What’s this tour for, anyway? To shock and awe me? Am I supposed to be amazed? Appalled?
I just wanted to be alone with the sulky philosopher. I want your philosophical take on these things. Actually, I want to see it through your eyes. I want to see myself in a philosophical mirror.
And what do you see?
You want me to tell you I hate it. You want me to hate it. For you.
What are you: a psychologist?
It’s so total. It’s so all. Like it will never fall down. It’ll last forever. This Kingdom will never fall.
Do you want it to fall? It’s barely even been built.
You’re not suited to this place, either. You want to approve of it, but you can’t. It’s driving you mad, too. It is, isn’t it?
I just like it silent and empty and dark. The lights flickering on and off as we walk the corridors …
I like feeling my footsteps … echo. I like to hear the echoes. With all this space around me. It’s the only way I can clear my head.
There’s a gym in there. Everyone’s so jacked nowadays. And they talk all the time about ice fucking baths. And how much they slept last night.
Do you do pull ups, philosopher? There’s an informal pull up competition among the senior Organisational Management team.
This is the future, philosopher. This is how we’re all going to live. And work.
Offices for two hundred organisational managers. Imagine what two hundred organisational managers might be capable of. Like, the collective brain. All of them, working towards the great Solutions. To the great Problems. There’ll nothing they can’t solve.
In project teams. With project leaders. Fighting against groupthink at every turn. And reaching out across the university. Bringing experts over to the Organisational Management campus. Assembling inter- and multi-disciplinary teams. You can be involved, too – you philosophers. You can make a contribution.
And putting in for great tranches of funding. Sublime amounts of money.
This is a period of great Organisational Management optimism. I can tell.
There are all these breakout rooms. For encounters. Unexpected meetings. We want there to be surprising conversations.
I want to kill myself.
How can philosophy types do anything?
Making sure that there’s no uniformity of thought on their project. Making sure each team is a little off centre, off balance. We need mavericks. Brilliants. Are you a brilliant, philosopher?
No dark corners. No slack. Nothing unproductive. So much optimisation.
The human optimisation project. That’s based here.
Sounds exciting.
Don’t be sarcastic.
It’s a people place. People are the thing. The resource.
How many suicides do you get? You’ll have to spread nets between the Organisational Management campus buildings to prevent people from jumping.
You can’t open the windows wide enough to get out. They’ve seen to that.
An all algae based restaurant. How exciting.
This building recognises me. It knows who I am. Gives me access to everything. It doesn’t know you, yet.
It’s like being on a generation starship. It’s like it’s being readied to blast off into space. Looking for some habitable planet to organise and manage.
It’s so safe. The building wants us all to live forever. Well, I say ‘live’.
Do you find it unbearable, philosopher? Sometimes I find it unbearable. But I should like it, shouldn’t I?
You can’t throw yourself out of these windows. They don’t open wide enough. All you can do is batter yourself against them like flies.
They probably watch us battering against the windows like flies. They’d probably like that.
It’s a suicide machine, that’s what it is. It’s a culling device for the likes of us.
Am I included in your ‘us’?
Work in Progress 