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the unabomber manifesto part-3

book in forest

2022-05-07

This is my third and final article on the unabomber manifesto (industrial Society and It's Future). I might cover Theodore Kaczynski Philosophy in an other series of articles, but for now this is the conclusion to my highlights of the books,

These highlights are the parts I personally found interesting, and I hope you will to.

Here (PDF) is the complete book, in epub format, if you are interested in reading it your self, which I recommend you do. You can also get all of my highlights on the book in PDF format here (PDF).

  1. Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society's requirements.

  2. In any technologically advanced society the individual's fate must depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent.

  3. Using propaganda to make people want the decisions that have been made for them.

  4. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system.

  5. Technology is a more powerful social force, than the aspiration for freedom.

  6. Government officials and law officers believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights, but when these conflict with their work, they usually feel that their work is more important.

  7. 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.

  8. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places, and 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).

  9. This is why if you have a portable computer, I highly recommend that you, or a technician, completely remove the "webcam" & microphones from it. If you need to record your self, buy an external one that you can unplug when not in use. (Putting tape over the webcam does little to block the microphone).

    Especially recently when the governments of some country secretly use new military technology and methods to spy on innocent law abiding citizens and infringe on their right to privacy.

  10. 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.

  11. most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise they get "bored," i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.

  12. Presumably, research will continue to increase the effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior.
  13. This is important to keep in mind, since this manifesto was written, a lot of advancement in human behavioral manipulation have been made, big tech is leading the innovation in that area, with one of the most disruptive advancement being the modern "social media", that keep's perfecting the methods and science of human conditioning into one of the most powerful tool ever invented.

  14. Industrial-technological society will be able to pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human beings will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.
  15. We still ignore to what extent, the modern human is actively being altered, and what are all of the methods that might be used to do so, but in the word of Yuval Noah Harari (member of the WEF), "Humans are now hackable animals".

  16. Each new step in the assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society.
    ...
    each advance, considered by itself, will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will seem to be less than that which would result from not making it.
  17. All cruelty can be rationalized, as the proverb goes: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

  18. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact.
  19. This could not be more relevant, then right now, when politicians are replicating the methodes of big brothers (1984), the line between fictions, and reality is increasingly blurred. To clarify this is not to claim that all science fiction, will become true (At least I hope it won't), same for all "conspiracy theory", but when they are, it is foolish to ignore it.

    This remind me of a recent popular saying on the internet: The different between the truth, and a "conspiracy theory"? About a month.

  20. Individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with super technology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion. Only a small number of people will have any real power, and even these probably will have only very limited freedom, because their behavior too will be regulated.

  21. The industrial system is reducing the human race.
    ...
    Reduction of the population can occur more trough lowering the birth rate, than through elevation of the death rate.

  22. It may be better to die fighting for survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but empty and purposeless life.

  23. Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape.

  24. It may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work.
  25. This is where the ever increasing bureaucracy comes into play.

  26. If man is not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long and painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the latter.

  27. the task of revolutionaries will be less to win the shallow support of the majority than to build a small core of deeply committed people.

  28. One should think twice before encouraging any other social conflict than that between the power-holding elite (which wields technology) and the general public (over which technology exerts its power). For one thing, other conflicts tend to distract attention from the important conflicts (between power-elite and ordinary people, between technology and nature); for another thing, other conflicts may actually tend to encourage technologization, because each side in such a conflict wants to use technological power to gain advantages over its adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between nations. It also appears in ethnic conflicts within nations.

  29. The difference between a "democratic" industrial system and one controlled by dictators is small compared with the difference between an industrial system and a non-industrial one.

  30. Suppose for example that the revolutionaries took "social justice" as a goal. Human nature being what it is, social justice would not come about spontaneously; it would have to be enforced.
  31. Do I really need to make the parallel with the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) movement, and the rise of the "cancel culture".

  32. Once the industrial system is gone the world's population necessarily will decrease.
  33. If it is true, it might be a less cruel way of resolving the overpopulation concerns.

  34. Because of their need for rebellion and for membership in a movement, leftists or persons of similar psychological type are often attracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose goals and membership are not initially leftist. The resulting influx of leftish types can easily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so that leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the movement.

  35. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past.

  36. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural being. But for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role much like that which religion plays for some people.

  37. Leftism is totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position of power it tends to invade every private corner and force every thought into a leftist mold.

  38. The leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to pursue some new goal.

  39. Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of all the things that were wrong with society, and then suppose you instituted every social change that they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple of years the majority of leftists would find something new to complain about, some new social "evil" to correct because, once again, the leftist is motivated less by distress at society's ills than by the need to satisfy his drive for power by imposing his solutions on society.

  40. Oversocialized types who try to satisfy their drive for power by imposing their morality on everyone have certainly been around for a long time. But we think that the decisive role played by feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem, powerlessness, identification with victims by people who are not themselves victims, is a peculiarity of modern leftism.

  41. It is important to understand that we mean someone who sympathizes with these movements as they exist today in our society. One who believes that women, homosexuals, etc., should have equal rights is not necessarily a leftist. The feminist, gay rights, etc., movements that exist in our society have the particular ideological tone that characterizes leftism, and if one believes, for example, that women should have equal rights it does not necessarily follow that one must sympathize with the feminist movement as it exists today.

It's sure is a lot of work just to put all of these highlights together, so I hope this will be of interest to someone.

I will end on this quote, "Even if most people in industrial-technological society were well satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed to that form of society" ~ Theodore Kaczynski