We’re sitting round bitching about the new world, and they’re building it. So pragmatic.
This is their world. This is the world they wanted – that they created. This is their false world. Except no one thinks it is false.
We do.
What we think doesn’t matter.
What has this place got to do with Newcastle? It’s like it’s been beamed in from elsewhere. From science fiction. From 70s SF, trying to imagine the future.
They bought the design from elsewhere – that’s obvious. It’s an international style.
International crap sci-fi design. Like Blake’s Seven, or something.
Organisational Management is necessary – deeply so. It’s all that stands between us and chaos. It’s all that saves us from chaos. The experts of Organisational Management are working on it, constantly. On holding chaos back.
Organisational Management know what’s best for us. They correct us when we make the wrong decisions. They steer the great ship away from running aground.
Experts in charge! Who are qualified to know what’s best for us – for society as a whole! They know what’s what! They have the vision!
The managerial revolution! The organisational revolution! They need mass! Scale! In order to operate. Piloting events on a societal level! Organising! Managing! Handling all the problems! The difficult ones! The impossible ones!
They’re dealing with risks, crises, that we can’t even imagine. Vast problems, which require vast solutions. Which require campuses like this. Gargantuaism. Massification. Requires vast networks of brains. Inter and multi disciplinarity: who can doubt it?
We have to entrust our lives to them. They know what they’re doing. And we – we become more helpless, more docile.
All of it in their hands: food production, policing, justice, medicine, transportation and above all education. Education is the key!
The university reborn as trade school. The university as a promulgator of skills, not ideals.
They’ve hollowed out the uni. From within! By enforcing the ideal of business-relevance to every discipline. By being more efficient! More far sighted! More able to make their case! More far-seeing! More strategic! More pragmatic! More wily! More cunning!
They deserve to win …
Organisational Management has got everywhere. It’s even in us. We can feel it, burrowing down. Inside us! Invading us!
This is the last gasp of the humanities. We’re its last gasp. Because the humanities have been hollowed out, too.
There’s no brilliance here. Brilliance isn’t necessary. Only a logic – a remorseless utilitarian logic. All around us. In glass and steel.
Work in Progress 