/lit/ - Literature

>>20919144
Did you read the book?

>>20919157
i did. i'm a brainlet though so i probably missed something. did i?
>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.
even still, to me it doesn't make a lot of sense to delve first into a specific symptom of industrial society. at the very least he should've ordered the power process first as the leftism he talks about comes from a lack of power process. it would make his argument stronger if he explained the innate need of human beings first, then into how the bastardization of that need has resulted in the craziness of the world.

>>20919144
>He mentions leftism a lot, which I guess I'm having a hard time understand why, or Im just confused on the ordering of the manifesto. His spiel towards the end especially. Why is it so important he drives this nail in about leftism specifically instead of just oversocialized people themselves, regardless of politics?
ngmi you are filtered by some hard truths big guy

>>20919144
Because leftist then just as they are now are obsessed with creating a land of gumdrop trees and lemonade rivers and making progress at any cost even if it means total destruction of the planet and becoming a parasitic appendage to a mass of machinery

>>20919240
>Why is it so important he drives this nail in about leftism specifically instead of just oversocialized people themselves, regardless of politics?
Well anon, you have to sit down and think for yourself for a minute. How do you think this state of things came to happen? Maybe leftists is a codeword for something else, a category meant to be extended to another category of people?! Maybe all of this was orchestrated from the very beginning in a top-down fashion by a global elite following a cultural marxist agenda?!? Which we could conveniently label as leftists to avoid censorship so that we could attack their ideological postures and prevent them from literally ruining western civilization? Oh well, guess we didn't manage to do that. Too bad.

>>20919144
A lot of things he said is true. Especially with diversity. It's always on a superficial level. Where the white liberal only wants minorities who act like upper middle class white people....basically just like them.

And these same ethnics and minorities try so hard to show off they're just regular "Americans, Australians, British" just like their white counterparts.

Eg. Apple ads, they'll never have real niggas on a stoop showing off their new iPhone to their homies. But they'll have the token black guy acting like a white guy at a dinner party pulling out his phone. Even though the "real nigga" is a demographic that does exist and probably does use/steal iphones

>>20919423
>obsessed with making progress
fake progress, yes. facilitating progress as a means of rebelling against the industrial society they are actually slaving for to make up for the lack of power process in their lives. taking the surrogate activity to an extreme.
structurally, would it not make more sense to introduce this later, after he explains the power process as a prime example of how industrial society hurts people? Instead of explaining leftism first, then the power process?
On the political side, I guess i have a hard time reconciling this view point with most left wing people i know. i get he's talking about a certain type of leftist but i think i just don't have experience, im not a politics guy

>>20919144
throw that away and read marx if you actually want to understand industrial society. he's not systematic. not a serious thinker, has only an understanding of the surface phenomenon.

>>20919470
cringe

>>20919144

Just read Ellul instead, any of the philosophically interesting ideas presented in the manifesto are literally just cribbed from picrel with some of Kaczynski's incel college experience and American fanticization of the frontier thrown in

>>20919615
>philosophically interesting ideas
i know this was his main influence but i'm legitimately braindead when it comes to philosophy. kaczynski put it in "plain old american" terms that were easy for me to understand, by and large. if the books like plato or anything, ill be a lost cause. if not, ill give it a shot

>>20919144
Been years since I read it, but I remember him digressing at one point, much later in the book, to say “Every time a new and important movement comes along, it is co-opted be leftists who end up unintentionally running it into the ground. Therefore for this anti-tech movement to work, it is important that we keep the leftists from adopting it.” After saying this I don’t remember if he explicitly draws the connection to the beginning of the book after that or if it’s just so obvious that I drew the connection to the beginning. But the obvious connection is that he started the book by bagging on leftists so excessively because he doesn’t want them to join his movement.

>>20919700
huh, i didn't pick up on that myself. ill give it another read soon.
hell, i may as well just write him and ask him lmao

>>20919144
You have to understand that Kaczynski viewed himself as a revolutionary. His journal notes say that he had fantasies of being a "revolutionary rousing the masses" (or something to that effect). In prison he wrote an entire book called "Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How" and has even tried to form an anti-tech movement with some of the outsiders he has held correspondence with. Starting an anti-tech revolution is his life goal, basically.

So the reason why he is so obsessed with leftism is because he views leftists as the first line of defense against the techno-industrial system. If you believe someone like Curtis Yarvin, then leftists basically have all the power. But Ted has even been super critical of his fellow anti-tech thinkers who he views as being blinded by leftist ideals. John Zerzan (who thinks that tribal societies had equality, no sexism, etc.), Pentti Linkola (who was an ecofascist; see https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-ecofascism-an-aberrant-branch-of-leftism).). In short, leftists are his worst enemy.

As to why he specifically started out with the psychology of leftism in his essay, well... he also ends with a discussion of leftism, explaining how it is the greatest danger to an anti-tech movement. (The essay is basically a milquetoast call to action.) He probably chose a hamburger format to help drive home his anti-leftism points. People usually remember best what they first and last read.

>>20919771
your point reminds me of what this anon said >>20919700
i still think beginning straight with the power process and the need of human beings would build a stronger argument not only for his cause but against leftists. if i understand correctly, leftists are arguably the biggest victims of and the best reason against continuing technological society as they have maladapted to the system so much. pointing this out relating to the power process and then going on that spiel still seems to make more sense than blatantly bashing leftists in that hamburger format.

maybe i should write to him. i can't imagine ill be on some watchlist or anything for asking why he structured it that way

>>20919792
Yeah, I am not saying I disagree with you. I think the structure you propose could have worked better, but I don't really know anything about essays, lol. I am just giving you info about his psychology which could explain why he chose that possibly inferior format. Ted was smart but not infallible.

IIRC, he's at FCC Butner now. The Federal Bureau of Prisons scans all letters for violence, threats, etc., but I don't know if they forward ALL names to three-letter agencies, or just those they see as potential threats.

>>20919144
It funny that guy who is clearly damaged in the brain was declared sane because of his manifesto. The bombing of the computer shop owner was fucked up. I still can't help liking him a bit despite his psychopathic tendencies.

>>20919828
>The Federal Bureau of Prisons scans all letters for violence, threats, etc.,
i can't imagine my question would really fall under that lol

>>20919852
I thought he was currently in the hospital for something big.

>>20919875
He is. He's dying from cancer. FCC Butner is a medical prison which is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons

>>20919423
There is unironically nothing wrong with your pic related.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt3szcr8ogw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oImjjYN-OFA

>>20920017
>morality means being comfortable and happy
No.

>>20919144
He was just trying to warn everyone that leftism had essentially already taken over the world even at that point as it had ingrained itself into the technological revolution.
Of course there's no question about any of this now but back then most people couldn't see it yet or understand where things were really headed. I'm sure he felt like it was paramount to focus on it for this reason.
Basically you're just taking for granted that you're reading this with the mind of someone from 2022 who has a different perspective on everything

>>20920791
Has there ever been a most that reeks more of burger? Imagine being such a dumb, conceited fatass, that you actually think Teddy K was falling into binary oppositions of political parties and 'spectrums'. Just take a moment to soak in what a fucking moron you are required to be to even consider this option.

>>20920793
This post is ridiculously ironic
I'm gonna assume it was on purpose

>>20920807
You are, without any doubt, beyond salvation. Too stupid to function. Please leave /lit/, burn any books that have mistakenly fallen into your lap.

>>20919423
Explain to me how your picrel is bad

>>20920848
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pic rel and no draw backs Whatsoever you should definitely sign up for the pleasure matrix at the first opportunity :)

>>20920871
Assuming it does what it claims to do, why shouldn’t I?

>>20920929
I don’t know anon maybe you can come up with one or two cons I can’t seem to think of any

What happened to the environmentalist lefties of the 90s and early 00s? They took the bait and are currently campaigning for more black transsexuals in the upcoming Disney films. Ted was right.

>>20920791
>>20920793

>leftism

I think he just didn't have the word for it at the time. Im sure the "leftism" he talks about is more specifically what we know now as "social justice warriors" or wokeism. Not necessarily left wing parties or whatever.

You can just write to him in prison, you know.

>>20919157
Fpbp

>>20921263
yeah, but am i going to be put on a watchlist and have the fbi like take my rights away or something if i do that?

>>20921259
yes
>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.
the sentence after this is
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 movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related
types.
from paragraph 7. i saw a forum online that bashed ted solely because he was "anti-gay and anti-feminist" and so on when he blatantly didn't say that

>>20921321
The fatmerican wants to identify Teddy K's philosophy to his own to feel smarter. He's misconstruing both the work and the author to try and feel superior because he is without any shadow of a doubt, a fool. He thinks opposing Biden is the same as opposing the universal underpinning systems of the pseudo-democratic oligarch state of America. He wants to believe that Teddy K had any real political standing, when he hated the system as a whole.

>>20921502
>the universal underpinning systems of the pseudo-democratic oligarch state of America
im going to be honest, i dont know what the hell this means lol. i just know that ted k wasn't against minority rights, he was just against taking them to an extreme as he outlines

if im reading correctly you're saying the "fatamerican" just wants to bring ted to his level to compartmentalize him within the industrial system ted is advocating against?

>>20921311
You're already on the watchlist by talking about him on here, buddy. You might as well upgrade your power level by sending him some correspondence before he shuffles.

The FBI never take anybody's rights away, by the way. Just violate them. Glownigger.

>>20919423
Imagine thinking this is "leftism" when this is literally liberal capitalism in a nutshell. Do you think it was leftists that outsourced all manufacturing in the US to China or leftists that invented the internet? Both of these things changed to society more than a bunch of purple-haired losers at a university ever will.

Toss aside the usage of Leftism by Ted and use Zappfe's elucidation of "spiritually-developed people" in its place. That should make it clearer.

Every time capitalist technological development changes the world in inescapable ways, you can always count on a reactionary to find a way to blame it on leftists and communists.

>>20919615
Sad that jungerfag got overrun by this spammer. The Failure of Technology is a much better book.

>>20921651
>Zappfe's
never heard of them. ill look into it though

>>20921720
would you recommend junger for a beginner? it may be a better book like you say but i'm not well versed in this stuff

>>20921633
yeah, i guess you're right lol. i mean, it's not illegal or anything to just ask the question of why he ordered it the way he did. i'm not advocating for what he did i'm just curious as to why he thought that order would be best, especially since it was printed in newspapers.

>upgrade your power level
okay i get the meme but realistically they're not going to break into my house or anything just for writing a letter. right?

>>20919729
Is he known to respond to letters?

>>20921662
i never considered this. would you say you disagree then with kaczynskis overall idea of capitalist technological development being a detriment to human beings? or just his overt dislike of a certain field of leftism?

>>20921737
ive seen a few online. apparently a bunch of college kids were writing to him during the 2008 (?) election or something like that. asked him about 9/11 and the internet. he apparently has no idea what youtube is which obviously makes sense but is wild at the same time.

would asking a question about ISAIF get my letter marked or rejected? I am not advocating for his tactics against industrial society and all that, just asking a question about his essay

then again, the guys 80 and apparently sick, so it may be all in vain

>>20921742
I think he has some good arguments, but at the end of the day I think he romanticizes the past too much. Life for human beings for most of history was a complete shitshow, I don't think he takes it seriously how hard it is to be a hunter-gatherer or subsistence farmer and how easy it is to simply die from disease or starvation. Like, do you think the argument "Industrial society sucks because it makes people mentally ill and depressed" is good enough to offset cancer cures, dentistry, fine art, world travel, food safety, warm shelters and so on? I don't.

>>20921788
>do you think the argument "Industrial society sucks because it makes people mentally ill and depressed" is good enough to offset cancer cures, dentistry, fine art, world travel, food safety, warm shelters and so on?
If i remember correctly he didn't condemn small scale communities that would theoretically house some of those things, he's just against the large industrialized machine that would give those same things. i don't think he'd be against a small community making refrigerators for themselves but he would be against a country wide corporation that gives little freedom of choice to people who would want one, if that makes sense. I've only read through it once so i may be talking out of my ass a little and completely misinterpreting what he was getting at

>>20919729
he’s terminal with cancer

>>20919144
The main argument about how leftism bolsters the technological-industrial order was well-defended. Leftism stems from feelings of inferiority and "oversocialization", which refers to excessively following societal norms and feeling guilt over minor transgressions. Ted also established his most kernel claim of the "power process", which encompasses the autonomous goal-oriented processes central to human nature (e.g., hunting, farming, etc.); however, after industrialization, man has disrupted the power process with surrogate activities such as highly specialized scientific endeavors, mass media, and so on, and this led to great lack of fulfillment, higher prevalence of mental illness, and loss of connection with nature. Leftists see themselves as rebels, but they are in fact the biggest supports of the techno-industrial system due to treating their "activism" as a "surrogate activity" in their power process, and feminism and minority rights are merely pretexts for their insatiable totalitarian drive for power, always inventing new problems, which merely strengthens the industrial order with greater loss of autonomy.

Ted draws a distinction between small-scale technology and organization dependent technology, and the main distinction lies in that the latter requires a massively interconnected technological system to sustain. For example, any individual can learn to create a bronze shovel, but you need an industrial system to create a refrigerator due to the manufactured parts necessary. Ted also spends much time analyzing how prior to industrialization, man's life was oriented to fulfill the power process (e.g., cattle herder, farmer, etc. bringing food to table), but industrialization led to disruption of the power process, stripping man of his autonomy, by forcing him to become "educated" in supporting the interconnected industrial system. The system will never accommodate itself to man, and man has to change himself to accommodate the system. This is a concerning thought because we are heading in the direction of genetic engineering of human beings.

In short, organization-dependent technology have led to immense issues: breakdown of local communities, loss of autonomy, crowding, loss of privacy, lack of fulfillment, future genetic engineering, and so on. I have only given a rough summary.

>>20921865
damn. i mean, so long as he isn't dead yet i suppose its worth a shot

>>20921865
-50 points for terminal disease!

>>20919144
>>20921872
Organization-dependent technologies are semi-autonomous, and all they've done in the long-run is rob us of our own autonomy by disrupting the power process, which encompasses the autonomous goal-oriented processes central to human nature (e.g., hunting, farming, etc.); however, after industrialization, man has disrupted the power process with surrogate activities such as highly specialized scientific endeavors, mass media, and so on, and this led to great lack of fulfillment, higher prevalence of mental illness, and loss of connection with nature.

The massively-interconnected technological-industrial system will never accommodate itself to man, and man has to change himself to accommodate the technological-industrial system, which fundamentally goes against our evolutionary default states. This is a concerning thought; we are also now heading in the direction of more effective mass surveillance through the monopolization of data in cloud centers such as AWS & Azure and genetic engineering of human beings, which will inevitably be normalized. In short, organization-dependent technology has led to these immense problems: breakdown of local communities & traditions, loss of autonomy, massive biodiversity loss, overcrowding leading to behavioral sinks, loss of privacy, lack of fulfillment, future genetic engineering, etc. I have only given a very brief and rough summary, but the loss of freedom and autonomy is inherent in the telos of organization-dependent technologies.

>>20919144
>>20921872
>>20921878

Part 1/2

I watched Jago: A Life Underwater, which is about Rohani an 80 year old Indonesian fish hunter on Togian islands from the Bajau tribe. The first half was masculine in the true sense of the word. It details his life as a child growing to become a deep sea diver who hunts fish with an injectable spear from a stick. He thus got the name Jago from his transition into adulthood and true self-reliance. It also touches on the tribal mysticism these Bajau have and their close connection to the spirits of the sea and coral reef.

The 2nd half is a bit sad because Jago had to leave his family to get money for his wife and kids, most likely for some dumb reason like schooling (which is just a system of indoctrination). His son also died when he was gone because he was never there to teach him how to dive.It also mentioned him learning trawling from Japanese fishermen. The second half seems to have a subtle primitivist critique on modern technological methods of hunting fish like trawling, which has been proven to decrease biodiversity. Jago also mentions in the end he doesn't see as many fish anymore near the coral, and there is in fact more crowding of people now! I think this documentary beautifully complements Ted Kaczynski's philosophy and his notion of the power process.

Extra thoughts:

Jago is interesting because he is old and most likely lived before and after introduction of industrial techniques to the Bajau tribe.

What I've noticed from the Bajau tribe is that their way of hunting and life was sustainable prior to industrialization and introduction of global capitalist markets and organization-dependent technologies. However, now markets open up that either prey on peoples' greed or where one's livelihood, thus, becomes tied to a destructive heavily interconnected globalized economic system. Many of the Bajau people now use plastics to aid hunting, trawling, harvest sands for construction companies, and more, which adversely impacts oceanic biodiversity and also strips man of autonomy. Here are some relevant quotes reviewinganother documentary named "The Call from the Sea" on the Bajau people:


>However, the film shows the tribe's use of plastics, styrofoam, and other products deemed "environmentally toxic"... They are not oblivious, or isolated and utilize modern products... and this film appears to neglect this. The plastic buckets, the styrofoam cooler is in the footage, a child rows by in a plastic tub.

>The history and culture of the lovely Bajau people are fascinating. Their fishing practices, though traditionally sustainable and better than mass commercial fishing, have not always remained sustainable. At the time I was there, they were harvesting sand from nearby beaches to sell to construction companies, which led to sedimentation, suffocating the coral. Hopefully the blasting of coral has stopped.

>>20921872
yeah, i got the gist of it, i'm just wondering why he went straight into leftism instead of explaining the power process first since the leftism he talks about stems from the lack of power process to begin with
your second paragraph really helped me get that aspect of his theory. so in his perfect world would it be theoretically possible to even have a refrigerator again?

>>20921881
Part 2/2

One sees this pattern all over the world, especially with the Amazonian forest being cut down for farmland for economic reasons. Some tribal Amazonians, in fact, embrace this change as a "positive direction". I and Ted, of course, would consider it a negative direction in which man's autonomy and power process is disrupted and biodiversity is destroyed.

>>20921885
Because leftism paradoxically strengthens the semi-autonomous technological-industrial system while acting like it is against it. As Ted Kaczynski, the leftist acts like a rebel, but he is the number one supporter of the establishment.

>>20921896
Kaczynski says*
He is adamant about not accepting leftists into the movement because they would jeopardize it for their leftist ideals, which is just about fulfilling their own narrow power process (via surrogate activities). They don't care about freedom or self-reliance.

>>20921629
>if im reading correctly you're saying the "fatamerican" just wants to bring ted to his level to compartmentalize him within the industrial system ted is advocating against?
Yes, that works too. Ted hates the system as a whole, not one side of the system.

>>20919144
Bump

>>20919470
Marxoids are subhuman

>>20921637
>leftists can't be capitalists!!!!
Swing and a miss.

>>20923992
"left" capitalists are reformists. They'r under the impression it can be tweeked here and there by legislation. But it's proven to be only temporary and weak at best. They could have once pointed to the EU as an example of the reforms working, but no longer. New Labour, Macron, Scholz, they're all supporting Nazis now for the sake of Democrats from the US and their oligarchy. The political entity of left liberal capitalism is busted. The true believer non-politicians are nothing but fools or are now knowing nazis (But mostly fools. I include my own family in this)

tedbros...
https://i.4cdn.org/lgbt/1662010328120914.jpg