On my walk with the dogs, it was windy, and I mused about the Fool and his Call to Adventure. If you understand the Fool, you understand everything. The alpha and the omega. The Fool is happy, content, carefree. He knows nothing of the wonders of the world outside, but he also knows nothing of its malice and horror. Why does he set off anyway? Quite simply: because peace, joy, and sunshine are not enough for people. That’s what we always claim (quote Jessica: I just want to be left alone), but it’s not true. Otherwise, Adam and Eve would have kept their fingers off the fruit tree. We sense that there is more. We strive.

For what, exactly?

As the leashes flew in the wind, I asked myself like a child, like a Fool, where the wind comes from. In the past, people thought it came from the gods or something. Poseidon sends a storm and makes the waves roar. Today, we know that wind is actually just pressure equalisation. Warm air heats up, rises, and cold air rushes in. It was the sun! The fire. It moves the air. And the air, in turn, moves the water, extinguishes or ignites the fire. And that the earth is solid and immobile is only half the truth. Fire, the heat inside the earth, moves the earth. Eyjafjallajökull. In the nature guide course, we also had geology. Endogenous and exogenous forces. The air also moves the earth. The water too, of course. Sedimentation. We see all this in cliffs, rocks, outcrops.

Everything is in motion. Always. We humans, too. We cannot simply stand still and enjoy life. We cannot feel the wind or a sunburn and not ask ourselves where it comes from, why it is like that. As children, we still ask out loud; at some point, many of us become jaded and shut up. But deep down, we want to understand the world. This is our curse – and our blessing. Is it that simple? Is that why the Fool sets out? And what does it mean to understand the world? That makes me think of Count von Krolock: »I want to understand the world and know everything, and I don’t know myself.« Later: »The true power that rules us is the disgraceful, endless, consuming, destructive, and eternally insatiable greed.« (Original (German) Cast Of »Tanz der Vampire« – Thema, 2019, 4:27; 5:49)

Count von Krolock is the chief vampire from Tanz der Vampire (Wait – there’s no vampire in my Major Arcana – why?). His greed is the greed for blood, for which he had to kill what he loved throughout the centuries and could thus never be happy. So, Tanz der Vampire is a story, and the Count is more than a bloodthirsty, albeit very reflective, vampire. He also embodies the person who strives eternally, wants eternally, and can never be satisfied. And what is the greed for blood then? Okay, for some individuals, it might be exactly that. But I have to convince myself that something went wrong there to maintain my painstakingly built positive worldview.

Is it the search for knowledge? A thirst for understanding? Thirst, this incredibly elemental feeling. Is it the self-knowledge von Krolock sings about? Self-realisation. Or individuation? Libido, the life force? Back to Maslow and the hierarchy: self-actualisation and self-transcendence? Love? The Count names love. He also names happiness. But when he has love, he has to destroy it. He wishes for nothing more than »a moment of happiness« (Original (German) Cast Of »Tanz der Vampire« – Thema, 2019, 2:40). But happiness is not enough for us humans. To be happy, we wouldn’t have to understand the world. Not even ourselves. So what is this »greed« that drives us? I’ve been racking my brain over von Krolock’s solo for over twenty years. I’ve heard it at least seven hundred times. I know it by heart. And I don’t know.

But something resonates. I know this greed. Otherwise, I would be sitting around picking my nose instead of dealing with this sprawling thesis. Something in me strives for something – and like the melancholic Count, I don’t know myself and cannot name it, cannot grasp it.

My incomplete thesis is that it might be creativity. The potential to create, to shape, that pushes outward and strives for realisation. Csíkszentmihályi’s book is called Creativity. The Psychology of Discovery and Invention (2013). Discovery and Invention. That is what distinguishes us humans from apes. And we don’t just want to discover and invent; we apparently also want to do something with it, to change something. But why? Because creative thinking and doing triggers Flow and Flow just feels awesome? Because that’s where we feel that we are in our element? For Csíkszentmihályi, Flow is the key to happiness (roughly … the book subtitle The Secret of Happiness (2021) somehow reveals it). But Flow only sets in with an appropriate challenge. So we have to constantly raise the bar, otherwise it gets boring. Meaning: We want more, so we don’t get bored. Does that hold up? Is that the insatiable greed, the creativity, the striving for Flow? Is the thesis tenable? Has anyone formulated it like this before?

Csíkszentmihályi writes that when the first creation myths emerged, people were initially helpless. Ignorant and at the mercy of the forces of nature, they invented creating (i.e., shaping, creative) gods to understand their world. With the great civilisations and progress, people became less and less helpless: »[…] the entire face of the earth transformed by human craft and appetite. It is not surprising that as we ride the crest of evolution we have taken over the title of creator.« (2013, p. 5)

Is that it? A God complex? Because God created man in his image (or something)? Do we just want to find out how far we can go? To sound out everything that is possible? Curiosity is also a form of greed (the german word for curiosity is actually Neugier, which literally translates as new-greed). Or is it the logical, more highly developed continuation of the creative urge that is innate in all beings, namely that of reproduction? If you break it down, love, romance, eroticism, and the entire porn industry are just biochemistry that is supposed to ensure the continued existence of the human race. On the human stage of evolution, however, that might be too little for many. And I know a lot of »creatives« who, regardless of their field of work, family status, sexual orientation, and desire for children or not, consider their works their children, their creations. The first time I hold the deck in my arms, I will probably suffer an oxytocin shock. And I’m already getting postpartum depression when I think about the end of this work.

But what do I know? I’m not a psychologist, not a researcher, and not a philosopher. When I look at all this, I am probably just a storyteller. And that’s enough. Homer was also »just« a storyteller. And yet I can’t stop wanting to explore the world. The reason behind the reason, the mystery behind the mystery. The last secret. The insatiable greed.