On April 3,1996
Theodore John Kaczynski
was arrested for being the so-called unabomber, who over a period of seventeen years from 1978 to 1995 carried out a series of bombings designed to protest industrial technology society. I may be wrong about this, it wouldn't be the first time, but I just don't believe this guy is the real deal. I don't believe a guy who chucked a lucrative career as a professor at the University of California Berkeley to live in a self built
one room cabin in the Montana wilderness without electricity or running water could pull off something like this. But the issue of whether Kaczynski is guilty is irrelevant to my purpose here.
In 1995 the unabomber offered to end the bombings if his so-called manifesto was published. It begins with the assertion
'The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.' Clearly the unabomber manifesto is the ramblings of a raving lunatic. I in no way agree with his methods and tactics but I personally can sympathize with some of the things he says and I can also empathize with the whole conception that the industrial technological society is, has been, and alway will be a threat to individual freedom although I don't believe it is either possible or desirable to destroy the industrial-technology system. I have printed what I consider to be some notable excerpts from the
Unabomber Manifesto below.
-
In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to
satisfy one's physical needs. It is enough to go through a training
program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on
time and exert very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only
requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence, and most of all,
simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from
cradle to grave.
-
The system couldn't care less what
kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what
religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a
respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a 'responsible' parent,
is nonviolent and so forth.
-
Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them
or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what
they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down
by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system
provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with the rules
and regulations, and techniques prescribed by experts must be
followed if there is to be a chance of success
-
It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few
years ago that many of the franchise-granting companies require
applicants for franchises to take a personality test that is designed
to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because such
persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the
franchise system
-
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make
them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their
unhappiness.
-
The concept of 'mental health' in
our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual
behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without
showing signs of stress.
-
The regulation of our lives by
large organizations is necessary for the functioning of
industrial-technological society. The result is a sense of
powerlessness on the part of most people. It may be, however,
that formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by
psychological tools that make us want to do what the system requires
of us. (Propaganda, educational techniques, 'mental health'
programs)
-
Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at
many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and
regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large
organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic
engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and
computers, etc.) To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would
require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect
freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the
rapidity with which they develop, hence they become pathetic and no
longer resist.
-
freedom is an abstraction that means
different things to different people, and its loss is easily obscured
by propaganda and fancy talk.
-
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.
- Presumably, research will continue to increase the effectiveness
of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we
think it is unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be
sufficient to adjust human beings to the kind of society that
technology is creating. Biological methods probably will have to be
used. We have already mentioned the use of drugs in this connection.
Neurology may provide other avenues of modifying the human mind.
Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to occur in
the form of 'gene therapy,' and there is no reason to assume the such
methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of the
body that affect mental funtioning.
-
Whereas formerly the limits of human endurance have
imposed limits on the development of societies, 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
being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.
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- "O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!
- The Hermit crossed his brow.
- "Say quick" quoth he,"I bid thee say--"
- What manner of man art thou? "
- SAMEUL COLERIDGE
The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner
- "Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its
chief
sensation a sanginary execution after torture, for its central
mystery is an
insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But
there is a nobler
and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery
of equality and
forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance ."
- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
- "My object will be, if possible, to form Christian men, for
Christian
boys I can scarcely hope to make ."
- THOMAS ARNOLD
- "2 Nietzsche, There is a choice ."
- message seen on outside display board of Church
- "I fear continence."
- AENEAS SYLVIUS PICCOLOMINI,
the future 15th century Pope
Pius II, when he
reluctantly took the Holy Orders as a young man
- "Fine words and insinuating appearance are seldom
associated with true
virtue ."
- CONFUCIUS
- "The artist needs no religion beyond his work ."
- ELBERT HUBBARD
- "This is the way the world is lead to war:
- politicians lie to journalists,
- and believe those lies when they see them in print ."
- ANONYMOUS
- "Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the
slime of a new
bureaucracy."
- FRANZ KAFKA
- "Any movement in history which attempts to perpetuate
itself, becomes
reactionary."
- JOSIP BROZ
TITO
- "Power operates only destructively, bent always on
forcing every
manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its
intellectual
form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute
force. And this
unintelligence of its objectives sets its stamp on its
supporters also and
renders them stupid and brutal, even when they were
originally endowed with
the best of talents. One who is constantly striving to force
everything into
a mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and
loses all human
feeling."
- RUDOLPH ROCKER
- "Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views
beyond the
comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service
when it is
violating all his laws ."
- JOHN ADAMS
- "The instinct to command others, in its primitive
essence, is a
carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the
influence of
the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more
ideal form and
becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the
instrument of reason and
the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction,
which is
called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as
baneful, and
it becomes even more so when, with the application of
science, it extends
its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a
devil in
history, it is this power principle ."
- MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
- "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front
for the urge
to rule ."
- H. L.Mencken
- "Debt is the slavery of the free ."
- PUBLILIUS SYRUS
- "Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away;
- A single laugh demolished the right arm
- Of his country ."
- LORD BYRON
- "Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge."
- TOULOUSE-LAUTREC
- "If the devil were to offer me a resurgence of what is
commonly called
virility, I'd decline. 'Just keep my liver and lungs in good
working order,'
I'd reply, 'so I can go on drinking and smoking.' ."
- LUIS BUQUEL
- "Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing
what he read made
him mad ."
- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
- "To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to
educate a menace to
society ."
- THEODORE ROOSEVELT
- "Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human
freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves ."
- WILLIAM PITT
- "Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the
body; but
knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold
on the mind ."
- PLATO
- "Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of
responsibility ."
- GEORGE ORWELL
- " Music is esentially useless, as is life ."
- GEORGE SANTAYANA
- "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own
mind ."
- RALPH WALDO EMERSON
- "Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best
formed in the
stormy billows of the world ."
- JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
- "The bigger the information media, the less courage and
freedom they
allow. Bigness means weakness ."
- ERIC SEVAREID
- "Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks
himself ."
- FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
- "My music doesn't come from the heart, it comes from the
groin ."
- -rock star BRYAN ADAMS
- "Well, we've only had a certain number of executions in
the last few
years- whatever it was- and two of them were for the
personal convenience of
Truman Capote ."
- WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.
- "In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme
boredom...Make
no mistake; all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S ."
- WILLIAM BURROUGHS
- "You have to be deviant if you're going to do anything new
."
- DAVID LEE
- "The American experience stirred mankind from
discovery to exploration,
from the cautious quest for what they knew (or what they
thought they knew)
was out there, to an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown."
- DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
- "The genius of the American system is that we have
created extraordinary
results from plain old ordinary people."
- PHIL GRAMM
- "The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the
most wonderful
work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose
of man ."
- WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
- "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is
wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
- JOHN ADAMS
- "In our country, we have those three unspeakably
precious things:
freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence
never to practice
either ."
- MARK TWAIN
- "The typical American of today has lost all the love of
liberty, that
his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride
in self-
reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by
cheer leaders,
press agents, word mongers, uplifters ."
- H. L. MENCKEN
- "Sex is the tabasco sauce which an adolescent national
palate sprinkles
on every course in the menu."
- MARY DAY
WINN
- "The problem with America today is that too many people
know too much
about not enough."
- -ANONYMOUS
- "A sound American is simply one who has put out of his
mind all doubts
and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as
incontrovertible gospel,
the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may
be and no
matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it,
no matter how
timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a
loyal and
creditable citizen of the republic ."
- H. L. MENCKEN
- "American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to
neutralise every
intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and
to fuse it in
the native good-will, complacency thoughtlessness, and
optimism ."
- JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON
- "The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man
who Is able to
think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing
superstitions
and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that
the government
he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if
he is
romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic
personally, he is
apt to spread discontent among those who are ."
- H.L. MENCKEN
- "America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy."
- JOHN UPDIKE
- "Europe was created by history. America was created by
philosophy ."
- MARGARET THATCHER
- "The United States is like the guy at the party who gives
cocaine to
everybody and still nobody likes him ."
- JIM SAMUELS
- "America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every
time it wags its
tail it knocks over a chair ."
- ARNOLD TOYNBEE
- "Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of
popular mythology
since the Greeks."
- ALLISTAIR COOKE
- "Fame is proof that people are gullible."
- RALPH WALDO EMERSON
- " Civilization is a transient sickness ."
- ROBINSON JEFFERS
- "I am a pupil, and need to be taught"
- Inscription which PETER THE
GREAT always carried with him
- "A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a
man from the
vexation of thinking."
- RALPH WALDO EMERSON
- "The 100th anniversary of the French Revolution was
marked by a huge
exhibition, the Exposition Universelle, in Paris. The
organizers
considered a number of schemes for a centerpiece for the
exhibition,
including the bizarre idea of a model guillotine 1,000 feet
high."
- NIGEL HAWKES
- "The elegance of honesty needs no adornment."
- MERRY BROWNE
- "peanut butter can be used as a substitute for shaving
cream."
- BARRY GOLDWATER
- "The more things a man is ashamed of, the more
respectable he is ."
- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
- " F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation."
- GERTRUDE STEIN
- "It is terrifying to see how easily, in certain people, all
dignity
collapses. Yet when you think about it, this is quite normal
since they only
maintain this dignity by constantly striving against their own
nature ."
- ALBERT CAMUS
- "Death is the only thing we haven't succeeded in
completely vulgarizing
."
- ALDOUS HUXLEY
- "Dawn. When men of reason go to bed ."
- AMBROSE BIERCE
- "Dark with excessive bright ."
- MILTON
- "Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are
often true,
but seldom or never the whole truth ."
- JOHN STUART MILL
- "Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many
people of
average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car
is separate
from the way the car is driven ."
- EDWARD DE
BONO
- "Numbers are like people; torture them enough and
they'll tell you
anything ."
- ANONYMOUS
- "Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people
without blushing ."
- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
- "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and
free than
Christianity has made them good ."
- H.L. MENCKEN
- "Sir, I say that justice is truth in action ."
- BENJAMIN DISRAELI
- "A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it
would be hell
on earth ."
- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
- "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to
myself I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on the sea- shore, and
diverting myself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell
than ordinary,
whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me
."
- ISAAC NEWTON
- "When the sun comes up, I have morals again ."
- ELAYNE BOOSLER
- "Jews don't go camping . Life is hard enough as it is ."
- CAROL SISKIND
- "Travel, instead of broadening the mind, often merely
lengthens the
conversation ."
- ELIZABETH DREW
- "Certainly it is a world of scarcity. But the scarcity is not
confined
to iron ore and arable land. The most constricting scarcities
are those of
character and personality ."
- WILLIAM R. ALLEN
- "Some people have a large circle of friends while others
have only
friends that they like ."
- ANONYMOUS
- "Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not
conform with
noconformity ."
- ERIC HOFFER
- "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to
govern. Every
class is unfit to govern ."
- LORD ACTON
- "Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men,
and I will find
an excuse in them to hang him ."
- CARDINAL RICHELIEU
- "Oh, if only I did nothing simply as a result of laziness ."
- DOSTOYEVSKI
- "People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he
gets there ."
- BOB EDWARDS
- "We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but
we cannot be wise
with other men's wisdom ."
- MONTAIGNE
- "infinity and nothingness are two words which are
inspired by the same
emotion ."
- RICHARD
- "There is no safety for honest men but by believing all
possible evil of
evil men ."
- EDMUND BURKE
- "Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters
cannot be trusted
with important matters ."
- ALBERT EINSTEIN
- "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no
more to the
point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober
one ."
- GEORGE BERNARD
SHAW
- "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know
."
- ERNEST HEMINGWAY
- "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored ."
- ALDOUS HUXLEY
- "None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest
love not freedom,
but license ."
- JOHN MILTON
- " . . . information can be treated like any other quantity
and be
subjected to the manipulation of a machine ."
- STAN AIGARTEN
- "What makes all doctrines plain and clear?-
- About two hundred pounds a year.
- And that which was prov'd true before
- Prove false again? Two hundred more ."
- SAMUEL BUTLER
- "It's useful that there should be Gods, so let's believe
there are."
- OVID
- "Object as they exist in time the clean eye and camera
give us. Not
falsified by"seeing ."
- JIM MORRISON
- "The more a man lies to others the more he lies to
himself."
- ANONYMOUS
- "The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence:
cynicism ."
- ALBERT CAMUS
- "An orphan's curse would drag to Hell
- A spirit from on high;
- But oh! More horrible than that
- Is the curse in a dead man's eye ."
- COLERIDGE
- "Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be
wise are almost
always cunning ."
- SAMUEL JOHNSON
- "I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy
company as to
shun myself ."
- SAMUEL JOHNSON
- "Had I been present at the creation, I would have given
some useful
hints for the better ordering of the universe ."
- ALFONSO THE
WISE
(1221-1284)
- "The so-called method of co-education is false in theory
and hamful to
Christian training ."
- POPE PIUS XI
- "Children's playthings are not sports and should be
deemed as their most
serious actions ."
- MONTAIGNE
- "When men are easy in their circumstances, they are
naturally enemies to
innovations ."
- JOSEPH ADDISON
- "The younger brother hath the more wit ."
- JOHN RAY
- In the times when primogeniture was the rule, the
younger brother was
resentful but dependent; wit was likely to be his sole
resource.
- "You're searching, Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean
beginnings.
Ends and beginnings-there are no such things ."
- ROBERT FROST
- "Nothing overshadows truth so completely as authority ."
- ALBERTI
- "Justice, n. A commodity which in a more or less
adulterated condition
the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance,
taxes and
personal service ."
- AMBROSE BIERCE
- "A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to
be deemed a
scholar ."
- LAO TZE
- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety ."
- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
- "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard
even his enemy
from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a
precedent
that will reach to himself ."
- THOMAS PAINE
- " Women want medicore men. and men are working hard to
become as
medicore as possible ."
- Margeret Mead
- "A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of
respect for his
merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and
with
something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings
seldom deceive
them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a
shallow and
pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best
proofs of
feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it,
feminine intuition
."
- H. L. MENCKEN
- "A man always blames the woman who fooled him. In the
same way he blames
the door he walks into in the dark ."
- H. L. MENCKEN
- "Vision without action is a daydream. Action with without
vision is a
nightmare ."
- JAPANESE PROVERB
- "It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of
certain
opinions makes it impossible to earn a living ."
- BERTRAND RUSSELL
- "Truth is not determined by majority vote ."
- DOUG GWYN
- "There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make
peace with the
establishment and nothing more corrupting ."
- ALAN JOHN
PERCIVALE TAYLOR
- "Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give
to wisdom ."
- MARK TWAIN
- "cynic. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as
they are, not as
they ought to be ."
- AMBROSE BIERCE
- "Ambition is but avarice on stilts and masked ."
- WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
- "The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make
converts
without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are
wealth, health,
and power ."
- C. C. COLTON
- The following are titles of Country-Western Music songs:
- You're the Reason our Kids are so ugly.
- I've been flushed from the bathroom of your heart.
- I got in at 2 with a 10 and Woke Up at 10 with a 2
- If you see me Gettin' smaller it's cause I'm Leavin' you
- I'll Marry You Tomorrow but Let's Honeymoon Tonite
- He's been Drunk Since His Wife's Gone Punk
- "Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at
least half the
sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it ."
- BERTRAND RUSSELL
- "If we think we regulate printing, thereby to rectfy
manners, we must
regulate all regulations and pastimes, all that is delightful to
man ."
- JOHN MILTON
- "We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to
check the
expression of opinions that we loathe ."
- OLIVER WENDEL HOLMES, JR.
- "Where it is duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to
be a crime to
examine the laws of heat ."
- JOHN MORLEY
- "Existentialism is less a philosophical system than a bad
mood ."
- WILLIAM WILSON and JUDY JONES
- "In the fight between you and the world, back the world ."
- FRANZ KAFKA
- "Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they
make us
stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after ."
- ALEXANDER POPE
- "Books give not wisdome where none was before,
- But where some is, there reading makes it more ."
- SIR JOHN
HARINGTON
- "Comedy is allied to justice ."
- ARISTOPHENES
- "Academia forcibly tells you about all the great men and
revolutionaries, and rebels, especially the rebels, who have
changed the
world for the better. But they wouldn't notice him were he
standing right in
front of them ."
- ELI KHAMOROV
- "Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than
reasoned errors ."
- THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
- "You don't need any brains to listen to music ."
- -LUCIANO PAVAROTTI, opera
singer, 1994
- "Gradualness, gradualness, and gradualness. From the
very beginning of
your work, school yourself to severe gradualness in the
accumulation of
knowledge ."
- IVON PETROVICH PAVLOV
- "Education...has produced a vast population able to read
but unable to
distinguish what is worth reading ."
- GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN
- "You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what
you do not
understand ."
- -LEONARDO DA VINCI, Italian inventor
- "A scholar knows no boredom ."
- JEAN PAUL
RICHTER
- "I have found it difficult to endear myself to those who
could best
positively affect the quality of my life ."
- ELI KHAMOROV
- "It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization It is
those who
have achieved something and want to rest upon their
achievements who are
forever clogging things up ."
- CHARLES SORENSON
- "Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep ."
- FRAN LEBOWITZ
- "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a
perfectly useless
manner, you have learned how to live ."
- LIN YUTANG

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