Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it’s true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.
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“Sadly, I think that the notion of a utopia died at some point in the 20th Century — two vast utopian projects, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, turned into the greatest nightmares the human race has ever experienced, and people now are understandably skeptical about any future utopia. We’re still living in the aftermath of an extremely dangerous century. People today are rightly skeptical about any proclaimed intentions to build heaven on earth.”
J. G. Ballard