“It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.”

— Mark Fisher,
Capitalist Realism (chapter 5)

“To become moral is not in itself moral. – Subjection to morality can be slavish or vain or self-interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or an act of despair, like subjection to a prince: in itself it is nothing moral.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Dawn of Day (97)

A post-capitalist world is possible!

Matrix (and similar) films are not made just for mindless consumption, nor are they really so much about AI or technology in general. Instead, they are metaphors, on the one hand, for socio-political systems of control (and oppression, exploitation), and, on the other hand, for revolutionary hope and liberation from those systems.

Liberalism as an 'order' founded on oppressive rationalism [rationalization]

“With the time of the bourgeoisie begins that of liberalism. People want to see what is ‘rational’, ‘suited to the times’, etc., established everywhere. The following definition of liberalism, which is supposed to be pronounced in its honour, characterizes it completely: ‘Liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason, applied to our existing relations.’ Its aim is a ‘rational order’, a ‘moral behaviour’, a ‘limited freedom’, not anarchy, lawlessness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then the person succumbs. Art has for a long time not only acknowledged the ugly, but considered the ugly as necessary to its existence, and takes it up into itself; it needs the villain. In the religious domain, too, the extremest liberals go so far that they want to see the most religious man regarded as a citizen, that is, the religious villain; they want to see no more of trials for heresy. But against the ‘rational law’ no one is to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the severest penalty. What is wanted is not free movement and realization of the person or of me, but of reason – a dominion of reason, a dominion. The liberals are zealots, not exactly for the faith, for God, but certainly for reason, their master. They'll tolerate no impertinence, and therefore no self-development and self-determination; they impose their will as effectively as the most absolute rulers.”

— Max Stirner

“War is another thing. I am by nature warlike. To attack is among my instincts. To be able to be an enemy, to be an enemy – that perhaps presupposes a strong nature, it is in any event a condition of every strong nature. It needs resistances, consequently it seeks resistances: the aggressive pathos belongs as necessarily to strength as the feeling of vengefulness and vindictiveness does to weakness.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (§2. 7)

“If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible.”

— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (ch. 1, §4)

Unser neuer Dreipfeil

“People are at pains to distinguish law from arbitrary orders [Befehl], from an ordinance: the former comes from a duly ennoscriptd authority. But a law over human action (ethical law, state law, etc.) is always a declaration of will, and so an order. Yes, even if I myself gave myself the law, it would yet be only my order, to which in the next moment I can refuse obedience. One may well enough declare what he will put up with, and so deprecate the opposite of the law, making known that in the contrary case he will treat the transgressor as his enemy; but no one has any business to command my actions, to say what course I shall pursue and set up a code to govern it. I must put up with it that he treats me as his enemy, but never that he makes free with me as his creature, and that he makes his reason, or even unrea­son, my plumb-line.”

— Max Stirner

“States last only so long as there is a ruling will and this ruling will is looked upon as tantamount to the own will. The lord's will is—law. What do your laws amount to if no one obeys them? What your orders, if nobody lets himself be ordered? The state cannot forbear the claim to determine the individual's will, to speculate and count on this. For the state it is indispensable that nobody have an own will; if one had, the state would have to exclude (lock up, banish, etc.) this one; if all had, they would do away with the state. The state is not thinkable without lordship [Herrschaft] and servitude [Knecht­schaft] (subjection); for the state must will to be the lord of all that it embraces, and this will is called the 'will of the state'.

He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be all over with lordship.”

— Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

“The own will of me is the state's destroyer; it is therefore denounced by the state as ‘self-will’. Own will and the state are powers in deadly hostility, between which no ‘perpetual peace’ is possible. As long as the state asserts itself, it represents own will, its ever-hostile opponent, as unreasonable, evil; and the latter lets itself be talked into believing this—indeed, it really is such, for no more reason than this, that it still lets itself be talked into such belief: it has not yet come to itself and to the consciousness of its dignity; hence it is still incomplete, still amenable to fine words.”

— Max Stirner

“Every state is a despotism, be the despot one or many, or (as one is likely to imagine about a republic) if all be lords, that is, despotize one over another. For this is the case when the law given at any time, the expressed volition of (it may be) a popular assembly, is thenceforth to be law for the individual, to which obedience is due from him or towards which he has the duty of obedience. If one were even to conceive the case that every individual in the people had expressed the same will, and hereby a complete ‘collective will’ had come into being, the matter would still remain the same. Would I not be bound today and henceforth to my will of yesterday? My will would in this case be frozen. Wretched stability! My creature—namely, a particular expression of will—would have become my commander. But I in my will, I the creator, should be hindered in my flow and my dissolution. Because I was a fool yesterday I must remain such my life long. So in the state-life I am at best—I might just as well say, at worst—a bondman of myself. Because I was a willer yesterday, I am today without will: yesterday voluntary, today involuntary.”

— Max Stirner

“How to change it? Only by recognizing no duty, not binding myself nor letting myself be bound. If I have no duty, then I know no law either.

‘But they will bind me!’ My will nobody can bind, and my disincli­nation remains free.

‘Why, everything must go topsy-turvy if every one could do what he would!’ Well, who says that every one can do everything? What are you there for, pray, you who do not need to put up with every­thing? Defend yourself, and no one will do anything to you! He who would break your will has to do with you, and is your enemy. Deal with him as such. If there stand behind you for your protection some millions more, then you are an imposing power and will have an easy victory. But, even if as a power you overawe your opponent, still you are not on that account a hallowed authority to him, unless he be a simpleton. He does not owe you respect and regard, even though he will have to consider your might.”

— Max Stirner

“We are accustomed to classify states according to the different ways in which ‘the supreme might’ is distributed. If an individual has it – monarchy; if all have it – democracy; etc. Supreme might then! Might against whom? Against the individual and his ‘self-will’. The state practices ‘violence’, the individual must not do so. The state's behaviour is violence, and it calls its violence ‘law’; that of the individ­ual, ‘crime [Verbrechen]’. Crime, then – so the individual's violence is called; and only by crime does he overcome [bricht] the state's viol­ence when he thinks that the state is not above him, but he is above the state.”

— Max Stirner

“Now, if I wanted to act ridiculously, I might, as a well-meaning person, admonish you not to make laws which impair my self­-development, self-activity, self-creation. I do not give this advice. For, if you should follow it, you would be unwise, and I should have been cheated of my entire profit. I request nothing at all from you; for, whatever I might demand, you would still be dictatorial lawgivers, and must be so, because a raven [Rabe] cannot sing, nor a robber [Räuber] live without robbery. Rather do I ask those who would be egoists what they think the more egoistic – to let laws be given them by you, and to respect those that are given, or to practice refractoriness, yes, complete disobedience. Good-hearted people think the laws ought to prescribe only what is accepted in the people's feeling as right and proper. But what concern is it of mine what is accepted in the nation and by the nation? The nation will perhaps be against the blasphemer; therefore a law against blasphemy. Am I not to blas­pheme on that account? Is this law to be more than an ‘order’ to me? I put the question.

Solely from the principle that all right and all authority belong to the collectivity of the people do all forms of government arise. For none of them lacks this appeal to the collectivity, and the despot, as well as the president or any aristocracy, acts and commands ‘in the name of the state’. They are in possession of the ‘authority of the state’, and it is perfectly indifferent whether, were this possible, the people as a collectivity (all individuals) exercise this state-authority, or whether it is only the representatives of this collectivity, be there many of them as in aristocracies or one as in monarchies. Always the collectivity is above the individual, and has a power which is called legitimate, which is law.”

— Max Stirner