To better illustrate this, noted academic Wendell Berry in his article “Faustian Economics” tells of two literary characters who play out the eventual fate of mankind if it continues on its current path. He first points out Doctor Faust from The Tragic History of Doctor Faust and explains Faust’s mortally impossible goal to consume all the knowledge in the world. Desperate to accomplish his ambition, Faust makes an ill fated pact with the devil and is eventually damned because of it. Secondly, Berry introduces Satan from Paradise Lost who rebels against God as he cannot accept the prospect of relegating himself to a higher authority. Within the explanation of these two beings, Berry enlightens the reader showing that both Doctor Faust and Satan ignore their all too real limitations and instead futilely aspire for unfeasible aspirations. In the same respect contemporary man is just the same.

We are like Faust in that we ignore our all too human flaws and embrace the view that our own ability will lead us to a better tomorrow with more resources to plunder and more technology to capitalize so that we may keep afloat our highly consumerist, materialistic culture. Usually though we say such beliefs in a different way, substituting “our ability” with the words “free market” and “science” as our vehicles of progress. Many intelligent people have exclaimed “the free market will eventually find valid alternative fuel sources” or “science will eventually solve the global climate crisis” and show the almost religious faith they have in humanity’s own seemingly infinite ability. Yet oil prices just keep rising as the rate of production and discovery of new oil fields remains the same and consumption keeps doubling, tripling, quadrupling or whatever it is now. Of course on the up side we can always exchange our needless farmland that feeds much of the third world with fields of “green” fuel; a situation where food really is for oil, and where society, well American society anyway, really is progressing.

Like Satan we cannot accept the fact we are not gods and yet act like we are deities. We speak of this almost divine right we have when we go about consuming endlessly, saying in defense that such frivolous spending is “good for the economy”; and view our struggle against our own realistic limitations as heroic and romantic, just as how Satan saw his rebellion was against God, which was in actuality grounded in Satan’s own narcissism. We ought to know our place in the world and accept our all too human qualities, understanding that this cycle of voraciously feeding on the earth will destroy the once pristine Appalachian Mountains as we torn the coal asunder from them and as we let our halcyon Californian forests burn from global warming’s unfortunate progression.

Have we reached our zenith or are we already past it? Maybe the real key to our success on this temporal earth is to realize the limits of our existence like an artist knows the boundaries of the wall he paints on or like how a playwright understands the limited extent his audience will sit and pay attention to the stage. Such people have to enrich themselves in their confines and create wonderful masterpieces that are enjoyed by every new generation; there is no doubt everyone here can name a literary work they read over and over and receive a different perspective each time. Like them, we should acknowledge our limitations and know we may not go beyond them; and within such confines we can augment ourselves to an infinite level. As a great teacher once said, “an inch wide and a mile deep”.

Sources:
Much of this article’s ideas came from Wendell Berry’s article “Faustian Economics” in this month’s Harper’s Magazine. A great article; I advise everyone to check it out!

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