Industrial Society and Its Future: Unabomber Manifesto

Love the compilation and formatting compared to other versions. Very prophetic book for our current age

Good read

Good book

I've recently read Ted Kaczynski's manifesto in full. The main argument about how leftism bolsters the technological-industrial order was well-defended. Leftism stems from feelings of inferiority and "oversocialization", which refers to excessively following societal norms and feeling guilt over minor transgressions. Ted also established his most kernel claim of the "power process", which encompasses the autonomous goal-oriented processes central to human nature (e.g., hunting, farming, etc.); however, after industrialization, man has disrupted the power process with surrogate activities such as highly specialized scientific endeavors, mass media, and so on, and this led to great lack of fulfillment, higher prevalence of mental illness, and loss of connection with nature. Leftists see themselves as rebels, but they are in fact the biggest supports of the technological-industrial system due to treating their "activism" as a "surrogate activity" in their power process, and feminism and minority rights are merely pretexts for their insatiable totalitarian drive for power, always inventing new problems, which merely strengthens the industrial order with greater loss of autonomy.Ted draws a distinction between small-scale technology and organization dependent technology, and the main distinction lies in that the latter requires a massively interconnected technological system to sustain. For example, any individual can learn to create a bronze shovel, but you need an industrial system to create a refrigerator due to the manufactured parts necessary. Ted also spends much time analyzing how prior to industrialization, man's life was oriented to fulfill the power process (e.g., cattle herder, farmer, etc. bringing food to table), but industrialization led to disruption of the power process, stripping man of his autonomy, by forcing him to become "educated" in supporting the interconnected industrial system. The system will never accommodate itself to man, and man has to change himself to accommodate the system. This is a concerning thought because we are heading in the direction of genetic engineering of human beings.In short, organization-dependent technology have led to these immense issues: breakdown of local communities, loss of autonomy, overcrowding, loss of privacy, lack of fulfillment, future genetic engineering, and so on. I have only given a rough summary.

You can tell the author had an IQ of 160. I was impressed with the clarity of thought and how accessible the writing is- and how forward thinking he was. This was written in the 90s and so much of what he wrote about has come to pass.As to all the reviewers who wrote that Kaczynski had good points “BUT”: check out the reviews for Marx’s Communist Manifesto. How many people are over there are saying that Marx had really good ideas “but”? The Communists were responsible for the deaths of untold millions of people- Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao. Nobody makes excuses for THEM. They shrug it off with “If you want to make an omelet, you need to break some eggs.”Kaczynski was right. The Internet Age in collaboration with Big Pharma and Corporate America has done a lot of damage to our society- they have eroded our freedoms and our privacy. It’s an awesome book. Two thumbs up.

I've been meaning to buy this book and read it for several years. Now that I have finally gotten around to it, I could not agree more with the general premise, and time has proven Ted unfortunately correct. The industrial revolution and the technological boom we have seen since has proven monstrously disasterous for the human psyche and humanity as a whole. The pit of my stomach turned over and over reading certain portions of this manifesto. Not sure I agree with his methods of being heard - did he really have to murder people to get heard? I don't think so. But his opposition to pseudo left wing activism and his suspicions of these types of people are well founded and accurate.I highly recommend this book if you consider yourself a true revolutionary type and independent thinker. If politics and radical political theory appeal to you, then buy the book. Give Ted an ear.

industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. not as durable as other softcover books but Id say its a pretty average quality

He says everything we wished we could say about modern society in clear unequivocal terms where rationality and clear thinking is the main focus beyond any type of agenda