Work in Progress

Only Livia got the joke. The jokes that we were. The jokes of our lives. The jokes that we are. Even we don’t get the joke, not really.

How do you know I’m not a trap for you, philosopher? That I wasn’t designed to seduce you? To bring your over to the dark side?

Machine learning could have provided all the details of my madness. None of it might actually be real. I might just be another liar.

I know you’re not a liar.

But how do you know? Do you lie to yourself? What if I’m a temptress, philosopher? A honey trap?

Did you ever hear a robot talk about God?

You’re not a robot. We’ve already settled that.

Or a synth, then.

You’re not a synth, either.

Endearing, philosopher. You can’t face it. You want to be gallant.

Organisational Management is asking to be extinguished. To be no more.

Organisational Management wants only one thing: its annihilation.

Organisational Management doesn’t know how to die – it’s like cancer.

I might change my name to Cancer. It feels right.

Mmm – good call.

They want our contemplation. They want our stupidity. They want our stupefaction. Our studiousness. They want our rest, our sleep. Our dreaming. They want to dream with our dreaming. To put it to work.

Am I a machine of Satan? Have I been crafted by the Imitator? Tell me, is there light in my face? In my eyes?

Am I a daughter of God? Is that who I am? Does my life rest in Him? Would you know, philosopher? Would you tell me?

It can’t be redeemed, any of this. It’s quite impossible. We can’t lift ourselves from this. Can’t resurrect ourselves. We can’t, like, open our coffins. We can’t unseal the tombs.

This is the hour of our stupidity. This is when our idiocy steps forward. Becomes – important. More important than anything.

Who we are. Our particular lives. Our histories. Our temperaments. Our … idiosyncrasies …

We who can be no other. Who are only what we have to be. Who stand, stupefied, in nothing other than our stupidity.

We like our continental philosophy making vast doomy pronouncements. About the change of epoch. About epochal shifts. About civilizational change. About the West in general. About the doom of the West! And our doom! Doom in general! Omni-doom!

We like our European philosophy to be pathos-rich. To be full of great, dark moods. Of Angst! Of dread! All that kinda stuff.

We like our European philosophy written in high style. Grandiose, if possible. Written as if it mattered. As if people were reading. As if there was a still a literary culture – which there still is, over there, in continental Europe. Written as if there were still people to read that kind of thing. Not, like secondary commentaries.

We like our European philosophy heady. High minded. Written for clever, clever people.

We like our continental thought to be about Great Things. About Time. And Space. And Politics. And the End of the World. And anything about the messiah is a bonus.

We like our European philosophies to be about vast, world-changing things. About events so vast …. They dwarf everything. About events so diffuse, you can barely tell that they’re happening. Events so subtle, yet so profound that only a European philosopher can tell that they’re going on.

Vast things. Enormous things. World-encompassing things. Things that break over the face of the world, like solar winds. Things through which the whole world turns. The whole earth …

This is our world: a world of death.

We’re even used to it – we’re used to the horror. We’re used to death. It’s our daily bread. We wake up into death and go to sleep in death. We go about our day in death. We don’t expect anything.

And nothing’s going to lift us out of this. There’s no hand extending down to pull us out of our sewer.