The rather elegant phrase, "turning nourishment into wind" was Christopher Marlowe's way of saying that Dr. Faustus was just farting around when he thought he could beat the Devil.

  The back story follows familiar lines: Faustus, a respected but run-of-the-mill scholar grows weary of the limits of human knowledge. He wants to peer into the deepest recesses of the mind. Not satisfied by the limits of logic, medicine, philosophy and religion, he undertakes the study of black magic and, eureka! summons up Mephistopheles, a servant to Lucifer.

  Faustus and Mephistopheles bargain … Faustus swaps his soul for a book of powerful spells and answers to all questions, save one. The bargain is sealed when Faustus' arm is branded with words that became the anthem of the Beat Generation, "Oh man, fly!" The question Mephistopheles refused to answer was "who made the universe."

'Hell hath no limits'

  Wendell Berry, the notable Kentucky poet and farmer, writes in an essay in Harper's Magazine that, "hell hath no limits," referring to our Faustian desire for limitless possessions, limitless knowledge, limitless science, limitless technology and, most of all, limitless progress.

  The downside of desire -- and there is always a downside to desire -- is that limitlessness produces a sort of moral minimalism. It is only logical to conclude that faith in limitlessness is simply industrial fundamentalism: there is always more as long as we abide limitless waste, limitless exploitation and limitless supervision.

The trouble with luck

  The term of the Mephistopheles-Faustus agreement was a mere 24 years. How lucky we are that the State of Arkansas has signed on with the Chesapeake Energy Corporation which promises a 100-year supply of natural gas from the Fayetteville Shale play, located near Searcy. State Senator John Paul Capps, (D-Searcy) quoted in a rival newspaper said, "I think Chesapeake will bring untold benefit to Arkansas, particularly to my district …" where the shale play is located.

'Fatherly sins'

  I suppose we can assume that these untold benefits will run out in 2108, but will be renewed by some new advance in science or technology such as cold fusion or, say, a perpetual motion device. We've got 100 years to screw around, plenty of time to turn corn and soy beans, and who knows what other nourishment, into wind. And if cold fusion or perpetual motion fail to deliver, so what? We won't be here.

  On the other hand, children born in Carroll County this morning will probably live to see what happens. Before they leave the maternity ward, I propose that we tattoo the arms of the little nippers with "Oh, man, fly!" to commemorate our hopefulness in the limitless future. I wonder if they will look back on our era of industrial fundamentalism and understand our optimism.

-- Dan Krotz