Good summary. Thanks for reading this so the rest of us don't have to.
For a smart guy he certainly sounds very stupid. The thing I can't wrap my head around is how you start from "everyone would be happier if they followed my lifestyle" and get to "so I guess I'll bomb them until they do". Rather than, say, starting a eco-retreat. I'm sure there are simple-living Instagram influencers who have shifted the world closer to his goal than he did.
It's almost like he really just wanted to bomb everyone and was just looking for a reason.
Yeah, it's sort of a mystery to me, too. I touched on it a bit in my response to Liam, but I think it's a byproduct of his profound isolation. IIRC there's some neurological stuff that happens when you're alone for long periods of time. After a weekish you get extra friendly, but after that levels of aggression and dislike of others increase significantly. So I think it's the same process that many mass killers go through: isolation->paranoia->more isolation->desire to murder.
It's amusing to me that he didn't seem to consider that most people could have chosen the life he lived, but didn't because they didn't want to. That sort of inability to consider others' minds plays a role, too, I think. You get off the rails really fast when you can't empathize with others.
To play devil's advocate, he did manage to black mail the Washington Post into publishing his manifesto because of the bombing campaign, which was probably the main reason his ideas have become as well known as they are.
I liked your piece; thanks for sharing it. I had the "view from a distance" so it was good to hear your take on it. I feel like his "most compelling point" was one that had many other people had observed long before, so doesn't add much value.
I don't know if you wanted feedback or not, but I found myself wishing to see some Kacynzski quotes. It's not that I don't believe you, but I'd like to see an example of his argument in his own words, if he wrote in a style that's quotable enough.
I talked to someone else who has read the Manifesto who had a more favorable opinion of the writing (though, to be clear, very much did not like Kacynzski the person). I wonder why he thought it was much better than you did. For what it's worth, I've read bits of Mein Kampf and found it horribly written and rambling. Like a big rant that desperately needed focus and heavy-handed editing. I kept wondering how anyone could have stayed with it long enough to be radicalized by it. Maybe it was just an aspect of the pre-Netflix era and there wasn't that much else to do.
I'm always interested in feedback! You're right I should've included more Kaczynski quotes. I think it's something I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate into more informal writing.
w/r/t why I didn't like it: I think I had high expectations going in. I expected to read something that effectively made a case for eco-terrorism*, and I instead got something that weirdly ranted about leftists and made a bunch of sophomoric arguments about technology. I think had I been looking for some anti-tech opinions I would've enjoyed it a lot more.
The environmental movement feels impotent right now, so I was hoping, partially, to get some insights on tactics--a Letter from a Birmingham jail instead of a harangue.
I have at times been interested in reading Mein Kampf as a way to try and get an insight into Hitler's brain--it's hard to imagine someone being so disturbed and so successful. I suppose it's not surprising that awful people tend to have disordered, grating thinking when they try to put words on paper. Cut out the charm and force of personality and one finds that their ideas are not very compelling.
*to be clear I'm not in support of eco-terrorism, but I think a piece effectively arguing in favor of it would probably have transferable insights to non-violent activist tactics.
I'm sort of a fan of Kaczynski, I think several of his ideas are major contributions to our understanding of the socio-economic system, undeniably though he was a very disturbed guy, and a lot of his more tangential arguments don't really hold up, like you've mentioned.
The idea that life in industrial-society imposes chronic boredom and stress on people to various extents, and that our evolutionary heritage imposes quite a low ceiling on how good life can be in a very unnatural environment, strikes me as very true and something most other ideologies won't acknowledge.
I'm also sympathetic to his concerns about the loss of personal autonomy:
That the techno-industrial system is an independent force that advances itself outside human agency, and that society usually moulds itself to its needs also seems like quite a deep insight to me.
I think there's quite a lot of variation among people in how well they adapt to living industrial society. I read a piece by Noah Smith a few weeks ago where he argued against the idea of BS jobs, he argued people concerned about BS jobs were mostly just rationalising their dissatisfaction with working life (probably true), and that it was unreasonable to be dissatisfied with working in an office because it's a comfortable environment that doesn't require any physical exertion.
Kaczynski wrote a biography that documents his every ay struggles in mainstream society and being an academic, which might be revealing to anyone whose instincts are more like Noah Smiths, just to warn you though it makes Industrial Society look positively optimistic in comparison.
There aren't many other places you can go for discussion about these deep questions about whether an industrialised world economy is likely to collapse, and whether it even has the potential to provide most people with a good quality of life, basically whether there's an optimistic future for the techno-industrial system we're all riding. I definitely wouldn't say Kaczynski is boring or mad, in his trial the psychological evaluation cited Industrial Society as evidence of the "lucidity of his mind".
I believe that most of Kazinski's ideas were not original but rather restatements of various things he had read (there was a library near his cabin, and he was a regular patron). He may have made them more popular, but I'm not sure that they've had much of an impact.
I checked out your article, and I do disagree pretty strongly with the conception that hunter-gatherer societies were more free. Your main illustration of the west's lack of freedom is prohibitions on violence and property rights, but (as other commenters point out on that piece) HG societies had strong constraints on those as well. I'm reminded of Scott's review of the book about pre-industrial Inuit societies that sounded incredibly unfree--any minor deviation from social norms was met with unceasing mockery and exhortations to kill oneself.
I, too, dislike the lack of personal autonomy that civilization encourages, but I don't think it's a requirement as much as a path of least resistance. A person in the US has a great deal of ability to make choices for themselves, but most people pick the traditional route because its most supported and low effort. Anyone can go out and attempt to live in isolation on a homestead, or sell products of their labor freely, but most people don't because the advantages of selling labor to an organization are immense. I do wish we made it easier for people to self-actualize, but I think many people simply do not care enough to do so.
I'd agree on the variation point, though. George Orwell wrote that, "human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades," and that's a fact that we pay too little attention to. But if I had to pick one or the other, I'd pick the first category over the second.
Thanks for linking the autobiography. I skimmed a bit of it--it reminded me a great deal of Elliot Rodger's manifesto, especially the extended dwelling on his unattractiveness. I'm afraid it's only confirmed my view of Kazinski as fundamentally self-absorbed, and unable to figure out how to productively deal with his dissatisfaction.
I think there is a sort of lucid madness that comes from a profoundly warped worldview. Anyone who bombs random individuals and hopes that it will result in mass revolt against creature comforts is a madman in my definition, even if they are able to speak clearly.
I tried to imply this in the article, but even despite agreeing with many of Kazinski's points, he does very little to argue for them, or link them to his final conclusion. For me it had the character of listening to someone rant on without providing any new information.
In conversations about people like that, I'm always reminded of Malcolm X, who was able to extremely persuasively argue for the NOI's ideas which, especially at the time, were very far outside of the mainstream. I had hoped Kazinski's manifesto would be more like that, in which he makes good, compelling arguments that help me understand the world better, even if I end up ultimately disagreeing.
Thanks for the comment. I think we have very different views on things, but I enjoy the chance to respectfully argue some of those differences out.
Apart from the discussion in Industrial Society not really, sorry. Thomas said in his reply that he thought Kaczynski's ideas were mostly taken from other writers, so maybe he does.
One of the main mechanism techno-industry advances by is Molochian competition, I wrote an essay https://claycubeomnibus.substack.com/p/only-the-dead-at-dawn about the adoption of agriculture from a Molochian perspective, which might be one of the earliest major examples of technology imposing itself on humanity probably to our detriment, it's also quite influenced by Industrial Society, but I'm not sure I'm completely happy with it.
“As you may know, Kaczynski’s prescription for all of this is the complete destruction of society and its replacement by loose bands of anarchic tribes.”
I didn’t know this actually. I know very little aside from the high level: he was a mathematician who bombed some people and hated modern society. I personally enjoy spending a lot of time outside, have reservations about our increasing reliance on technology. It wouldn’t be correct to call myself a Luddite given my career choice and obsession with technology, but I’d like us as a society to be more strategic about how we deploy technology. Because of that I’ve been morbidly curious about his manifesto. I thought it’d be a bit different than what you’re saying. Given his math background did he quantify his belief in any way?
I grew up around Amish communities and they aren’t as anti-technology as people think but rather just premeditated about it. They aren’t anti-technology, but pro-family and pro-community and only use technologies if they think it will benefit family and local community interaction. I think we could do that rather than go with Kaczynski’s Paleolithic plan.
He quantifies almost nothing in the essay--it's pretty surprising. Given his intelligence and background I expected something fairly rigorous, but it really does read more like a mass murderer's manifesto than an academic's reasoned essay.
I think he takes as self-evident that the loss of "freedom" (again, defined primarily as full responsibility for one's survival) is not worth any benefits technology brings. IIRC he doesn't even acknowledge that technology has benefit. I think in Kaczinski's wordview even something like a washing machine is inherently bad for the world, because it is inseparable from a larger social trend towards more industry, which requires more standardization and social control, which requires less freedom. He asserts any technology will inevitably lead to more technology, which inevitably leads to total loss of freedom, but doesn't justify that very well. He does a thing where he tries to anticipate counterarguments and address them, but he's so entrenched in his worldview that he focuses on minor quibbles rather than justifying his main points.
I might write a part two talking about this, but I dug into his background and some interviews he did with a psychiatrist when he was being tried. He was advanced several grades at a young age, and went to Harvard at 16, and described being extremely socially isolated. In college he became convinced his roommates were conspiring against him, and he spent a ton of time alone in his room hiding from other people. So I think he's surprisingly similar to a lot of mass killers we have nowadays--social isolation led to paranoia led to more isolation led to a deeply warped worldview. He just happened to land on environmental stuff rather than inceldom or white supremacy.
I agree. I think there's a great deal of room for restraint and better social norms around tech rather than throwing it all out. It's a tired analogy, but the shift in attitudes towards smoking seems like a potential good starting point towards addressing isolation technology.
Alas, I think some of the battles have been lost. It feels like there was a backlash against TV and advertising at some point that just died out. I'm hoping the anti-social media stuff is more powerful.
Good summary. Thanks for reading this so the rest of us don't have to.
For a smart guy he certainly sounds very stupid. The thing I can't wrap my head around is how you start from "everyone would be happier if they followed my lifestyle" and get to "so I guess I'll bomb them until they do". Rather than, say, starting a eco-retreat. I'm sure there are simple-living Instagram influencers who have shifted the world closer to his goal than he did.
It's almost like he really just wanted to bomb everyone and was just looking for a reason.
(And thanks for reading and commenting)
Yeah, it's sort of a mystery to me, too. I touched on it a bit in my response to Liam, but I think it's a byproduct of his profound isolation. IIRC there's some neurological stuff that happens when you're alone for long periods of time. After a weekish you get extra friendly, but after that levels of aggression and dislike of others increase significantly. So I think it's the same process that many mass killers go through: isolation->paranoia->more isolation->desire to murder.
It's amusing to me that he didn't seem to consider that most people could have chosen the life he lived, but didn't because they didn't want to. That sort of inability to consider others' minds plays a role, too, I think. You get off the rails really fast when you can't empathize with others.
To play devil's advocate, he did manage to black mail the Washington Post into publishing his manifesto because of the bombing campaign, which was probably the main reason his ideas have become as well known as they are.
Fair point
I liked your piece; thanks for sharing it. I had the "view from a distance" so it was good to hear your take on it. I feel like his "most compelling point" was one that had many other people had observed long before, so doesn't add much value.
I don't know if you wanted feedback or not, but I found myself wishing to see some Kacynzski quotes. It's not that I don't believe you, but I'd like to see an example of his argument in his own words, if he wrote in a style that's quotable enough.
I talked to someone else who has read the Manifesto who had a more favorable opinion of the writing (though, to be clear, very much did not like Kacynzski the person). I wonder why he thought it was much better than you did. For what it's worth, I've read bits of Mein Kampf and found it horribly written and rambling. Like a big rant that desperately needed focus and heavy-handed editing. I kept wondering how anyone could have stayed with it long enough to be radicalized by it. Maybe it was just an aspect of the pre-Netflix era and there wasn't that much else to do.
Thanks for reading, Julius.
I'm always interested in feedback! You're right I should've included more Kaczynski quotes. I think it's something I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate into more informal writing.
w/r/t why I didn't like it: I think I had high expectations going in. I expected to read something that effectively made a case for eco-terrorism*, and I instead got something that weirdly ranted about leftists and made a bunch of sophomoric arguments about technology. I think had I been looking for some anti-tech opinions I would've enjoyed it a lot more.
The environmental movement feels impotent right now, so I was hoping, partially, to get some insights on tactics--a Letter from a Birmingham jail instead of a harangue.
I have at times been interested in reading Mein Kampf as a way to try and get an insight into Hitler's brain--it's hard to imagine someone being so disturbed and so successful. I suppose it's not surprising that awful people tend to have disordered, grating thinking when they try to put words on paper. Cut out the charm and force of personality and one finds that their ideas are not very compelling.
*to be clear I'm not in support of eco-terrorism, but I think a piece effectively arguing in favor of it would probably have transferable insights to non-violent activist tactics.
I'm sort of a fan of Kaczynski, I think several of his ideas are major contributions to our understanding of the socio-economic system, undeniably though he was a very disturbed guy, and a lot of his more tangential arguments don't really hold up, like you've mentioned.
The idea that life in industrial-society imposes chronic boredom and stress on people to various extents, and that our evolutionary heritage imposes quite a low ceiling on how good life can be in a very unnatural environment, strikes me as very true and something most other ideologies won't acknowledge.
I'm also sympathetic to his concerns about the loss of personal autonomy:
https://claycubeomnibus.substack.com/p/the-free-world-isnt-especial-free
That the techno-industrial system is an independent force that advances itself outside human agency, and that society usually moulds itself to its needs also seems like quite a deep insight to me.
I think there's quite a lot of variation among people in how well they adapt to living industrial society. I read a piece by Noah Smith a few weeks ago where he argued against the idea of BS jobs, he argued people concerned about BS jobs were mostly just rationalising their dissatisfaction with working life (probably true), and that it was unreasonable to be dissatisfied with working in an office because it's a comfortable environment that doesn't require any physical exertion.
Kaczynski wrote a biography that documents his every ay struggles in mainstream society and being an academic, which might be revealing to anyone whose instincts are more like Noah Smiths, just to warn you though it makes Industrial Society look positively optimistic in comparison.
https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-ted-kaczynski-s-1979-autobiography
There aren't many other places you can go for discussion about these deep questions about whether an industrialised world economy is likely to collapse, and whether it even has the potential to provide most people with a good quality of life, basically whether there's an optimistic future for the techno-industrial system we're all riding. I definitely wouldn't say Kaczynski is boring or mad, in his trial the psychological evaluation cited Industrial Society as evidence of the "lucidity of his mind".
Thanks for reading, Penrose.
I believe that most of Kazinski's ideas were not original but rather restatements of various things he had read (there was a library near his cabin, and he was a regular patron). He may have made them more popular, but I'm not sure that they've had much of an impact.
I checked out your article, and I do disagree pretty strongly with the conception that hunter-gatherer societies were more free. Your main illustration of the west's lack of freedom is prohibitions on violence and property rights, but (as other commenters point out on that piece) HG societies had strong constraints on those as well. I'm reminded of Scott's review of the book about pre-industrial Inuit societies that sounded incredibly unfree--any minor deviation from social norms was met with unceasing mockery and exhortations to kill oneself.
I, too, dislike the lack of personal autonomy that civilization encourages, but I don't think it's a requirement as much as a path of least resistance. A person in the US has a great deal of ability to make choices for themselves, but most people pick the traditional route because its most supported and low effort. Anyone can go out and attempt to live in isolation on a homestead, or sell products of their labor freely, but most people don't because the advantages of selling labor to an organization are immense. I do wish we made it easier for people to self-actualize, but I think many people simply do not care enough to do so.
I'd agree on the variation point, though. George Orwell wrote that, "human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades," and that's a fact that we pay too little attention to. But if I had to pick one or the other, I'd pick the first category over the second.
Thanks for linking the autobiography. I skimmed a bit of it--it reminded me a great deal of Elliot Rodger's manifesto, especially the extended dwelling on his unattractiveness. I'm afraid it's only confirmed my view of Kazinski as fundamentally self-absorbed, and unable to figure out how to productively deal with his dissatisfaction.
I think there is a sort of lucid madness that comes from a profoundly warped worldview. Anyone who bombs random individuals and hopes that it will result in mass revolt against creature comforts is a madman in my definition, even if they are able to speak clearly.
I tried to imply this in the article, but even despite agreeing with many of Kazinski's points, he does very little to argue for them, or link them to his final conclusion. For me it had the character of listening to someone rant on without providing any new information.
In conversations about people like that, I'm always reminded of Malcolm X, who was able to extremely persuasively argue for the NOI's ideas which, especially at the time, were very far outside of the mainstream. I had hoped Kazinski's manifesto would be more like that, in which he makes good, compelling arguments that help me understand the world better, even if I end up ultimately disagreeing.
Thanks for the comment. I think we have very different views on things, but I enjoy the chance to respectfully argue some of those differences out.
> That the techno-industrial system is an independent force that advances itself outside human agency
Do you have any resources where I can read more about this? It's something I've been thinking about and I'm not quite sure where to start.
The wikipedia page for the manifesto has some authors with similar ideas (in the influences section). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society
^apparently that book was one of his influences
Apart from the discussion in Industrial Society not really, sorry. Thomas said in his reply that he thought Kaczynski's ideas were mostly taken from other writers, so maybe he does.
One of the main mechanism techno-industry advances by is Molochian competition, I wrote an essay https://claycubeomnibus.substack.com/p/only-the-dead-at-dawn about the adoption of agriculture from a Molochian perspective, which might be one of the earliest major examples of technology imposing itself on humanity probably to our detriment, it's also quite influenced by Industrial Society, but I'm not sure I'm completely happy with it.
“As you may know, Kaczynski’s prescription for all of this is the complete destruction of society and its replacement by loose bands of anarchic tribes.”
I didn’t know this actually. I know very little aside from the high level: he was a mathematician who bombed some people and hated modern society. I personally enjoy spending a lot of time outside, have reservations about our increasing reliance on technology. It wouldn’t be correct to call myself a Luddite given my career choice and obsession with technology, but I’d like us as a society to be more strategic about how we deploy technology. Because of that I’ve been morbidly curious about his manifesto. I thought it’d be a bit different than what you’re saying. Given his math background did he quantify his belief in any way?
I grew up around Amish communities and they aren’t as anti-technology as people think but rather just premeditated about it. They aren’t anti-technology, but pro-family and pro-community and only use technologies if they think it will benefit family and local community interaction. I think we could do that rather than go with Kaczynski’s Paleolithic plan.
Thanks for reading, Liam.
He quantifies almost nothing in the essay--it's pretty surprising. Given his intelligence and background I expected something fairly rigorous, but it really does read more like a mass murderer's manifesto than an academic's reasoned essay.
I think he takes as self-evident that the loss of "freedom" (again, defined primarily as full responsibility for one's survival) is not worth any benefits technology brings. IIRC he doesn't even acknowledge that technology has benefit. I think in Kaczinski's wordview even something like a washing machine is inherently bad for the world, because it is inseparable from a larger social trend towards more industry, which requires more standardization and social control, which requires less freedom. He asserts any technology will inevitably lead to more technology, which inevitably leads to total loss of freedom, but doesn't justify that very well. He does a thing where he tries to anticipate counterarguments and address them, but he's so entrenched in his worldview that he focuses on minor quibbles rather than justifying his main points.
I might write a part two talking about this, but I dug into his background and some interviews he did with a psychiatrist when he was being tried. He was advanced several grades at a young age, and went to Harvard at 16, and described being extremely socially isolated. In college he became convinced his roommates were conspiring against him, and he spent a ton of time alone in his room hiding from other people. So I think he's surprisingly similar to a lot of mass killers we have nowadays--social isolation led to paranoia led to more isolation led to a deeply warped worldview. He just happened to land on environmental stuff rather than inceldom or white supremacy.
I agree. I think there's a great deal of room for restraint and better social norms around tech rather than throwing it all out. It's a tired analogy, but the shift in attitudes towards smoking seems like a potential good starting point towards addressing isolation technology.
Alas, I think some of the battles have been lost. It feels like there was a backlash against TV and advertising at some point that just died out. I'm hoping the anti-social media stuff is more powerful.