Livia’s Joke

Why did Livia place her faith in us?

Some romantic fantasy. Some obvious delusion. Some crazed disavowal of the advantages of intelligence. Of a Mitteleuropean education. Livia had gone deranged in her exile, clearly.

Unless it was a deliberate parody. A joke made on purpose. A way of laughing at everything. Unless her philosophy department was a joke – could that be possible? Unless it was about amusing herself. Bitterly, maybe. In revenge, maybe. But it was about a joke.


Employing the likes of us! Bringing us to Tyneford! Giving us the run of teaching! How terribly funny.

What if it was about fulfilling some deep, perverse need on her part. The desire to ruin things, to parody it all. To tell the darkest joke. That would outdo the dark joke of her life. Of her exile. Of her having had to come to the UK.


This is what Livia was to do with her time. With the last years of her career. This is how she was to occupy herself, before heading off into retirement. But why? What for? What did she think she was doing?


Livia, speaking all those languages. Being able to do maths, and logic. Familiar with the great thought-movements on the continent.

And what did she do in her final hours as a university professor? She turned to us! She recruited us! And who were we? Skaters on the surface. Superficials. Depthless types. Who barely had souls. Who barely knew melancholy. Whose despair was only sham despair.

Barely educated. Self-educated! Self so-called educated. With PhDs from all the worst institutions. From the lowest universities in the league tables. With no European depth.


We’re a joke that Livia was playing on everyone. On the UK – on UK philosophy, to be sure. But on Europe too – old Europe. On her old Mitteleuropa.

This was all comedy – high European comedy. Like Confessions of Felix Krull, or something. Like the Good Soldier Svejk. But real! But incarnate!

A comedy department! For old European to laugh at. Like some elaborate art project. Like some installation art joke. What a marvel!

But it was more bitter than that. There was a darker note than that. This was black comedy, after all. Abyssal laughter. Laughter laughing at itself.

The legacy of old Europe, reduced to this. How funny! How hilarious! A laughter from the chest. From the guts. A laughter from the bowels. From very deep inside us.


We were a joke. Even our Gnosticism was a joke.

A gnostic joke, maybe.

Sure – but a joke against us. A joke that we’re not in on – that only the real Gnostics could understand.

I thought Livia said we were the real Gnostics.

Livia was taking the piss.

She was always taking the piss.


We’re Livia’s jokes. We’re jokes in a way we can’t understand, not really. Let alone laugh at. Can we laugh at ourselves – really? Can we laugh at what we are?

We’re too tired to laugh. Too exhausted. And besides, the joke’s too clever for us.


We live within a joke. And perhaps this whole cosmos is a joke. Perhaps someone’s laughing at it All. At Everything.

This whole cosmos is just like the philosophy department. It was made as a joke. It was a created as a joke.


We were just things to laugh at. Livia’s pets. Livia’s zoo. We’re just Livia’s comic freak show. We’re like the comedy channel. Like the funnies in a newspaper. Like the cartoon at the bottom of the page. Light relief. Comic relief after a hard day’s mathematico-philosophy.


We’re a joke. We’re a punchline. Our entire lives …

What does it mean to live as a joke? To be something that serves only to amuse? That is supposed to bring a smile to the lips of the demiurge, or whoever?


What about the true God, the real God. Where is he, Io? Is he going to end the mockery? Is he going to stop the laughter? Or is God in on the joke, too?

Imagining Livia in hysterics.

Which was already a parody. Her mathematico-philosophical work was already pearls before UK swine. Was never understood over here. Her philosophico-mathematical mark was wasted on UK philistines.

Sure, they were impressed. But the British were always amazed by a little formal logic. By a bit of mathematics. They were always overawed by something technical. I mean, look at the whole of analytic philosophy, which was itself a joke philosophy. Livia’s joke.


God laughing. The demiurge is laughing.


The whole thing’s a joke. Livia’s just a version of the demiurge. The demiurge is just some ginormous Livia. Laughing and clapping her hands.


Are we bitter? We don’t even get the joke. We weren’t even in on the joke.

We are now, aren’t we? Too late. It isn’t funny anymore.


We’re just vehicles of the joke. Pieces of it.


Is God in on the joke? Is God part of the joke?


When did Gnosticism become comic?


Who’s laughing? Who’s LAUGHING? God’s laughing. Man thinks, God laughs.


Old Europe is a joke. We turned it into a joke. It turned itself into a joke. It wanted to be a joke. Because the light’s coming for it, old Europe – old European thought. And it knows it. it knows its time is up.


We only half get the joke. Because we only half laugh at ourselves. Because we take ourselves semi-seriously, even now. We really think we have some role, some function.

Because that’s what Livia made us believe! Because that’s how she wanted us to be deluded!

Why did we believe Livia?

We wanted to be flattered. We wanted to be more than Johnny-no-marks. Who doesn’t want to be the hero of the story? But there are no heroes. And there is no story.

We’d laugh ourselves to death, if we really understood. But we don’t understand, do we?


We’re not dark enough. We’re not as dark as the earth. We don’t have black in black eyes. We should drink more! Brew up some mud wine!

I’ll bet black-in-black eyes can see through everything, every lie. Every pretence. Can see right through to the dark heart of it all.

Darkness sees itself. Darkness sees by way of darkness. Darkness knows itself. The earth knows itself. And laughs.


We want to save ourselves after all. We want not to laugh at ourselves, after all. We want not to be idiots.

That’s only natural. Of course idiots don’t want to be idiots. The way they try not to be idiots is what’s laughable to those in the know. But it must be cute, too. Like the capering of idiot children.