Understanding Stirner

 

There are two key concepts to understanding Stirner. His subjective brand of egoism requires that the individual live for himself in his own live-in, empirical perspective, solely focused on his own interests. His thoughts, feelings and drives drive him to here and there, but he does not value himself by putting some moral ideal or cause over himself for him to live up to and serve..

 

The second,  critical point is to realize that Stirner the atheist does not believe in a spiritual world, So what is he talking about with people with spiritual interests? It seems that the spiritual is mental or conceptual or abstract effort in our consciousness. So even an atheist like Feuerbach fails because this secular humanism rejects Christianity but replaces it with another ism to be worshiped and served, and that rational cause is spiritual or a phantasm for Stirner.

 

He dismisses all human attempts to serve an ideal or cause as spiritually based at its origin, and to be rejected accordingly. On the bottom of Page 19 of the Byington translation, The Ego and Its Own, by Max Stirner, Stirner denies the spiritual exists except as a human construct coined when first imagines that spiritual entities exist—one’s imaginary act to that effect is their own reality.

 

From the Steven Byington translation, I want to quote from Page 19: “But whom do you think of under the name of egoist? A man, who instead of living up to an idea, that is a spiritual thing, and sacrificing it to his personal advantage, serves the latter. A good patriot brings his sacrifice to the altar of the fatherland; but it cannot be disputed that the fatherland is an idea, since for beasts incapable of mind, or children as yet without mind, there is no fatherland and no patriotism. . . . You despise the egoist because he puts the spiritual in the background as compared with the personal, and has his eyes on himself where you would like to see him act to favor an idea. The distinction between you is that he makes himself the central point, but you the spirit; to be ruler of the paltrier remainder, while he will hear nothing of this cutting in two, and pursues spiritual and material interests just as he pleases . . . You live not to yourself, but to your spirit and to what is the spirit’s, that is ideas.”

 

My response: The egoist serves his personal advantage, not sacrificing himself for some self-alienating ideal, a spook that does not exist. He enjoys his spiritual (rational) and material interests to please himself, failing to worship any ideal.

 

 

Let us look at the same excerpt from the Wolfi Landstreicher translation of Max Stirner’s The Unique And Its Property, Page 26: “But who do you imagine under the name of egoist? A human being who, instead of living an idea, i.e., a spiritual thing, and sacrificing his personal advantage to it, serves the latter. A good patriot, for example, brings his sacrifice to the altar of the fatherland; but it cannot be disputed that the fatherland is an idea, since for animals with no capacity of mind, or children who are still mindless, there is no fatherland and no patriotism  . . .  

So you despise the egoist because he neglects the spiritual in favor of the personal, and looks after himself, where you would like to see him act from love for an idea. You differ from him in that you make the spirit, and he makes himself the central point, or in that you divide your I in two and raise up your ‘true I,’ the spirit, as master of the worthless remainder, whereas he wants to know nothing of this division, and pursues  spiritual and material interest just as it gives him pleasure . .  You don’t live for yourself, but for your spirit, and what is the spirit’s, i.e., ideas.”

 

My response: Stirner believes the amoral interest that the individual must concentrate on is his own interest, in its spiritual or material aspects.

Words Do Not Capture

 

Max Stirner, the subjective egoist, does not believe that words, reason, concepts, and ideology can capture what is going on and who we are as empirically living Uniques. All we can do is live our own lives, experience everything, and serve only ourselves. We may offer generalizations and theories, but we do not proclaim them as gospel, and nor are we willing to alienate ourselves by serving them as our cause.

 

Here is an excerpt from Pages 21 and 22 of Jason McQuinn’s introduction to the Wolfi Landstreicher’s translation of the Max Stirner book, Stirner’s Critics: “That words and language—explicitly in their conventional usages—are inadequate to fully convey the meaning here is obvious, and is part of the problem of both adequately understanding Stirner and avoiding all the (more or less easy and mor or less consciously intentional) misinterpretations of Stirner’s work. The process of self-alienation—of separating an idea or representation of oneself from one’s living self and then subordinating one’s living self to that image—which Stirner describes and criticizes is so ubiquitous and fundamental to the functioning of modern societies that permeates nearly every aspect of life. 21 Enslaving oneself to a fixed idea or imaginary ideal (or any number of them) is not a simple thing. It requires an immense amount of effort to work itself out in practice. This effort, in large part, it has been the primary function of all religion, philosophy and ideology to facilitate from the earliest days of symbolic communication. This effort also is embodied in a large number of habits, attitudes, modes of thought, and techniques of subordination that must be and have been learned and perfected by the masses of people in contemporary societies. And it is enforced by the sanctions of social, economic, political and military institutions that are constructed and maintained through the same types of self-alienated acts en masse.”

 

My response: There is no doubt that words cannot capture entirely what Stirner recommends for who is and what it means to live as a Unique, that individual. That is so even when his enemies were not trying to deplatform, censor or silence him, and he was banished to a large degree by his detractors, many that loathed him while not understanding him. Stirner is correct in accusing society of nudging egoists to become enslaved and self-alienated, but his recommendation for them being liberated and self-possessed is not constructive. The irrational, lived life of the subjective egoist eventually returns people to groupism, enslavement, hierarchical and group-living. My solution would be objective egoism/subjective egoism. Egoism yes, but along the lines of Ayn Rand’s John Galt.

 

Here is footnote 21: “The process of self-alienation—of separating an idea or representation of oneself from one’s living self and then subordinating one’s living self to that image—is not just the modern life of modernity, it is also the foundation of so-called ‘traditional’ societies, basically from the neolithic age onwards up to modernity. Though it appears that it was precisely not the foundation from the earlier (one would argue more aptly-named ‘traditional’) paleolithic and, later, gathering and hunting societies that are now usually called ‘primitive.’ What distinguishes the non-primitive traditional societies from the modern societies can be characterized as the intensity and ever-wider dispersion of this self-alienation throughout all aspects of life, including every social institution and form of social practice. Although it is proper to call Max Stirner the most radical, coherent and consistent critic of modernity, it would be incorrect to understand him as defending these traditional institutions or life-ways. He is equally a critic of premodern traditional and modern societies. (Given the limits of archeological and anthropological knowledge in his time, it is not surprising  that Stirner never mentions or hazards any guesses regarding what are now called ‘primitive’ societies.”

 

My response: McQuinn captures well Stirner’s definition of self-alienation as the process of separating an idea or representation of oneself from one’s living self and then subordinating one’s living self to that image. The living self is to stay free and autonomous, and stay focused on his own interests and pleasures, not conceive of some idea of the self as its essence, and then subordinate the empirical self to that abstraction. Stiner thinks this self-alienaton is pervasive throughout modern society.

 

One can see that Hegel dismissed the importance of the individual and that his only freedom and purpose was serving the collective and the State as its absolute ruler led the people in a way that contributes to God’s Glory and an apprehension of absolute knowledge. Stirner was profoundly anti-Hegelian while being deeply influenced by Hegel nonetheless.

 

 

An Egosim Of Intentionality

 

On Page 20 and 21 of his introduction to Wolfi Landstreicher’s translation of Max Stirner’s book, Stirner’s Critics, McQuinn tries to explain to the reader how the conceptual consciousness of the Unique functions: “It is an egoism of intentionality that cannot itself be alienated, because it is exactly what one chooses and does, nothing more and nothing less. (It’s definitely not an egoism of ends or goals oriented towards some self-alienated image of self-interest.) As Stirner says, it ‘points’ to something which cannot possibly explain or define in words. It is not an ultimate reality or truth, since these concepts cannot possibly express what it is. Stirner’s egoism points to Stirner’s figure of the Unique, which points merely to Stirner himself. 20 Similarly, according to Stirner’s usage, any particular person’s egoism will point to the whole of that person’s uniquely lived experience.

 

20 As Stirner proclaims in The Unique and Its Property,, the ‘Unique’ points to that which precedes all conceptualization. This means the ‘Unique’ does not point to any ideal person, not to a physical person, not to some conception of a soul or a self. But to the entire lived experience of the person. It therefore includes one’s entire life, including both objective and subjective aspects, which must themselves be artificially determined and separated from each other in order to be brought into being—out of the always pre-existing nonconceptual Unique—as concepts.”

 

My response: I included Footnote 20 with this excerpt. The subjective egoism of the Unique is an Irrational Consciousness in which reasoning and feeling, both the subjective and objective aspect of the Unique’s lived experience are nonconceptually described, if that is possible or even makes sense. The Unique does not point to some ideal or essential description of the Uniques’s nature; rather, it highlights but does not explain or define with language the Unique’s nature, so the nature of the Unique remains at least in part shrouded in mystery. We can know that it is, not what it is or why it is what it is.

 

To describe the Unique or any other phenomenon with terms, concepts and propositions is to create a vicious abstraction, a spook according to Stirner.

 

I do not go along with his radical skepticism and pure nominalism, but he is consistent in maintain his view of how the world is and operates.

 

 

 

Nonconceptually Lived

 

I am reading the introduction to Max Stirner’s book, Stirner’s Critics, translated by Wolfi Landstreicher, with an introduction on Page 19. I will quote a sentence from McQuinn with its remarkable footnote from the bottom of the page added: “Instead it begins from his own and by implication each individual person’s own particular, phenomenal, uniquely lived experience.19

 

19. Neither of course, does it begin from any particular fixed idea of what each person’s uniquely lived experience is supposed to be. It begins from that experience as it is nonconceptually lived.”

 

The Unique person or ego lives his life NONCONCEPTUALLY: do you think foundationalists like Aristotle or Descartes would agree with that statement, but that statement is Stirner’s anthem, and he is dead serious?

McQuinn On Stirner

 

Jason McQuinn seems to be something of an expert on Max Stirner. For is The Anarchist Library, McQuinn wrote an essay: Max Stirner: the anarchist every ideologist loves to hate. The date for the article’s retrieval is August 12, 2010 from www.anarchymag.org.

 

 

This short 4-oaragraph essay is excellent, but I am going to quote from the third paragraph for that is what interests me and that is what I want to respond to: “There had certainly been plenty of de facto anarchists before the European anarchist milieu began to arise at the end of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s—most notably throughout prehistory. Max Stirner was not only one of the first to elaborate a consistent anarchist theoretical orientation; he was also the most sophisticated and important anarchist critic of philosophy then and since. Nevertheless, his influence both within and without the anarchist milieu has always been extremely controversial. Stirner’s descriptive, phenomenological egoism and absolute refusal of any and all forms of enslavement have been a perennial source of embarrassment for would-be anarchist moralists, ideologues and politicians of all persuasions (especially leftists, and including individualists and others). By clearly and openly acknowledging that every unique individual always makes her own decisions and cannot avoid the choices of self-possession or self-alienation and enslavement presented at each moment. Stirner scandalously exposes every attempt not only by reactionaries, but by self-proclaimed radicals and alleged anarchists to recuperate rebellion and channel it back into new forms of enslavement and alienation. In Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum Stirner has harsh criticisms of those who attempt to legislate slavery through the imposition of compulsory morality, ideologists who attempt to justify submission to the political state and capitalist economy (or equivalent institutional forms), and politicians that ride herd on the rabble in an attempt to keep everyone in line. . . .”

 

My response: Stirner’s descriptive, phenomenological egoism is different from the descriptive and prescriptive, noumenal/phenomenological egoism that I espouse for I prefer the objective egoism of Ayn Rand more than the subjective egoism of Max Stirner.

 

His radical rebellion, his seeming utter refusal to abide under and obey a political structure of any kind, his pure anarchism is unworkable and would causes society to collapse, and lead to a Hobbsean nightmare for the society that adopts pure anarchy. Only angels with their angelic natures can live in a state of pure liberty and pure anarchy. Humans are at least half beast and demons so there must be laws to govern their behavior, their misbehavior, their poor choices. My Mavellonialist solution is to offer a semi-anarchist existence for each citizen as an individuator-anarchist supercitizens living in a federal constitutional republic with quite limited government and a free market economy. In that setting the invisible hand of the marketplace can unveil its miracles as people work, live and enjoy their lives in ordered liberty. They may thus not enjoy pure liberty, but that is the price we all must pay for living in a community.

 

Let me now quote and repeat the sentence from Paragraph 3 that fascinates me: “By clearly and openly acknowledging that every unique individual always makes her own decisions and cannot avoid the choices of self-possession or self-alienation and enslavement presented at each moment, Stirner scandalously exposes every attempt . . . to recuperate rebellion and channel it back into new forms of alienation and enslavement.”

 

McQuinn is a bit correct in insisting that each individual always makes her own decisions and cannot avoid the choices of self-possession or self-alienation and enslavement. All people do wield some free agency all the time, but pure, full, powerful, functioning free will is acquired as a moral adult, not wielded by an callow 8-year old.

 

But without moral training to learn to be wise, strong, liberty-loving, self-loving, courageous, expressing a fierce willingness to to fight and not surrender, people will surrender predictably and put up with being alienated from their true selves and enslaved. They are naturally so weak-willed that social conditioning will allow others and the authorities to stunt their puppet-lives and determine their choices for them. I presuppose that humans have natures that make them selfless and self-loathing, cowardly, selfish, sadistic (loving to oppress others below them in the hierarchy while, at the same time, masochistically accepting and defending putting up with abuse, oppression, and cruel treatment from those above them in stratified rank. I assume that all people are born ignorant (not knowing how to live and not being morally alert to know how to live. The good news is that anyone can and should develop a strong, virtuous will so that they will refuse to group-live, but demand the freedom to individual-live and room to maverize. Only the growing individuators is free and self-possessed.

 

I love how McQuinn contrasted concepts of people needing to choose to live lives of self-possession or meager, enslaved groupist life in a hierarchy with its class system and its police force enforcing compliance and obedience to its value set that, via brainwashing through the Althusser principle of interpellation spoon-fed to children in public schools, whereby kids in school are indoctrinated in the culture favored by the ruling class.

 

I would like to add to McQuinn’s contrast of the free agent that is self-possessed as free or self-liberating as an individual. The unwilling egoist is that sad groupist non-individuator that accepts and even welcome enslavement and self-alienation as her lot in life.

 

I was not going to but I am going to include the 4^th and final paragraph from McQuinn’s article for this blog post entry, and then comment on his thoughts: “Still, (and quite infuriatingly to anarcho-leftists)  there has always been a minority of spirited radicals, including undomesticated and undisciplined uncontrollables among the anarchists, who have heeded Stirner’s warnings and criticisms, refusing to allow any words, doctrines or institutions to dominate them. As Stirner proclaimed, ‘Nothing is more to me than myself.’ This clearly implies that I am only free when I choose how to live my own life. Politicians, economists, ideologists, priests, philosophers, cops, and every other con artist with or without official papers, plans, and/or bombs and guns: get the fuck out of our lives! And that includes any fake anarchists who think they can pull the wool over our eyes.”

 

My response: Both McQuinn and Bob Black are a couple of those spirited radicals that allow no words, doctrines, or institutions to dominate them, I suspect that these two intellectuals are clear about Max Stirner’s very high, very unpopular standard for remaining free and individuallly self-regulating. They have interpreted his texts as they should be interpreted.

 

Though I am an objective egoist more from the Ayn Rand wing of egoism, I accept that these free spirits and brave souls, that are Unique Egos refusing to be alienated from themselves or enslaved, are persons of integrity. I would hope that they would investigate my social suggestion that anarchist-individuator supercitizenship could provide them the independence and freedom that they deserve, crave and need to love themselves and yet we all must shoulder our duty to obey and serve reasonable abstractions, laws and causes out of adult duty and to help God on earth, in a political establishment of few, durable laws, natural rights, natural law and ordered liberty so that people have the legal and ethical structure they require to bring up the next generation of fallen children to civilize them and help them self-transform into productive, contributing adults, parents and citizens that keep America a capitalist constitutional republic for generations to come.

Stirner's Method

 

Jason McQuinn seems to understand Max Stirner quite well, and that is no easy accomplishment. Here is what McQuinn writes about Max Stirner in McQuinn’s introduction to the Wolfi Landstreicher’s translation of Stirner’s book, Stirner’s Criticis, Page 19 and 20: “One way to better understand what Stirner does in The Unique and Its Property is to grasp his effort is an attempt to employ a particular method to all the general cultural phenomena of religion, philosophy, morality, science and ideology. This method was an egoist method, possibly modeled in part on Ludwig Feuerbach’s anthropological method. But whereas Feuerbach was concerned to reduce the imaginary ideals of religion to the supposed reality of ‘Man’ or the ‘Human,’ Stirner had a much more radical concern. His own concern, and by implication each of our own concerns. Instead of reducing imagined ideals into another more supposedly more real conceptual ideal as does Feuerbach, Stirner dissolves every imaginary ideal into himself and suggests that we all choose to do likewise. What ultimately makes Stirner’s critique so powerful and irrefutable, is that it does not, like Feuerbach’s  (or any other possible) critique begin from any fixed-idea or ideal. Not even any conceptual ideal of an ‘I’ or an ego. Instead it begins from his own, and by implication each individual person’s own particular, phenomenal, uniquely lived experience. Thus, Stirner’s egoism and his egoist method do not involve any reference to any other of the usual depictions  (conceptions or representations) of these ‘ego’ words as aiming at self-transcendence (whether ‘egoistic or ‘altruistic’). They resolutely and consistently express a nominalist, or phenomenal—and thus an immanent-understanding. This nominalist or phenomenal or immanent egoist is purely descriptive and empirical, with no normative or metaphysical content in itself.”

 

My response: Stirner rejects all ideals as fixed ideas. Stirner will not allow any universal to lord itself over him, as he dissolves all abstractions into himself. Even the concept of I or the ego are dissolved back into the self. His critique begins from his own particular, phenomenal, uniquely lived experience. He allows no transcendence, either altruistic or egoistic, away from the self. His understanding is always within the individual self, it is phenomenal, nominalist and immanent, and the subjective self remains isolated and unassimilated from absorption into a governing abstraction, above and over the self. This egoist is purely descriptive and empirical, with no normative or metaphysical content in itself. Stirner disallows any moral categorizing at all. I insist that we need abstractions to live and make sense of our lives. Stirner’s nominalist epistemology is a corrective upon modernism, but it is too irrational to be productive or to live or build society. There is too much chaos and nihilism in his worldview.

 

He accuses rationalists of being groupist, but the irrationalist ultimately will more groupist and the rationalist will be more individualistic.

Self-Possession

 

Jason McQuinn does the introduction for Wolfi Landstreicher’s translation of Stirner’s Critics, a book by Max Stirner. McQuinn writes this on Page 19: “Interpretation of Stirner’s perspective on each of these most often founders in this translation of his own words from their particular contexts in his text into the chosen language of each interpreter’s own particular  context of understanding and interpretation and, at the same time, within the more general context  of prevailing social, linguistic and cultural reifications—compulsory presuppositions and prejudices that cannot be questioned with an imagined consensus reality of ubiquitous self-alienaton. This includes the greatest prejudice of all (especially for all those who remain self-enslaved), that of the impossibility of self-creation and self-possession.”

 

My response: I think that I am righter and McQuinn and Stirner are more wrong about egoism. Objective egoism is more rational, more individualistic, more self-creative more self-possessed and their egoism type, that of subjectivism, irrationality, unimaginative or average, group-oriented and collective-enslaving whereas under Ayn Rand’s objective egoism, self-enslavement is shed, and one is self-possessed. One’s relationship with the abstraction that one utilizes on one’s work and philosophy liberate and uplift, not enslave and crib one’s wonder and joy.

 

The immanent, creative nothingness of Stirner’s subjective idealism and subjective materialism is one way to be a egoist and individualist but these traits are much more common among joiners and self-alienated non-individuators.

Self-Enslavement

 

Wolfi Landstreicher’s translation of Stirner’s Critics is introduced by Jason McQuinn. On Page 18, McQuinn is describing how humans self-enslave themselves in service of some abstraction bigger than and transcending themselves: “Do you want to subordinate your life, and prostrate yourself to God, to Nature, to Jesus, Ecology, Peace, Love or Science? Or to the Proletariat or Communism, to Free Enterprise or Capitalism, to Language, Freedom or the Void? To many people it matters much less in whom or what you believe enough to pledge your self-enslavement than that you at least believe something, anything that you imagine to be greater than yourself! The biggest tabu is non-belief.”

 

My response: McQuinn and Max Stirner are more wrong than they are right, but they are correct in warning that people must not worship any cause solely or too enthusiastically.

 

Now, we do not want to deify that cause as an ideologically pagan deity that we offer sacrifices too, including ourselves, as enslaved myrmidons and passionate robots, whose surrender and service to the vaunted cause is a gesture of self-sacrificing to please this new deity.

 

It is so that as true believers serving our cause, we are enslaved and subjugated.

 

But Stirner’s subjective idealism, the self-as a creative nothing without ideals to dedicate one’s life to, that makes self-realizing impossible and empty by McQuinn’s and Stirner’s standard.

 

We must have high ideals that we live by without reifying them into a fetish to be worshiped.

Stirner And Mandeville

 

I try to be as honest and transparent as I can be about sharing with the reader the sources of ideas that interest or influence me. In that spirit, I am typing out a two-paragraph excerpt from a 2/25/2023 entry in Wikipedia. The short category was entitled Egoism and the author or authors were writing some interesting points about Max Stirner’s subjective egoist outlook. When I read it, it made me think of a comparison to the modestly objectivist ethics of Bernard Mandeville.

 

Though both thinkers are regarded as psychological egoists, they are very different philosophers. Still, below I will elaborate one way that they seem to think in a similar vein. First, I will give my response to both paragraphs, separately, and then I will try to show how Stirner and Mandeville think alike in this one way.

 

Wiki Excerpt: “Stirner’s egoism argues that individuals are impossible to fully comprehend, as no understanding of the self can adequately describe the fullness of experience. Stirner has been broadly understood as containing traits of both psychological egoism and rational egoism. Unlike the self-interest described by Ayn Rand, Stirner does not address individual self-interest, selfishness, or prescriptions for how one should act. He urged individuals to decide for themselves and fulfill their own egoism.”

 

My response: When one considers the self to be the brain and biological consciousness, of a living, walking animal, it is hard and likely impossible to fully comprehend or describe, with clear language, the fullness of experience. When one adds on that the soul connected to and part of each person’s biologically existing consciousness, that res cogitans or soul, in touch with God, the infinite and the near limitless potential enjoyed in the outward flowering of the talents, learning, creativity and power of the self-realizing individual, then it becomes patent that we cannot fully comprehend the fullness of experience.

 

Still, Stirner is too pessimistic about our ability to provide an explanatory account of what is an essentialist picture of human consciousness and its enormous potential as envisioned and acted upon. I may not be as dogmatic and optimistic as Ayn Rand about my ability to provide such an account, but we are smart enough, and our generalizations are accurate enough and meaningful enough that we have much applicable knowledge about what it means to be human.

 

I agree that Stirner is a psychological egoist, that people do pursue what interests them personally. He is a rational egoist—after his own indefinable, quirky, quixotic fashion-- but his creative-nothingness brand of subjective egoism so introduces the individual, following his amoral directive, into chaos and a lazy lifestyle, that the non-individuating lifestyle will be the life of an immoral sinner that group-lives. The paradoxical moral and existential reality is that it is joiners that are altruistic and selfish at the same time, while loners—especially maverizers—are egoistic and generous, for the most part, with themselves, with others and towards nature and God.

 

The moral danger of subjective egoism is that it traps the deluded egoist (Stirner may have suffered from this delusion. He is moderate in some of his offered solutions, but his nihilistic ethical predilection would allow Satan to rule the world without effective opposition.) into irrational, extreme, undiscipline living and experiencing, and that is the lifestyle of selfish yet altruistic joiners and group-livers, that would deny vehemently that they are selfish.

 

Yes, I agree that Stirner does not offer moral prescriptions for the life of rational egoism as championed by Ayn Rand. His brand of egoism entails not naming, categorizing, generalizing, or labeling any goal to avoid worshipping a reified concept, a spook and false idol.

 

Wiki Excerpt: “He believed everyone was propelled by their own egoism and desires and that those who accepted this—as willing egoists—could freely live their individual desires, while those who did not—as unwilling egoists—will falsely believe they are fulfilling another cause while they are secretly fulfilling their own desires for happiness and security. The willing egoist would see that they could act freely, unbound from obedience to sacred but artificial truths like law, rights, morality, and religion.”

 

My response: For someone to be a self-proclaimed willing egoist would require that they actually were individualists, individual-living, self-aware to the extent that Stirner was, but his level of self-awareness was rare and exceptional—and the number of openly existing willing egoists, whether practicing objective, Randian egoism or subjective Stirnerian egoism, have historically been few in number in any community in pre-history or in historical times.

 

A willing egosts would definitely be free to live his individual desires, but, the familial, social and even legal repercussions, would be heavy but varying depending on setting and generation of occurrence.

 

Most people are unwilling egoists as would self-identify as communal joiners, as willing altruists, collectivist and selfless, moral self-sacrificers dedicated to preserving their families, their community, their divinity, and their country.

 

I, unlike Stirner and Mandeville, am a psychological altruist, not a psychological egoist, but I am a psychological altruist with a twist: people are selfless and group-oriented naturally, but selfless and group-oriented are predominantly satanic. I would characterize them as instinctive/teleological altruists and willing, self-conscious altruists. They serve, defend, and will fight for the cause or abstraction that has central narrative value for their group or nation.  Their selfish desire to avoid the hard, painful work and journey of maverization as commanded by the Good Spirits drives them to embed themselves in their group and its favored ism or spook, so they there find the happiness and security as they define it and would own it.

 

The willing egoist, as an objective, individuator-egoist, not as a subjective non-individuating, Stirnerian subjective egoist, would be liberated to do her own thing while bound to obey sacred, artificial and divine truths like law, rights, morality and religion.

 

Stirner’s finest moral point is his warning to egoists, willing or unwilling, to avoid worshiping an abstraction that leads to total subjugation by its propounding guru, demagogue, ruler or totalitarian regime, a mass movement in its passive, asleep mode, or its rare, vibrant, on-the-march, radicalized mode.

 

Wiki Excerpt: “Power is the method of Stirner’s egoism and the only justified method of gaining philosophical property. Stirner did not believe in the one-track pursuit of greed, which as only one aspect of the ego would lead to being possessed by a cause other than the full ego. He did not believe in natural rights to property and encouraged insurrection against all forms of authority, including disrespect for property.”

 

My response: I agree that power is the method of Stirner’s egoism and the only justified method of gaining philosophical property. My own version of power, as the preferred method of exercising one’s rights, duties, and responsibilities under Mavellonialist egoism, would dictate that the individuators-anachist supercitizen use his natural and acquired share of power to do his thing while avoiding conflict or grabbing such share of power as wielded by each of his maverizing neighbors. This would apply to intellectual property as well as material wealth.

 

Stirner was wise and insightful to discourage one-track pursuit of greed, or any other obsession, for being possessed by any experience, hyper-giantized as the abstraction to serve and peddle.

 

Part of Stirner’s genius and moral greatness is his conscious, intuitive (the law moral moderation to avoid extremes as the way to lead a good and happy life) worry that one aspect of our experience becomes a “made-sacred”, sickening idol that we worship and that it possesses us, should we join others in bowing down to this false cause, this spook, this pagan god, an abstraction that now is above us and rules over us, and we are deprived and deprive ourselves of an independent existence as free agent and willing egoists.

 

Implicit in Stirner’s philosophy is his advocacy of the law of moderation, and something like advocacy of that law flows through Eastern metaphysics and at least the Buddhist religion. Jordan Peterson is tapping into this ancient advocacy of something like the moral law of moderation as he urges the individual to avoid extremes, either too much order or too much chaos, and these reified extremes, disguised as causes, collectively worshiped by millions of adherents leads to all kinds of human suffering unhappiness and unjust social conditions.

 

Unlike Stirner, I do believe in natural rights to property: the government and other people have no right to steal it or mug the owner to grab his property. The egoist and his property comprise the social field where he will do his own thing as a living angel.

 

Stirner champions insurrection not revolution against all forms of authority, and in this too he is a moral moderate. I would add that the willing egoist as a Mavellonialist would insurrect and not revolt, most of the time, against all authorities, while, simultaneously obeying, preserving, and protecting the social order, the social contract that he was born into and is working on updating. Like a Jordan Peterson conservative, he will not overthrow a democratic capitalist democracy, and nor will he fail to improve himself and then be a political activist in lawful, sensible way, dialoguing, cooperating with and reaching concord via compromise with neighbors, maverizers to decide how the system can be improved and made more fair and more efficient.

 

Mandeville and Stirner Compared: These ethical egoists are very different from each other. I do not know if Max Stirner every heard of or read Bernard Mandeville.

 

The similarity that I see occurs as Max Stirner lays out his categories of egoists as of two types: the willing egoists are openly pursing their own interest, and the unwilling egoists who self-deceive that they are altruists serving some higher purpose or cause, when in fact they find pleasure in selflessly serving a cause outside of themselves and their own interests.

 

The realistic and cynical Mandeville flat asserts that people are fallen creatures that always pursue their selfish interest, whether they are open about it or pretend to be selfless religious believers and charitable givers.

 

Both thinkers point out that psychological egoism is what drives people no matter what set of values they proclaim to themselves or the world whether they believe their rationales or not.

 

I regard people as damaged by their psychological altruism. They are willing altruists by their altruist ethics and unwilling altruists in that they are built that way as non-individuating, group-living collectivist obsessed with their group and its worshiped abstractions.

 

To bring up a moral and free child is to teach her to self-realize, to leave the group, to develop her virtuous character as a willing egoist pursuing ends of enlightened self-interests that will still require some amelioration and adjustment to serve the general good, a secondary moral demand upon her, but one that she should be able to accommodate.

We Gain

 

Are we getting smarter and smarter? Perhaps we are since our knowledge—probably certain not certainly certain—grows exponentially, but still the knowledge, that we have amassed, pales in comparison to the infinite amount of knowledge to be had and discovered out there and inside.

 

Therefore, we may not be getting smarter and smarter, but are just knowing more.

 

And knowledge and wisdom are not the same. One requires knowledge to flesh out wisdom, to provide it with content, But to  be wise is to know what to think, what to treasure and how to proceed in the world.

 

The wise are those judicious sages that take knowledge and know how to apply it. Their keen judgment has been informed by love, goodness, and divine revelation.

The Supernatural

 

Does the supernatural exist? I sincerely believe that it does, and I pray to the Good Spirits and the Divine Couple constantly.

 

We can not prove the supernatural is real; nor can we disprove it, but, on faith, it I am convinced that it exists, and that good powers guide our destinies.

The New

 

Though I am a conservative, I am not at all against change, but it must be handled correctly. Not all changes are good, and not all changes will be beneficial if they are introduced to society in a violent, whole-hog manner, with zero comprehension to protect society against unintended consequences—many of which we cannot foresee, but we must try to mitigate some of these alterations.

 

If changes add to our store of knowledge, if changes allow us to more deeply understand how to maverize, to love and know God, then these changes are welcome.

 

If changes provide no increase in what is helpful and healthful for people, then the changes should be thwarted, obviated, redirected, or modified significantly

Stupendous

 

There are many adjectives that could be words of praise for the Divine Couple, but the word stupendous comes to mind. The very idea that Divine Beings exist is momentous and startling. That they would be so wondrous and astonishing, so loving so brilliant. It is impossible to express one’s amazement when a finite mind encounters infinite Beings.

 

I will praise them as stupendous and leave it at that

The Similarities

 

I reread some words by Eric Hoffer, that I have read 5 times before, and I am continually impressed and astounded at his wisdom and brilliance. He seems to have anticipated nearly everything I write, 50 to 70 years ago.

 

Here is what he wrote on Page 13 of the book, The Syndicated Newspaper Articles, 1968: “It is disconcerting that the practical men of action—businessmen, engineers, politicians, soldiers—should, on the whole, be less corrupted by power than philosophers, artists, poets, scholars and intellectuals in general. Seen thus, the moderateness and democracy of the Anglo Saxon nations in the past may be due to their tradition of keeping intellectuals away from power, and oof not paying attention to their political views.”

 

My response: Note that men of action, may or may not be intellectual, but their working and interacting with others in the world out there, makes them somehow more rational and moderate, than irrational and radicalized, which intellectuals are. Intellectuals are used to being part of the ruling elite in every advanced society. They see it as their hereditary privilege and right to dominate and direct the masses, whom they sincerely believe are inferior, and in need of a strong hand to direct them. Having come from a ruling class background, where the unjust, immoral addiction to rule the masses from above, is a dependency that intellectuals easily, eagerly succumb to.

 

The intellectuals are high up in social hierarchies and are very group-oriented, and these are two of the most corrupting traits for any human type or individual. When one also attributes to intellectuals, idealism, ideology, passion, irrationality and a willingness to hold a whip and cudgel over the masses for enforce uniformity and obedience, it is not hard to see that Hoffer identified in this single paragraph, most of the traits that have the worst effect on making socially vicious, already naturally tainted human souls. Intellectuals are usually quite unable to avoid tyrannizing others, and they are clever at rationalizing being haves and oppressors.

 

It is not an accident that the Anglo Saxons, a capitalist, moderate and democratic people, admired their intellectuals but did not allow them to run things. Here is how things were so run, but that way of running things here in America, until recently, was how we operated until wokeness, DEI/CRT, American Marxism and the Administrative State, run by experts, has taken over much of America.

 

Hoffer has brought up all the points that I make today.

 

Hoffer continues: “Intellectuals are likely to consider any achievement not fathered by words as illegitimate. Hence their disdain for things which have come to pass by chance. One of the reasons that America is as it is without appeal to the intellectual is that it does not manifest the realization of a grand design, and the solemn ritual of making the word become flesh. The masses eloped with history to America and have lived in common-law marriage with it, unhallowed by ritual and incantations of the intellectual.”

 

My response: I am not against a self-educated, very smart, very articulate individuator using words to describe what his original contribution is or what he hopes it will be. His view must not be the final word, and his research and adventure of discovery must be open-ended, flexible and he must be able to adjust for the many failures that he will incur.

 

Other individuators should be free to say and do what they will without idealistic straitjackets bracketing research and personal investigation. Let the invisible hand of the market and of chance encourage people to go invent as they will.

 

A grand design, is but a speculative conception, that has been reified into a worshiped, sacred abstraction or idol. It must be torn down and smashed, and it should be modified and discarded if unworkable or impractical.

 

Hoffer continues: “To the intellectual, America’s unforgivable sin is that it has revolutions without revolutionaries, and achieves the momentous in a matter-of-fact way. The real shock will come when Americans achieve socialism without socialists.”

 

My response: The greatest miracle, the most revolutionary explosion, the most incredible burst of human ingenuity, originality and artistic expression will be unleashed and produced spontaneously and by deliberate intention, effort and application on the part of individuators.

 

If they have a grand design, and they might, it would be theirs alone, and they would not force the entire society to conform it to both the spirit and letter of the law constituting their grand design.

 

This amazing middle-class constituted by millions of supercitizens would produce and unleash, peaceful revolution after peaceful revolution upon society, without a ripple being felt or expressed in anger, terror or upheaval, and much in the way of growing pains, and no violent counter-revolutionaries or totalitarian strongmen would arise to set things “right”

Supercitizens working and creating idealistic achievements would not be ideologues. Instead, they would carry on, individuating and individual-living moderate and calm geniuses, but not grandiose and passionate and theatrical.

 

Classlessness or socialism for the masses is to be achieved by these supercitizens, powerful, armed lawful anarchists of great personal power, wealth, and liberty, but not tempting to nab these enjoyments from neighbors similarly well situated.

 

Good Pain Defined

 

Hedonistic ethicists suggest that humans are naturally built to gravitate to pleasure and to avoid pain.

 

That seems right but what these words mean is tricky to explain.

 

I would argue that enlightened self-interest is good, so pursuing actions that fulfill the agent’s enlightened self-interest are good pleasures, but those are not much the pleasures that he naturally seeks.

 

He may discipline himself to pray to God every morning but that is hard work, and it requires self-discipline and steadfast determination to pay homage to the Divine Couple. He learns to pray every morning until it is his unwavering custom, and then the effort becomes easier, as it takes not much willing to stop and converse with the Father and the Mother each morning. This communion with the good divinities is his duty but it is now his greatest joy, once he learned to enjoy this spiritual communion. It is a higher pleasure and a good pleasure that is good for him personally, and good for the community because a good praying believer is likely a moral person, and that benefits the community indirectly.

 

If a person steals, lies, steps out on his wife, or cuts others off on the freeway, it is in his self-interest in some cheap, mean way to so act, but this pleasure has an ugly, foul aura about it. It is not in his long-term interest to so act and he might end up in an accident, divorced or jailed for his dishonesty, so the long term pain may not be worth his indulging his immediate need for gratification. This bad pleasure is not worth it.

 

If he chases after bad pleasure, perhaps he is a heroin addict or drunk, and he feels intense pleasure immediately, but sick and empty when he comes down. This bad pleasure will wreck his life and perhaps kill him or land him in prison.

 

If he has a learning disability, so he had to work three times as hard as anyone else to graduate from high school, and then graduate from college with his business degree, his struggle and hard work would have steeled his character, making him resilient, strong, resourceful, and versatile. His good pain will have made him able to thrive as an adult, a business owner, as a husband and father.

 

To be morally unworthy is to act in ways that are wicked, hurting the self and others, while betraying the Good Spirits.

 

To be morally worthy is to act out of love for the self and others, so that all are uplifted by one’s choices and actions, and these behaviors will please the Good Spirits.

 

Now I have asserted that people are mostly born wicked, but still have some residual capacity to become good if they work hard at becoming good. It is a heavy lift but doable.

 

I define wickedness as hatred of the self (bad altruism or other-centeredness) more than love of the self (bad selfishness). A wicked person would be a child molester, a car thief, one that abuses another verbally and emotionally, ripping them to shreds by incessant badgering, gaslighting and putting them down for months or years.

 

Bad altruism is also group-living as a non-indivuduator, refusing to answer God’s call to stand tall, maverize, develop one’s abilities, and share one’s gifts with the world to make it a better place. The selflessness of these bad altruists also makes them very selfish in a bad way.

 

I define good selfishness as enlightened self-interest, where one self-realizes and takes care of one’s chores, duties and needs so that one is not a burden on others to be care for. If all people acted with enlightened self-interest, or, even going farther, by self-realizing, the community would be filled with rational, strong, individuators that would learn to cooperate and work out their differences calmly and reasonable, and that would be of great general benefit.

 

As a rule good selfishness leads to good altruism, or community benefit, and bad selfishness, where people group-live, but live like animals in the jungle, and do not work hard or develop their abilities, they find pleasure in misbehaving and seeking immediate self-gratification, but long-term they are failing to take care of themselves and the community, If enough average people so misbehave and make terrible decisions, the community will collapse in anarchy, poverty, and lawlessness and chaos.

Not Revolution

 

Under the law of ethical moderation, it would appear that social change should be constant but gradually achieved. Internal, constant, incremental change or reformation, not violent revolution, is much more revolutionary.

 

France in the 1790s, Russian and China in the 20^th century, all experienced murderous, violent upheaval in their societies and none became classless bastions of human rights, freedom or republicanism after the events solidified.

 

Elites rile the masses and seek revolution from above, but it nearly always fails.

 

Change must come from below and be done thoughtfully, carefully, voluntarily, and peacefully.

 

Only bottom-up reform has a chance of improving the human lot, and it is best if the revolutionaries are conservative anarchist-individuator supercitizens.

 

Totalitarian nations are ruled by the Party, the elite, the ruling class: they have soul-raped the masses so that the entire society is a mass movement set in concrete, a pure hierarchy and class system, and all citizens are reduced to existing as ideologues, robots, slaves, enslaved, totally-group-oriented.

 

It is a cruel social arrangement that maximizes injustice, suffering; all are degraded.

Free Speech Protected

 

It is axiomatic that one that loves, loves God, loves the Good Spirits, loves the self, loves others. To love is to lead a good a spiritual and ethical life as one can.  To be a good person requires that one knows the truth about things, people, and the world, and this entails that one seeks to know the truth, however painful, as best as one can grasp, and that one keeps testing oneself to whittle down the deceptions, illusions, biases and blind spots, that one carries with one and cherishes. One is scrutinizing oneself for self-deceptive rationales throughout one’s entire life.

 

Again, one cannot be good unless one knows what goals to aim for, the ones of value. To discover what is true requires unrestricted thought and free speech which allows one to put those thoughts into words, concepts, arguments and potential solutions.

 

Free speaking, free thinking and free writing allows one rationally to be more accurate and productive in discovering what is true, what is false, what is a good idea, what is a bad idea, what is beautiful and what is ugly.

 

With the goal to discover truth and live by its ethical implications is one of the highest human responsibilities and callings. This demands of any free people, any democratic or republican political arrangement, that the people enjoy radically free speech. Some narrow restrictions like threatening to murder someone, or maliciously defame someone, to yellow Fire in a crowded elevator, or seriously speak of blowing up the government aside, people need to enjoy radically free speech for a people to discover the truth, to then live by the truth, to keep a people free, prosperous and happy.

 

Leftists demand that free speech, that criticizes their slant on reality, speech that is or accused of being hate speech, speech that is accused of disinforming the masses, and speech that is considered verbally and conceptually pornographic violence against women, is to be silenced, censored, outlawed, made illegal and otherwise repressed.

 

They are totalitarian tyrants out to shut down the opposition with thought, words, speech and ideas that are not amenable to their narrative about reality.

 

We must return to the love of free speech—I disagree with you but I will die for your right to say what is disagreeable or offensive—that the wonderful, liberal Jews and the old ACLU exemplified in the  1978 march when the Nazi monsters were allowed to demonstrate in Skokie, Illinois.

 

The Progressive censors of free speech do not mean anyone well. Their instincts are totalitarian—to force others to speak, think, and act only as they do—or else they should be arrested and sent to jail.

 

Even if the Progressives do not recognize their authoritarian proclivities, and counter-argue that their motive is to censor hate speech to protect the rights of putatively oppressed identity groups, my moral law is that bad means (The use of government force and legal threats) to gain a noble end (to protect the rights of the oppressed) are extremist or evil, leading only to chaos and hurt. Evil is thus spread in the world.