It seems that “personal development” guru Steve Pavlina has plunged fully into Stirner-esque egosim. Duff McDuffee analyzes Pavlina’s world view:
I hate to break it to you, but if you’re reading this and your name isn’t Steve Pavlina, then you don’t exist. Nope, you’re just a dream character in his reality. Only his identity and consciousness are real, only his impulses matter. You and I, well, we’re merely projections of Pavlina’s inner world. In his reality, all these images that appear to be other people, other subjective consciousnesses, are actually just dream characters. Or at least these are some of the results of Pavlina’s recent experiments into what he has aptly named “Subjective Reality.”
My last two posts have been about what I’m calling “the logic of evil”—the self-justifying rationalizations that lead a sincere seeker to become a psychopathic guru. In what could only be explained as an act of The Universe, I just happened to cruise by A-list personal development blogger Steve Pavlina’s blog today and found that he had produced a great example of exactly what I’ve been writing about. In fact, in the last few months he has been experimenting with taking the plunge into full and complete narcissism—and even Solipsism—which even he admits that he won’t be capable of turning back from once he has fully done so.
Pavlina has been a proponent of law of attraction, so this is none too surprising.
See also Duff’s referenced two articles on the logic of evil:
The Logic of Evil in Personal Development
The Logic of Evil, part 2: Trapped by the Void vs Freed by the Void
October 23, 2010 at 8:52 am
I’m not sure that this particular worldview *automatically* connotates “evil” – although it’s certainly not a good sign.
He might just as easily have arrived at the conclusion: “I have no idea if any of these people are real, so I’d better assume that they are, just to be on the safe side.”
Of course, he appears not to have done that. Assuming some of us actually do exist, that’s going to bite him on the arse at some point…
October 23, 2010 at 3:52 pm
I don’t think it automatically connotes evil either. If I understand Duff correctly, he’s speculating that this world view ends up justifying “evil” on the part of otherwise decent people. Which I think is a decent theory, though “evil” is not a word I’d readily use.
October 24, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Thanks for the link, Klint!
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