Free Friends Forum: Abandoned To Ourselves--Naturalism, Humanism, Individualism Post #2
For me, Max Stirner’s debunking focus on what he termed “Spooks” or “Ghosts”—nonsensical (literally) Collectivist Ideas that take over and parasitize Human Minds from Gurus/Religions to political ideologies like Syndicalism/Communism, is the most important aspect of his writings.
Max like myself considered that the Mind of the Individual should be its sole, ultimate Authority. Every Human Being should claim their own (fallible, all too Human) Godhead and permit no idols. Max viewed all collectivist reified/deified ideas/ideologies as illegitimate sources of Authority that have resulted in the greatest destruction of individual Human Beings sacrificed to that Greatest Ghost, "The Greater Good/Gods". I agree.
The quotes and videos below capture for me the essence of his “Host No Ghosts” philosophy. Join me in turning your "Haunted House" into a "Human Home" where only Free Friends reside in voluntary, peaceful trade of themselves based on the Non-Aggression Principle--the only morally permissible "NAP" you require to awake from the Nightmare of History.
Max Stirner – Spookbuster (Video) Pierre Tru-Dank, March 7, 2016 1:49
MAX STIRNER
“Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse.
“Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my judgement, my bending the knee; in short, by my - conscience. Therefore take courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the leap, and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you devour the sacred, you have made it your own! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it!”
“All freedom is essentially self-liberation--that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness.”
Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own
The Ego and His Own (Ebook free download) by Max Stirner (Ebook free download—1844 Steven T. Byington translation). https://archive.org/details/TheEgoAndHisOwn
“With regard to freedom…every human being is also equally unfree, that is, we are born in need of AUTHORITY [my emphasis] and we create out of freedom a prison. The majority of individuals today are not able to solve this problem of self-responsibility, indeed they’re scarcely able to recognize and bear it.” Otto Rank, Modern Education
Max Stirner – Owness (Video) Kane B, July 23, 2020 40:34
5:45 “You are your own master, you are an egoist when you recognize nothing as an authority over you”
The Union of Egoists (video) Octipus Circus
WIKIPEDIA, UNION OF EGOISTS
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of egoists" (German: Verein von Egoisten) was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. A union of egoists is understood as a voluntary and non-systematic association which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state.[1] Each union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will.[2] The Union requires that all parties participate out of a conscious egoism. If one party silently finds themselves to be suffering, but puts up and keeps the appearance, the union has degenerated into something else.[2] This union is not seen as an authority above a person's own will, but a voluntary relation subordinate to the wills of its members. This idea has received interpretations for politics, economics, romance and sexual relations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_egoists
