Unabomber Manifestation summary- Why how and what?
Who is Unabomber.
He is a terrorist lived in USA, responsible for deaths of 3 men and injured many others over a period of decades. He is a well-educated man seemed to be motivated by his philosophical ideas to improve the society. The means he used to achieve his goals, or "Send a message to the society who did not take his seriously" was wrong, as hurting anyone is a crime regardless of the reason. But his published manifestation, have attracted many people over the years, as it provides the powerful interpretation of the struggle of the modern man to fit into the system he was born into. In many ways is the story of Many men and women living in the modern world. Following is a summary of Unabomber manifestation.
5 Key Ideas of Unabomber Manifestation - summary
The process of power
According to Kaczynski, the sense of satisfaction of a human comes from achievement when he/she is engaged in difficult task and able to fulfil this. But in the modern world basic survival seems to make very easy as long as you have a stack of cash. And instead of finding food, we are diverted by the system for different tasks that we did not want to do in the first place. This observation of him seems true. Although there are many opportunities, to earn while doing what you like to do, many of the individuals in life land in different parts of the system turning wheels day after day like slaves. Like in a system of modern slavery, pathetic situation than slavery itself, as these people do not know they are the pawns of a system.
Systems restrict freedom.
True freedom is if you can function, individually in nature and survive. However, as we are all dependent and used to the modern systems, we cannot function individually. We are stuck. There is no survival target. Although we appear free at the end of the day, we fill our lives with mundane tasks and entertainment which doesn't make a fulfilling life experience in the long term.
"Surrogate activities"
Surrogate activities are given as a goal to life by the system. We are aiming for vacations, retirement, getting promoted, having the biggest car in the neighborhood as our goals. And some even spend their entire lives without knowing what to do, just dreaming to have an experience in a first-class flight in an airplane just a few feet away from their economic class colleagues. Status, political games, academic achievement and materialistic gains are all surrogate activities imposed on us by the system.
Psychological pressure.
Imagine you woke up one day in the middle of the jungle like Bear grills. What would you do? I am sure you would either be dead or would just start doing something to live immediately. There would be greater urgency in your actions for your survival. It is very difficult to say you would come up alive or not, but those few days in your life trying to survive would just feel like you have been living, when and if you come back to the society and talk about it. But modern systems would not allow you to do that, as it has created psychological pressure on us. We tend to take easier and faster route every time we choose, and there are a whole lot of choices too.
Technology keeps expanding.
Technology keeps expanding, creating new goals. New niches for us to spend our entire lives thinking about. Consider 3n+1 mathematic problem. How many human hours have spent over years, of humans tackling this problem. Is it even necessary? For advancement of what? To create what after that? To earn how much money for whom? And what they are all doing with that newly gained money printed by government, that they created? It seems we are just playing an imaginary delusional game without even knowing that.
Why deliberately choosing difficulty can make life richer.
This is an easy question to answer. And it comes from the famous book, the flow. If life is too easy like most of the people in modern days, it will be really boring. You might just scroll, watch TV and binge eat. If life is more stressful, like most of the people at work, you will be utterly exhausted, and you might not enjoy working. What we really need is a balance between these two extremes. A boring life can be fulfilled only by deliberately choosing some difficulty, so our brain and body muscles have enough strain to grow, but not too much to tear them apart. Perhaps this is the place the Unabomber wanted every one of us to be. But I am not sure it is capable of happening in modern society. Like he suggested maybe we need to change the structure of society entirely from scratch. But not with violence.
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