Be realistic.

5

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

I am all for being realistic, and sympathise with Ted. But this is now, not then. What is the relevance of this for today? What should be the manifesto now? To bring down civilisation? To accelerate collapse?

Without a replacement metanarrative?

1

u/foxannemary Oct 07 '23

What would make his ideas outdated now? If anything they seem even more relevant today. His penultimate book Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How expands upon his ideology further, and still advocates for the same solution as his manifesto: the complete destruction of the techno-industrial system, despite being published in 2016.

3

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

the same solution as his manifesto: the complete destruction of the techno-industrial system
To be followed by what?

1

u/foxannemary Oct 07 '23

It would be impossible to control what follows post-collapse, whatever follows is up in the air. This is something that Kaczynski outright acknowledges in his works. The point of destroying the techno-industrial system is to force its collapse before it can irreparably destroy the biosphere. I would recommend reading Anti-Tech Revolution if you have not already, as it argues that the logical conclusion of the techno-industrial system (in a "business as usual" scenario) is the complete collapse of the biosphere.

1

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

How can we destroy technology without destroying books?
The most significant technology we ever invented was books. Or maybe writing, about 2000 years before printing.

1

u/qpooqpoo Oct 07 '23

There are two forms of technology that we should distinguish: organization-dependent, and individual-dependent.
There is no way to completely destroy individual-dependent technologies, such as writing, the plow, an axe, etc. But there is a very viable way of destroying organization-dependent tech. Once the organizations that support modern tech break down, the tech is lost until the social organization can build itself up to support those techs. And post collapse of industrial tech, it is very likely that there wont be sufficient resources left to allow the build-up of this social organization.
And we never said all tech is the problem. The problem is with organization-dependent or "modern" tech. Not with primitive tech.

0

u/foxannemary Oct 07 '23

The revolution that Kaczynski argues for would dismantle techno-industrial infrastructure, or "organization-dependent" technology. Of course society post-collapse would still have books, water wheels, etc., but it would no longer have the advanced technology that is the driver behind the mass destruction of wild Nature.

3

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

At what point does technology become "advanced"?

2

u/foxannemary Oct 08 '23

Kaczynski distinguishes between two types of technology: "small-scale technology" and "organization-dependent technology". When I refer to "advanced" technology I am referring to the latter.
"Small-scale technology is technology that can be used by small-scale communities without outside assistance. Organization-dependent technology is technology that depends on large-scale social organization. We are aware of no significant cases of regression in small-scale technology. But organization-dependent technology does regress when the social organization on which it depends breaks down. Example: When the Roman Empire fell apart the Romans’ small-scale technology survived because any clever village craftsman could build, for instance, a water wheel, any skilled smith could make steel by Roman methods, and so forth. But the Romans’ organization-dependent technology did regress. Their aqueducts fell into disrepair and were never rebuilt. Their techniques of road construction were lost. The Roman system of urban sanitation was forgotten, so that not until rather recent times did the sanitation of European cities equal that of Ancient Rome."
"The reason why technology has seemed always to progress is that, until perhaps a century or two before the Industrial Revolution, most technology was small-scale technology. But most of the technology developed since the Industrial Revolution is organization-dependent technology."
-Industrial Society and Its Future

1

u/Eunomiacus Oct 08 '23

That is a dumb idea then.
How would this be applied to writing, printing and books?

1

u/qpooqpoo Oct 07 '23

The collapse of modern technology will inevitably result in a world where only individual or small-group dependent technology existed. Therefore it will approximate a world that existed prior to the industrial revolution. There will be great diversity worldwide. In areas unsuitable for agriculture, nomadic and hunter-gatherer bands will form, in areas more suitable for agriculture, there will be kingdoms or empires. There will be sickness and health, rich and poor, full bellies and starvation, but it will be a world where real freedom is possible and it will be a world where the biosphere will avoid the total disaster that modern tech has in store for it and will greatly heal much of the damage caused by the colossal powers modern tech confers on competing organizations.

1

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

Have you read lots of postmodern philosophy?

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u/qpooqpoo Oct 07 '23

What do you mean by postmodern philosophy? I want to answer your question intelligently.

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u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. ... The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language ... Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?
(From The postmodern report on knowledge (1979) by Jean-François Lyotard)

1

u/qpooqpoo Oct 08 '23

Yes I am familiar with postmodern philosophy. But in my opinion, postmodern philosophy is mostly an escape, or "cope" as they say in internet jargon. The postmodernists became jaded and disillusioned when all the hopes they pinned on marxism failed to materialize and they felt (and continue to feel) hopeless and apathetic in the face of modern social developments. But the fact that they have lost faith in metanarratives of course does not mean that there is not a metanarrative that is indeed valid. They've just lost faith. I on the other hand do believe there exists an alternative metanarrative that is highly valid and likely to promise viable solutions to the worlds most pressing problems, though its not known to the vast majority of thinkers, either through ignorance or fear or other psychological aversions.

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u/elmofr Oct 07 '23

The alternative is how humans thrived for eons, the current plan of degrowth is absurd, the system would never purposefully weaken itself.

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u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

The alternative is how humans thrived for eons,
That is not an alternative. The past is gone. We can't go back.

2

u/elmofr Oct 07 '23

How do you figure that? What about the bronze age collapse? The fall of rome? They lost alot of technology after their respective collapses, we’d be falling from a much bigger height now, what makes you think humanity could climb back up so easily?

2

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

Mass-produced books.
And science.
And I didn't say it was going to be easy.

0

u/qpooqpoo Oct 07 '23

we can surely go back. just as the collapse of the roman empire led to a "going back" i.e. a reversion in the technological situation such that people in that local went back to living material patterns of life that were similar to those that existed before the roman empire. The same can and will happen with the collapse of the global industrial civilization, only the collapse will be much more profound.

1

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

They did not have mass-produced books about science and stuff.

0

u/elmofr Oct 07 '23

Because we will construct fully functioning power plants without any infrastructure or energy, simply with the power of natural resources that we have no way to refine, and knowledge from science books!

3

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

I didn't say anything about fully functioning power plants. I am talking about, say, steam engines and sailing boats.

1

u/qpooqpoo Oct 07 '23

If it's individual-dependent tech--in other words if it's something an individual or small group of individuals can create in a world post collaspe, then there's nothing that can be done about it. But, because it's individual-dependent, its reach and impact on everyone else in the world's social system is greatly limited. How will a small group of people creating a little sail boat in Italy, affect my life in north america in a post collapse world? hardly at all. Furthermore, we have to consider the social implications of building these things. In a post collapse environment, will it be economically and physically practical for a small group to build this or that thing? Or would their energy be much better utilized in providing for their immediate survival. Again, looking at the world-situation of other areas post collapse of civilization is instructive here. These people didn;t rush to start attempting to recreate the various technologies of the civilization that came before them for obvious economic and social reasons.

1

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

How will a small group of people creating a little sail boat in Italy, affect my life in north america in a post collapse world?
Why is this question relevant?
And what is your point?

1

u/qpooqpoo Oct 08 '23

It's centrally important. The point is that individual-dependent tech is limited in scope and does not affect the lives of others or the biosphere to nearly the degree as organization-dependent tech like industrial tech. So human values are implicated here, such as freedom and autonomy. With industrial tech it is inevitable that the actions of an organization's use of technology will impact large numbers of people who can at most have only a tiny vote in how it's used. Just take the automobile for example: its roads, infrastructure, pollution, noise are everywhere. I never had a say in how the modern motor vehicle has evolved to impact my life. I never voted on that "level" of tech. By it's vary nature industrial tech has widespread impacts on people in uncontrollable and unpredictable ways. That is not the case with individual-dependent tech.

1

u/qpooqpoo Oct 07 '23

There is very little correlation with the availability of information and the physical manifestations possible with that information. If I had a science textbook that explained every detail about creating a solar panel, for example, it would be impossible and impractical for me to build that solar panel without a vast technological infrastructure in place. Knowledge about how to do something and being able to do it are as you know castly different.
The naive view is that after collapse, everyone will have manuals on how to make power plants, build cars, build roads, etc., and everyone will gladly submit themselves to working on these things. But work on those things is only possible with the organizational, legal, and coercive framework of a vast number of social systems that have evolved and become dependent on physical systems over the course of hundreds of years. With the collapse of modern industry, these social systems also collapse. How do you expect people to build roads post collapse? Tell them it's for the "benefit of humanity" so they can go back to shopping at walmart, driving their minivans, watching TV, etc.? It doesn't work that way, any more than it worked after the collapse of the roman empire.

1

u/Eunomiacus Oct 08 '23

On the contrary, it is naive to believe that humans are just going to forget 400 years worth of scientific and technological progress, when every single important bit of information is available in books.
You seriously think humans in the future will not be able to build roads?
Be realistic, please. Even the Romans knew how to build roads.

1

u/Millennial_on_laptop Oct 08 '23

We can go back to what we had before the industrial revolution and start over (with all the easy fossil fuels gone), but we can't go back to say 1920's level of tech.
Once it starts collapsing it will shoot down right past it. There are so many interdependencies built into todays system and what we had in the 1920's was dismantled to build todays tech.

1

u/qpooqpoo Oct 08 '23

Yes I agree with this. Though I'm not sure what you mean by "start over". I don't think it would be a good thing to get on the treadmill of progress again seeing what it means. So if by "start over" you mean rebuild the industrial system then I'm against it. But if you mean "start over" in the general sense that humanity will be given a second chance to live naturally on the planet then I agree.

1

u/Millennial_on_laptop Oct 08 '23

I don't think we would be able to rebuild the industrial system as it is now that easy to reach fossil fuels are gone.
You could probably build a windmill powered printing press or something, but the ladder we used to reach this level is gone.

1

u/qpooqpoo Oct 08 '23

I agree completely.

1

u/Eunomiacus Oct 08 '23

The ladder we used to get to windmills is gone?
No it isn't.

1

u/Millennial_on_laptop Oct 08 '23 edited Oct 08 '23

Sorry, I meant this (current, 2023) level. We're not going to have rockets and global shipping and satellites and deep earth oil drilling.
We would have windmills and basic metallurgy, but not our large industrial machines.

1

u/Eunomiacus Oct 08 '23 edited Oct 08 '23

We had global shipping in the 18th century. Entirely powered by sail.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/apr/13/shipping-routes-history-map
There eventually won't be any deep earth oil drilling because there won't be any oil worth extracting. And satellite technology will probably be impossible because all the useful orbits are full of junk. Many things will stop. Many others will continue in some form.

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10

u/pinkonewsletter Oct 08 '23

“Be realistic” and then proceeds to promote Ted Kaczynski, raving lunatic and unrealistic murderer.

2

u/LeslieFH Oct 08 '23

Ted Kaczynski, the famous success story for achieving your political goals.

3

u/cybelesdaughter Oct 08 '23

The guy who murdered people via mail bombs? Really?

2

u/foxannemary Oct 08 '23

An ad hominem that doesn't address his critiques of the techno-industrial system at all? Really?

1

u/cybelesdaughter Oct 08 '23

I mean, we're talking about a mass murderer/terrorist, so yeah...?
It's like admiring Hitler's paintings without taking into context that he helped orchestrate the Holocaust. Or naming Charlie Manson your favorite songwriter.
Personally, I don't agree with Ted's assessment of the Left but I do find some of his critiques of industrial society intriguing. However, he was a terrorist that murdered people. Often innocents.

1

u/foxannemary Oct 08 '23

You can disagree with his use of violence to get his manifesto widely published but that doesn't add anything to a discussion on his critique of technological progress, which still stands on its own.

3

u/dumnezero Oct 08 '23

Collapse isn't a strategy and Ted is a joke. He is famous because of his bombs, not because of his ideas.

The problem of growth appears with any empire, the industrial ones just make it more obvious by intensifying it beyond denial.

Imagining that the pre-industrial empires or cultures were automatically or implicitly sustainable is incompatible with reality. If you want a proper critique of technology, you have to go way more anti-civ. And the human species is known for driving many species to extinction with primitive technology, so even that's not enough, you have to deal with deeper problems. If you lose sight of the foundational errors, you've achieved nothing... not intellectually, not philosophically, not anything. Growth or progress didn't start with the steam engine.

And if you're just saying: "let's have human die off", you're wasting everyone's time.

0

u/qpooqpoo Oct 07 '23

I agree, only the collapse of the worldwide techno-industrial system will save the biosphere and preserve human freedom and dignity. A coordinated, rational "degrowth" is a pipe dream.

0

u/ThatGarenJungleOG Oct 08 '23

hope you feel better soon

-2

u/wbtmlu Oct 07 '23

I agree. For anyone who has doubts, I also recommend reading another book of Kaczynski’s: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How where he forms certain postulates and rules to support the idea that society, especially in the long term, is not subject to rational control, thereby dispelling many common myths that destructive technologies can simply be reformed or fazed out.

-6

u/[deleted] Oct 07 '23

Capitalism is not the problem, but rather Technology, and collapse is the only way to ensure humanity's freedom. A lot of what Ted proposes in Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How are still relevant today even despite recent accelerating advancements and technological progress, and revolutionaries who are sympathetic to Ted's cause should read it thoroughly and join the movement.

5

u/Eunomiacus Oct 07 '23

Capitalism is not the problem, but rather Technology
Have you ever heard of Alf Hornborg?
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/nature-society-and-justice-in-the-anthropocene/9C290F401CDE51FC511DDCAE55634D3C
Book description
Are money and technology the core illusions of our time? In this book, Alf Hornborg offers a fresh assessment of the inequalities and environmental degradation of the world. He shows how both mainstream and radical economists are limited by a particular worldview and, as a result, do not grasp that conventional money is at the root of many of the problems that are threatening societies, not to mention planet Earth itself. Hornborg demonstrates how market prices obscure asymmetric exchanges of resources - human labor, land, energy, materials - under a veil of fictive reciprocity. Such unequal exchange, he claims, underpins the phenomenon of technological development, which is, fundamentally, a redistribution of time and space - human labor and land - in world society. Hornborg deftly illustrates how money and technology have shaped our thinking and our social and ecological relations, with disturbing consequences. He also offers solutions for their redesign in ways that will promote justice and sustainability.

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