Jash Dholani Profile picture
Aug 13 17 tweets 6 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
The Unabomber Manifesto🧵

Ted Kaczynski’s IQ: 167
Harvard admission: At 15
Youngest ever math prof, UCB: At 25
Money spent by FBI to find him: $50+ mil

The manifesto attacks modern civilization like nothing else before or since

13 best insights from a Philosopher-Terrorist👇🏻 Image
1/ Kaczynski lists the 4 big problems with modern civilization:

- “Excessive density of population”
- “Isolation of man from nature”
- “Excessive rapidity of social change”
- “The breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village, the tribe”
2/ The big difference between the primitive civilization and our contemporary world is that before, individuals had a lot of autonomy while the state was largely powerless to penetrate into the everyday life of people

Kaczynski argues that modern tech suddenly flips this balance
3/ The balance of power between individuals and the larger “system” flipped when machines made much of human labor obsolete while simultaneously allowing big corp and big govt to observe, track, exclude (social media bans, stripping away bank accounts) anyone being naughty
4/ Uncle Ted on how modern life STEALS your sense of agency:

“Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal, can fight in self-defense…the modern individual is threatened by many things against which he is helpless: nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, increasing taxes.” Image
5/ Ted Kaczynski writes:

“The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man’s environment..it is to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been.”
6/ With robots doing most work will people find work in “service industries”?

Kaczynski says no

People will reject the “pointless busywork” of “driving each other around, making handicrafts, waiting on tables” and embrace dangerous outlets: “drugs, crime, cults, hate groups”
Image
Image
7/ Kaczynski against Leftism:

“Leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the elimination of modern technology. Leftism is collectivist; it seeks to bind together the entire world (both nature and the human race) into a unified whole.”
8/ Kaczynski devotes a large chunk of his manifesto attacking leftism

But in a powerful paragraph, he argues that the conservatives are fools too

Full quote: Image
9/ The system knowingly destroys intimate bonds between people because it wants to SOAK UP all the loyalty and energy of individuals for itself

Kaczynski writes: “The technological society HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently.”
10/ A “democracy” with advanced tech is less free than a “dictatorship” with primitive technology

A low tech society has “no rapid long-distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of average citizens”

Easier to “evade control" Image
11/ Can we go back to small-scale communities?

Kaczynski says no because we are “enmeshed with and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems, the mass communications media and the modern health-care system.”
Image
Image
12/ Next step?

A retvrn to nature...

Nature is Kaczynski’s “counter-ideal to technology” because it is self-contained, “beautiful,” and already has “tremendous popular appeal”

The technological civilization must expand wastefully to survive, is ugly, and is largely despised Image
13/ Kaczynski on the importance of aims:

“Secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic & demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one’s power.”

fin. Image
Thank you for reading!

Kaczynski POWERFULLY critiques leftism in his manifesto

He has great insights on:

• Why the left NEEDS technology
• Why leftist art is the way it is
• The inner life of a left-winger

Discover these insights and more👇

new.memod.com/jashdholani/un…
I'm creating a "Critics of Modernity" reading list

2 min intros to some great thinkers :

• Nietzsche on Master-Slave Morality
• Chesterton on Learning
• Burnham on Power
• Huxley on Modern Pleasures
• Evola's Revolt Against The Modern World

Dig in: new.memod.com/jashdholani/co…
Thank you for reading this thread!

I appreciate your time🙏🏻

Please RT and spread Uncle Ted's warning

More people need to encounter his ideas 👇🏻

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