then ordered the assassination of the congressman and the murder-suicide of all 900 residents of Jonestown including 300 children.

Jones had so adamantly expected defeat that the concept of success had become an impossibility. The terror of the visit and the chaos of the town had numbed all hope to apathy. In that state, any success became meaningless. The project was over and it had to be destroyed quickly.

Once one has lost conviction, defeat is guaranteed.
There are two possible outcomes:

Failure. Failure confirms the brain's model of the world. The feeling of apathy becomes justified to the self and any effort feels pointless. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in which a person quits sooner, fails faster and eventually loses their sense of self.

Success. Success is the more dangerous outcome. When a person somehow succeeds or survives despite the mental act of quitting and the sense of apathy, rather than being fulfilled by victory, a very odd thing happens. The brain's world model has been violated. Defeat has been predicted so confidently that they act to destroy their own success.

A form of self-destructive mania takes over. Rash, unjustifiable decisions are made because they just want it all to be over. They've mentally prepared themselves to move on, and remaining in the situation creates acute stress.

This behaviour seems insane, but it is quite common. At the end of a failing startup, you often see manic, inexplicable behaviour. Few companies go quietly into the night. When you look at the end of relationships, it is rarely a quiet goodbye, it is usually an emotional explosion.

The lesson I have drawn from my own life is simple: never give up. If you're on a worthy mission, you need to fight to your last breath. Your strategy can adapt. Your plans can pivot. But never, ever give up, even when your back is against the wall.

Life is rarely a linear progression.
It's nothing, then everything, all at once.
You will never fulfill your destiny if you quit.
Never Give Up.