OdiousOutlaw

OdiousOutlaw wrote

That's disgustingly reductive. There's a whole slew of serial killers that don't kill strictly for kicks; hell, most of them do so for cringe shit like money or the enforcement of law.

Also, civilized humans are, for the most part, so removed from having to witnessing death that it hasn't lost its shock value.

Also, also; on a practical level, humans find the idea of being "prey" terrifying and anything that hearkens to that primal fear meets a more immediate response.

Personally, I think that people constantly combating anthropocentric, humanistic moral systems with the innately destructive nature of their shitty civilization results in cognitive dissonance.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote (edited )

Went back to NY for a bit; saw some family members that I didn't see in 4 years.

Got to see how my older brother managed to drive away pretty much every member of our family except for myself and his daughter; wish him the best and hope he gets his shit together, but I don't care for the feelings that the whole situation inspires in me.

Got fired last week; they didn't even have the guts to me in the face, just put me and a bunch of other "under performing" employees in a teams meeting, disabled the face cams, told us the news, and closed it. Maybe I'm leaning into the retribution-based moral system a bit, but fuck it, it's still fresh: if you have the ability to take my livelihood away, you should suffer my rage, my grief, my wondering how the fuck I'm going to handle my family's living expenses; you shouldn't be able to weasel out of that, you feeling a few minutes of discomfort is your price to pay for exercising your power to potentially drive someone's household into the streets; you should feel weight of your own conscience bearing down on you, you should feel some measure of shame for what you're doing to people; I don't get the luxury of detaching myself from this process, I still have to tell my family, go through the unpleasant business and tedium of making myself seem like a desirable commodity for a different capitalist entity.

Heh. "Should".

Oh, and my younger brother brought a stray cat home; she's pretty well behaved, hasn't mauled either of the dogs or anything.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Reply to comment by trickshot in who's spooked? by trickshot

but if people can use stirner to gain power or anything that fucks me (or people i like over), then isn't me destroying their shit (like traps and cages) also dominating them?

Being free to pursue one's individual desires also opens up the window to conflict, as it always has; just without the pretense of fairness or equality under law. Conflict isn't domination (At least, I don't see the two as mutually inclusive); and you and your adversary are free to use whatever means you see fit to do whatever is that you want to do.

If they lack the means (be it ability, resources, friends, etc.) to prevent your sabotage of their tools for confinement; then it means that they should just change up their strategy, location, or goal; any anarchist mad at you for destroying something meant solely to imprison another living thing probably isn't going to get along with you anyway. You're one person using whatever means your personal power/ability allows you to; you have no system or infrastructure manned by (and parasitically using) thousands of others; you may want to look at some anarchist writings on authority vs force; you don't have to agree with them, but they might help you sort things out one way or the other.

like how do i work that out?

WIP. Stirner, to his credit, never really had a blueprint for the world nor did he truly focus on what he wanted for the world at large outside of what it could provide for him. We live in a spooked, capitalist civilization; if you're an anarchist and/or an egoist, then you're already opposed to the current state of the world and anyone interested in maintaining it. Is fighting for a little pocket of anarchy in everyday life oppressive? Is enjoying the company of a friend oppressive? The fact that you care enough to call yourself out on even the possibility that you might develop oppressive tendencies via egoist philosophy is meaningful; keep doing that, skepticism is healthy; anarchists without it develop authoritarian tendencies.

if i want be free or without spooks,

Egoism, like anarchism, doesn't have a definite conclusion; you will grow and change when you accumulate life experiences. Religion offers definite answers and becomes myth when the answers fail; philosophy only gives more questions. If I gave you definite answers to those same questions that I ask myself often, then I'm probably trying to dupe you. There's no perfect ideal to reach, no ubermensch, no communist society; just you being you, as much as you can.

then how do i know i'm not spooking myself by fighting for my own freedom and the people i like?

If it's something that you want to do, then how would you be spooking yourself? What's truly stopping you?

cos it feels like something i want to do, but then don't those capitalists think that about themselves too?

Capitalists fight for money, an ideological perversion of freedom, and capitalism itself; all of which are abstractions that place themselves above the individual: the poor worker that toils does so because they need to eat and this is quickest way to do it, anyone doing out of love for capitalism is putting themselves at a disadvantage to please an economic ideal: spooked by definition. Your friends/companions/loved ones are real; you can perceive them through your senses, you know and can measure their worth to you and you'd know it; sacrificing anything to that end is simply prioritizing one thing (your "property") over another (another instance of your "property"); you're not sacrificing anything to a god so much as making sure that you can continue to enjoy "using your property".

what if i'm spooked and they're not? or we all are?

We all are; some more than others. But we can always be less spooked, y'know?

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Everyone is. Much like how not being oppressive is a conscious effort for anarchist, not being spooked is a conscious effort for the egoist; unlearning behaviors is hard.

The "point" of Egoism is that it's entirely self-centered: your path to self-emancipation is to recognize what abstracts/concepts make a slave of you and work on reversing the dynamic so that you're subordinating these ideas/ideals to your self interest instead of having them take precedence.

i like the ideas but idk how they're not just another way of saying i just do whatever i want?

They are literally just that. A big part of the philosophy is to consider is why they want what they want and examine the relationship between their desires and the goals that external influences say that they should have. For instance, one could take what Stirner said to justify all sorts of things for the purpose of gaining power and/or wealth (a few egoists have already used Stirner to justify their desire to dominate others), but the desire to gather those things is born from another spook that demands that you suppress/deny another part of yourself as well.

Most people don't care for or about what Stirner has said, written, or thought; so them being spooked isn't ever going to be as important for them as it is to someone with some interest in Stirner's works.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Reply to comment by kano in Free TALK friday by kano

I more meant that in this particular case, reading through a document and signing it to announce my support to a country other than the one I'm trying to move to is a pointless task.

I wasn't trying to knock people who are considering, trying to, or in the process of naturalizing. You wanting/needing to move isn't pointless; but the state and what it has you go through in order to do so is.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

My frog was a part of my life and daily routine for so long that I still notice her absence 6 weeks later whenever it would be time to feed her.

I've actively put effort into not looking at the spot where she used to be and tried not to think of her; I "slipped up" a couple of weeks ago and just randomly pictured her swimming around; perfectly recalling the motions that she would make on a day-to-day basis and now, after everything, it's truly dawning on me that this is the only way that I'll ever see her do that again.

fuck...

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Reply to Free TALK friday by kano

I hate paperwork, pointless tasks, and demands that I make affirmations that I don't really mean in order to appease the sensibilities of people that I will never meet, interact with, or care about. That sounds like all three.

If it's purely sentimental, then I'll sign it; it's just paper and ink, there's no passion or any genuine declaration of intent; I'll lie for just about any reason.

Though it's probably not purely sentimental; at the very least, at least some of my tax dollars would probably fund Israel in some way and the document is just me "giving my formal permission" to do so. Granted, it's not like it's any different where I'm at now. My taxes almost certainly go towards funding things that I'm opposed to.

You know, I thought this was kind of clear cut, but this really made me think and now I'm not so sure.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

It's the "royal we"; obvs I know nobody here is like that

My bad, I was feeling playful during the first bit and then I immediately launched into full blown seriousness and that actually made the first bit come off less tongue-in-cheek than I would have liked.

Current diagnostic criteria has 3 levels that dictate the amount of support they need. 1 requires the least support

I appreciate the explanation; thank you.

In any case, I hope you can find measure of peace in knowing that there are people who feel the same way about cops that you do, if nothing else.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Why the fuck are we STILL acting like cops are selfless heroes who want to keep us safe?

Aw, come on; don't do yourself or anyone else on here the disservice of association with the cop lovers. If you're on ACAB, you know better. To actually answer that, it's a combination of steady propaganda and a recursive loop of appeal to authority. Law enforcement is how governments actively exert their power over the general populace; so they gotta keep that going. Few people want anarchy, so they're willing to accept some "necessary evils" and use the "bad apple" excuse to cope.

I never once felt safe around police, my fight or flight always activates when one is present; when will be the day I'm arrested for some warrant I knew nothing about for a crime I had nothing to do with and...jesus fucking christ make it stop. I'm literally going insane how the fuck do you all do it?

I'm basically a hermit; I've personally interacted with cops less than 5 times within the past 5 years; all of which were due to my family members. It was nerve wracking, very uncomfortable, and I wanted little more than to get them the fuck out of my living space. The less often you see cops, the more at peace you will be in your day to day life. I feel you on the fight or flight thing, though; just seeing a sheriff's car drive by puts me on edge.

I'm level 1 autistic

I genuinely have no idea what this means; is this new autist verbage, old verbage that I simply missed, or a meme or something?

but I still don't take kindly to being touched or manhandled by strangers, or being confined, etc.

You know, I never actually considered this when it came to cops; I always thought I'd end up shot if cops were going to cop my general person.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Preconceived notions can do quite a lot to justify things that would otherwise be unacceptable and labels are a quick and easy way to do that; depending on how you feel about the label itself, you can fill in the blanks on who to root for.

Sometimes I wonder if this tendency is something I should work to rid myself of or if I'm being too much of an absolutist and am missing some nuance on this.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Reply to Friday FREE TALK by kano

Hey, it's been a while; I've had a rough couple of weeks; 10 hour shifts of nothing but talking to people has pretty much sapped any desire for social activity that I save for posting here. I have thought about quitting, but everything else pays shit and I'd basically be doing the same things that made me hate call center work to begin with.

Fortunately, I have less than 2 weeks left before this mandatory overtime period is over; I've set aside some PTO to have a nice 4 day weekend right after it's over (a pittance in comparison to the time demanded of me, but, frankly, I'm too tired to be angry right now). We're at the tail-end here, which means it's only going to get busier from here on out.

It hasn't been for nothing, though; I finally managed to fully pay off my credit card and I've even gotten some new exercise equipment, so I've gotten 2 personal goals done.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Ex-officer

Should've happened while he was a cop; now it just feels like a shitty consolation prize.

A prisoner getting stabbed may do it for the punitive moralist types and the prison fanatics, but it really doesn't do much for me.

I guess him being an ex-cop through external factors rather than his own will makes me feel more neutral than negative about him getting stabbed, but, really, that's about it; I'm sure there are countless other prisoners getting stabbed that are far less "deserving", but those aren't gonna make the news because that wouldn't paint prisons in a positive light. At least with this the penance fetishists can pretend that justice/karma is real.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

If it's a necessary class, then it's probably one of the humanities; in my experience, writing for those classes; necessary or otherwise, tends to be a lot more flexible than this scenario; but maybe this is post woke-panic in a red state's university that fired all of the "marxist" professors and I, in a severe lapse in judgment, decided to go back college to finish my last humanities course. The way I see it, I have a couple of options:

I can try to negotiate for a different ideology to write about; there are a lot of angles I can work this; college professors, from my experience, tend to be pretty reasonable about this sort of thing, because I'm not asking for extra credit or an extension on the due date (from what I remember, writing prompts were generally pretty flexible, especially when it comes to writing argumentative essays; we could more or less write about whatever as long as it's relevant to the course material).

If the above doesn't work, I could write a "pro-fascist" essay in the most tongue-in-cheek possible; by writing in such a way that I point out its flaws, but sweep under them under some nebulous "but, y'know, under fascist values, kind of negligible" statement. Arguably, the most fun and stimulating way to deal with this situation; I could get away with A-, if try really hard to hide my disdain (I wouldn't).

I could also just not do the essay (or throw the match if my life was a fever dream and I decided to enroll into a debate class again); Humanities and English classes were the easiest for me; unless it's a major paper listed in the syllabus that I've had the semester to prep for, it's not likely that big a deal; worst case, I pass with a C and even that is stretching it.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

The African clawed frog that I've been taking care of for almost 13 years died on Saturday.

I've been working every day after, so I haven't even been able to really think about it, but the last time I looked at a picture of her, I broke down crying and I feel like something's missing whenever I glance at the spot she used to be in.

She's not a mammal, though; so I feel like bringing it up at work would get me dismissed, but at least the people who knew her understand how broken up I am about it.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by wednesday in by subrosa

Yeah, I brought it up because they are very similar. Trying to outdo the legalists in moralizing is goofy as hell.

(i wonder if there's a more interesting discussion here about the futility of spending (or not spending) money in more ‘ethical’ ways when money itself is a creation of the system you're trying to oppose... or maybe the conclusion is already so clear that there's no particular need to discuss it explicitly.)

I haven't seen it; and even if there was one, it was probably really old (to the point where the userbase was almost completely different). I think it's a discussion worth having (or, at least, not worth any less than many others that I've participated in), and it's not like raddle hasn't had posts dedicated to topics we've discussed at length over and over again despite the seemingly obvious conclusions.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Reply to by subrosa

Ehhh, I've always found the idea of petty theft being a meaningful attack on Capitalism to be complete fucking bullshit.

I don't see digital piracy as harmful, why would I think that stealing meat affect the meat industry in any meaningful way? Why and how does eating stolen meat "improve health"? Damn, dawg, just steal the fucking meat if you want it so bad, no need to parade it like it somehow makes you a "good" person or a "better anti-capitalist". Petty theft doesn't need to be some morally righteous action; there's no need to paint it like it is. You can just do it because laws are bullshit and you wanted the thing.

You're still consuming the end result of the meat industry; the only thing separating you from a "normie" is that you didn't pay for it; if we want to play the moral totem pole game, then clearly the "vegan kleptitarian" is "better than" the "non-vegan kleptitarian" and the vegan that gets all of their food independently from civilized structures is "better than" all of the people relying on capitalist resource distribution.

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