THEODORE KACZYNSKI (A.K.A. THE “UNABOMBER”), “INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS FUTURE”

Over the course of 18 years (1978-1995), the so-called "Unabomber" placed or mailed 23 package bombs in the United States. Targeting those associated with science and/or technology, the devices killed 3 men, wounded 16 others, and at times terrorized the entire nation. The initial targets were UN-iversities and A-irlines. Thus the FBI gave the case the code name UNABOM.

The case gained tremendous notoriety in 1995, when a letter to the New York Times warned of further deadly attacks unless the paper published a 67-page anti-technology manifesto called "Industrial Society And Its Future, By FC." After consultation with the FBI, the Times, the Washington Post, and several other media outlets printed abbreviated versions of the text.

The FBI was finally able to apprehend former mathematician Theodore Kaczynski thanks to his brother David, who recognized the writing in the manifesto. His federal trial ended in a plea bargain leading to life imprisonment in the SuperMax prison in Colorado. Kaczynski subsequently appealed on the grounds that he had been wrongly denied the chance to represent himself, but the appeal was denied in February 2001.

The Unabomber’s manifesto has since acquired a life of its own on the Internet. It is considered something of a declaration of war by a number of groups opposed to technology, globalization, and other prominent features of modern life. Particularly in Europe and the US, it has contributed to a sharp critique of many of the values at the heart of what contemporary “Western Civilization.”

Dozens of Internet sites—some good, some bad, few indifferent—contain material on or about the Unabomber. The trial brief filed against Kaczynski by Federal prosecutors can be found at: http://www.unabombertrial.com/documents/trialbrief1.html A good general site containing the complete text of “Industrial Society And Its Future” is: http://hotwired.lycos.com/special/unabom/

THE ESCAPE

171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several decades and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be? We will consider several possibilities....

177. ...It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the "bourgeois" type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more "socialized" that ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly to a very great extent ) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God's will, or whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.

178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human begins a new physical and social environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race physically and psychologically. If man is not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long an painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the latter.

179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.

Strategy

180. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) don't think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it.

181. As we stated in paragraph 166, the two main tasks for the present are to promote social stress and instability in industrial society and to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial system. When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern would be similar to that of the French and Russian Revolutions. French society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their respective revolutions, showed increasing signs of stress and weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new worldview that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case, revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old order. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress (by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we propose in something along the same lines.

182. It will be objected that the French and Russian Revolutions were failures. But most revolutions have two goals. One is to destroy an old form of society and the other is to set up the new form of society envisioned by the revolutionaries. The French and Russian revolutionaries failed (fortunately!) to create the new kind of society of which they dreamed, but they were quite successful in destroying the old society. We have no illusions about the feasibility of creating a new, ideal form of society. Our goal is only to destroy the existing form of society.

183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideal as well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is Nature. That is, WILD nature: those aspects of the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regulation by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions).

184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and opposes technology. It is not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society, and for countless centuries many different kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amount of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even pre-industrial societies can do significant damage to nature. Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to keep increasing its control over nature (including human nature). Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature, because in the absence of advanced technology there is not other way that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen or hunters, etc. And, generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or other large organizations to control local communities.

185. As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society -- well, you can't eat your cake and have it too. To gain one thing you have to sacrifice another....

QUESTIONS

1. What does the Unabomber find objectionable about industrial technology? Do you agree with some or all of what he says? Why?

2. What does he think ought to be done to solve the social and environmental problems created by the Industrial Revolution?

3. What do you think about the Unabomber’s radical solution to the problems of contemporary Western Civilization? Even if he is right, can the clock really be turned back on more than two hundred years of technological progress? And if he is wrong, what—if anything—should be done instead?