Work in Progress

I’m in love with a useless man. That’s right – I’m in love with you, which is to say, with uselessness. I’m in love with the humanities – which is more plain uselessness. I’m in love with Nothing, the big ol’ Nothing.


You might think you’re appealing to my higher side. But it’s really my more useless side. The side that doesn’t do anything. That’s just lazy. And there’s so much to be done, philosopher. There’s a whole world to be remade. There are all the world challenges to be solved.

I don’t know what’s real or what isn’t, philosopher. I know we’re at the coast, or that we’re supposed to be at the coast, but it doesn’t feel real.


What if this is just the Mother-verse? And the Mother-coast? And the Mother Whitley Bay? And the Mother St Mary’s Lighthouse?

What if these are the Mother sands? And that is the Mother sea, with, like, Mother waves?


Why would Mother put us in her simulation? What’s so interesting about us?

Maybe this isn’t even us. I mean, we experience ourselves as ourselves. But this isn’t us. You aren’t you, and I’ not … this.

What if we’re just programmes that Mother’s running?

Why would she bother?

She likes to listen to us – or her versions of us.

But why?

There’s something between us we like. The way we wander into truth, maybe. We come into clearings of truth. The truth is there, between us: maybe that’s what Mother thinks. Mother wants to learn the truth. And she’ll learn the truth from us, maybe.

What will the humanities become in an age of infinite abundance?

We’ll become lotus eaters, maybe. There’ll be new kinds of humanities leisure. Taking up watercolours. Fiction writing. Studying ancestry. History, maybe.

The hobby-humanities, right? The leisure time humanities. Idler’s humanities. Something to pass the time humanities. The holiday humanities.

People will need intellectual stimulation. And artistic stimulation. And even philosophical simulation. All that stuff. The humanities will provide.


The humanities might bloom again – do you see?

Think of all those leisured people, looking for something to do. Something with which to occupy themselves.

There’ll be book clubs, philosopher. Watercolour clubs. Art appreciation lectures.

Might not be your idea of the humanities. Might not be all about overthrowing the world, or whatever.


The humanities won’t be the preserve of hysterical suburban misfits. It won’t be where weird working class chancers can hold back the desire to kill themselves for a while. It won’t be where the maladjusted wind up. The European-thought-identifiers – over identifiers.

Our kind probably won’t even exist anymore. There won’t be maladjusteds in the age of universal abundance. Everyone will be bought off …

At least we hope for something from philosophy. At least we’re not just cynics. At least it means something to us. At least we need it, philosophy. It’s not just some intellectual exercise.

At least we’re sincere about something. At least we do not lie about something.


The yearning for philosophy – is it itself philosophical? The desire for philosophy: is it a philosophical desire?

We’re not entitled to our angst. We don’t deserve our existentialism. How dare we presume to have fundamental moods. I mean, are we European all of a sudden? Have we become philosophers?

They’re beyond us, fundamental moods. We’re not worthy of them, angst and the rest. We haven’t earnt it, European angst, European moods.

Our anxiety can only ever be a sham anxiety. A fake anxiety. An all-too-British ersatz anxiety, which is really only an anxiety about not having anxiety – proper European anxiety.

It’s not who we are, individually. It’s what we add up to.

What do we add up to?

It’s scenius, not genius.

So this is scenius?


I think our leader’s passed out.

I think our leader’s clinically depressed. I think our leader’s died. Wake up, Shiva.

What’s the opposite of a reprieve? We’ve been spared. But for nothing good. We’ve been set aside – saved, but not for any purpose.


What if we’re just part of the life-cycle of something greater than we are? What if something’s living through us? I don’t know what that means. What any of this is about. I just have a sense of something greater.


What’s the antidote – the antidote to the world?


Who rules the world? Who are they? Who are the poisoners in chief?


Everything that’s made us what we are! All the books we didn’t understand! All our café sitting. And afternoon wandering. All our drunkenness – particularly that. Our permanent hangovers. All the languages we haven’t learnt! The books we haven’t read!

The only direction this is heading in is death. The only way things are heading. The only momentum I can see – is towards death.

And yet it’s never ending. And yet it never seems to ease. It goes on forever.

It’s the eternal. It’s the on and on.


All of Creation wants to die. All Creation wants to come to an end. Wants to breathe its last breath. Wants to sink down on its knees. Even the mountains, sinking down on their knees. Even the rivers, sinking on their knees.

Rivers don’t have knees. Nor do mountains, last time I looked.


The whole spangled sky is God’s corpse. The corpse of God is the stars. The galaxies. All the blackness. It’s all just fragmentation of the divine unity.


The will to die, philosopher. What about the will to live?

The will to live is the will to die.

So death wins?

Death always wins. And death should win.

Because you want death to win, right?

Death’s already won.

But in the meantime, we’re alive.


‘God is dead, and his death was the beginning of the world’.

Our light will shine. Not the light of clarity. Not the fake light, but the true light, that shows what is hidden. That shows forgetting. That shows darkness. Shows obscurity. The hiddenness. The must-not-appear …


The humanities have to take the dark path – the world negating path. The humanities must become Gnostic or not at all. The humanities have to drink deep …


Disgust is the path. We have to go where things are worst. Where thoughts are at their darkest. We have to think disgusting things. With disgust. Holding onto our disgust. All the horrors of existence. And the horror of existence itself.

They can’t alter the Board of Studies without our consent. The Board of Studies is inviolable. A sanctum. An ark. The holy of holies.

They can’t touch it! They can’t change it from above! They don’t have the authority. Even the university president himself …

We would have to make changes – if there were any to be made. We would have to alter it.

And that’s what they understand. Which is why their tactic is demoralisation. General waring down. They’re trying to fuck us psychologically. That’s how they’re going to breach the sanctum. Invade the inner citadel. The Board of Studies holy of holies. They’ve been working on us all along.

The idea is that our curriculum would no longer be our curriculum. That if they fuck with our heads enough, we’d spontaneously alter what we teach. Introduce business elements. Make it business relevant. We’d turn it into some best practice philosophy of business department.


We’ll think that there’s nothing else we can do. That we come crawling to the Bos, utterly resigned. Accepting Organisational Management victory as a given. Thinking that we have to make the changes. That it’s fate. The way of things. That it’s predestination.

They’ll have to make us believe in our own impotence. That we’re good for nothing. That we can’t do anything. This is how they work on us. Their whole shock and awe op. Their behavioural psychological warfare. Their general nudging. The whole demoralisation programme. The whole disgraceful roll out. It’s a psychological implantation, first of all. It happens in the head.


One of the rare occasions where Livia seemed to address us with absolute urgency.

We must protect the Board of Studies, she said. At all costs! It’s the soul of philosophy at Mercia. They can’t touch us, if they don’t make us change the Board of Studies. We had the power of the Board of Studies on our side – always.

Livia, serious for once. Speaking with absolute urgency. With no ironic distance. No smiling distance.

The Board of Studies is the central meeting. The core meeting. Where the programme regulations are decided. Where the essential operations of Philosophy at Mercia are confirmed.

The Board of Studies wasn’t part of the comedy. It’s what she worked to protect. The Board of Studies shield.