Work in Progress

Thunder – mother’s turning over in her sleep.

Mother’s having bad dreams. Which you’re giving her. Don’t break mother. She’s probably reading your philosophical thoughts.

Where does all this talk lead us, philosopher? Where does it take us? Palookaville. Nowhere. The same place as we were before.

But everything’s a little bit different, don’t you think? There’s been a tiny … displacement.

But that just means that everything’s even more what it is. What it was. What it will be …

We’re all going to be transparent to Mother, Priya says. Mother will know us like no one else does. She has all our data. Mother sees all and knows all about us. She’s able to read or desires, our dreams. And she can make an environment that’s just perfect for us – each of us. Only it won’t be your dream or my dream anymore. It’ll be the dreaming. Mother’s dreaming.

A new Ice Age is setting in. The grand solar minimum.

Sheets of ice are coming. Miles-high ice sheets. Glaciers, pressing through the campus.

The Earth, turned into an ice planet. Silent. Lifeless. And just the frost-filled wind blowing across …

Eternal winter. Like nuclear winter. Where nothing will grow, ever again.

Oh things might grow – but only twisted things, mutated things. What Livia would call interesting things.

Stupidity’s the only thing we have. The only thing that might save us.

From what?

From knowing our stupidity, of course.


What’s the opposite of a savant? The opposite of a prodigy? Is there such a thing as a genius of stupidity?


Livia, too, was an agent of Stupidity, the greater Stupidity. She, too, was a servant of forces beyond her control. She, like us, served Idiocy and the self-seeking of Idiocy.


Stupidity, trying to sound its depths. Failing to sound its depths. Stupidity, pondering its own abyss. Failing to ponder its own abyss.

We’ve heard the rumours.

An underground resistance network … Places like this all over the country. Whenever the humanities are threatened, this is what happens. A kind of withdrawal. It’s like monasteries during the Dark Ages. Keeping the flame of civilization alive.

See, they know the catastrophe’s coming. A great cull. Which they’ll survive underground. It was like those ancient people in Derinkuyu, with their underground city.

The paragraduates know what they’re planning – the enemy. They’re prepping. They’ve got this a vast secret pantry, stacked with tins. With sacks of lentils.

They’re, like, a doomsday cult.

Look, they’ve left the world, the paragrads. They’ve taken their leave. Renounced everything, Written letters to their loved ones, explaining. They’re like those Indian ascetics who have a mock funeral before they take up the mendicant life.

It’s a whole ethos. It’s a way of life. Like, a last form of life. For the endless end times.

It’s, like, lower education – this is underground education, Sophia says. It’s an anti-university.

It’s about depth, Sophia says. It’s about being hidden. Just being allowed to do your thing. To pursue a thought for as long as it takes. To think the most important things.

They’ve gone underground to pose the really deep questions, Sophia says. To dwell with the fundamental books – ones it takes a lifetime to understand. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aquinas’s Treatise.

They have these study cells, Sophia says. The higher cells are for the more superficial subjects. The deeper ones for the more fundamental ones. And they go pretty fucking deep. And there’s a giant chasm at the heart of the campus, apparently. Like, some fissure.

The Abgrund, Helmut whispers.

Exactly! Sophia says. That’s what they call it! That’s where they go after they’ve read Schelling. And Heidegger’s lectures on Schelling. After they’ve read everything … The paragraduates –

At least we’re amused by our stupidity, Livia said. At least it diverts us.

From what?

From stupidity of course.


Livia used to speak of the stupidity of the humanities. Identical with the studiousness of the humanities. With the stupefaction of the humanities. With the idiocy of the humanities.)


What there is to be thought: stupidity. What stands in the way of stupidity being thought: stupidity.


She was grateful for idiocy, Livia said. For what idiocy had brought her. For us! For her idiot squad.

What hadn’t we taught her – or untaught her? What hadn’t we got wrong and therefore got right? What blows on the brain hadn’t we dealt her? Great blows! Laughing blows! Gladdening blows!


The intricacies of our idiocy. Its filigree. It’s delicacy, even. Idiocy could be quite a refined thing. Like some complex confectionary. The taste of such delicate idiocy. The savouring of such idiocy. Only a connoisseur of idiocy, like Livia, could really appreciate it. It’s too bad we never learnt to appreciate it ourselves. Too bad that we were incapable of enjoying our idiocy. But that would require a non-idiocy that none of us possessed.


Our wager: that we might have something to say as idiots – as philosophical idiots. But we don’t know how – or why. We’re too idiotic for that.  Are we fundamental idiots, or just idiots? How deep is our idiocy – that’s the question. How far down does it go?

Is there such a thing as an idiot’s philosophy? Or does idiocy always fall short of philosophy? Can you philosophise from your idiocy – or do you have to philosophise against it?

Our questions. The questions of idiots. But are the question of idiots idiotic questions?  Philosophical idiocy – is it the same as idiotic philosophy? The same thing? The idiocy of philosophy and the philosophy of idiocy: what’s the difference?


Have we ever really reached it, our stupidity? Livia wondered. Where we could really come into our stupidity? Own up to it? Inherit it?

Will we ever be able to inhabit it, our stupidity? Dwell in it.

Have we really been released into our stupidity?


We should let our idiocy be idiocy: that’s what Livia told us. It was more than accepting our idiocy. More than reconciling ourselves to our idiocy. It was affirming it, our idiocy.

Let us be these idiots: that’s what we should say to ourselves. Let us step into our idiocy. Let us be, really be these idiots. Let us own our idiocy – not fight against it. Let idiocy be the seed from which it would grow, our non-intellectual life.


It’s still to come, in a way, the opening of our idiocy. It’s still ahead of us. We’re still waiting for it. We’ve yet to come into our own, as idiots.

Livia’s waiting, too. Livia’s excited. Livia knows that it isn’t here yet, but that it will be. She’s waiting to see what we will do. She’s waiting to see what her charges will do, when idiocy arrives.

Idiocy Itself. Capital I, for Itself. Idiocy, arriving. Idiocy, coming. Idiocy, terrifying – great. Like an angel. Are there angels of idiocy?



Might there be another name for idiocy? Might it be, innocence? Might there be such a thing as a divine idiocy? As a messianic idiocy?

Is there an idiot messiah, a messiah of idiocy? Is idiocy arriving as the messiah, and as nothing other than the messiah?)

 Uma, reading from my notebooks. Let us never adjust to this. Let us never accept this. Let it be a perpetual outrage. Let it never be allowed to complete its work on us.

Do you take advice, philosopher? Uma asks. Do you like it? Do you welcome feedback? Are you receptive to the thoughts of lesser unphilosophical mortals?

Do I have any choice? I ask.

You put a lot into this, Uma says. Too much, maybe. Isn’t it a bit laboured? You should write something that’s closer to the way you speak. You don’t speak like this, do you?

And there’s so much of it, Uma says. So you write every day? Every – single – day? Do you have that much to write?

I write anyway, I say.

You must really believe in yourself, Uma says. You take yourself seriously. Someone, at some time, must have told you that you were great. That great things were expected of you. God, you have such confidence. Like the world wants to know your thoughts …

I wrote it for myself, I say.

You wrote it for posterity, Uma says. These aren’t just notes. You actually think your thoughts are worth preserving … I’m lucky to be here. To be admitted into the office of a genius ….

 Uma, reading from my notebooks. The urgency of the lack of urgency. The emergency of the non-emergency. The evil of the lack of obvious evil. The apocalypse of the non-apocalypse. This is how they’ll fool us. By making it appear so normal.

What is this supposed to be? Uma asks. What do you think you’re writing?

Every day, new horrors. New … disgraces. New things to loathe. Every day, new reasons for hatred.

We demand the meaning of meaning. We shake the bars of this world. Cry out. It makes prison no longer seem so bad.

Such a sense of having died. Such a sense of never actually having lived – not for a moment. Such a sense of never having been born.