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Title: Afterthoughts to Technological Slavery Author: Ted Kaczynski Date: April 26, 2017 Language: en Topics: primitivism, anthropology, democracy, revolution Source: https://www.wildwill.net/blog/2017/04/26/ted-kaczynski-afterthoughts-to-technological-slavery/
Ăšltimo Reducto has recently called attention to some flaws in my work.
For example, in ISAIF, paragraph 69, I wrote that primitive man could
accept the risk of disease stoically because “it is no one’s fault,
unless it is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal demon.” Último
Reducto pointed out that this often is not true, because in many
primitive societies people believe that diseases are caused by
witchcraft. When someone becomes sick the people will try to identify
and punish the witch—a specific person—who supposedly caused the
illness.
Again, in paragraph 208 I wrote, “We are aware of no significant cases
of regression in small-scale technology,” but Último Reducto has pointed
out some examples of regression of small-scale technology in primitive
societies.
The foregoing flaws are not very important, because they do not
significantly affect the main lines of my argument. But other problems
pointed out by Ăšltimo Reducto are more serious. Thus, in the second and
third sentences of paragraph 94 of ISAIF I wrote: “Freedom means being
in control…of the life-and-death issues of one’s existence: food,
clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in
one’s environment. Freedom means having power…to control the
circumstances of one’s own life.” But obviously people have never had
such control to more than a limited extent. They have not, for example,
been able to control bad weather, which in certain circumstances can
lead to starvation. So what kind and degree of control do people really
need? At a minimum they need to be free of “interference, manipulation
or supervision…from any large organization,” as stated in the first
sentence of paragraph 94. But if the second and third sentences meant no
more than that, they would be redundant.
So there is a problem here in need of a solution. I’m not going to try
to solve it now, however. For the present let it suffice to say that
ISAIF is by no means a final and definitive statement in the field that
it covers. Maybe some day I or someone else will be able to offer a
clearer and more accurate treatment of the same topics.
In “The Truth About Primitive Life” and in “The System’s Neatest Trick”
I referred to the “politicization” of American anthropology, and I came
down hard on politically correct anthropologists. See pages [144-149]
and [202-203] of this book. My views on the politicization of
anthropology were based on a number of books and articles I had seen and
on some materials sent to me by a person who was doing graduate work in
anthropology. My views were by no means based on a systematic survey or
a thorough knowledge of recent anthropological literature.
One of my Spanish correspondents, the editor of Isumatag, argued that I
was being unfair to anthropologists, and he backed up his argument by
sending me copies of articles from anthropological journals; for
example, Michael J. Shott, “On Recent Trends in the Anthropology of
Foragers,” Man (N.S.), Vol. 27, No. 4, Dec., 1992, pages 843-871; and
Raymond Hames, “The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate,”Annual Review of
Anthropology, Vol. 36, 2007, pages 177-190.
The editor of Isumatag was right. As he showed me, I had greatly
underestimated the number of American anthropologists who made a
conscientious effort to present facts evenhandedly and without
ideological bias. But even if my point about the politicization of
anthropology was overstated, it still contained a significant element of
truth. First, there are some anthropologists whose work is heavily
politicized. (I discussed the case of Haviland on pages [145, 202-203]
of this book.) Second, some of the anthropologists’ debates seem clearly
to be politically motivated, even if the participants in these debates
do strive to be honest and objective. Consider for example the article
by Raymond Hames cited above, which reviews the anthropological
controversy over whether primitive peoples were or were not good
conservationists. Why should this question be the subject of so much
debate among anthropologists? The reason, obviously, is that nowadays
the problem of controlling the environmental damage caused by industrial
society is a hot political issue. Some anthropologists are tempted to
cite primitive peoples as moral examples from whom we should learn to
treat our environment with respect; other anthropologists perhaps would
prefer to use primitives as negative examples in order to convince us
that we should rely on modern methods to regulate our environment.
Until roughly the middle of the 20th century, industrial society was
extremely self-confident. Apart from a very few dissenting voices,
everyone assumed that “progress” was taking us all to a better and
brighter future. Even the most rebellious members of society—the
Marxists—believed that the injustices of capitalism represented only a
temporary phase that we had to pass through in order to arrive at a
world in which the benefits of “progress” would be shared equally by
everyone. Because the superiority of modern society was taken for
granted, it seldom occurred to anyone to draw comparisons between modern
society and primitive ones, whether for the purpose of exalting
modernity or for the purpose of denigrating it.
But since the mid-20th century, industrial society has been losing its
self-confidence. Thinking people are increasingly affected by doubts
about whether we are on the right road, and this has led many to
question the value of modernity and to react against it by idealizing
primitive societies. Other people, whose sense of security is threatened
by the attack on modernity, defensively exaggerate the unattractive
traits of primitive cultures while denying or ignoring their attractive
traits. That is why some anthropological questions that once were purely
academic are now politically loaded. I realize that the foregoing two
paragraphs greatly simplify a complex situation, but I nevertheless
insist that industrial society’s loss of self-confidence in the course
of the 20th century is a real event.
Disposal of Radioactive Waste. In a letter to David Skrbina dated March
17, 2005, I expressed the opinion, based on “the demonstrated
unreliability of untested technological solutions,” that the
nuclear-waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada likely would prove
to be a failure. See page [315] of this book. It may be of interest to
trace the subsequent history of the Yucca Mountain site as reported in
the media.
On March 18, 2005, The Denver Post, page 4A, carried an Associated Press
report by Erica Werner according to which then-recent studies had found
that water seepage through the Yucca Mountain site was faster than what
earlier studies had reported. The more-rapid movement of water implied a
greater risk of escape of radioactive materials from the site, and there
were reasons to suspect that the earlier studies had been intentionally
falsified.
The Week, January 26, 2007, page 24, reported a new study: “Special new
containers designed to hold nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years
may begin to fall apart in just 210 years,” the study found.
“Researchers…had pinned their hopes on zircon, a material they thought
was stable enough to store the waste…” The scientists had based this
belief on computer simulations, but they were “startled” when they
discovered how alpha radiation affected the “zircon” in reality.
Zircon is a gemstone. The substance referred to in the article
presumably is a ceramic called zirconia. See The New Encyclopdaedia
Britannica, 15th ed., 2003, Vol. 21, article “Industrial Ceramics,”
pages 262-63.
On September 25, 2007, The Denver Post, page 2A, reported: “Engineers
moved some planned structures at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump
after rock samples indicated a fault line unexpectedly ran beneath their
original location…”
On March 6,2009, The Denver Post, page 14A, carried an Associated Press
report by H. Josef Hebert according to which the U.S. Government had
abandoned the plan to store reactor waste at Yucca Mountain. This after
having spent 13.5 billion dollars on the project.
So it appears that the problem of safe disposal of radioactive waste is
no closer to a solution than it ever was.
Why is Democracy the Dominant Political Form of the Modern World? The
argument about democracy set forth in my letters to David Skrbina of
October 12 and November 23, 2004 (pages [283-285] and [292-296] of this
book) is incomplete and insufficiently clear, so I want to supplement
that argument here.
The most important point that I wanted to make was that democracy became
the dominant political form of the modern world not as the result of a
decision by human beings to adopt a freer or a more humane form of
government, but because of an “objective” fact, namely, the fact that in
modern times democracy has been associated with the highest level of
economic and technological success.
To summarize the argument of my letters to Dr. Skrbina, democratic forms
of government have been tried at many times and places at least since
the days of ancient Athens, but democracy did not thrive sufficiently to
displace authoritarian systems, which remained the dominant political
forms through the 17th century. But from the advent of the Industrial
Revolution the (relatively) democratic countries, above all the
English-speaking ones, were also the most successful countries
economically and technologically. Because they were economically and
technologically successful, they were also successful militarily. The
economic, technological, and military superiority of the democracies
enabled them to spread democracy forcibly at the expense of
authoritarian systems. In addition, many nations voluntarily attempted
to adopt democratic institutions because they believed that these
institutions were the source of the economic and technological success
of the democracies.
As part of my argument, I maintained that the two great military
contests between the democracies and the authoritarian regimes—World
Wars I and II—were decided in favor of the democracies because of the
democracies’ economic and technological vigor. The astute reader,
however, may object that the democracies could have won World Wars I and
II simply by virtue of their great preponderance in resources and in
numbers of soldiers, with or without any putative superiority in
economic and technological vigor.
My answer is that the democracies’ preponderance in resources and
numbers of soldiers was only one more expression of their economic and
technological vigor. The democracies had vast manpower, territory,
industrial capacity, and sources of raw material at their disposal
because they—especially the British—had built great colonial empires and
had spread their language, culture, and technology, as well as their
economic and political systems, over a large part of the world. The
English-speaking peoples moreover had powerful navies and therefore,
generally speaking, command of the sea, which enabled them to assist one
another in war by transporting troops and supplies to wherever they
might be needed.
Authoritarian systems either had failed to build empires of comparable
size, as in the case of Germany and Japan, or else they had indeed built
huge empires but had left them relatively backward and undeveloped, as
in the case of Spain, Portugal, and Russia. It was during the 18th
century, as the Industrial Revolution was gathering force, that
authoritarian France lost to semidemocratic Britain in the struggle for
colonization of North America and India. France did not achieve stable
democracy until 1871, when it was too late to catch up with the British.
Germany as a whole was politically fragmented until 1871, but the most
important state in Germany—authoritarian Prussia—was already a great
power by 1740[1] and had access to the sea,[2] yet failed to build an
overseas empire. Even after the unification of their country in 1871,
the Germans’ efforts at colonization were half-hearted at best.
Like the English-speaking peoples, the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking
peoples colonized vast territories and populated them thickly, but the
manpower of their territories could not have been used very effectively
in a European war, because these peoples lacked the economic, technical,
and organizational resources to assemble, train, and equip large armies,
transport them to Europe, and keep them supplied with munitions while
they were there. Moreover, they lacked the necessary command of the sea.
The Russians did not need command of the sea in order to transport their
men to a European battlefield, but, as pointed out on page [340] of this
book, note 34, the Russians during World War II did need massive aid
from the West. without which they could not have properly equipped and
supplied their troops.
Thus the Allies’ preponderance in resources and numbers of troops, at
least during World War II, was clearly an expression of the democracies’
economic and technological vigor. The democracies’ superiority was a
consequence not only of the size of their economics, but also of their
efficiency. Notwithstanding the vaunted technical efficiency of the
Germans, it is said that during World War II German productivity per
man-hour was only half that of the United States, while the
corresponding figure for Japan was only one fifth that of the U.S.[3]
Though the case may not have been as clear-cut in World War I, it does
appear that there too the Allies’ superiority in resources and in
numbers of troops was largely an expression of the democracies’ economic
and technological vigor. “In munitions and other war material Britain’s
industrial power was greatest of all…Britain…was to prove that the
strength of her banking system and the wealth distributed among a great
commercial people furnished the sinews of war…”[4] Authoritarian Russia
was not a critical factor in World War I, since the Germans defeated the
Russians with relative ease.
Thus it seems beyond argument that democracy became the dominant
political form of the modern world as a result of the democracies’
superior economic and technological vigor. It may nevertheless be
questioned whether democratic government was the cause of the economic
and technological vigor of the democracies. In the foregoing discussion
I’ve relied mainly on the example of the English-speaking peoples. In
fact, France, following its democratization in 1871 and even before the
devastation wrought by World War I, was not economically vigorous.[5]
Was the economic and technological vigor of the English-speaking peoples
perhaps the result, not of their democratic political systems, but of
some other cultural trait?
For present purposes the answer to this question is not important. The
objective fact is that since the advent of the Industrial Revolution
democracy has been generally associated with economic and technological
vigor. Whether this association has been merely a matter of chance, or
whether there is a causative relation between democracy and economic and
technological vigor, the fact remains that the association has existed.
It is this objective fact, and not a human desire for a freer or a more
humane society, that has made democracy the world’s dominant political
form.
It is true that some peoples have made a conscious decision to adopt
democracy, but it can be shown that in modern times (at least since,
say, 1800) such decisions have usually been based on a belief (correct
or not) that democracy would help the peoples in question to achieve
economic and technological success. But even assuming that democracy had
been chosen because of a belief that it would provide a freer or a more
humane form of government, and even assuming that such a belief were
correct, democracy could not have thriven under conditions of
industrialization in competition with authoritarian systems if it had
not equalled or surpassed the latter in economic and technological
vigor.
Thus we are left with the inescapable conclusion that democracy became
the dominant political form of the modern world not through human choice
but because of an objective fact, namely, the association of democracy,
since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, with economic and
technological success.
It is my opinion that we have now reached the end of the era in which
democratic systems were the most vigorous ones economically and
technologically. If that is true, then we can expect democracy to be
gradually replaced by systems of a more authoritarian type, though the
external forms of democratic government will probably be retained
because of their utility for propaganda purposes.
Popular Rebellion as a Force for Reform. On pages [345 note 121,
322—323] of this book I stated that in the early 20th century labor
violence in the United States impelled the government to carry out
reforms that alleviated the problems of the working class. This
statement was based on my memory of things read many years earlier.
Recent reading and rereading lead me to doubt that the statement is
accurate.
It’s true that labor violence during the 1890s seems to have spurred
efforts at reform by the government and by industry between about 1896
and 1904, but the effect was short-lived.[6] The great turning point in
the struggle of the American working class was the enactment in the
1930s of legislation that guaranteed workers the right to organize and
to bargain collectively, and this turning point was followed by a “sharp
decline in the level of industrial violence.”[7] But I’m not aware of
any evidence that the legislation was motivated by a desire to prevent
labor violence.
The data support the conclusion that labor violence was damaging to
labor unions and counterproductive in relation to the workers’ immediate
goals.[8] On the other hand, it seems clear that labor violence could
not have been ended except by addressing the grievances of the working
class.[9] Thus, the threat of violence could have impelled the
government to enact legislation guaranteeing the workers’ right to
organize and to bargain collectively. But, again, I don’t know of any
evidence that this was actually what happened.
Be that as it may, we can dispense with the labor movement for present
purposes. The revolt of American black people (the “civil rights
movement”) of the 1950s and 1960s can serve to illustrate the points I
tried to make on page [345 note 121] and pages [322-323] of this book.
And it’s easy to give other examples of cases in which popular revolt,
short of revolution, has forced governments to pay attention to people’s
grievances. Thus, the Wat Tyler Rebellion in England (1381) failed as a
social revolution, but it impelled the government to refrain from
enforcing the poll tax that was the immediate cause of the revolt.[10]
The Sepoy Mutiny in India (1857-58) was ruthlessly crushed, but it
caused the British to drop their effort to impose westernizing social
changes upon Hindu civilization.[11]
[1] Encycl. Britannica, 2003, Vol. 20, article “Germany,” page 96.
[2] The fact that Prussia’s access was to the Baltic Sea rather than
directly to the Atlantic was not a terribly important factor in the 18th
century, when round-the-world voyages were nothing very extraordinary;
still less was it important in the 19th century, when sailing ships of
advanced design, and later steamships, made voyages to all parts of the
world a routine matter. Even the tiny duchy of Courland, situated at the
eastern end of the Baltic, made a start at overseas colonization during
the 17th century (Encycl. Britannica, 2003, Vol. 3, article “Courland,”
page 683), so there was certainly no physical obstacle to Prussia’s
doing the same in the 18th and 19th centuries.
[3] John Keegan, The Second World War, Penguin, 1990, page 219.
[4]
B. H. Liddell Hart, The Real War, 1914-1918, Little, Brown and
Company, 1964, page 44.
[5] Encycl. Britannica, 2003, Vol. 19, article “France,” page 521.
[6] Foster Rhea Dulles, Labor in America: A History, third edition, AHM
Publishing Corporation, Northbrook, Illinois, 1966, pages 166-179,
183-88, 193-99, 204-05.
[7] Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr (editors), Violence in
America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, Signet Books, New
York, 1969, pages 343-45, 364-65.
[8] Ibid., pages 361-62.
[9] Ibid., pages 364-66.
[10] Encycl. Britannica, 2003, Vol. 9, article “Peasants’ Revolt,” pages
229-230.
[11] Ibid., Vol. 6, article “Indian Mutiny,” pages 288-89.