“Stress, loneliness, depression, boredom- the madness of everyday life. Ever-greater levels of sadness, implying a recognition, on the visceral level at least, that things could be different. How much joy is there left in the technological society, this field of alienation and anxiety.”

—  John Zerzan, book Future Primitive and Other Essays

"The Mass Psychology of Misery"
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Stress, loneliness, depression, boredom- the madness of everyday life. Ever-greater levels of sadness, implying a recog…" by John Zerzan?
John Zerzan photo
John Zerzan23
American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author 1943

Related quotes

S. H. Raza photo

“One doesn't look at the quality of work, they see how much it fetches, how it earns. That's a sad thing. Money is not the criteria of art. Art or love is not a question of money. One should percieve these things at a different level.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

Indian contemporary artists have not reached my standard: SH Raza

Emil M. Cioran photo

“Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Viggo Mortensen photo

“There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever.”

Viggo Mortensen (1958) American actor

Quoted by Alex Kuczynski, Vanity Fair, "Finding Viggo" (January 1, 2004).

Charles Bukowski photo

“t was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn't much left you could depend on.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

Marc Maron photo

“The only difference between disappointment and depression is your level of commitment.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

Tickets Still Available (2006)
Variant: I think, in most cases, the difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment.

Ryū Murakami photo

“People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter One

Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo

“In spite of the lack of clarity in the concept of society, the word is doubtless necessary. In everyday language, words denoting local communities, large-scale society and global society exist, and all refer to actually existing entities, existing at different systemic levels. Humans are integrated in (that is, they participate in and contribute to) several social systems, some operating at a large scale, others at a small scale. When anthropologists delineate their field of study, the level of scale is determined by the issues at hand.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

“• Top down implies level of detail that is, looking at the highest level of summarization and then decomposing hierarchically to lower levels of detail as required.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Business Systems Planning and Business Information Control Study: A comparison, 1982, p. 34

Lauren Southern photo

“I believe anyone who supports feminism is anti-woman even if they are not conscious of it. Feminism and "female empowerment" has led to a generation of the least happy women in history. They are lost and are being told that they are the EXACT same as men and should be able to compete at the same level in all fields of life. How sad to always fail at something you are supposed to be equal in. How sad to be led astray to never get married then hit a wall where you wish for nothing more than a family but cannot have it… simply because you bought into this false notion of feminism that promised happiness and fulfillment. The reality is women are biologically different and different things will make them happy.”

Lauren Southern (1995) Canadian libertarian commentator

AMA on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4zlf89/lauren_southern_ama/d6wtbfx/ (August 25, 2016)

Erich Fromm photo

“Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Related topics