Every day, we wake up knowing that the earth is round and that the moon impacts the ebbs and floods of our seas.
We're pretty sure that humanity's footprint on Earth is contributing to a changing climate, and we feel assured in the comfort of knowing that whenever we have a question - we can just google the answer.
We're inundated with information and data.
All the knowledge we could possibly want is just a few clicks away.
And yet, we're not happier for it.
Maybe there's truth in ignorance is bliss.
After all, in Spongebob, the happiest character appears to be Patrick, who completely lacks ambition and lives day by day. He's also not very smart.
But for us, who we do not wish to live the Patrick way, despite learning so much about the inner workings of the earth, and dissecting every thing... There is no solace.
"The intention to understand ever smaller phenomena better: the deadly combination of more and more detail knowledge, applied to an ever narrowing world."
Daniel Barenboim in Music is everything
We have entered a phase where magazines speak of "Everyone's existential crisis." - and financial nihilism is identified as the main culprit of the rise of speculative investments and gambling.
In a sense, this is indeed a modern problem.
At the same time, it isn't. If you boil it down to the question, "What's my purpose?"
Or the will to meaning, as Jung would say.
Take the Faust myth.
A saga that has roamed around for centuries.
Medieval Faust, a man dedicated to pursuing knowledge, and in pursuit of, maybe the most fundamental question of them all: what he should do.
Isn't that what we all wonder? What should I do with my life? Am I on the right path? Is there any sort of guidance out there? Detached from what others expect or desire?
It's the same question young Kierkegaard pondered when he came across the teachings of Socrates (or shall we say lack thereof since, after all, he did not explicitly teach anything) and the German Romantic works of Goethe's Faust.
Poignantly, the Danish philosopher observed that each century had its own version of the Faust myth, reflecting the idea of where meaning and purpose was to be found.
Medieval Faust also entered a bargain with the devil, and for doing so was portrayed as - in flattering versions as an idiot, in less flattering versions as evil. In the end he gained very little.
To use esoteric words, he failed to connect with the infinite. To transcend. That's why he went on to enter his pact. All the knowledge he achieved, couldn't answer his question for a deeper calling.
"He had studied, but his studies had not yielded him any return (what he saw next [the experiences and arcane knowledge that Mephistopheles made available to him] did yield something, even though infinitely little compared with what he wished; Faust’s profit from knowledge was a nothing, because in the last resort it was not this question he wanted answered, but rather the question: what he himself should do"
Kierkegaard in Journals and Papers
In medieval times, the path to redemption and meaning was in religion. Faust failed to recognize that and made a pact with Mephistopheles instead. Bad choice. Bad end.
But that's not the most famous version of the story of Faust.
A few centuries later, the German poet Goethe took it upon himself to write a play based on the Faust saga.
It's this Faust I've been reading, and obsessing about this year. Largely since I've been repeatedly wondered about the question of meaning in life, while working in an industry, where this question does at large not appear.
Sure, companies have missions and visions, but they often fail to capture something I'd truly care about. Also isn't it weird to get meaning in life based on just a job?
At this point, I've realized that meaning isn't something others can create for us. It's something we need to find ourselves. It's hard in a nihilst world. It's difficult when people pursue sheer numbers games, disregarding those subtle fluffy things in between that, cannot be captured by those.
What better era to look for people that are critical toward the project of rationalizing and capturing everything in numbers than the Romantics.
A little background on Goethe
Goethe's breakthrough novel was The Sorrows of Young Werther. A story about a young man who falls in love with a woman he can't have. A tale as old as time, with some autobiographical stripes.
This young man though is a romantic, so he goes on about his suffering with lyrical pathos until, eventually it's too much and he decides to kill himself. The final scene haunted me for a while after we read it in school, since, he does not die a pretty death. Not very romantic.
“I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.”
Goethe in The Sorrows of Young Werther
A romantic death would be Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, peacefully succumbing to poison. Werther however shoots himself in a way that he lays there for hours until he's finally dead, slowly bleeding out.
The novel was such a success that it was blamed for an increase in male suicides. Ironically, Goethe had set out to do the opposite: portray that the romantics might be a bit too sensitive, and their behavior borderline ridiculous.
He understood Romanticism perfectly. And just like Flaubert he decided to use that understanding to criticize it. However, unlike his French counterpart, he didn't believe that Art for Art's sake was the solution to the human condition.
Instead, he sought something that combined the insights from science and what can't be grasped by it.
After his initial literary success, he became a bureaucrat at the calling of the Gradn Duke Karl August, and moved to Weimar where he served at the court for ten years. Too busy with paperwork, he'd not publish a single novel in that time.
Some would consider it a waste of his talent, chances are Goethe himself did not think this way.
Instead of subjectivity, following passions and desires, he chose objectivity in working a real job, while dedicating his free time to science. A very enlightenment choice.
His home in Weimar is full of artworks, music instruments, books and science equipment - likely financed also thanks to having held a steady job.
While spending time with math and science, he came to develop an idea of nature that added something to it that the rational project of enlightenment missed. A spirituality, and an idea that the whole is bigger than the sum of its pieces
As he put it "We experience the fullest sense of well-being when we are unaware of our parts and conscious of the whole itself."
A trip to Italy puts him back on the writers path, and it was then that he started to pick up working on Faust.
Goethe's Faust
The first part appeared in 1808, but readership had to wait until 1831 for the second part shortly before the poets death.
"All literature is a footnote to Faust. I have no idea what I mean by that."
Woody Allen
Without sharing the entire plot of the saga, Faust is a story about an unease at the dawn of a new world, at the project of rationality, and a question of how one is to spend one's life.
Goethe explores in Faust the impact of our endless striving for knowledge, and the havoc it can wreck on us and those around us.
A well accomplished scholar at the height of his career, Faust, still continues wanting to find more. The dark element of ambition is nowhere nearly as well displayed as in the scene where - Faust despite outwardly looking like someone who's got it all - plans to kill himself. Ironically, it's the choir rejoicing Easter that keeps him from going through.
When Mephistopheles appears to him he complains:
"All the treasures of the human spirit
I feel that I’ve expended, uselessly.
And wherever, at the last, I sit,
No new power flows, in me.
I’m not a hair’s breadth taller, as you see,
And I’m no nearer to Infinity."
For Faust the world has flattened into a vast sea of information, but he's nowhere closer to feeling fulfilled.
At this point, you could maybe even consider him a Nihilist, as the Earth spirit calls him an Ubermensch - foreshadowing Nietzsche.
"The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude
Oh, happy he who still hopes he can emerge from Error's boundless sea"
All earthly knowledge gobbled up, the only realm left is the mystical, the world beyond our senses.
As such, the journey Faust and Mephistopheles embark on can be understood as one of dealing with the meaninglessness of life.
For as long as Faust continues striving, never wishing a moment to last, Mephistopheles becomes his servant.
Working off a list that could come from SV tech bro they first go to a witch to reverse his aging, and then they hook Faust up with a young girl called Margarete.
There's joy in seeking, yet with his devlish wingman, Faust quickly reaches his goal, in the process accidentally poisoning Margarethe's mother with an overdose of sleeping medicine, and killing her brother who uses his last words to curse his sister.
He might have been truly in love, but the actions had dire consequences.
At the end of part one, Gretchen (her nickname) is sitting in prison cell, awaiting her execution after drowning her baby. She refuses to be rescued by Faust.
The whole family decimated by one man's desire for hedonistic pleasures.
The ending of Part 1 gives the whole a sense of tragedy: The Gretchen Tragedy.
But that's not where Goethe lets it end.
Part 2 is less coherent, consisting of 5 acts in different locations including Ancient Greece, a Dark Forest, and a vast array of land Faust acquires with the help fo Mephisto and builds a sort of civilization on.
To offer up some highlights:
Faust invents paper money
Wagner, a scholar, creates an artificial human, a Homonculus - who doesn't survive a wild Walpurgisnacht.
Faust meets the ancient Godess Helene, and eventually has a child with her.
He has a vision of a free prosperous society
Tries to establish it with the help of Mephistopheles.
It ends when Faust decides he is, for once, happy. He realizes that he has found a purpose.
Mephistopheles unable to grasp it, talks about death as eternal nothingness, asking "So who's supposed to create the eternal for us? Over, what a stupid word."
Some might think that Faust took an awful long time to realize that the purpose in life he was seeking could have been attained much quicker, without less detours.
Yet, putting it in relation to Goethe's own biography, I don't think that's a fair judgement.
After all, wisdom isn't learned in a few minutes. Neither is meaning just out there for the taking.
In a world that's full of earthly pleasures, just one swip away, it's natural to give into instant gratification.
That's what Faust started with, when Mephistopheles offers him a chance to "sample every possible delight."
When the scholarly career doesn't provide much more satisfaction, Faust becomes a man of action, one who takes whatever he wants, in the pursuit of power and wealth.
He doesn't pay much attention to the consequences, although Gretchen's death eats at him for a while - it does not stop him.
His goals in part two are larger than life, driving forward in the name of progress. A tendency only too familiar to us, living through the AI boom. We don't even know what's real anymore, and we don't necessarily care when the unreal is still supporting our worldview.
Those who speak up against the constant acceleration, are cancelled. In Faust, their house is burned down.
At the end, as an old man, blinded, reflecting back, Faust concludes that he's found the ultimate wisdom. That freedom, only those deserve, who conquer it daily.
He has created an environment that allows others to thrive, to flourish and he used all his experience and wisdom acquired up to this point to accomplish this.
A sentiment echoed in Erwin's last speech rallying his troups into a suicide mission in Attack on Titans.
"It's all meamingless. No matter what dreams or hopes you had. No matter how blessed a life you've lived...Was there even any meaning in us being born? Would you say that of our fallen comrades? Their lives... meaningless?
No. They weren't. It's us who give meaning to our comrade's lives. The brave fallen! The anguished fallen! The ones who will remember them...are us. The living. We die trusting the living who follow to find meaning un our lives. That's the sole method which we can rebel against this cruel world."
What gives our life meaning is often something that'll outlast us.
John Vernake, a cognitive psychologist writing on the meaning crisis, boils it down to this:
What would you like to exist even when you don't?
What are you contributing to it?
If you have an answer to both, you find meaning. For me it's been a question that has at times haunted me.
Working in crypto, I often wonder, what is the point when at large, what we're known for and facilitating is a lot of bad. And when you spend your days on Crypto Twitter, people don't even seem to think that's a problem.
Getting rugged, rugging others - it's all just a game, an attempt to feel something when everything is flattened - looked at through the lense of personal gain.
I know, there is people who still deeply care about financial inclusion, and empowering others. It's just hard to feel a meaningful connection to the industry at large when the big impactful projects are more occupied with releasing yet another chain with tech innovation not aimed at making real peoples lives better but just rejoicing the nerds.
Writing has helped me give at least some meaning to it, sharing a different perspective that - in the best case - connects people who share similar skepticism. It's also, something that may or may not outlast me.
And if there's just a handful of people who find insight, or consolation in knowing someone else thinks the same as them that's enough.
I've also started spending more time playing the guitar, and joining a local guitar ensemble - music, another of those things I'd love to continue existing. And if me playing, and contributing to an orchestra can make a small difference, that suffices. Not to mention, it's a lot of fun.
Volunteering by reading to kids is another one of my attempts at giving more purpose to my existence, trying to foster a healthy connection between kids and books. Books have given me so much, I want to pass this feeling on.
All of my actions are probably a good illustration of what it means to find some meaning in it. It's the ability to connect our finite life with the bigger whole, an idea that Goethe too found solace in.
"All finite beings exist within the infinite."
Spinoza
We all strive toward something. As long as we do we'll lose the plot sometimes. But we can through experience, and reflection get better at it and continue stumbling forward.
It's not elegant, nor pretty at all times.
It's not utilitarian either. Nor is it plugging yourself into the hedonistic machine.
Goethe teaches us that it requires work, and that it's only the ups and downs - the contrasts, the suffering in-between phases of joys, that make us whole. Desires give rise to new desires, and that's okay.
We cannot have one without the other.
We can't perceive meaning without feeling its lack at times.
The choice isn't full on romanticism or enlightenment.
It's something in-between.
A whole bigger than all of its parts in aggregate.
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
Goethe
Thanks for reading 💚
If you ever feel up for a challenge, try reading some of Faust.
For those capable of the German language, it's definitely worth reading in the original.
