Work in Progress

The Organisational Management move.

It’s a university suicide. It’s an SOS. It’s uni self-harm. Self-parody. As a way of saying to the world: look at what they’ve done to me. Look what they’ve reduced me to … It’s pathetic.

This is our re-education camp. They’re re-educating us through their stone. Through their towers. Through the patterns in the paving stones. Through the slogans written on their benches. Through their endless plaques.

They’re re-educating us through their gentle walkways. Through the building names. And the listening lampposts. Through their glass and steel. Through their surveillance equipment. Through their satellites, looking down.

 

The psychologists designed it all. The behavioural psychologists. At every turn, some behavioural psychology’s trick. Some subordination strategy. Some destroying of questioning and of the power to question.

This is what they’re doing to us. This is how they’re destroying us. How they’re making us capitulate. How they forcing us to think.

We should see it in the pavement – the patterned pavement. Is it supposed to hypnotise us? Is it supposed to placate us? We see it in the rivulets – in their channelled water. Is it supposed to tame us, too? Is it supposed to assist in our channelling?

We think we’re defeated – because of them. We think we’re crushed – and its their fault. We think they’ve won – but they haven’t won. We think we have no chance – but we do. We think we’re ruined – but we’re far from ruined.

The way we looked upwards at philosophy – that impressed Cicero. The way we held philosophy above everything. As drowning people look upwards to be saved.

You need philosophy more than they do: that’s what she said. And what you want from philosophy is greater, too.

Would-be thinkers are the best thinkers, Cicero said, on another occasion. Thinkers who do not presume they think. For whom thinking itself is a problem, and never straightforward. Thinkers who make a problem of philosophy – of what philosophy is. Of what thought is.

But we’re half mad, we told her. We’re deranged, we told her. Better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion, she said, quoting Kierkegaard. The passion of thought is to discover something that thought itself cannot think, Cicero said, quoting Kierkegaard again.

Who are we? Thrashings, nothing more. Convulsions. Corrupted. Twisted. Sick animals.

As sick as the world. As contorted as the world …

So what’s going in the real timeline? Are there versions of us?

I … guess so.

What are we doing? I mean … are we in Newcastle?

We would never have got jobs here … Cicero wouldn’t have needed us.

And where’d we be? What would we have been doing?

Stuck in part-time hell, probably. Whoring for work in one department or another. Invisible adjuncts, right? Thinking of packing the whole academic thing in …

We probably would never have got PhDs. That always seemed strange to me: that people like us could actually get PhDs. We’d never have got scholarships. Never have passed our MAs. Our BAs …

On the true timeline, we’d never have been born. Beautiful fucking idea! Never have opened our fucking eyes! Never even been conceived! We’d be literally in-con-fucking-ceivable, which is exactly as it should be …

 

I reckon she’s gone in search of the true timeline. She’s looking for admittance into the real world.

You can’t cross to the true timeline. All you can do is destroy this one.

So maybe that’s her plan: to destroy this world. Fuck …

We want to report ourselves, Organisational Management campus! We want to shop ourselves in! We’re extremists, basically. Domestic terrorists, basically.  

We’re objectors to enlightened managerialism, Organisational Management campus. Resistors of programming. Who aren’t thinking what we’re supposed to. Who aren’t steered by government-approved talking points. Upon whom behavioural psychology doesn’t seem to work.

We’re spreaders of disinformation, Organisational Management Campus! Of mal-information, probably! We’re not the sort you want around! We’re not going to be good global citizens! Your nudges aren’t working on us!

We’re allergic to behavioural psychology, Organisational Management Campus! To mass formation! We’re not going to be obedient! Your new normal isn’t for us! Your brave new world! We’re not and never will be good technocratic subjects! We haven’t got the temperament! We’re the wrong kind! We’re not the type to kiss the ring!

And it’s not even defiance, Organisational Management Campus! We can’t help it! We’re not drones! We’re not non-player characters! It’s a temperament thing. Who knows, it’s probably a mutation thing. There’s something wrong with us. It can’t be corrected. It can’t be gene-edited out. We're recalcitrants! Throwbacks! We're yesterday's people! 

So we volunteer for depopulation, Organisational Management Campus! We’ve put our hands up for the cull! Turn on your sirens! Let the spotlights find us! Send in the guard dogs! Or the killer drones! What does it take to get executed around here!?

Destroy us, Organisational Management Campus! We’re consuming precious resources! Polluting the campus! We’re useless eaters! We’re useless people! Doing a useless subject!

There’s even euphoria to be snatched from the ruin of the humanities. Of philosophy! Despair can be altered into joy. Hopelessness can be raised a notch, and then another notch.

We don’t feel so utterly defeated. We don’t feel quite as crushed. We can crawl out from under our stones. We’re no longer buried – not as deeply. We’re not completely lost in the wreckage.

Death isn’t just pressing into death. Horror-world isn’t quite as horrible. We can open our eyes in Hell. Laugh at our revulsion. It’s not quite the end of the world – not anymore.

There’s life in death – imagine that! It’s not entirely horror. Desolation is not quite as desolate. There’s a gap! A break! An opening. My God, we can breathe, if you can call this breathing. Some last, late gasp. Our negativity howling.

It's not revolution. It’s not the overturning of the world in blood and fire. But at least it’s a gasp. At least it’s something. At least we can see it all and hate it all and stand back from it all. At least we’re not entirely victims.

The strange joy of stupidity.

Stupidity, amusing itself. Stupidity, laughing at itself. Quite comfortable with itself. And isn’t that the problem: that stupidity is comfortable with itself?

 

Drunkenly contemplating it, our stupidity. Drunkenly pleased with it.

This is how we entertain ourselves. This is how stupidity entertains itself, passes the hours.

 

We have to experience the ache of our stupidity. The fact that it wants to be something else.

I don’t believe that.

 

What would we talk about, if we weren’t stupid?

We wouldn’t need to talk, that’s the thing. Stupidity is what we do. Stupidity is what holds us together. Stupidity is what we talk about. What we talk from. The twists and turns of our stupidity keep us alive.

 

Our stupidity display, like the courtship display of birds of paradise. Our stupidity dance. But who are we trying to seduce? Spreading stupidity’s peacock feathers … But there’s no one there to see.

 

Stupidity’s the only thing we have. The only thing that might save us.

From what?

From knowing our stupidity, of course.

How clever.

 

What makes us think that we’re especially stupid? Isn’t that a kind of hubris? I mean, why should we suppose that here’s something special about our stupidity? Something that sets it apart?

 

Are we God’s idiots? The devil’s?

 

Stupidity isn’t always meek. It isn’t always servile. Stupidity can roar. Can shout. Stupidity has a tempers.

And there can be peaceful stupidity, too. Sweet stupidity, lying on its back, looking up at the sky. Quiet stupidity, lying there in the water, keeping itself afloat.

As though a vast and subtle bomb had dropped. As if a soft explosion had blown through everything. Destruction – only without anything being destroyed. Ruination – but with nothing actually ruined.

Everything has been shifted, just a little. Moved sideways. Tilted, just a little. We do not live in the same world. The end has come and gone.

Our despair is real. It’s the realest thing about us.

We have instincts. We know what to reject. We know what’s wrong – utterly wrong – about the world. We know what to despise.

And we know what to love, too. We know in what direction we should turn.

We know we should lift our heads. We know that it’s from the sky that it will come. From on high. From the most high.

We know evil is not final. We know the world isn’t totally fallen. We know that sin is not absolute.

We know that the lies aren’t too great after all. The poison hasn’t worked after all. We not completely abandoned.

We know the clouds will part one day. We know the sun will come – the forbidden sun.