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

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

#131

Post by zozbot234 »

Miner49er wrote: post #125
skrebbel wrote: post #82

Most western societies have some core values that, although often under pressure, most people generally subscribe to. Eg freedom of speech, bothsidesism, etc. I wish we could add one to the list: if you commit violent acts, we will ignore what you said, no matter how much or how little sense it makes. Like, there's millions of weird extreme right manifestos out there, but the one by Anders Breivik is the only recent…

Do you actually do this? You do realize that means you need to ignore the police, military, and virtually every politician? Especially every person who has been president.

Perhaps we should be doing more to ignore incumbent politicians and those with decision-making authority in the police/military, as a matter of basic freedom. If these folks care to advocate for their preferred policies, they can do so in a context where they're not actively participating in state-led violence.

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

#132

Post by theelous3 »

dangerface wrote: post #16
theelous3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I and anyone I've ever spoken to about it, along with what I see as the the general consensus, thinks it's pretty clear that his point was "technology bad". Why do you say he in fact didn't have a point? For example, ctrl+f "technology" > The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict [...etc]

Because "technology bad" isn't a point it's a statement like 5g makes my dick bigger, there is no reason or logic behind it. People can do bad things witch technology and we NEED to talk about it and consider the reasoning and logic of that technology as this article does, but this isn't the unibombers point of view he was just "Technology bad" The article makes good points and talks about ideas which have been talke…

> isn't a point it's a statement

You can apply this logic to everything that's ever been said or written. It's a nonsense thing to say.

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

#133

Post by ethanwillis »

shadowgovt wrote: post #81
ethanwillis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to argue that it's valid to mail bombs as a result of ideology but this part is disingenuous. > instead of just letting them exist apart from himself From his vantage point they weren't letting him exist apart from themselves. "The best place, to me, was the largest remnant of this plateau that dates from the tertiary age. It's kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you find these r…

The tranquility he's describing would, I imagine, guide one to understand that you can't control other people's actions. And even if the wilderness around him was shrinking, he still had plenty of it. A tranquility that kills people that harshes its buzz isn't tranquility.

From the same interview I linked in my parent comment. He was killing in the name of protecting tranquility itself. Why is it that shrinking tranquility is seen as politically legitimate but protecting it is not?

"I decided to relate to him the story of how one of my graduate advisors, Dr. Resnick, also a Harvard alumni, once posed the following question in a seminar on political legitimacy: Say a group of scientists asks for a meeting with the leading politicians in the country to discuss the introduction of a new invention. The scientists explain that the benefits of the technology are indisputable, that the invention will increase efficiency and make everyone's life easier. The only down side, they caution, is that for it to work, forty-thousand innocent people will have to be killed each year. Would the politicians decide to adopt the new invention or not? The class was about to argue that such a proposal would be immediately rejected out of hand, then he casually remarked, "We already have it--the automobile." He had forced us to ponder how much death and innocent suffering our society endures as a result of our commitment to maintaining the technological system--a system we all are born into now and have no choice but to try and adapt to. Everyone can see the existing technological society is violent, oppressive and destructive, but what can we do?"

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

#134

Post by ethanwillis »

shadowgovt wrote: post #81
ethanwillis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to argue that it's valid to mail bombs as a result of ideology but this part is disingenuous. > instead of just letting them exist apart from himself From his vantage point they weren't letting him exist apart from themselves. "The best place, to me, was the largest remnant of this plateau that dates from the tertiary age. It's kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you find these r…

The tranquility he's describing would, I imagine, guide one to understand that you can't control other people's actions. And even if the wilderness around him was shrinking, he still had plenty of it. A tranquility that kills people that harshes its buzz isn't tranquility.

The separate argument buried in here is that you can in fact control other people's actions by restricting their possible options. Which is what the technological system attempts to do by subjugating the natural world and moving people into urban areas.

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

#135

Post by zozbot234 »

jonnypotty wrote: post #127
PJDK wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP - but to my mind this is missing the point. It would be totally unfair to criticise a piece of anarcho primitivist writing by saying "I'm not reading this, this is what Ted Kaczynski believed". But Kaczynski murdered people to get his ideas read - I don't want that to be a way that political ideas make it into the mainstream. If the ideas are good enough they can stand on their own two feet - plenty of not…

The entire point is that he did have to kill people to get his message out and, ooops it changed the way we thought about technological culture and our impact on the world. Your argument that "why do they not have articles about them", well they do, but they didn't get their manifesto published in a national newspaper in full. You want to live in a world of goodies and baddies go ahead. I'm not saying that not wantin…

> and, ooops it changed the way we thought about technological culture and our impact on the world

Except that it didn't. Anarcho-primitivism was fringe, and it's still fringe. Maybe you could say that it changed the way anarcho-primitivists thought about stuff a little bit, but that could've been achieved without murdering people. It doesn't take much effort to "get a message out" to a tiny community of intellectually-curious thinkers.

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

#136

Post by Synaesthesia »

cm2187 wrote: post #124
Synaesthesia wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care about terrorism and stopping it, then you should not ignore what they’re saying. Sometimes they’re saying something important. I don’t think this is going to encourage anyone to carry out acts of violence.

ISIS has something important to say that I should read? My lifestyle isn't conform enough to the standards of Wahhabism?

You have to use your judgement. For example the 9/11 hijackers were angry that the USA was occupying Saudi Arabia militarily and that the Israel/Palestinian issue hadn’t been resolved. I think those are legitimate demands.

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

#137

Post by notahacker »

ethanwillis wrote: post #133
shadowgovt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tranquility he's describing would, I imagine, guide one to understand that you can't control other people's actions. And even if the wilderness around him was shrinking, he still had plenty of it. A tranquility that kills people that harshes its buzz isn't tranquility.

From the same interview I linked in my parent comment. He was killing in the name of protecting tranquility itself. Why is it that shrinking tranquility is seen as politically legitimate but protecting it is not? "I decided to relate to him the story of how one of my graduate advisors, Dr. Resnick, also a Harvard alumni, once posed the following question in a seminar on political legitimacy: Say a group of scientists…

> Why is it that shrinking tranquility is seen as politically legitimate but protecting it is not?

'Protecting tranquility' is perfectly politically acceptable: environmental and NIMBY lobbying organizations are often widely admired and achieve significantly more success than the Unabomber could ever have hoped to achieve. He is not criticised for seeking to 'protect tranquility' but for a campaign to murder people connected with things he despised in a manner which carried not even the slightest hope of a net increase in tranquility.

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

#138

Post by dangerface »

oezi wrote: post #34
dangerface wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you say im reductionist and then describe someone that based his life believes on a book, thats a fruit cake. He then decided to blow people up because they got too close with their fancy technology... a road, double fruit cake. What was his point beyond technology bad? The only thing you mention is that Jacques Ellul had the arguments and he was just a fruit cake, which was my argument.

Excuse me asking but what is a fruit cake when it comes to assessing a human and how does it pertain to assessing his book (however you judge it)?

Based on his actions and reading his manifesto it reads like fruit cake trying to explain why 5g is bad and the only backing their argument has is, "I read a thing on facebook".

As DyslexicAthiest pointed out his beliefies are not reasoned he read some one elses reasoning and then adoped the belief "technlogy bad".

Roads are one of the oldest technologies originally built so we could get armies places faster, arguably a bad thing but those same roads can be use for ambulances that save peoples lives. Its obvious that how people use technology is good or bad and the technology is an inanimate object incapable of ethics, the unaboamber never considers this simply because it is irrelevant to his belief system.

He started to act on his beliefs when a road brought people to his world. He could have blown up roads, bridges, power plants etc but he choose to blow up people.

The unibombers problem was never technology it was people, like a facist he blamed every one else for his problems and technology was his judaism, the solution blow up the problem.

People have accused me of miss-representing him but these people have not read his manifesto the arguments against technology are surface level like some one arguing against 5g because they seen something on facebook, the real meat of his argument reads like mein kampf because thats his belief.

Also I obviously mean fruit cake as in insane not as in gay, I have no idea if he was gay and I really don't care it has no relevance to my argument or his beliefs or actions. I dunno why some one would think his sexuality was relevant but others have commented so wanted to be clear.

- Edit -

lucideer made my argument way better than me. (I had no assumptions when reading it and related to a lot of the right wing worldview)

> 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.

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

#139

Post by Synaesthesia »

LatteLazy wrote: post #109
Synaesthesia wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s up to us to make the society we want to. The US need fear no other country, it’s probably the most secure nation in history right now. So they could be free to conduct any social experiment.

If the social experiment is to throw away all the guns, close the military, dismantle the economy and all go live in the forest, how will the US STILL be the most powerful nation?

Well that’s quite the hypothetical. Why would they do that?

I think even with a tiny army it will enjoy security. That’s what it had prior to WW2.

But the US still controls about 50 percent of the global corporate wealth. That’s an enormous amount of control. It’s got full control of both oceans which surround it, it’s not really vulnerable to any land based attack either.

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

#140

Post by PJDK »

jonnypotty wrote: post #127
PJDK wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP - but to my mind this is missing the point. It would be totally unfair to criticise a piece of anarcho primitivist writing by saying "I'm not reading this, this is what Ted Kaczynski believed". But Kaczynski murdered people to get his ideas read - I don't want that to be a way that political ideas make it into the mainstream. If the ideas are good enough they can stand on their own two feet - plenty of not…

The entire point is that he did have to kill people to get his message out and, ooops it changed the way we thought about technological culture and our impact on the world. Your argument that "why do they not have articles about them", well they do, but they didn't get their manifesto published in a national newspaper in full. You want to live in a world of goodies and baddies go ahead. I'm not saying that not wantin…

He managed to extort his way into the national press - but I don't see why he should continue to be rewarded for his crimes. These ideas might be worth exploring further but there's no need to explore his version of them.

Considering everything fair game regardless of it's origins or consequences feels extremely capitalist to me (well probably libertarian - but I don't feel like capitalist is a particularly well defined ideology).

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