Was Ted Right, After All?
A Review of The Unabomber Manifesto
Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Terrorists: And then there’s Ted
History shows that there is no shortage of radicals, extremists, revolutionaries, and outright terrorists among us. Nor is there any dearth of ideological banners under which cohorts of like-minded upstarts can rally under. Indeed, these agents of chaos represent a historical mainstay, routinely destabilizing social orders and launching epoch after epoch into brutal crucibles that often rise to notoriety for the sheer excess of turmoil, suffering, and death caused by them.
Yet, despite the objectively extreme nature of these wildcards, both their practical and moral values are generally appraised under a subjective lens. Nevertheless, the merits of the agents, ideological motives, and consequences of each instance must be judged consistently by the same metrics, and not all crises are created equal. For most of us, it would be almost impossible to cite any benefits to ISIS’s murderous rampage through Iraq and Syria or find the silver lining in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. However, these deplorable terrorist acts share a common degree of ideological zeal with the Patriots of the American Revolution and the early disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, whose actions are widely regarded as positive. Given the nature of their tactics, beliefs, and ultimate consequences of their efforts, our evaluations of these people are far differ greatly.
Perhaps one such radical who stands out from this motley crew of troublemakers is Theodore Kaczynski, better known as “the Unabomber”. Kaczynski’s tactics deserve nothing but condemnation. His cowardly method of attracting attention by mailing homemade explosives to unsuspecting targets from universities and airlines to computer repair stores grants him no higher esteem than the malicious, tin-foil-hat-wearing, batshit-crazy recluse so many people have taken him for. In terms of demonstrable impact, he was a dud. His manifesto, Industrial Society and its Future, despite being published by the Washington Post under the threat of further bombings, never gained a significant following. Not even a shred of the measures Kaczynski called for manifested in his lifetime.
Yet it is precisely the thoughts articulated in Kaczynski’s overlooked manifesto where substantial credit is due. His interpretation of industrial-technological society as the root both of increasing human misery and multiple existential threats facing the human race is logically constructed, well-defended by historical facts, and draws many of its better points from various sociologists (although these influences would have almost certainly condemned Kaczynski’s horrific bombing campaign).[1] It provides a sober, albeit extreme argument for why the entire technological apparatus should be dismantled and replaced with a preindustrial primitive society stripped of any predictable means of resurrecting our formerly advanced past. Despite its reputation as the work of a reclusive, extremist killer, Industrial Society and its Future deserves an objective appraisal based on its own merits. It would be difficult to write an exhaustive catalog of Kaczynski’s better points, but there are a few that I find particularly perceptive, and that have influenced my own thinking.
Power Process: The Psychological Impact of Industrial Society
The first concept that deserves distinction is Kaczynski’s “power process”. Kaczynski notes that while this is related to the widely recognized human need for power, he points out that just having power isn’t enough. He illustrates this by citing the decadence of leisured aristocracies, whose secure grip on power led to boredom, demoralization, and licentiousness. According to Kaczynski, human satisfaction is attained through overcoming difficult challenges. Having goals, expending a good amount of effort in pursuing them, and finally achieving them at an acceptable rate of success leads to the psychological benefits of high self esteem, confidence, and feelings of power. This idea is reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “will to power”, which he sees as the vital human life force. In his book, The Antichrist, Nietzsche writes, “What is good? – Whatever augments the feeling of power, power itself, in man… What is happiness? – The feeling that power increases – that resistance is overcome.”[2]
The trouble here, is that industrial society lacks opportunities for people to go through this process, because for everyone outside of the economic underclass, goals are either too easy to achieve, i.e., acquiring basic necessities like food, water, shelter, etc., or flat out impossible. The only way for people in today’s society to simulate the power process is through what Kaczynski calls, “surrogate activities”, which are chosen activities like art, sports, or the maximization of wealth or status at work, that offer challenging objectives outside of what is biologically necessary. Kaczynski further argues that such surrogate activities, while often sufficient to ward off serious psychological distress, lack the full sense of fulfillment that the satisfaction of basic biological needs did in preindustrial societies. So, while they do often provide a means to go through the power process and attain its benefits, it ultimately amounts to a mere substitute for the real thing. Moreover, taking up a surrogate activity that meets these standards is easier said than done, as suggested by the pervasiveness of depression, defeatism, and low self-esteem throughout society.
Autonomy makes up a fourth component of this power process. For most, going through the power process only packs its full psychological punch when the individual going through it is calling the bulk of the shots. Kaczynski concedes that while people generally have varying degrees of autonomy, even natural followers – the majority of the human race in his view – have the desire to influence their leaders and to participate in the decision-making processes, even if they don’t want to lead the effort themselves. There is thus a certain amount of agency that almost every human wants to assert over their lives.
Unfortunately, this is not something that is often possible in our current society, where people must function merely as one of innumerable cogs in a massive industrial machine. For example, the lack of impact that any one person’s vote has in national elections is enough to dissuade millions from going to the polls. Doubtless, many of those who cast their ballot despite these feelings do so out of a sense of civil obligation rather than a belief that their individual vote really matters. Theoretically, every citizen has the power to hire and fire their leaders in our government. In practice, however, any one person’s control over who sits in the highest seats of government with ready access to immense power over their own lives is almost zero.
The Incompatibility of Personal Freedom in an Industrial-Technological Society
Ted Kaczynski’s analysis of human freedom in the context of an industrial-technological society is another theme of great significance that is a core element of his manifesto. Kaczynski acknowledges the various ways that the term, “freedom” can be interpreted. Hence, he clarifies that the type of freedom he refers to is defined as,
“the opportunity to go through the power process, with real goals, not the artificial goals of surrogate activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one’s existence… Freedom means having power, not the power to control other people, but the power to control the circumstances of one’s own life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness.”[3]
Here, we can see that Kaczynski’s view of freedom astutely acknowledges the essential link between freedom and power/control. He acknowledges that no real freedom can exist without power. His interpretation of freedom also rejects the notion that organizations are needed to secure these freedoms for us. Such institutions, Kaczynski implies, are the very problem to begin with, and should thus be abolished.
Kaczynski argued that personal freedom has suffered a steady decline since the industrial revolution began, to the point where even monarchial societies among New England Indian tribes and the dictatorial city-states of Renaissance Italy enjoyed more personal liberties than our current democratic government, even with all of the civil rights that it guarantees. Even those very rights, Kaczynski states, don’t matter as much as we think on an individual level, since they are all heavily attenuated according to the rising needs of the technological-industrial society.
In fact, Kaczynski writes that our industrial society only allows us the freedoms that it does because those freedoms are necessary to keep it in well-functioning order. He states that,
“He has economic freedom because it promotes growth and progress. He has freedom of the press because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders; he has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of the powerful would be bad for the system.”[4]
Kaczynski noted that this cynical attitude toward personal freedom in society is shared by several major historical figures. The Latin-American revolutionary hero, Simon Bolivar, Hu Han-Min of the Chinese Kuomintang, and Carsun Chang, the leader of the Chinese Socialist Party, are all cited as leaders who viewed personal freedom not as an individual right, but as a public utility.[5]
Moreover, Kaczynski argues that personal freedom – not the “bourgeois” freedom we mistake for real liberty – is more restricted today than in earlier societies, and this is thanks to technology. For one, the rise of industrialism fundamentally transformed the socioeconomically independent rural lives of post-colonial Massachusetts residents into highly regulated, mutually dependent urban existences centered around the factory where “good” behavior was rigidly enforced. He argues that the narrowing of personal freedom is an ongoing trend, driven by the system’s ever-increasing need for obedience, good order, and discipline as it becomes more complex and dependent upon the proper functioning of its countless interconnected components.
Kaczynski concludes that technological-industrial society is inherently antagonistic to personal human freedom and will only become more so as time goes on. The continued modification of human behavior will progressively drive humans farther from their nature, resulting in the continued rise of corresponding psychological problems and diminution of personal freedom. After all, according to Kaczynski, the system doesn’t function to meet human needs but to sustain itself. Ted is convinced that solutions to this problem outside of the total dismantling of the system itself are foolishly naïve.
Leftist Psychology
One thing that Kaczynski makes clear early in his manifesto is his contempt of modern leftism. According to Kaczynski, the “leftism” that he opposes is not necessarily political policies that are typically associated with them, i.e. animal rights, women’s rights, etc. Indeed, he points out that not everyone who supports these policies can be classified as a leftist in the first place, and that many of the causes themselves are legitimately valid. Rather, the “leftism” that Kaczynski so emphatically derides are the two psychological types that are commonly drawn to leftist causes and chiefly direct both its temperament and direction. By approaching leftism as a psychological class rather than a political disposition, Kaczynski successfully circumvents the quagmire of attempting to appraise the ostensible values and objectives leftists support. He draws back the curtain to reveal the underlying psychological needs that identifying with and supporting leftist causes satisfy for its proponents.
According to Kaczynski, the first and most numerous leftist psychological type is made up of individuals with deep-seated neuroses, namely, “depression, anxiety, feelings of helplessness, and low esteem.” The inferiority complex resulting from these deficiencies produces a nasty, resentful, vindictive, and masochistic personality type. Such people embrace leftist policies because a) they identify with groups perceived as weak, defeated, or repellant, b) they despise the strength, pride, and beauty that they feel they can never attain and c)leftism provides an ideological platform to attack representations of strength, such as white males and the United States, because it allows them to express their anger and vent their frustrated need for power.
Kaczynski states that the second type is defined as “oversocialized”. Kaczynski argues that these individuals have been so heavily indoctrinated with the severe moral expectations imposed upon people living in modern industrial society, that they cannot violate these standards even in thought without catching a ration of guilt. Oversocialized people have internalized the impossible and austere standards and expectations of today’s society (which Kaczynski asserts is much more extensive and rigid than in earlier societies) and their constant failure to meet these standards often leads to feelings of self-hatred. Seeking a way to evade such feelings, they adopt leftist ideology, which is a means of “rebelling” against the standards that have acted as their psychological fetters, without actually breaking them. Kaczynski’ elaborates on this, saying,
“Generally speaking, the goals of leftists today are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual.”[6]
He further elaborates by giving the example of leftist support for affirmative action. He states that although the attempt to place more black people in prestigious and high-paying jobs ostensibly serves the “leftist” goal of racial equality, it is, in reality, an attempt to assimilate black people into white, bourgeois lifestyles, with only the superficial aspects of black culture, i.e. food, music, clothing, and religious tradition remaining. Despite any delusions they may have, oversocialized leftists are among the status quo’s greatest and most formidable champions.
Ted points out that this second group is mostly made up of a small, but very influential segment of the ranks of modern leftists. They typically come from middle and upper class families, and are well-represented in academia. Their bourgeois backgrounds are, in fact, the primary reason for their oversocialized status. Since the current social value system is capitalist bourgeois values, oversocialized leftists are likely often the product of an over-zealous moral upbringing.
The two psychological types differ in fundamental ways. Those with inferiority complexes embrace leftism to drape their vitriolic hostility toward the strong in moral cloth. Oversocialized types see it as a means to evade their moral failings. The former class acts out of a frustrated need for power. The latter likely feels guilty for having too much of it. Yet both of these driving forces in leftist movements share much of the same feelings of low self-esteem, depressive tendencies, and defeatism that are not only laced throughout leftist movements but widespread throughout our entire society.
Conclusion
Ted Kaczynski certainly wrote his manifesto and everything in it to justify humanity’s return to preindustrial life through the complete effacement of the modern industrial system down to the last shred of its very memory. It would, of course, be difficult to convince the necessary percentage of humanity to embrace this fanatical ideology: it openly states that such a revolution would certainly lead to a great deal of suffering and death. Ted Kaczynski also concedes that the agents of revolutions have historically shown an inability to control the process and outcome of their actions once they’ve initiated it. So, even if our species were to embrace Kaczynski’s strategy for human salvation, we can probably guess what it would entail because people have already lived through it. Preindustrial society, despite the rosy way in which Kaczynski depicts it, was a system fraught with superstitions, low life expectancies, high infant mortality rates, and rampant poverty, starvation, and disease. For instance, prior to the Industrial Revolution, Europe was a land of regular famines, and preindustrial London was so infested with disease that its population could only be sustained by the steady flow of rural migrants desperate for work. Furthermore, preindustrial society was not immune to devastating wars, and these eras displayed fearsome acts of cruelty for reasons as trivial as blasphemy or working on the Sabbath.
The example that Kaczynski alludes to, that of early colonial New England, is a pleasant one, indeed. However, it represents an exception to the unforgiving realities of preindustrial life. Its distance from totalitarian rulers, along with its uniquely advantageous and egalitarian economy in a nearly unadulterated and resource-rich landscape, allowed for a comfortable yeoman lifestyle much unlike the norm of the rest of the world. In nearly every other scenario, economic conditions were defined by systems of slavery, serfdom, and land tenancy run by tyrants. The nascent reservoir of secular knowledge arising from the very scientific advances Kaczynski condemns tempered the atmosphere of superstition and religious extremism that held the people of Massachusetts bay its grip only about a century earlier.
Despite these criticisms, Kaczynski’s manifesto is also well-stocked with astute ideas based upon both empirical knowledge and sober reasoning. The manifesto amounts to a solid diagnosis of the ills of our current society, regardless of whether or not readers accept Kaczynski’s prescription for it (hopefully, none of them do). Its logical layout and (usually) professional and straight-forward tone reflect the erudite and rational nature of its author. The above-mentioned concepts are only a few of the ideas contained in the manifesto that are worth consideration, and I would encourage any rational and level-headed person to read it.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/19/unabomber-ted-kaczynski-dangerous-anti-tech-manifesto-lives-on
[2] Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Antichrist, pg. 7
[3] Kaczynski, Theodore, Industrial Society and its Future, pg. 30
[4] Kaczynski, pg. 31
[5] Ibid.
[6] Kaczynski, pg. 10