Reading Goethe's Faust: the tragedy of development provided me with an unusual insight into the dark world of modernity. Faust craves for a development of himself as well as society. By doing so, he frees other from their own subdued mind. Thus, meaning that for development to materialize, there must be liberation of thoughts and actions. But this freedom of life comes at a cost, one with 'dark and fearful' thoughts. Mephistopheles is Faust mentor in his quest to change the world.
With confidence from Mephistopheles, Faust makes the leap to 'the lover' where he meets Gretchen. She is a girl from a small town with all the purity in the world. On meeting her, Faust takes her innocence and naivety away. She is infected by modernity. In the company of Faust, Gretchen changes to become somebody else. She experiences modernity and all that comes with it. This development lead her to her own destruction. Modernisation has found another victim.
The final metamorphosis, the developer, sees Faust overgrowing his mentor to take charge. However, in his enthusiast and commitment to development, he destroys the medieval house of an old couple and then had them killed to build his tower. Faust completes his transformation to the dark side of modernity. He is blinded by his greed and stubbornness. The author writes further “once the developer had destroyed the pre-modern world, he had destroyed his whole reason for being in the modern world” It is hence true that for the modernity, there can be no future without past.
It is obvious that the author sees development as part of a give and take process. There cannot be development without sacrifice of some some sort. Furthermore, the development that is created has its own termination date where it has to make place for new developments to happen. For some reason, there seem to be an association between evil and modernity.
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