Depressive Realism Quotes

“We evolved haphazardly within a random universe; no purpose underpins us, no God watches over us, and no assured glorious future awaits us. We are saddled with a dualistic consciousness that weighs us down and plays tricks on us. We have built and seem unable to dismantle a dehumanizing and destructive civilization and mindset that perpetuates deceit and greed. We can make ourselves as comfortable as possible, as doctors tell their terminally ill patients, but we are sadly incurable.”
― Colin Feltham, Keeping Ourselves in the Dark

“Depressive realism has a very impressive pedigree. The Buddha pronounced that “all life is suffering” about 2,500 years ago, at roughly the time when the original Greek tragedies were composed. The Old Testament writers and prophets bequeathed us the concepts of human evil, sin, and the Fall, all this stemming from about the 5th century BCE when Adam behaved badly and doomed us all to suffering and death. From Paul through Augustine and Aquinas we have inherited the concept of original sin. The idea that we live in a “vale of tears” is probably from a Catholic hymn. Shakespeare put the phrases “to be or not to be” and “shuffle off our mortal coil” in Hamlet’s mouth in 1603. Robert Burton’s monumental The Anatomy of Melancholy was published in 1621 and George Cheyne’s The English Malady in 1733. DR is hardly a wacky modern idea owing its existence to Enlightenment- denying pessimists or to 20th century existentialists.”
― Colin Feltham, Keeping Ourselves in the Dark

“The waves of liberation movements from the 1960s have disenchanted us vis à vis ‘old-fashioned’ restrictive values but have also forced upon us new codes of thought and behaviour, summarised in the clumsy phrase ‘political correctness’ and the morality of uncritical respect for difference and diversity. (I lazily say ‘us’ and, of course, this is not true for everyone.) We have learned from psychoanalysis that whatever is repressed will emerge projectively later or elsewhere, often in even more virulent forms. Hence, in recent years we have seen waves of paedophile scandals, celebrated cannibal cases, serial murders, school shootings and mass murders committed by terrorists. The naivety of the nice peaceful Left runs parallel to the converse unbridled greed of bankers, internet criminals, drug dealers and pornographers. These trends might scotch any illusions of linear and easy progress but they do not. If Dostoevsky’s over-quoted ‘If God does not exist, everything is permitted’ is true, nihilism steps into the vacuum, and subsequently moralistic alarm steps in to call for a return to traditional values. But Pandora’s box will not close, every demon is now loose.”
― Colin Feltham, Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives