Everything in the Universe is Hungry

Contentment is a lie.

"To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest." - Alfred Adler

Everything in the universe is hungry.

Both the tardigrade and the galaxy want to expand. The tardigrade eats algae and the liquid off plants. The objects inside of a galaxy grow larger with age, stars puffing their cheeks and blowing out chemical matter. 

To be alive is to always fear starving, and crave contentment that can never be achieved. For a content thing is a still thing, and another word for a still thing is a dead thing. If you could see inside yourself you'd see all your body's ravenous machinations. Its desire to feed and grow into any available space.

Men think their lust will be satisfied when they meet the perfect woman. Addicts think their need will be satisfied with one more hit. Entrepreneurs think a million, two million, or a billion will cure their hunger for money.

And always, they meet those goals and wonder why they want more, more, more.

People will fall into despair because they think something's wrong with them. They'll climb the mountains of Nepal and go shark-fishing to "find themselves," seeking a way to sate the angry, endless hunger, to bring the boiling heat inside of them down to a slow, cool mass. They take massive doses of ayahuasca administered by shamans in the Amazon rainforest to try to find some kind of secret in the psychedelic dance inside their heads. Like if they just peer into the universe the right way, like looking through a kaleidoscope full of gold glitter and rainbow beads, they'll find the secret conveniently lodged in a hidden place and be able to go home in peace.

But that's the secret. There is no secret. There's no finish line. No completion screen. No end of term grade. Life is a story of growth, of continuous changing, shaping, movement.

I used to have these milestones that meant I "made it" as a writer. I wanted every day to be spent writing, amongst writer friends and colleagues, my life dedicated to art. To child me, being a writer meant to be something more than human. A mythic figure placed alongside Nabokov, Bukowski, Chekhov, Plath, and the others. A living, breathing black and white portrait. Someone who oozed the mystical, debonair confidence of an intellectual. Maybe I'd even wear pointed leather shoes and a blazer with patchwork elbows.

But each milestone passed without much significance. I didn't feel different all at once, but gradually, until I didn't even recognize that I'd changed because I still desired more. I was already living the life I wanted, but each milestone meant more hunger.

You get to the top of the mountain, only to realize you're halfway there.

If there's something we should learn, it's that contentment is a lie, and you will never feel complete. Alfred Adler was the psychologist who coined the term "inferiority complex." This is often used colloquially as a bad thing. The way Adler described it, every person possesses a sense of inferiority. Every child is born with a feeling of weakness and dependence. It's this inferiority that makes the child strive to grow. It's only when this inferiority becomes exaggerated in childhood because of bad parenting or experiences that it becomes a pathology.

And in Adlerian psychology, every human being strives for overcoming, expansion, growth, completion, and security. This striving is at the core of being alive. 

I think James Hillman in 'Healing Fiction' sums it up best:

"For the whole therapeutic opus with its vision of perfection in the love of fellow-feeling can never leave the tiny beginning, the bit of gravel in the shoe, the petite tache humide that returns us to feelings of inferiority which are given with embodiment in our organic creatureliness. And so, even our answers to ‘What does the soul want?’ do not put us on top of the question. We are not coming out all right; all shall not be well. We are, however, attempting to remain in touch with the soul by means of the question. For psychotherapy, it may be enough to remember not what it wants but that it wants, and that the soul’s eternal wanting is psychotherapy’s eternal question."

If desire is the root of all suffering, then to suffer is to live, because desire is life. But in understanding that you're always going to want, you can find yourself at a kind of peace in the eternal striving.

Because it's that striving that created everything you see around you. From the ocean tugging on the moon, to the distant constellations, to the house you live in, full of electricity, Internet, warmth, and cold food. It is the striving that builds. It is the hunger that makes you grow.

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Some updates from Autumn.

Hey there everyone, it's been a while since I last wrote to you. But now my crystals have been recharged and I've spent 90 days in multiple deserts of the real. The newsletter should be back on its regular weekly schedule now. 

I'd been writing the Teach Robots Love newsletter every week since August 2018 and figured it was time for a little break. In the interim I finished a draft of my manuscript You're My Cult Leader, Baby, coming out in 2024 from CLASH books. I also published several stories online including A Human Rupture, A Cruel God Makes a Cruel Woman, and Beautiful Surfaces, Terrible Depths. After I turned in my manuscript I had never worked a service job and was curious about it, so I had a stint working as a waitress at Chili’s for a few months and am now working as a cocktail server at a club three nights a week. I also signed up for a chaos Twitter festival outside of Austin called Vibecamp in March, so maybe I'll see you there. (link goes here).

I also have some other big news (non-book related) that I will be able to announce shortly.

You've also probably noticed that I'm no longer using Mailchimp to send this out to you, and have moved over to Substack. I think it has a lot more functionality and ease of use, especially for the end user. The archive at Mailchimp was nearly impossible to navigate, but now all letters will be collected and easy to search through online.

And if you've been enjoying this newsletter for a while and would like to subscribe (For about $7/month), you can do so here.

And there's no pressure to subscribe. All content will always be available for free.

I missed everyone. I'm excited to be back writing for you again.