“Industrial Society and its Future”: the writings of the Unabomber

I think Ted gets the fundamentals a little bit off, and the entire work is unsound as a result. Society doesn't just magically become more repressive because of the need of industrial society to be more "organized". It becomes more repressive because of powerful people who find personal profit in organizing it in a repressive way.

The powerful have always been able to oppress the weak, and abandoning all technology to go anarcho-primitivist leaves the powerful better-resourced than ever, and leaves you scraping out a marginal living. Moreover, as technology continues to advance, the need for mindless conformity is further eroded. Mass production was pretty mind-numbing, but now we have robots to do the most mindless tasks, and we are getting more of them.

The solution to control and repression, now as ever, is to structure society so that ambition can counteract ambition, to enshrine the rights of the people in law, to jealously guard those rights, and to inculcate the next generation in their value. The US Constitution does an absolutely world-class phenomenal smashing good job of the first two, such that even as society has been doing a mediocre job at guarding them and teaching their value, we're still getting by, and improving.

If you'd like to fight control, in the abstract, don't bomb people: preserve the system that protects us through civic engagement, and work to build a culture that celebrates the robust defense of rights like free speech (including, critically, of unpopular people you don't like who are targeted by the mob or by the powerful) and other civil rights (criminal justice issues in particular).

Teddy K really is the best read. But you could always read the classic Silent Spring if you want something more mellow. The more adventurous could try Running on Emptiness by Zerzan who AFAIK isn't a terrorist.

I have to say I had the exact opposite reaction.

I was also intrigued by the depiction in the Manhunt series and read the manifesto as a result.

In the TV show, Kaczinky is portrayed as a highly intellectual, informed, educated individual, mentally thwarting his interviewer in their debate on morals and politics. After building up that expectation of Kaczinky's intellect, the manifesto is an enormous disappointment. It's filled with base broad assumptions, ignorant and unresearched assertions on "leftism" and in particular his treatise on "oversocialization" is so transparently a defensive lashing out at the elements of society that have not been personally accepting of him.

Throughout, his arguments are made as plain, implicit statements. Nothing is approached in an evidence-based manner and there are no attempts to contradict obvious counter-arguments. His "facts" are simply stated as self-evident.

Take e.g.

> it’s likely that many leftists of the oversocialized type would say that most people, including themselves, are socialized too little rather than too much, yet the oversocialized leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his high level of socialization.

This is centred around the idea of society imposing restrictions on our autonomy through socialization; we believe strongly in our own freedom. He proposes that "leftists" have this belief in their own freedom, but that this freedom is a delusion. A delusion that results from their own oversocialization. At no point does he explain how/why leftists are more oversocialized than non-lefists, or why he believes that he himself is not delusional in his sense of his own autonomy.

There are some central elements in there of value (his general focus on the importance of effort and autonomy in fulfillment I would agree with), but these can be found discussed more articulately in better writings without being padded with political/social nonsense.

Overall, the manifesto is not worth reading.

I guess not completely inspired by his writings:

> Ellul explained his view in this way: "By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence."

He was one of the youngest professors ever at his University and was one who was experimented on by the CIA. There are some novelties here that exist other than him being a random school shooter.