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Part I: Unabomber's Manifesto

INTRODUCTION

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the
human race.  They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us
who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have
made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led
to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical
suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.  The
continued development of technology will worsen the situation.  It will
certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater
damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social
disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical
suffering even in "advanced" countries.

2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. 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.  Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be
inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to
prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But
the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown
will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than
later.

4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system.  This
revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden or it may be
a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades.  We can't predict any of
that.  But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who
hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a
revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL
revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic
and technological basis of the present society.

5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments
that have grown out of the industrial-technological system.  Other such
developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether.  This does not mean
that we regard these other developments as unimportant.  For practical reasons
we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient
public attention or in which we have something new to say.  For example, since
there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have
written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild
nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM

6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One
of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is
leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an
introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.

7. But what is leftism?  During the first half of the 20th century leftism
could have been practically identified with socialism.  Today the movement is
fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist.  When we
speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists,
collectivists, "politically correct" types, feminists, gay and disability
activists, animal rights activists and the like.  But not everyone who is
associated with one of these movements is a leftist.  What we are trying to
get at in discussing leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a
psychological type, or rather a collection of related types.  Thus, what we
mean by "leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)

8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than
we would wish, but there doesn't seem to be any remedy for this.  All we are
trying to do is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psychological
tendencies that we believe are the main driving force of modern leftism. We by
no means claim to be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology.  Also,
our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only.  We leave open the
question of the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the
leftists of the 19th and early 20th century.

9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call
"feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization."  Feelings of inferiority
are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is
characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment
is highly influential.

FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY

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.

11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about
him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has
inferiority feelings or low self-esteem.  This tendency is pronounced among
minority rights advocates, whether or not they belong to the minority groups
whose rights they defend.  They are hypersensitive about the words used to
designate minorities.  The terms "negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or "chick"
for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no
derogatory connotation.  "Broad" and "chick" were merely the feminine
equivalents of "guy," "dude" or "fellow."  The negative connotations have been
attached to these terms by the activists themselves.  Some animal rights
advocates have gone so far as to reject the word "pet" and insist on its
replacement by "animal companion." Leftist anthropologists go to great lengths
to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be
interpreted as negative.  They want to replace the word "primitive" by
"nonliterate."  They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest
that any primitive culture is inferior to our own.  (We do not mean to imply
that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the
hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are
not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or
disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong
to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society.
Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have
secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are
heterosexual, white males from middle-class families.

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups
that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians),
repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior.  The leftists themselves feel
that these groups are inferior.  They would never admit it to themselves that
they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups
as inferior that they identify with their problems.  (We do not suggest that
women, Indians, etc., ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist
psychology).

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong as
capable as men.  Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as
strong and as capable as men.

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and
successful.  They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate
white males, they hate rationality.  The reasons that leftists give for hating
the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives.  They SAY
they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric
and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in
primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he
GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and
often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western
civilization.  Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist's real
motive for hating America and the West.  He hates America and the West because
they are strong and successful.

16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative", "enterprise,"
"optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary.  The
leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist.  He wants society to solve
everyone's needs for them, take care of them.  He is not the sort of person
who has an inner sense of confidence in his own ability to solve his own
problems and satisfy his own needs.  The leftist is antagonistic to the
concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to focus on
sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing
off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything
through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse oneself in
the sensations of the moment.

18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective
reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative.  It is true that
one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge
and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But
it is obvious that modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed
logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge.  They are
deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality.  They attack
these concepts because of their own psychological needs.  For one thing, their
attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful,
it satisfies the drive for power.  More importantly, the leftist hates science
and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e.,
successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e. failed, inferior).  The
leftist's feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any
classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as
failed or inferior.  This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the
concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests.  Leftists are
antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because
such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to
others.  Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an
individual's ability or lack of it.  Thus if a person is "inferior" it is not
his fault, but society's, because he has not been brought up properly.

19. The  leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a
ruthless competitor.  This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in
himself.  He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can
still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts
to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior.  But the leftist
is too far gone for that.  His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that
he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable.  Hence the
collectivism of the leftist.  He can feel strong only as a member of a large
organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics.  Leftists protest by
lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists
to abuse them, etc.  These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists
use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics.
Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by
moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the
oversocialized type.  But compassion  and moral principle cannot be the main
motives for leftist activism.  Hostility is too prominent a component of
leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.  Moreover, much leftist behavior
is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists
claim to be trying to help.  For example, if one believes that affirmative
action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative
action in hostile or dogmatic terms?  Obviously it would be more productive to
take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal
and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action
discriminates against them.  But leftist activists do not take such an
approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.  Helping black
people is not their real goal.  Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for
them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power.  In doing
so they actually harm black people, because the activists' hostile attitude
toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to
INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a
fuss.

23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
description of everyone who might be considered a leftist.  It is only a rough
indication of a general tendency of leftism.

OVERSOCIALIZATION

24.  Psychologists use the term "socialization" to designate the process by
which children are trained to think and act as society demands.  A person is
said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his
society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society.  It may seem
senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is
perceived as a rebel.  Nevertheless, the position can be defended.  Many
leftists are not such rebels as they seem.

25.  The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think,
feel and act in a completely moral way.  For example, we are not supposed to
hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other,
whether he admits it to himself or not.  Some people are so highly socialized
that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on
them.  In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive
themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings
and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin.  We use the term
"oversocialized" to describe such people.

26.  Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness,
defeatism, guilt, etc.  One of the most important means by which our society
socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that
is contrary to society's expectations.  If this is overdone, or if a
particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by
feeling ashamed of HIMSELF.  Moreover the thought and the behavior of the
oversocialized person are more restricted by society's expectations than are
those of the lightly socialized person.  The majority of people engage in a
significant amount of naughty behavior.  They lie, they commit petty thefts,
they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say
spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other
guy.  The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them
he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred.  The oversocialized
person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are
contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts.  And
socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to confirm
to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality.
Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his
life running on rails that society has laid down for him.  In many
oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness
that can be a severe hardship.  We suggest that oversocialization is among the
more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another.

27.  We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern left
is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of great importance in
determining the direction of modern leftism.  Leftists of the oversocialized
type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class.  Notice
that university intellectuals (3) constitute the most highly socialized
segment of our society and also the most left-wing segment.

28.  The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological
leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling.  But usually he is not strong
enough to rebel against the most basic values of society.  Generally speaking,
the goals of today's leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality.
On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its
own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle.
Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace
as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to
animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and
the duty of society to take care of the individual.  All these have been
deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its middle and upper
classes (4) for a long time.  These values are explicitly or implicitly
expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the
mainstream communications media and the educational system.  Leftists,
especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against
these principles but justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some
degree of truth) that society is not living up to these principles.

29.  Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized leftist
shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our society while
pretending to be in rebellion against it.  Many leftists push for affirmative
action, for moving black people into high-prestige jobs, for improved
education in black schools and more money for such schools; the way of life of
the black "underclass" they regard as a social disgrace.  They want to
integrate the black man into the system, make him a business executive, a
lawyer, a scientist just like upper-middle-class white people.  The leftists
will reply that the last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy
of the white man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture.
But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist?  It
can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to
black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black-style
church or mosque.  In other words, it can express itself only in superficial
matters.  In all ESSENTIAL respects more leftists of the oversocialized type
want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals.  They want
to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist,
spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as
good as white.  They want to make black fathers "responsible." they want black
gangs to become nonviolent, etc.  But these are exactly the values of the
industrial-technological system.  The system couldn't care less what kind of
music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what religion he
believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs
the status ladder, is a "responsible" parent, is nonviolent and so forth.  In
effect, however much he may deny it, the oversocialized leftist wants to
integrate the black man into the system and make him adopt its values.

30.  We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the oversocialized type,
NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our society.  Clearly they
sometimes do.  Some oversocialized leftists have gone so far as to rebel
against one of modern society's most important principles by engaging in
physical violence.  By their own account, violence is for them a form of
"liberation."  In other words, by committing violence they break through the
psychological restraints that have been trained into them.  Because they are
oversocialized these restraints have been more confining for them than for
others; hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their
rebellion in terms of mainstream values.  If they engage in violence they
claim to be fighting against racism or the like.

31.  We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing
thumb-nail sketch of leftist psychology.  The real situation is complex, and
anything like a complete description of it would take several volumes even if
the necessary data were available.  We claim only to have indicated very
roughly the two most important tendencies in the psychology of modern leftism.

32.  The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our society
as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and defeatism are not
restricted to the left.  Though they are especially noticeable in the left,
they are widespread in our society.  And today's society tries to socialize us
to a greater extent than any previous society.  We are even told by experts
how to eat, how to exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so
forth.

THE POWER PROCESS

33.  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 defin e and may not be
necessary for everyone.  We call it autonomy and will discuss it later
(paragraphs 42-44).

34.  Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants
just by wishing for it.  Such a man has power, but he will develop serious
psychological problems.  At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he
will become acutely bored and demoralized.  Eventually he may become
clinically depressed.  History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to
become decadent.  This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to
struggle to maintain their power.  But leisured, secure aristocraci es that
have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and
demoralized, even though they have power.  This shows that power is not
enough.  One must have goals toward which to exercise one's power.

35.  Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical necessities
of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are made necessary by
the climate.  But the leisured aristocrat obtains these things without effort.
Hence his boredom and demoralization.

36.  Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are
physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals is
compatible with survival.  Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life
results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

37.  Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being
needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable
rate of success in attaining his goals.

SURROGATE ACTIVITIES

38.  But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized.  For
example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent hedonism,
devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he became distinguished.
When people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy their physical needs
they often set up artificial goals for themselves.  In many cases they then
pursue these goals with the same energy and emotional involvement that they
otherwise would have put into the search for physical nec essities.  Thus the
aristocrats of the Roman Empire had their literary pretentions; many European
aristocrats a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in
hunting, though they certainly didn't need the meat; other aristocracies have
competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few
aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science.

39.  We use the term "surrogate activity" to designate an activity that is
directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in
order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of
the "fulfillment" that they get from pursuing the goal.  Here is a rule of
thumb for the identification of surrogate activities.  Given a person who
devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If
he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological
needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental
facilities in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived
because he did not attain goal X?  If the answer is no, then the person's
pursuit of a goal X is a surrogate activity.  Hirohito's studies in marine
biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain
that if Hirohito had had to spend his time working at interesting
non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of life, he would not
have felt deprived because he didn't know all about the anatomy and
life-cycles of marine animals.  On the other hand the pursuit of sex and love
(for example) is not a surrogate activity, because most people, even if their
existence were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed
their lives without ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite
sex.  (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs,
can be a surrogate activity.)

40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy
one's physical needs.  It is enough to go through a training program to
acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert very
modest effort needed to hold a job.  The only requirements are a moderate
amount of intelligence, and most of all, simple OBEDIENCE.  If one has those,
society takes care of one from cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass
that cannot take physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of
mainstream society.)  Thus it is not surprising that modern society is full of
surrogate activities.  These include scientific work, athletic achievement,
humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation, climbing the corporate
ladder, acquisition of money and material goods far beyond the point at which
they cease to give any additional physical satisfaction, and social activism
when it addresses issues that are not important for the activist personally,
as in the case of white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite
minorities. These are not always pure surrogate activities, since for many
people they may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some
goal to pursue.  Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive for
prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings, militant social
activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue them, these activities
are in large part surrogate activities.  For example, the majority of
scientists will probably agree that the "fulfillment" they get from their work
is more important than the money and prestige they earn.

41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less satisfying than
the pursuit of real goals ( that is, goals that people would want to attain
even if their need for the power process were already fulfilled).  One
indication of this is the fact that, in many or most cases, 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.
More importantly, in our society people do not satisfy their biological needs
AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as parts of an immense social machine.  In
contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their
surrogate activities. have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their
surrogate activities.

AUTONOMY

42.  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.  Yet most people
do not have to exert this initiative, direction and control as single
individuals.  It is usually enough to act as a member of a SMALL group.  Thus
if half a dozen people discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful
joint effort to attain that goal, their need for the power process will be
served.  But if they work under rigid orders handed down from above that leave
them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then  their need for the
power process will not be served. The same is true when decisions are made on
a collective bases if the group making the collective decision is so large
that the role of each individual is insignificant.

43.  It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for autonomy.
Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by identifying
themselves with some powerful organization to which they belong.  And then
there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely
physical sense of power(the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power
by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind
obedience to his superiors).

44. But for most people it is through the power process-having a goal, making
an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining the goal-that self-esteem, self-confidence
and a sense of power are acquired.  When one does not have adequate
opportunity to go throughout the power process the consequences are (depending
on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted) boredom,
demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression,
anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable
hedonism, abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc.

SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in modern
industrial society they are present on a massive scale.  We aren't the first
to mention that the world today seems to be going crazy.  This sort of thing
is not normal for human societies.  There is good reason to believe that
primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better
satisfied with his way of life than modern man is.  It is true that not all
was sweetness and light in primitive societies.  Abuse of women and common
among the Australian aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of
the American Indian tribes.  But is does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the
kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less
common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society.

46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to
the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions radically
different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways
that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed
while living under the earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have
already written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly experience
the power process as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which
modern society subjects people. But it is not the only one.  Before dealing
with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems we will
discuss some of the other sources.

47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are
excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive
rapidity of social change and the break-down of natural small-scale
communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe.

48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression.  The
degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from nature are
consequences of technological progress.  All pre-industrial societies were
predominantly rural.  The industrial Revolution vastly increased the size of
cities and the proportion of the population that lives in them, and modern
agricultural technology has made it possible for the Earth to support a far
denser population than it ever did before.  (Also, technology exacerbates the
effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people's
hands.  For example, a variety of noise-making devices: power mowers, radios,
motorcycles, etc.  If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who
want peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise.  If their use is restricted,
people who use the devices are frustrated by the regulations...  But if these
machines had never been invented there would have been no conflict and no
frustration generated by them.)

49.  For primitive societies the natural world (which usually changes only
slowly) provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of security.  In the
modern world it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other
way around, and modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological
change.  Thus there is no stable framework.

50. The conservatives are fools:  They whine about the decay of traditional
values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic
growth.  Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic
changes in the technology and the economy of a society with out causing rapid
changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid
changes inevitably break down traditional values.

51. The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown
of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups. The
disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that
modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations,
separating themselves from their communities.  Beyond that, a technological
society HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function
efficiently.  In modern society an individual's loyalty must be first to the
system and only secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the
internal loyalties of small-scale small-scale communities were stronger than
loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at
the expense of the system.

52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation executive appoints his
cousin, his friend or his co-religionist to a position rather than appointing
the person best qualified for the job.  He has permitted personal loyalty to
supersede his loyalty to the system, and that is "nepotism" or
"discrimination," both of which are terrible sins in modern society.  Would-be
industrial societies that have done a poor job of subordinating personal or
local loyalties to loyalty to the system are usually very inefficient. (Look
at Latin America.) Thus an advanced industrial society can tolerate only those
small-scale communities that are emasculated, tamed and made into tools of the
system.

53.  Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely
recognized as sources of social problems.  but we do not believe they are
enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today.

54.  A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their
inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems to the
same extent as modern man. In America today there still are uncrowded rural
areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban areas, though the
problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas.  Thus crowding does not
seem to be the decisive factor.

55. On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th century, the
mobility of the population probably broke down extended families and
small-scale social groups to at least the same extent as these are broken down
today.  In fact, many nuclear families lived by choice in such isolation,
having no neighbors within several miles, that they belonged to no community
at all, yet they do not seem to have developed problems as a result.

56. Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and deep.
A man might be born and raised in a log cabin, outside the reach of law and
order and fed largely on wild meat; and by the time he arrived at old age he
might be working at a regular job and living in an ordered community with
effective law enforcement.  This was a deeper change that that which typically
occurs in the life of a modern individual, yet it does not seem to have led to
psychological problems.  In fact, 19th century American society had an
optimistic and self-confident tone, quite unlike that of today's society.

57. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense (largely
justified) that  change is IMPOSED on him, whereas the 19th century
frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he created change
himself, by his own choice. Thus a pioneer  settled on a piece of land of his
own choosing and made it into a farm through his own effort.  In those days an
entire county might have only a couple of hundred inhabitants and was a far
more isolated and autonomous entity than a modern county is.  Hence the
pioneer farmer participated as a member of a relatively small group in the
creation of a new, ordered community.  One may well question whether the
creation of this community was an improvement, but at any rate it satisfied
the pioneer's need for the power process.

58.  It would be possible to give other examples of societies in which there
has been rapid change and/or lack of close community ties without he kind of
massive behavioral aberration that is seen in today's industrial society. We
contend that the most important cause of social and psychological problems in
modern society is the fact that people have insufficient opportunity to go
through the power process in a normal way.  We don't mean to say that modern
society is the only one in which the power process has been disrupted.
Probably most if not all civilized societies have interfered with the power '
process to a greater or lesser extent. But in modern industrial society the
problem has become particularly acute. Leftism, at least in its recent
(mid-to-late -20th century) form, is in part a symptom of deprivation with
respect to the power process.

DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY

59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that can be
satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied but only at the
cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately satisfied no
matter how much effort one makes.  The power process is the process of
satisfying the drives of the second group.  The more drives there are in the
third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism,
depression, etc.

60. In modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be pushed into
the first and third groups, and the second group tends to consist increasingly
of artificially created drives.

61. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into group 2:
They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort. But modern
society tends to guaranty the physical necessities to everyone in exchange
for only minimal effort, hence physical needs are pushed into group 1. (There
may be disagreement about whether the effort needed to hold a job is
"minimal"; but usually, in lower- to middle-level jobs, whatever effort is
required is merely that of obedience.  You sit or stand where you are told to
sit or stand and do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it.
Seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously, and in any case you have
hardly any autonomy in work, so that the need for the power process is not
well served.)

62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often remain in group 2 in
modern society, depending on the situation of the individual. But, except
for people who have a particularly strong drive for status, the effort
required to fulfill the social drives is insufficient to satisfy adequately
the need for the power process.

63.  So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group 2,
hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and marketing
techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things
that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of.  It requires serious
effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs, hence they fall
into group 2. (But see paragraphs 80-82.) Modern man must satisfy his need for
the power process largely through pursuit of the artificial needs created by
the advertising and marketing industry, and through surrogate activities.

64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial forms
of the power process are insufficient. A theme that appears repeatedly in the
writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the
sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society. (This
purposelessness is often called by other names such as "anomic" or
"middle-class vacuity.")  We suggest that the so-called "identity crisis" is
actually a search for a sense of purpose, often for commitment to a suitable
surrogate activity.  It may be that existentialism is in large part a response
to the purposelessness of modern life. Very widespread in modern society is
the search for "fulfillment."  But we think that for the majority of people an
activity whose main goal is fulfillment (that is, a surrogate activity) does
not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment.  In other words, it does not
fully satisfy the need for the power process.  (See paragraph 41.) That need
can be fully satisfied only through activities that have some external goal,
such as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc.

65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing the
status ladder or functioning as part of the system in some other way, most
people are not in a position to pursue their goals AUTONOMOUSLY.  Most workers
are someone else's employee as, as we pointed out in paragraph 61, must spend
their days doing what they are told to do in the way they are told to do it.
Even most people who are in business for themselves have only limited
autonomy.  It is a chronic complaint of small-business persons and
entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation.
Some of these regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part
government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely
complex society.  A large portion of small business today operates on the
franchise system.  It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago
that many of the franchise-granting companies require applicants for
franchises to take a personality test that is designed to EXCLUDE those who
have creativity and initiative, because such persons are not sufficiently
docile to go along obediently with the franchise system.  This excludes from
small business many of the people who most need autonomy.

66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them or TO
them than by virtue of what they do for themselves.  And what they do for
themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system.
Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides, the opportunities
must be exploited in accord with the rules and regulations, and
techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance
of success.

67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of
real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in pursuit of goals.  But it is also
disrupted because of those human drives that fall into group 3: the drives
that one cannot adequately satisfy no matter how much effort one makes. One of
these drives is the need for security. Our lives depend on decisions made by
other people; we have no control over these decisions and usually we do not
even know the people who make them. ("We live in a world in which relatively
few people - maybe 500 or 1,00 - make the important decisions" - Philip B.
Heymann of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York Times, April
21, 1995.)  Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear power
plant are properly maintained; on how much pesticide is allowed to get into
our food or how much pollution into our air; on how skillful (or incompetent)
our doctor is; whether we lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by
government economists or corporation executives; and so forth.  Most
individuals are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats
to more [than] a very limited extent.  The individual's search for security is
therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness.

68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure than
modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy; hence modern man
suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity that is normal for
human beings.  but psychological security does not closely correspond with
physical security.  What makes us FEEL secure is not so much objective
security as a sense of confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves.
Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in
self-defense or travel in search of food.  He has no certainty of success in
these efforts, but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten
him.  The modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things
against which  he is helpless; nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food,
environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by
large organizations, nation-wide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt
his way of life.

69. It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the things that
threaten him; disease for example.  But he can accept the risk of disease
stoically. It is part of the nature of things, it is no one's fault, unless is
the fault of some imaginary, impersonal demon. But threats to the modern
individual tend to be MAN-MADE.  They are not the results of chance but  are
IMPOSED on him by other persons whose decisions he, as an individual, is
unable to influence.  Consequently he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry.

70. Thus primitive man for the most part has his security in his own hands
(either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) whereas the security
of modern man is in the hands of persons or organizations that are too remote
or too large for him to be able personally to influence them.  So modern man's
drive for security tends to fall into groups 1 and 3; in some areas (food,
shelter, etc.) his security is assured at the cost of only trivial effort,
whereas in other areas he CANNOT attain security.  (The foregoing greatly
simplifies the real situation, but it does indicate in a rough, general way
how the condition of modern man differs from that of primitive man.)

71. People have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessary
frustrated in modern life, hence fall into group 3. One may become angry, but
modern society cannot permit fighting. In many situations it does not even
permit verbal aggression.  When going somewhere one may be in a hurry, or one
may be in a mood to travel slowly, but one generally has no choice but to move
with the flow of traffic and obey the traffic signals. One may want to do
one's work in a different way, but usually one can work only according to the
rules laid down by one's employer.  In many other ways as well, modern man is
strapped down by a network of rules and regulations (explicit or implicit)
that frustrate many of his impulses and thus interfere with the power process.
Most of these regulations cannot be disposed with, because the are necessary
for the functioning of industrial society.

72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters
that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do what
we please.  We can believe in any religion we like (as long as it does not
encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system).  We can go to bed with
anyone we like (as long as we practice "safe sex").  We can do anything we
like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the system
tends increasingly to regulate our behavior.

73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by the
government.  Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through
psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than the
government, or by the system as a whole.  Most large organizations use some
form of propaganda to manipulate public attitudes or behavior.
Propaganda is not limited to "commercials" and advertisements, and sometimes
it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it.
For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of
propaganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have
to go to work every day and follow our employer's orders. Legally there is
nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or
from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little
wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number
of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else's
employee.

74.  We suggest that modern man's obsession with longevity, and with
maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age, is a
symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power
process. The "mid-life crisis" also is such a symptom. So is the lack of
interest in having children that is fairly common in modern society but almost
unheard-of in primitive societies.

75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages.  The needs and
purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular reluctance
about passing on to the next stage.  A young man goes through the power
process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to
get meat that is necessary for food. (In young women the process is more
complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we won't discuss that here.)
This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no
reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family.
(In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because
they are too busy seeking some kind of "fulfillment."  We suggest that the
fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process -- with real
goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having
successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing
them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is
done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and
death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are d isturbed by the prospect
of death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain
their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to
unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical
powers to any use, have never gone through the power process using their
bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man, who has used his body
daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the
modern man, who has never had a practical use for his b ody beyond walking
from his car to his house. It is the man whose need for the power process has
been satisfied during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of that
life.

76. In response to the arguments of this section someone will say, "Society
must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through the power
process." For such people the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the
very fact that society gives it to them. What they need is to find or make
their own opportunities. As long as the system GIVES them their opportunities
it still has them on a leash. To attain autonomy they must get off that leash.

Part I: Unabomber's Manifesto

HOW SOME PEOPLE ADJUST

77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society suffers from
psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied with
society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people differ so
greatly in their response to modern society.

78. First, there doubtless are differences in the strength of the drive for
power. Individuals with a weak drive for power may have relatively little need
to go through the power process, or at least relatively little need for
autonomy in the power process. These are docile types who would have been
happy as plantation darkies in the Old South. (We don't mean to sneer at
"plantation darkies" of the Old South. To their credit, most of the slaves
were NOT content with their servitude. We do sneer at people wh o ARE content
with servitude.)

79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which they
satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who have an
unusually strong drive for social status  may spend their whole lives climbing
the status ladder without ever getting bored with that game.

80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing
techniques. Some people are so susceptible that, even if they make a great
deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the shiny new
toys that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So they always
feel hard-pressed financially even if their income is large, and their
cravings are frustrated.

81. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing
techniques. These are the people who aren't interested in money. Material
acquisition does not serve their need for the power process.

82. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing
techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for goods
and services, but only at the cost of serious effort (putting in overtime,
taking a second job, earning promotions, etc.) Thus material acquisition
serves their need for the power process. But it does not necessarily follow
that their need is fully satisfied. They may have insufficient autonomy in the
power process (their work may consist of following orders) and some of their
drives may be frustrated (e.g., security, aggression). (We are guilty of
oversimplification in paragraphs 80-82 because we have assumed that the desire
for material acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and
marketing industry. Of course it's not that simple.

83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying themselves
with a powerful organization or mass movement. An individual lacking goals or
power joins a movement or an organization, adopts its goals as his own, then
works toward these goals. When some of the goals are attained, the individual,
even though his personal efforts have played only an insignificant part in the
attainment of the goals, feels (through his identification with the movement
or organization) as if he had gone through t he power process. This phenomenon
was exploited by the fascists, nazis and communists. Our society uses it, too,
though less crudely. Example: Manuel Noriega was an irritant to the U.S.
(goal: punish Noriega). The U.S. invaded Panama (effort) and punished Noriega
(attainment of goal). The U.S. went through the power process and many
Americans, because of their identification with the U.S., experienced the
power process vicariously. Hence the widespread public app roval of the Panama
invasion; it gave people a sense of power. We see the same phenomenon in
armies, corporations, political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious
or ideological movements. In particular, leftist movements tend to attract
people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people
identification with a large organization or a mass movement does not fully
satisfy the need for power.

84. Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power process is
through surrogate activities. As we explained in paragraphs 38-40, a surrogate
activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual
pursues for the sake of the "fulfillment" that he gets from pursuing the goal,
not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no
practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a
hole or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our
society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp
collecting. Some people are more "other-directed" than others, and therefore
will more readily attack importance to a surrogate activity simply because the
people around them treat it as important or because society tells them it is
important. That is why some people get very serious about essentially trivial
activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or ar cane scholarly pursuits,
whereas others who are more cl ear-sighted never see these things as anything
but the surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach
enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that
way. It only remains to point out that in many cases a person's way of earning
a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a PURE surrogate activity, since
part of the motive for the activity is to gain the physical necessities and
(for some people) social status and the luxuries th at advertising makes them
want. But many people put into their work far more effort than is necessary to
earn whatever money and status they require, and this extra effort constitutes
a surrogate activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional
investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward
the continual development and perfecting of the system, with negative
consequences for individual freedom (see paragraph 131). Especially, for the
most creative scientists and engineers, work tends to be l argely a surrogate
activity. This point is so important that is deserves a separate discussion,
which we shall give in a moment (paragraphs 87-92).

85. In this section we have explained how many people in modern society do
satisfy their need for the power process to a greater or lesser extent. But we
think that for the majority of people the need for the power process is not
fully satisfied. In the first place, those who have an insatiable drive for
status, or who get firmly "hooked" or a surrogate activity, or who identify
strongly enough with a movement or organization to satisfy their need for
power in that way, are exceptional personalities. Others are not fully
satisfied with surrogate activities or by identification with an organization
(see paragraphs 41, 64). In the second place, too much control is imposed by
the system through explicit regulation or through socialization, which results
in a deficiency of autonomy, and in frustration due to the impossibility of
attaining certain goals and the necessity of restraining too many impulses.

86. But even if most people in industrial-technological society were well
satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed to that form of society, because
(among other reasons) we consider it demeaning to fulfill one's need for the
power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an
organization, rather then through pursuit of real goals.

THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS

87. Science and technology provide the most important examples of surrogate
activities. Some scientists claim that they are motivated by "curiosity," that
notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on highly specialized problem
that are not the object of any normal curiosity. For example, is an
astronomer, a mathematician or an entomologist curious about the properties of
isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is curious about such
a thing, and he is curious about it only because chemis try is his surrogate
activity. Is the chemist curious about the appropriate classification of a new
species of beetle? No. That question is of interest only to the entomologist,
and he is interested in it only because entomology is his surrogate activity.
If the chemist and the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to
obtain the physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their abilities
in an interesting way but in some nonscientific p ursuit, then they couldn't
giver a damn about isopropylt rimethylmethane or the classification of
beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for postgraduate education had led the
chemist to become an insurance broker instead of a chemist. In that case he
would have been very interested in insurance matters but would have cared
nothing about isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not normal to put
into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that
scientists put into their work. The "curiosity" explanation for the
scientists' motive just do esn't stand up.

88. The "benefit of humanity" explanation doesn't work any better. Some
scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race -
most of archaeology or comparative linguistics for example. Some other areas
of science present obviously dangerous possibilities. Yet scientists in these
areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as those who develop vaccines
or study air pollution. Consider the case of Dr. Edward Teller, who had an
obvious emotional involvement in promoting nuclear po wer plants. Did this
involvement stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn't Dr.
Teller get emotional about other "humanitarian" causes? If he was such a
humanitarian then why did he help to develop the H-bomb? As with many other
scientific achievements, it is very much open to question whether nuclear
power plants actually do benefit humanity. Does the cheap electricity outweigh
the accumulating waste and risk of accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side of
the question. Clearly his emotio nal involvement with nuclear power arose not
from a desire to "benefit humanity" but from a personal fulfillment he got
from his work and from seeing it put to practical use.

89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible rare exceptions,
their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit humanity but the
need to go through the power process: to have a goal (a scientific problem to
solve), to make an effort (research) and to attain the goal (solution of the
problem.) Science is a surrogate activity because scientists work mainly for
the fulfillment they get out of the work itself.

90. Of course, it's not that simple. Other motives do play a role for many
scientists. Money and status for example. Some scientists may be persons of
the type who have an insatiable drive for status (see paragraph 79) and this
may provide much of the motivation for their work. No doubt the majority of
scientists, like the majority of the general population, are more or less
susceptible to advertising and marketing techniques and need money to satisfy
their craving for goods and services. Thus science is no t a PURE surrogate
activity. But it is in large part a surrogate activity.

91. Also, science and technology constitute  a mass power movement, and many
scientists gratify their need for power through identification with this mass
movement (see paragraph 83).

92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the
human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs
of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives
who provide the funds for research.

THE NATURE OF FREEDOM

93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot be
reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the
sphere of human freedom. But because "freedom" is a word that can be
interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what kind of freedom we are
concerned with.

94. By "freedom" we mean the opportunity to go through the power process, with
real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate activities, and without
interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from any
large organization. Freedom means being in control (either as an individual or
as a member of a SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one's existence;
food, clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in
one's environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control other
people but the power to control the circumstances of one's own life. One does
not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power
over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power
may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere
permissiveness (see paragraph 72).

95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number
of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they
seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined
more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its
laws or its form of government. Most of the Indian nations of New England
were monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were
controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets the
impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than out society does.
In part this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the
ruler's will: There were no modern, well-organized police forces, no rapid
long-distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of
information about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy
to evade control.

96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for example that of freedom of
the press. We certainly don't mean to knock that right: it is very important
tool for limiting concentration of political power and for keeping those who
do have political power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their
part. But freedom of the press is of very little use to the average citizen as
an individual. The mass media are mostly under the control of large
organizations that are integrated into the system. Anyo ne who has a little
money can have something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in
some such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of
material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect. To make
an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most
individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for example. If we had never done
anything violent and had submitted the present writ ings to a publisher, they
probably would not have been a ccepted. If they had been accepted and
published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it's
more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober
essay. Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers
would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by
the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our
message before the public with some chance of making a lasting i mpression,
we've had to kill pe ople.

97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not serve to
guarantee much more than what could be called the bourgeois conception of
freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a "free" man is essentially an
element of a social machine and has only a certain set of prescribed and
delimited freedoms; freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the
social machine more than those of the individual. Thus the bourgeois's "free"
man has economic freedom because that promotes growth and progress; he has
freedom of the press because public criticism restrains misbehavior by
political leaders; he has a rights to a fair trial because imprisonment at the
whim of the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the
attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserved liberty only if they used
it to promote progress (progress as conceived by the bourgeois). Other
bourgeois thinkers have taken a similar view of freedom as a mere me ans to
collective ends. Chester C. Tan, "Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth
Century," page 202, explains the philosophy of the Kuomintang leader Hu
Han-min: "An individual is granted rights because he is a member of society
and his community life requires such rights. By community Hu meant the whole
society of the nation." And on page 259 Tan states that according to Carsum
Chang (Chang Chun-mai, head of the State Socialist Party in China) freedom had
to be used in the interest of the state and of the peo ple as a whole. But
what kind of freedom does one ha ve if one can use it only as someone else
prescribes? FC's conception of freedom is not that of Bolivar, Hu, Chang or
other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such theorists is that they have
made the development and application of social theories their surrogate
activity. Consequently the theories are designed to serve the needs of the
theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky enough to live
in a society on which the theories are imposed.

98. One more point to be made in this section: It should not be assumed that a
person has enough freedom just because he SAYS he has enough. Freedom is
restricted in part by psychological control of which people are unconscious,
and moreover many people's ideas of what constitutes freedom are governed more
by social convention than by their real needs. For example, it's likely that
many leftists of the oversocialized type would say that most people, including
themselves are socialized too little rather than too much, yet the
oversocialized leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his high level of
socialization.

SOME PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY

99. Think of history as being the sum of two components: an erratic component
that consists of unpredictable events that follow no discernible pattern, and
a regular component that consists of long-term historical trends. Here we are
concerned with the long-term trends.

100. FIRST PRINCIPLE. If a SMALL change is made that affects a long-term
historical trend, then the effect of that change will almost always be
transitory - the trend will soon revert to its original state. (Example: A
reform movement designed to clean up political corruption in a society rarely
has more than a short-term effect; sooner or later the reformers relax and
corruption creeps back in. The level of political corruption in a given
society tends to remain constant, or to change only slowly with the evolution
of the society. Normally, a political cleanup will be permanent only if
accompanied by widespread social changes; a SMALL change in the society won't
be enough.) If a small change in a long-term historical trend appears to be
permanent, it is only because the change acts in the direction in which the
trend is already moving, so that the trend is not altered but only pushed a
step ahead.

101. The first principle is almost a tautology. If a trend were not stable
with respect to small changes, it would wander at random rather than following
a definite direction; in other words it would not be a long-term trend at all.

102. SECOND PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is sufficiently large to alter
permanently a long-term historical trend, than it will alter the society as a
whole. In other words, a society is a system in which all parts are
interrelated, and you can't permanently change any important part without
change all the other parts as well.

103. THIRD PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is large enough to alter
permanently a long-term trend, then the consequences for the society as a
whole cannot be predicted in advance. (Unless various other societies have
passed through the same change and have all experienced the same consequences,
in which case one can predict on empirical grounds that another society that
passes through the same change will be like to experience similar
consequences.)

104. FOURTH PRINCIPLE. A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That
is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and
expect it to function as it was designed to.

105. The third and fourth principles result from the complexity of human
societies. A change in human behavior will affect the economy of a society and
its physical environment; the economy will affect the environment and vice
versa, and the changes in the economy and  the environment will affect human
behavior in complex, unpredictable ways; and so forth. The network of causes
and effects is far too complex to be untangled and understood.

106. FIFTH PRINCIPLE. People do not consciously and rationally choose the form
of their society. Societies develop through processes of social evolution that
are not under rational human control.

107. The fifth principle is a consequence of the other four.

108. To illustrate: By the first principle, generally speaking an attempt at
social reform either acts in the direction in which the society is developing
anyway (so that it merely accelerates a change that would have occurred in any
case) or else it only has a transitory effect, so that the society soon slips
back into its old groove. To make a lasting change in the direction of
development of any important aspect of a society, reform is insufficient and
revolution is required. (A revolution does not neces sarily involve an armed
uprising or the overthrow of a government.) By the second principle, a
revolution never changes only one aspect of a society; and by the third
principle changes occur that were never expected or desired by the
revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries or utopians set
up a new kind of society, it never works out as planned.

109. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample. The American
"Revolution" was not a revolution in our sense of the word, but a war of
independence followed by a rather far-reaching political reform. The Founding
Fathers did not change the direction of development of American society, nor
did they aspire to do so. They only freed the development of American society
from the retarding effect of British rule. Their political reform did not
change any basic trend, but only pushed American politi cal culture along its
natural direction of development. British society, of which American society
was an off-shoot, had been moving for a long time in the direction of
representative democracy. And prior to the War of Independence the Americans
were already practicing a significant degree of representative democracy in
the colonial assemblies. The political system established by the Constitution
was modeled on the British system and on the colonial as semblies. With major
alteration, to be sure - there is n o doubt that the Founding Fathers took a
very important step. But it was a step along the road the English-speaking
world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its colonies
that were populated predominantly by people of British descent ended up with
systems of representative democracy essentially similar to that of the United
States. If the Founding Fathers had lost their nerve and declined to sign the
Declaration of Independence, our way of life tod ay would not have been
significantly different. Maybe we would have had somewhat closer ties to
Britain, and would have had a Parliament and Prime Minister instead of a
Congress and President. No big deal. Thus the American Revolution provides not
a counterexample to our principles but a good illustration of them.

110. Still, one has to use common sense in applying the principles. They are
expressed in imprecise language that allows latitude for interpretation, and
exceptions to them can be found. So we present these principles not as
inviolable laws but as rules of thumb, or guides to thinking, that may provide
a partial antidote to naive ideas about the future of society. The principles
should be borne constantly in mind, and whenever one reaches a conclusion that
conflicts with them one should carefully reexamine one's thinking and retain
the conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so.

INDUSTRIAL-TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY CANNOT BE REFORMED

111. The foregoing principles help to show how hopelessly difficult it would
be to reform the industrial system in such a way as to prevent it from
progressively narrowing our sphere of freedom. There has been a consistent
tendency, going back at least to the Industrial Revolution for technology to
strengthen the system at a high cost in individual freedom and local autonomy.
Hence any change designed to protect freedom from technology would be contrary
to a fundamental trend in the development of our society.

Consequently, such a change either would be a transitory one -- soon swamped
by the tide of history -- or, if large enough to be permanent would alter the
nature of our whole society.  This by the first and second principles.
Moreover, since society would be altered in a way that could not be predicted
in advance (third principle) there would be great risk.  Changes large enough
to make a lasting difference in favor of freedom would not be initiated
because it would realized that they would gravely disrupt the system. So any
attempts at reform would be too timid to be effective. Even if changes large
enough to make a lasting difference were initiated, they would be retracted
when their disruptive effects became apparent.  Thus, permanent changes in
favor of freedom could be brought about only by persons prepared to accept
radical, dangerous and unpredictable alteration of the entire system.  In
other words, by revolutionaries, not reformers.

112. People anxious to rescue freedom without sacrificing the supposed
benefits of technology will suggest naive schemes for some new form of society
that would reconcile freedom with technology. Apart from the fact that people
who make suggestions seldom propose any practical means by which the new form
of society could be set up in the first place, it follows from the fourth
principle that even if the new form of society could be once established, it
either would collapse or would give results very differ ent from those
expected.

113. So even on very general grounds it seems highly improbably that any way
of changing society could be found that would reconcile freedom with modern
technology.  In the next few sections we will give more specific reasons for
concluding that freedom and technological progress are incompatible.

RESTRICTION OF FREEDOM IS UNAVOIDABLE IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

114. As explained in paragraph 65-67, 70-73, 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.  This is not
accidental or a result of the arbitrariness of arrogant bureaucrats.  It is
necessary and inevitable in any technologically advanced society.  The system
HAS TO regulate human behavior closely in order to function. At work, people
have to do what they are told to do, otherwise productio n would be thrown
into chaos. Bureaucracies HAVE TO be run according to rigid rules. To allow
any substantial personal discretion to lower-level bureaucrats would disrupt
the system and lead to charges of unfairness due to differences in the way
individual bureaucrats exercised their discretion. It is true that some
restrictions on our freedom could be eliminated, but GENERALLY SPEAKING the
regulation of our lives by large organizations is necessary f or the
functioning of industrial-technological society. T he result is a sense of
powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however, that
formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by psychological
tools that make us want to do what the system requires of us. (Propaganda,
educational techniques, "mental health" programs, etc.)

115. The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are increasingly
remote from the natural pattern of human behavior. For example, the system
needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It can't function without
them. So heavy pressure is put on children to excel in these fields. It isn't
natural for an adolescent human being to spend the bulk of his time sitting at
a desk absorbed in study. A normal adolescent wants to spend his time in
active contact with the real world. Among primitive peopl es the things that
children are trained to do are in natural harmony with natural human impulses.
Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active outdoor
pursuits -- just the sort of things that boys like. But in our society
children are pushed into studying technical subjects, which most do
grudgingly.

117. In any technologically advanced society the individual's fate MUST depend
on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A
technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous
communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large
numbers of people.  When a decision affects, say, a million people, then each
of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a one-millionth share in
making the decision. What usually happens in practice is that de cisions are
made by public officials or corporation executives, or by technical
specialists, but even when the public votes on a decision the number of voters
ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one individual to be significant.
Thus most individuals are unable to influence measurably the major
decisions that affect their lives.  Their is no conceivable way to remedy this
in a technologically advanced society. The system tries to "solve" this
problem by using propaganda to make people WANT the decisions that have been
made for them, but even if this "solution" were completely successful in
making people feel better, it would be demeaning.

118. Conservatives and some others advocate more "local autonomy." Local
communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes less and less
possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and dependent on
large-scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems,
the mass communications media, the modern health care system. Also operating
against autonomy is the fact that technology applied in one location often
affects people at other locations far away.  Thus pesticide or chemical use
near a creek may contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream,
and the greenhouse effect affects the whole world.

119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it
is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This
has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to
guide the technological system. It is the fault of technology, because the
system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity. Of course
the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally speaking it does this
only to the extent that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is
the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For
example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn't
function if everyone starved; it attends to people's psychological needs
whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn't function if too many
people became depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid,
practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their
behavior to the needs of the system. To o much waste accumulating? The
government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone
inundates us with a mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical
personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to
ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their
time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of
a job by technical advances and have to undergo "retraining, " no one asks
whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is
simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity and for
good reason: If human needs were put before technical necessity there would be
economic problems, unemployment, shortages or worse. The concept of "mental
health" in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual
behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing
signs of stress.

120. Efforts to make room for a sense of purpose and for autonomy within the
system are no better than a joke. For example, one company, instead of having
each of its employees assemble only one section of a catalogue, had each
assemble a whole catalogue, and this was supposed to give them a sense of
purpose and achievement. Some companies have tried to give their employees
more autonomy in their work, but for practical reasons this usually can be
done only to a very limited extent, and in any case employee s are never given
autonomy as to ultimate goals -- their "autonomous" efforts can never be
directed toward goals that they select personally, but only toward their
employer's goals, such as the survival and growth of the company. Any company
would soon go out of business if it permitted its employees to act otherwise.
Similarly, in any enterprise within a socialist system, workers must direct
their efforts toward the goals of the enterprise, other wise the enterprise
will not serve its purpose as part of the system. Once again, for purely
technical reasons it is not possible for most individuals or small groups to
have much autonomy in industrial society. Even the small-business owner
commonly has only limited autonomy. Apart from the necessity of government
regulation, he is restricted by the fact that he must fit into the economic
system and conform to its requirements. For instance, when someone develops a
new technology, the small-business person often has to use t hat technology
whether he wants to or not, in order to remain competitive.

THE 'BAD' PARTS OF TECHNOLOGY CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE 'GOOD' PARTS

121. A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in favor of
freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are
dependent on one another. You can't get rid of the "bad" parts of technology
and retain only the "good" parts. Take modern medicine, for example. Progress
in medical science depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology,
computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require
expensive, high-tech equipment that can be made available only by a
technologically progressive, economically rich society. Clearly you can't have
much progress in medicine without the whole technological system and
everything that goes with it.

122. Even if medical progress could be maintained without the rest of the
technological system, it would by itself bring certain evils. Suppose for
example that a cure for diabetes is discovered.  People with a genetic
tendency to diabetes will then be able to survive and reproduce as well as
anyone else. Natural selection against genes for diabetes will cease and such
genes will spread throughout the population. (This may be occurring to some
extent already, since diabetes, while not curable, can be contro lled through
the use of insulin.) The same thing will happen with many other diseases
susceptibility to which is affected by genetic degradation of the population.
The only solution will be some sort of eugenics program or extensive genetic
engineering of human beings, so that man in the future will no longer be a
creation of nature, or of chance, or of God (depending on your religious or
philosophical opinions), but a manufactured product.

123. If you think that big government interferes in your life too much NOW,
just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic constitution of
your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow the introduction of
genetic engineering of human beings, because the consequences of unregulated
genetic engineering would be disastrous.

124. The usual response to such concerns is to talk about "medical ethics."
But a code of ethics would not serve to protect freedom in the face of medical
progress; it would only make matters worse. A code of ethics applicable to
genetic engineering would be in effect a means of regulating the genetic
constitution of human beings. Somebody (probably the upper-middle class,
mostly) would decide that such and such applications of genetic engineering
were "ethical" and others were not, so that in effect they w ould be imposing
their own values on the genetic constitution of the population at large. Even
if a code of ethics were chosen on a completely democratic basis, the majority
would be imposing their own values on any minorities who might have a
different idea of what constituted an "ethical" use of genetic engineering.
The only code of ethics that would truly protect freedom would be one that
prohibited ANY genetic engineering of human beings, and you can be sure that
no such code will ever be applied in a t echnological society. No code that
reduced genetic engineering to a minor role could stand up for long, because
the temptation presented by the immense power of biotechnology would be
irresistible, especially since to the majority of people many of its
applications will seem obviously and unequivocally good (eliminating physical
and mental diseases, giving people the abilities they need to get along in
today's world). Inevitably, genetic engineering will be used exte nsively, but
only in ways consistent with the needs of the industrial-technological system.

TECHNOLOGY IS A MORE POWERFUL SOCIAL FORCE THAN THE ASPIRATION FOR FREEDOM

125. It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and
freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and
continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises. Imagine the
case of two neighbors, each of whom at the outset owns the same amount of
land, but one of whom is more powerful than the other. The powerful one
demands a piece of the other's land. The weak one refuses. The powerful one
says, "OK, let's compromise. Give me half of what I asked." The w eak one has
little choice but to give in. Some time later the powerful neighbor demands
another piece of land, again there is a compromise, and so forth. By forcing a
long series of compromises on the weaker man, the powerful one eventually gets
all of his land. So it goes in the conflict between technology and freedom.

126. Let us explain why technology is a more powerful social force than the
aspiration for freedom.

127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns
out to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later
on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go
where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic
regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor
vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man's freedom. They took no
freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have a n automobile if he
didn't want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel
much faster than the walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport
soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man's freedom of
locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate
their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one
cannot just go where one likes at one's own pace one' s movement is governed
by the flow of traffic and by var ious traffic laws. One is tied down by
various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration,
insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase
price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since
the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has
changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within
walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas an d
recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for
transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case
they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car.
Even the walker's freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he
continually has to stop and wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly
to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and
unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note the important poi nt we have
illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of
technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as
he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new
technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find
themselves FORCED to use it.)

128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of
freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be
desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance communications .
. . how could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of
the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society? It would
have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It
offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet as w e explained in
paragraphs 59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created
world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in the
hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation
executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an
individual has no power to influence. The same process will continue in
the future. Take genetic engineering, for example. Few peopl e will resist the
introduction of a genetic technique t hat eliminates a  hereditary disease It
does no apparent harm and prevents much suffering. Yet a large number of
genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an
engineered product rather than a free creation of chance (or of God, or
whatever, depending on your religious beliefs).

129 Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that,
within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only
one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a technical innovation has been
introduced, people usually become dependent on it, unless it is replaced by
some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as
individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole
becomes dependent on it. (Imagine what would happe n to the system today if
computers, for example, were eliminated.) Thus the system can move in only one
direction, toward greater technologization. Technology repeatedly forces
freedom to take a step back -- short of the overthrow of the whole
technological system.

130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many
different points at the same time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing
dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other
psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through
surveillance devices and computers, etc.) To hold back any ONE of the threats
to freedom would require a long different social struggle. Those who want to
protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of ne w attacks and the
rapidity with which they develop, hence they become pathetic and no longer
resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can
be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a whole; but that is
revolution not reform.

131. Technicians (we use this term in its broad sense to describe all those
who perform a specialized task that requires training) tend to be so involved
in their work (their surrogate activity) that when a conflict arises between
their technical work and freedom, they almost always decide in favor of their
technical work. This is obvious in the case of scientists, but it also appears
elsewhere: Educators, humanitarian groups, conservation organizations do not
hesitate to use propaganda or other psychologic al techniques to help them
achieve their laudable ends. Corporations and government agencies, when they
find it useful, do not hesitate to collect information about individuals
without regard to their privacy. Law enforcement agencies are frequently
inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects and often of
completely innocent persons, and they do whatever they can do legally (or
sometimes illegally) to restrict or circumvent those rights. Most of th ese
educators, government officials and law offi cers believe in freedom, privacy
and constitutional rights, but when these conflict with their work, they
usually feel that their work is more important.

132. It is well known that people generally work better and more persistently
when striving for a reward than when attempting to avoid a punishment or
negative outcome. Scientists and other technicians are motivated mainly by the
rewards they get through their work. But those who oppose technilogiccal
invasions of freedom are working to avoid a negative outcome, consequently
there are a few who work persistently and well at this discouraging task. If
reformers ever achieved a signal victory that seemed to s et up a solid
barrier against further erosion of freedom through technological progress,
most would tend to relax and turn their attention to more agreeable pursuits.
But the scientists would remain busy in their laboratories, and technology as
it progresses would find ways, in spite of any barriers, to exert more and
more control over individuals and make them always more dependent on the
system.

133. No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs or ethical
codes, can provide permanent protection against technology. History shows that
all social arrangements are transitory; they all change or break down
eventually. But technological advances are permanent within the context of a
given civilization. Suppose for example that it were possible to arrive at
some social arrangements that would prevent genetic engineering from being
applied to human beings, or prevent it from being applied in such a ways as to
threaten freedom and dignity. Still, the technology would remain waiting.
Sooner or later the social arrangement would break down. Probably sooner,
given that pace of change in our society. Then genetic engineering would begin
to invade our sphere of freedom, and this invasion would be irreversible
(short of a breakdown of technological civilization itself). Any illusions
about achieving anything permanent through social arrange ments should be
dispelled by what is currently happening with environmental legislation. A few
years ago it seemed that there were secure legal barriers preventing at least
SOME of the worst forms of environmental degradation. A change in the
political wind, and those barriers begin to crumble.

134. For all of the foregoing reasons, technology is a more powerful social
force than the aspiration for freedom. But this statement requires an
important qualification. It appears that during the next several decades the
industrial-technological system will be undergoing severe stresses due to
economic and environmental problems, and especially due to problems of human
behavior (alienation, rebellion, hostility, a variety of social and
psychological difficulties). We hope that the stresses through which t he
system is likely to pass will cause it to break down, or at least weaken it
sufficiently so that a revolution occurs and is successful, then at that
particular moment the aspiration for freedom will have proved more powerful
than technology.

135. In paragraph 125 we used an analogy of a weak neighbor who is left
destitute by a strong neighbor who takes all his land by forcing on him a
series of compromises. But suppose now that the strong neighbor gets sick, so
that he is unable to defend himself. The weak neighbor can force the strong
one to give him his land back, or he can kill him. If he lets the strong man
survive and only forces him to give his land back, he is a fool, because when
the strong man gets well he will again take all the land for himself. The only
sensible alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has
the chance. In the same way, while the industrial system is sick we must
destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it
will eventually wipe out all of our freedom.

SIMPLER SOCIAL PROBLEMS HAVE PROVED INTRACTABLE

136. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the system
in such a way as to protect freedom from technology, let him consider how
clumsily and for the most part unsuccessfully our society has dealt with other
social problems that are far more simple and straightforward. Among other
things, the system has failed to stop environmental degradation, political
corruption, drug trafficking or domestic abuse.

137. Take our environmental problems, for example. Here the conflict of values
is straightforward: economic expedience now versus saving some of our natural
resources for our grandchildren. But on this subject we get only a lot of
blather and obfuscation from the people who have power, and nothing like a
clear, consistent line of action, and we keep on piling up environmental
problems that our grandchildren will have to live with. Attempts to resolve
the environmental issue consist of struggles and comp romises between
different factions, some of which are ascendant at one moment, others at
another moment. The line of struggle changes with the shifting currents of
public opinion. This is not a rational process, or is it one that is likely to
lead to a timely and successful solution to the problem. Major social
problems, if they get "solved" at all, are rarely or never solved through any
rational, comprehensive plan. They just work themselves out through a process
in which various competing groups pursing t heir own usually short-term)
self-interest arrive (mainly by luck) at some more or less stable modus
vivendi. In fact, the principles we formulated in paragraphs 100-106 make it
seem doubtful that rational, long-term social planning can EVER be successful.

138. Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity
for solving even relatively straightforward social problems.  How then is it
going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling
freedom with technology?  Technology presents clear-cut material advantages,
whereas freedom is an abstraction that means different things to different
people, and its loss is easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk.

139.  And note this important difference: It is conceivable that our
environmental problems (for example) may some day be settled through a
rational, comprehensive plan, but if this happens it will be only because it
is in the long-term interest of the system to solve these problems.  But it is
NOT in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy.
On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior
under control to the greatest possible extent. Thus, while practical
considerations may eventually force the system to take a rational, prudent
approach to environmental problems, equally practical considerations will
force the system to regulate human behavior ever more closely (preferably by
indirect means that will disguise the encroachment on freedom.)  This isn't
just our opinion.  Eminent social scientists (e.g. James Q. Wilson) have
stressed the importance of "socializing" people more effectively.






Part I: Unabomber's Manifesto

REVOLUTION IS EASIER THAN REFORM

140.  We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be reformed
in a such a way as to reconcile freedom with technology.  The only way out is
to dispense with the industrial-technological system altogether. This implies
revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a radical and
fundamental change in the nature of society.

141.  People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much greater
change than reform does, it is more difficult to bring about than reform is.
Actually, under certain circumstances revolution is much easier than reform.
The reason is that a revolutionary movement can inspire an intensity of
commitment that a reform movement cannot inspire.  A reform movement merely
offers to solve a particular social problem A revolutionary movement offers to
solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world; it provides the
kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great
sacrifices. For this reasons it would be much easier to overthrow the whole
technological system than to put effective, permanent restraints on the
development of application of any one segment of technology, such as genetic
engineering, but under suitable conditions large numbers of people may devote
themselves passionately to a revolution against the industrial-technological
system. As we noted in paragraph 132, reformers seeking to limite certain
aspects of technology would be working to avoid a negative outcome. But
revolutionaries work to gain a powerful reward -- fulfillment of their
revolutionary vision -- and therefore work harder and more persistently than
reformers do.

142. Reform is always restrained by the fear of painful consequences if
changes go too far.  But once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a
society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake of
their revolution. This was clearly shown in the French and Russian
Revolutions. It may be that in such cases only a minority of the population is
really committed to the revolution, but this minority is sufficiently large
and active so that it becomes the dominant force in society. We will have more
to say about revolution in paragraphs 180-205.

CONTROL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

143. Since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to put
pressures on human beings of the sake of the functioning of the social
organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society to another.
Some of the pressures are physical (poor diet, excessive labor, environmental
pollution), some are psychological (noise, crowding, forcing humans behavior
into the mold that society requires). In the past, human nature has been
approximately constant, or at any rate has varied only within certain bounds.
Consequently, societies have been able to push people only up to certain
limits. When the limit of human endurance has been passed, things start going
rong: rebellion, or crime, or corruption, or evasion of work, or depression
and other mental problems, or an elevated death rate, or a declining birth
rate or something else, so that either the society breaks down, or its
functioning becomes too inefficient and it is (quickly or gradually, through
conquest, attrition or evolution) replaces by some more efficient form of
society.

144. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the development
of societies. People coud be pushed only so far and no farther. But today this
may be changing, because modern technology is developing way of modifying
human beings.

145. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that amke them
terribley unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness.
Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It
is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing
in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption fo the power
process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the
increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that
exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people
depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect,
antidepressants area a means of modifying an individual's internal state in
such a way as to enable him to toelrate social conditions that he would
otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that depression is often of purely
genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment
plays the predominant role.)

146. Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the methods of
controlling human behavior that modern society is developing. Let us look
at some of the other methods.

147. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video
cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places, computers are
used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals.
Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical
coercion (i.e., law enforcement). Then there are the methods of
propaganda, for which the mass communication media provide effective
vehicles. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections,
selling products, influencing public opinion.  The entertainment
industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly
even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence.
Entertainment provides modern man with an essential means of escape. While
absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety,
frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don't have
work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at
all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most
modern people must be contantly occupied or entertained, otherwise the get
"bored," i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.

148. Other techniques strike deeper that the foregoing. Education is no
longer a simple affair of paddling a kid's behind when he doesn't know his
lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them. It is becoming
a scientific technique for controlling the child's development. Sylvan
Learning Centers, for example, have had great success in motivating
children to study, and psychological techniques are also used with more or
less success in many conventional schools. "Parenting" techniques that are
taught to parents are designed to make children accept fundamental values
of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable. "Mental
health" programs, "intervention" techniques, psychotherapy and so forth are
ostensibly designed to benefit individuals, but in practice they usually
serve as methods for inducing individuals to think and behave as the system
requires. (There is no contradiction here; an individual whose attitudes or
behavior bring him into conflict with the system is up against a force that
is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from, hence he is likely to
suffer from stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier if he
thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense the system is
acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into
conformity.) Child abuse in its gross and obvious forms is disapproved in
most if not all cultures. Tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no
reason at all is something that appalls almost everyone. But many
psychologists interpret the concept of abuse much more broadly. Is
spanking, when used as part of a rational and consistent system of
discipline, a form of abuse? The question will ultimately be decided by
whether or not spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit
in well with the existing system of society. In practice, the word "abuse"
tends to be interpreted to include any method of child-rearing that
produces behavior inconvenient for the system. Thus, when they go beyond
the prevention of obvious, senseless cruelty, programs for preventing
"child abuse" are directed toward the control of human behavior of the
system.

149. Presumably, research will continue to increas the effectiveness of
psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we think it is
unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be sufficient to adjust
human beings to the kind of society that technology is creating. Biological
methods probably will have to be used. We have already mentiond the use of
drugs in this connection. Neurology may provide other avenues of modifying
the human mind. Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to
occur in the form of "gene therapy," and there is no reason to assume the
such methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of the
body that affect mental funtioning.

150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely
to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human
behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And a
considerable proportion of the system's economic and environmental problems
result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self-esteem,
depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won't study, youth gangs,
illegal drug use, rape, child abuse , other crimes, unsafe sex, teen
pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic
rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (i.e., pro-choice vs. pro-life),
political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate
groups. All these threaten the very survival of the system. The system will
be FORCED to use every practical means of controlling human behavior.

151. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of
mere chance. It can only be a result fo the conditions of life that the
system imposes on people. (We have argued that the most important of these
conditions is disruption of the power process.) If the systems succeeds in
imposing sufficient control over human behavior to assure itw own survival,
a new watershed in human history will have passed. Whereas formerly the
limits of human endurance have imposed limits on the development of
societies (as we explained in paragraphs 143, 144),
industrial-technological society will be able to pass those limits by
modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological
methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit
the needs of human beings. Instead, human being will be adjusted to suit the
needs of the system.

152. Generally speaking, technological control over human behavior will
probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even through a
conscious desire to restrict human freedom. Each new step in the
assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a rational
response to a problem that faces society, such as curing alcoholism,
reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to study science and
engineering. In many cases, there will be humanitarian justification. For
example, when a psychiatrist prescribes an anti-depressant for a depressed
patient, he is clearly doing that individual a favor. It would be inhumane
to withhold the drug from someone who needs it. When parents send their
children to Sylvan Learning Centers to have them manipulated into becoming
enthusiastic about their studies, they do so from concern for their
children's welfare. It may be that some of these parents wish that one
didn't have to have specialized training to get a job and that their kid
didn't have to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But what can
they do? They can't change society, and their child may be unemployable if
he doesn't have certain skills. So they send him to Sylvan.

153. Thus control over human behavior will be introduced not by a
calculated decision of the authorities but through a process of social
evolution (RAPID evolution, however). The process will be impossible to
resist, because each advance, considered by itself, will appear to be
beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will appear
to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will
seem to be less than that which would result from not making it (see
paragraph 127). Propaganda for example is used for many good purposes, such
as discouraging child abuse or race hatred. Sex education is obviously
useful, yet the effect of sex education (to the extent that it is
successful) is to take the shaping of sexual attitudes away from the family
and put it into the hands of the state as represented by the public school
system.

154. Suppose a biological trait is discovered that increases the likelihood
that a child will grow up to be a criminal and suppose some sort of gene
therapy can remove this trait. Of course most parents whose children
possess the trait will have them undergo the therapy. It would be inhumane
to do otherwise, since the child would probably have a miserable life if he
grew up to be a criminal. But many or most primitive societies have a low
crime rate in comparison with that of our society, even though they have
neither high-tech methods of child-rearing nor harsh systems of punishment.
Since there is no reason to suppose that more modern men than primitive men
have innate predatory tendencies, the high crime rate of our society must
be due to the pressures that modern conditions put on people, to which many
cannot or will not adjust. Thus a treatment designed to remove potential
criminal tendencies is at least in part a way of re-engineering people so
that they suit the requirements of the system.

155. Our society tends to regard as a "sickness" any mode of thought or
behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because
when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the
individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an
individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a "cure" for a "sickness"
and therefore as good.

156. In paragraph 127 we pointed out that if the use of a new item of
technology is INITIALLY optional, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional,
because the new technology tends to change society in such a way that it
becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using
that technology. This applies also to the technology of human behavior. In
a world in which most children are put through a program to make them
enthusiastic about studying, a parent will almost be forced to put his kid
through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up
to be, comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or
suppose a biological treatment is discovered that, without undesirable
side-effects, will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so
many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of people choose to
undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be
reduced, so that it will be possible for the system to increase the
stress-producing pressures. In fact, something like this seems to have
happened already with one of our society's most important psychological
tools for enabling people to reduce (or at least temporarily escape from)
stress, namely, mass entertainment (see paragraph 147). Our use of mass
entertainment is "optional": No law requires us to watch television, listen
to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape
and stress-reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone
complains about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches
it. A few have kicked the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could
get along today without using ANY form of mass entertainment. (Yet until
quite recently in human history most people got along very nicely with no
other entertainment than that which each local community created for
itself.) Without the entertainment industry the system probably would not
have been able to get away with putting as much stress-producing pressure
on us as it does.

157. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that
technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control
over human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that
human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis. As
experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger
and fear can be turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate
parts of the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of the
brain or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation.
Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by drugs. There may or may
not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one it clearly is less
powerful that the biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were
not the case then researchers would not be able so easily to manipulate
human feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents.

158. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes
inserted in their heads so that they could be controlled by the
authorities. But the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so open to
biological intervention shows that the problem of controlling human
behavior is mainly a technical problem; a problem of neurons, hormones and
complex molecules; the kind of problem that is accessible to scientific
attack. Given the outstanding record of our society in solving technical
problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great advances will be made in
the control of human behavior.

159. Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological
control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made to
introduce such control all at once. But since technological control will be
introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no
rational and effective public resistance. (See paragraphs 127,132, 153.)

160. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point
out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial
Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life, and it
is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the
human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his
environment and way of life have been.

HUMAN RACE AT A CROSSROADS

161. But we have gotten ahead of our story. It is one thing to develop in
the laboratory a series of psychological or biological techniques for
manipulating human behavior and quite another to integrate these techniques
into a functioning social system. The latter problem is the more difficult
of the two. For example, while the techniques of educational psychology
doubtless work quite well in the "lab schools" where they are developed, it
is not necessarily easy to apply them effectively throughout our
educational system. We all know what many of our schools are like. The
teachers are too busy taking knives and guns away from the kids to subject
them to the latest techniques for making them into computer nerds. Thus, in
spite of all its technical advances relating to human behavior the system
to date has not been impressively successful in controlling human beings.
The people whose behavior is fairly well under the control of the system
are those of the type that might be called "bourgeois." But there are
growing numbers of people who in one way or another are rebels against the
system: welfare leaches, youth gangs cultists, satanists, nazis, radical
environmentalists, militiamen, etc..

162. The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to overcome
certain problems that threaten its survival, among which the problems of
human behavior are the most important. If the system succeeds in acquiring
sufficient control over human behavior quickly enough, it will probably
survive. Otherwise it will break down. We think the issue will most likely
be resolved within the next several decades, say 40  to 100  years.

163. Suppose the system survives the crisis of the next several decades. By
that time it will have to have solved, or at least brought under control,
the principal problems that confront it, in particular that of
"socializing" human beings; that is, making people sufficiently docile so
that their behavior no longer threatens the system. That being
accomplished, it does not appear that there would be any further obstacle
to the development of technology, and it would presumably advance toward
its logical conclusion, which is complete control over everything on Earth,
including human beings and all other important organisms. The system may
become a unitary, monolithic organization, or it may be more or less
fragmented and consist of a number of organizations coexisting in a
relationship that includes elements of both cooperation and competition,
just as today the government, the corporations and other large
organizations both cooperate and compete with one another. Human freedom
mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be
impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an
arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating
human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion.
Only a small number of people will have any real power, and even these
probably will have only very limited freedom, because their behavior too
will be regulated; just as today our politicians and corporation executives
can retain their positions of power only as long as their behavior remains
within certain fairly narrow limits.

164. Don't imagine that the systems will stop developing further techniques
for controlling human beings and nature once the crisis of the next few
decades is over and increasing control is no longer necessary for the
system's survival. On the contrary, once the hard times are over the system
will increase its control over people and nature more rapidly, because it
will no longer be hampered by difficulties of the kind that it is currently
experiencing. Survival is not the principal motive for extending control.
As we explained in paragraphs 87-90, technicians and scientists carry on
their work largely as a surrogate activity; that is, they satisfy their
need for power by solving technical problems. They will continue to do this
with unabated enthusiasm, and among the most interesting and challenging
problems for them to solve will be those of understanding the human body
and mind and intervening in their development. For the "good of humanity,"
of course.

165. But suppose on the other hand that the stresses of the coming decades
prove to be too much for the system. If the system breaks down there may be
a period of chaos, a "time of troubles" such as those that history has
recorded: at various epochs in the past. It is impossible to predict what
would emerge from such a time of troubles, but at any rate the human race
would be given a new chance. The greatest danger is that industrial society
may begin to reconstitute itself within the first few years after the
breakdown. Certainly there will be many people (power-hungry types
especially) who will be anxious to get the factories running again.

166. Therefore two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which the
industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must work to
heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the
likelihood that it will break down or be weakened sufficiently so that a
revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to develop
and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial
society if and when the system becomes sufficiently weakened. And such an
ideology will help to assure that, if and when industrial society breaks
down, its remnants will be smashed beyond repair, so that the system cannot
be reconstituted. The factories should be destroyed, technical books
burned, etc.

HUMAN SUFFERING

167. The industrial system will not break down purely as a result of
revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to revolutionary attack unless
its own internal problems of development lead it into very serious
difficulties. So if the system breaks down it will do so either spontaneously,
or through a process that is in part spontaneous but helped along by
revolutionaries. If the breakdown is sudden, many people will die, since the
world's population has become so overblown that it cannot even feed itself any
longer without advanced technology. Even if the breakdown is gradual enough so
that reduction of the population can occur more through lowering of the birth
rate than through elevation of the death rate, the process of
de-industrialization probably will be very chaotic and involve much suffering.
It is naive to think it likely that technology can be phased out in a smoothly
managed orderly way, especially since the technophiles will fight stubbornly
at every step. Is it therefore cruel to work for the breakdown of the system?
Maybe, but maybe not. In the first place, revolutionaries will not be able to
break the system down unless it is already in deep trouble so that there would
be a good chance of its eventually breaking down by itself anyway; and the
bigger the system grows, the more disastrous the consequences of its breakdown
will be; so it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening the onset of the
breakdown will be reducing the extent of the disaster.

168. 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. Besides,
we all have to die some time, and it may be better to die fighting for
survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but empty and purposeless
life.

169.  In the third place, it is not all certain that the survival of the
system will lead to less suffering than the breakdown of the system would.
The system has already caused, and is continuing to cause , immense suffering
all over the world.  Ancient cultures, that for hundreds of years gave people
a satisfactory relationship with each other and their environment, have been
shattered by contact with industrial society, and the result has been a whole
catalogue of economic, environmental, social and psy chological problems.  One
of the effects of the intrusion of industrial society has been that over much
of the world traditional controls on population have been thrown out of
balance.  Hence the population explosion, with all that it implies.  Then
there is the psychological suffering that is widespread throughout the
supposedly fortunate countries of the West (see paragraphs 44, 45).  No one
knows what will happen as a result of ozone depletion, the gre enhouse effect
and other environmental problems that cannot yet be foreseen.  And, as nuclear
proliferation has shown, new technology cannot be kept out of the hands of
dictators and irresponsible Third World nations.  Would you like to speculate
abut what Iraq or North Korea will do with genetic engineering?

170.  "Oh!" say the technophiles, "Science is going to fix all that!  We will
conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody healthy and
happy!"  Yeah, sure.  That's what they said 200 years ago.  The Industrial
Revolution was supposed to eliminate poverty, make everybody happy, etc.  The
actual result has been quite different.  The technophiles are hopelessly naive
(or self-deceiving) in their understanding of social problems.  They are
unaware of (or choose to ignore) the fact that when large changes, even
seemingly beneficial ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long
sequence of other changes, most of which are impossible to predict (paragraph
103).  The result is disruption of the society.  So it is very probable that
in their attempt to end poverty and disease, engineer docile, happy
personalities and so forth, the technophiles will  create social systems that
are terribly troubled, even more so that the present one.  F or example, the
scientists boast that they will end famine by creating new, genetically
engineered food plants.  But this will allow the human population to keep
expanding indefinitely, and it is well known that crowding leads to increased
stress and aggression.  This is merely one example of the PREDICTABLE problems
that will arise.  We emphasize that, as past experience has shown, technical
progress will lead to other new problems for society far more rapidly that it
has been solving old ones.  Thus it will take a long d ifficult period of
trial and error f or the technophiles to work the bugs out of their Brave New
World (if they ever do).  In the meantime there will be great suffering.  So
it is not all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve less
suffering than the breakdown of that society would.  Technology has gotten the
human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape.

THE FUTURE

171.  But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several
decade and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the system, so that
it functions smoothly.  What kind of system will it be?  We will consider
several possibilities.

172.  First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in
developing intelligent machines that can do all things better that human
beings can do them.  In that case presumably all work will be done by vast,
highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary.
Either of two cases might occur.  The machines might be permitted to make all
of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the
machines might be retained.

173.  If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't
make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how
such machines might behave.  We only point out that the fate of the human race
would be at the mercy of the machines.  It might be argued that the human race
would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines.  But
we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power
over to the machines nor that the machines w ould willfully seize power.  What
we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into
a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical
choice but to accept all of the machines decisions.  As society and the
problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more
and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decision for
them, simply because machine-made decisions will b ring better result than
man-made ones.  Event ually 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.

174.  On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines
may be retained.  In that case the average man may have control over certain
private machines of his own, such as his car of his personal computer, but
control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite --
just as it is today, but with two difference.  Due to improved techniques the
elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will
no longer be necessary the masses will be superflu ous, a useless burden on
the system.  If the elite is ruthless the may simply decide to exterminate the
mass of humanity.  If they are humane they may use propaganda or other
psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass
of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite.  Or, if the elite
consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good
shepherds to the rest of the human race.  They will s ee to it that everyone's
physical needs are satisfi ed, that all children are raised under
psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to
keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes
"treatment" to cure his "problem."  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.  These engineered human being s may
be happy in such a so ciety, but they most certainly will not be free.  They
will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

175.  But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in
developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary.
Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that
there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of
ability.  (We see this happening already.  There are many people who find it
difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological
reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessa ry to make
themselves useful in the present system.)  On those who are employed,
ever-increasing demands will be placed;  They will need more and m ore
training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable,
conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a
giant organism.  Their tasks will be increasingly specialized so that their
work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated
on one tiny slice of reality.  The system will have to use any means that I
can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to
have the abilities that the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for
power into some specialized task.  But the statement that the people of such a
society will have to be docile may require qualification.  The society may
find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing
competitiveness into channels that serve that needs o f the system.  We can
imagine into channels that serve the needs of the system.  We can imagine a
future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige
an power.  But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where
the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163).  Very repellent is a
society in which a person can satisfy his needs for power only by pushing
large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR
opportunity for power.

176.  Once can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of
the possibilities that we have just discussed.  For instance, it may be that
machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical
importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being given relatively
unimportant work.  It has been suggested, for example, that a great
development of the service of industries might provide work for human beings.
Thus people will would spend their time shinning each others s hoes, driving
each other around inn taxicab, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on
each other's tables, etc.  This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for
the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling
lives in such pointless busy-work.  They would seek other, dangerous outlets
(drugs, , crime, "cults," hate groups) unless they were biological or
psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.

177.  Needless to day, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the
possibilities.  They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us mots
likely.  But wee can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more
palatable that the ones we've just described.  It is overwhelmingly probable
that if the industrial-technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years,
it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics:
Individuals (at least those of the "bourgeois" type, who are in tegrated into
the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more
dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more "socialized"
that ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent
(possibly to a very great extent) will be those that are engineered into them
rather than being the results of chance (or of God's will, or whatever);  and
whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for
scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists
(hence it will no longer be truly wild).  In the long run (say a few centuries
from now) it is it is likely that neither the human race nor any other
important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once you start
modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at
any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until
man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.

178.  Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating
for human begins a new physical and social environment radically different
from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the
human race physically and psychological.  If man is not adjust to this new
environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it
through a long an painful process of natural selection.  The former is far
more likely that the latter.

179.  It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the
consequences.

STRATEGY

180.  The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the
unknown.  Many people understand something of what technological progress is
doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is
inevitable.  But we (FC) don't think it is inevitable.  We think it can be
stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping
it.

181.  As we stated in paragraph 166, the two main tasks for the present are to
promote social stress and instability in industrial society and to develop and
propagate an ideology that opposes technology  and the industrial system.
When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution
against technology may be possible.  The pattern would be similar to that of
the French and Russian Revolutions.  French society and Russian society, for
several decades prior to their respective revolutions, showed increasing
signs of stress and weakness.  Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that
offered a new world view that was quite different from the old one.  In the
Russian case, revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old
order.  Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress
(by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia) it was swept
away by revolution.  What we propose in something along the same lines.

182.  It will be objected that the French and Russian Revolutions were
failures.  But most revolutions have two goals.  One is to destroy an old form
of society and the other is to set up the new form of society envisioned by
the revolutionaries.  The French and Russian revolutionaries failed
(fortunately!) to create the new kind of society of which they dreamed, but
they were quite successful in destroying the existing form of society.

183.  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 individu al 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).

184.  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.  It is not necessary for the sake
of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any ne w kind of social order.
Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long
before any human society, and for countless centuries many different kinds of
human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amount of
damage.  Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society
on nature become really devastating.  To relieve the pressure on nature it is
not necessary to create a special kind of soci al system, it is only necessary
to get rid of industr ial society.  Granted, this will not solve all problems.
Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and  it will
take a very long time for the scars to heal.  Besides, even pre-industrial
societies can do significant damage to nature.  Nevertheless, getting rid of
industrial society will accomplish a great deal.  It will relieve the worst of
the pressure on nature so that the scars can begin to heal.  It will remove
the capacity of organized society to keep increa sing its control over nature
(including human nature).  Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise
of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will live close to
nature, because in the absence of advanced technology there is not other way
that people CAN live.  To feed themselves they must be peasants or  herdsmen
or fishermen or hunter, etc.,  And, generally speaking, local autonomy should
tend to increase, because lack of advanced tech nology and rapid
communications will limit the capacity of governments or other large
organizations to control local communities.

185.  As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society --
well, you can't eat your cake and have it too.  To gain one thing you have to
sacrifice another.

186.  Most people hate psychological conflict. For this reason they avoid
doing any serious thinking about difficult social issues, and they like to
have such issues presented to them in simple, black-and-white terms: THIS is
all good and THAT is all bad. The revolutionary ideology should therefore be
developed on two levels.

187.  On the more sophisticated level the ideology should address itself to
people who are intelligent, thoughtful and rational. The object should be to
create a core of people who will be opposed to the industrial system on a
rational, thought-out basis, with full appreciation of the problems and
ambiguities involved, and of the price that has to be paid for getting rid of
the system. It is particularly important to attract people of this type, as
they are capable people and will be instrumental in influencing others. These
people should be addressed on as rational a level as possible. Facts should
never intentionally be distorted and intemperate language should be avoided.
This does not mean that no appeal can be made to the emotions, but in making
such appeal care should be taken to avoid misrepresenting the truth or doing
anything else that would destroy the intellectual respectability of the
ideology.

188.  On a second level, the ideology should be propagated in a simplified
form that will enable the unthinking majority to see the conflict of
technology vs. nature in unambiguous terms. But even on this second level the
ideology should not be expressed in language that is so cheap, intemperate or
irrational that it alienates people of the thoughtful and rational type.
Cheap, intemperate propaganda sometimes achieves impressive short-term gains,
but it will be more advantageous in the long run to keep the loyalty of a
small number of intelligently committed people than to arouse the passions of
an unthinking, fickle mob who will change their attitude as soon as someone
comes along with a better propaganda gimmick. However, propaganda of the
rabble-rousing type may be necessary when the system is nearing the point of
collapse and there is a final struggle between rival ideologies to determine
which will become dominant when the old world-view goes under.

189.  Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not expect to
have a majority of people on their side. History is made by active, determined
minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea
of what it really wants. Until the time comes for the final push toward
revolution, the task of revolutionaries will be less to win the shallow
support of the majority than to build a small core of deeply committed people.
As for the majority, it will be enough to make the m aware of the existence of
the new ideology and remind them of it frequently; though of course it will be
desirable to get majority support to the extent that this can be done without
weakening the core of seriously committed people.

190. Any kind of social conflict helps to destabilize the system, but one
should be careful about what kind of conflict one encourages. The line of
conflict should be drawn between the mass of the people and the power-holding
elite of industrial society (politicians, scientists, upper-level business
executives, government officials, etc..). It should NOT be drawn between the
revolutionaries and the mass of the people. For example, it would be bad
strategy for the revolutionaries to condemn Americans for the ir habits of
consumption. Instead, the average American should be portrayed as a victim of
the advertising and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a
lot of junk that he doesn't need and that is very poor compensation for his
lost freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts. It is merely a
matter of attitude whether you blame the advertising industry for manipulating
the public or blame the public for allowing itse lf to be manipulated. As a
matter of strategy one should gener ally avoid blaming the public.

191.  One should think twice before encouraging any other social conflict than
that between the power-holding elite (which wields technology) and the general
public (over which technology exerts its power). For one thing, other
conflicts tend to distract attention from the important conflicts (between
power-elite and ordinary people, between technology and nature); for another
thing, other conflicts may actually tend to encourage technologization,
because each side in such a conflict wants to use technologi cal power to gain
advantages over its adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between
nations. It also appears in ethnic conflicts within nations. For example, in
America many black leaders are anxious to gain power for African Americans by
placing back individuals in the technological power-elite. They want there to
be many black government officials, scientists, corporation executives and so
forth. In this way they are helping to absorb the African American subculture
into the technological system. G enerally speaking, one should encourage only
those social conflicts that can be fitted into the framework of the conflicts
of power--elite vs. ordinary people, technology vs nature.

192.  But the way to discourage ethnic conflict is NOT through militant
advocacy of minority rights (see paragraphs 21, 29). Instead, the
revolutionaries should emphasize that although minorities do suffer more or
less disadvantage, this disadvantage is of peripheral significance. Our real
enemy is the industrial-technological system, and in the struggle against the
system, ethnic distinctions are of no importance.

193.  The kind of revolution we have in mind will not necessarily involve an
armed uprising against any government. It may or may not involve physical
violence, but it will not be a POLITICAL revolution. Its focus will be on
technology and economics, not politics.

194.  Probably the revolutionaries should even AVOID assuming political power,
whether by legal or illegal means, until the industrial system is stressed to
the danger point and has proved itself to be a failure in the eyes of most
people. Suppose for example that some "green" party should win control of the
United States Congress in an election. In order to avoid betraying or watering
down their own ideology they would have to take vigorous measures to turn
economic growth into economic shrinkage. To the a verage man the results would
appear disastrous: There would be massive unemployment, shortages of
commodities, etc. Even if the grosser ill effects could be avoided through
superhumanly skillful management, still people would have to begin giving up
the luxuries to which they have become addicted. Dissatisfaction would grow,
the "green" party would be voted out of of fice and the revolutionaries would
have suffered a severe setback. For this reason the revol utionaries should
not try to acquire political pow er until the system has gotten itself into
such a mess that any hardships will be seen as resulting from the failures of
the industrial system itself and not from the policies of the revolutionaries.
The revolution against technology will probably have to be a revolution by
outsiders, a revolution from below and not from above.

195.  The revolution must be international and worldwide. It cannot be carried
out on a nation-by-nation basis. Whenever it is suggested that the United
States, for example, should cut back on technological progress or economic
growth, people get hysterical and start screaming that if we fall behind in
technology the Japanese will get ahead of us. Holy robots The world will fly
off its orbit if the Japanese ever sell more cars than we do! (Nationalism is
a great promoter of technology.) More reasonably, it is argued that if the
relatively democratic nations of the world fall behind in technology while
nasty, dictatorial nations like China, Vietnam and North Korea continue to
progress, eventually the dictators may come to dominate the world. That is why
the industrial system should be attacked in all nations simultaneously, to the
extent that this may be possible. True, there is no assurance that the
industrial system can be destroyed at approximately the sa me time all over
the world, and it is even conceivabl e that the attempt to overthrow the
system could lead instead to the domination of the system by dictators. That
is a risk that has to be taken. And it is worth taking, since the difference
between a "democratic" industrial system and one controlled by dictators is
small compared with the difference between an industrial system and a
non-industrial one. It might even be argued that an industrial system
controlled by dictators would be preferable, because dictator-controlled
systems usually have proved inefficient, hence they are presumably more likely
to break down. Look at Cuba.

196.  Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that tend to bind the
world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT
are probably harmful to the environment in the short run, but in the long run
they may perhaps be advantageous because they foster economic interdependence
between nations.  It will be easier to destroy the industrial system on a
worldwide basis if the world economy is so unified that its breakdown in any
one major nation will lead to its breakdown in all industrialized nations.

197. Some people take the line that modern man has too much power, too much
control over nature; they argue for a more passive attitude on the part of the
human race.  At best these people are expressing themselves unclearly, because
they fail to distinguish between power for LARGE ORGANIZATIONS and power for
INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS.  It is a mistake to argue for powerlessness and
passivity, because people NEED power.  Modern man as a collective entity--that
is, the industrial system--has immense power over nature, and we (FC) regard
this as evil.  But modern INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS have far
less power than primitive man ever did.  Generally speaking, the vast power of
"modern man" over nature is exercised not by individuals or small groups but
by large organizations.  To the extent that the average modern INDIVIDUAL can
wield the power of technology, he is permitted to do so only within narrow
limits and only under the supervision and cont rol of the system.  (You need a
license for e verything and with the license come rules and regulations).  The
individual has only those technological powers with which the system chooses
to provide him.  His PERSONAL power over nature is slight.

198. Primitive INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS actually had considerable power
over nature; or maybe it would be better to say power WITHIN nature.  When
primitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare edible roots, how to
track game and take it with homemade weapons.  He knew how to protect himself
from heat, cold, rain, dangerous animals, etc.  But primitive man did
relatively little damage to nature because the COLLECTIVE power of primitive
society was negligible compared to the COLLECTIVE power of industrial
society.

199. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passivity, one should argue that
the power of the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM should be broken, and that this will
greatly INCREASE the power and freedom of INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS.

200. Until the industrial system has been thoroughly wrecked, the destruction
of that system must be the revolutionaries' ONLY goal. Other goals would
distract attention and energy from the main goal. More importantly, if the
revolutionaries permit themselves to have any other goal than the destruction
of technology, they will be tempted to use technology as a tool for reaching
that other goal. If they give in to that temptation, they will fall right back
into the technological trap, because modern technolo gy is a unified, tightly
organized system, so that, in order to retain SOME technology, one finds
oneself obliged to retain MOST  technology, hence one ends up sacrificing only
token amounts of technology.

201. Suppose for example that the revolutionaries took "social justice" as a
goal. Human nature being what it is, social justice would not come about
spontaneously; it would have to be enforced. In order to enforce it the
revolutionaries would have to retain central organization and control. For
that they would need rapid long-distance transportation and communication, and
therefore all the technology needed to support the transportation and
communication systems. To feed and clothe poor people they would h ave to use
agricultural and manufacturing technology. And so forth. So that the attempt
to insure social justice would force them to retain most parts of the
technological system. Not that we have anything against social justice, but it
must not be allowed to interfere with the effort to get rid of the
technological system.

202. It would be hopeless for revolutionaries to try to attack the system
without using SOME modern technology. If nothing else they must use the
communications media to spread their message. But they should use modern
technology for only ONE purpose: to attack the technological system.

203. Imagine an alcoholic sitting with a barrel of wine in front of him.
Suppose he starts saying to himself, "Wine isn't bad for you if used in
moderation. Why, they say small amounts of wine are even good for you! It
won't do me any harm if I take just one little drink..." Well you know what is
going to happen. Never forget that the human race with technology is just like
an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.

204. Revolutionaries should have as many children as they can. There is strong
scientific evidence that social attitudes are to a significant extent
inherited.  No one suggests that a social attitude is a direct outcome of a
person's genetic constitution, but it appears that personality traits tend,
within the context of our society, to make a person more likely to hold this
or that social attitude. Objections to these findings have been raised, but
objections are feeble and seem to be ideologically motivat ed. In any event,
no one denies that children tend on the average to hold social attitudes
similar to those of their parents. From our point of view it doesn't matter
all that much whether the attitudes are passed on genetically or through
childhood training. In either case the ARE passed on.

205. The trouble is that many of the people who are inclined to rebel against
the industrial system are also concerned about the population problems, hence
they are apt to have few or no children. In this way they may be handing the
world over to the sort of people who support or at least accept the industrial
system. To insure the strength of the next generation of revolutionaries the
present generation must reproduce itself abundantly. In doing so they will be
worsening the population problem only slightly. And the most important
problem is to get rid of the industrial system, because once the industrial
system is gone the world's population necessarily will decrease (see paragraph
167); whereas, if the industrial system survives, it will continue developing
new techniques of food production that may enable the world's population to
keep increasing almost indefinitely.

206. With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only points on which we
absolutely insist are that the single overriding goal must be the elimination
of modern technology, and that no other goal can be allowed to compete with
this one. For the rest, revolutionaries should take an empirical approach. If
experience indicates that some of the recommendations made in the foregoing
paragraphs are not going to give good results, then those recommendations
should be discarded.







Part I: Unabomber's Manifesto

TWO KINDS OF TECHNOLOGY

207. An argument likely to be raised against our proposed revolution is that
it is bound to fail, because (it is claimed) throughout history technology has
always progressed, never regressed, hence technological regression is
impossible. But this claim is false.

208. We distinguish between two kinds of technology, which we will call
small-scale technology and organization-dependent technology. Small-scale
technology is technology that can be used by small-scale communities without
outside assistance. Organization-dependent  technology is technology that
depends on large-scale social organization. We are aware of no significant
cases of regression in small-scale technology. But organization-dependent
technology DOES regress when the social organization on which it depends
breaks down. Example: When the Roman Empire fell apart the Romans' small-scale
technology survived because any clever village craftsman could build, for
instance, a water wheel, any skilled smith could make steel by Roman methods,
and so forth. But the Romans' organization-dependent technology DID regress.
Their aqueducts fell into disrepair and were never rebuilt. Their techniques
of road construction were lost. The Roman system of u rban sanitation was
forgotten, so that until rather recent times did the sanitation of European
cities that of Ancient Rome.

209. The reason why technology has seemed always to progress is that, until
perhaps a century or two before the Industrial Revolution, most technology was
small-scale technology. But most of the technology developed since the
Industrial Revolution is organization-dependent technology. Take the
refrigerator for example. Without factory-made parts or the facilities of a
post-industrial machine shop it would be virtually impossible for a handful of
local craftsmen to build a refrigerator. If by some miracle they did succeed
in building one it would be useless to them without a reliable source of
electric power. So they would have to dam a stream and build a generator.
Generators require large amounts of copper wire. Imagine trying to make that
wire without modern machinery. And where would they get a gas suitable for
refrigeration? It would be much easier to build an icehouse or preserve food
by drying or picking, as was done before the invention of the refrigerator.

210. So it is clear that if the industrial system were once thoroughly broken
down, refrigeration technology would quickly be lost. The same is true of
other organization-dependent technology. And once this technology had been
lost for a generation or so it would take centuries to rebuild it, just as it
took centuries to build it the first time around. Surviving technical books
would be few and scattered. An industrial society, if built from scratch
without outside help, can only be built in a series of stages: You need tools
to make tools to make tools to make tools ... . A long process of economic
development and progress in social organization is required. And, even in the
absence of an ideology opposed to technology, there is no reason to believe
that anyone would be interested in rebuilding industrial society. The
enthusiasm for "progress" is a phenomenon particular to the modern form of
society, and it seems not to have existed prior to the 17th century or
thereabouts.

211. In the late Middle Ages there were four main civilizations that were
about equally "advanced": Europe, the Islamic world, India, and the Far East
(China, Japan, Korea). Three of those civilizations remained more or less
stable, and only Europe became dynamic. No one knows why Europe became dynamic
at that time; historians have their theories but these are only speculation.
At any rate, it is clear that rapid development toward a technological form of
society occurs only under special conditions. So there is no reason to assume
that long-lasting technological regression cannot be brought about.

212. Would society EVENTUALLY develop again toward an industrial-technological
form? Maybe, but there is no use in worrying about it, since we can't predict
or control events 500 or 1,000 years in the future. Those problems must be
dealt with by the people who will live at that time.

THE DANGER OF LEFTISM

213. Because of their need for rebellion and for membership in a movement,
leftists or persons of similar psychological type are often unattracted to a
rebellious or activist movement whose goals and membership are not initially
leftist. The resulting influx of leftish types can easily turn a non-leftist
movement into a leftist one, so that leftist goals replace or distort the
original goals of the movement.

214. To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature and opposes technology must
take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid all collaboration with
leftists. Leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human
freedom and with the elimination of modern technology. Leftism is
collectivist; it seeks to bind together the entire world (both nature and the
human race) into a unified whole. But this implies management of nature and of
human life by organized society, and it requires advanced technology. You
can't have a united world without rapid transportation and communication, you
can't make all people love one another without sophisticated psychological
techniques, you can't have a "planned society" without the necessary
technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and
the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a
mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up
technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.

215. The anarchist too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or
small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups to be able to control
the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes
small groups dependent on large organizations.

216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only
so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by
non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the
technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will
enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be
repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When
the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship
and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic
minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they
imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than
any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at
least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades
ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were
vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those universities
where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take
away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.")
The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress
everyone else if they ever get it under their own control.

217. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type,
repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist revolutionaries, as well as
with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have double-crossed
them to seize power for themselves. Robespierre did this in the French
Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the Russian Revolution, the communists
did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the
past history of leftism, it would be utterly foolish for non-leftist
revolutionaries today to collaborate with leftists.

218. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of religion.
Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because leftist doctrine does
not postulate the existence of any supernatural being. But for the leftist,
leftism plays a psychological role much like that which religion plays for
some people. The leftist NEEDS to believe in leftism; it plays a vital role in
his psychological economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or
facts. He has a deep conviction that leftism is morally Right with a capital
R, and that he has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on
everyone. (However, many of the people we are referring to as "leftists" do
not think of themselves as leftists and would not describe their system of
beliefs as leftism. We use the term "leftism" because we don't know of any
better words to designate the spectrum of related creeds that includes the
feminist, gay rights, political correctness, etc., moveme nts, and because
these movements have a strong affinity with the old left. See paragraphs
227-230.)

219. Leftism is totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position of power
it tends to invade every private corner and force every thought into a leftist
mold. In part this is because of the quasi-religious character of leftism;
everything contrary to leftists beliefs represents Sin. More importantly,
leftism is a totalitarian force because of the leftists' drive for power. The
leftist seeks to satisfy his need for power through identification with a
social movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to
pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph 83). But no matter
how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the leftist is never
satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate activity (see paragraph 41).
That is, the leftist's real motive is not to attain the ostensible goals of
leftism; in reality he is motivated by the sense of power he gets from
struggling for and then reaching a social goal. Consequently the leftist
is never satisfied with the goals he has already attained; his need for the
power process leads him always to pursue some new goal. The leftist wants
equal opportunities for minorities. When that is attained he insists on
statistical equality of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone
harbors in some corner of his mind a negative attitude toward some minority,
the leftist has to reeducated him. And ethnic minorities are n ot enough; no
one can be allowed to have a negative attitude toward homosexuals, disabled
people, fat people, old people, ugly people, and on and on and on. It's not
enough that the public should be informed about the hazards of smoking; a
warning has to be stamped on every package of cigarettes. Then cigarette
advertising has to be restricted if not banned. The activists will never be
satisfied until tobacco is outlawed, and after that it will be alco hot then
junk food, etc. Activists have fought gross child abuse, whi ch is reasonable.
But now they want to stop all spanking. When they have done that they will
want to ban something else they consider unwholesome, then another thing and
then another. They will never be satisfied until they have complete control
over all child rearing practices. And then they will move on to another cause.

220. Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of ALL the things that were
wrong with society, and then suppose you instituted EVERY social change that
they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple of years the majority of
leftists would find something new to complain about, some new social "evil" to
correct because, once again, the leftist is motivated less by distress at
society's ills than by the need to satisfy his drive for power by imposing his
solutions on society.

221. Because of the restrictions placed on their thoughts and behavior by
their high level of socialization, many leftists of the oversocialized type
cannot pursue power in the ways that other people do. For them the drive for
power has only one morally acceptable outlet, and that is in the struggle to
impose their morality on everyone.

222. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, are True Believers
in the sense of Eric Hoffer's book, "The True Believer." But not all True
Believers are of the same psychological type as leftists. Presumably a
truebelieving nazi, for instance is very different psychologically from a
truebelieving leftist. Because of their capacity for single-minded devotion to
a cause, True Believers are a useful, perhaps a necessary, ingredient of any
revolutionary movement. This presents a problem with which we must admit we
don't know how to deal. We aren't sure how to harness the energies of the True
Believer to a revolution against technology. At present all we can say is that
no True Believer will make a safe recruit to the revolution unless his
commitment is exclusively to the destruction of technology. If he is committed
also to another ideal, he may want to use technology as a tool for pursuing
that other ideal (see paragraphs 220, 221).

223. Some readers may say, "This stuff about leftism is a lot of crap. I know
John and Jane who are leftish types and they don't have all these totalitarian
tendencies." It's quite true that many leftists, possibly even a numerical
majority, are decent people who sincerely believe in tolerating others' values
(up to a point) and wouldn't want to use high-handed methods to reach their
social goals. Our remarks about leftism are not meant to apply to every
individual leftist but to describe the general character of leftism as a
movement. And the general character of a movement is not necessarily
determined by the numerical proportions of the various kinds of people
involved in the movement.

224. The people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements tend to be
leftists of the most power-hungry type because power-hungry people are those
who strive hardest to get into positions of power. Once the power-hungry types
have captured control of the movement, there are many leftists of a gentler
breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but
cannot bring themselves to oppose them. They NEED their faith in the movement,
and because they cannot give up this faith they go along with the leaders.
True, SOME leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies
that emerge, but they generally lose, because the power-hungry types are
better organized, are more ruthless and Machiavellian and have taken care to
build themselves a strong power base.

225. These phenomena appeared clearly in Russia and other countries that were
taken over by leftists. Similarly, before the breakdown of communism in the
USSR, leftish types in the West would seldom criticize that country. If
prodded they would admit that the USSR did many wrong things, but then they
would try to find excuses for the communists and begin talking about the
faults of the West. They always opposed Western military resistance to
communist aggression. Leftish types all over the world vigorously protested
the U.S. military action in Vietnam, but when the USSR invaded Afghanistan
they did nothing. Not that they approved of the Soviet actions; but because of
their leftist faith, they just couldn't bear to put themselves in opposition
to communism. Today, in those of our universities where "political
correctness" has become dominant, there are probably many leftish types who
privately disapprove of the suppression of academic freedom, b ut they go
along with it anyway.

226. Thus the fact that many individual leftists are personally mild and
fairly tolerant people by no means prevents leftism as a whole form having a
totalitarian tendency.

227. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far from
clear what we mean by the word "leftist." There doesn't seem to be much we can
do about this. Today leftism is fragmented into a whole spectrum of activist
movements. Yet not all activist movements are leftist, and some activist
movements (e.g.., radical environmentalism) seem to include both personalities
of the leftist type and personalities of thoroughly un-leftist types who ought
to know better than to collaborate with leftists. Varieties of leftists fade
out gradually into varieties of non-leftists and we ourselves would often be
hard-pressed to decide whether a given individual is or is not a leftist. To
the extent that it is defined at all, our conception of leftism is defined by
the discussion of it that we have given in this article, and we can only
advise the reader to use his own judgment in deciding who is a leftist.

228. But it will be helpful to list some criteria for diagnosing leftism.
These criteria cannot be applied in a cut and dried manner. Some individuals
may meet some of the criteria without being leftists, some leftists may not
meet any of the criteria. Again, you just have to use your judgment.

229. The leftist is oriented toward largescale collectivism. He emphasizes the
duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care
of the individual. He has a negative attitude toward individualism. He often
takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be for gun control, for sex education and
other psychologically "enlightened" educational methods, for planning, for
affirmative action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims.
He tends to be against competition and against violence, but he often finds
excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of using the
common catch-phrases of the left like "racism, " "sexism, " "homophobia, "
"capitalism," "imperialism," "neocolonialism " "genocide," "social change,"
"social justice," "social responsibility." Maybe the best diagnostic trait of
the leftist is his tendency to sympathize with the following movements:
feminism, gay rights, ethnic rights, disability rights, animal rights
political correctness. Anyone who strongly sympathizes with ALL of these
movements is almost certainly a leftist.

230. The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most power-hungry,
are often characterized by arrogance or by a dogmatic approach to ideology.
However, the most dangerous leftists of all may be certain oversocialized
types who avoid irritating displays of aggressiveness and refrain from
advertising their leftism, but work quietly and unobtrusively to promote
collectivist values, "enlightened" psychological techniques for socializing
children, dependence of the individual on the system, and so forth. These
cryptoleftists (as we may call them) approximate certain bourgeois types as
far as practical action is concerned, but differ from them in psychology,
ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people under
control of the system in order to protect his way of life, or he does so
simply because his attitudes are conventional. The crypto-leftist tries to
bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer in a
collectivistic ideology. The crypto-leftist is differentiated from the
average leftist of the oversocialized type by the fact that his rebellious
impulse is weaker and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated
from the ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact that there is some
deep lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a
cause and immerse himself in a collectivity. And maybe his (well-sublimated)
drive for power is stronger than that of the average bourgeois.

FINAL NOTE

231. Throughout this article we've made imprecise statements and statements
that ought to have had all sorts of qualifications and reservations attached
to them; and some of our statements may be flatly false. Lack of sufficient
information and the need for brevity made it impossible for us to formulate
our assertions more precisely or add all the necessary qualifications. And of
course in a discussion of this kind one must rely heavily on intuitive
judgment, and that can sometimes be wrong. So we don't claim that this article
expresses more than a crude approximation to the truth.

232. All the same we are reasonably confident that the general outlines
of the picture we have painted here are roughly correct. We have
portrayed leftism in its modern form as a phenomenon peculiar to our
time and as a symptom of the disruption of the power process. But we
might possibly be wrong about this. Oversocialized types who try to
satisfy their drive for power by imposing their morality on everyone
have certainly been around for a long time. But we THINK that the
decisive role played by feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem,
powerlessness, identification with victims by people who are not
themselves victims, is a peculiarity of modern leftism. Identification with
victims by people not themselves victims can be seen to some extent in 19th
century leftism and early Christianity but as far as we can make out, symptoms
of low self-esteem, etc., were not nearly so evident in these movements, or in
any other movements, as they are in modern leftism. But we are not in a
position to assert confidently that no such movements have existed prior to
modern leftism. This is a significant question to which historians ought to
give their attention.

NOTES

1. (Paragraph 19) We are asserting that ALL, or even most, bullies and
ruthless competitors suffer from feelings of inferiority.

2. (Paragraph 25) During the Victorian period many oversocialized people
suffered from serious psychological problems as a result of repressing or
trying to repress their sexual feelings. Freud apparently based his
theories on people of this type. Today the focus of socialization has
shifted from sex to aggression.

3. (Paragraph 27) Not necessarily including specialists in engineering
"hard" sciences.

4. (Paragraph 28) There are many individuals of the middle and upper
classes who resist some of these values, but usually their resistance
is more or less covert. Such resistance appears in the mass media only
to a very limited extent. The main thrust of propaganda in our society
is in favor of the stated values.

The main reasons why these values have become, so to speak, the official
values of our society is that they are useful to the industrial
system. Violence is discouraged because it disrupts the functioning of
the system. Racism is discouraged because ethnic conflicts also disrupt
the system, and discrimination wastes the talent of minority-group
members who could be useful to the system. Poverty must be "cured"
because the underclass causes problems for the system and contact with
the underclass lowers the moral of the other classes. Women are
encouraged to have careers because their talents are useful to the
system and, more importantly because by having regular jobs women
become better integrated into the system and tied directly to it
rather than to their families. This helps to weaken family solidarity.
(The leaders of the system say they want to strengthen the family, but
they really mean is that they want the family to serve as an effective
tool for socializing children in accord with the needs of the system.
We argue in paragraphs 51,52 that the system cannot afford to let the
family or other small-scale social groups be strong or autonomous.)

5. (Paragraph 42) It may be argued that the majority of people don't
want to make their own decisions but want leaders to do their thinking
for them. There is an element of truth in this. People like to make
their own decisions in small matters, but making decisions on
difficult, fundamental questions require facing up to psychological
conflict, and most people hate psychological conflict. Hence they tend
to lean on others in making difficult decisions. The majority of people
are natural followers, not leaders, but they like to have direct
personal access to their leaders and participate to some extent in
making difficult decisions. At least to that degree they need autonomy.

6. (Paragraph 44) Some of the symptoms listed are similar to those shown
by caged animals.

To explain how these symptoms arise from deprivation
with respect to the power process:
Common-sense understanding of human
nature tells one that lack of goals whose attainment requires effort
leads to boredom and that boredom, long continued, often leads eventually
to depression. Failure to obtain goals leads to frustration and
lowering of self-esteem. Frustration leads to anger, anger to
aggression, often in the form of spouse or child abuse. It has been
shown that long-continued frustration commonly leads to depression and
that depression tends to cause guilt, sleep disorders, eating disorders
and bad feelings about oneself. Those who are tending toward depression
seek pleasure as an antidote; hence insatiable hedonism and excessive
sex, with perversions as a means of getting new kicks. Boredom too tends
to cause excessive pleasure-seeking since, lacking other goals, people
often use pleasure as a goal. See accompanying diagram. The foregoing
is a simplification. Reality is more complex, and of course deprivation
with respect to the power process is not the ONLY cause of the symptoms
described. By the way, when we mention depression we do not
necessarily mean depression that is severe enough to be treated by a
psychiatrist. Often only mild forms of depression are involved. And
when we speak of goals we do not necessarily mean long-term, thought out
goals. For many or most people through much of human history, the goals
of a hand-to-mouth existence (merely providing oneself and one's family
with food from day to day) have been quite sufficient.

7. (Paragraph 52) A partial exception may be made for a few passive,
inward looking groups, such as the Amish, which have little effect on
the wider society. Apart from these, some genuine small-scale
communities do exist in America today. For instance, youth gangs and
"cults". Everyone regards them as dangerous, and so they are, because
the members of these groups are loyal primarily to one another rather
than to the system, hence the system cannot control them. Or take the
gypsies. The gypsies commonly get away with theft and fraud because
their loyalties are such that they can always get other gypsies to give
testimony that "proves" their innocence. Obviously the system would be
in serious trouble if too many people belonged to such groups. Some of
the early-20th century Chinese thinkers who were concerned with
modernizing China recognized the necessity of breaking down small-scale
social groups such as the family: "(According to Sun Yat-sen) The
Chinese people needed a new surge of patriotism, which would lead to a
transfer of loyalty from the family to the state. . .(According to Li
Huang) traditional attachments, particularly to the family had to be
abandoned if nationalism were to develop to China." (Chester C. Tan,
Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century," page 125, page
297.)

8. (Paragraph 56) Yes, we know that 19th century America had its
problems, and serious ones, but for the sake of breviety we have to
express ourselves in simplified terms.

9. (Paragraph 61) We leave aside the underclass. We are speaking of the
mainstream.

10. (Paragraph 62) Some social scientists, educators, "mental health"
professionals and the like are doing their best to push the social
drives into group 1 by trying to see to it that everyone has a
satisfactory social life.

11. (Paragraphs 63, 82) Is the drive for endless material acquisition
really an artificial creation of the advertising and marketing
industry? Certainly there is no innate human drive for material
acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people have desired
little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy their basic
physical needs (Australian aborigines, traditional Mexican peasant
culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have also been
many pre-industrial cultures in which material acquisition has played
an important role. So we can't claim that today's acquisition-oriented
culture is exclusively a creation of the advertising and marketing
industry. But it is clear that the advertising and marketing industry
has had an important part in creating that culture. The big
corporations that spend millions on advertising wouldn't be spending
that kind of money without solid proof that they were getting it back
in increased sales. One member of FC met a sales manager a couple of
years ago who was frank enough to tell him, "Our job is to make people
buy things they don't want and don't need." He then described how an
untrained novice could present people with the facts about a product,
and make no sales at all, while a trained and experienced professional
salesman would make lots of sales to the same people. This shows that
people are manipulated into buying things they don't really want.

12. (Paragraph 64) The problem of purposelessness seems to have become
less serious during the last 15 years or so, because people now feel
less secure physically and economically than they did earlier, and the
need for security provides them with a goal. But purposelessness has
been replaced by frustration over the difficulty of attaining security.
We emphasize the problem of purposelessness because the liberals and
leftists would wish to solve our social problems by having society
guarantee everyone's security; but if that could be done it would only
bring back the problem of purposelessness. The real issue is not
whether society provides well or poorly for people's security; the
trouble is that people are dependent on the system for their security
rather than having it in their own hands. This, by the way, is part of
the reason why some people get worked up about the right to bear arms;
possession of a gun puts that aspect of their security in their own
hands.

13. (Paragraph 66) Conservatives' efforts to decrease the amount of
government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For one
thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated because
most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the
deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so
that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it to
private corporations. What this means for the average man is that government
interference in his life is replaced by interference from big corporations,
which may be permitted, for example, to dump more chemicals that get into his
water supply and give him cancer. The conservatives are just taking the
average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to
promote the power of Big Business.

14. (Paragraph 73) When someone approves of the purpose for which propaganda
is being used in a given case, he generally calls it "education" or applies to
it some similar euphemism. But propaganda is propaganda regardless of the
purpose for which it is used.

15. (Paragraph 83) We are not expressing approval or disapproval of the Panama
invasion. We only use it to illustrate a point.

16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were under British rule there
were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of freedom than there were
after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there was more personal
freedom in pre-industrial America, both before and after the War of
Independence, than there was after the Industrial Revolution took hold in this
country. We quote from "Violence in America: Historical and Comparative
perspectives," edited by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by
Roger Lane, pages 476-478: "The progressive heightening of standards of
property, and with it the increasing reliance on official law enforcement (in
19th century America). . .were common to the whole society. . .[T]he change in
social behavior is so long term and so widespread as to suggest a connection
with the most fundamental of contemporary social processes; that of industrial
urbanization itself. . ."Massachusetts in 1835 had a population of some
660,940, 81 percent rural, overwhelmingly preindustrial and native born. It's
citizens were used to considerable personal freedom. Whether teamsters,
farmers or artisans, they were all accustomed to setting their own schedules,
and the nature of their work made them physically dependent on each other. .
.Individual problems, sins or even crimes, were not generally cause for wider
social concern. . ."But the impact of the twin movements to the city and to
the factory, both just gathering force in 1835, had a progressive effect on
personal behavior throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The factory
demanded regularity of behavior, a life governed by obedience to the rhythms
of clock and calendar, the demands of foreman and supervisor. In the city or
town, the needs of living in closely packed neighborhoods inhibited many
actions previously unobjectionable. Both blue- and white-collar employees in
larger establishments were mutually dependent on their fellows. As one man's
work fit into another's, so one man's business was no longer his own. "The
results of the new organization of life and work were apparent by 1900, when
some 76 percent of the 2,805,346 inhabitants of Massachusetts were classified
as urbanites. Much violent or irregular behavior which had been tolerable in a
casual, independent society was no longer acceptable in the more formalized,
cooperative atmosphere of the later period. . .The move to the cities had, in
short, produced a more tractable, more socialized, more 'civilized' generation
than its predecessors."

17. (Paragraph 117) Apologists for the system are fond of citing cases in
which elections have been decided by one or two votes, but such cases are
rare.

18. (Paragraph 119) "Today, in technologically advanced lands, men live very
similar lives in spite of geographical, religious and political differences.
The daily lives of a Christian bank clerk in Chicago, a Buddhist bank clerk in
Tokyo, a Communist bank clerk in Moscow are far more alike than the life any
one of them is like that of any single man who lived a thousand years ago.
These similarities are the result of a common technology. . ." L. Sprague de
Camp, "The Ancient Engineers," Ballentine edition, page 17. The lives of the
three bank clerks are not IDENTICAL. Ideology does have SOME effect. But all
technological societies, in order to survive, must evolve along APPROXIMATELY
the same trajectory.

19. (Paragraph 123) Just think an irresponsible genetic engineer might create
a lot of terrorists.

20. (Paragraph 124) For a further example of undesirable consequences of
medical progress, suppose a reliable cure for cancer is discovered. Even if
the treatment is too expensive to be available to any but the elite, it will
greatly reduce their incentive to stop the escape of carcinogens into the
environment.

21. (Paragraph 128) Since many people may find paradoxical the notion that a
large number of good things can add up to a bad thing, we will illustrate with
an analogy. Suppose Mr. A is playing chess with Mr. B. Mr. C, a Grand Master,
is looking over Mr. A's shoulder. Mr. A of course wants to win his game, so if
Mr. C points out a good move for him to make, he is doing Mr. A a favor. But
suppose now that Mr. C tells Mr. A how to make ALL of his moves. In each
particular instance he does Mr. A a favor by showing him his best move, but
by making ALL of his moves for him he spoils the game, since there is not
point in Mr. A's playing the game at all if someone else makes all his moves.
The situation of modern man is analogous to that of Mr. A. The system makes an
individual's life easier for him in innumerable ways, but in doing so it
deprives him of control over his own fate.

22. (Paragraph 137) Here we are considering only the conflict of values within
the mainstream. For the sake of simplicity we leave out of the picture
"outsider" values like the idea that wild nature is more important than human
economic welfare.

23. (Paragraph 137) Self-interest is not necessarily MATERIAL self-interest.
It can consist in fulfillment of some psychological need, for example, by
promoting one's own ideology or religion.

24. (Paragraph 139) A qualification: It is in the interest of the system to
permit a certain prescribed degree of freedom in some areas. For example,
economic freedom (with suitable limitations and restraints) has proved
effective in promoting economic growth. But only planned, circumscribed,
limited freedom is in the interest of the system. The individual must always
be kept on a leash, even if the leash is sometimes long (see paragraphs 94,
97).

25. (Paragraph 143) We don't mean to suggest that the efficiency or the
potential for survival of a society has always been inversely proportional to
the amount of pressure or discomfort to which the society subjects people.
That is certainly not the case. There is good reason to believe that many
primitive societies subjected people to less pressure than the European
society did, but European society proved far more efficient than any primitive
society and always won out in conflicts with such societies because of the
advantages conferred by technology.

26. (Paragraph 147) If you think that more effective law enforcement is
unequivocally good because it suppresses crime, then remember that crime as
defined by the system is not necessarily what YOU would call crime. Today,
smoking marijuana is a "crime," and, in some places in the U.S.., so is
possession of ANY firearm, registered or not, may be made a crime, and the
same thing may happen with disapproved methods of child-rearing, such as
spanking. In some countries, expression of dissident political opinions is a
crime, and there is no certainty that this will never happen in the U.S.,
since no constitution or political system lasts forever. If a society needs a
large, powerful law enforcement establishment, then there is something gravely
wrong with that society; it must be subjecting people to severe pressures if
so many refuse to follow the rules, or follow them only because forced. Many
societies in the past have gotten by with little or no formal law-enforcement.

27. (Paragraph 151) To be sure, past societies have had means of influencing
behavior, but these have been primitive and of low effectiveness compared with
the technological means that are now being developed.

28. (Paragraph 152) However, some psychologists have publicly expressed
opinions indicating their contempt for human freedom. And the mathematician
Claude Shannon was quoted in Omni (August 1987) as saying, "I visualize a time
when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the
machines."

29. (Paragraph 154) This is no science fiction! After writing paragraph 154 we
came across an article in Scientific American according to which scientists
are actively developing techniques for identifying possible future criminals
and for treating them by a combination of biological and psychological means.
Some scientists advocate compulsory application of the treatment, which may be
available in the near future. (See "Seeking the Criminal Element", by W. Wayt
Gibbs, Scientific American, March 1995.) Maybe you think this is OK because
the treatment would be applied to those who might become drunk drivers (they
endanger human life too), then perhaps to peel who spank their children, then
to environmentalists who sabotage logging equipment, eventually to anyone
whose behavior is inconvenient for the system.

30. (Paragraph 184) A further advantage of nature as a counter-ideal to
technology is that, in many people, nature inspires the kind of reverence that
is associated with religion, so that nature could perhaps be idealized on a
religious basis. It is true that in many societies religion has served as a
support and justification for the established order, but it is also true that
religion has often provided a basis for rebellion. Thus it may be useful to
introduce a religious element into the rebellion against technology, the more
so because Western society today has no strong religious foundation. Religion,
nowadays either is used as cheap and transparent support for narrow,
short-sighted selfishness (some conservatives use it this way), or even is
cynically exploited to make easy money (by many evangelists), or has
degenerated into crude irrationalism (fundamentalist Protestant sects,
"cults"), or is simply stagnant (Catholicism, main-line Protestantism). The
nearest thing to a strong, widespread, dynamic religion that the West has seen
in recent times has been the quasi-religion of leftism, but leftism today is
fragmented and has no clear, unified inspiring goal. Thus there is a religious
vaccuum in our society that could perhaps be filled by a religion focused on
nature in opposition to technology. But it would be a mistake to try to
concoct artificially a religion to fill this role. Such an invented religion
would probably be a failure. Take the "Gaia" religion for example. Do its
adherents REALLY believe in it or are they just play-acting? If they are just
play-acting their religion will be a flop in the end. It is probably best not
to try to introduce religion into the conflict of nature vs. technology unless
you REALLY believe in that religion yourself and find that it arouses a deep,
strong, genuine response in many other people.

31. (Paragraph 189) Assuming that such a final push occurs. Conceivably the
industrial system might be eliminated in a somewhat gradual or piecemeal
fashion. (see paragraphs 4, 167 and Note 4).

32. (Paragraph 193) It is even conceivable (remotely) that the revolution
might consist only of a massive change of attitudes toward technology
resulting in a relatively gradual and painless disintegration of the
industrial system. But if this happens we'll be very lucky. It's far more
probably that the transition to a nontechnological society will be very
difficult and full of conflicts and disasters.

33. (Paragraph 195) The economic and technological structure of a society are
far more important than its political structure in determining the way the
average man lives (see paragraphs 95, 119 and Notes 16, 18).

34. (Paragraph 215) This statement refers to our particular brand of
anarchism. A wide variety of social attitudes have been called "anarchist,"
and it may be that many who consider themselves anarchists would not accept
our statement of paragraph 215. It should be noted, by the way, that there is
a nonviolent anarchist movement whose members probably would not accept FC as
anarchist and certainly would not approve of FC's violent methods.

35. (Paragraph 219) Many leftists are motivated also by hostility, but the
hostility probably results in part from a frustrated need for power.

36. (Paragraph 229) It is important to understand that we mean someone who
sympathizes with these MOVEMENTS as they exist today in our society. One who
believes that women, homosexuals, etc., should have equal rights is not
necessarily a leftist. The feminist, gay rights, etc., movements that exist in
our society have the particular ideological tone that characterizes leftism,
and if one believes, for example, that women should have equal rights it does
not necessarily follow that one must sympathize with the feminist movement as
it exists today.

If copyright problems make it impossible for this long quotation to be
printed, then please change Note 16 to read as follows:

16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were under British rule there
were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of freedom than there were
after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there was more personal
freedom in pre-industrial America, both before and after the War of
Independence, than there was after the Industrial Revolution took hold in this
country. In "Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,"
edited by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, it
is explained how in pre-industrial America the average person had greater
independence and autonomy than he does today, and how the process of
industrialization necessarily led to the restriction of personal freedom.