Status Updates From Depressive Realism: Interdi...

Self-report surveys of happiness, contentment or life satisfaction mean nothing in a society where the required response to 'how are you?' is 'fine thanks".

Human nature is an unreliable mixture of goodness, wishful thinking, denial and selfishness, is always at the mercy of the natural environment and its downsides are multiplied by mass societies.

...yet perhaps we have still not fully appreciated the sad coincidence of language and alienation both in our evolution and everyday life. In other words, language, thought and literature can be considered part of the problem of being human, a record of wrenching ourselves from so-called brute existence to an increasingly symbolic and self-alienated existence.

We can easily concede that religions have been necessary in a frightening, pre-scientific era, but their persistence now is an obstacle to understanding and a source of further suffering.