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Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Depressive Realism argues that people with mild-to-moderate depression have a more accurate perception of reality than non-depressives. Depressive realism is a worldview of human existence that is essentially negative, and which challenges assumptions about the value of life and the institutions claiming to answer life’s problems. Drawing from central observations from various disciplines, this book argues that a radical honesty about human suffering might initiate wholly new ways of thinking, in everyday life and in clinical practice for mental health, as well as in academia.
Divided into sections that reflect depressive realism as a worldview spanning all academic disciplines, chapters provide examples from psychology, psychotherapy, philosophy and more to suggest ways in which depressive realism can critique each discipline and academia overall. This book challenges the tacit hegemony of contemporary positive thinking, as well as the standard assumption in cognitive behavioural therapy that depressed individuals must have cognitive distortions. It also appeals to the utility of depressive realism for its insights, its pursuit of truth, as well its emphasis on the importance of learning from negativity and failure. Arguments against depressive realism are also explored.
This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of depressive realism within an interdisciplinary context. It will be of key interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates in the fields of psychology, mental health, psychotherapy, history and philosophy. It will also be of great interest to psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors.
206 pages, ebook
First published November 22, 2016
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February 16, 2024
Have you ever, when someone asks ‘how are you?’ blurted out (or been tempted to)—in the words of Franz Kafka—‘the alarm trumpets of nothingness’ instead of just mumbling ‘fine’? If so, you may be a depressive realist. Although the author of this book, Colin Feltham, investigates the nuances of the concept of depressive realism in his introduction and throughout the various chapters, the book’s description offers this basic definition:
Depressive realism is essentially the viewpoint from which Thomas Ligotti writes in his book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, and Feltham does make reference to Ligotti and his writings. However, Feltham’s book is a more directed and organized overview of the depressive realist perspective. Admittedly, Feltham is an academic and, though he sometimes writes disparagingly of academia, his book is published by an academic publisher and thus follows a fairly standard academic approach to a topic. It is thoroughly cited, with a full bibliography at the end of each chapter (immensely valuable for further reading), and a useful topical index. Feltham covers some similar ground as Ligotti does in his book but without the meandering digressions that the latter tends to engage in. This is not to say that Feltham’s book is better, per se, just that it is quite different and would pair well as a companion read to Ligotti’s book.
Given its academic publisher, the book’s high price point will likely dissuade the general reader, which is unfortunate because it is written in a cogent and lucid style that would be accessible to many general readers and is an important contribution to a subject with little published work directly discussing it. Instead, it will be purchased almost exclusively by academic libraries, which will dutifully process, catalog, and shelve it in the cognitive psychology section, where it will languish unread for years to come.
Depressive realism argues that people with mild-to-moderate depression have a more accurate perception of reality than non-depressives. Depressive realism is a worldview of human existence that is essentially negative, and which challenges assumptions about the value of life and the institutions claiming to answer life’s problems.Despite the book’s relative brevity, Feltham tackles an ambitious number of topics to view through the depressive realist lens, including history and ‘anthropathology’, religion and spirituality, philosophy, literature and film, psychology, psychotherapy, the sociopolitical domain, science and technology, and lifespan and everyday life. He also offers arguments against such a view as well as lessons and possibilities for the future. Due to the breadth of scope for such a short book, at times the coverage of a given individual topic is not very extensive. Occasionally, Feltham also makes general statements without citing evidence, although he addresses this practice up front in the introduction.
Depressive realism is essentially the viewpoint from which Thomas Ligotti writes in his book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, and Feltham does make reference to Ligotti and his writings. However, Feltham’s book is a more directed and organized overview of the depressive realist perspective. Admittedly, Feltham is an academic and, though he sometimes writes disparagingly of academia, his book is published by an academic publisher and thus follows a fairly standard academic approach to a topic. It is thoroughly cited, with a full bibliography at the end of each chapter (immensely valuable for further reading), and a useful topical index. Feltham covers some similar ground as Ligotti does in his book but without the meandering digressions that the latter tends to engage in. This is not to say that Feltham’s book is better, per se, just that it is quite different and would pair well as a companion read to Ligotti’s book.
Given its academic publisher, the book’s high price point will likely dissuade the general reader, which is unfortunate because it is written in a cogent and lucid style that would be accessible to many general readers and is an important contribution to a subject with little published work directly discussing it. Instead, it will be purchased almost exclusively by academic libraries, which will dutifully process, catalog, and shelve it in the cognitive psychology section, where it will languish unread for years to come.
October 11, 2020
Depressive Realism challenges the hegemony of positive psychology and its more popular counterpart – the happiness industry. DR holds the view that mildly depressed people have a more accurate perception of the world than normal people. It resembles Buddhism in its central idea that human existence is essentially negative, or life is dukha, but also partially differs from it as DR doesn’t have any prospect of comfort or nirvana. The author draws his ideas through deep and rich investigation of various disciplines of science as well as arts. I found the exposition to be precise and well argued. Overall, an excellent book.
December 31, 2025
“How are you doing?” This must be the emptiest platitude in human society. Nothing other than “fine thanks” is expected or accepted. The questioner would be appalled if you took the opportunity to reply truthfully, actually listing your many hardships, worries, and anxieties.
Psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour. First used as an English term in the late 17th century, the intrigue is timeless and ever relevant. In philosophy we ask how best to live and there is huge crossover to be found with the soft and mysterious psychological science; it explores how we are wired and how best to traverse the wild seas of the mind that we all must sail with very mixed results.
Indeed, we all have to live with the knowledge that we and everyone we love will face personal annihilation, that our species will eventually become extinct and that our solar system and universe will come to a halt. That’s if we even choose to live an examined life, T.S. Eliot memorably remarked that “human kind cannot bear very much reality.”
As hard, objective, scientific data poured in we have had to face a great humbling. No, the sun does not revolve around our planet, we live on a non-descript little rock in a small habitable zone of one solar system, in one galaxy among trillions. We don’t know why there is something rather than nothing and all of our projects and egoistic drives for posterity will ultimately be as dust.
The mythical timescales inherited from religion no longer applied and Darwin pulled the scales from our eyes further showing that religious accounts of creation were flawed and that we weren’t made in the image of a God. Rather we were subject to the same evolutionary determinism that produced all the other animals. Similar wake up calls are being proffered in the fields that disprove the idea of the self and the illusion of free will.
So how do we stay moored mentally? How to be well-adjusted mortal apes as we spin around the sun to our assured demise? How to avoid falling into a mental abyss if our consciousness is simply the product of blind organic forces, and if there is no purpose or cosmic plan in place as to how we should live?
To compound our predicament further, we are hardwired to endure almost any level of suffering due to our survival instinct or the will as Arthur Schopenhauer identified it. A perverse state that leaves us in thrall to the blind processes of replicating more of the same, namely, passing on our selfish genes to another generation.
Something is rotten in the state of being and there are many theories as to what constitutes the ultimate fall of man; Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge and putting us in a state of original sin or Zeus’ plan for Pandora to open the box of suffering and misery to punish humankind. Anarcho-primitivists see the fall as coming with the advent of domestication, agriculture and technology. Henry David Thoreau remarked that the mass of men lead quiet lives of desperation.
The Fall could simply be traced back to the advent of sentience and the ability to suffer. Now beings could experience pain. Norwegian philosopher Peter Zapffe compared human consciousness in particular with the extinct species of Irish Elk that evolved antlers too large to aid their survival. He also suggested that we keep our marbles intact by enacting four coping strategies; isolating the unpleasant facts of life, finding things to anchor ourselves by, diverting our attention, and sublimating our struggles, via the creation of art such as the Greek Tragedies or the wry reflections of Thomas Hardy.
Ernest Becker validated these concepts with his Denial of Death hypothesis, coining the term Terror-Management-Theory for how we keep thoughts of death at bay. He even found that we would rather go to war than grapple with our imminent demise.
Existentialism, as popularised by Sartre and Camus rests on the concepts of accessible freedom and meaning. What, though, if you recognise deterministic forces and accept how limited your freedoms actuallyare? What if you recognise cosmic nihilism, namely that there is no method to the madness? Victor Frankl was a big proponent of existentialism, coining the title Logotherapy, he explained the thought processes that protected him mentally within a concentration camp as others wilted or exterminated themselves.
Evolutionary psychology is a branch of science that points out how our minds are the legacies of millions of years of evolution and how we are ultimately constrained by human nature. This limiting, reductive narrative is offensive to many, keen to attribute our behaviour instead to environmental conditions that they hope to adjust through social reform. Still, our tribal instincts, patriarchal urges and violent responses persist, impervious to a few decades of political grandstanding.
Godfather of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud recognised that in order to have a safer civilization, we must repress our instincts and toil with suffering in the process. He set his goals at a realistic level, hoping that a session on the couch could be the path from “neurotic suffering to ordinary unhappiness”. His theories ranged from Oedipus complexes, dream analysis and the id, ego and superego. One-time acolyte Carl Jung would build on this legacy with concepts of conscious and subconscious minds, universal archetypes, individuation and psychological selves. Both are antecedents to Carl Rogers and modern person-centred therapy.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy doesn’t pick over past events favouring a here-and-now approach, where unhelpful aberrant thoughts are replaced with more realistic ones. This constitutes a move towards optimism bias, an observable phenomenon in which humans are unable to accurately report on how bad their lives have actually been. CBT is often coupled with mindfulness, seeking to offer brief insights to awareness; freedom from that often-critical voice in our heads, or quieting the illusion of self.
Colin Feltham, was a professor emeritus at Sheffield Hallam University in Psychology. A critic of his own discipline, he has coined the term Anthropathology to describe the mental burdens and behaviour of our species. Feltham would point to depressive realism as providing the most accurate worldview. Scientific studies have, in fact, shown test subjects with mild to moderate depression are better judges of reality. As Herman Tonnesson remarked:
“The fact that a patient is classified as mentally or emotionally sick prevents the psychotherapist from enquiring into the possibility of whether, or to what extent, his patient may be cognitively right. It is perfectly possible that a person with ‘existential frustration’, ‘ontological despair’, or simply ‘sub-clinical depression’ may, because of his abnormal condition, be in a better position to look through the camouflage of life that still is deceiving the ‘healthy’ psychotherapists.”
Feltham believes that those who have come to have a depressive realist outlook constitute an oppressed minority. Have a think of how you would label such figures, perhaps as party poopers, as a misery guts or sarcastically remarking that they must be fun at parties? It is an unpopular deed to offer some pessimism into proceedings; hardly any institution in society welcomes the interjection of a Debbie Downer.
Playwright Samuel Beckett wrote, “You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that.” With our thoughts literally able to cause us physical pain, aka depression, there is often an intensifying feedback loop between the pain and the negative thoughts. That suicide is referred to as “taking the easy way out” just confirms our knowledge that to endure is the painful route. Not that suicide is actually easy of course, requiring as it does a suppression of survival instinct, risks of failure, and guilt over the grieving loved ones left behind. Even the depressive realists will generally stick around to support others. A compassionate nihilism that recognises other suffering entities in need of our support.
So will you choose the proverbial red pill or the blue pill? What are your coping strategies? Will you keep your sanity or push deeper into Socrates’ examined life? The reconstructive therapies literally want to fashion you a new, more sustainable personality. What to keep? What to discard? Can we even hope to live authentically? Our idea of self is a set of predilections and habits, often produced by complex biochemical relationships that we can have little real insight into. Truly, the subconscious.
Perhaps most realistically we can continue to lug around our inherited behavioural baggage but with some of the most self-defeating extremes cut away. Freud himself hoped for little more.
Psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour. First used as an English term in the late 17th century, the intrigue is timeless and ever relevant. In philosophy we ask how best to live and there is huge crossover to be found with the soft and mysterious psychological science; it explores how we are wired and how best to traverse the wild seas of the mind that we all must sail with very mixed results.
Indeed, we all have to live with the knowledge that we and everyone we love will face personal annihilation, that our species will eventually become extinct and that our solar system and universe will come to a halt. That’s if we even choose to live an examined life, T.S. Eliot memorably remarked that “human kind cannot bear very much reality.”
As hard, objective, scientific data poured in we have had to face a great humbling. No, the sun does not revolve around our planet, we live on a non-descript little rock in a small habitable zone of one solar system, in one galaxy among trillions. We don’t know why there is something rather than nothing and all of our projects and egoistic drives for posterity will ultimately be as dust.
The mythical timescales inherited from religion no longer applied and Darwin pulled the scales from our eyes further showing that religious accounts of creation were flawed and that we weren’t made in the image of a God. Rather we were subject to the same evolutionary determinism that produced all the other animals. Similar wake up calls are being proffered in the fields that disprove the idea of the self and the illusion of free will.
So how do we stay moored mentally? How to be well-adjusted mortal apes as we spin around the sun to our assured demise? How to avoid falling into a mental abyss if our consciousness is simply the product of blind organic forces, and if there is no purpose or cosmic plan in place as to how we should live?
To compound our predicament further, we are hardwired to endure almost any level of suffering due to our survival instinct or the will as Arthur Schopenhauer identified it. A perverse state that leaves us in thrall to the blind processes of replicating more of the same, namely, passing on our selfish genes to another generation.
Something is rotten in the state of being and there are many theories as to what constitutes the ultimate fall of man; Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge and putting us in a state of original sin or Zeus’ plan for Pandora to open the box of suffering and misery to punish humankind. Anarcho-primitivists see the fall as coming with the advent of domestication, agriculture and technology. Henry David Thoreau remarked that the mass of men lead quiet lives of desperation.
The Fall could simply be traced back to the advent of sentience and the ability to suffer. Now beings could experience pain. Norwegian philosopher Peter Zapffe compared human consciousness in particular with the extinct species of Irish Elk that evolved antlers too large to aid their survival. He also suggested that we keep our marbles intact by enacting four coping strategies; isolating the unpleasant facts of life, finding things to anchor ourselves by, diverting our attention, and sublimating our struggles, via the creation of art such as the Greek Tragedies or the wry reflections of Thomas Hardy.
Ernest Becker validated these concepts with his Denial of Death hypothesis, coining the term Terror-Management-Theory for how we keep thoughts of death at bay. He even found that we would rather go to war than grapple with our imminent demise.
Existentialism, as popularised by Sartre and Camus rests on the concepts of accessible freedom and meaning. What, though, if you recognise deterministic forces and accept how limited your freedoms actuallyare? What if you recognise cosmic nihilism, namely that there is no method to the madness? Victor Frankl was a big proponent of existentialism, coining the title Logotherapy, he explained the thought processes that protected him mentally within a concentration camp as others wilted or exterminated themselves.
Evolutionary psychology is a branch of science that points out how our minds are the legacies of millions of years of evolution and how we are ultimately constrained by human nature. This limiting, reductive narrative is offensive to many, keen to attribute our behaviour instead to environmental conditions that they hope to adjust through social reform. Still, our tribal instincts, patriarchal urges and violent responses persist, impervious to a few decades of political grandstanding.
Godfather of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud recognised that in order to have a safer civilization, we must repress our instincts and toil with suffering in the process. He set his goals at a realistic level, hoping that a session on the couch could be the path from “neurotic suffering to ordinary unhappiness”. His theories ranged from Oedipus complexes, dream analysis and the id, ego and superego. One-time acolyte Carl Jung would build on this legacy with concepts of conscious and subconscious minds, universal archetypes, individuation and psychological selves. Both are antecedents to Carl Rogers and modern person-centred therapy.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy doesn’t pick over past events favouring a here-and-now approach, where unhelpful aberrant thoughts are replaced with more realistic ones. This constitutes a move towards optimism bias, an observable phenomenon in which humans are unable to accurately report on how bad their lives have actually been. CBT is often coupled with mindfulness, seeking to offer brief insights to awareness; freedom from that often-critical voice in our heads, or quieting the illusion of self.
Colin Feltham, was a professor emeritus at Sheffield Hallam University in Psychology. A critic of his own discipline, he has coined the term Anthropathology to describe the mental burdens and behaviour of our species. Feltham would point to depressive realism as providing the most accurate worldview. Scientific studies have, in fact, shown test subjects with mild to moderate depression are better judges of reality. As Herman Tonnesson remarked:
“The fact that a patient is classified as mentally or emotionally sick prevents the psychotherapist from enquiring into the possibility of whether, or to what extent, his patient may be cognitively right. It is perfectly possible that a person with ‘existential frustration’, ‘ontological despair’, or simply ‘sub-clinical depression’ may, because of his abnormal condition, be in a better position to look through the camouflage of life that still is deceiving the ‘healthy’ psychotherapists.”
Feltham believes that those who have come to have a depressive realist outlook constitute an oppressed minority. Have a think of how you would label such figures, perhaps as party poopers, as a misery guts or sarcastically remarking that they must be fun at parties? It is an unpopular deed to offer some pessimism into proceedings; hardly any institution in society welcomes the interjection of a Debbie Downer.
Playwright Samuel Beckett wrote, “You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that.” With our thoughts literally able to cause us physical pain, aka depression, there is often an intensifying feedback loop between the pain and the negative thoughts. That suicide is referred to as “taking the easy way out” just confirms our knowledge that to endure is the painful route. Not that suicide is actually easy of course, requiring as it does a suppression of survival instinct, risks of failure, and guilt over the grieving loved ones left behind. Even the depressive realists will generally stick around to support others. A compassionate nihilism that recognises other suffering entities in need of our support.
So will you choose the proverbial red pill or the blue pill? What are your coping strategies? Will you keep your sanity or push deeper into Socrates’ examined life? The reconstructive therapies literally want to fashion you a new, more sustainable personality. What to keep? What to discard? Can we even hope to live authentically? Our idea of self is a set of predilections and habits, often produced by complex biochemical relationships that we can have little real insight into. Truly, the subconscious.
Perhaps most realistically we can continue to lug around our inherited behavioural baggage but with some of the most self-defeating extremes cut away. Freud himself hoped for little more.
May 27, 2019
Excellent book on this topic. Comprehensive view on DR. Though it doesn't mention any effective methods to deal with it.
January 18, 2023
Estoy investigando acerca de abordajes teóricos sobre el pesimismo. Este es uno de los libros a los que llegué en esa búsqueda. La tesis me resultó interesante: ¿cómo abordar la posibilidad de que las personas deprimidas simplemente tienen razón, que su postura sobre el mundo es en realidad "más correcta"?
El desarrollo es altamente decepcionante. No hay una verdadera exploración de las razones que podrían justificar esta perspectiva, más allá de la una vaga idea de "antropopesimismo", una mezcla de psicología evolutiva y existencialismo que podría definirse así: tenemos un "exceso de conciencia", evolutivamente nuestra conciencia es un desarrollo negativo porque nos enfrenta necesariamente al sinstenido del mundo.
El libro es una reiteración constante de esta idea, que por otra parte no es original sino tomada de otras fuentes. Se supone que se trata de "perspectivas interdisciplinarias" desde la literatura y las artes, la psicología, el enfoque sociopolítico, etcétera. Ocurre que el autor no sabe mucho de ninguno de estos temas, y de hecho rechaza de plano toda postura académica. Esto redunda en un análisis extremadamente superficial, basada en la construcción de un tipo biográfico de "realista depresivo" sin ninguna base epistemológica creíble. Muchos de los comentarios sobre filosofía son simplemente demasiado básicos para ser tomados en cuenta. Y nuevamente, nunca se elaboran nuevas ideas, solo se reitera que el mundo no tiene "sentido" ya que este es solo un epifenómeno de la conciencia. Nada nuevo.
Lo que baja esta reseña de 2 a 1 sola estrella son los comentarios políticos de Feltham. El autor no solo dedica varios párrafos a despotricar contra los radicales "de izquierda y de derecha" sino que no se da cuenta de la asimetría de su crítica y llega a citar algunos dogwhistles de la extrema derecha para criticar a la corrección política y la "nueva izquierda".
El desarrollo es altamente decepcionante. No hay una verdadera exploración de las razones que podrían justificar esta perspectiva, más allá de la una vaga idea de "antropopesimismo", una mezcla de psicología evolutiva y existencialismo que podría definirse así: tenemos un "exceso de conciencia", evolutivamente nuestra conciencia es un desarrollo negativo porque nos enfrenta necesariamente al sinstenido del mundo.
El libro es una reiteración constante de esta idea, que por otra parte no es original sino tomada de otras fuentes. Se supone que se trata de "perspectivas interdisciplinarias" desde la literatura y las artes, la psicología, el enfoque sociopolítico, etcétera. Ocurre que el autor no sabe mucho de ninguno de estos temas, y de hecho rechaza de plano toda postura académica. Esto redunda en un análisis extremadamente superficial, basada en la construcción de un tipo biográfico de "realista depresivo" sin ninguna base epistemológica creíble. Muchos de los comentarios sobre filosofía son simplemente demasiado básicos para ser tomados en cuenta. Y nuevamente, nunca se elaboran nuevas ideas, solo se reitera que el mundo no tiene "sentido" ya que este es solo un epifenómeno de la conciencia. Nada nuevo.
Lo que baja esta reseña de 2 a 1 sola estrella son los comentarios políticos de Feltham. El autor no solo dedica varios párrafos a despotricar contra los radicales "de izquierda y de derecha" sino que no se da cuenta de la asimetría de su crítica y llega a citar algunos dogwhistles de la extrema derecha para criticar a la corrección política y la "nueva izquierda".
January 1, 2026
العيش في حضارة القرن الحادي والعشرين ينطوي على (صفقة فاوستية جديدة). فمقابل «روحك» (أو على الأقل أصالتك الجوهرية، إن صحّ التعبير)، ستحصل على فوائد واسعة. صحيح أن الخلود ليس متاحًا بعد، لكن الرفاه النسبي، وإحساسًا مشتّتًا جيدًا بانعدام الفناء، وطول العمر، كلها مكاسب واضحة.
لقد أدرك فرويد طبيعة هذه الصفقة بوصفها تنازلًا يتمثل في كبت أعماق غرائزنا ومنح الأنا الأعلى مكانة مهيمنة. سيخفف المجتمع من قلقك إذا ابتسمت بدل أن تعبس، وأجبت دائمًا بـ«بخير» على سؤال «كيف حالك؟» الخالي من المعنى. وقد يُتسامح أحيانًا مع تسريب قاتم مثل: «لا مجال للتذمّر». أيِّد الوضع القائم، أنجب الأطفال، ولا تتحدث عن المعاناة والموت. وتجنّب تمامًا «ذلك الهراء الغريب» الذي ينطق به أمثال راست كول (من مسلسل True Detective).
وللحصول على الحزمة الفاوستية الجديدة المتفوّقة ذات المنافع المعزّزة، ساعد في دعم الرأسمالية عبر مشاريع ريادية؛ وساند (بل كن جزءًا من) الدين، والعلاج النفسي، وصناعة المساعدة الذاتية، وخطاب الرفاه والازدهار؛ وابتعد عن ساخطِي الحضارة، ولا سيما أنصار الواقعية الاكتئابية؛ ولا تمرض أو تشيخ أو تمت على نحو ظاهر، أو كن شديد التكتم أو مفرط الإيجابية حيال ذلك حين يحدث. وإذا فكرت يومًا في الانشقاق والانضمام إلى نادي الواقعية الاكتئابية، ستفقد سريعًا جميع المزايا.
.
Colin Feltham
Depressive Realism
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
لقد أدرك فرويد طبيعة هذه الصفقة بوصفها تنازلًا يتمثل في كبت أعماق غرائزنا ومنح الأنا الأعلى مكانة مهيمنة. سيخفف المجتمع من قلقك إذا ابتسمت بدل أن تعبس، وأجبت دائمًا بـ«بخير» على سؤال «كيف حالك؟» الخالي من المعنى. وقد يُتسامح أحيانًا مع تسريب قاتم مثل: «لا مجال للتذمّر». أيِّد الوضع القائم، أنجب الأطفال، ولا تتحدث عن المعاناة والموت. وتجنّب تمامًا «ذلك الهراء الغريب» الذي ينطق به أمثال راست كول (من مسلسل True Detective).
وللحصول على الحزمة الفاوستية الجديدة المتفوّقة ذات المنافع المعزّزة، ساعد في دعم الرأسمالية عبر مشاريع ريادية؛ وساند (بل كن جزءًا من) الدين، والعلاج النفسي، وصناعة المساعدة الذاتية، وخطاب الرفاه والازدهار؛ وابتعد عن ساخطِي الحضارة، ولا سيما أنصار الواقعية الاكتئابية؛ ولا تمرض أو تشيخ أو تمت على نحو ظاهر، أو كن شديد التكتم أو مفرط الإيجابية حيال ذلك حين يحدث. وإذا فكرت يومًا في الانشقاق والانضمام إلى نادي الواقعية الاكتئابية، ستفقد سريعًا جميع المزايا.
.
Colin Feltham
Depressive Realism
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
February 22, 2022
An astoundingly resonant book regarding a concept I’d been unaware of, but which now wholly subscribe to. And realize I’ve fit into since my early years.
The book, while groundbreaking in ways, can become quite dry in particular chapters. But it provides enough intrigue and personal solidarity for me to grant it the fifth star.
The book, while groundbreaking in ways, can become quite dry in particular chapters. But it provides enough intrigue and personal solidarity for me to grant it the fifth star.
June 28, 2022
Most of the issues in this book I was aware and I was familiar with most of it but that book made them more clear for me I thank to colin fetham for writing such enlightening book the most affected word from the is Entropy must win that will be the basis of philosophy just like mainlander and I guess I will also seek redemption through nothingness.
September 10, 2025
Very interesting book pulling from a vast array of sources, from existentialism to antinatalism to pessimism and religious philosophy. In some ways less visceral than other writings on the topic yet also not neglecting or demoting the emotions in the way some opponents of DR do.
September 2, 2025
Here’s what I thought about after finishing the book:
● Life is full of suffering—it can feel pointless and meaningless.
● We kind of create illusions just to cope, to make ourselves feel like we’re moving forward or that life has some deeper meaning.
● I like the idea behind negative utilitarianism—focusing more on reducing suffering than chasing pleasure. When you really look at the world, yeah, there’s a lot of ugliness and pain. But being aware of that can also make us more compassionate and willing to help others. Even if it feels pointless sometimes, since suffering seems built into existence. Even if humans disappeared, suffering would probably still be around in nature.
● Life is full of suffering—it can feel pointless and meaningless.
● We kind of create illusions just to cope, to make ourselves feel like we’re moving forward or that life has some deeper meaning.
● I like the idea behind negative utilitarianism—focusing more on reducing suffering than chasing pleasure. When you really look at the world, yeah, there’s a lot of ugliness and pain. But being aware of that can also make us more compassionate and willing to help others. Even if it feels pointless sometimes, since suffering seems built into existence. Even if humans disappeared, suffering would probably still be around in nature.
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November 5, 2024
This is probably the most comprehensive, all-encompassing book I've ever read in my whole life, as a 41 years old guy from Indonesia. It's deep, thoughtful, smart, well thorough, covering basically all topics/subjects, including life's biggest (& existential, philosophical) questions. Also very real honest book covering the brutal truth & the harsh reality of life, world, society, & existence. In short, this is probably the best book I've ever read in my life.
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