Is it already over? Have all the battles been lost? Was the rout so irrevocable? Was the defeat been so entire? Was it wipe-out inevitably and in advance?
We were only ever scavengers of the end. End-times opportunists. Rag pickers. Collectors of scraps. Bricolagers.
We were only ever bricolagers, turning the bright pages of theory. Of continental philosophy. Magpie-sifting. A bit of this, a bit of that.
All the magic books. All our holy books. The theory funhouse: there for the ransacking.
Are you a scholar, dreaming he’s an idiot, or an idiot who’s dreaming he’s as scholar?
Or an idiot who knows he is an idiot.
No one knows it – their idiocy. You can’t know it – it escapes you. The idiosyncrasies of your idiocy. It’s particularity. The way your idiocy is different to everyone else’s idiocy. Your idiocy is the most personal thing about you – did you know that? The most singular thing. The thing that really sets you apart. Much more than your so-called intelligence.
Intelligence is what makes you discern the latest thing you’re supposed o be going along with, that’s all. It makes you very good for sniffing the air. For sensing the opportunities. Seizing the main chance. Intelligence is what makes you move vey cleverly with the crowd.
No one ever accepts that they’re an idiot. No one calls themselves an idiot and means it. They think they’re smart enough to know their so called idiocy. As though they could outwit it. That they can master it, their own idiocy. And that they are therefore most assuredly not idiots.
A nameless and powerless residue. An anthropological residue.
Half wits. Badly dressed. Unseemly. Who don’t even know enough to come out of the rain.
Shunned. Avoided.
Languid. Mildly retarded. Indigent. Self sabotaging. Half suicidal.
Repugnance: that’s what we inspire – or should inspire. Putting people off.
Undesirables. A residue of life: that’s what we are.
The socially passed over.
Comical … Ridiculous …
Truants – but endlessly so. Agelessly so.
Unconcerned, in some way.
Empty. Persisting, but pointlessly. Detached from all significance.
Awkward. Detached. Idly staring. Just looking on.
With poor enunciation. You can’t even make out what we say. We’re unpolished, haphazard. As though we hadn’t learnt to dress ourselves. To speak properly.
Self defeating. Mechanical.
A writing without authority. That leaves the senseless as the senseless. No literary result.
This is an experiment. This is a mistake – of course it is. We’re mistaken. We’ve gone down the wrong path.
Neglected people. That’s what we want to be. And deserve to be.
Just rumours. Superfluous. Unneeded.
People who just are. Sweet. In a numb actuality.
Vulgar – totally vulgar.
Stalled at the threshold. In some not yet …
Socially neglected Socially shunned. Socially dead, maybe
Senseless … remnants. That’s who we should be Like a dead language Like dead things.
The kingdom of God that’s forgotten it’s a kingdom of God. The people of Jesus who are not yet the people of Jesus. The proletariat that isn’t yet a proletariat.
The not net people. Of the not yet world. That’s where we live, isn’t it?
Speaking by rote. Like we’re rehearsing to speak.
Debility… stupidity. Self-degradation – that’s what we’re about. That’s what we want.
Childish. Foolish. Not concerned with what we should be concerned with.
Our kind aren’t strong. We’re the kind that goes to the wall. The ends up in mental institutions – if there were any left.
Unproductive. We can’t do anything. We’re good for – nothing.
We know what we are.
Squandering ourselves. Embarrassing everyone. Tiring those who feel obliged to defend us.
Pathetic. Sad cases. Never to be taken seriously. Good for nothings.
Dependent. Pathetically so.
We can’t defend ourselves. We barely exist. Barely … hold ourselves together.
Allowed to slip away from everything.
Weakness, incapacity, shyness, debility. That’s what we’re about.
Smiling at ourselves – always. Smiling at stupidity.
Our fault. What hasn’t been our fault?
We weren’t paying attention. We weren’t alert. Watchful.
Plebians.
We don’t know what else to do.
Do you despise intelligence, philosopher?
Intelligence is about … sniffing the air and working out what’s acceptable and what’s not. What’s trending. What the new thing is. That we’re supposed to agree with. Intelligence is essentially opportunistic. It’s about fitting in in a fast moving world. Stupidity, on the other hand … is incapable of opportunism. Isn’t even thinking of itself. Of its own interests.
What is stupidity thinking about, then?
About nothing in particular. About nothing yet. Stupidity’s vague.
I’m vague for a lot of the time. Does that make me stupid? Perhaps it does. But that would be good in your books, wouldn’t it? Except that I’m not, like, exaltedly stupid. I’m not philosophically stupid in some cool philosophical way.
We’re actually having an adventure. I didn’t think anything new could happen that wasn’t just more descent. Another horror move. I thought the desert was just … growing. But it turns out the desert doesn’t have to grow. I thought nihilism was compulsory. But it turns out it isn’t compulsory.
Hope – is that it? It doesn’t all have to be downhill. It isn’t all progressive ruination. The crash isn’t inevitable. We don’t just have to roll our eyes and take it. It’s not a death sentence. It’s not terminal. We don’t have to accept just dying of whatever. Just been slow murdered.
A counterfeit parallel uni. A counterfeit parallel universe, on some parallel demonic track. With us in it. Why did they bring us here? Why didn’t they just eliminate us?
They follow these weird rules of karma. There are rules they play by. They want witnesses. It’s weird. They want to be seen. They want a few of us around who know what’s going on. Who know the kind of people they are. They want their deviousness to be known. Admired, maybe.
Our paranoia is so enormous. A whole cosmology, conjured from our paranoia. A whole political theory, conjured from our paranoia. A whole philosophy, conjured from our paranoia. From our not-so-borderline mental illness. From our sense that you’ll die in prison.
We’re as mentally ill as we need to be. We’ve been made mentally ill.
What’s happening is so big, it does this to you. It’s fucked us up. The scale of what they’re doing. Its vastness. Their plans for the remaking of the human race. Of human society. Of the polity. The total resetting of all things.
They’re reprogramming everything, but no one notices but us. They’re destroying it all, and only we know.
How can it help but drive us mad? How can it help but destroy us?
The toxic brew of bloodline families and tech companies and black magic and Satan worshippers. And child abusers. And MK Ultra deployers.
Those people are mad. These people are destroyers. They’re as mad as we are. They’re our mirror images. Our contraries. They’re mad so we’re mad.
Of course we’re maniacs. What else could we be but maniacs?
They’re taking over. They’re asserting their control. And only our paranoia knows it. Only our paranoia is strong enough. To see it. To know it.
Yes we’re mentally ill. Of course we’re mentally ill. How could we be anything other than mentally ill?
And it’s a beautiful mental illness. And it’s a mad mental illness.
We know what they’re doing. We know their plans and their plans within plans. We know their programmes. We know who they serve. Their dark lords.
We’re the by-products of processing. We’re where processing went wrong.
We’re some gasp of the freedom. We’re some spasm of freedom. We’re some jerk of freedom. We’re what freedom becomes, in a time of total processing.
Half deranged – of course! What else! Without proportion – yes, yes. mordantly sensitive – how could we be anything but? Maniacal – agreed? Almost gleefully so. Half destroyed! Exploded! Demolished! That’s what they’ve done to us. This is what they’ve made us into. They’ve created their own enemy – a mad enemy.
They produced our kind – as a byproduct. As an unintended consequence.
They made their enemy. Their opposite. We’re their Frankenstein’s monsters. We’re cautionary tales. Botched. Ruined. Poisoned.
But interesting things grow from the poison. Twisted things. Sports and mutants. With special gifts. A special kind.
They made philosophy. Or what we call philosophy. What is European philosophy. European philosophy in England. The monstrosity of European thought in England.
They made us do this to philosophy. They perverted philosophy in us. They turned us into mutilators of philosophy. Depravers of philosophy!
All we’ve ever tried to do is express the horror. By every means. Philosophically! Psychologically! Theologically!
The first fact. The outrage. The exclamation mark. That this could be happening. That the Destruction could be so overt. That the horror is out in the open.
Defiling the humanities. It’s a power source, you know – defiling things. It gives you energy. Charges you up. The more you destroy righteous things, the stronger you get.
They have to find the most revolting thing to do. That’s the aim. The most perverted thing. The most depraved. That’s their fuck you to God.
Whence the sacrifice of philosophy. But not a sacrifice all at once. A programmatic defilement. Over time. A series of humiliations. In a spiritual rite. As part of their counter-religion.
The ritual sacrifice of the humanities. Ritual defilement. Of the entire university.
They’ll bring the humanities subjects here one by one. But it’s not even sacrifice – too quick, too clean. A long defilement. A lifelong humiliation.
They’re doing it for a spiritual rite. Their religious order. Their counter religion. That’s their demonic agenda. It just reeks of evil.
They are abominating us. They’re metamorphosing us.
They’re passing us through the fires of technocracy.
They’re creating humanity 2.0 – that’s what’s happening. So we aren’t image bearers of god. They’re augmenting us.
Come on, guys. We’re the department. We’re the DEPARTMENT.
What fucking department?
The PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT. Of a MAJOR UNIVERSITY. That has to mean something.
We’ve been entrusted with teaching the children of the rich. We’re not no ones and nothings. We crawled our way up, somehow. We escaped part time Hell. We’re SURVIVORS motherfuckers. And we’ll survive this!
You’re no going to have us, Organisational Management! We on the side of all the good things. We’re part of everything righteous.
PHILOSOPHY, man. We are philosophy in Newcastle. University philosophy, anyway. We’re the ones. It’s fallen to us. They can surveil us all they like. They can command all the obeisance they want. But we won’t comply.
Of course we’ll comply. We’re being moved, aren’t we? We’re going to their party.
But we have philosophical hearts. And philosophical hearts run free. Dream free. Burn free. We know the secret of freedom. We’re the winners, even though we’ll lose. We’re uncrushable, even though they’ll crush us. We’re undestroyable, even though they’ll destroy us …
Pulse, my friends have theories. Pulse, is Organisational Management actually evil? Is it run by off-planet sociopaths wanting only to install a technocracy? Pulse, are you part of some extra terrestrial invasion force? Are you linked up with some cosmic AI maniacs? Are you part of some incoming wave of silicon-based life that’s been secretly steering world history? Are space cruisers going to park on the plaza? Are there techno sorcerers flying about practising geomancy? Are they making our bodies shells for habitations? Are they turning us all into cavitated synthetic entities? Are they biohacking us into posthuman postbiological entities? Are they 3D printing low-IQ kobold babies with tails? Is the new campus going to be part of the counterfeit book of life?
Work in Progress 