Define "spook"

What's wrong with spooks? Don't they give us a collective benefit?

Stirner was an anarchist, so giving them a negative name is probably just a reflection of his personal opinion or maybe actually an attempt to make you think badly of them aswell.

There is some benefit in being aware of a spook being a spook of course. Even if the spook is actually beneficial and should be maintained.

benefit is a spook

Calling everything a spook is a spook

These dubs are a spook

Spooktastic

[s p o o k y]

Stirner and his spooks. Fucking hell. It's sort of a corollary to nihilism or solipsism, a line of critique with no underlying valid purpose or goal, that only serves to allow second-rate deconstructionist trash to appear smarter than they are.

A 'spook' is just anything that makes you act differently than you would with its absence, despite it being only an internal concept of the mind. This is a retarded appeal to naturalism, and a tactic to trip up people who use it specifically so that you can then BTFO them by critiquing the idea that people have a 'natural state of mind'.

For this reason, while I despise Stirner and his spook crap, he has done the world a great service by allowing anti-deconstructionists to easily BTFO the lazy deconstructionists looking to get a quick snippity snipe in on them by tearing them a new asshole for appealing to naturalism in the absence of a framework for naturalism to occur.

>What's wrong with spooks?
They inhibit your ability to live a fulfilled life as you confuse your own individual interests with them or at worst see your own interests as being lesser.

Stirner doesnt tell you to abolish spooks as much as he asks you "why would you act against your own interests"

>Don't they give us a collective benefit?
Spook =/= social construct, when you use such a construct for your benefit it becomes your property.

>only serves to allow second-rate deconstructionist trash to appear smarter than they are.

This is a rather ironic criticism of Stirner given that his entire work was based around destroying the second rate deconstructionalists in the Left Heglians.

>A 'spook' is just anything that makes you act differently than you would with its absence, despite it being only an internal concept of the mind

Simply not true it describes a very specific relationship between the individual and ideas/concepts.

>while I despise Stirner and his spook crap,
All he did was write that people can have different interests to those propounded by social constructs hardly anything to get in a tissy about

If you clicked this thread you probably already understand spook at least as "something that only exists in your mind yet tremendously affects your behavior" so I'll talk about how a "Spook" is more nuanced than a synonym of "social construct". I think this is important because this board so often seems to conflate the two.

It should be noted here that "social construction" as a concept only entered the common lexicon among supporters of social justice causes fairly recently (the specific term was coined and popularized in the 1960s (more than a hundred years after the release of Stirner's magnum opus, The Ego And Its Own). So, the concepts' genealogies are entirely separate.
A social construction can be equated with the phrase I mentioned earlier, where a social construct is effectively an understanding of the world, humanity, etc. shared by many *that becomes a systemic belief/understanding where it is reflected on people through socialization (ie virtually everyone is raised with gender), despite the fact that such understandings have no physical basis. Application of the term shares some overlap with that of "spook", where both are often used to dismiss notions about nationalism and the state. However, "social construction" as a concept is also extended to describe many other things: race, gender, most identities as a whole. This sort of identity is not related by philosophers (or philosopher, if we're being entirely honest) to the concepts of "spooks". Spooks, instead, describe social *institutions* that can be tied to authority and notions of freedom: Stirner describes the state, nationalism ("the fatherland"), and property as spooks. The aforementioned identities are not referenced by him.
It should probably be noted that his outlook was greatly impacted by his time, in that while the state and property had already come under siege from european intellectuals (especially his peers), gender and race had not been touched upon in the same manner. Had he been living today, his "spooks" may have been more aligned with what is described as "social construction", but that's all speculation.

quality post

So is food a spook?
This all sounds like moral relativist nonsense

He's lying, Stirner was not an anarchist.

'There ough to be no state' is not Stirnerist. A Stirnerist position would be to accept the state if it serves your interests and reject it if it does not.

Stirner is the fundamental egoist.

>desmond I was a spook
What did he mean by this?

too soon

Food is physical. Did you not read this thread?

He was an individualist anarchist. And his spook idea was often used to discredit all sorts of state concepts such as private property.

He didn't advocate for people to actively remove the state, but rather for them to just ignore it.

food is a physical thing
read you goofball

>nihildubs

spooky!

shieeeet i actually just watched this episode. is this destiny?

>He was an individualist anarchist.
He wasn't even that, there was no 'people ought to live for themselves and be governed only by themselves'.

A lot of his thought was appropriated by anarchists but labelling yourself an anarchist would be just another spook in the line of liberal and socialist to get caught up in.

A spook used to be something that exists only in your brain

Now literally anything could be a spook

This post is a spook.

Spooky trips there mate

I still don't understand. A spook is a mental concept a person will feel is part of their self to such a degree that they support or fight for it? Anything like that?

dark polo trips

Scare

Refer to > Spooks, instead, describe social *institutions* that can be tied to authority and notions of freedom: Stirner describes the state, nationalism ("the fatherland"), and property as spooks. The aforementioned identities are not referenced by him.

Kys and learn his legacy and know his true thoughts on the state dumbass.

Spooks means political concepts then? I passed over that sentence assuming he couldn't possibly just mean politics. Should I understand it as political concepts that limit the self - perhaps through submission - due to their authority?

No- While it could be argued politics (as a concept that simply is a product of states) is a spook as a whole, there is more to it- Effectively institutions (as mentioned, nationalism and individual's property) that exert any authority over you, an individual despite not being grounded in a physical presence (existing only as a common understanding in a population) are spooks.
> Should I understand it as political concepts that limit the self - perhaps through submission - due to their authority?
Yes, with the one alteration of "political concepts" to "institutions".

Okay, I understand it more. Institutions are something I've always placed in a political category, but the word in a more general sense makes it clearer. Institutions are spooks. So, for instance, the elites are a spook? The church is a spook. The pope is a spook. The Queen is a spook. Police are a spook? Law is a spook. And all of that because it takes away from my individual freedom, being in the position of authority to impose its will on me?

how bout you read the bloody blook ya dungus? it is fairly short

The institutions those people are a part of (namely the state and the monarchy) are the spooks, yes! The actual people themselves are not, but I think you get the concept.

Okay, it makes much more sense when I look at institutions out of a political context. I think I get it, enough for now. I'll check out the book ... after I finish the Greeks.

I will. I'm just mired in world history book that's taking me months to read. I have to memorize everything.