Why is man so inclined to find and internalize spooks? Do these ghosts present to us our deep longing for something immortal? Something unchanging? Why do we find our own egotistic desires so inherently empty that we voluntarily seek something to cage them?
If spooks are so contrary to our own self interest why is our entire history devoted to their evolution?
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What exactly is a spook. Give an example and why it is inherently 'not true' or whatever spook means otherwise this is just bs word that means fuck all
Jesus, forgot this was "Veeky Forums" could you really not even skim a summary of The ego and its own?
Alright, you lazy fucks
>"Indeed, with the aim of concerning himself purely with his own interests, he attacks all "higher beings," regarding them as a variety of what he calls "spooks," or ideas to which individuals sacrifice themselves and by which they are dominated. Among the "spooks" Stirner attacks are such notable aspects of capitalist life as private property, the division of labour, the state, religion, and society itself."
Why is owning things I.e. Private property not self interest
A 'spook' is really just a concept adopted by an individual which places other interests ahead of that individual's self interest.
For example, not eating meat at a meal because you identify as a 'vegetarian' is a spook.
Not eating meat at a meal because you do not want to eat meat is not a spook but is instead you acting in your own self interest.
To take the point back again, not eating meat at a meal because you feel 'morally compelled' not to is again, a spook.
It is the ideology masking the intention that is the spook in these scenarios. If you want to do something, do it, if you want something, get it. It is as simple as that, but it is the transformation of these desires into ideological compulsions that creates the 'spook'.
>the state is a spook
tell that to niggas in prison if the state is a spook, stirner is a minor hegelian who is completely irrelevant everywhere on earth except Veeky Forums, so if anything is a spook it's stirner, so i ask u, stirnershitposter, why do u sacrifice urself to spamming stirner memes on Veeky Forums? is that really in ur self-interest? seems like stirner is the biggest spook of all.
Why isn't it self interest if you feel morally compelled to do it because you are self interested in doing what you feel is right
vegetarianism is stupid, nut ur point is valid, trying to separate man from his spooks is actually alienation, to be a man is to be spooked, animals don't have spooks, maybe spooks are built into the grammars in our brains, i don't know, but crying about spooks all the time is a spook
Of course it is still self interest but it is the compelling nature of the idea that is the issue. The idea of 'right' and 'wrong' are not inherent concepts, they are internalized ideas that were given to you which you now base your actions on. You have surrendered your base self interest to fulfill a compulsion to ideals which are not yours and never have been.
>if you want something, take it
But in the real world people will kick a fuss for doing this and the repercussions are usually not worth it. There are exceptions like internet piracy, so people just do it.
If spook is just saying that the structures we use for order are not concrete, it seems barely worth mentioning it's so obvious
yeah, stirnerites are like teens who just realized everything is a social construct aka spook, no shit, welcome to being a adult, moron.
>if you want something, take it
please don't mis-quote to build your straw man, the wording was very precise for a reason, 'get it', not 'take it', for that very obvious point you just raised.
baka senpai
I don't see why a sense of right or wrong is less inherent instinctually than self interest. You see the experiments on monkeys when they feel injustice and throw a tantrum for not being treated equally. I don't see why having an inner sense that something you do you ought not to or you ought to is not 'mine'
Put the word 'get' in the context where I mistakenly used 'take' and my point is the exact same
>research discovers marxist monkeys
oh yes i'm sure this will be reproducible and not some leftist anthropologist's fantasy
so to u "getting" some thing and "taking" some thing is the same? stirner is corny, but ur spooked
I think Marx is the one giving the rewards
>You have surrendered your base self interest to fulfill a compulsion to ideals which are not yours and never have been
I don't understand why this should be systematically avoided. Does Stirner actually suggests to, or is it just that the Veeky Forums memers are deriving some morality from his work?
If that context (like I said) yes. I get whatever I want regardless of anything but self interest, I take whatever I want regardless of self interest.
Show me the big difference
*in
*regardless of anything but
that's not in the wild u fucking tard, if there wasn't a cage there the other monkey would just take the grape from the other one
is english ur second language? if u can't tell the difference between get and take then u a stupid mf and shud just go watch tv for life
I didn't say it was in the wild. How Marxist of me right
So, you can't. Thanks for proving the point m80
while "get" and "take" denote similar concepts of attaining, "take" includes denotations (and therefore strong implications) of attaining from (and at the expense of) someone or something else. Pls, don't argue this point, you know it to be true, and in the future don't play stupid to win internet arguments.
you lose
as a sick mc I take pills for the ills I get
The spook is an idea that manifests itself in the physical word by manipulating the mind of the person it inhabits.
Example: National identity. You are an American and you think that because you live in that great country you have to do your best to be a good citizen.
Now you find yourself supporting local businesses despite them being more expensive with similar quality to foreign goods.
The spook has just made this person do something they wouldn't have normally done. Being "American" is not a real tangible thing and yet it has forced you to do something the same as if the government had just banned all foreign goods.
Instead of using police or military, the spook uses your own thoughts. The person might slip up one day and buy foreign goods, but they will probably feel bad and might even resent the goods themselves. This is not the person choosing for themselves, this is the spook controlling them.
It is important to note that it is not "wrong" to buy from local businesses if you actually want to, maybe the quality is better or something, but if you are being forced to buy there because of idea then that is "wrong."
In contrast with the other person, the person who does this has a simple reason for what they do. If this person were to one day buy foreign goods that were of the same quality as the American ones, they would not feel bad and they would not resent the goods unless there was a real reason for it.
Stirner is not telling people what to do, he is trying to let people take control of their lives. The spook is a meaningless nonliving thing that only serves itself.
This is not a difficult concept; please read.
>Why is man so inclined to find and internalize spooks?
He isn't it's called "education" and it involves a lot of psychological pressure on kids to make them internalize spooks.
Stirner says that respecting private property as a right or as a 'sacred' thing is a spook. Property is what you can seize and hold. Your property is what you can exclude others from using.
You don't understand what a spook is. Venerating the state as some sort of mythic thing over and above yourself is a spook. Being subjected to the states material power is not a spook
>take" includes denotations (and therefore strong implications) of attaining from (and at the expense of) someone or something else.
>get it off him
There's a context in which 'get' has a strong connotation that one might attain at the cost of someone.
So, yes, like I said it varies on context. I didn't say get and take mean the same thing all the time, I said they do in the context I used it.
Take the context. "If you want it, take it' or 'if you want it, get it' in both the only condition is that you want it and therefore you attain it.
Until you have an adequate answer to
Instead of trying to take the argument elsewhere, please refer to this
:)
Literally this. It's an ideology for the immature mind.
Any person of education and experience knows that there are real and true things beyond the individual that give us meaning. Principles that can be said to not only be true through reason, but our own intuitional and experiential experiences.
You might find ethics a spook, but it's absurd to denybthat given certain conditions, like other people experiencing suffering, that this is not something we should work to avoid.
Spooks is just a clever way for egoists to deny any social responsibility, and coming from an organism that is inherently a social being, the entire ideology become literally anti human.
Why is placing identity in essentially camaraderie and looking out for your own nation, not just a value judgement that sometimes you'd rather help the people of your country in a small way over and sacrifice your own money for that cause?
It's just some vague notion of empathy and can quite easily be related back to self-interest because they desire a sense of belonging and doing what they deem to be something nice.
>anti human
Very spooky indeed.
Stirner doesn't say we should work to avoid suffering. If you want to stop the suffering of others because it makes you feel bad then go ahead. But to justify it using ethics is spooky. Likewise stirners critique of both socialism and the rights of private property is because he believes the sacrosanct nature of property is a ghost in the mind as is appealing to 'fairness' or 'fruits of labour' which also buys into the spook. To be free as I you must repudiate the spook and seize the property for yourself not for socialism or humanity. He is a destroyer of ideology
No it's not. Read this; I don't want to explain it all again.
The state is a spook in that way, but when there are physical things that physically force you to do things, it is no longer a spook.
Stirner is about freeing your mind from things that can force you to do things. If you understand that killing a person will make you go to prison and then decide not to do it because of that, then it is not a spook. Likewise if you don't want to kill a person because it is messy, exhausting or you have no reason to and don't want to, then it is not a spook. That is your choice and it is not an idea telling you not to do it.
>Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that?
>By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and – has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.
Of course what you describe is less extreme than dying for your nation. What really is a "sense of belonging" though? You feel happy and at ease where you are? You feel you are a part of something?
These are all things in your own head, why should you have to pay someone for it?
The spook here is actually not having a sense of belonging. Since a person feels they don't belong they will do things to feel better. It is all in their head. If you want to feel that you belong, then just do it. What good is it really to help people your country? Does it actually make a difference? Why not support the other countries? It will do you just as good. If you support all countries or none, it's really the same thing. So why bother at all?
There is also one fundamental misunderstanding everyone seems to have: People think Stirner and people who think like him are sociopaths; they're not.
You can have friends and be nice to them, but it should be because you actually like them and you want them to like you. If you are only supporting a friend because of the notion that that's what friends should do, then it is a spook, but if you support a friend because you like them and you really want to help them, then that's just a choice.
A country is not a friend though. It's not anything more than a piece of land.
Did Stirner's notion of the spook prefigure the psychoanalytic notion of The Big Other? Are there any noteworthy differences between the two?
most people see that most of what stirner attacks is a fairly specific set of young hegelian philosophers. the spook first and foremost is fuerbachs essence of man which he believes is alienated into god in christianity. stirner says an essence of man above you does not belong to you and so is a spook leaving only the I. he then critiques liberal humanists who posit a liberal state for mankind again a spook. he criticises proudhons property is theft because before being able to steal property the notion of a rightful owner must exist which is another spook. again for socialists the proletariat or for man freeing himself in communal labour is a spook. to abstract from stirners specific intellectual milieuis a mistake. although is still useful for showing the absurdity of being a nationalist, a racist, deferential to the state, or a wage worker.
Ok, except many ethical arguments stand up to scrutiny. Just calling it a spook doesnt make it unsound.
You at least understand that, right?
The spooks found him.
shhh, everyone be very quiet, we are witnessing something very rare on this board. Behold, an individual who has read the source material, no sudden movements or loud noises or we might scare it off
Not that guy, but an ethical argument is not sound. If someone falls back to this is 'morally wrong' then someone else can ask why?
Morals are not solid. Easy example is to just look at other cultures and their different morals, but beyond that, there is no argument for any morals at all.
Why is human life valuable, why is life valuable?
If you want to make a logically argument in addition to your ethical argument, then that's fine. I'm sure there are many to be made.
Differing morals does not say morals do not exist. It either says some people are wrong, or morality is complex.
Moral can be solid, you just have to think critically. Why? It starts with a certain kind of knowledge, feeling. When you feel suffering what does it feel like?
That's how everyone feels it, from there we can make a lot of sound ethical arguments. Now if you want pretend like it's not bad, and that Nazis are as good as people who feed the poor, I won't be able to convince you, but if you are open to reason this makes perfect sense.
it prefigured the Super-Ego, Lacan is kind of a hack desu.
>most people see that most of what stirner attacks is a fairly specific set of young hegelian philosophers.
that's super fucking wrong, though... to abstract from Stirner's specific intellectual milieu is entirely correct because his central thrust destroys basically every human prescriptive value system.
>many ethical arguments stand up to scrutiny
name one.
>It starts with a certain kind of knowledge, feeling.
That's not a kind of knowledge and the way you feel about any certain decision cannot be abstracted into a linguaform value system, which is exactly what Stirner points out. If you rid yourself of spooks, you will literally end up acting in accordance with your feelings. But since your feelings are different from everyone else's and also different in every moment, you will act according to your feeling in every single moment (with possible abstraction/strategy over time as 'ego-performance', but always anchored in the present of experience [this is not directly in Stirner's text, it is a development of his position based on different secondary literature]). Listening to you feelings is NOT an "ethical argument", it is what you do 'naturally' in the absence of ethics.
Singer's argument about a drowning child.
It is a foundation of ethics. We all experience suffering as bad. That's what we know from our experience, and using language to share this. From there a build ethics with an obvious communal foundation, based in the human condition to which we all belong.
Nothing spooky about it.
Of course I would say the Nazis are bad, but that is just based on my own personal morals.
I don't think objective morality exists. If you make an argument to someone with similar morals then there can be an ethical argument, but you won't be able to convince most Muslims in the middle east that women deserve the same rights as men if you just keep saying it is morally wrong.
A logical argument is universal. If you base your argument on something subjective it will just fall apart.
>Singer's argument about a drowning child.
It's not a logical argument about the existence of obligation because it proceeds from societal agreement on the existence of obligation and the argument itself is only used to transform one commonly accepted moral judgement into another. It does not argue a moral judgement 'from scratch' utilitarian.net
>It is a foundation of ethics. We all experience suffering as bad
not him but have you never encountered any self-destructive individuals? rape fetishists? bondage?
even artists 'suffer' under the pressures of a creative fervour because they believe their suffering will give rise to something good. suffering is v underrated
It's so they don't have to think all the time and can do other things--and if only they thought stongly enough they would see they needn't think at all.
Where is the difference? If there is physical and mental manifestation of the spook, which precedes which?
Your fucking dense aren't you. The idea of the state and its material reality is obviously true. To let the idea control your actions is the spook
Spook: "I have to follow the law because that's what I ought to do,"
Not a spook: "I have to follow the law because if I don't then I'll get arrested,"
The difference is that the person in the first one is being kept in check by something they have in the head. The is actually nothing there and if this person wanted to they could drop it.
The second person is being kept in check by something that is very real.
They are very intertwined. To continue with the same example, many people join the military because of a spook, that spook being the idea of honor and duty to their nation. That creates an increasingly formidable perception of the state, which means that the state is more powerful physically and in your understanding of it.
When asking which precedes which, I would say that is completely variable. The spook of religion has no material basis, and yet it is powerful. The spook behind obedience toward police can be taught or bashed into you.
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Reading the arguments between dilettantes and pendants: priceless
You're wecome.
>pendants
I think you meant pedants.
Suffering is subjective in the sense that it's debatable or untrue.
All because you can't convince someone, doesn't make it untrue. Nazis are bad because their beliefs are built on lies, and they cause suffering. That's an objective truth. You can pretend that it's just relaitve, but you would agree it's never ok to smash babies against rocks for fun. Some things are just wrong and your beliefs have no bearing on it. I don't have to convince you, it's already true.
Sure, because disagreeing with the basis is unreasonable and essentially absurd.
Yes, I'm into it myself, but that's not suffering. The get enjoyment from physical pain, not the same as actual sufferif. That's why they have safe words, when it enters that realm they say the word to end it because that's the boundaries of consensual and enjoyable activity they set.
Not all suffering is meaningless either, but unecessary suffering is obviously bad.
I don't buy thus notion of suffering. Take someone like arnie who would on occasion throw up because of the pain he was putting himself through to bodybuilding. To say 'oh, well he chose it so it's not suffering' I think is rather contrived. There can be joy and suffering intertwined and to act as though it weren't a strange contradiction for neatness of word use is wrong imo
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Aren't spooks, spooks?
Who's to say their self-interest isn't achieved through spooks?
People follow spooks because it makes them feel good, internally - there is order in their world.
To follow one's beliefs is probably one the most satisfying things of a person.
Life itself is a spook.
Pain is not the same thing. We can also suffer for things as well. Nothing I said is contrary to what I said. But we experience suffering itself as bad, and there are levels of suffering so extreme and for no good reason that no Sane person would say it isn't bad.
>Aren't spooks, spooks?
Honestly have you read any of the numerous posts in this thread that define spooks or did you just jump in at the end?
>People follow spooks because it makes them feel good, internally - there is order in their world.
He uses the term spook rather than something like idea of ideology for a specific reason, its the "possession" aspect. Not all beliefs,views or ideologies are spooks even if they all have the potential to be so.
This comes out clearly when you find yourself suffering holding firm to this even when it ceases to aligning with your feelings. If following an ideology or idea is something that you can discard as you feel fit it is no longer a spook.
Think of the person who has made a spook out of the state justice, they live a happy a life with this view however say one day they or someone close to them is a victim of an arbitrary law or abuse of power. Think of the anguish and internal conflict.
Another example think of the woman who feels compelled to stay in a marriage with a violent and sexually abusive man because she believes it to be a core foundation of femininity or "what a good woman" is. Besides it served here well up until now why should it fail now?
>To follow one's beliefs is probably one the most satisfying things of a person.
Exactly, and you can not follow your own beliefs if you are possessed by spooks or chained to fixed ideas.
Values and beliefs change but spooks do not.
>Why is man so inclined to find and internalize spooks
You say find as if they have some independent existence and are not simply creations