Author: Lars Iyer

We had a few good years.

Did we?

We were left alone. Left to get on with things. We were under the radar. And now we’re above the radar. We were Noticed. And a Plan had to be made. And now here we are.

Organisational Management, though! Organisational Management!

Some Buddhists actually pray for adversity. They like to test themselves.

So we’re being tested?

We’ll just end up teaching Organisational Management ethics, that’s all.

A test, like I said.

 

To think: Cicero left us to this.

It’s hardly her fault.

She left us. She disappeared. And now look what happened.

Cicero gave us our reputation. Shielded us. From the reality of the institution. From university shennanigans. She was very good at that. It was her Eastern European background. She knew how to negotiate with apparatchiks. Face it, we were spoilt. And now … welcome to reality.

I don’t like reality. I just want to close my eyes and pretend it never happened.

 

Let’s do something wild and unpredictable. Let’s turn suicide bomber, or whatever. Take a few of them out.

But we won’t, will we? We’re housetrained now. We’re housebroken.

If they knew what was in our head … in our heart … We’d burn them up. We’d burn everything up …

 

What’s all our philosophy good for if we can’t stop this?

How long did you think it could last, once Cicero left? The dream is over, right?

And this is what we’ve awoken to? God. I want to go back to sleep.

 

I want something to Happen. I want the roof to cave in. I want the Second Coming – Cicero’s second Coming. Why couldn’t she save us? We need saving.

I feel actual dread. I’m full of dread. I’m all dread. It’s like I’m on some high gravity planet. My limbs are so heavy.

 

Come on, we have something they’ll never have.

Like what?

Despair. A sense of total defeat.

 

It’s like we’re being readied for something …

Yeah, the kill.

 

It’ll be a slow strangulation. They’ll just drain the life out of us, but slowly. We’ll be teaching applied ethics, for all we know. Organisational Management ethics. God!

That’s what the humanities should do: rebel. That’s how the humanities should go out: definantly. Sovereignly. Biting off its own tongue, spitting it out.

We should just offer it up, everything we’ve learnt. In a sacrificial bonfire. An auto da fé … The highest meaning of life is just a burning up, right? Is just meaninglessness.

 

A little apocalypse. That’s how the humanities should go out: gloriously. Not just diminishment. Not just administered into nothing.

Philosophy should rise up against its fate, tragically. Gloriously. Just burn upwards.

To what? To God?

God is only a sacrifice, idiot. Just like the stars are sacrifices – a great gratuitous burning. An offering of NOTHING to NOTHING. A fuck you to the universe. Which is really the universe’s fuck you to anything that would make it useful …

 

Just defiance. It’s not about making the case for our existence. Of having to prove ourselves useful. Of having to justify ourselves in their terms, the enemy’s terms.

The very opposite – that’s what needed. A sacrifice. The great for-nothing of the humanities. Raising our supposedly futility to the highest power.

 

We should confuse the enemy! Bewilder Organisational Management! Overturn the Organisational Management tables! Show them what philosophy really means!

Go on – you do it. It could be your one-man show.

We have to put an end to it now: our servitude. Acting like we’ll just do their bidding. If we don’t stop it now, they’ll only make more demands.

We need to make a stand! A last stand! But a stand nonetheless! For ourselves! For our subject area! For Philosophy! For the humanities!

I actually think the world might end tonight. I think the Organisational Management / Philosophy merger is going to break reality. I think it’s so crazy. It’s going to cause some tear in the space-time continuum, or whatever.

 

It’s an omen. Like the birth of a two-headed cow.

An omen of what?

That reality – so called reality – is crazy and out of control.

We knew that.

We didn’t know it. 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.

So it reached us. So what? What did you think would happen?

 

They hate us without knowing that they hate us. Without realising it. But they have to hate us. Because they’re part of a system that hates us.

The system does the hating. The system wants to destroy us. Which means they can only want to destroy us – of course. It’s their logic. It’s what they’re about.

But it’s a benign hatred. A hatred that doesn’t look like hatred. A hatred dressed as kindness. They’re kind murderers, but murderers nonetheless. The system does all the actual hating, whereas they can appear to be kindness itself – generosity itself.

All the hating’s done for them. All the logic’s working out. And they’re like the smiling figurehead …

 

Come on, they’re welcoming us. This is a meet and greet. To discover areas of synergy. Of mutual research interests. Areas of research overlap. Ways to prepare joint bids. Seek impact.

It’s meeting of minds. A might meld. Bringing Organisational Management and philosophy together …

 

What happened to the idea of philosophical honour?

You made up the idea of philosophical honour.

What about the great martyrs of philosophy? What did they die for?

This is your moment. You can add your name to the great list. Turn berserker. Run amok into the Organisational Management crowd.

 

We’re traitors – of course we are. We’re weak-willed. Weak-minded! We’re stupid – deeply so. Very deeply. We’re the philosophers these times deserve.

Compromisers! Forelock tuggers. Kneelers to power. Betrayers. It’s generations of class based deference. It’s our psychological conditioning.

 

It's dishonour! Compromise! We’ve lost face! Philosophy’s been betrayed.

We should just suicide, all of us. Without question! We should just stab ourselves and collapse! En masse! Like, the last stand of Philosophy. Its last triumph! In uselessness! In sacrifice! Setting itself utterly apart from the world of Organisational Management.

 

A murder-suicide: that’s what you should go for. Take a few of them out …

Come on, they’ll win you over. The Head is pretty charming. Good sense of humour. He’s pretty amiable.

But amiability’s part of the problem. No – it is the problem. Middle-class moderation is the problem. And we’re middle-class, too – which is part of our problem. There’ll be no murder-suicides tonight.

 

What’s the most self-destructive thing that I could do right now? Kill everyone? Run anok? No – kill myself! I’d do it, too, if I had a gun! I’d, like, turn the weapon on myself. Wouldn’t that be something?

They’d just say you were mentally ill.

Not if I wrote a really boss suicide note, indicting these fuckers. Indicting the Organisational Management move. I’d make the university news.

They’d supress it. They wouldn’t understand it.

I was going to write a book that was just a suicide note. I was going to write it and die.

So what stopped you?

I couldn’t finish it.

Finish it now! Finish it tonight!

 

An act of pure exhilarated despair.

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

We’ve swallowed the abyss of the night …

 

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

 

Our comical apocalypse. What’s shown as we laugh all the way to the last night? What shows itself?

 

Moths batter themselves against the window. And we find it funny, that battering. We laugh as we batter ourselves. For wanting to batter ourselves.

 

Our laughing self-torture.

We laugh at our humiliation mechanisms. At our self-degradation machine. We laugh at our auto-ridicule. At our spontaneous foolishness.

 

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. At the great silence. At the great indifference. Laughter, rising.

 

Laughing at our manacles. Laughing at our muzzles.

Why not just kill us? Why do they need so many of us? Why are they letting us live at all? That’s the mystery, right? What do they get from us? I don’t understand it. Haven’t they got the stomach to just murder us?

Maybe they like watching us. Like an ant colony. Like spider-monkeys. Maybe we’re entertaining.

 

We’re, like, a useless population. Allowed to live. Allowed to go on. Teaching useless subjects, uselessly.

Yeah, because they want to experiment on us. To do live gene editing on us, or whatever. To transform us using drone swarms. To do all their nanobollocks.

 

I don’t get what’s in it for them to let us live.

Maybe they can’t stomach mass murder.

I don’t believe it. What stayed their hand?

There’s a plan, only we don’t know it. Maybe it's a slow cull.

This is the last battle. This department is like the Nebuchadnezzar in the Matrix. The last true place. We’re red pilled – very red pilled. We’re the last best hope of humanity.

So who’s Neo? Who’s the One?

Cicero was Morpheus, right?

But Cicero fucked off …

 

The battle’s deep. The frontier runs through the university. Through our School! Through Philosophy! Through us, as philosophers! Through our souls!

 

It’s neuroweaponry. They’re after our brains. Our fontal cortices. They want us stupid – more stupid. They’re attacking the brain with their hydrogels. They busting through the blood brain barrier.

 

Organisation Management is a front. Organisation Management is run by MI6 or something. Or DARPA. Where did it come from, so suddenly? Where did it spring up from? Suspicious, isn’t it, the rise of Organisation Management? The way it’s swallowing up the older disciplines.

The plan: to move the old discipline into the Schools of the new ones. And then hollow out the old disciplines. Hollow out the humanities. That’s how they’ll do it. They know students want to study the Arts. So they’ll hollow out the Arts. They’ll infiltrate the Arts. It’s already happening. And philosophy itself. Philosophers! Students will think they’re studying philosophy, but really … in fact … They’ll think they’re studying the wisdom of the great thinkers, but actually …

 

The sky is where they attack you from. The sky, full of low-flying satellites. Full of direct energy weapon platforms.

The sky is a giant attack vector, that’s all. That’s where the attacks will come from. Nowhere’s safe. Nothing’s safe.

 

The Go command has been given. It’s operational.

 

Acoustics, microwaves, radio frequencies. Beams of light. Fucking unsurvivable …

 

Neuroweapons – they want to take out our brains. They don’t want us to have brains. Bioweapons. Hydrogels in the brain.

It’s attack … on every frontier.

 

Directed evolution – that’s what it’s all about. It’s soft robotics. To hybridise us. To give us new synthetic bodies …

 

They’re GM-ing everything. Including us. It’s the fucking mark of the Beast.

 

The great poisoning, all around us. Poisoned food. Poisoned water. Poisoned air. Poisoned thought.

Our hope: that the other sky will show through. That others will see it too, and realise. That they’ll awaken, like us. That they, too won’t be fooled.

Our hope: that we wouldn’t be alone with this knowledge. That we could hold what was shown between us, this non-knowing, this nothingness. And that it wouldn’t be nihilism, but the antidote to nihilism. And that it would cure us of nihilism. And that we’d be lifted from nihilism.

Our hope: that others would see through it all, too. That others wouldn’t be fooled. That we’d share the secret. That we know what was hidden. And that we’d laugh at it all: the fiction of the world. The lies of the world.

Why were we the only ones who know what’s going on? Who have any idea of what’s happening? Why are we the exceptions? Why are we the ones who see through things? What is it about us? What’s so special about us, we who always thought we were unspecial?

Because we knew. We had instincts. We were Certain – as no one around us was. We saw through it – as no one else did. We had the Gift. Almost clairvoyant. We knew something was up, that something was wrong. That something new was heaving into view.

A change of reality. A new normal. That must have been long in the making. Decades long. Hundreds of years long. That must have been the product of vast plans. Agendas. This was to be the culmination of something, that was clear. This was to lead somewhere.

They were showing their hand – but only to those of us who could see. Who were aware. Who saw, like us. Who knew, like us. Who weren’t fooled.

 

Our conspiracy theories. Is that what they were? Our shared madness. Our sense of vast forces. Of vast evil. Of agendas, gathering. Of great darkness. And great light. Because didn’t we sense that, too: a kind of light. That might save us. Might lift us up.

Didn’t we feel the grace of God? Didn’t we know that God was close? That it could only be him. Wasn’t God shown too, as well as the evil? Wasn’t God shown because of the evil?

 

What was it about us? Won’t we always be asking that question: What was it about us? Why did it fall to us? Why were we deserving? Why did we feel it? Intuit it? Who gave us the powers of discernment?

It turned us from the world. Turned us in upon ourselves. Turned us to one another. As we became the only ones we could talk to.

It changed us. We weren’t the same. There was a new Seriousness. Something not to joke about. That we saw in each other.

We were comrades. We were the undeceived. We talked in corners. In hushed tones. We knew there were enemies everywhere. We knew we might be denounced – reported. To the authorities. To the new secret police.

We knew there were those for whom we were the enemies within. The enemies next door.

 

Some of us knew. It was given to us to know. Some of us sensed it. It was give to us to sense.

Our ultimate vindication Our justification. We were not wrong. We did not live in the wrong.

And the rest: who are they becoming? Are they still human anymore? Hadn’t they given up their humanity? Transformed into something else – but what? Gene-edited into a new form of life? Into homo borg genesis?

 

We’re the last human beings. Among the last. But they’re working on us. They’ll find us. They’ll run us down. They’re only looking for an excuse. Their algorithms have found us. Are watching us. They have us on their lists.

For how long will we be allowed to live? How will they take us out? What’ll they do to us? Will we be found dead in our beds? Will we be found hung from some roof-beam? Will we be victims of some traffic accident? Will we slit out wrists whilst out on a countryside walk, David Kelly style? Will it be some personalised directed energy weapon beam? Some individual burst of 5G malevolence?

They’re building prison camps. FEMA camps. Concentration camps. For the likes of us! To lock us up! They can’t let us just roam through the world. Spreading the word. Spreading what they’d call lies. What they’d called misinformation.

 

Why has it fallen to us? And what do we do with what has fallen with us?

Are we the only ones who’ve noticed it? I mean, why us? What’s special about us?

It’s because we have so little stake in the world as it us. It’s because we don’t really care about its … perpetuation.

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. We saw the void, right? The void showed itself to us. The non-truth of the world: that’s what we saw. The great Nothing. The unreality of everything. Which meant we could see through it: the great lie.

 

It’s what allows us to breathe. It’s what makes us smile. At all the fakery. At the latest vast stupidity. That all these idiots take to be real.

I mean, it’s actually funny to see what the idiots are fooled by now. To see what’s passing itself off as reality now. Or it would be, if the maniacs weren’t actually trying to kill us off.

 

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. Which is why we can laugh at those who do. We’re freer than them. Lighter. We’re not addicted to the seriousness of this world …

I’m crying, but I don’t know why. Are these my tears? There’s an immense sadness, but it’s not mine – it’s not ours. It’s the sadness of the universe – the whole universe.

Everything is weeping. Everything cries in our tears and with or tears. We’re to express the sorrow of the universe. The sorrow that we’re sorrowful. That we’ve known pain. That we’re lost children, because that’s what we are, isn’t it?

 

I think if I could begin to speak, find the right words, I’d never stop.

 

A time will come … a time will come for us. Peace will come.

Will it?

A great calm, that sweeps everything away.

Will that be the end, the end of time?

I think it will.

 

It’s at an end, the world. It’s found its peace, the world. And we’ve found our peace, in the peace of the end of the world. Which is the peace of God. Which is God’s peace.

 

I think all things will find their peace. I think all things will lie down, in the great calm. In the calm of God. And that’s what God is: calm.

 

That the end has come because it is right. That the world has ended because it is fitting. Because God has decreed it thus. Because God has made it happen so. And we’ve got nothing to be do but Accept. But to bow our heads.

We don’t have to choose anything, decide anything. It’s at an end, the world. It’s found its peace, the world. And we’ve found our peace, in the peace of the world. Which is the peace of God, God’s peace. Which is God’s end, God’s repose.

 

The end: isn’t that what we’ve been waiting for, all along?

All the drama have played out. Everything that was to happen has happened.

We’ve lived enough. We’ve lived out our lives, our petty lives.

 

Our lives, in the hand of God. Our lives, held in the hand of God. Their importance. Their unimportance. The things of our lives. Important in their unimportance.

 

Are we going to wake up now? Are we going to wake into another life? Are we going to open our eyes in another world? Will we live and breathe in another world? In God’s world?

Will we be close to God, now? Will we be as close to God as God’s angels are. Will we be among the angels, God’s angels, by the side of God?