Our hunt for eternal youth and desperate attempts to reorganize and ‘optimize’ our lives, in a false approach to 'higher purpose', make us blind for everything our present time offers. Mephisto, the devil’s smart messenger, describes this ‘Faustian poorness’ as follows: “No bliss satisfied him, no enjoyment, and so he tried to catch at shifting forms …”.

Faust went the way to nihilism – and perishes, because he has used the spirit of the artificial, borrowed from Mephisto, to devastate the heart of a sincere young woman – Margaret – and the lives of simple people. The dilemma of the Faustian world is that it cannot but exclude all forms of modest and grateful common life with nature. Consequently, the Faustian human being loses calmness, the condition for gratefulness and goodwill.

Faustian unlimited aspirations follow the order: “Enrich yourself!” Its ideology of an hedonistic casino-capitalism has little in common with socio-ecologically committed free market economies. Yet in order to make the difference, it is hardly useful to impose high-flying virtues, so long as we do not perceive and attack the destructive dynamics of modern life within our society and inside ourselves. Faust, as Goethe describes him, is a vivid epitome of this dynamism.

Over the years Travel & Tourism offered us the golden platform to discover the world, adapted to both high and low-budget travellers. The former were considered as ‘privileged’ and intentional, the latter preferably labelled as ‘bargain hunters’, with an unerring eye for ‘last-minute’ opportunities. Travel destinations were opening up at high-speed, attracting tourists by means of advertising and sales promotion – an instrumentation that was increasingly focused on selected target-groups, particular life-styles and new Tourism zones.

It is hard to overlook parallels: Faust wants to reshape the whole world to make it people’s paradise. Not as a gardener, who wisely channels nature’s unfolding, but as a blaster, whose sense of development is exploitation. His wish fulfilled would make Faust equal to God. However, his vision will never come entirely true, since its final fulfillment will be subject to a future which always just promises fulfillment, without allowing itself to happen at present. The highest moment Faust can savour is nothing but “anticipating the deep enjoyment” of future happiness, which never a man will experience.

At the end of his life, Faust expresses our erstwhile untarnished belief in progress, rooted in omnipotence and omniscience. The former allows unlimited desire and fulfillment, the latter provides total control. Unifying both of them would mean the total form of man’s freedom in the sense of absolute autonomy toward nature and God. The promise of the snake in the Genesis of the Bible would be fulfilled: “Your will be like God”.–

We may shy away from largely identifying ourselves with Faust. A clear attention to what we are doing and its consequences is the basis of our's and our society’s self-knowledge. Nothing less than our way of life is at stake. This self-knowledge may remind us of the motto of the antique oracle of Delphi, “Know Yourself”. Its meaning intends to tell us that we are all humans, but not God.

Form follows function

Travel & Tourism spearheads people’s yearnings on the way to free travelling, enjoying leisure and pleasure, sports and adventure, arts and culture, new insights and viewpoints. In a time of manipulation, plagiarism, fake news, populism and virtual hate-speech, Tourism evokes the natural and the pristine, the artistic and the unique highlights of both world heritage and their ‘Disney’-inspired artificial worlds. But there is the other side: We understand local people’s growing reluctance to welcome visitors, since there are simply too many of them. The problems they create affect the quality of local everyday-life and culture, pushing the prices for consumer goods and real-estate assets, lowering the levels of behaviour, and rising social and environmental degradation and crime rates. Man’s concept of an artificial Tourism world may be perfect – technically and in functional terms. However, it remains a surrogate, a kind of “second-hand world” (Ludwig Fusshoeller/The Return of the Demons).

For decades, we have degraded natural places of beauty and charm to deserts of concrete and steel – materials that insinuate duration, yet brought deception. Our dreams and ambitions to turn into man-made holiday paradises seemingly useless areas in mountains, valleys and on coastlines, too often left dreams back and paradise – lost. This went at a high price paid to pressurize on tourism development and put up with mass-tourism, in an effort to reach a quick return of investment: “To gold they tend, On gold depend, All things! Oh, poverty!” (Goethe, Faust I).

After decades of people almost having gotten used to ‘bed fortresses’, it is time to say good-bye to an architecture which nobody likes. New ideas were coming up, for instance that 'smart beats hard': 'Smart City' concepts have started to being implemented in the early 2000s, soon adapted to face an emerging mass-tourism. An example is the concept of the ‘Tourist City’. It is intended to provide benefits for both the visitor and the local inhabitant and intends to further develop holistically the 'Smart City' approach, in an effort to make towns and cities economically more efficient, socially more inclusive, and ecologically 'more green'.

Far away from turning into a tourist ghetto, the ‘Tourist City’ has three different expressions: first, as tourism resorts, including accommodation and all kinds of pastime activities for the visitor; second, as an integral part of important tourist cities boasting a particular cultural and historical identity, and whose annual tourist arrivals exceed distinctly the number of inhabitants; third, as ‘restructured’ cities, which provide special tourism-related areas within a city otherwise unlikely to be frequented by non-locals.

In a strictly functional sense, ‘Form follows function’ , the functional 'Bauhaus' architecture provided the template. Since its beginnings after World War I, the Bauhaus has brought together numerous important protagonists from the worlds of art and handicraft, architecture and many other disciplines. They not only ought to create everyday objects, but to play an active role in re-shaping society. Space for nature became tight, as the number of inhabitants was increasing – and the number of visitors, too:

“It’s in the very nature of the thing:

For the natural the world has barely space:

What’s artificial commands a narrow place.”

(Faust II, Laboratory)'

Looking at the rich biodiversity which we ourselves are a part of, however, we may conclude that natural organism is far more apt than man-made organization, to manage complexity and even to ‘economize by creating abundance’. Admittedly, this sounds paradox. In all its varied abundance, nature stands for self-sufficiency, complementary impact, ecological economy, diversification and decentralization.

Nature has developed a systemic way of complementary properties between species, and an instinct that even includes cooperative elements reminding us of human ‘solidarity’. ‘Eco-Tourism’, for instance, enters a sensitive liaison with nature, following its kind invitation to let us be enchanted by its rich biodiversity, if we do not abuse it. Travel & Tourism, the industry, is well advised to dive more profoundly into the depth of ‘bionic construction and management’, to apply its strategies on how to grow and flourish, to compete and cooperate, and to learn how to economize by creating abundance.

Function follows the non-violent power of ... form

Goethe's original 'Faust' draft was called 'Urfaust', a kind of prototype of the famous drama. 'Urfaust' was given as a benevolent nickname to Hans Domizlaff, who  started his career as an advertiser during the Roaring Twenties. The ‘Master of Brands’, as he was also dubbed later, became a brillant creator of Industrial brands and interpreter of political symbolism. He projected the entrepreneurial wisdom of nature to human psychology and called it “Markentechnik”, or Branding Technique, emphasising the corporate style to be coherent, with its components designed as vectors of the company’s concept.

Domizlaff refers to the natural pattern: “At first, a brand is just an idea, but then it becomes a living creature, an organism on its own" (from: ‘Die Gewinnung des öffentlichen Vertrauens’/‘Winning Public Confidence’).

In terms of State Branding, Domizlaff insists: “With regards to meaning, however, form should not follow function, it ought to be an expression of the state system. The ‘invisible’, non-violent power of form could rule people much better than physical violence or restricting laws.”

As a tribute to his 'Urfaust' token, Domizlaff himself reveals some 'Faustian' thinking: He concludes that “if being determines consciousness, then someone who designs people’s being, will determine people’s consciousness”. He understood his well-meant approach beneficial for Germany's democracy ('Weimar Republic'), yet main political stakeholders'  vigilance device seemed out of order.

In 1932, Domizlaff tried to convince the German  government  to install a state 'propaganda' unit (today we would call it Information and Promotion Department, or alike). It would have been in charge of communicating the assets of a then struggling democracy, which was facing an avalanche of challenges after World War I and the 1929 Great Depression. However, there was no understanding and perhaps no will to catch the spirit of a non-violent 'Branded State'. Instead, Domizlaff's book 'Propagandamittel der Staatsidee'/Propaganda Tools of the State Idea had caught the attention of an unintended but highly interested reader: the nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels ...

"What hidden sense in this enigma lies?" asks Faust. Mephisto's response: "I am the spirit, ever, that denies! ... Destruction, in short, what you’ve meant by evil is my true element."

Part III points to our struggle to prevent and heal the negative impacts of Travel & Tourism, with meager results, though. The industry seems too fragmented, stakeholders too ego-centered, and people too easygoing or pretentious to make ends meet. Depite its numerous workforce and an outstanding, yet by far not fully developed capacity to communicate and make networks, Travel & Tourism needs to address a more holistic approach, in order to be stuck in its ambiguous dead end of being overrated 'and' underexposed.-- Stay tuned.