I am a writer and independent researcher with an M.A. in cultural anthropology (please check out my socials for more info). Above all I consider myself an egoist cultural critic.
Check my links for more info.
I am an egoist because I believe that desire is an undeniable machine that can't be ignored through consciousness without distorting it (neurosis).
I am an anarchist - meaning I dont believe in the need for leadership, I detest conformity, and don't recognize social hierarchies as being organized by any kind of natural order. I also oppose the concept of property.
Everything is desire, and I believe that some people at some point desired comfort enough to dominate others. And this addiction to comfort turned into a whole system which then had to be defended ideologically. And now we got this mess...
...what bell hooks calls "imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy."
I was born into extreme physical disability. There was nothing so crushing to me as when I discovered that not only could I not enjoy the same level of 'autonomy' as the able-bodied, but that it was a deliberate choice on the part of my parents to give birth to me. What's more, the rest of you have this bizarre, hypocritical habit of dismissing me as an individual even as you embrace me as a ward.
@@John-ir4id so is the shit that is currently happening working for you? what exactly do you think should be done for you? what kind of philosophical framework allows for what is it you seek as a solution to the reality to youre living? I dont really have anything to respond to in what you said. so let me know and maybe we can have a conversation.
@@recurringparadoxmy position is I should never have been born because there is no solution for the life I have been made to live. Whatever autonomy I may have has been given to me by society, the very thing that saw fit to allow me to be born as I am. I despise it but cannot survive without it and am granted 'autonomy' only so long as I fit in the box that has been made for me.
@@recurringparadox reasonable as it is, try explaining it to family, friends, or doctors, all of whom have tried to solve my problem with my life by paying me, pitying me, or medicating me.
This video is incredibly well put. I understood everything I couldn't understand when I read Stirner a few years ago. I might have to revisit it. Union of egoists is the rad version of having friends pretty much lol, gonna start calling my crew like that.
Sounds like he's american--minus "cooperation " and spontaneous change. The mistake Stirner made was his belief that ego-tist life would result in the above--when it results in the very opposite! Stagnation and mindless, ruthless competitiveness. A fractured insect-like society adrift with competitive self-indulgent "individuals " who are completely suited more for War and death--or endless exploitation of the incredulous "ego" !
@@robertburatt5981competitive self indulgent individuals sounds like american capitalism to me. we have never tried egoism, so to say it wouldnt work is quite the assumption. i dont really care either way. It works for me.
Stirner is most b@sed memelord cause he trolled us all into keeping his sp!r!t @live in memes. His hyperstitious hyperego pales in significance to my sh!t posting
Cool video, great introduction and elaboration on the subject. For me all this complaining people have done in the past about union not being bound by moral or social laws, rejection of natural rights is the whole point or even a virtue of an egoistic union. Also, did you thought about any discord "union of egoists" server? Or any other community based around your channel?
@@Zapalo320 actually..........I have a Patreon which includes a union of egoists discord but its very small still. I do have some connections though, if you are interested.
Loved the video and I love that you covered the criticisms of the Union of Egoists concepts. I think you handled those really well. Personally I would rather be in a Union/Association of Egoists that what exists now. I really enjoy these essays.both in print and video.
@@recurringparadox cool, it’s called Leftists Fight Each Other More Than Capitalism. In case you’re interested I help out with the Lucky Black Cat channel and write an occasional script for the Mutual Aid Works channel. Different stuff to you but I’m not a convinced egoist nor have I read Stirner. Most of what I know about him comes from you. I am individualist and libertarian to the marrow though. I’d be interested to know what you think of my essay ‘Reclaiming Libertarianism’ and what similarities it has, if any, with your philosophy. There’s a reading of it on Mutual Aid Works or I could send you a link
great video! one note- please make it easier to read the quotes in future videos. i didnt like having to keep pausing, and the background images obscured the text sometimes.
Love this video. Have you ever explored Camus and his Absurdist philosophy? I think it relates very well to Taoism, Egosim and Deleuzian thinking as well.
@@willthryn497 i have. I could make a video essay about the similarities though. you can sign up for free on my Patreon and vote on the topics or you can pledge and choose topics for the weekly videos, if you are interested. I will keep this in mind either way though.
Great video. I think people tend to severely underestimate the economic implications of Stirners thought simply because to be an "egoist" needn't require you to adhere to any one economic system, which is generally true on it's face of course, but it is when the negativity in Stirners thought gets confused for neutrality that people most often get confused. There is no hypothetical or actually-existing global economic union that can be likened to what capitalists or communists desire that can exist without the flattening of desires to the point of sameness and the demanding of sacrifice to the collective (unless you suppose everyone secretly agrees with you), which necessarily voids such unions of their egoistic properties, which rules out any one "economic" configuration from being the one "right way" to do things egoistically when taking into account the plurality of subjectivities on this earth, hence there is no "egoist economics" complete with pre-figurated pat solutions for the worlds problems to point to. I've found that when people ask egoist critics of economies to provide a better alternative to their pet system, it is not too different to when proponents of the state-form smugly ask anarchists to point to an instance of actually-existing anarchy and are confused and dissatisfied when you list out a bunch of things that are obvious non-equivalents to a nation state in it's scale and scope, as what they're asking for is essentially an anarchist nation state, and in the case of egoist alternatives to conventional economic logic and ordering, they're looking for a rationally organized egoist form of productive alienation, an egoist non-egoism, as this rational ordering is a quality that has been taken by them to be obvious in any theorizing that has implications on society, as they clearly begin all their theorizing from the question of how they'd best go about making sure others do what they want them to do when they want them to do it. When having totalizing answers to all the worlds problems is posited as the necessary condition to your economic ideas being taken seriously, a rejection of such rational ordering is taken to be a neutral or "agnostic" economic stance that can be compatible with capitalism or communism or fascism or whateverism when it is in-fact a negativistic one, which in-fact does have real-world implications if applied to economic relations, for emergent non-ordered inputs have characteristics of their own which... while they can't necessarily be universalized in our descriptions of what exactly they can entail when put into practice on the ground-level, they can at least be identified as something radically distinct from all other inputs which answer to a societarian economic logic, where you're expected to follow and be held to the expectations of "the economy" or "humanity" or what have you. What is often missed in analyses that assert the economic neutrality (or irrelevance) of egoist insights is the fact that any kind of together-living implies some level of productive-consumptive circulating activity, and that if one it to suppose that such activity should begin from the smallest unit of organization possible so as to eliminate alienation (smallest unit meaning the "individual"), then communism and capitalism both get unraveled in the mix of such considerations, if not practically then at least conceptually in their static ideological forms, and if you want to practically do away with such systems of control, weakening the hold they have over you conceptually is step one to my mind, regardless of what step two is ultimately deemed to be for you on an individual level. "Economy" as a describable social phenomenon is a main-stay in any social formation so long as production and consumption continues to be more than a purely individuated process, so long as the circulation of goods is something that can be observed, whether egoistically or not. But the logic of economics which demands that rationally ordered inputs be given as a guaranteed part of everyday life is itself an abstraction with near infinite potential to enslave. This logic is often assumed to be a necessary quality of any economically relevant thought, which is exactly where this discussion gets completely lost in the sauce.
