/dead/ - Post-Left

>>2925
You're projecting yourself. You don't feel it's authentic, but the act of you projecitng an identity is already a genuine act and part of your identity already. What you must part with is the idea that you "hold" identity. Identity isn't a collection of things you hold or project. It's fluid becoming. Never static, never coherent, always contradictory. Once you let go of your illusions, your "identity" will seem like a reductive box for your active becoming.
Good luck.

I wish I could erase every trace of my existence. How do you abandon an identity? I wish to be nothing.

Self-annihilation alone will leave you a helpless slave to your impulses. Why? Because you cannot escape the purpose of an identity: to give you coordinates, to help you navigate the world. There is no such thing as abandoning your identity; you either paint your own mask and wear it, or you wear the mask that others will paint for you - to merely destroy your mask is to identify with the mask of madness.
The irony is that a life of complete rejection is precisely what capitalism results in. It's a system that encourages us to reject our desires so that we may identify with our impulses. It is a system that pushes us to throw away our identities in favor of the carefully crafted identities that we are sold. The nihilistic goal of abandoning the ego without replacement is a mirror of such self-cannibalization.
You should neither reject capitalism nor should you accept it, because in both instances the result is the same: wear the mask that the other paints. No, the only solution is to see this dialectic through to the end and start anew. You have to abandon your identity in order to create a new one. You have to give up your dreams in order to dream differently. Either way, your only free choice is to accept responsibility for your desires and the pain that comes with being free. There is no easy way out.

>>2925
identities are mostly just a habit of thought, it is learned behavior. You can choose to think about stuff unrelated to an identity, at first it will require a little concentration and deliberate attention, once that becomes your new habit, you're free.

>>2936
who are you, this comment feels like something i'd write but i dont remember writing it

wait fuck nvm your conclution isnt dialectical enough. good try comr8

to fix my post make these edits: The new identity you take on cant just be another particular identity, but one which rises above all identities by explicitly embracing progress/negation/surpassing. Without that you fall into a stupid loop, where you have a solid identity, you can negate it if you want, but only to take on another identity. This is true in some ways but it's not so futile - while yes in order to function you need some positive identity (or values, coordinates, etc. to identify with), this identity doesnt have to resemble the old one, or any unexamined identity. It can and should be fundamentally different, so that rather than staying fixed and tribal, it's expansive and universal, self-overcoming without having to accept some outside identity over and over, or being stuck (as you said) in the madness of pure negation.

Also interestingly, it seems like many schizophrenics probably don't even go all the way to self-negation, but hold on to both - the progressive and regressive directions, and make themselves really crazy by not just progressing the thought and accepting negation wholesale. (just from my reading of R. D. Laing and other shit :P)

>>2925
Read Plato and the Upanishads.

>>2937
This. You can't just make a clean break from your identity. You have to break it as you break a habit. It's difficult because habits are comfortable and lure you into them. It's like a desire path or pleasure path (picrel). Once the habit is well-trod it becomes more easy and appealing, while an alternative route is less appealing and might be a little rougher. But you have to carve out the new path over time through repeated use while you let the other path disappear through disuse. You may even be able to speed up the disappearance in some way by deliberately provoking the stimuli that would prompt the habit and then choosing to do something different and new instead, sort of analogous to aerating the soil and putting down grass seed or something. Don't think of the process as one of creating or building, but as one of growing. You are an organism and you will get a lot farther if you treat yourself like a soft squishy thing that has to be molded over time and induced to adaptation.