Work in Progress

Shall I tell you a secret? You’ll have to lean in, philosopher.

Ok.

I’ll whisper it: I feel … dead.

Dead? Like, bored to death?

Not dead – but … like I’m dying. What if I said that I’m terminally ill?

Are you terminally ill?

Do I appear terminally ill to you? I could be terminally ill. But I’m not. I’m not terminally ill … I’d like to be terminally ill, maybe. It might give some meaning to my life. The idea of the end being close … That things wouldn’t just go on forever … Because they're in serious danger of going on forever …

We’re safe in the hold of Organisational Management.

 

Organisational Management will carry us, like Jonah in the whale. Organisational Management will shelter us. Keep us from the worst.

 

In the world’s darkness, Organisational Management will keep the humanities’ light burning.

 

There’s a philosophical crypt inside Organisational Management.

Once upon a time, the humanities had the kudos, The respect. Business studies was some Johnny-come-lately subject. With a total inferiority complex. And Organisational Management …, well. Organisational Management didn’t even exist.

And now, the humanities all but going-a-begging to Organisational Management to save them. So we’re allowed to be a little sniffy.

How are your student applications going? Up? Down? Whereas our numbers are going up and up. UK students. International. It’s enough to make one positively smug.

But we’re generous, philosopher. We’re inviting you in. On your terms. We’ve got a whole office suite ready – a whole floor of the building.

They’re going to break philosophy. Like a wild horse.

We’re already broken, idiot.

 

They want to be resisted. To be played with. It gives them a frisson. They like the idea of challenges to their power. It perks them up. Makes Organisational Management feel young again. Positively kittenish. Philosophy’s a chew toy, basically.

 

Organisational Management has run out of meaning. Happens to every subject area. Eventually, you just come face to face with the void. Organisational Management nihilism: that’s the problem. Organisational Management acadie. When you just lie back and stares at the sky.

 

Organisational Management wants a project. They want the non manageable Other, that threatens misrule and chaos. And that’s what they want.

I don’t see anything.

Keep on looking. Wait. Your eyes will adjust. That’s the oldest might in the universe. The oldest and the farthest away. Deep space, right. Which is also deep time. Sublime, right? It’s supposed to promote ego-death. Making even the loftiest Organisational Manager feel small and insignificant.

Management isn’t just about control and organisation. It’s about coping. About muddling through. And it’s not just about managing others. It’s about managing ourselves.

 

To manage means not only to handle, to control, but to cope. It’s not only about hierarchical order and symbolic violence.

 

Perhaps we should stop thinking in terms of problems and solutions. We can’t solve our problems with the same kinds of thinking we used to create them – that’s what Einstein said. Problem / solution thinking is itself part of the problem. We have to leave behind mainstream management consciousness.

 

There are three hundred thousand students on management and administration programmes. Far more than any other subject area.

 

Traditional, hierarchical structures are giving way to distributed practices, apparently. Organised nodally.

 

It’s not about maximum growth, competitiveness and productivity anymore. It’s not only a matter efficacy, cost-effectiveness and instrumentality.

Care about others – that’s the thing. Collective stewardship. Frameworks of cooperation. Common horizons! The collaborative commons! Global solidarity! It’s all part of the new managerial toolkit.

 

This is not your dad’s Organisational Management. It’s not about some massive global authority to control everything and everyone, oh no.

It’s about building a heterotopia. Clearing a common ground on which to rebuild society.

 

Solidarity is the watchworld. Not suppressing or deny differences, but valuing each contribution to the whole.

 

It’s not all about Weberian bureaucracy anymore. It’s not about repressing personal idiosyncrasies. About eliminating beliefs, predilections, affections, mannerisms, eccentricities. It’s not about smooth and unswerving goal pursuit. It’s not about uniformity. About instrumentally rational performance.

 

The model of manager as gardener. Inviting, not structuring. Letting grow, not motivating. Inspiring, not planning. Caring, not controlling.

 

Management Kairos. Seizing the right moment.

 

Reading: Organization is an attempt to order the intrinsic flux of human action, to channel it towards certain ends, to give it a particular shape, through generalizing and institutionalizing particular meanings and rules. At the same time, organization is a pattern that is constituted, shaped, emerging from change.

 

Velocity management. Speeding up operations to the level of instantaneity. Perfect coordination – that’s the clue. It’ll allow decision making at lightning speed.

If Hell is close to us, what about paradise?

 

Angels and devils, battling. At war. It’s Biblical – literally. Like that painting by … whoever it is.

 

I’d like to be a pawn in a divine game – wouldn’t you? In some celestial battle of angels and devils.

Our fatalism.

The world is lost, we know that. We know it’s all played out, the world. We know what it can be, what it can’t be. We’re reconciled to it – we’ve accepted it. Actually, we don’t want to hope. It’d be too much to hope – we actually want things to remain the same. We want the usual horror. Safe horror.

 

The world’s just doing what the world does. It’s the old fatality, dressed up differently.

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.