Work in Progress

Part time rats: that’s what we were. We learnt a … resilience. We adapted to it – that’s what’s worst. We became … opportunists. Scavengers … Ingratiators …

Auto-humiliators: that’s what we were. Auto-exploiters. We sold ourselves out. We prostituted ourselves. We were our own pimps. Our own slave drivers.

Forced to entrepreneurs of ourselves. Forced to sell ourselves – our intellectual wares. A life lived on our knees. A life on all fours.

Like some dreadful process of natural selection. Like evolution in progress. There were people who could cope with this. Who could live like this, year after year. But not us. We were the dross. We were the losers. We were the weak. The unable to cope.

We were the ill – mentally ill. We were the mentally fucked. We were the couldn’t-cope-with-all-this types.

We weren’t strong enough. We weren’t trainable. We weren’t biddable. We didn’t accept it, the new reality. The casualised reality. We didn’t accept it … not in our hearts. Not in our souls.

We refused in our souls. In what was left of our souls. We said, no, in our heads. In what was left of our heads.

Until Livia scooped us up.

Why aren’t we angrier? Why are we so resigned? What’s wrong with us? Why are we so used to being pushed around? Why do we accept it: being pushed around? Why do we expect so little? Why do we just accept and accept and accept?

Are we insects to be crushed under a thumb? Are we mosquitoes to be swatted away? Are we a wrong that had to be put right? Are we a system fault? A system error? A mistake that simply had to be corrected?

So resigned. So fatalistic. So dominatable.

We’re the sort to get pushed about. To be swatted. We’re the sort who don’t really matter. We’re the kind they can do to what they like.

Can’t we just live our lives? Can’t we work twenty years, or thirty years? Can’t we have a job – not career, just a job? A bearable job. So we can pay off our debts. So we can save up for a pension? Can’t we just have a chance? To live like other people. To live like everyone else. Or to live like people used to live.. To get married, maybe. To settle down, maybe. To have children, maybe.

Hoping that we could stay in the background. That years would pass without anyone thinking of us. That we could just get on with business – philosophy business.

Wasn’t that enough to ask? Why did we have to be moved anywhere? Why did we have to be noticed? Why did we have to be exposed to the light – to their dreadful light?

Why did we have to be subject to their ideas? To their plans for us?

What did we do wrong? What sin did we commit? What error did we make? How did we slip up? Weren’t we careful enough? Weren’t we untroublesome enough?

We wanted to sit it all out. We wanted to escape. We wanted to survive – that’s all. To go on as we were, for a few years at least. We wanted time to … recover. To recuperate. From all our difficult years. From all our ravaged years. From all our years out there.

We wanted to lay down our heads. We wanted to close our eyes for a few years, nothing more. Couldn’t we have been allowed that? Couldn’t we have been allowed a few years of ordinary life?

Of course, that wasn’t allowed.

Our persecution. Why us, why now?

The injustice of it. The randomness of it. What had we done that’s so terrible? What mistakes were we supposed to have made?

Our misfortune. What curse was placed upon us? Weren’t we meek enough? Accepting enough? Compliant enough? Obedient enough?

Did we forget to bribe someone? To grease someone’s palm? To suck someone’s cock?

And hadn’t we been humiliated enough? Why did there have to be more abasement? Was it part of some ritual? Part of some demonic … religion? Were we being sacrificed to some strange god?

Why does it have to be so screamingly meaningless? Why do they have to turn up the nihilism? Why did meaninglessness have to thunder?

We pitiful in some way. We laughable. We derisories. We begging to be overlooked. Passed over. We who should have been on no one’s list. From whom no one was expecting anything.

We not even disappointers. We in perpetual descent. We runts of the litter. We always deficient. We runners up in life. We extras in life. We rhubarb-rhubarbers, always in the background.

We confused types. Clueless types. Best kept out of the spotlight.

We shrinkers away. We hiders-away. We stickers to corners and cracks. We slinkers away. We peerers from shadows. We hoping to pass unnoticed. Hoping to be part of the furniture. Hoping that no one notices us. Picks us out. We praying to appear on no one’s radar. We wanting only to be left alone. Left out of all spotlights.

We grubbers. We opportunists. We hunters-after-favours. We crawlers. We scum of the earthers. We beggars. We low-lifes. Under everyone’s feet!

We whiners. We witless. We vacant. We special needers. We clueless. We missers of cues. We never quite listening. We never quite getting it. We out of all loops.

We too dispersed. We too vague. We not concentrating enough. Not focused enough. We not sharp enough. We always too blurry. Too daydreamy. Too woolgathery. Too floaty.

We not quite up to it. Lacking something – not sure exactly what. Missing something. Some level of intelligence. Like a phantom limb. A phantom brilliance. A phantom genius.

We who missed the mark, and all marks. We who needed things explained to them too many times. We never knowing what we were doing. We never quite there. We never where we were supposed to be. We missing all appointments.

The UK philosopher is a contradiction in terms: isn’t that what we’ve learnt? A complete impossibility! We haven’t got the pathos. We don’t feel things the right way, let alone think them.

But at least we know that: that we don’t feel things the right way. That we don’t think them

Do you think that saves us?

It makes us would-be-philosophers. Philosophers without philosophy.

But hasn’t philosophy always been that? Philosophy loves without knowing what it loves. It’s supposed to love wisdom, sure, but wisdom is a vague word.

The only thing we love is philosophy.  

No: we’d love to be able to love philosophy. We’d love to be able to be serious. We’d love to be able to be solemn about our thinking. But we’re weak, terribly weak.

But at least we know that. Stop saying that: at least we know that. We don’t know anything.

All I can hear is our voices echoing. Is our stupidity echoing.

All I can hear is how this sounds for them, the paragraduates. How we sound.

If we just kept quiet. If we just … were here … Then what?

Leave us to our mediocrity, postgraduates! Stay away – you’ll be infected! We’ll turn you trivial! Diminish you! Shrink your souls! Kill you off!

You can do better – so much better, postgraduates!

And here we are, sitting in the dark. Sitting under the non-sky. Sitting drinking disgusting wine. As usual! As always! With everything wrong with us! With our whole lives wrong with us! With the anchor of our stupidity pulling us down. With the same idiotic ballast making us sink!

We’ve failed you, postgraduates! Of course we did! We couldn’t help it! We fucked up – yes, yes! What could we do but fuck up?

But we brought you here, into the unknown. We brought you to paragraduate territory. To the philosophical wild. As an apology for taking you to the Organisational Management party.

Can’t you feel the messianism, postgraduates? Doesn’t it tremble in the air? Doesn’t it set you aquiver? Can you feel the paragraduate call? The call of the wild?

We’ve brought you to the brink, postgraduates. The leading edge! The bleeding edge! Beyond us!

Thrive, out there! Fly, fly! This is your kingdom. This is where you need to disappear. Melt away, postgraduates! Disappear!

You won’t miss us, our postgraduates. What have we ever done but disillusion you? Age you? Fill you with our cynicism? Pump you full of weariness?

We don’t deserve you, our postgraduates. And they deserve more than us! So snatch you from the shadows, paragraduates. Whisk you away! Show you how to live!

We’ll leave you with them, the paragraduates. They can have you. Foster you. Bring them to maturity.

We don’t deserve you! We don’t deserve anything! Look what we did to our own youths! Look how we despoiled it, our own potential! We murdered ourselves. Of course we did! We exploited ourselves! We sold ourselves out! We don’t want the same to happen to you!

We give you over to them, the paragraduate faeire. To the paragraduate faerie kingdom!

We put you in their hands. So they can teach you their lessons.

What matters is only that we throw you ahead of us as we collapse. That we free you, by throwing you beyond our lives. Beyond our shadows! As darkness falls over us all.

In the final hour! In our final hour – that perhaps isn’t yours! Give more time. More life! Let them pass over into the messianic kingdom.