Welcome back to NonServiam -- IMPORTANT INFO

[Thomas Gramstad]

Hello everybody,

and welcome to the new nonserviam discussion list! You may have
noticed that the nonserv at etext.org mailing list disappeared
earlier this year. The reason is that the etext.org web site
has been closed down (please see further info at
http://www.etext.org/error ), and that means that their
listserver is gone too.

Now we are restarting the list, with the name and address
nonserv at mailman.gramstad.no, as a mailing list managed by the
Mailman listserver, with a list web page here:
http://mailman.gramstad.no/mailman/listinfo/nonserviam .

The new list is managed by Svein Olav Nyberg and Thomas Gramstad
(Thomas will do most of the list maintenance and technical stuff).

Everybody on the old etext.org-list has been moved to and
subscribed to the new list, and you will have received a message
from the listserver confirming your subscription, and containing
a personal list password that you may use to fine-tune your
subscription preferences. Please read carefully and save the
message from the listserver, as well as this posting.

I know some of you personally, and in a few cases updated your
subscription address to your most current e-mail address.

Currently you are all subscribed in "no-digest" or single message
mode, meaning that you will get each posting to the list
individually, as soon as it is posted. It is possible for you to
change your subscription to "digest mode", meaning that you
instead will get one large posting periodically, containing all
the postings from the most recent period. See edit settings info
below.

We are currently 60 persons on this list. The new list will be
announced in various forums. Feel free to repost or redistribute
list-info and invitations.

Below you will find a welcome text which contains, first, the
introduction to this list (purpose, background, topics, guide
lines etc.). And secondly, a section about how to post, manage
your subscription, and technical netiquette for this list. The
second section is all new, so please read it carefully.

(The following welcome text is also included in the message you
got from the listserver.)



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Welcome to the Nonserviam mailing list!

"Non serviam!" - "I will not serve", is known from literature as
Lucifer's declaration of his rebellion against God. We wish to
follow up on this tradition of insurrection and self-expression.

In modern times, the philosophy of the individual's assertion of
himself against gods, ideals and human oppressors has been most
eloquently expressed by Max Stirner in his book "Der Einzige und
Sein Eigentum" (English title: "The Ego and Its Own").

Stirner, whose real name was Johann Kaspar Schmidt, lived in a
time (1806-56) dominated by German Idealism, with Hegel as its
prominent figure. It is against this background of fixation of
ideas that Stirner makes his rebellion. Stirner takes down these
ideas from their fixed points in the starry sky of Spirit, and
declares all ideas to be the ideas of an Ego (original German
term: Einziger - meaning single individual), and the realm of
spirits and ideas to be the mind of the thinker himself. His
heaven-storming is total. Even the idealist tool - dialectic, and
the supreme ghost of Idealism, (Absolute) Spirit - are stripped of
their status of intrinsic existence, and are taken back into the
Ego itself. This is most clearly seen in Stirner's main triad:
Materialist - Idealist - Egoist. And the triad stops at its last
link. Any further progress cannot negate Egoism, for - progress
has been taken back into the individual, as one's - property.

For Stirner, the solution to the "alienation", or
"self-alienation" of Idealism, is in self-expression, or -
ownership. What cannot be one's own cause, the cause that is not
one's own, is not worth pursuing. As Stirner says "Away then, with
every cause that is not altogether my cause!"

This is the philosophical starting point for this forum.  We wish
for discussions of philosophy and ideas as well as topics from
everyday life relevant to true egoists. We ask that postings are
not on-line ranting, but serious attempts to convey something of
interest and relevance.

This discussion forum was started as a companion to the Non
Serviam newsletter (see http://nonserviam.com/magazine/ and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_serviam), but is
now a stand-alone forum only incidentally related to the magazine
by name, one of the owners, and the topic matter.

People subscribing to this list range from self-taught amateurs to
professors of philosophy, and so the interest ranges from academic
interest in ideas to the more practical and applied. Nothing more
will come out from this forum than is put into it. The only
synergistic effect we can hope for, is that of inspiration through
an environment of people discussing the same ideas.

This forum is not primarily aimed at confrontation, though this
surely is not barred, but at exchange of information. That means
that if anyone finds something s/he thinks will be of interest to
the members, s/he should feel free to post it.

Some examples of relevant topics are postings about how Stirner,
Nietzsche, Rand, Hegel, Steiner, Feuerbach, Zen Buddhism and
Discordianism relate to each other and to ideas about egoism,
freedom and self. Other examples are postings relating selfhood
and self-interest to political ideas like anarchism,
libertarianism or others - or how selfhood and self-interest
relates to psychology and other sciences, and to secularism as
well as to spirituality.


HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE NONSERVIAM LIST

You can subscribe (or unsubscribe) yourself to the Nonserviam
mailing list via this web page:
http://mailman.gramstad.no/mailman/listinfo/nonserviam. From
this web page you will also find a link to the list archive.

You will receive postings to the list by E-mail to your E-mail
address as long as you are subscribed to the list.

You can unsubscribe, change address, or change your subscription
settings via the field at the bottom of the page ("Edit
options..."). This mailing list is managed with the Mailman
listserver.

HOW TO POST TO THE LIST

In order to post to the list, send your posting to this address:
nonserviam at mailmanNOSPAM.gramstad.no (remove "NOSPAM" from the
address). You will receive a copy of your own posting via the list
when it is distributed.

The first time you post something to the new list, your posting
may be slow to go through - maybe up to 24 hours - because of an
anti-spam measure at the new machine, known as greylisting,
whereby the recipient machine checks to see if your machine/e-mail
address responds/exists (spammers' don't, because they use forged
sender addresses).

If your posting is time-sensitive or you're just impatient, you
can post your first posting a second time shortly after the first
one, and the second one will go through right away (but so is the
first one supposed to do, some time later).

Do keep a copy of your first posting, in case something in the
greylisting process breaks, and you need to resend your posting.

NO RICH TEXT/HTML AND ATTACHMENTS

All postings you receive via the list will be in the plain text
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If your posting to the list contains rich text/HTML or
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offer web hosting space for pictures and other documents - post to
the list and ask if you need help with web publishing your
material.)

In a few cases, attachments may be OK. In such cases, the attached
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certainly smaller than 300 000), and it must be in an open and
harmless format (e.g., jpg, png, pdf). Postings with attachments
will usually be subject to manual approval by list admin.

The list archive is open to anyone, meaning that no password,
login or the like is necessary to access the archive - just click
on the link below like any other link on a web page. This also
means that list postings are visible in and may be found via
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publicly available in this way, please pseudonymize or anonymize
your name in your postings (that is, in the header fields of your
posting and in your signature, if any). As for your e-mail
address, we will aim to cloak this, to protect you from spam etc.

THE WEB PAGE FOR THIS MAILING LIST

You can use this web page to subscribe to the list:
http://mailman.gramstad.no/mailman/listinfo/nonserviam .

This web page can also be used to make changes to your
subscription settings and preferences (including for example
unsubscribing, and changing address (unsubscribe the old address,
subscribe the new one), etc. - use the menu box at the bottom of
this page ("Edit Options").

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Thomas Gramstad
thomas at gramstad.no