Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber, reportedly died by suicide this past weekend. In recent years, likely because of his insightful critiques of modernity and the cultural intrigue surrounding one of the most famous manhunts of all time, Kaczynski’s profile has received a considerable amount of interest online across the political and cultural spectrum.
Whereas it is often easy to lose touch with reality and empathy in the digital era, it shouldn’t be forgotten amid the memery that Kaczynski’s letter bombing campaign killed three innocent people and critically wounded several more. Indeed, Kaczynski ought not to be celebrated, and his methods should be thoroughly eschewed.
But with the increasingly rapid embrace of technologies that further sever humanity’s relationship with the natural world by supplementing it with a form of hyperreality; with a global fertility and nutritional crisis posing a dire yet under-discussed threat to our species; with supranational financial and surveillance infrastructures being embraced by global elites who seek to erode personal liberties; and with the Western left’s embrace of a pseudo-religion that seeks to supplant the good, the true, and the beautiful with a priestly class of oversocialized neurotics — were his critiques on modernity entirely inaccurate?
In Industrial Society and Its Future, published by The Washington Post, Kaczynski argued that industrial-technological society, which he referred to as “the system,” was inherently destructive and posed a threat to human freedom and well-being. He believed that modern technology had led to the erosion of personal autonomy, the loss of authentic human
