How can individualists and egoists even advocate for individualism...

How can individualists and egoists even advocate for individualism, or seek to protect the individual from collective society when it is collective society that invented individuality and is the reason why individuals can exercise any degree of self-determination at all?

pic somewhat related.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art
ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/the-lack-of-epipen-competitors-is-the-fdas-fault
mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly-0
twitter.com/AnonBabble

viewing individualism and collectivism as oppositional is foolish, i think. they comprise a sort of yin and yang. you need both, the trying part is determining the proper ratio.

It's generally not considered normal to be drinking your mother's milk into adulthood.

The supreme irony of Stirner is that the ego is granted the ability to be an independent individual by the society he calls a spook.

They're not oppositional because the dichotomy is unnatural. The expression of individualism springs only from advanced development of society, a collective entity.

I'm not sure if this is bait or not

Individualism works better when most of the world believes in collectivism. You can take advantage of others, because they believe they should help you.

But just because individualism comes from collectivism, it doesn't negate it's value. You didn't even give an argument to it, you just said that since individualism comes from collectivism it is wrong

>Individuals can't exist without society

Individuals existed long before society. By definition, they had to: society is comprised of individuals, whereas individuals are not comprised of society.

The point was that the dichotomy is a false one, as someone pointed out. It's a dialectical relationship.

There are individualists who want to "abolish" society to protect individual rights, the rights that flow from society to begin with. We shouldn't fetishize the individual when the existence of individuals requires high society.

This also changes the idea of how we should exercise our autonomy/self-determination, taking advantage of other people damages society at large and thus reduces the ability for an individual to exercise their individuality.

We don't want the individuality of cancer cells.

Please point out this magical point when individuals existed outside of society.

Socialization begins in the womb and ends in the tomb, even in monkey tribes.

The greatness of a society is measured by how many parasites it can tolerate/bear. Do we find a whale any less impressive if it happens to be covered in barnacles?

Individuals and parasites both serve a purpose in any society, in the fashion of inoculation. Read Nietzsche.

It's not irony he outlines this very clearly.

Physical society is not a spook. The ways we think of it (patriotism, father land, tradition) are a spook.

And even then spooks can be participated in insofar as you know that they are spooks and and choosing to participate.

>Do we find a whale any less impressive if it happens to be covered in barnacles?

No, but a find a diseased person much less impressive than a healthy one. A well-functioning society would prevent parasite formation and re-socialize, or if absolutely necessary, eliminate existing ones.

But you don't choose to participate, the fact that you're able to choose at all is a product of the "spooks" themselves. The Ego is a spook by its own definition, it's a self-defeating idea.

I have read Nietzsche by the way, but Hegel is better.

>Hegel is better

...

You're confused due to a translation error.

First, what Stirner talks about isn't the ego in terms of the persona, but the Unique One, which isn't just someone's decitions, emotions, etc. but the collection of everything you have experienced and done; as such the Unique does not stand in opposition to society, but instead contains society as you know it.

Second, the Unique One isn't granted anything: it makes and takes without intention or permission, as a way to exist. It does this according to its might, not its right. You're thinking about Stirner in terms of psychology when he himself explicits the psychological ego isn't what he's talking about.

Third, Stirner advocates nothing--he advocates "himself", but that not as something distinct from "nothing". One can advocate for anything with Stirner's philosophy--it's simply a matter of recognizing it as one's property.

I wasn't talking about the psychological ego either, I was talking exactly about what you are.

The idea that the individual has this kind personal autonomy to begin with outside of society is a post-hoc assessment. To say that you ever had this kind of authority over yourself is like saying "If I pour my can of tomato juice in the ocean, I know own the ocean" when in fact, you just lose the tomato juice.

If you believe in might over right, the individual has already lost and always will, society will always be stronger than the individuals that it contains. Stirner's conclusion that the unique one even exists is something that can only occur because of the advancement of society as a whole permitting him the autonomy to do so. Why do you think tribal fuckholes aren't producing philosophers? Society is not developed enough to support individual autonomy to such a level.

>hmmm but what if the ego is a spook, never thought of that huh
You didn't read Stirner.

How can civilizationists and statists even advocate for civilization, or seek to protect civilization from the savagery of human nature when it is human nature and primitive tribes that invented civilization and is the reason the concept and ideal of civilizations even exists in the world at all?

The ego as the unique one is granted existence by society despite Stirner's protests to the contrary. Ιt is permitted to exist by society, and the only reason it has any self-determining power is because of society, not even physical society, the idea of this unique one flows out of late-stage societies' cultural apparatuses.

The claim that everything you've experienced and done somehow belongs to you is dubious too. All of these experiences and relations are with things outside of you. The ego once again makes a post-hoc assumption that the world around it belongs to it when in fact, the world and society brought you into existence and it owns you. The Unique one is not unique in that he is defined entirely in relation to other things, all of the components of the unique one are not of it's own creation, but come from outside of it, the same can be sad for every other entity.

>How can civilizationists and statists even advocate for civilization, or seek to protect civilization from the savagery of human nature when it is human nature and primitive tribes that invented civilization and is the reason the concept and ideal of civilizations even exists in the world at all?

Because we aren't, human nature has always tended towards social behavior since before we were even a well-defined species.

You're making a fundamental mistake with Stirner: his philosophy isn't one of possibility and generality, but of reality and particularity. You use his terminology to compare individuals and societies when not doing that is precisely his point.

Say you poor that tomato juice. You have interacted with the ocean. In that stuation, you have dirtied its waters, let's assume that was your intention, and as such have made the water your Own. Then you find the water becomes blue again. Does that mean you have lost ownership of the ocean? No, the view of the blue water is still *your* view, still your Own. But because you compare the red and the blue; then you imagine the ocean has an agency of its own, which is more powerful than yours. From this to sacrificing virgins there's only a few steps.

The problem arises because there's a fixation. You have two memories which you compare, in order to extract some sort of abstraction or truth. You are thinking in terms of possibilities and generalities. That's not how Stirner works. His ownership is an *active* ownership; things are only your Own so long as you can interact with them: he doesn't think you can lay claim forever to anything by just touching it once--unless you make others deluded, and then only so far as you can keep up the play. His might is not a matter of authority, it's not ownership in legal, ad futurum terms. The point is to quit equating your sensory perceptions to abstractions and inferations, and treat them as they come along.

As for the savages, they don't philosophize in the same way they don't speak English like we do, and don't have wings like birds do--so really your issue with them is that they're not more like your Own. A stupid issue: you only have your own petceptions of them to compare to. Likewise with society: saying the individual finds *himself* weaker than society, is based on *his* assesment.

Lastly, Stirner really isn't against society at all. He only speaks to perpetuate his ideas, which can only happen upon others hearing them and propagating them, ideas which are based on self-aware and self-honest interchange. It's pretty much the complete opposite of being autonomous in the traditional sense, the boundaries typically assigned to the individual don't exist in a fixed state to him.

Go away fauux.

>Individuals existed long before society
This is debatable. Before recorded history, did we recognize the "individual" in the world? Before a proper language we definitely didn't. The concept of "individual" we have now seems like a recent human invention, not something that has always been.

that makes no sense. Before society existed there were individuals. Therefore when society came about individuals made it up. Individuals make up the collective therefore it's individualism that allows for collectivism. Plus egoism and Individualism is only rational. Why shouldn't we expect people to act in their own self interest?

Furthermore, individuals can completely abandon society and continue to exist. Society is dependent on individuals, not the other way around.

>Before society existed there were individuals
see:
Total loss of social contact is a well known cause of mental health problems. Separating from society also reduces your autonomy as an individual as it becomes nearly impossible to do much more than subsist, you can't really exist as an individual when you're totally subject to the will of nature and can't exercise self-determination.

You could argue that there's no need to do anything but subsist outside of society. It's a chicken and egg situation. Self-determination only exists inside society to begin with, it's like saying you can't swim outside of liquid (no shit).

Why are we discussing this anyway? What are we trying to achieve or prove here?

I'm a theist, can you guys point me towards some works that argue against this whole individualist/egoist schlock?

Okay, I accept that. Individuals without society (which you seem to be defining as any group of more than one person, which I'll also accept) will suffer and face difficulty. So individuals deprived of society can still survive and subsist. But society deprived of individuals cannot. Society is composed of individuals and is therefore not only dependent on them, but ceases to exist without them.
So, back to OP's question, did society invent individuality? No, since society can't even exist without individuals.

The Ego and Its Own, by Max Stirner.

How can you advocate complex society if its root is a natural state?

>recognize the "individual" in the world

Recognition is not a prerequisite of existence.

It is when we're talking about language-formed concepts.

I've never been to Veeky Forums before and I'm pleased at how little this thread has degenerated into cancer despite containing arguments. Is this the least cancerous place on Veeky Forums?

>individuals can completely abandon society and continue to exist

Honestly this is a naive view. As much as I hate appeals to human nature, this much is clear, we are extremely social animals and highly adapted to work in groups and communicate with one another, to an amazingly intricate degree, and work off that.

Even the first people had societies, tribes where care was given towards its over all existence. Believing we're ultimately solitary, or being totally solitary and isolated is even a desirable and not damaging outcome in life, is pretty hokey.

>How can individualists and egoists even advocate for individualism, or seek to protect the individual from collective society when it is collective society that invented individuality and is the reason why individuals can exercise any degree of self-determination at all?

How does this whole overburdened sentence not boil down to "be grateful to your betters and stay in line"?

>Because we aren't, human nature has always tended towards social behavior since before we were even a well-defined species.

It certainly didn't tend toward agriculture, the written word, and the sedentary lifestyle that are all considered hallmarks civilization.

>It certainly didn't tend toward agriculture, the written word, and the sedentary lifestyle that are all considered hallmarks civilization.

It actually did. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art

>the art = sedentary lifestyle meme

You literally can't sit around all day when you walk around eating things to survive.

>You literally can't sit around all day when you walk around eating things to survive.

Do you honestly think that's what human beings did for over a hundred thousand years. It may be entirely speculative, but from the span of now to the paleolithic, this time frame was repeated many times over. Humans have existed for longer than you care to realize. While living was dangerous, ultimately it was survivable to create trends in Eurasian art by the upper paleolithic where all recoverable evidence of earliest human art and culture can be gathered besides tool making, arrowheads.

These people had to have had faith in something in order to keep themselves tight nit and together, and that required a certain amount of down time. There is no way you would get prehistoric amber jewelry, creation of pigments for cave painting, perfecting the ability to at the very least basically sculpt out of clay, or the Olmec heads from disorganized rabble.

It's more of a meme to suggest that humans were brutish uncommunicative thugs who hated each other's guts. The opposite was so, it had to have been otherwise they wouldn't have been as successful as they were.

>It's more of a meme to suggest that humans were brutish uncommunicative thugs who hated each other's guts. The opposite was so, it had to have been otherwise they wouldn't have been as successful as they were.

Is that what you think primitivists think about primitive life? Not even a primitivist btw, but moreover I never suggested humans were brutish uncommunicative thugs who hated each other. I said that the fact they made art doesn't prove that they had agriculture, the written word, or a sedentary lifestyle, which are generally considered hallmarks of civilization.

On the other hand, the evidence for religion and organized warfare in this period is comparatively solid IIRC and I hear about new 'earliest known warfare' finds about as often as I hear new 'earliest known art' finds.

You want things to be chocolate or vanilla but they're actually Neapolitan

>>Is that what you think primitivists think about primitive life

No. That's not even what I was suggesting. I was suggesting the direct opposite, and nowhere did I mention primitivism. The conversation was about human life's individuality being more important than its group cohesion and cooperation and communication.

>I said that the fact they made art doesn't prove that they had agriculture, the written word, or a sedentary lifestyle, which are generally considered hallmarks of civilization.

I never suggested agriculture, though everything else is highly debatable. They didn't have written word within our knowledge of pre-paleolithic time (at least that we know of), but they still communicated various ideas through art. Enough so even, to create common trends in art of prehistoric Eurasia that span hundreds, if not more than hundreds, of miles. It indicates that culture at some point was disseminated; perhaps a very large Eurasian tribe collapsed and word of mouth kept certain cultural ideas and relics alive. Important things happened that don't otherwise need writing to occur. All that was needed was spoken word, which fills an unrecordable, but parallel, void of writing.

And for "they didn't have a sedentary life style", it honestly depends where you're talking. Nowhere did I suggest that they had a permanent sedentary life style, but there had to be large periods of rest, these weren't hunters, they were mostly gatherers.

Besides which, a counter point would be the ten thousand year old Olmec people who's craftsmanship was insane and we know less than shit about them. They were carving fine art like pic related as megafauna like the mastodon were almost all but extinct but still existent as southward as Florida. It honestly all points to how importance on communication hasn't at all grown, just changed.

I don't see where you disagree with me.

>egoists
>individualists
That's something radically different, my friend. It's the difference between the Einzelne and the Einzige.

this

>How can individualists and egoists even advocate for individualism, or seek to protect the individual from collective society when it is collective society that invented individuality and is the reason why individuals can exercise any degree of self-determination at all?

Because collective society is distinct from the spook of collective society.

I'm a social person who is active in his community because it brings me joy, security aligns with my natural empathy. Ive made society my property.

Its important to remember that individualism can be just as spooky as collectivism

There is no "collective" or "society" in reality, just individuals.
A society is made of individuals, just like a forest is made of trees.
Protecting the collective and sacrificing to the collective accomplishes nothing but give power and goods to those who claim to represent said collective, aka the government.
To protect the individual IS to protect the interests of society at large, as opposed to the imaginary god of "the collective" (which in practice is the government).
That's because a happy society is made of happy individuals.
Seeing society as equal to "the collective" and the good of its people equaling collectivism, is your first mistake,
thinking that collectivism can accomplish anything is your second.
It's a false god and a false pursuit.
It's something that only makes sense in theory, but which when actually applies only causes disaster.
That's why the most individualist societies (and yes that is not an oxymoron) have been the most sucessful and the best ones to live in.

The point I tried to make with this thread was something similar to this, but without the libertarian autism implied by your picture.

The problem with libertarianism is it doesn't have a mechanism of preventing antisocial behavior, which is something that long-term harms individual freedom and autonomy. The proper society fosters individual autonomy while discouraging the use of that autonomy for antisocial ends, in order to protect that autonomy from being lost due to societal degeneration.

Techno-platonist transhumanist republic now.

>The problem with libertarianism is it doesn't have a mechanism of preventing antisocial behavior
>Techno-platonist transhumanist republic now.

>The point I tried to make with this thread was something similar to this, but without the libertarian autism implied by your picture.
Yeah, no, the only thing you tried to make is bait, and I'll give you credit for getting me to fall for it.
But I shouldn't bite to someone like you anymore.
Here's your (you)

How is this bait?

What is so ridiculous about my stance? Techno platonism was an obvious meme.

A species is more real than any one specific instance of itself.
There has never actually existed a successful "individualist society" (yes that is an oxymoron). The most historically successful societies have also been the most chauvinistic, liberalism when it starts getting taken seriously only leads to decadence and collapse.

Libertarianism (and its philosophy and economics) is all about union busting, undoing the reforms of the New Deal, and rendering the state completely impotent, thus removing the barriers that impede finance oligarchs from absolute control of the market.

Aside from techno platonism, it's the fact that your point easily dismisses libertarianism with claims that are vague, meaningless, and easily dismissed themselves.
Either do you suffer from a lack of self-awareness or you are posting bait.

>The problem with libertarianism is it doesn't have a mechanism of preventing antisocial behavior
What is even the point there? What "Libertarianism" are you even referring to?
"Libertarians" generally believe that private property should be protected, and people should be prevented from killing each other which does count as antisocial behaviour.
But in general individualism doesn't lead to the end of individualism. You'd have to back that up.
The "societal degeneration" IS collectivism
You don't get to the end of individual liberties without collectivism first taking over the minds of people. That simply can't happen.

The end of individual freedoms always happens because of collectivist thought.

>The most historically successful societies have also been the most chauvinistic,
No, that's simply wrong, and I don't even get where you got that idea.
The west has been the most individualist culture and that individualism has made it consistently the most powerful force in the world, starting from the roman empire, the english empire, colonialism, and now the american empire.
Other cultures have either adopted the ways of the west or they have become third world countries.
Japan is a perfect model.
It had a culture as far from the west's as is imaginable, and it managed to adopt our ideas to a certain extent (while never abandoning its culture).
That led it to prosperity.
On the other hand, collectivism and government control is what led to the end of the soviet union.

>liberalism when it starts getting taken seriously only leads to decadence and collapse.

>le right wing evil liberalism meme
No it doesn't. That's either you believing that what american "liberals" call liberalism is what they call it, or simply historical ignorance.
The roman empire collapsed because of collectivism and the growth of the State. That was its decadence and that was its collapse. The welfare state, the growing military, the subsequent inflation and the end of the free market is what led to the end of it.

>Believing we're ultimately solitary, or being totally solitary and isolated is even a desirable and not damaging outcome in life, is pretty hokey.
It would be hokey if it was even remotely what I said. I never said that being deprived of society is ideal. I admitted that individuals deprived of society will suffer and face difficulty The question still stands: which is more dependent on the other, society or individuals? Individuals can continue to exist without society, but society doesn't exist without individuals. If that's true, then society couldn't have invented the individual, and it must have been the individual that invented society.
The same goes for individualism. In politics, a society that denies individualism and upholds collectivism has to keep itself alive using force. Larger governments that enforce more extreme variants of collectivism have to go to greater lengths to deny the individual. Public executions are common.
Now I don't mean to get into murky water here but to illustrate my argument I would point to 20th century socialism and the rise of the welfare state. Socialisation and collectivisation kill society. This is because society depends on the individual and not the other way around.
Lastly, the example that you use of tribal society proves my point. You can see that society started extremely small and is now extremely large. Not only in population, but in government size. But did the "first" people live in tribes?
From the evolution standpoint, no. The further you go back in human history, the more obvious it is that the individual existed before the collective, and that the collective arose out of the individual. The only way around this is to draw an arbitrary line in history between "animal" and "human" that just so happens to coincide with the invention of the tribe.

>Libertarianism (and its philosophy and economics) is all about union busting, undoing the reforms of the New Deal, and rendering the state completely impotent,

This is the lie the left-wing has sold people for the past 70 years, yet it is nothing but that, an empty lie that falls apart once you consider how things actually work in reality.

The big corporations only exist with - and because of - the big state.
They love big government because they are very much like it, big, bureaucratic, and useless.

In a free market, no company actually has power, because they have to compete and cater to their customers.
They can't do what they want, because their very existence depends on pleasing people who buy their products.
Corporate oligarchies exist because the government controls the free market, making it less free.
This status leads to an incentive for companies to corrupt the government and make sure that, if the government regulates the market, they do it in their favor.
Corruption inevitably happens in this situation, and trying to "get money out of politics" is nothing but an impossible pipe dream.

Regulations always end up benefitting the big corporations.
That's why you see them rally behind big government people all the time.
If libertarianism was truly a way for them to gain power, they would be promoting it.
Yet compare big government with libertarianism and you'll see how disproportionate the support for the latter is among the big corporations, who wouldn't exist without government control of the market, as they would be destroyed by competition before they grow that big.

You are merely drinking the kool-aid they want you to.
Higher taxes are also great for big business, because they know they can always avoid them, while smaller competitors can't.
That doesn't mean they're always in favor of more taxation or that the support every regulation. It's just more often than not.

Natural monopolies do not exist.
If you look at all monopolies in the world, you'll find that they exist solely because of governments.
That's because only governments actually have power.
In a free market the only powers are market forces, which nobody truly controls.

It's the same for markets where you only have very few big companies, they can hold their cartel because of government support.
Look at the media industry.
The pharmaceutical industry.
Don't they have something in common?
IP, also called "intellectual property" is central in their business.
If it wasn't for the government imposition of the authoritarian concept known as IP, do you really think big pharma and big media could survive or compete with smaller entities? (for example the independent media)
Government subsidies of all sorts help big pharma too.
ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/the-lack-of-epipen-competitors-is-the-fdas-fault

And ISPs crush small competitors with constant lawsuits over patents.

Wherever you see oppression, there is government intervention behind it.

Also read this:
mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly-0

I think that might be the Overjustification Effect. They're conditioned to receive rewards for their behavior, in the broadest sense - society provides them validation. When the rewards stop then so does the behavior; because in their head the reward was the only point of the behavior.

That might be true of today's internet culture. They're spoiled with attention they can get anywhere. Needing encouragement and attention to do anything. If they were trapped alone on an island, they wouldn't even draw in the sand to PASS THE TIME because nobody could see them.

>Individuals existed long before society.

The prospect of living according to the principles of Individuality was a death sentence up until a century ago.