Work in Progress

Organisational Management can find no way out because it’s Organisational Management. Organisational Management’s can’t escape itself, that’s the thing. We have to show Organisational Management how not to be Organisational Management.

 

Organisational Management’s cursed with itself. Burdened by itself. Organisational Management wants to lift the curse.

And is that our job – to lift Organisational Management from itself. Philosophy has to liberate Organisational Management from Organisational Management.

 

We have to release the philosophy in Organisational Management – and thereby destroy it.

There’s a new quality in our disgust.

Do you think?

I think our disgust’s giving us gravitas. I think it’s giving us substance.

 

There’s a glamour to our hopelessness.

Really?

It’s positively Eastern European. We’re approaching the arch-doom of Eastern Europe.

 

When things finally collapse, they’ll need a philosophy of the collapse. And a literature of the collapse. A philosophy of UK doom! That’s our role.

It’s like an alien abduction. Only they’ve abducted an entire philosophy department.

To do what – experiment on us? To insert their anal probes?

 

Are we going to be rescued? Could someone rescue us?

Who would rescue us? Who do we know in Newcastle?

Would they miss us at Trillians? Would Klaus send out a search party. Klaus is pretty much the only person we know.

 

The world is falling into the world. Further into it.

 

The poison is the world. Nothing other than the world.

 

We’re descending. What level of Hell is this? Are we going to go any lower? Are we going to fall any further?

 

Are there other dimensions? And is there Organisational Management, in these other dimensions?

Is it cold in these other dimensions?

Cicero loved our disgust. The quality of it. And our self disgust.

So she did.

 

She loved our self-disgust. She harvested it. Lived off it, like a succubus.

She thought it could be turned in another direction. Towards something more worthwhile.

 

Cicero’s giving us jobs was only the condition of our coming into our idiocy. Of truly inheriting our idiocy.

We didn’t know it yet, but our jobs would hone our idiocy. Direct it.

 

Cicero’s giving us jobs only have free play to our impostor’s syndrome. It would be the making of us … through the unmaking of us.

 

Our idiocy versus the world: that wasn’t enough for Cicero. But versus ourselves. Turned upon ourselves …

We were idiots who didn’t want to be idiots. Self-aware idiots who wanted done with self-awareness.

Idiocy by itself was nothing. But self-consciousness about our idiocy …

We won’t stop dying. Not now. Not ever. We’re immortal – but immortal in dying.

 

The world will not stop ending. Why is that?

 

It’s like we’re after time – after everything. The world might has well have ended.

It’s like we’re after time – after everything. Does that make sense to you? Just you and I and eternity, philosopher.

These aren’t my words … that’s what it feels like. I’m not saying these things. It’s my distance saying them. It’s the faraway that’s speaking. And it’s speaking of being faraway.

 

If I had a baby, would I be feel so faraway? If I had a child? Would that bring me into reality? Would I be fully real then? Would I actually live in the world? Maybe I wouldn’t be faraway anymore.

You should set fire to your own library – like the Library of Alexandria. I should. You should burn it all down, like a gypsy caravan. All your treasures. Your ark. Like a Viking funeral.

Let it burn up. Your whole flat. All your dead books. And yourself, too. That’s how you’d complete your idiocy. Some sacrifice to … whatever. Your God of idiocy.

I hate being subject to … desires. I hate being at the mercy of my body. Even if I’m nothing but a body. I hate desire. I hate these desires. I disgust myself. I’m disgust and nothing more. I’m saturated with disgust.

I’m disgust and nothing else. There’s nothing leftover. I’m such an idiot. I’m an idiot in desire. I’m an idiot in lust.

And in love? What about love, philosopher? Who are you in love?

I’m an idiot in everything.

 

I’m an idiot in everything, but I haven’t reached the limit of my idiocy, yet. The end of my idiocy. There’s still further to do. I need to be more disgusted. More appalled.

And then what?

Then I’ll have broken my ties with all this. With the world. With everything.

Is that what you want to do – cut your ties?

Then I won’t be subject to this. I won’t have to feel these things.

Like some kind of Zen Buddhist? Will you work our way to enlightenment? Is this a Nirvana thing? Like anti-Zen?

 

I’m meant to be the greatest idiot who’s ever lived. That’s my task. That’s what I’m about.

I’m sure you’re using the word, idiot in a way no one else does. You’re making it mean something profound. Like some kind of backhanded compliment to yourself. It’s a way of saying that you’re really really clever. That you’re part of some elect. That’s the philosophical trick, isn’t it?

Socrates said that he knew he knew nothing.

Exactly. He was still Socrates.

 

I crown you king of the idiots, philosopher. 

What are you thinking?

Whether to throw myself off the balcony.

How … histrionic. So you’re not greeting the Organisational Management merger with any degree of pleasure.

It’s not a merger. Organisational Management are swallowing us up.

It won’t be that bad, you know. You might quite like it.

 

Is it hard talking to a normal person?  Must be very difficult.

 

I’m too depressed for small talk.

I’ll have to rustle up some big talk. Am I being too trivial?

 

Philosophical despair isn’t like actual despair, is it? You don’t actually look depressed. You can go about life completely unchanged and be convincing.

Despair isn’t depression.

Oh, it wouldn’t be anything as workaday as depression. Common people have depression, but philosophers …

 

How low do you go? Organisational managers, I mean.

Not low enough, I’m sure.

Do you know what you’ve brought onto your campus? It’s like inviting in vampires. They have to have your permission to cross the threshold. Well, you invited us. we’re across the threshold now.

Do you think we’re afraid of you? What can you do?

Fill you full of nihilism. It’s in our bite … Our nihilism bite.

I don’t believe you. What is nihilism, anyway?

Not believing in anything.

So you’re dangerous, philosopher. You’re a bad boy. Imagine that. A bad boy in the Organisational Management building. A badass intellectual. Thinking badass thoughts.

 

You’ve already been drinking – I can tell.

I have been drinking. Very, very bad wine.

Do you want to drink some more? Is this good wine? Semi-good Organisational Management wine?

I’m not used to that.

 

And you’re cold. You’re, like, radiating cold. I didn’t think that was possible.

I nearly died of exposure. We all did.

Why didn’t you get the shuttle bus. It’s our pride and joy, the automatic shuttle bus.

We preferred the scenic route. We wanted to acclimatise ourselves. We wanted to know what we’re up against.