The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psycholog… - Ted Kaczynski
" "The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.
If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.
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.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Ted Kaczynski
El entusiasmo por el «progreso» es un fenómeno particular de la forma moderna de sociedad, y parece no haber existido antes del siglo XVII, más o menos.
211. En la última parte de la Edad Media, había cuatro civilizaciones importantes que estaban igualmente «avanzadas»: Europa, el mundo islámico, India, y el Lejano Oriente (China, Japón, Corea). Tres de estas civilizaciones permanecieron más o menos estables y sólo Europa se dinamizó. Nadie sabe porque Europa lo hizo en este periodo, los historiadores tienen sus teorías, pero sólo son especulaciones. De todas formas, está claro que el desarrollo rápido hacia una forma tecnológica de la sociedad sólo ocurre bajo condiciones especiales.
Finally, one learns that boredom is a disease of civilization. It seems to me that what boredom mostly is is that people have to keep themselves entertained or occupied, because if they aren’t, then certain anxieties, frustrations, discontents, and so forth, start coming to the surface, and it makes them uncomfortable. Boredom is almost nonexistent once you’ve become adapted to life in the woods. If you don’t have any work that needs to be done, you can sit for hours at a time just doing nothing, just listening to the birds or the wind or the silence, watching the shadows move as the sun travels, or simply looking at familiar objects. And you don’t get bored. You’re just at peace.
"The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another."