Work in Progress

We have to remain in the gnostic tension. We had to stay at a Gnostic peak. That’s what the wine’s for. We have to keep in tip-top Gnostic condition, like athletes. It’s the only way the forcefield will hold.

What forcefield?

The one that maintains the polarities.


Gnostic thrills, for sheltered academics. Gnostic chills, they’re multiplying, for the academic lock-ins and shut-ins …


We should get gnostic uniforms. Gnostic outfits. Gnostic hats, like the ones Devo used to wear.


Livia wasn’t capable of full Gnosticism – she knew that. It was up to us.

Didn’t stop her from whispering Gnostic instructions like a Zen master. Gnostic koans. Setting us Gnostic riddles.


Do you know any Gnostic snogs? Or Gnostic poems? Give us a Gnostic recitation.


We’ll never be drunk enough. We’ll never be Gnostic enough.

Asking Chat GDP about the essentials of cult leaders.

Authority. Sure. Charisma. She had that. Perceived expertise. Check. Sure, we thought she was the bee’s knees, with her chair in mathematical philosophy, or whatever …

Demanding absolute loyalty. Check. Keeping members psychologically isolated – check. Exerting control over daily life. Obviously!

Giving members a new role, a new name, a mission. Like, textbook. Especially empowering, if they previously felt invisible or directionless. Like duh …

Manipulation disgusted as love or enlightenment. Check.

Well, it wasn’t exactly love, was it? It wasn’t love bombing …

Hate bombing, more like. Simply insulting us.

But they were bespoke insults. They were very carefully crafted. I always thought it was a Zen master thing. A way of pushing us towards some kind of enlightenment …

Very culty.

Painting the outside world as dangerous and corrupt and rejecting.

The whole them or us thing – definitely!

Paranoia and persecution narratives.

Uh – obviously.

Emotional manipulation and entanglement.

Yup.

A feeling of being chosen.

Sure – for our idiocy.

Targeting the emotional vulnerable. People dealing with loneliness and depression. With low self-esteem.

Does it say anything about impostors’ syndrome?

Providing social identity and belonging … Rituals that amplify group cohesion …

Drinking at Trillians – that was the ritual. And she was always plying us with drink. lt could get positively Mad Men in the office.

Here’s another one: gradual escalation. The leader introduces harmful and controlling ideas step by step. Members barely notice the change.

The boiling frog principle. Maybe …

Making threats about spiritual or existential consequences.

Philosophical consequences, maybe.

So where has she gone? Why did she disappear?

To increase her cult-leader mysteriousness. I don’t know.

Our temperament. Our kind. We’re eschatological by temperament.

We want the countdown.


We’re apocalypticists. That’s our type. It’s only ever permanent catastrophe for us. It’s the endlessness of the disaster. It’s everything sucks over and again.


Annihilation – that’s what we want! The grandeur of annihilation! Nothing tawdry! Nothing mediocre!


To fast-forward to the end. To accelerate into disaster. To press eject on it all. To fire the ejector seat.


We’re the volatiles. We’re the ones who ought to be under control.

Our pathology! Our psychology! We’re all death drive and nothing besides.


Imaginary revenge! On a world in which we never fit in. Never thrived. That seemed raised against us. That seem predicated upon the exclusion of our kind.

Livia was an anti-mentor. She encouraged wildness. Overgrowth. Overambition. Great, windy statements on this and that. On the history of being! On sacred history! On the Same and the Other.


Livia, encouraging our natural inclination to fanaticism. To apocalyptic bias. To the identification of malign entities directing all things.


Carelessness and impatience. Unfounded intuitions. Apocalyptic leaps in the dark.

As though we had no natural thought predators. No analytic philosophers to curb us. To cut us down when we needed it. No one asking for clarity. No one asking to tone down the hyperbole. No one to bring us to heel.


Livia wanted to build up a cell, she said. She wanted a cult. She wanted maniacs. And that’s what she got!

We were her version of the Spice Girls. There was stupid philosopher and pathos philosophy and conspiratorial philosopher and mad Christian philosophy and whatever the rest of us were. Each with something to bring to the team. Each with our special powers. Our special needs. Our deep, deep issues.


Always drunken escalation. Always rushing to judgement. Always mania.

Making vast, emotional claims. Bonding over the abyss. Over world-doom. Exaggerations! Diminished critical thinking!

Where everyone has to match the groups drunken, passionate tone.

Our negativity bias. Our apocalyptic bias. Our everything-is-doomed bias.

Our tendency to expect catastrophic outcomes. To focus too much on extreme conclusions. On worst case scenarios. On the end of the world!

Ignoring more moderate, realistic possibilities … Overestimating how sudden and total and irreversible things are going to be … Thinking from our fear and anxiety … As though everything were about to collapse …

Looking to fill our apocalyptic bingo cards …


Our apocalyptic thinking. Our Manichean thinking. Our mad dualisms of absolute good and absolute evil. Our understanding of life as a cosmic struggle.


The way we’re magnetised by bad news. The way we zoom in on threats.

Our catastrophizing. Our black and white thinking.

It’s group-think, of a sort. It’s a group polarisation. Where we drive each other to ever more extreme positions … Where we reward each other’s madness. Normalise it!

The way we don’t just agree, but intensify each other. In our apocalyptic echo chamber. In our impatience with careful reasoning. With all constructive solutions. In our ideological hothousing. In our drunken hothousing.

Always us versus them. Always goodies and baddies. Nothing is ever moderate for us. Always vortices of panic and hopelessness.


Like we’re always playing apocalyptic bingo. Like we’re looking to fill our cataclysmic bingo cards.


Our apocalyptic frisson. Our apocalyptic thrills.

Driving each other to even greater extremity! Feeding each other’s madness!

Reinforcement, right? Norm shifting. The extreme feels normal to us.

Moderation seems like naivete to us. The greatest naivete!

The local conditions of our thinking. The poor drainage of our heads. The special density of our skulls. The high spuriousness content of our brains.


Newcastle boulder clay. Its special density. Its organic layer. The humus of its topsoil. The glacial till of its subsoil. Its mix of clay and gravel. The activity of Geordie worms and microbes.


The poor drainage of Newcastle boulder clay. Lower yields – but more concentrated flavours. High mineral flavours. An earthy tang.

The old European terroirs of thought.

The brown earths of France and Germany. Thick, with an A-horizon, good for thought crops. The chernozem of eastern Europe – so deep and dark. So fertile. The luvisols of central Europe – full of clay in the B-horizon …

All the graves, in the European oil. The bodies. The fascisms. The … communisms. The revolutions and the failed revolutions.

Thoughts need history. And time. And stuff to think from. Like soil. Like a terroir.  


There are, like, mood terroirs. From which philosophies grow. Springing up from our desperation. And horror. And disgust.


Our mood depths. Our temperaments. What shaped us. Made us. Our histories. Our humiliations. And defeats.

And deepest of all: our idiocies. Our deep stupidity. On which our roots drink. From which our vines grow.

What we are! Most deeply! Our originary history. Our inability. Our impotentiality.


The theological profounds of our idiocy. The philosophical fundaments of our stupidity. The deep buried treasure of our idiocy. We can philosophise from that, too.

You can’t just synthesise wine. It’s about the whole process of cultivation. Of fermentation.

I’m sure it’s just a matter of throwing some chemicals together. Stirring them up. Hey presto – earth. And then you stick some vines in. Let ‘em grow. Harvest them. Wine, right? In fact, you probably don’t vines, or grapes, or earth. You can just cook it all up in a lab.

You can’t have lab grown wine. That’s not how it works.

Don’t be so precious.

The universe, philosopher. What could possibly be wrong with the universe. How could you possibly object?


The most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, right? Don’t you feel like you’re standing on holy ground?


It’s supposed to make you want to relinquish your boundaries. Your desire to organise and manage. It makes you feel small, right? And open.

And worshipful of the great organisational manager in the sky, no doubt.


The grandeur, philosopher. How can you accommodate the fact that it all exists?


Awe takes time, philosopher. Give it time.


Don’t you just want to melt into it?


Don’t you feel a bit godlike, seeing it all? It makes me feel grand. And jubilant.

It’s a monstrosity.


Sometimes I believe in God, philosopher. I have to. Just the idea that God shaped all this. All this awesome universe. And I’m full of reverence.


Awe. That’s the Grundstimmung. Forget your horrific vision.