Author: Lars Iyer

It's a total environment. It’s supposed to be. Meeting all human needs. Like some starship, or something. Like the Starship Enterprise.

They’ll just 3D print everything you want.

What if what you want can’t be 3D printed?

It’s only when it’s achieved a perfect totality, when it’s covered the whole earth, only then –

Only then what?

That the question of the totality can be asked. The question of what it means. Of why it exists and not nothing.

 

Organisational Management truth. That’s what this is. The forgetting of shadows. Of depth. Of darkness. The forgetting of forgetting itself.

Organisational Management truth. Everything positive will be remembered here. Brought here, into the light. Everything that is itself and nothing more.

 

This is how they want us to live. This is how they suggest we might live … They’re giving us ideas, apparently. It’s not going to be forced on us.

Of course it will.

It’s a model community. A new way of combining business and living. Everything you want you’ll be able to find within a fifteen-minute walk.

Marvellous.

There’s a suggestion box – a virtual one. You can let them know of your objections.

What if your objections are …. To the very idea of it all? Objections to the very possibility of building such a place?

Organisational Management is founded upon the elimination of philosophy. This whole campus. Upon the destruction of questioning.

Organisational Management can’t ask the question of itself. Can’t pose it. The question is too vast. The question will destroy it …

 

The question of God: do you think you could you ask that on the Organisational Management campus?

Organisational Management thinks it’s got God contained. God has a place. And philosophy has a place. And God can do his God thing, and philosophy can do its philosophy thing, and all’s well and good. And Organisational Management can do is – vast – Organisational Management thing. It’s all-encompassing Organisational Management thing.

 

Organisational Management has us under its dome. Contained. With its Organisational Management version of the sky. With its Organisational Management version of stars. With Organisational Management snow, God knows. It’s absolute containment.

What have they done to the rain? They can’t even leave the rain alone. It’s full of strontium. And barium. And things to fuck us up.

And this isn’t real snow. This is fucked up snow. They’ve done bad stuff to it. It doesn’t fall right. It doesn’t melt right.

This isn’t a real night, either, I’ll bet. That isn’t a real sky. They might as well have placed a dome over it all.

Maybe they have …

And this isn’t real air – that we’re breathing. There’s something wrong with the air. What have they put in the air? What have they done to the air?

They’d fuck up the sun, if they could. They’d poison the sun. Just like they’ve poisoned the earth. Like they’ve poisoned our fucking minds. And our hearts.

We’re owning this campus. We’re walking it like God sent us. We’re, like, Organisational Management anti-Messiahs.

You wish! All mouth and no fucking trousers. All attitude. All righteous fury, and for what? We were summoned to a party, and we came. We fucking RSVP’d …

We came with attitude.

They’ll laugh at our attitude. Fuck, they won’t even notice our attitude.

We’re owning this campus. We’re walking it like God sent us. We’re, like, Organisational Management anti-Messiahs.

You wish! All mouth and no fucking trousers. All attitude. All righteous fury, and for what? We were summoned to a party, and we came. We fucking RSVP’d …

We came with attitude.

They’ll laugh at our attitude. Fuck, they won’t even notice our attitude.

There’s so much of it. This campus is, like, miles across. How did they fit it all in? The original site wasn’t that big. There must be some multidimensional thing going on. Some Tardis-like magic.

 

And it’s all powered by geothermal energy. From the earth.

Is that true?

They’re drilling down and down and down. They sent down some, like, bore. It’s about two miles deep now.

Where’s it going?

In search of energy – geothermal energy.

Maybe they’re trying to open a portal.

To what? To where?

To Hell, probably. Are there, like, geothermal demons?

Reading the plaques.

Creating a home for the world’s brightest minds.

They’re dreamers and doers, apparently. They can make what is impossible happen, it says here. A global community of visionary minds. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Adventurous spirits. Thought leaders. Changemakers. This is where innovation can be ignited, socialised, engineered and tested. You can’t go wrong, can you? Providing next generation technologies. Delivering livability, apparently. What’s that, I wonder?

Furio, reading the education mission. Pushing back the frontiers of learning. Driving cross disciplinary innovation and impact. Piloting new ways of living. Empowering societal progress. Building community. Keeping pace with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Fostering knowledge and skills in an engaging learning environment.

It’s a vibrant research and innovation ecosystem, imagine. Sounds fantastic.

They’re into personalised upskilling, it says here. Into education as a lifelong experience.

Continuous professional development. Inquiry-based, experiential learning. Fostering creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. A flexible curriculum, responding to economic needs. Real world problem solving. You can’t complain, can you? And all in partnership with global high tech industry …

The conditions for the humanities have disappeared. We can see that. There’s no place for the humanities anymore.

But it’s only now that the humanities can appear as such. In their perfectly uselessness. In their perfect superfluity. Insofar as they do not matter – not to this world. Not according to its reckoning.

 

The humanities, forced to justify themselves on the enemy’s terms. In the enemy’s vocabulary. The humanities, forced to talk about transferrable skills. About the uses of the humanities in business. Abut their fostering of business-relevant communication skills.

The humanities can’t survive. Or if they do so, it’s only as a shell of themselves. As husk-history. As hollowed-out literature. As phantom history of art.

I’m actually impressed by the Organisational Management victory. I’m actually moved by the Organisational Management triumphalism. It’s so fucking sublime. I mean, it is, isn’t it? They’ve really done it, haven’t they?

While we … what? While we fucked around in our bedrooms. While we tried to read really hard philosophy and then got stoned instead. These people are high achievers, whilst we …

 

All our leftism dreams of liberatory urbanism. What good psychogeography now? They’ve built psychogeography into the campus. That’s how you find your way about: psychogeography. Only it’s psychogeographic nudging that’s leading us. Their nudging.

 

The false light of this campus. The false salvation of this campus. Its false kingdom. This is the city of the anti-God. This is the antichrist’s city. The liar’s kingdom. Trust none of this.

 

It’s Babel all over again. Don’t they know what happened the first time?

 

We’re the last of the humanities. The remnant. The chosen ones.

That seems pretty fucking presumptuous.

 

Fiver understands. Fiver sees through it all. What’s real and what’s not, Fiver? Explain. Tell us what we should see.

Crossing the campus.

I can’t believe we’re still alive. I can believe that we’re still – actually – alive. It’s amazing, isn’t it? In a world that’s this disgusting.

It’s amazing that we haven’t just burst into flames in our disgust. In our being appalled.

It’s amazing that the world hasn’t destroyed itself out of some vast self-loathing. That the world – their world – hasn’t just exploded. Out of some vast disgust. Some enormous horror.

 

It’s designed to induce feelings of impotence and despair, this campus. It’s designed to make us feel dwarfed and diminished and defeated and compromised.

It wants us to know that resistance is futile – utterly so. It wants us on our fucking knees.