No method. No mercy. Just this. What if the self you've been tending-defending, improving, believing in-was never really there? In these unsparing but lucid essays, psychologist and philosopher Robert Saltzman examines the machinery of meaning in an age of performative presence and synthetic minds. With dry wit and a refusal to console, he exposes our hunger for stories, our need for coherence, and the illusions that pass for identity in the 21st century. What remains is not despair, but the end of waiting for the plot to redeem itself.