Work in Progress

The left have won, basically. The left are in the ascendant, for all they think that they’re surrounded by fascism. They’re stifling. They’re no fun. So po-faced. Such killjoys.

I hate their indignation. I hate their righteousness. I hate their unbudgeable sense that they’re in the right. I hate their good conscience. I hate the way they’re totally pleased with themselves and their left wing views.

I hate their confidence. I hate the way they band together. Just confirming each others’ attitudes. Going along with every trendy cause that’s, like, fed to them. I hate the way they’re so predictable.

And they’re so easily played, right. They believe everything, all the crises. And they’re all in love with pig pharma. And censorship.

So what are we now – right wing?  Do you think the right have all the cool now? All the energy?

I don’t know about the right. I don’t know anyone on the right. Where do we find people on the right?

Advertise, maybe.

So we’re going right-wing now? Do we have to go racist? Do we have to hate the poor?

Have we got to become ardent capitalists? I don’t think I’d be very good at that.

I don’t want to give up our left wing melancholy. I rather like our left wing melancholy.

We have to swap it for right wing pessimism. About the state, about what human beings can achieve, about the reality of evil and mendacity and the whole ship of fools. No lofty political hope. No utopias. Politics isn’t going to help us.

So what is?

Family, according to the right.

We’re fucked. Have you met my family? My family are freaks. We’re largely inbred.

The church?

Full of pedophiles, just like every other institution.

We should just escape politics altogether. Be, like, anti-political. Anti hierarchical. Whenever there’s a hierarchy, there’s evil.

And pedophiles.

Loads of pedophiles.

A higher left: that’s what we should aim for. A superior left. Isn’t that what Cicero spoke about?

 

We were always beneath politics, for Cicero. She liked that. We weren’t academic leftists. Campus Marxists. Putting posters on the noticeboads outside their office. We weren’t all self-righteous and utopian.

We were always sub political, Cicero said. We went beneath politics. We knew politics didn’t concern us. We knew that nothing would change, politically. We knew the uniparty were in charge, and would always be in charge. That was clear to us.

And we knew that we would have to live, nevertheless. Do our thing, nevertheless. Eke out a living. Find some corner, some crack into which to disappear.

 

The working class, like us, always had a healthy disrespect for politics, that’s what Cicero liked. Didn’t take any of it seriously. Expected nothing to change. Having been fucked over so many times. Common sense, that’s what they were full of. They knew the political class despised them. The political class despised the middle-class, too, but the middle-class didn’t know it.

 

I’m bored. Bored of the left. Bored of their worthiness.

What you really hate is liberalism. That’s what Cicero said. It’s the liberal left that’s the problem.

So was she a socialist – some kind of higher socialist?

She hated socialism. She was brought up in Hungary, for fuck’s sake. No, I always thought of her as an anarchist …

Maybe.

Or a libertarian …

She was anti-politics, that’s all. She hated politics. She wasn’t an anything.

 

Cicero saw the signs of encroaching communism. Was it communism? Was it fascism? Some unholy mixture of the two.

Cicero saw it. Smelt it. Recognised it. She knew what was coming. And she knew we did, too.

Technocracy! That was the real threat, she said. And she knew we knew it, too.

Cicero’s gone. We have to find our own way in the dark. By remembering what Cicero told us.

I’ve forgotten what Cicero told us.

It was mostly insults.

But kindly insults. Carefully tailored insults. For each of us, specially. Based on real knowledge. And dare I say it, love.

Fuck off.

Her insults were her way of showing us kindness. Of bringing us on. Cicero was generous, in her way. But it was a negative generosity. It was a cruel kindness. Cicero wanted to push us. For us to be better than we are. Cicero was ambitious for us.

Did we disappoint her, do you think?

She was saddened by us sometimes, I think. She was saddened by the world. She was saddened by what the world made us. How we couldn’t escape the world.

Like her? Of course, like her. She insisted on our not being part of the world. Not regarding it as some gift. Do you remember how she nearly spat out that word, gift. The world is not a gift – that’s what she used to say. Angrily. Don’t be fooled by the beautiful day, she used to say. This is the universe of death, she used to say.

 

She used to call herself a Gnostic. And a Jew. A Jewish Gnostic! A Gnostic Jew! What can that possibly mean?

She used to quote Benjamin on the perfect culpability of the world. And Scholem on the religion of nihilism. Perfect disenchantment – that’s what we needed to reach, Cicero said. So we can see the world as it is. In its pure, brute being. So we can discern the horror.

What horror?, we said. The horror she said! Which you guys probably like, she said. Like pigs. Like pigs in a trough. Like pigs rolling in the filth. In the filth of the world.

 

Why did Cicero live at the coast if she was so horrified by beauty?

It wasn’t horror at beauty, it was more … suspicion. She didn’t want to be seduced.

She loved really beautiful women.

She did, it’s true. That was part of it. She wanted to be close to what could seduce her. But that she could resist. It was about keeping herself in tension … That’s why she lived at the coast, in that really beautiful flat. Where temptation was at its greatest! It was a test. Of herself. Of her Jewish Gnosticism, or whatever.  

We have to complete the disenchantment, she said. We have to go to the end of nihilism. There must be nothing left of myth inside out heads. We have to understand the world as curse.

 

This world is not a gift: hang onto that, that’s what Cicero used to say. Don’t ever feel at ease in this world. This isn’t your world. You don’t belong here – remember that, Cicero always said. We don’t belong to the cosmos. Stand guard against beauty. Don’t be seduced, Cicero would say.

We must be anti cosmic, Cicero said. We’re not citizens of this universe. We’re not cosmopolitans. How wrong the Stoics got it. How right the Gnostics were! We have to disenchant the universe, Cicero said. Continue the disenchantment. Pursue it’s logic to the very end. Because it shows what there is as what there is. The truth of it all, the whole universe.

 

Cicero was able to distract us for a while. Cicero was able to make us believe we might be capable of something.

The idea of being part of some thought-school. Some reborn Jewish Gnostic school of philosophy. The idea that there really could be a Newcastle school of philosophy.

Led by Cicero. Guided by Cicero. Carried away by Cicero. By her rhetoric. By her readings of this philosopher and that philosopher. By her example. Her impromptu improvisations on this or that topic. By her philosophical extemporisations on the Metro. On the Metro!

 

Gradually, we all moved to the coast to be near her. Kitten to South Shields, Io to North Shields, Gazelle to Tynemouth and me to Cullercoats.

Oh we denied it. We pretended we moved out there, a half hour’s metro ride from the campus, for other reasons. But it was entirely because of Cicero. Solely because Cicero was already there, ahead of us.

 

Walking on the beach, with our beach thoughts. Walking Spanish City, with our Spanish City thoughts. Walking with our fish and chips, with our fish and chip thoughts. Walking through the Fish Quay, with our Fish Quay thoughts.  

Crossing from North Shields to South Shields on the ferry, with our ferry thoughts. Walking down Ocean Drive to the beaches, thinking our Ocean Drive thoughts. And all of them because-Cicero-is-close thoughts! Because-Cicero-is-at-the-coast-thoughts!

*We’re thirty-somethings. We’re moving into the really boring phase of life. We’re in the coupling phase. We’re in the settling down phase. We’re in the dinner party phase. We’re in the thinking-about-reproduction phase. That’s what awaits us.

Fuck …

We’re in the not-working-so-hard phase. We’re in compromising-on-our-philosophical-dreams phase. We’re in the never-going-to-write-a-masterpiece phase.

Did you actually think you were going to write a masterpiece?

I didn’t think it was impossible …

What about now?

Now …

When did you find out that your hopeless dreams of masterpiece were just hopeless dreams?

I don’t know … just, life …

Did you give it all up, but slowly, without even noticing it?

Yeah, maybe.

Face it: we’re not going to make it. We’re not going to rise above mediocrity. We have to accept our mediocre fate. That we’re only going to deepen our mediocrity. That we’ll only ever explore the, like, byways of our mediocrity. We’ll only never be lost in our mediocrity.

Is that the worse thing there could be: our mediocrity?

Yes.

Reality. That’s what we’ll see. Who we actually are. See, philosophy always indulges you because you think you could be a late developer. Our thirties are when we accept that we’re not actually late developers. That we’re not going to be anything. But the full disappointment doesn’t kick in until your forties. That’s when you have a midlife crisis.

So what, we buy a motorbike or something? Have affairs?

God, we’re not even married yet. We don’t actually have families.

We need something. Because when we finally realise how mediocre we are …

We should have hobbies. We should do things outside of philosophy. We should cultivate interests. What we interested in?

Philosophy.

Stop it.

We need to ground ourselves. Walk on the earth like everyone else. Or didn’t you think you were like everyone else.

Do we really have to lose our faith? Accept who it is we are … or aren’t? It fucking … sucks …

It took so many years to get where we are. It was so hard.

And where are we? Here. Being tossers.

Management training: the saddest words in the world. To think: being sentenced to Management training. What a fate, being forced into Management training!

 

The management training facilitators are working at the limits of their intelligence: remember that. This is them at their best, dull and earnest. Them at the brightest.

They’re actually trying, that’s the thing. They actually think they have something to say. That they’re delivering truths. They believe in this stuff – they really do.

And what of our fellow academics around us, taking notes? Looking attentive. Asking pertinent questions. How can we account for them? Are they stupid? Are they dim bulbs? Does academia no longer attract the brightest and the best?

What catastrophe has befallen the entire university that such academics could be taking notes in a session of Management Training? What disaster has taken hold of the entire world that they’re not man and woman uprising in shouting protest at this course of Management Training?

Something’s happened to their minds. To their souls. They believe in this. Our fellow academics believe in this. They actually think there’s something to be learned from Management training. Which is probably worse than the actual Management training.

No one to roll your eyes with. No allies, no friends. The loneliness is complete in Management Training. What human society there is merely forces you back upon yourself, in Management training. Merely shows you up as aberrant. As an Exception, in Management training. It’s your problem, not that of Management training.

Behold the compromised. Behold the complicit.

 

Corralled into Management training. Kettled into Management training. Destroyed by Management training.

There’s war on philosophy – real philosophy, not technical philosophy – analytic philosophy. The philosophy of the technate – that’s allowed. It’s even encouraged. It’s spreading everywhere. There’s virtually nothing else taught in UK Philosophy Departments. But real philosophy isn’t wanted in the new age, the technocratic age.

They’ve all but declared European philosophy misinformation. Or disinformation. They’ve all but deemed us misinformers. Or dissinformers. Or malinformers. We won’t be allowed to go on.

 

What books we’ve be close to! What books on our bookshelves! Books that will no doubt be shadow-banned and memory-holed. Books that might has well never have existed. Whole oeuvres that will be banished from the archive. That will be seen to have committed thoughtcrimes. Will be thought to be complicit in real crimes. Suspected of antisocial thoughts. Of offending public safety. Thought safety. Evidence of domestic terrorism …

We have to reach perfect hopelessness. Absolutely de fucking profundis.

 

Once we complete nihilism. Once we perfect it. Once we see things for what they are.

What then?

Then … then it will show itself.

 

The perfect nihilist can see that the world lacks nothing. That it’s self-enclosed. Integral. Full as it is. Completely saturated with itself. And that’s the problem. Because what it lacks is nothing. What it lacks … is what it’s not.

 

We cannot trust this world – can’t you see? We have to regard it as fallen. And ourselves as fallen. We have to see it in the worst possible light. And ourselves: In the worst possible light! Then and only then …

 

There’s a new faith … which is made from doubt and disbelief. Which creates itself out of nothing – the divine nothing. God has to spring anew from his nothingness.

 

There’s a … horrific vision. And that’s important. Creation stripped to the bone. Naked … facticity.

 

What there is as horror.

 

We have to nihilize the world. The whole creaturely realm. It’s not some holy gift. It’s not some magic …

 

There’s a use for disenchantment. It’s … demystifying. It shows the world as what it is: dead matter. Just … death. It shows that there can be no reconciliation between world and God. Between creatures and the creator. It shows that there’s … separation. There must be. Which means there can be no truce between you and the world.

 

Have to hold on to the nihilistic perception. Have to hold on to what creatureliness shows us. The worst the world becomes, the greater the chance for redemption. The stronger the messianic impulse…

 

Everything has to sink to the lowest level. The world has to be shown as being perfect guilty, perfectly culpable. As being worthy only of being destroyed. The redemption needs dread and ruin.

 

Fuck the beatific vision. God isn’t revealed through the world. God and the world are antagonistic. God doesn’t just shine through the world.

 

There’s a religious use that can be made of nihilism.

 

There’s a nihilism that arises from the rejection of reality. That knows the world as … disgusting …

 

As if meaning was just given in the order of things as they are.

The question of the meaning of the world has to be felt in its true acuteness. We have to know the world as illuminated by nothing, by no meaning, by no direction.

 

There’s a promise. A grain of meaning: that’s what I want. A turn … in nihilistic meaninglessness.

 

Exodus now – not apocalypse now. Exit now.

 

We have to pass beyond nihilism. To where? To what? To God, of course.

 

We need a spiritual awakening. We need to awaken from this world. From this hell.

It isn’t hell. Only someone mad would regard it as hell.

They're keeping us alive – face it. We're alive because they want us alive. They could just wipe us out, if they chose to. They want to see what we'll do. We're interesting someone, if not ourselves. 

 

We have some role in all this. I don't know what it is. They're using us, in their own way. For their own obscure purposes. They want to see what we'll do, for some reason. What we can be made to do. Or not do. They're keeping an eye.

 

They don't know what to make of us. How to frame us. How to contain us. Not really. They don't know why we do what we do. But they want to learn – to machine learn. They want to teach AI how to play the philosopher.

 

Don't think some kind of human unpredictability can save us now. Some kind of human unmanageability. Some perversity or twistedness. That's exactly wheat they want to learn – our supposed unorganisability. That's what to programme into their latest AI models. 

Suicide’s, like, our truest desire. Suicide’s our best desire. It’s us at our highest. Of course we should hate ourselves – our fake selves. Of course we should hate what we’ve been made to become in this world, in this timeline.

They’ve stolen it, our world. And they’ve stolen us. Who we could have been. What we might have been.

 

We want to kill ourselves in this world – of course! We want to kill what this timeline’s made us into. We want to suicide this world in us. Which is totally the right thing to want.

 

We hate this world, because we love another. Because we know there is another. Our hatred is just a form of our love …

 

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 …

 

We know that we should hate: we have that consolation. We have the right instinct, if nothing else. We hate this timeline, and we hate ourselves as what this timeline’s made us into. We hate this version of ourselves.

 

This is us at our best. This is us at our highest. Of course we should hate it: this world. Of course we should loathe all this. Of course nothing is right in this timeline. In their world.

 

Let us never adjust to this. Let us never accept this. Let it be a perpetual outrage. Let us never trust this world. Let it never be allowed to complete its work on us.

 

Emergency extraction, that's what we need. To be beamed the fuck up.

 

At what point will we actually kill ourselves? What stage do we have to reach? What are the limits of our toleration? How far do we have to go?

Do they know what they’re doing to us? I’ll bet they do. Was it on purpose? Of course! This is a special, bespoke torture.

 

They’re surrounding us with ugly things. They’re drowning us in ugliness. They’re trying to appal us. They want to push us into death.

Your Christian sentimentalism is really tedious. The way little baby Jesus makes you all weepy. The saviour of the world and all that. Helping you dress up your misery as something else.

It gives me comfort in my misery.

You can say the Lord’s Prayer however many times you like. You can kiss your fucking cross. I understand – you need to cope. You need to cope with the  daily horror. Whatever you need to get you through … But it’s still irritating.

Ooh, who’s afraid of the big bad atheist? So cutting-edge. So vanguard.

 

Gnosticism is so much cooler than Christianity. So much doomier.

I don’t see why that’s a recommendation.

I like religions when they have no content. When it’s just about the nothing of this world, or whatever. Just some empty transcendence. A gap where the light gets in, or whatever. Only it’s the darkness. Where the darkness opens. Where there might be some dark god or something – who knows?

Our apocalyptic names … fucking crazy.

We use them, don’t we?

The whole thing was Cicero’s idea of taking the piss.

Who was Shiva, anyway?

A Hindu god of destruction. Pretty cool.

Who was Barbarossa?

Google it.

Some … battle? What the fuck?

Who’s Driss, anyway?

That was always mysterious.

It’s like being part of a cult.

Kitten refused her name. She preferred Kitten.

Sensible woman.

What did Cicero want to call her?

Jean Grey. From the X-Men. Or Jesus.

Jesus!?

A female Jesus.

Cicero was a real fucking mystery.

Cicero was as mad as Colonel Kurtz. Lost up the river. In the heart of fucking darkness. She was just like Marlon Brando, mumbling into the darkness.

Except she was constantly taking the piss.

There was that.

So was she taking the piss out of us or not?

It’s complex. There are layers of layers of meaning to everything Cicero did.

She would have hated this. The whole campus

Sure.

She would have hated us being here.

Maybe. See, she might have wanted us here. Her agents. Behind enemy lines. Doing her bidding.

But what would be her bidding?

What would Cicero do?: ask yourself that.