God Seems To Have Left The

From The Ghost in the Machine (1967, p. 339), Koestler's grim assessment of humanity's prospects in the nuclear age. The telephone metaphor — the receiver left off the hook, making the line permanently engaged — was contemporary readers' instant shorthand for unreachable. Writing amid Cold War nuclear brinkmanship, Koestler argued that man's capacity for ideological fanaticism, rooted in a flawed brain architecture, made self-annihilation likely unless radical psychological or pharmacological intervention was attempted.