Discussion Industrial society and its future

[Menschenmühle]

Have anyone of you read ted kaczynski/the unabomber's manifesto "Industrial society and its future"?
If so what do you think of it?
I personally believe that while his methods of rebellion did more harm than good, his thesis in itself carries much truth. I at least see this from a personal perspective relating to my dependence on technology ever since I was a child.
Yet I also believe that despite how accurate his critique of industrial society is, there's simply no hope for any meaningful change. Today's technology is only getting worse, you can't think of the modern man without his digital machines that keep him preoccupied all day, I guess Ted's fear of people adjusting to this new way of life, by becoming docile cogs, is becoming a reality.

 

[WoAiGou]

The issue is the mode of production, which is capitalism, technology by itself isn't the issue. The problem is is that technology is a tool and it is currently being wielded by the capitalist class to oppress us in the name of profit and power all while destroying the planet. To be honest it has become such a runaway train that I see no solutions, human society will collapse one way or another.

 

[Mr2005]

Have anyone of you read ted kaczynski/the unabomber's manifesto "Industrial society and its future"?
If so what do you think of it?
I personally believe that while his methods of rebellion did more harm than good, his thesis in itself carries much truth. I at least see this from a personal perspective relating to my dependence on technology ever since I was a child.
Yet I also believe that despite how accurate his critique of industrial society is, there's simply no hope for any meaningful change. Today's technology is only getting worse, you can't think of the modern man without his digital machines that keep him preoccupied all day, I guess Ted's fear of people adjusting to this new way of life, by becoming docile cogs, is becoming a reality.

It's also why I feel the need to die because I didn't do a technology course in 2005 and since then it's just exploded. I wasn't prepared for it at all

 

[Menschenmühle]

The issue is the mode of production, which is capitalism, technology by itself isn't the issue. The problem is is that technology is a tool and it is currently being wielded by the capitalist class to oppress us in the name of profit and power all while destroying the planet. To be honest it has become such a runaway train that I see no solutions, human society will collapse one way or another.

Yes capitalism sure exacerbates the problems of modern technology by turning it into tools of brutal exploitation, but Ted though that technology had an inherently negative impact on the human condition. Don't forget that it's the invention of industrial machines that lead to the birth of the capitalist mode of production, the steam engine was an expensive machine that could only be bought by wealthy capitalists, and was the reason why the relations of production are what they are today, a group that owns everything, while others own only the power of their labour.

Industrial machinery, and later advances in technology also created a system that requires strict discipline, obedience, and subservience, a sort of system that Ted saw incompatible with man's original condition. This system will also exist even within a socialist society, as socialists don't seek to abandon technological "progress".

I guess the biggest difference between marxism and Ted's ideas, is that the former valued the collective, therefore couldn't abandon the tools that hold this collective together, while the latter focused more on individual autonomy.

 

[WoAiGou]

Yes capitalism sure exacerbates the problems of modern technology by turning it into tools of brutal exploitation, but Ted though that technology had an inherently negative impact on the human condition. Don't forget that it's the invention of industrial machines that lead to the birth of the capitalist mode of production, the steam engine was an expensive machine that could only be bought by wealthy capitalists, and was the reason why the relations of production are what they are today, a group that owns everything, while others own only the power of their labour.

Industrial machinery, and later advances in technology also created a system that requires strict discipline, obedience, and subservience, a sort of system that Ted saw incompatible with man's original condition. This system will also exist even within a socialist society, as socialists don't seek to abandon technological "progress".

I guess the biggest difference between marxism and Ted's ideas, is that the former valued the collective, therefore couldn't abandon the tools that hold this collective together, while the latter focused more on individual autonomy.

i don't see mans original condition as anything worth striving towards, we've been killing, raping and oppressing one another for hundreds of thousands of years. I think the ship has sailed on global socialist revolution, but I think it offered a chance for a better life for all sentient beings, at least compared with whatever Ted was espousing.

 

[noname223]

I did not read it. But I think new technologies can be really helpful. But some are too enthusiastic about it. Especially in SIlicon Valley. To be honest the internet really helps me to cope. I have the naive dream new technologies could save the average person from his existence as work slave.

 

[fox_wannabe]

Oh yeah, I read It not knowing he was Unabomber or that he killed anybody. I knew he was dropping some truth bombs.

But luckily he got one thing wrong: We won't continue like this forever as we already reached peak oil and we will never achieve such levels of expansion as we did before.

Tbh I hate most industrial society. Mass housing, ugliness, how fake everything is including people, mass meat production, all the trash we produce, poverty, sweatshops.
Yeah this shit sucks. I don't know what else I can do about It other than leave.

 

[lostundead]

I think the ship has sailed on global socialist revolution, but I think it offered a chance for a better life for all sentient beings, at least compared with whatever Ted was espousing.

The 'global socialist revolution' was a gigantic failute that spawned tyrannical regimes, mass starvations, genocides, never-seen-before torture methods and more. How exactly did it offer a "chance for a better life of all sentinent beings"?

Socialism is at it's core incompatible with human nature. I agree that man's natural barbaric condition is cruel and I wish we could change it but the reality looks different. Socialist/ Communist theorists can write thousands of books carving out a mathematically perfect system yet they will never be able to make humans work the way they want them to. I believe socialism can only come about naturally if we manage to overcome our subjective nature, by recognizing how we are all just refinements of the same force.

 

[WoAiGou]

The 'global socialist revolution' was a gigantic failute that spawned tyrannical regimes, mass starvations, genocides, never-seen-before torture methods and more. How exactly did it offer a "chance for a better life of all sentinent beings"?

Socialism is at it's core incompatible with human nature. I agree that man's natural barbaric condition is cruel and I wish we could change it but the reality looks different. Socialist/ Communist theorists can write thousands of books carving out a mathematically perfect system yet they will never be able to make humans work the way they want them to. I believe socialism can only come about naturally if we manage to overcome our subjective nature, by recognizing how we are all just refinements of the same force.

You should read black shirts and reds, good book detailing how socialism did work in terms of improving the lives of average people. Look up standard of living increases, literacy rates, infant mortality, life expectancy in countries that had socialist revolutions (USSR, Cuba,China, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos). To say these countries were worse off under socialism than what they were prior is historically inaccurate.

 

[Julgran]

The 'global socialist revolution' was a gigantic failute that spawned tyrannical regimes, mass starvations, genocides, never-seen-before torture methods and more. How exactly did it offer a "chance for a better life of all sentinent beings"?

Socialism is at it's core incompatible with human nature. I agree that man's natural barbaric condition is cruel and I wish we could change it but the reality looks different. Socialist/ Communist theorists can write thousands of books carving out a mathematically perfect system yet they will never be able to make humans work the way they want them to. I believe socialism can only come about naturally if we manage to overcome our subjective nature, by recognizing how we are all just refinements of the same force.

You are presenting an interesting perspective.

Being a conservative myself, I think that it is in humanity's nature to struggle, meaning that our current capitalist society is the best that we can muster as of now, and that it has to be allowed to run its course - and then, when or if we build robots to take our place - that may do our work for us - we can all sit back and enjoy the scenery. This is a simplification, of course, but I mean to say that humanity, as a whole, has to earn a socialistic society, and that it won't come freely or without struggle.

 

[Pluto]

Kaczynski's manifesto is the product of an exceptionally intelligent yet tragically tormented mind, and is worth a read for its intellectual substance alone. A few points worth making.

His core argument that all of humanity should abandon technology overnight is remarkably naïve coming from a mind of his calibre. It reflects a simplified world-view blaming a particular facet for all current problems. It's no different to saying, "We should all just love one another," or even, "We should kill all people of xyz demographic."

People will never come together to agree on any particular course of action unless they are forced, as happened under the more aggressive socialist regimes. (NB: in modern times, the insidious social engineering technology of Facebook has made divisions even more pronounced by creating echo chambers which radicalise people by repeating the same biases over and over. We even see the results of that on this very site whenever gender warfare breaks out.)

Speaking of which, everyone claiming that Communism is dead might want to take another look at the downhill trajectory of the USA and the fast-growing might of the China/Russia combo's authoritarianism.

Regarding technology, I am not going to speak ill of it whilst using a computer that automates so many chores in a manner unimaginable in Kaczynski's bloody heyday. And social stratification is not a phenomenon that I see correlated with technological evolution, though human population growth certainly is.

On the other hand, it is a shame that collective narcissism is so socially acceptable within the human culture. The environment should be a very high priority not only out of compassion for animals, but for our own survival. I invested a bunch of money in the technology of solar panels for my house for this very reason. The need for sustainability is ultimately what Kaczynski hoped to bring awareness to.

As an aside, I recently quoted his manifesto on this website in response to a young woman expressing discontentment with virtue signaling and disingenuous argumentation on the part of progressives on Twitter. While the topic is of dubious relevance to his core anti-technological stance, Kaczynski repeatedly indulged in tangents criticising 'leftists', raising similar concerns way back in in 1995. It seems that the same issue of SJWs - on moral high ground, harming their own cause by lashing out with anger at the very people they should be trying to seduce into joining their cause - was the Achille's heel of left-wing politics back then, too.

 

[JinZhin]

I haven't read this work, but I've been reading and listening a lot of works on why our civilization as it is will inevitably collapse and things will only be getting worse and scientist have been talking about it since the 70s (eg. the MIT's Limits on growth), but the public could never learn about it because the capitalists have been spreading the propaganda and brainwashed everyone.
We are quickly running out of every possible fuel, metal, soil fertilizer needed to make cars, solar panels, buildings, chips, and so on.
It didn't have to be like this.
Capitalism/THE HUMAN GREED is pure evil. The Earth will have to burn down for people to realize having a fat stack of dollars, collection of NFTs or a pile of gold is worthless when there is no more water and all air is poisonous and pilling up all the resources won't help them (oh, they're going to Mars right?)
The surge of popularity of socialism won't influence anything, and even if it does, it is too late, it's been too late for very long now.
It's be best to go out before 2030 as things are going to get...interesting, and not in a good way

some 'comforting' thoughts:
LIFE SUCKS ANYWAYS. ALWAYS HAS
As much as I hate modern society, if I were to be born 100 or 1000 years earlier, there is at least 99% chance I'd be very miserable and my life not worth living, exactly like everyone else's, and my best hope would be to become a nun away from all men and with some possibility of learning how to read so...
The more I think about this, any political or societal arrangement is doomed to fail as it deals with regulating life, and life itself is one of the greatest evil to exist
the soundtrack I guess

 

[Menschenmühle]

The 'global socialist revolution' was a gigantic failute that spawned tyrannical regimes, mass starvations, genocides, never-seen-before torture methods and more. How exactly did it offer a "chance for a better life of all sentinent beings"?

Socialism is at it's core incompatible with human nature. I agree that man's natural barbaric condition is cruel and I wish we could change it but the reality looks different. Socialist/ Communist theorists can write thousands of books carving out a mathematically perfect system yet they will never be able to make humans work the way they want them to. I believe socialism can only come about naturally if we manage to overcome our subjective nature, by recognizing how we are all just refinements of the same force.

You're presenting a framework that relies on the concept of 'human nature', this nature determines, according to what I understood from you, the way society organizes itself. However, marxist socialism believes in the exact opposite of such notion. Social existence determines the social consciousness, capitalism isn't inherently greedy because humans are so, it is because capitalism is greedy that humans become greedy themselves. Material conditions shape people's behaviour, not the opposite.

So, if we're going to look into the causes of socialism's failure, it's better to look outside the scope of the idea of 'human nature', or at least prove its validity before using it as a mean of argumentation.

Kaczynski's manifesto is the product of an exceptionally intelligent yet tragically tormented mind, and is worth a read for its intellectual substance alone. A few points worth making.

His core argument that all of humanity should abandon technology overnight is remarkably naïve coming from a mind of his calibre. It reflects a simplified world-view blaming a particular facet for all current problems. It's no different to saying, "We should all just love one another," or even, "We should kill all people of xyz demographic."

People will never come together to agree on any particular course of action unless they are forced, as happened under the more aggressive socialist regimes. (NB: in modern times, the insidious social engineering technology of Facebook has made divisions even more pronounced by creating echo chambers which radicalise people by repeating the same biases over and over. We even see the results of that on this very site whenever gender warfare breaks out.)

Speaking of which, everyone claiming that Communism is dead might want to take another look at the downhill trajectory of the USA and the fast-growing might of the China/Russia combo's authoritarianism.

Regarding technology, I am not going to speak ill of it whilst using a computer that automates so many chores in a manner unimaginable in Kaczynski's bloody heyday. And social stratification is not a phenomenon that I see correlated with technological evolution, though human population growth certainly is.

On the other hand, it is a shame that collective narcissism is so socially acceptable within the human culture. The environment should be a very high priority not only out of compassion for animals, but for our own survival. I invested a bunch of money in the technology of solar panels for my house for this very reason. The need for sustainability is ultimately what Kaczynski hoped to bring awareness to.

As an aside, I recently quoted his manifesto on this website in response to a young woman expressing discontentment with virtue signaling and disingenuous argumentation on the part of progressives on Twitter. While the topic is of dubious relevance to his core anti-technological stance, Kaczynski repeatedly indulged in tangents criticising 'leftists', raising similar concerns way back in in 1995. It seems that the same issue of SJWs - on moral high ground, harming their own cause by lashing out with anger at the very people they should be trying to seduce into joining their cause - was the Achille's heel of left-wing politics back then, too.

Kaczynski's manifesto is the product of an exceptionally intelligent yet tragically tormented mind, and is worth a read for its intellectual substance alone. A few points worth making.

His core argument that all of humanity should abandon technology overnight is remarkably naïve coming from a mind of his calibre. It reflects a simplified world-view blaming a particular facet for all current problems. It's no different to saying, "We should all just love one another," or even, "We should kill all people of xyz demographic."

People will never come together to agree on any particular course of action unless they are forced, as happened under the more aggressive socialist regimes. (NB: in modern times, the insidious social engineering technology of Facebook has made divisions even more pronounced by creating echo chambers which radicalise people by repeating the same biases over and over. We even see the results of that on this very site whenever gender warfare breaks out.)

Speaking of which, everyone claiming that Communism is dead might want to take another look at the downhill trajectory of the USA and the fast-growing might of the China/Russia combo's authoritarianism.

Regarding technology, I am not going to speak ill of it whilst using a computer that automates so many chores in a manner unimaginable in Kaczynski's bloody heyday. And social stratification is not a phenomenon that I see correlated with technological evolution, though human population growth certainly is.

On the other hand, it is a shame that collective narcissism is so socially acceptable within the human culture. The environment should be a very high priority not only out of compassion for animals, but for our own survival. I invested a bunch of money in the technology of solar panels for my house for this very reason. The need for sustainability is ultimately what Kaczynski hoped to bring awareness to.

As an aside, I recently quoted his manifesto on this website in response to a young woman expressing discontentment with virtue signaling and disingenuous argumentation on the part of progressives on Twitter. While the topic is of dubious relevance to his core anti-technological stance, Kaczynski repeatedly indulged in tangents criticising 'leftists', raising similar concerns way back in in 1995. It seems that the same issue of SJWs - on moral high ground, harming their own cause by lashing out with anger at the very people they should be trying to seduce into joining their cause - was the Achille's heel of left-wing politics back then, too.

Ted definitely didn't present any exact method or plan that would help reverting back to a pre-industrial society. Any such transition would have lead to unimaginable catastrophes if done rapidly, as hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation/preventable diseases. Even if the transition was done gradually, it would have to resort to methods such as forced abortions and euthanasia in order to to both stop the growth of human population and decrease it.
It seems then that any abandonment of technological development would be a very painful process, assuming ofc that people can actually come together and decide to abandon industrial society.

I think that Ted's manifesto outside of its critique of technology, can only help a couple of individuals who consciously decide to live outside of society, but on a collective level, the manifesto is as useless as it gets.

 

[NumbItAll]

i don't see mans original condition as anything worth striving towards, we've been killing, raping and oppressing one another for hundreds of thousands of years.

some 'comforting' thoughts:
LIFE SUCKS ANYWAYS. ALWAYS HAS
As much as I hate modern society, if I were to be born 100 or 1000 years earlier, there is at least 99% chance I'd be very miserable and my life not worth living, exactly like everyone else's, and my best hope would be to become a nun away from all men and with some possibility of learning how to read so...
The more I think about this, any political or societal arrangement is doomed to fail as it deals with regulating life, and life itself is one of the greatest evil to exist

Yeah life has always been a shitshow and always will be. There is no reasonable solution. As long as there is consciousness there will be suffering.

 

[JinZhin]

Yeah life has always been a shitshow and always will be. There is no reasonable solution. As long as there is consciousness there will be suffering.

consciousness was a mistake :/

 

[thinkkank]

he's still alive. I wish they would let prisoners have podcasts, he would either be a great podcast host or guest