Androids cannot dream

I’m very interested in the statistical fact that writers, I’m sure amongst other creative professions, have a remarkably higher rate of suicide and suicidal behavior. When this topic was introduced in lecture, what followed was a chicken and egg debate, which I found hilarious and horrifying—about which preceded which. Do we write because it’s the only way for us to stay alive in a world so clearly not created for us, ie. to cope, or does the constant introspection, regardless of the positive or negative nature, drive us to suicidal behavior in an attempt to outrun the crushing weight of reality? Who knows.

There is an equally dark red thread that wraps its way around nearly, and a very generous nearly at that, every professional or otherwise devoted capital C Creative, and that is alcohol. I would extend the umbrella to substances in general, because a wide array of writers also have problems with cocaine and heroin and whatever else, but it’s not as widespread. Not every writer smokes crack but the ones who do also drink. I know some writers wrote drunk and this was a crucial part of their process, cough cough Hemingway and Bukowski and Faulkner, to name a few, but this I feel is a bit less conventional. Or perhaps it just doesn’t work for me. I don’t think I write drunk that often, mainly because when I get properly drunk it’s past the point of being able to construct sentences (alcoholic), but I also avoid getting massively introspective and alone when drinking. Maybe this is the mitigating factor, the aloneness and level of distraction, how we use the drink—the writers drinking and writing alone constantly are probably at an even higher active suicide risk. It’s just dangerous behavior. Alcohol is a depressant and we all know this.

I think writing for the sake of writing in our current post-capitalist imperial hellscape is in itself an act of rebellion, to make the conscious decision to create instead of consume. When we think of humanity (when I think of humanity) I think about the act of creation—and bare with me here—(another chicken and egg) God did not create us in his image, we created him in ours. When you really actually think about the notion of God as an omnipotent (benevolent?) creator, that idea is actually quite strange and bizarre. And honestly not one I could have come up with myself. So perhaps he made us in his. But I think it’s at least a bit funny, the possibility that humanity were the OG creators and couldn’t deal with the responsibility so we shacked off onto something bigger. God was our first muse.

It’s also deeply ironic, and ironically literary, that our downfall then would be in our own creations. Big tech and AI pumping out slop in books and paintings, soon movies and probably music, and we can all identify it in a heartbeat by its lack of soul. The rate with which we’re heading down this road is looking dangerous and possibly lethal, and very Nietzschean—we killed ‘God’ when we basically knifed human creativity, and AI is going to kill us, their gods, perhaps not in a literal way but in a way that will nevertheless be the most crucial and meaningful. Jupiter eats and is killed by his son, again. Hubris maintains its position as the most prevalent story, yet the least internalized, and Pride remains the deadliest of the seven sins.

When we loop back around to the opening statement, that of writers committing at an increased rate, I’m wondering if we can apply this on a meta level to our species as a whole. Creatives, not with a capital C this time but in the most abstract sense, thus perhaps creators, God, ourselves, the literal Earth, they make and they make until they Frankenstein it. The holy grail that we’re all working towards is perhaps the very thing that will destroy us. Perhaps the only universal drive is the one to get to the other side faster.