Intro to Egoism
You might have heard the term Egoism floating around libertarian circles. You might have even left a conversation regarding Egoism that left a bad taste in your mouth. Today, in an effort to educate and clear up any rumors, let’s look at what Egoism actually is and what some of it’s takeaways are.
Egoism is a metaphysical philosophy in the existentialism family of philosophies. The common text referenced when discussing Egoism is typically The Ego and It’s Own by Max Stirner. He has been touted as one of the grandfathers of existentialism for this piece. The Ego and It’s Own has been recognized widely but oftentimes not received well because of translation issues and therefore, interpretation issues. There seems to be two common reactions.
The first of them being a complete rejection of any and all ideas therein, in favor of what one may perceive to be an objective morality. This is common in religious and “natural law” circles. The second reaction is confusion paired with a desire to understand. When you have nothing to lose from having your ideas of morality shaken or you can separate yourself from your own sense of morality, you start to see that there may be something to this. I encourage you to keep that in mind prior to reading the reference material. It’s scary to face the notion that all you understood about the world may not be what it was presented to be. The positive aspect is that if you can make it to the other side, there is real freedom and peace in store for you.
There are several lessons to be taken away from Egoism and I will do my best to summarize them and provide some clarity. The first of these is the idea of “spooks” or “ghosts of the mind”. These are essentially social constructs that have no root in reality or no real meaning. They were invented by humans to make us feel better about a situation. Some examples include words like “should”, “right”, “wrong”, “bad”, “good”, and “deserve”. These concepts cannot be found anywhere else in nature. A good example of a spook would be the word “authority”. We’ve all heard someone say they have the authority to do something or that someone else is an authority, but when we really look at what that means, the idea falls short. Where outside the human mind does authority exist? Where does authority come from? Even if we have proof that a deity existed and decided that we are to respect authority, that’s still an egoistic act and we still don’t have to acknowledge it, much less subscribe to it. It isn’t real and yet we see so many examples of people claiming it does. The reason for this is laid out in another lesson worth learning about in Egoism.
Humans cannot act outside of self interest. Everything we do, even if it hurts or is uncomfortable, serves us in some way, or we wouldn’t do it. Another example of a spook, would be “altruism”. If you look at any deed you would consider to be kind, you will find that there is something within that deed that served the one carrying it out. Be it a tax write-off, validation, a paycheck, notoriety, fuzzy feeling in the tummy, whatever. There is always something that was gained. So, when we look at other social constructs through the lenses of Egoism, we can see very clear motives for creating and using them.
One of the most inspiring concepts in Egoism holds close to it’s existential roots. It’s the idea that we all start as a “creative nothing”. We are but a blank canvas of nothingness when we are born and only after being presented with external ideas that call to our intrinsic motivation, do we become something. Once we do become something, The Self cannot be defined because day to day, It’s always changing and transcending itself. This idea conflicts with the Statist Christian idea that we are born with God-given gifts and predetermined “bad” ideas (sin).
Within this concept of the creative nothing, there beckons an opportunity to be that again. I’ve often called it Spook Training, it’s a longer thought exercise where you shed all the social constructs and beliefs you can identify in your regular thinking and really take time to reflect on them, how you ended up with them, and if they actually even serve you in any real way. If you don’t find that they serve you, you can discard them. If they do serve you, you can reincorporate them into your regular use. It helps to visualize this as a tack board and you’re taking away and adding concepts written on sticky notes. The point is to make sure that everything on your tack board serves you and aligns with what you want in life. This process, in modern times, resembles very closely the concept of self-actualization, which can be seen in the works of Jordan B. Peterson and Abraham Maslow, among others.
The further you get into the experiment and the further you go in your study of Egoism, the more you’ll find my remark about people having interpretation issues to be true. Not only is Egoism not some big, bad monster that represents all the bad in the world, but it would be a strong contender in a competition for the greatest motivational speech ever.
