leftists and memes

“Counting and Measuring. — The art of seeing many things, of weighing one with another, of reckoning one thing with another and constructing from them a rapid conclusion, a fairly correct sum – that goes to make a great politician or general or merchant. This quality is, in fact, a power of speedy mental calculation. The art of seeing one thing alone, of finding therein the sole motive for action, the guiding principle of all other action, goes to make the hero and also the fanatic. This quality means a dexterity in measuring with one scale.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part II) (§2. 296)

“Not to See too Soon. — As long as we undergo some experience, we must give ourselves up to the experience and shut our eyes – in other words, not become observers of what we are undergoing. For to observe would disturb good digestion of the experience, and instead of wisdom we should gain nothing but dyspepsia.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part II) (§2. 297)

“From the Practice of the Wise. — To become wise we must will to undergo certain experiences, and accordingly leap into their jaws. This, it is true, is very dangerous. Many a ‘sage’ has been eaten up in the process.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part II) (§2. 298)

“Honesty. — It is but a small thing to be a pattern [Muster; model] sort of person with regard to rights and property – for instance (to name trifling points, which of course give a better proof of this sort of pattern nature than great examples), if as a boy one never steals fruit from another's orchard, and as a man never walks on unmown fields. It is but little; you are then still only a ‘law-abiding person,’ with just that degree of morality of which a ‘society,’ a group of human beings, is capable.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part II) (§2. 303)

“Man! — What is the vanity of the vainest individual as compared with the vanity which the most modest person feels when he thinks of his position in nature and in the world as ‘Man!’”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part II) (§2. 304)

“The Most Necessary Gymnastic. — Through deficiency in self-control in small matters a similar deficiency on great occasions slowly arises. Every day on which we have not at least once denied ourselves some trifle is turned to bad use and a danger to the next day. This gymnastic is indispensable if we wish to maintain the joy of being our own master.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human (Part II) (§2. 305)

influence of theory/theories on our minds

Nietzsche's Last Man: characterizing modern capitalist society

“Fundamental idea of a commercial culture. — Today one can see coming into existence the culture of a society of which commerce is as much the soul as personal contest was with the ancient Greeks and as war, victory and justice were for the Romans. The man engaged in commerce understands how to appraise everything without having made it, and to appraise it according to the needs of the consumer, not according to his own needs; ‘who and how many will consume this?’ is his question of questions. This type of appraisal he then applies instinctively and all the time: he applies it to everything, and thus also to the productions of the arts and sciences, of thinkers, scholars, artists, statesmen, peoples and parties, of the entire age: in regard to everything that is made he inquires after supply and demand in order to determine the value of a thing in his own eyes. This becomes the character of an entire culture, thought through in the minutest and subtlest detail and imprinted in every will and every faculty: it is this of which you men of the coming century will be proud: if the prophets of the commercial class are right to give it into your possession! But I have little faith in these prophets. Credat Judaeus Apella – in the words of Horace.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Dawn of Day (175)

Anarchism as Nietzschean anti-politics

My interpretation of anarchism as a social and (anti-)political philosophy is inspired from this quote of Nietzsche. It does point to some new interpretation of politics, and to a new conception of society, so to speak. And the fundamental antagonism between the state and culture that the quote points out, is a great insight, something that has already influenced many anarchists, such as Rudolf Rocker who expanded upon it in his works like Nationalism and Culture and Anarcho-Syndicalism. A beautiful quote!

Also, direct action is, for us anarchists, a manifestation of a strong will to power, just as the anarchic nature itself is the consequence of an overflowing life: of fullness — of overfullness of existence!

“As little State as possible. — Political and economic affairs are not worthy of being the enforced concern of society’s most gifted spirits: such a wasteful use of the spirit is at bottom worse than having none at all. They are and remain domains for lesser heads, and others than lesser heads ought not to be in the service of these workshops: better for the machinery to fall to pieces again! But as things now stand, with everybody believing he is obliged to know what is taking place here every day and neglecting his own work in order to be continually participating in it, the whole arrangement has become a great and ludicrous piece of insanity. The price being paid for ‘universal security’ is much too high: and the maddest thing is that what is being effected is the very opposite of universal security, a fact our lovely century is undertaking to demonstrate: as if demonstration were needed! To make society safe against thieves and fireproof and endlessly amenable to every kind of trade and traffic, and to transform the state into a kind of providence in both the good and the bad sense – these are lower, mediocre and in no way indispensable goals which ought not to be pursued by means of the highest instruments which in any way exist – instruments which ought to be saved up for the highest and rarest objectives! Our age may talk about economy but it is in fact a squanderer: it squanders the most precious thing there is, the spirit.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Dawn of Day (179)

“I heartily accept the motto,—‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Constitutionalism is a hopeless ideology...
It is impotent against fascism...
Don't forget that it is Constitutionalism that makes fascism possible.

A bourgeois, representative democracy — i.e., a fake democracy — is what makes fascism possible.
Demagoguery is an essential feature of bourgeois democracy, as is oppression and exploitation, fundamentally.

You can never really completely overcome the threat of fascism within a statist, hierarchical society. Pretty much all countries today prove this, even Germany and Italy which had the most brutal, most horrible fascist regimes in history.

The fight against fascism is also a fight against the state, against all social hierarchies, against caste, against patriarchy, and against Constitutionalism, liberalism, capitalism, etc.

we will burn the constitution just like we burnt the Ramayana, Mahabharatham, Geethai, Prabandam etc.

Just like how we declared and burnt all of those texts as being impractical and harmful for our everyday lives, we will do the same with this constitution that has been put in place to make it easy for those in power to enslave and exploit the people of this country.

We will burn it. Yes, we will!

— Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

my friends tell me that I have made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody. But whatever that may be, if our people want to carry on, they must not forget that there are majorities and there are minorities, and they simply cannot ignore the minorities…

People always keep on saying to me, ‘Oh, you are the maker of the Constitution.’ My answer is, I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.

The Hindus wanted the Vedas, and they sent for Vyasa who was not a caste Hindu. The Hindus wanted an epic, and they sent for Valmiki, who was an untouchable. The Hindus wanted a Constitution, and they have sent for me.

— Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/should-bahujans-burn-the-constitution

„Das Ehren-Wort für mittelmäßig ist bekanntlich das Wort ‚liberal‘.“

“The honorable term for mediocre is, of course, the word ‘liberal’.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power; 864)

Liberalism as the ideology of Nietzsche's Last Man

Cis people's gender dysphoria: when others' gender identity doesn't align with their gender expectations

“The first question is by no means whether we are content with ourselves, but whether we are content with anything at all. If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Will to Power (1032)

I'm not really addressing the main point of the post here...
just a small observation

Ego is not really a bad translation in this context, since it's Latin for "I", just as ich is its German counterpart...

(Interestingly, this is also what happened with Freud... the translator(s) translated das Ich as 'ego'; and likewise, das Es as 'id', das Über-Ich as 'super-ego')


But the noscript of the first (1907) English translation, as The Ego and His Own, is of course a bad translation... since Stirner was talking about der Einzige — 'the unique one' — and it's very different from the ego/I/ich...

It also contributed to a misunderstanding of his (anti-)philosophy, since what he valued more in his writing was ownness (die Eigenheit) rather than a more vague notion of egoism... the latter concept, conflated with the colloquial meaning of ego(t)ism, contributed to the misunderstanding that Stirner advocated a narrow egoism


As for Marx, it was typical of him to strawman his opponents with petty arguments