I don't know if the position on an armed struggle against the power elite that is different from a totally pacifist one may be freely discussed here. Please tell me, so I know if I would go too far for this forum if I would try to express a non-pacifist position.
I hope, I can say this: Ted Kaczynski is a heroic figure for anarchists, and deservedly so. He is a warrior, a thinker, a martyr. As an anarchist myself, I hold him in high esteem.
"The Industrial Society and its Future: the Unabomber's Manifesto" is short, yet wonderfully written and superbly well-argumented. One may disagree with (some of) the positions expressed here, yet still acknowledge author's exceptional sharpness of mind. Here is
the full text, from the Anarchist Library.
Give it a try, Hurm. Whether you'll like it or not, it will worth a short time needed to read it.
If even this is too far, I can remove this post immediately!
Okay I read some and skimmed some. He is clearly an intelligent guy and provides a great critique of modern society, leftism, and industrialization. There's a lot there that any thinking person could agree with. Despite that I obviously don't condone what he did killing innocent people to get attention, nor do I understand why such a stupid evil idea arose in his head as he could have had a lot more success if he had simply waited for the technology of YouTube!
Where I disagree:
He believes the power process applied to physical needs provides greater fulfillment and psychological health than when applied to "surrogate goals" because we are biologically adapted to struggle with nature. How can we be sure that this isn't a romantic idealization of archaism unless we have lived both the life of a primitive man and that of a modern man? And I believe the "surrogate goals" of scientific or artistic pursuits can be more fulfilling than that of physical needs... I use technology to learn as much as I can while I can... and at the same time having prepper tendencies, I have a macabre fascination and even look forward to the eventual great contest of the societal collapse. We want whatever we don't have, so the modern man longs for the life of the native and the native longs for the technology and comfort of the modern man.
He seems to have a narrow view of technology. Technology and Truth are inextricably related. Truth is symbolizing something in a way that is USEFUL. Without USE, there is no TRUTH. A tool is useful. A tool is technology. So knowledge and tools inevitably develop together. Tools or technology are externalizations of power that modify the environment which in turn creates internal or physical weakness, but also selects for intelligence because the physical weakness then MUST be overcome with intelligence... so the human who needs clothes and fire cannot survive without the intelligence and knowledge to produce these things. So the advancement of technology is inevitable because it changes our niche which then changes us which then prompts us to perpetuate the changes to our niche.
In other words, he is bemoaning the fall of Adam and longs for the Garden, but the garden has a flaming sword guarding it which can only be taken by force which requires the expansion of our power which happens through technology.
This is the nested pattern of reality in action: Adam's will was externalized in the form of Eve who then convinced him to eat the fruit of knowledge, and then the two became one merging back together and in their union produced offspring that would perpetually strive with the Serpent - the agent of change who brought knowledge/technology. And so we externalize our will as technology (clothes and fire) and then merge with our technology producing offspring (AI agents) in our image and likeness just as we are in the image and likeness of the Elohim who engineered us by either shaping our environment (just as we use an environment to train an AI agent) or with direct genetic manipulation (hard coding).
Environment and organism are inseparable and evolve together. The fragility induced by the environment that is modified by technology creates an organism's dependence on knowledge which improves the organism's ability to attain knowledge (because the dummies will die).
Another thought: he believes that revolutionaries will possibly have to take out the industrialized system after it has become weak almost to the point of failing on its own, but the Earth with its periodic solar induced catastrophes every 6000 or 12000 years seems to have a built in reset mechanism on technology. The apocalypse is the "harvest" where both good and bad seed grows together until the harvest and are then sorted. Earth is like a self-cleaning petri dish designed to refine certain qualities into the organisms present. The big question is: what sort of technologies will be preserved through the next apocalypse and how will that seed the new era? Will we finally produce a viable "egg" of technology which will make it past this point in history or will we go the way of Atlantis and be totally reset to hunter-gatherers and forced to do this all over again?
Edit: one more critique I forgot to include: Systematization is inevitable and is oppressive; however, the process of creating structure also creates boundaries and boundaries are where the marginalized can thrive and in fact they need a boundary to exist upon, so without a system or a structure, they have no niche. Like the coastline fractal problem where you have an infinite boundary on a finite surface: systemization create boundaries and as it becomes more oppressive the spaces become smaller, but the surface area increases and eventually it shatters.
