Work in Progress

Do you like being a lover – my lover? You don’t mind either way, do you? Our afternoon fucks are a bonus. They’re a treat. Our affair is a distraction. And it’s easy, because it’s on a plate. Because here I am, right in front of you.

It’s easy for you, too. You just drive here. And drive off again.

But part of me gets caught here. Snagged. Do you think about me when I’m not here? I’ll bet you don’t. Well, I think about you.

 

The real drama of your life is elsewhere – I know that. It’s your magnum opus. Wrestling with its very possibility. Or impossibility. That’s your drama. That’s what’s keeping you occupied.

And it’ll keep you busy for a number of years yet. Until … your late thirties, maybe. Or early forties. When you decide you’re bored of it all.

 

Only in philosophy are you allowed to think you still might develop into something, age thirty-two. That you could still have unlimited promise in your early thirties. That if you work in your room for long enough. If you read the wright books for long enough, you’ll turn the right corner. There you’ll be …

And I like it in you, that hope. It’s attractive. Your idealism … Like you’re about to change the thought world.

 

One day, I’ll just leave you to it, your ambitions, your great project. I’ll tiptoe away, and you won’t really notice. It won’t really disturb you.

And it won’t disturb you, either. You’ll have our husband to go back to.

Go back to? I never left him.

 

So it’ll be an episode, for both of us. An episode. A what-was-that? A what-happened-there? A what-was-that-all-about? A just-think-of-it. An imagine- that. Something to occupy our thoughts in dull hours. Something to wonder at. To get wistful about. Nostalgic.

 

One day you’ll tell your husband all about it. One day, when you’re feeling particularly close. On an anniversary, or something. On his birthday, or yours. You’ll tell him about your love affair – that’s what you’ll call it. It’ll all come out. To show him not to take you for granted. Not to assume you couldn’t lead an entirely life if you chose to. Not to think you weren’t ever so interesting to someone. That would add an unexpected twist to the evening, wouldn’t it? That would make him sit up and listen …

And you won’t tell anyone. Not even your future wife. Your future girlfriend …

The destruction of the present course of the world. The wiping out of the Satanic powers. The termination of all pain and sorrow. The coming of the fucking kingdom of the God …

 

The turn from the old aeon to the new one. The shift from the time of sin to the time of salvation.

When the Now alone has meaning – nothing else. When we have to decide what do Now – and what to leave undone. When no standard from the past can help us.

 

A militancy. A totally passionate way of living. A total praxis. Where you embody the revolution. The apocalypse …

 

The new aeon breaking in. The imminent abolition of the world, of all the kings and nobles, all the priests, the moneylenders, the rentiers, all the laws and the henchmen. The annihilation of everything that is not perfect in God.

 

A new epiphany of the Godhead. In its urgency, its Kairos. The wedge of the Moment in the present.

 

All present things are inconsequential, because the end is coming. That’s what apocalypse teaches you.

 

Nihilism has already claimed transcendence. It’s swallowed it up. Transcendence is fucking empty.

 

Ecstatic nihilism. Creative nihilism. The death of God that we have to live.

 

A new thought of the void, of the emptiness of nihilism. Of chaos – chaos itself, in its groundless ground.

 

We have to face the full horror of history. No escapism. No wishful illusions. The full reality of this despicable world.

Theology has to descend to Hell and stay there.

 

Faith can’t be positive anymore. It’s destructive. It means destructive action. The destruction of the political law. Of moral law. Of metaphysical law.

 

God is the nothing of the world. The void of the world. And that’s the religious meaning of the death of God.

 

God has nothing to do with the world – this world. God has left this world. Nothing remains of God but the void.

A religion of the void of God – that’s what we seek. Except it wouldn’t be a religion, or just another religion. It’d be anti-religion. The end of all religions …

 

This is our theology: divine absence. Divine non being. Divine impotence. Divine indifference.

 

Do you know how we’re unified with God? Not through some beatitude, but through crucifixion. We become one with God in slavery. In the Cross. That’s how we know the absent God, the divine void.

 

A theology of divine absence, divine impotence. The godlessness of the world is what we know of God.

 

The first experience – our experience – has always been of the silence and nothingness of God.

 

God is the whirlwind. And all there is is whirlwind.

Which means that God cannot be called to account by his creatures. That God is unrecognisable, unsayable, unnameable. Utterly transcendent. 

 

Our uprootedness. Our nakedness. Our hopelessness.

 

Transcendence is not – it doesn’t exist. 

Which is a way of saying that God is without form, without bounds, unameable, incomprehensible, non-existent.

 

A revelation of the void – everywhere. The very sky. The earth itself. The waves of the sea. We can’t escape.

 

The meaninglessness of the world is itself significant. It means something.

 

The grace of destruction. Grace as destruction, running rampant. Like spreading flames.

 

The Fall’s just deepening and deepening. The law of the earth is too strong.

It’s much too late for this world – but we always knew that.

 

Lower and lower stages of amorphy. Of formlessness. Of senseless violence.

 

We’re waiting for the blazing break. For an apocalyptic fire to purge the land.

 

We’re the antinomians. We’re the bearers of the alien fire.

Total antagonism towards the world: that’s our only option.

 

We don’t need God any longer to solve the human paradox. We’ll solve it ourselves. We don’t need to find a justification for all the unbearable terrors. There is no justification.

 

Either God or the world, right?

 

The flash of the transcendent in the immanent: that’s what we want to see. The apocalyptic fire of divine love. The momentary burning up of the world …

 

The world’s old – terribly so. And it needs renewal.

 

The incessant death agony of the world …

 

Our religion of the Fall of God.

 

We can understand meaning only negatively. Only through the profound experience of meaninglessness.

 

The world is a purely functional mechanism. The conditions of meaning come from outside.

 

Being is just self-repetition, self-perpetuation, self-enclosure. The old tautology.

 

The use of nihilism: not to denigrate ourselves, but to embolden us so that we can look beyond the world. So that we no longer regard it as a holy gift. So it loosens its magical grip upon us.

Nihilism: disenchantment carried to its limit.

 

The void of God: that’s what we have to see. That nothing remains of God but the void.

 

God is with us in his absence: don’t you see? Even though that absence is painful.

 

Kierkegaard: It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion.

 

Scholem: 'the redemption […] cannot be realized without dread and ruin.

 

The world was created by mistake: that’s what I believe.

 

I renounce the creation and reject the creator. That’s where I stand.

 

He lives in his own private Dostoevsky novel. A St Petersburg of his mind.

 

When prophecy fails, there comes apocalypticism. When apocalypticism fails … Gnosticism.

This is not our world: remember that.

All we have: our despair, which is to say, our freedom not to be caught up in this world. Which means despair isn’t just passive. It isn’t just something we just endure. Which means despair is a incitement. An awakening. A condition of further action …

 

Despair is an invitation. A calling. Even the highest calling. It says: turn your eyes to this. Turn your attention to this. Awaken yourself to this. You are not part of the demonic realm.

 

This demonic world. This unacceptable world. This refusable world. Because that’s what we learn: this world is refusable. It doesn’t have to be our world. We don’t have to succumb. We can climb into the light.

 

Our apocalypse. This world has to collapse – and it will collapse.

That’s what hope is, for us: destruction. The end of all things. For the end of the world.

 

This isn’t our world. This isn’t our filth.

 

Horror at the world. At ourselves. At having to live. At having to go on.

Sin, deepening. Sin, always. And lies. And corruption. And ugliness.

 

The hideousness of it all. The twistedness.

Will we ever be untwisted? Will we ever be made beautiful? Will we ever become uncorrupted?

 

This world is too disgusting to last. It’s too deeply fucked to last.

Which is why we’ll have to accept the coming horror. The tyranny.

Which is why we’ll even have to work for the destruction. For the great down-going.

 

The air is poisoned. The very air. Our food. Everything we eat. The sky is poisoned. The clouds aren’t real clouds. The soil is poisoned. The water. The rain that falls. All poison. They’d poison the sun, if they could.

 

We’re driving ourselves mad: do you ever think that: that we’ve driven ourselves mad? That we’ve gone too mad. That we’ve spent too much time in mad company. Too much time reading mad books. Studying wild philosophy.

 

Is this what madness is like? Is this what it feels like – tastes like? Are we unwell – that’s what they call it nowadays, don’t they: being unwell. Are we suffering from mental health problems – because that’s how madness is known today, as a mental health problem?

 

Because madness shows what lies beyond this world. Madness is part of a greater sanity. A coming sanity. It’s the face of that sanity. Just like stupidity – our stupidity – is the present face of brilliance.

 

What if we’re the madness? What if we’re the ones who should be eliminated? What if our destruction is the solution?

Mad people like us. Mad philosophers like us. Mad theologians like us. Mad thinkers. We’ve taken things too far. We’ve taken thought too far. Until it’s merged with madness.

 

It can’t go on like this, and yet it goes on. It can’t get any worse, and yet it gets worse. It’s even accelerating.

They’re intensifying the pressure. The enemy’s desperate. They’re forcing their agenda. They’ll stop at nothing. They’re the real apocalypticists, not us. They’re the ones who want to drive the world to ruin, not us.

 

A mad philosophy, for mad times. A mad theology. In service of God gone mad. Who will help us? Are we just driving ourselves madder? More mad? Infinitely mad?

 

Everything burning up into nothing … An offering … The offering of everything there is. To what? We call it God. But it’s just … The sky? The night? The fucking Open?

As if our whole lives were sacrifices. In some religion. Our religion …

 

We should slit our throats now. We should hang ourselves now. It would makes sense. It makes more sense than anything.

At the height of our lives. At the height of our fucking beauty. (Laughter)

 

I want the wave to break. I want the flood. I want to go under.

And I want to think there’s an ark somewhere. That will save all the good things – not me. Not the likes of us. But there’s an ark that carries all the beautiful things, all the good things. That saves the goodness. I like that thought.

 

There’s nothing more beautiful than death. I’m starting an absolute cult of death –now! Tonight!

They want to fuck up our hippocampuses. The ability to learn. Our emotional stability. That’s what they want to target. To create a new neural network in the brain. Rewiring the human nervous system. To trap us in Hell.

 

It’s neurodegeneration everywhere. All around us. It’s all conformity, obedience. People are turning into zombies. Their frontal lobes are fucked. The high centres of the brain.

All the fine turning’s gone. All the subtlety. Humane thinking. Empathy. All going. Love – the capacity to love. Civilization’s the central cortex. That’s what they’re demolishing.

They’re creating the kind of masses that they want.

 

This is Armageddon. This is the apocalyptic battle. Taking evil to a level never before seen.

Satan is behind this. Someone who hates the world as it is. Who hates creation as it is. Where it’s not enough to own everything living, but to take possession and control living things in their essence.

 

It’s out in the open. They’re not trying to sneak up on the herd anymore.

 

There’s aluminium, barium, strontium up in rain. The rain, like foams.

 

They don’t need us to make money, they don’t need our taxes, they print money for whatever they want.

 

The mercantile era is coming to an end. This is the neo-feudal era

 

They’re breaking in the new system. Everything’s lined up – every major logistical element.

 

The population is a liability. They want to thin out the herd.

 

It’s cognitive infiltration. They’re letting the IQ points fall.

 

We’re being prepped. They’re programming us – remote controlling us.

 

It was a slow kill programme. Now it’s a fast kill programme. Things are speeding up.

 

They’re going to modify every species on the planet.

 

We’re in tune. We sense things. The shifting narratives.

There are so many battle fronts. So many battle lines.

 

The ownership of humans: that’s what they’re aiming at. He ownership of the entire world. The digitization of everything that can be traded or used as a medium of exchange.

Mourning the death of the old world.

But we didn’t even like the old world. The old world sucked.

What will the new world be like?

Worse.

 

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? How will we tell them from the rest of the tossers?

We will know them by their deeds. Their books? Their substacks. Their podcasts. Their vlogs.

 

Why do we sense these things, and no one else does – not all the clever philosophers? How come it’s falling to us?

Our very mediocrity. Our very lowness. The fact that we’ve little stake in the world as it is. The fact that we half hope for apocalypse. That we want it all to end.

Perhaps we’re not to be trusted. Perhaps we’re too in love with apocalypse. Perhaps we want the end of the world. Perhaps that’s all we want – all we’ve wanted.

 

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

Of course! Drinking! What else! It’s preparatory. A method of attunement. Not a method … that’s not the word. There’s a Way.

 

The stupid hope that a world may come in which we’d want to live. When the end of this world is the last chance we have.

 

The shift’s occurring. We’re supposed to go along with it all. We’re supposed to accede. We’re supposed to work on it ourselves: the production of the new reality. We’re supposed to join in, the so-called educated middle class. The indoctrinated. The deceived. The stupefied. Shoulder to the wheel, and so on. We’ve got our role to play.

The great dimunition. People are more lethargic now. They’ve lost their pep. They’ve lost their joie de vivre. They’ve sunk down a level – everyone. They’re lost their desires.

We’re sinking, all of us. The level of the world is falling. The spiritual level. It’s all planned. They know what they’re doing.

 

They’re decommissioning the old reality, and implementing a new one. And everyone’s going along with it. A thousand years of darkness: that’s what’s coming. Slavery. A slavery system. The new Hell. They’re building Hell. A false reality. A fake reality.

And they’re rolling out the new narrative.

 

The spiritual trial is over. We know who we are now. It’s been revealed to us. It’s all clear.

 

No one’s coming to save us. There’s no second coming. We have to save ourselves.

 

They’ve launched it. The new reality. It’s here – it’s all around us.

 

Most people just want to believe. They’re pretending to believe. They’re pretending as hard as they can. It’s difficult – it’s an effort. Look at them, straining.

 

The trap is closing. No – it’s closed.

 

You’re going to refuse their implants? The implants are already in you, idiot.

They put it in the air, put it in the water. Everything you eat.

 

Love … there’s no more love. Just mutual suspicion.

 

All that’s left to us are more or less spectacular suicides. Which no one will understand.

Generations of processing has actually worked. It’s made us, bred us, into soft robots. Into bearers of the message. Conveyors. Perpetuators. Here to pretend nothing has happened when in fact everything’s happened. Here with the message that the world is as it was when the world is nothing like it was.

They’re making the shift. The adjustment. All at once, moving together. Lie a flock of birds, all turning together. All at once. Like a shoal of fish.

Mass behaviour. Mass formation. Mass hypnosis. They’re acting as one. As if things were never other than they are. As if there were never anything but this … reality.

Except I shouldn’t call it a reality. That insults the very word, reality. Because it’s not real. Because it means nothing.

Fakeness, fakery. Let’s pretend – the great game. They’re all saying, the middle class, solemnly, pursed-lipped: let’s pretend. Let’s follow the game to the end. And let’s pretend we’re not pretending. Let’s pretend everything is as it was.  

And they’re pretending not to pretend. They’re faking not faking it. Brilliantly! Intuitively! They’re following their orders so deeply, they don’t even appear to be orders. They know what’s to be done. The moves to be made. The shifts. Their fakery has depth. Substance.

How do they do it? What an achievement! Do they not know they’re play-acting? Or have they convinced themselves, too?

 

Things are shifting. But they act as though nothing’s shifted. As though it was always like this.

How do they convince themselves? Through what mechanisms? What horrible mode of transmission? How do they manage it?

But they’re essential. They’re necessary to the whole charade. They do the real work, the work close to the ground. They carry it through, the real labour. They’re responsible for the implementation. At micro level. At the level of the absolutely ordinary. The most concrete.

 

Luckily, this isn’t an entirely middle class world. Luckily, they have to share it with others.

This really is class war. Their undeclared war is really a total war. Over the nature of reality. Over what is real and what is not.

They’ve at war by dint of who they are. Who they remain, from moment to moment. Of what they implement, from moment to moment. Of what they change, from moment to moment.

They act as if this were normal – isn’t that the miracle? As if it had always been like this. As if things had always been this way. They play their part so magnificently. So minutely. With such attention to detail. They are everything they’re supposed to be. They’re doing everything they’re supposed to. They’re implementing the new world viscerally. At every level. Through their simplest gestures. Through their very way of walking. Of being. Of breathing.

They don’t even have to be told, to be told. They know what to do – utterly. Completely.

 

They’re so played. So deeply. They think they’re free and independent. They think they’re reasonable. That they can make up their own minds. That they’re open to things, and the world. They think they can live in good conscience. Undisturbed.

That things are trundling along as they should. That this is the way things should be.

 

They’re perpetrators. They’re guilty. It’s what makes the new reality seem to real. So thick. What makes it seem to be already here. Everywhere. In advance.

They pass it off successfully. As if nothing had changed. As if it was just the same old same old. As if the transition had been smooth. As if the new boss was the same as the old boss. As if there hadn’t been an epochal shift.

As if everything hadn’t completely changed. As if this were still the same world. As if lunatics weren’t in charge now. And we know it, don’t we? We remember. We have memories of the shit old world. The world we didn’t want, but that was better than this.

 

Their sanity is insanity. Their moderation is immoderation. Their calm is panic. Their confidence is fear.

Being and Time. Being and Event. Being and Nothingness. These titles. These books. Do they still write books like that? Do they think they can? Do you think you can?

And all these books about revolution. Do people still believe in revolution? An all these books about God.

Why do you have all these religious books, anyway? About Christian history And ascetics. And martyrs.

 

Faith – that’s all that’s left to you. Faith in faith in faith … Not God but the possibility of God. Not faith but the possibility of faith. That’s as far as you can get.

Reaching – for what? Striving – for what? For something other than all this. Whatever this is.

 

Read me some beautiful God stuff. I want some God-pathos. I want some more God. Read me some God. The biggest and most beautiful thoughts are about God, that’s what I think.

Why are we just lying here, watching the dust motes, when we should be doing things? Striding forth, or whatever. When we should be effective individuals. Busy with this and that. …

If only we had important things do to … But I suppose you do have important things to do, don’t you? This is just a pause in your Herculean labours. You’ve just laid down your tools for a bit. This is a rest-break, in the afternoon.

Taking it easy for a while. And then back to it in the evening. Is that how it is? Are you working on something particularly important at the moment? Have you come to a crucial part of your magnum opus?

 

Your magnum opus. Do you really believe you’re writing one? That all this is for something? That all your days are leading somewhere? Building up to something? There’s a direction in your life. I envy that.

 

What are you actually writing? Can I have a look? You’ve made me actually interested now.

Reading.

Oh, it’s prose poem philosophy. It’s literary philosophy. Written in a high literary style. Do you actually have a gift for writing, do you think? Are you actually good at this? Perhaps you are … I can’t tell. Anyway, you take yourself very seriously, for all you talk about the universal farce.

 

A literary philosophy. Must be a real audience for that … See, you know it’s pretentious, don’t you? You know it’s imitation French, or whatever.

 

Do you ever think you’ve got it all wrong? That you’ve backed the wrong horse in life?

 

How’s your magnum opus going?

How do you think it’s going?

You should write about wanting to write a magnum opus. About the impossibility of writing a magnum opus. That might be more interesting.

 

Write about the impossibility of the book. Write about what you can’t do. Write about how mediocre you feel. Write about how you disappoint yourself. Dear diary, I am an idiot.

Longing – that’s our stock in trade. We do longing – messianic longing. We see longing in everything. We project longing onto everything.

 

Messianic yearning – the whole world groaning for redemption. Lifting itself to be blessed. Waiting for the touch of God on its fevered brow. For the kiss of God on its febrile forehead …

 

Everything yearning, waiting for the young messiah, the messiah of youth, who will make everything new again. That’s what we’re waiting for. That we’ll turn some beautiful corner, and surprise the messiah, just being there. That we’ll enter some grove of groves, and there he’ll be.

 

Yeah, but the messiah will be wasted on us. The messiah’s got better things to do.