The Unabomber is dead.
You probably saw the news. Last month, Theodore John “Ted” Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, was found unresponsive in his prison cell. He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. It’s believed he committed suicide.
The subject of the longest-ever FBI investigation, from 1978 to 1995, Kacynski mailed or delivered by hand 16 bombs—which killed three people and injured over two-dozen others.
Many of the bombs were delivered to universities or airline companies, leading the FBI to use the case identifier UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber). The press called him the “Unabomber.”
Like most terrorists, Kacynski believed fanatically in a cause, which he thought was so urgent—it required committing violence to draw attention to it.
Kacynski lived in a cabin in the woods in Montana, and he saw nature being destroyed all around him.
He came to believe that industry and technology were a great evil that must be destroyed, for man to return to a purer way of life. In harmony with nature.
He wrote in his “manifesto,” Industrial Society and Its Future: “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.”
And: “We’re letting technology take over our lives, willingly.”
Lost Prophet?
Have we let technology take over our lives?
Certainly today, many would say “yes.”
There’s “smartphone addiction”… our kids (and maybe we ourselves, too) glued to screens all day, endlessly scrolling, one TikTok video or tweet or Facebook post after another… doing untold damage to mental health and the ability to form meaningful relationships, according to many experts.
Before that, we worried that the television was destroying the American family (we no longer spent time together around a dinner table)…
There are plenty of other ways our technology is a threat. What about the number of jobs lost to automation? Assembly lines that were once manned were taken over by robots… the hollowing out of America’s industrial heartland…
Today, the robots are coming for “white-collar jobs”… with artificial intelligence set to take over roles once performed by doctors, teachers, journalists…
Kaczynski thought technology was destroying us.
And what was remarkable—after his death—was the number of people coming out to say he was right. Condemning his methods, of course, but saying that, when it came to his message, he was a prophet, of sorts.
You could see the trend on social media, particularly among conservative commentators…
Heck, even Elon Musk, who many might think of as “Mr. Technology”—CEO of an electric car company, a social media company, and a space exploration company… Musk tweeted that Kacynski “might not be wrong” about the Industrial Revolution being a “disaster” for humanity.
Restoring Balance
Look, I appreciate nature’s bounty as much as anyone—and probably more than most.
I walk the walk here; I don’t just talk the talk. For years I’ve talked at my conferences about opportunities in Belize, for example, where you can get “back to the land” in a big way… self-sustaining communities where you can grow your own food; where you have solar panels—completely clean energy—and grey water systems… you can escape the modern hyper-developed world entirely, if that’s what you want. (Check it out here.)
I’m building my own self-sustaining community in Los Islotes on the Sunset Coast of Panama. One of the things—maybe the biggest thing—I love about this location is that I’m able to get “back to the land.” People have skills here that were lost to a lot of city-dwellers generations ago… whether it’s horseback riding or digging a well.
Los Islotes is the kind of place that’s designed for you to live an independent, idyllic rural lifestyle… though considerably more comfortable than a Walden-style cabin in the woods.
So I appreciate the idea of living in harmony with nature… and I can kind of see the point about the problems with industrialization, depending on how you define it… but, bottom line: I also like my comforts.
I enjoy the pleasures the modern, industrialized world has given us.
During the pandemic, a reader once wrote to me demanding an update on which countries around the world now required you to be vaccinated to enter the country. The reader was worried to put their health at risk (as they saw it) by getting a vaccine made with experimental tech.
I replied (and I meant it) that I would rather be dead than not be able to travel. If that meant getting an experimental vaccine, so be it. I never want to give up my right to spend part of my year in Paris, part of it in Panama, and the rest of it wherever I choose…
The lifestyle I live… traveling at the drop of a hat between my bases around the world… “following the seasons” across the hemispheres so Kathleen and I never have to live through another winter… this magic is all possible because of one single industrial invention: the airplane.
The invention Kacynski targeted directly and saw as a symbol of a world being destroyed by technology…
The thing is—as I’ve already suggested—Kacynski is hardly alone in his views.
Indeed, there’s a weird sort of agreement between those conservative commentators who now think Kacynski “had a point”… and all the left-wing commentators who celebrate Greta Thunberg and her calls to halt economic growth and industrial development in order to combat climate change.
“Degrowth” is a movement on the rise… eating away at our freedoms one by one with the idea that in order to protect the planet, we need to stop (and even reverse) human development.
A recent report from Cambridge University in the U.K. said that in order to achieve targets on carbon emissions, all flights will have to be grounded indefinitely.
In France, it is now illegal to take a domestic flight if you can get to your destination by train in less than two hours.
So you see, there are many people… governments, conservatives, and liberals… who seem to think it’s a very good thing if we’re forced to give up our technology, our modern comforts—including travel, which has become affordable for literally billions of people in the last few decades, like never before—just as Kacynski wanted. The Unabomber and the Gretas are winning the argument…
Never mind that since the Industrial Revolution—that event which supposedly was the turning point toward humanity’s destruction—human wealth and life-expectancy has skyrocketed in a way that was never possible before that moment, thanks to science, medicine, technology, and yes, industry—cars and home-heating and refrigerators and everything else…
Like journalist Dylan Matthews wrote for Vox:
“What today we’d characterize as extreme poverty was until a few centuries ago the condition of almost every human on Earth. In 1820, some 94 percent of humans lived on less than US$2 a day. Over the next two centuries, extreme poverty fell dramatically; in 2018, the World Bank estimated that 8.6 percent of people lived on less than US$1.90 a day. And the gains were not solely economic. Before 1800, average lifespans didn’t exceed 40 years anywhere in the world. Today, the average human life expectancy is more like 73. Deaths in childhood have plunged, and adult heights have surged as malnutrition decreased.”
See, I even have the Industrial Revolution to thank for my 6-foot-plus height… maybe.
But I certainly have my lifestyle to thank… and it’s not a lifestyle I want to give up.
Like I say… I love the “back to nature” lifestyle. I also like my travel, and my comforts.
Most of all, I love my freedom. Having options. The option to live on the Sunset Coast part of the year and in the City of Light as well.
Would you give up your right to see the world?
There’s a campaign underway to take away that most basic freedom—the right to travel…
Ted Kacynski’s ghost is haunting us.
Stay diversified,
Lief Simon
Editor, Offshore Living Letter
