The Double Curses

Max Sterner worried and raised the alarm that duped egoists would form mass movements as they regarded the abstraction, their cause, as the one true cause to advance in the world, to unite around, and be willing to sacrifice everything that one has or is (including one's life) to serve this sacred cause. His legitimate criticism of the dangers posed by people worshiping and advancing their sacred ideal was based in fear that collectivized people, a mass movement, could lead to totalitarianism, murder, concentration camps, war, sever poverty, starvation and an utter loss of freedom and self-management. Stirner was correct in pointing out that excessive rational devotion to some mere abstraction would lead to very bad things. Where he was incorrect, among other things, was failing to point out that the feeling, sentimentality, ardent or "new citizen" passion in service of extending the range and power of the beloved 'sacred abstraction. It is a curse upon humanity for people to group-live, to form mobs--to over sell the expression of ism with too much fervency or too narrow and totalistic concluding in reasoning about how thinking must be arranged. Each human is to be moderate in thought, word, feeling and deed when thinking about perpetuation of his favorite ism, so that excess or meager passion or reasoning do not distort his relation to his cherished cause.