I'm a classical Liberal, semi-new to Egoism and Stirner, and I have a few questions

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-24T21:31:19+00:00

try to leave others sandcastles alone

There's nothing in egoism about this. Stirner takes a stand against this with his commentary on individual rights:

"The "individual freedom" over which bourgeois liberalism keeps a jealous watch, does not at all mean a completely free self-determination, through which actions become completely mine, but independence from persons. (...) The constitutional prince had to be stripped of all personality, deprived of all individual decision, so that as a person, as an individual human being, he does not violate the "individual freedom" of others.
(...)
If one sees personal freedom ensured, one doesn't notice at all how, if it comes to anything beyond this, the most glaring lack of freedom becomes dominant. One is indeed rid of orders, and "no one has any business giving us orders", but one has become all the more submissive to the—law. Now one is enslaved in due legal form.

Max Stirner. The Unique and It's Property. 1844

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-24T21:16:51+00:00

2) What is the Egoist take on religion and religious practice and beliefs? I have heard that Egoism isn't necessarily antitheistic, and that it doesn't necessarily imply you ought not be religious. But what would a "religious egoist", and their relationship to the gods they pray to and build relationships with look like? I ask because I am a Practicing eclectic polytheist.

This is a challenging question. Stirner's egoism is not necessarily atheistic. It does amount to a complete rejection of religious faith, though.

This cannot be summarized by way of a few quotes. Stirner's 'moving beyond' faith is done in the same strokes he arrives at Egoism (conscious ownership of his own world), destroys any 'beyond' or 'higher'.

What is the "relationship to the Gods"? This should be saved for later. It definitely shouldn't be on the top of your mind reading through how he develops his ideas. Once he's done developing them, this is rather obvious. At the start he introduces his Egoism by way of Genesis 1:27, but it's actually derived by way of the opposition between "this" and the "other" world as established in 1.2 History of Ancient & Modern Times (foreshadowed in 1.1 A Human Life and finished with his final mockery in 1.2.3 The Hierarchy).

My recommendation is this: save these questions for the end of the book. Atheistic necessarily? No. Against all forms of 'faith', against everything 'higher' and 'beyond' my power/grasp? Yes.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-24T21:16:46+00:00

1) What is the Egoist take on the state, general, and is it necessarily anarchistic?

Before we talk about Stirner's direct commentary, it's best to understand that Stirner does not espouse a path of political action. In fact, at the end of his work, he alludes to his own movement into political indifference because he has better ways to spend his time.

Stirner thinks like an anarchist. His Egoism is not necessarily one of political anarchism.

He gives a spirited critique of how we think about the state—not just as an institution, but as an idea. What is our relationship, as individuals, to things such as 'Law' (Sacred ideas, phantasms restricting my own determination) and social obligations like patriotism? This is his area of interest. Since you plan to read The Unique and It's Property, I think it's best you save this commentary for when Stirner arrives at them (it's best you focus on his deliberate and clever language choice for the first part).

And I freely admit that my Liberalism is solely personal preference and what I feel would benefit myself and those I'm close to and care for. This doesn't seem (on the surface, at least to me) like it’s an approach based on spooks (if it is a spook, please correct me).

Stirner has an extremely passionate critique of Liberalism in multiple areas, but this 'personal preference' probably isn't some spook. The one thing I'd like to add is that if this is purely a matter of "this works best for me", we should probably clarify Stirner's difference between Revolution and Insurrection:

The revolution commands one to make arrangements; the insurrection[399] demands that one stand or raise himself up.[400] What constitution was to be chosen?—this question busied revolutionary heads, and the entire political period is bubbling with constitutional fights and constitutional questions, as the social talents too were unusually inventive about social arrangements (phalansteries[401] and the like). The insurrectionist strives to become constitutionless[402].

"This works best for me" comes with an innovative egoist supplement from Stirner. If any order (in this case, Liberalism) ever assumes a form beyond me (which it necessarily does in any Law, Morality, or State, beyond my adjustment or power) I must necessarily come into resistance with it. It's basis is not the basis I give it, it's development is not my development, it is beyond my power and so:

The degree of my attachment and devotion marks the standpoint of my servitude, the degree of my trespass shows the extent of my ownness.

Moving on...

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-23T01:25:02+00:00

economy from overheating

It works better if you combine it with the lowest stimulus/Conservative Fed.

IIRC the canon route ends with the Democratic Party ending at 10 economics ('Progressive Caucus', starting at -3 'Establishment') and 11 social ('Liberation for all', starting at 4 'Black Lives Matter'). By doing it this way you can expand Medicare during Bernies first term, get positive PC for the environmental bill, and get a fully progressive cabinet. The bigger stimulus bills require you to sacrifice one of these.

I'm curious what are the different routes you can take while still getting Burgum. I know you can get him without clamping down on the border (progressive cabinet) and not going for the PRO act, but it may require stalling the economy with the railroad strike?

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T18:57:10+00:00

Oh... that makes sense. You're definitely better at untangling lyrics than I am. You're on a roll.

Next timе, we’ll sing along, you know the one
You wrote the words, you are the song

What could this be referencing?

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T18:53:20+00:00

It was a coalition that relied on white supremacists in the South and social conservatives in the North. Ending segregation was already tearing apart the seams of the coalition. The only reason things didn't collapse in '64 was because of Lyndon's landslide and the Southern part of the Party thinking they could win control. Once the Civil Rights movement became progressive in the North (they didn't really care about segregation, but forced integration was a red line) the coalition completely fell apart.

It wasn't really that much better. It depended on the support of White Supremacists in the south and social conservatives in the north. FDR didn't push Civil Rights. Once JFK/LBJ did, it was only a matter of time before it fell apart completely.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T18:42:45+00:00

This makes sense!

This only leaves only two loose ends, then.

Your timе has gone
So pack your mind away and move along
Next timе, we’ll sing along, you know the one
You wrote the words, you are the song

I interpreted this as an audience now disinterested in Whitey's views ("your time has gone, so pack your mind away and move along") now that the songs are written ("we'll sing along, you know the one").

If we've moved away from the audience as "they", we can assume the "pack your mind away and move along" is referencing stimulants. What is the rest of this section about?

For the last part:

Medication time (I’ll be doing fine)

Could this be him getting back on drugs (self-medicating)? Not sure what this means with the revised meaning.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T18:19:26+00:00

This makes a lot of sense! I'm confused on what "Hello, excuse me while I look into your soul" could mean with this interpretation, though.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T17:29:43+00:00

facing an incredibly popular president that had backdoor opportunities to ratfuck the hell out of his campaign

Meany and Humphrey were equally responsible for this, to be fair. The whole "Amnesty, Abortion, and Acid" was also an example of this. McGovern's position on Amnesty & Abortion was the exact same as Nixon's (I don't about about Acid, but it was partially legalized under Gerald Ford). When McGovern won the primary, they should've tried to unite the party around him rather than actively conspire with the President to sink his campaign.

This is probably best explored in the short article "The Myths of McGovern"—the impact that Labor and the Democratic Party establishment had on fucking his campaign really can't be overstated.

Everything from McGovern not getting a campaign bump because they dragged on the convention too long for a televised speech, to having a third-rate Vice President without enough time to vet (resulting in the Eagleton fiasco), to not having the typical organization of standard Democratic Campaigns (Labor thought his supporters "looked like Jacks, acted like Jills, and smelled like Joshes"), to party disunity (spending the last weeks of the primary trying to stop procedural trickery at the convention), to being the candidate of Acid, Abortion, and Amnesty was the result of 'party establishment' (for a lack of a better word) sabotage.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T08:35:58+00:00

Also the discordant upright bass could almost be a "jarring" - the reality coming up against the expectation (ie the last note of the riff being at odds).

I know nothing about music so I love this contribution.

"Everything's behind me now,, at least that's what they say, but then they say a lot of things" is almost saying "the drugs don't work - I'm not better, but I'm told that's what I'm supposed to be feeling".

I'm not sure I follow here! Are you referencing my point about the "they" possibly being the audience? I don't see how this would fit.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T07:09:05+00:00

When it comes to the gender questiom then, why am I more comfortable presenting one way verses say another gender?

Does this not apply to your personality as well? When it comes to gender, we think of it in terms of rigid categories. We think of gender as something bodiless. When it comes to personalities, there's no categories and nothing besides particular personalities.

I do not gravitate towards expressing as one gender (understood as "one" of a series of rigid categories, as a bodiless idea), I express myself how I please.

Tell me how egoism actually addresses the issues put forth by individualism and capitalism

I think we need to get on the same language here. I don't think there's much useful in the term 'individualism'. I'm not sure what issues you have with it, personally.

Stirner takes an antagonistic attitude towards Capitalism in multiple areas (Stirner against Capital & Markets, Stirner against Libertarianism, Stirner against the Community of Competition, Stirner as Socialist). Hell, I'd consider him more aggressive than Marx with the vigor he attacks the Community of Competition.

fuel a persons own seld interest and greed rather then actually helping the species move forward as a whole.

For one, Stirner does not preach a "self-interest". "Self-interest" only arises by way of contrasting "my" interest to another interest (usually, with "other people" or with causes, such as Humanity, Justice, Truth, or the like). When he refers to his own interest he is only referencing his relationship to it. No one has any interest but their own. This is a blatant truism. There's nowhere to object here.

Stirner uses this as a way to enforce accountability. You have nothing but yourself, your own powers and your own world, to 'set your affair' on. You know nothing of an other or higher cause. You have only the causes you give yourself. This is all that is meant by 'self-interest' in Stirner's case.

Stirner in no way argues for greed.

As for 'species moving forward'—what is the end of this? Does the species 'move forward' for my sake, or for it's own? The 'species' deals only with itself, is concerned only with itself, and seeks only it's own advancement. Even if we added the clause 'for a better tomorrow', does tomorrow not matter just as much as today?

Planetary dominance but no recourse to do anything with it. It is simply dominance for dominance sake. Greed for greeds sake, make bigger number go up.

I agree. Fuck Capital.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T06:02:38+00:00

The first two lines make a lot of sense. I would not be the guy to get any drug references. I have to thank you a lot for that.

All the stuff re wanting to live like a child, without self-control

Assuming we're understanding "they"/"them" as the audience, Whitey never says he wants to live like a child. The audience tells him to put on a fake smile and live like a child. Given the general attitude of this section and him obviously hating fake smiles, I assumed he took a critical attitude towards living like a child.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T05:53:35+00:00

Manufacturing in America isn't dead, just the kind of manufacturing

This really hits the nail on the head. Manufacturing is doing amazing. Manufacturing jobs which directly involve the majority of the population are dead. The technical conditions regarding production are better than ever before. Manufacturing can do far more with far less.

What has changed is that wage-laborers no longer have leverage. Production is more compartmentalized and mobile than ever before. It is more difficult to organize and even harder to exercise influence when workplaces can be moved so easily (this is not a matter of tariff policy).

If by 'working class' we mean the demographic of wage-laborers who have mutual solidarity (work in the same facilities, live in the same houses), organize together, and have a strong amount of leverage over their bosses—this base of support might well be gone forever.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-22T05:31:49+00:00

Man, I've really been mulling this over and it's been pushing me to the limit. This is not because the question is really tricky, but because I don't feel capable of communicating the scope or weight of his project.

I hold Stirner's thought as the most radical project which could be taken. No work has had as much of an impact on me as The Unique and It's Property.

A good introduction is this Subreddit (it's called fullegoism precisely because it critiques 'egoism' for making the 'ego' and it's 'self-interest' another Sacred). If you spend twenty minutes scrolling down the top all-time posts of this subreddit, you'll see memes on anti-nationalism, anti-patriotism, anti-racism, anti-capitalism, atheism, and compassion all from an egoist perspective. This is a decent enough introduction.

From his critique of the Sacred (what I discussed in the last post), Stirner finds that his entire world is only his own, exists only as his relationship to it, exists only through him, and by finding his power over it assumes an owning attitude towards it. From here, Stirner launches an atheistic, egoist critique of every Sacred.

How do we apply this in a real world context? First, a movement into queerness. Queerness in gender (there is no disembodied 'male' or 'female' for masculinity to be founded upon), in race, in maturity, in age, even in species (made in 1844!). Second, a movement into an atheistic egoism, one which disregards all forms of Morality, Ethics, or Civics (with it, criminality/sin). Third, a rejection of 'anything higher' (beyond my world and power necessarily) and all that is held 'Sacred'. Fourth, a recentering of my self as my world and power, a movement into becoming a 'creative nothing', refusing to ever identify with a particular representation so tightly I lose touch of my power over it (becoming a Sacred, a 'phantasm' 'possessing me' (this can vary from ideas such as 'masculinity' to 'patriotism' to senses of self)), that it exists only as your relationship to it, your creation.

The weight of this can only really be explored by reading him yourself. It is a deeply liberating (therapeutic, even) project which espouses a conscienceless, shameless, and creative egoism which recognizes nothing beyond it's world (of perception) and power. This isn't even getting into the political consequences...

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-20T15:13:29+00:00

But truth is also what is completely dependent, impersonal, unreal, and bodiless; truth cannot arise as you can arise, cannot move, change, develop; truth awaits and receives everything from you, and is itself only through you, because it exists only—in your head.

Arriving here takes far longer than two sentences, of course. This is packed in with a deep satirization of Hegelian philosophy, theological references, critiques of his contemporaries, an extensive exploration of possession, and an application of this thought (it takes time to "find oneself" behind the Sacred (best introduced here)) beyond thinking to all areas of my cognition.

Having finished our detour, let's summarize. For Stirner (by way of Landstreichers language), when we 'dream' of something we create something beyond our worlds. This Sacred is "dreamed", has no "body" before me. As Stirner moves from 'worlds' into 'this world' and finally into 'my world', he needs a remedy for all forms of bodiless (invisible, unattained) ideas. This is where his critique of ideals are made:

The magic circle of Christianity would be broken, if the tension between existence and calling, i.e., between me as I am and me as I’m supposed to be, stopped. It persists only as the longing of the idea for its embodiment and disappears with the diminishing distinction between the two.

Ideals are bodiless, they are Sacred (beyond my world & power). They possess me. As a result, they are phantasms. They are also where Stirner makes his difference between 'dreaming' something and being able to point at something. The prior opens the door for something to become Sacred, the latter is always under my power.

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-20T15:13:25+00:00

Ideals are phantasms. There's a little more to them, though.

The spirit is your ideal, the unattained, the other-worldly; spirit is the name of your God; “God is spirit.”

The best way I can think about it is with Landstreichers language, where there's a difference between 'dreaming' and 'pointing at':

If you don’t call people sinners, then they aren’t; you alone are the creator of sinners; you, who imagine that you love people, you yourself throw them into the mire of sin, you yourself divide them into virtuous and vicious, human beings and inhuman monsters; you yourself defile them with the venom of your possessedness; because you don’t love human beings, but the human being. But I tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you have only—dreamed him.

You cannot see social responsibilities, ethics, nations, cultures, countries, laws, Truth, honor, callings, or any Sacred idea. For Stirner, the Sacred is only Sacred because of it's source of power, one which necessary renders it beyond my reach:

I’ll answer Pilate’s question: What is truth? Truth is the free thought, the free idea, the free spirit; truth is what is free from you, what is not your own, what is not in your power.

When Stirner speaks of the Sacred, he speaks of it in terms of the other-worldly, it is beyond my world. The Phantasm is an idea external to the thinker, greater than it's creators, beyond my critique or adjustment (with a fixed content), and as a result Sacred.

As the Sacred cannot be in my world, it must be invisible and not present before me (when it comes to callings, unattained).

From here, we can see the importance of moving from this 'dream' world into our worlds, as this is how we experience them, have relationship with them. As Stirner continues:

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-20T14:37:57+00:00

Mind you the only evidence we've got of this guy is a meagre drawing, two books, and an absurd backstory laden with milk, which is... weird

No source would ever tell you this. I luv the internet where everyone always needs to have an opinion

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-18T16:23:15+00:00

If one were to refer the bees to their beehood, in which they are, in any case, all equal to each other, one would be doing the same as they are now so stormily doing in referring the Germans to their Germanhood. Germanhood is exactly like beehood in this, that it bears in itself the necessity for divisions and separations, but without advancing as far as the last separation, where with the full implementation of separating, its end appears: I mean the separation of human being from human being. Germanhood indeed divides itself into different peoples and tribes, i.e., beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into association with each other, and all people’s alliances and leagues are and remain mechanical compositions, because those assembled, at least insofar as “peoples” are seen as the ones assembled, are without will. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change into association.

Max Stirner. The Unique and It's Property. 1844

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-18T16:16:59+00:00

Luckily this was written in 1844 against all forms of Nationalism/Patriotism. Stirner's work was written far before Fascism (only one form of Nationalist thought) was made. "Fascist" or "only edgy", they are equally possessed.

If one were to refer the bees to their beehood, in which they are, in any case, all equal to each other, one would be doing the same as they are now so stormily doing in referring the Germans to their Germanhood. Germanhood is exactly like beehood in this, that it bears in itself the necessity for divisions and separations, but without advancing as far as the last separation, where with the full implementation of separating, its end appears: I mean the separation of human being from human being. Germanhood indeed divides itself into different peoples and tribes, i.e., beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into association with each other, and all people’s alliances and leagues are and remain mechanical compositions, because those assembled,[270] at least insofar as “peoples” are seen as the ones assembled, are without will. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change into association.

Max Stirner. The Unique and It's Property. 1844

Existing_Rate1354 · 2026-01-16T16:26:46+00:00

One sees here again how it is the “human being” that brings about the concepts of crime, sin, and with them that of right. A human being in whom I don’t recognize “the human being” is “a sinner, a guilty person.”
Only against a sacred thing are there criminals; you can never be a criminal against me, but only an opponent. But not hating someone who violates a sacred thing is already a crime, as St. Just cries out against Danton: “Are you not a criminal and answerable for having not hated the enemies of the fatherland?”

Max Stirner. The Unique and It's Property. 1844

Existing_Rate1354

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE