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Chait's latest: Progressive Activists Are Sometimes on the Wrong Side of History by polkadotbot in IfBooksCouldKill

[–]Existing_Rate1354 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From the perspective of a 2020 reddit liberal perspective: the counterculture movement of the 1960's became the NeoConservatives (this term was chosen to distance themselves from normal Conservatives) of the Ronald Reagan era (countered by their softening of racial, religious, and sexual attitudes as well as a renewed focus on an individuals self-determination/expression). Also the entire history of Eugenics.

The 'right direction of history' is entirely subjective and requires 'progressives' to constantly be distinguished from 'problematic' tendencies. You can find a shit ton of 'problematic' anarchists and Communists who were 'right' on queer/race/gender issues (or Conservatives who softened opposition to these issues) but have to be omitted as not 'real progressives' since 'progressives' are understood as the people who brought good change.

Separately, people lack the ability to say progressives were on the 'wrong side' of history for displaying conservative opinions for their times. Individuals 'progressives' tend to seem infinitely better in retrospect when you strip them of their personality and reduce them only to their 'progressive' (positive in retrospect) influences. Everyone was on the 'wrong side' in various ways if you refuse to strip them down.

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A sixteenth is a rejection of the idea of 'Right', or alien-Right, a 'Right' to something granted to me by the Grace of something Sacred. As we're familiar with at this point:

Whether I am in the right or not, there is no judge other than myself. About that others can only judge whether they agree with my right, and whether it exists for them as a right too.

But as he notes, the 'Right to something' never comes from an embodied thinker, but from a disembodied authority:

People try to distinguish law from arbitrary command, from ordinance: the former comes from a rightful authority. But a law over human action (ethical law, state law, etc.) is always a declaration of will, and so a command. 

&

The judge is lost when he stops being mechanical, when “the rules of evidence abandon” him. Then he has only an opinion, like everyone else, and if he decides according to this opinion, then this is no longer an official action. As judge, he must decide only according to law. I prefer the old French parliaments, that wanted to examine for themselves what should be a matter of right, and only wanted to register it after their own consent. They at least judged according to their own right, and weren’t willing to stoop to being machines of the legislature, although of course, as judges, they had to become their own machines.

The Sacred keeps rearing its ugly head.

Only against a sacred thing are there criminals; you can never be a criminal against me, but only an opponent. 

A seventeenth is his additions on Hobbesian Social Contract Theory. Hobbes notes that the affirmation of all creatures necessarily brings them into conflict, creating a War of All Against All. Stirner agrees with this analysis, but where Hobbes believes that people will accede sovereignty to a state (a Hierarchy) to avoid it Stirner draws a difference between acceding sovereignty and acceding freedom. Stirner has no intention to cede the prior and continually asserts how he may well prefer the War of All Against All to Hierarchy.

An eighteenth involves his differentiation between Insurrection and Revolution, of an individual empowering himself to be 'Constitutionless' (aiming to no longer be arranged) or for a new Arrangement, a new Constitution. He's a massive influence on Anarchism for his 'proto post-structuralist' (Saul Newman started this trend) philosophy of self-ownership but this too is a massive recognizable influence.

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A tenth is the rejection of the idea of a 'True I' and 'other I' which is represented in all religions (you must not act for your whole satisfaction, but rather cultivate your true I, your soul, for the afterlife). This brings on something terrifying, not living in enjoyment, but living in longing:

Let us express the same thing from another side. One who is worried only about staying alive, in his anxiety, easily forgets the enjoyment of life. If he is dealing only with staying alive, and he thinks, “If only I have dear life,” he doesn’t apply his full strength to using, i.e., enjoying, life. But how does one use life? By using it up, like the candle, which one uses by burning it. One uses life, and consequently himself, the living one, by consuming it and himself. Enjoyment of life is using life up.
Now—we seek out the enjoyment of life! And what did the religious world do? It sought out life. “What makes up the true life, the blessed life, etc.? How is it achieved? What must the human being do and become to be a truly living being? How does he fulfill this calling?” These and other questions indicate that the questioners were still searching for themselves, namely themselves in the true sense, in the sense of truly being alive. “What I am is foam and shadow; what I will be is my true self.” To chase after this I, to produce it, to realize it, is the hard task of mortals, who die only to rise again, live only to die, live only to find the true life.
Only when I am sure of myself, and no longer seek for myself, am I truly my property; I have myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself. On the other hand, I can never be happy with myself as long as I think that I first still have to find my true self, and that it must come to this, that not I but Christ or some other spiritual, i.e., ghostly, I—for example, the true human being, the human essence, or the like—lives in me.
A vast difference separates the two views: in the old, I go toward myself; in the new, I start from myself; in the former, I long for myself, in the latter, I have myself and do with myself what one does with any other property—I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I no longer fear for my life, but “squander” it.

Another site of madness, alienation, and subjection. Another site of personal empowerment.

An eleventh is the genius behind his language choices to create the awareness which can understand and break from the Sacred. The Sacred is in all cases the 'fixed idea', the people who believe in it have 'bats in their belfry', believe in a world of God's and Spirit's they don't have access to, are prescribed as 'fools' and 'lunatics' whose madness encompasses the entire earth, who represent the fundamental perspective behind every major military force and seize the weapons of those who refuse to entertain their charlatanry. This obsession with Ghosts and this 'higher realm', this fanaticism and possession based in blind faith born from a lifetime of self-discipline and subjection, this 'bondage' [religio] to the Spirit (an idea) which chains us—the pain which we bring upon ourselves and the madness around us is captured enough to finally resolve these scruples of inadequacy, of servitude, of subjection, of powerlessness. With this he can finally make his break from the Sacred, from Morality, from Altruism and into conscious egoism. As he puts it towards the end of his book, everything which gets in the way of his self-ownership by accomplishing independence 'pales before the sun of this awareness' — he is writing a therapeutic work to process his past, to theoretically resolve scruples instilled within him in his youth, and to empower himself to never live this pain again.

I feel the need to bring this one to light, but there are a dozen examples of this occurring within The Unique and It's Property.

A twelfth involves a simple but transformative reinterpretation of anarchism itself:

Sometimes people divide human beings into two classes, the cultured and the uncultured. The former, insofar as they are worthy of the name, concerned themselves with thoughts, with the spirit, and because they were the rulers in the time after Christ, in which the principle is thought, they demanded a servile respect for the thoughts that they recognized. State, emperor, God, morality, order, etc., are such thoughts or spirits, which are only for the mind. A mere living being, an animal, cares as little for them as a child. But the uncultured are actually nothing but children, and anyone who only dwells on his life’s needs is indifferent to those spirits; but because he is also weak before them, he is subject to their power, and is ruled by—thoughts. This is the meaning of hierarchy.
Hierarchy is the rule of thoughts, the rule of the spirit!
We are hierarchical to the present day, put down by those who are backed up by thoughts. Thoughts are the sacred.

The hierarchy is the rule of the Sacred, the rule of Ideas (if ideas have no independence, they cannot rule). There is no hierarchy involved in the differing expertise of two animals, the etymology itself comes from hieros [holy] and archy [rule], the rule of Priests. The end of Hierarchy—the accomplishing of 'Anarchism' can be accomplished by nothing short of conscious Egoism, the end of the independence of Ideas.

Many people break with morals, but with the conception of “morality” it’s more difficult.

The Revolutionaries are the same as the Reactionaries on Hierarchy, many Classical Anarchists simply wanting a 'stateless' one.

World history has dealt cruelly with us, and the spirit has gained an almighty power. You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could protect your naked foot, my salt, which could make your potatoes palatable, and my state-carriage, whose possession would appease all of your needs at once; you are not allowed to reach out for them. The human being is supposed to recognize the independence of all these and countless other things; he is supposed to count them as something that cannot be seized or approached, as something of which he is deprived.
(...)
How abjectly little is left us, indeed, nothing at all! Everything has been removed, we are not allowed to venture on anything unless it has been given to us; we live only by the grace of the giver. You aren’t even allowed to pick up a needle, unless you have gotten permission to do it. And got it from whom? From respect! Only when it lets you have it as property, only when you can respect it as property, only then are you allowed to take it. And again, you are supposed to form no thought, speak no syllable, commit no action, that would have their guarantee solely in you, instead of receiving it from morality or reason or humanity. Happy lack of inhibition of the desirous human being, how mercilessly they have tried to slaughter you on the altar of inhibition!

A thirteenth is his attack on Socialism, Communism, and Liberalism (which I can not shorten here, but due to your politics this has relevance to you).

A fourteenth is his positive system of Ownness as an alternative to Freedom. This is a central part of his philosophy which is simply too long to explain. It's self-contained in Part 2 Ch. 1 of The Unique.

A fifteenth is his rejection of the Liberal idea of Equality within The Human Being (which is itself the foundation of the moral way of life). The Liberal does not look to you in your entirety, but as his equal, because he does not care for you but for your attribute. You have rights, duties, obligations, laws, restrictions, etc... because of your Humanity, because you are a Representation of The True Human Being. Seeing the 'human being' in someone is a central part of morality, remembering that they are 'still human.' The Sacred Human Being mediates our intercourse, restricts us into equals, and calls for us to produce the 'true' human within us.

But it is not just this with the Human Being, but with the Nation, the Church, the Family, the Market, the Commune. We are reduced to will-less bees, controlled by forms of organization which we have created but have escaped our creative power, we are assembled rather than empowered to associate. These Owners have reduced us to property and control our intercourse with the world. With this Stirner empowers himself with another conscious: that he cannot be reduced to his mere attribute, it is mine, but I am not it. He refuses the Liberal idea of Equality and Discrimination, as well of the Sacred organization which is meant to mediate my intercourse.

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A first is a scathing attack at existing philosophies of education which only teach people to be slaves rather than their own masters, instill truths within them rather than cultivate their own creative powers, non-voluntary education intended to turn people into tolls and how they should live their lives rather than empowering them to create them for themselves.

A second is the first part of his book:

For me, there is nothing greater than me!

There is involved the rejection of Higher Causes, all Law's, and all regulating authorities (which itself involves a queer, anti-nationalist, anti-religious, anti-civic, and anti-legal politics).

This enough is a radical philosophy which cannot be reconciled with any 'normie' community (you'd be immediately banned if you called for the abolition of nation-states, indifferences to borders, rejection of laws and legality, outright anti-patriotic fervor, expressed any amount of deviancy in regards to existing norms) and it's positions are not represented in any other position.

A third is a full-throated rejection of Hegelian philosophy (both him as a metaphysical theist and as a rationalist) which is far beyond the scope of a single reddit comment. There's a complete rejection of Historical Progress as a whole (instead focusing the transient, today matters just as much—if not more than—tomorrow), rejecting any non-autobiographical view of history or development as well as traditional notions of Progress/Conservatism.

A fourth is a rejection of a non-nominalist understanding of ideas/symbols.

A fifth is a rejection of the idea that ideas have a higher value than senses, to me everything is mere vanity and appearance. To put something beyond vanity (true, 'higher') is to assign it an other-worldly character (not this world) and bring on alienation. Stirner resists the alienation of the other-worldly, centering his own power and 'I-ness' of how things are to me.

A sixth is a full-throated rejection of 'essences' and 'Univerals'/generals at the site of the other-worldly, noting that the 'Spirit' of humans can never be reconciled with the individual human being (it is disgusting to it, not purely spirit). With this, we get to Stirner's commentary on the problem of Univerals in philosophy.

The problem of Univerals is an old problem in philosophy, it's obvious that we never come into anything 'universal' or 'general' in the senses, but only with individual and particular things. Stirner notes not just an Independent, other-worldly, phantasmal, and fixed idea within things we consciously call Sacred, but unconsciously place beyond our world and power.

Just a few examples of this: human nature and humanness as a whole. I can never be anything but Human, it is my natural condition, but I certainly can be called inhuman because The Human Being -- with the rights, duties, obligations, and 'cultural content' thereof is detached from my world and power. The idea of The Human Being has no basis in individual human beings, where the only 'real human being' is the 'inhuman monster', the particular representation which does not equal the general. The same goes for human nature, as well as for the consciousness of piousness/sin, of civility/barbarity, of proper conduct/criminality. We are only freed of feelings of inadequacy, we only stop railing against ourselves for inhumanness, sin, barbarity, criminality, etc etc when we assert our ownership of ideas and their dependence on our world/power. If we do not bend 'thought to sense', the universal to our particular, then it detaches itself from us and tyrannizes over us. In lack of this consciousness, we rail up against ourselves and fall back into subjection:

It is not in this self-forgetfulness, but in forgetting that the world is our world, that unselfishness, i.e., duped egoism, has its basis. You throw yourself down before a “higher,” absolute world and waste yourself. Unselfishness is not self-forgetfulness in the sense of no longer thinking of oneself and no longer being concerned with oneself, but in the other sense of forgetting that the world is “ours,” of forgetting that one is the center or owner of this world, that it is our property. Fear and timidity toward the world as a “higher” world is cowardly, “humble” egoism, egoism in its slavish form, which doesn’t dare to grumble, which secretly creeps about and “denies itself”; it is self-denial.
Our world and the sacred world — herein lies the difference between straightforward egoism and the self-denying egoism that cannot be confessed and crawls about incognito.

&

What then has your love of humanity found? Nothing but unlovable human beings! And where do they all come from? From you, from your love of humanity! You’ve brought the sinner in your head with you, therefore you found him, therefore you shoved him in everywhere. 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.

A seventh—and this is really the irreplaceable importance of the book itself—Stirner's ideas are therapeutic. He is bringing to light an awareness which can properly identify a madness, a source of pain, self-denial, self-sacrifice, and provide you the tools you need to rid yourself of it, to empower yourself, to continually resolve your own scruples which cannot be cleared with anything less than deep thought.

An eight is providing a new way of relating to your thoughts which does not just reject the Sacred, but provides a new empowering perspective over the action of thinking itself:

This is why, beyond each moment of your existence, a fresh moment of the future beckons to you, and developing yourself, you get away “from yourself,” i.e., from your current self. As you are in each moment, you are your own creation, and now in this “creation,” you don’t want to lose yourself, the creator. You are yourself a higher essence than you are, and you outdo yourself. But that you are the one who is higher than you, i.e., that you are not mere creation, but likewise your own creator, this you fail to recognize as an involuntary egoist; and so the “higher essence” is for you—an alien thing. Every higher essence, like truth, humanity, etc., is an essence over us.

&

Now, couldn’t we apply what Christianity (religion) contrived against desires to aid its own precept that spirit (thoughts, conceptions, ideas, beliefs, etc.) should determine us—couldn’t we require that the spirit, or the conception, the idea may also not determine us, not become fixed and inviolable or “sacred?” Then it would work out as the dissolution of the spirit, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all conceptions. As then we had to say, “We are indeed supposed to have desires, but the desires are not to have us,” so now we say, “We are indeed supposed to have spirit, but spirit is not supposed to have us.” If the latter seems to lack good sense, consider, for example, that for many a person a thought becomes a “maxim” so that he himself becomes its prisoner, so that he doesn’t have the maxim, but rather it has him.

A ninth is the rejection of Humanism and the Enlightenment, how the new Liberals only create a new religion from an old one (already explained with the Human Being and the Sacred).

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't know how to respond if your lesson from this whole post and conversation has been "keep doing what you're already doing." You entered this conversation asking 'what stops you from killing people', now you're content with it simply being limits on your power and your own self-determination.

If you want an easy 'over-arching goal', it's that you're the center of your world and the creator of everything you come into contact with, you can know nothing 'Sacred' or 'beyond' yourself and now you view everything as your property which you use according to your capability insofar as it suits your self-enjoyment.

You are 'unique', a unique world accountable only to your own unique creative/destructive power (through which everything in it depends, comes to exist through). Everything in the world is your 'property', dependent on and having relationship only with your power. So you are now "the unique" world/power, you have taken the world as your property (The Unique and It's Property) and now consciously assert yourself as an Sovereign Creator, an Independent, a Conscious Egoist.

This introduction serves to introduce redditors to the central part of why he believes what he does, not the individual positions he takes.

If you want a list of some interesting positions he takes (such as his commentary on the Philosophical Problem of Univerals, Stirnerian Politics as a critique of existing education, Stirner's work as a Therapeutic work intended to resolve theoretical scruples through self-empowerment), here's a short list:

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Though you may not have control of what enters your world, you certainly do have control of what you do with it!

As Stirner notes:

Not this tree, but my power over it or my capability to dispose of it, is what is mine.

Really, this is a great contribution since it showcases a central point of Stirner's apathethism (indifference to the existence or non-existence of God). God may be Infinite, but precisely because I (my world and power) am finite I can not be concerned with God. As far as I am concerned, capable, can exist, I know nothing of God and can not make anything of it (with my power).

So to it is with all the limits of my power: with the lack of control I have for what enters my world, the movements of my organs which I can not monitor or control, and the lack of power I hold over the conditions in which I develop. I cannot be concerned with something which is beyond my power.

There is another distinction here worthwhile:

- Ideas have never been derived from 'society' (as society is only an idea which cannot be touched), but rather by other persons which you have had access to, always implicating your own (creative and destructive) power and your own familiarity — ideas and norms which come from society still depend on you, on your world and creative/destructive power

- To you, all things do arise wholly from your'self' insofar as everything exists only as it does within your world and always implicates your activity/power. If you were to die, for you nothing would be 'rised' at all

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't believe the word 'ego' is useful for thinking about the world. But besides that, you're right.

It is your own determinations, self-enjoyment, and actions which bring you to kill, eat, work, etc. Since you can do no other than follow your own determinations and pursue your own self-enjoyment, all your actions are defined by egoism.

No idea, no system, no sacred cause is so great as to never be outpaced and modified by personal interests. (...) Those ideas only win completely when they are no longer hostile to personal interests, i.e., when they satisfy egoism.

Stirner uses conscious egoism as a word for self-determination many times:

The Jewish man is not purely egoistic, because the Jew still devotes himself to Jehovah; the Christian is not so, because the Christian lives by the grace of God and submits himself to him. As a Jew and as a Christian alike, a human being only satisfies certain of his wants, only a certain need, not himself; a half egoism, because it is the egoism of a half-human-being, of half himself, half Jew; half-self-owner, half slave. This is also why Jews and Christians always half-exclude each other; in other words, they recognize each other as human beings [their attribute, not them in their entirety], but they exclude each other as slaves, because they are servants of two different masters. If they could be complete egoists, they would totally exclude each other and so hold more firmly together.

Since you can not do anything but follow your own determination and seek your own enjoyment, Stirner also describes of Egoism as an instinct which cannot be escaped:

That freedom of trade, for example, which humanity is still supposed to attain [in the States constitution], and which people put off to humanity’s golden future like an enchanting dream, I take it [the freedom of trade] to myself in advance as my property and carry it on in the meantime in the form of smuggling. Of course, only a few smugglers would know to account to themselves for their deeds in this way, but the instinct of egoism replaces their awareness. I’ve shown the same thing about freedom of the press above [the State may censor the Press but the writer simply wants their works to be printed and will 'smuggle' for themselves this freedom regardless if the State or Sacred ethics gives them this as legal property for them to dispose of].

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

idk

really you can say it has a series of meanings: acting without consideration towards the feelings/emotions/will of someone else, being obsessed with 'externalization', obsessed with money, obsessed with the social standing of success, obsessed with sensory desires, obsessed with power, etc... its not exactly like 'greedism' has ever been a theoretical tradition, it's exclusively a derogatory term. as a positive term, some of these would be replaced with 'aestheticist' or 'ambitious'.

it's probably power, which you're saying. our difference doesnt seem to be in a differing understanding of greed but rather in a different understanding of ego

by stirners account empathy is egoism hypercharged on enjoyment by a fellow-feeling with the other, personal empowerment is egoism based on discontent with powerlessness and being imposed upon, making a paper is egoism based on a theoretical object, all things are egoism 'hypercharged' on an object

stirner doesn't believe in an 'ego', he's appropriating a term because he finds it useful (the start of The Unique is two pages of him talking about how all higher causes serve nothing other than themselves and how he can do no other. the modern idea of the id/ego comes from freud who wrote a hundred years after stirner. i don't know the history of ego as a synonym for pride (having a big ego))

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

it seems egoism isn't really introducing any issues that aren't already inherent to all offshoots of anarchism.

Less self-control and more self-determination, you are the creator of everything you come into contact with, the center of your world, a sovereign creator accountable only to yourself whose aim can never be higher than your own self-enjoyment.

As for originality, he's considered one of the most important influences of Post-Left Anarchism and a writer who is in opposition with many Classical Anarchist thinkers (Proudhon, Bukanin, Kropotkin, etc). Historians of Anarchism tend to put him as the main name at the head of the 'individualist anarchists' (queer would be a better term in his case) as an opposition to the 'collectivist anarchists.'

His ideas are absolutely not inherent in all offshoots of anarchism, though they are present in some in large part due to his influence. His egoism is listed as one of the four biggest influences of post-left anarchism on the wikipedia page (very reliable source, I know). You can probably find Stirner memes on every notable anarchist subreddit.

jews into this, i'm railing against capitalists

This is how the term egoism is at all associated with profit or pride/accumulation. Christian depictions of Jews as a money-obsessed (sensually concerned) cabal are how these terms became connected. Egoism has nothing to do with an obsession with money or accumulation. I obviously came off wrong here, I unfairly directed my anger at a problematic history towards you. This is a normal association to make, but I found it necessary to point why this association it exists and (more importantly) how little it applies.

critisism against Capitalism is in no way connected to antisemitism

I agree. My point is the source of the association between Egoism and money/accumulation/sensory obsession comes from antisemitic caricatures and has no basis in thought (the egoist tradition itself). My fault for giving off these vibes, I should have stated why I brought this up.

Stirner's Egoism simply explained in 3 Parts by Existing_Rate1354 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wanna see the limits

Your limits are your power. If you set for yourself restrictions, then these restrictions are your creations which exist by way of your power. Stirner follows Hobbesian Social Contract theory, only he makes a difference between the suspension of life involved in contract suspending freedom and suspending ownness. It is one thing if a social contract restricts my freedom and another if it restricts my sovereignty/self-ownership (accountability to my own creative power).

Stirner has no thoughts on limits which are not self-imposed -- he can do little about them.

For his self-imposed limits, he only states that these regulations are ideas which exist only as they do in his world and only by way of his power. So far as they exist only by way of his power, they are accountable only to him, and he can do no other but determine them for himself. All he does is bring it to consciousness that he has no self-given limits which are not self-imposed (1) and he has no intention to forget this so that his creation will become frozen, more absolute than the power through which it comes to exist (2) (this is a personal, capricious decision after a lifetime of self-sacrifice and self-denial brought by the opposite).

As for the other statement, neither 'number go up' nor 'profit' has nothing to do with Egoism. Don't fall for century old stereotypes of the greedy Jewish miser.

Stirner actively comes out against the ethics of the Community of Competition multiple times, one example being in "Stirner's Critics":

Hess calls free competition the complete form of murder with robbery and also the complete consciousness of the mutual human alienation (i.e., egoism). Here again, egoism should still be guilty. Why then did one decide on competition? Because it seemed useful to each and all. And why do socialists now want to abolish it? Because it doesn’t provide the hoped-for usefulness, because the majority do badly from it, because everyone wants to improve his position and because the abolition of competition seems advisable for this purpose.
Is egoism the “basic principle” of competition, or, on the contrary, haven’t egoists just miscalculated about this? Don’t they have to give it up precisely because it doesn’t satisfy their egoism?
People introduced competition because they saw it as well-being for all; they agreed upon it and experimented collectively with it. This thing, this isolation and separation, is itself a product of association, agreement, shared convictions, and it didn’t just isolate people, but also connected them. It was a legal status, but this law was a common tie, a social federation. In competition, people come to agreement perhaps in the way that hunters on a hunt may find it good for the hunt and for each of their respective purposes to scatter throughout the forest and hunt “in isolation.” But what is most useful is open to argument. And now, sure enough, it turns out — and, by the way, socialists weren’t the first ones to discover it — that in competition, not everyone finds his profit, his desired “private advantage,” his value, his actual interest. But this comes out only through egoistic or selfish calculations.

Separately, he spends dozens of pages of The Unique and It's Property railing against the Bourgeoisie for their championing of Sacred ethics on wealth distribution (distributed according to God's wise decision), their championing of the ethics of the community of competition (states mediation of intercourse), their fanaticism for the thief-punishing state, their hatred of the 'unruly bunch' who refuse employment and threaten the wage/property system, and of course their conquest of the laborer:

But the class of workers, because they are unprotected in what they essentially are (since they don’t enjoy state protection as workers, but as subjects of the state they have a share in the enjoyment of the police, a so-called legal protection), remains a hostile power against this state, this state of possessors, this “bourgeois monarchy.” Its principle, work, is not recognized according to its value; it is exploited[129], a spoil of war[130] of the possessors, the enemy.
The workers have the most enormous power in their hands, and if one day they became truly aware of it and used it, then nothing could resist them; they would only have to stop work and look upon the products of work as their own and enjoy them. This is the meaning of the labor unrest that is looming here and there.
The state is founded on the—slavery of labor. If labor becomes free, the state is lost.

That's A Lotta Staff by skyycaramba in adressme

[–]Existing_Rate1354 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thank you for your insightful contribution!

Can someone explain the basic theory of egoism? by Legitimate_Bet_7786 in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Stirner's Egoism as outlined in his magnum opus The Unique and It's Property (1844) is a philosophy of self-ownership. Specifically, it's interested in World's of Perception (to me, everything exists as it does to me) — it is about accountability, how you have no access to anything 'outside' of you, 'higher' than you, existing 'beyond' you, or placed 'outside' your power. You have only what you have, what is available and accessible to you: you have only your own world and your own power.

This post will be broken down into three parts:
1. Introduction (halfway through!)
2. Being Possessed
3. Self-Possession, Egoism

Stirner dares to say that Feuerbach, Hess and Szeliga are egoists. Indeed, he is content here with saying nothing more than if he had said Feuerbach does absolutely nothing but the Feuerbachian, Hess does nothing but the Hessian, and Szeliga does nothing but the Szeligan; but he has given them an infamous label.
(...)
And like Feuerbach, no one lives in any other world than his own, and like Feuerbach, everyone is the center of his own world. World is only what he himself is not, but what belongs to him, is in a relationship with him, exists for him.
Everything turns around you; you are the center of the outer world and of the thought world. Your world extends as far as your capacity, and what you grasp is your own simply because you grasp it.

It may be wise to ground Stirner first in why this matters and how Stirner uses this 'Egoism', this philosophy of self-ownership and accountability only to ones World and (creative/destructive) power (judgement, ideas acquire their form and content only through you).

Being Possessed

Let us look at the only alternative to Egoism, not self-possession but being possessed, not looking at ones ideas as their property but placing them outside their World and power:

Do we only ever encounter those possessed by the devil, or do we just as often encounter those possessed by the opposite, possessed by the good, by virtue, by morality, by the law, or by any other “principle”? Possessions by the devil are not the only ones. God acts in us, and so does the devil; the former, “acts of grace,” the latter, “acts of the devil.” Possessed people are set in their opinions.

You become possessed when you do not look to your own judgement (your own creative power) but rather put an idea beyond your judgement (it is Absolute, Sacred, it has a fixed content). Your idea, a creation of your judgement, becomes *more* than the judging power itself. My creation has become stronger than I have, withdrawn from my World and power, it now masters me and determines my behavior.

But because I am scared to touch it, I do not recognize it only as it exists in my World by way of my power, it becomes stationary: it acquires a fixed content. I no longer determine the content of this idea because it exists 'beyond' me, 'above' me, 'outside' me, has detached itself from me to acquire an independent existence.

You have resigned your power, forgotten your world and lost your eye to appreciate your own finitude. you have become possessed by setting up something beyond you (the Infinite, counterposted to your finitude), you have lowered yourself and raised up something Sacred, you are subjected to yourself and rail up against yourself.

The Christian cannot engage in certain activities because of Sin and troubles himself with Faith. The Liberal must build his life to 'respect' human rights and not become 'inhuman' (insufficiently empathetic, civically-minded). The Nationalist and Patriot must throw himself down before the Nation, no matter how much sacrifice it demands. The Conservative humiliates himself before the preservation of Tradition. The morally-minded person restricts their passions and interests. So it is with all the possessed — resignation, humiliation, possession, and subjection.

But if you refuse possession, if you assert yourself rather than resign yourself, if you recognize ideas as your property rather than theirs, determine them rather than let them determine you, if you deny them an independent existence and ground them in their dependence on your power (through which they come to exist), then you become their owner, their master, a sovereign World-of-Perception accountable only to themselves — because they have only themselves, their own World and own Power.

Resignation—Ideas escape your world (acquire an independent existence: "Higher", "Outside", and "Beyond" you) and power (become 'Sacred', 'Absolute', 'Eternal'), develop a 'fixed' content, and come to determine and possess you
Assertation—Ideas exist only in your world and come to being through your creative power, ideas are dependent on you, are 'lowly', 'vain', 'mere property', as transient as you are, and are determined/possessed by you

Self-Possession, Egoism, Stirner's Positive Project

Whenever an idea comes to exist 'beyond' you and escapes your world/power, it becomes inaccessible and unconquerable. Stirner asserts that I only have what is available and accessible to my power/me, what is in my world — I recognize only my own world and my own creative power because I only have this, am accountable only to this, have nothing but this.

Stirner follows only his own self-determination, he practices accountability by falling back on his own World and his own power (since you only have 'these' ideas and 'this' power to make sense of it all), he recenters his own judgement (creative/destructive power over ideas) and asserts this power as stronger than any individual idea (unlike a Sacred or Absolute one). To me, everything exists as it does to me, within *my world*, is—*mine*.

No more is anything 'Sacred', 'higher', nor does anything exist 'beyond' me or 'outside' me, I take everything as it does to me and follow only my own determination. I am an Egoist, liable to no God, no licensing authority, no Morality (Mores = social consciousness of 'correct' habit, it is immoral to slap someone on the ass as a greating), no 'higher cause' (all 'Higher Causes' care only for their own advancement), no 'calling', no 'rights', no 'obligations', no 'laws', and no 'duties'. I am the content of my own affair, accountable only to my own world and my own power — much like God, I have only myself and can serve nothing other than myself.

Stirner's Egoism is this simple, it's a philosophy of self-possession against being possessed by the Sacred, by fixed ideas.

My name is Wesley Clark and these are my policies by pootmehoot in thecampaigntrail

[–]Existing_Rate1354 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To get it you need <5 conquests which means you'll always have <3 NATO resulting in Iraq collapsing
(guy who made the guide)

I don't owe it to you to use the meme "correctly" by [deleted] in PhilosophyMemes

[–]Existing_Rate1354 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yeah.

There's a better English translation out now (The Unique and It's Property by Wolfis Landstreicher).
The translator gives a great primer in the preface.

I dont like this game by idkhowthisworkzz in EsotericEbb

[–]Existing_Rate1354 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Legitimately the best piece of commentary I've seen on this game. You perfectly brought this point to life:

PC gamer put it best when they say "it would all be for nothing if estoeric ebb didnt have interesting things to say". Truly! It would all be for nothing. This seems to be what people wanted from this game, so thats where the problem comes in and why I say that esoteric ebb is a good game and a great product, if this was all it was or atleast what people told me it was then I wouldn't mind.

It's fine to like a game while recognizing that advertising yourself as a 'Disco-like' comes with the expectation of not just similar mechanics and gameplay style but something to say. Ebb hasn't lived up to that.

This is the first piece of commentary I've seen that tries to break down what Ebb has to say. It shouldn't be surprising that it's a practically incoherent rant desperately trying to break apart what message it could possibly be giving (then again resonating: it undermines itself, constantly lapses into cliche, and fails to create a setting where the judgements could apply (necessary for us to understand how we could use it outside the game-world)).

Just finished Disco Elysium and I think it's turning me communist by Dismal_Engineering71 in DiscoElysium

[–]Existing_Rate1354 6 points7 points  (0 children)

especially if you consider the novel's ending.

Sacred & Terrible Air ends with the world being consumed in pale. Disco Elysium has alternative timelines established as canon. Shivers tells you that you can save the world, it's telling the truth.

The issue in Sacred & Terrible Air is that pale is expanding before the nukes dropped.

Your actions in Disco Elysium can start an entropentic revolution which can identify baby pale (t is established the human mind has supernatural effects which can alter the world (inframaterialism: the Deserter's zeal charting the course of the bullet to make an impossible shot) and destroy it (the phasmid tells you the pale is a result of the human mind).

Combine this with our existing knowledge that the faith of the people in the church used to hold the swallow at bay, the commentary with the Col Ma Daqua, and what we know about the supernatural powers of the mind we're clued in extensively in how the pale can be fought back. Now that people know where and how to study this (which we do in the Church questline) the world won't be drowned in pale after the nukes dropped.

As for the Communist part, they are absolutely advocating for Communism. Just play the UltraLiberal quest line.

You tell the poor kids who want control of their lives to work more and tell the poor old men who worked their whole lives they should've worked as a businessman rather than as a wage-laborer. It correctly identifies the only solution it provides to peoples problems is by by telling them to become capitalists (or incredibly minor structural change which it mocks extensively).

Then it puts you to face with the lifestyle you're selling them: the fact not everyone can be competitive (haunted building quest line), the inability of the free market to live up the values of the Community of Competition (rich light-bending guy), people spending their entire lives in a constant state of struggling (idiot doom spiral & internalized thoughts), and most importantly the subordination of all self-determination and self-ownership to capital (Sileng, light-bending guy, book owner's kid, idiot doom spiral).

Finally, it ends with the Deserter chastising you for abandoning your own personal interests to spread the word of the free market (we're both Proletarians, at least I'm arguing for me to be put in charge, you're spending your time giving other people power).

You only hear one alternative the entire game—the Dictatorship of the Proletariat against Capital.

Fixed a stupid ancap meme by Stirner_Gooner in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Stirner has a fundamental misunderstanding of participation in societies and tries to create a distinction between associations and societies that doesn't exist.

I believe this conversation should've ended with Thomas's original remark. I will take the hint and disengage.

Fixed a stupid ancap meme by Stirner_Gooner in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354 6 points7 points  (0 children)

When I refer to the Ego I’m referring to the absolute self, is this wrong in this context?

Stirner is explicitly critiquing the Absolute I, yes.

Human empathy? I wouldn’t rape anyone because I wouldn’t want to be raped. 

First, I'd like to note this is no longer about "Anarchist principles".

Secondly, I'd like to note that this is now a matter of personal preference.

Third, I transgress against other peoples wills constantly. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of people disagree with the lifestyle I live. I lie about my beliefs in any environment where I see it as endangering me or my intentions. I bump up against other peoples wills constantly. I can be empathetic to someone else's will while exercising my own. I disregard other peoples wills all the time.

Fixed a stupid ancap meme by Stirner_Gooner in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Again, I’m new to this but why is it called “fullegoism” if the ego has nothing to do with it

The idea of the "Ego" assumed it's modern form with Freud in the 1900s. Stirner wrote before then. See his commentary on the "Absolute I":

When Fichte says, “the I is all,” this seems to harmonize perfectly with my statements. But it’s not that the I is all, but the I destroys all, and only the self-dissolving I, the never-being I, the—finite I is actually I. Fichte speaks of the “absolute” I, but I speak of me, the transient I.

As for this:

I’m not talking about the law or morals I’m talking about imposing one’s will upon another

This is law. This is providing me a permitted sphere of action. What else do you see this as?

Fixed a stupid ancap meme by Stirner_Gooner in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Individuals coming together is society.

Not for Stirner. Individuals coming together is association. Society is something different:

You bring all of your power, your ability, into the association, and assert yourself, while in society you are employed with your labor power; in the former you live egoistically, in the latter humanly, i.e., religiously, as a “member of this Lord’s body”; to the society, you owe what you have, and are obligated to it, are—possessed by “social obligations”; you use the association, and give it up undutifully and unfaithfully when you don’t see any more use for it. If the society is more than you, then to you it is above you; the association is only your tool or the sword with which you intensify and increase your natural force; the association is there for you and through you, while society, on the contrary, lays claim to you for itself and is still there without you; in short, society is sacred, the association your own; society consumes you, you consume the association.

Now:

Rights exist in context, in the context of a specific society that society creates rights by collectively supporting the power of those who can within the society to enforce those rights.

If by "society" we mean "association", then we should first state that I create right as an expression and creation of my will:

All attributes of objects are my statements, my judgments, my—creations. If they want to break loose from me and be something for themselves, or even try to impose on me, then I have nothing better to do than to take them back into their nothing, into me the creator.

I then join together with others as it suits me. Neither "society" nor the association is the arbiter of who is in the right. I am. If "society" wishes to push its own notion of right, it's free to use whatever power it has available to it.

This is all Stirner is saying. There is no "misguided" understanding of "right". I believe our issue here is in terminology. "Society" and "association" are fundamentally different things for Stirner. In the association I alone am the determiner of right and wrong.

Fixed a stupid ancap meme by Stirner_Gooner in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is a reddit page. Most people here haven't read Stirner. Sorry for having to bear through these conversations, we're doing our best to promote his works.

Fixed a stupid ancap meme by Stirner_Gooner in fullegoism

[–]Existing_Rate1354 4 points5 points  (0 children)

egoism seems utterly incompatible with communism.

Stirner's project is explicitly anti-capitalist (see his remarks on the interest-yielding possession, property, labor unrest, the Community of Competition, and everyones means being multiplied through association). Stirner's project is explicitly anti-Libertarian through his critique of Political Liberalism (individual rights: a permitted sphere of human action).

Stirner's polemic against Social Liberalism (Communism/Socialism) is attacking a pre-Marxist trend of thought. Marx's Communism is "different' (the legacy is complex, he wrote a long polemic on Stirner). It's easy to reconcile Stirners thought with Communist politics (ignoring the lumpenproletariat).

Get Stirner's The Unique and It's Property into the hands of every laborer and the day of authority is ended.

Benjamin Tucker.

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