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goldenkamuyhunting · 5 years ago

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Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 230 “Ienaga Kano”

So with the new chapter we get a split in the fandom on how to nickname Tsukishima. While the Japanese fandom goes for ‘Surekill-man’ a reference to a fanassigned nicknamed for a character in the ‘Jojo no kimyō na bōken’ universe, the western fandom went for something obviously more ‘western’…

…to be honest with various variations of the nick, from purely ‘The Terminator’ from the homonymous movie to ‘The Tsukishima’ or ‘Tsukishimator’ and so on (I went with the one that would fit better in the space in the image, that and Merdopseudo liked it, my apologies to the nicks not used, you’re all cool but ‘there can be only one’).

But let’s start with the chapter and with how Tsukishima gained this nick.

We left him having been injected a sedative by Ienaga and yet still managing to shoot her to death. It’s worth to point out Ienaga’s sedatives need some time to affect people and our Tsukinator is trying to take advantage of it to make a short work of Tanigaki.

Really, we knew Tsukishima, pardon, the Tsukinator was good at hand-to-hand combat but not really how much. Tanigaki is supposedly good as well, bigger than him and not drugged and our supposedly sedated Tsukinator is literally wiping the floor with him without even breaking a sweat and Tanigaki manages only narrowly to have him miss shooting his brain off.

Luckily for Tanigaki when it looks as if the Tsukinator will get better luck with his next shoot, the sedative kickes in (with the Tsukinator’s veins becoming rather visible as if they were some sort of monster crawling on his face)

and the Tsukinator’s falls, his face flat on Tanigaki’s ample chest.

Ienaga, still alive, tells Inkarmat, who’s naively trying to stop the blood pouring out of her, about how the Tsukinator wouldn’t SUPPOSEDLY be able to move for two hours.

Tanigaki, always the righteous, gives Ienaga a look that Ienaga correctly interpret with ‘why would a selfish, evil criminal like you do something like that?’.

Tanigaki represents that sort of naïve people that divide the world in two blocks, the purely evil ones and the purely good ones and misses how actually there’s a lot of middle ground in between the two groups and purely evil and purely good hardly exist if not in fairy tales.

As Ienaga did PLENTY of terrible deeds Tanigaki doesn’t care for her motivations nor expects her to feel also positive emotions like love or care and do something good like helping them. He put her in the box of the evil people and thinks there’s no way she would get out of it and do something good.

On the contrary side he perceives himself as being among the good guys, as proved by the previous chapter in which he said he wasn’t cold blooded enough to kill a friend, Sugimoto, conveniently forgetting he wanted to do the same to Kenkichi and that he did the same to Kiro (who saved his and Inkarmat’s life by the way) and doesn’t realize the ‘greyness’ in himself, feeling free to judge negatively Ogata and Nikaido for betraying Tsurumi but thinking instead that he is entitled to do the same.

This, of course, doesn't mean Tanigaki is evil, he’s merely human and therefore flawed.

I love this side of him as a character, I love how human Tanigaki is in his own good sides and in his own bad sides but, on the other hand it clearly makes me angry when he acts like a blind hypocrite. It’s human... but it’s no good at all.

Anyway Ienaga explains her own reasons which are… very simple.

Inkarmat, who’s about to give birth, is, for Ienaga, about to become ‘perfect’. Evidently the trauma of her mother’s abort, which twisted Ienaga and turned her into a bloody murderer and cannibal, rules her life not only pushing her to do heinous acts but also in a positive way. She wants to save this pregnant woman, she wants her to attain the ‘perfection’ neither her or her mother could attain. And it’s clear Ienaga is completely content with giving up her life for this, in fact she’s smiling and telling Tanigaki to not lose this moment.

Inkarmat is touched. Tanigaki just pulls Inkarmat up and tells her to leave without even a word of thank you for the person who gave her life so that they could escape. Inkarmat’s gaze instead is still on Ienaga and since she doesn’t seem to really try to get up I wonder if this is because she feels bad for Ienaga, for leaving her behind.

Not that she can be saved.

This, mind you, doesn’t mean Ienaga is now a good person or that she gets redeemed by this single heroic act. Ienaga is a terrible person who did terrible things and who’s helping Inkarmat only because, for her own reasons, she had come to care about her.

It’s entirely possible Ienaga doesn’t regret a single terrible thing she had done in life and, had she survived, she would have continued to try to chop people and eat them for their own purposes… except Inkarmat for whom she had grown fond.

On the other side the cover of the chapter, placed here and showing Ienaga’s body, depicts the sprays of blood that came out of her as forming a halo and wings, while the writing points out that Ienaga became perfect in that very moment, by giving her own life for someone else.

If this is Noda nodding to Christian faith again, the implication is that yes, Ienaga regretted what she did in the past and that she would be forgiven, not by men but by God.

After all, according to many, ‘Who saves a life saves the world’.

Yeah, yeah, among fans it’s a controversial topic.

The tropes of ‘death equals redemption’ and ‘redemption equals death’ are overused to the point they feel cheap and that’s due to fans themselves. As James Norrington said ‘The problem with a 'redemption' gig is, well, no one wants to see it. They all want to believe in it, sure, but to do it... it's as good as signing your own death warrant. Audiences don't want to see you redeemed, living a normal life. They'll never truly forgive you for your flaws as long as you're alive.’

Long story short, authors who decide to portray that EVERYONE can do a heel-face turn, that you can stop doing evil things, that is never too late to become a good person which is a great message really, also end up heroically killing off characters who decide to do something good for a change, so as to appease the fans who can’t forgive them and just want them to never realize the errors of their way and die a miserable death (or, when they feel merciful, spend their life being miserable).

Well, if that’s your kind of story, you’re free to roll with it.

De gustibus non disputandum est.

I’m personally not sure that, had Ienaga survived, after this heroic act of her, the trauma that pushed her into becoming the person she was, would be magically healed and she would become a morally perfect person... or at least as morally perfect as a human can be (not much really unless you’re in air of sainthood) and OF COURSE there’s no way she could ‘pay back’ all the people she killed as... well… they’re dead (I know there’s a lot of confusion about it but redemption isn’t about being forgiven, nor is about giving your life in a heroic way, redemption is about paying back the people you wronged... unless of course you use religion and have the character atone for his sins against God by redeeming himself to His eyes and not really by redeeming himself to his victims) but I like the idea Noda is hinting this could have helped her to change their ways.

A perfect world would be perfect if all the criminals just were to change their ways and become good people, not if the jails could contain them all or if they were to drop all dead in a ‘Death Note’ style (though, when we talk about fictional works, there’s a bit of Yagami Light in all the fans… :P ). We need good men more than we need jails filled and corpses.

But well, this of course is just an utopia, sinning is addictive and changing your life is hellish hard. It happens even in real life, but is sadly very rare.

Anyway Tanigaki and Ienaga leave Inkarmat’s room only to meet up with Koito, pointing his gun at them. Tanigaki, who was pushing ahear Inkarmat, now places her behind himself but Koito is clearly torn. He’s sweating and chewing his lower lip as he lower his gaze as well before lowering his gun too and telling them to leave.

The two run away, always without thanking him, but then Tanigaki wonders why Koito left them go.

Inkarmat points out that when Koito was bedridden she spent a lot of time telling fortunes to him but Tanigaki rejects the idea. The Second Lieutenant Koito he knows wouldn’t have shown mercy to a person who had shown kindness to him.

While this is partially true, as part of Koito’s actions are clearly motivated by how he had lost faith in Tsurumi and Tsukishima due to discovering how he was used by them, I still think him letting Inkarmat go is also part due to him growing fond of her.

She was with him and cheered him up when he was wounded and weak and, in a way, in enemy ground. I think this was precious to him and Inkarmat, who’s clearly not a naive person, probably realized it. Koito knows he can’t escape, he doesn’t take that chance to run away as well, but it’s worth to mention if Tsurumi were to realize he let them go, Koito could end up in troubles as well and maybe he’s afraid Tsukishima too could put him in troubles since he warned him if he were to betray he would kill him. Koito also is risking his own life to help them, and, I think, is something he’s not doing solely out of the kindness of his heart but out of genuine care for Inkarmat.

She won him over a little.

It’s also sad how Tanigaki thinks that Inkarmat’s kindness should have gone unrewarded on Koito. He doesn’t think the time she spent with him would affect Koito, that he would grow to care for her. He sees Koito as a lost cause, a man uncapable of showing thankfullness and apprecciation for the kindness he received.

Koito is in another box for bad guys from which Tanigaki didn’t think Koito should have been able to get off and instead he did. People don’t change to Tanigaki, he has no hope for them to get better, to improve themselves, to develop positive relations or to do good thing. Once evil, always evil.

It’s a sad, hopeless and cold view.

I think even Nihei would be hurt by it.

Meanwhile Tanigaki put in action his ‘bright plan’ of escaping with Inkarmat on a horse a mean of transportation surely perfectly comfortable for a pregnant woman who could give birth at any minute and whose speed wouldn’t resent at all of the fact it has to carry two people, one of which at the nth month of pregnancy plus whatever Tanigaki has in those bags he hung to the horse and his own backpack.

Now… remember when I said the Tsukinator was meant to be out of commission for supposedly two hours?

Well, we wished.

The Tsukinator, despite the sedative, manages to get up, grab a rifle, shoot in Tanigaki’s direction and recharge before… falling again. Honestly I’m not sure if he has fainted or he just slipped off the bed due to lack of coordination. Nothing stop the Tsukinator as we’ll see later on.... but after all we knew it.

‘Listen, and understand, Tanigaki. That Tsukinator is out there, it cant be bargained with, it cant be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop... EVER, untill you are dead!’

Too bad Tanigaki can’t hear me lecturing him about the Tsukinator....

Meanwhile as Tanigaki and Inkarmat escape, as it was easy to predict, the rocking of the horse of course starts to affect Inkarmat. Tanigaki realizes he was going too fast and, since they managed to make to the edge of the Otaru he thinks they’re far enough and safe enough they can stop there in an abandoned building.

As Tanigaki lights a fire, Inkarmat notes there’s blood coming from his head so he uses the Matanpushi (the headband Huci gave him) to bandage it, claiming he’ll be fine.

Honestly I don’t really find respectful to use that headband as a makeshift bandage as the Matanpushi has a religious meaning among Ainu, in fact it tells Gods where they are and calls their protection on the wearer. I can understand Huci using it as such, to ask the Gods to protect Tanigaki, but, as I doubt Tanigaki is now an Ainu Gods believer, it just feels a bit inappropriate.

On the other side in desperate times people would beg at whatever altar they would find and I also wonder if, in a way, this makes Tanigaki feel as he felt when he was escaping from Ogata and Nikaido so in a way he is hoping Huci’s headband will give him protection not so much through the Gods in which Huci’s believes but just because it’s Huci’s headband... which again is very human and also rather sweet.

(Besides there are huge chances Tanigaki has no idea of the religious meaning tied to it...)

We can also see that Tanigaki’s irises recover their light colour now that he’s wearing it so yes, I think it has a good psychological effect on him and it’s not just something he picked up at random.

Anyway Tanigaki plans to have them rest only a little and then escape farther.

Inkarmat notes Tanigaki is losing blood from his leg also, which Tanigaki thinks is the result of Tsukishima shooting at them earlier and which he notices only now since he was so busy escaping he didn’t even felt the pain it should give him.

While this is kind of normal and points rather well to Tanigaki’s inner state, so completely focused on escaping he basically didn’t even felt pain, not checking on his own conditions is a huge mistake. Not only loss of blood makes him weaker and could have caused him to faint, making him useless and giving Inkarmat more troubles but his dripping blood left a convenient track the Tsukinator followed till there.

And that’s why I think Tsukishima didn’t faint, he only fell because, on his feet he basically reached Tanigaki and Inkarmat who escaped on a horse in no time as they only apparently had time to light the fire before being discovered. The Tsukinator is even faster than Jason Voorhees in tailing after his victims despite being on his feet and drugged… but Noda has already assigned the comparison with Jason to Sugimoto so I’ll stick with the Tsukinator…

Anyway the Tsukinator tries to shoot Tanigaki but he narrowly misses him.

Either Tanigaki is lucky, due to the Matanpushi the Gods are really protecting him or Tsukishima is still partially affected by the sedative. Anyway Tanigaki tells Inkarmat to escape from the back as he tries to shoot the Tsukinator and… miss him despite the Tsukinator being only few steps from him as the Tsukinator lowers himself, pushes Tanigaki on the ground and then punches him hard.

Tanigaki, taking advantage of his superior size and strength, grabs the Tsukinator up and tosses him against a wall so hard the Tsukinator crashes through it.

Think this signs a score for Tanigaki? Think twice.

The result of Tanigaki’s efforts is that when Tanigaki grabs his rifle and tries to shoot him, the Tsukinator had all the time to hide, protected by the walls.

Tanigaki looks out, and luckily for him the Tsukinator isn’t into position yet as Tanigaki’s head would have been a beautiful target right then.

Way to go, Tanigaki, really.

Inkarmat calls him so Tanigaki reaches her and again they escape on a horse. Again.

The Tsukinator shoots Tanigaki in the shoulder...

...before faithfully ‘hopping’ after them at a leisurely pace with a calm and a determination that betrays how he took lessons from Pepé Le Pew only, to Pepé and Tsurumi’s displeasure, what pushes him forward to chase and attempt to kill Tanigaki, is clearly not ‘love’.

Anyway morning as come and Inkarmat and Tanigaki are still escaping on a horse, conveniently leaving blood track on the snow that the Tsukinator can follow. They might as well leave direction signs.

Tanigaki though is optimist. Now he has a rifle so, he thinks, the Tsukinator will keep more at distance (he wishes) and besides since he’s more at home in the mountains than him they will easily lose him if he will hide there with a pregnant woman about to give birth and for whom all those emotions and the horse ride clearly aren’t good.

As on cue and strictly following Murphy’s law, Inkarmat’s water breaks and Tanigaki’s oh so perfect plan to slowly reach the mountains and lose the Tsukinator there crashes when facing the logistics of how to deal with an impending childbirth that Ienaga had warned him was about to happen. But no, do not listen to the amazing doctor when the latter is also a criminal who just died to save your ass.

So Tanigaki APOLOGIZES TO THE HORSE because he is leaving him behind and mind him, this is nice and everything but what about thanking Ienaga, who died for you and Koito who risked his ass for you?

Meanwhile the Tsukinator moves closer following the trail of blood he can notice also in a bamboo grove… to discover Tanigaki’s horse which now has a wound on his leg, likely made by Tanigaki as the horse before seemed perfectly fine.

The Tsukinator understands he was misleaded into chasing the horse and his brain computer analyze the situation to set on a new course… and soon it’ll become obvious it’s not really difficult to get which one.

Meanwhile Tanigaki, who’s about to become father, carries Inkarmat bridal stile running through the snow repeating the classic sentences Panicky Expectant Fathers says to their wives when they’re about to give birth to a baby: ‘you can do this, grit your teeth and bear it, it’s gonna be okay, I’m with you, you can do this, everything will work out… yadda, yadda’.

Mind you, it’s nice from them as it’s not like there’s something they can do except saying such things and being of moral support with their presence but it’s a trope so abused seeing it in this scene somehow made me laugh instead than feel the drama that’s obviously looming over him and Inkarmat due to them being in an obviously very dire situation.

And it’s worth to mention that Inkarmat, same as all the other pregnant women, appreciates a lot Tanigaki’s efforts to reassure her.

Moral support might seem nothing much but sometimes it can also do miracles and it’s great to know there’s someone with you that encourages you when you’re in such a desperate situation, a rock against which you can hold so as not to be dragged away by waves.

So she smiles and hugs Tanigaki tightly and tries to hold on.

It’s a good moment.

Yeah, Tanigaki went into this without the sliver of a decent plan but at least he decided to stick with the people that were important for him and not leave them alone at the first sign of trouble.

Tanigaki has plenty of faults and flaws but, despite this I think it’s so IMPORTANT how he decided to stay with Inkarmat through thick and thin when so many other men would have washed their hands clean of her and the baby.

Maybe Tanigaki can’t give us lessons about planning or about not being hypocrites but sure as hell he’s trying his hardest to be a good companion and a good father and this is GREAT, really.

He’s wounded, he has lost blood and yet he’s running in the snow with all their luggage and Inkarmat, who’s pregnant, in his arms.

The Tsukinator can be scary in the way he doesn’t stop his chase but Tanigaki, who’s instead moved by love, is amazing.

Sadly though, Tanigaki isn’t really good at planning things and this definitely plays against him.

So Tanigaki, running like a madman, reaches the most predictable destination in the neighbourhood of Otaru in which he could hope to get help, Huci’s house, where we can see next to her the son of Sakamoto, the Lighting Bandit and O-gin who now had grown enough he can sit on his own.

While yes, in this place they can find someone who’ll help Inkarmat, it’s not like The Tsukinator couldn’t guess Tanigaki would take this course, it was obvious enough that escaping with a woman who’s about to give birth they should find a place in which said woman could give birth and Huci’s house is close enough so I expect the Tsukinator to figure this out and reach them in no time. I honestly doubt Tanigaki will manage to repeat the same trick he used with Ogata as, first of all, at this point it wouldn’t be wise to move Inkarmat for a while and this includes also just after she gave birth and he can’t leave her behind or she and her child will become hostages Tsukishima and Tsurumi can use against him or kill off in retaliation for his escape and this now includes Huci as well since Tanigaki has ended up involving her.

Due to Tanigaki’s huge involvement in Kiro’s death (Kiro died of blood loss mainly caused by the wound Tanigaki gave him) he’ll likely be a victim of the tiger curse and condemned to live an unhappy life meaning there are chances he won’t be the one to die here but that he’ll lose everything here.

Tsukishima is in no better position as he also contributed to Kiro’s death albeit in a smaller manner (the wound Tsukishima inflicted him did negligible harm compared to Tanigaki’s although it clearly didn’t help, actually it only speeded up Kiro’s death) so let’s talk a bit about him.

Tsukishima didn’t need to become The Tsukinator, as I called him through this whole rambling.

He attempted to stop Tanigaki, he was drugged, they went away, he could have told Tsurumi he just passed out, Koito kept on sleeping and be done with the whole business.

Tanigaki is just a man who wants to go back home, he isn’t interested in the gold hunt nor in stopping Tsurumi, he wants to get the woman he loves and have a family with her. Inkarmat is a woman who due to her past with Wilk ended up becoming a pawn to him and now she apparently merely wants to have a family with Tanigaki. The incoming baby has no fault of his own and can’t prove to be a threat.

Why just not letting them go? Why do they need to be killed or captured at any cost?

Is the baby’s actually Tsurumi? Did they experimented on the fetus so as to create the perfect soldier or the antichrist himself? Does Inkarmat know earth shattering secrets that can’t be revealed to anyone?

Tsukishima was willing to let go Gansoku, a criminal. When Koito unveiled the truth Tsukishima let it slide as long as Koito played along with Tsurumi.

So why not letting go Tanigaki, Inkarmat and the baby?

Just because they aren’t okay with being used as a pawns like he is? Just because they want to have the ordinary happy life Tsukishima was denied? Or it’s because in this way it won’t come out Koito let them go?

I don’t know but I can’t say I like what Tsukishima is doing. He could turn the other way to save three lives, he could turn the other way as he does each time Tsurumi commits a crime and instead he decided to stick with Tsurumi against three people who, apparently, can’t really do Tsurumi harm. I’m really sad he chose to be that way.

On another note there’s something I wanted to remark in the past chapter but forgot about it so I’ll mention it here. I love how Noda handles Inkarmat’s pregnancy.

In many cases in manga a pregnant woman is often moving around like a not-pregnant woman, using her protruding belly like a hand rest and maybe being a little slow and fatigued but overall acting as she usually do.

Inkarmat moves exactly like a pregnant woman instead, not using her belly as a hand rest but protecting and holding it with her hands, taking it into consideration when she moves around and even when she’s in a seating position she clearly have to adjust it to make it comfortable for herself now that she’s in her 9th month. Noda really did his homework with her.

Anyway with this chapter we end volume 23, with Tanigaki coming back to Huci without Asirpa and with a woman about to give birth and a Tsukinator tailing after them in a situation that really sounds like it will become a déjà vu of volume 5.

Ogata back then didn’t want to shoot Tanigaki in Huci’s house so as not to have to kill her too and ended up allowing Tanigaki to get an advantage over him. We’ll see what the Tsukinator will do… and we’ll see what Tanigaki will do now as well, so as to ensure Inkarmat, his kid and Huci (as well as Sakamoto and O-gin’s baby) will get out of this safely.

Hopefully maybe, being back on the mountains will give him back his planning ability.

Using the horse to lead Tsukishima in the wrong direction wasn’t a bad idea even if the course he took afterward became then far too predictable. On a sidenote… in that circumstance Nikaido was there as well and Tsukishima watched as Tsurumi cut his ear. I do wonder… was Nikaido still at the hospital? Does he know what’s going on? Will he join them? And with whom he’ll side?

Tanigaki who caused him to be attacked by a bear or Tsukishima who stood by as Tsurumi cut his ear and would have let the latter kill him without blinking?

It would really be interesting to have Nikaido join the party with a ‘personal’ position instead than just the one of the soldier who has to obey to Tsurumi’s orders.

As the tiger curse said they’re supposed to live an unhappy life, unless I’m misinterpreting something, the curse won’t attempt to their lives, just at making them miserable. Still, we’ll see. I don’t want Inkarmat, the baby and Huci to die but I get this could be appropriate karmic retribution for Tanigaki. We’ll see.

In a way, while the previous chapter pushed forward a comparison between Tanigaki’s escape plan (or lack thereoff) and Ogata’s escape plan, this chapter is all a comparison in strenght and endurance between Tsukishima and Tanigaki. They fight, they keep on going even when other men would just give up, with a desperation and a determination that makes me think of Kiro in his last moments and that might be done on purpose in case the tiger curse is looming on them.

Kiroranke is looking down on them from above, seeing them as they struggle like he did, seeing them, who in the past had a good relation, fight without mercy like Tanigaki did with him.

We’ll see how it’ll end for both of them but sure thing the irony in all this is big.

Last but not least a question that’s going to stay unanswered for now. Who between the Tsukinator, the killer rabbit of Caerbannog, the 6 million yen man and Jasonmoto would win should they come to a hand-to-hand fight? We’ll probably discover this in the future.

#Golden Kamuy #Tanigaki Genjirou #Inkarmat #Tsukishima Hajime #Ienaga Kano #Koito Otonoshin #Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories #Susupo

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years ago

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Drawing First Blood

I have no ancestors! For me the creation of the world dates from the day of my birth; for me the end of the world will be accomplished on the day when I shall restore to the elementary mass the apparatus and the afflatus which constitute my individuality. I am the first man, I shall be the last. My history is the complete result of humanity; I know no other, I care to know no other. When I suffer, what good do I get from another's enjoyment? When I enjoy, in what do those who suffer detract from my pleasures? Of what consequence to me is that which happened before me? How am I concerned in what will happen after me? It is not for me to serve as a sacrifice to respect for extinct generations, or as an example to posterity. I confine myself within the circle of my existence, and the only problem that I have to solve is that of my welfare. I have but one doctrine, that doctrine has but one formula, that formula has but one word: ENJOY! Sincere is he who confesses it; an imposter is he who denies it.

This is bare individualism, native egoism; I do not deny it, I confess it, I verify it, I boast of it. Show me, that I may question him, the man who would reproach and blame me. Does my egoism do you any harm? If you say no, you have no reason to object to it, for i am free in all that does not injure you. If you say yes, you are a thief, for, my egoism being only the simple appropriation of myself by myself, an appeal to my identity, an affirmation of my individuality, a protest against all supremacy, if you admit that you are damaged by my act in taking possession of myself, by my retention of my own person — that is, the least disputable of my properties — you will declare thereby that I belong to you, or, at least, that you have designs on me; you are an owner of men, either established as such or intending to be, a monopolist, a coveter of another's person, a thief. There is no middle ground; either right lies with egoism, or it lies with theft; either I belong to myself, or I become the possession of someone else. It cannot be said that I should sacrifice myself for the good of all, since, all having to similarly sacrifice themselves, no one would gain more by this stupid game than he had lost, and consequently each would remain destitute — that is, without profit, which clearly would make such sacrifice absurd. If, then, the abnegation of all cannot be profitable to all, it must of necessity be profitable to a few; these few, then, are the possessors of all, and are probably the very ones who will complain of my egoism.

Every man is an egoist; whoever ceases to be one becomes a thing. He who pretends it is not necessary to be one is a sly thief.

Oh, yes, I know, the word has an ugly sound; so far you have applied it to those who are not satisfied with what belongs to them, to those who take to themselves what belongs to others; but such people are in accord with human impulse; you are not. In complaining of their rapacity, do you know what you do? You establish your own imbecility. Hitherto you have believed there were tyrants. Well, you are mistaken: there are only slaves.

Where nobody obeys nobody commands.

—Anselme Bellegarigue, 1850

The history of civilization is the search for Utopia, the pursuit of a static, idealized social form where all individuality and variation is melted into the crucible of one unifying belief system. It has been a millennia-long military campaign to contain all within a single structure, where constant sameness is the ideal, to absorb and convert the outsiders who venture within the charmed circle, and to flatten and standardize life by entangling all of us in the spiderweb of an abstract social contract. The civilizing process itself — that is, domestication — is part and parcel of the utopian project, as it attempts to perfect and re-engineer the vital forces of the self-exalting individual, to turn humans — who are a self-centered mixture of hate and gentleness, violence and peace, greed and generosity — into masked animals who feel shame for all that is biological and natural, to render them internally fragmented, divided, and broken (and hence, more amenable to control). To accomplish this, society invents ideas and images to cover those instincts it considers in need of taming; it formulates various ideologies to convince its subjects that selfishness is wrong and should be suppressed, and that the healthy egoistic impulses of a free man or woman must be denied expression in the interests of group-stability. From the ideal republic of Plato to the ideal republic of Lenin, civilization has produced unquantifiable, competing visions of Utopia that each vie for mastery, and that each bear identifiable similarities: They are routinely masked under philanthropic guises, and they all advocate the absorption of the individual into the social body — often (and almost satirically) in the name of “collective freedom”.

The sole utopian current that explicitly asserts the sovereignty of the individual is anarchism, certainly the most paradoxical of the “isms” because it insists on absolute individual and collective freedom. From these shared propositions have emerged the unavoidable dilemmas: how to synthesize complete individual freedom with social identification and a strong sense of social responsibility? Is self-determination compatible with any kind of social contract? And more pointedly, do most people even want the unconditional freedom that anarchism, in its more glorious and inspired moments, postulates? These are the questions that have always checkmated anarchists who engage in large-scale social planning. They start out talking about anarchy and end up advocating some particularly weak version of direct democracy.

But how could it be otherwise? Every attempt to free humanity en masse is bound to fail because collective self-determination is a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as the common good, for there is no good that is common to all. Society, collective, and public are only convenient terms to designate individuals in the aggregate; they are not entities — they have no bodies, minds, interests, or real existence: A collective has no self, and is but a collection of selves who have waived their individual powers and will to self-determination, for what is claimed to be the interests of the majority. The price paid for collective unity is always the subordination of the member units, which is the antithesis of anarchy (as we understand it). The ideal Free Society of autonomous but federated collectives that Social Anarchists envision (The AK Press version of anarchy) differs very little from the state capitalist reality of autonomous but interlocking corporations: in both cases individual sovereignty is fettered and repressed so that collective mediocrity may flourish. Beyond the fact that this federation-model constitutes one of the most boring and narrow images of what liberation might mean that it’s possible for the human mind to conceive, the very desire for individual difference — or uniqueness — is destined to be held competitive and dangerous to the egalitarian (or inevitably, hierarchical) solidarity of these federations and communes, and the anarchist Mass utopia, if it were ever implemented (which it won’t be), would inescapably become a reign of stagnancy, servility, and conformity. It’s difficult to regard collectivist anarchists as anarchists at all, since they simply want to turn over what amounts to State power to their communes and federations and to promote party lines and group think in the interest of a fraudulent solidarity —And woe betide anyone who dissents from the collective plan or decision!

That this concern is not mere boogey-man scaremongering is borne out by a critical examination of what many consider the pivotal moment in anarchist history, the Spanish Civil War (and specifically the practices of the falsely titled anarcho-syndicalist CNT, which has been outrageously glorified in innumerable studies, and which actually had a brief opportunity to try to implement their utopia). Regarding syndicalist federalism, in “What is the CNT?,” Jose Peirats ominously records that “Federation always implies freedom and self-government of the federated bodies, but this does not mean their independence.” And this is spelt out even more clearly in the Rule Book of the CNT, in which its constitution is described. Here we are told that in the CNT “We recognize the sovereignty of the individual, but we accept and agree to carry out the collective mandate taken by majority decision”. This clause is reinforced by others, which state that “anarcho-syndicalism and anarchism recognize the validity of majority decisions” and that “the militant… is obliged to comply with majority decisions even when they are against his own feelings”! This constitution was operative when the CNT was a minority organization in opposition. What its application would have meant when the CNT had taken “over the tasks of production and distribution after the revolution” is not hard to guess — at best, a theoretically democratic federalism; at worst, an economic totalitarianism. In either case it would not be anarchy.

It only remains to add that the Spanish syndicalist de Santillan saw one of the roles of the syndicalist federal economic council as the distribution of Labor from one region to another, which gives us a picture of the syndicalist new order that is rather different from an anarchist vision of a liberated world. Needless to say, we’re not told by these social saviors what would happen to Labor that refused to be distributed according to the orders of de Santillan’s “directed and planned socialized economy,” but it becomes pretty apparent that the syndicalists just wanted to replace the State with an industrial organization every bit as opposed to self sovereignty — and this observation applies equally to the utopian schemes of the so-called libertarian socialists and anarcho-communists, with their mechanized, efficient picture of social perfection (essentially just another form of the Leftist workers paradise).

If history and the record of every collectivist experiment large and small prove anything it is the staggering — in fact insurmountable — difficulties and complexities of such a proposed mass organization. What happens to those individuals who don’t wish to be planned, who don’t like the Jobs assigned to them by their fellow workers, and who wish to exist outside the purview of the absolute power of these workers councils? Or how about those who don’t wish to be citizens but to be free of citizen-hood, to escape from statehood (regardless of what it’s called), those who desire to secede from this fancied, singular entity called society? What happens when an absolutely total unanimity doesn’t reign in the federated pyramid of workers councils, when separations don’t magically disappear, and some individuals find the plans and democratic decisions of others not to their liking? The common ownership ideal of these left-anarchists would make Society or Humanity the new proprietor, the new lord-god. And if Society is the owner, then everyone is owned by Society and must suffer its dictation.

Anarchy is freedom, and this most assuredly includes the freedom not to be a socialist or to live like one, and the freedom not to limit one’s identity to any social role — especially that of worker. It’s the freedom not to participate in communal activities or to share communal goals, or to pray before the idol of Solidarity. It’s freedom not only from the rule of the State but also from that of the tribe, village, commune, or production syndicate. It’s the freedom to choose one’s own path to one’s own goals, to map out one’s own campaign against Authority, and, if desired, to go it alone.

Of course, anarcho-syndicalism is no longer a credible or even very active force, and only continues to linger around anarchist circles as a type of phantom belief, analogous to the syndrome of phantom limbs — a limb such as an arm or leg that someone no longer possesses, yet which still seems to be there, attached to the body, and continuing to cause pain or distraction. But the social forecasts of the anarcho-communists and anarcho-socialists (who, regrettably, are still with us) are actually not substantially different, in that they all envision something akin to this workers council model — an entirely leftist political structure, about which anarchists ought to be embarrassed. This extended intercourse with decayed leftist thinking is partly why anarchist theory has gone flabby, and helps clarify why so much important anarchist history has remained undocumented.

But anarchism, though a political or anti-political philosophy, is not a doctrine, and the anarchist theoretical spectrum, because it does (in the final analysis) stress freedom, has never become an ideology that is pure. Many anarchists have been doctrinaire, even dogmatic, but no single doctrine or school has ever encompassed more than a part of anarchist thought. Consequently, anarchism has also generated radically individualist currents that place the majesty of the free individual first, foremost, and above all things — including society. Of course, it has to be admitted that these aren’t the voices that generally appear in anarchist history books (which are in the main overshadowed by anarcho-communist perspectives), and when they are given space it’s typically in the form of footnotes. Yet these remain some of the more wild, undomesticated, and disreputable voices in anarchist thought, the voices that embody the most radical qualities of the anarchist revolt — the “heart of the blast”, so to speak — and in them we catch gleams of the elemental and barbaric will to sovereignty that characterizes an unconquered individual. These are anarchists who don’t confuse self rule with social reform, the dethroning of authority with planning committee meetings, or insurgency with daydreaming. Their revolt springs from self-interest — a conscious egoism — but they’re honest enough to admit it, without shame and without justifications.

From an individualist perspective, to speak of an anarchist politics is an absurdity. Politics is the science of how to organize a society, a collectivity (or town — Polis) and anarchism, taken to its furthest conclusions, is anti-collectivist. Anarchism is an individual way of engaging with the world, a rebellion against what is, a declaration of what should not be, not a prescription for what should be. The hypothesis of an organized collectivist tomorrow presages a ferocious struggle between the New Order and the individuals who are desirous of preserving their autonomy. Even in the most optimistic scenario — ie, an effort to forge a new culture based on anti-authoritarian principles — any post-revolutionary social grouping will inevitably tend to impose one ideological credo on its members and reignite the age-old struggle between the individual and society. Thus, individualist anarchists have no programme for anyone else — and quite often have no programme even for themselves!

Most individualist anarchists also accept that what is known as the State or government is not going to be abolished in some glorious collective revolution and that expecting this to happen is in the same class as expecting the oceans to turn into lemonade. They regard clinging to this eschatological fantasy as a wasteful fixation that renders anarchists not exceptionally different from the Christian who lives for heaven or the Muslim who lives for paradise: a mixing of religion (with its messianic tendencies) with social doctrine to make of anti-political aspirations and social revolt a prophetic affair — with promises of full-measured social salvation at hand, and a millennium around the left corner. Not only is the ideal of abolishing the State a theoretical whimsy under present circumstances, it’s also impossible to pursue any ideal with single-minded determination without eventually becoming enslaved to that ideal (and enslavement to ideals is slavery as much as Is bondage to a physical master) — at which point the ideal becomes more of an enflamed hallucination than a critical engagement with the world as it is. If anything, in the dawn of the twenty first century, it seems reasonable to predict that Statism will continue to escalate on a dizzying scale and dimension, as environmental and population pressures intensify dependency on the infrastructure of mass society. It’s one thing to see the State exactly for what it is, to at least avoid the disastrous error of mistaking it for a benefactor or mistaking its witless and oppressive orders for divine commands, to demystify and de-sanctify the State in one’s own life and creatively out manuever its attempts at control — but it’s another matter entirely to attempt to confront the very real power of the State with vain, meaningless chest-thumping or to underestimate the support the State has among the presumably discontented masses. Ideological anarchists don’t like to hear this, but the State continues to exist, not solely by violent conquest or deception, but because there is a demand for its services from the sheep habituated to governance.

Individualist anarchists/conscious egoists preach no holy war against the State because they’re reflective enough to admit that they know of no way to get rid of the State — and that the problems of the State and organized society may, in fact, be intrinsically insoluble. If all political rule rests ultimately on the consent of the subject masses — and is cemented upon society by the laziness, cowardice, and stupidity of those same masses — -then when the cataclysmic crises looming on the planetary horizon (such as environmental and economic meltdown) begin to occur, the masses will probably call for a new Caesar or Hitler (as they always do) to rescue them from the system-failure that traditional political forms are no longer capable of addressing. Fear, bolstered by the insidious throes of habit, is the mainspring of the Herd’s every thought and action and even in the most opportune historical moments they have failed to establish anything approximating self-determination. This is just one of many flaws in the entire set of assumptions regarding authoritarian culture: Master-slave dynamics are a complex relationship between the governors and the governed, a mutually-reinforcing feedback loop between the legislators and the servile multitudes, inextricably bound together in an ancient and familiar holding pattern.

Taking this all into account, conscious egoists have no firm position on insurrection and retain tactical flexibility in the face of the realities of power, weighing the long and short run benefits of various forms of rebellion against the risks and costs, individually. If they lack the strength in the moment to overthrow those forces that claim authority and/or demand compliance, they will evade them the best way they know how, put up with that part of it which is unavoidable, assert their sovereignty as often as they can, pursue liberation in realms other than the political, continually engage in cultural de-conditioning, and when all else fails take refuge in what James Joyce described as “silence, exile, and cunning”. Their egoistic victories come not in the form of revolutionary martyrdom, but in the successful creation of free lives, and at times, free culture.

All society-oriented versions of anarchism carry within them the ideological virus of utopianism, in that they posit individual liberation as conditional on the liberation of The Masses or The People. But to make my freedom conditional on the freedom of others is to turn me into their servant and to deny my self-ownership in favor of a masochistic, unattainable, altruistic ideal. By changing anarchism into a theoretical conception of an ideal free society — instead of an individualistic rejection of authority — the society-oriented anarchists then become obliged to convince others that Anarchy would work and begin drawing up diagrams for everything from anarchist trash collection to worker-owned sewage treatment plants. Moreover, in their zeal to prove that a stateless society — one without a government as we ordinarily recognize it — is practical, these socially preoccupied anarchists turn into incorrigible moralists obsessed with the desire to fix some objective standard for human behavior that will endure for all time. And, as with all other moralists, social anarchists delude themselves by thinking that what they wish to impose on others is “the will of the people” or “historically inevitable” or anything other than their own personal egoistic desires. This is not a criticism of selfishness at all, but of self-deception — and of self-defeating idealism, not self-serving realism. Moralists — whether religious, political or humanist — are unconscious egoists and they seek converts to their ideal conceptions, ie they seek willing slaves and fellow believers. Individualist anarchists, by contrast, are conscious egoists and seek allies and partners for mutually enjoyable adventures in subversion. They see it as indisputable that no government or ruling class could oppress anybody without the broad support of public opinion, and to imagine that most people are longing for the abolition of the hallowed institutions of authoritarian society is to live in a dream world. (Even the most disgruntled members of the populace are usually far from being anarchists.) History has shown that the sheep who accept the authority of their shepherds have always been the largest class, and so for individualist anarchists anarchy becomes not a future place, but a present state of mind, an individual denial of authority, not a future social practice. Their anarchism is not a matter of faith and rejects the sacrificial politics of social anarchism, which is predicated on pointless optimism, reward-less duty and the Indefinite postponement of freedom: their anarchism is grounded in the clarity that sovereignty is only for those who want it and that one must comprehend and confront their own slavish conditioning before freedom timorously ventures within their reach. Individualist anarchists are more than willing to make use of a social revolution to further their own adventure, but always without any illusions regarding the Herd’s atrocious track record and deep-seated fear of real freedom.

At this point is should be made clear that there’s never been an anarchist individualist movement that has brought under one hat such unique personalities as Josiah Warren, Thoreau, Zo D’Axa, John Henry Mackay, James L. Walker and the countless other idiosyncratic thinkers who all developed wildly varied visions of anarchy. As its very name implies, individualist anarchism is a philosophy of a “plurality of possibilities” and if it’s inconsistent at times, that very inconsistency allows endless space for growth, diversity, and mutation. Still, no intelligent discussion of individualist anarchism and/or conscious egoism can occur without first grappling with Max Stirner and his inflammatory, ground breaking work, The Ego and His Own, which is responsible for not only presenting the fundamentals, but also the implications of individualism. Highly controversial when first presented to the world in 1844, his book became the object of much shock and ridicule, most notably from Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, who revealed more about their own insecurities than anything else in their 300 pages of “repudiation” — a hysterical diatribe comprising more pages than Stirner’s own work. The thick and thorough expressions of Stirner’s writing starts early in the history of the machinations of society, and progresses with palpable passion into the most sublime workings of society over the individual, and by the end frees the individual from this morass. Like a grand dissociator of ideas, or a surgeon of illusions, Stirner makes a sacrilegious broth out of all the materials of human thought (particularly morality) and brews from them Nothing. Your dreams? Stirner skins them alive. Your God(s)? Stirner splits this phantasm into an infinite number of particles and hands you back a hatful of waste. Your cobweb-spinning idealisms? Stirner tears asunder the masks of self-deception and exposes all idealism as worship of the non-existent. To Stirner, belief of any kind is a species of hypnosis and he sloughs off dogma, codes, and ideology like snake-skin. The furious energy of Stirner’s anti-metaphysical assault is both savage and interrogative in its impact: Unsentimental, heretical, and liberatory beyond what his contemporaries could dream of or stomach, Stirner was seemingly forgotten before re-introduction to the Americas by the anarchist Benjamin Tucker in 1907. (Tucker received considerable help in this endeavor from anarchist poet John Henry Mackay, the egoist James L. Walker, and the translator Steven T. Byington.) Nothing more and nothing less is postulated within The Ego and His Own than the absolute sovereignty of the individual in the face of all attempts at his/her weakening and suppression: by the “spooks” and the loose screws in the human brain along with all external powers that want to subjugate the unique individual under the guise of law. To the first, negative section of his critique, the criticism of Man, Stirner counters the more positive second section, his “I”. Here he first clears up the falsely understood concept of freedom, which cannot be given, but must be taken and then describes the “unique one”: his power with regard to the State and society, this power that laughs at law as a phantasm; his intercourse with the world, which consists in his using it; and his self-enjoyment, which leads to uniqueness, to which the I as I develops. To Utopians, one of the most threatening qualities of Stirner’s negation is that he has no interest in supplying a substitute structure for that which he seeks to terminate. (It’s difficult for the idealist mind to grasp the concept of negation for negation’s sake, or to appreciate Stirner’s radical negation as at once a splendid affirmation — of free life!) More alarmingly, Stirner divulges the selfish and hollow foundation of all humanitarian movements — the predatory, greedy, power-craving, egoistic motives that hide behind the ideological mask of social service.

Between the publishing of The Ego and His Own and Stirner’s re-discovery by John Henry Mackay and Benjamin R. Tucker, fatefully enough, the Russian Nihilist movement began and Nietzsche’s blasphemous proclamations made their earth-shaking appearance in Europe, initiating a new dawn for individualism and setting the stage for Stirner’s return. There is even debate as to Stirner’s possible influence on Nietzsche. Although no conclusion has come of this exploration, it speaks to the power and potency of Stirner’s Luciferean intellect that some consider him a precursor to one of the most pitiless iconoclasts of all time. While socialist and syndicalist movements such as the IWW and the Bolsheviks gained traction in the early twentieth century, the momentum and power of individualist anarchist thought found a home most notably within the Italian, French, and Spanish anarchist milieus. They, along with Stirner, are the progenitors of our legacy today and established the first fruitful era of Egoist practice. They are still heretical, since most proclaimed anarchists could not conceive of putting their individual life expression above that of their chosen social causes. The concept of amorality scares average people like a thought virus, and most of those exposed to the more radical strains of Individualist thought react as if the devil himself had tabled a proposition for their own freedom. Yet those in the top echelons of society (finance capitalists, for instance) wield power driven fully by their amoral individual desires, and count on the masses constraining themselves with myriad social regulations and ethics — what Nietzsche referred to as “slave moralities”. These ruthlessly skilled exploiters are certainly conscious egoists and in a sense, more daring than most anarchists, since they effectively put themselves above government, not just verbally like a mass of whining, morally indignant slaves. As the State and the ruling class directly diminish the enjoyment of my existence, my own egoistic desire is to see them put effectively out of my way. But it isn’t my attributes and limited power that are a danger to the State or Society, it’s the multiplication of my attributes should they permeate those of like mind. The revolutionary value of Egoism is that it removes all taboos or selfishness and the acquisition of personal power, and smashes the mental chains of slave morality. The rules and laws of society were made to fetter conquered vassals and fools — but the conscious egoist knows that they are under no obligation to obey anything or anyone. Think of the implications of unbound individual expression and power countering the established authorities! If the masses were to manifest their conscious egoism, and become ungovernable individuals who seize and keep all that their power permits them to take, these established authorities could not handle or control people anymore: a union of bold, determined beings, animated by clear-sighted self interest, who won’t succumb to any master, corporeal or so-called divine, is a force that any governing agency would have a hard time vanquishing. With illusory social obligations laid bare and broken behind us, the question would no longer be whether to embrace Egoism, but what personal fears must we jettison to begin the individualist journey post-haste? To slash the veils of illusion that countless generations of social conditioning have instilled in us, to strike down the spooks (within and without) that promise freedom but deliver yet more quandaries, is the exact antidote needed to the violently enforced Sisyphusian nightmare of culture and civilization that keeps us as in thrall to the delusion of social identification (not to mention the myth of social progress).

Social anarchists have typically decried this type of egoist social analysis as “bourgeois individualism,” confident that their use of the dreaded word “bourgeois” is sufficient to convince the faithful to think no further. Anarchist individualists are not likely to lose any sleep over being labeled so, but the use of the term in such a way is indicative of social anarchist argumentation, which is almost always by way of morality and intimidation rather than independent analysis. Kropotkin, commenting on individualist anarchism in America in his oft-quoted contribution to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, wrote:

Those who profess it ....they are chiefly “intellectuals”... soon realize that the individualism they so highly praise is not attainable by individual efforts, and either abandon the ranks of the Anarchists, and are driven into the liberal individualism of the classical economists, or they retire into a sort of Epicurean a-moralism, or super-man-theory, similar to that of Stirner or Nietzsche...

Encyclopedia Brittanica, 11th edition, Volume i, pp 914-916

In this encyclopedia entry Kropotkin, as usual, defines anarchism as a secular variant of the Christian Heaven and indulges in his classic populist mystifications about the masses. Despite an attempt to be objective in his presentation, he singles out Stirner and even the tepid Benjamin Tucker as villains whose ideas encourage “amoralism” and “super-man-theory”. Somewhat incongruously, he then instances the works of Nietzsche as being among those “full of ideas which show how closely anarchism is interwoven with the work that is going on in modern thought”. But just how close is “closely” to this egalitarian true believer and chronic optimist? It’s not at all surprising that Kropotkin, the humanist, moralist, and communist par excellence, makes Stirner his arch-villain. After all, The Ego and His Own is not only the most outspoken exposition of amoralism in the history of philosophy, but also one of the most powerful vindications of individualism ever written — in some ways, the ultimate encouragement to self liberation and one without a suggested social replacement for what is to be overthrown — and none of these things would be to the stunted tastes of Kropotkin and his pious, collectivist followers.

Yet many of Kropotkin’s contemporaries from the “Heroic Age of Anarchism”, like Emma Goldman, never forgot the primacy of the individual and understood the supreme relevance of both Stirner and Nietzsche to anarchist thought, as evidenced by the following passage:

The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the Ubermensch. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Ubermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.

It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner naught but the apostle of the theory “each for himself, the devil take the hind one.” That Stirner’s individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is utterly ignored. Yet, it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated individuals, whose free efforts make society.

(from her preface to Anarchism and Other Essays)

Since Emma Goldman wrote these words, it’s been amply demonstrated that both the feeble namby-pambyism of the “save the world” anarchist and the collectivist revolutionary models of social change have failed to deliver the goods. This shows an observant, non-ideological person that this orientation does not work. In the search for the ultimate sacrifice, selflessness for the Common Good has denied the basic truth of human self-interest, and is both hopelessly naive about human nature and hermetically sealed against all realistic feedback regarding the psychology of masses. The Kropotkinist dream of full agreement and peaceful fraternity among people denies the irrefutable fact of differentiation, and is founded on the seductive but malignant politico-ethical principles of socialism (itself an offspring of Christianity). As long as anarchists remain preoccupied with saving The Masses (even in spite of themselves), then anarchists will curtail their own evolution and self-empowerment and be herded into an intellectual fog. (This morbid, pathological over-identification with large collectives probably helps explain Kropotkin’s later appalling support for World War I.)

If all are bound to one another by some imaginary social contract and if the majority elect to jump into the lake (of fire), then I am doomed unless I can emancipate myself from the crazed lemming herd before it’s too late to save my own astoundingly precious life. Using swimming as an analogy: the overburdened individual sinks, like the group that, tied to one another, drags each other down, dooming all! The self-owning individual is of the open spaces — intrepid, recalcitrant, nimble, spontaneous, and agile — and able to raise his or her self above the weight and sheer gravity of the Masses and their self-defeating belief systems, precisely because s/he is unencumbered with delusional social theorems.

If anarchists (who claim no gods, no masters) were to look at any social movement and the assumed collectivist orientation with open eyes, we would easily find the inherent duplicity of motives that are veiled and hidden under the most grandiloquent and idealistic principles — and the bombs of egoistic purpose that are carefully hidden in all the fine silks of utopian promises. While many may agree intellectually with this assessment, understanding is not entirely an intellectual process and clearing the spooks of collectivist social responsibility requires a hard edge of criticism — it requires that we give total attention to the structure of our conditioning, to the inherited psychological patterns that encourage us to identify with something outside ourselves — whether it be the State, an ideology, or Society. As Stirner constantly does, we must get behind the nature of these philosophical institutions and assumptions; we must clear the phantom beliefs of what the social being is, and start at the most neglected and maligned truth: l am the only master.

Individualist anarchism in the United States was most notably expounded in the pages of Benjamin R. Tucker’s journal Liberty, which was published from 1881 to 1908. Tucker and his associates — all capable writers and thinkers — attempted to forge individualist anarchism into a coherent system through an ill-conceived fusion of Proudhon’s economic theories and Max Stirner’s uncompromising egoism. In the end, Tucker’s efforts to reconcile the utopianism of Proudhon and the individualist amoralism of Stirner resulted in neither fish nor fowl, but mostly in confusion (for example, Tucker’s support for private police and private courts to combat and punish theft) and in unconvincing visions of a future harmonious society held together by the principles of what Tucker called “equal liberty.” Still, Tucker did two very important things to help the development of individualist thought: 1) As already stated, he published the first English translation of Stirner’s incendiary masterpiece The Ego and His Own and 2) he allowed the pages of his widely-read journal Liberty to serve as an uncensored forum for the discussion of egoist perspectives on power, politics, and self-determination. Although we have no desire to dwell excessively on Tucker’s overly idealistic theories in this anthology, it would be disingenuous to ignore either him or the vibrant milieu that formed around his ideas — a milieu that produced some formidable egoist thinkers like James L. Walker, John Beverley Robinson, and John Badcock, Jr.

The primary focus of this anthology, however, is to explore the development of anarchist individualism in Europe and the multifarious constructions and applications of Stirner’s ideas by anarchists in Italy, Spain, France, and England. This collection is by no means comprehensive, owing primarily to the fact that so many core texts have yet to be translated into English. (For example, Enzo Martucci’s The Banner of the Antichrist; Miguel Gimenez Igualada’s extensive treatise on Stirner from 1956; the writings of Biofilo Pandasta — Columbian Stirnerite, adventurerand vagabond; the Russian anarchist Lev Chernyi’s 1907 book Associational Anarchism, in which he advocated the “free association of independent individuals.”)

Other important individuals unrepresented in this collection for similar reasons; Ixigrec, the French anarchist science-fiction writer, comrade of E. Armand, and radical interpreter of the Marquis de Sade; Rirette Maitrejean, who wrote extensively on anarcha-feminist and free love subjects for the French individualist anarchist magazine L’Anarchie, and who went on trial in the 1920s for alleged participation in the illegalist activities of the Bonnot Gang; Domenico Pastorello, the Italian polyglot and popularizer of Esperanto, who advocated an ascetic lifestyle of self-sufficiency as a solution to economic slavery; The Brazilian individualist anarchist Maria Lacerda de Moura who wrote for the Spanish individualist anarchist magazine Al Margen alongside Miguel Gimenez Igualada; Octave Mirbeau, “the Ravachol of modem literature”, author of The Torture Garden and the timeless abstentionist pamphlet Voters Strike!; Federico Urales, an important Spanish individualist anarchist who edited the journal La Revista Blanca and was highly critical of the anarcho-syndicalism in his time (he viewed it as plagued by excessive bureaucracy that tended towards reformism), and Adolf Brand, German individualist anarchist writer, comrade of John Henry Mackay, editor of the periodical Der Eigene (1896-1931) and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality. The list just goes on and on.

The individualist anarchist press has also had a fertile life (with points of abandonment followed by periods of resurgence) and a rich, innovative publishing history — one abounding with variety, local flavor and an emancipatory non conformism towards ready-made anarchist dogma and programs. Some of the more noteworthy examples are Enrico Arrigoni’s journal Erisia, which unleashed nine issues between 1928-1928 that anarchist historian Paul Avrich describes as “remarkable”. Then there are the French individualist papers, which are almost too numerous to catalogue, but loosely start with Autonomie Individuelle (1887 to 1888) giving birth to a genealogy that continues to proliferate in our day. The Spanish individualist milieu of the 1920s and 1930s is just as impressive, producing confident, multihued journals like L’Individualista, La Idea Libre, La revista blanca, Etica, Iniciales, Al margen, Estudios, El Unico, and Nosotros. Who knows what illuminating gems lie buried in the yellowing pages of these lively texts, waiting to be unearthed, translated, and discussed again! Catalan historian Xavier Diez, who recently completed a wide-ranging survey of the Spanish individualist anarchist press before and during the Civil War period, summarized the basic positions of this tendency as follows:

under its iconoclastic, anti-intellectual, antitheist run, which goes against all sacralized ideas or values it entailed, a philosophy of life took shape which could be considered a reaction against the sacred gods of capitalist society. Against the idea of the nation, it opposed its internationalism. Against the exaltation of authority embodied in the military institution, it opposed its antimilitarism. Against the concept of industrial civilization, it opposed its naturist vision.

Unfortunately, access to this valuable heritage of individualist ideas was not (yet) available to us as we were assembling this anthology, though we did have the lucky break of coming into a windfall of dynamic English-language Individualist and Egoist papers, publications containing a wide range of heretical views operating outside and against orthodox anarchism. The publications that we consumed most ardently were The Storm! A Journal For Free Spirits, Minus One: An Individualist Review Egoist, and Ego, supplemented by a smattering of translated texts that fortuitously materialized when needed most. All of these journals were driven by an utter disrespect for the alleged unity or sanctity of the anarchist movement. They all articulate an independence from, and refusal of, the altruistic idealisms and socialist ethics (which are really Christian ethics) that have infested anarchist thought. They all introduce new approaches and philosophic concerns and help to move anti-authoritarian consciousness in a dangerous direction again. S.E. Parker, whose writing features prominently in this compilation, was a British individualist anarchist who, from 1963 to 1993, edited three of the journals just cited — Minus One, Egoist, and Ego — all urgent, vehemently individualist periodicals that assail the complacency of anarchist group think and disrupt the placid reliance on morality as a means of justifying anarchy. Parker eventually drove a wedge between egoism proper and anarchism — at least in his own life — repudiating anarchism as a self-renunciating, humanist church. In one of his last published articles, Parker found himself agreeing with Dora Marsden (an important early twentieth-century British egoist, whose writings Parker helped rescue from obscurity), who argued that moralistic anarchism is merely continuing the work of religion under a new guise. Parker describes his “loss of faith” in the article “Archists, Anarchists and Egoists” (which is Appendix A in this volume). He arrived at these conclusions after forty-plus years of wrestling with the implications of anarchism and egoism. Regardless of whether one agrees with Parker’s verdict or not, it shouldn’t be too frightening to look at, and if it is then you probably shouldn’t be reading this book; As a philosophical weapon, anarchist thought has become dull, has lost its once-lethal edge and become encrusted with leftist cliches. One of the purposes In compiling these outsider voices is to help relieve anti-authoritarians of the burden of carrying the impossible load of universal emancipation (this leftist ideal of herd-life that undermines our individual strength) and to help re awaken the slumbering dragon of insurrectionary egoism. These are the voices of uncompromising individualists, to whom no topic is taboo or off-limits, voices that have stayed obscure until now, but for which the myriad complexities of our current era provide an excellent context for a re-appearance.

What ultimately emerges from these writings is a vision of anarchy that is non-utopian, non-idealist, and decidedly non-leftist, a vision of anarchy that could accurately be described as anti-social, or at least, socially pessimistic. Those readers who would turn to the writers in this collection for the exact details of a reconstructed society will search in vain, for their concern is the rebirth of the individual as a separate entity — unsmothered by the claims of any nation, State or society. Any sketches of an anarchistic future they offer are apparent only by inference. Their ideas will resonate most strongly with those defiant, unconquered individuals who are only interested in reconstructing themselves — the free spirits who are resolved to live outside the structures of control as far as they possibly can, relying on their own psychic resources and experiencing liberation on a personal level even as the whole world slides in horror down a bottomless pit. Stripped of all fantastic figures of speech and fruitless will-o-the-wisp schemes for social betterment, the assertion of individual sovereignty by word and deed is the only method and only message of these iconoclastic minds who choose to label their personal rejection of all authority as individualist.

#egoism #communism #individualism #post left anarchy

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hotelconcierge · 7 years ago

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THE SOUND OF MANY ONE HANDS CLAPPING

All of the blind men trying to describe the alt-right elephant seem to agree that anti-political-correctness is part of the picture. Maybe anti-PC isn’t the most important issue to any one alt-righter, but it’s the stance that is most widespread among them, sensitive but not specific. Okay. Why?

Movie reviewer/philosophizer “Film Crit Hulk” weighs in with “P.C. Culture Vs. The Big Joke - A tale of dissent in five acts”:

I'm sitting here at point of paralysis, trying to casually explain the rise of internet trolls, 4chan, hardcore gamer culture, lulz, twitter-eggs, gamergate, pepe the frog, the alt-right, the rich asshole and how they came all crashing together in spectacular ugliness...for the purposes of this conversation just know that all display a combo of 1) being virulently anti-PC. 2) being the kinds of people who have really sad, internal existences and internet they can be anonymous and escape into. And 3) a core philosophy that sees the value of what I will call "the big joke."

That is to say that the world itself is a joke.

I feel bad for mocking a lawful good superhero, but the above paragraph is the sickly sentimentality of someone who has fed on his own vomited platitudes for too long. If I ever reach “the point of paralysis” while explaining “lulz” or “twitter-eggs,” euthanize me.

There's a reason The Dark Knight's Joker struck such a cord with this populace and it wasn't just his good performance, it was his mantra: "Why so serious?" It was his ability to reign terror and tear apart hypocrisy. It was the sense power that comes with having such a freeing attitude toward the cares of society. The pure, bleak joy of nihilistic glee.

There isn't a side. There isn't a belief. The only goal is to burn down your side. After all, "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Comparisons between children’s fantasy and adult reality tend toward the inane, but there’s a particular irony here: back in ‘08, when The Dark Knight came out, every dinner party worth schmoozing agreed that the pyromaniacs in question were supposed to represent Al Qaeda. And when someone pointed this out, the accepted reply was to say something about how, well, it’s more complicated than that, you see, back in the ‘80s everyone was doing a lot of cocaine and tweaking pretty hard about the Soviet Union, and well, maybe we funded some terrorists here and there, mistakes were made, that’s all I’m saying. It’s a little naive for Christopher Nolan to act like they’re just bad.

Now the analogy has switched teams and it didn’t get any less idiotic. I too have observed that some individuals are psychopaths who care about nothing except mashing the dopamine button. I have never observed a group of such people, in fact I’m not sure it’s possible, shit would go Reservoir Dogs before you could say “defect in the prisoner’s dilemma.” What makes fascism terrifying is that most fascists are not psychopaths. Nurses get Milgram’d on the daily, told to hurt people via IV pokes and pulled bandages, often doing this when patients are demented or delirious or otherwise screaming No No No. And yet nurses are some of the most compassionate people in existence. How do they stay sane? Any violation of another requires the same mentality: this is for the greater good. Repeated like a mantra, whether you’re building a utopia or feeding the kids or preparing to shoot up a school: this is for the greater good. It’s comforting to believe that the bad guys are motivated by “nihilistic glee” because that means you aren’t one of them. “If anything, my problem is...I care too much,” you say, between sobs, as you bring your boot down on the curb.

Political correctness is defined as, "the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.

For the moment, I hope you can get past any associations you might have and understand that the intent behind being politically correct is clear: empathy with marginalized groups.

We're supposedly having a debate between PC and Anti-PC culture, but we can't have a debate unless we're really talking about what we're really talking about...We have get away from so much of the false equivalency that surrounds this conversation...we can't miss the only two sides that matter:

Victim and victimizer.

Here’s the thing: no.

Film Crit Hulk’s argument has such polished stupidity that it reflects a shining truth: the switch from “being politically correct” to “PC culture.” This is the sleight of hand common to all defenses of political correctness. Being politically correct is something you do. PC culture is something you do to others.

Two case studies, and hold off on your value judgments:

1. Milo Yiannopoulos mocks and misgenders a transgender student.

2. Harvard rescinds 10 admission offers to students who posted offensive memes. (Incidentally—check out the cover photo of the linked articles.)

Intentionally misgendering someone is an aggressive act. This is true even if transgenderism is attention whoring or special snowflakism or whatever—misgendering violates the Zeroth Commandment of “Thou shalt call others by their chosen name.” You can argue that misgendering is justified, that it’s impractical to cater to every pronoun, that you shouldn’t encourage a society-wide “mental illness”—we can duke that out elsewhere—but don’t pretend it isn’t an act of aggression.

Contrast with the Harvard story: posting offensive memes in a private group chat is not an act of aggression. It may suggest poor character, it certainly suggests weak judgment, and Harvard has the right to kick ‘em out, but don’t pretend the dichotomy is between victim and victimizer when there was no victim.

Discussions of political correctness go nowhere because one team is hurt by the first example and retaliates with the second, the other is hurt by the second and retaliates with the first, and the internet makes private public so it’s impossible to tell the difference.

Film Crit Hulk spends the rest of his 8000 word essay on variations of:

So I'll ask again: why am I doing all this? Why write about movies and politics? Yes, it's because I give a shit. It's because I feel insanely lucky and want to express endless gratitude. I do not consider it heroic or anything more self-serving than the simple idea that it is important. It's because I feel compelled and passionate about it.

Because I don't think the world is a joke.

It's the only one we got and I'm trying to run around with 60 million other Americans and try to hold it together with duct tape. You can demonize this. You can demonize me. I don't care.

I don’t think you should stunt like Jesus on the cross when your grand insight is "them motherfuckers be crazy." But sure, I’m willing to buy that Hulk believes his own gospel. What he doesn’t get is that he holds the majority opinion. The Panopticon gives out mad brownie points for calling out -isms, even private victimless -isms; why wouldn’t it, you’re giving it that much more power over what used to be privacy. And maybe that’s fine, maybe if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear, but don’t say I didn’t warn you: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." If society subsidizes political correctness, then some virtuous people will be PC but so will any competent sociopath. And no matter how noble the intentions behind a policy, when sociopaths exploit that policy, exploit it to shame and punish people who haven’t done anything wrong—well, you’ve got to admit that’s kind of funny.

Choose:

THE GENDER NULLARY

HYPOCRISY’S BAD, BUT YOU’RE WORSE

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anonymouscrocodilefan · 7 years ago

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Addendum: Ex-Slave Croco Theory

LONG TIME NO POST, and not quite a shower thought, but it occurred to me at one point that I never actually debunked the other common theory about Croco’s secret (the one Ivankov has on him).

The major theories I’m aware of (all of which I find flawed):

1. FTM Croco (Croco was a woman & other gender/sexuality-related variations). This is the immediate conclusion most people jump to, and I’m pretty sure it’s a red herring. Although, as I’ve mentioned, I wouldn’t mind if it were true. I pretty thoroughly debunked this in one of my first posts: http://anonymouscrocodilefan.tumblr.com/post/132946232157/2-crocodiles-past

2. Croco was on Whitebeard’s crew (in some variations the chopped off hand was to remove WB’s tattoo). And is for some reason ashamed of that and/or left for reasons related to his weakness. This has been completely debunked by Word of God. See my very first post: http://anonymouscrocodilefan.tumblr.com/post/132880323933/1-crocodile-the-warlord

3. Croco’s missing hand originally had a different power from the “drying” ability of his right; the secret behind this removed power is related to his other weakness. I don’t think this theory is as widespread as the others, nor am I particularly against it. But I don’t really buy it either. Plus I think with the advent of “awakened” powers as a concept, this idea is getting less and less likely. I’ve only ever tangentially discussed this though (never directly addressed the specifics of this theory): http://anonymouscrocodilefan.tumblr.com/post/135195626561/shower-thought-handedness

4. An actual physical/power-related weakness (aside from the water weakness and the obvious existence of haki). Discussed this in the same post as FTM Croc. This one seems to make sense in context, but is narratively unsatisfying to me. I can kinda imagine it though – if water is a weakness, I wonder about wind (water clumps sand, but wind does the opposite)? Still, Oda could’ve easily done the same scene with something along the lines of “no worries, I know how to defeat him” – so the specific and somewhat ambiguous use of the word “weakness” and Iva promising not to give him away if he behaves is... interesting.

5. Croco is a former slave (like Hancock and Fisher Tiger). I can’t believe I never discussed or even brought up this theory... because it’s actually one of the earliest ideas I personally considered (along with “Croco has revolutionary connections [beyond the acquaintance with Iva]”, which I’ve long since discarded).

Like the “revolutionary” theory, I discarded it very early on (and didn’t see it discussed nearly as often), which is probably why it slipped my mind.

Also, my arguments against this particular theory are mostly circumstantial, like my arguments against the missing hand/physical weakness theories (but unlike the FTM/WB theories, which have fairly solid textual evidence working against them and in the latter case has been explicitly contradicted by Oda’s statements).

Still, it’s probably worth discussing. So here are my thoughts.

First of all, it’s a tempting theory on the surface. Unlike the FTM and WB theories, it also gives him a valid motivation for his dislike of the government (and apparent desire to create a Utopia [we are soooo short on details there, including how seriously he meant it]). It would also fairly neatly explain his trust issues, although maybe not why he’s so adamant at first about human connections being worthless (the WB theory probably does the best on that one, but like I said, it’s total bunk).

Nonetheless, it doesn’t really “feel” right, either.

As I’ve previously noted (see the post with FTM Croco), Crocodile’s reaction to Iva’s threat is actually relatively subdued despite the way the whole thing’s been blown up in the collective fandom consciousness. Sure, it pisses him off, but he’s not upset or anything either. We have several known ex-slave characters whose behavior can be easily contrasted with his, in fact. Fisher Tiger’s undying hatred. Hancock’s deep shame. Koala is the most well-adjusted one we’ve seen so far, but I think that’s probably down to the fact that she was still very young at the time (much younger than Hancock!) and has since grown up in a very supportive environment. For all three though, there is that underlying sense of having been betrayed by the government and its support of an inherently unjust system, and moreover by humanity itself. On the other hand, Croco’s scorn for the Marines and the government overall seems more akin to Law’s feelings on the subject, i.e. they’re useless assholes. In other words, yes he has trust issues, but he never comes across as traumatized. (Law maybe isn’t the BEST comparison there.)

The timing is tricky. Surprisingly, we know a handful of solid dates for Croco, despite the fact that he’s never gotten a backstory flashback. All of which I’ve discussed before, but again – he was at age 22 present for Roger’s execution. He became a Warlord shortly thereafter, with his defeat by Whitebeard presumably marking his first real setback as a pirate. Around age 30 he was featuring in newspapers for his “heroic” acts. By the time the series starts, he’s been a public figure for 20 years or so. Basically, he could’ve only been a slave during his child/teen years... and couldn’t have been part of the big breakout all the other known ex-slaves escaped during. That is, he would’ve had to escape on his own, or I suppose potentially with Revolutionary aid (which maybe accounts for the eventual Iva meeting when he’s a rookie). The former seems unlikely, no matter how clever the dude is. But the latter would have more naturally led to him being involved in the Revolutionary faction sooner or later rather than setting sail to compete with Roger and Whitebeard and coming up with his own grandiose schemes.

I talk about this all the time, but if we can trust his SBS child illustration – and I think we can, based on past experience – he was already toting around a real gun as a kid. And in fact it seems like he was probably already fairly skilled in its usage (mentioned this in the handedness post, but I have a feeling that his gun is holstered in a cavalry draw position rather than the more typical cross draw). His expression and stance also already lack that veneer of innocence that many (not all) of the child illustrations tend to have. From that (among other things), I’ve always gotten the sense that he was a street kid who pretty much raised himself/grew up in the underworld... and would have been far too careful and shrewd to have been captured by anyone.

If his missing hand was the one with the tattoo (kinda has to be, since he had to get undressed for the Impel Down “baptism”)... well, Croco’s much too pragmatic to have chopped it off just because of a tattoo. Especially when there are more obvious ways of subverting or hiding the symbol (see also: Sun Pirates). No matter how well he’s adapted to the lack of it, he is NOT the kind of man who would have willingly given up the practical benefits of having two working hands, imo. Even to escape (he’s no Zoro lol).

I dunno, even if all the above points can technically be written around, it feels kind of redundant to have another ex-slave Warlord in the mix. Sometimes redundancy is good, and adds thematic texture due to the different nuances. But I think we’re already pretty well covered.

(The remaining variations on this theory that I actually think are kind of viable but require way too much guesswork: he betrayed his allies into slavery [after being betrayed by them first, I’m thinking], OR he attempted to pull a rescue but failed [again, perhaps due to treachery] and chose to abandon them/save his own skin. These not only fit what we know about his personality, but also provide a decent explanation for why Iva specifically would be involved/aware, and suit the context of the exchange during Impel Down. Like I said though, way too much guesswork, especially re: what exactly in this scenario would serve as a hold over him.)

As for what I personally think the actual secret is, if not those two above options – my thoughts haven’t really changed that much since I originally wrote the FTM debunk post. In my view the three main options are 1) the backstory behind him obtaining his fruit; 2) whatever backstory there might be regarding his hook/scar (assuming they’re not just design elements like Doffy’s sunglasses LOL); and 3) the backstory behind his knowledge of Pluton and the poneglyphs (plus I assume he’s one of the few who knows the truth behind Ohara). Possibly those options might even be related to each other.

The only somewhat new addition to my thoughts: since Oda’s made the parallels between Croco and Luffy* even more explicit than before, I suspect Croco had a similar experience as Luffy/Sabo/Ace did in the Gray Terminal. (Remember that I think Croco was a street kid.) Only his reaction was something more along the lines of Sabo’s, if Sabo hadn’t gotten proper guidance in form of Dragon and had turned pirate instead.

(… I can’t be the only one who can imagine alternate universe Sabo going the evil mastermind route, can I?)

* The Croco/Luffy parallels are key to the Alabasta arc, and Oda then brought them up again with the SBS about Croco’s pirating history. And as I’ve argued in my MBTI posts before, their personalities are mirrors of each other (rather than “in opposition”).

But I’ve also seen people point out that there’s an interesting parallel to be found between Croco and Ace as well. (Both talented and ambitious young Logias who challenged WB early on in their pirating careers; one submitted, one picked himself back up to attempt his own path.)

Which I think makes it not unreasonable to eventually see an echo of Sabo in Croco as well. (Although I have previously thought the more explicit Sabo foil was Doflamingo, hence him turning up specifically during Dressrosa.)

I mean no matter what, the weirdly romantic vibe of Baroque Works and the idealism implied in “Operation Utopia” have been cracking me up for ages. And that’s gotta have its roots in something, right? Odd to think about, but we actually know way more of what makes Doflamingo “tick,” what his driving motivations are. We never got a true explanation for Croco. Just like Big Mom’s yearning for family and belonging is a corrupted version of Whitebeard’s family ethos (and note apparently SHE wants to construct a “utopia” of sorts as well), Croco’s stubborn opposition to the government strikes me as a corrupted version of the Revolutionary stance. That’s like the one thing we’ve known about him all along, the one reason we know he was after Pluton – and Marineford only further supported this. I mean yeah, no pirate actually LIKES the government for obvious reasons, but Croco’s disdain has been consistently highlighted in particular.

I’m convinced it means something.

#one piece #Sir Crocodile #character analysis #one piece theory #one piece meta

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academiablogs · 7 years ago

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Interview with David Gowey - on Science Fiction and Fantasy Tropes, Aesthetics, and World Building

(Image source) This week on Academia we discussed the trope of the “hero of prophecy” so common in fantasy and even science fiction literature, and whether or not it still has currency in the genre. To discuss this and related issues, we now invite David Gowey, author of fantasy and science-fiction novels such as Kaschar’s Quarter, Jire, and First Instance, and a regular contributor to our Academia community. As a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology, David’s world building skills draw from many lands and cultures, and always examine what makes his characters—and their respective societies—tick. The wide-ranging conversation that follows will give you a hint as to why his books are so rich and easy to get lost in.

Joshua: Welcome, David! You write both science fiction and fantasy, so for you, what is the biggest difference between the two genres besides one is set in a hypothetical past and the other in a could-be future? What unique challenges does each genre offer you as a writer?

David: I’d say the biggest challenge is that the distinction between the two isn’t very clearcut, at least when it comes to the types of messages each type of story can send. While there’s certainly an element of prediction in sci-fi because verisimilitude goes a long way in deepening the reader’s immersion, the author ultimately has to construct the world of the story around the message they want to send rather than purely what is scientifically possible or even plausible. Predicting a dystopian nightmare future of government oppression can play out as a fictional case study for authoritarianism and why it should be defeated, but that’s not the only story sci-fi can tell. More utopian visions like Star Trek’s Federation also exist to show us what humanity could accomplish if it truly embraced the idea that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”. But again, utopias aren’t the only story to tell and they’re inherently constructed as unrealistic literary teaching moments (to paraphrase a past Academia post).

Personally, the most interesting stories come in between these two extremes because they contain a mixture of recognizability, utopian aspiration, and dystopian warning. Something like The Expanse comes to mind, where government increasingly falls behind human progress in space exploration, leaving corporations and tribalism to fill in the blanks. This is what I try to approach in my sci-fi stories, with one human corporation (a joint Chinese-German venture called Interplanetery Resources Incorporated) appearing in many of them as a sort of Easter egg and also prediction about the future of space exploration. Interestingly enough, I’m 1-for-2 in my future predictions so far: Brexit happened and put a kink in my worldbuilding about its role in a joint EU space fleet, while Germany and China have taken what they perceive to be a US withdrawal from global leadership to signal a brighter future as partners. That’s not a bad track record.

As for fantasy, the problem is that the hypothetical past is mired in an awful lot of assumptions that then get turned into an awful lot of lazy worldbuilding. Here’s one example that’s stood out to me recently. I think we’ve all heard plenty about controversial casting decisions regarding characters whose presence in a given story is considered anachronistic based on ethnicity, whether it’s Matt Damon in The Great Wall (which I never saw so maybe it’s internally justified but I really can’t say) or black characters in media depicting medieval Europe. The problem for fantasy is that when we internalize assumptions about who was where in which time periods on Earth, we miss out on opportunities to reflect on diversity that was already there as opposed to merely going with the status quo or else insisting that our creation is entirely unique for its diversity. In reality, history is full of migrations and the concept of pure ethnicity divided into neat little ethnostates starts to collapse once it’s analyzed in those terms. Persian coins found their way to Britain; Africans and Native Americans lived in Western Europe; Japanese ronin fought in Mexico; Indian stories were indigenized in the Philippines; the predominant language in Madagascar is originally from Taiwan; and Polynesians ate South American sweet potatoes with mainland SE Asian chickens. The point is that relying on tired old reconstructions of our past and perpetuating them in fantasy is still a case of the author showing readers the world they want to see, whether that’s subconscious influence or conscious selection of the history they want to tell. Granted, I’m sure the vast majority of authors aren’t malicious about this at all but it’s something else to look out for if we want to conceive of fantasy as a reconstruction of the real world.

Joshua: Speaking of what authors do consciously or subconsciously, many fantasy novels tend to be variations on the “hero’s journey,” where a young, naive hero or heroine learns of an epic quest which they must undertake with the help of a wiser guide, who leads them through numerous perils, all to the tune of an ancient prophecy that foretells his or her triumph or doom, etc. How do you avoid re-writing the same story over and over again while staying true to the elements most readers appreciate from the genre?

David: My first book started about seven years ago as part of a character monologue that didn’t even have a name or a setting, but began with the words “I never wanted to be king”. As I continued to flesh it out, I kept making notes of things that this character could do that eventually turned into a sort of Candide or Guliver’s Travels scenario, where the “hero” found himself in a series of episodes that were basically glorified morality plays and then escaped them through a mixture of cunning and dumb luck. Later research clarified that the form I wanted was the picaresque novel, which the two books I mentioned were satirizing. Another earlier example would be Don Quixote and its deconstruction of medieval chivalric tales. While my inner editor killed off a lot of the more obviously moralizing episodes over time, the core of the story remained: I wanted my main character to be the sole point-of-view and to use those episodes as catalysts for him to change over time.

There’s no prophecy hanging over his head, but he does continually ask himself why he’s still alive. Is it God and if so, why? If not, is he surviving because of any particular skill or just because he’s lucky? He makes a number of choices along the way, many of which are purely for survival, but even that isn’t enough to answer why he manages to live through wars and other events that have killed so many others. In the end, it’s about him finding his agency and living with the consequences of exercising it on increasingly larger stages, from the ruins of his home city after an attack by religious extremists to eventually the capital city of a great empire. That last part isn’t a spoiler because it’s in the prologue but you’ll have to read the books to find out how he gets there.

Joshua: Yes, perhaps the important thing is that the character has to seem to have his or her own agency, or as you say, “is he surviving because of any particularly skill or just because he’s lucky.” That’s a great point. How else, as a writer, are you able to establish a sense of reality (or believability) when writing novels that take place in worlds that have never existed? What does it mean to make the fantastic sound feasible?

David: One of the big things I’ve come away with from reading sci-fi and reading about sci-fi is that a lot of that sense of reality lies in what the characters take for granted. For instance, the FTL drive may have a very convoluted but plausible way of working but it still gets you from point A to point B, at least until the plot demands that it break down for reasons to be explained later. That isn’t to say that everything complex should simply be handwaved away if readers ask too many questions, since that would defeat the purpose of shooting for believability in the first place. What it does mean for me is that I try to write the characters as if they don’t know they’re in a story (as opposed to Deadpool, who knows that he’s in a comic book). Organizations, people, events, and locations that exist in the character’s world will be just as obviously real (again, until the plot demands them to be otherwise) to them as anything in our world is to us. These characters will make pop culture references to things they know: the classic holo movie that everyone can quote, how the Mets in the year 2145 lack bullpen depth, or the famous composers whose music will be heard in the new opera house.

And speaking of opera houses, one thing I’ve noticed in a lot of fantasy is that all the buildings are ancient. Where’s the scaffolding on that “new” cathedral that was begun a hundred years ago but could take thirty more years to complete using only wooden construction equipment and hand tools? When does the king of this stereotypical Western European fantasy kingdom knock down the old castle and build a star fort, or even a new palace out in the country where he can house all the rowdy nobles in an effort to further centralize his power, as was done with Versailles? And for some ultra history nitpicking, why are medieval knights running around in full plate armor from the 17th century but cannons, handgonnes, and arquebuses from the 15th century are nowhere to be found? Making the fantastic sound feasible can and should include research that extends beyond our assumptions of what the past was like or what the future might be, all seen through the lens of characters who’ve lived their entire lives as themselves in that particular setting. When it works, we see a fully formed world through their eyes in much the same way as we see our world through our eyes. It also bears mentioning that this is really, really difficult and always subject to a learning process on my part.

Joshua: That’s a great and hilarious point—where are all the new cathedrals in fantasy? Everything can’t be old, after all, particularly in the ancient world. This relates to science fiction as well, since we can’t just be in a world with warp drives and parallel universes—we sometimes need to see where these come from and who discovered them. So I wonder, how much science should be in science fiction? Or is the emphasis on fiction, meaning that it can stretch scientific possibility to serve the story? How do you approach this balance in your own writing?

David: To paraphrase Asimov’s submission guidelines, I generally shoot for stories that use science to facilitate human experiences. Technology provides either the premise or the background for the premise but is very rarely a character in its own right. Even a recent story I did about a sentient AI tasked with carrying out a terraforming operation on a planet to make it suitable for human habitation is ultimately a human story, since this AI is specifically programmed to act as a mother for her future children. While it could be productive to argue the pros and cons of engineering gendered AI consciousness or the morality of terraforming alien planets, often destroying any chance for native life to survive on the surface, these concerns are secondary to making a main character that the reader can approach as if they’re reading about not just a person, but an authentic one.

Personally, aiming for hard sci-fi is all well and good, but if the story ends up reading like a lecture acted out by cardboard cut-outs instead of human beings, like Asimov himself was sometimes accused of doing, then I’m willing to flub a little science for the sake of a better story. Are humanoid robots fighting in space highly impractical and more likely to end with the pilot reduced to a puddle of goo by gee-forces than appear in a real battlefield of the future? Probably, but I want humanoid robots in my story because they’re cool and I may as well put interesting people in the cockpit while I’m at it.

Joshua: We’re getting a great sense of your personal philosophy and aesthetics as a writer. Of course, not everyone can appreciate the result of our craft. Related to this, what is the most painful feedback you’ve received from a reader? How did you deal with it?

David: Oh boy. The most painful is also one of the most recent, wherein an anonymous user on reddit gave my latest chapter draft for an unpublished story a little over a paragraph before finally quitting in anger and leaving a lot of negative comments all over it. Now I’m naturally biased toward my own work and while I do try to take criticism for what it is, a lot of their comments came off as nitpicking for nitpicking’s sake, as if they thought they could take my chapter through the Cinema Sins or Nostalgia Critic treatment and call it a constructive review. The complaint that stuck out the most was “don’t mention God in your story unless there really is one” and my first thought was that the objective existence of God in the story was irrelevant because that particular POV character believed that there was one. Admittedly, I didn’t respond in the best way and got a little snarky with them because of how angry they got without giving my work what I thought to be a fair reading.

This was not the ideal response on my part. What I should’ve done was shrugged it off instead of getting snarky, no matter how tempting it was (and it was very tempting). Instead, I learned some lessons about how to take critiques that can hopefully be of some use to other writers as they were to me.

Joshua: Perhaps, but I’m just as guilty of the same responses—and the same wounded ego. Readers can’t always be our validation, of course, and ultimately a writer has to decide whether or not his or her work “works” as an artistic whole. So how do you know if a work is successful when you’ve finished it? What are the signs you look for during the writing process and afterward? Is external validation the only true way to measure a book’s success?

David: Personally, the sign that a story is successful isn’t just when it has a clear beginning, middle, and end (though this is also important for obvious reasons) but rather when I no longer think about it. What this means for the novel and novelette I’ve published (Kaschar’s Quarter and Jire respectively) is that I don’t sit around anymore with lingering doubts about whether that story accomplished what I wanted it to or if it could’ve used something more. The same goes for many of my short stories. In all honesty, I can’t quite say the same for my novella First Instance; my lone Amazon review for that one was a roundabout way of asking for that “something more” and after further reflection and distance between the narrative and myself, I’ve come to agree. I wouldn’t use that to deter someone from reading it but the fact that I think the story has more to say leads me to believe that it’s not quite finished yet. I wouldn’t consider this a defect, though. Composers often rearranged arlier pieces later in their careers because they felt the music had more to say (or simply because they wanted to extend their copyright, like Stravinsky did with The Firebird). Not to say I’m Stravinsky or anything. Of course, other people liking my stories and/or giving me money for them is always appreciated.

Joshua: Ha…though Stravinsky is a great example, since he continually tinkered with his works, as much as to extend copyright as to discover new possibilities in them—often new orchestrations (and the original Firebird of 1910 had an enormous orchestra—not financially feasible for most modern orchestras to pull off!). Speaking of the classics, one final question to round out a fascinating discussion: if you could write the Preface to one classic novel of science fiction or fantasy, what would it be? In general, what would you want people to appreciate about this book that you would single out in your Preface?

David: I’d have to go with Frank Herbert’s Dune. Picking a single topic to focus on would be pretty difficult, given that there are so many sequels (and spin-offs if you’re inclined to count those) and even the first book has so many threads that it’s hard to keep track of what’s really going on the first time through. On the surface, it hits many of the same notes as other sci-fi/adventure stories: retaking a throne, acts of vengeance and betrayal, a love interest, and the white newcomer saving the brown indigenes from their oppressors but really from themselves. We’ve seen variations on these themes in John Carter of Mars, Avatar (the James Cameron movie), Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, etc. What Dune does that’s special, especially considering it predates all but one of those aforementioned stories, is that it flips the entire familiar narrative on its head, all while telling you exactly what it’s doing and why. The chosen one prophecy was nothing but cynical propaganda, prescience is a very double-edged sword, and the cost of achieving his final goal leaves Paul an emotional and physical wreck.

Ultimately, the entire series is one big deconstruction of the societal craving for messianic leaders that produces the chosen one narrative in the first place. It’s definitely the single most influential thing I’ve read in terms of how I try to write; constructing setting and characters with compelling, individual motivations.

Joshua: Wonderful response…you write the Preface, I’ll write the Epilogue! :) Thanks so much for exploring these topics with me, and as usual, offering so much passionate insight into what makes these genres exciting for modern readers. For more information on David’s novels, check out his Amazon author page, where you can buy copies of all his novels and story collections here . He can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and his blog!

#amwriting #interview #author #fantasy #scifi #David gowey #jire #reading #booklr

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lumbirdjack · 8 years ago

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Who’s ready for some bullshit thoughts on why Merlin can be “Summoned?”

Yes, yes, I know-- I always seem to swoop in with absolute bullshit Merlin meta whenever anyone asks a question about him within my general vicinity. I apologize. I just love that man.

Anyways. Let’s discuss a few theories I have. As a foreword, sorry for any formatting issues or anything like that, tumblr really fucked with it hardcore and I did my best to fix it up but. Also ignore any typos ect ect. Whatever. Merlin meta under the cut because I got REALLY longwinded:

1) Perhaps Merlin’s A-Ranked Illusionism skill allows him to project himself, or a shadow of himself, onto the physical plain. The Profile translation on the Cirnopedia says that his Illusionism is “A magic that deludes people. It indicates intervention towards the mind, virtual projections on the real world and the likes. Upon reaching A Rank, nightmares on the mental world are a matter of course, but he can also easily create virtual images of about the size of a single village to deceive people.” The important thing to note is that it describes “Virtual projections on the real world.” Coupled with his clairvoyance, this means that Merlin could very easily be projecting some sort of physical “body” for himself to act through, even though it’s not his actual body. This would also explain why he’s got flowers coming out of him all the time always, because I believe that’s just a side effect of his magic-- and why one of his myroom lines is that he does not, in fact, throw flowers everywhere with each step. I say this is the least likely of the theories even though technically speaking it is one of the least likely, but it’s a possibility regardless and something worth keeping in mind.

2) This second theory deals with what Avalon is, does, and represents. Let us take a gander at what his profile says about Avalon: “Reproduces the 『tower』where Merlin is even now being confined on the surroundings. Flowers bloom in profusion and a warm sunlight shines on the ground, no matter what sort of darkness or hell that might be. Even if the space that he has been permitted with is nothing but a jail of mere 10 meters in all directions, and the scenery given to him is only an isolated emptiness found far away in the skies, it continues to exist as a utopia.“

The interesting thing to note about this is the phrasing. This could be a byproduct of the translation, but it’s all I have to go on, so: “The tower where Merlin is even now being confined.” Merlin is still absolutely confined within the tower. But! That’s not the important part of the profile in regards to Avalon: “The place where the magus Merlin is must not be a hell, but a land filled with hope.”

There it is. Avalon does not exist in any map. Avalon is a reflection of the world; the beautiful reflection of the world where hope exists above all else. Where even in the depths of despair, hope prevails. The solitary tower overlooking everything, even the fate of humanity. In Merlin’s Bond CE, it describes Avalon as “Avalon. Another name for the soul of the planet Earth itself, the inner sea of the star.” Let me just say this really bluntly to make my point clear: Avalon is the existential concept of hope and fate given “physical” form. Therefore, it would make sense for Avalon to be able to manifest itself where both the World’s and Humanity’s Hope is the strongest... Chaldea.

And thus the puzzle pieces fit together. Because Chaldea is humanity’s Last Hope with all this timeline fuckery, Merlin was able to materialize Avalon at or within Chaldea, giving him the opportunity to actually Be There. And, by extension, because of the technology Chaldea has where they transmit a Physical Body into a Spiritual One for time travel.... Well, suddenly Merlin’s got a body he can use to fuck everyone he can get his hands on be a servant.

And the last theory I have. The one that’s actually the least likely, but is still one of my favourites because I Love To Hurt. This one is the most bullshit and the most [insert me in a tinfoil hat pointing vigorously at a wall with a ton of different pictures all linked together by colourful lines, super conspiracy theory style]

3. Avalon is a prison meant to hold Merlin and Merlin alone. Its scripture states “Only the Innocent May Pass.” This is important, but it’s a point I will get back to later. If you read his Bond CE translation, it even says this:

“Now go, Cath Palug. I’m staying here. But you should go free, to touch truly beautiful things.” The man let his last companion out through a window, without showing any emotion. And so the mage continued to gaze at the world from that one window.

And that’s where things start to get fucked! Merlin says, specifically, “I’m staying here.” Not “I can’t leave,” or “I can’t go,” or any variation of that! Specifically “I’m saying here.” As though it’s his choice. In fact, the Bond CE text also says this: “It is here that that man closed off his own path, shutting himself into the tower, choosing a future where he could not die until the end of the star.”

The important part of this text is “That man closed off his own path, shutting himself into the tower.” It almost makes it sound like Merlin chose to enter the tower himself. Makes it sound like Merlin locked himself away. But didn’t the Lady of the Lake lock Merlin away for trying to seduce her? Well, actually, based on what the Wiki says: “Merlin has left King Arthur before the last battle with Mordred due to his problem with love affairs. He claims that the cold-mannered woman has been trying to murder him, and so he has taken refuge on the Reverse Side of the World, where he had crossed the boundary and stumbled into a foreign land known as Avalon.” It’s later revealed that Avalon was a trap, and as soon as he entered, the Tower rose to trap him. Given enough time, however, I’m sure he could find a way, or a loophole, to leave his tower. In fact, the inscription, as I mentioned before, is “Only the innocent may pass.” If Merlin considered himself innocent, could he not, then, pass? Guilt and Innocence are concepts based solely on the [self], after all. Ah... But that’s not the case, is it? Merlin feels guilty. Merlin feels guilty for.... Well, let’s take a look at his last profile paragraph.

“Possessing outstanding clairvoyance, in spite of having foreseen all about the collapse of he Round Table and Britain’s crisis, he left Britain without telling anything to King Arthur. There are many theories as for why Merlin never told King Arthur about her fate, but it is often said that it was because he is not biased towards individuals, instead caring only about fate. Afterwards, Merlin went to the utopia of Avalon and confined himself into a 『tower』.To ascertain the world of humans until the end of the universe, without being able to die.......as if to say that this is the fate of a foolish man, who playfully meddled with the fate of a single girl.”

Merlin saw everything. Merlin knew of everything that would happen. In the Once and Future King, Merlin can see the future and knows exactly what is going to happen, but is powerless to resist: or, alternatively, does not resist because he knows that That Is How Things Must Be. Merlin in FGO is the same. His profile confirms that his Clairvoyance applies not only to the present, but also the future: He knew Exactly how the Arthurian Cycle was going to play out. He knew he was going to be trapped in the tower; he knew it had to happen. Thus, even though Merlin did not lock himself in the tower, he still confined himself. He still left. He Had To. He had to follow the cycle; he had to perform as Fate willed. After all, Merlin is not biased towards individuals, but instead answers to Fate itself. However, as I mentioned, Merlin feels incredibly guilty for condemning Arturia to such a cruel fate. Even if that was how things had to be, he still felt guilty about “playfully meddling with the fate of a single girl.” But! It mentions on the Wiki that “After Merlin witnesses Saber’s last moments in the Fifth Holy Grail War, he is pleased with the outcome. He releases Cath Palug from the Garden of Avalon [...] He insists Cath Palug to seek freedom and to play into something really beautiful.” And thus is Merlin absolved of his Guilt. Arturia, his King-- and as his profile mentions, basically his daughter-- has finally found peace, has finally made peace with herself and her fate. And without that guilt, knowing that Arturia found peace... Well, he probably still regrets putting her through Hell, but Regret and Guilt are different. And so Avalon’s gates open. He carries Avalon with him wherever he goes, because it is the Tower where he is Always Destined to Be, but that’s why it is his Noble Phantasm. Because even though he’s finally outside of the tower, he will always return, and it will always be with him.

Anyways, this has been “More Merlin Bullshit With Jordan.” We will return to your regularly scheduled programming shortly. Just. I love Merlin. I’m so pleased with what Fate did with him. Love this hot mage boyfriend, 11/10, would date

#meta with mags #mage boyfriend #fate grand order #merlin

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ronaldmrashid · 8 years ago

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The Downside Of Financial Independence

One of the things I was counting on when I published, Being A Landlord Questions My Faith In Humanity, was readers coming out of the woodwork questioning why I would be so lenient when my tenants were so thoughtless. Most were empathetic to my situation, but some blamed me for my tenant’s actions. That’s cool.

At the end of the day, I got $216,000 worth of rent over 24 months, a completely redone backyard mostly paid for by them, a professionally cleaned house, and $1,000 of their $17,000 deposit. Things could have been much worse if you read some of the tenant horror stories in the comments section.

My tenants were generally nice guys. They were just clueless. When I sent them the picture of the trash explosion the next day, they immediately called a junk trunk to collect everything a couple hours later. They could have just disappeared into the wind since they had their deposits back. But they didn’t.

Hopefully my post will encourage people to be more thoughtful. At the very least, it provides some insights for current and future landlords. I always try to highlight the good with the bad on my road towards financial utopia (doesn’t exist, sorry).

In this post, I’d like to highlight the downside of being financially independent. I don’t know any other landlord who would not have charged a single late fee after eight times of tardiness. But you know I’ve got a masochistic side, looking for ridiculous situations to share with all of you!

The Downside Of Being FIRE

1) Not optimizing for maximum financial returns. When you are financially independent, you don’t need more money because you already have money. If the counter party isn’t financially independent as well, you start feeling a little slimy for trying to optimize your returns. As a result, you aren’t negotiating the best deals. You aren’t shopping around to find the best bargains. You’re definitely not driving around the block to find a free parking spot. And you’re always booking flights late because you value optionality.

Instead of optimizing for financial returns, you start maximizing for peace and harmony. With each late payment, I had a choice of letting it go or laying down the hammer, which might have led to more property damage and further disregard of the lease. I knew they would eventually pay, so I showed kindness.

By forgiving their tardiness, I wanted to build credits for future instances when I couldn’t come over in a timely manner to fix something or address an issue. And it worked on two occasions: 1) The kitchen faucet lost cold water pressure for some reason. My master tenant volunteered to meet the plumber, make the payment, and oversee the project. 2) Then my microwave stopped working one day. It was a custom size that was built into the cabinetry. He took it upon himself to go to Best Buy, then to a private party when Best Buy didn’t carry such a model to pick one up, pay for it, and install it. His actions saved me at least three hours of time.

My main mantra is to always give as much as possible first. This way, people are more inclined to do right by you in the future. I’m a peacekeeper by nature who believes everything can be worked out through an open discussion.

Related: To Get Rich, Be Willing To Do The Dirty Work

2) People will take advantage of your kindness. It doesn’t matter how rich you are, nobody ever wants to be taken advantage of. Yes, my tenants were taking advantage that I wasn’t penalizing them $250 for each time they were late. But the way I saw it was I had $2,000 worth of credit I could withhold from their $17,000 security deposit if they didn’t comply with what I asked for before moving out.

They knew this, which is why one of the tenants said the day before move out, “We won’t let you down Sam!”

I have a wealthy friend who escaped to Paris for a year with his wife and four kids because he couldn’t stand getting hit up for money all the time. He told me, “Every time I open my inbox, I get some random person whom I don’t even know asking if I could donate $100,000 to some organization I don’t care for. It’s maddening I tell you. How about at least getting to know me first?”

One time I met a friend for drinks. He was talking to this startup female founder who was once an ex-beauty pageant queen. She was attractive and she knew it by the way she talked about her relationships with “high powered VCs.” Both my friend and the founder had to leave, so instead of paying for her own drink, she looked at me and said, “I’ve got to run. It was nice meeting you,” implying that I was to pick up her tab. Since she Usain bolted, of course I had to pay even though we just met. I’ll give her startup a 0.1% chance of surviving with that type of entitlement.

Finally, I get bombarded every day with questions from people who don’t bother to make a connection first. I’ve been asked to give a diagnostic of their entire financial lives. Some have asked whether I can help them with their marriages. Others have asked me to help them with their online business plan. The most common question I get is, “Can I pick your brain?” I’m not sure how anybody thinks that’s enjoyable.

To avoid being taken advantage is one of the key reasons for practicing Stealth Wealth. If people know you are financially independent, they’ll do everything they can to extract as much time and money from you as possible.

3) You start empathizing too much. I saw in my tenants a rowdier version of me when I was their age. I remember what it was like to struggle at work, survive layoffs, begrudgingly pay a portion of my paycheck to rent, all while trying to enjoy all that life has to offer. I started developing a lot of empathy for them because some of them had issues at work. Another had back tax problems because he somehow forgot to pay them. While another just couldn’t get it together given his parents babied him too much as an adult. I thought I could be sort of a big brother who could provide some guidance.

But empathy doesn’t get you anywhere if the other side doesn’t care. There’s a reason why it’s never a good idea to do business with friends or loved ones. For at least the rest of the year, I’m going to work on being a stone cold business assassin. It’s not in my nature because I’m always joking around and having a good time.

To be frank, I fear the lion within. I’ve never backed down from a fist fight or a shouting match when provoked. A part of me longs to snap an oppressor’s bones as I once did as a raging young man who always defended his honor. Thanks to the feedback from the community, I’ve been reminded how overly soft I’ve become. Time to get fierce and care for no one!

Related: Are You Smart Enough To Act Dumb Enough To Get Ahead

4) You start taking money for granted. Do you remember how excited you were as a kid to get a crisp new bill in an envelope for your birthday or Christmas? Those were the best! Unfortunately, I no longer get excited about seeing a $20 bill or even a $100 bill in my wallet. Now, I withdraw thousands of dollars at a time to pay vendors without feeling a thing.

The reason why I’ve begun to tip more aggressively since reaching financial independence is because I enjoy seeing the joy in others that I once had. I remember getting a $5 tip for just a $5 ride when I gave an Uber ride to this woman. My eyes teared up with gratitude! For the rest of the afternoon I had an extra hop in my step. Then I noticed the best tippers are those who work in the service industry because they know how hard it is to make a buck.

I wish I would be excited by money again. But I’m not. Nowadays, all I get excited about is living life on my terms.

* I just realized while writing this post that I forgot to collect $420 for the two pro-rated and discounted nights after April 30 check out. I accommodated two of the guys because their escrow closing was delayed. I wanted them out on April 30 because it would take five days for the floor guy to refinish everything with four coats of polyurethane. If I cared more about money, I would have remembered to have collected the $420 on the May 2 walk through.

5) You slowly lose motivation to try harder. There was a time when I responded to almost every comment. I felt I had to at least say “thank you” to those who took the time to share their thoughts. But now, I respond to only about a third because I’ve lost the energy to keep up. I feel I’ve provided enough value over the years to give myself a break. Besides, the time formerly spent responding to comments is being used to write meaty new posts.

I used to have this goal of writing five posts a week from the current three posts a week cadence. More posts, higher growth, and more revenue. Now, I’m thinking about just posting a couple times a week because I don’t have this insatiable drive to grow my business anymore. Unless there’s a huge tax cut, I don’t want to build a Financial Samurai app or create a larger publication with 10 different staff writers. I just want to have my own little lifestyle business that never feels like work.

The people who hit it out of the ballpark have this ridiculous drive. Pity the trust fund kids who went to private school, got jobs through connections, and don’t really have to create something of their own. When you have everything taken care of, it’s much harder to be your own person. I blame my loss of motivation partly due to my older age, but mostly due to my passive income and steadily declining debt levels.

Related: Debt Optimization Framework For Financial Independence

The Three Generation Cycle

“From rice paddy field to rice paddy field in three generations.” – Japanese/Chinese variation

“Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” – American variation

“The father buys, the son builds, the grandchild sells, and his son begs.” – Scottish variation

The First Generation comes from a life of hardship. This generation takes the most risks, works the hardest, and makes the most sacrifices to break the cycle of poverty.

The Second Generation grows up a witness to their parents’ struggle and understands the importance of hard work. Because of this awareness, they make good financial decisions and build upon the foundation their parents worked so hard to create.

The Third Generation, however, has no recollection of hardship. They only know a life of abundance. Without an awareness of the work needed to build build wealth, the third generation squanders their good fortune their parents and grandparents worked so hard to build.

My great grandparents left China by boat in order to make better lives in Hawaii and Taiwan. They took all kinds of risk, whereas by comparison, I’ve done nothing close. I fear that a life free of financial worries will dishonor their generations of hard work, frugality, and sacrifice. With consternation, I wonder when my child grows up, will he take his good fortune for granted?

Being financially independent is fine, but unless you have a deep hunger to do something great, it is unlikely you will ever maximize your potential. Therefore, a key reminder is to always be mindful of others.

Financial independence can blind you to the world’s suffering. Or financial independence can bless you with the time to help other people. Which will you choose?

The Dark Side Of Early Retirement

Once You Have F U Money It’s Hard To Tell Others To F Off!

How Does It Feel To Be Financial Independent?

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/the-downside-of-financial-independence/

#Financial Samurai

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averyxadeline · 8 years ago

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I once saw a shirt that said “If you’re reading this, raise girls and boys the same way”. I googled that sentence today and all of the above were the only results I found.

If you’re reading this wear black or wear nothing. If you’re reading this I fucked your girl for some honeybuns. If you’re reading this you look like a muhfuckin uuuuuuuh. If you’re reading this give me head. If youre reading this thick thighs r life. If you’re reading this fuck you.

if youre reading this wear black or wear nothing if youre reading this I fucked your girl for some honeybuns if you’re reading this you look like a muhfuckin uuuuuuuh if you’re reading this give me head if youre reading this thick thighs r life if youre reading this fuck you

ifyourereadingthiswearblackorwearnothingIfyourereadingthisIfuckedyourgirlforsomehoneybunsIfyourereadingthisyoulooklikeamuhfuckinuuuuuuuhIfyourereadingthisgivemeheadIfyourereadingthisthickthighsrlifeIfyourereadingthisfuckyou

–

IFYOUREREADINGTHISWEARBLACKORWEARNOTHING

The girl is an idealistic, one that thrives in the atmosphere of the insulated and secure. Black is her soul but she has embraced it; dark lipstick, brazen hair, nose rings and brave words, sisters chant the war cry of a new era of gender triumph. But is there really equality on an island only populated by girls? The island is buried in a thick fog of ignorance of the mainland. Our cries are loud unto ourselves but are we really heard? If we do a rain dance and the storm does not hit, do we really suffer? Perhaps the world I’ve lived in thus far has been a utopia because I’ve surrounded myself with boys and girls alike who’ve shared my world views and my voice against a very hypothetical form of bigotry. When I am only hearing these loud cries, it is easy to assume everyone is shouting in unison, but in the dead of silence, the nefarious whispers begin to creep down your spin and flood into your veins like an old heart attack. Maybe I’ve overestimated boys I thought were my friends, boys who I assumed saw me as their equal, boys that I thought respected me. Because no friend tells another that she is any less because of her gender, because of her looks, because the course of study she has embarked on is all “floozy” and “feminized”. “What’s the point of studying Literature and the arts? You can’t fix anything!” I study Literature precisely because I am self-aware that I live in a world that is ignorant to the nuanced sphere of human emotions, I and many others am attempting to fix what you do not see. Yes, engineering, sciences, mathematics and computing have their value in fixing society, but the arts do not fix, they reconcile, they heal and they protect, specifically from the brutality of a mechanical world where everything has become entirely utilitarian (cue locomotive noise and let this aural discordance upset musical souls!). The thing is, yes, we won’t earn much and maybe we won’t even be employed easily, but that is not our agenda, we don’t have an agenda, it’s not about the money but a wholesome livid life. Yes, let’s laugh about how the FASS student cannot fix a sink, or call her a “scrub” for not being able to understand mathematics well. But darling, I’d like to see you patch up those little holes of emptiness in your chest with a hammer and nails.

IFYOUREREADINGTHISIFUCKEDYOURGIRLFORSOMEHONEYBUNS

There is a humming in my ears and red strings bind my hands to his, but neither of us tied them. Ownership is a funny concept; I own this shirt because I bought it, I own this dog because I adopted her, I own this person because I love him/her. Because I love a boy, and because he loves me, the stars have aligned and we implicitly owe certain things to each other! The glittery pigments on my eyes are there akin to worship of him, the glorious tears that fall do so in his name, the slickness between my thighs are nothing but an ode to him. My body nothing but enslaved to him my idol? When he kisses my cheek, should it feel like a branding mark or love? Or both? Because I know in his eyes, it is love, but he has become the unknowing owner of this empty house and it is the world that deconstructs love with the politics of ownership that continues to build up walls. “How does your man let you out of the house wearing that? What does he think of that top? Did you dress of for him?” My body is no longer my own not because he demanded it, but because by the World’s gaze, love has become the defining mechanism of consent. That’s why marital rape isn’t “a real thing”, that why girls/boys who are raped by their significant other are assumed to have wanted it because they have before. So when I splurge my money on a 100 different lipsticks, it is so he might notice each and every colour. When I choose a pair of shoes, it’s not about convenience but whether they will risk making me taller than him. And when I wax it’s fully because he must believe that I am a hairless cat with the innocence unknown to all forms of natural female sexuality! Razors and too many variations of smudged red lipsticks have become the aesthetic of feminine ownership and I know that he does not expect me to shave for him or dress up for him, but what does is that everyone else does. “Your girl” has had her honeybuns stolen in the name of love and all its irony!

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I look in the mirror, the depth of self-reflection spits back at me in horror. This face has become unknown territory; the nose ring I thought would express an edgy part of myself has deemed me a “bad girl”, the makeup caked on my face as an empowering attempt of feeling myself has labelled me as insecure, my natural chest and cleavage should not be exposed, and yet I am also not ‘womanly’ without it. The male gaze tastes like metal; the angry sort of tang you get from licking a rusty spoon, it spoils the flavor of anything you eat. I am the most stereotypical girl; I am everything you’d expect. I love clothes, makeup and arts, but most importantly I loved that I was comfortable loving these things. But when a boy insists that, “all girls only dress up for boys” and my own mother tells me that I shouldn’t wear certain things because I’ll, “scare boys off and look ugly to them“, I start tasting metal. The new metallic highlighter that I bought to compliment my skin tone disgusts me with its new ironized significance, I’m subtly afraid of wearing culottes in front of a guy who likes girls who wear them because I don’t want him to assume that I’m doing so for him and when I feel more self-conscious than confident when wearing red lipstick because I know someone is going to sexualize my libertarian choices and assume that I’m “trying hard”. Don’t get me wrong, boys are not the singular villain in this treachery, girls too ingest this patriarchal logic; they swallow it and spit it out at each other in the brazen tussle of femininity until it consumes everyone. Wave upon wave, femininity has indeed become a competition of who adheres most the hegemonic master text of what a girl must be. I look in the mirror and light pink is so drab against my lips but maybe boys will think I’m innocent! I look in the mirror and see a neon sign that screams, “YES” where my cleavage used to be. I look in the mirror and I realize that my eyes don’t work anymore, I am looking through someone else’s. I look in the mirror and I do not recognize myself.

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Let me tell you a story about a young 14-year-old girl who did not understand love and suffered for it. A girl who just wanted to be loved by a boy at the wrong time and place and suffered because no one taught her better. A girl who liked a boy who convinced her that sending nudes was the only way he’d like her back. A girl who figured that this must be the natural path that romance takes because not one, but two boys demanded this from her. A girl who recognised harassment as a romantic pursuit because that’s what happens in movies. A girl who felt ashamed of her own body and responsible for a violation she had no control over. A girl who was afraid of talking to boys until she was 17 because at the back of her head, she assumed that this was the main agenda of all boys who befriended her. A girl who was wrong because someone set the wrong precedent. A girl who was given a second chance at love and realized that not all boys are sexual animals, but they still exist and sometimes we fall prey. I am an example, but I am not the whole story. Girls are getting touched and raped before they’re old enough to make sense of their own bodies, and it’s not just about rape but sexual harassment that has become normalized within a pop culture that begs one to, “send nudes” and makes memes out of it instead of addressing its travesty. America is seeing an epidemic of rape culture across college campuses and they’re still asking why. The infamous Dehli rape of Jyoti Singh was successful in raising awareness against rape culture but only because she was elevated as the “Nirbhaya”, the pure and fearless, only because her body was worthy in purity. But what about every other body? What every body from young rape victims to sex workers who face violence in the industry? The thing is, to not be seen as a sexual object, a girl has to be pure. But when she’s too pure, she’s a prude. The spaces that liberate female sexuality are growing smaller and smaller alongside the proliferation of this culture and these mindsets. A girl, like me, cannot survive a world like this.

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Dear boy who once tried to come off as the ‘nice guy’ by telling me you dance with fat girls in the club out of pity, did you think you owed her anything? Did you assume that her body that you deemed inferior was meant to be denigrated? Did you think that you did her a favour with your attention? Did you think she was in a club to validate her body? When the lights go down and the music is turned up, I bet you inched across that dance floor looking for someone to impress and you assumed that the fat girls would give you the time of the day because they have no better option? Check yourself. The girl is abundant, she is a blossom through which life flows, her body is a vessel to be celebrated for every curve and inch that is not yours to explore. It is not your place to deconstruct her colors and shapes. She is not yours to dismantle. The shape of her body does not define her self-worth, confidence and ability until it ‘becomes’ so in your eyes! The Kardashians will go on about thick thighs and body positivity, until anyone has thicker thighs than them. Rappers will sing of a woman’s curves unless they are on her waist and not her chest or butt. And boys will say that they’re accepting or any body shape until she threatens their ideal of beauty. Don’t get me wrong, yes some boys are perfectly accepting of a curvier woman, but that’s because their beauty ideals aren’t as narrow. But the real problem is not what men’s ideal women look like, but the fact that men still think it’s their place to validate a woman’s body or deconstruct it. Beauty can no longer be in the eyes of the beholder when that beholder is not worthy. When the lights go down and the music is turned up, let it be a celebration of every body on that dance floor in the perfect amalgamation of size, colour and gender.

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I have described at least 5 instances of sexism, some more personal than others but all of equal exigency. But the final instance is the most potent and deadly. It is the instance that has yet to come. It is the rebirth of all the above even after being educated and made aware of the very real genderized travesties that still exist today. The last instance is the ignorance of now. It is the blind eye that scoffs at this as another extremist liberal irrationality and continues to deny the silence the voice that they are screaming for. It is when we assume that in our own peaceful and idyllic contexts, we are untouchable and share no part in this fight. Don’t get me wrong, tis a battle but not one of a gender binary. It is not about boys against girls and vice versa, but collective humanity against a toxic mindset and culture. We can no longer be impartial; you have read this, you are reading this, now you know. Now you have no excuse. So I suppose that the real slogan of the t-shirt should be, “IF YOU’RE READING THIS AND YOU STILL DON’T CARE,

FUCK YOU.“

If You’re Reading This I once saw a shirt that said "If you're reading this, raise girls and boys the same way".

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