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Title: Egoism Author: John Beverley Robinson Date: 2005 Language: en Topics: egoist Source: Retrieved on October 1, 2009 from http://www.greenanarchy.org/index.php?action=viewwritingdetail&writingId=184 Notes: Published in Green Anarchy issue #20
There is no word more generally misinterpreted than the word egoism, in
its modern sense. In the first place, it is supposed to mean devotion to
self interest, without regard to the interest of others. It is thus
opposed to altruism — devotion to others and sacrifice of self. This
interpretation is due to the use of the word thus antithetically by
Herbert Spencer.
Again, it is identified with hedonism or eudaimonism, or epicureanism,
philosophies that teach that the attainment of pleasure or happiness or
advantage, whichever you may choose to phrase it, is the rule of life.
Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by
Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the
realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far
as they are concerned, they are the only individual.
For each one of us stands alone in the midst of a universe. We are
surrounded by sights and sounds which we interpret as exterior to
ourselves, although all we know of them are the impressions on our
retina and ear drums and other organs of sense. The universe for the
individual is measured by these sensations; they are, for him/her, the
universe. Some of them they interpret as denoting other individuals,
whom they conceive as more or less like themselves. But none of these is
his/ herself. He/she stands apart. His/her consciousness, and the
desires and gratifications that enter into it, is a thing unique; no
other can enter into it.
However near and dear to you may be your spouse, children, friends, they
are not you; they are outside of you. You are forever alone. Your
thoughts and emotions are yours alone. There is no other who experiences
your thoughts or your feelings.
No doubt it gives you pleasure when others think as you do, and inform
you of it through language; or when others enjoy the same things that
you do. Moreover, quite apart from their enjoying the same things that
you enjoy, it gives you pleasure to see them enjoy themselves in any
way. Such gratification to the individual is the pleasure of sympathy,
one of the most acute pleasures possible for most people.
According to your sympathy, you will take pleasure in your own happiness
or in the happiness of other people; but it is always your own happiness
you seek. The most profound egoist may be the most complete altruist;
but he knows that her altruism is, at the bottom, nothing but
self-indulgence.
But egoism is more than this.
It is the realization by the individual that she/he is above all
institutions and all formulas; that they exist only so far as he chooses
to make them her own by accepting them. When you see clearly that you
are the measure of the universe, that everything that exists exists for
you only so far as it is reflected in your own consciousness, you become
a new person; you see everything by a new light: you stand on a height
and feel the fresh air blowing on your face; and find new strength and
glory in it.
Whatever gods you worship, you realize that they are your gods, the
product of your own mind, terrible or amiable, as you may choose to
depict them. You hold them in your hand, and play with them, as a child
with its paper dolls; for you have learned not to fear them, that they
are but the “imaginations of your heart.”
All the ideals which people generally think are realities, you have
learned to see through; you have learned that they are your ideals.
Whether you have originated them, which is unlikely, or have accepted
somebody else’s ideals, makes no difference. They are your ideals just
so far as you accept them. The priest is reverend only so far as you
reverence him. If you cease to reverence him, he is no longer reverend
for you. You have power to make and unmake priests as easily as you can
make and unmake gods. You are the one of whom the poet tells, who stands
unmoved, though the universe falls in fragments about you.
And all the other ideals by which people are moved, to which people are
enslaved, for which humyns afflict themselves, have no power over you;
you are no longer afraid of them, for you know them to be your own
ideals, made in your own mind, for your own pleasure, to be changed or
ignored, just as you choose to change or ignore them. They are your own
little pets, to be played with, not to be feared.
“The State” or “The Government” is idealized by the many as a thing
above them, to be reverenced and feared. They call it “My Country,” and
if you utter the magic words, they will rush to kill their friends, whom
they would not injure by so much as a pin scratch, if they were not
intoxicated and blinded by their ideal. Most people are deprived of
their reason under the influence of their ideals. Moved by the ideal of
“religion” or “patriotism” or “morality,” they fly at each others’
throats — they, who are otherwise often the gentlest of neighbors! But
their ideals are for them like the “fixed ideas” of lunatics. They
become irrational and irresponsible under the influence of their ideals.
They will not only destroy others, but they will quite often sink their
own interests, and rush madly to destroy themselves as a sacrifice to
the all-devouring ideal. Curious, is it not, to one who looks on with a
philosophical mind?
But the egoist has no ideals, for the knowledge that his ideals are only
his ideals, frees her from their domination. She acts for his own
interest, not for the interest of ideals. She will neither hang a person
nor whip a child in the interest of “morality,” if it is disagreeable to
her to do so. He/she has no reverence for “The State.” She knows that
“The Government” is but a set of men, mostly as big fools as he is
himself, many of them bigger. If the State does things that benefit her,
he will support it; if it attacks her and encroaches on his liberty, she
will evade it by any means in his power, if she is not strong enough to
withstand it. He/she is a person without a country.
“The Flag,” that most people adore, as people always adore symbols,
worshipping the symbol more than the principle it is supposed to set
forth, is for the egoist but a rather inharmonious piece of patch-work;
and anybody may walk on it or spit on it if they will, without exciting
their emotion any more than if it were a tarpaulin that they walked upon
— or spat upon. The principles that it symbolizes, they will maintain as
far as it seems to their advantage to maintain them; but if the
principles require them to kill people or be killed themselves, you will
have to demonstrate to them just what benefit they will gain by killing
or being killed, before you can persuade them to uphold them.
When the judge enters court in his toggery, (judges and ministers and
professors know the value of toggery in impressing the populace) the
egoist is unterrified. She/he has not even any respect for “The Law.” If
the law happens to be to his advantage, she will avail himself of it; if
it invades her liberty she will transgress it as far as he thinks it
wise to do so. But she has no regard for it as a thing supernal. It is
to her the clumsy creation of them who still “sit in darkness.”
Nor does he bow the knee to Morality — Sacred Morality! Some of its
precepts she may accept, if he chooses to do so; but you cannot scare
her off by telling him it is not “right.” He usually prefers not to kill
or steal; but if she must kill or steal to save herself, he will do it
with a good heart, and without any qualms of “conscience.”
And “morality” will never persuade her to injure others when it is of no
advantage to himself. She will not be found among a band of “white
caps,” flogging and burning poor devils, because their actions do not
conform to the dictates of “morality,” though they have injured none by
such actions; nor will he have any hand in persecuting helpless girls,
and throwing them out into the street, when she has received no ill at
their hands.
To her friends — to those who deserve the truth from him, — she will
tell the truth; but you cannot force the truth from him because she is
“afraid to tell a lie.” He has no fear, not even of perjury, for she
knows that oaths are but devices to enslave the mind by an appeal to
supernatural fears.
And for all the other small, tenuous ideals, with which we have fettered
our minds and to which we have shrunk our petty lives; they are for the
egoist as though they were not.
“Filial love and respect” he will give to his parents if they have
earned it by deserving it. If they have beaten her in infancy, and
scorned her in childhood, and domineered over him in maturity, he may
possibly love them in spite of maltreatment; but if they have alienated
her affection, they will not reawaken it by an appeal to “duty”.
In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of
altruism, but of idealism. The ordinary person — the idealist —
subordinates their interests to the interests of their ideals, and
usually suffers for it. The egoist is fooled by no ideals: she/he
discards them or uses them, as may suit his own interest. If he/she
likes to be altruistic, they will sacrifice themselves for others; but
only because they like to do so; they demand no gratitude nor glory in
return