Flowers for the Individualist: Why Arguing with Egoists is Pointless by Kevin Tucker

Anonymous (not verified)

Forums

"Flowers for the Individualist: Why Arguing with Egoists is Pointless" by Kevin Tucker | published February 9th, 2017 on the Kevin Tucker blog | Read text on the library here.

[Note from a SHH! website content moderator (rocinante): Some edits have been made to the original forum post by Anonymous. Minor housekeeping explained: Originally this new forum topic was posted by Anonymous as the full on text. This website isn't meant for sharing texts in that manner, but rather sharing commentary about texts. Usually the hope is someone shares a library link at the start of their forum post and shares some meaningful commentary about said linkage. In this case it was just Anonymous sharing an entire Kevin Tucker text, but they also added Paypal, Cashapp, and Venmo links to the end of it. I added the text to the library and have edited the original post by Anonymous to reflect such changes. It would have been nice if they shared a critique, a discussion or point to converse about, a good faith argument, or anything other than what seems to be someone attempting to troll the project, but they didn't. The idea is light moderation, but posts that just share links without anything meaningful to start a conversation are a bit bland and going nowhere. This post will stay up as an example of such, along with the edits. If Anonymous would like to now add their talking points for sharing the text, that would be appreciated. To better conversations!]

 

 

Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 09/17/2022 - 00:25

Why don't you post these very fucking specific rules on what you expect from users on an FAQ page or somewhere that isn't just buried in a random post that didn't meet your expectations?
COME ON!

If you like the article in question why not help the author out at:

Cashapp: blackandgreenpress
Vanma: blackandgreen
Paypal: blackandgreen

Thanks!

@balm Sat, 09/17/2022 - 15:48

it says right there at the top of the page, "a place to discuss texts from The Anarchist Library." don't know how much clearer things need to be for you...

 

anyway, i tried to read this piece and it starts with some light ad hominem and then proceeds to wildly misunderstand Stirner. 

 

maybe i'll finish it when hell freezes over....

 

Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 09/18/2022 - 15:50

...'SHH! THIS IS A LIBRARY! A place to discuss texts from The Anarchist Library'

You copied and pasted a text that is not a text from the anarchist library, then made no attempt to discuss it. Then complained.

Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 09/18/2022 - 17:52

It's no surprise to see thecollective moderators being heavy handed on this new site deleting comments that are critical of them and leaving comments that tickle their dried up balls.
Fake anarchists.

rocinante Sun, 09/18/2022 - 19:11

Again, for the second, third, and perhaps more times - this website is not ANews nor does it have anything to do with thecollective (who run ANews).

I have unpublished your comments because they have been terrible and meaningless with basically nothing to offer. I've been the only one moderating your comments. You are just trolling this website with death threats, spam like posts, and phrases of a few words. Then you get upset and say something totally unfounded, which has already been responded to. Dear Anonymous, what's the deal? This project just started and it's like you have all this anger towards it already for no reason and accuse the project of things which obviously you have no idea about.

Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 09/18/2022 - 20:49

Regarding "fake" "anarchists":

"When the Christian crusaders in the Orient encountered the invincible order of the Assassins, that order of free spirits par excellence, whose lowest ranks followed a rule of obedience the like of which no order of monks ever attained, they obtained in some way or other a hint concerning that symbol and watchword reserved for the highest ranks alone as their secretum : “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”—Very well, that was freedom of spirit ; in that way the faith in truth itself was abrogated. Has any European, any Christian free spirit every strayed into this proposition and into its labrynthine consequences? has one of them ever known the Minotaur of this cave from experience?—I doubt it [….]"

— Nietzsche

@balm Sun, 09/18/2022 - 17:04

in the spirit of this site i read the introduction, part 1 & part 2 of this essay, in an attempt at useful criticism.

early on KT writes -

The basis of egoism is the idea that the Self is, or should be, the basis of all validation and perspective. In short, you can only truly know what you experience. Self-interest is the only true guiding principle in life. Sound familiar? It should, it's the articulation of the individualism that Modernity upholds. It has become the sales pitch for civilization; used by productionists to get workers into factories, used by capitalists to equate freedom with the freedom to consume, and practiced by programmers through distilling the principles of immediate gratification through social networks and personalized technology.

the first two sentences seem like a fair assessment of egoism, though i am unclear on what is meant by 'validation'. anyway, the idea that we only 'truly know' what we know from our senses and experiences seems valid for most meanings of 'truly'. 

how KT then makes the leap to 'Self-interest' is unclear. he does not flesh out this leap so it reads as merely an assertion that the Self of egoism is the same as the Self-interest of (all the bad things). 

now, i don't disagree that cis hetero white supremacist capitalist patriarchy has used the formulation "rugged Individualism" to very bad ends. i do not agree, though, that the self of egoism (as egoists use it) is the same as that formulation. 

so, right away, this slippage of terminology has me skeptical of good faith. 

 

moving on to wildness.

KT writes - 

To sum it up, all terms are imperfect. "Wildness" as a term is, like all terms, a representation, in this case of what I call a community of wildness. To borrow, as I often do, from the Mbuti, it is "the breath that moves through all life." It is not God. It is not a god. It is not a conscious, sentient force. It is not the lion lying with the lamb. It is a term for a state of existence accessible to all and best expressed through embodiment rather than philosophy. As such, it exists far beyond words. Attempts to treat it philosophically are, at best, demanding a whole other level of reification of thesentient concept. It makes it easy to personify it into religious dogma because that's the beast most of us were raised with.

 

to say that wildness is a representation of a community of wildness is sloppy. it leaves wildness still undefined but KT seems to think that his explanation is clear and he gets angry that others don't understand. okay, then, he quotes the Mbuti as saying wildness is the "breath that moves through all life". (no citation given). but KT insists this in no way means anything like "god" or even "consciousness" or "sentience". 

and here i dwell in deep perplexity. i do not at all know what an Mbuti thinks they mean when they use this phrase. this phrase and the things KT insists it isn't (consciousness, sentience) seem related or could be related, i would have to ask. and it feels weird that for KT, it seems, people asking about meaning by way of analogy only angers him. because KT goes on to say wildness is beyond words, that using words to describe it or to try to come to terms with it misses the point. to me, the only avenue available for discussing the ineffable is analogy (or poetry) so i don't understand why this upsets Kevin so much. 

nothing is exactly another thing, it is true. but we have to try to bridge the gap in understanding somehow, don't we? is that not what writing and critique and engagement are for? 

 

 

@balm Sun, 09/18/2022 - 18:31

so, that's out of the way.

 

i suspect this comment is not actually kt because he often uses his full name and gives donation information. but for the sake of argument let's operate as if, shall we....

Kevin, your writing is sloppy and that makes it hard to understand. i am not actually making a judgment as to the veracity of your point of view, i'm trying to let you know that inconsistent, unclear writing is not getting your point across at all. if you get apoplectic at attempts at clarification then it is no wonder these conversations devolve into ad hominem. 

Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 09/18/2022 - 18:50

The sloppiness is precisely what renders both kt’s and the egoist’s arguments outside of the realm of discourse. Whether “wildness” or the “unique” both camps, in my experience, claim their core concept as ineffable, and thus beyond the critique of those not fortunate or worthy of grasping its meaning. Furthermore, it grants each with an exclusive perch from which to set terms and pick apart opponents. Reminds me of Hume’s description of the critic as one who looks over everyone else’s shoulder while attempting to convince them he has none.

@balm Sun, 09/18/2022 - 21:26

the ineffable is beyond critique by its very nature, i agree. to me what is not beyond critique are the terms we use to describe or talk about/talk around what we mean by "ineffable."

i mean, we should be able to have that conversation. 

but if you say the ineffable is "hgđ&$¤●♤|€¤☆" and i respond to you saying "oh, i have not heard that term before. do you mean ○°■}》《¤×&"thhfj ? " and you then get huffy and just repeat "hgđ&$¤●♤|€¤☆" ad nauseum we clearly have not communicated.  there has to be some flexibility in these realms, at least imo.

rocinante Sun, 09/18/2022 - 19:06

Is this really KT? If so, why not tweet a comment that says you are participating in these forums?

I highly doubt it's KT, but someone just writing under their initials.

@balm Sun, 09/18/2022 - 19:56

what i find hilarious is Kevin Tucker is the one who originally posted this. given the stated purpose of these forums, i would assume he was looking for discussion and engagement with his blog post or essay or rant or whatever. 

 

and yet here we are. 

i admit, my first post was a bit short so i tried again, with as much good faith as i could muster. 

i believe further engagement with Kevin Tucker is not worth my time. 

rocinante Sun, 09/18/2022 - 20:17

Hello. Just to clear things up, Kevin Tucker was not the one to post this forum originally. It just says - the text is by Kevin Tucker and the original poster was actually Anonymous - but they have gone on to respond to comments under KT name, leading to the idea that it might have actually been. IMHO it's definitely not KT and it's the same old troll that has been posting crap since project started.

@balm Sun, 09/18/2022 - 20:32

for the clarification. 

Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 01/01/2023 - 14:37

> Charitably, I will assume that Tucker is simply ignorant rather than malign about this but I come away from his text with a warning never to take anything he says about egoism seriously.

Be charitable to yourself and extend that to anything KT has said about anything over the last decade or so.

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA
Security
586719432Click/tap this sequence: 1386
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.