I've seen a lot of confusion over what Egoism, Stirner, and "spooks" mean on this board recently and I thought I would post some good sources to clear these things up (of course actually reading The Ego and Its Own would be ideal, but this is a crash course)
stirnerism is supposed to be a personal philosophy helping the individual relate to his own ideas better, being less mystified by them, so he can use them better, instead of being used by them. It's a very refined and tricky psychological game meant for the individual.
but online Stirnerism just amounts to obnoxious fedoras yelling at anyone who seems to have a strongly held opinion, calling them "spooked", usually with no explanation or follow up and some smug anime picture to seal the deal.
Noah Robinson
That's a nice strawman bb
Also perhaps a way to change that, to the degree that it still exists, would be to incorporate IRL Stinerism into the Internet instead of just crying about how someone memed on you?
Just a thought
Dylan Baker
He has a point, you know. That's how pol is useing Stirner in an attempt to make it their meme.
Then maybe, as I just said one post ago, we should do the opposite and actually understand Stirner instead of saying "Lmao no all Stirner is bad cuz the memes make me upset"
Or you could let the Right steal another thinker because you're too vapid to move past you're butthurt on an anonymous imageboard
Tyler Wright
I read the Ego and its Own years ago, and I just wanted to ask, what exactly would motivate someone to take part in Stirner's Union of Egoists? What would that even look like considering Stirner considers almost everything a spook?
Ryder Watson
A Union of Egoists in practice would basically look like an anarcho-syndicalist commune. Keep in mind that Stirner wrote his book before Anarchism was even a thing.
Aiden Jackson
Why would anarcho-syndicalism be in my best interest? What if I'm a business owner and I would actually profit more by helping out the Fascists?
Kevin Robinson
Also if I remember right Stirner referenced either Bakunin or other major anarchist thinker in his work, and claimed that even their anarchism was stupid.
Elijah Lee
Why do you conflate profit and interest?
Jaxson Richardson
Lol ephemeral "unions of egoists" as the milk man foresaw them don't lend themselves to the institutional form and distributive principles of ANY form of socialism or communism, regardless of what stank ass anarchos today try to claim. The is why Marx and co. hated the turd.
Brody Gonzalez
Stirner's idea about a Union of Egoists was a group of people who realized that Egoism is at the root of all action and thus choose to interact with each other based on that principle, it wasn't necessarily a blueprint for the "correct" communist society just a theoretical idea about how a social organization could function in a group of despooked folks
If you'd rather not be involved in it you don't have to
Joshua Fisher
Why do you separate them? what if all a guy is interested in is accumulating capital and buying shit for himself? All you could do to argue against him is invoke arguments the milkmaid would dismiss as "spookz"
Brody Brooks
Maybe I'm just sloppy in my language, but my point is that I would do better under Pinochet or Hitler or something like that rather than socialism because I would (to put it simply) make more money. I know Stirner considers obsessing over profit-making a spook but why wouldn't I be concerned over my material livelihood and existence in society?
Chase Murphy
STIRNER BTFO
Cameron Mitchell
Also to be clear I'm not a fascist or pol retard, I'm just using the business owner thing as an example.
Alexander Watson
If all he's interested in is accumulating capital, then he's an idiot and will be killed by a nihilist death squad.
Ayden Jones
This is what I mean by obnoxious Stirnerfags. No content, no nothing.
Easton Nelson
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Isaiah Flores
If you were concerned about your material livelihood and existence in society, you would be an anti-private property individualist. There is nothing egoist about submitting yourself to the pursuit of profit.
Gabriel Harris
A person who pursues profit is a "false egoist" instead of a "true egoist" who affirms himself as a "creative nothing". Okay, that's great for me in my mind, but in material reality I have a decisive class interest as a capitalist to keep the structure intact. Despite whatever I think of myself in my mind, in reality I have an interest to keep the whole racket going, and that's why big corporations, even American ones, financed Hitler and the other Fascists against the Communists and labor movement who wanted to end whatever system I was a part of. They supported them across cultural lines while the labor movement was infiltrated by Communists from other countries, suggesting that something besides cultural affinity kept them together. That's a "class interest". I can think whatever I want in my head but in reality i participate in class systems. I think the whole Stirnernite position falls apart because it doesn't understand the unity of mind and matter, and it inherits the weird understanding of Kant that Schopenhauer used. He posits that "feeling, willing" and other emotional things ie the feeling we have inside our own body is reality and everything outside is one big illusion. The "inside my head is real" and "outside my head" is illusion" was started by Descartes and of course ended in the German philosophical period. Frankly the mind -idea divide breaks down once you realize that once you take a rail-road spike to the head, your ideas change.
Dominic Carter
No, not necessarily, it would make no difference really; you could carve out a good existence and livelihood by playing the private-property game. In fact it would be easier to manipulate people and their property if they are "spooked" and not true-egoists like Stirner. Stirner had no problems cheating people and taking out loans he never intended to repay.
There's nothing stopping the egoist from pursing profit either.
Stirner and his ideas are meant for the individual to use in private not as a way to critique what other people are saying or win arguments.
if only you actually understand what you're typing…
Ayden Lewis
youre implying there are any offline stirnerites
Julian Walker
kek
Xavier Adams
Okay when did I deny this? If me and you agree on this why do you keep arguing against me? I just made this thread to dispell misconceptions about Stirner that I've seen a lot of users on Holla Forums develop, not to challenge anyone's ideas about anything, including egoism
It seems like you came into this thread with a pre-formed opinion that you were going to school me on something and when I showed that I already knew what you thought you were going to lecture me on you got butthurt so now you're just repeating myself.
Pretty sad since you could have just contributed to the thread by saying what you told me to everyone else who misunderstands stirner and his ideas instead of pursuing your obvious self-aggrandizement on imageboards
John Price
I scream (SPOOKS HAHAHA) irf
Tyler Campbell
I never argued against you. I agreed with your topic and also mentioned that some people misuse Stirner online…. For some reason you didn't like my first post or this post and felt the need to post stupid smug reaction pics against me with snarky green-text.
I never argued against you
Noah Murphy
Maybe he thinks you're me? I like to debate and challenge others, I don't mean to be rude.
Jace Lee
k m8
Chase Ortiz
Then obviously you go join the fascists, duh. However, the vast majority of the population are not business owners.
I don't know why you thought this was a good point.
Hudson Butler
You don't. He mentions Proudhon and criticizes this moralist appeal. That's it.
Asher Phillips
Yeah, that proves the Marxist idea of classes operating to protect themselves, not Stirnerite egoism. Material reality exists whether or not you lay around and call everything a spook bro.
Carson Scott
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Kayden Rogers
As it pertains to this specific case, it proves both because they overlap. Again, I don't think you've thought this over much.
Grayson Myers
So I affirm myself as a "creative nothing" by partaking in "false egoism", aka backing Fascism which is against my supposed interest to form the Union of Egoists, which the earlier user said was anarchist? How does that make any sense?
Not an argument my anarchist friend.
Ian Turner
When is someone going to hold an argument ?
Jeremiah Sullivan
You said "if I remember correctly" then said something which was incorrect and that user corrected you. I don't see how that's butthurt
I'm starting to think you guys are just projecting
I rest my case
Parker Lopez
Pretty sure Proudhon is a major anarchist thinker bro. How many times do I have to BTFO you guys and make you resort to reaction images or personal attacks? Give us arguments!
Ian Ortiz
First of all the post he was referring to mentioned Bakunin and "other major anarchist thinkers" "if I remember correctly"
The user didn't remember correctly because Ego and Its Own mentions Proudhon and that's it. It doesn't mention Bakunin nor any other "major anarchist thinkers" other than Proudhon. So the point still stands.
user didn't remember correctly and Stirner didn't mention Bakunin. Yes Proudhon is a major anarchist thinker, but that wasn't what the user said, and on top of that what Stirner criticizes is Proudhon's moral arguments not his anarchist leanings.
Nice try spinning things so you look like you know what you're talking about though
Brandon Jackson
lol what intellectual dishonesty.
Come on user. I try to be respectful so at least give me the benefit of the doubt.
Dominic Myers
wow user you sure seem confident in your "philosophical argument"
Gavin Reed
You guys haven't responded to my arguments in my posts here>>811878 and instead circlejerk about how I didn't remember the name of whatever anarcho edge lord Stirner critiqued in his book, a book I said at the outset I read a long time ago. Nihilist egoism is a fail and as soon as you critique it philosophically it falls apart. It relies on le meme tier reasoning and that's why Marxists have had to BTFO the silly philosophy you guys espouse for over a hundred years now.
Justin Ortiz
Wait a minute, are you one of those people who thinks The German Ideology was Marx BTFO'ing Stirner? Lmao now I know arguing with you was a total waste of time
Adrian Myers
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Connor Morales
And you say I'm the one who can't argue the point
Adrian Bennett
...
Julian Sullivan
kek'd " foucault and school of life
Christian Sanchez
oh fuck. please no. can I get a screencap of them doing this?
Landon Cox
it wouldn't be, but it would for the most of the workers, and they outnumber the capitalists a hundredfold. This is why Stirner said something to the effect of "Were the workers to come to recognize the magnitude of their collective power, they would have only to refuse to work and thus halt society at every level". Sure it would be in the so called 1%'s best interest to maintain the status quo, but their jobs are dependent on proletarians.
Matthew Kelly
It's "Stirner's Critics" all over again, BTFO'ing spooked people who haven't even read Stirner.
Isaiah Clark
I think Kierkegaard surpassed Stirner.
Stirner is the perfect aesthete, having freed himself from external fixed ideas so in the aesthetic sphere he is absolutely correct, but his idea of ego is ahistorical and shaky. To be free of fixed ideas doesn't mean to be one's self. One must thereby turn inwards and to become one's self find an inner fixed idea.
"When, with perfect consistency from the systematic point of view, one abstracts systematically from the interest, what that makes of immortality, God only knows, or even what the sense is in wishing to prove it, or what kind of a fixed idea it is to bother oneself about further. If one were able systematically to hang immortality on the wall like Gessler’s hat,49 before which we would all doff our own in passing, that is not being immortal or being conscious of one’s immortality. The incredible pains the system takes to prove immortality are wasted effort and a ludicrous contradiction: wanting to answer systematically a question that has the notable trait of not being able to be raised systematically. This is like wanting to paint Mars in the armour that made him invisible. The point is in the invisibility, and in the case of immortality the point is in the subjectivity and the subjective development of the subjectivity. What the existing subject asks about then, in all simplicity, is not immortality in general, for such a phantom does not exist, but his own immortality. He asks about his immortality, what it means to become immortal, whether there is something he can do to become it, or becomes it in some way as a matter of course; or whether he is it but can become it. In the first case, he asks what it might if anything mean that he has let some time go by unused, whether there might be a greater and a lesser immortality. In the second case, he asks what it might mean for his whole human existence that the highest thing in life becomes like a prank, so that the passion of freedom within him is assigned only to lower tasks but has nothing to do with the highest, not even negatively, since acting negatively with regard to the highest thing would in turn certainly be the most strenuous acting, that is to say, to have been willing enthusiastically to do all one could, only to learn that the highest thing is to maintain at every moment a merely receptive attitude"
Charles Clark
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Dominic Foster
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Andrew Hall
Fagwheels fix your site
If you're bourgeoisie, of course, yeah, you'd be going against your own interests. Since when did we need the bourgeoisie?
Xavier Reyes
You might already are part of some!
Gabriel Gomez
Does this refer to infamous cuckold Moses Hess?
Landon Diaz
Yes. “The Last Philosophers” by Moses Hess.
Colton Anderson
Holy shit read someone before you criticise them
Jaxon Morgan
You mean, like Marx/Engels (Lenin), before you criticize DiaMat?
Robert Reed
kek
Angel Anderson
Eh, thougth I am the Fat Czech here?
Aiden Cruz
Who?
Robert Miller
fat czech
bane of ylilauta
person of thousand mask, faces, proxies, vpns and schizoid personas