I have deliberately refrained from using Game concepts and jargon in the following polemic because I want readers to draw their own connections between the concepts of the 1840s German tradition and their modern PUA-centric equivalents. There really is nothing new under the sun*
The greatest lecture I ever attended at university was given in the Politics faculty in 1994 and I was an interloper. I’d already signed up for all my elective modules that semester but I continued to peruse the course prospectus of each faculty to see if there was anything I fancied. I was hungry for knowledge, instinctively looking to feed my brain at that time of life when intelligence is most fluid.
- Rousseau and Marx
- An Introduction to Informal Logic
- Marx and the Young Hegelians
Aha, those sounded good. The latter was a ten-week series of lectures on the main names from Hegel through Feuerbach and ending in Marx. I knocked on the professor’s door and politely inquired if I may sit in on the lectures without registering. No problem, he said.
The first of the lecture series I got to was on Max Stirner, a mediocre gamma pedant whose one claim to fame was writing The Ego and his Own. But what a claim! Marx and Engels (rival gammas) were so triggered by this book that they devoted three hundred pages of their The German Ideology to an ankle-biting rebuttal that wouldn’t look out of place on a modern internet forum. Why so serious?
Max Stirner, yesterday
I sat in my chair at the back of the seminar room, notepad open (a paper one, this was 1994). In strode said professor with his tweed blazer, handkerchief, and foppish hair. Imagine those writer picture shoots for J R R Tolkien or Dennis Wheatley and you’re about right. He was rather dapper. He then launched into a masterful 45-minute monologue explaining Stirner. I really wish someone had recorded it. It was one-part academic exposition, one-part human psychology, one-part reading between the lines of the German Idealist’s petty rivalries, and ALL PARTS zero fucks given.
I dare say it was a pivotal moment in my intellectual life. I looked at this guy and thought “Wow, that’s what an academic should be like”. I only wish I could remember his name. Stirner was the perfect foil for this performance and I think diving into his theory will hit all my daygamer and red pill readers with a sweet jolt of head-nodding satisfaction.
Stirner began in the Left Hegelian meeting group obsessed with the Hegelian concept of “alienation”. Put crudely, it means to be separated from your true self and this separation creates dysfunction and unhappiness. Marx would later assert that the capitalist mode of production (think Fordism, production lines, and now office cubicles) created alienation. The Left Hegelians asserted religion is a form of alienation in which the believer projects his own desired qualities onto a transcendant deity. Man is not created in God’s image, but God is created in Man’s ideal image. To overcome this alienation, it is necessary to reappropriate the human essence and to realise these ideal God-like qualities are actually Man’s own.
Stirner wasn’t having any of that, considering it pompous humanism that elevates Man to a new quasi-Religion. The concept of human essence is merely an abstraction and thus cannot be a standard to measure actions. Like all those other big abstractions such as God, State, and Justice, the concept of Man is nothing more than “wheels in the head”. Stirner celebrated the primacy of the individual, which he called the Ego, and we know ourself as the mental point of origin
“It is not that the ego is all, but that the ego destroys all”
We are not bound by great abstractions to serve the phantasmic causes of God, State, Justice or Man. Our only duty is to our Ego. “For me you are nothing but – my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of useableness, of utility, of use” The Ego is not the only reality (i.e. Stirner is not a solipsist) it is the only one that matters to us. The ego is unique. Each individual is entirely single and incomparable: “My flesh is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind”. This leads to an atomistic conception of the self – we are each a sovereign island in the large sea of the world, rather than links in a chain. Seeing as we are not chained to our fellow tribesmen nor to grand abstractions we are thus unfettered.
“What am I?…. An abyss of lawless and unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, chaos without light or guiding star”.
The ego is corporeal, of and in the real physical world. The products of the intellect or ideas can have no independent existence (scholars will note all the Young Hegelians pushed to invert Hegel’s philosophical Idealism that posited the moving force of history is the non-corporeal Spirit). Stirner has so far broken down the “brotherhood of Man” type philosphers and insisted on reducing the unit of importance down to the sovereign individal. Not unlike classic Liberalism, without the tether of grand abstractions such as Liberty. How he builds it back up is interesting.
This edition of the Ego is my own
The Ego develops by becoming more aware of itself and other things as its property (again, very Hegelian if you replace “ego” with “spirit”). It can thus develop it’s ‘ownness’, its sense of self-possession. This means a progressive process of unplugging untethering from the matrix grand abstractions in order to make itself the mental point of origin its own. The Ego is a unity acting from a self-seeking will: “I am everything to myself and I do everything on my account.” Stirner thus anticipated Freud in his stress on the force of the desires to influence the intellect, and Adler in his description of the will as the highest faculty of the ego.
It is in the nature of the Ego to follow its own interest. Pre-figuring both Darwin and Dawkins, Stirner posits that altruism is a complete illusion. The apparent altruist is really an unconscious, involuntary egoist. Even love is a type of egoism: I love because love makes me happy. Conscious egoism is preferable to egoism disguised as altruism since it allows the development of the will, which gives one the dignity of a free man.
There are no eternal moral truths or values to be discovered in nature: “Owner and creator of my right, I recognise no other source of right than – me, neither God nor the State nor nature nor even Man himself.” We don’t even have a duty to ourselves because that requires separating the Ego into both a higher and a base self. The conscious egoist must choose what pleases him as the sole good. Enjoyment of life is the ultimate aim. This is not the same as proposing a hedonistic pursuit of short-term pleasure. Rather, whatever you determine your source of fulfillment is legitimate. Those grand abstractions cannot tell you what to pursue nor can they incept into you mind viruses that will twist your goals towards false ideals.
The Ego has no more moral calling than does a flower. It he acts, it is because he wants to. He is his own mental point of origin. He puts himself first and foremost always. Natural law, social contract, historical rights, moral imperatives, religious law – these are all grand abstractions. “What you have the power to be you have the right to… I decide whether it is the right thing in me; there is no right outside me.” The conscious egoist is thus beyond good and evil (prefiguring Nietzsche). Such concepts are grand abstractions.
“Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the ‘good cause’ must be my concern? What’s good, what’s bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me…. Nothing is more to me than myself!”
Even Freedom does not trump your Ownness. Society and State can take away your freedom but your Ownness is always in your control.
“One becomes free from much, not from everything…. Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams! Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power or what I control. My own I am at all times and under all circumstances, if I know to have myself and do not throw myself away on others…. I am my own only when I am master of myself”
A man retains his ownness when he does not give his power away to others.
Freedom is not the goal – to make it so is to make it sacred, to elevate it to a grand abstraction and to thus tether yourself to a limiting force. Metaphysically, it is to sink back into Idealism. Man is constantly tempted to huddle with his peers around the security of such warming grand abstractions. The Ego must resist the urge because he will thus trade his Ownness for an illusory freedom. Serving Freedom as a higher cause is no better than serving God, State, Justice or Man – it is to slavishly perform one’s duty at the expense of self. All philosophies that promote grand abstractions of freedom are promoting a particular freedom – a one-size-fits-all freedom to be writ large across society. Stirner rejects this as a contradiction: It is only possible to be free if one acts with self-awareness, self-determination and free will. As an individual.
“All freedom is essentially – self-liberation – that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness.”
The Ego looks on everything in the world as a candidate for ownership: “I think it belongs to him who knows how to take it, or who does not let it be taken from him” but it’s never a big deal. The only truly valuable possession is one’s ownness and that can never be taken. Whether a man succeeds or fails in the battle to own other things, he can treat the result “smilingly” and “with humour”. He is Stoic in his acceptance that each man’s power is limited.
Stirner rejects both State and Society (grand abstractions that tether the Ego and have no real existence outside a mass delusion). The matrix State has become a fixed idea that demands worship and tribute. It is utterly opposed to our individuality and interests. Its sole purpose is “to limit, tame, subordinate the individual – to make him subject to some generality or other…. it is an enemy and murderer of ownness.” There is no legitimate social contract. To claim the State has a legitimate right to rule and make law because it expresses the will of the sovereign (or the People) overlooks the fact that only the individual ego has a claim to sovereignty (again this blows close to classic liberalism and the constitutional republic).
“I am free in no State. No-one has any business to command my actions, to say what course I shall pursue and set up a code to govern it.” Society is a coercive association demaning each member think of the well-being of the whole. This well-being is another grand abstraction, beautifully captured by Ayn Rand in the trial of Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged:
Prosecutor: “Mr. Rearden, the law which you are denouncing is based on the highest principle – the principle of the public good.”
Rearden: “Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that ‘the good’ was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it – well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act…. The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!”
What does Stirner suggest us to do?
“Why will you not take courage now to really make yourselves the central point and the main thing altogether?”
And if you disagree with Stirner and wish to argue he should agree with x social theory……… Who are you to tell him to tether himself to your grand abstraction? Who are you to lay claim to his ownness?**
* I’m working from Peter Marshall’s Demanding The Impossible for many of the quotes. He has a good chapter on Stirner.
** That’s a philosophical version of “GTFO”
Now is a good time to try my hardcopy books. Enter the codes FREEMONEY and LULURC at checkout for a big fat discount and free shipping.
Krauser PUA 
February 18, 2016 at 8:09 pm
This is by far the most dense article I’ve ever read from this blog, i am unfamiliar with many of the concepts but what i can get from it is that you have a very sophisticated and intellectual explanation on why it is justifiable for you to be a daygamer. Most daygamers opt to take much simpler justifications (including myself). Its a very common discussion that i often have with my blue-pill friends, i often use evolutionary psychology to explain what i do but this is an interesting approach to it as well. [Mindwank is gonna mindwank. Lots of my 2011-12 posts are in similar vein. K.]
February 19, 2016 at 8:41 am
Have a look at Krauser’s old Count Cervantes blog
This post wouldn’t be at all out of place there [I loved that blog, but it was just too time-consuming to write for relative to its readership. K.]
February 18, 2016 at 8:29 pm
mr K dont forget your non-native speaking readers, didn’t understand shit…. 😉
February 18, 2016 at 8:46 pm
This shows that there really has been one main battle in the history of epistemology: intrinsicism vs subjectivism or more loosely thought of as Platonism vs nominalism. Stirner comes across as a radical subjectivist. Granted, many of his individualist elements resonate to someone who is opposed to both crown and throne but you can see why Conservatives or Reactionaries would see Stirner as ultimately nothing more than a nihilist. AND you can see why they say the same thing about PUAs.
We are not just free floating atoms. We ARE part of a social network. We can not live as an island even though we must ultimately think for ourselves. Individualism and ego are both captivating and dangerous concepts that need to be placed within proper parameters less they end up destructive. Also, I’m sure Rand would have HATED Stirner thinking him a subjectivist whim worshiper who was probably one of the forefathers of the hippies. Her approach to individualism is about the best we’ve seen yet and even with her I think she goes too far.
But your point connecting PUA with radical egoism is correct. Which is why so few men will become PUAs even beyond how hard it is. It is a morally nihilistic lifestyle that most men will not want. The reality oriented understanding of female psychology that Game offers is essential for every man. But the PUA lifestyle is not. A man can not reject God-State-Society-Man or more accurately thought of as Nature-Justice-Conscience with impunity. In that sense Stirner was very wrong. [Top comment so far. Mindwank + Education + Deduction. You also immediately grasped one of the key crossovers to daygame that I wished to imply. Bravo, sir! K.]
February 19, 2016 at 1:25 am
Thanks for the article Nick, it’s was a nice wank. Cheers m8!
February 19, 2016 at 12:48 pm
A lot of what i’m understanding about the Daygame journey is that it requires a disconnect from feelings in order to reach a level of proficiency required to bang hot girls consistently. The result of this is a borderline unhealthy nihilistic concept of the self that disregards anything outside of themselves. This is what makes daygamers attractive. It then becomes a double edged sword in that you’re stuck between confronting this head on and deciding whether to stick with it or to take a step back and look for alternatives knowing that doing so will make you less attractive.
Most guys simply want to love and be loved. As much as we understand the dynamic and how imbalanced it all is, most guys simply decide to eventually throw in the towel, which is understandable. [I’m thinking aloud with these things. One strange thing for me is I spent so long transforming myself into the sexually attractive cad that I didn’t appreciate it’s a double-edged sword. K.]
February 18, 2016 at 11:42 pm
Outstanding article. It’s made me want to go check out Stirner and more of his work. Never really heard of him before. Seems like him and Nietzsche have a fairly similar outlook. Pretty much rejecting any idea of objective morality and societal obligation. The will to power. “Might is right” and all that.
It seems to be the only path a man who has swallowed the red pill can ultimately take if he will persist long enough for it to digest. If you manage to push through the various stages of grief associated with unplugging, and enough time (typically several years in my experience personally and among peers) passes, you simply cannot ever engage in the delusion and enslavement that modern society is trying to ram down your throat at every turn. You see nothing but lies and attempts to guilt and shame at every turn. Personally, it gets easier and easier every day to reject any impulse to defer to “society” rather than trust my own desires and opinions. Embracing and trusting in my own self above all.
A lot to think about. That’s an article that I think will require multiple readings and time to digest in my subconscious before I can fully appreciate it.
February 18, 2016 at 11:48 pm
I’d sum it up as “do what you truly want for yourself, because you are all there is at the end of the day”.
Painful to accept but I see it as the truth, whether it’s day game, writing, video games or anything else.
The key is knowing what you truly want
February 19, 2016 at 12:08 am
Not terribly surprising when gamma males write long delusional justifications for viewing humans as atomized egos pursuing atomized fulfillment in an uncaring world. After all, they really are atoms that nobody cares about.
Leaving that aside…I think the statement “I recognise no other source of right than – me, neither God nor the State nor nature nor even Man himself” has leaked into western civilization as an unspoken metaphysical assumption that everybody now takes for granted. And as Dostoyevsky predicted (in his famous “Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?”, but not only there), this leads to nihilism. I see this as an empirical statement, not a theoretical one: when a civilization takes on this metaphysical assumption, does it become nihilist? Viewing our own progress over the last 50 years, the answer seems to be a clear “yes”. By which I mean it has led to loads of leftist poz and a press that tells only lies and politicians who think they’re demonstrating their holiness by bringing millions of third-world barbarians into Europe.
Why did England have such an outpouring of science and invention and art, music, and architecture during the 16th-19th centuries? The English had embraced a moderate amount of individualism, but they still had as a metaphysical assumption a Platonic ideal–really, a Christian ideal–of truth and beauty. When that dissipated, art turned ugly. Science has survived longer, but I think many fields of science are losing their mojo and drowning in dishonesty and careerism. (Weather sure is globally warmed today, huh?)
Krauser, if you’re interested in a counterpoint view that combines philosophical mindwank with a Nietzsche-level understanding of nihilism, I highly recommend Seraphim Rose’s pamphlet “Nihilism” (originally intended to be one chapter of a long book, ultimately published standing alone as a short book), which you can read free at http://oodegr.co/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm . It takes the pro-Christian view, but even if you disagree with that part, I think you’ll find its description of 20th and 21st century nihilism to be very accurate and a bit prescient. [I’m a pro-Christian atheist. As to your first sentence – it’s both a gamma and sigma tell, but the sigma tome would be self-amusing not self-justifying. K.]
February 19, 2016 at 8:35 am
As a philosopher-wanker with a background primarily in neuroscience, I think the concept of “ego abstractions” can be translated nicely into biological terms. The way I see it, what the Hegelian camp refers to as “human nature” or “essence” is nothing more than a set of built-in psychological illusions designed by evolution to motivate a conscious animal to act on behalf of it’s DNA rather than it’s own happiness. For example, K-selected Christians/whites instinctively believe that monogamy with a virgin hunny is the path to happiness/satisfaction. As I’m sure your experience going from chump to PUA taught you, that is an instinct the modern world utterly fails to satisfy- and yet people continue to robotically chase it.
When one realizes that none of those instincts actually give you the mental rewards they promised, the mind that was once a prison becomes more like a playground. Instead of being jerked around by 2 parallel reward systems that tell you to seek monogamy and variety at the same time, you simply have 2 sources of pleasure that you can turn off when they stop serving you. Instincts can be dismissed so long as the user is awakened to their true source (evolution, DNA, the amygdala, etc). “””You””” are simply the set of thoughts & feelings they are designed to corral into helping your body survive and replicate. They mean nothing. [Good comment. I might post about my thoughts on happiness. I believe in Identity-DNA dualism. The mind that we identify as “me” is a CEO installed by the shareholder and real owner of the body – our DNA. It sets up an agency-principal conflict, just like Wall Street, where the CEO tries to milk the owners out of remuneration. In our case, the remuneration is happiness and contentment. These are just the DNA’s way to reward us for advancing its plan. It all becomes interesting when you recognise the system and start gaming it to bilk your DNA out of happiness without providing it with beautiful white children. K.]
March 9, 2016 at 2:27 am
Applause. It’s a common notion in many pickup articles and purple pill “self-help” areas, but to put the actual political implications into why you may instinctively behave in an AFC manner (for a lack of a better term) really nails down the need to look at ones paradigm, and the paradigm that is bestowed upon him as he inevitably absorbs some aspects of common themes. Sometimes you may revert to the need of wanting to love and feel love, which is certainly not always a bad thing. Sometimes your mirror neurons will mimic those of the public, and after not approaching for a while, a daytime pickup may intuitively feel odd to you. To break out of this pattern in a controlled way that doesn’t rely on outrageous, volatile, RSD “in-state” exercises, understanding why you feel this way in a political sense washed over onto you from being immersed and psychologically effected is the key to becoming consistent in really performing the acts you were set out to do.
February 20, 2016 at 8:19 pm
If 160 years after his death, Max Stirner triggers a 2000+ word laudatory article then that indicates he was not a “mediocre gamma pedant”. [Non-sequitor. Read up on his life history. K.]
February 24, 2016 at 12:50 pm
You mentioned that altruism has at it’s root a search for personal happiness.
If you flip that truth around, all the nihilism disappears, because you realize that in order maximize happiness, we MUST do as our biological programming demands of us, and recognize and contribute to and receive positive feedback from those around us.
We are not only individuals, but are individuals that come pre-programmed to act as social insects. An ant is more than an ant when he is in a group. And human individuals are more than human individuals when in groups. Neither and nor human is fully ant or fully human alone ; we are built as social animals.
Our individual happiness is not individual after all. [I agree, but it’s a rather odd state of fairs. Doing something altruistic for selfish reasons. The problem with it is it’s not a very strong bulwark against the temptations of nihilism K.]
February 25, 2016 at 1:50 am
Buddhism holds that karma holds within it no morality at all. Buddhists try to do good deeds for selfish reasons. Do good and good things happen to, or a more nuanced version, do good and you’ll generally feel better.
Most people FEEL first, and their inner press secretary later explains WHY they feel that way. People feel that they don’t want to get cheated, and so explain that cheating is therefore wrong. Or they feel that they would be served by cheating, and therefore explain that the self is the only arbiter of right and wrong, and that what is right for the self is all the right that is required. There actually isn’t any contradiction between these two viewpoints, if you pull back the focus and notice that everyone who is not a full blown sociopath has no option but to swim and soak in the fact that we are socially plugged in and can never unplug. It is therefore simply BOTH true that there is no ultimate right or wrong, no matter how much we FEEL bad when other cheat us, or FEEL good when we cheat others, plus it’s also true that doing good to others overall improves our social standing and feelings of well being.
The Buddhist notion of karma can be understood in a highly nuanced way, or for those who require more black and white barriers to action, it can misconstrued as a superstition such that “do good things and good things will happen to you”, and imaginary karma Gods who control fate are dreamed up.
Some people can handle and understand the nuance, and work perfectly well with nuance, others can’t and so default to Karma gods. Either way, once we realize the inevitable fact that we feel better when we are helpful, there is no falling back to delusions that being purely selfish is somehow a philosophy of life or a way towards happiness.
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February 25, 2016 at 2:20 am
When you realize that our evolved psychological nature is built to reward you for sharing rewards with others, you’ll want to consciously craft your life such that you give and receive recognition for giving. It’s just another hedonistic pursuit that is required to maximize life’s potential. Avoiding that aspect of life would be a blind spot so large that it would not be possible to steer life towards contentment.
And so it is with all relationships. Anyone who advocates “pumping and dumping the bitches” is deeply ignorant as to what causes happiness.
You don’t need Karma Gods or morality to acknowledge simple evo-psych facts. Our emotional rewards were evolved within the context of being social, and therefore it is natural that overall we get rewarded for doing social good. The idea of morality is completely unnecessary to come to the conclusion that having mutually beneficial relationships (including with women) is more satisfying than trying to get one over on anyone. [I don’t disagree, I just think its one of the odd paradoxes of life. K.]
February 26, 2016 at 5:36 pm
Very interesting post and comments. I am in agreement with the sentiment of the comments here. My interest particularly is to better understand precisely why we are, on the whole, not strongly psychopathic, given that Stirner’s arguments as outlined here are sound (we all are our own mental point of origin, like it or not, and those that don’t like to recognize that are perhaps in denial about the true nature of our existence in this realm so as to provide themselves comfort, which will be a false comfort, as that sliver of truth can never be excised from one’s mind, perhaps medicated but never excised). So why are we not all hard-core psychopaths (instead perhaps just the soft-core version being the usual)?
Pair
“we are each a sovereign island in the large sea of the world”,
with
“The Ego looks on everything in the world as a candidate for ownership: “I think it belongs to him who knows how to take it, or who does not let it be taken from him” but it’s never a big deal. The only truly valuable possession is one’s ownness and that can never be taken. Whether a man succeeds or fails in the battle to own other things, he can treat the result “smilingly” and “with humour”. He is Stoic in his acceptance that each man’s power is limited.rather than links in a chain. Seeing as we are not chained to our fellow tribesmen nor to grand abstractions we are thus unfettered.”
Realizing this, what is the best response, for living one’s life, (if you agree as Stirner does that reality does not imply the solipsistic perspective)?
My view is that it would be the mindset of valuing others in the same way one values oneself (equal in existential fundamental worth) – which will naturally predispose one to a very high level of self-respect, and an expectation of this sentiment occurring in others, which if occurs, would then provide the basis for a high level of mutual respect. Of course one cannot expect this in all circumstances (or even in most circumstances, given the above-mentioned delusion around the want for comforts, as outlined in the first paragraph above). So for practicality sake, how best to order one’s deepest convictions? I would argue for:
– The belief that the perspective of the equal fundamental existential worth of individuals, which naturally predisposes one to a frame of mutual respect, is a worthy perspective wrt promoting trust and therefore cooperation as mitigated by discernment around the expectation of reciprocity in this regards
Note that by “equal existential, fundamental worth” I do not mean “the exact same in nature”, but instead meaning – “the same in potential promise as mitigated by the variable circumstances of the environment, or of reality”. It is abundantly obvious to absolutely everyone that does not prescribe to solipsism, that we are created the same in “design” but with variability around the design parameters (please do not quibble about my use of the word “design” in an evolutionary context – my meaning is “the same but different” if you will).
Perhaps the lower than expected quality of the human social condition is that this conviction is not widely shared, though it be the most logical response to Stirner’s outline of human nature.
If you agree, then the next pertinent question would be – how to promote this view? My thoughts on this are that a good place to start in such endeavor would be to first understand how men and women subtly differ in their appreciations for the above-mentioned perspective of mutual-respect potentiality. Redpill (and evol psych) discourse has commenced the endeavor wrt to a better understanding of the differing man/woman hindbrain scripts around attraction and survival-instincts, that are largely in conflict with the Stirner-induced perspective of mutual-respect potentiality, and I think we have enough now to commence focusing on precisely how these “attraction and survival-instinct” gender differences color the appreciations for the mutual-respect potentiality.
I think there is potentially much low-hanging fruit, potential-understanding-wise, inherent in this particular approach. I do have some further thoughts on this as well.
March 13, 2016 at 1:27 am
I’d like to continue Buddhist vs Stirers discussion. Both can be for me expressed this way:
– Stirers tells – atruism is some conditioning that limit’s you from being happy, go eradicate altruism and see what happens
– Budhists tell – go be altruistic because otherwise you cannot be happy
And logically it’s probably diffictult to prove one over another. That’s where intelect loses its power and direct experience enters..
So Nick, your answer to the following question would be just huge practical reference point and takeaway from this post:
How often in your PUA quest have you felt _real_ happiness in following situations:
– you loose, somebody gets
– you neutral, somebody gets
– you get, somebody gets
– you get, somebody neutral
– you get, somebody looses
Cheers!
March 21, 2016 at 11:12 pm
http://www.hamariweb.uk/watch/pmGL8NQ519Q
This man explains why something akin to Stirner’s philosophy is the only logical moral framework to abide by. I posit that even for religious people, their moral prescriptions are nothing more than God’s opinions. Where I disagree with Stirner is that in the end, he commits the same logical fallacies when he makes prescriptions. Even if his descriptions of the enslavement of the European mind are accurate, liberating isn’t something that’s right or wrong in an universal sense. I don’t agree with the descriptive claims either because he autistically assumes we exist in a vaccuum when we’re simply genes expressed in an environment and the ego, in the sense of us having agency independent of who we are(the interplay of genes and environment) is illusory if one has the Enlightenment concept of mind and ego.
Personally, while I don’t think my morality is objective(all ought statements are what an agent should do to achieve a goal), I do have moral beliefs and values and since I accepted the subjectivity of morality, I managed to craft my own set of values instead of unwittingly accepting what others peddle wholesale. If I had absolute power and I was to rebuild society I would create a blend of national and conservative liberalism that thrives to create closer communities that regulate social relations instead of having the state do it. On the personal level, I’d like to build a financial empire and have a bunch of children that will inherit and perpetuate it and I’d most likely find it more rewarding than the life I’ll have.
Given that we live in a world filled with diversity, materialistic sluts I don’t see fit for marriage, let alone mothering my children, I can’t do that. I don’t feel that much despair over it though. Instead I started to focus on improving myself physically, intellectually and professionally and after I get a job, I’ll day game after work to improve socially(I weaseled for too long by using my exes as friends with benefits, but they do get older lol). I’ll spend the next 15 years of my life doing this and if I’ll feel like having children around 40, I’ll marry then. Since you’d be hard pressed to find girls willing to marry before 25, unless they’re ugly, low class or stupid and since we all know here that the romantic notion of soulmates who love each other unconditionally is a myth, the cost of learning how to marry someone 15 years your junior(and freezing your sperm at some point to avoid age related issues for your children) is far smaller than the opportunity cost of staying married to someone all this time.
I do agree that being selfish because that’s what you intellectually think will make you happy is silly. But I won’t pretend that me feeling bad if I abandoned my parents won’t factor in my decision not to do so when they’ll get old. It’s selfish altruism. I enjoy teaching. Should I stop doing it because it helps others? lol. What one can do though is understand that whenever someone tells you X is right, what he means is X gives him good feels and his good feels are entirely subjective. It’s nothing more than trying to get you on board by doing some PR work. The issue though is that you have to understand yourself and that’s not a quick fix such as adopting an ideology that posits a moral framework, much like men want some lines to spit and get laid, not to reassess themselves and women.
Wild Man, why would you want your life to be built on lies? Someone breathing doesn’t mean they have equal existential worth to someone else that’s breathing. My pet cat has more existential worth to me than 100 Nigerians. The inhuman horrors of your mentality are quite easy to show. If all humans have equal existential worth, than I hope that if you’re in a lifeboat and you can save your own child and my child, you’ll be indifferent to which one you pull into the lifeboat. Otherwise, not even you believe in the lies you expect us to believe. I’m also not sure how trust is built on lies. It’s quite clear that this belief made our societies have less trust because we imported throngs of third worlders based on it.
May 1, 2016 at 8:29 pm
Hey there TOO – just came across your comment today. You (like everyone else it seems) misinterprets the true definition of the egalitarian. Of course self preservation trumps all. I never insinuated otherwise. What I said is that “we are created the same in “design” but with variability around the design parameters”. Of course those design parameters include the ascendancy of self-preservation, importance-wise, within the design hierarchy, as it must for life to exist, and for which all life is subject to. As such – that is one of the basis (among others) for the genuine (i.e. – non-delusional) psychic condition naturally being one of high self-respect. This really is the way it is, as Stirner argues. If so, and if one does not prescribe to solipsism … does it not logically follow then that others should have genuine self-respect for themselves in the same way? If so then …… the egalitarian as I defined above naturally follows.
TOO – what normally occurs nowadays is that everybody, – both the PC crowd as well as the enemies of the PC crowd, all prescribe to the PC definition of the egalitarian, that seeks to fashion it as “altruism”, or “self-sacrifice” – i.e – fashioning the definition of the egalitarian so-warped, as a delusion around the non-worthiness of self-preservation. Ludicrous! Especially ludicrous for the enemies of the PC crowd to adopt this PC-misappropriation of the concept. So why does this warping-of-concept occur all round? I think for the PC crowd, for many, it may be a delusion around their own low self-worth vis-a-vis others, perhaps. Or alternatively – it could be because they are actually adopting the delusion of a solipsistic outlook, whereby the self-preservation only applies to themselves, and others are not seen as real as themselves, and as such the resulting belief would naturally be that others should then prescribe to altruism wrt to serving the solipsistic one, but not the other way around (malignant narcissism).
Likewise for the enemies of the PC-crowd, I think there could also be a variety of flavors of delusion. Perhaps to be so reactionary, and in such strong response bypassing any consideration of the possibility of the “even-hand”, and going straight-away to the mode of self-preservation at all costs, speaks to an underlying belief that such individuals think they are constantly under attack (paranoid). Truth be told we are not normally constantly under attack by others. Normally, it happens on occasion but it is not constant or even the usual. Or perhaps such individuals actually keep the company of solipsists, so that in their life they actually are constantly under attack (and therefore not paranoid, but in real danger). But such strong solipsism is not the norm and so one does have the option of removing oneself from said conditions (but it is true that sometimes one cannot see past the confines of their prison cell). Or perhaps such reactionary individuals are actually solipsists themselves, but of the kind that expect others are as well (I think this would be akin to living in a dissociative state akin to “dreaming awake”). Or perhaps such reactionary individuals are influenced wrt to delusions about their own low self-worth vis-a-vis others, but are in denial about that, and by way of psychic compensation, kneejerk past any consideration wrt to the possibility of the “even-hand”, and go straight-away to a toxic celebration of self-preservation as the only possible consideration in all circumstances, because such “nightmare” scenario may actually be more comforting than facing the fact that they have allowed self-disrespect to creep in, in the first place (which existentially speaking – is perhaps worse than denial, wrt to the ordering of the pain of the psychic wounding of our inner lives).
TOO – the point is – there are many many ways all round to fall under the spell of such delusions around being blinded to the natural condition of non-solipsistically prescribing to high self-respect as obvious. The exceptional adaptiveness of the human brain during early childhood makes humans especially prone to this. I am not refuting that such delusion is indeed the reality for many many people (humans are predisposed towards glorious human capacities but these come at a cost). But what I am refuting is that such variety of delusions are in fact the natural order. These delusions are not the natural order. To see the egalitarian as the zenith of the psychic natural order – all one has to do is see the very simple logic as per the first paragraph above, paired with, seeing that such delivers the highest benefits at the lowest costs, by way of the empirical evidence wrt to one’s own life and the lives of others. It probably usually takes alot of trials and tribulations of life experience to come to this realization.
March 23, 2016 at 5:24 pm
I think this touches on some fundamental truths, but I think the preoccupation with labeling the true inclinations of an individual as “ego” is dead wrong. The ego is a false self, a conditioned set of beliefs and mental/emotional habits. This acts as a veil to your inner, or divine, essence or what can be termed “true will”. Whether people take offense at the terminology such as ” divine ” or “god” is irrelevant. The philosopher you exposed here is saying the same thing but it’s 80% explained properly. We should not glorify what he terms as “the ego”… The ego, the false self, and our preoccupation with fulfilling it’s desires is what blinds us from our true nature. There are many people who fancy themselves as one thing (say, a monogamous man) who really in their deepest core, would be fulfilled with another way of living (being a player)..it is up to the individual to determine what his true nature is, and then fullfill it. I disagree with the assertion that there is nothing divine in us, but i fully agree that we are only responsible for ourselves and that there is no such thing as universal morality. We only have a duty to ourselves and contrary to the way many of us are conditioned, the world responds positively to a man who is fully selfish and attending to his own concerns, in mental habit and through action. It is when we are overly concerned with the will of others that we start to clash, and the world starts abusing us.
The same principle applies to interacting with women, where if you are outcome dependent (ie: concerned with something outside of your own will) they have a tendency to be disdainful, dismissive. You could argue that pursuing women is the most direct way of challenging your true will and learning to express it with one pointedness…I think you basically have said as much in the past. I believe you found your niche, or your true will in daygame and teaching it…because your success is proof of that will. Your deepest inclination (the divine part of you) led you into the labyrinth of self discovery that is game, and your success is the result of the universe clearing a path for your pursuit of that deepest inclination. Also, success like this can only be had through persistence, which is a virtue exercised by the person who feels almost spiritually passionate about something..or possessed. It’s the same passion that led me to be an excellent guitarist..the years of development never seemed like work. It was Joy.
If you like this author, and you haven’t done so, in would highly suggest you read some aleister Crowley, and look into Thelema. It is a much more lucid and in depth system, exploring the subject. Right up your alley i would imagine.
May 11, 2016 at 10:38 am
Wild Man, try to write your verbiage under 3 paragraphs if you want me to read it. It’s not like you’re some great philosopher whose ideas I’ll ponder while I sit on the toilet, you’re supposed to speak clearly. This being said, the equal individual worth isn’t even applied by people because it implies they will be indifferent whose child they pull into a life boat, theirs or mine. I’ll always call out these pathetic hypocrites on their hubris.
You have quite a few challenges to solve before you even make the case for your reality denying value system:
1)prove morality is objective(you can only do this without referring to subjective moral standards and it has to exist independent of the observer: a human or humanity)
2)bridge the is-ought gap. How people are is irrelevant how they ought to be. Why does our similarity make us have equal worth? It doesn’t, because using descriptive facts, even if true, to imply that’s right is fallacious.
3)give up on all your unprincipled bullshit. If we have equal moral worth, then you should be indifferent if I live or you do. If you’re not, you’re not living up to your own bullshit philosophy and I see no reason why I’d listen to you.
The list goes on, but you seem to be just a vapid fool who spouts big words without creating a coherent thought process and I have no time for wooden language.
May 11, 2016 at 11:43 pm
TOO – wow what a mess your logic is.
i) How does it follow that my argument is contingent on proving morality to be objective?, unless you mean “objective” as the consensus among the subjective perspectives, as I have indeed implied, however by way of your (1) criticism you are going out of your way to advise you are not implying it as such (but instead you are defining “objective” in the extreme universal sense of independent of the observer, of a human, or of humanity). That is absurd. It is a logical impossibility for any human to enjoy the objective perspective, as you have defined, and in any event, metaphysically, it has never been proven that such perspective (or “state” if you will) can even exist, even outside of the realm of human experience. You argue as if you are an idiot who cannot reason.
ii) Your (2) criticism. Once again you display an uncommonly poor reading comprehension and perhaps even an inability to handle more than one abstraction at a time (which if in fact is the real limits of your cognitive abilities, which I can’t be sure of based on this one exchange, would indicate you are incapable of examining the interface of one abstract concept with another). What “ought” gap? My definition of the egalitarian begins with “The belief that the perspective ….. is a worthy perspective wrt ….”. Where is the “ought” in that? Or did you mean to imply the converse – that you require “an ought’ fashioned out of what is? Well….. that type of “ought” only operates wrt to the pragmatic, and pragmatism is in fact what I am arguing for (i.e. – “seeing that the egalitarian perspective delivers the highest benefits at the lowest costs, by way of the empirical evidence wrt to one’s own life and the lives of others). You go on to say “Why does our similarity make us have equal worth?”. You are still missing the point – what I am saying is that our similarities will naturally lead a thinking person to consider the value in that perspective (but more precisely my actual meaning is “equal fundamental existential worth”). Your further comment (“It doesn’t, because using descriptive facts, even if true, to imply that’s right is fallacious”) seems to be about implying the fallaciousness of applying transformational operations on descriptive facts – and that would be a foolish criticism when the transformational operation, is in fact no such thing, because the elements of the descriptive facts are embedded in the so-called transformation (i.e – humans possess personal agency, and thus non-transformatively speaking, can be expected to form beliefs about the choices one can make, including attitudinal choices.)
iii) Your (3) criticism – there is nothing I said that would imply that I should value you, if you do not value yourself enough, to see the pragmatic nature of the egalitarian perspective, and mutually implement it as such, within any social exchanges in which we may partake. If another is not capable of, or otherwise refuses said appreciation, then indifference (or confrontation even) towards that other is pretty much the only cogent attitude to take in that eventuality. However, if you meant value you equally within circumstances where self-preservation is otherwise at stake – like you are trying to kill me in a knife fight let’s say – well it’s pretty clear I am not arguing against preserving myself in such eventuality …. I said “Of course those design parameters include the ascendancy of self-preservation, importance-wise, within the design hierarchy, as it must for life to exist, and for which all life is subject to. ”
TOO – I take exception to your kneejerk towards the use of the word “vapid” in describing me, when your most recent comment here belies that you either cannot even comprehend my argument, or can but nevertheless refuse to give due consideration. As such, your use of the word “vapid” in this context (i.e – paired with the utter irrationality of your criticisms), informs my impression of you as a pompous idiot, and I find that to be pretty funny.