Carson Nøkke
An Overview of Freedom
To the Capitalist
You, capitalist! Upholder of the neoliberal system! Oh, how you cower in fear when us egoists, those who are unique, those who have no regard for your petty laws - that which hinders us - and no regard for your markets, your currency, your vain attempts at stopping us from true freedom - suggest that we must do away with everything I just mentioned, when just before you had the striking courage to suggest that your system is human nature! You fail to realize that what you are saying is contrary to reality. Egoism is innate to man! We desire and then we do! As much as I desire to write this to tell you that you are nothing but incorrect, you desire to defend your system! Just as much as the virulent atheist desires to prove his so-called correctness, the religious inherits his deity’s desire and act upon it to be pious!
You are ill-informed to suggest that it is in our blood to be greedy - or, rather, your greed is no match for my greed, an enlightened greed, which desires not for some, not for what is allowed within some rules, not one that suppresses any sort of desire that transcends these rules and wishes for something more - the one that keeps you awake at night, eyes watering, heart racing, knowing there is, indeed, something more - but rather my greed thirsts for all and I do not silence it! You cling to your currency, your markets, your gods of false economy in some hope that it may free you and that you may be made happy by owning. But you fail to realize that you already own all, and all owns you, and everything owns everyone!
Indeed we all own; the question is when shall we take it? When shall we reclaim from those who call themselves bourgeoise and proletariat, or slaves and masters, those who we detest for having the audacity to suggest that we are not individuals but rather slaves to some sort of binary. They limit our individuality as much as we limit theirs as long as we are complacent within the system - having rebellious thoughts but never once daring to expropriate or communize. The great limiter here is morality - not bourgeoise or master/slave, but just morality as a whole, as a barrier, as something we must happily yet mournfully bury as a thing of the past, as a non-objective non-reality. We have no regard for the master, the god, the religion of ethics - we acknowledge its reality within the individual, but we say resoundingly that even then it should be ignored. Ignore one intuition for that which benefits you and those you love!
Here’s the catch: as egoists, we love everyone for it benefits us to love!
The capitalist now attempts to explain to me that we have natural property rights - many a capitalist would say it guides our every personal ethic, or rather it should. But where does this so-called property right come from? The liberal responds that it comes from naturality. However, they fail to realize that rights are merely granted by a master, the master of a president, a minister, a king, a state, a god - ah, that old god, the old messiah which must dictate our every move. This old god is not limited to some epiphenomenal deity which has ascended us all, but rather many gods - the god of humanity, of law, of state, of morality. We reject all gods except for the god of one thing - that of the self.
“Why do you reject one god for another? What hypocrisy!” says the self-proclaimed nihilist, proud cynic, when they are nothing but a clueless fool! We are nihilists but we have lost the need and desire to cling to some petty godless nihilism and instead ascended to a realm of nihil where the only thing acknowledged is the self’s desires, the desire to be unique above all - then the desire to love, to own, and so on. This is our god, and our realm, and we challenge anyone and everyone to tear town the indestructible self. The self, you see, is always present - at every moment. To paraphrase Stirner, even the slave under the harshest master is a self - every time he is lashed, he groans out of self, he does not give in to the complete desires for complacency the master so abundantly and painfully demands. The slave remains steadfast in his uniqueness until his last dying breath.
The issue in this, with the slave, is that he fails to realize that just as much as his “master” has the ability to lash him, he has the ability to lash his master in the most painful way possible - disobedience and uprising. Let’s say, for example, this slave is on a plantation where slaves labor in abundance. The slave has a remarkable idea - that of an egoist - the idea to overthrow his master, and masters to him altogether, and make his way in life free of restraints. Is it not true that the egoistic slave could find others to help him? To form a union of egoists - which are not united by some cause but rather of will, love, and friendship; and, of course, opposition to their oppressors.
There is one thing here I am yet to criticize: the god of civilization, arguably the most prevalent of all gods, that which causes others to be born and promoted. Civilization is what prevents so many of us from being true egoists and instead makes us spectral egoists - an egoist which desires but only within set, societal limitations. Civilization and its partner, industrial technology, keeps us complacent and with a false sense of security. How the civilizationists fail to realize how wrong their assumptions are, and how fragile their repeated attempts to save society are when compared to the unique!
We are the nihilists! We adhere to no boundaries of civilized life as you know it! We dispute civilized life as a whole as nothing but a subjectivity - how can you have the audacity to suggest some sort of definitive binary between civilized and uncivilized exists when it is clearly nothing but something each individual makes for himself! We reject the boringness of your arbitrary life for the excitement, liberation, and joy of our own!
We refuse to bow! We refuse to follow your laws if they unjustly hinder us! We cannot be undone in our passion for freedom, for liberating the caged animals known as modern humanity, for freeing nature as a whole and living in harmony with it, with a sense of both community and the most extreme form of individuality man has known since the times of hunter-gatherers, instead of the false sense of such offered by civ! We recognize this false sense as nothing but that born out of a spectacle, of mass media, of industrialism, of the ever-so-rampant sense of isolation that we so massively and outrageously cry out against!
Yet you have the audacity to call us barbarians? You, living caged in a house, with a comfy job, unaware of your own isolation from your family, those you love, from reality as a whole? We may be barbarians, but we are not hindered to the point of sadness; we may be uncivilized, but why is that a bad thing compared to the alternative? Why do you so rampantly trample on nature or defend such? Why do you contribute so enthusiastically to the destruction of the uniqueness and of yourself? Why is your sadomasochism so undeniably large that you inflict pain on yourself and on others to uphold your gods, the system of capital, ethics, and so on? Do you have no sense of self or are you afraid to find it? The answer to this is simple, and it is the latter option.
We suggest, among things such as blowing up the sun and forcing all politicians to fistfight each other until they are all dead, that everyone recognize that they are unique individuals and deserve, among everything, to live as such. This is our statement and has been since the beginning; it will remain as such until the end.
Under the paving stones - the beach. Under the ruthlessness of capital - desire. Under the soulless slave of gods - the egoist.