Author: Lars Iyer

Cold! It’s so cold!

We’re thinking only of mulled wine at the Organisational Management party – will they serve mulled wine?

But isn’t alcohol is banned on campus now?

Mince pies, then! Will the mince pies be warm at the Organisational Management party?

Can you imagine how bad university catering mince pies will be?

At least Organisational Management towers will be heated. At least there will be the warmth of other bodies …

Sheltering from the wind.

Our PhD students are turning blue.

Passing them X’s hipflask. Giving them a nip. That’ll warm them up.  

A pep talk: You’re representing us at the Organisational Management Christmas party, postgraduates, don’t forget that! There’s to be no Organisational Management merriment. You’re to regard the enemy with suspicion! Dislike! Just because we’re fraternising with the enemy doesn’t mean we can let down our guard.

The Organisational Managers probably bought their postgraduates from a plan. They probably built their postgraduates. But you are human all too human. Human 1.0. You’re delicate. Brilliant! Brilliant in your delicacy! In your half-derangement. My God! We’ve brought you this far – we don’t want to lose you now.

Don’t weep, postgraduates! We’re defeated, postgraduates! Cosmically! Actually! But you … you still have hope. You have to have hope. Just as we have hope, but not for us. But for you, postgraduates! For your nobility! Your incorruptibility!

No, we mustn’t let you freeze to death. The most painful thing in the world: having your PhD student die before you. No PhD supervisor deserves that.

You’re our future, postgraduates. They’re supposed to outlive us, live beyond us. Reach farther. Achieve what we’ve never been able to achieve.

We’re your Doktorvaters and Doktormutters, as they say in Germany, postgraduates. You’re our Doktorkinderen. You’ll carry forward our work. You’ll quote us. Remember us. So that it will not have been in vain. So that we will not have been in vain. Our academic careers will have meant something. Because it led to you, postgraduates. It bloomed in you. It reached full flower in you.

You’re spears flung through the philosophical night, postgraduates. You’re soaring! At the height of your flight! You’re like we were, ten years ago – our younger selves. You’re younger versions of who we are. Not yet compromised. Not yet all loss-of-innocence. Not yet fully disappointed. Not yet crashed up against the reality-principle. Against the so-called real world.

And you’re not suited to social chit chat, postgraduates. To an Organisational Management party. Neither are we, for God’s sake! Look at us! We’re not small talkers! We’re burners-down. We’re destroyers. We’re apocalypticists. We’re end-of-the-world-ists.

Only an auto-da-fe of the Organisational Management campus will do. A destruction of the entire Organisational Management world. Some magnificent potlatch. A destruction as great as the campus. The unmanageable – as explosion.

These paving stones, swelling upwards. Breaking apart. And the Earth, revealing itself. There it will be: an open wound: the earth.

Rending – just that. Tearing. The revenge of the Earth, welling up beneath the campus. All the buildings, heaving up. All the glass and steel. The Earth, rising up to meet the sky. And that will be the most beautiful day of all.

Late! We’re going to be late!

Of course we’re going to be late. We have to be late. The least thing we could is to be late! There’s a question of philosophical honour.

We’ll appear at the Organisational Management party when we choose to appear. We’re not slaves of the Organisational Managers – not yet. We’re not here to follow their orders – not for now. We still have a week or so before the move of Philosophy to Organisational Management …

We need them to see us as unmanageable. Unconquerable. We need to set a precedent.

So we’ll roll in drunk in our own time. Sweetly drunk! Singing drunk!

I mean, we’re actually coming to the party – surely that’s something (except Daria.) We’re showing good will! We’re making an effort (except Daria.) Left our homes on the coast! Braved the Newcastle winter! (Except Daria) We’ve torn ourselves away from our Russian film watching. We could have been inside, watching Hard to be a God or the thousandth time. Pondering My Car, Khrushtalev! for the millionth time. Or just drinking – drinking! Watching the snow from inside instead of being in the snow. Watching the whirling flakes (except Daria) …

But here we are! Walking against the Organisational Management campus. Walking through it, but against it. We’re opposing the campus. With everything we are! The magnificent seven (f we include our PhD students), across the Organisational Management campus! Marching over the paving stones! Among the great buildings.

The Catalyst, this one’s called. The Hub, this one. And that’s the Engine. And that’s the Core. And over there, the Nexus. Kind of hubristic, isn’t it?

It’s supposed to be an innovation campus. A collaborative ecosystem for public and private bodies. A place of Curiosity and Innovation! With state of the art amenities … New office spaces! Championing collaboration! Connectivity!

And isn’t that why Philosophy is being brought to Organisational Management? Isn’t that the reason for the marriage of the subject areas?

Opposites attract, maybe.

Opposites repel.

It might destroy the universe, you know. Like matter and anti-matter. Because philosophy is anti- organisational management, just as organisational management is anti-philosophy. At opposite poles. Bring them together and you risk tearing the universe apart.

We thought all the craziness would just blow by like some hurricane and leave us alone. We thought we could batten down the hatches and be okay. We thought we could just hide out until the end of civilization, or whatever … But no: our rock’s been lifted! We’ve been seen. The university was peering at us, which is never a good thing. The university made a Decisions, which can only be a disaster.

We didn’t even know the name, Organisational Management until recently. It didn’t call itself that. Business Studies – that was the old name …

But now, Organisational Management is naming itself as such. It isn’t a new university subject anymore. It isn’t a Johnny-come-lately. Some trendy upstart. It’s moved into the old universities. Into the traditional universities.

And now it’s coming out into the open as exactly what it is. It doesn’t need to disguise itself any longer. Here it is: the Organisational Management campus. Abroad. In fading daylight. All around us, unashamed and unabashed …

 

Can’t we feel the dynamism? The energy? Are we inspired?

The future’s here. The future’s angular. The future’s covered in metal cladding. Like some knock off Daniel Libeskind.

This is Architecture, new style. It’s supposed to be dynamic. Exciting. It’s supposed to be inspiring. To generate ideas! Have we had any ideas? Any thoughts?

The Catalyst, the Hub, the Engine, the Core, and over there, the Nexus.

We’re being channelled by the campus. Led somewhere. Taken. We’re flowing, with the campus. We don’t need signposts. We’re being borne along to its centre, to the Organisational Management Tower (not its real name.) We’re being taken to the centre.

The campus steers us, almost without our know it. Gentle descents. The downward slope of the paving stones. We’re following a poem, written on a metal band that’s wending through the campus. We’re follow its sinuous curve, as it replicates the course of a culvetted river.

And there’s running water on the campus. Sort-of-rivers – created rivers, channels of paving tiles, elevated a little. Water flowing. Sheets of water over concrete. Slow rivulets down concrete runs.

These aren’t real rivers, X says. These are engineered rivers. I thought we could depend on water. I thought it’d just do its own thing, like in Tarkovsky films. Raining inside, and the like. I thought water was anarchic. Turns out water’s a tart. Water just does whatever it’s told.

The campus, doing sinuous. The campus, doing flow. The campus, doing ups and downs. There’s a drama to the topography. They couldn’t flatten it. Or is it part of the design? Perhaps it was all planned this way. Perhaps they made hills and valleys to give it its sinuousness. To give it its flow.

Probably the whole design is some international template. Probably exactly the same campuses are being built all over the world. In one hundred and four countries at once, as part of some Organisational Management coup d’état. A whole synchronised global takeover.

The Organisation of everything! The Management of everything! Soon, everyone will be studying Organisational Management, nothing but Organisational 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.

 

It’s supposed to be a thinking campus. A campus for ideas.

What do these buildings think about? we wonder. What is the glass and steel thinking? And these paving stones? These fancy lampposts? And what do they think of us, wandering through?

They’re monitoring us, that’s all we know. They’re listening to our conversation. For dodgy keywords and phrases. For hate speech and disinformation. They’re measuring our body temperature. The rate our hearts beat. Any … agitation we might be feeling.

They’re probably spraying things to calm us down. They’re pumping something into the air, to alter our mood. They’re probably changing the lightning, to make us see things differently.

They’re reading our minds, I reckon. They know that we’re against them. They know that we’re negation – pure negation. That we hate them.

They can probably read our thoughts … Our unsafe thoughts. Our disinformational thoughts.

 

Living pods, with grass roofs. Synthetic biological trees. Vertical farms. Robot squirrels, strengthening stress points. Adding carbon resistance patches.

All pods autoregulated for efficiency. Their energy codes synchronised. All of them biomimetic, incorporating biological architecture.

All pods AI run … AI programming specific air quality, scent and solar intensity … AI, continually filtering the air and capturing carbon … AI, examining your piss, to analyse your pancreatic function. And your shit, to analyse your gut bacteria and antibiotic use. AI, fermenting the the right soybeans that are growing on your roof. AI, directing your smart-oven will suggest food customised to your unique digestive system and give you personalised and dynamic nutrition plans. AI, making sure your smart-sink can mix the right biotic mix in your water. 

Reading a plaque. An entirely new model for sustainable living … Changing how the world does business … Easing the way for entrepreneurial innovation … Remaking the way we look after nature and our planet … Making people’s lives healthier, longer and more prosperous.

They’re here to help us all to live better lives! Better – did you hear that? Healthier! Smarter! Longer! Who could object to that?

They’re showing how researchers, businesses, progressive home owners can live side by side. Progressive home owners only, note. I’ll bet there’s serious vetting …

They’ll want good-attitude people. Positive people. Solutions-focused people. Bigger-picture people. Communitarian types. Who care about the planet. Not nay-sayers, like us. Not draggers-down-of-others, as we are.

This isn’t just a campus, it’s a vision of the world. Of how things should be. A perfect alliance of technology and biology! Green tech solutions! A solution for all! To all the global challenges!

What’s wrong with us? How did this become a form of enjoyment? Like scorpions stinging themselves.

Nothing hates itself like a human being. We’re the uniquely fucked up species, right? That’s what comes of having a big brain. Which it uses for torturing itself. And why shouldn’t it?

We’re so profoundly fucked up. So fucking deeply. And the smarter you are, the more fucked up you are.

Tell me your origin story as a philosopher.

Sure, if you tell me your origin story as an organisational manager.

And through organisational management. And out the other side. Which is where I am. I think I’m shedding my organisational management skin, like a snake …

Once upon a time, I asked a question so big that I fell into it.

Is that what happened?

Once upon a time … I looked up at the sky, and saw there was nothing.

Is that it?

And I looked at the earth and saw it was nothing. And I looked around me and saw there was nothing.

Sounds Buddhist.

One upon a time, I heard the rustling movement from being to nothing. I’m quoting … And what about you? How did you become an organisational manager?

I met my husband. Or rather, he was teaching me. He was my lecturer. And I was just an innocent Business Studies student.

You studied Business Studies? You actually signed up for Business Studies?

I wanted to make my way in the world. Not just be another unemployed humanities grad …

Without unemployment, there’d be no philosophy. You know that, don’t you?

Typical: the rest of society has to pay for you to lie about and contemplate ... 

I can’t believe it: I’m literally flirting with the right.

And I’m literally flirting with the humanities.

Her office.

I’m disappointed at the lack of personal flair …

It’s anonymous, perfectly so. I like that. I like institutions. I was in in rehab, you know. I really shouldn’t be drinking.

Or spiking anyone’s drinks.

Definitely not.

I don’t believe you did.

Don’t you trust me? Don't you think I'd follow through?

Who do you bring here?

To my office? No one. I’m actually pretty well behaved.

And then: This is the seduction scene, you know. This is where we’re going to …

Kiss?

Sure we’re going to kiss. And maybe more. If you’re up for more.

Is this something you do often?  

You want it to be special. You want it to be just about you. I understand that. Put it this way: you’re the first philosopher who’s visited my office.

And then: I wasn’t actually in rehab. I just said that to make myself sound interesting. I don’t even have a drink problem. I don’t have anything … Don’t look shocked. What do you say to make yourself sound interesting? See, you think you’re very interesting: I can tell. You’re terribly presumptuous, philosopher. You think you’re perfectly fascinating.

Kissing. Kissing.

I suppose this is all some disgusting mating activity to you, philosopher.

Are you always so meta?

That’s what happens when you’re dead … I think you actually become philosophical when you’re dead … I think you ask questions because you see everything as from a distance. A meta-distance. The distance of the tomb …

And then: So – have you decided whether I’m a synth or not?

You’re a rogue synth, I think. The kind Harrison Ford was after.

I’ve interested you today, philosopher. I see that. I’ve piqued your interest. I was the last thing you were expecting at an Organisational Management party.

Kissing.

I’m dangerous, philosopher. I’m at a loose end. I’m careening. I’m fucking things up. I’m taking revenge for my fucked-up life … Actually, I’m not actually fucked-up. I didn’t have a traumatised childhood, or anything like that. I’ve got no fucking excuse – just boredom. And death …

Fucking.

Are you still dead?

Still dead. More dead than ever.

Haven’t I woken you up?

You’ve woken up death. 

And then: What if I said that I’m terminally ill? Do I appear terminally ill to you? I could be terminally ill. But I’m not. I’m not terminally ill … I’d like to be terminally ill, maybe. It might give some meaning to my life. The idea of the end being close. That things wouldn’t just go on forever. Because they're in danger of going on forever. 

How long will you stay dead?

Forever. I’ll never be alive.

And will you ever die – finally?

Death isn’t going to come. There’ll be no end for me.

So you’ll live forever?

I have psychic powers, philosopher. I have dreams that tell the future. What do you think of that?

Fiver has visions. One of our unit … 

I tell you what I've seen. Something new is coming. There'll be some new phase. I see everything becoming light. I see an end coming that never ends. I see us crossing a threshold, but endlessly. Never getting to the other side. And there might not be another side. And there might not have been this side. And I see us talking, philosopher. I see us talking about nothing in particular. I see us talking and talking, without it coming to an end.

A personal tour, philosopher.

Why now? Your husband was about to give a speech.

That’s why.

Listen to my heels click-clacking. I’ll take them off. Bare feet is very grounding, isn’t it?

And then: I like the university when it’s deserted. At night. When there’s no one there. You can just .. wander around.

Is there life here in the daytime? The hum of activity? Do people leave their doors open? Call hello down the corridor?

It’s all pretty quiet now. Everyone works from home. Once upon a time, there used to be departmental football teams. There used to be … fun, laughter. There used to be parties.

We’ve just left a party.

Proper parties. Back when we were just plain ol’ Business Studies.

And then: This whole building was designed be someone or other. And featured in Pevsner. My husband takes a keen interest in architecture. It’s seriously sustainable.

Yuck.

Are you not into sustainability? Come on. Who could be against it?

That’s why I’m against it – because you can’t be against it.

You’re just perverse – but I actually like that perverse.

Keep the wound of the negative open.

I like that, too.

It’s Kierkegaard. The philosopher.

I think I like philosophy.

And then: These corridors. There should be a study of the academic corridor. Of the stuff academics put on their doors. Showing personality, or whatever.

All the fascinating personalities of Organisational Management …

Don’t be sarcastic. We’re encouraged to express our individuality. Not bad for synths …

This guy’s displaying his poems …

Sure – our in-house poet. We’re not all hardheaded business people, you know. And we have an in-house artist, too – I told you about her. She's all about extended practice and post art. She's making a garden with some of our PhD students. She does all these herbal remedies and yoga with them. This is her office. You can tell by the posters of mushrooms.

Now. A special design feature of our building: The Notch.

What is it? There isn’t anything here.

A space for contemplation. An area that has no purpose. My husband’s idea. To foster unexpected encounters. A whatever space. That can be used … however anyone likes. An ideas generator. A place for ideas jamming. Or just to breathe. For periods of contemplation. And even meditation. It’s purposeless. Yet ready to be used for any purpose. It’s pure potentiality.  Philosophical, wouldn’t you say it? Are you impressed?

Lea, drawing close.

I’m tired of talking. Stop me talking. Do something, philosopher. Act.

Forget it – I’m not doing anything in the … notch. Not here.

And I thought it’d be just your kind of thing.

It’s … frightening.

Why – because you thought we were just technocrats?

The way you’ve commandeered the arts. And architecture. And even philosophy.

Why do you think we brought you here? Poor you: you’ve got nothing to object to.

Nothing but everything. The whole thing …

How are you going to keep the wound of the negative open here? Actually, I manage quite well.

Onwards. The open foyer.

I like institutions, philosopher. I like vast buildings that are totally indifferent to me.

And then: They’re going to install a waterfall here at some point. It’s modelled on something in Singapore. My husband’s very keen on Singapore …

A large plaque.

You’re going to love this. It’s the building philosophy.

Reading:  Interfaces between indoor and outdoor spaces … The juxtaposition of open and closed, noisy and quiet, hard and soft, public and private. Permitting multiple pedagogies and curricula … A shared dynamic space of transformative and democratic dialogue. Truly interdisciplinary – or transdisciplinary – or multidisciplinary … Overturning the reification of space. Contesting the usual division between boundaries, pathways, walls, sectors which serve to reinforce social roles and relationships. With special areas for contemplation. For whatever use we want to make of them. Deliberate surplus spaces or spatial remnants for no particular purpose … You guys really have the lingo.

Looking out.

What’s that?

A Chinese dragon. Made entirely from drones.

And that flies about every night? The way you can just take over the air space …

People in Chinatown like it. Tourists.

Lea, taking my hand. I’m leading you, philosopher. Follow me.

What are they talking about down there?

I think the philosophers are testing your colleagues. To find out whether they’re synths.

Synths?

Like, androids.

So you think we’re robots, or whatever?

Synths aren’t robots. They’re made out of biological tissue, which means no circuits or wiring. The crucial thing is that they’re lab-grown, like, not born from a woman. Did you ever see Blade Runner?

Once, maybe …

Blade Runner’s fully of synths. Who look just like us, except that they have no emotions.

I have emotions.

You think you have emotions. Maybe they’re simulated emotions.

Weren’t the synths evil, or something? I remember Harrison Ford trying to shoot them …

Harrison Ford killed replicants who had developed the ability to question. To philosophise, even. Synths who could ask, why? Because that meant that they couldn’t be controlled anymore. That they couldn’t just be used for slave labour or as prostitutes.

So how can you tell whether someone is a synth?

There are questions you can ask.

Go on – test me.

Okay. Now and then you contemplate life alone. It is… a) Independent, b) Inconceivable, c) Insulting, d) Intriguing.

Intriguing: that’s what I’m not supposed to say. But really, it is.

That’s not a great sign of your relationship.

Does it make me a synth?

Not sure yet. Another question: You see a friend who has suffered bereavement. Afterwards you feel … a) Annoyed at their lack of engagement, b) Powerless to help, c) Saddened or d) Bored. 

D) Bored … ever so bored. Infinitely bored. I know I’m not supposed to say that, either. But I am bored, philosopher. I get very bored. How am I doing so far?

Some open-ended questions. Ready? What do you love most of all?

Adventure, perhaps. Romance, maybe …

Your poor husband.

I told you – I’m trouble.

What is the privilege of the dead?

That’s poetry, not a question. Really: how am I supposed to answer that?

And then: you’re keeping quiet. Okay, I’ll you something. I’ll confess. I feel dead. I feel dead, dead, dead. Like I died a long time ago. And I don’t think it’s a privilege. Is that what a synth’s supposed to say?

How close and warm is your family?

Fine. My family’s fine. My parents are fine. I get on with them fine. But I’m DEAD, philosopher. I’m D.E.A.D. dead.

Does your husband know you’re dead?

I’ve tried to tell him. I’ve – tried – to – tell – him. But he didn’t understand. And he’s not my husband, you know. Not technically. We never actually got married. Do you believe in marriage, philosopher?

Sure I do.

Sure you do. What do you know about marriage? What do you know about relation … ships?

Do you feel your childhood was happier than most people’s?

What is this – therapy? I told you I’m dead. That’s the truest thing I’ve said. The most philosophical thing, maybe. Do philosophers think that they’re dead?

To philosophise is to learn how to die.

Then I could teach philosophy. I could teach philosophers. I’m an expert on the topic.

When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

My husband’s very keen on karaoke, so I might be singing quite soon … Or I might scream instead. I might just scream. I could scream and scream and scream. Do dead people scream? So am I synth or not, philosopher? Or am I just M.A.D.?

How do we know that we’re not duped?

About what?

About everything.

Everything … perhaps we are. I don't know … Harrison Ford fell in love with a synth – I remember that.

She had the same name as you: Rachael – with an ‘a’. She was a more advanced model than the others. Turns out she could get pregnant, too. That’s what the sequel is about. Have you seen it?

No.

Spoiler alert: she has a child.

A synth child?

A half synth child. Who will save the universe, or something.

Does the universe need saving?

I think we need saving.

Is that what your philosophy is about? You do have your own philosophy, don’t you? You can tell me about it on our tour. I’m going to show you around.

Sipping our drinks.

Your philosophers definitely look like they’re having fun, Lea says.

They like to drink –

Oh, we all like to drink.

I didn’t know you were allowed to serve alcohol on campus anymore. I didn’t know you could even have gatherings of this kind, of this number. You must have filled out a lot of forms.

You can rely on Organisational Management for all that. Organisational Management practically designed the forms. Organisational Management are form experts.

Didn’t you used to be called Business Studies?

We rebranded. Organisational Management was the hot new thing a few years back. Maybe we’ll have to rebrand ourselves again, soon. As Leadership Studies.

Who are the big names in Organisational Management? Who’s, like, the Organisational Manager’s Organisational Manager? Who do Organisational Managers talk about with reverence?

Now you’re taking the piss. Just because your subject’s ancient and prestigious and totally useless.

It depends upon your notion of use.

You would say that.  Philosophy’s proud of its uselessness. That’s what I’ve noticed.

Which is why Philosophy has become a kind of scapegoat. Why we’ve been made to bear all the sins of the humanities – uselessness, irrelevance and so on – and sent into the Organisational Management wilderness.

Is that what's happened?

Sure. Because we're the most useless humanities subject them of all. In their pointlessness. In their lack of applicability to anything mercantile. Let alone anything organisational. Let alone anything managerial.

Which is why we need you, clearly. 

Well, I’ll tell you something useless. There are going to be very … surprising things happening tonight.

Here? At the party?

I spiked the punch.

You did?

I told you: the latest thing in Organisational Management is non Organisational Management. I think there’s room for a little bit of chaos.

So my drink’s spiked?

And mine. And everyone’s.

Spiked with what?

Our artist in residence helped me out. She’s an expert on hallucigens. Can you feel it hitting?

No.

You will, philosopher. I told you I was a madwoman, didn’t I?

The mezzanine.

Are your philosophers having fun, do you think? Lea asks.

My philosophers?

You’re the Head, aren’t you? You run the show … They’ll be wondering where you went.

What about your husband: won’t he be wondering where you went?

He won’t have noticed.

I’ll bet he has.

He’s preparing for his speech – there’ll be a welcome Philosophy speech, you know. Are you looking foreward to it? … Anyway, I do my own thing. He knows that. He’s used to me disappearing. Wouldn’t you love to be married to me? I make everything … unpredictable.

The madwoman in the O.M. attic?

Exactly.

Looking down from the railing.

I like watching a party from outside, Lea says. Musing upon all the things that might happen. All the romances that might start. I suppose philosophers despise romance …

Romance is a honey trap.

Whose honey trap?

Nature’s. It’s supposed to lure you in. Nature wants us trapped. Confined. Seeking all our salvation from romantic love …

And where should we be seeking it from? Philosophy?

Philosophy’s a search for salvation, too.

But it’s a lot less fun … You could write a philosophy of romantic love. It might make your name.

Plato did that already. In, like, 500 BC. Socrates was supposed to be in love with this beautiful youth called Alcibiades. But when Alcibiades offered himself to him, Socrates refused.

Because he had his mind on higher things …

On true beauty. Which is the visible aspect of the good.

Is that what you believe in: the good?

I believe in evil. There’s too much evil.

And how about the beautiful?

Beauty can be a false promise.

Like romance?

Like romance.

The Organisational Management Party.

On the mezzanine.

Lea, she says, shaking my hand.

I know who you are. I saw you at the meeting,

Oh – the meeting. You wouldn’t eat anything of the buffet – that’s what I remember. And it was a luxury buffet. The best the university could offer. And you were just sitting there with folded arms –

I wasn’t going to dignify the occasion –

– like a spoilt child.

As if the forced marriage of Organisational Management and philosophy wasn’t sufficient a humiliation; we had celebrate the marriage; we had to pretend the marriage is a good thing.

When life gives you lemons, etc.

Is that your philosophy?

This wasn’t an Organisational Management idea. It’s not like we had any choice in it.

So whose was it?

Lea, shrugging. University Exec. The high-ups. It’s just a show of power thing. Like parking a tank on your front law.

They’re doing because of its madness – that’s what I think. Because of its nihilism.

They’re doing it because they can: that’s all you need to know. It’s old style notion of management. Leadership’s the thing now. Management has all the wrong associations.

Like what?

Like being in charge. Top down hierarchy. Very old fashioned. It’s all supposed to be about distributed networks, nowadays … Actually, the latest thing in Organisational Management is non Organisational Management. It’s about allowing a little disorganisation and non-management. Which I’m sure Philosophy can help us with … Actually my husband – who’s the Head of O.M. as you probably know –

– I know.

Thinks Philosophy can bring with it a different kind of thinking – something more holistic and relational. That’s more about the Whole, capital W. It’s a Tao thing. Philosophy could be the yin to O.M.’s yang …

Oh God.

I think it might become a personal mission of his. He thinks there might be some interesting conversation to be had. Something to get the interdisciplinary dice rolling … Joint plans for funding bids. Discovering synergies –

Use the word, synergy again, and I’ll kill myself.

– Whereas I would welcome some anarchy. Some madness, even. Because I’m tired of being the only mad person in the O.M. attic.

Is that what you are?

I’m actually very philosophical, for an organisational manager. But I don’t expect you to believe that.