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This was really nice.
I'll just say, it starts out deconstructing the way "magic" in the modern world has given way to "engineering" and thus mythological things like 'deals with the devil' are no longer believed.
But, in my view, a significant part of the appeal of the 'deal with the devil' is that it isn't mysterious. A Faustian bargain works according to exactly the letter of the deal, and the devil always keeps his end of it. Part of what makes it interesting, enticing even, is that it looks like there might be ways to outwit the devil. The devil then is a force of nature to be engineered just like any other branch of engineering in modern times, not an arbitrary fact of life beyond our comprehension.
Yes, the point, as I have always thought, is not that playing with the devil is playing with a deceitful sharper, but playing against one's own inability to handle one's desires, one's own imperfections and basically facing the corruption of the original sin in oneself. The devil just sets things up in such a way that the human who yielded to the temptation arrives to the state of ruin faster, and initially enjoying the ride, all while not being formally lied to at any moment.
The idea is that there logically may be ways to outwit the devil, but he will never offer you a deal where you would be able to outwit him by the power of your (weak and corrupted) mind, so the faith is the only salvation, and rejecting any deals is the only non-losing strategy. Remember, Dr Faustus was not written by an atheist.
Faust himself didn't get tricked. He was offered the chance to get out of it until the very last instant. There wasn't any sneaky wording. There wasn't anything to outwit.
At the beginning he somehow convinced himself that his soul didn't really exist, despite the presence of a literal devil in front of him, offering the power to do genuine magic. At the end he somehow just couldn't bring himself to repent.
In between he uses his power for absolutely nothing of interest. The most earth shaking thing he does is that he plays a prank on the Pope.
I'll be honest that I really don't get the point of the story. It's not about the devil being a trickster. If anything it reads kinda like a self critique by Marlowe, but that reading is also kinda shaky. It's more like people just wanted to see an academic get taken down a peg.
Coincidentally, I've just finished Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic. It's very long and massively overexampled, but still a good and eye-opening read.
When it came out in 1971 it cost an extortionate £7; one national newspaper had an editorial saying people might be forced to pay for it in instalments.
Recently I encountered a piece discussing "The Prestige" as a counter to the opinion that science dulls the wonder of the world by removing magic from the equation.
The idea is that the machine in The Prestige is stipulated as being science as a conceit to allow the audience to experience an unexplainable phenomenon as the people of the time of the film would have experienced to technology of today.
The distinction between magic and technology is shown to be that the wonder goes away for magic tricks once you know how the trick is performed. Technology maintains wonder even after you know how it works, because the wonder is the appreciation of how the goal is achieved by known principles.
Honestly? ‘deals with the devil’ aren’t dangerous because the devil is doing any of the enticing, we are to ourselves.
The devil just gives us a glorious chance to be hoist on our own petard (long term) in exchange for short term glory/enjoyment. A temptation eternally present in humanity, no matter the environment. We’re more than happy to scam ourselves later.
If you like the structured nature of deals with Other beings and the intersection of that with magic, you might really enjoy the Pact web serial and its sequel Pale by Wildbow.
They contain an exceptionally intricate and well thought through magic system in a modern "hidden world" setting.
My favorite part is how litigious it all is. Power is gained, lost, and traded through deals practitioners make with Other beings, and these are mired in details and exploitation of nuanced language and such. It even features diabolist lawyers!
Are the persistent themes the outcome of generation via the authors' predilections, or of winnowing via the readers'?
Ok I read it. More it served the interests of power, "Protestantism (and, of course, Christianity generally) had a need to enforce the discipline of delayed gratification".
It has a heckuva closing sentence.
It worked for me. The first part did a great job of painting the
horror of living in an age of ignorance, at the mercy of unseen, never
understood forces. But I kept thinking... no, hold on... that's now
too! [0], so was pleased the last stanza wrapped up as I anticipated,
concluding modern forms of magic and Faustian bargains are indeed
"exchange in which short-term gain threatens long-term security." As a
book review it went off into the long grass for a bit in the middle.
[0] EDIT; sorry but that SouthPark episode where Butters prays to the government just popped into my head; "And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'd really like to get a puppy for Christmas this year. G'night, Government!"
The devil never lies.
Exactly. All of magic is like that and has never really been mysterious... the people actually practicing it have mostly always understood that it was psychological hacks: that people are mostly holding themselves back from what they want, one just needs to align their unconscious desires with their will, and it will happen.
(in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley was asked if magic is "real" e.g. can you actually do physical things like light a fire with your mind. His answer was basically that he didn't care or it doesn't matter- because the magic that aligns your unconscious with your conscious will is more powerful than people even imagine that type of magic would be.
"Magic" in its various forms is alive and well, and is actually widely used (although often on the down low) by creative types to create things that far exceed what confused/ignorant lay people historically imagined magic to be capable of.
The mark always believes he has an edge.
One thing I never understood about dealing with the Devil. When the Devil shows up, it changes the calculus. Now the person knows there is a heaven and hell, etc. What used to be a reasonable decision is now outrageously wrong.
You're applying a modern sensibility. Originally, the skepticism you're alluding to didn't exist. The existence of a god and the various related phenomena was taken for granted. Given the knowledge of the time, how else could humans have come into existence?
Widespread skepticism of those beliefs didn't start until the Englightment and the discovery of evolution.
If a Devil showed up and could grant wishes, it would be a phenomenon in the universe we could do science at. Thing better look out, we’re going to try and capture it, squeeze the wish-juice out or whatever.
Baysian probability is technology???
The term Bayesian derives from Thomas Bayes (1702–1761), who proved a special case of what is now called Bayes' theorem in a paper titled "An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances".
This reads as if the author set out to make a point about modern traditionalism, got distracted with Renaissance literature halfway through, and then gave up on the piece with three or four paragraphs still to write.
It's a shame. Something a little trenchant about the vacuity of "forward unto the past" would've made a better read than this.
I agree it seems pretty unfocused. To be fair I read it quickly so I might be missing something, but I'm struggling to pull a thesis out of this piece.
At the beginning it seems like it's trying to make a point about society becoming better after eliminating superstition, but then it mostly just goes through a history of Faustian bargains in literature before ending with one paragraph that implies that the modern equivalent is EULAs in software.
EDIT: I just realized from the URL that this is supposed to be a book review? I probably didn't notice because the book isn't mentioned in the title or even in the article until four paragraphs in.
I don't know if I'm missing something about the Newyorker but every article I've tried to read loses me in a similar chaos of literary references and excessive thesaurus usage.
I can't tell if I'm illiterate or it's overhyped.
That type of essay often works like that: start with a few paragraphs that are interesting to a broader audience, write a book review while showing off your literary chops, and then tie it together sloppily the end.
It's like they need to continue the book review genre, and add the required literary flourishes, and have a book review at its core.
Especially funny since he calls Goethe's Faust incoherent.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the title and content disconnected. Seems like the author got a chance to talk about their interest in literary history by adding a paragraph at the end and an enticing title.
The story of Faust is about the dangers of knowledge and technology. If you know too much, you will eventually lose your soul.
As this book review explains, with the enlightenment and industrial revolution, this fear of knowledge receded. But the myth is still there.
For example, take the "Terminator" movies. They're about the dangers of technology: what if we create machines that are intelligent enough to turn on their creators and seek to destroy them? There is a parallel between gaining forbidden knowledge and making artificial creatures. Today, we are afraid that corporations and governments will use our inventions to control us, but I think that fear has an echo of the old myth that it is dangerous to learn forbidden knowledge, or create artificial life, because that would be entering the realm once reserved for the Almighty.
It's also about making deals with entities smarter than you are. Essentially the same thing can be found in Science Fiction (e.g. Culture Minds):
> Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.” ― Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward [0]
In classic Fantasy, it's dragons who take the same role, manipulating and deceiving mortals into doing bad things (e.g Tolkein's dragons, based on the old Norse traditions of dragons being sly and deceptive [1]).
And of course, the Djinn's classic Three Wishes is all about being careful what you wish for. The Djinn does exactly what the wisher wishes for, but if there's any way of manipulating it for evil, they will.
We now have AI and tech, so it's natural that we start telling these same stories about our smarter-than-us entities. I don't think the Terminator gets into this kind of story; it's more as you say about our children being a danger to us (but then the Greek creation myths are all about that, too).
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/83257-oh-they-never-lie-the... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_in_Middle-earth
It's crazy to think that one of the oldest religious stories, the whole Adam and Eve don't eat from the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge, actually has a coincidence (...I mean, I believe it was a coincidence) in our past diet
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/03/27/521423216/wh...
I don't believe pre-human primates somehow passed that story down or anything but old stories always make me curious into their origins. Sometimes cool and interesting stuff comes up when you do
> what if we create machines that are intelligent enough to turn on their creators and seek to destroy them?
I disagree with this - it's about creating machines that are powerful enough to turn on their creators. Battlestar Galactica is more about intelligence/superiority IMO (as well as powerful).
We already have no shortage of machines powerful enough to turn on us. A steel rake lying hidden in the grass for example. Everyone knows the apparent danger with these things, yet this tool has managed to infect our very ethos to the point where its potentially operator-harming design has remained unchallenged for 100 years, perhaps longer. I trust there will still be people getting smacked in the face with rakes in 100 and 1000 years from now at this rate.
I love deals with the Devil. What's your favorite Deal with the Devil tale? Tell me one off the beaten path.
My favorite is the Brazillian "Grande Sertão: Veredas"
https://kasmana.people.charleston.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?ca...
“The Devil and Simon Flagg” in which Flagg sells his soul in exchange for the proof of Fermat’s last theorem. No proof is found, but the Devil becomes consumed with mathematics.
It's on the beaten path, but how can you resist (and how did the New Yorker resist?) "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_Went_Down_to_Georgia
Most of the deals in the article do not end well for the human, but here there's no lesson about hubris, nor the curse of knowledge, or anything else. No, Johnny's just a better fiddle player, he beats the devil, and he wins a golden fiddle fair and square.
(The article might allude to this story: "Satan is not the real God, because there is only one God; the Devil doesn’t have the best tunes.")
Poland has a tale of "Pan Twardowski"(Mr Twardowski) about a man who made a pact with the devil for all kinds of powers, in exchange the devil said he will take Twardowski's soul if he ever sets his foot in Rome - since he didn't intend to visit Rome, he assumed this was the perfect deal. However the devil outwitted him, by coming for his soul in an inn called Rzym(Rome in Polish).
My favorite is the legend of the Devil's Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schöllenen_Gorge where some Swiss hired the devil to build a bridge over a seemingly unbridgeable gorge, and then tricked him out of his payment.
I've referred to the devil as the Patron Unholy of Swiss engineering.
Here is a Norwegian tale of the Devil, in form of a traditional fiddle song. Music at the bottom, recommend playing it through once before reading the post.
https://www.norskkornolfestival.no/2019/06/18/fanitullen/
> In these two early stories lie most of the subsequent Faustian motifs: the temptations of knowledge and power; the bargaining away of more distant spiritual gains for nearer material ones; the almost symmetrical rivalry of good and evil forces; the taint of the commercial or contractual bond; the picaresque flights through time and space; even the odd obsession with exciting women called Helen.
In apocryphal Bible texts, it's claimed corrupted angels called "The Watchers" gave humans various technologies, in exchange for their women.
> In the Book of Enoch, the watchers are angels dispatched to Earth to watch over the humans. They soon begin to lust for human women and, at the prodding of their leader Samyaza, defect to illicitly instruct humanity and procreate among them, arriving on a mountain called Hermon. The offspring of these unions are the Nephilim, savage giants who pillage the earth and endanger humanity.
> Samyaza and his associates further taught their human charges arts and technologies such as weaponry, cosmetics, mirrors, sorcery, and other techniques that would otherwise be discovered gradually over time by humans, not foisted upon them all at once. Eventually, God allows a Great Flood to rid the earth of the Nephilim, but first sends Uriel to warn Noah so as not to eradicate the human race. The watchers are bound "in the valleys of the Earth" until Judgment Day (Jude verse 6 says, "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.").
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_(angel)#Rogue_watchers...
We are witnessing the beginning of a significant shift in how we perceive the world—a "remagicalization" driven by technological advancements. Technology has progressed to a point where it often feels indistinguishable from magic to many.
In the past, building a radio, the primary tool for real-time information, was within reach of anyone with basic components like wire, a speaker, a capacitor, and a coil. Today, however, technology has become so advanced that it is incomprehensible to most, controlled by experts who can seem like modern-day wizards.
I fully agree with the conclusion of the article.
* We’re all Faustians now. These days [...] we write our contracts not in blood but in silicon—both figuratively, insofar as we sign away our identities and privacies for all the short-term benefits of material ease, and literally, whenever we scroll rapidly through one of those unreadable online contracts, eager only to assent.*
I disagree.
"For most people, life was a business of terrifying external forces and arbitrary powers, both spiritual and legal."
Substitute "economic" for "spiritual" and it describes the experiences of the majority in modern societies.
To most,
searching for a job involves appeasing various inscrutable forces,
such as AI resume filtering,
HR hoops,
and interview questions that might as well be asking about how to cast spells.
Employers are arbitrary and capricious entities of enormous power over individuals and with the ability to influence the world in ways the individual has no hope of matching.
We don't call it magic, but there are other incantations for it. The adherents to the True Way of economics and law elevate themselves to positions of power and influence.
This is written for someone with a higher reading level than me. I skimmed the first few paragraphs and have no idea what it is about beyond the title.
> Jesus again rejects material gain, and finally banishes the tempter: Satan is not the real God, because there is only one God; the Devil doesn’t have the best tunes.
Hard disagree. Though playing them on a golden fiddle certainly doesn't help.
Disenchantment was well underway in the 1600s, and arguably peaked in the 1700s, the Age of Reason, before it was partly undone by Romanticism. The disenchantment narrative goes back at least as far as Chaucer: https://aeon.co/essays/enlightenment-does-not-demand-disench...
If you want to go back the age of magic, try the 900s, or better yet, prehistory.
Great piece, though I do wish there was some more discussion about the Book of Job, in which God Himself makes a deal with the 'accuser' (Satan). The parallels with later 'deal with the devil' stories are numerous. I think it's particularly interesting to note that in Job, 'Satan' must still get permission from God to torment Job, and that, arguably, Job's final redemption rests on God coming down and speaking directly to him.
Isn't the faustian bargain a warning against taking money from unscrupulous lenders? The promise of riches, but in the process you lose your freedom (still true for business owners)
"Engineering" reflects the popular way of thinking. So when magic is explained for the popular mind it looks like engineering.
There's no way to see this and not include this neat little Twilight Zone episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29sd4IneEm4&pp=ygUZaSBvZiBuZ...
weird story, I happen to have known the devil quite well. all the things they say about him are true, and that's the uncanny thing. you'd look at this man, slightly too large, objectively not attractive, impossibly clever and disarming, wealthy, seemingly impervious to any known law, known and welcomed everywhere, the exception to every rule and convention, accompanied everywhere by beautiful women, with literal horns on his head, and never once said a dishonest word even for the sake of politeness. Rationally, it was impossible that he could have been the devil, even if he specifically said it, broadcast it, and advertised it in every humanly possible way, the more he told you, the less you believed it, the more you felt like you were in on it. After all, he was harmless and fun, nobody around him ever did anything they didn't want to do. They always chose, they always consented with enthusiasm, and there are thousands of people who would rush to his defence and aid if anyone were to suggest he had ever done anything untoward. He is quite legitimately a great man in this world of men. Even when you knew, how much harm could be done in letting people who are already lost mislead themselves? We are not their keepers. They were having the time of their lives, but without him, their lives were less. He encouraged them up the hedonic treadmill to see how well they swam out of their depth. Decadent nights out became credit card bills, indulgences became needs, flings became transactions, familiarity contempt. They were all my choices as well, and I spent them unwisely, and at some truly astonishing personal cost, because we were spending what we wouldn't miss until it was gone. You couldn't know because you didn't know you were valuable. That was the impossible brilliance of it. I allowed myself to be seduced and misled because that was the whole ride. It's awesome. You can't judge the devil, it doesn't mean anything to him, but you can learn to appreciate and respect him for what he is, it's only a question of what you will pay for that education.
I haven't seen him in many years and it's hard not to miss him, but with some distance and respect I'm good with that. If you don't believe me and maybe think I'm insane, it doesn't matter either. If you ever want to prove it to yourself and find him, all you need to do is want for the material things in this world a bit more than others for whatever reason, and I guarantee he will find you. Bye old friend, you're missed, and may we never meet again.
It drives me BONKERS that I can read the new yorker within the apple news app (because I pay money) but I cannot in any way through any means read the same words via a web browser to the actual new yorker site.
I know, welcome to the new internet. Apple sells me discounted access via their app because in doing so Apple can monetize my eyeballs. I hate it.
I thought this was going to be about deals with VCs.