Keeping Ourselves in the Dark Quotes

“Human existence is a penal colony; a sexually transmitted disease; a disappointment; nothing but suffering; “a sky-dive: out of a cunt into the grave”; a one-way ticket to the crematorium. “Nobody gets out of here alive”. Every day is a grim passage, a struggle through moments and hours of loneliness, boredom, emptiness, and self-loathing. I count myself among the pessimists. I believe that life is suffering. I force myself (my contraself) to look at other positions, but this remains my default. More specifically, I am a depressive realist.”
― Colin Feltham, Keeping Ourselves in the Dark

“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

“Look at your “hobophobia.”
If there is one group of people our majority population fear and despise it is rootless, nomadic individuals with no stake in society. They offend simply by “opting out”—of property, commitments, beliefs, relationships, expectations. Many such people have turned their backs on a society they don’t understand or can’t cope with. They have absconded from the pressures to compete, to perform, to sell out, to join in the dance of bureaucracy, money worries, cohabitation, housekeeping, procreation, you-name-it. Society is right to fear such people because they embody the sane rejection of many insanely onerous “civilized” values that would collapse under scrutiny. Strangely, though, society also makes an idol of Jesus, apparently a nomad who had no possessions or family ties, who walked away from a promising career in carpentry, a hobo if ever there was one. (We haven’t, however, made a popular hero out of Diogenes, the ultimate dirty Greek hobo.)”
― Colin Feltham, Keeping Ourselves in the Dark

“When rock bands like the Rolling Stones came to prominence in the 1960s, they were perceived as dangerously anti-establishment. Some exploited this reputation by promoting social revolution and sexual hedonism. Even now old rockers in their seventies retain an aura of wildness. Yet Sir Mick Jagger and his ilk changed very little in the society they professed to loathe, and today it is common enough to find our celebrated cultural rebels enjoying multi-millionaire lifestyles based on shrewd investments. They live in large mansions. They enjoy access to the best health care. They take exotic holidays, and so on. We may love the music of Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Bob Geldof, KBE, but now we must see that it really is “only rock and roll.” Such people are part of the kinnocratic illusion (see Chapter 7), manipulating the story of being-like-us, fighting for fairness, making the world a better place with their sonic flares in the gloom.”
― 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 human species is generally not considered to be pathological. It may be considered sinful by many religious folk, but not pathological. Groups not ourselves—foreigners, minorities, outcasts, the mad, the bad and feckless—may be described in pathological terms, but while we have whole sociological and psychiatric vocabularies for misfits we have very few terms for sick organizations, societies, or species. Could it be that this is due to a failure of imagination that is itself rooted in a species-deep instinct for survival? Could it be that this instinct is reified in norms and beliefs that militate against consideration of the dire conclusion that life is sickness? If so, one of the tragic features of mass survival norms is that conception, childbirth and longevity are so fêted and reinforced that mass is ensured and suffering within it will endure for individuals.”
― Colin Feltham, Keeping Ourselves in the Dark

“The animal world provides many examples of female dominance as well as male. As far as I can tell, the human past contains some arguable examples of female social dominance or intergender equality and cooperation, but it has been marked for the last few thousand years by patriarchal social structure. Theories differ on this but one has it that dimorphism is central. Sexual dimorphism refers to inequality in physical size, and human males are on average bigger and stronger than females. In challenging adaptive environments with small populations, females would have to devote more time to breastfeeding, childrearing, protection of the young, and domestic tasks, while males hunted and performed other physical tasks. With the advent of agriculture and the invention of the plough, muscle power was crucial. Given our frequently violent past, males would probably have engaged more often in physical conflict and warfare. It has also been suggested that females would probably have selected stronger males for protection. All of this is contentious enough, but modern feminists argue that primitive circumstances no longer pertain and that most tasks can now be performed by either gender, thus rendering dimorphically contingent historical and prehistorical differences defunct. However, dimorphism persists and underpins violence. Men commit the vast majority of violent crimes. Perhaps out of sheer self-interest, tradition and habit, males also retain most social power. Male attitudes may be challenged, but, allowing that we may generalize, men remain relatively less emotionally invested, less communicative, and more competitive than women.”
― Colin Feltham, Keeping Ourselves in the Dark