Our Meeting

Our Board of Studies.

You’re in charge, Shiva. Come on then – lead us. Show us the way! Lead by example. You have to be decisive, Shiva. That’s what you’re for. So decide! Cut through the red tape! Though the Gordian knot! There are decisions to be made! Things to be done. We have an agenda to work through. Points to address. Action points to tick off.

We’re in Organisational Management now, remember that. They’ll be scrutinising our minutes. Make sure our minutes are immaculate, Fiver. Don’t record anything we say about suicide. Or our drunkenness. Or about throwing ourselves out of the window. None of that! We need clean minutes. Don’t record the swearing. Or the panic. Or the threats of mutiny.

We have to pass muster. Under the radar. We shouldn’t stand out. We don’t want to draw attention. We want to appear as though we’re an efficient cog in the overall machine. That we can keep the academic wheels turning. We need to appear as a functioning department. And that’s half the battle, isn’t it?

But we’re not a functioning department. We’re not a functioning anything. Of course not! Everything’s wrong with us. My God, look our leader!

We have to reign in our masochism. Keep it under wraps. We can’t show ourselves as what we are.

 

Our meeting. Our Board of Studies.

It’s just us. The lunatics really have taken over the asylum. The chimps have taken over.

Let’s have a chimp meeting. What would be on the chimp agenda. Bananas. Inter chimp rivalry. Mating. Eating their own shit.

They only do that in zoos.

Colourful assholes.

That’s mandrills.

 

Press the panic button!

Is there a panic button? Why not?

Phone the police. There’s a crime in progress. An ontological crime. It’s all a crime. The university’s a crime. The university itself!

Calm down! Don’t get hysterical! Driss, slap him!

There’s a planetary crisis. There’s emergency. Of being!

 

Why are you lying down, Shiva?

I’m assuming  my position on  the floor of dread.

Get up off the fucking floor of dread!

Driss, lying on the floor of dread. Barbarossa, lying on the floor of dread. Fiver, lying on the floor of dread.

What is this, some kind of yoga?

Yeah, doom yoga.

Get up! You’re supposed to be chairing this meeting, Shiva. You’re supposed to be in charge. This is the Board of Studies, for fuck’s sake. What have you got to report to us from the Executive Committee? What’s coming down from on high.

I don’t know. I didn’t go to it. I said I was ill.

Ill?!

Mentally ill Too full of dread.

You can’t keep giving excuses like that! Not to the Organisational Management Executive! Those guys are serious. They’re world conquerors. These guys are taking over the world. What do you think they’ll do to us if they think we can’t run our department? We have to keep up appearances.

For fuck’s sake! This is not a time for dread, but for manly resolve. No lying down! And are you actually meditating, Driss?

I’m just closing my eyes.

Well, open them again! My God. And Fiver, leave off the visions for a few minutes. We need our departmental administrator alert! Focused! Writing minutes! Taking down our words of wisdom. The relevant action points.

 

We need an emergency meeting.

We’re already in a meeting.

We need a meeting inside the meeting.

Wow, a meta-meeting.

 

Let’s put this to the vote: should we kill ourselves immediately? Just fall on our swords?

We don’t have swords.

We need to be issued with swords. That’s an action point. So we can fall on them. Contact the department of metallurgy. Ask them to make some swords. Our philosophical honour is at stake. The honour of philosophy falls to us.

Isn’t it a bit late for that? If it was so honourable, why did it give us jobs at a Russell Group university? PhDs? Why did it give us first degrees. Face it, philosophy’s in a slump. Philosophy’s been being dishonoured since … God knows when. We’re just the latest twist in its deep dishonour.

Which doesn’t mean we should dishonour philosophy any further!

Uh … do we have to kill ourselves or not?

We’ll wait for the swords to be delivered. Why do we need to wait for swords? We could just throw ourselves out of the window.

But the window doesn’t open wide enough. Have you noticed that?

It’s a deliberate anti suicide measure. Those bastards. It’s prejudice. Against the suicidal! It’s against the Equalities Act! We have rights!

They actually want us to kill ourselves, that’s the thing. It’s why they’re building euthanasia pods.

So we should live! In defiance! That would serve the true honour of philosophy.