Work in Progress

There’s some pattern here. It’s conditioning – deep conditioning. They’re working on us. At a deep level. At a multidimensional level.

What are they trying to achieve?

Total control, obvs.

This is a test bed for something. They’re figuring things out. They don’t quite know what they’re doing yet … We have some role in all of this. I don’t know what … They’re using us, in their own way. For their obscure purposes. They want to see what they can do with us, if anything. What we can be made to do. Or not do. They’re going to find out.

We should get high.

High, here? On the campus?

Maybe we could access its other dimensions.

What other dimensions?

Maybe we could work out what the pavement is about.

It's a total environment. It’s supposed to be. Meeting all human needs. Like some starship, or something. Like the Starship Enterprise.

They’ll just 3D print everything you want.

What if what you want can’t be 3D printed?

It’s only when it’s achieved a perfect totality, when it’s covered the whole earth, only then –

Only then what?

That the question of the totality can be asked. The question of what it means. Of why it exists and not nothing.

 

Organisational Management truth. That’s what this is. The forgetting of shadows. Of depth. Of darkness. The forgetting of forgetting itself.

Organisational Management truth. Everything positive will be remembered here. Brought here, into the light. Everything that is itself and nothing more.

 

This is how they want us to live. This is how they suggest we might live … They’re giving us ideas, apparently. It’s not going to be forced on us.

Of course it will.

It’s a model community. A new way of combining business and living. Everything you want you’ll be able to find within a fifteen-minute walk.

Marvellous.

There’s a suggestion box – a virtual one. You can let them know of your objections.

What if your objections are …. To the very idea of it all? Objections to the very possibility of building such a place?

Organisational Management is founded upon the elimination of philosophy. This whole campus. Upon the destruction of questioning.

Organisational Management can’t ask the question of itself. Can’t pose it. The question is too vast. The question will destroy it …

 

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.

What have they done to the rain? They can’t even leave the rain alone. It’s full of strontium. And barium. And things to fuck us up.

And this isn’t real snow. This is fucked up snow. They’ve done bad stuff to it. It doesn’t fall right. It doesn’t melt right.

This isn’t a real night, either, I’ll bet. That isn’t a real sky. They might as well have placed a dome over it all.

Maybe they have …

And this isn’t real air – that we’re breathing. There’s something wrong with the air. What have they put in the air? What have they done to the air?

They’d fuck up the sun, if they could. They’d poison the sun. Just like they’ve poisoned the earth. Like they’ve poisoned our fucking minds. And our hearts.

We’re owning this campus. We’re walking it like God sent us. We’re, like, Organisational Management anti-Messiahs.

You wish! All mouth and no fucking trousers. All attitude. All righteous fury, and for what? We were summoned to a party, and we came. We fucking RSVP’d …

We came with attitude.

They’ll laugh at our attitude. Fuck, they won’t even notice our attitude.

We’re owning this campus. We’re walking it like God sent us. We’re, like, Organisational Management anti-Messiahs.

You wish! All mouth and no fucking trousers. All attitude. All righteous fury, and for what? We were summoned to a party, and we came. We fucking RSVP’d …

We came with attitude.

They’ll laugh at our attitude. Fuck, they won’t even notice our attitude.

There’s so much of it. This campus is, like, miles across. How did they fit it all in? The original site wasn’t that big. There must be some multidimensional thing going on. Some Tardis-like magic.

 

And it’s all powered by geothermal energy. From the earth.

Is that true?

They’re drilling down and down and down. They sent down some, like, bore. It’s about two miles deep now.

Where’s it going?

In search of energy – geothermal energy.

Maybe they’re trying to open a portal.

To what? To where?

To Hell, probably. Are there, like, geothermal demons?

Reading the plaques.

Creating a home for the world’s brightest minds.

They’re dreamers and doers, apparently. They can make what is impossible happen, it says here. A global community of visionary minds. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Adventurous spirits. Thought leaders. Changemakers. This is where innovation can be ignited, socialised, engineered and tested. You can’t go wrong, can you? Providing next generation technologies. Delivering livability, apparently. What’s that, I wonder?

Furio, reading the education mission. Pushing back the frontiers of learning. Driving cross disciplinary innovation and impact. Piloting new ways of living. Empowering societal progress. Building community. Keeping pace with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Fostering knowledge and skills in an engaging learning environment.

It’s a vibrant research and innovation ecosystem, imagine. Sounds fantastic.

They’re into personalised upskilling, it says here. Into education as a lifelong experience.

Continuous professional development. Inquiry-based, experiential learning. Fostering creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. A flexible curriculum, responding to economic needs. Real world problem solving. You can’t complain, can you? And all in partnership with global high tech industry …

The conditions for the humanities have disappeared. We can see that. There’s no place for the humanities anymore.

But it’s only now that the humanities can appear as such. In their perfectly uselessness. In their perfect superfluity. Insofar as they do not matter – not to this world. Not according to its reckoning.

 

The humanities, forced to justify themselves on the enemy’s terms. In the enemy’s vocabulary. The humanities, forced to talk about transferrable skills. About the uses of the humanities in business. Abut their fostering of business-relevant communication skills.

The humanities can’t survive. Or if they do so, it’s only as a shell of themselves. As husk-history. As hollowed-out literature. As phantom history of art.