Industrial Society and Its Future - Theodore John Kaczynski  ## Metadata - Author: **Theodore John Kaczynski** - Full Title: Industrial Society and Its Future - Category: #books ## Highlights - 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 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpj34jwh1d8j4c9mb3wzm66y)) - **10**. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpj3bj9jfggdd6xpdkprqths)) - Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the “power process.” This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy and will discuss it later ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpj40syphn04gsypdm25haxk)) - people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from these activities than they do from the “mundane” business of satisfying their biological needs, but that it is because in our society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpj3ncx241qt6m80ac6c0d91)) - Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for every individual. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own direction and control ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpj41kkzabcrjajssseek48d)) - modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations, and his fate depends on the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot influence ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpj46aqdybfsvtfzkwp93aaw)) - In the second place, one has to balance the struggle and death against the loss of freedom and dignity. To many of us, freedom and dignity are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpmkj5wwdgcdzz4y6wb5332e)) - Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpmmwbb8e7fdhxh3bwe8mqjw)) - Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpmn0y1dgz3rch5c7ccr10h2)) - But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideals well as a negative one; it must be *for* something as well as *against* something. The positive ideal that we propose is Nature. That is , *wild* nature; those aspects of the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regulation by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpq77whb28kdvx6t08na8672)) - Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical environmentalists *already* hold an ideology that exalts nature and opposes technology ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hpq78fdaan1k2fmherpzt774))