What’s your theory of the universe, philosopher? Priya asks. Do you have one? What’s the use of philosophy if it doesn’t give you a theory of the universe? Fuck. Okay, a more friendly question: what do you actually write about?
The tohu vavohu, I say.
The tohu … what? Priya asks.
It’s from the Bible, I say. Chaos is the best word for it. Or evil. In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. And the earth was without form and void. That’s how the tohu vavohu is translated in the Bible: without form and void.
So God made chaos? Priya asks.
There’s a whole rabbinical tradition that argues that God made the world from chaos – by shaping the tohu vavohu, I say.
Who cares? Priya says. Sell it to me, philosophy-boy.
It means God didn’t create the universe from nothing, I say.
So? Priya says.
And that God isn’t omnipotent, either, I say. Because the tohu vavohu couldn’t be definitely ordered. Chaos always threatens to break back in. That’s what happens with Noah’s flood and Jeremiah’s prophecies …
Now I’m no Biblical scholar or anything, but didn’t God, like, send Noah’s flood, Priya says. To punish him?
Sure, he unleashed the chaos, I say. He unlocked the doors and portals, and let it flood in.
So God was still in charge, Priya says. It was just a matter of creative destruction.
But maybe God isn’t always in charge, I say. The order of the world can’t hold back chaos.
But you don’t actually believe in God, do you? Priya asks.
It’s not a matter of belief, I say. It’s about an imaginary: the whole Christian imaginary. Which was predicated on the idea of natural order. You’ve heard of chaos theory, right? Of complexity theory. It’s saying the same thing: that chaos is ultimate. That we can try to hold it back, but that it all turns to chaos in the end.
Isn’t that, like the second law of thermodynamics? Priya asks. The one about entropy. Old news, right?
It’s about the unmanageable, I say. Becoming unmanageable. Becoming un-organisable.
I see what you’re doing there, Priya says. This is an anti-organisational management thing. Subtle. So you love chaos.
I don’t love chaos, I say. It’s not about loving chaos. Chaos can be evil, right – in fact that’s how the Bible thinks of it. Disaster. Collapse. The reversion of all things to formlessness, to the primordial Sea or the Deep or the wilderness, or the desert. Or it can mean contamination, the mixing of things that shouldn’t mix. General defilement. The dissolution of natural boundaries, limits. And that’s where it gets interesting. That’s where it’s about the unorderable. The uncontrollable. A kind of originary anarchy.
Sounds like the name of a metal band, Priya says. So this is what you write about: the Bible? Are you, like, a Biblical scholar? Do you read it in the original?
I’m not a scholar, I say. God … It’s just … I want to think about an exit from horror.
What horror? Priya asks.
From the world as it is, I say. From all this … From the natural cycles … from the Same returning over and again …
You despise the world, Priya says.
I despise this world, I say. Which is why I want to see it overturned.
How? In some cataclysm? Priya asks. In Noah’s flood all over again?
I don’t know, I say. In revolution, maybe.
Wow, you humanities types still believe in that, Priya says.
Not to believe in it … not to believe the world can be overturned is to be stuck, forever, I say.
Maybe that’s how it is: we’re stuck forever, Priya says. That’s what we call life.
That’s what you call life, I say. I don’t call it life. Life, human life, is a … breaking of forms. A breaking with nature, with the laws of nature. It’s a breakout from the prison, the natural prison. From this order of this world.
And what would happen after your revolution? Priya asks.
It’s not so much a revolution as an … apocalypse, I say. As a destruction of the present order of things. When chaos returns, like fury. Like the fury of God.
You want everything to be destroyed, Priya says.
I want all the wicked things destroyed, I say. The whole evil order. The corruption …
But you believe in love, too, right? Priya asks. That’s what you said the other day?
That’s part of it – love, I say. The one who loved us would destroy us, just like that. The one who truly loved us would understand what needed to be done. Love would mean death – my death. Our death. True love would mean the end of everything. In the name of love.
How did you get like this? Priya asks. How did you go this far?
Come on – you feel it too, I say. What you said the other day. About guilt. About what we’re doing now.
What we’re doing now … sure … The way we are, the way we’re being, just lying here, Priya says. Just lying here, corrupt … We’re … misusing our time, that’s what I was saying. We’re desecrating our time … See I can do it, too. I can talk like this, too. I can do self-loathing like a philosopher …
It’s not self-loathing, it’s world-loathing, I say.
There’s a desire in us to destroy: that’s how I see it, Priya says. To twist. To invert. This is nihilism, right?
Pure nihilism, I say.
What’s nihilism again? Priya asks.
That nothing means anything, I say.
But it’s worse than that …, Priya says. Because we’re actually mocking meaning. Scorning it … Your tohu-vav-whatever is just destruction. But we’re twisting things, philosopher. We’re deliberately making it worse.
Sin, I say. Sin is deliberate.
We’re at the bottom of the pit – just lying here, Priya says. We’re at the bottom of the pit, looking up …
At what? I ask.
At the sky, through the skylight, Priya says. At God, maybe …
Maybe we’re doing this because we want to be caught, I say. To be seen, sinning.
Isn’t that worse? Priya asks.
It means we want help, I say. And this is how we show it.
Sin as a call for attention, Priya says. Maybe. We do worse things and worse things because we want to be told off …
Because we want to die, I say. Which might be the same thing.
Work in Progress 