Animalism, Earthism

The prodigal capitalist revealed.

Serendipper

Why do you insist I simplify it?
You can prefer something, and identify with it, and have reasons for preferring and identifying with it, without thinking it’s objectively superior.

You’re right. Good point.

So I guess he wouldn’t have minded, then. But I wonder if, in this regard, he ever questioned himself (or ever made the connection).

understandable. he does have that effect. we take offense at anyone who calls our deepest thoughts and most pressing philosophical concerns, a menagerie of nonsense and spooks. we want to take something seriously, want to believe we can find some cause external to us that might give us meaning so that we can temporarily lose ourselves as the ‘creative nothings’ that we really are (according to stirner), and escape the nihilism that consumes us.

there probably hasn’t ever been a thinker as honest as stirner; that’s what’s so offensive to the involuntary egoist, who on account of his fear of his own nothingess, cannot live without lying to himself and others. what’s so impressive about stirner is that he ‘called out’ everything philosophical that was to develop south of marx, long before it happened. he was the absolute antithesis of marx’s collectivity and morality, a kind of private eye that got a look behind all the individualisms and egoisms that would evolve and parade around as ‘moral’ systems. especially capitalism; the quintessential farce in this respect. so in a way stirner was like the priest that the capitalist must confess to if he is to come clean. the capitalist has everyone else fooled, but not stirner… not that master psychologist and magistrate of philosophical honesty.

somewhere else i talked about how stirner and marx represent the only two possible wings of political theory. and stirner is incredibly important because he is the shining symbol of conservatism (jakob had it backward in some comment elsewhere), which is nothing more than an anarchy of egoism with no view toward a collective and truly moral state. this being the case, the conservative is the epitome of the involuntary egoist; he covers his immorality up by telling himself he cares for something more than his pocket - humanity, freedom, liberty… spook narratives he occupies his head with, ‘causes’ he tells himself he is involved in so he can avoid having to face his own transparency.

in the end you might say there are only two types of people. nihilists-truthers, and nihilist-liars. the first type is the creator of morality precisely because he knows there isn’t any morality. he has to fill this void, and to do so honestly, properly and completely, he has to shift to the other side of that spectrum and embrace the marxist collectivity. the second type is immersed in a tripartite lie; the first, that there is morality, the second, that his cause (capitalism) is this morality, and the third, that he becomes moral in what he does when he takes up his cause.

so the capitalist is so perfectly nestled in this series of lies that he tells himself that to come out of it would scare him to death… and this is the condition of the involuntary egoist. the first step out is to come clean and get washed. then you can begin doing political philosophy proper. until then, one is a thug at best, or a worm at worst.

this is the wisdom of the grand master max; that deadly philosophical marksman sniper. dostoevsky and nietzsche were great existential soldiers, sure, but they couldn’t shoot like max. no sir.

There isn’t any morality? Based off of logic there is. Since existence at its root is agony, morality spawns out of such. Objectively and subjectively.

Nihilism? Really? The meaning of life is Life, to evolve and experience, sorry that isn’t enough For some, quite sad to be honest. If one actually TRULY believes life has no meaning then what stops them from ending their life which has “no meaning” other than cowardice? They should take a trip back to Valhalla don’t you think?

We should have a half socialism system, half of our system focused on necessities and the other half as capitalism for luxuries, the un-needed things that we use as comforts or pleasures. We need to educate people in individual thinking and if they aren’t educated we should take their vote away, sorry not sorry. How can you fix an issue if you have a mass of people who don’t even understand what the issue is?

First step, diagnosis. Which they obviously don’t know how to diagnose, so why do we give them this sense of “false winning” when they’re losing and just too ignorant to see such.

what i mean is, there are descriptions for morality, but no prescriptions; there is no moral theory that can get around the naturalistic fallacy without appealing to something transcendent to humans that sanctions concepts like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. and even if there were, one is still not obliged to follow such rules.

for an all-encompassing prescriptive theory of morality to exist, moral philosophy has to be greatly simplified and narrowed down to a few basic premises. they would be utilitarian in principle, and hedonistic in practice, translating into the axiom: the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest amount of people. this is the only way you’ll ever get around all the conflicts generated by moral and cultural relativism. and such an all-encompassing morality needs to be forced on the world… precisely because of man’s inherently selfish nature. in the context of my above post, i’m explaining this problem in terms of polarities that are represented by both stirner and marx. one approaches one or the other, absolutely, and there is no ‘middle ground’ here. anything short of the marxian collectivity will express only a variation of stirnerism, which is what the world should be wanting to avoid if it wishes to establish a solid foundation for morality.

now i’m not saying the world has to do this… only that if it doesn’t, it will never turn moral theory into a prescriptively objective subject.

few things are more irritating than watching clumsy philosophers fumble around with moral theories that have no lasting substance, or try to invent new, designer moral theories that are only the residual left-overs of moral theory already demolished by positivism. you might say the age of moral ‘philosophy’ is over. morality now belongs to the sciences. the philosophers blew their chance.

to be clear, ‘nihilism’ isn’t actually a philosophy… but more of an anti-philosophy… as it denies many things philosophy has claimed to establish. it is an attitude of rejection, but certainly not an attitude of meaninglessness and valuelessness. people cannot actually have such attitudes; everyone gives/perceives meaning, and everyone values something. instead, nihilism has become a strawman that angered philosophers direct their nervious energies at when their philosophies are rejected. so anyone who does not subscribe to the philosopher who believes he has formulated a GUT (grand unified theory) of everything, will be deemed a nihilist and will represent an imaginary enemy toward which the philosopher can direct his energies. in sociological terms you could say that the nihilist represents the weberian ‘out-group’ of the philosophical class.

now i call myself a nihilist because it is the most appropriate designation to have in the environment i find myself in, it seems. i don’t deny ‘value’ or ‘meaning’, only the incredibly inconsistent, obscure, ambiguous and most often nonsensical material that describes what passes as ‘philosophy’ in such an environment that i find myself in.

nietzsches defines two types of nihilistic attitude; the active and the passive. the active nihilist is engaged in the assault on such philosophical error, while the passive nihilist simply resigns from it. but neither are meaningless or valueless. remember, these are just narratives philosophers who have been rejected, use to describe those who reject them.

the thing to remember most of all is this; nature is non-teleological, so there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to live, neither for individuals or entire peoples. there are only different ways to live, each producing their own sets of problems and solutions. so there is no grand ‘ideal’ way to be, which is so often the mistake that philosophers make when assessing civilization. the error usually consists in the indicative mood of the thesis; ‘civilization needs to be like x, or it is wrong, or [insert whatever pejorative adjective].’ the problem here occurs when the philosopher mistakes his hypothetical imperative for a categorical imperative… and this consists of ignoring the continuum that human evolution is, and prescribing historical imperatives to the entire series rather than only to a specific stage in the series. in other words, because human beings are changing, so too do the imperatives of what is ‘progressive’ or ‘regressive’ for them, change.

the ideological philosopher - especially the conservatively minded - gets ‘stuck’ in this error of reasoning and attributes as necessary, certain historical contingencies which happened to exist for some stage or another, … and then uses such standards and criteria to assess the health and the progress of the stages that follow… which are generically different and not subject to the same analysis.

take for example homosexuality. at stage x, it was an unheard of abomination in culture. then at stage y, attitudes toward it change. now ask; is it truly dangerous to civilization that this change of attitude occured? if you answer yes, you need to explain how. you’ll then set out to produce any number of pseudo-scientifc philosophical narratives that make all kinds of unsubstatiated predictions about the threat of homosexuality to mankind. and what would be driving this effort? certainly not the facts you think you’re producing, because there aren’t any. it’s rather your attitude and the anxiety you experience at this kind of historical, cultural change, that drives your protest. of course, one can certainly disapprove of homosexuality (as i do… felt like i should say that…lol) if that means ‘i wouldn’t do it’, but one could never state as a categorical imperative that not doing it is necessary for the ‘progress’ of mankind.

see where i’m going here? ideological wars are the expressions of the ‘sigh’ of an age giving way to a new stage of man. the nihilist’s role, as the active type, is to be there to shoot down the philosopher who steps in and declares ‘this is wrong’… and the trained nihilist has a whole arsenal of weapons - epistemological, metaphysical, scientific - to do this with. a nihilist proper should be like a ninja from the school of historical materialism, i say, because it is largely the fault of ‘philosophy’ that history is creeping along so slowly.

for some, evolution is simply to slow, man. i have a higher intellectual metabolism and see farther and faster than many. such a radical being could only be thought of as a nihilist, a completely different species, to the intellectual dionsaurs still dancing the de anza jig, that prevail today.

Birds that fly high look small :wink:
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities :wink:
Some people are so far behind they actually think they’re winning - Junior Soprano

The new “Spirit of the Age: Gain Wealth, forgetting all but Self” — the vile maxim of the masters, which they naturally sought to impose on their subjects as well, knowing that they would be able to gain very little of the available wealth. chomsky.info/nothing-for-other- … ed-states/

I’m learning a lot here, Pro. That Stirner fella thinks a lot like me:

Stirner argues that individuals are impossible to fully comprehend. All mere concepts of the self will always be inadequate to fully describe the nature of our experience. Stirner has been broadly understood as a proponent of both psychological egoism and ethical egoism, although the latter position can be disputed as there is no claim in Stirner’s writing in which one ought to pursue one’s own interest and further claiming any ought could be seen as a new fixed idea. Stirner may be understood as a rational egoist in the sense that he considered it irrational not to act in one’s self-interest. However, how this self-interest is defined is necessarily subjective, allowing both selfish and altruistic normative claims to be included. Individual self-realization rests on each individual’s desire to fulfill their egoism. The difference between an unwilling and a willing egoist is that the former will be possessed by an “empty idea” and believe that they are fulfilling a higher cause, but usually being unaware that they are only fulfilling their own desires to be happy or secure; and in contrast the latter will be a person that is able to freely choose its actions, fully aware that they are only fulfilling individual desires as stated by Stirner: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner

So, the moral absolutist vs the sensiblist; the righteous vs the pragmatic.

Guess I don’t need to bother reading him; I am him lol. Good to know I have allies.

Man that is concerning that capitalism is juxtoposed with necessity and equated with luxury.

The only possible unique definition of capitalism is exploitation of workers. That’s it. Capitalization on X is the exploitation of X. “I capitalized on this situation. I exploited this situation to my benefit.”

A worker co-op where workers are co-owners of the means of production can peddle the goods they produce in a 100% free market.

A worker co-op can make a profit and invest those profits with the expectation of making more profit.

The ONLY thing that doesn’t exist in a worker co-op is the exploitation (capitalization) of the worker by the capitalistic owner of the means of production.

Therefore, capitalism = exploitation. Period. Full stop.

“But but but…” No buts! Don’t believe the propaganda.

What? You thought the most refined propaganda system in the history of the world wanted you believe socialism is good? Why do you think it’s such a bad word? How can they remain in control if they can no long exploit people for profit? How can wealth be concentrated in a free society without propaganda demonizing your very salvation? :confusion-shrug:

Champions of capitalism are cows defending the slaughterhouse.

If any of the many millions of apparent Socialist sympathizers really wanted a the sort of equal distribution of profit as advocated by promethean, then they could just go about and do that. Nothing stands in the way of people founding companies that distribute the profits equally among the workers.

We can ask why does this not happen?
I see three reasons immediately

  1. once push comes to shove they decide against sharing the profits
  2. they’re not capable of creating a company which enough people want to buy from
  3. they think the only proper socialist way is violently taking ownership of other peoples work

As always the only problem capitalism ever faces is that of monopoly.

Monopoly always leads to fascistic tendencies, and in the end to the Socialist Hail-State, which always immediately collapses into a criminal oligarchy, from which a kind of Napoleon, Caesar or Putin can emerge. Usually no such figure emerges, and the nation falls into complete decay, until foreign powers take it apart.

Trump is no such figure, mind you. He is American.
America is writing the future, not basing itself on anything that came before it. It wants none of the dank past, maybe it wants a few of its treasures but not enough that it clutter the view on the road.

Monopoly is what might happened to the Dinosaurs, rather than a meteor.

They had no competition so they could eat too freely, so they at everything and then starved, after first tearing each other apart - the species consumed itself after it had consumed all the rest.

This is btw what islam prohencizes will come as the end of days; a monster that grows by drinking water drinks all of the oceans and then comes ashore and eats everything.

Capitalism:
Making something that a lot of people want and getting powerful because of it. Using loans or other peoples money to get there is the usual way.

The rest: (crime, and all other isms)
Taking the invention of another and using it to control people.

Whats gonna happen is a new thing will be invented to make markets on a whole other level.
Its the cornerstone of civilization that still has to be invented.
Xept its been invented.
On paper.

Too costly for its inventor to finance.

Capitalism is right now a caterpillar, treacherous little creeper and yet it harbours the butterfly. Renaissance is the path.

I see there are still people here who have the idiotic insensitivity to be against Trump. How is that possible after the past weeks?

Is this just propaganda or what?
I hope so.

I like the concept of forbidding peeing while standing up.

They should also forbid it for women though. It doesn’t happen much but I saw it once in a fucking public street in Rome. A lady just lifted up her dress and went to work on the cobblestones.
No. I can tell you. No good.