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👇🏻
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.”
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”
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:
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"
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.”
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
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.
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
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
Ancient Rome was the world's most powerful empire for 500 years
At its height, Rome boasted of roads, public baths, and much else that was close to miraculous for the rest of the planet
Then came the Great Fall...
What happened has lessons for the world TODAY
A thread👇🏻
1/ In his book The City In History (1961), Lewis Mumford explains how Rome went from "Megalopolis to Necropolis." This great city set up its own demise in two ways: Panem et circenses. That is: "bread and circuses." Mumford: "Success underwrote a sickening parasitic failure."
2/ As Ancient Rome became prosperous, it became an unsustainable welfare state
Mumford writes that "indiscriminate public largesse" became common
A large portion of the population "took on the parasitic role for a whole lifetime"
C.S. Lewis almost died in the trench warfare of WW-I
Became best friends with Tolkien
Sold 100 million books
On the cusp of WW-II, he gave an iconic lecture at Oxford University (1939)
His question:
Does beauty matter when bombs start falling?
THIS is his profound answer👇🏻
1/ The permanent human situation is endless strife, chaos and pain
C.S. Lewis:
“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself”
Yet culture breaks out
2/ If we waited for peace to create art the first cave painting would still not be made
Always some “imminent danger” looking more important than culture
Lewis: “If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun”
Emerson was best friends with Napoleon's nephew, the greatest American writer according to Nietzsche, and a Harvard undergrad at age 14
In 1841, he posed a timeless question in a sold-out lecture:
Why do we need great men? What happens when they disappear?
Discover his answer:
1/ Who you hang out with is of great importance:
“Activity is contagious. Looking where others look, & conversing with the same things, we catch the charm which lured them. Napoleon said, ‘You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.’”
2/ It’s very hard for us to “take another step” beyond the prejudices, preferences, horizons of our peers
But the greats pledge fidelity "to universal ideas” not their historical peers
Therefore greats “defend us from our contemporaries”