Max Stirner - Wikipedia
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Y'all know exactly what I'm talkin' about, and I'm sure you've grappled with it before. Egoism offers the world the very useful concept that English-speakers translate to "spooks". However, that word has been used for a long time in america as a racist slur against Black people. It's not a good word.

I would love to be able to talk about your ideas without saying a slur, so please consider changing it. Alternative translations of Stirner's idea could include: spectre, ghost, illusion. All of these have historical grounding as names for the concept. And, really, should a True Egoist really be so attached to the name of an idea?

Again, I love the idea, but hate the current English word. Here's a based passage in which Stirner describes the concept in The Ego and Its Own:

In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies – an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e.g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.

:ghost: specters :specter: ghosts :ghost: illusions :specter:

    • Gorn [they/them,he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      No ya, that's valid. I googled around, and it was still commonly in use as a slur in the 1940's, which means there are still living people who used it/were affected by it.

      But I also brought it up in a chat I'm in, and an EM/POC basically 'yikes'd, and went "uhhhhhhhhhhhh yeah thats hella racist" hahaha.

      So, like, as someone outside the context that would have, like, an intuitive understanding of 'ya, no', I've decided I'm gonna try to stop using the word.

      Words change and evolve and have different contexts and all that. But when there's literally 4 different words in the original egoist literature for the concept, I'm gonna start moving towards the 3/4 that aren't also a racial slur, you know? Hahaha