Work in Progress

We have to hate and we have to despair. We have to live the horror. Keep our minds on the worst.

 

Don’t let them cheer us up. Don’t let them bring us on side. Don’t smile! Don’t laugh with them. Don’t share their good cheer. Make sure!

 

They want to take our despair from us. They want to free us from our despair. We need to hold onto it.

They don’t want us to hate. But we have to hate!

 

Despair is an invitation, postgraduates. A calling. Even the highest calling. It says: Turn your eyes from all this. Turn your attention from all this. Awaken yourself from all this. You are not part of the demonic realm.

 

They’ll want to free you from your despair, postgraduates. But your despair is the despair of philosophy, postgraduates! It belongs to philosophy! It’s what enables philosophy!

Hope … is not for you, postgraduates. And especially sham hope … Organisational Management hope.

Your lives … will not be long. Your days will probably be painful. But they will at least be lives of integrity, so long as you’re not seduced by the Organisational Management campus.

This is what philosophy needed: to be lost, so it can find itself again. And we’re the ones who are going to find it.

Fuck off.

 

Philosophy, in exile. Philosophy, in hiding. Philosophy, disappeared inside us. And theology – even more hidden. Even more exiled.

Philosophy – European philosophy – hunted. On the run. Living under a false name – a organisational management name.

 

Philosophy, only able to exist under cover. Under an assumed name. In disguise. Philosophy, only able to be crypto philosophy. Speaking its truth by telling lies – organisational management lies.

Do the angels approve of us drinking? Do they drink, too? Drunken angels … imagine that.

Angels can’t be drunk. In fact, angels can’t even drink. They can’t feel these bodily things. They don’t have bodies. Same as demons.

Demons are always looking to inhabit bodies, right? They’re always waiting for someone to invite them in, like in the Exorcist.

Sure – possession.

Can there be good possessions? Can an angel possess you?

I don’t know.

I’d like to be possessed by an angel. And do only good things. I’d like to be the instrument of something very good.

 

Angels are invisible to everyone.

Except children.

Sure, children see them.

And idiots, probably. Have you ever seen an angel, Driss?

No.

So maybe you’re not an idiot.

 

Look at us, like children. Drunken children. We want to believe like children. But we’re not children. We’re old. And corrupted.

 

You can see the angels when you drink. And God, and the Most fucking high. And you see the absence of God when you’re sober. And the Most fucking Low.

 

Orders of anti-angels. Dark angels. What’s the collective noun?

Hatreds of anti-angels. Horrors of anti-angels. Despairs of anti-angels. Screams of anti-angels. Ghouls …

Which chapter of Revelations are we in, on the Organisational Management campus?

 

I saw Satan fall like lightning.

Where – where did he fall?

Into the Organisational Management campus.

What could Satan want with the Organisational Management campus?

A new base of operations.

 

We’re lost in the coils of evil. Lost in the coiling, the writhing. Lost in the agitation of sin. Lost in the deepening of the Fall.

 

It’s a question of descent. We have to descend to find it. We have to sink.

To find what?

The depths of evil.

 

We should pray, or something.

Do you believe in God now?

I do here – on this campus. It’s so deeply, profoundly evil, there must be something good. It’s so wrong, there must be something right.

Is that your reasoning?

It’s … dialectical. Evil makes us see. Evil points a way. Out of this pseudo-world. This entirely captured world. Satan is real, Satan is everywhere. Which means God must be real somewhere else.

Maybe they want us turning away from the world. They want us without faith in anything around us. We’re easier to control us in that way.

Not if we believe in something else.

Something impossibly remote, impossibly distant. That won’t have any effect on anything round here.

At least we can talk about how much we hate it, this world – that’s something, isn’t it? At least it allows us that.

It likes it. It likes to mock us by indulging it. By letting us say whatever we like. And then showing total indifference. Showing that resistance is futile and laughable and stupid.

And that’s it’s totally accounted for – that’s the thing. That it’s expected – that it’s all calculated. That it’s all organised and fucking managed.

The great futility: that’s what we’re supposed to be reminded of. Our futility. And everything does remind us of that. All their smiles. Their welcomes. All the nice things they tell us are just to remind us of our total impotence. That this is how it is and how it will be, now and forever.

 

We’re exactly where they want us. We’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to. We’re fulfilling our role – our non-role. We’re deepening our irrelevancy.

We haven’t even been arrested. Haven’t even been DEW’d.

We raise no red flags. There’s no warrant out for our arrest. We appear on no wanted posters. There’s no bounty on our heads.

We’re a type, and they know our type. They know what to do with us. What box we fit in.

They’ve got us where they want us. They’ve parked us here. We’re nothing to fear.

No need for any special attention to be paid to us. We’re not worth the effort to assassinate.

They know our inputs and our outputs. We’re predictable. Mappable. Even obvious.

 

Only if they want us to be the resistance. And they probably do. They probably brought us here to have a resistance. To enjoy having a resistance. It was a kind of gift to themselves: a resistance. To see what we’d do. Whether we might surprise them. So vive le resistance, right?

This is the Organisational Management world now. We’ll never leave this campus, even if we leave this campus. Everything that will happen will happen here. Wherever we live, we’ll be living here.

 

After the cull: that’s what’s Organisational Management’s planning for. That’s when it’ll come into its own. When the population’s cut down to size. When the survivors will be living in campuses like this. Only they won’t be called campuses then.

 

We should hang ourselves right now! From one of these lampposts.

Is suicide allowed? There are probably suicide prevention drones to talk us out of it. They’ll spray anti-depression gas.

Or just let us die. They don’t need people like us. Everything’s ready for the great cull, right? Everyone and everything perfectly controlled. No one will even protest … They’ll practically volunteer for the euthanasia pods …

 

They’ll cull nine-tenths of humanity. More, maybe. And bring the survivors, those who have been selected for obedience, to the Organisational Management campus. Just enough of us to serve their needs. As will be useful in the coming technocracy.

This whole timeline is suffering. It’s howling out. It knows that it shouldn’t exist and that we shouldn’t exist – not like this.

This whole universe knows that it should not be. The sky. The stars – they know it. The earth underneath all this knows it too.

It’s groaning. I can hear it.  

 

This is a branched-off universe. A split-off universe.

The whole timeline cries, help me. Just as we cry, help me. This whole reality wants to be put out of its misery. And so do we: to be put out of this misery. So that this universe can just be shut down.

 

We don’t want to be sober in this terrible world. We don’t want to be undrunk in this desecrated world …

Only drunk can we muster up the hatred of this timeline. Only drunk can we summon up the love for the real one …

The question of God: do you think you could you ask that on the Organisational Management campus?

Organisational Management thinks it’s got God contained. God has a place. And philosophy has a place. And God can do his God thing, and philosophy can do its philosophy thing, and all’s well and good. And Organisational Management can do is – vast – Organisational Management thing. It’s all-encompassing Organisational Management thing.

 

Organisational Management has us under its dome. Contained. With its Organisational Management version of the sky. With its Organisational Management version of stars. With Organisational Management snow, God knows. It’s absolute containment.

Our paranoia … so massive … so great … as great as the campus.

We’re reacting to things that haven’t happened yet. We’re reacting to the future. To future events. We can see the trends. We can see where things are going.

We’re Discerning, capital D. We’re not just passengers. We’re not just carried along.

 

No despairers on this campus. No alcoholics! No homeless! No vagrants! No tramps! They’re taken care of. Nudged away.

Everyone here’s purposeful. With a good attitude. Availing themselves of opportunities for leisure. For work. Everyone here, enjoying the public spaces. Heading to work. To the gym. To the café. To play badminton. (That’s the campus sport: badminton. Everyone can unwind with a bit of badminton, in the famous Organisational Management campus badminton halls.)

Don’t like badminton? Well, there’s activities for all ages. Places to date. To meet someone. Go bowling. Play darts. Beer pong. Beer pong! Have you ever played beer pong! Karaoke joints … Tai chi …

There’s even a place for ecumenical worship. For your spiritual needs. Non denominational. Open to all.

 

We should hang ourselves! Leave our bodies swinging from some lamppost. From some surveillance tower. Our philosopher’s bodies. Because this is where they killed philosophy …

The campus revealed. We should be grateful that it was revealed. That we’ve seen it now for what it is. …

Have we worked out the truth now? The truth of this campus? Which is to say, the lie of this campus. Which is to say, the nothing of this campus?

 

We’re being shown the secret campus. The campus within the campus.

Do you think?

We’re being shown Secrets. The campus is confiding in us. The campus is whispering in our ears.

 

It’s the very completeness of this campus that makes it incomplete. It’s the fact that it’s whole that makes it a fragment.

We can see beyond it because we cannot see beyond it. We know there’s more because we know nothing but this campus.

Because it’s won, I know we’ll win. Because it’s triumphed, I know we’ll triumph.

 

The university is being revealed as what it is. For what it is. As Organisational Management – nothing but Organisational Management. As Organisational Management, in all its details. As Organisational-Managing – nothing else.

 

And soon our civilisation will reveal itself as what it is. As Organisational Management – nothing but Organisational Management.

The university is only now revealing itself in its truth. As what it is now. As all it can be. The university is only being honest. Only showing what it is. The university’s only taken its mask off. Only revealed its real purpose.

 

The campus is the world and the world’s the campus. That’s the way it’s going. They’ll be indistinguishable.

It’ll only be so long before they ask us to live here. To move in. That’s when the last part of the trap closes.

Yeah, as life beyond the stony wastes becomes harder and harder. Before the rest of the world turns to cannibalism, or whatever. Before it all turns zombie wars, or whatever.

 

The Organisational Management campus is the desert. It’s the testing ground.

A new barrenness, a new scantness, a new emptiness. A new hostility! Which demands, in its turn, a new wakefulness! A new vigilance!