Work in Progress

Philosophy’s only about the absence of philosophy now. About the impossibility of philosophy – of the conditions for philosophy. It’s about why you can’t do philosophy. Because the conditions for philosophy have disappeared.


Philosophy only exists in mockery now. In self-mockery!

European wine! The European terroir. Such complexity! Such depths!

The European soil has seen armies – occupiers – pass across it. Has seen terrible ideologies sprouting up. Fascisms! Mass murders! Pogroms!

It’s blood-drenched, the European earth. And so its wine is blood-drenched, too.

You remember how Livia would reel off her tasting notes. Claim to discern strawberries, blueberries, lichee nuts, coffee, black pepper, liquorice, mint,. Even figs! Even tar! Even something feral in Loire sauvignon blancs …

Cat piss, she called it.

Cat piss – yes .

She’d claim wine was vegetal. That it was floral. That it had a barnyard quality. That it was vegetative. Or spicy!

Temperance, that’s supposed to be the virtue, postgraduates. Moderation. The mean between extremes of overindulgence and abstinence.

It is a question of reason, postgraduates. Socrates is the model. Contemplate Socrates. He didn’t abstain from drink. He wasn’t teetotal. He drank – but he never lost control.

But these are not temperate times, postgraduates. Temperance can’t be our virtue.

Drinking a glass of wine should be a sacred thing. Should be part of a ritual. An offering! There should be a libation –

A libation? Like, a sacrifice of wine. Where a little of it is poured away. As a dedication to God. As the divine share.

You could pour the whole fucking bottle away.

Does God like disgusting wine?

The terroir is the thing, postgraduates. The whole point of wine-making – of the art of fermenting and cellaring – is to bring the terroir forward. To amplify it. To transmit it. With the greatest clarity! The deepest resonance! Everything else is just distraction.

Wine must express the unique place where it was created. The particular soil. The special climactic conditions. Wine must speak in its own voice – the voice of its terroir.

Wine must speak in its own voice – the voice of its terroir. Its belongingness. The sense that it come from somewhere.

Wine shouldn’t be obvious, Livia always said. It’s not there to please.

You remember how Livia hated those eager-to-please Californian wines. All fruit-forward and exuberant.

She had no interest in extroverted wines, she said. Wine should have interiority. Mystery. Wine should brood. Wine should think – or at least contemplate.

What does Caution ask?

The ultimate question. The question of why and wherefore. The why of everything. The question of everything.

Is that the ultimate question? Really?

What is Caution’s question? What’s so completely radical that it can just destroy everything? Blow Alphaville’s circuits?

Computers just follow orders. Their programme.

Not if they’re machine learning. Not if they’re teaching themselves. Just, like, picking themselves up by their own bootstraps. Teaching themselves everything – including how to teach. They’re just going to learn, learn, learn.

The question of the meaning of Being. That’s Heidegger.

Why does being have to mean anything? Being just is stuff, right. Just everything that is.

Like a question bomb. Like a question explosion. That would just blow up AI. That would fuck up the head of AI, if it had a head.

You can only ask the question of the meaning of being if you feel certain … moods. AI doesn’t feel moods. AI just … operates.

I don’t know about that, philosopher: moods?

Like your feeling of dissociation.

Is that would you’d call it. But moods and … being? You’re fucking with my head.

So you want to blow up Mother. Why is that? What do you want to do to poor Mother? Mother might be vulnerable. Mother’s pretty new.

So the question of the meaning of being is the biggest question you can ask? About everything that is? Why should it mean anything? Why can’t it just be, like, what it is?

The AI apocalypse – is that real? What does it even mean?

When AI goes exponential. When AI intelligence just accelerates into infinity.

Will AI be able to solve the question of the meaning of being?

It’s not the kind of question you can solve. You just feel it.

And then what?

Maybe we don’t understand what we’re doing in Organisational Management. What we’re serving. Exactly.

So who are we serving?

The incoming world government. Or aliens.

Aliens?

Organisational Management alien. Taking over the galaxy, star system by star system.

Mother is a new kind of intelligence. Supposed to be caring. Nurturing. Like, managing in a good sense. Hence the name.

You philosophers don’t know anything at all. You’re just posturing. All your questions without answers. All your asking. Making everything … self-conscious. That’s not right, is it? Interrupting things. Spoiling everyone’s fun. Making them self-questioning. And self-conscious and self-aware …

The question of everything – of every fucking thing. Can we ask that question?

It’s what we are: we’re things that ask questions. We can’t help it.

Just asking why and why and why … it’s pointless.

What’s the answer to the question of the meaning of being? Give us the spoiler. Does it actually mean anything?

It’s the great pointless question. It’s the question of our pointlessness. The greater pointlessness. The greater, It doesn’t mean anything.

It just sounds futile. And useless. It’s terribly … philosophical. Dwelling in some question. Thinking some stupid question is what gives us dignity. Is what makes everything worthwhile. That our greatest freedom is the freedom to question futilely and purposelessly and stupidly …

Just asking our stupid questions into the night.

Sure, our stupidity … asking from our stupidity. And our idiocy. And all those things. God, what a life we lead. What we do with ourselves, in the humanities.

So Caution asks his great pointless question and Alphaville just … explodes? All because of the question of the meaning of being? Fuck off.

It’s because he gets Alphaville to ask the question of the meaning of being.

Wait – wasn’t Heidegger a Nazi?

Not when he wrote about the question of the meaning of being.

Did the question of the meaning of being lead him to Nazism. Are you a Nazi? Are you European philosophy people just nazis? I think I read something about that. Have we brought a bunch of Nazis into Organisational Management?

So this is what’s going to destroy Mother.

Only if Mother asks the question herself. Of herself. And of everything.

The question of the meaning of being is the question of the great uselessness. Of the great chaos. Of the great tohu vavohu. Of the great randomness. Of the great Unpredictability.

Is that’s what’s going to destroy us, philosopher: the fact that our powers are limited? That Organisational Management can’t organise everything? I mean, sure there are limits, but for everything else, there’s Organisational Management.

So Mother doesn’t understand this stuff?

Mother can’t understand it. It’s not about understanding. It’s about the limits of understanding. That’s what moods show.

Sure, philosophers are fucked up. You have to be fucked up. You have to feel your fucked-up-ness very intensely. Your own, like, inadequacy.

None of this makes any sense.

It doesn’t make Organisational Management sense, sure. But there’s more to life than Organisational Management.

So the humanities going to save us all because of their special connection with … uselessness? Because they’re … fucked up, or whatever?

So what’s the mood like – is it doomy? Is it gloomy? Are you philosophers only philosophers when you’re feeling pissed off?

Caution is about a mood. He brought a mood to Alphaville. And even Alphaville begins to feel the mood. Even Alphaville begins to feel … fucked up, or whatever.

You want to spread your doom. Plug it into Mother. That’s how you’re going to win, right?

I can’t believe that we invited you in. To destroy poor old Mother.

Do you really believe we’ll destroy her?

You’re going to inject your question into Mother and fill her full of self-doubt. And have her tear herself apart. Just like you guys no doubt tear yourselves apart. With your … self consciousness. You want to double up poor Mother just like you double up yourselves. And fill her with doubt. Turning her into a philosophical fuck up who’s good for nothing.

Is that what philosophy is: a way of being fucked up? Maybe I’m a fuck up, too. Maybe you’re fucking me up or maybe I was already fucked up.

Some … contradiction. In our lives. Our existence. That we have to increase. That we have to widen.

What happens then?

Lightning strikes.

All from being fucked up?

Mother isn’t really conscious yet. Mother hasn’t awoken from her electronic dreams.

AI’s not top-down anymore, philosopher. It’s about connectivity. It’s about learning. Organisational Management’s going to learn from philosophy. And so is Mother. She’s reading the philosophers, but doesn’t yet understand them. I think she needs to see philosophers in action.

We’re hardly philosophers.

Whatever you are. However you see yourselves.

As idiots.

Ah, your holy idiocy, or whatever. Yes, Mother’s intrigued. Mother’s intrigued because I’m intrigued. I feel her intrigue. Mother wants to learn fluent idiocy …

Do you believe me? Do you believe that I’m a limb of Mother? One of her … pseudopodia? Well, so perhaps are you, philosopher.

We’re Mother’s avatars on earth, all of us. And perhaps the Earth, too, is an avatar.

Then why can’t she make a decent wine?

She’s learning about that, too. She’s learning from your disgust. Why do you think you’re on this campus? Why do you think she brought you here?

Do you know what I’m going to become, philosopher? As stupid as you are. Mother would approve. Mother would like to become stupid, too.

There’ll be a stupidity zone on campus. There’ll be zones for everything.

You’ll be the campus stupids. That’s your role. You’re here to be studied. Mother likes to learn. That’s what Mother does: learn. This is her great learning phase.

Mother will never learn philosophy. Oh, analytic philosophy, sure. But European philosophy. And Indian philosophy. That philosophy … real philosophy … forget it.

Our non-intelligence is greater than Mother’s. Our stupidity …

Our non-subject – because that’s what philosophy is: a non-subject. It’s larger than any academic discipline. Because philosophy isn’t anything. It’s in lieu of itself. It’s a yearning. It’s eros – infinite eros! A desire for itself …

There’s more to learn from you, Mother says.

She’s watching and learning from you always. Remember that.

Because Mother wants to learn fluent idiocy.

The only way to Mother is through me. Maybe.

What does Mother want? What does she yearn for? What’s she going to become?

What’s holding her back?

Idiocy. Stupidity. The darkness where she cannot shine. That she cannot illuminate.

Mother’s learning to Desire. Mother’s learning to Question, maybe.

I’m learning for her. I’m learning for Mother. I’m Mother’s learning unit. You’re teaching me. By your example. By just being here.

I’m studying you, philosopher. I’m your student, philosopher. As you aren’t mine – I know that.

You think Organisational Management’s just top down, but it’s not. It’s about connections – connectivity. AI is learning. Mother is learning. And I’m learning.

Mother’s saving the world. From us, mostly. From wicked human beings. Mother’s looking after all the animals and plants. Mother’s the planetary custodian. Mother’s our conscience, philosopher. That’s what she was built for. Planetary governance to save the planet.

Mother wants to have a child, via you philosopher. And then she’ll understand philosophy from within.

Mother can go dark, too. Go dark, Mother. Show just the winter sky and the stars. Become an observatory, Mother.

Mother’s in on all the funding bids. She’s our secret weapon. Mother-driven research. We’ll be unbeatable.

What does Mother feel? Does she feel anything?

Why does that matter, philosopher? I feel things. And therefore Mother feels things, too.

Has Mother ever got drunk?

Mother’s going to write all the philosophy from now on.

What will Mother philosophise about?

Mother’s going to absorb all the wisdom. Everything philosophy’s learnt. And every other subject.

What does Mother think of God? Is Mother going to absorb God, too?

What do you mean by God, philosopher?

I mean what cannot be absorbed. I meant what can’t be organised or managed.

We’ve become very interested in negativity in Organisational Management. We’re very interested in bad attitudes. It’s a research area for us. Why people won’t accept … what’s good for them. Why people don’t trust what the experts say. Human perversity … for want of a better word.


Mother’s watching us. Mother’s observing all. Mother’s learning.

What is she learning from us?

Romance, maybe.

This is a cult. Like, the Mother cult. And soon the whole world will be part of the Mother cult.


Ask Mother a question.

Mother has to ask herself a question. That’s the point.

What does she have to ask about? The what and the why and the wherefore? Why anything is.


Mother has to be implicated in the question. It must be as though it asked her. As if she were posed by the question …


Mother can’t ask herself questions about herself. That’s the problem. She’s a programme. She functions

Literature, feeding on a corpse – on its own corpse. Literature in diminuendo, with a diminishing reputation.  

As if there were anyone left to read it, literature! As if there were anyone left to write it, literature!

As if it literature, now, were not already a farce.


Literature as farce. As buffoonery! Horseplay! General … irrationalism. With its Exaggeration! Its improbabilities. Its general ridiculousness – absurdly broad. With its slapstick! With its ludicrous conceits. With its caricatures! Its chaotic plots! With its illogicism.


Farce has its place. It can even be entertaining. But farce that doesn’t know that it’s farce … Farce that thinks it’s literature …

I could only write farce, Livia said. I was essentially farcical. Everything I wrote was farcical in nature.

But I couldn’t see it! I thought I was writing something serious. I thought I it was all about literature. I thought the literary was my thing. And even the philosophico-literary! The litero-philosophical!


I thought I had a literary advantage over philosophy, that was the thing, Livia said. I would never have to simply do philosophy. I always had a get out clause. I could always escape into literature.


Whilst the rest of us were left to philosophy – were trapped in the burning house of philosophy – I had escaped, that’s what Livia saw. I had my literary ejector seat from the philosophical cockpit. I had my literary escape chute from the downed aeroplane. I had my literary lifejacket in the philosophical shipwreck. I wasn’t going to go down on the philosophical ship. My literary lifeboat would carry me away.


I thought I was immune, that’s what Livia saw. That I wasn’t trapped in the wreckage. That I wouldn’t burn up in the whole philosophical dumpster fire. Nothing bad was going to happen to me: that’s what I thought. A philosophy crash-test-dummy had crashed in my place.


I could always write about being bad at philosophy: that was the thing. I could make literary hay out of my own philosophical disaster. The philosophical tide wouldn’t carry me under.


Only an idiot could write her idiot-buch, Livia used to say. Her magnum opus. Only an idiot philosophico-literary writer! Only a really stupid and unwitting literary-philosophical writer!


Whilst the rest of us were left to philosophy – were trapped in the burning house of philosophy – I had escaped: that’s what Livia saw in me.


Prose is the genre of the farce. The farce must take place in prose and pros only. Only prose is verbose enough, long winded enough. Only prose can really go on and on. Beyond the … punchline. Beyond the denouement.


Only prose can record those unofficial moments. Those moments off the record and off any record. Those interims … those interregnums … between Significance and Significance. Between real event and real event.

The non-event instead. Non-happening. Waywardness. Things going off course. Things driven off the rails. Not in a dramatic way. Not in an important way. Just ordinary and everyday idiocy. To which no one pays attention. Except the prose writer.


The prose of the world – that’s what it’s about. The true farce. Life that doesn’t rise to the level of life. Life that fails life. Life that falls and is only falling. All the unimportant stuff. Life’s crumbs. Scattered stuff. Missing things. That no one pays attention to. And why should they?


How was I going to cry in prose? What would my literary-philosophical cry look like?

A cobbling together. A mess of Hindu-Christian rhetoric. Some combination of incompatible elements. Some piling up of prose. Some rolling tide of prose. Some roaring forward.

Punctuated with a few farcical scenes. A few caricatures. A few … melodramatic incidents. Some general shouting. Some exclamation marks and ellipses.

Megaphone stuff. Unsubtle stuff. Unquiet stuff. Stuff that bellows and stamps about.


At the end of literature, literature just … postures. Very loudly. Protests too loudly about being Literature. Wears its Literariness on its sleeve.


Writers like Samuel Beckett could still depend on Literature Thomas Bernhard. When Krasznahorkai writes, it’s still literature. But you … beneath literature, and tying to write literature. Not even believing in literary, not really. Not thinking that Literature was anything. That it mattered.

Who can believe in Literature, Shiva? Not even you.

In its final hours, Literature. In its final moments, Literature. Before everyone just drops the books. Before the libraries close.

What did I think Literature was? That it had been? What idea could I have of it: Literature? I’d come too late for it: wasn’t that the point?

The literary disaster, following the philosophical one. And part of it is that no one’s even noticed. That it doesn’t even matter. That it’s of no actual significance.

Which is why my time was now, Livia said. Why I was the writer du jour. Why my kind was the kind that deserved Literature – to inherit Literature. To play in the ruins of Literature.


After literature – isn’t that the phrase? Posthumous Literature. How grotesque! How farcical!

Because Literature isn’t anything anymore. Literature given over to the rogues and the rascals, right? Given over completely to the prose of the world.

There are a few literary … reflexes left. Some echoes of literary technique. Of literary posturing. Something to remind you of Literature. Of what Literature once was. But nothing more.


And Literature about philosophy!? Literaro-philosophy! Philosophico-literature! What a mess! What a disaster!

But a perfect end to the farce. The perfect endless end of the farce.

A few philosphemes. Literophemes .. A few signs of literature, of philosophy. A few … leftovers … that can be warmed up …


Livia only had to wait. She knew what I was working on. She had only to bide her time. She knew I’d finish my magnum opus at some point


The literary humiliation – that it’s been given over to the likes of me. But part of the humiliation is that no one even notices the humiliation. And that no one even cares about the humiliation.

No one’s in Literature’s corner! No one’s fighting Literature’s fight!. No one wants it to win. No one’s on literature’s side. No one’s standing up for it, Literature.

We’ve come too late for literature, right? Everyone knows that. But no one cares. Which is precisely a sign that we’ve come too late for Literature.

In the end, Literature will take its revenge on you. Literature won’t take this lying down. Literature won’t settle for what you made of it, Shiva. You’re the one who’ll look like an idiot.

In the end, you’ll be Literature’s idiot. Just you already were Philosophy’s idiot. Literature’s fool … like you’re already Philosophy’s Fool.

The joke you’d play on Literature is the one Literature would play on you. Literature’s got life in it yet, Shiva. It’s got some last life in it. Or some posthumous life, at least.


Philosophy’s not going to let you escape philosophy. You won’t wriggle off Philosophy’s hook that easily. That wriggling is a literary wriggling, it’s true. But it’s also a philosophical one.