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Title: The Union of Egoists Author: Castanea Dentata Date: 1/23/2018 Language: en Topics: egoist, egoism, union of egoists, Max Stirner Source: Retrieved on 1/25/18 from https://rebelsdarklaughter.wordpress.com/2018/01/23/the-union-of-egoists/
Note: I use association and union interchangeably. I refer from my
reading of the Wolfi Landstreicher translation, "The Unique and Its
Property".
The phrase union or association of egoists is found only a few times in
Max Stirner’s “The Unique and Its Property”, and yet it is often
referred to as Stirner’s alternative to the relationships of state and
citizen; lord and servant; master and slave. Stirner did not provide us
with a blueprint for the future, nor a new system, to replace the
socioeconomic and belief/thought systems he critiqued and attacked. I
believe that this omission was intentional — Stirner was not about to
annihilate all fixed ideas, authority, and sacred beliefs only to
recreate a new fixed idea.
The union is something more mundane, if not commonplace, yet an
incredibly powerful tool for all individuals. The association is a
phenomena that we all experience and create throughout our lives.
The union is often referred to as some crystallized structure or
organization. This is at complete odds with Stirner’s actual writings on
union, association, and relations between individuals in “The Unique and
Its Property”. Stirner does not discuss the union as some static
relation between two or more individuals, but instead as shared life
activity of two or more self-interested individuals. The association is
one of both immanence and transience, it is felt, lived, and experienced
in-the-moment. When me and a good friend part ways after a night of both
enjoyable and pleasurable fare, our union has come to an end; when our
rebellious plot has been successfully hatched and we split up to lay
low, our association has ceased to be.
The enjoyable thoughts remain, the love I feel for my lover after
parting from them, the excitement and restlessness at the thought of our
next union — but the association itself has come to a timely end, only
the idea or thought of the union exists and an idea or thought is not
what I am relating with. Instead I relate to you as I, and you relate to
me as you, in the flesh, as corporeal, and sensuous individuals. We
accept no representations in such a relation, no symbolic determinations
or flesh-and-blood masters as mediators of this relationship. In our
union with one another, we are ourselves and we bring ourselves with all
of our property.
Our union is a thing of self-interest, self-enjoyment, and
self-fulfillment.
We come together for a common and shared aim, not because we are bound
by duty, honor, morality or any other cause, but because we both find
some mutual utility in such a union. Our shared activity could be
anything: Gardening, hiking, botany, insurrection, photography, writing,
art, cooking, sex, farming, fishing, hunting, robbing a bank, playing a
game, etc. The only thing that matters is that you and I are both
getting our own fulfillment or satisfaction from our association with
one another.
Our relationship is one of mutuality and reciprocity. We both gain what
we desire from our union, and thus are satisfied. We consume, but are
also consumed. We are used by the union, while also using the union. The
union is our tool, our power, it is created for our own needs, desires,
and purposes—for our own selfish ends. The union of egoists is a union
of self-interest, a union of power.
When we no longer find such an association as beneficial to ourselves we
withdraw and end the union. The union only exists at the behest of our
own individual power. If we find that we are working towards another’s
ends, no longer enjoying oneself, or desiring a new activity—we
withdraw—ending our association.
Throughout our lives we enter and exit many relationships with
individuals that are intentional, enjoyable, based on reciprocity, and
mutuality. You do this without thinking about it, hanging out with your
friends because they bring you happiness, having sex because it is
pleasurable for all participants, cooking a meal for guests because it
brings you joy at feeding your friends, resisting political authorities
because you refuse their orders and commands, every day you come into
and out of relationships of shared selfish activities with others.
We also engage in many relationships not based on intentionality,
mutuality, or reciprocity. Such relationships are ubiquitous in our
lives, we are forced through various means to associate with those that
we do not care for, engage in activities that are not our own, and take
part in relationships where we do not get our own satisfaction and
fulfillment. We repress our desires, our wants, and needs, and sacrifice
them to hollow and empty ideas that are backed with heavy handed
violence, intimidation, guilt, and shame.
The society is to have power over the individual, while the individual
is to have power over the union. The individual is a tool of the
society, the union is a tool of the individual. The societies claim over
the individual is absolute, the individual may not end this claim, an
association is transient, ends when the individual wills it. The society
is a relationship of master and slave, the union is a relationship of
individuality, reciprocity, and mutuality. The society is imposed upon
you, an association is an intentional act of your own power.
Why should we feed the rotten and stagnant "gardens" of society, when we
could instead water the sweet ephemeral blooms of our own unions? We
should be with those actual living, breathing individuals that bring us
satisfaction and enjoyment, engaging in activities that all bring us
self-fulfillment. Instead, we trudge endlessly in boring and
unfulfilling activities, working for the accumulation of others power
and wealth for most of our lives, forced to associate with people we
have zero interest in and have no mutuality or affinity for.
Do you ever ask yourself: Am I really enjoying what I am doing at this
present moment? This is not to say that acknowledgment of our
unenjoyment in some sort of present condition or activity will free us
from its constraints and power. We must exercise our own power to free
ourselves from those individuals, relationships, and activities that
fill our lives with the boring, mundane, and unimaginative.
Who should enjoy you but yourself? A strange question to some perhaps,
but a question that needs asking. Only you feel and experience yourself
and your life, why should your life be for any other than you? Only I
can feel the ache of my muscles and bones after a grueling 12 hour
shift. Only you can feel the stress and anxiety that builds when you
don't have enough money to make rent. We should not be passively
submitting to those who maintain, reproduce, and build the systems of
domination and exploitation we experience, but should instead actively
resist and strike back.
What exactly you experience in your daily life is most certainly
different then what I experience, but of course we may find commonality,
mutuality, and affinity in our personal experiences with our worlds. Our
mutual domination and exploitation can merely be the spark for our
shared fires of resistance.
Our worlds change and flux before us, and we can follow our desires,
needs, and passions, as our worlds and lives unfold before us, entering
into unions and associations as individuals come into and out of our
power. By seeking out those who have some commonality and affinity with
us, we may gain much, and by enjoying ourselves in a mutual and
reciprocal way, we share ourselves and our desires with those we choose
to be with. Our activities are limited only by our imaginations, power,
and finding willing partners.
Our unions are like a flowing river, they are in constant change, coming
together and coming apart, growing, contracting and expanding, sometimes
a vigorous, passionate, and raging river, other times only a small,
quiet, and gentle spring. We are much like our unions, are also in
constant motion, in a state of stochastic and chaotic change, ebbing and
flowing throughout our lives.
We need not play along with the dull and uninteresting, the expected,
and submissive roles and behaviors that are desired of us by our rulers,
masters, and lords. Our own lives are far too enjoyable for us to allow
such a thing. We have no need to hold ourselves to any of the codes,
laws, and morals of those who claim power over us. We need only to live
our lives, and create ourselves in every moment as we see fit and as our
individual power allows.