Work in Progress

I’d find it unbearable – seeing people all the time. Bumping into people. I can’t bear seeing anyone until about midday.

Always on. Always ready. Always up. Always bright. Always smiling. Always ready for encounter. For an exchange of ideas. I’d kill myself. I’d fucking kill myself.

 

In the morning! The morning should be sacred!

It’s like total mobilisation. Isn’t there any time for silence? For nursing hangovers. For just feeling appalled. For morning depression. For that-I-am-a-just-dug-up-corpse feeling.

Don’t you need time just to pull yourselves together? Just to be able to face the world? Look at another person in the eyes. Time to shake the dread off. To let the caffeine hit, or whatever. To just come together as a human being.

Time not to be shocked that there’s yet another morning. That there’s yet another day on earth. Another fucking day! Doesn’t that take some time to live with? So you can dial down the disgust. And the horror. Until you’re able to greet someone in the corridor.

 

I don’t want to greet anyone at that time in the morning. To mix with people who don’t feel the same default disgust that you do. Who don’t simply want to kill themselves. Who don’t want to hang themselves from the ceiling, right away.

God, Jesus must want you for a sunbeam.

 

Did anyone ever call you happy go lucky?

 

Should we compare depressions? How low do you go? Do you have anything other than suicidal ideation? Lucky you.

 

Another day that Satan has made, right?

 

It’s comic, really. It’s entertaining, in its own way. It’s amusing, this level of fucked-upness. You’d think it’d make us interesting.

 

I just feel wrong. Or the world’s wrong. Or everything’s wrong – everything. It amazes me. It constantly amazes me. Feeling this way.

What’s wrong with me? Why was I made like this? What possible use could I be?

I feel too heavy to stand. To sit up. I want to stay horizontal forever. I want to be buried. I want to  be deep underground. In some coffin, preferably. The vertical world isn’t for me.

Are there other people like this? Do you feel it, too? Do you?

 

Who feels worse – you or me? Who feels more suicidal? Who feels like they won’t get through the day?

We’re not made for this world, are we? Everything is unbearable. Every fucking thing.

 

I think my mind’s crashing, like a computer crashes.

 

Am I a philosophical specimen? Should I bequeath my body to philosophy? For philosophical research?

 

You’re wondering what my husband and I have in common. Whether I tell him these things. Whether he could listen. Whether he has a philosophical ear.

We have a way of getting on. We have our routines, philosopher. It’s … companionable. I’m not always full of all this … angst.

 

Do I have an interesting variety of philosophical madness? Is this a philosophical flare-up? When Organisation Management goes philosophical: is it a cautionary tale?

 

This is the only place where you can kill yourself. By throwing yourself all the way down. You can expect a lot of bodies piling up down there.

 

What can philosophy do to help? Anything? Or is it just a cry for help?

It’s a way of honing the cry for help. Making it beautiful.

 

Is it evil – all of this? In the way it pretends to be good? Is that it?

 

The age of philosophy has passed. And the humanities – obviously. All we’re for … Our age has gone. All that learning. The library of Alexandria is burning again.

 

The abominable offspring of philosophy and Organisational Management. Some ghastly new subject area.

Fuck the machine, eh, philosopher?

Some hatred of the earth. The earth itself. And the foulness of the earth. And the stench of the earth. Of the corruption of the earth. And all the corrupt things that lie in the earth. All the destroyed things. All the killed things. The reign of murder.

 

And nothing watching over us. And nothing caring about us.

And all of us in the pit, and sinking into the pit. Into the fucking mire.

And death is the law – not love. And murder is the law.

And chaos, returning. And screaming, returning. And the dying crawl over the dying. And the dead lay upon the dead and upon the dead.

And it’s senseless. It’s mockery. And nothing good will be done.

And there’s nothing but war, but they want war. Perpetual war. Because that’s what they want.

And the world is war. Them against us.  And the war won’t stop until the world stops.

It’s a holy war. It’s them versus us. The predators. The tapeworms. The parasites. The bloodsuckers. Who don’t need us anymore. Or who don’t need very many of us.

And the poisoning is just a new phase of the war. A new kind of warfare. We know what they’re about. We know there are too many of us, according to them.

Can’t you feel the hatred? Their hatred? Can’t you see their fangs, dripping poison. Can’t you hear their lies? Their cover. Their alibis.

Can I come with you into death? Can you lead me all the way to death? Is there a way out, through death? I want out, philosophy. I don’t want to be part of this …

 

Will we die here? Are we going to die here? In this … sarcophagus. The whole place is a suicide pod. The whole place is designed to make us want to kill ourselves.

 

It’s fitting. It’s appropriate. For those of us who didn’t want to be part of the human optimisation project. This is how they’ll thin us out. By making it unbearable. But of course, it already is unbearable …

 

I don’t want to live in this world. What we’ve done is disgusting. This campus is disgusting. This tower, reaching up into the void. And the void is laughing at us.

 

Who’s going to help us? Who will extend a hand? Pull us out of this? What do we pray to? Who is there to pray to? Who is there to kneel before?

 

This is a death zone, I know that. Death for the likes of us zone. This is a suicide zone. A drive us to suicide zone.

We couldn’t disturb them, Cicero’s European philosophy professors. They couldn’t see who we were. In our full significance. They didn’t recognise the barbarians. The inhabitants of the ruins. The ones who come after the destruction.

They couldn’t see what we were. What we embodied. We didn’t terrify them, Cicero’s professors. They couldn’t grasp the conditions that created us. Why our kind become necessary at a certain point.

They couldn’t discern that nature of the catastrophe – that there even was a catastrophe.

Not even our doomedness revealed itself to them. Not even our desperation, which was largely concealed, it is true, by our drunkenness. And even the meaning of our drunkenness was impossible for them to grasp.

So of course they were polite. Of course they were generous. They weren’t alert for signs. For omens. They didn’t know their own lies – the lies they couldn’t help but tell as soon as they opened their mouths. They couldn’t taste the poison. They were oblivious. Trusting. They thought everything was fundamentally okay.

And the humanities – what did they know of them? The coming destruction of the humanities. The imminent demolition of the humanities. None of that was apparent to them.

That the humanities had been devoured from within. That they had already been hollowed. Already cavitated. And that we were part of their hollowing.

The synths in Bladerunner think of themselves as angels. They quote Blake. Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc.

What’s that supposed to mean?

They’re fallen angels – that’s how they see themselves.

Who are the real angels? Do they believe in angels?

 

I thought synths weren’t supposed to feel anything.

The four year life-span is a failsafe to stop the synths experiencing emotions. If they lived any longer, they’d develop, like, emotional lives.

What sort of emotions might they feel?

 

Your memories could be fake. Your philosophy – maybe it was implanted in you .

How? By who?

 

See the real plan is to replace humans altogether. That’s why the synths look so much like us.

 

Did you ever do one of those tests on yourself?

You might be the first of a new kind – the philosophical synth.

So might you.

 

You’re the synth culmination of Organisational Management.

I’m not in the business. I am the business.

Perfect nihilism: that was always the goal. A perfect acceptance of nihilist. Of the limits of the world. An acceptance that there’s no meaning here. That meaning cannot come from here. That nothing earthly can save us.

And that’s a sign of hope?

It means you give up hope – for this realm. Give up the idea that hope can arise – in this realm. Only then can you live against the world.

 

Once you cry out … once you question … from the heart of you. From your viscera. Once you’ve reached perfect despair. An entire despair. Once you know that there’s no future for you in this world … Once hope is a memory …

 

To know the world as what it is. Perfectly cursed. Perfectly damned. A perfect void …

 

The extremity of hatred. And the extremity of love. The extremity of despair. Emotion carried at the highest pitch.

Until everything inessential is burnt up. Everything wrong. Everything that does not bring the world to destruction.

 

Cicero thought she’d found her perfect nihilist, that’s the thing. That you’d seen through the world entirely …

The poison runs so deep in us. The poison is us. We speak fluent poison. The lies run deeper than we do ourselves. We have to transmute it. Convert it inside us.

 

It’s made us into something interesting, the poison. That’s what Cicero would say.

Fuck Cicero.

 

Something’s being prepared inside us. We’re being made into something.

 

We have to learn to transmute the poison inside us. To change it.

 

It’s like a conversion. We’re being converted. To what?

 

We have to be converted. Which means we have to convert the poison. To turn it. Inside us. Turn ourselves. From interesting to … whatever. What does whatever mean?

 

How do we change the lies? Convert the lies? What can they be made into?

This is my life, philosopher. Do you like my life?

 

Do you think you could crack, like a piece of crockery?

 

How can you put an end to all this, philosopher? Put an end to everything. How can you get this stuff to STOP?

 

Are we going to save each other? Is that possible? Are we going to help one another? Are you going to help me?

Help you what – die?

 

Who’s doing it to us?: that’s what I want to know. And what are they doing? What, exactly? What is it? What’s happening? In all its dimensions? What is it that they want?

 

We’re lost in someone’s dream. Not our dream. We’re lost in what someone wants for us. Someone wicked.

 

This isn’t our world, is it? This isn’t even our dream. This isn’t our sleep.

This isn’t who we are. These aren’t our lies. These aren’t our lives. Someone dreamt this all up. We don’t belong here. To this. This isn’t our world. We’re not part of this.

 

On the threshold of … what? On the edge of … what? Are we asking the same things? About the same things? Are we caught up in the same question? Does the same thing ask itself through us both? Does it want the same thing in us?

 

These are the kind of things that I say to myself. Like, privately. I speak out loud to myself sometimes. Questions, questions. Or maybe they’re prayers …

 

Do you think I’m disturbed? What have I been disturbed by? What happened to me? Did it happen to you? Am I fucked up, or just philosophical? Are you fucked up, too?

 

Solitude, philosopher. How alone are you? Can you share what you think? With your colleagues? Can you share what you feel? Do they feel it too? Do they feel what you do?

 

Do you feel what I feel? Do you feel it? Do you know it?

Something bigger than us. Something greater than us. Something horrible.

That’s poisoning us. And lying to us. And lying through us.

 

And who’s going to save us from all this? And what’s going to save us?

 

Do you feel the evil? That word: evil. Are we allowed to call things evil anymore? But some things are evil, aren’t they?

 

How do we fight it? How do we resist? How do we escape this?

We don’t escape.

 

Are we damned, philosopher? What does that word mean: damned? Who would use a word like that: damned? Only a mad person. Or a religious person. All the real words have to come from religion now. They’re the only words that will suffice.

 

So evil – so, so evil. I sense it. I know it’s real. They have plans for us – terrible plans. They’ll destroy us. Worse.

What could be worse?

 

All this is an abomination. None of this should be. God knows that, doesn’t he?

So he should put us out of our misery, philosopher. Destroy  us all. And not just because we’re going to absorb the humanities, or whatever.

 

Why is there evil? Why is there anything? Who does the screaming belong to? Who makes the sound of screaming?

 

I’m tired of dying. Why are we always dying?

The postgraduate messiah will be the most stupid postgraduate who ever existed. But it will be a sublime stupidity. It will be a great stupidity.

The postgraduate messiah will be the most magnificent idiot. Vast. And swallowing up all so-called intelligence. Every clever thought.

The postgraduate messiah will be the one who should not existed. Who’s so twisted. So convoluted. So complexly folded. Whose hatreds are so various. Whose stupidities are manifold …

The postgraduate messiah will transmute all poison. Convert it within.

The postgraduate messiah will have explored every corner of death. Every part of the shadow of dying. Will have died a thousand times and been reborn from death.

The postgraduate messiah will be unable to lie. Unable to say a single false thing. With just one word on his lips: God.

 

Everything will be wrong about the postgraduate messiah.

The postgraduate messiah will be an even greater abomination than the Organisational Management campus.

 

I imagine the postgraduate messiah like Shakti, or something. Tongue sticking out. Riding a fucking tiger. Wielding some mace made of out of bones. Commanding some army of the undead.

What’s this tour for, anyway? To shock and awe me? Am I supposed to be amazed? Appalled?

I just wanted to be alone with the sulky philosopher. I want your philosophical take on these things. Actually, I want to see it through your eyes. I want to see myself in a philosophical mirror.

And what do you see?

 

You want me to tell you I hate it. You want me to hate it. For you.

What are you: a psychologist?

 

It’s so total. It’s so all. Like it will never fall down. It’ll last forever. This Kingdom will never fall.

Do you want it to fall? It’s barely even been built.

 

You’re not suited to this place, either. You want to approve of it, but you can’t. It’s driving you mad, too. It is, isn’t it?

 

I just like it silent and empty and dark. The lights flickering on and off as we walk the corridors …

 

I like feeling my footsteps … echo. I like to hear the echoes. With all this space around me. It’s the only way I can clear my head.

 

There’s a gym in there. Everyone’s so jacked nowadays. And they talk all the time about ice fucking baths. And how much they slept last night.

Do you do pull ups, philosopher? There’s an informal pull up competition among the senior Organisational Management team.

 

This is the future, philosopher. This is how we’re all going to live. And work.  

 

Offices for two hundred organisational managers. Imagine what two hundred organisational managers might be capable of. Like, the collective brain. All of them, working towards the great Solutions. To the great Problems. There’ll nothing they can’t solve.

 

In project teams. With project leaders. Fighting against groupthink at every turn. And reaching out across the university. Bringing experts over to the Organisational Management campus. Assembling inter- and multi-disciplinary teams. You can be involved, too – you philosophers. You can make a contribution.

 

And putting in for great tranches of funding. Sublime amounts of money.

 

This is a period of great Organisational Management optimism. I can tell.

 

There are all these breakout rooms. For encounters. Unexpected meetings. We want there to be surprising conversations.

I want to kill myself.

 

How can philosophy types do anything?

Making sure that there’s no uniformity of thought on their project. Making sure each team is a little off centre, off balance. We need mavericks. Brilliants. Are you a brilliant, philosopher?

 

No dark corners. No slack. Nothing unproductive. So much optimisation.

 

The human optimisation project. That’s based here.

Sounds exciting.

Don’t be sarcastic.

 

It’s a people place. People are the thing. The resource.

 

How many suicides do you get? You’ll have to spread nets between the Organisational Management campus buildings to prevent people from jumping.

You can’t open the windows wide enough to get out. They’ve seen to that.

 

An all algae based restaurant. How exciting.

 

This building recognises me. It knows who I am. Gives me access to everything. It doesn’t know you, yet.

 

It’s like being on a generation starship. It’s like it’s being readied to blast off into space. Looking for some habitable planet to organise and manage.

 

It’s so safe. The building wants us all to live forever. Well, I say ‘live’.

 

Do you find it unbearable, philosopher? Sometimes I find it unbearable. But I should like it, shouldn’t I?

 

You can’t throw yourself out of these windows. They don’t open wide enough. All you can do is batter yourself against them like flies.

They probably watch us battering against the windows like flies. They’d probably like that.

 

It’s a suicide machine, that’s what it is. It’s a culling device for the likes of us.

Am I included in your ‘us’?