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You can include books, essays, transcripts, etc. Also, it can be anything from Ted's own writings to ecology books that don't even mention Ted.
It just feels like Ted's life story and ideas have been used as a touchstone for discussing so many varied issues. So, would be curious what different people's list of top texts looks like, and reasons why. It doesn't matter if the list is diehard anti-tech or pro-tech.
Here's my list:
1. Bron Taylor. Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism
Since the 1980 formation of Earth First!, radical environmental movements have proliferated widely. Their adversaries, law enforcement authorities and some scholars accuse them of violence and terrorism. Here, I scrutinize such charges by examining 18 years of radical environmentalism for evidence of violence and for indications of violent tendencies. I argue that despite the frequent use of revolutionary and martial rhetoric by participants in these movements, they have not, as yet, intended to inflict great bodily harm or death. Moreover, there are many worldview elements internal to these movements, as well as social dynamics external to them, that reduce the likelihood that movement activists will attempt to kill or maim as a political strategy. Labels such as âviolentâ or âterroristâ are not currently apt blanket descriptors for these movements. Thus, greater interpretive caution is needed when discussing the strategies, tactics, and impacts of radical environmentalism.
2. Michael Sperber, Dostoyevskyâs Stalker and Other Essays on Psychopathology and the Arts
In Dostoyevsky's Stalker, we discover how the arts may illuminate psychiatry and psychoanalysis. ⌠It makes sense to consider Asperger as a spectrum disorder. Its incidence in the population at large is far greater than is thought. The major problem is a difficulty âreading people,â and those with the disorder are frequently hurt by those who misread them. As a consequence, they may become social isolates like the Underground Man and Kaczynski. Just as it is possible to teach people how to have a dialogue with themselves (by writing a poem, painting a picture, or playing a musical instrument) it is possible to teach a person who has no concept of anotherâs mind how to be in better touch with people.
3. Donald Wayne Foster; Author Unknown; On the Trail of Anonymous
Certain literary texts had an arguably pernicious effect on the Unabomberâs imagination during his seventeen-year campaign of terror. An avid reader, Kaczynskiâs study included a wide variety of English, American, and Spanish fictionâand he often commented afterward on those stories and novels that especially moved or amused him. One such is Horacio Quirogaâs âJuan Darien,â a story that Ted subsequently translated into English. Juan Darien is a studious boy, cruelly ridiculed at school for his rough hair and shynessâbut he is actually a tiger bearing a human shape. Taunted once too often, the tiger-boy renounces his sympathy for humanity. Taking his revenge on a cat-tamer, Juan catches the man in his teeth, carries him to a cane-brake, and sets him on fire. The cat-tamer begs pardon for his offenses, but it is too late. As the canes burn, the tiger that was Juan Darien stands by with other tigers, gazing at the colorful flames until the man is reduced to a blackened corpse.
4. Mark Dery, Pyrotechnic Insanitarium; American Culture on the Brink
Dery views contemporary America as âless a coherent society than a fault zone, a network of interconnected societal fractures. ⌠Iâm interested in the unlit, unfrequented corners of society, ⌠the gothic, the grotesque, the carnivalesqueâin short, extremes and excess of every sort. I want to induce, in my reader, the vertigo that comes from leaning too far over the edge of the cultural abyss.â
5. Michael Loadenthal. The Politics of Attack: CommuniqueĚs and Insurrectionary Violence
Since the early 2000s, global, underground networks of insurrectionary anarchists have carried out thousands of acts of political violence. This book is an exploration of the ideas, strategies, and history of these political actors that engage in a confrontation with the oppressive powers of the state and capital.
6. William Gillis, A Quick and Dirty Critique of Primitivist & Anti-Civ Thought
Today the landscape is even more ideologically fractured and many have retreated to a nebulous âanti-civâ position that inherits most of the primitivist framework while remaining loose enough to duck most criticism. But while those identify as anti-civ may individually break with some aspects of primitivism, without any of the frameworks or narratives of primitivism, there wouldnât be an anti-civ position to speak.Core to the term âanti-civâ itself is a sweeping impression of âcivilizationâ that is intensely problematic and lends itself to overly simplistic narratives. Primitivism is rife with this kind of irreductionist handwaving that dreams up big monsters from loose associations and gives them agency as magical forces acting on the macroscale, shaping every particular. Following an approach that Ellul openly termed âmonismâ, primitivism refuses to pick these spooks apart, to recognize any conflict between or latitude in the configuration of their constituent dynamics.
7. Sean Fleming, The Unabomber and the origins of anti-tech radicalism
This article uncovers the origins of Kaczynskiâs ideas and examines his influence on contemporary anti-tech radicalism.
Sean Fleming is a Nottingham Research Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations. His current project, 'Revenge of the Luddites', is about anti-technology radicalism. The aim of his research is to understand the ideas and ideologies that motivate terrorist attacks on scientists (such as the Unabomber's) and sabotage attacks on infrastructure (such as pipeline bombings). His previous project, 'Leviathan on a Leash', was about collective responsibility and Thomas Hobbes's political thought.
8. Ole Martin Moen, The Unabomber's Ethics
This text neatly reveals and refutes the hidden premise within many primtivists foundational arguments. That faulty premise being; the evaluative asymmetry whereby anything that happens in wild habitat is automatically less bad than anything that happens in an industrialized society.
9. Ted Kaczynski, Truth versus Lies (Volunteers Update)
A fascinatingly peculiar book for the context it was written in, itâs focus, and Ted hitting âstop the pressâ mid-printing, preventing the publishing of what likely would have been a fairly well-read book:
[Ted] had been interested in writing letters to counter the image being presented by his family of him in the media. He discussed this with his attorneys and although he felt some pressure to conform, he had agreed with them not to write letters to the media and draw additional public attention to him at this point in the trial process. Nonetheless he spent approximately four months preparing a rebuttal to all he perceived as inaccurate in the public portrayal of him, and focused extensively on portraying his brother David in a negative light in these writings.
Quoting Ted:
My book ⌠deals mainly with the lies that my mother and especially my brother have been telling about me through the media [crossed out: and with their motives for telling these lies]. In order to show why my brother and mother have been lying about me, I examine my family relationships in [crossed out: considerable] depth.On the positive side, the book contains material of considerable human interest. I demonstrate that my brotherâs case is one that surely would have fascinated Freud, Jung, and Adler.
10. Ted Kaczynski, Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography
Ted wrote three autobiographies in his lifetime. All are painfully honest about his social inadequacies, his inability with women and his painful relationship with his family, particularly his parents:
He wrote his second autobiography ⌠at age 37 he was back home with his parents in Chicago. After nearly a decade living in his cabin in the woods and it's almost uncomfortably intimate. It feels more intimate than Ted's journals themselves. He describes a teenage sexual encounter with another boy, talks about girls he lusts after and professors he hates. His own lifelong feelings of social inadequacy are everywhere, and this document Ted says there's a particular reason he's writing it, he's going to start killing people, and if he's captured or killed by the police, he wants people to find the document. Read his life story as he sees it.
11. Theo Slade, Normandie, etc. A Collaboratively Edited Discussion on Anti-Tech Politics
The open ended conversation that provoked me to start researching anti-tech philosophy.
12. Unpredictable, Why do People Love this Serial Killer?
The best short biographical account of Tedâs life story.
13. Sisyphus 55, The Philosophy of the Unabomber
The best short analysis of Tedâs philosophy.
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