The organisational managers bought their postgraduates from a plan. They actually built their postgraduates. Not like ours, who are human all too human. Who are pure angst, for the most part. Who are worse than us, for the most part. More deranged. Barely socialised. Seriously depressed.
They’re on edge as it is. They’re serious mentally ill as it. Life is a continual torment for them as it is. Why did the organisational managers demand that our PhD students come, too? Why did they want to meet the jewels of the humanities? Of philosophy? Don’t they know how extreme their mental states are? How fragile they are?
Philosophy postgraduates are delicate. But brilliant. Brilliant in their delicacy! In their half-derangement. We’re simply hoping they survive to the end of the their scholarships. My God! We’ve brought them this far – we don’t want to lose them now.
Scholarship philosophy students, doing nothing but study all day. Study and think about study. Study and prevaricate about study. We wish they’d balance their studies with some other activity. Like canoeing, or whatever. But you can’t force them.
It’s all or nothing for our philosophy PhD students (as it is for us.) They’ve waited their whole life for this, for time – time to study (just like us.) Our students are spears flung through the philosophical night. They’re soaring! In a great arc! They’re near the height of their flight!
And all they just want to experience that … rushing. That being thrown. That plunging. Blind-eyed. (Just like us.)
They want to be lost. To continue to lose themselves. Not to wake up from their PhD scholarship dream. Not to be reminded of the world.
They wanted to escape the world. They wanted an alibi. They wanted to be out of it all for a few years. They wanted to dream, philosophically.
They’re not suited to social chit chat. To an Organisational Management party. Neither are we, for God’s sake! Look at us! We’re not small talkers! We’re burners down. We’re destroyers. We’re apocalypticists. We’re end-of-the-world-ists.
And our PhD students are like us, but in nuce … We know who they are … They’re us, us ten years ago, us in nuce, us as infants, and we want to protect them … we want to enfold them with our wings. We want to incubate them, to hold them close.
Our younger selves. Younger versions of who we are. Not yet compromised. Not yet all loss-of-innocence. Not yet fully disappointed. Not yet crashed up against the reality-principle. Against the so-called real world. They haven’t understood it yet, what the real world is, and nor do they need to.
Can’t we just leave them alone for a bit? Let them be, in their innocence. In their ardency?
Look at them: they’re practically burning up. They’re running temperatures – high temperatures. They’re febrile – but this is their normal state. This is who they are.
They’re wild-eyed. They can barely string a sentence together at the best of times. But tonight … They’re inarticulate. They’re stammering.
Don’t scare them, organisational managers. Don’t make them bolt. Don’t approach them. Don’t talk to them. Don’t even ask them what they’re working on. Don’t even show polite interest. It might tip them over the edge.
They’re rare flowers, organisational managers. Orchids. Who need very special conditions. Very careful nurturing. They’re … easily bruised. Tender. Half deranged no doubt.
To hurt them is to hurt us. To endanger them. Be tender.
These are terrible times. Technocratic times, organisational managers. And we try to shelter them from that. From the full realisation. From the great Futility. No, they mustn’t know yet. They mustn’t feel it. Allow them some time. Give them some slack. Let them wander.
They don’t kneed to know it all, not yet. The big picture. The vast dreadful picture. The great takeover. Insulate them from that. Keep them safe. Shelter them. In our wings. Because we know what it was like – that realisation.
We remember when we Saw, really Saw, for the first time, organisational managers. We remember when we woke up. Let it be gentler for them. Let it not all come upon them all at once. Let them not be struck by lightning. It’s cruel. It’s needless.
We can’t do that to them – can’t expose them. No, let it come to them gradually, over time. Let it seep into them, the Knowledge. Let it come, drop by drop slowly, not all at once.
There’s no need for them to Know, not yet, organisational managers. Keep them protected. Let them work in peace. Let them burrow through the days and nights in peace. Let them read in peace.
Let them think the sky above their heads is the real sky. That the PhD night is the real night. They’re not ready for the full Futility. For the full Oblivion.
How can we explain to the Organisational Managers? How can we make them understand? It’s a differend. It’s a different language. It’s a cultural divide. How can we make them understand?
We are not like you. Nor are they. We might appear to be calm, sane. But we’re only just holding ourselves together. We’ve put our human suits on, for the occasion. We’re acting normal. We’re masking.
Don’t you understand what this costs us? Simply to speak normally To pretend to be one of you. The violence you do us. The cruelty. What we’ve been reduced to! What our PhD students still are not! Which is why we love them! Treasure them!
We’re treasuring ourselves. Rocking ourselves in our own arms. Singing lullabies to ourselves. We’re singing to ourselves, too. To the vulnerable ones we were! To the fragile youths we were! Who’d come back to uni from the streets. Who’d returned, on scholarships.
Do not think you know us – understand us, organisational managers. Do not think we share a common language. Do not think you can learn to speak like us.
That there’s an asymmetry between us. An infinite dissymmetry. We come from the other. From the outside. We bring the outside with us. That it enfolds us, like a cloak.
We don’t occupy the same universe, organisational managers. It’s not the same for you and us. It’s not the same planet we occupy. It’s not the same sky above our heads. It’s not the same firmament. They’re not the same skies. This is not the same universe.
We’re our own place. We come from very far away. We’ve travelled all the distance of the sky. We’re tired! We’re broken! We’ve crawled here on our knees! We’ve known such … extremity … such alienation.
This Is not our world, as it is yours, organisational managers. It’s never been our world. Nothing in it is ours. We’re not of this accursed planet. We’re not of this so called reality.
We are not like you, and they – our postgraduate students – even more so. We aren’t of your kind, and they – our PhD students – are even farther out. You cannot understand us; we’re unknown to you, and they – our PhD students – impossible so.
They’re beyond you – and even beyond us. Even further out than us. We don’t understand them. They’re a mystery to us. We can’t catch up with them. Their ardency is greater than ours.
They know their time is short. They know they won’t survive, not as they are. Your PhD students will get something somewhere, but ours? This is their moment. This is their time. Their studying time.
Do you think they’ll be able to study out there? After they’ve finished (if they finish)? Do you think the conditions will be right for them to read, to write?
With your party, organisational managers, you’re robbing them of study time, from reading time, from writing time. And they have precious little left of that.
You brought them to an Organisational Management party – what horror. You summoned them to an Organisational Management get-together. You wanted them to mingle with Organisational Management PhDs. My God!
Do you think they’ll have anything in common with our PhDs? Do you think they’ll understand our PhDs? They are our hope. They are what’s highest and best in us. They’re our integrity. They’re what we are. They’re our hearts! They’re our souls!
Who are we, compared to them? We’re compromisers. We’re fallers short …
Work in Progress 