{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

My paternal grandmother had once told my mother that she believes life on this earth is Hell.  My mother had been a nun, but not for long.

I was interested in finding posts on our message board related to Dr. Johannes Faustus, a professor at Wittenberg.  I found an oddity in the "Why Mathematics?" forum :: thread "Mathematical/Philosophical Fool!"  :: subtitle --->  "The Anti-Doctor: A Mediocre Faust.

Later in that same thread, a post with the title, simply Faust which has three videos with Faust [the legend] conjuring Mephistopheles and what not. 

There is mention of this topic (The Legend of Doctor Faustus) in the Notes From The German Genius thread:

p.120

Goethe had a serious aim.  He had told Caroline Herder that he had lost his belief in divine powers in the summer of 1788 and the purpose of life, when there is no god, is to become, to become much more than one was.

“The ultimate meaning of our humanity is that we develop that higher human being within ourselves, which emerges if we continually strengthen our truly human powers, and subjugate the inhumane.”

Some non-Germans have found it too much.

Goethe’s most famous masterpiece is FAUST.  It was by no means a new story, being a well-known medieval legend, made into a play by Christopher Marlowe, though Goethe wasn’t aware of Marlowe’s work until he had written more than half of his version.  It took him sixty (60!) years to complete.

The legend [of Doctor Faust] may be grounded in fact.  There was a Georg Faust alive at the turn of the 16th century (1500) who wandered through central Europe claiming to possess recondite forms of knowledge which gave him special healing powers.

recondite – (1) hidden from sight : concealed; (2) difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge to comprehend : deep; (3) of, relating to, or dealing with something little known or obscure

After his death he gradually acquired a slight change of name and an academic title, as Dr. Johannes Faustus, a professor at Wittenberg.  In his lectures, he was alleged to “conjure up at will personages from classical Greece, and he was notorious for allegedly playing tricks on both the pope and the emperor.

According to the legend, Faust becomes disillusioned with the many forms of secret knowledge he has tried out, and the devil, Mephistopheles, makes a wager with God that he can tempt Faust into his world.

In the thread, The Dark Side (a profound concentration of negativity):

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed.
In one selfe place, for where we are is hell,
And where hell is, must we ever be.

~  Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

There is mention of Faustus by Holden in the thread, From a Book of Nonsense :  HERE.

As far back as 2014, the 20th of September, to be exact [look at the date of this post and behold the Uncanny], when Holden and I switched from email correspondence to our own  *** FREE *** old school message board to better organize our ideas, I mention that the only play I ever read was Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, and just yesterday The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising.

In Facing Unpleasant Truths:

Maybe, like Faust, I am willing to pay the great cost for a little knowledge ... which means I will live a very frustrating life.  And this is just what it is.

And so I humbly focus on what the poor youth who aspire to be "engineers" or, even more impressive (to me, anyway), "theoretical physicists," are grappling with.  It will help me sympathize with their suicides when their area of study overwhelms them.


Indeed, Schopenhauer's influence, although persistent, is still limited, ironically for many of the same reasons that it was in his own day. The greatest value of Hegel's method was always that it could generate almost limitless verbiage without really saying anything. This is invaluable for an academic career today, where journals and books can be filled many times over with tireless, but stupefying, rehearsals of the same popular shibboleths. That these will never really mean anything to anybody -- indeed, they are usually of the form that nothing means anything, or that only power matters -- is far less important than the status, income, and, indeed, power that they foster.

* shibboleth = a word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another.

The Faust Legend even creeps its way into the Uncle Teddy thread with post Uncle Teddy and the Mythological Roots of Scientific Totalitarianism.  I leave a link to Conspiracy Archive : The Faustian Face of Modern Science: Understanding the Epistemological Foundations of Scientific Totalitarianism:

The rise of Science as a cosmological mythology in the 1500’s set up a struggle with the prevailing metaphysical doctrine of Christian theology, which… has never been resolved as a cultural discourse. At its core, the conflict centers around the usurpation of god-like powers by man. Armed with such supernatural abilities, humans can manipulate and alter life in ways that are reserved by Nature/God. The first cultural myth encapsulating the is conflict was, of course, the Faust legend, in which a medical doctor (i.e., scientist) sold his soul to Mephistopheles (i.e., the Devil) in exchange for knowledge and power belonging to God.

Even though this is from 2016, it is rather "uncanny" as well.  Raul was, at that time, beginning to respond with comments to some of my blogs at wordpress.  The themes were already leaning in the direction Holden and Raul have revisited.   Here is a direct and somewhat lengthy quote from the post (
Uncle Teddy and the Mythological Roots of Scientific Totalitarianism ):

The Faust legend echoes the theme of Genesis 3:5, where the serpent promises Eve that “…ye shall be as gods.” The Apostle John identifies the serpent as Satan in Revelation 20:2. Not surprisingly, Satan was an object of veneration for early sociopolitical Utopians, particularly those of the Enlightenment. For instance, a picture of Lucifer (i.e., Satan’s original angelic persona) adorned the title page of the first edition of Diderot’s Encyclopedie (Goeringer, “The Enlightenment, Freemasonry, and the Illuminati”). This veneration of the Devil under his original angelic title constitutes the religion of Luciferianism. Like some varieties of Satanism, Luciferianism does not depict the devil as a literal metaphysical entity. Instead, Lucifer symbolizes the cognitive powers of man. He is the embodiment of science and reason. It is the Luciferian’s religious conviction that these two facilitative forces will dethrone the “superstitious” institutions of God and apotheosize man.

However, Lucifer would assume yet another title. The term Lucifer, as translated by St. Jerome from the original Hebrew Helel (“bright one”), shares the same meaning as Prometheus who brought fire to humanity (“Lucifer”). The mythical character of Prometheus was central to the Utopian vision of early socialist revolutionaries.

All this may serve as a preface to contemplating on where a Metaphysics of Hell might even begin.

In the reddit thread, You've just arrived to hell, what would your ironic punishment for all eternity be?, there is a hilarious clip when Jim Carrey was hosting Saturday Night Live (I show I will withhold my opinion of, since I simply have not been in much of a mood for it in quite a long time, sorry to say  --- getting all-too-political, although I think they were wise to invite Dave Chappelle when they did ...):   https://my.mail.ru/mail/samchuk-mihail/video/57/61.html

I had been trying to understand exactly what "ironic punishment" might mean.

HELL =

Turns out the crazy fundamentalists are the ones who get into heaven. The people who can't stand them go to the same place they do but for them it's hell.

Contrapasso: