In the first part about Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto “Industrial Society and its Future” we covered his analysis of the leftist psychology. This part will cover his more famous area of analysis, namely the negative relationship between technology and human freedom.
His central point is that industrial society has created a framework of civilization that requires human and social engineering to sustain itself. According to Kaczynski, the industrial revolution has subjected people in advanced nations to indignities, widespread psychological suffering and has inflicted severe damage on the natural world. If the industrial system continues to exist, its effects will become increasingly worse, making more centralization of power and technology necessary. He believes that if it is not stopped it will end up “reducing human beings to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine”.
One of the major psychological effects that the industrial system has on humans is that it disrupts their ability to participate in the power process. The power process contains the four elements goal, effort, attainment of goal and in some cases autonomy. The mere possession of power is not enough to satisfy this process, it needs to be applied towards some goal. Kaczynski offers the example of an aristocrat without a challenger to his position. This person can obtain physical necessities and other goals without much effort, resulting in boredom, demoralization and depression. The same holds true on the opposite end of the spectrum. If a person consistently fails to attain their goals, they will end up suffering from similar psychological conditions as well as low self-esteem. Ideally, a human invests effort and struggles for attainable goals, but they have to yield a reasonable rate of success.
In modern Western societies most people find themselves in a similar position to medieval kings: They do not have to struggle to fulfil their physical necessities. To cope with this situation, they turn to artificial goals to satisfy their drive for the power process, just like the aristocracy of old. Kaczynski uses the term surrogate activities to describe this phenomenon and presents the Japanese emperor Hirohito as an example. He became one of the world’s most renowned marine biologist, as he never had to struggle to satisfy his physical needs. The manifesto lays out a simple identification scheme for surrogate activities: If a person would have to invest their physical and mental capacities in a varied and interesting way to satisfy their biological needs, would they feel deprived at the non-attainment of their other goals? If the answer is no, these would constitute surrogate activities.
Marine biology falls under this category, as it is a science that is not concerned with the fulfilment of one’s own physical needs.
Because it takes not much more than simple obedience to survive in Western nations, they are built around the provision of surrogate activities. Pursuits like science, athletic achievement, cultural creation, corporate careers, materialism and even activism that is not concerned with one’s own well-being are presented as examples for this in the manifesto. These activities are not sufficient to satisfy the power process and are therefore leading to a state of constant restlessness. An aspect of this is that people satisfy their physical needs by functioning as parts of an immense social machine and not on their own. A lack of autonomy plays a large factor for some humans, as they need to take an independent and self-directed effort towards the attainment of their goals, either on their own or within a small group.
The large-scale collective that is industrialized society prevents this by increasingly influencing the lives and decisions of its subjects, preventing them from achieving a sense of power and self-worth. Failing to experience the power process in a meaningful way leads to demoralization and inferiority feelings, which are the origin of the leftist psychology discussed in the previous part. These issues do not tend to play a significant role in primitive societies, leading Kaczynski to the conclusion that these psychological issues emerge in industrialized systems because humans are not adapted to live under their conditions. Factors that play into that are excessive population density, isolation of man from nature, rapid social change and the dissolution of small social units like the traditional family. Urbanization, a consequence of technological progress, tends to provide a less stable environment then nature, further increasing the levels of stress on human beings.
Traditional values tend to break down because the rapid advance of technology disrupts all other areas of life and therefore also leads to rapid social change. Small scale social units are broken apart as technological society often requires individuals to switch locations to enjoy better education, career opportunities or healthcare. It also has an incentive to actively promote this process to shift the loyalty of the population away from the family or tribe towards the system itself. It can only tolerate small scale groups that are pacified and emasculated, as they do not pose a threat to its position. This rapidly changing environment is a breeding ground for social and mental issues. Kaczynski argues that the decisive factor in that is not the change itself, but rather the imposed nature of it. While explorers and pioneers lived in a changing environment, they did not suffer from the same psychological conditions.
This can be attributed to the fact that they experienced change out of their own desire for adventure, whereas a modern man is powerless against the rapid transformation of his environment.
The manifesto establishes three groups of human drives: The first are those that are easy to satisfy. The second are those that can be satisfied with extensive effort, which is described as going through the power process. The third are those that cannot be achieved no matter what. In industrial society it is either too easy to satisfy human desires, or too hard, creating a sense of powerlessness and inferiority, which proliferates mental illness. Physical necessities tend to be pushed into group number one, whereas group number 2 mostly consists of artificial materialistic desires that are perpetuated by the marketing and advertisement industries. The pursuit of these false desires in combination with existential nihilism has created a chronic sense of purposelessness, that has emasculated Western civilization.
Other aspects that are severely disrupted by industrial society are the human desires for autonomy and security. The acquisition of wealth is often bound to the degree of obedience to the system. People get rewarded for adhering to laws, regulations and expert opinions, not for their own individual initiative. The desire for security is basically unsatisfiable, since technology often puts human lives at its mercy – one has to rely entirely on the decisions of others that pull the levers in the system. These people tend to be pilots, politicians, government economists, corporate executives and the like. Whereas a primitive man was not helpless in the face of adversity, a modern man has no way to protect himself from a nuclear explosion, a global economic crisis or an airplane crash. Despite the fact that the latter man is probably more physically secure, it is the former man that lives with a higher degree of psychological security, because he knows he can rely on himself in almost any situation.
Threats in a primitive society can be attributed to chance, such as disease, whereas threats to modern humans tend to be imposed by the system and man-made in origin. The failure of industrial society to satisfy the beforementioned desires sufficiently stems from a lack of human freedom which creates frustration and anger. It is so restrictive in fact, that even the expression of these emotions tends to be regulated. The enforcement of these regulations only serves to protect the system from instability and is therefore often exercised through indirect measures like psychological pressure, propaganda and manipulation. The resulting unsatisfying lifestyle in modern society leads to anomalies in human behaviour such as a lack of interest in having offspring, an obsessive focus on longevity and maintaining physical attractiveness, even at an advanced age. Opposed to that stands a primitive life, in which a man tends to accept the progression of his life with much more ease.
He has gone through the power process adequately enough to be satisfied with what he has achieved and therefore does not fear death. A modern man, who never had to physically struggle to sustain his fragile body is far more inclined to fear its deterioration in old age, because he has never put it to practical use in a serious manner. This unfulfillment cannot be simply substituted for by the provision of opportunities to go through the power process in industrial society, as this would lack the autonomy of the individual making their own opportunities.
According to Kaczynski, freedom is defined as the opportunity to go through the power process with real goals, such as the satisfaction of physical necessities or the desire to make and care for offspring. It means using power to influence and control the circumstances of one’s existence. The types of freedoms that are guaranteed to citizens of Western nations are of a lesser value to him.
They are framed in such a way to support and protect the economic and technological structure of the system. Freedom of the press for example is mostly beneficial to large media organizations. This allows them to propagate an interpretation of reality that protects the status quo while drowning out dissent coming from freethinking individuals. He describes the Western conception of freedom as “bourgeois”. They are only made up of liberties that either promote the expansion of the industrial system, or those that do not hinder it.
Kaczynski argues that the setup of our society is fundamentally biased towards the proliferation and innovation of technology at the cost of human freedom. He concludes that this progressive element can never be reformed or incrementally changed, as it is tied to the stability of the current system. Only a radical overthrow in the form of a revolution could reverse this process, with unpredictable and potentially dangerous consequences.
Furthermore, he describes how industrial society has to apply social engineering to function. This creates a sense of powerlessness amongst the population that has to be countered with psychological measures such as propaganda or mental health programs, to convince the masses that this is happening in their interest. A fitting example for this is the COVID pandemic of this year. The outbreak of SARS 2 was a result of globalised transport networks. This occurred at such a pace, that it might have caused mass hysteria around the globe. Initially it was therefore in the interest of the system to downplay and deny the effects of the disease, further contributing to its initial spread. Western governments, media organizations and international health organizations such as the WHO attempted to avoid any disruptive action, because they were not prepared to control the situation.
Only once they had prepared sufficiently to exercise extensive population control, they rapidly switched the narrative and drastically emphasized the importance of measures to fight the pandemic.
By this point in the time however, the brunt of the actual health crisis had been born and the death rate was declining. Since then the crisis has been manufactured by the beforementioned organizations, mostly by pointing out irrelevant rising infection numbers and ignoring the extremely low death rate. The only reason why this supposed pandemic is still a daily talking point is because it justifies the measures taken by the industrial system to permanently restrict and regulate human behaviour. The technocratic liberal elites have realized that this situation is a once in a lifetime opportunity to accelerate the dependence of society on complex technology. Lockdowns, mass surveillance, and other grave invasions of human freedom can now be applied to systematically silence opposition and support social engineering measures. It is clear for example that media campaigns and protest bans have been mostly applied to anti-lockdown demonstrations across the Western world.
Protests that do not threaten the industrial system, however, have been tolerated and used as a way to create violence on the streets to keep the average frightened citizen at home. As Kaczynski puts it, “the system has to force people to behave in ways that are increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behaviour”. The more people receive checks from the government, dial into work online or get their food and essentials delivered by logistical transport operations, the more influence does the system exercise over the individual. Life in Western society is dependent on the cooperation of millions of people and machines. This has removed almost all autonomy from individuals and local communities as they now have to rely on large scale communication networks, transport and health care systems. The system cares only about sustaining itself and this is why it reacts so detached from human desires in threating situations, such as the COVID pandemic.
When a new disease threatens to shut down the global transportation framework it seeks to prevent a panic. Once the actual threat is over it creates the panic to justify an extension of its powers. The actual wellbeing and health of humans is not relevant to the industrial system.
Gaining autonomy from the system is next to impossible, even for small business owners that are not influenced by large organizations. They have to adapt new technologies that are developed by large organizations to remain competitive and are therefore still reliant on them. Even the supposed “positive” effects of the technological regime bear negative consequences for human freedom. If medicine innovates to a point where it can effectively cure cancer or diabetes it will cause an increase of these traits in the gene pool of the population. As a result, it will increasingly turn to genetic engineering or eugenics programs, such as abortion, to keep the prevalence of these diseases in check.
The broad population will accept these measures, because they allow them to function within industrial society by reducing the effects of physical and mental illness caused by the system itself. The competitive pressure will force the minority of people who reject this interference with nature either into the lower strata of society or into grudging compliance. What applies to this case applies to all other technological innovations: When they are introduced they might be optional at first, but soon they change the entire setup of society and therefore force individuals to use them. One could imagine that the introduction of an effective COVID vaccine will be optional at first, but refusal to take the injection will lead to restrictions down the line. It might exclude individuals from participating in the workplace, using public utilities and even limiting their ability to move freely. These unique technological advances might appear to be desirable when viewed on their own.
The combined effect of all technological advances since the industrial revolution, however, has created a civilization in which the fate of the individual man is reliant upon the decisions of politicians, corporate executives, anonymous technicians and faceless bureaucrats. The population becomes fully dependant on these technologies and the organizations that provide them. Technology therefore is a more powerful social force then freedom. Especially people that tend to be involved in the research and development of technology like technicians and scientists will ignore the negative consequences of their work for human freedom. This can be attributed to the fact that their craft is their surrogate activity, which makes them psychologically dependant. Other institutions use technology because it serves them to advance their own interests. Industrial society therefore knows no compromises, because the mere existence of complex technology provides incentive enough for some organizations to accept a wide reduction of human freedom.
One can therefore either reject and seek the complete destruction of the industrial system, or one can embrace it, but must also accept its dramatic consequences. Ted Kaczynski famously advocates for the former approach and calls for a potentially violent revolution against the industrial system. His justification is that the revolution will have negative short-term effects, but it will prevent a lot of the negative long-term effects that would emerge if industrial society is allowed to exist into the future. He predicts that the following decades might be the ideal window for revolution, as the pressures of industrial society on the human psychology will inevitably create social unrest that threatens the survival of the entire system. This statement was published 25 years ago, and history has proven his predictions is this regard to be correct: Since the early 2000s Western nations have been experiencing more and more social instability and stress.
He argues that civilization has always put pressure on human beings to adjust their behaviour in the form of socialization. In the pre-industrial age, societies would simply start to collapse if their population was pushed too far. This however is not the case in the industrial system, as it invents ways to modify humans in such a way that they adapt to more societal pressure. Some of these tools are drugs, mass surveillance, propaganda and entertainment. If a person gets depressed, because they cannot satisfy their need for the power process sufficiently, the system just prescribes them antidepressants. If anyone acts in a hostile way towards the system, mass surveillance will make sure that they are dealt with before they can inflict any serious harm to the system. Propaganda can be used to pacify the broad mass of people, as it is used to influence public opinion to favour the industrial regime.
Entertainment is used to provide individuals with an escape from their meaningless and dissatisfactory everyday life. Another aspect that is mentioned in the manifesto is the education system, which is tasked with developing children into young adults that behave and think in a desirable way for the system. It will not only apply psychological techniques to control the population, but also biological modifications and it will impose these on the masses in order to guarantee its own survival. Again, these individual measures will always appear to be beneficial when viewed on their own. All these measures taken together however will inevitably lead to a severe restriction of human freedom. This will occur in the form of behavioural control that will become mandatory through competitive pressure once a large enough portion of the population adapts it. The elimination of human freedom is not something that the industrial system consciously desires, but it has to achieve this regardless to deal with its greatest threats.
Socializing the population is another word for pacification. Once this process is completed, the system can indefinitely sustain itself, having to rely only on a small group of global elites that are in charge of it. This effectively means that it has full control over the human population without having to fear any resistance. It will be too advanced to be challenged by any non-technological group or movement. This section is highly relevant with regard to the events of the current year. It is clear that there are ambitions by the contemporary global elites to initiate a fourth industrial revolution to deal with so-called “existential threats to humanity”. In reality however, these are only threats to the system. Under the guise of manufactured mass hysterias such as climate change, the global pandemic or terrorism lay the true ambitions of the technocratic elites: The desire to control human behaviour absolutely to protect the advancement of industrial-technological society.
Kaczynski describes the dilemma of humanities’ addiction to technology: To continue on the current path would mean creating rapid and frequent disruptions to society that have various predictable and unpredictable negative outcomes that will lead to human suffering. Overthrowing the industrial system on the other hand would also mean creating suffering, because a large portion of the world population is kept alive by organization dependant technology. It is likely however that the latter case, will be the less painful and degrading one in the long run.
His prediction for the future of industrial society is dire, because it can only survive if it perfects behavioural control: On the one hand it could lead to the creation of artificial intelligence, which would effectively control everything due to its superior problem-solving capabilities. This would make human life without technology close to impossible. On the other hand, it could also be that control over large machine systems would be maintained by humans, but only in the hands of a small elite.
The population would be at the mercy of this group as they could either decide to exterminate or take care of the now superfluous masses. In any case, most humans would only fulfil meaningless tasks in society, and they would have no influence over the circumstances of their existence. Ultimately, Ted Kaczynski concludes that industrial society and all organization dependent technology needs to be destroyed uncompromisingly, in order to regain and preserve human freedom.
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