Author: Lars Iyer

And you’re fucking her. The temerity. Is it love, or just some desire for revenge?

Is it lust? I think it’s lust.

Of course it is. Lust … she’s a looker. She has an allure. And she’s married to the head of Organisational Management … very alluring.

We’re such animals, aren’t we? Maybe we should all find an organisational management lover. That’s real interdisciplinarity. That’s what they mean by dynamic juxtaposition.

How did you get together? Did your eyes meet across the meeting room? Did  you bump into one another in a corridor? What did you, like, talk about? What did you have in common? Because you really wouldn’t have thought you’d have much in common.

Fuck you.

The allure of opposites. The yin and yang. The one and the other. How can you bear it? Sleeping with the fucking enemy.

 

Do you do it around her house?

In my flat.

Have you been round her house? What’s it like? Soulless, I’ll bet.

It’s very … tasteful.

Does her husband know? Does the Head of Organisational Management suspect?

Uh uh.

Wow. You’ll destroy him. And then he’ll destroy you.

 

You always did have a certain allure. It’s because you’re so quiet. And dark. She likes you because you’re the total opposite of everything she’s known.

 

You’re up close with an organisational manager. What’s her soul like? Does she have a soul? God, she’s on the front lines, really. She’s one of them.

Maybe you can save her. Turn her. Convert her. Is that your aim?

We’re always talking about it – our … relationship … such as it is … such as it isn’t. It’s … parasitical. Lovers always talk about their love. It’s smugness. We’re pleased with ourselves. Pleased with what has been given us, by way of the other. In our little bubble of love.

 

We think we’ve escaped the world, but love is part of the world. It’s just a little … give in the world. It’s a little leeway. It’s what we’re given as freedom – as a taste of freedom. But it’s still part of the illusion – and perhaps the worst part. Because it entangles us more deeply.  

We’re trapping ourselves. We’re being trapped – by nature. It’s nature’s honey trap. Nature’s seduction trap. Which is how it opens as apparent freedom what is really only a deeper form of servitude.

 

Nature’s thrown us a treat. We’re supposed to be grateful. To moon over one another in gratitude. When really it’s part of the whole machine.

 

Love isn’t part of the machine: that’s what we think. That’s what we’re supposed to think. We fool ourselves. We want to be fooled.

 

Our disgrace. We should fall to our knees … and …

And what?

Pray to be released from the world. Its traps – its snares. Pray for an opening … Don’t we want out? Sure we want out. We want the exit. And that’s what we want in love. We want to be an exodus for one another. A way out of the trap. When really it’s another part of the trap …

 

It’s the honey trap. Nature’s honey trap. That’s what it’s called isn’t it: when they lure you in via someone pretty. Some hottie specifically sent out to target you. Nature wants us trapped. Confined. Seeking all our salvation from another, when in fact … the only salvation comes from outside.

Outside what?

This world. This life. This … universe of death.

 

The stupidity of lovers. We think this is an exception. That we’ve been given all this as a special gift to us. All these feelings … This elation … This craving … This very sane madness. This rational irrationality. This law-abiding prohibition. Which happens to virtually everyone. To which all of us succumb. That lifts us all up. And up to what?

God. aren’t we lucky? we think. Why can’t everyone be as lucky as us? Until we become evangelists of love. Trying to pair all our friends up. Telling people the story of our romance. How we got together. Our ur-story. About when the world relented. When the remorseless logic of it all just pulled back for a few moments. When we were granted an apparent reprieve.

And now we think we know what the world is about. What things really are. As if everything had been revealed to us anew. As if for the first time. The world, all aglow. Colours, more vivid. The sky, a little wider … It’s a con …

 

Our story … how we escaped. How we weren’t subject to all the laws. How it wasn’t just the same old for us.  We think we’ve been elected. Saved. Lifted above the fray. Because Nature wants us to make more of ourselves. Nature wants the multiplication of Nature.

I don’t want to be subjected to this body.

But you like to fuck.

I don’t like to like to fuck. I don’t like to like to eat. I don’t like to like to be subject to anything.

You hate your body.

I like your body. But I don’t like to like your body. Why do we have to be like this?

You mean why aren’t we pure spirits, floating free. Angels, or whatever.

Sure – fucking angels. I’d like to be an angel.

 

We’re so meta. We’re meta lovers. I blame it on philosophy. All your philosophy. You can’t just experience stuff. You can’t just give yourself over to things.

I’m not an animal, you mean.

God, the romantic lobotomy. Infatuation has, like, stolen your mind. Fucking brain chemistry bullshit. What’s it doing to you? What’s it doing to your thought? It’s like you’re on holiday from life. It’s like you can allow yourself to be on holiday. You’ve given yourself permission.

This isn’t life. Away with the fucking romance fairies. When we need you here at the philosophy frontline. Fighting philosophy battles. What do you think this is? This is no time for a honeymoon. Can’t just swoon away. We need some cold rationalism – don’t you see? Need some hard thinking. Some philosophical toughness. Philosophical muscle. We have to take a hardline! And we have to have a united front! All together! All for one, one for all!

We need to stand with folded arms! Uncompromising! Unflinching! In the face of Organisational Management. Not eating their lunch at meetings. Not drinking their tea. Not giving an inch.

 

Not altering our modules to make them accessible to organisational management students. No rewriting our module docs to make them intelligible to organisation management students.

Because philosophy will never be accessible to organisational management students.

 

We have to make philosophy intolerable. Indigestible. Just as we have to make ourselves intolerable and indigestible. Unmanageable, even by Organisational Management. Unorganisable, even by Organisational Management.

 

They don’t know what to make of us. How to frame us. How to contain us. How to speak to us. How to approach us. They don’t know what we’re for – what philosophy’s for. They don’t know what philosophy does.

We’re the Incomprehensible. The Unthinkable. The Unassimilable.

We send our students out – out into the world. To explore the world. To look at things in the world. Their projects. There are no set-piece essays for them. Nothing they could purchase from an essay mill. Nothing that could be bespoke written for them.

Out students are wanderers of the afternoon. Psychogeographers. Urban drifters. Followers of invisible currents. Our students work with … intuition.

 

We’re equipping our students to understand the new wars – the invisible wars. The soul-programming wars. We’re teaching them how to read the skies, and the crisscross of chemtrails in the skies. We’re teaching them about the poisoning of the earth. Of the soil. Of food and water. About the new kinds of tyranny. We’re teaching them about the use of climate change as a cover. For, like, maniacal technocratic takeover.

 

Our students. Philosophy isn’t a dead subject for them. It doesn’t sit idly on the page. It’s not about ancestor worship. It’s not about getting Spinoza right. It’s about putting Spinoza to work.

 

We’re teaching them about the unorganisable. About chaos theory. About the tohu vavohu. About the varieties of evil. We’re showing them Goya’s Disasters of War. Mandelbrot’s fractals. We’re making connections across different subject areas. Leaps through history. From one tradition to another. From one language to another.

We’re constructing spurious etymologies. Making illegitimate criss crossings. Linkages. Bring this into contact with that. We’re bewildering ourselves. With our brilliance? With our stupidity? We’re venturing into numerology. Into superstition …

We’re liberating our students from years of so-called learning. Setting them free. Countering years of indoctrination. We’re counter-processing. Within the uni system. It’s heroic, in its way.

We’re turning them into anarchists. Subversives. Free thinkers. We teach whole modules on counterlogic. On guerrilla ontology. On practical surrealism. On the systematic derangement of the senses. On microdosing. On the uses of hardcore pornography. On UFOlogy as a science.

They’re to become Investigators. Researchers. Taking nothing for granted. Seeing through the lies. Through the New World Order agenda.

 

Our teaching.

We’re making it up as we go along. Of course we are. This is all entirely illegitimate. We’re talking outside our expertise. We’ve left all expertise behind.

This is speculative … highly speculative. In a bad sense … doubtless …

How long before we’re closed down? Because we really should be closed down. There’s no place for us here. For these kinds of studies. For general spuriousness. For thought gone rogue.

 

Our teaching.

None of this going anywhere. We’re just … tinkering. Fooling about. There’s nothing productive here. Nothing leads anywhere. It’s not about outcomes.

We’ve set things in motion, that’s all. Where will it lead? Nowhere, probably. Nowhere, of course.

Jesus had to become one of us. Jesus had to lose himself in this world. In this mire. God … had to mix himself up with the shit. To, like, save us.

And what did they do? Crucify him in shit. And then he raised himself from the shit … He’d had enough of the shit …

He wanted to free us from our sin, apparently. The sin of shit. To take upon himself all the shit – the shit of shit.

What is this, shit theology?

And did he redeem the shit?

He redeemed us, not the shit. He paid our debts.

And left us in the shit.

But we don’t carry around all the sin, not now. We’re not as compromised.

What about original sin? Is that original shit? The shit of life. The shit of existence?

Are we shit, too? Am I shit?

Oh you’re shit – definitely. You’re nothing other than shit.

So Jesus was part shit. Because he was part us. And we’re part him.

Are we? Are we part not-shit? Well, that’s something.

We’re stuck with time. Stuck with forever. No revolution’s going to happen. No messiah’s going to come. This is it. There’s just more and more of … this.

And we’re just waiting. For what? For not-this. Not the … ceaseless apocalypse. Not the endless anti-revolution.

So what then? How do we live without them? In the mode of without. In the mode of not having them. Stuck with the absence of the only things that could give sense to the world.

 

Nothing remains of God but the void, right?

The void’s what’s leftover. It’s not even God. It’s what God might be. It’s where God might come from. But it’s nothing – just nothing.

 

This reality’s only worthy of being destroyed, right?

Things are sinking to their lowest level. This is the deepest nihilistic fall of the world.

 

We’ll find salvation where it’s least sought. There, where you don’t expect it. In the void. Yes – why not, in the void! In the night of the world!

We’ll find salvation in our lack of salvation. If we experience our hopelessness in the right way, then it becomes hope! If we experience our damnation in the right way, then …

That’s some conjuring trick. What a conversion. At the last minute! In the final second! There is no final second, idiot. It goes on forever.

 

We can approach the question of meaning only through meaninglessness. Just as we can only know god through his absence. And the same for truth and everything worthwhile …

 

Only when you despise the world are you free of it. It’s a question of … messianic nihilism. It’s our exodus from the Natural House of Bondage. Of living in the world against its immanent logic. Inverting all earthly things.

 

The divine nothingness … an inverse of lost transcendence …

 

Messianism is very close to nihilism – very close! Don’t doubt it!

 

Meaning is not part of this world. Meaning depends upon liberation from this world. An … exodus from the natural cycle. The great merry-go-round …

I don’t want this world. I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to change the world. I want to leave it to its disaster. I don’t want to perpetuate the existing structure. This system. And I don’t want to replace it. Because what would we replace it with? More of the same. The same fucking horror.

 

We can’t rebel against the established order of the world is to ask for more order. It’s the usual cycle. The usual renewal of mastery and submission.

There’s a way of living that’s … unassimilable to the world. That doesn’t enter into relation with the world. That’s not part of the administration of all things. That’s just … inexplicable and unaccountable. That’s miraculous – why not use that word? That’s a fucking miracle …

 

We’re victims of the lower powers. Of the fucking Archons. We’re waiting for some … gnosis. Some Knowledge. That can’t be taught, can’t be learned. That you can’t approach directly. That you can’t even think about. Something … unthinkable.

 

You can’t overthrow the world, everyone knows that. All you get is more world. Kill the Master and you’ll get a new Master. The world’s not going to change.

 

Tired of the endless administration of the world. Its ceaseless management. The coordinates we’re given. The social coordinates. The governmental coordinates. The biopolitical coordinates. The philosophical coordinates.  

 

To empty out the fucking mind. Evacuate the fucking world. To achieve some new … subjectivation. Which you have to wait for. Which you can’t just bring about by yourself. And then … and then the question is how to live it. How to stay with it, loyal to it.

 

There’s a way of living in disgust – pure disgust. A way of living in hatred – pure hatred. Purifying hated. That is even a kind of joy in its purity.

 

There’s an ethics of … this. There’s a … transcendental experience that’s still possible. A point of leverage. There are encounters. Where you’re not engulfed by the worldly. Where it’s about the void – holding yourself out into the Nothing. When it’s about a new way of living. A way of life …

 

You have to hold on to the decision to depart. To purify yourself from the world. Without duplicity. Without hesitation. You have to find a true heading. A true destination.

 

No more philosophy, even. Because philosophy is always about reconciling us with the world. Or with some projected future reconciliation, when everything’s going to be fine. No more philosophy …

 

It’s a matter of an anti-life. An anti-biography. A personal … revolution. That breaks with what’s gone before.

 

Absolute revolt. As absolute as a saint … A total rejection of the world. Like those early ascetics. Driving themselves out of all comfort. Of all assurance. Wagering themselves. Struggle alone in the wilderness. Heroically, like, anonymous. 

 

Pure refusal. Pure retreat. Pure withdrawal. Just … subtraction from this world.

 

You can’t do anything about the horror. No redemptive promises. No theodicies, or versions of theodicies, when everything terrible that’s happened can be justified. Nothing that would posit an intelligibility to history, capital H. Because history is only exile. Alienation.

 

It’s not about what we think. It’s not about our own thinking. It’s not about being the subject or author of our own thought. The void thinks – in our place.

 

A negative philosophy. A hyperphilosophy … or a hypertheology.

 

We can say nothing positive about the void. There’s no affirmative proposition we can attach to it.

 

We have to resist social reality. Social power. We have to fall out of the socially constituted word.

 

A negative philosophy. A negative theology. A negative politics. An anti-politics.

 

A pure end. Absolved of any means through which it might be realised. Of any obstacle that stands in its way.

 

Faith in faith. Faith as a spiritual discipline. That has nothing to do with a religion, a politics. A faith that looks beyond this world, and its dependence on this world.

The temerity to write! That we’re allowed to write, at our desks. On our computers. No: that we would even try to write. That we would even attempt to write, and not our suicide notes. Not lengthy apology letters. Not resignation letters.

That we turn on our computers at all. Open a document. That we should presume that we have something to say. That we have something to write. Which isn’t just an apology – and a lengthy apology. That isn’t just a listing of our sins and even our original sin: that we exist at all.

What excuse do we have? As if we were perfectly innocent … As if we didn’t know that what we wrote yesterday was a complete disaster and could only have been disastrous … And the same for what we wrote the day before! And what we wrote the day before that!

That we have not learnt: our ultimate sin. That we’ve learnt nothing. That experience teaches us nothing. That we persist. That we go on. In what optimism? With what hopes? How deeply we’re deceived!

We know our shortcomings, but we don’t know our shortcomings. We know how we fall short, but we don’t know how we fall short. We know our catastrophe, but we don’t know our catastrophe. We know our errancy, but we don’t know our errancy. We know our idiocy, yet we don’t know our idiocy. We know what we cannot do, but we do not know what we cannot do. Because we haven’t yet destroyed ourselves. Because we haven’t actually killed ourselves.

Alive! Still alive! The embarrassment. We’re sheepish about it. Embarrassed. It wasn’t supposed to end like this – i.e., never ending. It wasn’t supposed to be endless. We weren’t supposed to just live on forever.

The long afternoon of life. The forever afternoon. Continuation – day after day. Week after week. It amazes us. To find ourselves still awake, still alive. Going on – somehow. Surviving – somehow. Still at it – somehow.

And a whole university, supporting us in our delusion. The whole of academia, allowing us our fantasies. Driving us on. Not minding us. Tolerating us. Ignoring us, so long as we do the right administrative things. So long as we’re able to recruit. Our ship of fools. Our febrile band. Somehow, in the midst of all this, we’ve been allowed to get away with it.

We haven’t been closed down – not yet. We haven’t been ejected from the university – but how? We haven’t been forcibly expelled – why not? We haven’t been tarred and feathered and banished from the campus. We haven’t been excommunicated. We’ve been allowed to … be what we want to be. Do what we want to do. Within parameters, of course. Within a certain framework, true. But we’ve escaped scrutiny – until now.

We haven’t been any trouble. We’ve recruited. We’ve filled our lecture rooms. There’s a bumper crop of philosophy students graduates every year. With the highest grade! Perfectly happy with their degree! With their studies! Making no complaints! Raising no fuss!

We balance our budgets. We even make profit – a little. We haven’t been noticed, not really. We’ve ruffled no one’s feathers. We haven’t even been noticed, not really. We don’t speak at meetings. We create no fuss. We’re unobtrusive. We know the best thing is to keep quiet. Not to draw attention to ourselves. To simply get on with the job. And to be allowed to do what we do, without interference. Without scrutiny.

The auditors are happy with us. The quality assurance people. The internal audit people. And that’s what matters! And that’s what should matter to us!

My God, we were looking for jobs for years, and now we’ve found them. We were looking to be able to earn a living for years, and now we do. We want to Dream. We want to Drift. We want to Explore. To close our office doors and Imagine. To Contemplate where we’ve been and what we’ve done and what the future holds for us.

To ponder how we got here. To wonder at the turn our lives have taken. Here we are, in a city we don’t know. In a region unfamiliar to us. A part of England. The northeast! Infinitely mysterious. Who are we here? Who will we be? What turns will our life take? Where will we go? What will we do?

We’ve been given this chance – how not to squander this chance? To use this time. Not to get lost. Not to go off course. To make something of ourselves. To launch ourselves as thinkers. Because we have no excuse anymore.

Open ended contracts. The support of the uni. Hadn’t we always dreamed of this? Isn’t this what we always wanted? And what will we do with it? What will me make of ourselves? Will we be able to think for ourselves? With our own thoughts? With what we are? With who’ve we’ve been?

Our thinking … thoughts peculiar to us. Individual. That reflects the accidents of our lives. The contingencies. That we’ll lift up into Necessity.

Think of all the other poor fuckers out there without jobs. Think of them, scrabbling away, trying to make a living, surviving on benefits, handouts, couch-surfing, moving back in with their parents, trying to live from part time contract to part time contract, picking up teaching here and there. Wherever.

Taking on anything – any teaching job that pays. Brownnosing. Ingratiating themselves. Working themselves into this department or that. Making themselves indispensable. In the hope … in the hope that … what?

They’ll just hire some big name instead of you. They’ll just bring in someone with a proper education, instead of you. Who studied at Leuven, or something. Who’s like properly foreign, properly European, and is cultured like a proper European. Who has the manners of a proper European. Who dresses like a proper European. Who possesses wit like a proper European. Who reads everything in the original, like a proper European. Who can really carry off European thought, like a proper European.

But we got hired. We made it. We’re inside. And maybe inside forever. We better be inside forever. Because the last thing we’d ever want to be now is outside, scrabbling. Whoring for work. We’ve done our time. We’ve served our … apprenticeships …

Which is why we want to rest for awhile. Why we want to be quiet for a while. We want to be left alone for a while. We don’t want to have to sell ourselves for a while. We’re inside. We walk the corridors. We feel glad in the corridors. We’re happy as we cross the threshold into our building. As we walk up the steps towards our building.

We belong somewhere. We’re thirty-somethings, and now we can begin our lives. Now we can write things and publish things and partner up and reproduce. Now we’re eligible. Now we’re players. Now we’re not no ones. But things will be Expected of us. We’ll have to Deliver …

But not quite yet. Not now. Not for the moment. We can crawl under the figurative bedsheets for a while. To be left alone … Not to feel a threat existentially. Not to feel under fire. Not to feel a target on your back.

No more dole office. No more signing on. No more having to apply for seven jobs a week. No more back to work interviews. No more housing benefit applications. No more Explaining Ourselves. To peers. To parents. No longer having to make a case for ourselves.

We can catch up with our contemporaries. Buy somewhere. It’s cheap in the northeast. We’ll thrive in the northeast. Round out our lives. Learn to cook, or something. Go out into the countryside, or something. Join the ramblers, or something. Meet people from outside the bubble, or something. Meet people who are non academics, or something. Meet people who’d look up to us, or something.

Our lives can expand, but gently, gently. Life – ordinary life. We remember that. We have an idea of that. We won’t have to live in squalor. In rented rooms. We won’t have to live on discounted sandwiches. On bargain crap.

Relief – is that what we feel? Relief … a second life. Another go at life. Reborn, remade. Coming to ourselves. We might be able to become full human beings, at last.

We’re not just lost. We’re not just stranded. We’re not just forgotten. We’re not just out here forever. We’re not one of the Lost Boys and girls and non-binary people. We’re not leftovers. We’re not spares.

We’ve been Vindicated. It’s all Paid Off. It’s Led Somewhere. The Plan Worked. Was there a plan? Only the plan to escape the world. Only the plan to worm our way in. We’ve done it. Relief.

And who are we to be? Who will we be? Poor idiot lecturers, going from this enthusiasm to that. Publishing here and then there. Secondary stuff. Critical Guides to this or that. Editors of collections. Special editions. In some half arsed way. With no oeuvre in view. No row of books bearing your name. No Trajectory. No Denkweg. No path of reflection. Nothing carrying you forward. No build up. No thick book from Oxford University Press, or Stanford University Press.

These are the days. On the sixth floor, looking out. High over St Thomas Church. Over the war memorial. Over Barras Bridge. Over Haymarket. And the sky. We’re close to the sky. We can come and go as you please. Stay late. Stay all night. Sleep in your cupboard. Are we going to get lost in all this time? Think of Blumenberg and his card file of notes. Or was that Luhmann? Or was it both of them? Think of the massive oeuvre of Jacques Ellul.

Do we have anything to Say? Will we discover something to Say? Topics to explore. That are ours, only ours. A new Pressure. A gathering Pressure. What we will have to be. How we’ll lift ourselves up. How we’ll find Momentum. How we’ll be led from article to article and book to book. How we’ll write and sail away on an ocean current of writing.

Will we surprise ourselves. Will we surprise everyone. Now that we’ve been Given a Chance? We don’t know who’ll we’ll be. Is that our hope? Are those the grounds for our hope? Is that what our hope is?

Our transcendental awfulness. Our transcendental stupidity. Out transcendental witlessness. Our transcendental idiocy. The way we compound our idiocy with meta-idiocy. Transcendental idiocy. The way we double up our stupidity. Triple it up. With transcendental idiocy and transcendental transcendental idiocy.

An infinite spiralling of idiocy. Great feedback loops of stupidity. Squealings. Howls. Roars. Shakings. Howlings. It’s deafening.

Proof that there is no God. Proof that there never was an intelligent design. Proof that it’s all just random. Chaotic. Control-less. Proof that it was never about survival of the fittest.

Proof of what? That the universe mocks itself. Life laughs at itself. That time is going on just for laughs. That life exists for laughs. That’s all going on in farce and deeper farce. We can only make sense of our lives as ongoing sacrifices. As exercises in futility and worse. Exercises in destruction.

 

We repent! Of course we do! But do we repent deeply enough? Are we our own scourges? Are we sincere in our penitence? Do we really mean it?

Self -loathing: is that it? Or is it a loathing of the conditions that produced us? Is it a transcendental hatred? For the transcendental conditions of our idiocy?

A loathing of what allowed us to exist …

 

But perhaps we have a redemptive power. A messianic role. That all is not quite lost, after all. By dint of how greatly we are lost, we are not lost. Because of the destructiveness of our presence, things might not be destroyed, after all.

 We should never have been: that’s our Original Sin. We should never have been born! But we were born! We grew up … And now we’re here … Here – where we should not be. On the face of the earth! Shameless! Right here! Right now! Full of sin! Sinning at every moment! At every instant! We rise in sin, go to bed in sin. We live out our whole lives in deep, deep sin.

Our original sin. The sin we carry with us. And sin’s worse when there’s no God. When there’s no one to absolve your sin. When there’s no way to be forgiven. Because we shouldn’t be forgiven, for what we did by being born. For being born at all …

Our original sin. Our original fault. That we can’t do anything about, it’s true. That we can’t solve, admittedly. A debt we can’t settle. That we carry with us, every day.

Isn’t the solution just to kill ourselves at once? To excise ourselves from the record! To change our birth certificates – to tear them up! All our records, destroyed. Disappearing from every photograph. From every online archive. Google searches of our name, turning up nothing. Memory-holed so thoroughly that our friends can’t recall us. That our own parents have forgotten our names …

And the world’s burden, lightened. The world’s load, lifted. The world, breathing a little more lightly. The sky a little higher. Its blue a little bluer. An unburdening. A lightening. A lifting. A release. A singing – why not? The song of a world released! The bliss of a world unburdened! Doves rising into the sky! A flock of birds, rising up! The souls of all, lifted higher.

And the world would never know what it’s been liberated from – that’s the thing. The world will have forgotten us – and hence the conditions of its liberation. The world will not remember why it feels lighter, happier, breezier. Why the sky seems deeper, bluer. Why the sun burns brighter. Why more birds sing. Why leaves push higher. Why flowers open wider.

The magnificence of the world without us! Without our presence! Without our shadows! Exaltation everywhere, and no one quite knowing why. A debt paid back. A burden lifted. An encumbrance. A lightening.

To think: we have it in our power to liberate the world. To lighten it. To loosen it. To lift it higher. We’d just have to … eliminate ourselves. Remove ourselves from the equation, and from all equations. Discreetly. Quietly. Without drawing attention to ourselves. Without making any kind of fuss.

We have it in our gift … That’s what we could bestow … That could be our generosity. Our blessing. That’s what we could give back. That’s how we could solve the problem. Solve our problem. Undo everything we’ve done. The terrible mess we’ve made. All the knots we’ve tied. That’s what we could do for the world. For everyone!

But what about the mess we’d leave? Who would have to clear up our bodies? Who would need to tidy up our affairs? The terrible jobs we’d leave others. Our bodies – hasn’t that been the problem all along? And what would we leave behind but our bodies?

Throw ourselves on the Tyne, and we’d wash up somewhere. Throw ourselves in the North sea, and we’d wash up somewhere. Throw ourselves off Claremont tower, and someone would have to find our battered bodies. Gas ourselves in our own flats, and someone would have to cart us off for cremation. Electrocute ourselves – same problem. There’d have to be an autopsy.

Always something left over. Always something. Our lifeless bodies. Our suicided bodies. If only there was a way just to be vaporised. Just to be blasted out of existence. Isn’t that possible? To be exploded. Every molecule dispersed. Every atom. An entire – eradication. A complete – wipeout.

Better to rewind the whole universe to the time before we were born. Before we had a chance to make trouble. Before our parodic existence, before our parody. Before our mockery. Before our absurdity – the absurdity of our existence.

Better to destroy the universe as such, because of the chance that beings like us could appear. Better to wipe out everything that exists, because things can go so terribly wrong. The original sin of existence. The original sin that there is anything at all …

Could we really eradicate all our effects? All the trouble we caused? All the terrible things we set in motion? Do we overestimate our significance? Do we make out ourselves as too important? Do we get the degree of our influence wrong? Our malevolence? Our evil-doing? The infestation that we spread? That spreads from us like a cloud?

The pain we’ve transmitted … The sadness we’ve passed on … We’ve made people shake their heads. Purse their lips. Tut quietly. Pity us. Feel sorry – desperately sorry – not just for us, but for the whole of humankind. For the whole human predicament. For the human ruin. For general human nest soiling. For general human auto destruction.

Reaching out. Spreading everywhere. For the curse of the human. And of the animal. And, we dare say it, of the planet. And – why not – for the whole of existence. Isn’t that what we’ve taught people? Shown them? Introduced them to?

The error of existence – of human existence, animal existence. Vegetable existence. And existence as such! And the existence of anything! Haven’t we made people doubt themselves. Doubt everything. Their right to exist. Their right to go on. In the face of … us.

Haven’t others wanted to kill themselves from shame – from shame for us? From being of the same species as us? For being human like us. For being animate like us. For being alive – just that?

What we’ve done … The pain we’ve caused … The misery we’ve spread. The great curse. The great, spreading horror. The sprawl of terror. Isn’t that what we’ve shown, to those who’ve known us. To those who’ve seen us at work. Who’ve read our papers. Who’ve heard us give talks. Who’ve been taught by us – God knows!

Shameless – our shame. Shameless – our shamelessness. The fact that we do not feel ashamed – or not ashamed enough. Not self-destructive enough. Not desirous of death enough. That we didn’t kill ourselves months ago – years ago. Isn’t that our shame? That any suicidal impulse we’ve felt has come too late – years late! Decades late!

That we’ve gone on regardless. That we haven’t at least tried to remove ourselves. To hide ourselves away. To shut ourselves up, so that we can’t be seen. To live a life as quiet as possible! Disturbing no one! Barely letting ourselves be seen! Thought about! Not just untouchable, but unthinkable. Unconceivable!

That we’ve actually published, and will publish more. That we actually write. That we actually give talks – academic papers. That we actually talk at conferences. That we actually share our thoughts. That we presume to spread our gospel.

When all that we’ve said or written has the same essential message: Stop us now. Kill us now. Strangle us now – right away.

Our capering. Our aping around. Our levity. Our joy – even our joy! We’re even joyful! We’ve even happy sometimes. Well, jubilant. Well, drunken!

That we should have any other thought than destruction – self-destruction. That we should have other plans other than extinction – auto-extinction. That we should we should write about anything other than the need to prevent us from writing. Than the urgent need or censorship and self-censorship.

That we assume to submit our learned essays to academic journals. That we presume to send our papers of our thoughts to this journal or that one. That we notwithstanding it all continue our academic careers. Continue to teach! Continue to write! Continue to come into our offices! Continue to walk the corridors! Continue to climb the stairs! Continue to step into the lift! Continue to sit in our swivel chairs! Continue to turn our computers on! Open Word for Windows! Begin to type!

How can that be? You’d think there’d be some rebellion of things against us. Some refusal of stuff. So that the computer wouldn’t switch on. Word wouldn’t open. Computers would just … explode internally. Computer viruses spontaneously appear.

People would turn their faces away from us. Birds would fall silent. Plants would just … wither. The earth itself would groan as we stepped across it. A rebellion of all things against us.

A world-flinching. The universe flinching. The universe recoiling in horror. The universe, horrified. Fearful. Of what it had created. At what had been made. At the terrible crime of our existence.

The very ground should quake. The very air should suck itself out of our lungs. The sun should turn its face from us. Sunlight shouldn’t reach us. We should live in perpetual shadow. In silence and darkness. Shunned. Cast out.

We’d be willing scapegoats. Sacrificial lambs. Send us out! Into the wilderness! We want the wilderness! At least we’d be doing something useful! Carrying away the sins of humanity! Of everything! Yes! Yes! Nothing better! And our own sins.

But we’re too late – always. The moment to kill ourselves lay long in the past.