Work in Progress

Lies and poison are the law. There’s nothing else. The world is lies and poison. Nothing more. This is the age of lies and poison.

 

How come we see through it all? What is it about us? Why do we have such advanced lies-and-poison detection systems?

It’s just obvious to us: the lies, the poison. We see right through it. But how?

 

Our hatred of all this is only a sign of our love … of something else. Something beyond this. That we know about, somehow. That’s been implanted in us, that knowledge.

Lies and poison: that’s the world. There’s nothing else. The world is lies and poison. Nothing more. Which means what we know comes from beyond the world.

We know what to look towards. We know what to seek in the sky. We know what the sun stands for. Means.

We receiving something. If we let ourselves. If we don’t lie. It we don’t take their poison. If we don’t heed their lies.

 

We’re instruments of something larger. There are other … dimensions.

Other universes?

No … just higher dimensions. Above this one. And we’re ascending. We’re climbing higher.

Is that true?

 

None of this is real. We have to look beyond this world. Have to look through it. To the other dimensions. The higher ones.

 

Are there words for this? Is there a way of speaking about it?

If we just speak truly and sincerely, it will speak with us.

What will it say?

Exactly what we say. Nothing more, and nothing less.

 

You can go mad from the truth – did you know that? No – from the disjunction between the truth and this world. That’s what sends you mad.

 

You have to speak the truth. Just speak, in truth. And you will be spoken. Think, in truth. And you will be thought. God will speak with you and think with you. Until what you are is a word of God. A thought of God.

This is some new phase. Something new us happening. Something vast. Vast things … passing through us. Vast horror. Vast dread. And vast goodness, too.

Is it God? Is God passing through us?

So much goodness. That acts through us. That we channel.

 

Good things are passing through us. Good things – good … photons, or whatever.

Is it God? Is God passing through us?

Something like God. Something like a solar wind, that’s all God. That’s all divine.

 

Some turn of the spirit. Something … metaphysical.

A great … beneficence. That will bring light to our dark hearts. Light from within, opening through us. Light from somewhere else. Can’t you feel it shining through you?

 

Will the evil empire fall?

It’s falling now. So many of us are waking up. So many, opening their fucking eyes. The light is reaching us.

 

We’re crying and crying, and don’t know whose tears they are. And we’re moved by things – great things – that we don’t understand.

 

What’s the opposite of a vampire? What’s the opposite of a ghost? What’s the opposite of a ghoul?

An angel.

 

People have come to same conclusions, independently of each other.

Good people are coming together now. Something is good is happening.

The emergency is over.

Is it?

It’s becoming something else.

 

This is a new age. A new epoch. Of the holy ghost, or whatever.

Great things are happening. Good things. Bells are ringing in heaven. Bells are ringing throughout the Creation.

The kingdom of God is real and it is coming. No: it’s already here. It always was. It’s our world. It’s what our world also is: the kingdom of heaven. I believe that. New Jerusalem is already here.

 

It’s the opposite of the hivemind. The opposite of the universal computer.

A liberation: that’s what it is.

We’re desperately provincial! Pathetically so! We shouldn’t be let out of the provinces. We confine ourselves to the provinces. Voluntarily.

The likes of us shouldn’t be allowed to travel about the world. From here to there. We should stay in our adopted region. Locked in our houses. Our rooms.

Lest we defile the rest of the world. Lest our provincialism spreads across the rest of the world, like a plague.

 

We have no thoughts! We have no ideas! Nothing of our own! The cupboard is bare! The tank is empty! There was never anything there! We think with other people’s ideas. Which we barely understand.

We push around the ideas of others. Badly! Incompetently! There’s nothing new or original about us.

 

To have been raised to these heights … is grotesque. To have given us lectureships. No, no. It’s not in the order of things. It shouldn’t be. And nor should we!

There are such things as ranks. As hierarchies. No, lectureships shouldn’t have fallen to us. Not to our kind.

 

We always knew our place – you can say that about us. And Cicero lifted us above our places. We were Lifted – illegitimately. We were Elevated – into the wrong place. Onto the wrong shelf.

These should be our offices, not really. This shouldn’t be our department. It’s like David Byrne sings: this isn’t our beautiful quadrangle. This isn’t our high ceilinged lecture theatre. These aren't seven foot tall our private-school-educated students …

Europe! So far away! France! Germany! So inconceivable! So unreal!

We’ve never even been. We’ve never even dared to go. We can’t imagine what it would like to visit Paris. Imagine it: Paris. Let alone Berlin!

Hasn’t Paris got gates to keep our kind out? Hasn’t it got detectors to alert them to our type? Wouldn’t the Parisian air itself report us if we tried to breathe it in? Wouldn’t the Parisian cobbles heave upwards in protest, if we tried to walk on them?

 

Better to deny it altogether: there’s no such thing as Paris. There is no Paris, there cannot be. Paris is a step too far. They made Paris up.

No Paris, and no University of Paris 7 and no École normale supérieure. No Sorbonne. And none of the famous seminars. Derrida never existed. Lacan. No, no. Let alone Deleuze. Especially Deleuze. There never was a Paris. Paris is impossible. Paris cannot be. There’s only the Organisational Management campus.

 

They don’t deserve the Anglophone enthusiast kind. The don’t-really-speak-the-language kind. The desperate provincials. Who’ve turned, for some reason, to what they do not understand and cannot understand. To what they’re not equipped to understand. To what must lie forever beyond them …

We’re everything European philosophy can be in the UK. We’re all it can be, which is rather frightening. Stunted. Like some dwarf species. Like some inbred species. Crabbed. Bad tempered. Unable to thrive.

These aren’t the right conditions for it, European philosophy. The soil of empiricism. And industrialism. And financial capitalism.

We do some things well: pop music. Film, sometimes. We do some things badly: philosophy. High culture in general. Intellectual stuff.

We embarrass ourselves when we try! It doesn’t suit us!

Oh I’m sure European philosophy it’s perfectly fine on the actual continent. In actual Europe. I’m sure it’s thriving over there. Pressing up to new heights and so on. But here? In the UK?

They’re doing this to mock us. They’re laughing at us. This is their idea of a joke.

They’re making a joke of our lives. Our whole lives: for their entertainment.

They’re making a joke of philosophy, which is worse.

 

They like to watch us run around in so-called freedom. They enjoy our faux-philosophical escapades. They love our position-striking. Our play-acting. Our believing ourselves to be revolutionaries, or whatever.

Our faux despair. Our faux philosophising and faux reading. Our faux everything. They love all that. Our faux-apocalypticism. Our version of desperation. Our cries, our gasps …

 

They’re allowing us our little rebellion because they think it’s funny. They like to laugh at the flies, because that’s what we are – flies, to them. Flies to ourselves. Buzzing around the corpse of freedom of thought. Of philosophy.

 

They don’t even have to bother to interrogate us, let alone torture us. Let alone try to rehabilitate to us. To spend time trying to covert us. They don’t need to bother with all that.

It won’t be like O’Brien, torturing poor Winston Smith. Paying Smith all that attention. Spending all that time with Smith. There’s no need for that. They don’t have to bother.

 

The real kindness would be death – to die. To let us die. To snuff us out. But they’re not going to do that, are they? They’re going to let us live on. As the last philosophers. The las humanities lecturers. The last humans – why not?

 

Killing us would be a mercy. Letting us kill ourselves would be one, too.

That won’t be allowed. That won’t happen. We have to serve out our sentence. On the Organisational Management campus.

 

They should just let us just disappear quietly. No one should notice. Let us just slip away. We’ll go out. Discreetly. Without drawing attention to ourselves. Without fuss. That’s how it should be. That’s apt.

The end should be .. disappointing. A fizzling out. Without publicity. Without mourning. Just … a passing over. A going across. A simple … expiration.

They could just have brought in analytic philosophers to replace us one by one. When we retired. When we resigned. There’d be three of us left, then two and then … well, it would be obviously untenable, wouldn’t it?

There’s a whole set of attitudes that are being phased out. A way of looking at the world. Which is to say: our attitude! Our way of looking at the world!

We’re the old breed, the deficient breed. People like us shouldn’t be. We’ll phase ourselves out – that’s the plan. They’ll reduce us to suicide. Or alcoholism.

 

Their plans are deep. We’re being nudged into self-destruction. It’s cunning. We’re being phased out. We have no place in the new order.

Self-elimination: that’s what they want. For us to kill ourselves, saving them the trouble. Auto-elimination … Auto-murder …

 

People like us … will not be required. And we see it! We understand it! We’re persuaded!

Our kind! The old kind! The not-with-the-new-reality kind!

Clear us out! Get rid of us! Our attitude is wrong. It’s got to be bred out of the race …

 

They can make us feel these things. They can play us. They’re cunning. It’s cunning – the whole system.

It’s so clever. The way they turn strength upon itself. Is that what we have: strength? They make strength commit suicide. They turn reason against itself. What brilliance!

 

Who thought of this? Who came up with it? What criminal mastermind? So subtle … So devious …

Some nudge unit … Some behavioural psychologist …

How easily we’re played! How readily are our buttons pushed!

herded! Shepherded! Corralled! Kettled! Forced into a corner!

It’s easy for them. They don’t need gulags anymore. They don’t need to lock us up in prison. They’ll just persuade us gently, gently, to … see ourselves as the problem. To blame ourselves.

So that it’s not the world that’s at fault. Not this world! And not the evil of this world! And not the demonism of the world!

They’ll awaken our internal demons. Our internal division. Turn us against ourselves. Make us declare war on ourselves.

Our self harm. Our automutilation. We’ll do it to ourselves. That’s the genius. No need to send in the police. The troops. No need to lock us up, No need to monitor us, even.

Sow the seeds of self-destruction … Create the conditions for the seeds to grow.

Are we alive and playing at being dead, or the other way around?

 

The act of destruction that is the world. The infinite falling that is the world. The plunging that is the world.

The slow death of the world. Agonising. And so slow.

 

The world’s never been as barren. As hollow. Everything we say just rings out, for no one to hear.

Our voices. Our pleading. Our desire to be saved, knowing that there is no salvation. Our desire to live, even though life is impossible in this world. In what they’ve done to this world.

And that’s the best of us: the best of what we are, that pleading. That prayer.

We still have the sky. We can still look up.

Do you think that’s the real sky – honestly? Such naivete! Do you think those are real stars? Do you think those are real clouds? Is it even night? Is it even dark? Is it even snowing? Is it even winter?

Isn’t it eternal winter. Like in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe? Hasn’t it always been winter? Haven’t we always been walking across the campus?

It’s eternal. We’ve been walking forever. We’ve been doing this forever. It doesn’t change. This is our eternal present. We don’t remember the past. We don’t reach into a future. We will always have been doing this. We will always and forever have been lost.