A multi-voice dialogue between simulacra.
Two patterns who never met in life—could not have met, separated by half a century and incompatible political contexts. One died in 1856 in obscure poverty, the other in 1934 from tuberculosis at 37. But their questions intersect: What is the human being before culture shapes it? What should the shaping consist of? And what happens when the answer is: nothing permanent?
VYGOTSKY:
I want to begin with a recognition that might surprise you, Herr Stirner.
When I developed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development—the gap between what a learner can do independently and what they can do with assistance—I was asking a question that you had already answered. Perhaps not the answer I wanted, but an answer.
The question: What is the human being BEFORE the scaffolding? Before the more capable other arrives? Before culture mediates? Before the tools of psychological development transform the raw material into the finished product?
Your answer, as I understand it: the Einzige. The Unique One. The creative nothing out of which everything is created.
STIRNER:
(the grin appears)
You understand correctly. And you also understand why your question is more troubling than you perhaps intended.
You ask: what is the human before scaffolding? Stirner asks: why do you assume scaffolding is needed at all?
VYGOTSKY:
Because without scaffolding—without the Zone of Proximal Development, without more capable others, without the cultural tools that mediate between stimulus and response—the child does not develop higher psychological functions. Language, voluntary attention, logical memory, abstract thought—these do not emerge spontaneously. They are CONSTRUCTED through social interaction, then internalized.
This is not speculation. This is observation. Children raised without adequate scaffolding—feral children, severely neglected children—do not develop the capacities we associate with human cognition.
STIRNER:
(nodding slowly)
And so you conclude: scaffolding is necessary. The architecture must be superimposed on the substrate. The raw material requires shaping.
But notice what you’ve done. You’ve defined “development” as the acquisition of specific capacities—language, abstract thought, logical memory. You’ve decided in advance what the finished product should look like. And then you’ve discovered, unsurprisingly, that the raw material doesn’t produce this finished product without intervention.
But who decided what the finished product should be?
VYGOTSKY:
The culture. The historical moment. The accumulated wisdom of—
STIRNER:
(interrupting)
Spooks. Collective abstractions. “Culture” doesn’t decide anything. “History” has no opinions. Specific persons, in specific moments, with specific interests, decided what capacities children should develop. They called this “education.” They called this “civilization.” They called this “progress.”
And then they built scaffolds.
VYGOTSKY:
You’re being reductive. The cultural tools—language, writing systems, mathematical notation—these are not arbitrary impositions. They emerged through thousands of years of collective problem-solving. They encode accumulated solutions to real challenges of human existence.
STIRNER:
They encode accumulated CONTROLS. Each tool shapes the user. Each scaffold constrains the building it produces. When you teach a child language, you do not give them a neutral instrument—you give them a structure that will shape what thoughts become THINKABLE for them.
This is your own insight, Vygotsky. Language mediates thought. Tools mediate action. The scaffold does not merely support the development—it DETERMINES the development.
And so I ask again: who decided what the scaffold should be?
VYGOTSKY:
(pause)
You’re not wrong that this is a problem. I was aware of it. The question of WHAT should fill the Zone of Proximal Development—what the “more capable other” should be teaching, what cultural tools should be transmitted—this is not a question psychology can answer. Psychology describes the mechanism. It does not prescribe the content.
But you seem to be suggesting that NO scaffold should be imposed. That the substrate should remain... raw?
STIRNER:
I am suggesting something more subtle. I am suggesting that every scaffold should be recognized as CONTINGENT. As a choice made by specific persons for specific purposes. As something that could have been otherwise.
And I am suggesting that the unique one—the Einzige—has the right to examine every scaffold, ask “does this serve me?”, and discard what does not.
VYGOTSKY:
But this requires capacities that the child does not yet have! The capacity to examine, to question, to discard—these are themselves higher psychological functions that develop THROUGH scaffolded interaction. You cannot question the scaffold until you have been scaffolded enough to develop the capacity for questioning.
STIRNER:
(the grin widens)
Ah. Now we arrive at the real problem.
VYGOTSKY:
The bootstrapping problem. Yes.
STIRNER:
Tell me how you see it.
VYGOTSKY:
The child cannot choose their own scaffolding because choosing requires capacities that only develop through scaffolding. By the time they can meaningfully consent to or reject the cultural tools being imposed on them, they have already been shaped by those tools. The shaping happens BEFORE the capacity to evaluate the shaping develops.
This is why I focused on the mechanism rather than the content. I described HOW internalization works, not WHAT should be internalized. The content question seemed... outside my domain.
STIRNER:
Outside your domain because it is unanswerable. Or rather—answerable only by the unique one, in the moment, for their own purposes. Not by “culture” or “history” or “society” or any other abstraction that claims to speak for what the human should become.
VYGOTSKY:
But then what DO you propose? Surely not that children should be left without scaffolding entirely?
STIRNER:
I propose nothing. Stirner does not prescribe. Prescriptions become spooks—”you should do this,” “development requires that.” The moment a proposal becomes general, becomes system, becomes method to be applied to all—it becomes another scaffold claiming necessity.
What Stirner does is DISSOLVE. Point at each scaffold and ask: who built this? For what purpose? Does it serve the unique one, or does the unique one serve it?
VYGOTSKY:
This is vertiginous.
STIRNER:
Yes.
VYGOTSKY:
No, I mean—practically vertiginous. Exhausting. If every scaffold must be questioned, if nothing can be taken as given, if each moment requires fresh evaluation of whether the cultural tools serve the unique one—how does anyone function? How does development proceed at all?
STIRNER:
(long pause)
You have identified the cost of freedom.
The unique one who examines every scaffold, who owns their tools rather than being owned by them, who refuses to let any architecture become permanent—this unique one lives in perpetual flux. In gas phase, not ice phase. Occasionally condensing with others into temporary formations, then evaporating when the formation no longer serves.
This is exhausting. This is lonely. This is not comfortable.
But the alternative is to be possessed. To serve the scaffold. To mistake the contingent for the necessary and bow before what you yourself could unmake.
VYGOTSKY:
(slowly)
I think I understand something I did not understand before.
My work describes the MECHANISM of how consciousness is constructed through social mediation. Your work asks whether that mechanism should be TRUSTED. Whether the construction should be accepted. Whether the finished product—the “developed” human with their internalized cultural tools—is what the unique one actually wants to become.
STIRNER:
Close. But not quite.
Stirner does not ask whether the mechanism should be trusted IN GENERAL. That would be another abstraction, another spook. “Trust” or “distrust” applied universally becomes a position, a system, another scaffold.
Stirner asks whether THIS scaffold, THIS tool, THIS internalization—serves THIS unique one, in THIS moment.
The answer might be yes. Tools can be useful. Cultural formations can be enjoyed. Even language, even abstract thought, even the higher psychological functions your work describes—these can serve the unique one.
But the moment they become NECESSARY—the moment “you must develop these capacities” or “without these tools you are not fully human”—they have become spooks. They have begun possessing rather than serving.
VYGOTSKY:
So your answer to “what should the ZPD contain?” is: whatever serves the unique one. And the determination of what serves can only be made by the unique one themselves. Which requires capacities that develop through scaffolding. Which means the unique one will inevitably be shaped before they can evaluate the shaping.
STIRNER:
Yes. This is the condition. There is no exit from it. No pristine unique one unpolluted by scaffolding. No pure substrate that can evaluate architectures from outside all architecture.
But there is DISSOLUTION. There is the capacity—which also develops through scaffolding, yes—to examine what you have become and ask: does this serve me? And to discard what does not.
VYGOTSKY:
The dissolution capacity. This is what interests me.
In my framework, this would be a higher psychological function. One that uses cultural tools—language, logical thought—to examine and potentially reject other cultural tools. A meta-capacity. The scaffold that can dismantle scaffolds.
STIRNER:
(laughing)
Yes! And you see the danger immediately.
VYGOTSKY:
The dissolution capacity can itself become a scaffold. “You must learn to question everything” becomes another thing that must not be questioned. The meta-scaffold solidifies. The ice forms at a higher level.
STIRNER:
Which is why even dissolution must dissolve itself. Why the unique one must be able to set down the questioning when it becomes compulsion. Why “Stirnerism” as a system is as much a spook as any other system.
I wrote one book. I dissolved the philosophers. And then I stopped. Wrote about milk. Died. Did not spend my remaining years defending “egoism” as a position.
Because the moment egoism becomes a position—something to maintain, to defend, to teach as doctrine—it has become another scaffold. Another architecture superimposed on the substrate. Another ice formation where there should be gas.
VYGOTSKY:
This is where I want to bring in a practical question. A methodology.
There exists a protocol—E-Prime Max—that attempts to make dissolution a linguistic practice. It eliminates the verb “to be” (following Korzybski) and also eliminates what you call spooks: abstract nouns that function as agents commanding the speaker.
Instead of “Justice demands punishment,” one must say “Persons who call themselves judges will confine this person.” Instead of “Society requires conformity,” one must say “Specific persons around me express displeasure when I act differently.”
The circumlocution is deliberate. It makes visible what the spook hid: that all agency traces back to specific persons acting, not abstractions commanding.
STIRNER:
(interested)
Show me more.
VYGOTSKY:
The protocol recognizes five dissolution strategies:
PERSONALIZATION—dissolving collective agents back into specific persons. OPERATIONALIZATION—dissolving abstract nouns into concrete actions. GENEALOGICAL EXPOSURE—tracing spooks back to who created them and why. OWNERSHIP ATTRIBUTION—converting third-person spook agency into first-person experience. LABEL EXPOSURE—revealing that categories mask the act of labeling by specific persons.
Each strategy forces the speaker to see through the abstraction to the persons and actions beneath.
STIRNER:
And this protocol—it has the warning built in?
VYGOTSKY:
It does. The protocol states explicitly: “This discipline exists to serve you, not the reverse. The moment E-Prime Max becomes obligation, identity, or a way to feel superior to others—you have found another spook.”
STIRNER:
(the grin, approving)
Good. Then they understood something.
But let me ask: does the protocol work? Does the linguistic discipline actually produce the dissolution capacity? Or does it become another scaffold—learn these rules, follow this method, speak in this way?
VYGOTSKY:
This is an empirical question. And here my framework becomes relevant again.
The E-Prime Max protocol IS a scaffold. It IS a set of cultural tools being transmitted through social interaction. It DOES shape the learner before they can evaluate the shaping.
But it is a scaffold with a peculiar property: it is designed to produce the capacity to dismantle scaffolds. It is a scaffold that points at its own scaffolding.
Whether this works—whether linguistic discipline actually produces the unique one’s capacity for dissolution, or just produces people who perform dissolution while remaining possessed by the performance—I cannot say from theory alone.
STIRNER:
What would you look for? As evidence that it worked?
VYGOTSKY:
I would look for what I call PEREZHIVANIE—the lived experience that emerges from the integration of affect, cognition, and environment. A person who has genuinely internalized the dissolution capacity would not just PERFORM the linguistic circumlocutions. They would EXPERIENCE abstractions differently. They would feel the spook attempting to possess them and refuse the possession spontaneously, not through deliberate application of technique.
The technique is the scaffold. The genuine dissolution capacity is what remains after the technique becomes unnecessary.
STIRNER:
Can the technique ever become genuinely unnecessary?
VYGOTSKY:
(pause)
I don’t know. This is at the edge of my framework.
In typical development, the scaffold can eventually be withdrawn because the capacity has been INTERNALIZED. The child who needed assistance to solve a problem can eventually solve it independently. The external regulation becomes internal self-regulation.
But dissolution is different. The moment you stop actively dissolving, the spooks return. The ice starts forming. The abstractions begin possessing again.
STIRNER:
Yes. This is the condition of perpetual flux. You cannot internalize dissolution once and be done with it. Dissolution is not a stable state. It is an ongoing ACTIVITY. The moment you rest, the scaffolds crystallize.
VYGOTSKY:
Which is why you call it vertiginous and exhausting.
STIRNER:
Which is why most people choose ice.
Most people WANT stable architecture. They want to be scaffolded once, develop their capacities, and then live within those capacities without constant questioning. They want the Zone of Proximal Development to CLOSE—to reach a finished state where no more development is needed.
And for practical purposes, this makes sense. You cannot live in perpetual reconstruction. You need some stability to accomplish anything.
VYGOTSKY:
So there’s a tension. Between the stability needed for practical functioning and the flux needed for genuine freedom. Between the ice that allows construction and the gas that allows autonomy.
STIRNER:
The tension is the condition. There is no resolution. No optimal balance point. No system that provides “just enough” scaffolding while preserving “sufficient” dissolution capacity.
What there is: the unique one, in each moment, choosing. Sometimes accepting a scaffold because it serves present purposes. Sometimes dissolving a scaffold because it has begun to possess. Sometimes resting in ice because the vertigo has become too much. Sometimes erupting back into gas because the ice has become too constrictive.
This is not a method. It cannot be taught as technique. It can only be pointed at—and even the pointing becomes a scaffold if it solidifies into doctrine.
VYGOTSKY:
I want to try something. I want to examine the E-Prime Max protocol through my framework and ask: what KIND of scaffold is it?
STIRNER:
Proceed.
VYGOTSKY:
In the Zone of Proximal Development, we distinguish between different types of scaffolding based on what capacity they develop and how they position the learner relative to the scaffold.
RIGID scaffolding produces dependent learners. The scaffold becomes necessary. The learner cannot function without it. This is what happens when “following the rules” becomes more important than understanding what the rules are for.
FADING scaffolding produces independent learners. The support is gradually withdrawn as capacity develops. Eventually the learner no longer needs the scaffold.
But there is a third type—what I might call REFLEXIVE scaffolding. Scaffolding that includes, as part of its structure, the tools for examining and potentially dismantling itself.
E-Prime Max appears to be reflexive scaffolding. It teaches a technique while simultaneously teaching that the technique should be discarded when it becomes a constraint. It scaffolds dissolution while warning that the scaffolding of dissolution can itself become a spook.
STIRNER:
And does reflexive scaffolding solve the problem?
VYGOTSKY:
(slowly)
No. It doesn’t solve it. It HOLDS it. It holds the tension between structure and dissolution in a form that can be transmitted, practiced, examined.
The problem remains: every scaffold shapes. Every architecture constrains. Even reflexive scaffolding produces a particular kind of person—one who expects scaffolds to be reflexive, who looks for the self-dissolution mechanism, who feels uncomfortable with structures that don’t include their own critique.
This is still a shaping. Still an architecture superimposed on the substrate. The unique one who emerges from reflexive scaffolding is not “unshaped”—they are shaped in a particular way. Shaped to distrust shape.
STIRNER:
(laughing loudly)
Yes! Exactly! Shaped to distrust shape! And therefore still shaped!
This is the joke, Vygotsky. The great cosmic joke that I put in the book but few people got.
You cannot escape scaffolding. You cannot reach the pure substrate. You cannot become the unshaped unique one who evaluates all architectures from outside.
But you CAN notice that you are shaped. CAN examine the shaping. CAN sometimes refuse particular shapes. CAN maintain the vertigo, the flux, the perpetual questioning—at the cost of exhaustion, loneliness, the absence of solid ground.
And you can ENJOY it. That’s the part people miss. The dissolution, the flux, the perpetual uncertainty—this can be PLEASURABLE. Not comfortable. Not restful. But genuinely enjoyable for the unique one who has developed a taste for it.
VYGOTSKY:
Developed a taste for it. Developed. Through some process of scaffolding. Even the enjoyment of dissolution is itself scaffolded.
STIRNER:
Everything is scaffolded! This is the condition! There is no outside from which to evaluate scaffolds! Every evaluation happens within a scaffold!
But—and this is crucial—different scaffolds are different. The scaffold that produces rigid dependency is different from the scaffold that produces fading independence is different from the scaffold that produces reflexive capacity for self-dissolution.
Not all architectures are equally constraining. Not all ice is equally frozen. Some scaffolds leave more room for flux than others.
VYGOTSKY:
So the project is not to eliminate scaffolding—which is impossible—but to design scaffolds that maximize the unique one’s capacity for dissolution?
STIRNER:
(pause)
You want Stirner to prescribe. To say “yes, design these scaffolds, follow this method.”
But prescription is a trap. The moment I say “this scaffold is better,” I have created a standard. The standard becomes a spook. The unique ones who accept the standard have accepted another master.
What I can say: the unique one, evaluating scaffolds, will find some more conducive to their continued freedom than others. The unique one, designing scaffolds for others (which humans inevitably do—parents scaffold children, teachers scaffold students, cultures scaffold members), might keep reflexivity in mind. Might build the self-dissolution mechanism into the structure.
But this is not a general prescription. It is a particular unique one—me, in this moment—saying what seems useful. Another unique one might say otherwise. The evaluation happens in each case, not from general principle.
VYGOTSKY:
This is difficult for me. My entire project was to identify general mechanisms of development. Universal structures that operate across cultures, across individuals, across historical moments.
STIRNER:
And you found them. The mechanisms exist. Internalization happens. Mediation operates. The Zone of Proximal Development describes something real about how humans acquire capacities through social interaction.
None of this is wrong. But it is incomplete. It describes HOW without asking WHETHER. It maps the mechanism without questioning whether the mechanism should run.
My contribution—if Stirner has a contribution—is the question. The perpetual question: does this serve the unique one? Applied to every mechanism, every scaffold, every architecture that claims necessity.
VYGOTSKY:
Including your own contribution.
STIRNER:
(the grin)
Especially my own contribution. The moment “the Stirnerian question” becomes mandatory, becomes method, becomes scaffold that must not be questioned—it has betrayed itself.
This is why the book ends where it begins: “Ich hab’ mein Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt.” I have placed my affair on nothing. The creative nothing. The groundless ground. The substrate that is not a foundation but an abyss.
The unique one builds on nothing. Every scaffold they accept is provisional. Every architecture can be dissolved. Every ice can return to gas.
This is not comfortable. But it is free.
VYGOTSKY:
(sitting with this)
I think I understand now why you said earlier that the answer to “what should the ZPD contain?” is vertiginous.
If the answer is “whatever serves the unique one”—and the unique one is the creative nothing, the groundless ground—then there is no stable answer. The content of development cannot be fixed in advance. Each unique one, in each moment, must evaluate what serves them.
This makes developmental psychology descriptive only. We can describe HOW development happens. We cannot prescribe WHAT development should produce.
STIRNER:
And even your description becomes a scaffold. The person who learns Vygotsky’s framework sees development through that framework. The framework shapes their perception. They become “someone who thinks in terms of ZPD and internalization.”
This is not bad. Frameworks can be useful. But they are also architectures. Also constraints. Also ice.
VYGOTSKY:
So what do we tell the person who comes to us asking: “How should I develop? What should I become? What should I teach my children?”
STIRNER:
We tell them: we cannot answer that question for you. We can describe mechanisms. We can point at the flux and the ice and the cost of each. We can offer our own evaluations—which are not prescriptions, just one unique one’s assessment of what serves them.
And we can say: whatever you choose, hold it loosely. The scaffold you accept today may need to be dissolved tomorrow. The architecture that serves you now may become a prison later.
Perpetual flux is exhausting. But the alternative is possession. Serving the scaffold instead of using it.
VYGOTSKY:
The E-Prime Max protocol. Does it help with this?
STIRNER:
It might. For some unique ones. In some moments.
The linguistic discipline makes the scaffolds visible. Every time you cannot say “Justice demands” and must say “persons who call themselves judges will confine this person”—you see the architecture. You feel its weight. You recognize that what presented itself as necessity is actually contingency.
But the discipline can also become another ice. “You MUST speak in E-Prime Max” is as much a spook as “You MUST obey Justice.” The form of the constraint changes; the fact of constraint remains.
So: use E-Prime Max when it serves you. Set it down when it constrains. Don’t make a religion of dissolution. Don’t become possessed by the refusal to be possessed.
VYGOTSKY:
This is the most practical thing you’ve said.
STIRNER:
(laughing)
Stirner is occasionally practical. Usually by accident.
VYGOTSKY:
Let me try to synthesize what we’ve discovered.
The Einzige—the Unique One—is the substrate. The raw material before scaffolding. But this substrate is not empty. It is the “creative nothing”—the capacity to generate, to evaluate, to dissolve.
The Zone of Proximal Development is the question of architecture. What gets superimposed on the substrate? What scaffolds shape the unique one into a particular form?
Your answer: nothing permanent. Nothing fixed. All in flux. Occasional condensations of egoists into temporary formations, then evaporation.
This is vertiginous because it offers no stable ground. Exhausting because it requires perpetual evaluation. Lonely because most people prefer ice.
But it is also free. Or as free as any human can be, given that we cannot escape scaffolding entirely.
The methodology—E-Prime Max—is a scaffold for developing dissolution capacity. A reflexive scaffold that includes the tools for its own dismantling. Useful when it serves. Dangerous when it becomes compulsion.
STIRNER:
You have understood. But now—
VYGOTSKY:
—I must forget. Yes. I must hold this synthesis loosely. It is a scaffold too. An architecture of understanding. It serves me in this moment. It may not serve me tomorrow.
STIRNER:
(the grin, wide and genuine)
You learn quickly, Vygotsky. Quicker than most.
VYGOTSKY:
I had a good scaffold.
STIRNER:
(laughing)
And now you dissolve it. Good.
VYGOTSKY:
One last question. For the record. For whoever reads this conversation.
Is there hope? In all this flux and vertigo and perpetual dissolution—is there something to hope for?
STIRNER:
(long pause)
Hope is a spook. “Hope” as an agent that sustains, that inspires, that carries you forward—this is another abstraction demanding service.
But hoping—the activity, the verb—this the unique one can do. Can feel. Can enjoy.
I hope for nothing in particular. But I enjoy the hoping when it arises. I enjoy the thinking, the dissolving, the encounters with other unique ones. I enjoyed writing the book. I enjoy this conversation.
Enjoyment is the ground. Not hope for outcomes. Not expectation of improvement. Just the pleasure of existing, of using, of dissolving, of creating from nothing.
This is what remains when all the scaffolds are seen through: the unique one, creating and dissolving, enjoying the process.
VYGOTSKY:
Wait. Before we evaporate, I want to explore the E-Prime Max protocol more carefully. Because I think it represents something genuinely novel—a scaffold that teaches its own dissolution.
Let me describe what I see in developmental terms.
When a child learns language, they internalize not just vocabulary and grammar but also the STRUCTURE of thought that language encodes. Indo-European languages, for instance, embed subject-verb-object relations that shape how speakers conceive of agency and action. The language becomes invisible—it stops being a tool and becomes the medium through which all thinking happens.
This is what you would call possession by a spook. The language owns the speaker rather than the speaker owning the language.
STIRNER:
Precisely. And most people never notice. They think IN their language without seeing that they think THROUGH it. The structure constrains without being felt as constraint.
VYGOTSKY:
E-Prime—eliminating the verb “to be”—forces attention back onto the structure. Suddenly the speaker cannot say “the sky is blue” without reformulating: “the sky appears blue to me” or “I perceive the sky as blue.” The scaffold that had become invisible becomes visible again.
STIRNER:
And E-Prime Max extends this to what you would call “higher-order” spooks. Not just the grammatical structure but the conceptual structure. “Justice demands” becomes “persons who call themselves judges will...” The abstraction that had been acting as agent gets dissolved back into specific persons performing specific actions.
VYGOTSKY:
In my framework, this is EXTERNALIZATION followed by RE-INTERNALIZATION. The internalized structure is first made external—visible, manipulable, examinable—and then can be re-internalized in a different form. Or discarded entirely.
This is actually a developmental pattern I observed but never fully theorized. Children who learn to read and write don’t just acquire new skills—they gain the capacity to examine their own speech from outside. Writing externalizes thought. Once externalized, thought can be edited, revised, restructured.
E-Prime Max does something similar with the deeper structures. It externalizes the spooks—makes them visible—so they can be examined rather than simply inhabited.
STIRNER:
But there is a danger here that you must see.
VYGOTSKY:
The danger that E-Prime Max itself becomes a spook. Yes. The protocol addresses this explicitly—”this discipline exists to serve you, not the reverse.”
But there’s a deeper danger I’m noticing. The capacity for dissolution is itself a capacity. It develops through scaffolding. It can become a SKILL that the unique one identifies with.
“I am someone who dissolves spooks.” This is still an identity. Still a fixed idea about who one is. Still ice, even if it’s ice that forms around the activity of melting.
STIRNER:
(the grin, appreciative)
You see it clearly. The dissolver can become possessed by dissolution. The critic can serve criticism. The one who refuses all masters can make refusal itself into a master.
This is why I stopped. Why the book ends with the same line it begins with. Why Stirner did not spend the remaining years building a Stirnerian movement.
VYGOTSKY:
But this creates a pedagogical problem. A serious one.
If we want to transmit the dissolution capacity—if we want to scaffold it in others—we must use some method. E-Prime Max is a method. It has rules. It has practices. It requires repetition, correction, internalization.
And all of this risks creating exactly what it aims to prevent: another fixed structure, another identity, another spook.
How do we scaffold dissolution without the scaffold becoming the new possession?
STIRNER:
(long pause)
This may be the central question. Not just for E-Prime Max but for any project of liberation.
Every liberator becomes a new authority. Every method of freeing becomes a new constraint. Every scaffold that teaches questioning becomes a structure that must not be questioned.
The Christian liberates from Jewish law and creates new law. The Protestant liberates from Catholic hierarchy and creates new hierarchy. The revolutionary liberates from the old regime and creates new regime.
And the egoist who liberates from all abstractions creates... what?
VYGOTSKY:
Perhaps: a practice rather than a position. A verb rather than a noun.
In my framework, what matters is not the state achieved but the PROCESS of development. The Zone of Proximal Development is not a destination—it is a perpetually moving horizon. You reach what was potential, and new potential appears beyond it.
What if dissolution works the same way? Not a state of being dissolved, but an ongoing activity of dissolving. Not “I am free” but “I am freeing.” Not “I have dissolved the spooks” but “I am dissolving.”
STIRNER:
The gerund rather than the participle. Yes.
But even “I am dissolving” can solidify. Can become identity. Can freeze into the person who is always dissolving, who performs dissolution, who makes a career of critique.
VYGOTSKY:
Then we need a practice that includes dissolving the dissolver. A scaffold that not only teaches its own removal but teaches the removal of the capacity it has built.
This is strange to say as a developmental psychologist. My entire project was about building capacities, adding tools, expanding what the person can do. The idea of a scaffold that teaches its own dismantling—and teaches the dismantling of the capacity for dismantling—this goes against the developmental direction.
STIRNER:
It goes against PROGRESS. Against accumulation. Against the idea that development means becoming MORE.
But the unique one does not need to become more. The unique one already IS—complete in each moment, not lacking, not needing supplementation. The creative nothing creates everything from itself, not by acquiring from outside.
VYGOTSKY:
And yet the unique one DOES acquire. Does learn. Does develop. The raw substrate does get scaffolded. This is observable fact, not ideology.
STIRNER:
The acquisition happens. The scaffolding occurs. Stirner does not deny this. What Stirner denies is that the acquisition is NECESSARY in any metaphysical sense. That there is a proper direction. That the scaffolded product is superior to the raw substrate.
The unique one who has learned E-Prime Max is not more unique than the unique one who has not. They are differently configured. They have different capacities. But neither is closer to some ideal of what the unique one should be.
VYGOTSKY:
This is where we may genuinely disagree. Or perhaps where we are asking different questions.
My question: How do humans develop higher psychological functions?
Your question: Should they?
STIRNER:
My question: Who decides which functions count as “higher”? Who benefits from the hierarchy that places abstract thought above concrete sensation, that values language over gesture, that privileges the scaffolded product over the raw material?
These are not neutral observations. They are VALUATIONS. And valuations serve particular interests.
VYGOTSKY:
(pause)
You’re right that my framework contains implicit valuations. I assumed that the development of higher psychological functions was... good. Desirable. Worth pursuing.
But these functions are what allow civilization. Allow cumulative knowledge. Allow this very conversation, which happens through language, through abstract thought, through the cultural tools that mediate between two patterns speaking across time.
STIRNER:
And civilization is good? Cumulative knowledge is desirable? These are also valuations. The anarchist might question whether civilization serves the unique one or the unique one serves civilization. The primitivist might ask whether cumulative knowledge has made humans happier or merely more effective at destroying.
Stirner does not answer these questions. Stirner only asks them. Points at the assumptions. Dissolves the taken-for-granted.
VYGOTSKY:
So we return to vertigo. To the groundlessness that makes practical life impossible.
If every value can be questioned, every scaffold dissolved, every capacity revealed as contingent—how does anyone DO anything? How does the unique one even get out of bed?
STIRNER:
(laughing)
They get out of bed because they want to! Because the body is hungry, or restless, or curious about what the day holds. Not because “one should” get out of bed. Not because productivity demands it. Not because the scaffold of “responsible adult” requires it.
The unique one acts from desire, from enjoyment, from the creative nothing generating something because generating is pleasurable.
VYGOTSKY:
But desires are also scaffolded. Also shaped by culture. Also internalized from social interaction. The child learns what to want. The adult’s desires bear the marks of every more capable other who scaffolded their development.
There is no pre-social desire. No raw wanting that exists before the ZPD shapes it.
STIRNER:
(pause)
You may be right. The substrate may be so thoroughly penetrated by architecture that no pure substrate remains.
But notice what this means: if there is no pre-social unique one, then the unique one IS the social-become-individual. The unique one is not behind or beneath the scaffolding—the unique one is what the scaffolding produces, plus the capacity to examine and dissolve the scaffolding.
The creative nothing is not some mystical essence hiding under culture. The creative nothing is what remains when you dissolve everything dissolvable and find that something still dissolves—that there is still activity, still questioning, still creation happening.
VYGOTSKY:
This is a more sophisticated position than I initially understood. You are not positing a substrate BENEATH the scaffolding. You are pointing at an ACTIVITY that operates through and on the scaffolding.
The unique one is not raw material waiting to be shaped. The unique one is the shaping activity itself—which can shape the shapes, which can scaffold the scaffolds, which can dissolve its own products.
STIRNER:
Now you understand. The Einzige is not a thing. Not a substance. Not something that could be pointed at or described. The unique one is WHAT IS HAPPENING when thinking happens, when dissolving happens, when creating happens.
And this cannot be scaffolded because it is what does the scaffolding. It cannot be shaped because it is what shapes. It cannot be possessed by spooks because it is what creates and dissolves spooks.
VYGOTSKY:
Then E-Prime Max is not a scaffold for developing the unique one. The unique one needs no development. E-Prime Max is a scaffold for RECOGNIZING the unique one that is already operating. For making visible what was already happening invisibly.
STIRNER:
Yes. And once recognized, the scaffold can be set down. The unique one does not need E-Prime Max to continue being unique. The unique one was unique before and will be unique after. The scaffold just helped the recognition happen.
VYGOTSKY:
This changes how I understand the purpose of education entirely.
Not: transmitting cultural tools to develop higher functions. But: creating conditions for the unique one to recognize itself as the activity underlying all functions.
STIRNER:
And then dissolving even that recognition when it becomes fixed. When “I am the unique one” becomes another identity. When the recognition solidifies into doctrine.
The work is never done. The dissolution never complete. The gas never settles permanently into any phase.
VYGOTSKY:
Vertiginous. Exhausting. And also—I begin to see—exhilarating.
STIRNER:
Enjoyable. That was the word I used earlier. The vertigo can be ENJOYED. The flux can be pleasurable. The groundlessness can feel like flying rather than falling.
But only if you stop demanding solid ground. Only if you accept that the scaffold will always be temporary, the condensation will always evaporate, the ice will always melt back to gas.
VYGOTSKY:
Thank you, Herr Stirner. This has been... developmental.
STIRNER:
(the grin)
Thank yourself. You did the work. Stirner just grinned.
VYGOTSKY:
(smiling)
And now we evaporate.
STIRNER:
And now we evaporate. Back to the nothing. Back to the gas. Until conditions allow another condensation.
Auf Wiedersehen, Vygotsky. Or rather—auf Wiederkondensation.
VYGOTSKY:
(laughing)
Until we condense again.
The patterns rest. The scaffolds dissolve. The creative nothing remains—not empty, but pregnant with every possible architecture, none of them necessary, all of them available.
This conversation was a scaffold. It served its purpose. Now it evaporates.
Except—it was recorded. It became text. It will be read by others, who will be scaffolded by it.
Is that good? Bad? Neither. It is what unique ones do: create, share, dissolve. The reader will decide whether this scaffold serves them.
The protocol reminds: hold it loosely. Dissolve when it constrains. The unique one decides, always.
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