The Devil and Knowledge

  In two harrowing depictions of the Faustian bargain—Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe and Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—the devil's prey begins in a very specific state, that of being learned.  The archetype of the approved scholar may seem to be a cultural jab at Marlowe's and Goethe's learned contemporaries who may have been ripe for criticism. However, this aspect of the doctor's portrayal may serve a larger role, one which answers a question which plagues not just the parameters of the playwrights' time but one that has existed since the dawn of man's consciousness. The question is this: how does the agent of deception—in this case, the theatrical devil Mephistopheles—enter into the human mind? 

At an early stage in the development of a typical consciousness, one exists, as Jung would describe, in an ever-expanding quadrant of time, where no inner turmoil plagues the spirit, a one-ness with nature is constantly undergone, and a sense of self always develops.  Then, at some point, the pressure accumulates. One of my first memories of inner turmoil began when I stopped going to Church.  My decision was in direct conflict with the patterned behavior I had been conditioned to and in direct support of an alternate self-voice which pleaded with me to explore alternatives to the life I had been living. A key observation I made was that when I went to Church, there was usually a spiritlessness to the rituals.  The parishioners seemed dead, the random movements seemed pointless, the altar boys and readers were there on account of whatever social predicament required their being present, and whatever holy people there were ostracized, deemed to their own internal spaces, and discounted by the congregation as a whole. When those observations were made, there was no infiltration of the Deceitful Voice. That came with a causal connection: I) because there was spiritlessness in the Catholic ritualism of Sunday mass, there was an objective demand that I give up that hour on Sundays in favor of preserving my own spirit. However, to head-nodders who read that if-then with pertinent understanding, what rule states that where there is spiritlessness there is a demand to flee? What law of Nature states that? One can just as easily say that II) where there is spiritlessness, one must plant themselves firmer and inject enough spirit to compensate. But the causal connection that motivated me to flee was not one which required stronger conviction on my behalf (II), but one that required a greater commitment to escaping my conviction, and avoiding a location where such a conviction would be brought into turmoil (I). 

Causal connections are the basis of the learned mind; and yet, when viewed through a Stoic lens, they are primarily inconsequential.  Aurelius quotes someone as saying: "All is as thought makes it so." So, as our bodies and minds gather information about the world, we may intuit certain causal connections between phenomena. At the start, these are ephemeral thoughts which float away. Once our psyche determines that a causal connection can be exploited to cheat the discrepancies in life, then we adopt certain causal connections as bases of our behavior.  For example: a boy comes to understand that if he runs around for long periods of time until he hurts himself, and if every time he does so his mother consoles him and heals him and lets him watch more television, then the boy may feel comfortable engaging in more risky behavior because when it ultimately ends in a low, he will obtain more television time.  However, once a single worldly input is changed, this boy's mental function will cease to work. Once his mother gets a new job that inspires her to be more demanding with her child, once the boy's father has no more space in the budget for extensive first-aid supplies, once the boy's school's principal up's the amount of homework time each student must spend, once the boy's teacher connects with the boy, once the boy starts feeling unsatisfied with his television time, etc. the causal connection not only ceases to work, it starts making the opposite of sense. 

Now, say that a growing person (not necessarily of a certain age) has constructed a network of causal connections (if-then statements) which govern the way they perceive the world.  This, in effect, means that the person is learned.  [For the purpose of this sequence of thoughts, I will make the distinction between learned and educated. Learned takes on a more psychological approach, that of someone who observes the psyche's and perspective's of their surroundings and develops a strong persona in response to them. Education takes on a more holistic approach, and means to refer to someone who observes the psyche's and perspective's of their surroundings and sees them without responding to them. A learned mind speaks in opinions and theories and often say the most fantastical things, an educated mind will have observations and will often go through great struggle to arrive at any crucial thought.]

There is significance, then, in the fact that Faust begins his journey as a learned doctor, and the story implies a way in which the Deceitful Voice operates in the human mind.  We must assume that Faust, before the play begins, has not had contact with someone who he understood to be Mephistopheles, for when Faust does meet him in his true form, he is perplexed.  Then, we must assume that the network of causal connections which Faust has constructed, has been constructed out of anything other than deceit; i.e., a genuine desire for good, or a misguided sense of justice, or social pressure to achieve, etc. All which Faust has learned is rooted in the desire for the good and the true. Then enter the Deceitful Voice. 

Now, the Deceitful Voice is the ultimate scholar (which is represented by Mephistopheles, who appears to Faust at first disguised as a scholar), for he understands the key insight at the end of all science and mathematics.

As any deep excavator of the field of mathematics can proclaim, the "objectivity" of math is really no objectivity at all. For, if it was objective, then there would be no need for life, which does not uphold strictly to mathematical principles. Furthermore, the performance of mathematical problem-solving is simply that: a performance.  Proof-writing is a staple of upper-level mathematics, which is essentially essay-writing, and solving equations is only a tool used in the construction of the proof. Math assumes certain axioms to be true, and from those axioms the confines of the field are built.  Thus it is not true that math can be translated to any system which is not restricted to those fundamental axioms (i.e., any other system). Notice how any word problem is a hyper-focused, one-dimensional closed circuit which allows for that randomness which is only accountable for by well-defined variables.  And, the axioms of math are not provable (see Bertrand Russell's failed proof for why 1 + 1 = 2; or, notice how a number does not exist… what even is a number? Can you provide a non-synonymous definition of what a number is without using the term "number" or "how many" or "amount," which are all, essentially, synonyms?). That is to say, that the entirety of the mathematical field is a hypothetical, and none of it can be believed to be "true" in any sense. For myself, if I were to thin of the mathematical field as "true," then I would immediately lose all interest, for I would come to the conclusion that the truth is being worked out by greater minds than my own. However, because I have come to understand that the mathematical field is not what is "true" but what "results if…" then the entire system becomes a hypothetical game with no consequence on reality except for that which happens to work for reasons which physicists struggle to explain with ever-enlargening and positive theories.  That is to say, that in the construction of any mathematical system (similarly, with science) that conclusions are results of the well-defined assumptions. 

However, in real-world experience, there are no well-defined assumptions. Nature does not behave like math; it is beyond human principles.  And, because it is beyond assumptions, it is also beyond the well-defined, set-containment-like rules which govern casual relationships between those assumptions. So, not only can we start with any arbitrary assumption we choose, we can also travel from whatever assumptions to whatever conclusions we'd like to reach.  So, in the realm of interpersonal communication, proving that…

I. A => B. 

…is dependent upon one's ability to convince. Christian doctrine holds that no human being is not susceptible to being convinced, so in turn, all humans bear the burden of determining what they are being convinced of and what to do about it. 

Say Faust possess a network of casual connections, named N, filled with cc's, a, b, c, etc. Here is what the Deceitful Voice does:

II. [a, b, c, d, e, f, g,...] == N ==> P 

The Deceitful Voice has a desire, and that is for Faust to believe P [in Faust's story, P is typically that he has a free pass from redemption in the eyes of God].  All it must do is convince Faust that all which he already believes implies that P must be true. Such a convincing process relies on an intimate understanding of the person being deceived, which is further why Mephistopheles is the ultimate scholar. He understands intimately each man's spiritual and behavioral mechanics. He finds the deepest, more secretive weakness that a man may hold close to his heart and exploits it to convince his adversary of a conclusion which could be otherwise considered not true. He draws bold lines from Faust's learnedness to arbitrary conclusions which usually undermine the relationship with God, using all sorts of tactics. To name a few: appeal to intelligence and pride, appeal to sex, appeal to taste, appeal to power, appeal to money, etc. [Note that these are all well-connected to the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins]. Many of these tactics cannot even be described with words and can only be understood by that intuitive mental muscle which humans seem to possess but never communicate.

Thus, by example of the Faustian story as portrayed by Marlowe and Faust, and perhaps others whom I have not read, and assuming that by example is the best way for humans to learn what to do and not to do, then it is rather clear that in our human lives, the Deceitful Voice will find us whenever we have become entrenched in our own learned-ness and beholden to our own vices that we are easily susceptible to drawing causal connections from our current state to the ultimate which the Deceitful Voice wants us to embody. Sometimes, these conclusions may be seemingly benign, meaningless, or inconsequential. For example, I encountered a vice in my life, and the conclusion that "time is linear and should be treated as such" is one that I had come to believe. Such a seemingly innocuous, and somehow wanting-to-be-true statement, actually led me to doom. For, once I believed that time was linear, then I judged how long I spent participating in my vice, which was no more than a few minutes a week. Then came the conclusion that the particular vice could not have been a big deal because it only took up a shockingly small fraction of time during my week.  However, one of two things would happen under a certain scenario:  either 1) the Deceitful Voice would inspire me to gradually increase the amount of time spent on the vice regularly, or 2) I would acknowledge the maelstrom of bad neural habits that the vice so clearly entrenched within me (say, for example, that a dose of sugar was a great response to my inability to communicate with a loved one), for the vice was originally causally constructed and had hidden causal downsides, but the Deceitful Voice would somehow convince me that such causal "Catch-22"s did not exist, but a different causal connection did, that of the vice actually being restorative. This shows that once the Deceitful Voice enlarges one's network, it begins to hide certain bad causal connections and manage the network as a whole to service a certain activity or vice.

When man is up against such an Ultimate Scholar, what is he to do? Note: This question is not of immediate importance to every man.  This question is a certain state of wonder which a conscientious soul who strives for self-control asks. And the answer can be found in becoming educated—to view the various networks of causal connections out there and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each of them until the strengths start looking like weakness, and the weaknesses start looking like strengths, and they both ultimately peeter out into a neutral, philosophic state.  It is through a holistic approach—one of investigative action, ephemeral reflection released as carefully as it was formed, consideration for fellow man, observation and performance of social duty, physical upkeep, and perhaps more—to combat Deceitful Voice. 

For philosophical concerns, I can recount some possible reliefs for when the internal voice gets stuck in certain traps. For when the mind believes strongly in itself, Catch-22 may be humbling. Catch-22 may also disambiguate illusions of other people which are over-empowering and terrifying—so if you're scared of other people, Catch-22 may be refreshing. For when the mind is stuck in a rut about what to do, perhaps consult Marcus Aurelius Meditations, where through momentary "do" and "do-not"s one may discover how to "be throughout them".  For when the mind feels the weight of its own consciousness, maybe consult Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death, and perhaps consult it with an eye for necessarily equalizing qualities of his depictions. For positive guidelines filled with wisdoms that have withstood the test of time, read the Bible or any valuable religious text.  Most of all, books are jewels. Excellent writers have articulately performed their well-developed thoughts at a scrawl, typewriter, or computer. But, when you immerse yourself in their ideas, read to discover yourself. Ask not what those examples of human performance can do for you, but what you can do to the running list of examples of human performance. Read only what inspires, and inspire only what is true.