Where will the extremes of OOO philosophy lead?
The world divides between creeps and jerks. History can be seen as a long, unedifying creep, or what one of Alan Bennett’s characters called ‘one fucking thing after another’. Alternatively, it might be seen as consisting of jerks – that’s to say, big events that revolutionise the world (the invention of the printing press, the advent of steam, the French Revolution, Hiroshima, Tim Berners-Lee’s creation of the world wide web). The latter position is essentially that of the philosopher Alain Badiou. The French Maoist maintains that the significance of events that stand out from the usual blah of history can only be grasped retroactively – vindicating Zhou Enlai’s reply when
