Author: Lars Iyer

The way it all happens in the same way. The same happening in the same way. How do we stop that?

 

You show me that I was bored. That I’ve ben bored all along. I didn’t know I was bored, but I was. I want something new now. I just didn’t know I wanted something new until tonight.

 

But I thought everything was exciting for Organisational Management. That you were expanding. Opening new frontiers. Drawing down more money. Increasing your dominion.

But it’s all Organisational Management isn’t it? Nothing more. It’s the same thing happening in the same way. It’s the same logic. The same same. I’m bored, philosopher. I’m meta bored. I’m bored of my boredom. I’m the bored wife and you’ve arrived to …

Amuse you? Entertain you?

Save me. A knight on his steed, Philosophy.

A steed Organisational Management wants to break.

Perhaps we do. Perhaps we want to break you. Or perhaps we’re going to philosophy-whisper you. Like a horse whisperer. Win you over that way – with gentleness. By breathing gently into your nostrils. By saying calm things. Loving things. That way you’ll come to trust us.

And maybe I’m part of it, the philosophy-whispering. Maybe that’s my role. To bring you, the leader, on board. To persuade you that we don’t want to harm you. That we don’t want to do anything had to you at all. That we want simply to … protect you. Enclose you. Wrap you in our organisational-managerial arms.

 

Philosophy whispering won’t work. You’ll have to break us instead. You’ll have to crush us.

No one wants to crush anyone. That’s not where we’re at. Philosophy’s a chew toy, that’s all. Something that will entertain us for a bit

We need to say everything tonight. Because there won’t be another chance. This is the only night.

Do you think?

We have to say everything we can tonight. We have to communicate the most important things. Everything about who we are. About who we cannot help but be.

It’s all there in our simplest gestures. The history of our body. Our affective lives. All our essential loves and hatreds. Everything we’ve undergone. There it is: in our gestures. In the way we smile or the way we … kiss.

 

We’ll have to say and do and be everything tonight. Everything that we can be for each other. We’ll have to live and die entire lives, philosopher. Do you think that’s possible?

 

We need time, philosopher. The Pulse can give us time. To catch up with ourselves. To find a moment in which we can live.

 

Ask it for time, philosopher. Ask it to wait. We need time.

We need time to breathe. To get used to each other. To be with each other.

 

I’m getting accustomed to you, philosopher. To your ways. To your strange way of being. I’m beginning to feel at ease with you.

 

I could be a honey trap, philosopher. How do you know that I am what I say I am? That I’m not deceiving you.

I don’t think you’re a liar. I think you’re telling the truth. I can see it in you. You’re sincere.

Am I? I thought I was being ironical … and coquettish … and …

 

I’ve never had an affair, you know. I’ve never been tempted. I’ve never strayed. Oh I snogged a guy in New Zealand once. (Do you like that word, snogged? I saw you flinch.) But that didn’t count. I was on a kinda late gap year. Because I didn’t have one earlier on.

 

Am I sincere, philosopher? Do I mean what I say? It’s as though the saying were more important than what is said. The fact that I’m saying it. But now I don’t understand myself. What if I gave you a sincere kiss? What if I planted one on your philosophical lips?

 

I was ordinary when I was young I wasn’t anything special. I wasn’t particularly clever. I wasn’t especially soulful. I wasn’t anything, really. And now what am I? What have I become?

I don’t see why you should be especially interested in me. Maybe you like my wisftulness. Actually, I like my wistfulness. I like this experimental me. I like this kinda vague me. I like being adrift. I like the philosophical me. That’s who this is: the philosophical me. Who’s slipped free from Organisational Management – just for the night.

 

I want to say to my husband: I miss you, even when I’m with you. But that doesn’t seem very fair, does it?

 

An affair shouldn’t be trivial. It should be about something. If you’re going to betray someone, it should be for a reason. For something pretty fucking great.

 

All the best things are unrepeatable.

Doing something together. Being together together. That’s enough, isn’t it? Sharing whatever it is we share. Sharing sharing.

 

The fact that we can say a few things. The fact that we can say anything at all. Isn’t language something, philosopher? The capacity to speak. Although I expect you wish I’d shut up.

 

We should say the most important thing we’ve ever said. That I’ve ever said. Or you’ve ever said. Only I don’t know what it would be. Do you know what it would be?

Only I don’t know if I’d even notice I’d said it.

 

I think we could happen upon it by chance: the secret. The secret of everything. The secret between us. The secret at the heart of our lives.

 

God, what am I talking about? Why am I saying these things?

 

Philosophy: the word sounds like a dream. Wistful and gentle and tender. Like one of those flowers that opens in boiling water. Like a lotus, blossoming.

 

You’re actually just on the threshold of philosophy. Once you get into philosophy, it’s a whole lot more technical.

Technical? I don’t like the sound of that.

Philosophy’s badass logic and that sort of thing. Rigour. And analysis. And the construction of sound arguments. And the testing of your arguments. And engaging with ideas. And critiquing them. And all that busy stuff.

How disappointing. How academic …

 

Stuck: that’s what I am. In this life. Living this way. Only sometimes I don’t mind being stuck. But tonight, I mind.

 

I feel such dread, sometimes. I feel heavy with it: dread. Dread: is that the word? It’s a heavy word. Dread is a weight. A dreadful weight.

 

Are you, like, in touch with vagueness, too? Is it part of you, too?

 

The threshold of philosophy – opening in wonder or in horror or in vagueness. In the everyday. Even on this campus. Even here.

 

How do you summon it up, all this philosophy? How do you begin philosophy? Or do you just slip into it?

 

Something important’s happened. Something broke through. Something was allowed through.

 

We could be living a beautiful life. Not just you and I – everyone. We’re just on the verge of it. On the brink. We just have to turn a particular corner, and … there it’ll be.

 

The most beautiful day could begin today. Right now. That’s how it feels.

Something’s going to happen tonight – I can tell. Something new. The course of things has been … interrupted. Things will shift in some tiny, imperceptible, but all-important way.

Something that has nothing to do with us – with Organisational Management. A new star will appear in the sky, or something. I don’t know.

 

Something’s started up between us, right? Something’s happening. Don’t you feel a sense of Inevitability?

 

I always feel that if I woke up … then something would happen. But first I have to wake up.

But what does that mean – wake up?

From this life to … another one. To true life. How do you do that, philosopher: wake up to true life?

 

There’s a … weight upon me. Pressing down on me. Crushing me. There’s something holding me down. If I could lose it. If I could push it aside. What then?

 

Do you ever feel that you’re not living your life?

Whose life are you living?

I don’t know. I’m not sure.

 

Do philosophers feel unreal? Are you supposed to feel unreal? This might not have been my life. None of this might be real. Do you remember When Narada asks Krishna what Maya is? Maya can’t be explained, Krishna says. It has to be experienced, Krishna says. They walk into the desert. Krishna sinks down. I’m parched, he says. I need water.

So Narada goes off to find water. An oasis. A beautiful woman, fetching water. She quenches his thirst. He follows her to her family house – the house of a chieftain. So taken is he that he asks for her father for her hand in marriage. The chieftain accepts, and he’s married.

Soon, he is blessed with four children. When the chieftain dies, he becomes chieftain in turn. Then: disaster. A flood comes. He loses his wife, his children. He cries out, My life is gone, my children drowned. How can I live without them. And a voice comes, Narada, I am thirsty. Where is the water?

Narada turns, and beholds Krishna, in the desert. Come to your senses, Narada, Krishna says. There never was any wife or children. It was all maya.

 

So you see, I might wake up and none of this was real. Not even Organisational Management …

 

Do you believe in past lives? Do you think there was something between us, once upon a time? In another life? Or will there be, in the future? In a future life?

 

Did we know each other in another life? It feels that way. It’s simple to talk to you. It’s easy. Ease is not a thing to be underestimated.

 

See this is so light. Talking like this. Feeling our words float up.

Are you a gamer, philosopher? You can game here. It’s like a giant Wii. I don’t game, either. Strategy games. Business games. Even Organisational Management games. We’ve commissioned them, anyway.

Organisational Management games – what larks!

This is how we amuse ourselves in Organisational Management. Makes learning fun. And fun, learning.

 

We can’t get lost here, can we?

If we can get lost in our heads, we can get lost in the Pulse. The Pulse takes us on a voyage into our heads.

 

I think the Pulse is real and nothing else is. The Pulse came before anything.

 

The Pulse reads us. The whole building’s intelligent, but the Pulse is the most intelligent.

 

You can ask the Pulse questions, you know.

Pulse, what’s the meaning of life, over. Pulse, are aliens planning to invade the Earth? Pulse, is Organisational Management part of an alien invasion force? Pulse, are there really Nephilim floating about? Pulse, are Organisational Management going to win? Pulse, is there any such thing as Philosophy on your home planet? Pulse, is philosophy going to survive?

 

Pulse, desert scene number one please.

 

Show us your homeworld, Pulse. How many light years have you come, Pulse? What do you want from humanity? Is Organisational Management an alien idea? How about analytic philosophy?

Not yet philosophy. I don’t think it’s the same as not yet Organisational Management. I don’t think there actually is a not yet Organisational Management. Organisational Management’s always gotten going.

 

Not yet philosophy. Philosophy that has forgotten that it’s doing philosophy. Or perhaps philosophy that doesn’t know it’s philosophy.

Amnesiac philosophy. Philosophy that doesn’t call what it does philosophy. That doesn’t know itself as philosophy. Philosophy that doesn’t know itself yet. Philosophy that hasn’t woken to itself yet.

Pre-philosophy. Philosophy that hasn’t gotten onto the serious business of being philosophy. Playful philosophy, maybe. Philosophy too distracted to be philosophy. Philosophy that’s forgotten what it was supposed to be doing.

Philosophy, daydreaming. Woolgathering. Philosophy that’s lost all grip on itself. Philosophy in a hammock. Philosophy … surprised by philosophy. Philosophy that’s been struck on the head. And now … has those little tweety birds turning round it.

Philosophy, asking everyone, what’s philosophy? Philosophy, shouting in the streets, WHAT’S PHILOSOPHY? Laughing in the streets

Noy yet philosophy. Not anything philosophy. Nothing whatsoever philosophy. Beginning nothing. Finishing nothing. Philosophy’s that’s all excuses.

Philosophy without any of the responsibility to do philosophy. To be philosophical. To take itself seriously.

Fun philosophy – is that it? Light as a feather philosophy. Comic philosophy. Divine comedy philosophy. The idiot cousin of philosophy. Philosophy that’s changed its name.

Philosophy, humming to itself. Philosophy, writing a poem.

I don’t even know what to want. Sometimes. This constant, low-level … whatever.

Anxiety.

That sounds too intense. It’s vaguer. Vaster. It’s bigger than us. And it’s indifferent to us. And we don’t matter to it. And it barely matters to us, or so it seems. Like drifting smoke. Like curling tendrils of smoke.

And it fills me with such a sense of disengagement. Like nothing matters.

Like a nihilism cloud.

Like melancholy. But it’s not my melancholy. It’s a kind of sadness in everything. A mute silence. If things could speak, that’s what they’d say. I’m melancholy: that’s what they’d say. But that’s not it, either. They’d say, there’s melancholy. Melancholy’s drifting through us like a cloud.

 

A great floating it-doesn’t-matter. That just floats around, more or less invisibly. Waiting to pass through everything and everyone. Possessing us. Or dispossessing us.

 

I’m confused, philosopher. But it’s not my confusion.

 

You lose yourself. Lose hold of yourself. Just disperse into the air. That’s what happens. Your attention just floats away. Who you are. What you care about.

That’s what it’s like being me.

 

Nothing in the head, philosopher. Nothing in the fucking head.

 

We’re falling together, philosopher. That’s something.

 

That one day passes, then another. That nothing changes. That things go on, philosopher. Indifferently to me. And to you. And to everyone. And it all just goes on. And maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe it should all stop.

 

How do we achieve the perfect dissociation? How do we find our way there? How do we leave ourselves, perfectly? Wake up from our bad dreams?

 

As though we were watching ourselves on TV from far away.

This is the making of philosophy, really. This is how we’ll become really interesting. Being crushed … helps.

The conditions are here for … great thought, maybe. Real thought.

A sense that there’s no way out. That’s what might do it. The pressure. This is our chance. Genuine oppression. Like Eastern Europe all over again.

The world is ending and will never finish ending. The world is doing nothing but end. These are the last days. They will always be the last days.

Everything is wrong. Everything is bewildered and disgusting. And reeling. It’s all reeling. The whole Creation.

 

How can we speak about how disgusting everything is? How do we speak of it? With what vocabulary? What words can we use? What words that aren’t lies?

I want to say a single true word. A single word, in my own name.But what is my name? What are our names? What would God call us, if there was a God?

 

Something’s come over the world. Something’s befallen the world. A shadow.

I see the shadow of wings.

Whose wings?

Satan’s wings. Because Satan’s falling. Satan’s always falling. Satan’s falling in our fall.

 

How far further? How much further is there to fall.

Oh, much further.

 

The evil at the heart of Organisational Management. The very heart. The base of operation. It all radiates from here. Does it? It all radiates out from here. Like that tower in Mordor.

I’m going to off on very long term sick-leave. Because I’m very very sick. In the head.  But I don’t want to miss it. I want to watch it all unfold. All the horror. Every component of it. Every part.

It’s mesmerising, the unfolding of our downfall. It’s the best show in town. Our slow fucking strangulation. I take pleasure in it. I like watching them at work.

Even when they’re destroying you?

Especially then. It’s a form of attention. I like that we’re so watched. So monitored.

Come on – they’ve done it a thousand times before. They’re just applying a crush-the-enemy programme. It’s not about us.

But I so like being crushed. I’m suited to this.

You’re a masochist.

Of course I’m a masochist. I like seeing how they work. How they destroy us. The attention to detail. They’re practised at this. It feels bespoke. I feel special. Like they’re paying special attention to me.

 

It’s amazing that our fantasies are being reduced to this.

 

There are always new depths to my masochism. New ways for it to unfold. I like it. It’s beautiful. It’s so complex and rich, my masochism. My masochism’s so much more interesting than I am.

The only interesting thing about us is our psychologies. Or rather our psychopathologies. They’re blooming, interestingly. We’re developing all kinds of interesting fetishes.

We’ve found a way to enjoy our pain. Suffering’s become a thrill. And humiliation. That’s what it’s about. We’re turned on by the System. By very powerful organisers. And managers.

 

The only truly individual thing about you is your malady.

Malady – is that what we’re calling it?

Our disorders. Our mental disease. They’re just adaptations. They’re a way to wring some pleasure out of all this madness. To pretend we have some kind of perverse agency. Even if it’s agency just to get turned on by the madness.

Are you actually turned on by cruelty? By Organisational Management?

It’s how we adapt. We have to find pleasure where we can.

We haven’t got souls. What we call souls is just … our complications. The depths of our humiliation. The way our humiliation registers.

 

What our strategy? What are we going to do?

We can have no strategy. We can’t out-strategise these guys. This is Organisational Management, for fuck’s sake.

Unless our strategy is no strategy. To give up strategy. Forward planning. Any idea that this is all leading somewhere.

We should just wait for it all to just EXPLODE.

That’s a strategy?

It’s collapsing, even as it appears to be succeeding. It knows that its days are numbered. That it’s fucked. The incorporation of philosophy is just one of its last gasps – the system, the total system.

 

It’s, like total triumphal. Running everything. Until it doesn’t. Until it breaks down, or whatever. Until it falls apart. Which could happen at any moment. Organisational Management could just … collapse.

These regimes don’t last forever. It looks as though they’re perfect and seamless, but they’re not. They’re brittle. They can break.

So let’s destroy it. We have to work out where the weaknesses are. Where they’re vulnerable.

 

This is our onboarding. That’s what it’s called.

 

Don’t be awed. Don’t be overwhelmed. Don’t be taken in by all this shit. These buildings. This purple office. Don’t think this is real. It’s not real. It’s a dream. The world’s a dream.

Is it?

 

They’re making us devise the way we can make ourselves fit in. Of course they are. Saves them the trouble. They outsourcing to us finding a way to destroy ourselves. They’re going to make us do it to ourselves.

 

This is how we’re being colonised, right? This is how they work on us. It’s devious. We’re going to be our own police. We’ll police ourselves.

We’ll crush ourselves. Admonish ourselves. Wag fingers at ourselves. That’s how it’ll work.

 

It’s amazing that they’re taking time to crush us. That they’re putting effort into it. It’s a sign that they see us as a real threat. Isn’t that something? I like being a real threat.

A threat that they’re going to crush.

But that takes effort to crush. Planning. Forethought. It’s so flattering. It’s like we have actual efficacy, or something.

 

They can’t be explicit about what they’re doing. Not even to themselves. They can’t view themselves as oppressors. As powerful, even. As anything less than kind.

So they’re killing us out of kindness.

Of course. For our own good. They see themselves as helping Philosophy. At helping us adjust to the new world. As bringing us on board. They’re sharing something with us. Secrets. Of how the world works. Of what the world is. They think we don’t know. That we have so much to learn.

 

I want to kill myself.

You want to kill the old you. The pre-Organisational Management you. The new you is what this is about.

God!

What are you going to do – protest? Who you’re going to protest to?

The universe. I’m going to protest to the universe. I’m going to cry up to the universe. To the blank sky. For no one to hear.

God hears.

Fuck off, Io.