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Not to argue that it's valid to mail bombs as a result of ideology but this part is disingenuous. > instead of just letting them exist apart from himself Fro

Not to argue that it's valid to mail bombs as a result of ideology but this part is disingenuous. > instead of just letting them exist apart from himself From his vantage point they weren't letting him exist apart from themselves. "The best place, to me, was the largest remnant of this plateau that dates from the tertiary age. It's kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you find these ravines that cut very steeply in to cliff-like drop-offs and there was even a waterfall there. It was about a two days hike from my cabin. That was the best spot until the summer of 1983. That summer there were too many people around my cabin so I decided I needed some peace. I went back to the plateau and when I got there I found they had put a road right through the middle of it" His voice trails off; he pauses, then continues, "You just can't imagine how upset I was. It was from that point on I decided that, rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on getting back at the system. Revenge. " (https://web.archive.org/web/20090318135703/http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/tedk.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20090318135703/http://www.insurg...)

shadowgovt 6y ago
The tranquility he's describing would, I imagine, guide one to understand that you can't control other people's actions. And even if the wilderness around him was shrinking, he still had plenty of it. A tranquility that kills people that harshes its buzz isn't tranquility.
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  From the same interview I linked in my parent comment. He was killing in the name of protecting tranquility itself. Why is it that shrinking tranquility is seen as politically legitimate but protecting it is not? "I decided to relate to him the story of how one of my graduate advisors, Dr. Resnick, also a Harvard alumni, once posed the following question in a seminar on political legitimacy: Say a group of scientists asks for a meeting with the leading politicians in the country to discuss the introduction of a new invention. The scientists explain that the benefits of the technology are indisputable, that the invention will increase efficiency and make everyone's life easier. The only down side, they caution, is that for it to work, forty-thousand innocent people will have to be killed each year. Would the politicians decide to adopt the new invention or not? The class was about to argue that such a proposal would be immediately rejected out of hand, then he casually remarked, "We already have it--the automobile." He had forced us to ponder how much death and innocent suffering our society endures as a result of our commitment to maintaining the technological system--a system we all are born into now and have no choice but to try and adapt to. Everyone can see the existing technological society is violent, oppressive and destructive, but what can we do?"
  - notahacker 6y ago
    > Why is it that shrinking tranquility is seen as politically legitimate but protecting it is not? 'Protecting tranquility' is perfectly politically acceptable: environmental and NIMBY lobbying organizations are often widely admired and achieve significantly more success than the Unabomber could ever have hoped to achieve. He is not criticised for seeking to 'protect tranquility' but for a campaign to murder people connected with things he despised in a manner which carried not even the slightest hope of a net increase in tranquility.
    - ethanwillis 6y ago
      I think you're confusing my arguments with my personal belief on whether or not murder is acceptable. I'll just say fullstop it's not. Now, as to your current argument that these organizations have been more successful than Ted ever could have been. I want to believe they have been, yet reality does not reflect this. At best they have only slowed the destruction of the environment. At worst they enable a technological society to carry on with their destruction with a clear conscience. If you look at the world today and in 10 years will these organizations have ceded ground or will the machine continue on? That is, do these organizations make further environmental destruction net 0 (or in a good case reverse said damage?). I would say no. Even from Ted's time to today the environment is worse and shrinking day by day. The reason Ted felt that "violent rebellion" was necessary is because these organizations can't possibly stop the inevitable results of what technological society does. They're only a stymie, a stopgap, not a long term solution. The more INTERESTING argument is, is technological society acceptable?
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        > Now, as to your current argument that these organizations have been more successful than Ted ever could have been. I want to believe they have been, yet reality does not reflect this. They demonstrably have been. Organized NIMBY campaigns, including campaigns containing a part of illegal land occupation but no part of mailing package bombs to individuals, have shut down all manner of development, including both nuclear power plants and oil pipelines. All the Unabomber accomplished was a lifelong stay in prison, the death of three people, and the injury of dozens more. By your strong metric, neither approach is successful. By a weaker metric, an organized campaign that doesn't include bombing people is partially successful.
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  The separate argument buried in here is that you can in fact control other people's actions by restricting their possible options. Which is what the technological system attempts to do by subjugating the natural world and moving people into urban areas.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    You are correct, I retract the argument that you cannot influence other people's actions. The method of mailing bombs to strangers is demonstrably ineffective. Society interprets eco-terrorism as damage and routes around it. If anything, if society accepted it, it would accelerate the anthropoforming of the planet; if violence against the politically opposed is acceptable, who wins an open violent conflict? Those hoping to preserve nature as it stands or the "technologists" with the benefits of industry, modern organizational systems, and automation at their command?
    - ethanwillis 6y ago
      My opinion is that the technologists would win. That's actually one of the points he brings up at one point. That after a certain point there absolutely is no turning back. His rationale was that the sooner that system is dismantled the easier it would be (Obviously making the assumption that it's even possible). It really all depends however. As we're seeing something as simple as a single virus is putting on our current technological system under strain. As time goes on the technological system creates tools that radicals such as Ted can more cheaply and easily utilize to attack the same system. It also depends on these radicals' ideological purity. Ted was not above using the postal service to carry out his attacks, but he did want to make the bombs himself. It's actually quite a concerning problem.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        That makes sense. FWIW, my opinion is that Ted missed the point by naming "technologists" his enemy. Technology is just what people do. It's not divorced from nature, or from humanity; it's the process of using nature's laws to make nature more palatable for our existence. Because nature does not care about us and would see humanity extinguished as fast as any other organism in the long history of life on Earth. While Ted found a certain tranquility in the woods, most people find the kind of survival activities he had to undertake to be toil---dull, dangerous, deadly. And not even Ted lived completely off the grid; the oats he sustained himself on came from a farm, and that implies agriculture, transportation, and distribution---roads and fossil fuels. The gun he used to shoot rabbits implies bullet and gunpowder manufacture; he didn't mention it explicitly in the interview, but I don't assume he had his own sulfur and saltpeter sources or was smelting his own bullets. So really, his world is divided into two types of technology: the kind he'll bomb people for using and the kind he's okay with. As you noted, ideological purity is lacking. I think it's lacking because it's basically impossible. People vastly underestimate how much dependence basic quality-of-life has on technology. Rather than bomb people to stop them from changing the world (which doesn't work), we have to work with people to find how to not use technology in a short-sighted and self-destructive fashion. Without further information, I can't say for certain how the timber roads that so inflamed his rage fit in that story. Probably they aren't worth the cost. But the point is, it's a dynamic process of working with people, generally, to find solutions, and setting yourself at odds with civilized society by bombing it guarantees failure. We passed the point of no turning back the day we tied a pointy stick to a rock and enhanced our predatory power to take down things that evolved tougher skin and sharper claws than we could kill with our physical traits. The only way forward is through.
- qpooqpoo 6y ago
  "The tranquility he's describing would, I imagine, guide one to understand that you can't control other people's actions." This makes no sense.

shadowgovt 6y ago

The tranquility he's describing would, I imagine, guide one to understand that you can't control other people's actions. And even if the wilderness around him was shrinking, he still had plenty of it. A tranquility that kills people that harshes its buzz isn't tranquility.

ethanwillis 6y ago
From the same interview I linked in my parent comment. He was killing in the name of protecting tranquility itself. Why is it that shrinking tranquility is seen as politically legitimate but protecting it is not? "I decided to relate to him the story of how one of my graduate advisors, Dr. Resnick, also a Harvard alumni, once posed the following question in a seminar on political legitimacy: Say a group of scientists asks for a meeting with the leading politicians in the country to discuss the introduction of a new invention. The scientists explain that the benefits of the technology are indisputable, that the invention will increase efficiency and make everyone's life easier. The only down side, they caution, is that for it to work, forty-thousand innocent people will have to be killed each year. Would the politicians decide to adopt the new invention or not? The class was about to argue that such a proposal would be immediately rejected out of hand, then he casually remarked, "We already have it--the automobile." He had forced us to ponder how much death and innocent suffering our society endures as a result of our commitment to maintaining the technological system--a system we all are born into now and have no choice but to try and adapt to. Everyone can see the existing technological society is violent, oppressive and destructive, but what can we do?"
- notahacker 6y ago
  > Why is it that shrinking tranquility is seen as politically legitimate but protecting it is not? 'Protecting tranquility' is perfectly politically acceptable: environmental and NIMBY lobbying organizations are often widely admired and achieve significantly more success than the Unabomber could ever have hoped to achieve. He is not criticised for seeking to 'protect tranquility' but for a campaign to murder people connected with things he despised in a manner which carried not even the slightest hope of a net increase in tranquility.
  - ethanwillis 6y ago
    I think you're confusing my arguments with my personal belief on whether or not murder is acceptable. I'll just say fullstop it's not. Now, as to your current argument that these organizations have been more successful than Ted ever could have been. I want to believe they have been, yet reality does not reflect this. At best they have only slowed the destruction of the environment. At worst they enable a technological society to carry on with their destruction with a clear conscience. If you look at the world today and in 10 years will these organizations have ceded ground or will the machine continue on? That is, do these organizations make further environmental destruction net 0 (or in a good case reverse said damage?). I would say no. Even from Ted's time to today the environment is worse and shrinking day by day. The reason Ted felt that "violent rebellion" was necessary is because these organizations can't possibly stop the inevitable results of what technological society does. They're only a stymie, a stopgap, not a long term solution. The more INTERESTING argument is, is technological society acceptable?
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      > Now, as to your current argument that these organizations have been more successful than Ted ever could have been. I want to believe they have been, yet reality does not reflect this. They demonstrably have been. Organized NIMBY campaigns, including campaigns containing a part of illegal land occupation but no part of mailing package bombs to individuals, have shut down all manner of development, including both nuclear power plants and oil pipelines. All the Unabomber accomplished was a lifelong stay in prison, the death of three people, and the injury of dozens more. By your strong metric, neither approach is successful. By a weaker metric, an organized campaign that doesn't include bombing people is partially successful.
ethanwillis 6y ago
The separate argument buried in here is that you can in fact control other people's actions by restricting their possible options. Which is what the technological system attempts to do by subjugating the natural world and moving people into urban areas.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  You are correct, I retract the argument that you cannot influence other people's actions. The method of mailing bombs to strangers is demonstrably ineffective. Society interprets eco-terrorism as damage and routes around it. If anything, if society accepted it, it would accelerate the anthropoforming of the planet; if violence against the politically opposed is acceptable, who wins an open violent conflict? Those hoping to preserve nature as it stands or the "technologists" with the benefits of industry, modern organizational systems, and automation at their command?
  - ethanwillis 6y ago
    My opinion is that the technologists would win. That's actually one of the points he brings up at one point. That after a certain point there absolutely is no turning back. His rationale was that the sooner that system is dismantled the easier it would be (Obviously making the assumption that it's even possible). It really all depends however. As we're seeing something as simple as a single virus is putting on our current technological system under strain. As time goes on the technological system creates tools that radicals such as Ted can more cheaply and easily utilize to attack the same system. It also depends on these radicals' ideological purity. Ted was not above using the postal service to carry out his attacks, but he did want to make the bombs himself. It's actually quite a concerning problem.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      That makes sense. FWIW, my opinion is that Ted missed the point by naming "technologists" his enemy. Technology is just what people do. It's not divorced from nature, or from humanity; it's the process of using nature's laws to make nature more palatable for our existence. Because nature does not care about us and would see humanity extinguished as fast as any other organism in the long history of life on Earth. While Ted found a certain tranquility in the woods, most people find the kind of survival activities he had to undertake to be toil---dull, dangerous, deadly. And not even Ted lived completely off the grid; the oats he sustained himself on came from a farm, and that implies agriculture, transportation, and distribution---roads and fossil fuels. The gun he used to shoot rabbits implies bullet and gunpowder manufacture; he didn't mention it explicitly in the interview, but I don't assume he had his own sulfur and saltpeter sources or was smelting his own bullets. So really, his world is divided into two types of technology: the kind he'll bomb people for using and the kind he's okay with. As you noted, ideological purity is lacking. I think it's lacking because it's basically impossible. People vastly underestimate how much dependence basic quality-of-life has on technology. Rather than bomb people to stop them from changing the world (which doesn't work), we have to work with people to find how to not use technology in a short-sighted and self-destructive fashion. Without further information, I can't say for certain how the timber roads that so inflamed his rage fit in that story. Probably they aren't worth the cost. But the point is, it's a dynamic process of working with people, generally, to find solutions, and setting yourself at odds with civilized society by bombing it guarantees failure. We passed the point of no turning back the day we tied a pointy stick to a rock and enhanced our predatory power to take down things that evolved tougher skin and sharper claws than we could kill with our physical traits. The only way forward is through.
qpooqpoo 6y ago
"The tranquility he's describing would, I imagine, guide one to understand that you can't control other people's actions." This makes no sense.