Work in Progress

Organisational Management. You know what that syllable sounds like to a Hindu.


The question of Organisational Management is essentially religious: isn’t that our position?


Organisational Management youth groups. Organisational Management youth conferences. Bringing together future Organisational Management leaders. The leaders of tomorrow Rising stars, and so on.


Organisational Management’s all wrapped up in its problems. Organisational Management can’t find a way out. Organisational Management’s stuck. Or maybe I’m stuck. Or maybe we’re all stuck. I get confused.


At least Organisational Management’s given us an objective correlate to our depression. We actually have a concrete reason for depression.


What do you think Organisational Management philosophy will be like?

Organisational Management philosophy already exists. It’s called analytic philosophy.

Analytic what? I won’t ask.


This is how we escape Organisational Management – we escape it by becoming imperceptible. We’ll never be seen. We’ll walk between the raindrops. We’ll slip between the molecules.


The various zones. Is there a disgust zone? A hatred zone? A kill yourself zone. Well, of course there actually is a kill yourself zone: the fucking euthanasia zone.


Organisational Management has discovered the secret of happiness, basically. How marvellous. And we’re spoiling it. If it wasn’t for us meddling philosophers …


The Organisational Management control manual for the universe.


Secret Organisational Management eugenics programme. Trying to breed the perfect manager.


Don’t let Organisational Management set up camp inside your head.


There’ll be ghosts of the humanities, wandering the Organisational Management corridors, wondering where they are. Wondering what happened to the university. Wondering who destroyed the university. Ghosts, scratching their heads. That’s the humanities afterlife.


Management without management – that’s the new thing. Based on French philosophy, or something. Organisation without organisation.


Organisational Managers are just the flying monkeys of the new world order.


We can’t destroy the O.M. monster, that’s what I think. This monster must destroy itself.

What’s your favourite question, philosopher? And don’t say the question of the anything or anything like that.


What’s the best question anyone’s ever asked?


Living against the world – does that give you meaning?

You can produce meaning from living against meaninglessness. That’s the magic.

So your philosophy is that everything in the world sucks.

And blows.

Even romance?


Lovers lark about. Lovers have fun. Do you think we have enough fun, philosopher?


How do we escape Alphaville? Is it Alphaville even here?


Don’t go average on me, philosopher.


I’ve forgotten how to breathe – that’s how it feels. I’ve forgotten how to make my heart beat. I’ve forgotten how to laugh.


Who’s in charge of the world, philosopher? Who are they, the rulers of the world? What do they want for us?


Alan isn’t real anymore. I’ve abolished Alan.


We should ask Mother just to … lift us out of time. Lift us out of the world. Would you like to walk on the beach forever? Listen to me going on forever?


You’ll have to find your way out of the abyss, philosopher. Philosophy has led you into its abyss. Now you have to find your way out.


Could a synth kiss like this?

A pleasure model, maybe.


Flirtation is an art, philosopher.


Are you on our side, Uma? Are you going to work as our mole?

I’m a rogue robot.


So what’s so wrong, philosopher? What’s so so wrong? What warrants all this?


Lightness, philosopher. That’s what I want to live for. That’s what I’m about. I’d like this night to be … light.

I think I’m growing more stupid.


Now you’re treating stupidity as some exalted state. Typical. Take an ordinary word and mystify it.


Can synths get drunk?

 If they’re programmed to.

It takes abominations to know the abomination.


People always imagine idiots to be happy. But we’re not happy, are we? Except when we’re lost in our idiocy. Except when we get especially drunk.


We don’t believe in anything. The organ of belief … has atrophied. We’ve got nothing to believe with.


We have no hobbies. We have no interests. We’re not broad personalities. We’re arrested in some vital sense. It’s like with pop stars, who don’t grow up when they become famous. You, like, stop maturing when you begin your PhD.


Quoting Schiller: “Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.”


What did our idiocy allow in the academe? It’s like when blind people develop an especially strong sense of hearing. We must have developed other skills. Like sonar? Like clairvoyance?

Intellectual skills. Or para-intellectual ones. Thing to compensate for out general stupidity.


The upturned tortoise of our lives.


High on our own philosophical supply.


The flaming zeppelin of our careers.


We’re products of mass HE. Face it. The finest fruit of mass HE!


Let’s kill ourselves.

Let’s not.

Let’s hang ourselves! We’ve been ailve too long! We’ve seen too much! Things are only getting worse!

Let’s strangle ourselves! Let’s strangle each other. Put your hands around my throat, and I’ll put my hands around yours.

I’m surprised we don’t just spontaneously combust. From disgust. Our blood and guts everywhere.


All these years, we’ve been allowed to get away with it. To pretend we’re philosophers, or whatever. Someone let us get away with it. The whole masquerade. But time was going to be up, soon enough. Our time will be up. Our number, called. Time gentlemen please, and all that. It’s going to be over.


We can’t help but be stupid. And being stupid is just a way of being what we are.

Which is?

Stupid.

Oh God. No more.


We’re just becoming more stupid, I think.

No, we’re coming into our stupidity. Our stupidity is increasing. Livia would be proud. We’re becoming what we are.

You shouldn’t be proud of your stupidity, Livia always said that.


We’ve ODd on philosophy.


Someone should stage an intervention – a stupidity intervention.

Would it stop us?


We’re in the doldrums.

What actually are doldrums?


All our talk of despair – do we know what despair is? Do we know what we’re saying when we talk about despair?


We weren’t savants, though we’d like to have been. We weren’t prodigies.

We thought we might be late developers. We thought with a certain amount of time, given a certain chance … we’d come into our own.

That’s what we believed, in our heart of hearts. It’s what we couldn’t help but believe.

Apes have invaded the academy. They hoot in the ruins. It’s clear! They swing from the ceilings.


We should deepen the decline, Livia thought. Bottom it out. See where the university becomes when it hits rock bottom.


We were a philosophy department. To think!

Remembering the great departments of yore. Remembering legendary philosophy departments. Departments of strong personalities. With different views. Often clashing! Often heated! But serious – intensely so.

Embodying an ideal life – the academic life. Showing students what the intellectual life could be.

High mindedness! General academic loftiness! Places of discussion! Debate!


No one will write the history of UK European Philosophy. No one will remember it.

Our kind will simply disappear. The whole scene will just … evaporate.

It’s as though none of this were real. Everything everyone cares about so deeply. It’s transitory. It’s on its way out. Analytic hegemony will triumph in the end.


Our time has passed. We’re anachronisms. We’re too-laters. The party’s over.


We missed the boat. But then we never would have made the boat. We would never have even been admitted onto the boat.

We’re the products of mass higher education! We’re what happens when you expand the universities! We’re the result of generations of educational collapse! Full of personality disorders. Psychological disorders!


They appointed us. Livia appointed us. To mock philosophy? To mock everything. Of course! This was a time that deserved only mockery, Livia said. And that was her role: the mocker in chief.

This wine – the tears of failed PhD students. Tears of bitterness! And resentment! Of years of life, wasted!


Ground up bat’s wings.


I want to be clear: is this wine poison, or is it the cure for poison?


The wine makes us taste poison. We taste the poison of everything.

So it’s everything we’re tasting?

Everything as it really is. Behind the veil of maya.


We’re tasting the poison of the universe. We’re tasting the horror.


We have to change it in our throats. Well, you do, Shiva.


Drunken disgust – that’s what we’re supposed to feel. Drunken horror – and horror at our drunkenness.


This is supposed to be, like, a disgust vigil. A drunken disgust vigil.


The path of disgust, that’s what we’re following. Which is, by necessity, a disgusting path.

It’s not good for us – of course not. Disgust is our body warning us not to drink anymore. It’s nature saying, no! But we shouldn’t listen to nature. We have to break the laws of nature.


We were supposed to covert the poison. Convert European philosophy, too. Change it into something else.

You can’t overthrow the world, everyone knows that. All you get is more world.


Doesn’t the world tire of being the world? Of course it does. That’s why it comes to us, begging for help. Asking. Can’t you hear it asking?


The sense of the world must be outside the world – Livia, quoting Wittgenstein.


The world’s running out.

Running out of what? Of world?

Just running out.


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


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


Octavio Paz: There is another world, in this one. EM Cioran: There is no other world, not even this one. Paul Éluard: There is another world, and it is this one.

So why were we supposed to save philosophy, or whatever?

Maybe we’re supposed to finish off philosophy. Strike the death blow.


A dying art – that’s what we’re practising. An art that’s past its sell by date. An irrelevant art. That we’re not good at. An unwelcome art.


What would it be like to acquire gravitas?


Has any of us produced an opus maximus yet? A magnum fabbo, or whatever? Are any of us close to a masterpiece?


As though we had come after philosophy. After everything, having forgotten everything.


We’re guardians of the pathos. We stand guard over the great European moods. We have versions of them ourselves.


We lived between inverted commas. We were happy between inverted commas. ‘Philosophers’, right? ‘European philosophers’? ‘UK European philosophers’.

We lived in the alibi. We were happy – for a while. But then it began to catch up to us. Then it began to niggle us – the old worry. Then it came to us.


Philosophical Bad Company.

Philosophy idiots assemble.

The philosophy stupidity squad.


Idiot Soup.


Livia’s Z list. Livia’s Z team.


The Most Low. The Most stupid. The biggest idiots.


Idiots assemble. Suicide squad.

They’ve desecrated Christmas. It’s anti-Christmas for the anti-Christ. The birth of the anti messiah.


The Anti-Santa. Is there such a thing? A Beelzebub Santa! And his demon-elves.

Santa is, like, Satan. Saint Nick is a name for the devil, too.


Always winter, never Xmas.

Helmut’s wandered off. Where’s he gone? Shouting. Helmut! Come back! We’ll be nice about Heidegger! We won’t talk quite as much rubbish!

Helmut – don’t get lost! The snow’s too thick? Its’s falling too heavily. You’ll get hypothermia. Actually, I think I’m getting hypothermia.


The Heideggerian bastard.


Where’s your last god now, Helmut? Is he going to be of any help?


You’ll become a future fascist leader, Helmut. The leader in the coming UK civil war.


We live under dark skies, Helmut. Things suck, Helmut.


Helmut’s battle against technology in general. One man, armed only with Heidegger books. In translation.


You should start a Heideggerian clothing line. Sell Heideggerian merch.


Helmut’s sabre-toothed phenomenology.


Helmut’s on a carnivore diet. Looks down on carbs.


That’s just Helmut doing his Wim Hof breathing. I’m surprised he’s not wandering the campus in shorts.


That’s a war crime, Helmut.


Helmut in a serious Heideggerian sulk.


Blood and soil, Helmut. Your kind of thing.


Read out some of Heidegger’s poetry, Helmut. What rhymes with Being?

Read out some of Bataille’s poetry. A recitation. Pee pee. Coffin full of shit.

People must think you philosophers know all about the meaning of life. Do you, philosopher? Do you have all the secrets?


I’m trying not to take it personally, philosopher. I’m making a great effort not to despise you. And I’m not sure whether I’m succeeding.


Ah the mysteries of your trade.


This is my fancy Organisational Management cage.


My Organisational Management head is spinning.


Maybe I’m having a breakdown, philosopher. How do you know you’re having a breakdown?


I’m shedding my Organisational Management skin, like a snake.


My golden retriever husband. My cinnamon husband.


Is there a philosopher bride? Is there a Mrs philosopher?

I suppose you philosophers are all solitaries. Lone wolves.


What are philosophers like in love? What happens when philosophers fall in love?


Do you weep as you type, philosopher? Are you moved by your thoughts?


What did you die of? You never said.


I amuse you, but I bore you. I know that.