swap you my soul for a barrel of beer...

OK, random start granted but reading this text about Faust has got me thinking about the value of things [not in a lefebvre-ian way] and got me thinking of another piece I recently read about the construction of a great railway bridge in England. There were hundreds of men employed, working very long, hard hours in dangerous circumstances. They would gather at the end of the day and drink, and gamble. One such exhausted drunk, was so desperate and so short-sighted he actually swapped his WIFE for a barrel of beer! ... our perception of value is easily skewed.

Around Christmas, values get warped in the face of accepted behaviour and time and stress constraints and really cause me to question the sanity of this institution... clearly we are being controlled, Burroughs would have a field day, but even as I am painfully aware I am being manipulated, I have a irresistible compulsion to comply. Why? Well Faust too was compelled to broker a deal with Mephisto against maybe more reasonable judgement. I too willingly engage in this short-termist pact every Christmas against my better judgement, all the time knowing it is a compromise... that is the difficulty. Life is a compromise. There is very little of life which is black and white, we have to make judgements on the gamut of greys and shape our world, maybe then man can change. But there must be people ready and willing to make the difficult decisions, willing to upset those around them for the greater good.

This short-term-ism, opportunism and greed are themes within Marshall Berman's 'All That Is Solid Melts Into Air'. They are both, indictments on capitalism and truisms of the system. They are necessary constituent parts of a system which wants to tear itself apart but at the same time also wants to prosper. These are all recurring questions and themes of this lecture series.

Acceptance of contradiction is a modernist approach; present in the writing of Nietzsche and Marx. This attitude is explored in the opening phase of Faust: Dreamer. It is argued that destruction is part of creation and that situations must be exploited for maximum return. This makes us consider a question; Does a crime ever become justifiable? What if it is done for the perceived greater good? This question is pertinent throughout Faust where choices are morally ambiguous. Through Mephisto Faust develops as a man; self-absorption gives rise to interest in others. He learns to trust himself and goes through a metamorphosis... an awakening... the metamorphosis goes through two further developments: Lover + Developer. In these phases Faust learns about the consequences of his actions. He ends up causing Gretchen's death, though indirectly, they are borne out of his actions. He allows her to see there is more to life than her small existence  much like Faust's earlier development. But where her ambitions involve Faust, his ambitions are bigger and don't involve Gretchen. 

His growth promotes recklessness, his success makes him greedy for more and he goes after this with a wild determination... when something stands in his way, he coldly 'deals' with the obstacle. This is the key facet of the Developer phase. This phase can be viewed as a metaphor for capitalism and the behaviour of market makers. Unquenchable thirst for more. Merely getting greedier rather than becoming satisfied. This endless struggle will inevitably have victims along the way but as with Faust the perpetrators will argue that the ends justify the means.