Author: Lars Iyer

Who woke us up? Who woke us up in these lives? Why did we have to be born into these lives? Who chose these lives for us? What’s supposed to happen in these live – our lives? What are we supposed to do with them, our lives? What are they for – our lives?

Do you think you’re good at romance, philosopher? At making a woman feel special?


The philosopher does romance.

Fuck knows why I’m so intrigued by you. Fuck knows why I’m so interested.

You’re just an occasion to make me speak. You’re just what lets me speak into the void.

I can just say anything to you. I can just say these things. No one’s stopping me. And I don’t even know what I’m saying.


The world is gone – who wrote that? The world is gone. And we’re gone, philosopher. We’re G-O-N-E. We’ve fallen out of the world. The world doesn’t want us.


This doesn’t matter to you. It isn’t important. This is incidental stuff. Chat. Romance doesn’t matter to you. I don’t matter.

This is just time out. Time away from the Work, right? From the magnum opus. From what you were put on earth to do.

What, be a crap philosopher?

You don’t think you’re crap. You don’t believe that. Or you believe that if you work hard enough you won’t be crap forever.


Don’t you ever enough? Don’t you have enough of being you? Of being anything? Don’t you ever have enough?

It’s all worn out. it’s wearing out. no one believes in it. You don’t, and I don’t, and no one –


Who am I, anyway? Just some jumped up organisational manager …

I’ve done nothing with my life. I’m doing nothing with my life, and I’m not even depressed. I’m not even miserable – not really. I’m not going to change. Nothing’s going to happen to my life as a result of this. It’s all going to be the same It’s all going to be the usual thing.

And I want to laugh at it, philosopher. I’m laughing at it. But I’m not laughing – I’m not actually laughing.

It’s all show business. It’s all lies. We’re fed these lines. We’re supposed to say all – these – things. And I don’t want to say them, but I’m going to say them. And maybe … maybe no one wants to say them, but they’re going to say them.


We’re organising it all. We’re managing it.

We’re running the show. We’re writing the script. We’re managing it all. Behind the scenes, making sure it all goes smoothly, or whatever. We’re doing the programming. And I want to break out of the programming.

We’ve set the parameters for future humanity, or whatever. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. So controlled.


I want a holiday from being me. From being an organisational manager, anyway. An organisational manager wife, to organisational manager Alan.


Who the fuck am I supposed to be? I’m going to be an organisational manager forever. What’s my role? What am I supposed to be? Who am I, philosopher? Am I anything at all?

We’re just going to blow away. The wind at the coast is just going to blow us away. I don’t know how I am anymore. I don’t know what anything’s about anymore.

I don’t know how to live. I’m puzzled by it. I’m confounded by it. I don’t know how to organise my feelings. Or manage them. Very clever.

This … mood. This atmosphere, that hangs over everything. That’s just everywhere. That’s thick. That’s heavy. That you’re probably made of, philosopher.

What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong wth me, now? What’s wrong with everything?

We simply shouldn’t exist. That’s what they discovered in physics, isn’t it? The Big Bang should have produced equal parts matter and antimatter. And they should have just cancelled each other out, leaving just this void of energy. But instead there’s all this matter …


Existence is in such bad taste. The universe is full of stuff. Full of crap. There’s too much universe.

There’s too much of everything. There are too many hours in the day, and days in the week, and weeks in the month, and months in the year. There’s too much time. Too much things-going-on. There are too many seconds in the minute, and minutes in the hour. There’s too much too much.


They offend me, the stars.

Who could be offended by stars?

Look at them, all their brightness. Thinking they have the right to flash out. Someone should just snuff them out. Leave us in peace.

Why? They’re not doing anything.

They’re broadcasting their existence. Through the medium of light. It’s like boasting.

You’re not serious.

Fucking stars. And galaxies are even worse. The whole spangled sky. At least we can see the sky. You think we should be grateful to see the sky. The sky is mockery. It’s existence on parade. All that brazen existence. All that existence, like, proud of itself. Can’t it just do its existence thing quietly, darkly. Why does it have to boast?


The stars are destroying themselves – you can say that for them. At least they’re burning themselves out. But it takes them billions of years to burn themselves out … But at least they’re trying. That’s how they live, by dying. Just like us.

We’re dying too.

But we’re not burning. Maybe we should be. Just burn up life. Live like maniacs, or whatever.


It’s entropy, isn’t it? Thermodynamics. The universe is basically hostile to life.  And I’m hostile to it.
To the universe?

Sure. it’s war.

You versus the universe – who would win?


Don’t think the universe likes us.

I don’t like us.

Maybe you’re of the universe – the true son of the universe. Maybe the universe approves of you.

Do you think it approves of me?

You think the universe is evil.

Sure – it’s evil.  

Isn’t it just… outside of moral categories.

It actually means harm to us.

Which means you approve.

Sure, I approve. In principle.


Is this philosophy? Are you doing philosophy? Is this what philosophy’s like? God, it’s depressing.

Are you supposed to be doing this with philosophy?


Such a bad boy. Must be very attractive to philosophy groupies, being a bad boy.


You’re just outdoing each other with nihilism. Like, you’d win in a nihilism contest. And a cynicism contest. And a uselessness contest. You’d win all the prizes.


I don’t think Alan knows anything about philosophy. Or at least, his philosophy isn’t anything like this. The philosophy he reads. I think he thinks it’s good for you. Or good for Organisational Management.

Real philosophy is definitely not good for Organisational Management.

It’s too late to derail us. Organisational Management is taking over the universe.

I know. There’s Organisational Management, and then there’s philosophy. And Organisational Management’s the death star, and philosophy’s Luke Skywalker.

We haven’t descended far enough. We’re getting in our own way. We haven’t relinquished enough. We’re still laughing, for God’s sake. Still taking the piss. There’s still humour. Is there supposed to be laughter in the katabasis?

High fucking seriousness. That’s what it’s about. A seriousness we can’t imagine. That we’re not capable of. A spiritual seriousness. Like you’d find in Dostoevsky or Tarkovsky. A sense that it all hangs in the balance. Everything! Which it does.


We haven’t suffered enough. If we’d suffered, we wouldn’t be so irreverent. So piss-takey.

Always laughing at ourselves. Always poking fun. Never simply serious. It’s always a sham seriousness. A distanced from itself seriousness.

Seriousness, doubled up. Never undergone. Never suffered. We haven’t reached the bottom. Nor will we. It’s our temperaments. We’ll never get what we should out of a Grundstimmung. Something stops us.

Our Britishness. This country. The UK … UK humour. We’re never as serious as we should be. We can’t take ourselves seriously enough. We can’t reach it, inner seriousness.

We can never pray, for example. We lack the sincerity. The openness. The vulnerability. We can’t open ourselves. What does God think of us? Do you thinkGgod’s laughing? With us? At us? Will God forgive us for being ourselves? For getting in our own way?


Katabasis. We haven’t descended far enough. We haven’t reached the bottom.

Seriousness. We haven’t claimed it for ourselves. Deep seriousness. That we might reach in prayer. In meditation. In silence. In waiting that is nothing other than waiting.


But we stand in our way. Our characters. Our temperament. Our humour. Why can we never take ourselves seriously enough? Why can we never attain it: the seriousness that would result from a true katabasis?


Our journey to centre of the earth. Our journey to our own centre. To our inner citadels.


Can’t we get it together to be seriousness?. Just lie there like Stalker. Pondering in infinite seriousness the infinite seriousness of all things.


Katabasis. Into the profounds. The depths. The fundaments.

When stupidity descends to discover the origins of its stupidity. The grounds of its stupidity. To discover what its stupidity is.


Katabasis is a journey inward, not a journey downward. A journey into death! Into the unconscious! Into suffering, or whatever. Katabasis is supposed to be a prelude to insight or rebirth or transformation. A downgoing.

Europe, the old Europe, is no more. The culture of old Europe is no more. Ring the alarm bells! Sound the klaxon! Gather and lament! Rend your garments!

Silence. Crickets.

But that’s a sign of the end: there’s no one who cares. No one who notices. It’s reaching through France, through Germany. It’ll be in Mitteleuropa soon. The subtle invasion.


Only the shadows of old Europe. Only the rumours of old Europe. Only what was once old Europe and is now no more.

Only the passing – Old Europe’s passing. Only the fall-apart. Only its breaking up, as satellites break up in orbit.


The artists of old Europe. The film directors of old Europe. The philosophers of old Europe. No more! No more!

Sound the lament! Send up the death-cry! Europe is not what it was. Europe as run out of Europe. Europe’s lost faith in itself. Europe’s lost contact with itself. It’s not what it is.


Europe’s at an end. There’s no Europe in Europe. Europe is broken up – in Europe. And have they noticed, the European philosophers? Are they aware? Are they philosophising about it now?

They can’t notice it. They can’t afford to. They live on in a state of denial. They’re pretending that things can go on as they were before. That there’s a continuity between past and present. A continuity that reaches into the future.

They’re closing their eyes to it: the death of Old Europe. They can’t think about it: the end of Old Europe. They can’t say the words, Europe is dead. They can’t take it in. They can’t experience it. They can’t admit the thought into their conscious minds. They’re repressing it in every possible way.

Of course not! they exclaim, if the thought even crosses their heads. But it cannot cross their heads. They cannot let it cross their heads. European thought is essentially extinct: European thought cannot think that.


The end of Old Europe. It’s not like the wipe out of the dinosaurs. It’s not sudden. It’s happening by degrees. Slowly, slowly.

Old Europe is demented. Old Europe is deepening its dementia. It’s gone in the teeth: who was it that said that?

They should put it out of its misery. But should they? They should shoot it dead – just hang it from the tree, like they used to hang old sheepdogs. Shoot it like a rabid dog.

Europe’s got dementia, is that it? Europe’s raving … They should turn off Europe. Cut its power. Turn off the European lights. Scatter the European stars. Europe’s dead – and is philosophy dead, too?

Analytic philosophy’s alive.

Analytic philosophy’s pseudo-alive. It’s functioning. It’s sky-netting. It’s blinking its lights. Extending its robot arms.

Analytic philosophy is calculating. Reckoning. It’s doing its technical thing. Bleeping, probably. Buzzing. Whirring. Ticking.

Analytic philosophy is scanning the sky. Waiting for its interstellar overlords. Waiting for the invasion force. For the Analytic Philosophy mothership. The Analytic Philosophy invasion force. Because that’s what it does: invade. Take over – that’s all it knows how to do.

Sending out its probes, analytic philosophy. Its drones. Scanning terrain. Working out plans of conquest. Multiplying itself. Machinating. Searching out every crevasse or crack where something else might be going on. Is this the only way European philosophy is to survive? Translated into Analytic Philosophy. Carried over into Analytic Philosophy. Transposed into Analytic Philosophy. Into Analytic Philosophy-ness.

Was there ever UK European philosophy? Was it only ever a dream? Did we dream it up, our entre academic life? Livia, and all that? Mercia? Is there a really a city called Merica, and do we live there?


The humanities can’t be seen anymore. Only out of the corner of the eye. Because they don’t matter in the new world.


It takes the humanities to diagnose what the humanities have become. It takes philosophy …

Are we the ones who understand? Us – uniquely us? The way the humanities have essentially been abandoned. Vacated. Cleared out. The way they’ve been left out in the rain. The way they’ve been packed up, ready for removal.

When will the great crash come? When, the great financial collapse? The end of the fiat currencies? The great Reckoning? When will the fall-apart come? When, the general ruination? When, the general Collapse?

We’re ready. We’re prepared. Our souls have already been hollowed out.


We’re already there! We already live in Limbo! We’re already in the afterlife! Already posthumous! The world’s already washed its hands of our kind. What we do doesn’t matter. What we are doesn’t matter.

We’re perfectly – useless. And liberated into uselessness. Freed into it, as into the sky. The sky of perfect uselessness. As good for nothings. As unproductives. As idlers in the garden of non-knowledge.


We’ve already had the lobotomy. We’ve already been turned inside out.

We died a long, long time ago. And we’re used to it. We take it for granted, our posthumous lives. We’re nothing other than posthumous. As though we’d been dead for fifty thousand years. For fifty thousand generations.


Our poor heads don’t work, and they’ve never worked. Lost in after-death clouds. In after death vagueness. There’s nothing clear about us. Noting determinate.

We’re like those people of lower than 80 IQ who will never be good for anything. Like the unborn. Like the babies who died in childbirth and float forever in Limbo.

We’re the blessed ones. We’re the unsaved and unsavable. We’re nymphs. We’re orphans. We’re the Lost Boys and Girls.

We were bashed on the head. We’re Simple. We’re Touched. We’re Foolish.

A beautiful stupidity. A gently retardation. We lag behind the world, and behind everything.

We see the campus through European eyes. We see the ruination, which the university calls world-beating success. We see the disaster, which the university calls triumph. We see the voiding, the emptying out, which the university thinks of as productivity.

We see the shadow of the university. The non-university, the un-university. We see the disastered university. Voided of itself. Of its history.


The ruination changes everything, but leaves it all intact. It’s all exactly the same as it was, but changed, utterly.


The ruins only appear as ruins when you know that they do not matter. That they’re passing away. That the form of life to which they belong, which gave them sense, is disappearing.

They’re not ruins to anyone else – true. They’re barely seen. They’re incidental. Everyone looks past them.

They’re revealed in its uselessness. Which is to say, in their ignorability. In the way that they don’t matter to anyone. Which is part of their ruination.


And our voices echoing amongst the ruins. Our stupid voices, crying out. Because we’re the children who play in the ruins. In their ruins.

Because we’ve been admitted like children into an old folk’s home – to cheer them up with our life. Our liveliness. Our stupidity. Our antics. We’re here as the entertainment. And we’re not even that entertaining anymore.

No one would see it as ruined but us.


The ruins. Do we even know what ruins are? Weren’t we brought up in the ruins? Haven’t we known nothing but ruins?


Ah, but we have a sense of who these ruins would be ruins for, that’s the thing. We keep a memory of those before us. More intelligent than us. More learned than we are. More wide-read.

We know how they’d see it, those thinkers we admire. Wouldn’t they see this as loss, as disaster?

We are their conscience, in some sense. They continue in us, even in our stupidity. Their thoughts echo in ours – in our stupidity. Their ideas sing even now in our idiocy.

And of what do they sing? Of ruination, of course. Destruction, of course. The end of the end of the end, of course.

Terrible that we should be the only ones who remember the traditions. Tragic that the memory of those thought-traditions should have fallen to us. Aberrant that we should be their legatees; that we should continue their thoughts.

Europe! We carry Europe forward in the new world! We are the memory of old Europe, of old European thought. It’s fallen to us, the undeserving. It’s been given to us, the unwarranted.

Europe! The last of Europe! The final effort of old Europe! What Europe flung ahead of itself: us!

De-volution is a thing. Dysgenics are a thing. General stuntedness. The great Diminishment. The uber Stunting.

But what makes us stand out is that we know the stuntedness. That we know the dimunition. That we are aware of the dysgenics that produced us, the likes of us.

Which is why we know the ruins as ruins. Which is why we know ourselves to be ruiners, part of the great ruination. As stranglers, even if we don’t want to be. As destroyers, even if we don’t want to be. As murderers, even if we don’t want to be.

It’s all we know how to do: destroy. Even if we think that it’s the opposite of destruction. It’s all we know how to do: murder. Even if we think we do the opposite of murder.

Even our European philosophy reverence is a form of ruination. Even our text-worship. Our throwback existentialism. Our philosophical relic hunting.


It’s fallen to us, European thought. We are the inheritors, we who cannot grasp what has passed down to us.

We introducers and contextualisers. We writers of secondary commentary. We underlings and underdogs. We fuck ups. We wrong-in-the-heads. We second-raters. Third raters. We duh-brains and dullards. We remedials. We fuckwits.


In permanent religious crisis. In permanent philosophical crisis. What we take to be religion. What we take to be philosophy. But that’s really only the collapse of philosophy. And the collapse of religion.


Best let that European world die, rather than go on like this. Better let it simply vanish, rather than preserve it as we do. Forgetting would be a better fate. Rather than ossified. Rather than frozen. Commented upon. Introduced. Contextualised. Ruiners …


The ruiners are at home in the ruins. Their ruins. The ruiners are happy with the ruination, ultimately. Except us! What’s wrong with us?


We’re just part of the ruination. Just another phase of it. We make it happen in new ways.


Livia only wanted us to fail. Success sickened her. Livia only set us up to fail. To ruin. To lay waste.


We despise what we love, even as we think we love it. We destroy it. We vandalise it.

Why did Livia want us to vandalise it?


She loved our love for European thought, Livia. She wanted to unleash it, our love – even as she knew it as destruction. She wanted our love – as ruination. Because we could only ruin what we loved. How painful it was for us! And how loving! And that’s what Livia loved: knowing that we, too, understood we could only destroy what we loved.


Let the world be interesting at least, Livia said. Let the end of the world be entertaining. Let wrong things happen rightly, and the right things happen wrongly Let there be confusion. A pell mell. Let it all unleashed. Let the end become more feverish. More febrile. More intense.

They’re acting as if, Livia’s professors, even if they don’t that their acting as if. It’s all as if European hadn’t been destroyed. They’re playing let’s pretend – even if they don’t think they’re playing let’s pretend. As if Old Europe were still Old Europe. As if the atrocity hadn’t happened. As if Abomination wasn’t rampant. As if the great hollowing hadn’t occurred.

They’re fossil Europeans. Throwback Europeans. To a time when Europe was still Europe. They haven’t grasped the European voiding. The European cavitation. They don’t get that Europe only lives on in effigy. In simulacra. And they, too, are nothing more than effigies and simulacra.


They’re part of the old European bloodstream, Livia’s professors. Pumped out from the old European heart. Still running with old European blood. As if that heart was still beating. As though Europe were still alive.

Only Livia had accepted the European death. Only she grasped it – that a new world had opened – a new non-world.

Europe! What does that word mean anymore? The Europe of thinkers and poets and artists … The Europe of the great European culture … The Europe that believed in Europe, in its thinkers, its poets, its artists … The Europe that wasn’t yet a museum … Wasn’t simply an archive … It’s gone, it’s all gone.


They thought they still lived in European time, Livia’s professors. They thought Europe still existed. That they might retire to Europe, or something. That it would still be there when they went back.

They didn’t feel the European hangover. They hadn’t grasped the European tragedy. And the fact that the tragedy that wasn’t experienced as a tragedy, which is part of the tragedy.

They didn’t understand the European disaster, Livia’s professors. Which wasn’t even suffered as a disaster, which is part of the disaster. The European catastrophe. What could it mean – when no one even knows it as catastrophe?

The last European poet is long gone. The last artist. The last novelist. The last philosopher, God knows. The last playwright. The last composer. The last, the last. There are no more European miracles left.


They didn’t understand, Livia’s professors, that the Anglo-American way of thinking has essentially conquered Europe. Has essentially destroyed it. Which is to say the organisational management way of thinking and being. And the analytic-philosophy way of thinking and being.

It’s wipe-out. It’s European Armageddon. Nothing’s strong enough. There’s nothing that can withstand it all. Nothing that can resist. The Anglo plague has been released.

It’s begun, and that means it can only play out. It’s started, which means it can only unfold, only fan out. Only spread and spread.

Germany’s fallen. France will, in time. Mitteleuropa. All the universities. The culture.


The true inheritors of European thought must understand the impossibility of inheritance. The true legatees of European ideas must grasp that there can be no legacy of European thought – not anymore.

That the chain has broken! That the line cannot hold! There’s nothing that can be passed down, and no one to receive what has been passed down. There’s a crisis of inheritance.

We’re the real inheritors – because we know ourselves to be incapable of inheritance. We’re the only legatees – because we know that we’re incapable of receiving a legacy.

We who are open to old Europe know ourselves to be essentially closed to old Europe. We who wish to inherit the thought of Old Europe know that there is nothing to inherit.

And this is our Europeanness. That we know only the nothing of Europe, the void of Europe. The fact that Europe can only be inherited as void.

Which is why idiocy is the only possible relation to the legacy of European traditions. And drunkenness. The drunken yearning to be worthy of European inheritance. That the ideas of Deleuze could be passed down to us. The thoughts of Ricoeur! Of Gadamer!


We’re the legatees of European philosophy, because we cannot be its legatees. We’re it’s caretakers, UK European philosophy, because we cannot be its caretakers. We’re its memory-keepers, because we cannot keep its memory. The ones it’s been entrusted to, because it cannot be entrusted to us. We’re the ones who will pass it down, because we cannot possibly pass it down.


Derrida’s looking up at us. Deleuze, hoping not to be disappointed. Mainlander. Hartmann. All the European jewels. All the European treasures. They’ve fallen to us! Who merely play with European jewels. Who merely toy with European treasures.


The undeserving! The thought-deficient! The ailing! The failing! The miserable! The stupid! We’re the ones to whom the baton has been passed, even though we immediately dropped the baton. We’re the ones who are supposed to carry the flame, even though we all at once extinguished the flame. It all depends on us, even as it cannot possibly depend upon us.


Soon, there will be no more UK European philosophy departments left! They’ll have closed the others down.

Except for us! Except for Merica philosophy, in the belly of the Organisational Management beast. Us! We’re the ones! We’re the elected! The last of a breed! The last outpost!

And here in the northeast, far from anywhere! As remote as the old monastic communities who kept the memory of Europe alive. And its fallen to us! We’re the inheritors! We’re the legatees! It’s been handed down to us.

Apostolic succession. Heidegger – Arendt – etc. Husserl – Gadamer – the others. And us. Us!


We’re the ones! We’re the chosens! We’re the remnant.

The really smart PhDs have gone where the money is. The power. The prestige. The smart ones have sniffed the air and fled the continental philosophy ship.

They’re betting on analytic philosophy. They’ve gone Anglo. Of course they have.