We’ve become as one (except you maybe, Io). We think as one (not you, perhaps, Io). We use the same words (excepting you, Io). We think about the same things (you think more about God, Io). The same things occupy us (nearly the same). We’re at the bottom of the same pit (even you, Io). We scream in the same night, with the same scream (even if God hears your screams, Io).
God hears your screams, too Io says.
Why do we actually use these names she gave us? Cicero’s names? I mean, we don’t have to now she’s … gone.
We’re used to them, I guess.
They‘re like superhero names. I do not want to be called Nigel anymore.
I like Furio …
I was never keen on Driss …
Have you seen an angel, Io? A like, punk angel?
No.
Do you have any special angel summoning powers? Can you pray one up for us?
Io, shaking her head.
So what’s the deal with the bad angels – are there bad angels?
A tenth of angels fell.
Lucifer fell, didn’t he?
Lucifer was their leader. Very beautiful. His name meant, morning star.
Is Lucifer Satan? I’m confused.
Same difference.
There were bad angels, right?
The sons of God had sex with human females. That’s what it says in Genesis. And the Nephilim were born. Who were all wiped out in the Flood. But who survive as disembodied spirits, looking for someone to inhabit. So don’t play with Ouija boards, kids.
We’ve left history behind. We’re in some new realm now. Spiritual time – maybe that’s it. Metaphysical time, or whatever. As in the days of Noah, right Io?
We are the uni: that’s what the Union used to say. But we aren’t the uni – we can’t be. And it’s the way that we’re not of it – the way we negate it that is the point. We’re the opposite of all this. Philosophy is! Philosophy’s the great no to it all – European philosophy, at least.
This is the Organisational Management prison. The Organisational Management incarceration.
Only it presents itself as the Organisational Management ark – as Organisational Management salvation. It’ll only save us by killing us.
Trapping Philosophy. Incarcerating Philosophy. That’s what it’s about. They need to do it.
But why Philosophy?
Because it’s the queen of the fucking sciences, of course. To show the Queen of the Sciences who’s boss. Make it do its bidding.
Organisational Management wants us buckled. Bowed. It wants our servility. That’s how it knows it’s alive.
It’s how it knows it is what it is.
What?
It’s about the self-definition of Organisational Management. Organisational Management itself is founded upon the confining of Philosophy. Upon discipling it. Showing it who’s boss. That’s its condition.
Organisational Management wants philosophy to live on – in Organisational Management. Organisational Management wants to preserve Philosophy – in a kind of museum. Within itself.
Organisational Management’s going to let philosophy live. But defanged. Made safe.
The incarceration of Philosophy will confirm Organisational Management as Organisational Management. As stronger than Philosophy – better than it.
We’re in the Organisational Management archipelago. In the Organisational Management penal colony. In the Organisational Management mental asylum. Because isn’t that what it is?
The Organisational Management campus is just a more intense version of what the world already is. Technocracy – nothing but technocracy.
And it's essential that they let Philosophy live on – in captivity. That's part of it.
These science fiction buildings.
How much did they cost? How can the university afford this?
Organisational Management money, right? Organisational Management drew it down.
From where? From Galacticus?
From the globalists. Or whoever. From the powers and fucking principalities.
They’ll be building these places all over the world. Places like this. From some globalist blueprint. From some globalist kit, shipped to your city in big boxes. Or 3D printed …
An Organisational Management campus, rising up out of some brownfield site in a city near you.
It doesn’t hide the fact that it’s technocratic that’s the thing. It’s like it’s boasting about being technocratic. It’s unashamed. Unabashed. It doesn’t want to be anything else.
The light shining from their surfaces.
They were designed this way. To reflect the faux Northern Lights. To flash it back to the false sky. To the satellites, watching us.
Dwarfed, that’s what we’re supposed to feel. By metal. By our metallic future. By the light flashing on metal.
What do they want with us? Why did they build these things?
Because they can.
Because they have metal hearts.
Because they have no hearts.
Because they weren’t born to a human mother. Because they’re aliens. Or lizards. Or something. Because they’ve beamed in from another dimension.
Sharp buildings. Shards, flying jaggedly upwards.
Thorn buildings. Metal thorns, cracked through the ice.
It’s got a kind of military feel. Like these are weapons, or something. Aimed at the sky.
They’re all at angles, these buildings. Shafts of metal stuck in concrete. Like they’re stabbing up the fake sky.
It’s like the crown of thorns. Metal thorns sticking up from the earth.
Metal cladding. Like some metal armour – protecting what?
All this metal cladding. metal exoskeletons …
Because otherwise they just wouldn’t look inhuman enough.
Why does it all have to be metal?
For, like, maximum alienation.
Who actually wants to live in science fiction?
The effectivised campus.
Is that a word?
The operationalised campus.
They’re like giant robots. Mega-synths. Ready to stride across some apocalyptic landscape. Of fly off into the burning sky like metal pterodactyls.
They’re a sign of their hatred. For all of us. For humanity.
Humanity … there’ll be no humanity, soon.
Stupidity is the clue. Stupidity is the doorway. It’s unfathomable, our stupidity. It has depth. It is something, rather than a lack of something.
They talk of radical evil. Shouldn’t they also talk of radical stupidity? It’s not just being thick.
The desert grows, Cicero said. But we are creatures of the desert. We’re nothing but desert.
Pass the mead. I need more mead.
Only mead can save us now – is that it?
Let’s listen to the mead. Let’s channel the mead. What’s the mead saying?
Share some mead wisdom. What have you learnt in your mead researches?
I’m lost in a mead-hole. It’s kinda like a k-hole.
Peasants drank mead. Peasants and monks.
We’re philosophical peasants.
Mead’s the drink for the serfs of the new technofeudalism.
Mead is made from honey, it says here. It’s also know as honey wine.
So it’s a wine?
In its fucking dreams.
What’s the terroir – dead peasants? Turnips? Jesters’ caps? Yorick’s skull? Authentic Python and the Holy Grail mud?
Mead was in the Rig Veda. They called it soma. The ancient Greeks drank it, too. Aristotle writes about it.
I thought they drank wine?
Mead was the drink of choice, in the ancient world. The same in the Dark Ages. Taliesin, the Welsh bard, wrote the Song of Mead. They drank wine in Beowulf, too. And in Germanic poetry. It’s what the heroes drank.
Must have been mead in Newcastle, too. All these monks were here. Back when we lived under Danelaw.
Of course there was mead. Monks kept bees, so they made mead. Newcastle was all about the mead, back in the day.
It’s making a comeback, apparently. The hipsters are all drinking mead.
We should forget philosophy and open a mead bar. Ride the mead revival.
There is no mead revival.
Shouldn’t we drink mead from a flagon? Does anyone have a flagon? On a tankard?
We should have departmental tankards. With our names on each one. And a departmental mead cellar.
Are you getting any mead visions, Fiver?
Mead is the antidote to poison. And lies. Maybe. Can you speak a lie when you’ve got some mead inside you? Just try.
What’s the mead terroir?
It doesn’t have a terroir. It grows from honey.
Honey’s from floral nectar, isn’t it? So it’s from flowers. Which means from the soil – the terroir.
Mead’s, like, nine thousand years old. It’s pre-agriculture. The oldest fermented drink.
We should start a meaderie.
Is that what they’re called?
A meaderie life … I can see it now. Experimenting with fermentation. Adding spices – cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg. Adding herbs – meadowsweet, hops, lavender. Adding fruit – raspberries or blackberries. Fermenting it with grape juice. Or mulling it for Christmas. Serving it warm … Meadsters, that’s what we’d be in another life.
See mead doesn’t have the class associations that wine does. Mead is about the common person. The common peasant.
Wine is Cicero’s drink. Mead is ours. The drink of the common person. Of the vassal. Of the serf. Of the peasant. And that’s what we’ll be, once they bring in digital IDs.
We’d go back to the soil. Back to the earth. Back to the bees.
Shame all the bees are dying. There are only about three left, apparently.
We should revive the ancient Northumbrian production of mead. Learn to learn to keep bees.
The mead life, that’s what I’m dreaming of. A Northumbrian cottage. With a garden of beehives. With a fermentation barrel …
Going round the markets, selling our homemade bottles of mead. Jesmond market, on the bridge. Hexham market, in the marketplace. Do you think we could make a living at that?
We wouldn’t have to go to meetings, anymore. No more Boards of Studies.
Mead’s the taste of summer.
Summer distilled into honey, and then distilled into mead.
Do you think Hölderlin drank mead?
Maybe he should have done.
Wow, it’s fizzy. Fizzy mead. Who knew?
It’s always Chinese year of the chimp, in our meetings. Is there actually a Chinese year of the chimp?
Take charge, Shiva! Take the reigns! We need your leadership! Results! Tell us what we should do! Channel Cicero! What would she tell us?
Let idiocy decide. Let idiocy speak! Clear the floor! Channel idiocy! Come on, Driss, you’re really good at that. Let’s have an idiocy séance. Let’s let ourselves be infected by some idiotic demon, by some demon of idiocy.
Look, it’s actually an emergency. We’re in the open maw of Organisational Management. Even if it’s just foreplay at the moment. Even if they aren’t really fucking us over yet.
The autumn term. The new academic year: that’s when it will have to be implemented. By summer … the plans for to be in place.
Look, if we give a little …
Then they’ll take everything. We have to resist.
There’s still a long time left. We’ve got a few months left. We have to give them our plan by summer.
We won’t make it to summer. World war 3 or 4 or 5 will have broken out. We’ll have been conscripted. Shot at the front.
Why don’t we talk about what we’re working on?
Okay, what are you working on?
Why don’t we talk about the … purple?
Fuck the purple.
The purple is really getting to me.
We need to protest! If only we could glue ourselves to something.
You’re leading from below, Shiva. From under the table.
We need to slump, I say. Get horizontal. The vertical axis shouldn’t be available to us. We should be too ashamed to be vertical.
Work in Progress 