Work in Progress

The serenity of mother. The calm of Mother.

Does Mother ever suffer her own stupidity. Does she experience it? Does it torment her?

 

Mother wants to learn what she cannot learn. Because you cannot learn stupidity. You can’t study study. You can’t fake stupefaction.

 

Is Mother ever stuck do you think? Does Mother ever fuck up? Is Mother ever defeated? But we are – all these things. Constantly.

Only with polarity can there be apocalypse. Can there be an end of the world.

Self division! Depth! That’s the engine of philosophy.

 

The world’s not for us. It wasn’t made for us. We’ll only ever live against it, the world. We can’t help that.

 

Disgust – that’s all we’ll ever feel. That’s all we’ll ever be able to feel.

But that’ll be what protects us. That’ll be what keeps us safe.

It means we’ll never fall under the spell of the world. We’ll never drowse under the spell of the world.

Cicero, expounding the origin of Gnosticism in apocalyptic disappointment, which was itself rooted in prophetic disappointment.

And what would happen when Gnostic disappointment came? we asked her.

Nothing, she said. Because Gnosticism is a name for disappointment.

 

Gnosticism is a philosophy of the endless death of God, Cicero said. For the failure of all eschatologies.

We have to bring Organisational Management down. Nothing less. Here and at every other university.

 

We have a mission – that’s exciting, isn’t it?

A mission!? We’ll just be defeated again.

But our defeats will become ever-greater. More encompassing. More entire. Grandiose, even.

When will it come, the apocalypse? When, the Last Judgement. And what if it never comes? What if there is no Judgement? No messianic age?

What if there’s just time and more time? What if there’s just history and the horror of history? And nothing rising out of them.

Just ceaselessness. Just cruelty. Just violence. Just the great engine. Just the great mechanism of nature. Just the endless dumb cycles. Just the continuation of horror. Just its empty perpetuation. Just the cosmic cruelty, without redemption. Just eternal injustice.

What if nothing ever comes of this – of us? What if it just goes on? What if nothing is redeemed? What if it’s yet more senseless violence? And the administration of violence? And the organisation of violence and the management of violence?

Just the daily dealings of horror. Just murder by poison in the air, in the earth, in the water. Just the continual poisoning. Just the continual lies. Just the air, thick with lies. Nothing but lies. And lies on our lips, too. Lies that they make us tell. Lies that we tell to ourselves.

I can hear bells.

What bells can there be? Do you think the Faith Zone has bells?

I can hear bells, ringing. I can hear them.

Who’s ringing bells? Who could there be? And besides, where are the bells? Do you think there are any bells on this campus?

St Mary’s is close.

Not that close.

That church on the west road. Do you think they ring bells? You don’t have bell ringing anymore.

But I can hear bells. In the sky maybe.

Who could be ringing bells in the sky?

Must be a miracle.

A miracle that only you can hear.

Wait … I can hear them. I can hear them, too.

I can hear bells. I can hear them.

Only a holy fool can hear them. Not a philosophical idiot.

I can hear bells. It means this world is not complete. It’s a promise.

Like a rainbow?

It’s a covenant.

To say what: that the apocalypse is going to come at last? That there’s going to be an end? That Jesus will return, riding a horse?

This world is going to end, I know it.

Is that what the bells mean: apocalypse?

I can hear bells. Can you hear them, Fiver?

Fiver, shaking his head.

I can hear beyond the endless end. I can.

Maybe … maybe I can hear them too.

You’re just being agreeable. It’s a terrible trait, agreeableness. You want it to be true.

Of course I want it to be true.

I can hear bells. I can.

We need to find the Organisational Management deeps. Where Organisational Management becomes philosophical. The Organisational Management profounds. The Organisational Management fundament.

 

We need to find the hollow heart of Organisational Management. The echoing heart. Where nothing is. Where there is no heart.

The void, instead. Emptiness, instead. The great Nothing.

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?