What the title says, basically.

I'm thinking it's body image issues? I go to the gym fairly regularly, and I definitely see improvements and it makes me feel good to see them. But if I don't go for a while, I start getting some pretty bad body image issues. I hyper fixate on my weight and muscle definition, and I know logically that I'm not overweight or anything, but that doesn't fix the fact that I perceive myself that way most days.

Sometimes I'll be walking and I'll catch my reflection in a window or something, and I'll think that I look huge or am growing a gut. The weird part is, these feelings go away pretty much immediately after a workout, but eventually come back if I don't go to the gym for a while.

And then, a lot of times immediately after working out, I'll feel pretty depressed generally speaking. I don't know if it's a dopamine crash or whatever.

I don't know if it's appropriate to call this body dysmorphia, because that seems to be very serious and I'm alright for the most part. I'm wondering, does anyone else have this issue? How do they cope with it?

So lately I've become convinced at the importance in engaging in ethical philosophy for anarchists. I feel that politics has completely subsumed ethics in our modern era. Things such as conflict resolution, personal responsibility, and even interpersonal boundaries have come to be understood within the discourses of politics - of law, of authority, of hierarchy. As anarchists, our aspirations are anti-political, and thus I think that ought to entail a return to the ethical as opposed to the political as the guiding principle of society.

Here I will attempt to synthesize Max Stirner's egoism and virtue ethics - primarily the Aristotelian tradition. My goal here is to treat ethics as a social science, the "science of right action".

First Principles and Definitions

First: Because it is a concept I will be referring to a lot, I will define Rationality.

Rationality, in the sense I'll be using it in this post, regards to the assessment of means and ends; specifically, the consistency between means and ends. To act in accordance to reason is to ensure that your means are aligned with of your ends.

There are instrumental means, where you have a wide range of potential means to reach your desired end. And there are constitutive means, where your means effectively are your end.

An example of instrumental means is driving to a city. Means-ends consistency applies here, because in order to get to the city you mean to go to (your end), your means must be able to take you there. However, they are instrumental means, because there may be a great number of routes to get to that city, some of which may serve your interests more than others.

An example of constitutive means is playing a song on an instrument. The song is composed of a series of notes in a particular order for the right amount of time. If you do not play these notes, then you are not playing the song. Therefore, if your desired end is to play the song, you must play the notes in its defined order.

Rationality, as the concern for the consistency between means and ends, is the sole requirement for ethical action.

Second: we will be taking Stirner's egoism - specifically his claim of psychological egoism - as a given*.* Everyone acts in their self-interest either consciously or unconsciously. To be a conscious egoist, I will argue, not only must one act rationally, but also the lack of rational action is the defining trait of unconscious egoism.

Third: As Aristotle has observed, humans are social animals. This is in the sense that we are interdependent and exist within complex social realities due to our complex, abstract thinking capacities. As a result, "right action" towards others is key to our individual survival. The purpose of ethics, then is teleological - to facilitate the self-interest and flourishing of the human animal.

Conscious Egoism vs Unconscious Egoism

We have virtually infinite ends we can pursue, but we cannot pursue virtually infinite ends. As a result, we must choose which ends we wish to pursue, and we must choose the means with which to pursue them.

The conscious egoist pursues interests that are their own. Their causes are their own, not defined by factors or abstractions external to their will. But in order to properly do so, they must engage in means that are conducive to their desired ends. Any means in particular won't do; they have to be in harmony with the conscious egoist's ends. As a result, the choosing of ends to pursue places inherent constraints upon our actions. If my desired end is to get food, then my means have to match that end. I cannot desire to get food and then proceed to not do it, as that would not fulfill the desire.

The unconscious egoist also pursues interests that are their own, except they externalize their interests to any number of spooks: "God", "The Nation", "The Community", etc. Because their ends are externalized, the unconscious egoist is unable to properly assess whether their means achieve their end. Because their end is defined not by them, but by a mental construction, an ideal outside of them, their ends become unattainable abstractions that impose upon their will. They are rendered unable to exercise rationality.

To be a conscious egoist, one must be concerned with means and ends - specifically their means and ends.

Values and Virtues

A value, for the purpose of this post, is essentially something that you like. This can be something material, such as books, videogames, sweets, but more often these are concepts and behaviors such as love, honesty, empathy, truthfulness, etc.

Values exist for your purposes as your property. They may be taken on and disposed of as you wish. What you value today, you may not value tomorrow.

However, when you do value something, it is in your self-interest to pursue it. So the Conscious Egoist pursues their values, whatever they may be at that particular time, and engages in means that are conducive to those ends.

Virtues are those actions which facilitate your ends. Virtues are actions and skills. A virtuous person is not an identity, but rather a label for someone who engages in those actions that achieve their values. Someone who values empathy, for example, will likely engage in the virtue of compassion. Someone who values solidarity, will likely engage in the value of courage.

As Aristotle would argue, virtue is contextual and exists within a golden mean. The virtue of courage only applies when engaging in such courageous action isn't foolhardy. For example, saving someone from a car crash when you are able and have the opportunity to is courageous. Attempting to do so when the attempt would put both yourself and the one you're trying to save in more danger is foolhardy.

When we are engaging in the virtues that lead us to our values, we are living eudaimonia. Eudaimonia has many translations, but it typically means "well-being"; it is a state of individual flourishing.

Not all values make sense. People can value whatever they want, but there are values that defeat the purpose of having values in the first place. The purpose of values is to achieve your self-interest and your flourishing, so values that contradict such ends - such as the value of murdering - do not make sense, as suffering the consequences of doing so are not in your self interest. Because humans are social animals, our values must both align with our individual flourishing and the flourishing of others. A healthy society makes for healthy individuals, and healthy individuals make for a healthy society.

Why care about ethics at all?

The amoralist may see ethics itself as a spook, saying that we should instead not pay attention to it and do whatever is in our particular interest at the time.

The thing is, human behaviors aren't random. We act in accordance to certain conscious and unconscious patterns. What we value isn't random, what we hate isn't random. They are determined by things other than our will - so when we do not consciously define our values, and engage in means conducive to our values, then we are acting in the capacity of an unconscious egoist, allowing our social context to dominate our wills.

When we are conscious and engage in the Science of Right Action, we gain the tools necessary to become aware of our actions and to which ends they are conducive to, and we allow ourselves to define them in ways that better suit our self-interest. Only then can we truly be a conscious egoist.

Just wondering what you guys' take on this would be.

It seems to me that politics presupposes rule, and since authority inherently expands and reproduces itself, politics expands itself into non-political areas of life, similar to how capitalism expands its logic into non-economic areas of life.

Just wondering. Anarchism seems to be very critical theory-friendly, and it certainly influences my way of analyzing authority, but I wonder if there are any anarchists that have taken issue with critical theory.

Follow up question: are there any black anarchists that have critiqued Pan-Africanism?

Would egoists recognize ones authority over one's self - e.g, the authority to command one's own actions, set the purpose for one's own actions, etc.?

Or would egoists - echoing Buddhism - see even the "self" as a spook that can act as a constraint on one's actions?

Something I've been thinking about is whether we as anarchists should focus on making others anarchists ideologically, or if we should focus on building horizontal systems that get people's needs met that will allow anyone - anarchist or not - to divest themselves from the state and hierarchy more broadly.

There will of course be changes in public consciousness that are required to truly build an anarchic society, but I wonder if it's better to think of those changes as coming as a result of people organizing horizontally and engaging with systems that subvert existing hierarchies. Should we be doing this instead of trying to convince more people to be anarchists, or entering already existing institutions such as labor unions to radicalize them? Or am I thinking of this the wrong way?

This is a bit of an abstract question, and I don't know how else to word it, but I'm interested in seeing what y'all's take would be on this.

Can humans create any type of society, as in are there limitless ways in which humans can organize themselves? Or is there some kind of "physics" of social organization that make some forms of organization impossible or unviable?

A follow up question: do you suppose there's a "natural" form of human society?

Hello! I'm writing a Southern Gothic Horror about a black World War 1 veteran who lived in France for 14 years after the great war before returning to his hometown in Louisiana, and it's important to me that the dialogue feels authentic.

I'm thinking he learns to read and write at a higher level in France before returning to Louisiana, and of course he learns both English and French. Are there any notable differences he might notice that he'd have to adjust to?

Hello, I'm writing a Southern Gothic Horror that takes place in a fictional rural Louisiana town called Moreau.

It's important to me that the dialogue feels authentic for the time. So how common would it be to speak both French and English?

As a follow up question, would it be at all common to not speak English at all, but only French?

Hello! I'm asking this question primarily because I'm working on a novel where the protagonist is a black World War 1 veteran. It's my understanding that most black battalions were under the command of the French Army (please correct me if I'm wrong here). I'm thinking our protagonist stays there and learns to read and write (he's originally from the deep south and hadn't really learned to do either beyond a rudimentary level) before returning to his hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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Is this a plausible scenario? What kind of treatment would he have gotten in the post-war period in France?

So I was reading Kevin Carson's Desktop Regulatory State, and I got to the part where he talked about networked currencies and time banks to organize barter networks.

It seems like a good idea, but I wanted to know if there were any anarchist (preferably mutualist) critiques of time banks? I know money is a controversial subject in anarchism in general, but are there any specific limitations of time banks or credit-based currency that I should know about?

So obviously, we as anarchists seek to abolish the structures of command that empower racism, such as courts, capitalism, private property, etc.

But I've been getting around to reading afropessimism, and while I'm not entirely on board, I can't help but see from personal experience and the experiences of other POC how pervasive white supremacy is as an ideology. It's so subtle as to be invisible, and it even exists in radical spaces.

So I wonder if anarchy can abolish racism *as an ideology*? How would we go about doing that? Do we believe that by abolishing structural and systemic racism, ideological racism would eventually lose steam, or would more work have to be done even then?