<p>The paper critically discusses a model of what a mystical atheism could be, that of the oceanic exuberance argued for by Brook Ziporyn, following Georges Bataille, and offers and alternative model. I develop an account of the human being freed from instrumental reason (characteristic of bourgeois civilization), and seek to make this non-instrumental way of being available here and now, not “after the revolution” (as in Marxist theory), resulting in a more pessimistic view. This freedom to reject purpose is achieved not through collective historical effort, but through limit-experiences of slow apocalypse recorded/constructed by figures like novelist László Krasznahorkai and his film director collaborator, Béla Tarr. A potential analogy is analyzed, according to which this freedom is like the fate of the slave that’s not freed but discarded by being found useless.</p>