Philosophy Subject Group Meeting.
The new term’s looming! We have to think about our teaching. Our post-Cicero teaching. How are we to deliver our courses in the wake of Cicero. Our aims and objectives. The syllabus we’ve specified. We have to remember the mission of the course. Fuck …
Come on, Tom, you’re the leader. You’re the one Cicero chose! Tell us what we’re to do, leader! Lead us, leader! Steer the ship of fools! What’s your strategy? What’s your plan? Give us a sense of direction!
We’ve a whole academic year ahead of us! A whole academic autumn term! All the way to Christmas! Anything might happen!
But this is still the summer, right?
The late summer …
God, this is like a parody of a real academic meeting. A chimp’s fucking tea party …
Contemplating the purple walls.
Why purple? Why's our new accommodation purple? Did anyone ask for them to be painted purple?
Not me.
Was Cicero consulted? Did she have a say in this?
Who knows?
Someone’s attached to purple, anyway. And all the shades of purple!
Maybe it’s some psychological warfare thing. Some demoralising thing. Maybe purple’s a uniquely depressing colour.
Googling psychological effects of purple.
A blend of a high energy colour, red, and a calming colour, blue. So it can be energising or relaxing, depending.
What about depressing? Does it say anything about depressing?
Toned down hues like lavender are soft and feminine, but darker hues can lead to impatience, frustration and irritability.
Well it's very fucking dark. They're clearly trying to provoke us.
Shades of purple: amethyst, lavender, lilac, mulberry, orchid, plum, puce, pomegranate, wine. And there’s royal purple … Associated with royalty, extravagance and aristocracy … King bloody Charles wore the Purple Robe of Estate after his coronation, apparently …
Would you call this royal purple?
It’s just, like, too much purple. Totally saturated purple. Like, deep purple.
And there’s the Prince connection. He associated purple with the end times, apparently. The pouring of red blood from the heaven, mixed with the sky’s natural blue …
I think purple’s the colour of the endless end times.
Are the purple walls on our side?: that's the question. Is the purple with us or against us? What powers does it represent? Who does it answer to?
The purple … if you pressed your hand against it … if you placed your forehead on it … would you think what it thinks? Would you think with it?
It’s as if the purple was listening. As if the purple was covered in sensors. Purple walls, listening to us as we teach. Absorbing our thoughts. Is it some new smart colour. Some new kind of uni surveillance. Like that stuff they’re putting into fabric.
I don’t believe it. The purple is its own thing.
Really!? Should we should regard the purple as an ally? As on our side? Is it in league with us?
It’s as if the purple itself were thinking. Were counterthinking. It’s as if the purple had its own thoughts: purple thoughts. Glowering thoughts. Purple-in-purple thoughts.
As if the purple were sentient somehow. As if it were philosophising, in its own way. About what? Its purple thoughts. Its deep purple thoughts. Its thoughts of purple-in-purple …
Our purple, so very different to organisational management cream. So different to organisation management magnolia. The organisational management walls don’t think. Or think only organisational management thoughts.
You know what I think: these are anti-smart walls. This is anti-smart purple. Maybe we have allies somewhere. People helping us in secret. Who approve of Philosophy, from afar. In Estates, or something. In Organisational Management itself!
Maybe there’s a counter institution within the intuition. A uni resistance.
But who in Organisational Management would be on our side?
Magellan, looking at the website.
There they all are. A dubious crowd. Professor Sophia Van Leyden. Reading her profile. Probably not her. She looks like a Nazi. Professor Klaus Tugendhat – probably not him.
He looks cool, though.
He looks like an East German terrorist. Like he could be part of Baader Meinhoff. Or star in some Fassbinder film.
It’s the leather jacket. The shades.
He should be called Helmut Omelette. To start a revolution you gave to crack some eggs.
Here’s your beau, Tom. She’s hot. There’s Priya Desai, in her business suit. She has something. Who else?
Fuck looking for supposed allies. Haven’t we got anything better to do? This is supposed to be our Subject Group Meeting. Impose some discipline, Tom! This meeting should have structure! An agenda! There should be bullet points! We need official minutes to send to the uni.
Come on, the uni shouldn’t get to know what we’re thinking about.
Maybe they can hear anyway. Through sensors. Through the purple.
Maybe there’s a mole! Is it you , Tom? Are you sharing our secret with Priya?
Magellan, still on the website.
This guy looks like he’s already homo sapiens 2.0 or whatever.
They’re not homo sapiens anymore. They’re homo borg genesis.
Homo borg what?
It’s a whole new thing. Synths – that’s what they’re called. Synthetic humans. Drawing on the latest advances in synthetic biology. Androids, basically. They’re building them now. There are loads of synths in these deep underground military bases.
Why?
They’re pretty useful. Totally compliant. They’ll do what you tell them – no questioning of orders. With no need for philosophy … for our kind of thought.
Maybe all the organisational managers are synths. Maybe Organisational Management itself is some kind of School of Androids. Like, a university infiltration thing …
Their PhD students look very synth-y. These guys look like clones.
They’re actually wearing Organisational Management uniforms.
They are not!
It’s completely technocratic.
Techno-what?
It was a big thing in the 30s. It’s what Brave New World’s all about. Total control.
So Organisational Management is technocracy?
Reckon.
Run by synths?
Run by academics allied to the synth makers, anyway.
So why do they want Philosophy in their School?
To integrate us, of course. To join the hivemind. They want to hollow out philosophy.
They want to hollow out all the humanities, probably. The entire arts …
But they're starting with us. We're the test case.
To think: the last free outpost of thought, captured. All the Schools of the university, being taken over, one by one.
But we’re not captured, that’s the thing. Philosophy is like the Nebuchadnezzar in the Matrix. We’re still free. We’re still puttering about, even though we’re in the heart of the beast.
So who’s Neo, if this is the Matrix? Who’s the One?
Cicero was Morpheus, right?
But Cicero fucked off …
Is it you, Tom? Are you the One? Are you the last best hope of humanity?
Work in Progress 