Work in Progress

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.

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.