Month: March 2010

Faustian Ambition

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AnoukAnge’s post on ambition, which included a range of quotations on the subject, inspired me to think that I might be able to write an interesting essay on the topic of ambition in Goethe’s Faust. This post is a stab at such an essay. Although this may seem like a strange thing to spend time blogging about at the moment, given all the political news and events, I believe this topic is in fact highly relevant to current affairs.

The word “Faustian” is frequently used in books, articles, blog posts, etc on all sorts of topics. I think the image that most people have of Faust is of a man who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for dangerous knowledge: sort of a mad-scientist type. This may be true of earlier versions of the Faust legend, but I think it’s a misreading (or more likely a non-reading) of Goethe’s definitive version.

Faust, at the time when the devil first appears to him, has devoted his entire life to the pursuit of knowledge–in many different scholarly disciplines–and is totally frustrated and in despair about the whole thing. It is precisely the desire to do something other than to pursue abstract knowledge that leads him to engage in his fateful bargain with Mephistopheles.

If it’s not the pursuit of abstract knowledge, then what ambition drives Faust to sell his soul? C S Lewis suggests that his motivations are entirely practical: he wants “gold and guns and girls.” This is partly true, but is by no means the whole story.

Certainly, Faust does like girls. Very early in the play, he encounters a young woman who strikes his fancy:

FAUST: My fair young lady, may I make free
To offer you my arm and company?
GRETCHEN: I’m neither fair nor lady, pray
Can unescorted find my way
FAUST: God, what a lovely child! I swear
I’ve never seen the like of her
She is so dutiful and pure
Yet not without a pert allure
Her rosy lip, her cheek aglow
I never shall forget, I know
Her glance’s timid downward dart
Is graven deeply in my heart!
But how she was so short with me–
That was consummate ecstasy!

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Silver Lining

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Dennis the Peasant has some lucid thoughts:

Much to my delight, I spent most of this week alternately entertaining and chauffeuring an old college pal who was visiting the wilds of Central Ohio. As opposed to sitting in front of a computer speculating about whether Obamacare would pass. I said last week that I thought it would pass, and it will. Anyone who was paying attention to Bart Stupack’s imitation of Hamlet should have known by last Thursday that he was never going to vote ‘no’.
 
So Obama and Pelosi will have their bill, and Democrats own health care for better or for worse.
 
Sure, it’s shitty legislation, but I can’t say I’m all that worried. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 25.5 years of dealing with people and their money, it’s that they will do anything to ensure their standard of living is not lowered. And that’s why I think that much of Obamacare will never actually see the light of day. In the end the mandate will go away, rather quietly, and by mutual consent. Probably via an indefinite delay in implementation. People simply will not tolerate a government order to lower their standard of living; and demanding a family making $88,000 pre-tax to spend $15,000+ after-tax to fulfil Obamacare’s mandate is just that.
 
And while Obamacare does in many ways threaten our way of life, our liberty and so on and so forth, I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that it really has had its upside as well. It’s been pure, unadulterated joy to watch legions of sanctimonious, holier-than-thou progressives sell out for the sake of pure partisanship and/or personal gain. It’s been fun to watch the kept men like Markos Moulitsas, Matthew Yglesias, Josh Marshall and countless others ditch single payer and the public option as if they had never once considered either worthy of interest, much less their support.
 
We’re to the point where progressives are now out-Clintoning Bill Clinton. They’re now worse than the DNC Bill Clinton forced upon them. The DNC they loathed. The DNC they’ve so often derided as being so centrist as to be sell-outs. Now they’ve got health care reform written by AHIP and financed by PhARMA, and they couldn’t be happier. They’re now in the same league with boob-jumping evangelists, Hummer-driving treehuggers and spendthrift Republicans… and they couldn’t be happier.
 
Like I said, that almost makes it all worthwhile.

Obama Rubs Our Faces In It

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“We proved that this government, a government of the people and by the people, still works for the people.”

That’s what Obama said after House Democrats passed his health scheme. It’s a revealing remark. The Democratic leadership ignored broad public opposition to pass this extremely consequential bill on a bare majority by a combination of dishonest rhetoric, bribery, scummy parliamentary maneuvers and sheer willfulness. Then the President had the nerve to abuse Lincoln’s great words to tell us — most of whom opposed the bill, as he well knows — that he and his colleagues did it at our direction (“of the people and by the people”) and for our benefit. I interpret his words, a characteristic inversion of the truth, as a direct insult to his political opponents, who on this issue are now the majority of the country. He knows that we know he is lying and he doesn’t care, because he thinks he can get away with it. And he appears to enjoy it. This is not someone who can be trusted with power.