What’s made us like this?
Nihilism, right?
Nihilism plus some extra craziness. Some wild desire for hope and transcendence and whatever.
Sure, we’re Gnostics. Or neo-Gnostics. Just like Cicero.
She called herself a Jewish Gnostic.
We’re Gnostic messianists. We’re waiting for … messianic time. Some twist in the world’s darkness. When hopelessness becomes hope. When the darkness lighten. Lifts.
What makes that Jewish?
Because we think it will come in time.
As, like, the end of time.
No: as the coming of a different order of time. The messianic era.
Tell us about this other time. What happens then? The lion lies down with the lamb, or whatever? Do we go finish in the morning and read all the afternoon? Do the meek inherit the earth? What?
Look, nihil means nothing, but nihilism’s not really about the nothing. It’s about being. It’s about the fact that things just go on and on. as they are. Forever. The endless end, right? Which is why we want the world to end. What we really want is the end of nihilism. Nihilism’s forever, and we don’t want to be trapped forever.
What we are is yearning. That’s all. And what we yearn for is the end of all this. Which isn’t just a desire for death.
For all out suicidal ideation, we don’t actually want to die.
The rumbling that shakes the world. That will topple the pillars. That will make the institutions tremble.
A disturbance in the earth. A protest. In the earth. A groaning, in the earth. The earth isn’t content. The earth’s turning in its sleep. It’s having nightmares. We’re the nightmare. All this is the nightmare. The campus is the nightmare.
Work in Progress 