Ownness & the Spook of Grief
One day, as I was sitting in my room typing on my laptop, I felt a dark and looming presence. I began to lose concentration and focus on my project. I thought this dark entity was staring at me as if it had no intentions of leaving. Suddenly, a ghost appeared! I began to feel a tightening in my chest, and my heart started pumping faster as I watched the ghost move closer to me. To my surprise, the entity appeared to have a projector in its hand. When the ghost sat beside me, it began to play various images of my life on the screen. The images were of all the traumatic experiences I’ve had in my life. While showing me these images, the ghost started to whisper that my life was not worth much and that no one would care for my suffering or even if I was alive or not. Despite my grief, plus the anger and rage that I attempted to direct at the ghost, it laughed and began to leave the room. Yet, before leaving entirely, it told me that it would be back, and when I asked when? The ghost replied, Only in accordance with your will!
However, are religions and political ideologies the only ideas that can be considered spooks? Given this definition, I would argue that they are not. A spook can be any thought in the mind that maintains power over us because of our attachment to it. And it is in the very act of attachment, as in our inability to take control over the idea and let it go, we begin to see ourselves as less powerful than the idea. As a result, we begin to hold the idea in reverence by projecting it from ourselves and reifying the intangible, essentially sanctifying it. In other words, we give the idea power through our submission to it. This process is described by Stirner in his statement, “Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my - conscience” (Brainyquote.com).
Grief can be a spook for the reasons previously stated. Grief is the act of holding on to the past. Although grief itself is a natural process that everyone experiences, for example, one may experience grief as a result of losing a loved one, it is the prolonged and obsessive grief that can become fixed if one finds themselves unable to move forward in their life due to their attachment to memories associated with it. This type of grief is usually associated with traumatic experiences and/or regret over past decisions that lead individuals to fixate on what could have been rather than embracing current opportunities. What makes matters worse is that our fixations can be triggered anytime. For example, the sight or smell of that could remind the individual of their trauma, thus causing the idea to manifest itself from nowhere, just like a spook (ghost). It is this prolonged grief can cause us to create worlds in our heads that replay the images of our negative past experiences, similar to that of a projector. Stirner describes this as our heads being haunted by fixed ideas. He states, “Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! (Brainyquote.com)
However, if we take what Stirner says to be accurate, that “no thing is sacred of itself, buy by my declaring it sacred”, then is logical to conclude that we can rid ourselves from these spooks by changing our attitudes and behavior towards them. Perhaps we never rid ourselves of ideas entirely, but we attain more power to enable us to be better equipped to deal with ideas before they attempt to spook us. I believe that this is best handled by utilizing the concept of Ownness. Max Stirner describes ownnes by saying, “Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power or what I control. My own I am at all times and under all circumstances, if I know how to have myself and do not throw myself away on others” (Newman, 2017, p.11). In this way, Ownness expresses the individual’s power and capacity.
Saul Newman takes a similar approach to describing Ownness as self-mastery. In his essay “Ownness created a new freedom’: Max Stirner’s alternative concept of Liberty” he states that,
“ownness implies a form of self-possession or what might be understood as self-mastery. The owner, for Stirner, is one who not only has a sense of her own interests and a capacity for power – something that would make her a simple egoist, but not necessarily an owner – but, more importantly, has control over herself and her own desires; has possession over herself. This is what separates Stirner’s sophisticated egoism from cruder accounts in which the individual merely pursues blind self-interest.9 Indeed, I would argue that Stirner’s notion of Ownness implies a certain ethical relationship to oneself, such that the individual is able to master her instincts, passions and desires, even her desires for external objects or her desire for power over others. (Newman, 2017, p.23)
If Ownness does imply an ability to “master instincts, passions and desires,” then it is logical to conclude that it would also apply to have the ability to master our thoughts or at least our reaction to them. In this way, taking Ownness means giving yourself the tools to deal with these things however the individual sees fit. Concerning grief, there is no universal standard for how one should master oneself with it. Thus, the individual would have to find many ways to deal with it. However, taking ownership of ourselves can be the first step to empowering ourselves to do so. As Stirner would say,
“Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively, not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others...He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.” (goodreads.com)
Max Stirner Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved September 22, 2024, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/max_stirner_618012
Newman, S. (2017). ‘Ownness created a new freedom’: Max Stirner’s alternative concept of liberty. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 22(2), 155–175. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2017.1282801
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7625680-liberate-yourself-as-far-as-you-can-and-you-have