They’re coming for us. For our kind. The new secret police – the new alphabet agencies.
Why would they bother with us? Haven’t they got other things to bother with?
It’s an algorithm. They’re tireless. All the lampposts out there, listening out for conversation about forbidden things. Searching for suspect words and phrases. Listening out for potential enemies of the state. Trying to prevent future crimes. Future criminals. Trying to prevent forbidden talk.
Everything we’re saying. Everything we’re doing – logged, tracked, analysed. We’re being tracked. Scored …
What do you think our social credit scores are? Do you think we’re doing well?
Laughter.
Come on, what can the algorithms do with talk about anti-philosophy and suicide? Not very much, I would suggest. I don’t think AI will be bothering with us.
We should just let ourselves be poisoned. Just give up. What do you suppose is in this beer? Are you going to stop drinking beer?
The poison’s everywhere. We know that. It falls in the rain. It blows in the air. It’s in our food. The water we drink.
Don’t pretend we can escape this. Don’t act as though we’re exempt.
They’re monitoring our electro-magnetic fields. They know all about that stuff. Our electro-magnetic auras. It’s a wavelength battle. It’s a spiritual battle. A very subtle form of warfare.
They’re microwaving us. We know that. They’re frying us. Our thoughts are microwaved thoughts. Our thoughts are fried thoughts.
Are we allowed to think these thoughts? Are we allowed to say these things? Is this, like, a smart pub? Is this smart beer? Surveillance beer? It might be. Are those surveillance beer mats? Are our pint glasses covered in sensors? What isn’t covered in sensors?
Are there microscopic drones, like, swarming around? What thought crimes have we committed today? God. Philosophy’s a thought-crime.
Fuck that. Philosophy’s complicit. Academic philosophy, anyway.
That’s why we need anti-philosophy, right?
Anti-philosophy … isn’t that just more philosophy? We don’t want any more philosophy.
The earth is poisoned. The very earth. The soil. The rocks. Probably. The mantle …
Can you poison the mantle?
All the way down to the earth’s core: poisoned. And all the way up, too. Through the atmosphere, the stratosphere. All the other -spheres. And space, too.
Can space be poisoned?
It’s all thick with poison. We’re all choked with poison. It’s amazing we‘re still alive.
Our tissues, thick with poison. Our lungs, thick with poison. Our livers, busily trying to process the poison.
We’re poisoned people. Poisoned thinkers. Poison slops through our veins. Poisons slide through our… mucus membranes. Poison’s being pumped through our lymph nodes.
The poison brews inside us. Slops around. In our bones, probably. In our ligaments. In our cartilage. There’s poison in our lips. Our earlobes. There’s poison in our retinas. We stare out of poison. There’s poison in our speech. In everything we say. There’s poison in our brains. These are the thoughts that poison thinks. It’s a wonder we’re still alive.
Are we still alive?
We’re just perpetuating the poison. We’re just poisoning more things. We’re spreading the poison. We can’t help it. What isn’t poisoned? What’s, like, the last unpoisoned thing?
The sun, maybe. The sun would just burn away poisons.
Do you think?
Have we poisoned all of space?
We’re trying, I’m sure. Have we poisoned all the wavelengths? What aren’t we killing?
There’s poison in everything we write. All our words and sentences. There’s poison in our thoughts. What would we be like if we hadn’t been poisoned?
Only the poisoned can think the poison. That’s what I think. Only the poisoned can write from the depths of the poison.
I think we should just let the poison run its course. Stop resisting. Just sink down. We should die this death. Just let ourselves die. Stop resisting.
And then what?
And then … who knows? And then be resurrected.
There’s stuff you can do something about, and stuff you can’t. You can’t escape the poison. You can’t escape anything. It’s just … fatalism.
Accept it: we’re being destroyed. And we can’t do anything about it. Babies poisoned in the womb. Children, growing up poisoned.
Why resist? Just give in. They’ve won, we’ve lost. A toast to them: well done, guys. Bravo, fuckers. The world’s yours. We won’t resist. We won’t do anything. We’ll just kill ourselves to get out of your way. We’ll slash our own throats. We’ll spare you the trouble.
We’re tired of resisting. We don’t want to put up a fight anymore. We’re tired of fighting. Just give us instructions. We’ll do as you say. Just say what you want, and we’ll do what we want.
You’ve won. Accept your victory and the spoils of victory. The world is yours. The earth, the poisoned earth is yours. The skies, the poisoned skies are yours. You’re fucking welcome.
What I want to say to them: surely you can’t want perpetual horror. Surely you can’t want utter destruction. Surely this is all supposed to lead somewhere. Surely it’s all about your utopia. Surely all this was a means, and there’s a goal ahead. Surely this is all for something. It isn’t, isn’t it?
Show us, then. Show us where it’s leading … What was it for, the great poisoning?
Carried along. Borne along. Living out our petty lives. Our so called lives. Living our half lives and quarter lives …
We should just strangle ourselves. Right away! Wouldn’t that resolve everything? And leave our poisoned corpses.
We don’t live and breathe as we’re supposed to. This is not a world in which we can live and breathe, not anymore. It’s not a world for us. It’s not a home. It affords no dwelling.
Corpses lie all around us. And we’re corpses, too. We’re walking corpses. Staggering corpses. We’re only alive in death, thick with death.
We can’t even be corpses. We can’t just lie there, all dead. There’s still a little life in us. We still stagger about. We still … live, if this is called living. If we can call this life. God. We have no choice in the matter, or any matter. We weren’t consulted. No one thought to ask us.
These are our new lives. Our new monitored lives. Our new tracked-and traced lives. Our new battery hen lives. Our new micro-surveilled lives. Our new watched-at-all-times lives. Our new listened-to-ceaselessly lives. The algorithm search engines checking our every sentence. Watching out for thought-crimes. Reading our thoughts … is that possible?
Come on, you’ve won, you’ve humiliated us. We’re humiliating ourselves. We’re doing it for you. We’re carrying out the devil’s work – your work. You sentenced us to death by humiliation. Very well, we’ll carry out the humiliation. We’ll do what you want. We barely need telling.
We humiliate ourselves – it’s a reflex. As though it were pre-programmed, and perhaps it is. Destroying ourselves is what you wanted. And the only honourable thing to do. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. But we always hold back from the final destruction. We never actually take our own lives We’re always playing chicken. Always feigning death. Feigning humiliating ourselves for the final time.
As if we expect to be saved. As if we thought something was going to save us. As if we thought things might change. Our sentence might be overlooked. That we could just get away with living a little longer. Taking a few more breaths. We thought we might be spared for a little while longer …
Shame … shame at being alive in this world … shame at living on in this world … shame at being human in this new phase of post-human life … Shame because we know what’s going on … we know what’s happening … there should be no excuse …
Our base, poisoned animality. Our sunken, poisoned bodies. Our filth … which doesn’t look like filth. Our abasement, which doesn’t look like abasement … our defiled humanity … We’re ready to die. We actually want to die … We’re perfect would-be martyrs … we’re still alive, and that’s their revenge.
What they’ve done with the world. The making-prison of the world.
At least we know it wasn’t always like this. That it wasn’t always a prison. That we weren’t always confined. That this isn’t how it had to be.
They won the battle. And now they’re letting us live on, to see their victory. To live out our humiliation.
An invisible humiliation. An invisible martyrdom. That no one really understands. Because they don’t remember the old reality. They’ve adjusted fully to the new reality. They’re perfectly at home in the new world.
They’ve forgotten how things used to be. They don’t feel compromised. They’re pragmatic. They’re getting on with things. They’re living life as best they can. They’re making the best of it all.
Impressive in its way. Impressive really. Routinised killing. Everyday killing. Disguised as everything else killings. They’ve normalised mass death. They’ve made democide look like business as usual. And the whole world’s in denial.
Surely they couldn’t be bothered to kill us. Surely we’re no threat. Surely we’re not going to do anything. Make anything happen.
Our secret struggle. Our secret politics – our anti-politics. All the things we’re against … everything, really. The whole world. The world as such.
Can we be imprisoned for that?
Work in Progress 