10 Comments
Apr 22Liked by Antonio Melonio

"I still believe that we have a responsibility to care for and support one another, that our individual flourishing is deeply and eternally bound up with the flourishing of our communities" You're not alone.

Expand full comment
author

Glad to hear that

Expand full comment
Apr 22Liked by Antonio Melonio

Fantastic reflection! I appreciate your balance between the cynicism of Stirner's writing and an optimism for how we can do better.

I agree, that we need to reject the "rights" upheld by corrupt systems of oppression, and start carving out our own. I see that new world coming together via a "network state" -- with Regenerative Villages determining their own rights. Anarchy at the Federal/State level, but a new truer form of democracy at the Village and BioRegion level.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you! Absolutely agree

Expand full comment
founding
Apr 22Liked by Antonio Melonio

Thank you for discussing Max Stirner. I had recognized his name the other day while reading Stefan Zweig’s book, The World of Yesterday, featuring your home city. But I really knew nothing about him and had not bothered to look him up. I am in agreement with your assessment of his philosophy.

At 73, I am old enough to remember a time when the word “duty” was still in common parlance and had not become the four letter word that no one now dares to mention in polite and learned society. Small wonder, really, because it was betrayed at every turn by the ruling class that used it to send men to foreign slaughter, women to domestic servitude, and everyone to lives of quiet desperation mindlessly following capitalist consumerism, pathological nationalism, and species exceptionalism.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that your “struggle to create a new world” should prove successful some day. Would people then not have a duty to maintain it? Personally, I believe that such an aspiration is, to use another out of date phrase, simply a delusional pipe dream. But that is really for your generation to decide since yours has more skin in the game than mine.

In the distant past, prior to ecological overshoot, there was a reasonable facsimile of such a world. It was systematically destroyed by industrial civilization in its relentless and sociopathic pursuit of individual and corporate rights to dominate and destroy the planet.

Expand full comment
Apr 22Liked by Antonio Melonio

Thank you Antonio🙏I dont see any way I could in practice survive alone, without others. Since I think like this I have always found the concept of human rights as some individual thing I need to exercice in opposition to others problematic. Finding ways to work together is what I find interesting.

Expand full comment

Thank you for this. Wonderful essay. I'm a fellow AnCom/Primitivist, so I definitely relate to your POV.

Thanks! Subscribed!

Expand full comment

“If we have the power to take something, he argues, then we have the right to it. Anything else is just a form of self-imposed servitude.

Yes, Stirner’s world is not a pleasant one.”

Turns out “Stirner’s World” is the real world. Might is just expression of being. Of course whatever one can do, they have the right to do. This is what I mean: birds have no right to hold their breath for 24 hours straight. But whatever they can do is totally right. No matter how uncomfortable that makes someone.

Humans are right. Life is right. The belief in human wrongness is a huge part of the problem.

Expand full comment

“any right that does not originate from one’s own “might” as an individual ego is, to Stirner, a form of slavery and subjugation”

That statement is so profound. I mean, it really gets to the heart of the truth and Liberty. Humans aren’t going to stop caring for one another. That’s silly. But the disconnect created when one’s might meets institutional barriers is the source of domination, oppression, etc.

Expand full comment

The difference between the sovereign (self-actualized) being established in unity consciousness vs. separation consciousness is the difference between a child and an adult.

In unity consciousness, the old/new golden rule is Sustainability (love in action). One is naturally compassionate, the only desire to create win-win situations. That anyone need to "sacrifice" is a weaponized byproduct of separation consciousness that doesn't exist in unity consciousness.

It's time for humanity to grow up and leave the world of competition for a cooperative society that recognizes the interconnectivity and vitality of every human being in their uniqueness. Only then humanity will prioritize a supportive community in harmony with Mother Earth.

Expand full comment