David Buss Quotes

“Hate crime and violent crime is something reprehensible perpetrated by other people, a small deviant class, mainly men – this, at least, is the commonly held view. But Miles (2003) argues that we must reckon fully and realistically with our barbaric evolutionary heritage; and Buss (2006) uses case study research to suggest that fantasising harm and death to others is extremely common. Freud would have agreed with such assessments of human nature, acknowledging that unconsciously, ‘safely’ repressed, we sometimes harbour destructive and taboo-breaking wishes not only towards enemies but also towards loved-ones and ourselves. Today’s ascendant coalition of groups opposing racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-religious views, and championing equality and human rights, want to abolish not only outward physical violence and its verbal scaffolding but also vocal and mental hatred. This amounts to an unrealistic and dangerous totalitarian agenda for the fantasised good, the mechanism for which is suppression not understanding. That we all have a barbarous dark side that can be triggered in certain circumstances is a thesis denied or ignored by many but recognised by so-called misanthropes, anthropathologists and DRs. Ironically, opponents of the concept of (often dark) human nature unwittingly force a mental illness status upon those who notice weird and hateful thoughts in their own heads and conclude that they are uniquely perverse and unacceptable individuals. In other words, denial breeds another layer of depression in the same way that sin-focused puritanical religions have caused inauthentic behaviour and created neurotic minds.”
― Colin Feltham, Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives