Work in Progress

It’s not all straight lines, philosopher. The corridors are curved. That’s how we like it. Inspiring. Curved forms. Not rectilinear. Better for thought.

Even Organisational Management thought?

We’re not who you think we are, philosopher.

 

All the subject areas will be reborn here. All of them reborn, remade. In the image of Organisational Management. Optimised. Functionalised. Made useful. At last.

Organisational Management’s very helpful.

You’re being sarcastic. But all subject areas will find their new homes. It’ll all make sense, philosopher. Philosophy will have to become useful.

 

This building is all about asking questions.

Organisational Management questions. In an Organisational Management way.

 

All kinds of things can happen in these corridors. Great conversations. The sharing of ideas. Great thought-romances. These are the Organisational Management streets, where you’ll find all of human life. All of Organisational Management life.

 

Young Organisational Management researchers, full of fun, full of joy. Full of youth, and the vitality of youth. Bubbling with ideas. Extroverted. Ready for collaboration.

It’s like a writer’s room for a TV series. They get to sit around together. Bounce around the ideas.

 

Solitary work is for lecturers. That’s the next floor up. When it’s time to make your particular mark. Prepare to make bids. Prepare to cover your own salary – and more. Earn your keep.

 

We don’t carry passengers, philosopher. You’ll have to be productive … eventually. You’ll have to learn to put in bids. To the funding councils. To the authorities. To business.

You’ll have to justify your office suite. Your place in the building. And so will all the humanities when they move here. You must think us very crass, philosopher. This place doesn’t pay for itself.

Don’t worry. There’ll be a few years’ grace. You’ll be assigned a mentor.

 

You’ll have to demonstrate your impact. The way you change the world.

But we have no impact. We actually have negative impact. Is that possible? Sucking impact out of the world – is that possible?

Whereas O.M. is … All impact. Nothing but impact. We’re shapers of the world. We pretty much are the world.

The world’s deranged. The world’s wrong. I just feel that sometimes.

Does evil exist, philosopher? Is there really such a thing as evil? As something real. And demonic. That has plans. That wants to take over things.

 

What we’ve built here is wrong. All this. Our empire. The empire. That rules over us, too, even though we think that we’re in charge.

 

Like there’s been some hostile takeover of the world. Of living. The liveability of living. The most basic components of life. The most basic things. Eating and drinking and walking and kissing. All these things we take for granted. Our gestures. What makes us us. Have been taken from us. Stripped from us. We don’t know who we are. We’re lost, even though we don’t think we’re lost.

 

Have we used up the world? Have we used up everything?

 

They want to seize upon our potentiality. That’s the worst thing they can take. Not what we are, but what we could be, too. Anything we could be. And even the possibility to be something else, something other than we are. Any chance of escape. That’s what they’re blocking off.

 

The perfection of our confinement: that’s what it’s about.

 

A false life in a false building. In a false place. In a false universe. It’s a false made up subject. In a false marriage. This wasn’t my life after all. And what about you?

I think this world is too evil to exist. Worthy only of being destroyed.

Do you really think that?

That’s what Cicero said.

Cicero sounds like a lunatic. Why are you so impressed by her?

What about the good things? The good acts? What about the good people?

Who are they? Where are they?

What about a night like tonight?

I’m glad it happened. I’m glad it opened. I’m glad that things are still possible.

Are they?

 

It’s like there’s thick lacquer on everything. Like its all caked in darkness. Encrusted.

And nothing happens cleanly. Without … echoes. Without dub.

Everything’s clotted. And thick. And slow. Slowed down. And echoey. And nothing happens on time.

And darkness is, like, threaded through all things.

 

And every day gets a little bit heavier. And all this becomes a little more all this. 

 

It’s all rotten from the inside. Just as we’re rotted from the inside. 

 

So that the only thing that’s real is the death wish.

 

And this day will ever end. This day which is also a night. Which is the world’s night. The final night that nevertheless lasts forever.

 

Nothing will lift the curse. No one can say the magic words.

 

Despair is the longing for an end. That’s what defines it. An end to all the ending.

 

Sinking to the bottom of the pool, and not even trying to swim.

 

And who are we in this? We’re lost in all this. We have no idea who we are. Or what we want. Or what’s ours and what’s not. Or whether we’re alive or not.

 

Everything lies. Everything around us has been made to lie. We’ve become liars. And listeners to lies. And perpetuators of lies. And liars’ channels. And mediums of lies. And transmitters of lies. And passers-on of lies. And conduits of lies.

We’re liar’s liars. And we can’t pretend we don’t know we’re lying. We’re covered in fucking lies. Buried by lies. Lost in lies.

 

And we’re just more deeply and deeply defeated. And deeply and deeply destroyed. And deeply and deeply battered. Until there’s nothing left that wasn’t defeated and destroyed and battered.

Tell me about Organisational Management. Tell me about Organisational Management’s plans for philosophy. Tell what Organisational Management is, first of all. Give me a history.

Didn’t you look it up on the website? Didn’t you do some research?

It didn’t tell me anything. I want you to tell me. On our tour. Open up the subject area for me. The discipline. I want to be brought up to speed with the latest developments in Business Studies, or whatever this is.

 

Organisational Management used to be about maximising the extraction of profit. About making workers more productive. There was scientific management, right? Time and motion studies, and all that. Then you got the rise of service industries. So the task was to be able to use the entire human being, without remainder. Getting everyone to bring their entire selves to work.

 

But it’s all changing again. The paradigm’s changed. Most of the menial tasks are going to be taking over by AI. Management is going to become something else. It’s about ethics. About judgement. We approach management as an art, not just as a science. And we use the word management as in the phrases, managing to cope. How are you managing? Organisational Management’s gone artistic. It’s not all top down anymore, philosopher.

 

Organisational Management’s not solely about the maximisation of production or profits, philosopher. It’s not exclusively about capitalism. We want to expand the managerial imaginarium. Reconceive things from the ground up. That’s the latest thing.

 

What’s the latest thing in philosophy? The latest thing is the oldest thing: the void. Is that what interests you: the void? It doesn’t sound very interesting. What is it, you void? Where is it?

Everywhere.

Here?

Yes, here. Especially here.

On the Organisational Management campus? How come we haven’t seen it? How come it isn’t in my model?

 

The void. Is that Buddhist? Or Hindu. I should know that. I don’t know much about Hinduism, really. Everything I know was gleaned from those very dodgy comic books my dad would bring them back from India. Do you remember them?

Sure. Amar Chitra Katha. You could pick them up in Southall.

 

The void. I like the way it sounds. So you write about the void. Think about the void. Do research on the void. And what impact do your studies have?

None whatsoever. No one wants to read about the void.

Fitting, I guess.

 

Should I have studied the humanities? What did I miss out on?

Everything.

Can’t I catch up? Read a few books. Look at some art. Watch a few films. That will do, won’t it?

 

And what about Organisational Management? How could I catch up with that? You can learn it by doing. By watching it unfold.

 

There’s an Organisational Management book club, you know. We read literary things. To, like, broaden our horizons. I’m a member. Maybe we should read some philosophy. What should I suggest?

The way it all happens in the same way. The same happening in the same way. How do we stop that?

 

You show me that I was bored. That I’ve ben bored all along. I didn’t know I was bored, but I was. I want something new now. I just didn’t know I wanted something new until tonight.

 

But I thought everything was exciting for Organisational Management. That you were expanding. Opening new frontiers. Drawing down more money. Increasing your dominion.

But it’s all Organisational Management isn’t it? Nothing more. It’s the same thing happening in the same way. It’s the same logic. The same same. I’m bored, philosopher. I’m meta bored. I’m bored of my boredom. I’m the bored wife and you’ve arrived to …

Amuse you? Entertain you?

Save me. A knight on his steed, Philosophy.

A steed Organisational Management wants to break.

Perhaps we do. Perhaps we want to break you. Or perhaps we’re going to philosophy-whisper you. Like a horse whisperer. Win you over that way – with gentleness. By breathing gently into your nostrils. By saying calm things. Loving things. That way you’ll come to trust us.

And maybe I’m part of it, the philosophy-whispering. Maybe that’s my role. To bring you, the leader, on board. To persuade you that we don’t want to harm you. That we don’t want to do anything had to you at all. That we want simply to … protect you. Enclose you. Wrap you in our organisational-managerial arms.

 

Philosophy whispering won’t work. You’ll have to break us instead. You’ll have to crush us.

No one wants to crush anyone. That’s not where we’re at. Philosophy’s a chew toy, that’s all. Something that will entertain us for a bit

We need to say everything tonight. Because there won’t be another chance. This is the only night.

Do you think?

We have to say everything we can tonight. We have to communicate the most important things. Everything about who we are. About who we cannot help but be.

It’s all there in our simplest gestures. The history of our body. Our affective lives. All our essential loves and hatreds. Everything we’ve undergone. There it is: in our gestures. In the way we smile or the way we … kiss.

 

We’ll have to say and do and be everything tonight. Everything that we can be for each other. We’ll have to live and die entire lives, philosopher. Do you think that’s possible?

 

We need time, philosopher. The Pulse can give us time. To catch up with ourselves. To find a moment in which we can live.

 

Ask it for time, philosopher. Ask it to wait. We need time.

We need time to breathe. To get used to each other. To be with each other.

 

I’m getting accustomed to you, philosopher. To your ways. To your strange way of being. I’m beginning to feel at ease with you.

 

I could be a honey trap, philosopher. How do you know that I am what I say I am? That I’m not deceiving you.

I don’t think you’re a liar. I think you’re telling the truth. I can see it in you. You’re sincere.

Am I? I thought I was being ironical … and coquettish … and …

 

I’ve never had an affair, you know. I’ve never been tempted. I’ve never strayed. Oh I snogged a guy in New Zealand once. (Do you like that word, snogged? I saw you flinch.) But that didn’t count. I was on a kinda late gap year. Because I didn’t have one earlier on.

 

Am I sincere, philosopher? Do I mean what I say? It’s as though the saying were more important than what is said. The fact that I’m saying it. But now I don’t understand myself. What if I gave you a sincere kiss? What if I planted one on your philosophical lips?

 

I was ordinary when I was young I wasn’t anything special. I wasn’t particularly clever. I wasn’t especially soulful. I wasn’t anything, really. And now what am I? What have I become?

I don’t see why you should be especially interested in me. Maybe you like my wisftulness. Actually, I like my wistfulness. I like this experimental me. I like this kinda vague me. I like being adrift. I like the philosophical me. That’s who this is: the philosophical me. Who’s slipped free from Organisational Management – just for the night.

 

I want to say to my husband: I miss you, even when I’m with you. But that doesn’t seem very fair, does it?

 

An affair shouldn’t be trivial. It should be about something. If you’re going to betray someone, it should be for a reason. For something pretty fucking great.

 

All the best things are unrepeatable.

Doing something together. Being together together. That’s enough, isn’t it? Sharing whatever it is we share. Sharing sharing.

 

The fact that we can say a few things. The fact that we can say anything at all. Isn’t language something, philosopher? The capacity to speak. Although I expect you wish I’d shut up.

 

We should say the most important thing we’ve ever said. That I’ve ever said. Or you’ve ever said. Only I don’t know what it would be. Do you know what it would be?

Only I don’t know if I’d even notice I’d said it.

 

I think we could happen upon it by chance: the secret. The secret of everything. The secret between us. The secret at the heart of our lives.

 

God, what am I talking about? Why am I saying these things?

 

Philosophy: the word sounds like a dream. Wistful and gentle and tender. Like one of those flowers that opens in boiling water. Like a lotus, blossoming.

 

You’re actually just on the threshold of philosophy. Once you get into philosophy, it’s a whole lot more technical.

Technical? I don’t like the sound of that.

Philosophy’s badass logic and that sort of thing. Rigour. And analysis. And the construction of sound arguments. And the testing of your arguments. And engaging with ideas. And critiquing them. And all that busy stuff.

How disappointing. How academic …

 

Stuck: that’s what I am. In this life. Living this way. Only sometimes I don’t mind being stuck. But tonight, I mind.

 

I feel such dread, sometimes. I feel heavy with it: dread. Dread: is that the word? It’s a heavy word. Dread is a weight. A dreadful weight.

 

Are you, like, in touch with vagueness, too? Is it part of you, too?

 

The threshold of philosophy – opening in wonder or in horror or in vagueness. In the everyday. Even on this campus. Even here.

 

How do you summon it up, all this philosophy? How do you begin philosophy? Or do you just slip into it?

 

Something important’s happened. Something broke through. Something was allowed through.

 

We could be living a beautiful life. Not just you and I – everyone. We’re just on the verge of it. On the brink. We just have to turn a particular corner, and … there it’ll be.

 

The most beautiful day could begin today. Right now. That’s how it feels.

Something’s going to happen tonight – I can tell. Something new. The course of things has been … interrupted. Things will shift in some tiny, imperceptible, but all-important way.

Something that has nothing to do with us – with Organisational Management. A new star will appear in the sky, or something. I don’t know.

 

Something’s started up between us, right? Something’s happening. Don’t you feel a sense of Inevitability?

 

I always feel that if I woke up … then something would happen. But first I have to wake up.

But what does that mean – wake up?

From this life to … another one. To true life. How do you do that, philosopher: wake up to true life?

 

There’s a … weight upon me. Pressing down on me. Crushing me. There’s something holding me down. If I could lose it. If I could push it aside. What then?

 

Do you ever feel that you’re not living your life?

Whose life are you living?

I don’t know. I’m not sure.

 

Do philosophers feel unreal? Are you supposed to feel unreal? This might not have been my life. None of this might be real. Do you remember When Narada asks Krishna what Maya is? Maya can’t be explained, Krishna says. It has to be experienced, Krishna says. They walk into the desert. Krishna sinks down. I’m parched, he says. I need water.

So Narada goes off to find water. An oasis. A beautiful woman, fetching water. She quenches his thirst. He follows her to her family house – the house of a chieftain. So taken is he that he asks for her father for her hand in marriage. The chieftain accepts, and he’s married.

Soon, he is blessed with four children. When the chieftain dies, he becomes chieftain in turn. Then: disaster. A flood comes. He loses his wife, his children. He cries out, My life is gone, my children drowned. How can I live without them. And a voice comes, Narada, I am thirsty. Where is the water?

Narada turns, and beholds Krishna, in the desert. Come to your senses, Narada, Krishna says. There never was any wife or children. It was all maya.

 

So you see, I might wake up and none of this was real. Not even Organisational Management …

 

Do you believe in past lives? Do you think there was something between us, once upon a time? In another life? Or will there be, in the future? In a future life?

 

Did we know each other in another life? It feels that way. It’s simple to talk to you. It’s easy. Ease is not a thing to be underestimated.

 

See this is so light. Talking like this. Feeling our words float up.

Are you a gamer, philosopher? You can game here. It’s like a giant Wii. I don’t game, either. Strategy games. Business games. Even Organisational Management games. We’ve commissioned them, anyway.

Organisational Management games – what larks!

This is how we amuse ourselves in Organisational Management. Makes learning fun. And fun, learning.

 

We can’t get lost here, can we?

If we can get lost in our heads, we can get lost in the Pulse. The Pulse takes us on a voyage into our heads.

 

I think the Pulse is real and nothing else is. The Pulse came before anything.

 

The Pulse reads us. The whole building’s intelligent, but the Pulse is the most intelligent.

 

You can ask the Pulse questions, you know.

Pulse, what’s the meaning of life, over. Pulse, are aliens planning to invade the Earth? Pulse, is Organisational Management part of an alien invasion force? Pulse, are there really Nephilim floating about? Pulse, are Organisational Management going to win? Pulse, is there any such thing as Philosophy on your home planet? Pulse, is philosophy going to survive?

 

Pulse, desert scene number one please.

 

Show us your homeworld, Pulse. How many light years have you come, Pulse? What do you want from humanity? Is Organisational Management an alien idea? How about analytic philosophy?

Not yet philosophy. I don’t think it’s the same as not yet Organisational Management. I don’t think there actually is a not yet Organisational Management. Organisational Management’s always gotten going.

 

Not yet philosophy. Philosophy that has forgotten that it’s doing philosophy. Or perhaps philosophy that doesn’t know it’s philosophy.

Amnesiac philosophy. Philosophy that doesn’t call what it does philosophy. That doesn’t know itself as philosophy. Philosophy that doesn’t know itself yet. Philosophy that hasn’t woken to itself yet.

Pre-philosophy. Philosophy that hasn’t gotten onto the serious business of being philosophy. Playful philosophy, maybe. Philosophy too distracted to be philosophy. Philosophy that’s forgotten what it was supposed to be doing.

Philosophy, daydreaming. Woolgathering. Philosophy that’s lost all grip on itself. Philosophy in a hammock. Philosophy … surprised by philosophy. Philosophy that’s been struck on the head. And now … has those little tweety birds turning round it.

Philosophy, asking everyone, what’s philosophy? Philosophy, shouting in the streets, WHAT’S PHILOSOPHY? Laughing in the streets

Noy yet philosophy. Not anything philosophy. Nothing whatsoever philosophy. Beginning nothing. Finishing nothing. Philosophy’s that’s all excuses.

Philosophy without any of the responsibility to do philosophy. To be philosophical. To take itself seriously.

Fun philosophy – is that it? Light as a feather philosophy. Comic philosophy. Divine comedy philosophy. The idiot cousin of philosophy. Philosophy that’s changed its name.

Philosophy, humming to itself. Philosophy, writing a poem.

I don’t even know what to want. Sometimes. This constant, low-level … whatever.

Anxiety.

That sounds too intense. It’s vaguer. Vaster. It’s bigger than us. And it’s indifferent to us. And we don’t matter to it. And it barely matters to us, or so it seems. Like drifting smoke. Like curling tendrils of smoke.

And it fills me with such a sense of disengagement. Like nothing matters.

Like a nihilism cloud.

Like melancholy. But it’s not my melancholy. It’s a kind of sadness in everything. A mute silence. If things could speak, that’s what they’d say. I’m melancholy: that’s what they’d say. But that’s not it, either. They’d say, there’s melancholy. Melancholy’s drifting through us like a cloud.

 

A great floating it-doesn’t-matter. That just floats around, more or less invisibly. Waiting to pass through everything and everyone. Possessing us. Or dispossessing us.

 

I’m confused, philosopher. But it’s not my confusion.

 

You lose yourself. Lose hold of yourself. Just disperse into the air. That’s what happens. Your attention just floats away. Who you are. What you care about.

That’s what it’s like being me.

 

Nothing in the head, philosopher. Nothing in the fucking head.

 

We’re falling together, philosopher. That’s something.

 

That one day passes, then another. That nothing changes. That things go on, philosopher. Indifferently to me. And to you. And to everyone. And it all just goes on. And maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe it should all stop.

 

How do we achieve the perfect dissociation? How do we find our way there? How do we leave ourselves, perfectly? Wake up from our bad dreams?

 

As though we were watching ourselves on TV from far away.