The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray) / quote 77 of 125
Drowning in collective pain
How come, I asked, you are so disgusted with yourself when you can’t even remember who you are? True, I had long forgotten who I was; let alone why I was so despicable. In a flash I understood that this was no longer my own pain. I had sunk through the bottom of personal suffering and was drowning in an ocean of anonymous, collective pain.*4 At one point I remember thinking: I am personally responsible for the failure of everything Western civilization has aimed at since the Renaissance. Presumably you get sanctioned for thinking considerably less . . . yet, of what would true morality consist if not of making each one of us personally—repeat, personally—feel responsible for everyone and everything else? I believe I was catching a glimpse of the world from a genuinely post-individual, in fact almost post-human, point of view . . .