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I'm wondering if the following pieces from his manifesto have even more truth today than 20+ years ago.
On Left-wing moral beliefs:
Quote:
25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to describe such people. [2]
[...]
27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals [3] constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most left-wing segment.
On education:
Quote:
148. Other techniques strike deeper than the foregoing. Education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a kid’s behind when he doesn’t know his lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them. It is becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child’s development. Sylvan Learning Centers, for example, have had great success in motivating children to study, and psychological techniques are also used with more or less success in many conventional schools. “Parenting” techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children accept fundamental values of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable. “Mental health” programs, “intervention” techniques, psychotherapy and so forth are ostensibly designed to benefit individuals, but in practice they usually serve as methods for inducing individuals to think and behave as the system requires. (There is no contradiction here; an individual whose attitudes or behavior bring him into conflict with the system is up against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from, hence he is likely to suffer from stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity.) Child abuse in its gross and obvious forms is disapproved in most if not all cultures. Tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no reason at all is something that appalls almost everyone. But many psychologists interpret the concept of abuse much more broadly. Is spanking, when used as part of a rational and consistent system of discipline, a form of abuse? The question will ultimately be decided by whether or not spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit in well with the existing system of society. In practice, the word “abuse” tends to be interpreted to include any method of child-rearing that produces behavior inconvenient for the system. Thus, when they go beyond the prevention of obvious, senseless cruelty, programs for preventing “child abuse” are directed toward the control of human behavior on behalf of the system.
On individual liberty:
Quote:
It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of government. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England were monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than our society does. In part this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the ruler’s will: There were no modern, well-organized police forces, no rapid long-distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy to evade control.
On medication:
Quote:
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression has been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today’s society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.)
On surveillance, media, etc.
Quote:
146. Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the new methods of controlling human behavior that modern society is developing. Let us look at some of the other methods.
147. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places, computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement). [26] Then there are the methods of propaganda, for which the mass communication media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don’t have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise they get “bored,” i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.
A good friend who lives in Missoula saw Kaczinsky almost every time he left his remote cabin for necessities.
Missoula has always been full of hobos, street people and odd ducks of ever kind, but even among them, Kaczinsky stood out. He stunk to high heaven of woodsmoke, his hair was always filthy, and he was as crazier than any of the other hermits who live in the surrounding wilderness. When a guy is thought to be crazy by others almost as far gone, that's real crazy.
Schizophrenics are often very intelligent. I've known quite a few over the years, and they often make sense until the actual lives they are living are compared to the words they say or write. Ted is no different than some of those I knew. Everything he wrote makes 3/4 sense. When read skeptically, comparing what he was actually doing when he wrote all that, he was no different than the homeless guy on the corner who couldn't make a bomb work if you held his hand and guided it while he tried to construct it.
Don't forget all his bombs took many patient months to slowly carve from scrap wood and scrounged parts. While he was thinking of those words above, he was completely engrossed in the pleasant thought of turning someone he didn't know into a quivering pile of guts. Not exactly a good way to prove his intellectual manifesto, is it?
Believe me or die? Sane people don't think like that.
25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin.
The idea that we are not supposed to hate people is not really left wing, unless you consider Christianity, Buddhism, etc. leftist.
Quote:
We use the term “oversocialized†to describe such people
Regarding Ted Kaczynski, this is one of the best articles I have read from a fellow Harvard grad whose life somewhat paralleled his. The writer, however, was not a participant in the MK Ultra project, as Ted K. was.
I'm not well acquainted with his writings, but I think I remember hearing on the radio something he also wrote about how in the future everyone would be so accustomed to having every little thing personalized just for them--news, entertainment, etc., that if they were on a ship and it was going down, they would all just stand there complaining about how this and that wasn't to their exact liking, and the ship would go down because everyone was only focusing in so minutely on their own personal preferences.
It stuck me as possible at the time, and now I think it is absolutely true and something that we should be guarding against. (However, I quickly discovered that quoting him tended to make people stare at me like I should be locked up, so I stopped talking about it.)
A good friend who lives in Missoula saw Kaczinsky almost every time he left his remote cabin for necessities.
Missoula has always been full of hobos, street people and odd ducks of ever kind, but even among them, Kaczinsky stood out. He stunk to high heaven of woodsmoke, his hair was always filthy, and he was as crazier than any of the other hermits who live in the surrounding wilderness. When a guy is thought to be crazy by others almost as far gone, that's real crazy.
Schizophrenics are often very intelligent. I've known quite a few over the years, and they often make sense until the actual lives they are living are compared to the words they say or write. Ted is no different than some of those I knew. Everything he wrote makes 3/4 sense. When read skeptically, comparing what he was actually doing when he wrote all that, he was no different than the homeless guy on the corner who couldn't make a bomb work if you held his hand and guided it while he tried to construct it.
Don't forget all his bombs took many patient months to slowly carve from scrap wood and scrounged parts. While he was thinking of those words above, he was completely engrossed in the pleasant thought of turning someone he didn't know into a quivering pile of guts. Not exactly a good way to prove his intellectual manifesto, is it?
Believe me or die? Sane people don't think like that.
It would have been easier to accept Ted's manifesto if Kaczinsky had not actually attacked and killed people with his bombs.
An anonymous bomber is the worst kind of killer; none of his victims had anything to do with the man, and one death was not Kacinsky's intended victim; she was his target's wife. He killed people at random for over 10 years before forcing his manifesto to be published. The newspaper only printed it in hopes he would not kill another person.
He could have sent his manifesto to any of his victims instead murdering them, or to a college, or to a government agency, or any number of other places. He could have used his name on it. He had some scholastic legitimacy, remember, and he didn't need to kill anyone to put his point across.
The facts must not be separated from his message. The fact is Kaczinsky was a schizophrenic, bloody-minded murderer with a need for self-justification. His family knew he was insane, and tried to get him help, but he refused them because he wanted to kill.
Why attempt to legitimize any bomber? Do you offer any support to what an ISIS bomber's manifesto is? A terrorist is a terrorist, whether he's a white American or a brown Iraqui. They all try to justify their murderous actions.
I'm wondering if the following pieces from his manifesto have even more truth today than 20+ years ago.
On Left-wing moral beliefs:
On education:
On individual liberty:
On medication:
On surveillance, media, etc.
That is probably correct. 911 was an excuse for this to become more so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by banjomike
Schizophrenics are often very intelligent. I've known quite a few over the years, and they often make sense until the actual lives they are living are compared to the words they say or write. Ted is no different than some of those I knew. Everything he wrote makes 3/4 sense. When read skeptically, comparing what he was actually doing when he wrote all that, he was no different than the homeless guy on the corner who couldn't make a bomb work if you held his hand and guided it while he tried to construct it.
Don't forget all his bombs took many patient months to slowly carve from scrap wood and scrounged parts. While he was thinking of those words above, he was completely engrossed in the pleasant thought of turning someone he didn't know into a quivering pile of guts. Not exactly a good way to prove his intellectual manifesto, is it?
Believe me or die? Sane people don't think like that.
He was different than the homeless guys. They don't have the intelligence to build bombs like Kaczynski did. Most, if not the vast majority, don't have the intelligence to write up a manuscript like Kaczynski did.
Kaczynski was more bad than ill. There's a difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DontH8Me
Regarding Ted Kaczynski, this is one of the best articles I have read from a fellow Harvard grad whose life somewhat paralleled his. The writer, however, was not a participant in the MK Ultra project, as Ted K. was.
I remember reading he was part of some guv experiment. I didn't know he was part of The MK Ultra project. I also remember people speculating whether or not that made a difference in his life. Ditto when he got sick as an infant. When he was returned to his mother, he wasn't the same according to her. I don't know if the emotional effects of the infant illness continued beyond a short period of time during infancy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by irootoo
I'm not well acquainted with his writings, but I think I remember hearing on the radio something he also wrote about how in the future everyone would be so accustomed to having every little thing personalized just for them--news, entertainment, etc., that if they were on a ship and it was going down, they would all just stand there complaining about how this and that wasn't to their exact liking, and the ship would go down because everyone was only focusing in so minutely on their own personal preferences.
In the past, this had made me think how we are less together now than in past times. Between all the channels/programming on TV and the internet, we're less on a similiar page compared to the past.
Quote:
Originally Posted by banjomike
It would have been easier to accept Ted's manifesto if Kaczinsky had not actually attacked and killed people with his bombs.
An anonymous bomber is the worst kind of killer; none of his victims had anything to do with the man, and one death was not Kacinsky's intended victim; she was his target's wife. He killed people at random for over 10 years before forcing his manifesto to be published. The newspaper only printed it in hopes he would not kill another person.
He could have sent his manifesto to any of his victims instead murdering them, or to a college, or to a government agency, or any number of other places. He could have used his name on it. He had some scholastic legitimacy, remember, and he didn't need to kill anyone to put his point across.
His primary motivation was to harm others. His manifesto was his excuse.
It would have been easier to accept Ted's manifesto if Kaczinsky had not actually attacked and killed people with his bombs.
An anonymous bomber is the worst kind of killer; none of his victims had anything to do with the man, and one death was not Kacinsky's intended victim; she was his target's wife. He killed people at random for over 10 years before forcing his manifesto to be published. The newspaper only printed it in hopes he would not kill another person.
He could have sent his manifesto to any of his victims instead murdering them, or to a college, or to a government agency, or any number of other places. He could have used his name on it. He had some scholastic legitimacy, remember, and he didn't need to kill anyone to put his point across.
The facts must not be separated from his message. The fact is Kaczinsky was a schizophrenic, bloody-minded murderer with a need for self-justification. His family knew he was insane, and tried to get him help, but he refused them because he wanted to kill.
Why attempt to legitimize any bomber? Do you offer any support to what an ISIS bomber's manifesto is? A terrorist is a terrorist, whether he's a white American or a brown Iraqui. They all try to justify their murderous actions.
Thats right. His ideas are not fully developed. It's not at all certain humanity cannot control the "machines". The fact is people are free to go live as the Amish or as people in the Amazon and virtually no one does. We all know where to find tribal areas, yet we deal with Starbucks and Cell phones. That is not the machines choice, that is John Q Publics doing. And he does it eyes wide open.
Killing people over that choice just makes it that much more clear he is lucky to have gotten life.
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