Work in Progress

The magnetosphere is crashing, apparently. That’s the barrier that protects us from cosmic rays. Which are now flooding down to earth. Fucking us all up.

 

The space weather’s terrible tonight.

Space weather!?

There’s some weird shit going on out there. There’s some great sheet of cosmic radiation heading towards us. From Barnard’s star, apparently. It’s hitting the planets one by one. Ripped off one of the rings of Saturn. Set storms raging on Jupiter …  God knows what will happen when it gets here.

When will it get here?

Just … about … now.

 

Space weather could take out the grid any day now. Best get ready.

How do you get anything done when you’re so full of world-doom? Doesn’t it get in the way of leading an effective life?

I don’t think I’ve ever led an effective life.

You should come to a leading an effective life seminar. We run them regularly in Organisational Management.

You don’t say.

 

Are you a tortured philosopher?

I don’t have the right to be a tortured anything.

Are you all introspective and brooding?

Who am I that I should be introspective – let alone brooding? Fuck.

Someone would fall in love with your broodingness. And introspection, I’m sure of it. Someone would find you fascinating.

Not you, though.

Not me.

 

What’s in the philosophical head but philosophy? What do you dream about, philosopher? Are you all philosophy, or anything else?

Now’s the time for your special powers, Anvil. You do have special powers, don’t you? Anyone called Anvil should have special powers.

Anvil has special quoting powers. Lay something on us, motherfucker.

Anvil: Would I like to be a comet? Yes. for they have the speed of birds, they  flourish in fire and are as children in purity.

Who said that?

Hölderlin.

Hölderlin’s pretty fucking cool.

What are we actually going to turn into?

The universal debacle. The cosmic falling apart. They’re trying to forestall it with their organising and their managing.

But they can’t win against the second law of thermodynamics. It is the second law, isn’t it? Entropy, organisational managers! You’re going to be fucked by entropy? The heat death of the universe will get you in the end!

 

How maladjusted are we?

VERY!

How fucked up are we?

EVER SO!

How organisable are we?

NOT AT ALL!

How managerial?

ZERO! ZILCH!

How defiant are we?

MEGA-DEFIANT!

All right then.

I like our wine turn. It elevates us.

It’s a different kind of drunkenness. There’s something sweet about it. Even lofty.

There’s a dignity to wine. It suits us. Now we’ve gone up in the world. We’ve come along way, and so on.

Yeah, but I think we should be savouring it rather than glugging from the bottle like winos.

 

This wine basically flows to us all the way from ancient Greece.

Socrates drank wine, right?

Socrates could drink the whole night, but it didn’t make him drunk. Unless it was a higher drunkenness.

That’s what we need to reach: a high drunkenness. Something spiritual.

 

Drink is the real religion – the original, ecstatic religion. The religion that children have. And animals. Where you’re not worried about the future. Or what’s fucked you up in the past.

The present: that’s what it’s about. The freedom of the present as we break out of our captivity. Of our domestication. As we shatter the chains of command and obedience. And we awaken from  our semi-permanent depression.

Religious delirium: that’s what we need. The original fucking religion. When we’re at one with ourselves. When we’re not second guessing ourselves. When we’re on the edge of ourselves, ready to dance …

Didn’t Jesus dance in the St Thomas gospel?

That’s a Gnostic gospel …

Jesus fucking danced. Jesus boogied.

Was he drunk?

With a higher drunkenness, maybe.

A hot Christian, that’s what you need. Freshly converted, just like you. A just-hatched hot Christian, full of ardour. You could pray together and stuff. Wear his and hers crucifixes. Go to Bible studies together. Move in together and put a big ass crucifix on the wall.

Christianity’s having a moment. Nothing hotter than an ardent young Christian. Conservatively dressed. Twinset and pearls style. No make-up or anything. Focused on her salvation and the salvation of the world. Fucking hot. Even I’m turned on.

And she’d be really into marriage. And fidelity. And so would you be. You could hang with other Christian couples. Wouldn’t that be something? Say grace before eating together at dinner parties. Hang out at church barbeques, or whatever.

 

Conversion is where it’s at. I’m half tempted to follow you. But I could never do that thing of just kneeling and giving myself to Jesus. That’s what you need to do, don’t you? Like, really ask for divine help. Which I definitely need. God, if anyone needs divine help, it’s me.

 

You could discuss God together. That’d be cool. It’d be really intimate. She’d trust you enough to discuss her spiritual life. Her spiritual journey. Her path to conversion. How she got into Jesus and so on.

You’d see it shining through her eyes. Really beautiful. And she’d weep in front of you. Just cry. Tears filling her eyes as she recounted her path to salvation. And received the grace of Jesus – that’s what your receive, isn’t it: the grace of Jesus? Or God. But it’s the same thing, really.

Imagine her voice. How it would tremble as she poke. As she searched for words. Imagine that!

And you could tell her about your path to conversion. How you felt the whole Jesus-pathos thing. How you read the gospels in awe. And you’d mean it, too. It’d be the best thing about you. It’d be better and higher than anything else. And your eyes would be full of tears, too. It’d be like something from Dostoevsky.

How do you actually do philosophy? How do you get ideas?

I don’t have any ideas. That’s the problem.

Okay, so how about other philosopher’s ideas? Do write about them?

I try to.

Is that what philosophers do – write about what other philosophers think?

That’s not real philosophy. That’s secondary commentary.

Yeah, but you critically engage with their ideas, too, don’t you?

The problem is, they’re so difficult all you can do is try and get clear about them.

So why don’t they write clearly.

It’s the prerogative for significant thinkers not to have to be clear.

Why can’t they just be clear, if they have something to say?

Like we know what clarity is.

I suppose it keeps you in a job, the unclarity of philosophers.

Yeah, but I never think I understand what they’re say. It takes a real philosopher to be clear about another philosopher.

You’re making it all sound very pointless. How do you keep motivated, if you don’t think that what you’re doing is worthwhile?

It’s like Kafka said: it’s not that I’m good at this. It’s that I’m so bad at everything else.

I don’t believe you.

It’s all I’m good for! And I’m not even good at it. Isn’t that cruel?

So you’re a masochist.

Definitely.

Do you, like, discuss things with your colleagues? Work ideas through.

Never.

Don’t you have reading groups and the like?

Sure … reading groups.

And don’t you have guest speakers come to read papers.

Yeah, we have some of those. But in general, philosophers abhor discussion. It’s a very solitary activity.

It would drive me mad, all that solitude. Trying to understand hard things … Do you have passionate philosophical correspondences? Do you exchange intellectual emails with anyone?

Only about how stupid I feel. And how stupid they feel.

I don’t think philosophy’s very good for you.

You don’t say.

But maybe you have a more interesting soul.

Maybe.

 

What are the hot topics in philosophy? What’s everyone thinking about? Nihilism, as usual.

Nihilism’s been around for a while. Even I’ve heard of nihilism. The theory that nothing means anything.

More like the feeling that nothing means anything.

A feeling.

Sure – it’s everywhere. Don’t you feel it?

Sometimes. If I’m down … But only sometimes. And it passes. Moods are like weather, aren’t they?

Moods are important. Stimmung: that’s mood in German.

Are you trying to impress me.

It means attunement. When you’re in a particular mood, you’re attuned to things in a particular way. Things show up in a distinctive way for you.

Like if I’m depressed and everything just seems grey and frustrating.

Sure.

And if I was infatuated, then it would all appear just dandy.

And there are these grounding moods – these Grundstimmungen. That are particularly important. That show the essence of things in a particular time.

So what about our time: what are the grounding moods of today?

It was anxiety, according to Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century. And according to Heidegger in the twentieth Today … dissociation, maybe.

Sure … detachment. Not feeling part of anything. That’s nihilism?

That’s how nihilism reveals itself through dissociation.

 

It bothers me you being so alone. How can you bear to be so alone? Working all alone, your whole life, just echoing out. Into nothing. Into the fucking void … Is this really what you want to do with your life?

What should I want to do?

No one should be happy doing this. It isn’t good for you … And claiming to be so concerned about nihilism. Isn’t your life just nihilism? Isn’t your working at philosophy just … nihilism? No wonder you feel dissociated …

What does PhD actually stand for?

Something Latin, I’ll bet.

You speak Latin, Driss. You read it, anyway. What does it stand for?

I don’t read that kind of Latin. I read a different Latin.

What do you mean, a different Latin? How many kinds of Latin are there?

Dog Latin. Pig Latin.

Fuck off dog Latin and dog Latin. Fuck that. The fact is that no one us knows what PhD actually stands for.

Who isn’t dead? Who hasn’t died? That’s what we’re looking for: the living. The last living. Non fucking zombies. Where are the tonight? Where are they on the last night of the world.

 

Is there any further to sink?

Much further.

Are there anymore deaths to die?

Many more.

 

You can’t burn out if you’re not on fire.

Are we on fire?

We’re on fire. And we’re burning up, on the last night of the world. We’re the world’s fever, in the night of the world.

 

Who caused us to be born? To feel these things? To be struck down by these things.

Are we totally insignificant, after all? Does anything we do matter at all? Does anything depend on us?

 

What kind of life will we lead? Will we live as others live? Will we do the normal things? Settling down: how about that? Having children?

 

Who will remember us? Who will ask these questions like us? In the way we do? That’s all we can do, ask our questions, without answer. Ask, with the whole of our lives, with the whole of our non-lives.

 

Eternal questions. And the question of the question. Is the desire to ask itself a question? Is the desire to pray itself a prayer?

 

What’s wrong with us? What’s right with us?  Are we more stupid than the others?

A blow’s been struck – a great blow. We’ve been struck …

This is a battle for our souls. For philosophy.

For more than philosophy!

How can we oppose Organisational Management without becoming Organisational Managers ourselves? Without becoming evil? That’s the question.

 

In the dark times, will there be dark philosophy?

There will be philosophy about the dark times.

 

A time will come when we know what all this was for. And there will be no mysteries about why we live.

Is that tonight?

 

We have to pass through an existential Great Death.

Do we?

 

The essence of Organisational Management is nothing organisational. Or managerial.

 

The darkness of the world is getting darker. This really is the Abendland eh, Helmut.

 

This world is over – over. This world is finished. Why can’t anyone see that? This world has run out of world.

 

A posthumous life: that’s what this is. We aren’t alive. This isn’t life.