Author: Lars Iyer

The vastness of the campus, the Organisational Management campus. They’ll bring everything here – the rest of the university. It’s all going to be reinvented here.

The Organisational Management maw! Swallowing everything! Scooping up everything. Swallowing the humanities, in one gulp …

Soon, the rest of the university will be brought here. Relocated here. Soon, the whole university, will be reborn on the Organisational Management campus! Soon it won’t just be Philosophy in Organisational Management, but History. But Geography. But Physics! But politics! But the Fine Arts! But Mathematics!

And History will be the history of the application of Organisational Management. Geography can be about the still uneven application of Organisational Management. Politics can be about the technocratic perfection of Organisational Management. The Fine Arts, can be about the décor of Organisational Management: of its glass and steel foyers. About the public spaces of its new campuses.

And Philosophy will concern Organisational Management as a philosophy. About Organisational Management not so much a subject area, but as a way of doing things. A practice. A methodology, if you like. As a logic. As a way of approaching problems. The problem of life! The problem of everything!

*

Soon, everyone will be studying Organisational Management … Nothing but Organisational Management …

Organisational Management, becoming the all-subject. The ur-subject. All unis will essentially be Organisational Management unis, nothing else. They’ll simply be about organisation! And management!

In the beginning, there was Philosophy, and all the other disciplines split off from Philosophy. In the end, there will be only Organisational Management, as all the other disciplines have been subsumed by Organisational Management.

Which is why the move to Organisational Management must be understood in its chiliastic dimension, we agree. In its eschatological dimension. As what is happening everywhere, but in miniature. As obeying the logic of the Last Days. This is why it has to be fought. Why we have to resist. The fate of the world depends on it …

A total management solution. A total organisational solution. That’s what Organisational Management is aiming for. A population control grid. A bio-fascist security grid.

They’ve studied the great control systems from the past. They’re up on the techniques of Hitler and Mao. The ancient Romans. They’re keen students of tyrannical history. But they’re going to raise it up a notch.

They’re perfecting their digital slavery system. Their behavioural psychology. Their neurolingusitic programming. They’re altering our minds. Tenderizing our minds. They’re ruling by group psychology and fear. By black magic, in other words.

*

Helmut, performing one of his famous etymological analyses.

The essence of Organisational Management is neither organisational nor managerial, he says. Organisation – from the Greek organon, meaning organ. The term emerged in mid fifteenth century, as act of organising, which came from the medieval Latin organizationem. Sense of ‘that which is organised’ by 1807. Meaning ‘system, establishment’, from 1873.

Manage, from the Latin non manus, hand and agere, to act. To handle, train or direct a horse: that’s what the word, manage meant in the 1560s. Being shaped by physical manipulation: that’s what it means in the 1670s. Governing body of a collective: that’s what it meant in 1739. The word management to refer to the act of managing by direction is first used in the late sixteenth century.

And what happens when you combine the words? Helmut asks, rhetorically. They’re essentially saying the same thing. An organisation is managed. Management happens through organisation. That’s what changes.

*

Organisational Management! Business Studies – that was the old name … A dead name … But now, Organisational Management is naming itself as such. It’s coming out into the open as exactly what it is. It doesn’t need to disguise itself any longer.

Organisational Management can be brazen – quite open. It can walk in daylight. It can be abroad. There it is, unabashed, unashamed, nothing other than what it is.

*

And what’s the role of Philosophy in all this? The etymology of philosophy: we all know that. Unlimited desire. Infinite yearning. Eros, as Plato would say.

Does Organisational Management know that? Do they sense something missing in Organisational Management – a kind of philosophical phantom limb? Maybe they want more. Maybe they Desire. Yearn in their own way. In an Organisational Management way.

They’d like to be more than they are. They’re all about logistics. And order. They’re all about procedures. About methodology. But they want something else. They’re not sure what they want, but they think it might be us.

This merger … This mind meld … Do they want to tame us, or untame themselves? Do they want to bind us or loosen themselves? It’s about a double becoming. A becoming-organisational-management of philosophy: that’s what they want, explicitly. But won’t there also be a becoming-philosophy-of-organisational-management?

The secret of Organisational Management: Organisational Management masochism. Organisational Management self-loathing. Perhaps Organisational Management is weary of being what it is. Perhaps Organisational Management wants philosophy to decomplete it. To part-destroy it. Perhaps Organisational Management wants to opened up. to bloom. To unfold all its dimensions. And we’re part of that …

We have to drink harder. We have to drink more.

We have to reaffirm … the power of assembly. Drunken assembly.

We’re not drunk enough. We’re not angry enough. We’re not appalled enough. We not screaming enough. We’re not hateful enough. Our blood isn’t frothing over.

We’re too low. Too scattered across the lowlands. We need alcohol to lift us up. To bind us together. To bring us together. We have to find the ardency. The hatred. The high seriousness.

We need to reach a promontory of drinking. To be able to look out – see what’s happening. Take in the whole fucking panorama. Feel the whole campus beneath us. The whole of Organisational Management.

We become visionaries when we drink. We SEE when we drink. We need to be out of the lowlands. Out of the valleys.

This is why we have to drink. To climb up. To attain it – a viewpoint. To be able to SEE. With the right intensity. With the intensity of focus. With the right narrowness of focus.

But we haven’t found our way to the plateau, not yet. We haven’t ascended in our drinking, climbed upwards. We haven’t risen in our drinking. The stars don’t flash above us, not yet. The sky doesn’t wheel around us. We haven’t found our way to the Great Drinking.

We’re looking to see the real sky, not the satellited sky. Not the Skynetted sky. Not the chem-trailed sky. Not the full-of-nanoparticulates sky. Not the all-set-up-for-holograms sky. Not prepared-for-the-fake-Second-Coming sky.

We want to see the real sky, a tear in the fake sky. A crack in the old sky. We have to tear their sky open. We have to destroy their chem-trailed sky. Their full-of-aluminium-and-barium sky. Their poisoned sky. From which poison rains down upon us.

Height – we drink for height. We thirst for elevation. For transcendence – why not? To be reminded. That the world system isn’t complete. That this isn’t all there is. That the irruption can come from without, and only from without. That the revolution happens in the sky, the real sky …

We’re losing ourselves. Forgetting who we were. Forgetting what it was like outside – outside the campus. In the real world.

Becoming vague. Becoming brain-fogged. Is it something in the air? Are they pumping something into the air? Some anti-philosophy gas. Some anti-thinking substance.

They’re probably raining it down from the clouds. From the controlled sky. From the controlled clouds. Raining barium and strontium and God knows what else -ium. Pouring it down …

We have to remember … the people we were. The would-be philosophers that we once we were.

Our years of training! Our PhDs! And then the whole period post-PhD …

How many years, scraping by? On the dole … Part-time teaching … How many hours reading and writing in our garrets? But we had a sense of mission. We wanted to survive. To find a job we could bear. To establish acceptable conditions of life.

Our years of work! Before we knew each other. Before we knew others of our kind. In terrible isolation! When everything else could be deferred. Relationships. Leisure. Lifestyle.

And, above all, any question about the quality of what we were doing. Any questions about our qualifications for writing. About our basic skills.

We worked! We burrowed through days and nights. Reading, writing, finishing articles, sending them off. In hope? In trepidation. But sending them off even as rejections came. Every time, optimistic. As if there were no other choice. Because there was not, we told ourselves, any other choice. Because how else were we going to get jobs?

What purpose! What keenness! Our lives shaped into missiles. We took aim with our lives. Fired, with our lives, our whole lives. Never thwarted. Never defeated. As if sheer effort would get us though.

Because was the alternative? A life outside the uni and suicide. A life of going nowhere and suicide. A life of understimulation and suicide. A life of dole office assessments and sick-leave assessments and suicide. A life of friendlessness and suicide. A life of general social ostracision and suicide.

A life of entropy, scattering, of afternoon dissolution and suicide. A life of afternoon melancholy and suicide. A life of the emptiness of the emptiness of the morning, the loneliness of the night, and suicide.

We worked – how we worked. Every night and day we worked. Every weekend we worked. Writing.

And reading. Borrowing books through interlibrary loans. Chasing down PDFs. Downloading. Converting into Word. Annotating, minutely. Line by line. Highlighting. Underlining. Setting into bold. Working through texts. Processing whole books. Fiercely learning. Intensely learning. Burning out your eyes learning, reading.

Until our eyes ached. Until they were totally red. Until we woke up sore-eyed in the night. Until we had to buy artificial tears. Until opticians shook their heads, concerned.

We read, in our own way: it’s undeniable. We read – but could it really be called reading. No doubt we perverted what we read. No doubt we created unholy monsters from our readings. No doubt our Heidegger was a twisted Heidegger. No doubt our Adorno was a malformed Adorno. No doubt our Hegel had little to do with the real Hegel. No doubt our Kant was unrecognisable compared to the real Kant. And our Plato, our beloved Plato!

Because we could only read from our torment. From our twistedness. Because we could only from our desire for revenge on a world that ignored us, that placed no value on our interests.

We read, which is to say, we polluted what we read. Poisoned what we read – indeed, the whole wellspring of European thought. We read, which means only that destroyed what we read – burnt it. We read as book-burners, as book-pyre-builders. And we knew it!

And no difference with our writing. What we destroyed with our writing. What we sacrificed! Because of none of it, we knew, was any good. Because it was at best mediocre. No – sub-mediocre. On a good day – a very good day – passable. Just about. But no more than that.

All we wanted was to be published. And in decent journal. In ranked-highly journals. Doubtless we could never transcend our petty interests, our petty desires. Our perversities – which were legion.

European books. European culture. We made it ours. It became ours. As though washed up on our shoes. As though shipwrack, random detritus. We picked it up, brought it home. Decorated our rooms with it.

And on our own, all of this. In solitude. Barely knowing anyone like us. Isolating ourselves more and more.

Having no small talk. Having no range of conversation. Unable to talk of fine dining or favourite recipes or planting the garden or where to go on holiday this year. Unable to talk of favourite box sets. Of prize-winning fiction.

Because we were burrowing into the night. Into our night. Beneath our stars. Our constellations. Thinking about Paul Celan on the bus. Thinking about Nelly Sachs on our way to sign on. Thinking about Chatelet on our way to the dole office. And learning French, in our own way. And reading German, in our own way. Grammar books. Online exercises. Struggling through Lardreau by ourselves. Reading the untranslated Grelet. The unknown-in-English Chatelet.

And in the meantime, scrabbling about for part time work. Looking for hourly paid work. Being available on call for hourly paid work. Just about getting by on hourly paid work. Surviving – barely – on hourly paid work.

Scurrying around the feet of the real academics. Ghosting the corridors of the real academics. Doing the real work of the academy. At short notice! Catapulted in! With no time to prepare! Infinitely adaptable! Saying yes to everything, for hourly paid work.

And signing on in the long vocations. Reduced to the dole in the long vacations. Income support and housing benefit in the long vacations.

Until Cicero.

Sure, until Cicero. Until she hunted us down and saved us.

And more Organisational Management campus! Always more Organisational Management campus!

Flags, flying. United Nations, United Nations banners. Celebrating the United Abomination’s sustainability goals.

Big walls, with windows so you watch the construction. With drawn simulations of what’s to be built. Advertising forthcoming attractions.

The entertainment zone. Pictures of cafes and open spaces. Captions in jaunty fonts: Pick up a drink to go. Hold informal meetings and catch-ups. Perfect spots to grab food.

See you grab food, guys. You don’t sit down and, like, eat it. You’re too fucking dynamic for that.

Places for people to meet, chat, share ideas and challenge one another.

Ooh challenge one another. Won’t that be something! It’s not all consensus here …

Coming bars. Mixologists will be at the ready, apparently. Preparing signature cocktails … Places to dance. Places to laugh. There’ll be comedy clubs. Organisation Management campus comedy! What a treat!

Approved comedy! Vetted comedy! Following-the-narrative comedy. Safe comedy! Offending-no-one comedy! With nothing desperate about it. Nothing gasping about it. With no vicious satire of the new world, the coming world.

A future interfaith hub. A general spiritual space. That’s about general contemplation. The common heart of all religions, apparently.

No crucifix here. No Christ writhing on the cross here. Nothing about the Passion here. Nothing about sin. Nothing about sacred horror. No Lord Shiva being a badass here. No invocations of Amalek. Or Antichrist. No child sacrifices to Ba’al. Just general hope-y stuff. We’re all-human-together stuff. General Gaia-y stuff. Worshipping sustainability! And the planet!

Which is why it overlaps with a future sustainability hub, under (green) construction. Pictures of future humanity and all life, living in harmony. The whole human family and our whole animal family. Uncle chimp and aunty bonobo. Great grandad flatworm. Distant cousin: tapeworm. Cousin’s cousin: mole-rat. And our more distant jellyfish relatives. Our bacteria relatives. All the flora and fauna. The whole web of fucking life …

And it’s part of a whole coming ethics complex. Which, in turn is part of a future kindness zone. A future healing hub. A future health hub. Sponsored by Bill and Melinda Gates-of-Hell. And the Rockefeller Foundation. All the predatory philanthropists …

And even a coming sports zone. Badminton, basically. There’ll be a great badminton hall. That’ll be the campus sport, apparently: badminton.  

And the coming leisure zone. Activities for all ages. Places to date. To meet someone. Spaces for team activities. For bowling. Darts. Beer pong. Beer pong! Have you ever played beer pong?

And now the future science space, which is really at one with the sustainability hub. Consensus science. Settled science. Safe and effective science. Explaining-it-all science. Friendly universe science. Supposed to inspired wonder. And reverence. About the wonderful world we live in. About spaceship Earth. About our little blue orb in the great darkness. About our precious orb. Our endangered orb. Videos of David Attenborough waxing by turns apocalyptic and rhapsodic …  

And a zoned creativity space. Art for all abilities. All backgrounds. All ages. Democratic art. Something for everyone. Nothing difficult or hard to attain. No technical skill required. No greatness here. Creative writing workshops. You’ll be able to write gratitude journals and the like. List the things for which you can thank the campus.  

We’ve seen the future! We’ve seen the campus they’re building for the people of the future. If you’ll feel at home here, you’re a campus person. You’re a person who will inherit the future. And if you don’t? If you’re depressed by the campus … If you despair because of the campus … If it appals you, the campus? It’s either exile, or straight to the euthanasia booths!  

Are there actually euthanasia booths?

There will be.

God, do those Organisational Managers know how interesting we are? Like, how we’re transforming their lives?

They don’t deserve us. They think Philosophy’s some toy. Something they can play with. Those fuckers! They don’t understand that we’re not just some novelty. Not just some bauble. Not just something that will amuse them for a bit, before they work their disgusting Organisational Management magic on us, before they absorb us, or whatever.

Those fuckers! They think they can just toy with us. Or whatever. That they can just invite us to their party. To their party. On their terms. Making us cross their threshold (which will soon be our threshold.) Making us cross their campus (which will soon be our campus.) Which goes on forever! Which is fucking infinite! Which is taking over the world!. Making us cross it with our postgraduates. With our Doktorkinderen. Deliberately making us feel small and insignificant. Deliberately demoralising us. Rather than knowing ourselves as the heirs of the philosophical logos, or whatever. Rather than the latest descendants of the great philosophical tradition.

They don’t even understood that were crap at philosophy. That we’re a bunch of idiots from provincial universities. They don’t even get that we fall far short How stupid we are. What idiots we are. They don’t see that we’re essentially second rate and third rate and fourth rate (except Helmut, maybe. Except Kitten, probably. And she’s not here.)

They don’t understand how unique our stupidity is. How special it is. How it makes us us. Such as we are. Such as we’ll always be. Which is what Cicero treasured. Which is what she saw in us, when she combed the country for our kind – the interesting kind. Which is why Cicero brought us together, to see what idiocy could do.

And now Cicero’s gone and we’re bereft and what are we going to do without her? Without her protection? Did she know that the Organisational Management wolves would be circling? Did she know that we’d be wandering, lost on the Organisational Management campus?

We should pray, or something. We should call up to the heavens. To the real sky, rather than the fake sky. Above the satellites. A prayer, from our philosophical hearts. From the depths of our idiocy. From our philosophical pathos. From our infinite philosophical eros …

You’ve won, Organisational Management! You’ve won!

We’ve given up – psychologically. We’ve thrown in the towel. We’re winded. We’re doubled up, on the floor. We’ve already accepted our defeat. On their terms!

We’ve surrendered. We do nothing but surrender. We’re waving the flag. We’ve given up. We’ll do anything they want.

We were outmanoeuvered. Out-strategised. At every turn. Outplayed!

My God, it was easy. It was effortless. Just a flick of the wing-tip. Just a slightly raised eyebrow. And that was it!

You’ve won, Organisational Management. You don’t even need your victory acknowledged. You don’t need us to pay tribute. To kneel at your feet, or whatever. You accept our subservience as a matter of course. Our obedience. It’s How Things Are. How Things Must Be.

You’ve won, Organisational Management. And we’ve lost – it’s that simple.

A toast to you: well done, adversary. Bravo, fuckers. The world’s yours. The earth is yours to poison and control.

And we won’t resist. We won’t do anything. We’re tired of fighting. Just give us instructions. We’ll do as you say. Just tell us what you want …

Some leader you are, Shiva!

You should be inspiring us! Giving us a vision! Didn’t you learn anything on the management training courses?

You should be a mascot, not a leader, Shiva! How are you going to stand up to the Organisational Managers in your various meetings? How are you going to advance the philosophical cause? Make a case for us? Voice our objections to pretty much everything?

And yet Cicero made you our leader. She must have know what she was doing. She must have had some plan. She had a special love for you, Shiva – we could all see that. You were, like, her chosen successor. Selected for special attention. As the chosen one. As the future leader. To whom everything was going to be entrusted.

They’re making a place for us here, on the Organisational Management campus. Which really means a tomb for us. Which really means a place where we can be buried. Where we can lie down in the earth.

They’re throwing a party for us, in the Organisational Management towers. They’re welcoming us. Which really means destroying us. Which really means casting us out. Destroying philosophy!

And we’re the only philosophy unit in the region. For miles! There’s nothing at Northumbria. They closed down the department at Sunderland. Of course they did! There’s nothing at Teeside.

There’s Durham, of course. Yes, Durham! We’re all envious of Durham! But we’re carrying the philosophical torch for the city. We’re its sole bearers in Newcastle. A great responsibility!

We’re bearers of civilisation. We’re keeping the flame – the philosophical flame. And the European philosophy flame to boot. There are barely any European philosophy departments left anywhere.

Which means Organisational Management is intent upon destroying European philosophy. European thought.

 

Philosophers in residence: that’s what we’ll be! Pet philosophers! Toy philosophers! For amusement! For diversion! For a break in the Organisational Management routine!

 

When our backs are completely against the wall, what then? When we’ve been utterly backed into our corner: what? What will we become?

When philosophy’s on the ropes: what then? When philosophy’s desperate? What will we become? What will we do?

Are we going to find out tonight?

The campus has plans for us. The campus is programming us. This is the campus brainwashing. Happening in real time!

There’s a malevolent intelligence at the heart of it all. Testing its powers. Becoming conscious.

Do you think?

The Singularity is here – right here. It’s awakening. Coming to itself. Seeing what it can do.

There is no Singularity. It’s just Satan. The same old Adversary.

It’s probably listening to us now. AREN’T YOU, FUCKER? It’s enjoying following us working out its plans.

Come on, satanic AI, flash the campus lights if you understand! Give us a sign! Beam something into the heavens! Light up the fucking clouds!

See, we’re being prepared for our role. Our whole lives. Our philosophical careers … our non-careers. Being brought here to Newcastle. It’s for a reason …

Why? By who?

By the opposite of this campus. By the opposite of this sentient horror.

You know how it is in these times. Everything is backwards. Everything is inverted. Doctors are here to destroy health. Big pharma to make sure we stay sick. Banks are here to destroy the economy. The weapons manufacturers will make sure we stay at war. Science is here to destroy the truth. Psychiatrists to destroy minds. And unis are here to destroy education.

They’re decommissioning the old reality, and implementing a new one. Right in front of our eyes. And everyone’s going along with it.

A thousand years of darkness: that’s what’s coming. Slavery. A slavery system. The new Hell. They’re building Hell.