Author: Lars Iyer

We’re going to end up in prison, all of us. We’ll end up shot. Disgraced. Pedophiled. Cancelled and memory-holed. We’ll end up locked up as domestic terrorists. In the nearest FEMA camp. They’re building holding pens for our kind.

They’ll outlaw thought as terrorism. As far-rightism. As anti-equityism. That’s what they’re ready for. As sins against the Guardian. Against Rightspeak. As dangerous. As unkind. As placing our students At Risk.

 

Sins against big pharma. Or big tech. Or the big government. Or big everything. We don’t want to take up our role in the new communitarianism. We’re not signing up for the New Consensus. We’re not going to eat ze bugs, or whatever.

We’re not genuflecting to the new idols. We don’t have the Permitted Opinions. We’re not the Right Kind of People. We’re Conspiracists. We’re Agitators. We’re against the Latest Thing. We’re probably racists. And anti-Semites!

We’re the resistance – don’t forget that.

But what do we actually resist? We just go along with things and moan.

But it’s a beautiful moaning. It’s a transcendental moaning.

 

We’ve become inured to this world. We’ve accepted its terms. We’ve surrendered. We’ve put our hands up. And they didn’t even demand our surrender …

They didn’t ask for anything – not explicitly. They knew we’d behave. They couldn’t conceive of our not behaving. Of sweeping all the food from the tables. Of overturning the fucking tables.

We don’t need them as our prison guards. We confine ourselves. We tell ourselves off. We lock ourselves down.

 

We’re captives – that’s clear. They’ve captured us. Psychologically. We’re trapped in our own heads. We’re walled up inside ourselves. We’re our own prison cells, our own warders, our own prison guards.

We’ve locked ourselves up. We’re collaborators. We’ve betrayed ourselves. We’ve sold all our secrets. We’re our own secret police. Keeping watch on who we are.

We’re internalising all of this. It’s becoming our soul. It’s what our souls are: prison cells. And we don’t even know it. The world’s been captured, and so have we.

 

How did we become so reasonable? Years of training. Years of obedience school. Like cows led by the nose-ring. Look at us. We can’t put up the slightest protest. Because we know it’s futile.

 

This impossibility … this strangulation. Should force us into thinking. The very crampedness … The very fact that there’s nowhere to go … That we can’t manoeuvre.

It should force us into … what?

 

The only thing that interests me is the end of the world. That’s what I want to tell them about: the end of the world. And not their human-made climate change. Not their climate mitigation strategies. Not some manageable transition away from fossil fuels. Fuck that.

Some sudden end. Some cosmological event. Some galactic force that’s ripping the rings off Saturn. About which there’s fuck all to be done.

 

I want to go home and crawl into bed. And, like, comfort-masturbate.

He’s giving a speech.

He’s not. God – a speech! – that’s all we need. A speech! What about!?

A welcome speech! A speech about kindness!

No! No!

An organisational manager does profundity. Does sincerity.

 

He was talking about seed beds and test beds. He kept saying there’s work to be done on.

And EDI. He kept talking EDI. It was a whole mantra with him: EDI. And kindness. He loves the word, kindness. He was instructing us on the importance of kindness. That’s what’s replaced ethics, in academia.

 

Is Tyrell sincere? Does he actually mean this stuff?

Isn’t he just stupid?

He’s optimistic. Boundlessly so.

Doesn’t he see that there’s a different culture. A different way of looking at things. He thinks this is the future. He wants to co opt us. Synergise us.

Yeah, says the Borg.

 

I hate him. I really do.

Am I unreasonable? Am I a fanatic? I think I am. I’ve been radicalised. I’m a fundamentalist now.

A fundamentalist what?

I don’t know. I’m just against.

Against what?

Against everything. Against the world. Against their world, anyway.

 

I actually feel ashamed of being human. Ashamed of being alive, of existing.

 

God, how intolerable the intolerable is!

 

How did we get like this? How come we have such a low threshold for university bullshit? We’re not fit for human company anymore.

Were we ever?

We do it to each other. We license it in each other. We’re not good for each other. This is what being in a philosophy department does to you. It’s a hall of mirrors.

So you think we should embrace our Organisational Management overlords?

 

These people are of another species!

These people are robots – fucking robots – and don’t you forget it.

These guys are sinister. They’re like evangelicals. They’re so happy.

Maybe it’s just that we’re unhappy. We’re used to being unhappy. We think that it’s the only way to be.

We’re happy unhappy, in other words. Whereas these guys are happy happy.

But this is Organisational Management happy, which isn’t the same thing.

 

They’re full of normalcy bias. They’re pretending things are normal. They’re acting as if the world hasn’t ended, essentially. The whole system … The whole thing …

Maybe we’ve just got apocalyptic bias.

 

God – I can’t bear it. Like we can all get together and just pool our resources. Work for a better fucking world, or whatever. When we just want the world to end. Do they realise they’ve merged with a bunch of apocalypticists?

 

They’re after us. They want to destroy us. Our joie de vivre. They want to live on our life – our philosophy. We’re philosophical batteries to them. Thought batteries …

 

You’re going to have to save us. You’re our new leader. You’ve got to lead us out of the labyrinth. You’ve got to stand between us and them. You’ve got to be the lightning conductor.

 

I want to run screaming from the room.

Go on then – run screaming.

That’s part of why I want to scream – because I can’t scream. If I could scream, I wouldn’t scream.

 

We need to spike our drinks.

Perhaps they’ve spiked ours.

Scary.

 

This is like the satanic inversion of philosophy. All that’s good and true and right, turned upside-down …

What are the signs? Can you read the signs? Use your ESP, or whatever. Can you still do ESP? Use your power of spiritual discernment, then. Didn’t you always claim to be very spiritually discerning?

She likes you. It’s your tortured philosopher thing.

I don’t like me.

That’s what she likes.

 

She’s going to eat you up.

Do you think?

Just kidding. But her husband floating about … maybe he doesn’t mind … maybe that’s the price you pay to go out with a hottie …

She’s a hottie, right?

Sure she’s a hottie.

 

You’re going to get entangled, I can tell. All caught up. In a spider’s web.

I don’t want to get entangled!

 

You just want to work on your magnum opus, right?

Sure I do.

What is it again? Some literary thing … some philosophical thing. Just what the world is waiting for.

The walls are closing in. The sky seems close. I want … I want to hang myself.

You always want to hang yourself.

 

Where are we going? What’s going to become of us?

Don’t be so hopeless. God, I hate hopelessness.

 

Calm down. You’re getting hysterical. You’re our leader now.

Am I?

The crown hangs heavy, right?

Why aren’t these business people actually running businesses? Why aren’t they out the world?

Because they’re here to instigate the new system. To roll out the new reality system. They’re involved. Organisational Management’s part of it, or in charge of it, or something.

We’re surplus! Useless! We know this! We know our kind! We know our faults! We know what we are! We know we have no place in the new world, the coming world! We know we lag behind! We know we’re tardy! Latecomers! Stick in the muds! We know we should be put down for our own good.

 

Philosophy is the queen of useless subjects! Philosophy is uselessness itself! Both useless and pointless! Philosophy’s for nothing! About nothing! Well, nothing important. Nothing relevant … 

We’re collateral damage. Necessary, no doubt. Something of the old must be destroyed for the new to appear. Something of the old must be nourishment for the new. It’s only right.

We volunteer! Put our hands into the air! We’re not ready for this brave new world! We’re quite happy to give up our place in the techno-utopia! We know our kind are defunct, our of time. We’re happy to go down. We’re happy for the future army to crunch down on our bones. Happy to be buried in an ecocoffin. To rot back into the soil. To feed the earth …