Work in Progress

There is no gift of being. There can be no humble submission! No gratitude!

A horrific vision: that’s what’s required. Naked facticity. What there is. In permanent catastrophe …

Where death and destruction reign. Indifferently. Absolutely. When the absence of God is revealed as such.

We have to nihilize the world. Everything. To complete the nihlization of the world.

We have to see apocalypse always. Every day. Because only in that way will we not be fooled. Because only thus will the messianic potential be released

 

Creation must be turned against itself. There has to be a twistedness. A contorsion. We must not worship the given.

 

There can be no truce with the world as it is, we know that. The worse it gets, the more nihilized the world gets … the more dread and ruin there is … The more we’re inclined to reject it. The more we can stay with that rejection.

 

To see the world sink to its lowest level. To its perfect culpability.

 

The night of the earth, where the glory of revelation is lacking …

A dark flame. A dark whirling. Is that it. Reaching us from the mist.

 

The Umkehr, who called it that? The reversal?

A turn … that might renew revelation. That might trace it back to … what?

The divine nothingness. Is there such a thing? The nothing of the divine … The nothing of meaning …

These phrases … I don’t know what they mean anymore. I’m too drunk.

 

And the Organisational Management move is assisting in our nihilization. That’s why we should be thankful.

This is how we rise to our vocation. Or sink to it …

 

You know what we’re here to say to Organisational Management. You know the message we have to deliver to them: order cannot substitute for meaning. Order is only ever functioning. A well-ordered house is a  dangerous thing.

We need to keep drinking. Keep the faith. That’s how we awaken it: our philosophical eros. Our untrammelled desire. Our bursting of the horizons.

The desire for philosophy that is philosophy. The love of philosophy: nothing other than philosophy. Philosophy itself is love – of wisdom. We only love love and loving.

 

A drunken quest. To open the horizon before us again. To see into the future. To lay claim to the future: our future.

When we won’t become what they want of us. When we won’t be actualised as they demand. When we hold onto something, keep it. What? Ourselves?

 

The fact that we’re not even philosophers. The fact … that we pause before philosophy. That we remain with potentiality – the potentiality to think.

Which is what allows the not-even-philosopher to contemplate philosophy. Before beginning to think. Before setting forth on any actual path. Before betraying philosophy, because if we began, we would surely betray philosophy …

Staying with our … potentiality. Staying with what cannot possibly be used. For any cause! Good or evil! Just or unjust!

Poised on the brink of … everything. On the threshold, forever. Suspending the forward march. Hovering in … whatever it is.

 

Only the not-even philosopher understands this. Only the on the edge of philosophy. Only the on-the-threshold philosopher.

The derangement of the world … was done on purpose. We’re supposed to be disoriented. Reeling. Off balance. We know that.

We have to be madder than the madness of the world, that’s the thing. We have to out-mad it.

How?

We have to out-drink the world. Drink our way ahead of it. Drink ourselves into the future.

 

We have to ride the madness. Ride the Chinese dragon.

This is no time for sanity. You won’t survive, if you try to remain sane.

There’s a Greater madness. A Vaster madness.

 

A draught of madness, that’s we need. The wine of madness. We need Bacchus on fucking side. We need Dionysus as an ally.

We fall-over-drunk types. We bleary-eyed types. We drinkers-till-dawn types. It’s heroic, in its way.

We’re the last drinkers! The last drunkards on campus! Drunk before the party’s even begun!

 

Waves of alcohol crashing through us. Drunken surges. Giving way to a full alcoholic storm.

Drunken storms! We’re ready to be lairy, now. We’re all attitude, now. We need to make sure we maintain this amount of alcohol in our bloodstream. This optimum of the bloodstream.

This is us at our best. At our surliest. At our most unreformable,

This is us, free from social ties. From the usual niceities.

We’re big-personalitied! Loud-voiced! We’re impolites and ingrates! Drunken churls!

 

A flagon of wine – who the fuck drinks from a flagon of wine?

It was cheap.

It was some marketing bullshit.

And I’ll bet you have a tower of wine in your bag. This isn’t exactly Sideways is it? You’re not exactly discerning.

We have to understand the interplanetary nature of Organisational Management. Its interstellar nature.

They’ve probably made contact with technocratic entities, the Organisational Managers …. Aliens, who’ve set up something similar on their home planets … In their own dimensions, or whatever … Who are part of some whole galactic Organisational Management civilization.

Interstellar Organisational Management! Intergalactic Organisational Management! The universe in general Organisational Management!

Organisational Management thinks big. Thinks cosmically and more than cosmically. Thinks interdimensionally! Thinks multiversally!

Organisational Management is about cosmopolitanism. Universalism. About being citizens of the whole galaxy. Of the whole universe and the whole multiverse! With the prosperity of all the multiverse’s citizens as its goal …

 

Once a civilization discovers the secret of Organisational Management, the Organisational Managers of the universe reach out. It’s like when they discover warp speed or whatever in Star Trek: that’s when the Vulcans first contacted the earth.

Once you’ve achieved global governance. Once you’ve definitively clamped down on disinformation and misinformation. Once you’ve muted all the bad actors.

Once you have the NGOs in their rightful place. Once you have the right public private partnerships in place. Once you have the appropriate people in charge. A world commissioner, or whatever.

Once the world order is complete. Once you’ve done the clear and hold. Secured the territory. Put down the revolts and all possible revolt. Once the World Solution has been found.

Once the world is sane, essentially. Once chaos has been definitely held at bay.

Then what?

Then humankind can take up its place in the multiversal Organisational Management.

 

Once a single regulatory framework’s in place. Once digital IDs are secure. Digital wallets. The global health pass.

Once movement is properly controlled. Once the surveillance mechanisms are complete. When any flare-ups can be sorted out quickly. Any rebellions.

Once there’s no more carping. No more moaning. No more negativism. Once there’s nothing that gets in the way of progress.

Once we’re all thinking in the same direction. When we’re all thinking similar thoughts.

 

One the whole system’s working smoothly. Once everything’s settled down. Once people feel at home with it all. Once it isn’t new or strange anymore. Once everyone’s made the adjustment. The new world order. The new normal. Once the new whatever it is. Isn’t so new anymore.

Once they see that it isn’t so bad. Once they barely notice anymore. Once the transition’s occurred. Once people are thinking about something else. Once the leaders are in place. Once the internicene wars are over. Once the high level squabbles are resolved.  

Once everyone realises that it’s All for the Best. And that this is how it is now. And that this is how it Must Be. That this is for the Good of All. And for the Planet. Above all, for the Planet.

When our backs are completely against the wall, what then? When we’ve been utterly backed into our corner: what? What will we become?

When philosophy’s on the ropes: what then? When philosophy’s desperate? What will we become? What will we do? Something new. We’ll think something new …

Maybe this is just what we need.

 

We’re fighting, and not just for ourselves. There are other unmanagables out there – there must be. We’re not the only unbiddables – we can’t be.

Where might we find them, our fellows? Our brothers and sisters in arms? Where are they hiding? Will they be forced into the open now by the new reality? Will they be pushed blinking into the sun?

 

They’ve made a place for us here. Which really means a tomb for us. Which really means a place where we can be buried. Where we can lie down in the earth.

 

We’re outflanked.

They’ve co-opted reason. Good sense. Every move we want to make … just seems antisocial. Churlish. They’ve made us seem sulky, like petulant adolescents.

They’ve seized upon morality. Kindness. They’ve made us into haters. We can’t be anything else. There’s nowhere left to turn.

We want what isn’t good for us. For anyone. For the world. We’re positively demonic, that’s the thing. They’ve turned us negative. Perverse.

 

They’re welcoming us in. They’re throwing a party for us.

On their terms! On their campus! In Organisational Management towers!

They’re making us appear churlish. Ingrates. Nothing’s good enough for us.

 

What’s wrong with us?, we ask. Why do we reject their kindness? Why are we such cynics?

There’s no position left to us. Except refusal. Except hatred.

They’ve left us no place. They’ve turned us into adolescents. Into teenagers. Who need bringing on. Who need looking after.

 

This world is not for us: is that all we can say? This campus is false. It’s part of a false world. A fake world. It’s part of the takeover of the world.

 

The campus know what to do with us. The campus can help, in its own way.

There’s probably a screaming zone, to let us scream. Probably a desperation zone. And a perversity zone. And an ingrate zone, for people like us. A petulance zone, for our type.

 

There are others like us – there must be.

Who are they? Where are they? We need them. To send out a call.

Did they think, like us, that they could sit it out? Did they believe themselves immune?

Our kind. Our type. Cut off from the channels of communication. From self-expression. From making a call to others of our kind. From summoning them from their corners and cracks. Just as we have been called out of our corner and crack.

Did we think we’d just be able to sleep our lives away in the quiet of a philosophy department?

There’s a whole set of attitudes that are being phased out. A way of looking at the world. Which is to say: our attitude! Our way of looking at the world!

We’re the old breed, the deficient breed. People like us shouldn’t be. We’ll phase ourselves out – that’s the plan. They’ll reduce us to suicide. Or alcoholism.

 

Their plans are deep. We’re being nudged into self-destruction. It’s cunning. We’re being phased out. We have no place in the new order.

Self-elimination: that’s what they want. For us to kill ourselves, saving them the trouble. Auto-elimination … Auto-murder …

 

People like us … will not be required. And we see it! We understand it! We’re persuaded!

Our kind! The old kind! The not-with-the-new-reality kind!

Clear us out! Get rid of us! Our attitude is wrong. It’s got to be bred out of the race …

 

They can make us feel these things. They can play us. They’re cunning. It’s cunning – the whole system.

It’s so clever. The way they turn strength upon itself. Is that what we have: strength? They make strength commit suicide. They turn reason against itself. What brilliance!

 

Who thought of this? Who came up with it? What criminal mastermind? So subtle … So devious …

Some nudge unit … Some behavioural psychologist …

How easily we’re played! How readily are our buttons pushed!

herded! Shepherded! Corralled! Kettled! Forced into a corner!

It’s easy for them. They don’t need gulags anymore. They don’t need to lock us up in prison. They’ll just persuade us gently, gently, to … see ourselves as the problem. To blame ourselves.

So that it’s not the world that’s at fault. Not this world! And not the evil of this world! And not the demonism of the world!

They’ll awaken our internal demons. Our internal division. Turn us against ourselves. Make us declare war on ourselves.

 

Our self harm. Our automutilation. We’ll do it to ourselves. That’s the genius. No need to send in the police. The troops. No need to lock us up, No need to monitor us, even.

Sow the seeds of self-destruction.. Create the conditions for the seeds to grow.

Organisational Management confidence. Sleekness. Their sense of being on the rise. All around us.

Organisational Management optimism. Organisational Management zeal. Quite visible.

The Organisational Management project. The Organisational Management takeover – except that they don’t think of it as a takeover.

The Organisational Management implementation. And what are they implementing? Organisational Management, of course. More Organisational Management! Organisational Management for every problem! Organisational Management solutions for all things!

 

The Organisational Management solution: everywhere. At every level. In all the details.

The Organisational Management paradigm. The Organisational Management ascendancy.

The world has essentially been delivered over to its care.

 

This isn’t just about Business Studies. This is where a new humanities will be born. A new humanities, born from Organisational Management. Springing from it, unexpectedly.

*The latest thing in Organisational Management is non Organisational Management. It’s disorganisation and non-management.

Very Tao. Is that why they’re letting us in?

 

Organisational Management has taken the wheel! The faculty wheel and soon the university wheel.

Its ambition has become epochal. Its wings are spreading. Covering up the sky. There’s even a madness to Organisational Management. It’s quite visible here on their campus.

 

All of academia, its entire history, will come alive again on the Organisational Management campus. The whole university. All universities. In some great recapitulation.

There’ll be Organisational Management history and Organisational Management physics and Organisational Management art and Organisational Management engineering. All here! On the Organisational Management campus!

 

The Organisational Management millennium is just opening up.

It’s growing dark. The philosophers of the end, of the very end, are starting to appear.

Who are they? Where are they hiding? What do they look like?

Like us, maybe.

 

Philosophy’s complicit. Academic philosophy, anyway. We can’t look to academic philosophy for anything.

So who can we turn to?

 

What will they philosophise about in the dark times?

They will philosophise about the dark times.

 

I think we’re here to attend to something. To be alert. On the watch.

What for, a miracle?

An anti-miracle, maybe. An anti-miracle … of the Antichrist. That only an … anti-philosophy could detect.

 

We need a new kind of thought, that’s all our own … A thought as vast and stupid as things are vast and stupid. Pathos driven thinking. Deep moods. Which we will access through drinking

Drinking! What else!

Drinking and hangovers. Even hangovers have lessons.

 

Only at the edges of Europe can European thought re-emerge. Only at its lunatic fringes. Only through our stupidity. By our stupidity. Wielding our stupidity.

 

We’ve only ever needed the courage of our stupidity. We’ve only even needed to be unleashed into our stupidity. To soar into it.

 

Anti-philosophers: that’s who we have to be now. The time of philosophy is over.

Anti-philosophy … isn’t that just more philosophy? We don’t want any more philosophy …

 

There can no more philosophy. No one can believe in philosophy. Just like no one can believe in God.

Maybe there’s room for a negative philosophy – like negative theology. Where it’s apophatic. Where it’s all about what it’s not.

Anti-philosophy … that could be the name of our movement.

Someone French is bound to have thought of anti-philosophy in, like, 1912. They’re so far ahead.

Look it up.

Fuck, there’s loads of stuff on anti-philosophy. It was all the rage in France in the ‘70s …

Typical.

There’s some guy who gave up philosophy for … sailing. He’s written a whole treatise on it. Sailing and antiphilosophy.

What about non-philosophy?

That’s taken – everyone knows that. There’s a whole school of non-philosophy: Laruelle and co.

What about hyperphilosophy?

You’re just pulling things out of your arse.

How about ultraphilosophy? Surphilosophy … like surrealism. Where the prefix Sur means beyond. …

People would be expecting things from us. Like, great things. We need to lower their expectations. They need to understand that this is philosophy in parody. Philosophy as a joke. Like a failure philosophy. A fuck up philosophy. A philosophy for the fucked up. Philosophy that isn’t philosophy. That’s not quite philosophy. Not even anything.

Not even philosophy: that’s a name.

Do you think?

Not even philosophy … look that up.

Nothing. It’s all ours.

 

Imagining it: a whole not-even-philosophy movement.

Would it mean we have do things? Like, work at anything? Run a not-even philosophy journal? A society? Hold conferences. Run some not even philosophy series for a publisher?

Fuck that. You shouldn’t have to do stuff if you’re not-even-philosophers. It should be like, slacker philosophy. Where it’s not about arguments, or theses, or positions, or being for or against anything.

 

What do not even philosophers think about? Is there, like, a not even ontology?

Not even that.

A not even metaphysics?

Definitely not.

Could you do a not even ethics?

Not even that. Not even anything. Not even philosophy.

Just being lazy useless bastards, then. Nothing’s changed.

It’s more like a suspension of philosophy: that’s how I  think of it. Where we lay down the usual philosophical tools.

Where we get drunk together, in other words.

Maybe that’s part of it.

Where we hang out.

That’s part of it, too.

Where we don’t organise anything. Just sit on the fucking beach, hungover.

Not even philosophy has many mansions.

 

Not even philosophy. Would we become the latest thing? Would word spread through the more alert postgraduates? Through the more vibrant postdocs? Through the more advanced MA students looking for something really transgressive?

 Would blurred photos of us circulate on the net?

We should write a manifesto.

The Centre for Not Even Philosophy – do you think the uni would allow that?

You can be our president, Furio. You can be in charge of spreading our doctrine. Like syphilis.

They’ve won! They’ve won!

We’ve given up – psychologically. We’ve thrown in the towel. We’re winded. We’re doubled up, on the floor. We’ve already accepted our defeat. On their terms!

We’ve surrendered. We do nothing but surrender. We’re waving the flag. We’ve given up. We’ll do anything they want.

We were outmanoeuvered. Out-strategised. At every turn. Outplayed!

My God, it was easy. It was effortless. Just a flick of the wing-tip. Just a slightly raised eyebrow. And that was it!

 

They won. They don’t even need their victory acknowledged. They don’t need us to pay tribute. To kneel at their feet, or whatever. They accept our subservience as a matter of course. Our obedience. It’s How Things Are. How Things Must Be.

 

Why resist? Just give in. They’ve won, we’ve lost – it’s that simple.

A toast to them: well done, guys. Bravo, fuckers. The world’s yours. We won’t resist. We won’t do anything. We’ll just kill ourselves to get out of your way. We’ll slash our own throats. We’ll spare you the trouble.

We’re tired of resisting. We don’t want to put up a fight anymore. We’re tired of fighting. Just give us instructions. We’ll do as you say. Just tell us what you want …

 

You’ve won. Accept your victory and the spoils of victory.

The world is yours to poison. The earth. The skies … For you to poison and control.

 

Come on, you’ve won, you’ve humiliated us. In fact, we’re humiliating ourselves. We’re doing it for you.

We’re carrying out the devil’s work – your work. You sentenced us to death by humiliation. Very well, we’ll carry out the sentence. We’ll do what you want. We barely need telling.

 

They won the battle. And now they’re letting us live on, to see their victory. To live out our humiliation.

An invisible humiliation. An invisible martyrdom. That no one knows but us.