Against Individualism: The Individual Is Not So, by Ausonia Calabrese

Egoism -- at least, egoism as it appears as a discursive formation -- concerns a very particular ontology of the individual. Apio Ludd, known under many names, is perhaps the most well-known living egoist-theorist, and describes this ontology thusly:

...most of today’s young “insurrectionary” communists believe that you and I don’t really act, but are simply the puppets of invisible, bodiless actors like society, social relationships, movements, various collective forces that apparently come out of nothing but themselves, since if you try to bring them back to an actual source, you have to come back to individuals acting in their worlds and relating with each other. And that won’t do, because then you’d have to recognize not “the commune,” not “human community,” certainly not that mystical absurdity “species being,” but yourself here and now – a unique individual capable of desiring, deciding and acting – as the center and aim of your theory and practice. And a whole lot of the theorizing that communists carry out seems to be aimed precisely at avoiding this.

Before I get very ahead of myself, allow me to state that I do not intend this critique as a rejection of individualism (in a moral sense), nor as an affirmation of collectivism (in any sense.) It is also not directed towards Ludd per se -- it is a view I have encountered "in the field" on countless occasions, by countless anarchists. Ludd has simply encapsulated a common attitude.

This critique, rather, is intended towards the ideology which affirms the spectral image of the Individual as an in-dividual, that is, unable to be divided -- an atom, from which this egoist program is derived. Therefore, the deconstruction of the individual is the deconstruction of egoism. Perhaps it is not Stirnerite egoism per se -- I have already discussed the placement of Stirner within my apophatic practice in Mortification of the flesh, and further, I consider him a major influential apophatic thinker. Again, I am considering a very particular ideology, not exactly endemic to Stirner's thought, which has appeared within the discursive formation of egoism -- that is, the body of discussion that identifies with and is produced by those who identify as egoists.

Firstly, from a purely material standpoint, the individual has no independent, or even objective, existence. Experiments in which the corpus callosum (the thin, membranous barrier between hemispheres of the brain) is severed as a treatment for epilepsy creates "individuals" with, seemingly, two separate wills. This can even lead to so-called "alien hand syndrome," in which these two separate wills are diametrically opposed to each other. The corpus callosum's primary anatomical function is to facilitate neurological communication between the "left" and "right" brains. When it is severed, this communication becomes impossible.

In biology, the primary units of natural selection are not individuals, nor masses of individuals (species.) Rather, it is genes -- below the level of the individual -- which are the primary actors in evolution. This is the true reason for biological altruism -- while altruism, particularly kin selection, does *not* increase a particular individual's chances for reproduction, it *does* increase the overall occurrence of that particular gene. Seminal geneticist J. B. S. Haldane once remarked,

Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers, or eight cousins.

The occurrence of such behavior implies (at least within this particular model) that the true actors within the Real are not "individuals" but alleles, and that individuals are better seen as merely vehicles for such "selfish genes," as Richard Dawkins describes them. Perhaps a more accurate term would be "egoist genes," if we were to accept Apio Ludd's argument -- only applied to genes as real actors. This also implies that altruism in nature is really an expression of selfishness, negating naturalist groundings of mutual aid such as that presented by Kropotkin -- perhaps genetic egoism isn't so bad after all?

From a slightly less material standpoint, the hypothesis of bicameralism suggests that, before a somewhat vaguely defined development of self-consciousness, the human mind was separated into two "chambers" -- one that commands, and another that follows. Circumstantial evidence for such a state has been found in ancient literature, including both Ancient Greek epic poetry and early books of the Bible, in which characters do not appear to think for themselves, but are rather commanded to act by higher forces. Such evidence has been used to explain the origin of religion. Bicameralism is highly controversial, though worthy of note in this context.

From a last, only-marginally material perspective, there exists a highly specialized subculture of "individuals" who play and experiment with the very concept of individuality. This involves meditation practices which, supposedly, render the creation of a "tulpa" -- a concept borrowed from Tibetan religion. Buddhism, the most popular religion within Tibet, holds the self to be illusory -- anatta, no-self. Thus, these creations, while as "real" as any other person, are fundamentally illusory themselves -- only images. Self-styled "tulpamancers" are not so sure-- they hold steadfast the belief that tulpas are real, sentient beings; though one that shares an individual body with its creator. As I have never practiced such techniques, I cannot verify how true such claims are. Nor can I conceptualize any method for verifying such claims in an objective manner. Regardless, there seems to be an active community of those who at least claim to have divided the individual, and act as such.

'My point in referencing such obscure examples should be obvious -- the individual is not as materially apparent, nor nearly as objective, as individualists seem to believe. Though it may appear to have some sort of objective, metaphysical existence, appearances fail. A closer inspection of the so-called individual reveals ever finer and finer grains, multiplicities of constituents.

Deleuze analyzes the concept of the individual in Postscript on the Societies of Control. He states:

We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become "dividuals," and masses, samples, data, markets, or "banks."

The suggestion is that societies of control make the distinction between individuals vague and ambiguous. It is irrelevant whether or not individuals truly are atomized actors as Ludd describes them in the material world -- there now exist technologies of domination which can divide that which cannot be divided.

Such reliance on so-called individuals, even when applied as a mere conceptual framework, reveals itself as untenable and reductionist for any practical or useful analysis. The operation of masses, collectives, and aggregates is complex, more complex than the sum of its parts. Aggregates of individuals can exhibit behavior that can not simply be reduced to its elements, such behavior is referred to as emergent and appears commonly in nature. Other such models become necessary. Further, such an atomized conception of the individual fails to capture those sometimes contradictory interests within persons -- hopes, desires, ideologies, drives -- which constitute divisions, and which have actual consequences in the material world.

Here I must stress the disconnect between the ego (the so-called individual) and what is referred to as the Unique. Firstly, ego is a particularly bad translation of the German einzige. Einz translates literally to "one," whereas einzige is literally "only one." Stirner's use of einzige is traditionally translated to mean "ego," rendering "egoism." Contemporary translators, such as the aforementioned Apio Ludd, have went with the much more accurate "unique." Note the Latinate root, "uni-", denoting one. In following the apophatic tradition, I generally translate this as simply One, that is, *the* One. Such is an epithet for God in the Christian tradition, and for divinity in neoplatonism, which predates and influences the former. Stirner explicitly references this particular tradition in The One and Its Own:

They say of God, "Names name thee not." That holds good of me: no concept expresses me, nothing that is designated as my essence exhausts me; they are only names.

Stirner appropriates Christianity in interesting, but undoubtedly critical ways.

Stirner speaks of the Unique and says immediately: Names name you not. He articulates the word, so long as he calls it the Unique, but adds nonetheless that the Unique is only a name. He thus means something different from what he says, as perhaps someone who calls you Ludwig does not mean a Ludwig in general, but means You, for which he has no word. [...] It is the end point of our phrase world, of this world in whose "beginning was the Word."

Stirner's constant explanations for his failure to reach the Real mirror that of apophatic philosophers who predate him by millennia. Whereas Stirner, in the third person as is the style of *Stirner's Critics*, explains:

What Stirner says is a word, a thought, a concept; what he means is no word, no thought, no concept. What he says is not what is meant, and what he means is unsayable.

An anonymous commentator on the Parmenides, perhaps by Porphyry of Tyre (c. 300 AD, who -- before I am accused of Christian undertones -- authored *Against the Christians*) similarly apologizes:

I realize...that I am uttering unclear things because of the of the weakness of language in these matters...

Whereas Stirner proclaims "All things are nothing to me," of the One, Porphyry (?) describes of God:

It is necessary, however, to know that the things which exist due to him are nothing in relation to him.

The great neoplatonist sage Plotinus similarly speaks of the Unity (the One, the Unique) in similar terms in the Enneads:

Generative of all, the Unity is none of all; neither thing nor quantity nor quality nor intellect nor soul; not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time: it is the self-defined, unique in form or, better, formless, existing before Form was, or Movement or Rest, all of which are attachments of Being and make Being the manifold it is.

Stirner responds:

For 'being' is abstraction, as is even 'the I'. Only I am not abstraction alone: I am all in all, consequently, even abstraction or nothing: I am all and nothing...

The Creative Nothing, the Unique, thus, is separate from -- indeed, prior to -- such reified conceptions of the so-called individual. The association of the Creative Nothing with Ludd's individual in the "here and now" (that is, the human being) is a falsehood, for the Creative Nothing is beyond being and thus material existence. The Creative Nothing truly *cannot be spoken of*, nor cannot it be associated with *anything* -- all attempts end in utter failure because the Creative Nothing is prior to even language, in fact it is the origin of language, that which creates the necessary circumstances for *nous* to come about. In fact, the negation of the self is employed in a number of mystical practices in order to transcend the self and reach the ineffable One, to become, as St. Paul states, "no longer I." Plotinus even refused portraits to be made of him during his life, so deeply was he committed to this particular practice.

The only way language can work towards understanding the One is by negation, that is, by negating all positive conceptions of it. Thus is the project of negative theology. If all speech that aims or points towards the Unique fails -- what is to be done, then, within anarchism? Simply *nothing*. Refusal to articulate. One must throw out *all* conceptions -- completely throw them out, not only stating that one has done so -- and dwell in complete, in-fant silence. This is the non-essence of nihilism -- silence, nothing, nothing-past-negation, negation-of-the-negation-which-is-not-positive. Silence is the entrance to uniqueness, that is, perfect attainment; for it is only within this silence that one can shed themself of themself and work towards union, oneness, uniqueness, anarchy (anarkhos, without-beginning, "What is divine? That without beginning, nor end."). This is the truest liberation possible, liberation from being itself. For truly, the One is the only in-dividual, hail to the unknown God! All desire is desire for union -- union with objects and people, union in some manner with the Other; and I tell you that union is becoming-One, henosis, in which there is no subject nor object, the non-ascension away from being to the superior Non-being, that is, beyond being, for being is the prison of language and symbolic existence. One must step outside themself, become "no longer I," flee away from their name, become unobtainable by language.

There are 45 Comments

or, to boil it down into a single statement: je est un autre - i is another - i is someone else

what is this pseudo-academic, marxoid dogshit doing on my beloved anarchist news?

I mean... okay that is some pretentious pseudo-academic dogshit, and a great piece of trollbait that I kinda enjoyed... just for destroying one argument after the other. Of course the author is confusing concepts and -as I've heard other marxoids do in the past- is deeply wrong about the semantics of "individual" and using some weird diversions to assert how it does not exist. I was once told with super-strong manly conviction by the despots that they are "dividuals", and that I am a "singularity", then I went "lol feck off!"

But better quality trolling than Wayne and Keating, tho.

most self-identified egoists get a partial understanding of stirner and fall over themselves to miss the point-- this coming from someone who also used to identify as an egoist.

it'd be nice to see a treatment of egoism that runs more along the lines of body-with-nature or body-with-desire than individual-with-will. stirner is really excellent at attacking morality, but other phantasms like materialism rush in to fill the void....

my understanding of egoism, to the extent i still care about the perspective, is decidedly non-dualist, but it seems like most egoists are dualist without even thinking about it. just like nearly everyone else, they have failed to rid themselves of the christian rationalist mindset. can't we do better?

You might have forgot that you used to be a just a baby who learned the other-ness by interacting with a breast you didn't even clearly see but could very well grab and squeeze with your hands? An individual's volition is rooted in those primal desires, and the duality arise from their contact with this outside world of stimuli.

I cannot think of any egoism that is non-binary, as this would also mean non-relational, ergo delusional in this well-known solipsist way. The internet.. this site... this comment of mine you're reading is part of a binary. It is not you, not even me... it is an "It", a thing detached from both of we (assuming you do exist).

My last comment was deleted? Maybe I waxed poetic too much, so I'll get to the poiñt and hope I'm not deleted again.
The essential quality of individualist egoism, is its non-binary solitary sovereignty in the face of all collectivism. Maybe you haven't attained a degree of solipsistic existence to reach this critical point of seperation, I don't know your thoughts?

ooh, you're getting right to the center of it. does a relationship, an interaction between different localities, require a binary division? of course we can see that some division between things exists. we can discern differences in objects, the objects are clearly separated from each other in some way. but does that make a binary division between self and other?

in my experience it doesn't. i don't remember being a baby, so i base my knowledge of the world on my present experience. i'll acknowledge that i do find the self/other division meaningful. but i experience as the beginning of a crack, which is immediately continued. if i look at the division between "self" and "other", i can immediately follow it to a division between what is "self" and "self". if i call one part "unconscious self" and the other part "conscious self" or some equally meaningless labels, i notice that these parts are also divided. i can follow the cracks as far down as i like; as far as i can tell there's no reason to assign greater meaning to the self/other division than the uncountable divisions within "self" and within "other". sure, if you want to, you can. but how is that any more true than assigning meaning to every division, or exactly five divisions, or no divisions?

personally i like to work at an experience that moves through these divisions (or transformations) without dwelling on them. i suspect they're only made meaningful through domestication. why does it make more sense to split the world into two, than to look at proximity and distance from a particular locality? the dualist schema only makes sense with an essential self. if there's a gradient where the experience of "self" gradually becomes an perception of "other", what benefit does it offer to draw a binary line between the two?

i do in fact experience a gradient of that sort, and i have no basis for knowing if that's something unique to me. but i doubt it, i think it's a matter of expectations and attention.

You keep talking of "division", which sounds arbitrary here. The fact there's a binary opposition between two aspects doesn't make them separated. The brains of most people have binary opposite hemispheres yet are connected and interacting together. They're not separate. The author here is using one marginal phenomena as an apparent attempt to negate the generality... that in rare cases there are indeed people with split brains as pathological condition so that means individuals don't exist... (???) Hums.

Separation is a thing, just not relevant in proving/disproving the existence of the individual, as just as I said earlier, this is based on bad semantics where one assumes "individual" as a "whole, united, complete" organism, where in fact it means more of a indivisible, autonomous, self-functioning" organism. We are not "bodies without organs", yet we can live by ourselves from the moment we get out of infancy.

I understand some people still may have this poor sense of individuality through their dependency on the herd or the family-like grouping. Just too bad. Tho it doesn't mean the rest of humanity is like them.

Cheers,
Nice to see you take a step out of oblivion, dire to dive straight into the shithole of online "discussion". Your reasoning is actually getting to piersing right through the hole. In case you're interested, there's one Nicola Masciandaro, whose - well, academic - babbling you'll find, perhaps, somewhat inspiring. I'd love to see more of you writings online. There's not much on the subject of non-subject, in fact, and it's all the more interesting that you're pursuing it along the lines of anarchy (ism) and identity shit. There's shengtong thing also and all this stuff (nothing new except for the moon landing). I am curious what you will come up with. Thanks. Oh, and make sure to check out donna-anna.org for some weird conspiracy

The word you are thinking of is "nondual." Stirner himself outlines a nonrelational egoism when he declares that "all things are nothing to me." Nothing can have relation to the Creative Nothing, for the Creative Nothing is prior to all logic and language. It is the very thing that necessitates logic and language.

>You might have forgot that you used to be a just a baby who learned the other-ness by interacting with a breast you didn't even clearly see but could very well grab and squeeze with your hands? An individual's volition is rooted in those primal desires, and the duality arise from their contact with this outside world of stimuli.

On the contrary, the babe does not distinguish itself from the breast. That is not where Otherness is learned. The in/fant spends nine months literally in union with its mother.

Cheers,
Nice to see you take a step out of oblivion, dire to dive straight into the shithole of online "discussion". Your reasoning is actually getting to piersing right through the hole. In case you're interested, there's one Nicola Masciandaro, whose - well, academic - babbling you'll find, perhaps, somewhat inspiring. I'd love to see more of you writings online. There's not much on the subject of non-subject, in fact, and it's all the more interesting that you're pursuing it along the lines of anarchy (ism) and identity shit. There's shengtong thing also and all this stuff (nothing new except for the moon landing). I am curious what you will come up with. Thanks. Oh, and make sure to check out donna-anna.org for some weird conspiracy

there needs to be a greater discussion on how people perceive "individuals" and "the self". I always try to go for concision in writing, but there's always someone who's going to understand you.

When I read things like this it occurs to me: Who is the I who wrote it?

Also, anyone quoting Dawkins looses several degrees of slack.

Anyway, I have been reading some stuff going into this idea, that the individual has no independent existence and I tend to agree. I want to trouble the Egoist notions of the self as the center. One needn't go to all the trouble of brain surgery though. Of the cells in our body only about 1/2 are human. We carry many symbiotes with us. At the level of the body we are not an individual. And yet I'm pretty sure my alleles didn't tell me what to have for breakfast.

"This is the truest liberation possible, liberation from being itself"

Well, this is just bullshit. I want to be free in this world. I like being a being even if I am actually many beings. Language here is a big problem because I would say we are individuals and we are many (holobionts) at the same time. We are independent and interdependent. It is all one and it is many.

Richard Dawkins is a gifted geneticist. He's not worth much outside of genetics, but he has done incredibly important work within that field, some of which is relevant to this particular discussion. That is, the fact that alleles are the main actors within natural selection, not so-called individuals. That is the point of that part of the argument: in a material sense, individuals still are not the primary actors. The same goes for split-brain syndrome. Those are two actual examples in which the individual is not so. There are actual human bodies walking around today that are cloven into two. There are actual alleles that have been identified which increase the fitness of that particular gene at the expense of the carrier, i.e., green beard genes.

Lastly, I make the argument that nonbeing is ontologically superior to being for a reason. All desire is desire for union with the One because the One is wholly Other, indeed, it *is* the Other, the thing beyond language. It is the monstrous mother of Lacan, the ineffable Real we separate from upon the acquisition of language. Such desire for the Other marks all desire because it necessitates a binary rendering of Subject and Object, Self and Other, that structures and makes intelligible human language. A subject who desires something seeks that which is outside the self. Thus desire for anything else is desire for union with the Other, and union is becoming-One. So, all desire is really desire for the ascension beyond being, because upon synthesis of the subject and object, being itself becomes unintelligible as a construct of language.

You are trying to say the same thing as Buddhists, that there is no self. I dont think this contradicts stirners egoism, the whole purpose of his work is to dissolve religious and political ideas that are used to scare and confuse people.

And I dont think wolfie is referring to "atomized" individuals as you claim, hes just saying that communism robs people of their agency.

Now I think your point, that we as individuals aren't so in control as western capitalism wants to believe, is fully valid. I think children have no free will whatsoever, and as we grow older we gain a little bit but we still don't have very much.

Stirner didn't really speak much of individuals in his main work, he spoke mostly of "his own" and "ownness"

Yes, hopefully you were not reading my argument as aggressive. As I mentioned before, Stirner is actually a great influence on me -- I consider him an apophatic thinker continuing in the vein of Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, and Dionysius the Areopagite; the same vein I also place Lao Tsu and Nagarjuna in (they both had similar conceptions of the absolute.) Whereas Lao Tsu worked towards the tao, Nagarjuna the prajnaparamita, and the neoplatonists the One, Stirner makes a similar journey towards the Unique. I think some of his writing fails to support his points in places, but I attribute that to the fact he was probably not familiar with those previous thinkers, and so was essentially on his own -- he wasn't informed by the past 2,000 years of negative discourse.

according to this framing, you can either go into the direction of being absorbed by the monstrous mother (non-being), or go into the direction of extricating yourself from her (being).

you said “All desire is desire for union with the One because the One is wholly Other” right after you mentioned life, particularly alleles, yearning to persist at the expense of the rest. a process of differentiation and of cell division, a repetition of a process of separation.

so again you describe a process of union/nonbeing/nonliving, and a process of division/separation/being/living, and you mention “nonbeing is ontologically superior”.

so you’re one more in a line of contrived life-denying anhedonists, not satisfied with extinguishing your self (which is polysemic, polyform, and multifasceted) your selfish meme seeks to reproduce itself by persuading others that denying life and pleasure is some type of foundational cosmological truth that leads to enlightenment and freedom.

>according to this framing, you can either go into the direction of being absorbed by the monstrous mother (non-being), or go into the direction of extricating yourself from her (being).

Kind of. Those process of being arising from nonbeing is one of emanation, a process that is necessitated on nonbeing, and not exactly one made consciously or even willingly. It is how nous (logic) arises from a simple principle without distinction.

>you said “All desire is desire for union with the One because the One is wholly Other” right after you mentioned life, particularly alleles, yearning to persist at the expense of the rest. a process of differentiation and of cell division, a repetition of a process of separation.

Yes, I make the argument that alleles could be construed as the true actors in the social sphere. That does not mean I agree with the conclusion or even accept the premise. I reject a similar argument that I locate in Wolfi's work at the beginning of the essay. It's reductio ad absurdum. I actually reject the position that alleles are the "true" social atoms by pointing out that aggregates and assemblages exhibit emergent behavior, which no reductionist theory (whether Wolfi's or my hypothetical "genetic egoism") can capture. I must ask: did you read the essay, or just my comments?

>so again you describe a process of union/nonbeing/nonliving, and a process of division/separation/being/living, and you mention “nonbeing is ontologically superior”.

Yes, alleles (as semiotic entities) are not simplexes. They engage in semiosis and thus are differentiated into subject-object pairs. I do mention that nonbeing is ontologically superior, but I also contend that even that statement fails to truly grasp the Real / the One / that-which-is-beyond-being.

>so you’re one more in a line of contrived life-denying anhedonists, not satisfied with extinguishing your self (which is polysemic, polyform, and multifasceted) your selfish meme seeks to reproduce itself by persuading others that denying life and pleasure is some type of foundational cosmological truth that leads to enlightenment and freedom.

You fail to understand my argument. I'm no anhedonist, in fact I go out of my way to defend desire in this essay and others, which you should have clearly noted -- they are quite obvious themes. As I said, all desire is desire for the Other. Thus the pursuit of that which one desires is the pursuit of the Other, the Subject seeking the Object. That pleasure or ecstasy associated with the union with the Other (the attainment of desire) is that same ecstasy of henosis, union with the One. The point of orgasm is a "little death," the extinguishing of the Self, through the destruction of the subject-object distinction. That is the freedom and liberation I am aiming towards.

Before you respond again, it might do good to re-read the essay, perhaps annotating it, to make sure you can actually engage with my arguments and conclusions. It makes things go a lot easier, for the both of us.

"the ineffable Real we separate from upon the acquisition of language"

Cognitivist and psychodynamics theory tell a different story. The principle of reality comes before the acquisition of language, while the latter is a process spanning over a few years. It starts as the perception of the Permanent Object then later as the awareness of a self as opposed to the perceived Other. Or maybe you were assuming "language" in a broader sense, then okay, maybe... but this brings us back to the useless game of chicken and egg to prove a philosophical stance.

You're getting somewhere in the latter part of your comment, tho still imposing what you believe as are other people's desires upon those people. My true desire isn't exactly in reaching or even becoming one with this object (which in the Freudian sense means that I seek going back to my mother's womb), but to get over this subject-object binary as the dialectical resolution of this tension.

This can ever be possible by non-desiring, as far as I can tell, which doesn't mean a non-being, but rather a kind of "Being in itself", a naive being, emotionally divested, contemplative, comprehensive yet unwilling to consume. The Epicurian living. This is how people can assert their individual sovereignty over the realm of the physical, or *despite* the latter, without falling "prey" of their own desires.

This naive being can be responsive and responsible; they are just staying away from the trickeries of their own gratification routines.

"but to get over this subject-object binary as the dialectical resolution of this tension."

Nobody is denying a universal and fluid interconnectedness, but I'm not going to buy into any of this nonsense about how I just simply dont exist, or that I am not different from you

>Cognitivist and psychodynamics theory tell a different story. The principle of reality comes before the acquisition of language, while the latter is a process spanning over a few years.

I should note -- and this is entirely my fault -- that when I use the term "language," I do not strictly refer to the definition as put towards by descriptivist linguistics. I mean language as denoted by semiotics, that is, a sign-system. All living things participate in meaning-making on some level. So yes, I concede that the acquisition of spoken language must be preceded by a concept of reality. But in semiotics, "a principle of reality" implies a rudimentary sign-system because it implies the distinction of subject and object. We also make a distinction between the Real and reality. The latter is a symbolic model or construction. The former is the actual referent.

>Or maybe you were assuming "language" in a broader sense, then okay, maybe.

Oh, nevermind. Yeah, that's what I meant. Ha.

>My true desire isn't exactly in reaching or even becoming one with this object (which in the Freudian sense means that I seek going back to my mother's womb), but to get over this subject-object binary as the dialectical resolution of this tension.

I'm confused as to how to respond to this because the deconstruction of the subject-object binary is also what I am seeking. Can you elaborate so I can see more clearly where we actually disagree?

I was actually pursuing oneness by self-fartbong meditation at the moment...

Did you understand nothing of which you read? One cannot "self-fartbong!" The self that would become-One to fartbong is beyond-self until perfect attainment of desired union via-a-vis materialist conjugation. You will realize the utterings once you an-atomize and sever your semens from your underpants.

This is spot-on. 10/10. Although you should have thrown in some random Greek words, that would have really nailed it.

Haha,
so you say: I am dividual. But: I am not "the I" and in the act of saying I I am.
Stirner actually speaks himself for "loosing yourself" as a positive thing. Also he is actually negating language.
But: where do you speak here against Egoism?
You think you contradict Wolfi with you're banal thoughts?
Multiple Personalities are not contradicting the concept of self-creation out of nothing and of Egoism - which means: to be one in moment... But this postmodern crap is far behind the development of wolfi's thought i guess...

Its about knowing thyself in the "NOW" Its you, not the Other, its Dasein, as that beautiful man Heidegger tried to explain!

I agree with your sentiments.

Another bootlicker of mustachoed authoritarians, amirite?

"Know thyself" is a much, much older principle than this hack.

♡♡ hi, luvin' U, diggin' Hi Diggy honey ♡ Thx fo' the dashing Dasein self-awareness, kisses xxx♡

Yup, that about sums it up most succinctly, like my comment!
Time and Being, his masterpiece, got me into existentialism and bridged an interpretation with zen and Stirner's solipsism.

time and being was a short essay. being and time was "his masterpiece."
troll harder.

>Haha, so you say: I am dividual. But: I am not "the I" and in the act of saying I I am.

Yes. As I discussed with my analysis of the Creative Nothing.

>Stirner actually speaks himself for "loosing yourself" as a positive thing. Also he is actually negating language.

Yes, I also speak of this in the very essay you are responding to. He does not negate language. The negation of language is silence. He undoes some of his own language. He does not fully negate it.

>But: where do you speak here against Egoism?

I explain in the second paragraph what in particular I am critiquing.

>You think you contradict Wolfi with you're banal thoughts?

Perhaps, perhaps not. In particular I do contradict the sentiment expressed in the block quote at the beginning of the essay: that is, I do not believe the individual is the primary social actor. I reject the idea that there is an objective primary actor within the social sphere. I do explicitly state that this is not a critique of Wolfi. Very early in the essay.

>Multiple Personalities are not contradicting the concept of self-creation out of nothing and of Egoism

Did you read my essay, or are you simply responding to the title? Regardless, you obviously haven't given it a proper close read.

>Egoism - which means: to be one in moment... But this postmodern crap is far behind the development of wolfi's thought i guess...

How is any of this postmodern? If anything, it is premodern. The latest thinker I reference, other than Wolfi himself, is Stirner.

This is exactly the sort of "egoism" I'm talking about, good lord. Please read my essay again. Or don't. You're obviously as clueless as the guy who thought I was an anhedonist.

lol this entire essay is what happens when Marxists try to use nihilism to defend communization theory. The individual still gets shit on but it's ok because it's by 'nihilism'.

Yes, we are always the scapegoat for every religion and ideology ever believed in. We are pure clay in the hands of fools.

Man in the misery of his illusions and unsatisfied desires, wings his flight to different religions, and doctrines, seeks redeception, a hypnotic, a palliative from which he suffers fresh miseries in exhaustion. The terms of the cure are new illusions, greater entanglement, more stagnant environment. Having studied all ways and means to pleasure and pondered over them well again and again, this self-love has been found by me to be the only free, true and full one, nothing more sane, pure, and complete.

There is no deceit: when by this all experience certainly is known, everything sublimely beautiful and exceedingly amiable: where is the necessity of other means? Like the drink to the drunkard everything should be sacrificed for it.

This Self-love is now declared by me the means of evolving millions of ideas for pleasure without love, or its synonyms- self-reproach, sickness, old-age, and death. The Symposium of self and love.

O! Wise Man, Please Thyself.

Thou is poetically unleashed to explore beauty in all things and discover that for the individuated, revolution is a toxicology.

any written individualist, critical responses to this post-modern marxist masterpiece, please send to warzone_distro (a) riseup (dot) net

here you go, wz:

the individual is comprised of a multiverse of bacteria allowing for proper organ function > the skin is an organ of communication > communication shares an etymological root with communism > organs are found in cathedrals and are used to communicate music via pipes that are crisscrossed with axes and thresholds traversed by gradients marking the transitions and the becomings ala a body without organs to the listening flock in a unified harmony of worship. ipso facto, G-d is a communist non-individual and bacteria are the revolutionary subject, because science. praise! praise!

So much academic jargon to distract from someone (the author) simply saying they think individuals are part of a ' greater good'. Therefore, they can not be individuals at all. As if individual people are incapable of making decisions for themselves or self-endulging without the guidance of the "Commune" or collective. I swear these communization nerds act like religious fanatics who go to incredible lengths trying to prove a god. Some individuals just don't believe in or want to be part of your church/commune bra.

Communards will commute.

They always rely on mass infrastructure

just to make sure

their contrivance will endure.

But their machines are part of their

machinations, that are

equally

Leviathan.

Fuck their system.

I just don’t understand what this essay? Op-Ed? Proclamation?? Thesis jazz????? or any of the commentary that follows it (besides the sardonic humor— fartbongs? Jfc lmao) adds to me being free, here and now. What does this add to anarchy, exactly?

I guess I’m free to not read it, but perhaps I anticipate more from a site called “anarchist news”? I guess I expected it to be more...well, “anarchist” (related to anarchy) It mentions anarchy but it feels more nihilist than anything. And for “news” I just dunno how a bunch of dead philosophers can do anything for anarchy. Like, existing in a state of anarchy, not just waxing hella (cult-y almost!) poetic about it. (Or in this case, nothingness?? I don’t even know tbh)

A whole lot of debate on philosophical/existential stuff in needlessly academic language that really doesn’t, to me—the average piece of shit individual—convey much meaningful information. Granted, most of it I easily follow along with, aside from some of the more esoteric vocabulary—this all is enough for me to understand I don’t desire to pay attention to whatever the author’s alleged theory can offer.

To the author in particular: aside from checking for grammar, structural editing, inserting quotations, and consulting the thesaurus, how much time do you spend revising your work? Or do you make one draft and then publish it? Who is your target audience? You cover quite a few “-isms” while assuming the reader is familiar with them or their terminology. The academic language supplementing the existential stuff demands a lot from most people, as it is. And too much of all of that stuff makes it read clunky and take effort to process info, especially if the reader is unfamiliar with more than one of the concepts addressed. And though it presents itself as a thesis of sorts, it concludes in this weird pseudo-religious artsy commentary which is frankly a disappointing conclusion to a provocative title and a hassle of an essay.

Plus like what the hell is with the weird hyphenating things? Some I get for purposes of breaking down the meaning in the words but wtf is “in-fant” ? That shit reminds me of every single pamphlet on Woo like homeopathy or hydro “colonics” whenever they say “dis-ease” instead of writing disease. Weird.

I publish essays to @News. What are you, a cop?

Anyway, this essay has to be considered in relation to my earlier essay (Mortification of the Flesh, on TAL) and the one(s) that come after it (Refusing All Identity, not on the TAL.) They're standalone essays, but they all relate to the same fundamental idea about transcendence, anarchy, mysticism, and human freedom.

The main point of this essay is to critique the tendency for egoists to make the "Individual" a transcendent reality. Simply I reject the idea that there is a transcendent individual, only a historically contingent and fleeting one. If you're asking how it enriches your own freedom (which is a fair and important question to ask), I would say that reading the essay doesn't enrich your own freedom, but putting the concepts (rejection of a transcendent individual) into practice has the potential to. That is, "stepping outside oneself" as a practice to achieve a state of anarchistic freedom. "Stepping outside oneself" has a long tradition in Western mysticism, although it takes a wide variety of forms.

My project hinges on developing anarchism as a set of concrete practices, and not as an ideology or a worldview. More on that later.

As for the weird hyphening, it's actually somewhat of an academic thing as well. I talk a lot about negation in this essay and in all of my work. In-fant literally means "not speaking" in the same sense of "in-dividual" means "not dividable." So when I say "in-fant", I do not mean it in the sense of a child, but in the sense of something that does not speak. And "in-dividual" I do not mean the historically contingent individuals (me and you) but something that cannot be divided.

Lastly, as for my "academic" writing style and dealing with concepts that not everyone knows, well, I'm simply not interested in effectively dumbing down my work. And for the ending, the point is to drop rationalistic thought at the point at which nothing more can be said, hence, prayers, poetry.

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