Industrial Society and Its Future: Unabomber Manifesto

A very good read if you want insight on the mind of Ted Kaczynski. Without spoiling this book, you hear alot about his opinion on the world, and what he thinks its future will be. His opinion on American politics on both the left and right, and his opinion and beliefs on different aspects of the government and what he thinks the outcome to his opinions will be. If you like history and like understanding or getting to know the mind of people (Ted Kaczynski in this case), this is a book I would recommend!

ted makes alot of very good points in this book. he touches on many subjects, but maintains that this isn't a political revolution but a revolution against the tech industry as a whole. he talks about the dangers of leftism and the like. It's hard to tell what his political leanings are. As i read the book, it seemed to me he was constantly going after the left, whereas only one area (maybe 4 lines), declaring "conservatives are fools". Ted argues that urban living, (cities) and environmental destruction negatively impacts humans, and makes us more stressed/depressed etc. amazing that this book was written over 30 years ago, and the ideas in the book, (he even talks about AI, (by the way it's something i detest). it's just amazing that he could basically see so far into the future. I have a feeling he was very brilliant, and just had enough of society, that he wanted to retreat and be left alone in his cabin. sad, because he could have done so much and went far. he actually skipped two grades in school, and was enrolled at Harvard at age 16.

Excellent read. Had to get it in paperback. He truly was ahead of his time. Many of the problems he outlined have only worsened over years and become even more obvious.

Who speaks for the wolf? Freedom.

good book, terrible guy

I first picked up the Unabomber’s Manifesto in 2001 at the Anarchist’s Bookstore on Haight Street in San Francisco. I was immediately put off by the author’s assertion that “Leftists” were to blame for society’s ills. I’d been fascinated by the story of Ted Kaczynski because dropping out of society and hiding in a shack in the woods appealed to me, but after reading a few pages, I wrote him off as a right-wing nut who lost the plot and got sick in the head. And, of course, what Kaczynski did was gruesome and abhorrent. I don’t mean to condone it at all. But, 24-years later, I now see that I should have kept on reading the manifesto. By “Leftists,” Kaczynski means neoliberal apologists of every political stripe. In other words, people who believe that technology-driven global capitalism will eventually accomplish every sort of collective goal and address every need, progressive or materialistic, but often both. If Kaczynski were alive today, he would be appalled to see that people now believe that productivist capitalism will inevitably produce technology that will clean up the trail of destruction that it has created, as if the processes of consumption and excretion might be magically reversed by the “free market.” Techno-futurism, they call it. Kaczynski thinks and writes like an engineer. The upside of this is that his precise and rigorous analysis led him to an array of conclusions that, I believe, were ahead of their time. He’s not an historian, but he reversed engineered the present and discovered the main themes in the last 500 years of socio-political evolution: increased collectivism and control, large-scale psychological manipulation, and an increasingly unsustainable use of resources. He sees that our ballooning, technology-enabled existence is out of step with our evolutionary skills and threatens our existence in the near term. The elegant solution: Instead of fighting over politics at the eleventh hour, simply remove the technology that made it all possible. The downside of Kaczynski’s writing style is that he often fails to define his terms or only remembers to define them later. For instant, he finally struggles with the term “Leftists” at the end. He talks about technology for 200 paragraphs before he admits there are different categories of technology. He also often slides between statements that reflect generally known scholarship and personal observation that reflect present-day culture and not a deep understanding of his topic. He leaves many vital topics unexplored in the race to get to his conclusions. Nonetheless, his carefulness is surprising and makes the work worth reading. He admits, for example, that a pro-nature, anti-technology revolution will not work unless it comes in parity with a disaster or a clear breakdown in the system of global production. He also admits that a revolution that aims to replace the current leadership is undesirable. He wants people to go back to living in - and he puts in caps - SMALL GROUPS. I agree that would be preferable. I’m afraid most of us won’t get to stick around and see that though.

Interesting

Prefect for birthdays, holidays, neighborhood book share boxes, or an anniversary gift! Uncle Ted was on to something, almost like he could tell where things were headed 30+ years ago.