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Title: Interview with Ted Kaczynski
Author: Theresa Kintz
Language: en
Topics: primitivist, Ted Kaczynski, anti-civ, technology, anti-technology, anarcho-primitivism
Source: Retrieved on December 16, 2014 from [[http://www.primitivism.com/kaczynski.htm]]
Notes: The above text first appeared in Green Anarchist Magazine.

Theresa Kintz

Interview with Ted Kaczynski

Kaczynski’s story represents a parable:

Once upon a time there was a continent covered with beautiful pristine

wilderness, where giant trees towered over lush mountainsides and rivers

ran wild and free through deserts, where raptors soared and beavers

labored at their pursuits and people lived in harmony with wild nature,

accomplishing every task they needed to accomplish on a daily basis

using only stones, bones and wood, walking gently on the Earth. Then

came the explorers, conquerors, missionaries, soldiers, merchants and

immigrants with their advanced technology, guns, and government. The

wild life that had existed for millennia started dying, killed by a

disease brought by alien versions of progress, arrogant visions of

manifest destiny and a runaway utilitarian science.

In just 500 years, almost all the giant trees have been clear-cut and

chemicals now poison the rivers; the eagle has faced extinction and the

beaver’s work has been supplanted by the Army Corps of Engineers. And

how have the people fared? What one concludes is most likely dependent

on how well one is faring economically, emotionally and physically in

this competitive technological world and the level of privilege one is

afforded by the system. But for those who feel a deep connection to, a

love and longing for, the wilderness and the wildness that once was, for

the millions now crowded in cities, poor and oppressed, unable to find a

clear target for their rage because the system is virtually omnipotent,

these people are not faring well. All around us, as a result of human

greed and a lack of respect for all life, wild nature and Mother Earth’s

creatures are suffering. These beings are the victims of industrial

society.

Cutting the bloody cord, that’s what we feel, the delirious exhilaration

of independence, a rebirth backward in time and into primeval liberty,

into freedom in the most simple, literal, primitive meaning of the word,

the only meaning that really counts. The freedom, for example, to commit

murder and get away with it scot-free, with no other burden than the

jaunty halo of conscience.

My God! I’m thinking, what incredible shit we put up with most of our

lives — the domestic routine, the stupid and useless and degrading jobs,

the insufferable arrogance of elected officials, the crafty cheating and

the slimy advertising of the businessmen, the tedious wars in which we

kill our buddies instead of our real enemies back home in the capital,

the foul, diseased and hideous cities and towns we live in, the constant

petty tyranny of the automatic washers, the automobiles and TV machines

and telephones-! ah Christ!,... what intolerable garbage and what

utterly useless crap we bury ourselves in day by day, while patiently

enduring at the same time the creeping strangulation of the clean white

collar and the rich but modest four-in-hand garrote!

Such are my thoughts — you wouldn’t call them thoughts would you? — such

are my feelings, a mixture of revulsion and delight, as we float away on

the river, leaving behind for a while all that we most heartily and

joyfully detest. That’s what the first taste of the wild does to a man,

after having been penned up for too long in the city. No wonder the

Authorities are so anxious to smother the wilderness under asphalt and

reservoirs. They know what they are doing. Play safe. Ski only in a

clockwise direction. Let’s all have fun together.

— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire, 1968

“I read Edward Abbey in mid-eighties and that was one of the things that

gave me the idea that, ‘yeah, there are other people out there that have

the same attitudes that I do.’ I read The Monkeywrench Gang, I think it

was. But what first motivated me wasn’t anything I read. I just got mad

seeing the machines ripping up the woods and so forth...”

— Dr. Theodore Kaczynski, in an interview with the Earth First! Journal,

Administrative Maximum Facility Prison, Florence, Colorado, USA, June

1999.

Theodore Kaczynski developed a negative attitude toward the

techno-industrial system very early in his life. It was in 1962, during

his last year at Harvard, he explained, when he began feeling a sense of

disillusionment with the system. And he says he felt quite alone. “Back

in the sixties there had been some critiques of technology, but as far

as 1 knew there weren’t people who were against the technological system

as-such... It wasn’t until 1971 or 72, shortly after I moved to Montana,

that I read Jaques Ellul’s book, The Technological Society.” The book is

a masterpiece. I was very enthusiastic when I read it. I thought, ‘look,

this guy is saying things I have been wanting to say all along.’”

Why, I asked, did he personally come to be against technology? His

immediate response was, “Why do you think? It reduces people to gears in

a machine, it takes away our autonomy and our freedom.” But there was

obviously more to it than that. Along with the rage he felt against the

machine, his words revealed an obvious love for a very special place in

the wilds of Montana. He became most animated, spoke most passionately,

while relating stories about the mountain life he created there and then

sought to defend against the encroachment of the system. “The honest

truth is that I am not really politically oriented. I would have really

rather just be living out in the woods. If nobody had started cutting

roads through there and cutting the trees down and come buzzing around

in helicopters and snowmobiles I would still just be living there and

the rest of the world could just take care of itself. I got involved in

political issues because I was driven to it, so to speak. I’m not really

inclined in that direction.”

Kaczynski moved in a cabin that he built himself near Lincoln, Montana

in 1971. His first decade there he concentrated on acquiring the

primitive skills that would allow him to live autonomously in the wild.

He explained that the urge to do this had been a part of his psyche

since childhood. “Unquestionably there is no doubt that the reason I

dropped out of the technological system is because I had read about

other ways of life, in particular that of primitive peoples. When I was

about eleven I remember going to the little local library in Evergreen

Park, Illinois. They had a series of books published by the Smithsonian

Institute that addressed various areas of science. Among other things, I

read about anthropology in a book on human prehistory. I found it

fascinating. After reading a few more books on the subject of

Neanderthal man and so forth, I had this itch to read more. I started

asking myself why and I came to the realization that what I really

wanted was not to read another book, but that I just wanted to live that

way.”

Kaczynski says he began an intensive study of how to identify wild

edible plants, track animals and replicate primitive technologies,

approaching the task like the scholar he was. “Many years ago I used to

read books like, for example, Ernest Thompson Seton’s “Lives of Game

Animals” to learn about animal behavior. But after a certain point,

after living in the woods for a while, I developed an aversion to

reading any scientific accounts. In some sense reading what the

professional biologists said about wildlife ruined or contaminated it

for me. What began to matter to me was the knowledge I acquired about

wildlife through personal experience.

Kaczynski spoke at length about the life he led in his small cabin with

no electricity and no running water. It was this lifestyle and the

actual cabin that his attorneys would use to try to call his sanity into

question during his trial. It was a defense strategy that Kaczynski said

naturally greatly offended him. We spoke about the particulars of his

daily routine. “I have quite a bit of experience identifying wild edible

plants,” he said proudly, “it’s certainly one of the most fulfilling

activities that I know of, going out in the woods and looking for things

that are good to eat. But the trouble with a place like Montana, how it

differs from the Eastern forests, is that starchy plant foods are much

less available. There are edible roots but they are generally very small

ones and the distribution is limited. The best ones usually grow down in

the lower areas which are agricultural areas, actually ranches, and the

ranchers presumably don’t want you digging up their meadows, so starchy

foods were civilized foods. I bought flour, rice, corn meal, rolled

oats, powdered milk and cooking oil.”

Kaczynski lamented never being able to accomplish three things to his

satisfaction: building a crossbow that he could use for hunting, making

a good pair of deerhide moccasins that would withstand the daily hikes

he took on the rocky hillsides, and learning how to make fire

consistently without using matches. He says he kept very busy and was

happy with his solitary life. “One thing I found when living in the

woods was that you get so that you don’t worry about the future, you

don’t worry about dying, if things are good right now you think, ‘well,

if I die next week, so that, things are good right now.’ I think it was

Jane Austen who wrote in one of her novels that happiness is always

something that you are anticipating in the future, not something that

you have right now. This isn’t always true. Perhaps it is true in

civilization, but when you get out of the system and become re-adapted

to a different way of life, happiness is often something that you have

right now.”

He readily admits he committed quite a few acts of monkeywrenching

during the seventies, but there came a time when he decided to devote

more energy into fighting against the system. He describes the catalyst:

“The best place, to me, was the largest remnant of this plateau that

dates from the tertiary age. It’s kind of rolling country, not flat, and

when you get to the edge of it you find these ravines that cut very

steeply in to cliff-like drop-offs and there was even a waterfall there.

It was about a two days hike from my cabin. That was the best spot until

the summer of 1983. That summer there were too many people around my

cabin so I decided I needed some peace. I went back to the plateau and

when I got there I found they had put a road right through the middle of

it” His voice trails off; he pauses, then continues, “You just can’t

imagine how upset I was. It was from that point on I decided that,

rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on

getting back at the system. Revenge. That wasn’t the first time I ever

did any monkeywrenching, but at that point, that sort of thing became a

priority for me... I made a conscious effort to read things that were

relevant to social issues, specifically the technological problem. For

one thing, my concern was to understand how societies change, and for

that purpose I read anthropology, history, a little bit of sociology and

psychology, but mostly anthropology and history.”

Kaczynski soon came to the conclusion that reformist strategies that

merely called for “fixing” the system were not enough, and he professed

little confidence in the idea that a mass change in consciousness might

someday be able to undermine the technological system. “I don’t think it

can be done. In part because of the human tendency, for most people,

there are exceptions, to take the path of least resistance. They’ll take

the easy way out, and giving up your car, your television set, your

electricity, is not the path of least resistance for most people. As I

see it, I don’t think there is any controlled or planned way in which we

can dismantle the industrial system. I think that the only way we will

get rid of it is if it breaks down and collapses. That’s why I think the

consequences will be something like the Russian Revolution, or

circumstances like we see in other places in the world today like the

Balkans, Afghanistan, Rwanda. This does, I think, pose a dilemma for

radicals who take a non-violent point of view. When things break down,

there is going to be violence and this does raise a question, I don’t

know if I exactly want to call it a moral question, but the point is

that for those who realize the need to do away with the

techno-industrial system, if you work for its collapse, in effect you

are killing a lot of people. If it collapses, there is going to be

social disorder, there is going to be starvation, there aren’t going to

be any more spare parts or fuel for farm equipment, there won’t be any

more pesticide or fertilizer on which modern agriculture is dependent.

So there isn’t going to be enough food to go around, so then what

happens? This is something that, as far as I’ve read, I haven’t seen any

radicals facing up to.

At this point he was asking me, as a radical, to face up to this issue.

I responded I didn’t know the answer. He said neither did he, clasped

his hands together and looked at me intently. His distinctly Midwestern

accent, speech pattern, and the colloquialisms he used were so familiar

and I thought about how much he reminded me of the professors I had as a

student of anthropology, history and political philosophy in Ohio. I

decided to relate to him the story of how one of my graduate advisors,

Dr. Resnick, also a Harvard alumni, once posed the following question in

a seminar on political legitimacy: Say a group of scientists asks for a

meeting with the leading politicians in the country to discuss the

introduction of a new invention. The scientists explain that the

benefits of the technology are indisputable, that the invention will

increase efficiency and make everyone’s life easier. The only down side,

they caution, is that for it to work, forty-thousand innocent people

will have to be killed each year. Would the politicians decide to adopt

the new invention or not? The class was about to argue that such a

proposal would be immediately rejected out of hand, then he casually

remarked, “We already have it — the automobile.” He had forced us to

ponder how much death and innocent suffering our society endures as a

result of our commitment to maintaining the technological system — a

system we all are born into now and have no choice but to try and adapt

to. Everyone can see the existing technological society is violent,

oppressive and destructive, but what can we do?

“The big problem is that people don’t believe a revolution is possible,

and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is

possible. To a large extent I think the eco-anarchist movement is

accomplishing a great deal, but I think they could do it better... The

real revolutionaries should separate themselves from the reformers...

And I think that it would be good if a conscious effort was being made

to get as many people as possible introduced to the wilderness. In a

general way, I think what has to be done is not to try and convince or

persuade the majority of people that we are right, as much as try to

increase tensions in society to the point where things start to break

down. To create a situation where people get uncomfortable enough that

they’re going to rebel. So the question is how do you increase those

tensions? I don’t know.”

Kaczynski wanted to talk about every aspect of the techno-industrial

system in detail, and further, about why and how we should be working

towards bringing about its demise. It was a subject we had both given a

lot of thought to. We discussed direct action and the limits of

political ideologies. But by far, the most interesting discussions

revolved around our views about the superiority of wild life and wild

nature. Towards the end of the interview, Kaczynski related a poignant

story about the close relationship he had developed with snowshoe

rabbit.

“This is kind of personal,” he begins by saying, and I ask if he wants

me to turn off the tape. He says “no, I can tell you about it. While I

was living in the woods I sort of invented some gods for myself” and he

laughs. “Not that I believed in these things intellectually, but they

were ideas that sort of corresponded with some of the feelings I had. I

think the first one I invented was Grandfather Rabbit. You know the

snowshoe rabbits were my main source of meat during the winters. I had

spent a lot of time learning what they do and following their tracks all

around before I could get close enough to shoot them. Sometimes you

would track a rabbit around and around and then the tracks disappear.

You can’t figure out where that rabbit went and lose the trail. I

invented a myth for myself, that this was the Grandfather Rabbit, the

grandfather who was responsible for the existence of all other rabbits.

He was able to disappear, that is why you couldn’t catch him and why you

would never see him... Every time I shot a snowshoe rabbit, I would

always say ‘thank you Grandfather Rabbit.’ After a while I acquired an

urge to draw snowshoe rabbits. I sort of got involved with them to the

extent that they would occupy a great deal of my thought. I actually did

have a wooden object that, among other things, I carved a snowshoe

rabbit in. I planned to do a better one, just for the snowshoe rabbits,

but I never did get it done. There was another one that I sometimes

called the Will ‘o the Wisp, or the wings of the morning. That’s when

you go out in to the hills in the morning and you just feel drawn to go

on and on and on and on, then you are following the wisp. That was

another god that I invented for myself.”

So Ted Kaczynski, living out in the wilderness, like generations of

prehistoric peoples before him, had innocently rediscovered the forest’s

gods. I wondered if he felt that those gods had forsaken him now as he

sat facing life in prison with no more freedom, no more connection to

the wild, nothing left of that life that was so important to him except

for his sincere love of nature, his love of knowledge and his commitment

to the revolutionary project of hastening the collapse of the

techno-industrial system. I asked if he was afraid of losing his mind,

if the circumstances he found himself in now would break his spirit? He

answered, “No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this

environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore.

And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin

to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that’s what

really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense

of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are

going to break my spirit.” And he offered the following advice to green

anarchists who share his critique of the technological system and want

to hasten the collapse of, as Edward Abbey put it, “the destroying

juggernaut of industrial civilization”: “Never lose hope, be persistent

and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history

where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so

you should never conclude all hope is lost.”