I read the first half of the Unabomber's Manifesto.

Before I discuss his general argument, I would like to make a few words about the piece itself. It is well-written, astute, and sound. It is an interesting read and educational.

Now the crux of his argument is that there is a human need for "real" goals. He defines real in the sense of the "power-process," a valuation system in man that determines his happiness around only having to hunt and gather. There are "surrogate goals" that we can have, which he claims cannot keep people fully satisfied. He blames the inability for man to seek happiness based on our complex society which is the natural result of technology.

So basically, Ted is looking to make people happy. But, I think he is making some improper estimations:

1) His notion of happiness is only akin to men. Women are the primary benefactors of modern socialization, and as a result, they've seen the best boom to their sense of well-being in recent centuries. Women, before technology, were slaves to the club-bearing man, and I don't think they they ever fully endorsed this kind of role. Woman was a kind of hiccup, an aberration, the extra rib from Adam, etc. Now, women are liberated, able to get their needs in so many ways thanks to technology. They exhibit little desire to return back to the primitive man state because it will weaken their power. Their apparent resistance to returning to the "natural" state is found in common sense observations, such as their hatred of farts and their ready acceptance of makeup. So the benefactors of Ted's agrarian anarchy will be men, the other sex.

2) Not everybody suffers the way Ted suffers. In sections 70 and up, he discusses the way in which other people have adapted or are indifferent to the power-process. Some just don't give a crap, and are content with going with the flow. Others have developed surrogate goals to adapt. While as others, the more common type, live in self-delusion. At this point, this is where Ted commits the fundamental error in many "broad-sweeping essays": he relies on conjecture. To him, these adaptations are "wrong" a priori. Ted worships his conception of what the "true" man would be like and then seeks to impose this on others who disagree.

3) Our knowledge of primitive man is limited. Ted biases the primitive man way too much. There are no illuminating writings from primitive man 10,000 years ago; how do we know how he "felt." What little evidence we have shows that life was cold, brutish, and short.

4) The lifestyle of the primitive man was probably shitty. On the one hand I can think, there must have been a point where our DNA evolution was at the same pace as our social evolution. This was the point where the emotional responses that our genetic composition was made for were intimately related to our environment. However, "intimately related" doesn't mean everybody was walking around as shiny happy people. Take negative emotions like fear, anger, revenge, suffering, anguish, despair, and anxiety and combine them with man's automatic responses to those emotions, and further combined with an anti-suicidal imperative, you still get a man who adequately fulfills his stake on earth. In other words, what is to say that man wasn't as much of a machine then as he is purported to be now.

5) Man can, and has changed. Our mentality and emotional makeup has been privy to change by society and technology. This is not its weakness, but its flexibility and strength. What if we went into all human minds, and removed the need for the power-process. poof, it'll be gone, nobody will miss it, and we could all live great human lives. We wouldn't fit Ted's romanticized conception of "man" but at that point, nobody will care except museum owners.

Once again, the Neo-Luddites have no suitable alternative and their arguments are more based on a romanticized notion of man. Nonetheless, I can never fully deride them due to my adherence to Nietzsche's first section on humanity. It's hard to explain, but I can also cite some quote in Luke that says the same thing: "Thank God in everything." If I knew Ted, I would have suggested to him to do otherwise. I would have tried to convince him that this was purposeless. But, I would have, if I were to be truly honest, qualified my arguments that in the end, whatever you do executes man's will, and therefore nature's will, and therefore the universe's will, and can never be fully derided. Plus, on a practical level, what's to say that 50 years from now, after a Chicxulub like event happens, that Ted won't be considered a legend. I am always amazed of man's propensity to change his mind, so in some cases, I choose never to commit mine.