Ted Kaczynski: What did he REALLY believe?

https://youtu.be/hxoblonf6cw

0:00 Introduction

Ted Kaczynski has started to garner more and more attention over the last few years. His diagnosis of why so many people today are miserable seems to resonate with most of the people who read him, and with his recent death, I think this would be a good time to go over what he truly believed. Since his worldview is a little more complicated than technology. Was bad. The goal of this video is to go into an in-depth analysis of his worldview. Since most videos that talk about him talk more about him as a. Person and only scratched the surface of his ideology, so I'm not going to talk much about the man himself that has already been done to death. Just just go read his Wikipedia page if you're interested. Most of you probably know what he did anyways, you know the the silly little packages he sent out. But was he a prophet or a madman? Well, let's start off with the first paragraph of his 1995 Manifesto Industrial Society and its future by reading it in its entirety. 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, and the third world to physical suffering. Well, and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly Subs. 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. Ted says the industrial system may collapse, or it may survive if the system survives a state of low level suffering may eventually be achieved, but only after a long and painful period of adjustment, and only at the cost of the human race being turned into engineered products and mere cogs with almost all traces of individuality. Erased if it collapses the consequences. Will still be very. Painful, but the human race will be given a second chance, and Ted believes it would be better. For it to. Collapse sooner rather than later, since the larger the system grows, the more painful its collapse will be. Ted starts his manifesto with analyzing what psychological state industrial society creates for the people who live in it, which he calls.

2:28 Leftism

The main and most obvious psychological issue stemming from industrial society, Ted believes, is modern leftism. He believes that this is the most obvious manifestation of how industrial society makes life unfulfilling and the type of psychological illnesses it causes by leftism. He doesn't strictly mean the political left, although there's an extremely strong. Correlation. It's more of a psychological type that's not limited to politically left wing individuals. He doesn't have a definitive way of defining who is a leftist, as he admits, but he does lay out a general outline of the type of person who is usually a leftist. Again, it's not just people who are leftist. Politically, it's more of a psychological type. 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's not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak of leftist. In this article, we have in mind mainly socialist, collectivist, 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 lie. Dist but we are trying to get at and discussing leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Why is modern leftism the best way to illustrate why the industrial revolution was bad for humanity? Why? Because it creates 2 distinct features of leftists. The first one is feelings of inferiority, and the 2nd is over socialization by feelings of inferiority. He means a whole spectrum of related traits. Things like low self esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, self hatred, guilt, defeatism and the. People who get really worked up. If you say anything negative about them or about a group with whom they identify with probably has feelings of inferiority. These traits are very common among groups like minority rights activists. Even if the activists does not belong to the group, they are defending words like Oriental Handicapped. Or Chick originally had no derogatory connotation. The stigma around these words have been attached to these groups by the activists themselves. The people who are most sensitive about these politically incorrect words are not the average black ghetto dweller or abused woman, but a minority of activists, most of which come from a privileged strata of society. Usually places like universities, which is where political correctness has its stronghold. 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 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 mean to suggest that women, Indians, etcetera, are inferior. We are only making a point about leftist psychology. Ted thinks that leftists seem to have a hatred for anything that has an image of being strong. They hate the West. They hate America. They say they hate the West. Because it is. Warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric. But where these same false appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds. Excuses for them, or at best, he grudgingly admits that they exist. Where he enthusiastically points out and often greatly exaggerates, these faults where they appear in Western civilization. So Ted thinks it's clear that imperialism, racism, sexism, etcetera are not the leftist real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful and leftist hate the strong and successful because they themselves feel weak and inferior. Words like self-confidence, self-reliance, initiative, enterprise optimism, etcetera, play little role on the liberal and leftist vocab. Larry, they want society to solve everyone's problems for them, satisfy everyone's needs for them to care for them. Leftists don't have an inner sense of confidence to solve their own problems. These feelings of inferiority are caused, or at least greatly exaggerated, due to the consequences of the industrial revolution, which will be explained later. But the other main psychological trait of a leftist is what Ted calls over socialization. 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. But 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 they attempt to think, feel. And act morally and poses 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 over socialized to describe such people. Ted believes over socialization leads to low self esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, et cetera. When a child is raised, he is told what words and behaviors to be ashamed of, which is not necessarily a bad thing and is very important for raising kids to fit into the society they are raised in. But if this is overdue. One or the child is particularly susceptible. The child ends up feeling ashamed of himself, and if any bad thought or action, no matter how minor or insignificant, will cause the person great psychological stress. And in an especially restrictive society with an extremely strict social order, the issue of over socialization. Fred Ted claims most of the modern world has become like this because of the industrial revolution, which again will be detailed later. But not everyone who suffers from leftism is over socialized having feelings of inferiority is an essential trait for leftism, but over socialization is not. But Ted claims the most influential segment of the left. Is over socialized, which are intellectuals and members of the upper middle class. He notices how university intellectuals are the most highly socialized part of our society and also the most left wing. Leftists claim to be rebels and that they are fighting against the man or the system, but this is not the case. Ted says leftists actually have very conventional attitudes, even though they pretend to be against them. Many leftist support, affirmative action, and slavery reparations for black people, for moving black people into high prestige jobs, improved education, and black. Schools to change the way of life of the black underclass they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system, just like the upper middle class white people. Although leftists will deny that they want to make the black man a copy of the white man. But the way they view black culture is very shallow. They only view in things like the music they listen to or the food they eat. They ignore whether the principles of black culture are antagonistic to the system. They want them to be integrated with in all essential respects, most leftist, especially over socialized leftist, want the black man to conform to white. Middle class ideals. They want him to become a business executive or lawyer to spend his life climbing the social ladder. Exactly the values of the industrial technological system. The system does not care what a man believes as long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job. Bob climbs the status ladder, is a responsible parent and so on and so forth. The leftist of the over socialized 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 the poor peace as opposed to war. Nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals, or 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 for a long time, these values are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed, and most of the material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and the educational system. Leftist, especially those of the over socialized 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. There are many individuals of the middle and upper classes who resist some of these values, but usually their resistance is more or less. Overt 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 reason why these values have become, so to speak, the official values of our society. 80 is that they are useful to the industrial system. Balance is discouraged because it disrupts the functioning of the system. Racism is discouraged because ethnic conflicts also disrupt the system, and discrimination waste the talents 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 morale of the other classes. Women are encouraged to have careers because their talents are useful to the system and more important. 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 through 52 that the system cannot afford to let the family or other small scale social groups to be strong or autonomous. The middle and upper middle classes only resist a few of the systems values and only covertly since they are too socialized to put up an actual resistance, even if they legitimately don't like the system. Yet, of course, doesn't claim that leftist never go against the mainstream values leftist actually go against one of the most important values of modern society. Being non violent, when you look at leftist protests, it's not hard to find ones that devolve into violence. I'm sure Ted would use the 2020 George Floyd riots or Antifa riots as prime example. They initially started off pretty peaceful, but ended up violent and in the end they were firebombing buildings and flipping over cars, but the way. Ted puts it. It's more of a form of liberation for them than actually wanting to help the group. They claim they want to help, which they rarely ever do. By committing violence. They are sort of breaking the chains of the psychological restraints. That have been ingrained in them, which are extremely stifling to an over socialized person. Person a healthily socialized person which feel no need to participate in a riot to defend the groups they feel are inferior, but over socialized people justify their violence by saying that they are fighting against racism or inequality or something else along those lines. As was just stated, leftists don't really protest a riot because they legitimately care about the cause. It's a form of liberation for them. But why do leftists only identify with groups they feel are inferior? Well, it's because they themselves feel inferior and they identify with these groups because they can relate with them since they think these groups are inferior just like themselves, they will get extremely emotional if their beliefs are questioned, since they feel as if they can only be psychologically secure by identifying with the powerful. Group and enforcing its beliefs on others so they are always able to rationalize their actions as being justified, even if their activism is not of actual benefit to the group. They say they want to help. It often makes things worse, like being dogmatic about racial issues and making ridiculous demands and claims that often intensify race hatred. The leftist feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate things as successful and superior and other things as failed or inferior, and that everything is relative. Leftists often deny the utility of IQ test and genetic explanations for people's abilities and behaviors. Leftists prefer to credit or blame society for an individual's abilities, or lack thereof. It's never the fault of the individual. It's the fault of society, since he has not been brought up properly, the leftist is not the kind of person. Whose inferiority makes him a braggart, an egoist, a bully, a self promoter, A ruthless competitor. This person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power or self worth, but he can still see himself as strong, and his attempts to make himself strong is what produces his unpleasant behavior. But the leftist feelings of inferiority are so ingrained he cannot conceive of himself as individually. Strong and valuable, hence why the left is so collectivist. They can only feel strong by identifying with the large organization or mass. Movement Ted says the problems of leftism are indicative of the problems of our society as a whole. Low self esteem, depressive tendencies and defeatism are not restricted to the political left, since again, what he calls leftism isn't necessarily a political ideology, but a psychological type. Though they're much more common among the political left. But feelings of inferiority and over socialization are widespread throughout our society. Even among the non political left. Ted believes that modern society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society ever has. Since we are even told by experts how to eat, how to socialize, how to exercise, how to Make Love, how to raise our kids and so forth. Most societies before relied on their extended family. Or people from their village to learn about the world, people. They were much closer with on a personal level, and each area having their particular way of life. Unlike today. Now some corporation or government body hires. To tell us the best way to live our life, Ted believes that things have gotten this bad because of the technological, economical system that has been created over the past 200 years.

17:55 The power process

But why does Ted believe Industrial Society has caused this? He believes these psychological issues stem from a disruption of what he calls. The power process. 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 it's 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 4th element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy, and we'll discuss it later. Ted uses the example of a man who could have whatever he wanted just by wishing for it. At first, the man would have a lot of fun, but overtime the man will become acutely bored and demoralized and may eventually become clinically depressed. Ted notes that history shows leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies. They have to struggle to maintain the. Power but leisures and secure aristocracies 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. If one is to be psychologically sound, everyone has goals in life, even if it's just to get the necessities. Like food, water and shelter. But leisured aristocracies get these without effort. Hence they become bored, hedonistic and demoralized. Not attainment of important goals, results in death. If the goals are physical necessities and in frustration if non attainment of goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failures to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self esteem or depression. 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. All the basics of life are easier than ever to obtain, so very minimal effort is required for a man to get his next meal. Most people for hundreds of thousands or millions of years have had to put quite a bit of effort in getting the necessities of life. But now, since the industrial Revolution, the necessities of life are all but. Guaranteed. So now people need to find some other goal to accomplish. Ted calls these surrogate activities. We use the term surrogate activity to designate any activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some sort of 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 faculties in a varied and interesting way, would he feels seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person's pursuit of goal X as a surrogate activity. For people who live in first World countries, one only needs to exert a modest effort to hold a job which only requires A moderate amount of intelligence and most importantly, obedience, since that's all that's needed to survive. People now need to sublimate the effort that normally would have went into getting the basics of life into something else. Activities like climbing the corporate ladder, scientific work, athletic achievement, acquirement of wealth far beyond the point in which it gives any additional physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues that are not important for the activist personally. These are not always pure or surrogate activities, since many people. May be motivated by needs other than they 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. But for most, the pursuit of surrogate activities are not enough to bring a psychological homeostasis, since people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are never our rest never satisfied, money makers always have to make more money. Scientists no sooner solve one problem than he moves on to the next. These people get more fulfillment from surrogate. Activities then satisfy biological needs. Since satisfied biological needs has been reduced to triviality. Most people trying to go through the power process need at least some autonomy. Their efforts must be undertaken under their own initiative and must be under their own direction and control, and it doesn't have to be on their own working as a small group to attain a goal that everyone has is usually sufficient. But if they work under rigid orders. Handed down from above, that leaves them no room for autonomous decision making, then their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true when decisions are made on a collective basis. If the group making the collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is inside. Infant. 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 required when one does not have adequate opportunity to go through the power process, the consequences are depending on the individual. And on the way, the power process is. Corrupted 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. The symptoms described are found in pretty much every society that has existed, especially among the aristocracy, but in modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale, Ted says these issues exist because we live in a world radically different from what we were evolved for, which was being a hunter gatherer. Or herdsman. Or subsistence. Farmers Ted views inadequate exposure to the power process as the main issue with why people are crazier than ever. Essentially, Ted believes people don't have control over their lives, which creates the feelings of inferiority and over socialization which creates modern leftism and all the traits that go along with it, like depression, self hatred. And low self esteem. But there are other sources of misery that are widespread among modern industrial society. 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 breakdown of natural small scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe. Crowding the increases, stress and aggression and people having to live in large cities as necessary to keep the industrial system going. People are not very psychologically calibrated. The cities, since most people lived in a rural environment up until 200 years ago. Now, cooperation is needed in the millions for our super complex society to keep running. Supply chains require the cooperation of millions of people and are very delicate. You need large amounts of truck drivers, manufacturing employees, white collar workers, logistics managers, et cetera, to keep the economy going. And disruptions of any of these components can breakdown the entire chain also, with man having to live in a city, he is more separated from nature than he has. Or been the natural world changes only slowly over the course of 10s of thousands of years, unlike the modern world, which seems to have a new world changing technology or economic schism appearing every few years, our way of life is changing faster than ever. Also, the breakdown of the extended family is caused by industrial society. Ted says that technological society has to weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently and modern society and individuals loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a small scale community. Because if the internal loyalties of a small scale community were stronger than the loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system. That has been pretty harsh of leftists throughout his manifesto. But right wingers aren't safe from Ted's criticisms. The conservatives. They whined 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 without causing rapid changes and all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes. Inevitably break down traditional value. News Ted also says this about modern conservatives in his notes, 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. Though I'm trying to keep this video about what Ted believes, I want to throw in my own hot take. I don't know about other countries, but in America, acting like the government and business, especially the largest ones, are entirely separate entities. Seems wrong to me. It's been like this since at least the 80s. Since the government started privatizing more and more of its services through subcontracting. So governments and businesses aren't really at odds, but they do have elements of competition and cooperation with each other. But they are both pretty much reliant on one another, like governments using businesses like the media to spread propaganda or censuring things and to collect massive amounts of data about people and businesses lobbying for certain deregulations and special privileges. I I guess I'm trying to say that within Ted's worldview, they're helping one another to extend the influence of the system. And are really just components of the system. They both have the same goals, which would be progress. So governments and businesses are functionally working towards the same goal. OK, time to get back to the power process. Ted still thinks the lack of the ability to go through the power process is more of a detriment to the psychological health of an individual than the breakdown of the extended family, or of the other issues mentioned. He uses 19th century America as his example. When people were moving westward to populate the unsettled parts of America, extended families were broken down at least as much as the extended family has broken down. Today, many nuclear families lived by choice in isolation and were many miles away from the nearest person, even though they were not part of any community, they did not develop the psychological problems that are widespread. Modern industrial society. Tea and even though change may have been very deep for a 19th century frontiersmen, they may have been born in a log cabin and outside the reach of law and order. And by the time they were an adult, they would be living in an ordered community with effective law enforcement. But the difference is that modern man has a 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, the pioneer settled on a piece of land of his choosing and made a farm and a community through his own effort. But modern society disrupts human drives more than any other society in history. Ted has several. Categories that he puts human drives into. We divide human drives into three groups, one those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort. Two, those that can be satisfied but only at the cost of serious effort. Three, those that cannot be adequately satisfied, no matter how much effort one makes, the power process is the process of satisfying the drives. The second group, the more drives there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc. Era and 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. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into group two that can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort. But modern society tends to guarantee the physical necessities to everyone in exchange for only minimal effort, so physical needs are pushed into Group One. To get the necessities of life, you just need to have some easy but usually soul crushing job and all you need to do is sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and do what you are told and the way you are told to do it. Seldom you have to exert yourself seriously and in any case you have hardly any autonomy and work and hence. The need for the power process is not served. So artificial needs have been created that fall into Group 2. The advertising and marketing industry have been created to make people feel like they need things like luxury cars, plastic toys, a new piece of technology to be fulfilled. But in reality they are entirely unnecessary for happiness and are solely there. They give people a surrogate activity to pursue. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs. Hence they fall into Group 2. Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process, largely through pursuit of artificial needs created by the advertising and marketing industry and through other surrogate activities. 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, and maybe 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 or through activities that have some external goal, such as. Physical necessities, sex, love status, revenge, etc. When goals involve earning money, very few people are able to pursue their goal autonomously. Most people are wages and have to work for someone else to earn money for the necessities of life and have to do what they are told in the way they are told to do it. Even most people who are in business for themselves have to follow strict rules and regulations, but for the most part these rules and regulations. Are necessary since the system is so complex. If most of the regulations were lifted, the system would descend into. Chaos 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 has 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 rules and regulations. And techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of success. The power process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy and the pursuit of goals. The way most people get the necessities of life today is by being an employee, so it falls into Group One of human drives, but the system has also pushed many drives 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 1000, make the important decisions. Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear power plant are properly maintained on how much pesticide is allowed to get in our food, or how much pollution into our air, whether we lose or get a job made depend on decisions. Made by government, economist 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 search for security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness. Yes, Ted says it may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure than modern man, as is shown by his shorter lifespan. Hence modern man has more security but psychological security does not closely correlate with physical security. What makes us feel secure is not so much security as in protection from all harm. But a sense of confidence and our ability to take care of ourselves. Even though primitive man is powerless over some things like disease, he accepts it stoically because it is the nature of things and no one has any control over it. Unlike a modern man who feels as if change is imposed upon him by others, things that he has very little control over, making him feel powerless, primitive. And can travel in search of food or fend off a fierce animal. 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 and food, environmental pollution, war and increasing taxes. Invasion of his privacy by large organizations nationwide. Social or economic phenomena that may disrupt his way of life. So primitive man has his security in his own hands. Unlike modern man who has almost no control. Over the things that that. In him, 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. Aside from corporations and governments trying to change public attitudes towards certain topics by using propaganda to try and stabilize the system, indirect coercion is used to a great extent. Ted's example is talking about how there is no law demanding us to go to work every day and how nothing legally is stopping us from going out into the wild. And living like a hunter gatherer or going into business ourselves. But in practice there's very little wild country left, and there's only so much room in the economy for small business owners, which indirectly forces most people to be somebody else's employ. LE during pre industrial times the vast to vast majority of people were self-employed. Hell, even during the last 100 years people were much more self-sufficient. Around 50% of the population and now only 13% of people can rely on themselves to make ends meet. 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 midlife. 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. Of course, not every person is miserable in the modern world. There are no doubt innate differences in the drive for power, and people with low drives for power have little or no need to go through the power process. These are people who would have been happy picking cotton in the fields of the old South. Health. Also, some people have an exceptional drive for power. These people will climb the status ladder their whole lives and never get tired of that game. People also vary in their susceptibility to advertising. People who are extremely susceptible are never satisfied, even if they make a large amount of money. People with medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. Have to put in a huge amount of effort to earn enough money to satisfy their cravings, so the need for material acquisition serves their need for the power process, and some people have low susceptibility, so material acquisition can never serve their need for the power process. Some people satisfy their need for the power process by associating with the large organization and individual lacking goals or power, joints of movement or organization adopts its goals as its own, and then works towards those 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 goals feels through his identification with the movement or organization, as if he had gone through the power process. This phenomenon was exploited by the fascists, Nazis and Communists, and of course our society uses it too, if not more. So. We see the same phenomenon in armies, corporations, political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious or ideological movements, and 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. Many, if not most, can't satisfy their need for the power process through these ways, since they see them for the surrogate activities. They are of course, many surrogate activities are not purely surrogate. Many people use it to get the money they need for the necessities of life, or it's a way to gain social. Credits, but many people put far more effort into their work 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, especially for the most creative scientists and engineers, work tends to be largely A surrogate activity. Ted explained how many people in modern society satisfy their need for the power process to a greater or lesser extent, but he thinks that for the majority. Of people that need for the power process is not fully satisfied. Those who have an insatiable drive for status, or those who get fully hooked on a surrogate activity, or who identify strongly enough with the movement or organization to satisfy their need for power in that way, are exceptional personalities. Most people, Ted argues, need to be in control of their lives. To a much greater extent than modern man is afforded the life and death situations need to be in their own hands and not in the hands of the state or of large corporations.

42:40 The motives of scientists

The motives of scientists. Science and technology provide the most important examples of surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are motivated by curiosity or by a desire to benefit humanity, but it is easy to see that neither of these can be the principal motive of most scientists. As for curiosity, that notion is simply. Most scientists work on highly specialized problems that are not the object of any normal curiosity. A mathematician does not care about the classification of a new beetle. That is, for the entomologist, and he only cares about it. Since it's his surrogate activity. If the mathematician 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 non scientific pursuit that they would not care at all about their respective fields. Also, the benefiting of humanity explanation doesn't work much better. A lot of scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race. Things like archaeology or comparative linguistics, and some areas of scientific work present very dangerous possibilities, like if cheap, nuclear. Energy is worth the risk of accident and the amount of waste it accumulates. Yet people in that field and other possibly dangerous fields. Are just as enthusiastic about their work as scientists who study air pollution or cure diseases. 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. Of course, the motives of some scientists are different. They may do it for the prestige and social status that comes along with being a high level scientist. Or like the majority of the population, are susceptible to the advertising industry and use the money they earn from their work to satisfy their cravings of material acquisition. 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.

44:55 The nature of freedom

The nature of freedom. 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 threat 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. Most of Europe used to be ruled by monarchies, and many of the cities of Renaissance Italy were controlled by dictators, but these societies seemed much freer than our liberty loving liberal democracy. You would not have gotten in much trouble with the law if you got in a bar fight in 15 hundreds, France, but today you'll have to pay a fine. Go to jail for a night or if there's an injury, you may go to prison for years. A large reason why 1500s Europe is freer than the modern West is because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the rulers 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. People ask for constitutional rights. Many of them don't give much benefit for the average person like freedom of the press. Ted certainly doesn't mean to disparage that, right. It's good at keeping people in power and check if they misbehave. But for the average citizen, freedom of the press isn't very useful. The mass media and social media companies. Are under the control of large organizations who are integrated into the system. Anyone with the little money can have something printed or go viral. On Reddit and what he has to say, even if it does go viral, will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media. So it will have no practical effect. This is the reason Ted gives for sending out his bombs. He believes if he didn't, his manifesto would have faded into obscurity since it's a lot more interesting to read a domestic terrorist. Manifesto than to read some random dudes sober essay. Was he right? Did the bombings do what he wanted? I don't know. But they sure got a lot of people talking about him, but usually not in a good way. Many people say this was just his excuse to kill and injure people because he was a psychopath and he wanted to shroud himself in a cloak of righteousness. Also, the bombings tainted the public image of his ideas. But Ted doesn't care that much what the public thinks, since he says the public is fickle and rarely know what they want. If he brings a small group of loyal followers to his side, that is enough. He goes into more detail about this law. 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 and part by psychological controls of which people are unconscious and moreover, many people's ideas of what constitutes freedom are governed more by social convention. And by their real needs, for example, it's likely that many leftists of the over socialized type would say that most people, including themselves, are socialized too little rather than too much. Yet the over socialized leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his high level of socialization.

48:45 Restriction of freedom is unavoidable in industrial society

Restriction of freedom is unavoidable in industrial society. 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 their time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. Most do it only grudgingly or normal. Adolescent wants to spend his time. And active contact with the. The world, but because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to societies, requirements, welfare leeches, youth gang members, cultist anti government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resistors of various kinds. In a technologically advanced society, the individuals fate must depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. It cannot be broken down into small autonomous communities because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society. Must be highly organized and decisions have to be made that affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects say 1,000,000 people, then each of the affected individuals has on the average only a one millionth share and making the decision what usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public officials or corporation executives or by technical specialists. 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 healthcare system, et cetera. 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. 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. 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. Point to the extent that it is to the advantage of the system to do so. 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. Too much waste accumulating the government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a massive propaganda about recycle. Need more technical personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is humane 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. It's technical necessity, not ideology. It doesn't matter whether it's capitalism or socialism and a capitalist system. Any company would soon go out of business if it permitted its employees to act on their own. And any enterprise within a socialist system. Workers must direct their efforts towards the goal of the enterprise, otherwise the enterprise. Will not serve its purpose as part of the system. The bad parts of technology cannot be separated from the good parts. One of the most. Popular criticisms of Ted's anti technology stance is that there are technologies that are only a net positive and offer no drawbacks and getting rid of the bad parts of technology should be our goal. But the people who say this obviously didn't read his manifesto.

53:10 The bad parts of technology cannot be separated from the good

Yeah, big Buster or they at least need to criticize Ted better on his next point. 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 and chemistry. Physics, biology, computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive high tech equipment that could 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. He says even if medical progress could be retained without other technological fields, it would still bring certain. Levels Ted uses diabetes as an example, he says people with a genetic tendency towards diabetes are able to survive through the use of insulin, therefore allowing people with genes that are prone to diabetes to survive and flourish, therefore leading to severe 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, but a manufactured product. Just wait until the government starts regulating your children's genetic constitution. Ted believes even if a code of medical ethics against the use of genetic engineering was passed, it wouldn't last long. He believes that the upper middle class would deem genetic engineering ethical. I mean, wouldn't it? Be cruel. If someone had a debilitating disease and doctors were not allowed to cure him since people deemed it unethical. Of course, it would be cruel, so it would most likely be approved by the general public. But even if genetic engineering was entirely banned, no code would stand up for long because of the immense power of genetic engineering is just too. Tempting all social contracts are transitory, but of course, the use of genetic engineering, of body and mind will only be used in a way that benefits the industrial, technological society, and human freedom is not part of the system's goals. The system actually looks at human freedom as a hindrance to its progress.

55:51 Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom

Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. 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 weak 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. And advance in technology that appears not to threaten freedom often seriously threatens it. 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. Hands freedom. They took no freedom away from The Walking man. No one had to have an automobile if he didn't know what one and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a 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 once movement. Is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various. Allegations, 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 and recreational opportunities, so 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 drive. The car, even the walkers, 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 and the country's motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. 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. Technological progress as a whole continues to destroy human free. But each technical advance on its own appears good. Electricity and indoor plumbing. How could anyone say they are bad? They offer many advantages and no disadvantages. But all these technological advances taken together have created a world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his family. And friends. But in those of politicians, corporation executives and anonymous bureaucrats and technicians, the same process will continue in the future. Take genetic engineering, for example. Few people will. Resist the introduction of a genetic technique that 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 technology within the context of an industrial society never moves backwards, only forwards. Once a technical innovation. Has been introduced. People usually become dependent on it so that they can never do again without 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 happen if computers, for example, were eliminated. Simpler social problems have proved intractable.

1:00:14 Similar social problems have proved intractable

Ted says there's absolutely no chance that freedom can be protected from technology, since we can't even fix straightforward problems like environmental degradation or drug trafficking or domestic abuse. 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 only get 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 compromises between different factions, some of which are ascended 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, nor 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, pursuing their own usually short term self-interest, arrive mainly by luck as some more or less stable modus Vivendi day. 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. And even if our environmental problem is one day solved, it would only be because it's to the benefit of the system. But human freedom and autonomy will never be of benefit to the system. It would actually be of benefit to the system to entirely do away with individuality and local autonomy.

1:02:21 Revolution is easier than reform

Revolution is easier than reform. We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be reformed in 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. Ted believes that revolution is actually much easier than reform. His reasoning for this 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 new world. That provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. The French and Russian revolutionaries went through enormous hardship to try and bring forth their utopia. Although only a minority of the population was really committed to the revolution, they were devoted enough to become the dominant force in society, even though the French and Russian Revolution failed to create the society they dreamed of, they were very successful in destroying the old one.

1:03:35 Control of human behavior

Since the beginning of civil. Nation organized societies have had to put pressures on human beings for the sake of the functioning of the social Organism. Some of the pressures are physical, some are psychological. 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. Past things start going wrong. Rebellion, crime, corruption, evasion of work, depression, other mental problems and elevated death rate. 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. Replaced by some more efficient form of society. Thus, human nature has in the past put certain limits on the development of societies. People could be pushed only so far and no farther, but today this may be changing because modern technology is developing ways of modifying human beings. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly. Unhappy. Then give some 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 has been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59 to 76. Yes, 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 and effect. Antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way. As to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. Able 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, IE law enforcement. Then there are the methods of propaganda for which the mass. Communications Media provides 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, well absorbed in television videos, etcetera. 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 constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise they get bored, IE they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable. Ted doesn't say that primitive life was perfect. He talks about how abuse of women was common among the Australian aboriginals and some of the perverted sexual practices of some of the American Indian tribes. But he still thinks that generally primitive man was better satisfied with his way of. Again, I'm trying to keep this about what Ted believes, but I think he exaggerates how good primitive life was, even if they were better satisfied than modern man. It's pretty staggering how violent many of these tribes were, on average, 20% or so of men died in wars, which makes the percentages of World War Two look tame. Also, things like infant side and. Human sacrifice were commonplace in primitive societies. Personally, I think the Middle Ages would be a great time to live, which I'm I'm not going to get into it right now, but maybe in a different. But anyway, it's certainly true that primitive man did not need all of these high tech distraction devices like modern man. If something was crucially wrong and a primitive man's way of life that made him unhappy, he would have done something about it. He couldn't have just immersed himself in five nights at Freddy's **** to forget about his dissatisfaction.

This is the entertainment matrix distracting people from their awful situations was certainly true in 1995, but it's even more so now. Much, much better ways of collecting data about average people for social engineering on social media. And the entertainment industry being able to grab people's attention to such an extent that it's almost comical, especially those Tik toks that have like two or three videos playing at once. I I really don't get it when I see one of those videos, I feel way too over stimulated and can't watch it for very long even though I use social media too much myself. But I guess people have gotten bored of only watching one video at a time, so now they need several videos at once so they can forget they exist for a little bit. Also, education is no longer a simple affair of paddling the kids 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. Learning centers like Sylvan, 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 to brainwash kids into becoming computer nerds or scientists. Mental health programs and 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. Presumably, research will continue to increase the effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior, but Ted doesn't think psychological techniques alone will be enough. Biological methods will have to be used. There is no reason to assume that better neurological drugs and genetic engineering won't be used to modify people's behavior until it has complete control over every part of the body and mind's functioning. 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 resolved from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self esteem. Depression, hostility, rebellion. Children who won't study youth gangs, illegal drug use. Child abuse. Other crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry. Bitter ideological conflict, EG pro-choice versus pro-life, political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti government groups, hate groups all these. Threaten the very survival of the system. The system will therefore be forced to use every practical means of controlling human behavior. Technological control over human beings probably won't be introduced all at once, or even with a conscious desire to do so. But each new step in control over human beings will be seen as a rational response to a problem that faces society. Something like reducing the crime rate, convincing young people to study science and engineering. During alcoholism, et cetera, et cetera. So no organized public resistance will be mounted. 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 that can be brought to the surface by electrical. Relation 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 than the biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were not the case, then researchers would not be able to so easily manipulate human feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes and search it 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. Given the outstanding record of our society and solving technical problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great advances will be made in the control of human behavior. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday, 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.

1:12:46 Human race at a crossroads

Human race at a crossroads. 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 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 bourgeoisie. But there are growing numbers of people who, in one way or another, are rebels against the system. Welfare leeches, youth gangs, cultist Satanist, Nazis, radical environmentalists, militiamen, etcetera. 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. Since Ted wrote this in the 90s, this should now be updated to 10 to 70 years. But if the system survives the crisis of the next several decades, it will have had to solve the principal problems that face it, mostly that of making human beings docile enough to where their behavior is no longer a threat. That being accomplished, there should be no further impediments to technological progress. And brought to its logical conclusion that means complete control over everything on Earth, including human. Means Ted says that industrial society is going through a period of extreme stress right now. So revolutionaries should have two goals. They 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 our revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to develop and propagate. An ideology that opposes technology and industrial society if and when the system becomes sufficiently weakened, such an ideology will help to assure that if and when industrial society breaks down, its remnants will be smashed beyond repair. OK, how many times have I said society in this video? Holy ****.

1:15:30 Human suffering

For the human suffering. The industrial system will not breakdown purely as a result of revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to revolutionary attack unless its own internal problems of development lead 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 deindustrialization. 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 1st place, revolutionaries will not be able to break the system down unless it is already in enough trouble. So that there would be a good chance, if it's 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. Ted says the only painless way of deindustrialization would be a global attitude change towards technology. Then through a slow process of the world's population becoming self-sufficient enough where they don't need advanced technology to survive, then it's conceivable that the system could break down without much suffering. Or hell, maybe it doesn't even have to break down. All the way. If people stop caring about scientific progress, people may become content staying at whatever level of technology they are at. Maybe everyone decides to go back to a technological level of the 90s or some. Thing, but Ted thinks the chances of this are so small he only mentions this in his final notes at the end of his manifesto. So Ted believes the entire system has to go. He doesn't think it's certain that survival of the system will lead to less suffering than the breakdown of the system. Would cultures that for hundreds or thousands of years that gave people a satisfactory. Way of life have been shattered by contact with industrial society and the result has been a whole list of economic, environmental, social and psychological problems. Oh, say the technophiles. Science is going to fix all of that. We will conquer famine and 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, etcetera. 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 society, so it is very probable that in their attempts to end poverty and disease. Engineered, docile, happy personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create social systems that are terribly troubled, even more so than the present one. For 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 that cannot be predicted and. Advance, in fact, ever since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been creating new problems for society far more rapidly than it has been solving old ones. Thus, it will take a long and difficult period of trial and error for the technophiles to work out the bugs of their brave new world. If they ever do. In the meantime, they will be great. Suffering so it is not at all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve less suffering than the breakdown of that society would.

1:19:58 The future

Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape. The future? But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several decades, 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. If computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent enough machines in AI, that can do everything better than humans. And we can assume all work will be done by machines. Machines may make their own decisions or human oversight will remain, regardless of which one happens, the human race will be at the mercy of the machines decision to make is so complex that people can't make good decisions on their own and will have to allow machines to be in control to allow for intelligent decision. In making whether the machine sees power or humans relinquish all power to the machines, or whether humans are still in control of machines, the human race will have drifted into such a position that turning off the machines would amount to suicide, even if control over the machines has retained, the average person will only have control over a few of his own machines. Like his car or computer. But the large systems of machines will be controlled by a tiny elite, just like today, but with two different. Due to improved techniques, the elite will have much greater control of the masses, and since human work will no longer be necessary, the masses will be a useless burden. If the elites are ruthless, they may eliminate most of humanity, leaving the world to the elite. If they are more humane, they may use propaganda and psychological or biological techniques. To reduce the birth rate until we hit a world population that the elite deem health. But if the elite are soft hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of Good Shepherd. Make sure everyone's needs are satisfied. Children raised in psychologically hygienic conditions that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and if anyone becomes dissatisfied, they undergo treatment to fix his problem. Since life will be so meaningless. People will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered to sublimate their drive for power into something harmless. Humanity will be reduced to the status of domestic animals. How about if computer scientists don't succeed in creating artificial intelligence that can? Do all of the work. So human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take control of more and more tasks, which creates an increasing surplus of people at the lower levels of ability. This is already happening today, and even those who are employed will have ever increasing demands placed on. For them, they will need more training and ability and have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized, so in a sense their work will be out of touch with the real world. The system will have to. Use any means necessary that it can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile. But the statement that people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. Competitiveness may be useful, of course, only if it's sublimated into a way that serves the system and may create a society where there's an endless competition for positions of prestige and power, but no more than a very few people will ever reach the top. This scenario reminds me a lot of the world of Cruelty squad. To be honest. Word to anyone who knows what I'm talking about. Machines taking over the work that is a real practical importance is already happening. Ted was spot on and predicting the rise of the service economy, where people are driving each other around using Uber, making handicrafts for one another on Etsy or working in the food service industry. These have all seen huge surges. But to Ted? This is a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up. Most people aren't fulfilled by this pointless. Easy work. They would seek other, possibly dangerous outlets. Drugs, crime cults, hate groups, being completely immersed in the entertainment matrix, alcoholism, political extremism, et cetera. Unless they were biologically or psychologically engineered to be adapted to such a way of life. There's a million other possibilities when it comes to possible futures, but Ted says the other scenarios aren't any better than the ones just described. Ted's predictions were made in 1995, and he said that within the next 40 to 100 years, the system will have many of these characteristics, and in the year 2023, I think it's pretty fair to say he was right. And over the course of the next few centuries, humans and many other organisms probably won't exist in the way we know them today, since if you change organisms through genetic engineering, there is no reason to stop at any particular point. So mankind probably won't even be human anymore. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences 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 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.

1:25:05 Strategy

Ted says the two main tasks for the present are to promote social stress and instability, 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. It would be similar to the French and Russian Revolution. 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 worldview that was quite different from the old one. 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, they were swept away by revolution. What Ted proposes is something along the same lines, even though the French and Russian revolutions were fair. Failures. Ted says they can still be used as blueprints of what works and what doesn't, but the French and Russian revolutions were good at was destroying the old society, but they both failed at creating a new one. But Ted has no delusions of creating a new society. He wouldn't want to anyway. All he wants to do is destroy the existing one, but an ideology. In order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideal as well as a -1, it must be for something as well as against something Ted proposes nature to be that positive ideal 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 new 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 social system. It is only necessary to get rid of industrial 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. And 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. IT to keep increasing 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 no other way people can live to feed themselves. They must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen. Are hunters et cetera and generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or other large organizations to control local community. As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society, well, Ted says you can't eat your cake and have it too, since most people hate doing serious thinking about difficult social issues, they must have the problems presented in black and white. So Ted says to develop the ideology on 2 levels and must appeal to people. Who are intelligent and thoughtful? The objective should be to create a core of people who are opposed to the system on a thought out rational basis, with full appreciation for the ambiguities involved and the price that will have to be. Aid these people are important to have in his group, since they're instrumental in influencing others. Facts should never be intentionally distorted and intemperate language avoided on a second level. The ideology should be easy to understand to the unthinking majority. The conflict of technology versus nature should be presented in unambiguous terms. What the language shouldn't be so cheap and irrational that it alienates the thought. Type cheap propaganda may achieve impressive short term gains, but in. The long run. It's best to have a small number of loyal and committed people to arouse the passions of the majority. A fickle mob will change their attitude when a better propaganda gimmick comes around. Ted doesn't expect that most people will approve of his ideology, but he says history is made by. Active and determined minorities, since they have a clear goal, unlike the majority, a core of deeply committed people is better than the shallow support of the majority. So he didn't care if the bombs he sent out tainted his ideology. But if you can get the majority support without weakening the core of seriously committed people. Ted says that. Would be desirable. Any kind of social conflict helps destabilize the system. But he says it many times to make sure that the line of conflict should be between the power. Voting elite and the mass of people, it should not be between the masses and the revolutionaries. It's not tactically good if you condemn people for their habits of overconsumption, it would be better to portray the average person as a victim of the advertising and marketing industry which has tricked him into buying a bunch of junk he doesn't need. And that's poor compensation for his lost freedom. Ted doesn't want to blame the public. Ted says that it's absolutely imperative that no other social conflict besides the power holding elite and the general public slash technology versus nature, should be pursued, focusing on other goals like social justice may encourage technology isation, since each side wants to use technology for its own gain. It must only be between the power holding elite versus the general public slash technology versus nature, social justice or any other movements getting involved would take away from the real problem, which is the industrial system. 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. 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 and. 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 average man, the results would appear disastrous. There would be massive unemployment, shortages of commodities, etcetera, even if the gross or 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 office, and the revolutionaries would have suffered a severe. Step back for this reason, the revolutionaries should not try to acquire political power until the system has got 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. Of 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 the technology, the Japanese will get ahead of us. Holy robots, the world will fly off its orbit. 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 same time. All. Over the world. And it is even conceivable 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. Uncontrolled 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. Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that bind the world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements like Gatt or US MCA 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. This is actually happening in Germany right now because of the Ukraine and Russian war. Since Germany was so dependent on Russian oil, their energy costs have skyrocketed since Russia was taken off the global market. And now German companies are moving to places like China or the United States. Although dependency on Russian oil is not the only factor. But it's not rare. For people to say that Germany and many other countries are. So many of their essential goods are manufactured abroad. Now they come from countries like the US and China, which are the industrial Titans of the modern world. But they seem to be having severe problems of their own. If one of these countries goes offline, the countries that depend on them for goods will be screwed, which is most of the world at this point. If there are any Ted Kaczynski. Them some positions of power. They seem to be doing a pretty good job assuming that these problems aren't naturally. Individuals today have very little power over nature. When people say modern man has too much power, they should clarify that large organizations have too much power. Since the average person has less power over nature than almost any other average Joe in history ever has. 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. Ted says it would be hopeless for revolutionaries to attack the system without technology. At the very least, they should use the media to spread their message. But modern technology must only be used for one purpose, and that is to attack the industrial system. Ted also says that revolutionaries should have as many children as possible. Social attitudes are to a significant extent inherited. Of course, it's not a direct outcome of a person's genetics, but they are at least partially inherited. Objections have been raised to this, but appear to be ideologically motivated. Regardless of whether beliefs are mainly passed on through genetics or through childhood. Training they are passed on.

1:36:44 Two kinds of technology

Two kinds of technology. 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. Ted talks about two kinds of technology. One he calls small scale technology and the other he calls organization dependent technology. Small scale technology is technology that can be created by small scale communities without outside assistance like simple tools crafted by a local tool, Smith organization Dependent Technology, a technology that depends on large scale social organization. Like needing factories and large groups of people working together for them to be created, things like computers or. Cars there doesn't seem to be much regression over history when it comes to small scale technology. When the Roman Empire fell, any village Craftsman could build a water wheel or any skilled Smith could forge basic metals, but the organization depended. Technology did regress. The aqueducts fell into disrepair and their road construction techniques were lost. Only recently did the sanitation levels of European cities equal that of ancient Rome. Home. So Ted says that it is clear that if the industrial system were thoroughly broken down, organization dependent technology would be quickly lost. And after they are gone, it will take centuries to rebuild. Assuming that people even wanted to rebuild in the 1st place, you need tools to make tools to make tools to make tools.

1:38:18 The danger of leftism

Ted says the movement against technology must take a resolutely anti leftist stance. An influx of leftist joining a non leftist movement can easily turn it into a leftist one and often replace or distort the movements. Original goals. Leftism in the long run is inconsistent with wild nature and freedom. Since leftists are collectivists and seeks to bind the whole world. To a unified whole, but this requires an enormous amount of management which 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, and 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 to ever give up technology because technology is too valuable of a source of collective. Power some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long that 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. Passed 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 Czars. And they oppressed ethnic minorities. At least as much as the SARS 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, and those of our universities were leftists have become dominant. They have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. This is political Co. Darkness the same will happen with leftist and technology. They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their control. And earlier revolutions left us at 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 robes. Pierre 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. Kent says he feels ashamed at his weak definition of who is the leftist, since that makes it hard to identify them. He says use your own personal discretion, but he goes over common leftist characteristics. The leftist is oriented toward large scale 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 social 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 leftist 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 may be 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. Ted says it's also very important to understand that leftists are people who sympathize with these movements as they exist today. If the person just believes that women are homosexuals deserve equal rights, that does not mean they are a leftist. They must have the particular ideological tone that characterizes modern leftism.

1:42:37 Final note

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 at all the necessary qualifications. And of course, any 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 of the truth. Ted did some evil things. I know only hot takes on this channel, but whether you think he was right or wrong about killing people being the only way for his message to make an impact, I wanna take his message on its own and separate the art from the artist cause. To be honest, I pretty much agree with the core of his message. Of course I'm not anarcho primitivist or anything like that.

I'm the weirdo. Because I'm sitting in the tree going I disagree with some of his points, but this video is long enough so if I feel like it I'll I'll do a video about what I disagree with him on in the future. But even if Ted as a person was not based, I think Ted's manifesto is one of the most based things I have ever read. Even if he himself says it's only a crude approximation of the truth, if you also thought Ted's manifesto was based, I wanna say please don't become a terror. Christ, I think the best way to do your part would be to be as little connected to the system as possible. It could be through self-sufficiency, needing only a little bit of money to get by, and being more involved in local affairs to strengthen local autonomy or best of all, a combination of all of these. And by the way, you're not a hypocrite if you use technology. Let's just say Ted himself used some technology. Just getting rid of technology that you know is bad for you should be enough. Since I'm not quite as anti technology as Ted, although I understand his positioning, I would say the ideal would be only using technology that adds to your life, but having enough control over your situation that if organizational dependent technology went down you would be fine.