The Hunger

By Christa De Coster

Addicted to an economic system, demoralized and paralyzed, we lost the instinct for what we need to survive. To quit an addiction is a subversive act. This book was written from a state of urgency, a perspective of solidarity, and a purpose of liberation. The Hunger is an allegory. The character (a misfit), events, and places are used to explore crucial issues in our world. This book dissects the illusions that we create as individuals and as a culture in Western civilization. Today's dominant ideology creates conformists. If we aspire to real freedom, we need participation to rebuild values and relationships. This is about maturing and getting rid of mediocrity.

“Christa's timely ode to Human Nature works at a chthonic level, in the vibrating loam of our subconscious psyche, where we find ourselves to be umbilically connected to Gaia, our host organism - anima mundi. The effect of taking this therapeutic writing into our brain is cumulative, even shaping our dream landscapes, and it taps into that latent reservoir in our primordial psyche where transmutation of the species is slowly taking luminescent form.” - Zhiwa Woodbury, M.A., J.D. Author of “Climate Sense: Changing the Way We Think & Feel About Our Climate in Crisis.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adelaide Books Publishers
• Release date: Feb 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954351547

Christa De Coster

Christa De Coster (January 19, 1970), Belgian-born, Masters in Comparative Science of Cultures from Ghent University, Filmmaking from New York Film Academy, traveled extensively in India, where she worked on reforestation and seed saving projects, worked in Belgium on a community-supported farm, passionate about nature and rebuilding civilization from the ruins of the industrialized world, radical feminist.

Book preview

(chasing illusions)

We wanted to be original and chased for an identity within conditioned mindsets. We built an idea of our identity, but challenges and life lessons led us forward, and at times forced us to dissolve what we thought we were.

The children were being disciplined from a young

age. Learning was used with the objective to conform

to society’s habits of competition and consumption

but kept the children from realizing that they were

capable of thinking for themselves. Their own secret

knowledge, their natural instinct to be curious and

know intuitively, was shut down. In school, they were

supposed to walk in line. The kids were only allowed

to ask a limited range of acceptable questions. Too

much imagination was disparaged. As the children

became young adults, spontaneous play declined.

This is the story of children who were born free, (1) but

came under the influence of an illness. (2)

The symptoms consisted of moral blindness and a

widespread accumulation of ideas revolving around me,

while empathy and compassion for the other were lost.

Some children would be fortunate enough to

eventually perceive the nature of the illness inflicted on

them, their communities, and their larger landscapes.

They realized nobody and nothing existed by itself.

(1) Freedom in the sense of a beginning, an initiation, to set something in motion, to act.

(2) A collective psychosis related by Paul Levy to the Native American word Wetiko.

FREEDOM

The woods

The children had a clarity that was natural and effortless. Life at their young age was not yet fixed.

They ran through tall grass, and took every opportunity to learn and explore, fall, and get back up again.

The children had an instinct to bond with nature and living things and loved to vanish in the woods. Discovering open spaces, immersing themselves in the light. Playing under the midday sun’s full force, while eating berries hanging ripe from the bushes, split open by the occasional hard summer rains.

Of course, they found school boring, and they did everything to prove that children weren’t motionless beings. They really wanted to discover the world, be alive, and feel the wind in their face.

While growing up, they slowly became pervaded by a feeling of not belonging and being a misfit.

They felt outsiders in an adult world.

Going to school to later get a job and being confined to society’s rules made them squirm. All this to become perfect people and lead the kind of comfortable and secure life like they noticed all around them.

The children were fascinated by the natural world. They longed for wild landscapes, where a sense of danger and amazement lurked with every new turn.

Twigs broke under their feet, and the scent of earth

wandered off in their childhood dreams.

Like other wild creatures, they hunted for space and didn’t stick to a set path. They longed for wild but genial places. Places where the earth was bountiful, with diverse species, and people living side by side with other animals.

When they trespassed fences, their parents would see the potential danger, but they saw possibilities. When they faced trouble, they stopped, became quiet, and held their breath.

They were curious to test their courage and climb trees, while the adults around them resisted too much freedom.

The children were hardwired with a will to express what they wanted, and intense emotions to show when they weren’t satisfied. They had a natural inclination to see what’s real, before society’s recasting in its own molds.

When they ventured off in nature, alone or with friends, they got excited in their playing and learned far more than in any activity organized by adults.

But unfortunately, through education, they absorbed society’s conditioning, and their experiences became contained.

They learned to classify all living things into kingdoms, classes, and biology species, while the woods spoke in silence.

The richness of their childhood interactions with nature faded.

Now, names carried distinctions, and playing in

nature didn’t seem to have much value anymore.

Where had all the fun gone?

Authentic experiences, once fresh and alive, now became pale and dull. The wind in their faces didn’t create as much excitement and promise of adventure as before.

The impulse for freedom

The youth drifted on wood and sailed across the great

Atlantic. By the time they reached their destination,

physical changes had occurred in their youthful bodies.

Slowly, they became confined to the world of adults, a world that was serious, competitive, and boring.

They clearly felt their limitations and kept feeling their internal impulse for freedom, but they had learned by now how to cast these impulses aside. They had lost most of their innocent passion.

Trees weaved pale gold patterns on the horizon and kindled

the fire of still-beating hearts on a withering

evening.

"The blossoms of the apricot blow from

the east to the west,

And I have tried to keep them from falling." (3)

Like most adults, they accepted society’s cultural norms and economic goals. They became conformists.

They learned how to stay under control and established a comfortable image of powerlessness, typical of civilized adults. But, each time they failed to conform to expectations, they felt the controlled terror of civilization.

Trees had become divided into trunk, roots, and

branches. The forest’s economic value now prevailed

over its value as habitat for plants, animals, and

humans. The young adults now failed to notice the

delicate beauty of the old beech trees, the rocks, and

dark green mosses in the forest.

The youths’ capacity to have profound, uncontained experiences diminished, and alienation from the natural world set in. By now, they were well adjusted to a seductive and superficial society.

Still, amid constricted urges, they longed to be free.

Liberalism promised individual freedom, prosperity, and free choices. The project of globalization was sold as the inevitable and best direction for all of humanity.

The youth was ambitious and adaptable, and some of them saw opportunities in working as migrants––they would learn new skills and have decent employment.

Some sectors and countries benefited in a globalized world from free trade and significant investments, but the labor force regularly suffered from exploitation, social exclusion, and