Author: Lars Iyer

Across the stony wastes.

There are non-graduates out there. On crutches. Riding mobility scooters. In track suits and trainers. Buying scratchcards, and that sort of thing.

 

They don’t know about the Latest Thing, across the stony wastes. They’re resisting the programming. They’re not thinking what they’re supposed to think. They’re not steered by the government-steered talking points. They’re not don’t know what they should be talking about. What their views should be. The behavioural psychology doesn’t quite work on them.

Jesus, are the only books you read about heavy metal?

Philosophy has to be about something. It can’t just be abut philosophy.

But why should it have to be  about Mötley Crüe?

Because Mötley Crüe are Gnostics. All heavy metal is Gnostic.

We’re the weak kind – neurotic, depressive, left handed, probably mutated. In any other time, we would never have survived birth.

 

If we were anywhere but in academia, we’d be dead – we’d have killed ourselves. Academia let us survive.

We’ve been raised by the uni. We’re runts of the uni. Of the uni litter.

We should never have survived. Never should have come of age. We should have been snuffed out, much earlier. Never should have been encouraged. Never brought on.

What was it – diversity quotas? Stupidity quotas? Unbalanced people quotas?

 

We’ve grown through the poison. Grown from the poison – out of it. We’re blooming from the poison. We’re poison’s bloom. We’re nothing but poison.

 

We’re runts of the litter. Malformed. Kinda short. With asymmetrical faces – that says a lot. Not, like, radiating life. Not happy. Disgruntled, in some fundamental way. We have bad attitudes. We’re full of needs. Fuck ups, in short.

 

Can you be philosophers, when you’re fucked up?

You can develop a fucked up philosophy. A philosophy of fuck-ups.

So that other fuck-ups can read it?

Maybe.

 

We’re bad-willed. And bad-souled. And fucked up. Someone should put us out of our misery.

Someone should.

 

We're paranoid. Inclined to conspiracy theories.

It's like an alarm bell’s ringing. At the heart of everything. God’s declared an emergency, or something. The alarm’s are sounding through everything.

 

There’s been an explosion. At the heart of universe. And it’s spreading. It’s passing through all things.

A shockwave. A blast. A frontier of … horror. We’re only feeling it now.

 

There’s a trembling. A rumbling. A great shockwave. Everything kind of … rattling.

 

If you pressed your ear to the ground, what would you hear?

A rumbling. Thunder – from very far away. An earthquake – deep, deep down. Reverberating. Blasting through everything.

The whole of creation has turned into a bomb. And they’ve set it off.

We have to out-drink the world. Drink our way ahead of it. Drink ourselves into the future.

 

A draught of madness, that’s we need. The wine of madness. We need Bacchus on fucking side. We need Dionysus as an ally.

 

How mad do we need to go? How much madder? How much farther?

Of course, our madness is really a counter-madness. Our madness is really a madness against their madness. Against their delirium. It’s a protective madness, of a sort. It’s a sheltering madness.

We fight their madness with a madness of our own. With mad weapons of our own. We’ll match the hyperbole in reality with our hyperbole in speech!

 

We’ve sent each other mad, that’s the problem. We’re incapable of moderation. But these are the times! Moderation is impossible in our times! Madness has broken out in our times! General madness, in our times! You can’t hold it back!

 

Every drinking night is a desire-for-the-world’s-end night. To drink is to desire the end. To drink for the end. To toast the end. To laugh at the prospect of the end.

We’re coming to it, the end. We’re rushing forward to meet it, the end. Just as it’s rushing to meet us. Our hour, the end. What will save us: the end. The axe blade falling. The flashing light, reflected on the blade.

Our comical apocalypse.

We’re laughing at the fact of laughter, that anyone laughs, that anyone has ever laughed.

We’re laughing … at ourselves laughing … at ourselves laughing. Our laughter is becoming abyssal in the night.

 

A cosmic laugher.

The universe, in us, finds itself amusing. The universe understands that it’s told itself a joke. That the creation itself was a joke.

On what? On who?

On the created, of course. On us – all of us.

 

Laughter, instead of the silence of the universe. Laughter, at the silence of the universe.  

Laughing at our manacles. Laughing at our muzzles.

It can be the last book. The last literary book.

The last book should be the most neglected book. The least important book. A book that doesn’t draw attention to itself. A book that’s scarcely even written. That barely even exists.

A book that is unwritten rather than written. A book that is subtracted from the world rather than adding to it. A book that’s lost. A book that wanders off, whistling.

A book that … fades. That disperses like morning mist. A book that evaporates like puddle of rain.

A book .. scarcely a book. A rumour of a book. A breath of a book. Even a gasp … of a book.

A book that is not yet a book. A half book. A quarter of a book. A book standing in for a book. A book that isn’t yet a book … or isn’t anything.

We’re dead! The walking dead! The irrelevants! The inexcusable! The indulged-because-they’re-allowed-to-live.

We volunteer! Cull us now! Or better, let us cull ourselves! We’ll spare you the trouble!

Make suicide efficient and productive. Suicide booths on every street! Euthanasia stations!

Make it simple and we’ll just do away with ourselves. We’ll take ourselves out. We’ll remove ourselves from the equation.

 

We demand the meaning of meaning. We shake the bars of this world – that’s what we do. Cry out. It makes prison no longer seem so bad.

 

Such a sense of having died. Such a sense of never actually having lived. Not for a moment. Such a sense of never having been born. Never actually begun … I think I died long ago. I think I’m a ghost.

 

There’s a darkness in the sun. There’s a black sun within the sun. That’s burning. There’s a sun devouring the sun. There’s a cancer of the sun, devouring the sun.

 

Nothing hates itself like a human being. We’re the uniquely fucked up species, right?

 

Why can’t we just die? Why isn’t it just time to die? Why can’t the end just come?

 

This is not my world. I do not accept this world. I am not who I am. This is not me. These are not my words.

 

How can they bear themselves? How can they go on? How can they be like this? How can they survive, from moment to moment? How does all this go on? This lie? This exuberance? This can-do. This yes I can.

It’s the worst nihilism. Much worse than we are. Than anything we could do.

At lest we’re truthful. At least we don’t try to cover it over with lies. At least we know it’s all fake.

 

We’re defeating ourselves. Our heads are defeating us. We stand in our own way.

If only we could be rid of ourselves … If only we had another chance – another life. To start all over again. Not to have got it so wrong. Not to have taken every wrong turn.

 

Every day, there are new horrors. New … disgraces. New things to loathe. Every day, new reasons for hatred.

 

Sink lower. There’s further to fall. There’s a depth we haven’t reached, not yet.

 

There’s a whole art of giving up. You can be a virtuoso of giving up.

 

We should be shot like mad dogs. Imprisoned! And we should be allowed to hang ourselves in prison. For our own dignity.

 

We can only live against this world. We have to live in the intensity of our hatred. We have to dwell there: in our absolute hatred. In our total opposition of the world – to their world. It cannot be enough for us.

 

The world is too much. There’s too much world in the world.

 

Hatred – that’s what our freedom has contracted into. That’s what it’s become. Some point of negativity.

 

And what we hate is what we have in common. An instinct of hatred toward the same things. An instinct for horror at the same things. A basic flinching – a recoil at the same things. It's what saves us. It’s what keeps us together, in dark times.

 

The same sense of machinery working in the dark. That there are vast and shady … manipulations. Power-grabs and counter power-grabs. Great armies clashing in the dark.

The same sense that there are shifting planes of darkness, that’s all. Powers. Principalities. That we can’t even catch a glimpse of our true rulers.

 

Can we not talk about killing ourselves for a few minutes?

 

You get offered euthanasia for mental disorders in Canada. Why not philosophical ones?

 

We have to kill God in us. We have to close down that dimension of hope. Once and for all! … We need to stop waiting for God to reach out his hand. To uncover his face. We need to accept that no one’s there.

And be happy atheists?

And be unhappy atheists.

The saturation of our stupidity. The way that it’s left no part of us alone. The way that we’re through-and-through stupid. That we’re soaking with stupidity.

And yet we believe that there’s a little part of us that’s not stupid. Some small part of us in which our stupidity knows itself. In which stupidity is self-aware.

We think that’s what redeems us. When, in fact, we can have no notion of the depths of our stupidity. Of its profundities. Because to know it, truly know, would mean we were intelligent enough not to be stupid.

So how do you know that we’re not intelligent enough to grasp our stupidity?

I’m inferring it, that’s all. It’s like negative theology. It’s apophantic. We can only know our stupidity by what it is not.

By what stupidity is not? It’s not intelligent, is it? So do we know our stupidity through our intelligence?

Through an intelligence we cannot reach. That isn’t ours. Which means we’ll never know for ourselves the depths of our stupidity. The sublime depths.

Are they sublime?

They would be if we knew them. Unfortunately, we’re just left with our stupidity. It’s the echoing vault of our stupidity. Where stupidity says stupid things.

 

Stupidity, trying to sound its depths. Failing to sound its depths. Stupidity, pondering its own abyss. Failing to ponder its own abyss.

 

What makes us think that we’re especially stupid? Isn’t that a kind of hubris? I mean, why should we suppose that here’s something special about our stupidity? Something that sets it apart.

 

Our stupidity display, like the courtship display of birds of paradise. Our stupidity dance. But who are we trying to seduce? Spreading stupidity’s peacock feathers … But there’s no one there to see.

If only we had an audience. If only there were someone to laugh at us. That might justify it. But we’re amusing no one, not even ourselves.

 

Stupidity’s the only thing we have. The only thing that might save us.

From what?

From knowing our stupidity, of course.

How clever. Stupidity can’t be clever.

But there’s a cunning of stupidity. There are ruses of stupidity. Trying to pass itself off as … as what? Non-stupidity.

 

At least we’re amused by our stupidity. At least it diverts us.

From what?

From stupidity of course.

Enough! Basta!

 

Outdoing ourselves in stupidity. In our variations on stupidity. In our strange joy at stupidity.

Stupidity amuses itself. Stupidity, laughing at itself. Quite comfortable with its stupidity. And isn’t that the problem: that we’ve become comfortable with our own stupidity?

 

Drunkenly contemplating it, our stupidity. Drunkenly pleased with it and pleased with ourselves for noticing it.

This is how we entertain ourselves. This is how stupidity entertains itself, passes the hours.

Amazing that we can just entertain ourselves like this, for hour after hour. We must be really stupid …

 

The ache of our stupidity. The fact that it wants to be something else.

I don’t believe that. What would we talk about, if we weren’t stupid?

We wouldn’t need to talk, that’s the thing.

Stupidity is what we talk about. What we talk from. Stupidity is what we do. Stupidity is what holds us together. The twists and turns of our stupidity keep us alive.

 

Stupidity explosions, deep underground. Like earthquakes. Their epicentre, buried.

Stupidity bombs, dropping from the sky. Storms of stupidity, the sky darkening.

A greater stupidity. God’s stupidity, if there can be such a thing.

A roaring stupidity. An angry stupidity. Stupidity isn’t always meek. It isn’t always servile. Stupidity can roar. Can shout. Stupidity has a tempers.

And there can be peaceful stupidity, too. Sweet stupidity, lying on its back, looking up at the sky. Quiet stupidity, lying there in the water, keeping itself afloat.

Come on, you’ve won, you’ve humiliated us. And now we’re humiliating ourselves. We’re doing it for you. We’re carrying out the devil’s work – your work. You sentenced us to death by humiliation. And we’re carrying out the sentence.

Shame … shame at being alive in this world … shame at living on in this world …

 

But we never actually take our own lives. We always hold back from the suicidal act …

As if we expect to be saved. As if we think things might change. There’s hope in us, despite everything. That we could just get away with living a little longer. Taking a few more breaths …

 

There’s a way of living in disgust – pure disgust. A way of living in hatred – pure hatred. Purifying hated. That is even a kind of joy in its purity.

Pure refusal. Pure retreat. Pure withdrawal.

 

Nothing remains of God but the void, right?

 

Lost in the coils of our evil. Lost in the coiling, the writhing. Lost in the agitation of our sin. Lost in the deepening of the Fall.

 

Despair, rather than Intelligence. Horror, rather than logic.

 

Thought coming from the bottom. From the lowly. From the fools.

Our hope: a black dawn is rising. The dark sky is opening. The greater sky. The sky of disaster, the stars blown out like candles.

Our hope: the night that we hold between us. That laughs between us. That trembles through us. The sky that shines through our drunken eyes.

 

Are we God’s idiots? The devil’s?

 

Is our idiocy sincere? Is our idiocy really a wanting to change? Is our despair an actual prayer? Do we merely wallow in our stupidity, dwell in it, rather than actually want to be transformed?

If we felt, really feel, our mediocrity, what then? Might something really happen then? If we experienced, really experienced our despair at our idiocy, might we not be idiots anymore?

 

The world’s just some … monstrosity.

But we’re monstrous, too. That’s the thing.

 

Maybe we’ll find salvation where it’s least sought. There, where you don’t expect it. In the void. Yes – why not, in the void! In the night of the world!

Maybe we’ll find salvation in our lack of salvation. If we experience our hopelessness in the right way, then …  If we experience our damnation …

 

The aching of all things in their self-hatred. In their loathing for themselves. In their atheism.

The atheism of air, of water, of the earth. Our own atheism, which is the heart of our self-hatred.

The air hates being the air. The air’s just wandering lost in air. The air, dazed in air. Just like water’s flowing lost in water. Just like water weeps tears in water.

 

It’s clicking into place. It’s worldwide. They have their hands around our throats. Each of us.

 

We should try and prolong the last moment forever. Make it last … forever.

 

They won the battle. And now they’re letting us live on, to see their victory. To live out our humiliation.

 

We’re already dead, that’s what I think. We’ve already died to the world. We’re already immune. We’ve seen through all things.

 

This isn’t our world … These aren’t our lies. We don’t need them to be true, like everyone else. We don’t need this all to be real. We’re not addicted to the world.

 

We haven’t become inured to this world. We haven’t accepted its terms. We haven’t surrendered.

 

We hate them, the world-perpetuators. The world-apologisers. The ones who are well-adjusted to the world. Who fit into it: the world – this world.

We hate them, the ones who accept the principle of the world. Who accept the fundamental order of the world. The world as system.

World-accepters, not world despisers. Who don’t want to clear the world away. Who don’t want to see it destroyed. We hate them.

 

That they’re not entirely lost in despair. The fact that they appear happy enough, content enough. The fact that they’re moderate – that they’re even-handed, even-voiced. The fact that they’re measured.

 

All our lives, primed for apocalypse. Fill of apocalyptic expectations. All our lives, ready for apocalypse. Watching out for apocalypse. Alert for all the apocalyptic signs.

 

All our lives, preparing for it, apocalypse. Full of apocalyptic bias …

 

An emergency of everything. Of all things.

 

These aren’t our stars. These aren’t real stars. I don’t believe in the sky. I don’t believe in the night.  I don’t believe in the earth. I don’t believe that this is the real world. It doesn’t feel real to me. And I don’t feel real. And you don’t feel real.

Are these our words – are they real?

These aren’t our words. This isn’t our time. None of this is real at all.

 

We don’t live and breathe anymore. This is not a world in which we can live and breathe …

 

Corpses lie all around us. And we’re corpses, too. And yet we can’t even be corpses. We can’t just lie there, all dead. There’s still a little life in us. We still stagger about. We still … live, if this is called living. If we can call this life.

 

It can’t go on like this, and yet it goes on. It can’t get any worse, and yet it gets worse. It’s even accelerating.

 

It’s happening more quickly now. Things are speeding up. They’re rushing at breakneck speed to implement their agenda. They’ve gone up a gear. They’ve pressed turbo. Why are they in such a hurry? Why is there such urgency?

 

Is it a sign that they’re losing control, or gaining it? Are they losing or winning?

These are our new lives. Our new monitored lives. Our new tracked-and traced lives. Our new battery hen lives. Our new micro-surveiled lives. Our new watched-at-all-times lives. Our new listened-to-ceaselessly lives.