I realized that the age of many of the people here on Hubski might mean you have no idea who the Unabomber is, or about the Unabomber Manifesto, "Industrial Society and its Future."
Big picture: Guy doesn't like technological progress (the "World Wide Web" was something a few people had access to, only at work, at this point), so he sends mail bombs to people who are, generally speaking, "intellectuals", or in some way connected with the advancement of technology. People die. People are maimed. And EVERYONE is panicked for about 15 years.
In 1996 the Unabomber demands that his Manifesto get published, for free, all over the US, or he will increase his terror campaign.
So for about a month, everywhere you went - grocery stores, bookstores, gas stations, etc - there, next to the cash register, were free printed books of the Unabomber Manifesto.
Hang on... think about that for a second... A murderer on an almost two-decade long killing spree demanded to have his writings published... and they were.
I had a copy. Might still have it in a box, somewhere.
He didn't like liberals. Thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket, and people had to stop being so nice to each other, and allowing other people to live their lives the way they wanted to. Society should be more conservative.
I'd be interested what people born after 1990 think of his writing and thoughts. I'm going to re-read it, because I don't remember it well, and am curious what it reads like today, in our current political environment.
(Final Note: This link goes to the same place the NY Times originally published the document on their web site. Same URL for 21 years.)
When I was seven, our house got access to the Internet. I was a nerdy kid, so I spent more time on there than most of my peers - one of my childhood memories is teaching the rest of my elementary school class about Google. So I can honestly say I was one of the first to "grow up" with the Internet. One of the weird things about that is that it has exposed me to collective memories that I otherwise would never get to know. In high school, for example, I read a ton of Cracked.com articles (back when they were good), and it exposed me to a metric ton of references in the collective memory of Americans that I slowly picked up on over the years. A simple example is that I only watched Star Wars two years ago, but I cobbled together most of the story and knew pretty much all of the cast solely because it was referenced so many times by others. Same goes for Pulp Fiction, which I still haven't seen but has been mentioned and giffed and meme'd on Reddit so much I almost don't need to see it anymore. If you ever want to know just how deep Reddit's American-centrism is, consider the fact that I, a Dutch guy in his twenties, know what this is: It's part of your collective memory, yet I know that people are nostalgic about being in that tent during gym class. I do not need knowledge like that and in any other generation it would be completely lost on me, but through the magic of the Internet and enough exposure, I kinda know what the collective memory is about. D.A.R.E. is another example like that. Or O.J. Simpson. Or, and this is why I wrote this whole tangent, the Unabomber. So I already knew the gist, knew his name is Ted Kazinsky, that he was from Harvard and I recalled this Radiolab episode about Henry Murray. I hadn't read it before though. It vaguely reminds me of a right-wing guy I've had some political discussions with, if his ideology got turned to 11. It's pure, concentrated pessimism throughout - which, sadly, is not something unique in this day and age. I once heard someone say that the left think in structures, and the right in individuals. Ted does not fuck around: the individual is pure and righteous and needs to be left alone because the world is totally a meritocracy, you guys. "enterprise," "optimism," etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. I don't think it has a lot of merit in the modern age. What I do worry about is that a bunch of his points are agreeable. I mean, didn't South Park do a whole story arc on the culture around political correctness? The danger is that it might make the whole piece appear defensible enough to be adopted today. I can totally see some alt-right loser looking past his fifteen years of terrorism and adapt it as his new Bible. I doubt he'll ever get as far as Ted got, though.I realized that the age of many of the people here on Hubski might mean you have no idea who the Unabomber is, or about the Unabomber Manifesto, "Industrial Society and its Future."
16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative,"
12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to upper-middle-class families.
First time I’ve read this. Gotta say the dude appears to be on the autism spectrum some. Brilliant with math and idealistic thinking but having horrific difficulty with human relations and life’s inconsistencies. Amazing to have someone so succinctly analyze and critique all of modern living and its problems in 131 paragraphs, yet come up with a best solution of sending bombs to other folks.
The publication was his downfall. Ted's brother recognized the writing style and ideas, hired a private investigator, lawyer and then a criminal profiler to compare the work to letters he had received; which led to the FBI being contacted.
I'm going to read it once my exams are over. I never thought about Unabomber having more than a murderous agenda. I'm a liberal (I know there are different subcategories of liberalism, but I'm not educated in those), but I've always been interested in why the other side thinks the way they do. When I was younger, I was opposed to people having different views: how could they? Now I've become curious. I'm interested in what he has to say. People – and viewpoints – are complex. Even Hitler had good points, nationalistic as they were: his physical education policy for children and teenagers was spot-on.
Well, and you gotta remember that the "Liberalism" that he is railing against is the Reagan-era definition of liberalism... and on the political spectrum today, Reagan the neocon is slightly LEFT of Hillary Clinton. In the 1980's, the type of psychotic "conservatism" that is common Republican policy today, was the platform of the anti-state militias, like the Michigan Militia. So when you read it, realize that his type of "conservativism" is essentially Clintonism.