That is the detail of what Faustus does after selling his soul. Part of the moral of the play, I suppose, is the disparity between what the Doctor imagines he will do with the time given to him and what he actually ends up doing with it. For, as readers of the play will know, Faustus ends up wasting his time in a pretty big way.
One thinks: you plotted to dislodge your boss and then spent multiple evenings debating Liz Truss – for this?
You would have thought that if you knew you were going to be claimed by the Devil in a few years’ time you would go high on the hog at least. Tick off all the items on your bucket list or the like. But Faustus wastes his time. Indeed he ends up doing bathetic things – like playing schoolboy pranks on the Pope.
This aspect of the play returned to me often during the Boris Johnson years. Here, after all, was a man whose lifetime ambition seemed to be to hold the highest office in the land. After years of japing and jestering, and a certain amount of leadership too, he got there. And then what did he do? A bit of Brexit, admittedly. Then a whole dollop more green. A lot of stupid posts about his dog, and an awful lot of fibs, and then – bang – it was all over. The Devil came for him, and although he was not allowed as much time as Faustus is, it was still possible to look at him and say: ‘What did you do with your time? Why did you waste it? OK – you tweaked some noses. So what? What was it all for?’
Tragically, the same thought now occurs with Rishi Sunak. For once again we have a Conservative prime minister who has clearly had his eyes set on this prize for a very long time. Goodness knows, this was a man who was willing to serve as a junior minister during Theresa May’s premiership.
And then, after a cunning campaign to unseat and replace his boss, he finally achieved his goal. And for what?
To ban smoking and reform A Levels?
To me, the most significant character in Faust is Gretchen. She is the stand-in for everyone else, the normies, who ask in effect “What will you do?”
The answer, whatever it might be, is of significance to everyone. The Germans term this the “Gretchenfrage“, the one that gets to the heart of an issue. The one that nobody really wants to answer.
The Gretchenfrage for our time? Would be for the pre-migration electorates of Europe and the US to ask their supposed betters “Why are you doing this?”
The answers would be educational, on all sides.
That assumes Sunak wants to be prime minister for the power and glory, whereas I assume he wants to be prime minister for the career opportunities available after he has stood down.
Kirk,
Or you could ask the EU why they are trying to destroy farmers as we speak, but I guarantee you won’t get a rational answer, any more than when you ask about migrants.
@Roué
Non-rational…
That probably sums up the whole problem.
Bucko has the answer, farming isn’t sustainable you see, not if you view it through the lens of climate bollox.
It doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. So presumably that’s why they’re forcing it to. They’re like the bloke who takes a hatchet to your furniture to show how poorly-made it is.
The idjit class is going to find that “Eat the Rich” morphs rather easily into “Eat the Environmental Activists” once people start going hungry.
Kinda wonder what the hell they think is going to happen when the two trendlines of “do away with agriculture and cheap food” and “bring in millions of third-world migrants” intersect. Do they think that will work out well? Do they ever look outside their stovepipes of irrationality?
I’m not sure what the hell any of these idiots are thinking, if they actually are capable of reasoning. On the one hand, they want to deprive the existing population of their states of wealth and basic survival commodities, and on the other… They’re importing people who specifically want those things. That’s the whole reason they’re coming; they want in on the largesse. So… Explain to me how the immiseration of the citizenry is going to work out, with all these “fortune seekers” wanting in on something that the elites are phasing out?
To be a leftist or member of the oligarchy apparently requires the ability to hold mutually exclusive ideas and concepts at the same time, none of which bear any relation to reality as experienced by actual human beings.
Are we really sure we’re going about the process of selecting, training, and then assessing these people for high authority properly? The key characteristic for success for any of them seems to be a decided lack of a grasp on reality, a total inability to recognize error and vast ego.
I would propose that we are doing it wrong, and that any of the idjit class that can game things well enough to get into the various educational latifundia ought to be excluded from positions of authority just on general principles of demonstrated incompetence.
The ironic thing is Faustus wants to be damned. The entire play everyone and their brother tells him to just repent, right up to the very last minute, but he just doesn’t. In his mind he’s either damned no matter what or he wants to be a martyr or something. Of course he panics at the end, but even then all he had to do was repent and refused.
I always read Faust himself as a prototype for the modern sort of soi disant “Bright” that knows better than everyone else, who make that self-determined intellectual brilliance the primary focus of their existence. They can’t stand not being the “smartest man in the room“, and imagine that there’s nothing they can’t reason themselves out of. Men like Obama are exemplars of the type…
And, in the end? What is proven about Faust? That he’s really not all that smart, and that his pride in all of that is what damns him eternally. In Goethe’s version of the tale, which ain’t the only one out there, the only thing saving him from eternal damnation is the woman he spurned and ruined, Gretchen. Who intercedes with God for his forgiveness… Something I think that a lot of idiot types believe they are doing with today’s criminal class. Lots of fodder in these tales for finding parallels with today’s liberal canon.
The difference between Prime Minister Sunak and Prime Minister Truss is that Prime Minister Truss opposed the officials and “experts” and Prime Minister Sunak does not.
But Douglas Murray writes as if a Prime Minister could oppose the establishment of officials and “experts” without a terrible cost to themselves, if that was so then Liz Truss would still be Prime Minister. The lady was used as the scapegoat for the financial mess that had NOT been caused by her tax cuts (which never went into effect) – but rather by the 400 Billion Pounds (“not much if you say it quick”) spent on insane Covid policies.
The idea that elected politicians are free to make policy may have been true at one time – but it is not true now. Not at national or at local level.
Not all policy is handed down – but a lot of it is, and an elected politician, even a Prime Minister, who says “no – I want to follow a totally different policy” is destroyed.
As for Prime Minister Sunak as a person – his own words on Wednesday the 31st of January 2024, in the House of Commons, in reply to Mr Bridgen, declaring “unequivocally” that “the Covid vaccines are safe” say all that it is necessary to know about this person.
I have nothing to add to that.