Author: Lars Iyer

Only European thought measures up to this. Only Europeans can think – really think – the coming technocracy. Down to its depths. To its roots. Grasping – really grasping – the essence of technocracy: only your Heidegger, your Benjamin, is capable of that. Only your Rosenzweig. Only your Gershom Scholem. Your Adorno. Your Arendt. Your Illich, maybe. Agamben – don’t forget him. Agamben’s the daddy.

The real thinkers. We’re not thinking of court jesters, like Zizek. Players to the crowd. Hot takers. Poseurs. Controversialists.

We’re not thinking of the old bores, like Habermas. Of all those fucking psychoanalysts.

You know this is the thirteenth bottle, don’t you?

So what?

The thirteenth bottle is the last wine. It’s the culmination of a whole eschatology of wine. It’s the wine all the others have been leading up to. That will make all of them make sense. We’ve been ascending a wine ladder, don’t you see? Or descending it. It feels like we’ve been going down, down, down a spiral staircase.

There’s been a method – of sorts.

A method in our drinking?

Thirteen bottles is the end of the course of anti-poison. It’s a cure. A cure in doses.

The thirteenth bottle turns lies into truth.

Is that right?

It’s the messianic wine.


 Drink the bottle, the last bottle, the thirteen bottle, and you’ll step across the threshold. You’ll actually be alive. For the first time .Your life won’t have been entirely worthless.

Don’t attribute these motives to her. She was a trickster. She was a provocateur. There wasn’t anything serious about Livia.

But that lack of seriousness was seriousness.

She was playing games. 5D chess, or whatever …


The trickster isn’t serious. Just wants to laugh at everything. Leaves nothing in its place – just empty laughter.


Pagan laughter. The laughter of paganism.

Laughter that laughs at itself laughing. At its own imposture, and all imposture. That is nothing but the void laughing, and the void in all laughter. The creation laughing at itself. The creation despising itself.


This isn’t Jupiter’s laughter, where laughter is part of some greater joy. It’s wicked laughter. It’s laughter that says, you won’t get anywhere. Everything’s pointless. It’s nihilistic laughter. It’s a big no to everything. It says: everything was fucked up from the start.


What if – what if Livia was a demon who fed on failure. All along. What I she lived on our misery. Harvested it. For her dark master. What if she just wanted to fuck things up. And to enjoy her fuckery.


We should do away with ourselves. We should go down with the ship. We’d throw ourselves on Livia’s funeral pyre. Burn up with her. Why should we outlive her? Outlast her? What would they do with us after Livia?

We’re a thrashing of the earth. We’re a spasmism of the world. We’re a flinching of existence – the whole of existence.

Some twitch. Some fit.

We’re an accident. We weren’t supposed to happen.

We’re the world’s bastards. Nature’s illegitimate offspring. Never mind that we had actual parents, or anything. We shouldn’t have been …

But here we are. We shouldn’t have been born – but we were born. We sprang into life.

Amazing, that we’re allowed to wander about, just living. Astonishing, that we’re allowed to desecrate life. That we still exist.

Here we are. Quite brazenly existing. Taking up space. Breathing the air. Surely we’re not entitled to breathe the air. But here we are, breathing the air. Poisoning all things by our being here. Spreading our disease. Our contagion.

We wanted to be defeated by higher things. We wanted to run up against a taller wall. We wanted to be smashed up by something noble. Obviously greater than us. Something worthwhile.

We wanted to shrink ourselves up looking upwards – terribly high. We wanted to diminish ourselves. We wanted life in diminuendo. We wanted to be crushed by something so vast that it wouldn’t even notice.


To be crushed by vast things. To be destroyed by great, good forces. For our deaths to be necessary. Incidental. Unimportant. To be extinguished – because it had to happen. For the greater good.

That’s what we wanted – to die for the greater good. But to die unobtrusively. Almost unnoticed. Not a martyr’s death, or anything like that. We want to be destroyed by something True. And Clever.

Death – that’s what we want. A death blow. A sublime blow, as from the sky. As from the stars. A glorious extinction. Glorious because it’s complete – it’s absolute. A nothing-left-over smashdown. Like at Sodom. And Gomorrah! Biblical style.

You think Livia was some kind of Zen fucking master. That her life was a koan to understand. That everything was riddle.

Everything she did was endlessly enigmatic.

She probably knew that. Did it on purpose. Just to keep us busy, and her amused.

Who would surround themselves with idiots? With people who were her inferior.

She was always praising our drunkenness. Our idiocy. She loved watching us make mistakes.

It was sadism – she was a sadist. And we were masochists. There – no mystery. And masochists love to interpret their sadist. Thinks their sadist is part of some higher purpose. Which, in the end, is just part of their masochism.


It’s not even an interesting masochism. Not even S&M. And it’s all mental, which is even more pathetic.


She never meant anything she said. She was always laughing. Laughing at us. Laughing at herself. Laughing at philosophy.

Heaven forefend!

She thought it was a joke – thought everything was a joke. That laughter was the highest thing. That’s how I picture her: sitting, laughing on her own, clapping he hands as she laughs – that’s probably what she’s doing now. In glee!

It was laughter all the way down, right? And it wasn’t even her laughter – not ultimately. It’s Satanic laughter. Because Satan is an imitator.

We’re like a fucked-up family.

Like the Mansons.

Like the Heideggers. You’re dad Heidegger, Helmut. You can be mum Heidegger, Gazelle: Elfride. Who was the real antisemite, apparently. Hers to him are prevented from being published until 2153, apparently.

How many children did they have?

Two. She had affairs, he had affairs …

So you’re the bastard children. You’re literally Helmut’s great great grandmother.

This is our lowest hour, which means it’s our highest hour. Here, in the depths, we’ll reach the heights. We’ll Think, capital, T. We’ll have a thought.

Genius will strike us. Genius, like a bolt of lightning. And that’s how the campus will be destroyed. That’s how the campus will crack.


Livia’s lightning: when’s it going to strike? How’s it going to save us?

I’m not sure it’s meant to save us. It’s supposed to be spectacular. Just light up the world’s night for a moment.


The lightning’s about illuminating things – showing the world as what it is. It won’t be about destroying anything. It’ll be about revealing the divine void – nothing is what there is, and first of all nothing beyond and all that. You know the score.


It’s not lightning – a lightening. A revealing. Of what’s there, and what’s hidden.

The earth isn’t a refuge. Not for us. We don’t belong to the earth. To the whole blood and soil thing. Except maybe you, Helmut.


The thick earth. As thick as our heads. As obtuse as we are. As stupid as we are.


It’s not just dead and indifferent. It’s actually malevolent. It’s a torture mechanism.


It isn’t vibrant matter – it’s festering matter.

Philosophical honour demands we kill ourselves. At once!

Philosophy’s disowned us, dillweed. Philosophy’s laughing at us. We’re here for its entertainment.

So let’s … be … entertaining.