Ego is a spook. Put your ego out and put it on the table and lets dissect it. Can't? You're spooked

Ego is a spook. Put your ego out and put it on the table and lets dissect it. Can't? You're spooked.

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You're right. That's why a better translation of "The Ego And Its Own" is "The Unique and Its Property"

Not nearly as catchy tbh

Agreed. But nonetheless OP makes a good point and that is why.

he writes ego but doesnt mean ego

I wish he wrote the entirety of the ego and its own in the third person.

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Was Thatcher a Stirnerist?

Imagine if you were to meet your doppleganger.
Let's say you're at a bus station, it is three in the morning, you go to your favorite corner of the station, and you find someone already there. He is exactly identical to you in every respect, he even has the same luggage.
He smiles, "user, don't you think you should introduce yourself?"
He knows everything about you, because everything about you is everything about him. He wrote the same things in the same textbooks and watches the same movies. He even meets himself in bus stations from time to time.
And he reveals that there are an infinite number of you, and always have been. Not because you're special (an infinite number of you requires, also, an infinite number of your mother, your brother, your 1st grade teacher with the huge jugs, and that old lady across the street who tripped over her cat, fell out a window and broke her neck, and an infinite number of the drunk paramedic who accidentally ran her over with the ambulance killing her, etc, etc).
And this isn't some cheap religious trick, either; there's no deity manifesting itself behind the scenes. No, this is just the reality of infinite space.
"There is one meter," you tell yourself, "but an infinite number of things one meter long. Anything that is important, there is only one of. Everything meaningless is infinitely reproduced according to the singular."

Despite this, you are not "an" user. You are the Unique, because none of the infinite others exactly like you have your perspective (literal perspective, as in, you are looking to the North at a tiled, grimy bus station wall behind your other self), and none of them have your freedom (existential freedom) to suddenly tear your pants off and run about screaming that your hair is filled with martians. Of course, your doppleganger could do the same, but he can only do it for himself, not for you, not from your perspective and not in yoir body.

And that's the Real Meaning of the Unique One, Charlie Brown.


Someone who comes up with an alias as bad ass as Max Stirner should be obligated to wirte everything in the third person.
But, then, that would be spooky.

More like a Randist

stop this

*All abstract concepts that limit the self
I would argue that the ego is the greatest spook of all, as to have any preconceived ideas about the self inherently limits the self's freedom and abilities.

confirmed for not having read stirner

fixed that for you fam

When I say ego I mean it in the way Eckhart Tolle uses it, meaning self-concept created and maintained by the mind, not in the way various translations of Stirner's work use it. Much closer to the concept of Stirner's ego is Tolle's being.

And really one could argue that ultimately spooks encroach upon one's freedom to act egoistically by psychologically limiting the self, so my definition stands.

What could possibly go wrong.

How do you know though? Have you read the German version?

No, but I understand what "creative nothing" means, and it is closest to Tolle's concept of being.

At least the hegelians will understand it.

This shit sounds quasi-buddhist

I can't argue with that, because that's correct. Sense of identity and self is an illusion, a quirk of chemistry run amok for billions of years. You might as well consider salt molecules as having life, being born in some underground cave and dying as they melt in your cooking water. Which, needless to say, is animist imbecility.

I think Tolle is a self-promoting huckster, but I actually agree with this assessment.
There are a lot of eastern ideas that are similar.
The concept of emptiness in Buddhism kind of reminds me of it.

I agree with you that he is a self-promoting huckster. I would go on to say that he has deluded himself into thinking he has no ego, when in fact he clearly does have one (considering himself a spiritual master/teacher, which he mentions a few times throughout The Power Of Now). The problem with considering the ego a spook is that it is impossible to be fully rid of it, as to have any thoughts about the self at all is to implicitly create the ego, even unconsciously. Therefore it is impossible to function without an ego unless one truly doesn't think at all - and he clearly does. This all being said, he has some excellent advice on how to work through suffering (and even transcend it, though I haven't reached that point).

It literally is though.

The concept of the Ego is (and Stirner himself says this) literally nothing. We have no direct access to the Ego; we can only know a semblance of it (you might even say, a shadow of it… maybe even a ghost ;^)) through the Self. The Self, however, is not the Ego, but merely the closest something that seems to be You. It's the same sort of general feeling of identifying your own existence with a thing, but humans aren't closed off from the world. We take in parts of our environment - good and bad - and are shaped by them. This means that our idea of the Self is full of a lot of narratives and other bullshit, but even if you can get rid of all of this without destroying the idea of the Self itself, you'll still have various, seemingly harmless ideas that you identify with as parts of yourself.

Stirner and Kierkegaard are remarkably similar in this regard. Both base their entire systems on literally nothing, but both displace that contradiction onto an axiom. The difference is that Kierkegaard is aware of this and recognizes the need to be ironic about it, though I think that there's some risk in choosing to be a Christian existentialist nonetheless given the historical power Christianity has maintained. I think that egoism is safer in our present circumstances at this point in history, before basically Instrumentality is achieved and the Self doesn't exist anymore. But we can learn from Kierkegaard and be ironic egoist, else risk basing our egoism on the Self (and end up being merely selfish and narcissistic) and miss the whole point of Stirner.

Or better yet, you drop all that shit and embrace the ultimate contradiction: Believe in literally nothing, yet make nothing itself your object. Nihilism, in other words ;^)

What if the ego isn't something that should define ourselves on its own, but rather something that makes up a part of our identity?

The Finns are a wise people.