Doomedness

We couldn’t disturb them, Cicero’s European philosophy professors. They couldn’t see who we were. In our full significance. They didn’t recognise the barbarians. The inhabitants of the ruins. The ones who come after the destruction.

They couldn’t see what we were. What we embodied. We didn’t terrify them, Cicero’s professors. They couldn’t grasp the conditions that created us. Why our kind become necessary at a certain point.

They couldn’t discern that nature of the catastrophe – that there even was a catastrophe.

Not even our doomedness revealed itself to them. Not even our desperation, which was largely concealed, it is true, by our drunkenness. And even the meaning of our drunkenness was impossible for them to grasp.

So of course they were polite. Of course they were generous. They weren’t alert for signs. For omens. They didn’t know their own lies – the lies they couldn’t help but tell as soon as they opened their mouths. They couldn’t taste the poison. They were oblivious. Trusting. They thought everything was fundamentally okay.

And the humanities – what did they know of them? The coming destruction of the humanities. The imminent demolition of the humanities. None of that was apparent to them.

That the humanities had been devoured from within. That they had already been hollowed. Already cavitated. And that we were part of their hollowing.