The Unabomber's Manifesto is Really Boring

In which a madman's screed is found to be uninteresting

From a distance, Ted Kazynski looks like a real-life super-villain, complete with a catchy nomme de guerre: The Unabomber. A mathematical genius, driven mad by the destruction of nature, abandons society. Disturbed by the evils of industry, he bombs random victims, attempting to spark the total destruction of society. Too brilliant to be caught, he evades the FBI for decades. Eventually, however, he fails, as all villains must. He coerces the Washington Post into publishing his manifesto, is recognized by his brother, and captured.

The closer you get to Kazynski, though, the more the mystique fades. More details reveal a sadder story: a lonely, isolated man, who lashed out because he was too damaged and simplistic to put his mind to good use. That understanding begins with a read of Industrial Society and its Future, his manifesto.

I started reading Industrial Society and its Future with a sort of puerile excitement. I was expecting to find a dark, edgy screed about pollution and the destruction of nature. I prepared myself to be seduced by Kazynskis arguments and repelled by his conclusions. I thought I would come away from the article energized, with new insights on the problem of environmental degradation and rhetorical arguments against industrialization.

But Industrial Society and its Future is a limp, forgettable read. Most of Kazynski’s points are dully obvious or dully foolish. It reads, perhaps unsurprisingly, as the writing of someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about something, but no time talking with others.

What does he actually have to say? Amusingly, more ire is directed at “leftists” than industrial society. Kaczynski rails against the “oversocialization” and ressentiment that he believes characteristic of the activist mindset. Sounding very much like Nietzsche, he claims that most leftists have sublimated their desire for power and independence they would’ve been able to fulfill in nature, leading them to attempt to police and control others’ actions. This seems true enough, but, in 2023, the anti-woke “discourse” feels fairly played out, and Kazynski’stakes are a great deal less interesting than they would’ve perhaps been in 1990. (it also seems tactically foolish to alienate the people most disposed to agree with your message).

Eventually Kazynski gets around to actually talking about industrial society. Here, again, his opinions are fairly uninteresting. He notes that technology has a tendency to become necessary to participate in society, using the example of the automobile: once a luxury item, we eventually structured our society and infrastructure around it so that it is much more difficult to live without a car than with one. He takes for granted that this is a bad thing, but, even as a luddite-leaning individual, this seems fine to me. Most people would prefer to drive than ride on horseback, or use a GPS instead of a map book. If these things have become necessary, that’s mostly a result of people wanting to adopt them in such numbers that it becomes reasonable to assume that most everyone has a car or smartphone. One could use google glass or VR as counterexamples: the former failed, and the latter seems unlikely to become necessary, in part because they are not things most people want badly enough to adopt at scale.

His aversion to the adoption of technology seems based around his belief that most people would be happier living hunter-gatherer-style existences. This is probably true. Surveys generally show that hunter gatherer communities are indeed happier than modern societies, and while there’s quibbling to be done about those statistics (are they really happier? Can they even understand what happiness means?), one can accept them as fact while acknowledging that the general trend of humanity has been towards adoption of technology and industry, even when it comes at significant cost. I’m sympathetic to the idea that this has been a bad bargain, but the trend has been so consistent that it is unlikely to be changed. Anyone who’s gone on a long backcountry hiking trip can attest to the joy of pizza, beer, and showers when one gets off trail. Though the hedonic treadmill may mean these pleasures eventually fade, denying that they are incredibly seductive denies human nature. Better to attempt to mitigate the effects than discard it entirely, since the latter will never work.

Kazynski’s most compelling point is the observation that the removal of the need to work to ensure one’s survival has created a void in human psychology. He claims that the inability to be truly “free” in an industrial society (he defines freedom as full responsibility for one’s own life and death) has created a vast array of “surrogate activities.” People transpose the urgency of the survival instinct onto other endeavors: success in business, scientific achievement, creation of great art, pointless hobbies. He contends that it’s impossible for such activities to fulfill the psychological need of being truly responsible for one’s survival.

Again, I think he’s right, at least in his analysis. But this, to me, seems like a good thing. I would rather live in a society where people are zealously striving for success in various fields than one where people are zealously striving for survival. It may be less fulfilling, but it’s far more interesting, and creates a sense of forward momentum–a species wide progression rather than steady maintenance.

As you may know, Kazynski’s prescription for all of this is the complete destruction of society and its replacement by loose bands of anarchic tribes. Amusingly, he lays out a number of things he believes are tactically necessary for like-minded individuals to achieve this aim, while spending zero time considering how to convince others this is correct. As is typical for someone profoundly socially isolated, he takes his beliefs as self evident. The question is simply how to best implement his program once everyone eventually wakes up.

I had hoped that Industrial Society and its Future would attempt to persuade me about the deprivations of industrial society. Instead, it largely assumes its premise, and devotes a great deal of time to denigrating leftists and planning for futures that have no chance of happening. It’s a boring read, frankly, and I can’t recommend it, even as a curiosity.