Η φιλοσοφία του Τεντ Καζύνσκι: Γιατί ο Γιουναμπόμπερ είχε δίκιο για την σύγχρονη τεχνολογία

by Chad A. Haag, Σωτήρης Γιαννέλης (Translator)

«Ο Θεόδωρος (Τεντ) Καζύνσκι, άλλως γνωστός ως Γιουναμπόμπερ (Unabomber), είναι διεθνώς γνωστός για την δραστηριότητα που ανέπτυξε ως ένα από τα πιο καταζητούμενα πρόσωπα από το FBI στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες. Παρά τις «φιλότιμες προσπάθειες» των μέσων μαζικής αποβλάκωσης και της βιομηχανίας του μαζικού θεάματος να τον παρουσιάσουν στο κοινό σαν έναν ψυχοπαθή εγκληματία, ο Καζύνσκι ανέπτυξε έναν ολοκληρωμένο φλοσοφικό στοχασμό επί του ζητήματος της σύγχρονης τεχνολογίας και του μοναδικά ζοφερού ζητήματος της σύγχρονης τεχνολογίας και του μοναδικά ζοφερού μέλλοντος που επιφυλάσσει το τεχνολογικό σύστημα για την ανθρωπότητα και το σύνολο της ζωής. Έτσι, παρά την απαξιωτική υπερπροβολή του προσώπου του από τα συστημικά media, ο Καζύνσκι, στην πραγματικότητα, είναι ο πιο υποπροβεβλημένος στοχαστής της εποχής μας, μιας εποχής που χαρακτηρίζεται πρωτίστως από την παγκόσμια κυριαρχία του σύγχρονου τεχνολογικού συστήματος, που σήμερα εμφανίζεται ανοικτά ως ο αυτουργός μιας οργουελικής τεχνοκρατικής δυστοπίας.

Ο Τσαντ Χαάγκ παρουσιάζει την πρώτη (και μοναδική έως τώρα) σε μέγεθος βιβλίου συστηματική πραγματεία της σκέψης του Καζύνσκι: την φιλοσοφική κριτική της σύγχρονης τεχνολογίας. Ο Καζύνσκι ανήκει δικαιωματικά στην χορεία των πιο οξυδερκών φιλοσόφων που στοχάστηκαν πάνω στο ζήτημα της σύγχρονης τεχνολογίας και στις πρωτοφανείς συνέπειές της για τον άνθρωπο και εν γένει για ολόκληρη την ζωή πάνω στην Γη.

Ο Καζύνσκι ανέπτυξε έναν γόνιμο στοχασμό για το τεχνολογικό σύστημα ως τον μείζονα αντικειμενικό παράγοντα ή την «ουσία» της σύγχρονης κοινωνίας. Τα πολύμορφα και πολύπλευρα κείμενά του -ανάμεσα στα οποία ξεχωρίζουν το Μανιφέστο του «Η Βιομηχανική Κοινωνία και το Μέλλον της» και το magnus opus του «Η επανάσταση κατά της τεχνολογίας: γιατί και πώς»- είναι σήμερα μεταξύ των πιο σημαντικών κειμένων που γράφτηκαν μέχρι τούδε. Ωστόσο, ο Καζύνσκι δεν περιορίστηκε σε μία εμβριθή ανάλυση του τεχνολογικού συστήματος. Ο σκοπός του δεν ήταν απλώς να προβληματίσει, όσο το να δημιουργήσει ένα επαναστατικό κίνημα επί τη βάσει μιας φιλοσοφίας που απορρίπτει εκ βάθρων την σύγχρονη τεχνολογία, με μια κατάλληλη στρατηγική για μια ριζι,κή μετάβαση σε μια μετατεχνολογική κοινωνία».

Το ανά χείρας βιβλίο είναι το πρώτο βιβλίο του συγγραφέα που κυκλοφορεί στην ελληνική γλώσσα.


ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΟ ΠΡΩΤΟ Η επανάσταση κατά της Τεχνολογίας. Η αναζήτηση ενός αντικειμενικού παράγοντα
ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΟ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟ Το τέλος της Υποκειμενικότητας. Ελευθερία και Ερμηνεία
ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΟ ΤΡΙΤΟ Ουσία και Ορθολογισμός: Οι αριστεροί και η γλωσσολογικοποίηση
ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΟ ΤΕΤΑΡΤΟ Ειρηνισμός ή Παθολογία; Βία και Ηθική

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Technology, Politics

492 pages, Paperback

First published July 20, 2019

Reviews

[Skallagrimsen]

Future historians may look back at Ted Kaczynski and conclude that the rest of us were crazy.

[Sameer ElKokha · Rating 5 out of 5]

First time I write a review, bare with me.

A good book that goes in depth into the ideas of Kaczynski as an intellectual and not as the techno-industrial SNL cheap caricature of a crazy killer.

The author also presents the idea of leftists' linguistification and adds more up to date examples of what Kaczynski warned about, also adds some insights about unpublished writings of Kaczynski which I found valuable. The author also doesn't stride too far from discussing Kaczynski's works to make it a book about his own ideas instead, never the less I am interested in reading more from Chad.
There are some typos in the copy I got and some headings that are not properly placed, if this was another type of book this would be a flaw but since it's this particular topic I think our obsession with perfect technique is what's at fault not the casual typos. We are not machines and we shouldn't act like ones in perceiving each others' works.

My only criticism was the mention of Peterson alongside other intellectuals, for two reasons: 1 was the lack of value his ideas added in this context.
Secondly and more importantly, I think Peterson-type intellectuals are the ones mentioned in the The System Neatest Trick, Kaczynski wrote how "The university intellectuals also play an important role in carrying out the System's trick." by fancying themselves independent thinkers, even though they are "the most oversocialized, the most conformist, the tamest and most domesticated, the most pampered, dependent, and spineless group in America (or in JP's case Canada) today." "real rebellion is impossible for them. Consequently they are suckers for the System's trick, which allows them to irritate people and enjoy the illusion of rebelling without ever having to challenge the System's basic values"
I believe that characters like JP don't represent the sane reaction against the linguistification but rather a faux Hegelian antithesis which, as Kaczynski properly diagnosed, are the instruments in the last step in his summary of the trick, point 5 "Much of the public resentment resulting from the imposition of social changes is drawn away from the System and its institutions and is directed instead at the radicals who spearhead the social changes".
so JP and his ilk attack low hanging leftist fruits and do the dirty work of drawing away the resentment from the system to direct it instead at a naive over-socialized pink haired genderfluid dragonkin. The Trick is neat because it's double-fold.

sorry I wrote a lot about the brief mention of Peterson because it's a flaw of this otherwise excellent work, in other words, I agree with/learned from the book so there is no point in just repeating what it contains but since I disagree with this I have to explain why.

Summary: I recommend the book to anyone interested in Kaczynski or Anti Tech philosophy/action in general. And I think someone should get Kaczynski a copy...

[Nick John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have nothing but great experiences reading books by Chad Haag and once again This Deep Dive into the Philosophy of Uncle Ted is no exception to my previous experience. The concepts and ideas explored in this book are outstanding and eye opening. Ted Kaczynski is definitely one of the most under studied and under appreciated philosophers of our time.

Being a Third Positionist myself I highly encourage anyone from the Dissident sphere to pick up this book as well as many others from Chad Haag. His deep understanding of Deep Ecology Philosophy and his excellent ability to explain it to an audience that isn't full of philosophy majors is astounding to say the least. Modern Technology and its effects on Humanity are disastrous and it is important that we understand the roots of these problems before we attempt to build solutions.

[Borek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A breathtaking exposition of Kaczynski's philosophy, not only focussing on the problems of the techno-industrial system but also managing to interweave modern, highly-relevant scholars such as Jordan Peterson and Jim Rickards. Impressive in scope.

[Pacific Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the main criticisms of technology involves the loss of what he calls the Power Process: setting a goal, working towards it, and achieving it. We have given up this much more profound experience in exchange for material comforts, and so we are left with boredom, frustration, and eventual madness.

We are told to be obedient to the System, and in return we are taken care of from the cradle to the grave in terms of material comfort. We even get to live out an emasculated version of the Power Process in surrogate activities like watching sports or collecting models, things with no real added value to our lives. This critique ties into his views on leftists, who are acting out politically in a surrogate activity (easy examples abound these days, consider the various social media campaigns).

Another significant problem with technology is that it is part of a self-propagating system, which will seek to maximize short-term gain even at the risk of extinction in the long-term. Modern technology has allowed normal human avarice and misbehavior to have catastrophic reach. An example that comes to mind for me is how we have always fished, but industrial fishing is literally driving fish to extinction. He believes that either AI will render humans obsolete, or environmental destruction will as with our changing the composition of the air.

I think here he fails to consider the limits to such self-propagating systems – eventually the negative feedback loop will kick in, and a new equilibrium reached. A good example of this is how the physical limitation of oil will prevent us from developing beyond a certain point of technology, or how the added growth of trees from increased CO2 will begin to offset the greenhouse effect.

And so his predictions may be more apocalyptic than realistic, and it is important because he has based his actions around the idea that the only way to stop modern society is to create a movement that destroys the technologic underpinning. You don’t need to go full Sarah Connor like he did if the technological system is going to implode. Chad mentions in one of his YT discussions that Kaczynski was a product of the late 20th century, and it is hard to imagine at that point how soon and how significantly energy limitations would pose a limit on growth.

There can be no balance between modern technology and wild nature because “Modern Technology is not an ordinary part of a broader whole but is rather a disruptive element which transforms the whole according to its own logic of technical rationality” (p.49). I wish he had defined a bit more clearly what modern technology entailed. There is evidence he meant more than the machines themselves, also the organizational structures, skills, etc. that make it possible (p.79), but the answer as to what exactly it is missing.

It seems as though Kacyznski wants a return to the stone age where civilization itself was impossible (p.121). He doesn’t want to pick and choose technologies from different eras like Greer, or stop at a certain level, because he believes that the self-propagating behavior will eventually run rampant again.

I read a bit more than halfway, but from what I can see Chad did a good job representing the ideas of Kacyznski with fidelity. Personally, I don’t agree with his conclusions though, and still think he was fried by mk ultra.

[Anne Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book because its title professed to be an examination of Ted Kaczynski's (aka Unabomber) philosophy. However, I think it should be more aptly entitled The Philosophy of Chad A. Haag. Although Kaczynski's works are oft cited, it is more often the case that those works are used to support the author's viewpoint. As such, the more I read, the more I came away with the distasteful feeling that the author cited Kaczynski in the title of his work in order to gain readers by means of name recognition. I find it ironic that the author relocated himself to, of all places, India—a growing bastion of the very technocracy that Kaczynski, and apparently Haag, both abhor.

[Jess]

Filed under: technically quasi-academic but defiantly strawmanian / autodidactic in spirit.

[Gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Jean-françois Virey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back when I was an Objectivist, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who "killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment" (Wikipedia), was presented to us as the living proof of the "anti-man" (and literally homicidal) nature of environmentalism.

As a deep ecologist, I was wondering how far I would sympathise with the agenda of this "eco-terrorist", from whom Chad Haag tries to distance himself a little (though the subtitle indicates this is an uphill battle), and I was surprised to discover that if Kaczynski was indeed a terrorist, he may not have been altogether deserving of the prefix eco-.

Indeed, Kaczinski is a kind of radicalised Ellulian critic of technique (in the broadest possible sense) who seems much more concerned with what it is doing to us (i.e. turning us into machines ourselves), than with what it does to the environment. Based on the evidence presented in the book, I would say Kaczynski is more of libertarian terrorist, taking libertarian in both its political sense and its metaphysical sense: Kaczynski sees technique or technology as a threat to human free-will, and if there was some positive motivation behind his murderous acts, it seems to have been the defense of this free-will.

When the environmental consequences of technology are mentioned, they appear to be either after-thoughts (secondary arguments against technology, if the main one failed to convince you entirely), or worrisome only insofar as they threaten human survival (potentially leading to the disappearance of breathable air or drinkable water, for instance (p42) and of the human race itself (p253).) As for the animals, Kaczynski does not care much about them, though of course, they would immensely benefit from a world in which his Butlerian Jihad cubed was implemented. Kaczynski himself used to live by hunting for food, and is contemptuous of the vegan movement, dismissing the "alleged (!) oppression of... animals" as one of many "irrelevant problems" (p175) or "inessential issues" (p176.) Only the destruction of technology matters to him. The movement he intended to launch would not care about anything else.

While I did find Haag's anti-leftism refreshing (he has many interesting pages on SJWs and the left-wing mentality), I'm afraid he himself appears to belong to the lunatic fringe of the right. An outlaw himself (who fled the U.S. for India in order not to have to repay his student debt), he is fascinated by very strange figures indeed, including another terrorist, Vlad Vikernes, a black metal occultist who burned churches and murdered one man, but whom Haag considers one of "the most important writers of our era" (p156), along with the antisemitic madman David Icke, the originator of reptilian conspiracy theories. Haag himself seems to believe the Apollo program was a hoax, as he refers to "our supposed voyage to the moon" (p225.)

I'm not sure I will be studying Kaczynski's thought much further, but despite more than a few quirks, Haag does seem to have interesting things to say, and I will probably be reading his volume on Pentti Linkola, that other supervillain of environmentalism.

[Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some incredible information in it, and it is the best analysis of Ted Kaczynski's philosophy that I have read, but that doesn't mean much as it is the only book-length analysis that currently exists. However, there are glaring issues including the awful formatting of the book (including grammar mistakes), author bias, and no bibliography. These problems were so glaring that I could not give a 4-star rating like I wanted.

What I appreciate most about this analysis is the time it most likely took to gather sources and find conclusions about Ted Kaczynski's philosophy beyond his writings. What I really enjoyed was the understanding of the philosophy of technology. Haag writes about Heidegger as well as Ellul and he connects them to Ted's philosophy accurately. Being a philosophy student himself he also throws in a fantastic amount of his own opinions even if they are hard to follow most of the time.

Being a philosophy student myself I was not surprised at all by the structure of what was written and I quite enjoyed the writing style. I will most likely be purchasing his latest book "Hermeneutics of Ecological Limitation: Ecophilosophy Beyond Environmentalism" as I was entertained and learned a lot of what I thought I knew about Ted Kaczynski with this installment.

The most glaring negative to me was the lack of proper formatting. It seems to me that he threw this together in a google doc and published it without realizing the importance of organization. The second issue is the obvious right bias that is apparent throughout the entire book. He makes spotty at best comparisons with modern-day problems and he tries to relate them to what is so obviously his personal vendettas. He tries to make them come off as objective but fails completely in his endeavor. The lack of a bibliography is almost criminal for a work like this, if I want to read your sources they should all be available at the end of the book and they should be easy to find.

[Pradyumn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a thought-provoking and intense read. The author argues that much of our modern unhappiness stems from how unnatural, over-regulated, and system-controlled our lives have become due to technology, mass society, and the constant pressure to “fit in.” Further, the concept of “power process” has been discussed which refers to human need to pursue real, meaningful goals such as survival, freedom, and self-reliance. In today’s world, this instinct is suppressed. We instead chase artificial goals such as grades, promotions, status, and social approval. And for those who choose not to participate? The system pushes them out, leaving them isolated or discarded.
The author doesn’t stop there. He also critiques modern education, corporate jobs, performative environmentalism, and even academic anthropology, especially when it distorts primitive cultures to match liberal modern values. These, he suggests, are all tools that reinforce the same system that limits real human freedom.
Tech worshippers who dream of merging with AI are not looked upon highly in this book. The author compares them to people wishing to be upgraded by the very machines that will probably wipe humanity out referring to Dune’s Butlerian Jihad, wherein humans destroy all sentient machines and return to a human-centred civilisation after realising that they just became tools in the hand of modern technologies. Another argument made in the book is how values like anti-violence, women’s empowerment, and careerism are often promoted not for ethical reasons, but because they make individuals more useful and dependent on the system. As a result, families weaken, communities erode, and centralised systems grow stronger.
Overall, this book isn’t politically correct, and it certainly isn’t optimistic. Whether you agree with the author or not, it’s a compelling critique that forces you to think about what freedom, purpose, and authenticity really mean in an increasingly controlled world.

[Gary Dingman · Rating 4 out of 5]

So Ted lived about 80 miles up highway 200 from where I live and he would get on the bus occasionally and would disembark across the street at the bus station for doctor's appointments and to conduct personal business. My wife worked with his doctor and her husband who was also a doctor. I never met or remember seeing Ted. Chad Haag's book is interesting, but from what I've read of Ted's own published writings it misses the mark to some extent.
Ted is our latter day John the Baptist preaching doom and destruction. A latter day prophet who sees the danger on the horizon, but has no faith in people's ability to evolve and adapt to meet the challenges that change presents. His work as a mathematics professor with boundary functions and his low opinion of people in general leads to hopelessness and a savior complex grounded in the long distant past. Call it magical thinking, but its my view that collective wisdom is the result of the bumbling well-intentioned efforts of the unenlightened and there is no shortage of experts intent on convincing us otherwise. It's the role of the expert's to disagree and make their pitch, and this includes Ted, but it's the "ignorant" who, thank God, hold the power. Besides there's no way to put the technological genie back in the bottle.

[Hank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Den här boken fungerar umärkt både som en intrudution till och djupdykning i Ted Kaczynskis (mer känd som "The Unabomber") artiklar och böcker. Författaren behandlar de mesta som Kaczynski har skrivit och kryddar med exempel, jämförelser med andra filosofer och observationer på ett lättläst och intressant sätt i en bok som undertecknad hade svårt att lägga ifrån sig.

[Charles Woodley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better idea than I had.

My plan was going to make condensed version of Ted Kaczynski's Manifesto, but this is better. Who knows I might still do it and publish a smaller version with very little to no commentary.

[Momen Bari · Rating 5 out of 5]

it was as an euphoria to my mind. Great writing.

[Joseph Hrigora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute masterpiece, inspiring. 10/10, I couldn't do better.

[Hrishaant · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES HAVE BEEN A DISASTER FOR THE HUMAN RACE

[Kæso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must read for anyone interested in thoroughly understand Kaczynski's thought. Typos appear somewhat regularly, however.