Introduction. Ted Kaczynski is an odd terrorist. His measured IQ is 167, he was admitted into Harvard at the age of 15, and became the youngest ever math prof at UC Berkeley at 25. The manifesto attacks modern civilization like nothing else before or since. 14 best insights 👇

Kaczynski lists the four big problems with modern civilization: “Excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village, and the tribe.”

The big difference between the primitive civilization and our contemporary world is that before, individuals had a lot of autonomy while the state was largely powerless to penetrate into the everyday life of people. Kaczynski argues that modern tech suddenly flips this balance.

The balance of power between individuals and the larger “system” flipped when machines made much of human labor obsolete while simultaneously allowing big corp and big govt to observe, track, exclude (social media bans, stripping away bank accounts) anyone being naughty.

Ted Kaczynski writes: “The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man’s environment. It is to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been.”

With robots doing most work will people find work in “service industries”? Kaczynski says no. People will reject the “pointless busywork” of “driving each other around, making handicrafts, waiting on tables" and embrace dangerous outlets: “drugs, crime, cults, hate groups."

Kaczynski against Leftism: “Leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the elimination of modern technology. Leftism is collectivist; it seeks to bind together the entire world (both nature and the human race) into a unified whole.”

Kaczynski devotes a large chunk of his manifesto attacking leftism. But in a powerful paragraph, he argues that the conservatives are fools too. Full quote: