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CONFESSIONS Of A FAILED � UNDERWORLD AMUSEMENTS Copyright © 2014 Trevor Blake. All Rights Reserved. Designed and prepared by Kevin I. Slaughter forUnderworld Amusements. WWW.UNDERWORLDAMUSEMENTS.COM Cover illustration by Josh Latta. WWW.LATTALAND.COM First Edition ISBN13: 978-0-9885536-5-1 Originally published in OVO, here corrected and expanded: "Trajectory ThroughAnarchism." June 2010. "So Yo u Wa nt to Meet an Alien?" July 2010. "Yes Yo u Can Say No." September 2010. "Co-Remotingwith the Thunderous." November 2010. "Multiple Name Identities." December 2010. "My Crowded Fist TheaterShou ting Fire ... " August 2012. "Why Should I Speak ofThem?" November 2012. Theauth or thanks tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE for technical assistance on "Co-Remoting with the Thunderous." TABLE Of CONTENTS 5 • Confessions of a Failed Egoist 39 • Co-Remotingwith the Thunderous 73 •InfiniteMaterial Universe 65 • It's a Sin 57 •Lan Asaslem! 49 • Multiple Name Identities 28 • My Crowded Fist Theater Shouting Fire ... 68 • Objectivisn't 75 •Really 116 •Shot from the Egoist Canon 78 •So Yo u Want to Meet an Alien? 32 • Trajectory ThroughAnar chism 92 • Triumph of the Wilt 87 •Why Should I Speak of Them? 138 •Wm . Trevor Blake 21 •Yes Yo u Can Say No ! TREVOR BLAKE photo by Jack Donovan TREVOR BLAKE CONFESSIONS Of A fAILED EGOIST 1 I am an egoist, a circular thinker of the most self-con­ tained philosophy. Keep reading, though, and you'll see I'm not a very good Unique One. I see rusty rivets and loose lashings in the HMS Ego ism. Egoism is the con­ trarian's philosophy, and so of course I begin this book with a broadside against it. Egoism is the claim that the individual is the measure of all things. In ethics, in epistemology, in aes­ thetics, in society, the Individual is the best and only arbitrator. Egoism claims social convention, laws, other people, religion, language, time and all other forces out­ side of the Individual are an impediment to the liberty and existence of the Individual. Such impediments may be tolerated but they have no special standing to the In­ dividual, who may elect to ignore or subvert or destroy them as He can. In egoism the State has no monopoly to take tax or to wage war. A few words about words. Max Stimer called the individual der einzige (the Unique One) in his 1845 book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum. 'Individual' and 'unique one' didn't have that legitimacy loaned by Latin lexicalization, and so the book was popularized as The 1REVO� BLAKE Ego and His Own in the same way that Freud's simple das !ch (I) was duded up as 'the ego.' I am the subject mat­ ter, the proper noun, while y'all are objects. Thus I, Me and Mine are all quite capital. Most of the time we have our facesburie d in smartphone simulacra, maps and not territories. But when I speak of egoism, I speak of ego­ ism with gnostic directness and not the idea of egoism or egoism-in-itself I know how this sounds. Thisbook doesn't make sense. Theex cessive word play is aggravating. Much of it is crazy talk. To o much repetition. Theamount of back­ ground knowledge in high and low culture required to get the joke much less the point is unreasonable. Sir, there is no other means ofex pressing ego ism. I can only give you a rope, a snake, fourtr ees, a wall and two curtains. It's up to you to make your own egoist elephant. Try reading it aloud, one chapter at a time, or just buy copies for your friends and forget about it. Now... let's strap this unhealthy specimen to the dissection table and get to work. Egoism is refuted by the simple existence of bodies and the complex matter of minds. Egoism doesn't hold water socially or philo­ sophically. But as the contrarian's philosophy, disproof is not enough to make egoism go poof The magician's cape whirls once again to reveal egoism puts the imp in impossible. 11 Yo u're too young to remember this, but at one time you ... weren't. Yo ur mammy and your pappy did the deed, sperm met egg and at some point afterthat you ... were. Egoism must account forwhen you got your you on. It seems silly CONfESSIONS Of A fAILF.DEGOIST AND ornrn [llAYI to suggest I was beforeI was, so I likely wasn't before con­ ception. I hung out as an unviable fetusfor months, and there's no standing on your own two feetwhen you're hanging upside down in someone else's womb. Plenty of babies are born early or late and require intervention by others to survive. I was not born with anything close to agency over My actions, and was a floppy poopy mess forwho knows how long. With self-control of My body came My first blurts oflanguage, a skill I hope to develop to adequacy some day. The human brain does not stop developing until after the teenage years. That's a good double decade of uncertainty as to when the ego enters the me-arena. Egoism has the problem of being unable to define when the Unique One comes into being and thus in saying who is and is not (yet) an Individual. This is true even when the egoist is asking when He, Himself, became an Individual. Egoism talks about the Individual, but who that individual is cannot be talked about. The stages of acquiring individual status I listed above are just the most likely dates I started me-ing. Perhaps it was the firsttime I stood up and walked, or broke a heart, or paid all My own bills, or registered forthe draft. Whatever ragged race you're running, I assure you the finishline looms and is shared by the One and all. Death is certain but dying is a puzzle foreg oists. Ego­ ism has the problem of being unable to definewhen the Unique One ceases to be and thus in saying who is or was an individual. Egoism talks about the Individual, but who that individual is cannot be talked about. Thepost­ ponement of death through medical means, the possibil­ ity of transhuman life extension, of cryogenics, muddies the waters of ego death. How much or in what ways I die [ONfmION� Of A f AilfD [GOm the death before I'm good and gone I cannot say. Come visit me in Valhalla and I'll tell you what I've learned. The most egregious elements of childhood are elevated and enshrined in egoism. Thelack of ability or interest in differentiating the self fromthe environment, the temper tantrums, the selfishness, the exaggerated em­ phasis on rules followedand broken-send that sprog to the 'splainin' room fora sound spanking! Egoism not only has the problem of being un­ able to define when any particular Individual appears, but also when any Individual at all first appeared. Ego­ ism cannot say whether there were egoist Neanderthals, or before them egoist possum-critters who stole dinosaur eggs, or perhaps egoist dinosaurs, or egoist fish, egoist al­ gae ... don't stop at selfish genes when you can imagine selfishmole cules. There is likely a line of before and after egoism emerged in evolution. Egoism cannot say where that line is drawn. Egoism can scoop the idea of animal rights out of the litter box as easily as any other idea of natural rights. But the idea of animal egos, the Unique One of non-human animals, is snarling and snapping and ready to engage any thinker trying cage it. Being alone is a crowded place. Human DNA is measurably made up of ancient viruses. Every human cell is also the home of mitochondria. A person is more like a park of microbiomes. As much as I fe el like myself, I'm more of a siphonophore. This gives "we're number one!" a whole new meaningless meaning. Thisbook is the world's burden somewhere in be­ tween the any-day-now dawn of artificial intelligence in the 1950s and the supercontext. TheInternet is enough of a person formany people most of the time. It's past CONfE55ION5 Of A fNlED EGOIST AND ornrn [\)AY) time forhuman ity to clean himself up because eventually we will have someone else to talk to. And that someone else may be farmore of a Unique One than any human could ever be. A craftyartificia l intelligence might scan and upload you into a simulation without your being aware of the change, initiating even furtherer osion to the foundations of egoism. Then transhumanism won't seem so dry and we can have a little sin in our singularity. I once flew free from the web of words. Then came speech, and literacy, and forever after that which is Me is known and expressed in that which is not Me. Language is inherently social and the social is inherent­ ly outside of Me. It doesn't entertain My ego to think pre-linguistic babies are alone themselves. Thedead and the incommunicative are also not egoistic. Language makes none of us egoists, and that all of us are not egoists means double trouble forthe idea of the Unique One. I am My body, and I am the Unique One. At the same time every fewwe eks I shave My head and My body carves offbits of what was Me. Where that one-of-a-kind ego is when the body can divide is a mystery. Egoism has the problem of being unable to definewhere in the body, or in how much of the body, the Individual exists.

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