Kaczynski argues that the modern technological society satisfies the basic needs and goals of survival. Free market enthusiasts concur, seeing this as one of its great achievements. But Kaczynski sees this as a problem to be fixed and not the solution to hunger and disease that it appears to be.
Why? Because pursuing the goal of survival–hunting, foraging, fighting bears, what have you–makes humans feel fulfilled. When that goal is met for us we are left to pursue surrogate goals that are artificial and less fulfilling (perhaps goals like writing anarcho-primitivist manifestos and sending pipe bombs to strangers?). To quote Ted, it is “demeaning to fulfill one’s need for the power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an organization rather than through pursuit of real goals.”
In addition to feeling less fulfilled, we also feel less free. The fact that our primary desires are met for us upon the condition that we obey and become properly socialized means that control of our lives is placed into the hands of others–bosses, technocrats, and other organizers of society. In other words, individuals have less control over their own lives in a highly organized technological society but depend upon others. For Kaczynski, freedom is the “opportunity to go through the power process” without control or manipulation.
Kaczynski’s solution is to destroy the technological society–all of the things that require specialized knowledge and a division of labor–and go back to pre-industrial society, where humans can go through the “power process” to meet their natural goals and thus be more fulfilled. He’s a bit like Wendell Berry meets Friedrich Nietzsche, with a dash of Karl Marx thrown in.
But why stop at our previous social development? Why not go back further, to hunter gatherer societies, ape clans, sea dwellers, or amoebas? Many of us thrive in the technological society that might not have in earlier stages of human development. Maybe some people genuinely like to understand how computers work, to study viruses, or to read the Church Fathers as valuable activities for their own sake and are not all miserably attending to “surrogate activities”–this is one of the beautiful things about the division of labor, isn’t it? That I can focus on what I do well, you can focus on what you do well, and we are both doubly enriched for it through trade.
That being said, there’s nothing wrong with asking if we may be reaching our limits in some areas. Humans are adaptable, though not infinitely so. Perhaps, for instance, living our lives on social media for the “likes” could be stretching our elastic-like flexibility to the point of breaking. Maybe our dependence on the supply chain, as we’ve learned post-COVID, can begin to be a liability if too many links in that chain break and we aren’t able to take care of ourselves. And maybe our dependence on the financial system is likewise a double-edged sword, as efforts to freeze the assets of Canadian trucker protestors and ordinary Russians in the early months of 2022 also have shown us.
Maybe we should, as John Prine suggested in his song “Spanish Pipedream,” blow up our TVs and build homes in the country.
But we definitely shouldn’t blow up other people.