# The Unabomber was right **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 18, 2009, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706 "2009-12-18T02:54:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![AdmiralCrunch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6f9a4e/32.png) [@AdmiralCrunch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AdmiralCrunch)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/121 "2009-12-23T06:08:30Z")
> [@misterW](#): > > Dehumanizing and degrading? He was responding to **msmith537** , who said > [@](#): > > The danger is that as we become more interconnected by those systems, there is an increasing pressure to conform to that system and to put the needs and desires of the system ahead of the needs and desires of the individual. and later described the system as dehumanizing. The contrast being, that while he finds modern society increasingly suppresses his individual needs and desires, others find that more primitive societies suppress their individual needs and desires. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/122 "2009-12-23T06:41:08Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > I can’t think of anything more dehumanizing, more degrading to my individuality and ability to self-actualize my potential and all that, than having to grub around the forest all day to dig up enough food to survive through the night, or having to chase some animal with a stone spear (that I spent all week chippiing) in the hope of getting something edible and a skin to wear. I don’t know. Maybe by working in a Chineese factory making products for Walmart? Or maybe a sweatshop stitching Reebok sneakers together? Or how about crammed in with a thousand illegals in some industrial slaughterhouse? Or maybe if you are luck enough to be in a Western country and educated enough you can work in a nice air-conditioned office park as a faceless cog in some corporate beurocracy? I mean at least until you appear unprofitable on some vice president’s P&L spreadsheet and are laid off from the company. Just do a search of this message board. How many people are in jobs they hate, working for abusive, idiot bosses and performing tasks they don’t particularly care about? But I suppose that is the bargain we make in order to be secure and comfortable (or at least have the illusion). We are perfectly comfortable working jobs we hate for shit we don’t need so we can eat our crappy food, watch TV at night before we go to bed and not have to worry about being eaten by anything. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/123 "2009-12-23T07:52:24Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > But I suppose that is the bargain we make in order to be secure and comfortable (or at least have the illusion). We are perfectly comfortable working jobs we hate for shit we don’t need so we can eat our crappy food, watch TV at night before we go to bed and not have to worry about being eaten by anything. And sooner or later… we die. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/124 "2009-12-23T08:34:39Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > And sooner or later… we die. And then we get eaten by something. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/125 "2009-12-23T11:31:51Z")
_You’re not your fucking khakis!_ ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/126 "2009-12-23T14:40:29Z")
> [@misterW](#): > > There are plenty of accounts of individuals who have lived with hunter gatherers who don’t describe their daily life as humanizing or degrading. Being able to leave that existence and go back to civilization makes a bit of difference, doesn’t it? Hobbies vs. basic survival, ya know. > [@](#): > > By the way, how does one self-actualize their potential? I was hoping somebody could explain that to me, too. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/127 "2009-12-23T14:50:37Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Being able to leave that existence and go back to civilization makes a bit of difference, doesn’t it? Hobbies vs. basic survival, ya know. > > I was hoping somebody could explain that to me, too. The difference is seeing the immediate results of your labor vs performing tasks as a necessary but not particularly important cog in a much greater machine that you don’t quite understand. Which is more satisfying? Building something with your own two hands or pressing a button a thousand times that attaches Doohicky #3 to Your Model 69 Widget. I think there is some middle ground between living in the jungle wearing animal skins and being permenantly hardwired into The Matrix. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/128 "2009-12-23T14:54:29Z")
Certainly. That’s where almost all of us live. But almost none of us, including outdoor sports enthusiasts, \*have \*to grub and hunt for basic survival, with no alternatives but death, thanks to technology. So why did you bring that up? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/129 "2009-12-23T15:46:14Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > She was vermin, not a humanitarian. She sacrificed other people, condemned them to suffering and death so she could mentally masturbate over her religious issues. Reminds me of certain Dopers. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/130 "2009-12-23T18:29:55Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Certainly. That’s where almost all of us live. But almost none of us, including outdoor sports enthusiasts, \*have \*to grub and hunt for basic survival, with no alternatives but death, thanks to technology. So why did you bring that up? I don’t think I implied we should return to a agrarian or hunter/gatherer existence nor that we should do away with technology. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/131 "2009-12-23T18:40:50Z")
Absolute rubbish. Kacynski never read _Lord of the Flies_, or watched read history, apparently. Technology makes things like genocide easier, but liberal, technologically advanced democratic societies smother the worst of man’s impulses. ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/132 "2009-12-23T18:51:53Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > At best, it’s a nitpick. In any case, a high infant mortality rate is a fairly good indicator of a society that is kinda icky and unpleasant and I’ll take a 21st-century Liberal Democracy over that by default. > > Now, if it was a society that had high infant mortality _and_ free pizza on demand, I might reconsider… What if the two were linked? 😉 Sorry, couldn’t resist. Anyway, I wasn’t making a qualitative judgement either way, I was just pointing out that an average life expectancy of 45 (or whatever the claim was in the original post) for pre-industrial cultures didn’t mean that most adults didn’t live to be 77. However, one also needs to compare the health and wellbeing of the 45-77-year-olds in both cultures to make a proper comparison - there’s more to quality of life than its length. Which I think has already been pointed out to some degree by someone else in this thread, so I’ll continue reading to see if the subject is already being discussed. ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/133 "2009-12-23T19:17:29Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > How many miles can you run? > > “Physically unhealthy” does not mean “dropping dead from diseases we now have cures for”. It means that taken as a whole, people these days are fatter, have lower stamina, are just generally less fit. Maybe much of that is due to those people whould have just died decades ago. Or it might have more to do with our lifestyle and the food we eat. > > … for all our technology and work-saving devices of convenience, people are as stressed, neurotic and depressed as ever. > > … I don’t think it’s realy about one form of society being superior to another. We aren’t going to revert back to an agrarian society. The question is what direction will technology take our society into the future? I think these are key issues. I’m fond of watching the recent attempts to experience the life of more primitive or less industrial times and cultures, and seeing the effects of the experiment on the people involved. The first was “Pioneer Quest”, undertaken in my province of residence at the time, Manitoba. The goal was for two couples to live an entire year like the prairie pioneers of the late 1800s. Those poor pioneer-wannabes got everything that Manitoba could possibly throw at them in a year, from the wettest spring to the most mosquito-infested summer to the coldest, snowiest winter in ages. They worked ridiculously hard and, during the busy season, ridiculously long. They faced deprivation and hardship and trauma and loss, but they also gained a particular kind of satisfaction in working for themselves that is notably missing from much of the “modern world”. They also formed close bonds with each other and with the other less industrial community in the area, the Hutterites, for whom they worked in exchange for food when their crops failed due to the weather. In spite of all the technical hardship, they were stronger and fitter and healthier and closer as couples because of the ways in which they were working together and literally “making a living” for themselves, rather than buying it in the store after working all day for somebody else. Even when the younger couple returned to their modern lives and had to work and go to school and such separately, they tried to retain that sense of closeness and common purpose that they had found when working together to build and maintain their home on the prairie. The older couple was fortunate enough to carry it back into their life literally, and run a bed and breakfast together and do speaking engagements and such. I would like to see us reclaim something of that sense of satisfaction and working for oneself in the future, regardless of what kinds of technology we may be using in the process. It does seem these days as if we’re largely working for it rather than the other way around - we’ve become such slaves to our technology habit that we spend our hours in pointless meaningless jobs just to support it. It’s especially costly because it’s not satisfying that need in us for really meaningful living, so we spend more on more tech to fill a hole that never gets filled. I don’t think that it’s impossible to cherry-pick the best parts of our technological advancement, advance further with those and leave behind the wasteful, unhealthy or antisocial bits, while at the same time cultivating our sense of community and all those things which satisfy us as humans. I think it would take a particular kind of mindfulness in our behaviour and decisions that we’ve largely abandoned, though. ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/134 "2009-12-23T19:21:20Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > One of the biggest problems isn’t with technology, it’s with people. Every advancement allows us to support more of them so our population continues to expand to the limits of what the system can support. I agree. It also contributes to social ills that make us care less about each other and our effects on things. ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/135 "2009-12-23T19:36:49Z")
> [@fessie](#): > > Maybe it needs a different name, some other word to represent the exhilaration of making music and art, and rooting for your team as they perform amazing feats, and cuddling your children as you stroke their impossibly soft skin. The closest word I’ve seen to cover all that is “community”. ---
**Author:** ![misterW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@misterW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/misterW)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/136 "2009-12-24T00:29:42Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Being able to leave that existence and go back to civilization makes a bit of difference, doesn’t it? Hobbies vs. basic survival, ya know. Perhaps, but not enough to make a difference in this case. If you want to argue that the hunter gatherer lifestyle if more dangerous, less secure, more likely to end in a violent or painful death, or more likely to result in getting one’s hands dirty, then go for it. But dehumanizing? Who has been dehumanized – the band of hunters who return home late, cold and exhausted, but successful in securing meat for their families? Or the checkout line worker who returns home late alone, exhausted and with an aching back from standing all day while performing tasks that a robot or chimpanzee could do equally well, but successful in securing a paycheck that will be consumed by rent, allowing him to do the same thing day after day after day? Which one will question where things went wrong as they try to sleep? This is not to suggest that dehumanizing existences in modern society are restricted to those with low education. A friend of mine who received a degree in biochemistry worked at a job where he tested the adhesiveness of tape all day long. He went home feeling empty, wondering where things had gone wrong, and drank. Again, you are arguing that a lifestyle consisting of activities that people turn to in order to feel alive and in touch with their humanity is somehow more dehumanizing than what many (I am not suggesting all) in our society experience --living as a cog in a giant machine? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/137 "2009-12-24T00:32:00Z")
> [@misterW](#): > > Again, you are arguing that a lifestyle consisting of activities that people turn to in order to feel alive and in touch with their humanity is somehow more dehumanizing than what many (I am not suggesting all) in our society experience --living as a cog in a giant machine? What makes you think a hunter/warrior is any less of a cog? They are if anything less free to choose to do anything else. ---
**Author:** ![misterW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@misterW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/misterW)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/138 "2009-12-24T01:12:05Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > What makes you think a hunter/warrior is any less of a cog? They are if anything less free to choose to do anything else. They are less of a cog because they are not simply a small and often ignorant piece of a great, complex, and mysterious machine. They exist in a small group of people that they know intimately and there is a direct and visible link between what they spend their energy doing and the fruits of their labor. There is no wondering about the purpose of what they are doing, wondering if it is necessary, questioning why they are wasting years of their life testing the adhesiveness of tape day after day. It is all obvious: I spent the last 5 days sharpening these arrowheads and now I am using them to hunt. I spend the afternoon gathering X and now I see my kid smiling as she eats X. When you get hungry and need to prepare food, does it bore you? Do you question why you are doing it? I think many of the tasks performed by people in our society are (1) joyless, and (2) lead to the question: why am I doing this? In a larger society, the roles are much more specialized. More efficient as a whole, but more cog-like for the individuals involved. With a large enough and specialized enough society, it is easy to lose track of the purpose. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/139 "2009-12-24T01:20:31Z")
> [@misterW](#): > > When you get hungry and need to prepare food, does it bore you? Yes. Necessary is not the same as “not boring”. I’m sure there were millions of hunters throughout history who found hunting equally boring. And just how fulfilling were such tasks as grinding grain by hand, or hauling around heavy weights without so much as a wheelbarrow? ---
**Author:** ![misterW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@misterW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/misterW)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706/140 "2009-12-24T01:41:38Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Yes. Necessary is not the same as “not boring”. I’m sure there were millions of hunters throughout history who found hunting equally boring. I doubt that. I think hunting is one of those things that has been hardwired into our nervous systems over millions of years. It would be like a dog finding it boring to chase something. I think many have been surprised by the unexpected excitement that they find released in themselves when they are hunting/stalking/tracking – even if is only for taking a picture. > [@](#): > > And just how fulfilling were such tasks as grinding grain by hand, or hauling around heavy weights without so much as a wheelbarrow? When a clear purpose is in mind and you are surrounded by others who you care about with the same purpose…I imagine it could be pretty fulfilling. Have you ever gardened? If you break it down into tiny pieces and analyze them individually it is difficult to imagine what might be pleasurable about, say, digging a hole with a shovel. But gardening is almost universally considered to be an extremely fulfilling activity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unabomber-was-right/521706.md?page=8)