What gives modern society a superficial appearance of individualism, independence, and self-reliance is the vanishing of the ties that formerly linke… - Ted Kaczynski

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What gives modern society a superficial appearance of individualism, independence, and self-reliance is the vanishing of the ties that formerly linked individuals into small-scale communities. Today, nuclear families commonly have little connection to their next-door neighbors or even to their cousins. Most people have friends, but friends nowadays tend to use each other only for entertainment. They do not usually cooperate in economic or other serious, practical activities, nor do they offer each other much physical or economic security. If you become disabled, you don’t expect your friends to support you. You depend on insurance or on the welfare department.

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About Ted Kaczynski

Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber (May 22, 1942 – June 10, 2023) was an American terrorist and former mathematics professor. After leaving modern society in 1971, between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide mail bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment. He authored Industrial Society and Its Future, a 35,000-word manifesto and social critique opposing industrialization, rejecting leftism, and advocating for a nature-centered form of anarchism. After promising to desist from terrorism in a letter sent to The New York Times if his manifesto was published by the Times or The Washington Post, it appeared in the latter in September 1995, leading to his identification and capture. Following the FBI's most expensive manhunt in its history, he pleaded guilty to all charges in 1998 and was sentenced to eight consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.

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Also Known As

Birth Name: Theodore John Kaczynski
Native Name: Theodore Kaczynski
Also Known As: Unabomber
Alternative Names: Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski University and airline bomber The Unabomber T. J. Kaczynski
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Additional quotes by Ted Kaczynski

Rebellion against technology and civilization is real rebellion, a real attack on the values of the existing system. But the green anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (The "GA Movement") have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values.

An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee.

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"Words like "self-confidence", "self-reliance", "initiative", "enterprise", "optimism", etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's problems for them, satisfy everyone's needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself."

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