Popular culture has absorbed the concept of the “Faustian bargain,” even if few people know the term. The basic Faustian plot has the main character (Faust, or Dr. Faustus) trading his soul to the devil in return for fame, riches, or power. The story then explores what those things do to him, usually discovering that what he thought he wanted doesn't live up to what he imagined. Eventually the story arrives at the inevitable climax of how Faust can wiggle out of his end of the bargain.
The plot has sunk into the common consciousness and has appeared in everything from a Simpsons Halloween episode to movies such as The Devil's Advocate and Bedazzled, and even in songs, with a variation of the theme in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”
Interestingly, in Goethe's version of Faust (multiple writers have picked up the theme over the centuries) his protagonist doesn't make the bargain because he wants riches or fame. Instead he makes a deal with the devil because he is bored.
More precisely, Goethe’s Faust is so dissatisfied with the limits of ordinary human existence that he contemplates suicide. Mephistopheles, sensing an opportunity, offers him the chance to experience everything life has to offer. So Faust bets his soul that Mephistopheles still won’t be able to give him a moment satisfying enough that he’d want it to last forever.
Goethe’s meandering two-part play then has Mephistopheles throwing the obvious temptations at him like lust, riches, power. Faust is “meh,” until he finally finds something that does matter to him: the possibility of creating something lasting and beneficial for mankind, something that will outlive him. After that, the rest of the story becomes what happens after Faust is no longer bored and has found something worth living for, and how he escapes his end of the bargain.
Two hundred years later, Goethe’s book is pedantic, strange, and pretty obscure. So what struck me when reading it in the 21st century was not Faust, the various inducements, or even Mephistopheles, who is often more interesting than the protagonist. It was the existential boredom that made a deal with the devil possible.
And my first thought reading this was that current generations have made their own modern Faustian bargain against boredom. And the devil today is of course the smartphone in your pocket. And a lot of people have given up living real lives in return for not feeling bored.
Waiting in line? Phone.
Commercial break? Phone.
Can’t fall asleep? Phone.
Eating lunch alone? Phone.
Feeling lonely, restless, or vaguely dissatisfied? Phone.
Do that long enough and you start training yourself to expect something interesting every few seconds. Ordinary life begins to feel empty and creates a negative feedback loop of filling that emptiness with more internet time. The more often you use constant stimulation to escape boredom, loneliness, or uncomfortable thoughts, the less capable you become of simply sitting with those things. Which makes you reach for the stimulation even faster the next time.
Now I use the internet every day. The question isn’t whether someone uses it, or browses, or goes on social media. The question is how much of a life is spent there, and what you do the moment you aren’t being actively entertained.
I was in my late 30s before the internet was ubiquitous, so I seem largely immune to selling my soul for online nirvana. And I’m still conscious of not using the internet during idle time. I’m the guy in line at the grocery store not looking at his phone, instead looking at everything around me and wondering: how long has the cashier worked here? Is this a career or a part-time job? Do employees get a discount?
That kind of idle noticing used to be the default. For society at large, and especially for younger generations with no memory of pre-internet and no practice sitting with boredom, I don’t know how society teaches it back.
The internet isn’t going away. Other than people like me setting an example of living outside it, and posting observations like this that maybe ten people will read, there may not be a neat solution.
The old stories obsess over how Faust gets out of the contract. The modern version may be bleaker because if all of society progresses to where it can’t bear three minutes without stimulation, there doesn’t need a Mephistopheles to come collect.