What’s the meaning of meaning, philosopher? Is that the kind of thing a philosopher asks? What’s it All About?
You can’t just talk about he World. Or about Meaning.
Why not?
You haven’t exhausted everything, philosopher. You haven’t experienced everything. You don’t know everything.
Sitting in your armchair, talking about the world. What do you know about the world? What could you know? Have you travelled, philosopher? Have you been places? Seen things? Have you been to the Southern hemisphere. Have you been to Africa? Or South America?
I’ll bet you have. I’ll bet you’re all about holidays.
The great meaninglessness? Is that what you so courageously face?
Have you seen through it all, philosopher? Do you know what’s real and not real? Have you worked it all out for the rest of us? Are you going to tell us what is and isn’t meaningful? Very handy, philosopher. Very kind of you to spoil our fun.
Like some adolescent in a perpetual sulk.
You’ve made a great judgement about it all – about everything. The whole world. At the age of thirty-whatever. You’ve decided what’s meaningful and what isn’t.
Would you be so gloomy if you visited Hawaii? Or got a puppy? You need to watch some baby animals video. Ever see a baby peacock. Cute. Cutely meaningful.
You’ve seen into the heart of all things. You know what’s Real. And True. And what the world Is.
I think you’re just mildly depressed. Do you think you see into the heart of things when you’re depressed? If you were some jolly optimist, you might see things differently.
We need lessons in how to live. How do you live? Is that what you teach your students: how to live? How fucking presumptuous! Your students must be such fuck ups.
Not like yours.
Ours come from all over the world. To study somewhere great.
There are five hundred times more Organisational Management students than there are philosophy students. What do you think of that?
God help us.
Philosophy: fucking up the world, one student at a time. Sure, we’ve been corrupting the young since ancient Athens. That’s what Socrates was killed for.
Well, I’m a fuck up, too, philosopher.
Are you glad you’re bringing us into the Organisational Management family?
I think you have a bad attitude.
So do you.
You teach them how to despise the world. How to cultivate their fucked-up-ness.
Legitimising all their adolescent bullshit. Making them think that being fucked up is part of the nature of being, or whatever.
Don’t think that I’m magnetised by your darkness, philosopher. Don’t think you’re drawing me into your abyss. I actually have an abyss of my own. I have my own … despair. I’ll bet your despair isn’t even despair.
You just want to dwell in some perpetual bad mood.
What do you want – an affair? An adventure? To make like interesting again … An episode … A diversion from all the Organisational Management boredom. You want some Meaning. An injection of meaning into Organisational Management nihilism.
Is that what we are: nihilists? That’s a very lofty name.
You drained all the meaning out of the world. And now you want meaning again. It’s the same as the way they take all the goodness out of bread. And reinject it. But it’s not the same.
Work in Progress 