I avoid the righteous. Their “virtue” is a form of vampirism: they feed on the perceived imperfections of others, inventions of their own making, to justify their own expansion. For them, the world is mere raw material, requiring “correction” according to the templates of their personal deity. Where the righteous see “sin” and “vice,” I see a sovereign otherness that they seek to annihilate. Any righteous man justifies his own “sin” and “vice” in advance, tailoring the dogma to suit himself: he is permitted, for he grants himself even that right.
I am wary of aesthetes and the “clever.” Their “taste” and “intellect” are colonial tools. They declare the world ugly or foolish only to monopolize the right to form and meaning. These are the architects of mental ghettos, where anyone endowed with their own vision automatically becomes a “poseur” or an enemy.
I stay away from idealists. These are the most dangerous of failed demiurges. For them, reality is a regrettable error interfering with their hallucinations. By “correcting” the non-ideal world, they erase the very fabric of being, replacing the living rupture with the flat scenery of their ideas. The more idealists achieve power, the less space remains for the autonomous existence of any discrete will.
I am fond of egoists. But not those who foolishly grasp at whatever they want. Such egoism is shortsighted. I speak of the authentic, functional, complete egoism. The Authentic Egoist is the only safe element of the system. His actions are predictable, his aspirations transparent, and his boundaries are defined by the other. A genuine other, who is as necessary to the egoist as resources or air. The other needs no salvation, no correction, and no instruction. For the egoist, the other simply is .
Authentic egoism is not greed; it is the hygiene of distance. Only one who is devoted to their own utility to the core is capable of acknowledging the utility of another. Only one who has truly accepted themselves is capable of leaving room for the other without attempting to consume them.
My creation does not need your approval, but it needs your presence. I create in such a way that the aspiration of my will leaves room for you.
I safeguard your otherness not out of mercy, but out of a higher egoism. You are my edge. You are my mirror, reflecting in which I see myself. You are the boundary against which my expansion shatters, gaining form and density. Without you, without your resistance, without your “wrongness,” I am a boundless nothing, dissolved in absolute void.
I end where you begin, and it is precisely this rupture that makes me real, defines me, and establishes me. Without you, there is no me.