So, is family a spook? If so, in what ways?

Whether you like it or not, you are linked to your family by the strongest bond which exists, the bond of blood.

You don't have to like your family. But you can never truly dissociate yourself from them. Because they're you (literally).

why are you even thinking about this? You baby brain retard.

>should i love my family
>should i kill a random person on the street
>should i cut my own dick off

The idea of family that is prevalent in the west (the 'traditional' family) grew out of the bourgeois (I mean this in a literal sense, the urban-dwelling middle class) arrangements of the late 17th and 18th centuries, in parallel with new Enlightenment ideas about consciousness, experience, childhood, society. In France, for example, the 'family' in the aristocracy functioned much differently; children, when born, were sent elsewhere such as to wet-nurses in the country side and returned when they were older (partly because it was thought semen spoiled breast milk). The purpose of the family was to secure heirs and nothing more. By contrast, the Enlightenment philosophes theorised that the moral and intellectual health of the nation depended on close family ties (later commenters suggest this is a way of navigating the alienation inherent in contract societies), especially when it came to children. Swaddling and wet-nursing were seen as 'unnatural'; instead children were to be breast feed by their mothers and allowed freedom to move around. This was 'propagandised' in the arts to an extent as well. Apart from the writings of Rousseau to the moral drama plays of later men of letters like Diderot, there was also a move to depicting these new familial models in painting (the rise of genre scenes occurs at this time), including happy breast feeding mothers and close-knit Third Estate families. Even Marie Antoinette is depicted as a loving mother in a portrait.

So it's kind of a spook which partly arose out of anti-monarchical fervor in 18th-century France and possibly also to give us a sense of belonging in a society run by contracts with strangers. And the Enlightenment thinkers may have taken the argument of the 'natural' too far but there's still some worth to loving your clan, just as there is worth to other social arrangements with people you share a residence with or whatever. I'm not convinced there is an argument of ethics to be made though.

Foucault looks rapey af in that pic. Like he's fantasizing about all the things he could do Chomsky's butthole after the debate.

Yes, just because you happen to be closely related to someone this does not make you obliged to love them. You should only bond with your family as far as you want to, if you genuinely like them or if a relationship of mutual-support would be beneficial. Otherwise you're just wasting time with these people for totally arbitrary reasons.

> But you can never truly dissociate yourself from them.
Yes you can.

All contracts written in meat are Satanic.

>Jesus said: He who doesn't hate his father and mother cannot be a disciple of mine. He who doesn't hate his brothers and sisters and bear his cross as I do will not be worthy of me. - Gospel of Thomas

things are only spooks if you do them because they've spooked you. havig a family bond when you hate your father because society demands it is being spooked. loving your parents because you love them and having a relationship with them isn't.

This pretty much. But really, by Stirner's logic, if you associate with your family as peers for your own pleasure it ceases to be family as such and becomes instead a union of egoists with incidental blood relation.

Does he look like a goblin?

I wasnt to gass foucault

BBBBBBBBBBRRPFTPFTPFFFTPRBT

Is Stirner's philosophy Satanic? It's a fair question to ask, I think.

I think his argument against "spooks" is life-affirming so yes.

>Should I love my clan, lit?
That depends: depraving you of love, unsupportive and/or abusing you mentally/physically? Holy fuck, of course, that's out of question.

If not, then I don't see any reasion why you should. Well, maybe you're a nihilistic fuck and want to leave, and that is also okay. But never ever crawl back to them like a spineless shit then. You either make a clean cut or none.

You're cherrypicking like a madman, and you know it.

Not everything life-affirming is satanic.
Nietzsche for example is life affirming (the highest form of it, in the concept of Eternal Recurrence) but opposed to materialism, which brings him far away from satanism.

>parents fuck
>mom gets pregnant
>dad breaks his ass providing for mom and you
>they raise you to adulthood and send you out into the world and are there as "scaffolding" should you need help

If you were in a non-degenerate family this would be your life. You tell me if these people are closer to you than a whore you fucked when you were 25 or a friend who's sticking around because he's bored.

Not OP here, but my family is even worse than some whore I fucked and some friend to hangout with because he's bored. I don't have a job, and am a NEET since I finished my Voluntary Year of Social Service after school. I don't want to study and not a minimum wage job, just an apprenticeship but cannot get one for more than two years now.

What to do? Kill myself? I'm really on the edge currently since my family hates my guts since I was born. Always giving me the fault for everything and never acknowledging what I accomplished (besides being a NEET).

There's a section in The Ego where he goes over this. You could answer this yourself, my property.

Your argument is literally

> In France, for example, the 'family' in the aristocracy functioned much differently
>So it's kind of a spook which partly arose out of anti-monarchical fervor in 18th-century France

Obviously the simple fact of genetic relation is not a spook. Everything associated with it is, though.

Spooks are life

How fucking hard is it to understand that what acts against your best self-interest is a spook? How hard is that to understand? Honestly, how fucking stupid do you have to be to not get that?

Is your family treating you like shit? You'd be better off without them. If they're not, you're fine with them. This morality choice you are fighting with is the biggest spook of all, you troglodyte.

How can you know for certain that you know your own self-interest?

Do you want to do it and does it benefit you?

Found the edgy teenager that feels capable of everything and doesn't fear anything. One day you will grow out of your childish egotistical mindset, hopefully.
Isnt your age between 16 and 23? Some take longer than that of course

>inb4 angry response with cute ad hominem

orphans tho

No.

Why would you love your "clan"

Why would you not love your mother and brother and father because of who they are. Why would you love some abstract intellectual ideal instead?

>and does it benefit you?
Wrong.

"Do you want to do it" is all there is.

What is the Gnostic view on Jesus? Is he the son of the demiurge or did he came from the higher divinity?

t. a guy who read VALIS and doesn't know what's going on anymore

>Loving them because of who they are
I don't like using this word, but that's very problematic. It's like when someone proposes that something is an end-in-itself...
Who are they? You love them because of an emotional bond and an implicit duty of helping others inside the group, etc etc., Not for "who they are". Of course, its way easier to think that you love them 'for who they are' than actually asking yourself what that actually means
English seems specially uncapable of expressing psychological and philosophical nuance..but thats a different subject

Try running away to a foreign country to teach. You will seem a bit mysterious when you come back at least.

I'm 26. I also never said spooks are bad, but you dummies would know what spooks were if you would actually read the books.

>egotistical
>bad thing

I thought this was a Stirner thread?

Maybe I am wrong but it is also implied or outright said it shouldn't negatively affect someone. I mean, of course one can do whatever they choose.

Those are not sunglasses you stupid.

The aristocratic model of family was seen as unnatural and the bourgeois model seen as natural and it is the bourgeois model that forms the ideal nuclear family today. The argument is about social, economic, historical, and cultural forces that changed how we perceive familial relations.

I feel it's worth mentioning that in many primate species, males and females will leave their kin and join a new band. This benefits their original group (by reducing crowding) and the species as a whole (by creating yet another fitness filter). Leaving home is natural, and so a spook.

The big spooks are hardwired by evolution. If you've evaluated your environment and determined that you're not competitive, one option is to leech off your family.

But the parents are still both central to your examples.

Only in the sense that parents give birth to children. They're not raised in the same way, even from birth, which is why I mentioned wet-nursing. And it seems the idea of conjugal love was absent as well; the parents weren't a team. Often nobles went off and fucked other people once the heirs were born.

But why am I the most important thing in the universe? And if I am, don't I then have the authority to declare other things as worthwhile?

There are so many ideas in the motif of Jesus. Perfect awareness of one's antagonistic duality, the freedom to look both ways, fractal refraction over linear creation, essence breaking phenomenal boundaries, the disruption of History and Time itself, the defeat of Death not by contractual exemption but by immanence - to name a few.

All modes of thinking resonate with certain parts of Jesus because the summary of all that we call Jesus contains them all in a way, or rather in all ways. It's the superprocess of Mind on this side of veil, Humanity itself.

Recommend me some books about
>What we call Jesus contains all modes of thinking
And
>It's the superprocess of Mind on this side of the veil, Humanity itself

the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb

You are wrong.

Family is a spook which means you OWE nothing to your family but if you like them you would obviously treat them well because you want too. But if your father is an abusive dickhead you don't owe him shit.

Youre defending two different -arguably opposite- points here:
>You owe nothing to your family and you will only treat them well if you LIKE them (which is not the same as: you will only treat them well if they treated you well)...
AND
>The reason why you dont owe anything to your family is that they treated you badly -which implies that if they treated you well you would owe them...

Dont you agree that youre morally forced to treat your family well if they treated you well and took care of you and helped you when you needed them?
Youre also implying -I think- that if they treat you well you WILL necessarily like them, and because of this you will treat them well...

Can you help me untie this knot?

Ok so obviously from Stirner's viewpoint morals are a spook so you are not obligated to treat them well if they treated you well. However from most conventional philosophy would argue that you had an obligation to treat them well or at least neutrally.

Basically what I am trying to say is that you owe them nothing. Ever. But using my family as an example who have been kind and caring to me even though I owe them no obligation It is still my desire and in my best interests to treat them well and interact with them. This is because I enjoy their company and find pleasure in it. Furthermore even if my family was abusive (say my father hit me often) It could potentially still be in my interests to appease my family for various reason (I may not be able to afford to live on my own etc).

Basically what I find Important from family being a spook is not that you should cut all ties with your family but that you have that option. I'm sure most people know someone who have terrible parents or offspring but keep making attempts to repair ties even when the other person is an abusive fuck. Often this is because "they are your family" This is why being unspooked in this regard is important, hope that answered your question.

This is the problem with Stirner memers. They only look at what benefits them on a very shallow level, because that's all the "ego" is capable of. If you understood anything about psychology you would do anything in your power to have a good relationship with your family whether you liked them or not, because a bad relationship with your family (most especially your parents) is Pandora's Box for pathologies.

Ok bro good to hear you would want to have a good relationship and be generous towards a hypothetical father who rapes you at the age of 6, because muh morals

I didn't invoke morals. Do you Stirnerbots really have this limited of a range of arguments, that you had to resort to that?

So people should stay with abusive and terrible family's because other wise they might get a mental health issue worse then the ones they are getting?

No, that would be an exception because the box has already been opened. What that person should do is seek out a father figure to act as a surrogate.

I don't get your arguement, stirner never says "doo ur family isn't real bro just ditch them". Generally it is in ones best interests to have a good or at least cordial relationship but by acknowledging family as a spook people don't feel morally forced to stay with their family when they are terrible.

Is there a rational argument on why you should stay if someone's family is terrible? It's basically living with a bunch of bullies or torturers under the same roof.

Freud's "ego" and Stirner's "ego" are different things. Stirner uses the word differently. Try reading the thing you mean to criticize, cretin

Yes in my opinion, there is of course if they will kill you or whatever for leaving maybe in a cult situtaion. But maybe its in your best interests to appease them and deal with the abuse if the alternative is being kicked out of home and starving in the street for example. Obviously this is up the the individual which they would prefer.

I haven't read Stirner, I'm only going on what I see his defenders saying. And his defenders constantly disregard virtually anything as valuable that doesn't result in immediate material gain.

The idea that you always help and care for family no matter what is a spook. however it is up to you how you treat your family whether you are angry at how they raised you or content.

>I haven't read Stirner, I'm only going on what I see his defenders saying

real Stirnerism has never been tried

I don't know. I'd like to know too.

Don't fall for the stirnerites and their ontological egotistical solipsism, it's the easiest and cheesiest form of doing pseudo-philosophy. Family is very important and you should respect your parents as Jesus advised you to do.

If people can only see what is good for them short term that is their fault not stirner's

Wow you clearly haven't read Stirner

Don't fall for the meme and steal a copy

Underrated post.

maybe.

GO AWAY SATAN YOU FUCK

Hail

Just like to point out that although the topic of the family points us towards the important role of libidinal economy in how 'spooks' actually work, this line of inquiry is not entirely absent in Stirner's work, if you think for example about his description of the young woman who gets horny and feels guilty for feeling horny. The answer to OP is: The notion of Family (as a concept that holds value by itself) is definitely a spook, but the role played by the principle of the family in the reproduction of capitalist modernity is not exhausted by calling it a spook. Stirner's work has many important directions which go beyond the term 'spook' though and should not be reduced to it.

>Family is very important and you should respect your parents as Jesus advised you to do.
You sure he did that? I could have sworn he told people to leave their families and jobs in order to follow him, a socialist hobo who hung with whores.

You are assuming that the Stirner haters have actually read him and don't get all their knowledge off random memes.

yeah unfortunately even many people who've read him don't get it...

>he has no honour
Figures.

>the strongest bond which exists, the bond of blood.
How are the 1950s, user? I hate the /currentyear/ meme, but it's accurate. Just look around you. You can't stop progress, whether it's good or bad. People are not going back.

Which was a behaviour that was officially discouraged.

I just remembered reading an ancient papyrus salvaged from an urn in Egypt where a child complains to its father that he didn't take him to a business trip in Alexandria.

The son is literally throwing a tantrum and threatens to hold his breath until his demands are met.

The example shows that practiced family life is far more continuous than some stuffy academics would have us believe it was.

I found it kind of hard to understand for the first 100 or so pages but at some point it clicked.

Implying the bond of blood is stronger then the bond between soldiers.

this is what happens to your brain on propaganda

>that picture

He wanted to suck Noams dick didn't he?

The first 100 pages contain mostly stuff that is almost irrelevant to Stirner's thought, sadly.

>Should I love my clan, lit?
Depends by what you mean by love.
Do you mean 'give up everything you own and have to create a greater standard of living for them at your expense'?
There is nothing wrong with loving your clan so long as it does not come at your expense or becomes a sacrifice. If you find happiness being among your clan, then by all means, spend your money with them and do whatever you want.
But if you do so out of duty or obligation, then no, you should not love your clan because you are forced to do so by spook and duty. The value of family's depends on your own personal individual values and whether it provides you happiness. Nothing more and nothing less.
If being among your 'clan' and family does not provide any measure of happiness, you have no obligation or duty to love or help your clan.

This guy gets it, fuck ayn rand tho her and Stirner were pretty different while being similar in some regards.

Rational egotism my man.

The biggest similarities between Ayn Rand and Stirner is mostly their rejection of spooks or duty towards ideologies as Ayn Rand would say, and simply following your rational self interest to whatever gives you happiness. Everything else from their philosophies results from a difference from this basic foundation.

In my view, the only real difference is that Stirner viewed the self as being a spook, while Ayn Rand used the axiom of 'existence exists' to confirm personal individualism and volition to build a system of morality.

>my spook is greater than your spook

So, all in all, there is no moral duty to love one's people, or at least no deeper, more meaningful one than with any other person.
If that is the case, why does it seem that it's more difficult to 'cut ties' with one's close group (proven by the fact that, statistically, the majority of people persevere in their family bonds throughout life, much more so than with non-related others), if no obligation of bonding exists?

Well the lazy arguement here would be that you have spent a long time with them. In the same way you might have had a close friend for 10+ years who becomes an asshole who you find hard to cut off.

It wasn't discouraged.

>The example shows that practiced family life is far more continuous than some stuffy academics would have us believe it was.

'Practiced family life' doesn't mean anything, and your example doesn't really demonstrate anything.

>WHY ARE HARD THINGS HARD
I dunno, why are social obligations imposed by evolutionary needs steaming from culture and society hard? You're begging the question in an attempt to give a bullshit answer.

The answer to your bullshit question is tribalism and collectivism. Humans desire to be among others because we needed to to survive nature. We still do but to a far greater extent. Humans do not have any innate tools to defend ourselves and must use our own rationality or teamwork to survive. Hence, why we created civilization. But now, we have reached the point in our history that there is no need to protect the collective, where an individual can live for themselves and not for the sake of a clan or group or collective or family. However, despite how our modern world grands these individual freedom, we still have a need for being accepted in a group to find meaning and to belong. Tribalism and collectivism is what is causing that feeling of being difficult to 'cut ties' and has no value on whether one should not break family bonds if it does not provide happiness.

If you live with a family that you hate, that you find no happiness or simply treats you like shit, you'll find that your bullshit thought experiment of ''huurrr it's hard to cut ties'' won't apply or hold much weight to such a person in that sort of condition.

There is no obligation. Even if you love your family but find that you'll be happier going your own way, you have no duty to stay with them.
Do such bonds mean you should try to go to college? To find your own happiness? Do such bonds mean you should stay among your family for the rest of your life and do nothing?

You will never be able to enforce a spook or duty without guilt. The quicker you realize this fact that shaming people into accepting spooks will make them comply, the quicker you'll stop asking this stupid questions.

I'd use Stirner as my reaction image, but it's always funnier to use Ayn Rand.

>We still do but to a far greater extent.
to a far lesser* extent.