A Geek with Guns - Egoism

Building Our Own Cage

2026-06-10T12:00:00-06:00

I'm now convinced that Ted Kaczynski was a visionary when he wrote Industrial Society and Its Future</a>. When I first read it, I believed that the future he described could be avoided. I believed what Timothy May wrote in The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto</a> about how technology could be used as a force against the State. Most foolishly though, I believe that the masses would act in their own self-interest.

Rather than be a weapon the masses could wield against the State, technology has become almost exclusively a tool the State wields against us</a>:

In recent months, civil liberties groups have warned</a> that adding facial recognition</a> to consumer smart glasses could turn everyday recording into something more troubling: real-time facial identification</a>. It reflects a broader shift already underway, where images and videos captured for one purpose can later be searched</a>, matched, and used for another. </blockquote>
Everywhere you go, you're being recorded. It's long been standard practice for businesses to install surveillance cameras inside and outside of their properties. That practice has now extended to residences. Many people install Ring cameras, which use facial recognition</a> to identify people. Inside their houses they often have devices like Alexa, which have microphones that are always listening</a>. No matter where you go, you're surrounded by people with smartphones with shockingly good cameras. Soon they may all be wearing camera-equipped smart glasses. Most of the data recorded using these technologies is uploaded to the Internet. Ring and Alexa upload recorded data to Amazon's servers. Footage recorded with smartphones and smart glasses typically ends up posted to social media. Once the data hits third-party servers, it's available to law enforcement either through an agreement with the company or via a warrant:

The basic approach is now routine: People record the state, or anything else—as in the January 6 attack</a> on the U.S. Capitol—and the state compiles that footage and data into a searchable environment, which may later be used to identify some of the same people who made the footage. </blockquote>
Surveillance goes beyond video and audio recordings. Most purchases are made with credit cards or applications like Venmo. Every transaction that goes through these systems is recorded. In the case of Venmo, transactions are treated like social media posts by default</a>. Credit cards and payment applications are so prevalent now that many venues won't accept cash at all. This wouldn't be so bad if people exercised common sense. But I've been in enough conversations and seen enough comments online to know that many people, including drug dealers, use these applications when buying and selling illicit goods. The comments are typically found on social media, which means people are stupidly posting evidence against themselves on a publicly accessible forum.
We've built our own cage. All it took was a handful of large technology companies to offer us convenience. While there are many people who bitch and whine about it, they typically do their bitching and whining on the very social media platforms that are being used to surveil them. Furthermore, they typically use credit cards and payment applications for all of their transactions. In other words, even thought they recognize the problem, they refuse to forego convenience to be part of the solution.
Technology is ultimately a tool. Tools are neither good nor evil. However, humans in aggregate are stupid. Stupid people use tools stupidly. Individuals can certainly use technology intelligently, but truly self-actualized individuals are rare. Most people have allowed their individuality to be subsumed by the herd and are therefore incapable of doing much of anything, including use technology, intelligently. They will ensure that technology as a whole continues to be a tool of oppression rather than a tool of individual empowerment. Unfortunately us self-aware individuals are caught in the cage created by the herd.
Kaczynski believed that the use of violence for the purpose of starting a revolution was the only solution. This is one point where I disagree with him. Violence won't start a revolution. The only response the masses have to violence is to pull out their smartphones, record it, and upload it to social media. Their lack of self-awareness is so complete that they regularly record violence rather than flee from it. The only solution I can see is breaking the masses away from the herd by making them into egoists. This, however, is equally impossible.
The only upside in all of this is that those few of us who are self-actualized individuals can at least mitigate some of the damage inflicted upon us by the herd. Simple actions like removing ourselves from social media, using cash to pay for goods and services, self-hosting online services, freeing our devices from the control of the large tech companies, and not taking our smartphones with use everywhere reduces our surveillance footprint (although we cannot eliminate it). Refusing to be a node in the State's surveillance network by not recording and especially not uploading footage to the Internet prevents us from being part of the problem. The herd is too large to be avoided, but we can at least separate ourselves as much as possible from it.

What's The Point

2025-07-29T12:00:00+00:00

Upfront I will warn you that this post will be rambling even more so than my typical rambling. This is because the idea I'm trying to express isn't fully formed in my head yet. I find writing about such ideas helps me form them more fully. If you don't like that, feel free to skip this post. With that warning out of the way, let me begin.

Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared the death of God. From The Gay Science:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? </blockquote>
Max Stirner, whose writings may or may not have influenced Nietzsche's, declared the same. From Stirner's The Unique and Its Property:

At the entrance of the modern era stands the “God-man.”
Will only the God in the God-man evaporate at its exit, and can the God-man really die if only the God in him dies? They didn’t think of this question, and considered themselves finished, when in our day they brought the work of the Enlightenment, the overcoming of God, to a victorious end. They didn’t notice that the human being has killed God in order to now become—“sole God on high.” The other world outside us is indeed swept away, and the great enterprise of the men of the Enlightenment is accomplished; but the other world inside us has become a new heaven and calls us forth to storm the heavens once again: God has had to make way, but not for us, rather for—humanity. </blockquote>
Internet atheists often take Nietzsche's (most of them haven't heard of Stirner) declaration as celebratory. This is because few of them have actually read Nietzsche's works. If they had, they would know that his declaration was both an observation about the Enlightenment and a warning. The observation about the Enlightenment, which is also highlighted in Stirner's work, is that Enlightenment thinking lead many to question the existence of God (really religion in general, but both were European writers and Europe was predominantly Christian). This ultimately lead to the downfall of Christianity as the foundation for Western morality. Nietzsche and Stirner both explain how morality isn't self-evident. Without something to plant the idea of morality into our minds, a phantasm to possess us in Stirner's work, there is a vacuum. Stirner points out that the vacuum has been filled by the concept of "humanity," which is just another phantasm. Nietzsche warns that without something to fill the vacuum, there will be nihilism.
Nihilism, like all philosophical words, isn't well defined. It means different things to different people. In the context of this post, nihilism means the absence of purpose or meaning. My observations lead me to believe that Nietzsche's warning remains unheeded. The Enlightenment wiped away the Christian foundation upon which Western civilization was based but nothing replaced it. Reason, the ultimate deity in Enlightenment thinking, can't provide purpose so today we live with those consequences, we live in a state of nihilism.
I'm not the only person who has observed this. Christians are quick to blame the current state of society on the lack of widespread Christian belief. They tell us that if people would just believe in God again, these ills would disappear! Whether that's true or not is irrelevant. The genie of Reason (capitalized as I'm using it as the deity of Enlightenment thinking) is out of the bottle and there's no way to put it back in. So long as Reason lives, God cannot. Christians aren't the only ones who have observed this vacuum. Many others have too. Like the Christians, they want to fill that vacuum. Unlike the Christians, they claim Reason to be their foundation. Political parties are a great example. They promise to fix the ills of society if only we bend the knee and accept them as our lords and saviors! While all political parties claim Reason to be their foundation, none make that claim louder than the communists and fascists. Despite the ruin they left wherever they've taken hold, some people still take them seriously. As bad as they might be, at least they're not nihilism.
The ultimate problem with nihilism is that it leaves everybody asking, what's the point? Everywhere you look you can observe people facing this question. It makes them uncomfortable because they can't answer it so they spend their days doomscrolling, recording videos of themselves screeching about the topic of the day, playing video games for 12 hours straight, endlessly consuming pornography, and anything else that distracts them from facing this question. Reason can't answer this question either, which is why those claiming Reason to be their foundation have failed to fill the vacuum left by God's demise.
I wish that I had an answer. I wish that I could wave a magic wand and fix this state of affairs. Unfortunately I don't have an answer and I can't fix it. All I can do is observe it and point it out. I will, however, leave you with these words from Renzo Novatore's The Revolt of the Unique:

Let each human being therefore work—if he thinks this way—at the discovery of his own I, at the realization of his own dream, at the complete integration and full development of his own individuality. Every human being who has discovered and won himself walks on his own path and follows his free course.
But let no one come to me to impose his belief, his will, his faith on me. By denying god, fatherland, authority, and law, I have achieved anarchism. By refusing to sacrifice myself on the altar of the people and of humanity, I have achieved individualism.
Now I am free... </blockquote>
If you can't find meaning outside of yourself, perhaps you need to look within.

An Ode to Illegalism

2025-05-19T05:00:00+00:00

The anarcho-communist will advocate that the hungry man steal bread and that the homeless man squat an unused building. The anacho-syndicalist will advocate workers sabotage their employer's equipment if they refuse to meet the workers' demands. Both will have lengthy moral justifications for why the crimes they encourage aren't really crimes at all. Then there's the illegalist. He'll advocate for the same crimes and more. But unlike his anarcho-communist and anarcho-syndicalist brethren, he won't attempt to twist meanings to explain why the crimes he advocates aren't crimes. He won't waste your time explaining why the crimes he advocates are morally just. The only justification he needs to commit a crime is that he desires to do so and society says he can't. This is why illegalism is the most honest branch or anarchism.
Illegalism is a branch of individualist anarchism that developed towards the end of the 19th century. It's largely influenced by Max Stirner's egoism, which means illegalists typically have little or no concern for the laws or morals of society. Adherents blatantly violate them whenever they desire to do so. Where illegalism differs from simple criminality is that there's a philosophical reasoning behind it. The crimes perpetrated by an illegalist serve a purpose. They are a direct attack against the established social systems and thus action taken under the banner of illegalism is a form of propaganda of the deed.
Clément Duval</a> is largely considered the founder of illegalism. As with many of his contemporary French anarchists, Clément fought in the Franco-Prussian War where he suffered significant injuries. Like so many soldiers injured in war, he was discard by his government when he was no longer valuable to it. Left unable to work due to his injuries and discarded by the government he fought for, he turned to theft to support his family. He was then arrest and imprisoned. In prison he became an anarchist. Because he was French and an anarchist, Clément was involved in a few arson attacks. This lead him back to prison a couple more times. Eventually the state tired of his shit and he was sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life at hard labor. Sent to a penal colony, he escaped to the United States after 13 years. His life and especially his final trial inspired several who would go on to become illegalists. To give you an idea of the cojones on this man, here was his opening statement in his final trial:

Yes, I believe that parasites should not own jewels while workers, the producers, have no bread. I regret only one thing: not finding the money I intended to use for revolutionary propaganda. Otherwise, I would not be here on the defendants’ bench—I would be making bombs to blow you up. </blockquote>
No. Fucks. Given.
His statement shows the philosophical side of illegalism. While Clément stole to survive, he also did it for ideological reasons. He viewed his actions largely as acts of individual reclamation and he intended to use the spoils of his crimes to continue waging his war against society. This was the founding of illegalism. Those inspired by his actions would continued his work by perpetrating crimes as a war against society. Probably the most notorious of those inspired by him would be the Bonnot Gang</a> (there's a good book by Richard Parry titled The Bonnot Gang that is freely available on The Anarchist Library</a>).
The Bonnot Gang was interesting for a couple of reasons. First, they identified themselves with illegalism. Second, they made use of technologies that were new at the time. They performed the first bank robberies using automobiles. They were also early adopters of repeating firearms. Local law enforcement in Paris often didn't have access to either so the Bonnot Gang enjoyed a technological advantage over law enforcement for a time. The gang consisted of many anarchists and their eventual target of banks was both practical and ideological. Practical since banks are where the money was and ideological because it was largely an attack against the bourgeois, since they were the ones who held most of the money in the banks. Eventually the gang leaders were arrest and put on trial. Several were executed. But their exploits inspired others to follow in their footsteps. This lead the state to come down hard on anybody espousing illegalist sympathies. Simply stating support for the Bonnot Gang was enough to get you arrested. While the Bonnot Gang didn't topple the French state, it scared the hell out of it. Thus is accomplished more than any group of political activists in history.
I see parallels between illegalists and pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy. Both groups had numerous grievances against their societies. Both groups took direct action in the form of committing crimes that caused direct damage to the societies that aggrieved them. Both groups were driven at least in part by ideology. Illegalists were driven by individualist anarchist ideology. Pirates were driven by a concept of fairness amongst seafarers (this is evident in the constitutions various pirate gangs drew up, which largely ensured all crew members were treated with an equality not otherwise known to seafarers at the time). Neither group spent a lot of time justifying their actions on moral grounds. They took the actions they did largely because they wanted to do so and knew it would damage the social structure that oppressed them.
If you're interested in radical ideology, I can't recommend researching illegalism enough. It's perhaps the most radical of ideologies. It's certainly one of the most straight forward. You don't need to spend months reading tomes written by philosophers. The library of illegalist writings is quite small and to the point. Understanding illegalism is best done by looking into the actions take by its adherents, which makes it much more fun to research than most radical ideologies.