Unabomber auction! Anyone need this sfuff?

by lovelylil 15 Replies latest jw friends

  • lovelylil
    lovelylil

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/yahooeditorspicks/galleries/72157626725855132/#photo_5713092648

    The unabomber personal affects are being sold to raise money for his victims. Is this a good idea? What say you all?

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    Any bombs?

    S

  • lovelylil
    lovelylil

    No but I think one of the items is a timer like the type used in some of his bombs. Up for sale too is his Harvard Degree, some homemade tools and his manifesto. Very interesting the way his mind worked. He was a genius but insane at the same time.

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    He was in some govt mind experiments, way back. Some people think that they might have affected him.

    Unabomber's Manifesto

    The following is full text of the Unabomber's Manifesto.
    _________________________________________________________________

    INTRODUCTION


    1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster
    for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of
    those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have
    destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected
    human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological
    suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have
    inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued
    development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly
    subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage
    on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social
    disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased
    physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

    2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break
    down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of
    physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a
    long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of
    permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to
    engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore,
    if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is
    no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from
    depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

    3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very
    painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the
    results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had
    best break down sooner rather than later.

    4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system.
    This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden
    or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We
    can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the
    measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in
    order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of
    society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be
    to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis
    of the present society.

    5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative
    developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological
    system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore
    altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments
    as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our
    discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention
    or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are
    well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written
    very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild
    nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.

    THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM


    6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled
    society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of
    our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can
    serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern
    society in general.

    7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century
    leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today
    the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be
    called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in
    mind mainly socialists, collectivists, "politically correct" types,
    feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and
    the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these
    movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing
    leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological
    type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by
    "leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
    leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)

    8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less
    clear than we would wish, but there doesn't seem to be any remedy for
    this. All we are trying to do is indicate in a rough and approximate
    way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main
    driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling
    the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is
    meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of
    the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of
    the 19th and early 20th century.

    9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we
    call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of
    inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while
    oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of
    modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

    FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY


    10. By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings
    in the strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low
    self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies,
    defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend
    to have such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these
    feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

    11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said
    about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that
    he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is
    pronounced among minority rights advocates, whether or not they belong
    to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are
    hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities. The terms
    "negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or "chick" for an African, an
    Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory
    connotation. "Broad" and "chick" were merely the feminine equivalents
    of "guy," "dude" or "fellow." The negative connotations have been
    attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal
    rights advocates have gone so far as to reject the word "pet" and
    insist on its replacement by "animal companion." Leftist
    anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about
    primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative.
    They want to replace the word "primitive" by "nonliterate." They seem
    almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive
    culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that
    primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the
    hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

    12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect"
    terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant,
    abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of
    whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from
    privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold
    among university professors, who have secure employment with
    comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual, white
    males from middle-class families.

    13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of
    groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American
    Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists
    themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit
    it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely
    because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with
    their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE
    inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

    14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as
    strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women
    may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

    15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
    good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western
    civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The
    reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not
    correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West
    because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so
    forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in
    primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he
    GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points
    out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in
    Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the
    leftist's real motive for hating America and the West. He hates
    America and the West because they are strong and successful.

    16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative",
    "enterprise," "optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and
    leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic,
    pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's needs for them,
    take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense
    of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy
    his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of
    competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

    17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to
    focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an
    orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope
    of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that
    was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

    18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science,
    objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally
    relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the
    foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the
    concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that
    modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians
    systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply
    involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack
    these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one
    thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent
    that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More
    importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they
    classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and
    other beliefs as false (i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist's feelings
    of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification
    of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or
    inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the
    concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are
    antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior
    because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or
    inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or
    blame for an individual's ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is
    "inferior" it is not his fault, but society's, because he has not been
    brought up properly.

    19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
    inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter,
    a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith
    in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but
    he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong,
    and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant
    behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings
    of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as
    individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the
    leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization
    or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

    20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists
    protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke
    police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be
    effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but
    because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist
    trait.

    21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion
    or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the
    leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle
    cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too
    prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.
    Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of
    benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help.
    For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black
    people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or
    dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a
    diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal
    and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative
    action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take
    such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.
    Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems
    serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and
    frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black
    people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white
    majority tends to intensify race hatred.

    22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would
    have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse
    for making a fuss.

    23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
    description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only
    a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.

    OVERSOCIALIZATION


    24. Psychologists use the term "socialization" to designate the
    process by which children are trained to think and act as society
    demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and
    obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning
    part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists
    are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel.
    Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such
    rebels as they seem.

    25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can
    think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not
    supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some
    time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are
    so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally
    imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt,
    they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives
    and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality
    have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe
    such people. [2]

    26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of
    powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means
    by which our society socializes children is by making them feel
    ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's
    expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is
    especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of
    HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized
    person are more restricted by society's expectations than are those of
    the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a
    significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty
    thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate
    someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick
    to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do
    these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of
    shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even
    experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to
    the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And
    socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to
    confirm to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading
    of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological
    leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down
    for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of
    constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest
    that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human
    beings inflict on one another.

    27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the
    modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of
    great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism.
    Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or
    members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university
    intellectuals (3) constitute the most highly socialized segment of our
    society and also the most left-wing segment.

    28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his
    psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually
    he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of
    society. Generally speaking, the goals of today's leftists are NOT in
    conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes
    an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses
    mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial
    equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed
    to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to
    animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve
    society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All
    these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of
    its middle and upper classes (4) for a long time. These values are
    explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the
    material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and
    the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the
    oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but
    justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of
    truth) that society is not living up to these principles.

    29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized
    leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our
    society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists
    push for affirmative action, for moving black people into
    high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more
    money for such schools; the way of life of the black "underclass" they
    regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into
    the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just
    like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the
    last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white
    man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in
    what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It
    can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food,
    listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going
    to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express
    itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects more
    leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform
    to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical
    subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing
    the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white.
    They want to make black fathers "responsible." they want black gangs
    to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the
    industrial-technological system. The system couldn't care less what
    kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what
    religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a
    respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a "responsible" parent,
    is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it,
    the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the
    system and make him adopt its values.

    30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the
    oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our
    society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have
    gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society's most important
    principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account,
    violence is for them a form of "liberation." In other words, by
    committing violence they break through the psychological restraints
    that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized
    these restraints have been more confining for them than for others;
    hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their
    rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence
    they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.

    31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing
    thumb-nail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is
    complex, and anything like a complete description of it would take
    several volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim
    only to have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies
    in the psychology of modern leftism.

    32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our
    society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and
    defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially
    noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And
    today's society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any
    previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to
    exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.

    THE POWER PROCESS


    33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something
    that we will call the "power process." This is closely related to the
    need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same
    thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut
    of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs
    to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed
    in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more
    difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it
    autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44).

    34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he
    wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will
    develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of
    fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized.
    Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that
    leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of
    fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power.
    But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert
    themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even
    though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must
    have goals toward which to exercise one's power.

    35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical
    necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are
    made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains
    these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.

    36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are
    physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals
    is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals
    throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

    37. Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human
    being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a
    reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.

    SURROGATE ACTIVITIES


    38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized.
    For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent
    hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he
    became distinguished. When people do not have to exert themselves to
    satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for
    themselves. In many cases they then pursue these goals with the same
    energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put
    into the search for physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the
    Roman Empire had their literary pretentions; many European aristocrats
    a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting,
    though they certainly didn't need the meat; other aristocracies have
    competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few
    aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science.

    39. We use the term "surrogate activity" to designate an activity that
    is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for
    themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us
    say, merely for the sake of the "fulfillment" that they get from
    pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of
    surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy
    to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most
    of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that
    effort required him to use his physical and mental facilities in a
    varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because
    he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person's
    pursuit of a goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito's studies in
    marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is
    pretty certain that if Hirohito had had to spend his time working at
    interesting non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of
    life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn't know all about
    the anatomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the
    pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity,
    because most people, even if their existence were otherwise
    satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without
    ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. (But
    pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can
    be a surrogate activity.)

    40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to
    satisfy one's physical needs. It is enough to go through a training
    program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on
    time and exert very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only
    requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence, and most of all,
    simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from
    cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take
    physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of
    mainstream society.) Thus it is not surprising that modern society is
    full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work, athletic
    achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation,
    climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods
    far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional
    physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues
    that are not important for the activist personally, as in the case of
    white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These
    are not always pure surrogate activities, since for many people they
    may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some
    goal to pursue. Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive
    for prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings,
    militant social activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue
    them, these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For
    example, the majority of scientists will probably agree that the
    "fulfillment" they get from their work is more important than the
    money and prestige they earn.

    41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less
    satisfying than the pursuit of real goals ( that is, goals that people
    would want to attain even if their need for the power process were
    already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in many
    or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities
    are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly
    strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one
    problem than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives
    himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue
    surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from
    these activities than they do from the "mundane" business of
    satisfying their biological needs, but that it is because in our
    society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been
    reduced to triviality. More importantly, in our society people do not
    satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as
    parts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have
    a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities. have
    a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities.

    AUTONOMY


    42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for
    every individual. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of
    autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be
    undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own
    direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this
    initiative, direction and control as single individuals. It is usually
    enough to act as a member of a SMALL group. Thus if half a dozen
    people discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful joint
    effort to attain that goal, their need for the power process will be
    served. But if they work under rigid orders handed down from above
    that leave them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then
    their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true
    when decisions are made on a collective bases if the group making the
    collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is
    insignificant [5]

    43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for
    autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by
    identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they
    belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be
    satisfied with a purely physical sense of power(the good combat
    soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills
    that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).

    44. But for most people it is through the power process-having a goal,
    making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining t the goal-that self-esteem,
    self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not
    have adequate opportunity to go throughout the power process the
    consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power
    process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem,
    inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt,
    frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism,
    abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc. [6]

    SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS


    45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in
    modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale. We
    aren't the first to mention that the world today seems to be going
    crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is
    good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress
    and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than
    modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in
    primitive societies. Abuse of women and common among the Australian
    aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of the American
    Indian tribes. But is does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of
    problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less
    common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society.

    46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern
    society to the fact that that society requires people to live under
    conditions radically different from those under which the human race
    evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of
    behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier
    conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we
    consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process
    as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which modern
    society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing
    with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems we
    will discuss some of the other sources.

    47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society
    are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature,
    excessive rapidity of social change and the break-down of natural
    small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or
    the tribe.

    48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression.
    The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from
    nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial
    societies were predominantly rural. The industrial Revolution vastly
    increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that
    lives in them, and modern agricultural technology has made it possible
    for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did
    before. (Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because
    it puts increased disruptive powers in people's hands. For example, a
    variety of noise-making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles,
    etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want
    peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is
    restricted, people who use the devices are frustrated by the
    regulations... But if these machines had never been invented there
    would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them.)

    49. For primitive societies the natural world (which usually changes
    only slowly) provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of
    security. In the modern world it is human society that dominates
    nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes
    very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable
    framework.

    50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of
    traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological
    progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that
    you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the
    economy of a society with out causing rapid changes in all other
    aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably
    break down traditional values.

    51.The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the
    breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale
    social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also
    promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt
    individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their
    communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family
    ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern
    society an individual's loyalty must be first to the system and only
    secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the internal
    loyalties of small-scale small-scale communities were stronger than
    loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own
    advantage at the expense of the system.

    52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation executive appoints
    his cousin, his friend or his co-religionist to a position rather than
    appointing the person best qualified for the job. He has permitted
    personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system, and that is
    "nepotism" or "discrimination," both of which are terrible sins in
    modern society. Would-be industrial societies that have done a poor
    job of subordinating personal or local loyalties to loyalty to the
    system are usually very inefficient. (Look at Latin America.) Thus an
    advanced industrial society can tolerate only those small-scale
    communities that are emasculated, tamed and made into tools of the
    system. [7]

    53. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been
    widely recognized as sources of social problems. but we do not believe
    they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are
    seen today.

    54. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their
    inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems
    to the same extent as modern man. In America today there still are
    uncrowded rural areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban
    areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas.
    Thus crowding does not seem to be the decisive factor.

    55. On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th
    century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended
    families and small-scale social groups to at least the same extent as
    these are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by
    choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles,
    that they belonged to no community at all, yet they do not seem to
    have developed problems as a result.

    56.Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and
    deep. A man might be born and raised in a log cabin, outside the reach
    of law and order and fed largely on wild meat; and by the time he
    arrived at old age he might be working at a regular job and living in
    an ordered community with effective law enforcement. This was a deeper
    change that that which typically occurs in the life of a modern
    individual, yet it does not seem to have led to psychological
    problems. In fact, 19th century American society had an optimistic and
    self-confident tone, quite unlike that of today's society. [8]

    57. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense
    (largely justified) that change is IMPOSED on him, whereas the 19th
    century frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he
    created change himself, by his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a
    piece of land of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his
    own effort. In those days an entire county might have only a couple of
    hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity
    than a modern county is. Hence the pioneer farmer participated as a
    member of a relatively small group in the creation of a new, ordered
    community. One may well question whether the creation of this
    community was an improvement, but at any rate it satisfied the
    pioneer's need for the power process.

    58. It would be possible to give other examples of societies in which
    there has been rapid change and/or lack of close community ties
    without he kind of massive behavioral aberration that is seen in
    today's industrial society. We contend that the most important cause
    of social and psychological problems in modern society is the fact
    that people have insufficient opportunity to go through the power
    process in a normal way. We don't mean to say that modern society is
    the only one in which the power process has been disrupted. Probably
    most if not all civilized societies have interfered with the power '
    process to a greater or lesser extent. But in modern industrial
    society the problem has become particularly acute. Leftism, at least
    in its recent (mid-to-late -20th century) form, is in part a symptom
    of deprivation with respect to the power process.

    DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY


    59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that
    can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied
    but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be
    adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power
    process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group.
    The more drives there are in the third group, the more there is
    frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc.

    60. In modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be
    pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to
    consist increasingly of artificially created drives.

    61. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into
    group 2: They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort.
    But modern society tends to guaranty the physical necessities to
    everyone [9] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical needs
    are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement about whether the
    effort needed to hold a job is "minimal"; but usually, in lower- to
    middle-level jobs, whatever effort is required is merely that of
    obedience. You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and do
    what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it. Seldom do
    you have to exert yourself seriously, and in any case you have hardly
    any autonomy in work, so that the need for the power process is not
    well served.)

    62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often remain in group
    2 in modern society, depending on the situation of the individual.
    [10] But, except for people who have a particularly strong drive for
    status, the effort required to fulfill the social drives is
    insufficient to satisfy adequately the need for the power process.

    63. So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group
    2, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and
    marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel
    they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed
    of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these
    artificial needs, hence they fall into group 2. (But see paragraphs
    80-82.) Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely
    through pursuit of the artificial needs created by the advertising and
    marketing industry [11], and through surrogate activities.

    64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these
    artificial forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that
    appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second
    half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts
    many people in modern society. (This purposelessness is often called
    by other names such as "anomic" or "middle-class vacuity.") We suggest
    that the so-called "identity crisis" is actually a search for a sense
    of purpose, often for commitment to a suitable surrogate activity. It
    may be that existentialism is in large part a response to the
    purposelessness of modern life. [12] Very widespread in modern society
    is the search for "fulfillment." But we think that for the majority of
    people an activity whose main goal is fulfillment (that is, a
    surrogate activity) does not bring completely satisfactory
    fulfillment. In other words, it does not fully satisfy the need for
    the power process. (See paragraph 41.) That need can be fully
    satisfied only through activities that have some external goal, such
    as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc.

    65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing
    the status ladder or functioning as part of the system in some other
    way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals
    AUTONOMOUSLY. Most workers are someone else's employee as, as we
    pointed out in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what they are
    told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even most people who are
    in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic
    complaint of small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands
    are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations
    are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government
    regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely
    complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on
    the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few
    years ago that many of the franchise-granting companies require
    applicants for franchises to take a personality test that is designed
    to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because such
    persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the
    franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people
    who most need autonomy.

    66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them
    or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what
    they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down
    by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system
    provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with the rules
    and regulations [13], and techniques prescribed by experts must be
    followed if there is to be a chance of success.

    67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a
    deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in pursuit of
    goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that
    fall into group 3: the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no
    matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for
    security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have
    no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the
    people who make them. ("We live in a world in which relatively few
    people - maybe 500 or 1,00 - make the important decisions" - Philip B.
    Heymann of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York
    Times, April 21, 1995.) Our lives depend on whether safety standards
    at a nuclear power plant are properly maintained; on how much
    pesticide is allowed to get into our food or how much pollution into
    our air; on how skillful (or incompetent) our doctor is; whether we
    lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by government
    economists or corporation executives; and so forth. Most individuals
    are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats to
    more [than] a very limited extent. The individual's search for
    security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of
    powerlessness.

    68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure
    than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy; hence
    modern man suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity
    that is normal for human beings. but psychological security does not
    closely correspond with physical security. What makes us FEEL secure
    is not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our
    ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a
    fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or travel in
    search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but
    he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The
    modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things
    against which he is helpless; nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food,
    environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his
    privacy by large organizations, nation-wide social or economic
    phenomena that may disrupt his way of life.

    69. It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the
    things that threaten him; disease for example. But he can accept the
    risk of disease stoically. It is part of the nature of things, it is
    no one's fault, unless is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal
    demon. But threats to the modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE. They
    are not the results of chance but are IMPOSED on him by other persons
    whose decisions he, as an individual, is unable to influence.
    Consequently he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry.

    70. Thus primitive man for the most part has his security in his own
    hands (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group)
    whereas the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or
    organizations that are too remote or too large for him to be able
    personally to influence them. So modern man's drive for security tends
    to fall into groups 1 and 3; in some areas (food, shelter, etc.) his
    security is assured at the cost of only trivial effort, whereas in
    other areas he CANNOT attain security. (The foregoing greatly
    simplifies the real situation, but it does indicate in a rough,
    general way how the condition of modern man differs from that of
    primitive man.)

    71. People have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessary
    frustrated in modern life, hence fall into group 3. One may become
    angry, but modern society cannot permit fighting. In many situations
    it does not even permit verbal aggression. When going somewhere one
    may be in a hurry, or one may be in a mood to travel slowly, but one
    generally has no choice but to move with the flow of traffic and obey
    the traffic signals. One may want to do one's work in a different way,
    but usually one can work only according to the rules laid down by
    one's employer. In many other ways as well, modern man is strapped
    down by a network of rules and regulations (explicit or implicit) that
    frustrate many of his impulses and thus interfere with the power
    process. Most of these regulations cannot be disposed with, because
    the are necessary for the functioning of industrial society.

    72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In
    matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can
    generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like
    (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the
    system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice
    "safe sex"). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT.
    But in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate
    our behavior.

    73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only
    by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect
    coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by
    organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole.
    Most large organizations use some form of propaganda [14] to
    manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to
    "commercials" and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even
    consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For
    instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form
    of propaganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that
    says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer's orders.
    Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild
    like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But
    in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room
    in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners.
    Hence most of us can survive only as someone else's employee.

    74. We suggest that modern man's obsession with longevity, and with
    maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced
    age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with
    respect to the power process. The "mid-life crisis" also is such a
    symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly
    common in modern society but almost unheard-of in primitive societies.


    75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. The needs
    and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no
    particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man
    goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for
    sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food.
    (In young women the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on
    social power; we won't discuss that here.) This phase having been
    successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about
    settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In
    contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children
    because they are too busy seeking some kind of "fulfillment." We
    suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the
    power process -- with real goals instead of the artificial goals of
    surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children,
    going through the power process by providing them with the physical
    necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is
    prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. Many
    modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of
    death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to
    maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue
    that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they
    have never put their physical powers to any use, have never gone
    through the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It is
    not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical
    purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who
    has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car
    to his house. It is the man whose need for the power process has been
    satisfied during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of
    that life.

    76. In response to the arguments of this section someone will say,
    "Society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through
    the power process." For such people the value of the opportunity is
    destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. What they
    need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as the system
    GIVES them their opportunities it still has them on a leash. To attain
    autonomy they must get off that leash.

    HOW SOME PEOPLE ADJUST


    77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society suffers from
    psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied
    with society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people
    differ so greatly in their response to modern society.

    78. First, there doubtless are differences in the strength of the
    drive for power. Individuals with a weak drive for power may have
    relatively little need to go through the power process, or at least
    relatively little need for autonomy in the power process. These are
    docile types who would have been happy as plantation darkies in the
    Old South. (We don't mean to sneer at "plantation darkies" of the Old
    South. To their credit, most of the slaves were NOT content with their
    servitude. We do sneer at people who ARE content with servitude.)

    79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which
    they satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who
    have an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole
    lives climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored with that
    game.

    80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing
    techniques. Some people are so susceptible that, even if they make a
    great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for
    the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their
    eyes. So they always feel hard-pressed financially even if their
    income is large, and their cravings are frustrated.

    81. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing
    techniques. These are the people who aren't interested in money.
    Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process.

    82. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing
    techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for
    goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort (putting in
    overtime, taking a second job, earning promotions, etc.) Thus material
    acquisition serves their need for the power process. But it does not
    necessarily follow that their need is fully satisfied. They may have
    insufficient autonomy in the power process (their work may consist of
    following orders) and some of their drives may be frustrated (e.g.,
    security, aggression). (We are guilty of oversimplification in
    paragraphs 80-82 because we have assumed that the desire for material
    acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing
    industry. Of course it's not that simple.

    83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying
    themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement. An
    individual lacking goals or power joins a movement or an organization,
    adopts its goals as his own, then works toward these goals. When some
    of the goals are attained, the individual, even though his personal
    efforts have played only an insignificant part in the attainment of
    the goals, feels (through his identification with the movement or
    organization) as if he had gone through the power process. This
    phenomenon was exploited by the fascists, nazis and communists. Our
    society uses it, too, though less crudely. Example: Manuel Noriega was
    an irritant to the U.S. (goal: punish Noriega). The U.S. invaded
    Panama (effort) and punished Noriega (attainment of goal). The U.S.
    went through the power process and many Americans, because of their
    identification with the U.S., experienced the power process
    vicariously. Hence the widespread public approval of the Panama
    invasion; it gave people a sense of power. [15] We see the same
    phenomenon in armies, corporations, political parties, humanitarian
    organizations, religious or ideological movements. In particular,
    leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy
    their need for power. But for most people identification with a large
    organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for
    power.

    84. Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power
    process is through surrogate activities. As we explained in paragraphs
    38-40, a surrogate activity that is directed toward an artificial goal
    that the individual pursues for the sake of the "fulfillment" that he
    gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal
    itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building
    enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a
    complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society
    devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp
    collecting. Some people are more "other-directed" than others, and
    therefore will more readily attack importance to a surrogate activity
    simply because the people around them treat it as important or because
    society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very
    serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or
    bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are
    more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the
    surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach
    enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process
    in that way. It only remains to point out that in many cases a
    person's way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a
    PURE surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the activity is
    to gain the physical necessities and (for some people) social status
    and the luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put
    into their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever
    money and status they require, and this extra effort constitutes a
    surrogate activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional
    investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces
    acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system,
    with negative consequences for individual freedom (see paragraph 131).
    Especially, for the most creative scientists and engineers, work tends
    to be largely a surrogate activity. This point is so important that is
    deserves a separate discussion, which we shall give in a moment
    (paragraphs 87-92).

    85. In this section we have explained how many people in modern
    society do satisfy their need for the power process to a greater or
    lesser extent. But we think that for the majority of people the need
    for the power process is not fully satisfied. In the first place,
    those who have an insatiable drive for status, or who get firmly
    "hooked" or a surrogate activity, or who identify strongly enough with
    a movement or organization to satisfy their need for power in that
    way, are exceptional personalities. Others are not fully satisfied
    with surrogate activities or by identification with an organization
    (see paragraphs 41, 64). In the second place, too much control is
    imposed by the system through explicit regulation or through
    socialization, which results in a deficiency of autonomy, and in
    frustration due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and
    the necessity of restraining too many impulses.

    86. But even if most people in industrial-technological society were
    well satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed to that form of
    society, because (among other reasons) we consider it demeaning to
    fulfill one's need for the power process through surrogate activities
    or through identification with an organization, rather then through
    pursuit of real goals.

    THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS


    87. Science and technology provide the most important examples of
    surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are motivated by
    "curiosity," that notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on
    highly specialized problem that are not the object of any normal
    curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician or an
    entomologist curious about the properties of
    isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is curious
    about such a thing, and he is curious about it only because chemistry
    is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the
    appropriate classification of a new species of beetle? No. That
    question is of interest only to the entomologist, and he is interested
    in it only because entomology is his surrogate activity. If the
    chemist and the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to
    obtain the physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their
    abilities in an interesting way but in some nonscientific pursuit,
    then they couldn't giver a damn about isopropyltrimethylmethane or the
    classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for postgraduate
    education had led the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of
    a chemist. In that case he would have been very interested in
    insurance matters but would have cared nothing about
    isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not normal to put into
    the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that
    scientists put into their work. The "curiosity" explanation for the
    scientists' motive just doesn't stand up.

    88. The "benefit of humanity" explanation doesn't work any better.
    Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the
    human race - most of archaeology or comparative linguistics for
    example. Some other areas of science present obviously dangerous
    possibilities. Yet scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic
    about their work as those who develop vaccines or study air pollution.
    Consider the case of Dr. Edward Teller, who had an obvious emotional
    involvement in promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement
    stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn't Dr.
    Teller get emotional about other "humanitarian" causes? If he was such
    a humanitarian then why did he help to develop the H-bomb? As with
    many other scientific achievements, it is very much open to question
    whether nuclear power plants actually do benefit humanity. Does the
    cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating waste and risk of
    accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side of the question. Clearly his
    emotional involvement with nuclear power arose not from a desire to
    "benefit humanity" but from a personal fulfillment he got from his
    work and from seeing it put to practical use.

    89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible rare
    exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit
    humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal
    (a scientific problem to solve), to make an effort (research) and to
    attain the goal (solution of the problem.) Science is a surrogate
    activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get
    out of the work itself.

    90. Of course, it's not that simple. Other motives do play a role for
    many scientists. Money and status for example. Some scientists may be
    persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status (see
    paragraph 79) and this may provide much of the motivation for their
    work. No doubt the majority of scientists, like the majority of the
    general population, are more or less susceptible to advertising and
    marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods
    and services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is
    in large part a surrogate activity.

    91. Also, science and technology constitute a mass power movement, and
    many scientists gratify their need for power through identification
    with this mass movement (see paragraph 83).

    92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real
    welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to
    the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government
    officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for
    research.

    THE NATURE OF FREEDOM


    93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot
    be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively
    narrowing the sphere of human freedom. But because "freedom" is a word
    that can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what
    kind of freedom we are concerned with.

    94. By "freedom" we mean the opportunity to go through the power
    process, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate
    activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from
    anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in
    control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of
    the life-and-death issues of one's existence; food, clothing, shelter
    and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's
    environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control
    other people but the power to control the circumstances of one's own
    life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large
    organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently,
    tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is
    important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness (see
    paragraph 72).

    95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a
    certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are
    not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that
    exists in a society is determined more by the economic and
    technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of
    government. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England were
    monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were
    controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets
    the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than out
    society does. In part this was because they lacked efficient
    mechanisms for enforcing the ruler's will: There were no modern,
    well-organized police forces, no rapid long-distance communications,
    no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of
    average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy to evade control.

    96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for example that of
    freedom of the press. We certainly don't mean to knock that right: it
    is very important tool for limiting concentration of political power
    and for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly
    exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of
    very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass
    media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are
    integrated into the system. Anyone who has a little money can have
    something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some
    such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of
    material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect.
    To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost
    impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for
    example. If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the
    present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been
    accepted. If they had been accepted and published, they probably would
    not have attracted many readers, because it's more fun to watch the
    entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if
    these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon
    have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the
    mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our
    message before the public with some chance of making a lasting
    impression, we've had to kill people.

    97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not
    serve to guarantee much more than what could be called the bourgeois
    conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a "free"
    man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a
    certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are
    designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of
    the individual. Thus the bourgeois's "free" man has economic freedom
    because that promotes growth and progress; he has freedom of the press
    because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders;
    he has a rights to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of
    the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the
    attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserved liberty only if
    they used it to promote progress (progress as conceived by the
    bourgeois). Other bourgeois thinkers have taken a similar view of
    freedom as a mere means to collective ends. Chester C. Tan, "Chinese
    Political Thought in the Twentieth Century," page 202, explains the
    philosophy of the Kuomintang leader Hu Han-min: "An individual is
    granted rights because he is a member of society and his community
    life requires such rights. By community Hu meant the whole society of
    the nation." And on page 259 Tan states that according to Carsum Chang
    (Chang Chun-mai, head of the State Socialist Party in China) freedom
    had to be used in the interest of the state and of the people as a
    whole. But what kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only
    as someone else prescribes? FC's conception of freedom is not that of
    Bolivar, Hu, Chang or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such
    theorists is that they have made the development and application of
    social theories their surrogate activity. Consequently the theories
    are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs
    of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which
    the theories are imposed.

    98. One more point to be made in this section: It should not be
    assumed that a person has enough freedom just because he SAYS he has
    enough. Freedom is restricted in part by psychological control of
    which people are unconscious, and moreover many people's ideas of what
    constitutes freedom are governed more by social convention than by
    their real needs. For example, it's likely that many leftists of the
    oversocialized type would say that most people, including themselves
    are socialized too little rather than too much, yet the oversocialized
    leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his high level of
    socialization.

    SOME PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY


    99. Think of history as being the sum of two components: an erratic
    component that consists of unpredictable events that follow no
    discernible pattern, and a regular component that consists of
    long-term historical trends. Here we are concerned with the long-term
    trends.

    100. FIRST PRINCIPLE. If a SMALL change is made that affects a
    long-term historical trend, then the effect of that change will almost
    always be transitory - the trend will soon revert to its original
    state. (Example: A reform movement designed to clean up political
    corruption in a society rarely has more than a short-term effect;
    sooner or later the reformers relax and corruption creeps back in. The
    level of political corruption in a given society tends to remain
    constant, or to change only slowly with the evolution of the society.
    Normally, a political cleanup will be permanent only if accompanied by
    widespread social changes; a SMALL change in the society won't be
    enough.) If a small change in a long-term historical trend appears to
    be permanent, it is only because the change acts in the direction in
    which the trend is already moving, so that the trend is not altered
    but only pushed a step ahead.

    101. The first principle is almost a tautology. If a trend were not
    stable with respect to small changes, it would wander at random rather
    than following a definite direction; in other words it would not be a
    long-term trend at all.

    102. SECOND PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is sufficiently large
    to alter permanently a long-term historical trend, than it will alter
    the society as a whole. In other words, a society is a system in which
    all parts are interrelated, and you can't permanently change any
    important part without change all the other parts as well.

    103. THIRD PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is large enough to
    alter permanently a long-term trend, then the consequences for the
    society as a whole cannot be predicted in advance. (Unless various
    other societies have passed through the same change and have all
    experienced the same consequences, in which case one can predict on
    empirical grounds that another society that passes through the same
    change will be like to experience similar consequences.)

    104. FOURTH PRINCIPLE. A new kind of society cannot be designed on
    paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance,
    then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to.

    105. The third and fourth principles result from the complexity of
    human societies. A change in human behavior will affect the economy of
    a society and its physical environment; the economy will affect the
    environment and vice versa, and the changes in the economy and the
    environment will affect human behavior in complex, unpredictable ways;
    and so forth. The network of causes and effects is far too complex to
    be untangled and understood.

    106. FIFTH PRINCIPLE. People do not consciously and rationally choose
    the form of their society. Societies develop through processes of
    social evolution that are not under rational human control.

    107. The fifth principle is a consequence of the other four.

    108. To illustrate: By the first principle, generally speaking an
    attempt at social reform either acts in the direction in which the
    society is developing anyway (so that it merely accelerates a change
    that would have occurred in any case) or else it only has a transitory
    effect, so that the society soon slips back into its old groove. To
    make a lasting change in the direction of development of any important
    aspect of a society, reform is insufficient and revolution is
    required. (A revolution does not necessarily involve an armed uprising
    or the overthrow of a government.) By the second principle, a
    revolution never changes only one aspect of a society; and by the
    third principle changes occur that were never expected or desired by
    the revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries or
    utopians set up a new kind of society, it never works out as planned.

    109. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample. The
    American "Revolution" was not a revolution in our sense of the word,
    but a war of independence followed by a rather far-reaching political
    reform. The Founding Fathers did not change the direction of
    development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They
    only freed the development of American society from the retarding
    effect of British rule. Their political reform did not change any
    basic trend, but only pushed American political culture along its
    natural direction of development. British society, of which American
    society was an off-shoot, had been moving for a long time in the
    direction of representative democracy. And prior to the War of
    Independence the Americans were already practicing a significant
    degree of representative democracy in the colonial assemblies. The
    political system established by the Constitution was modeled on the
    British system and on the colonial assemblies. With major alteration,
    to be sure - there is no doubt that the Founding Fathers took a very
    important step. But it was a step along the road the English-speaking
    world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its
    colonies that were populated predominantly by people of British
    descent ended up with systems of representative democracy essentially
    similar to that of the United States. If the Founding Fathers had lost
    their nerve and declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, our
    way of life today would not have been significantly different. Maybe
    we would have had somewhat closer ties to Britain, and would have had
    a Parliament and Prime Minister instead of a Congress and President.
    No big deal. Thus the American Revolution provides not a
    counterexample to our principles but a good illustration of them.

    110. Still, one has to use common sense in applying the principles.
    They are expressed in imprecise language that allows latitude for
    interpretation, and exceptions to them can be found. So we present
    these principles not as inviolable laws but as rules of thumb, or
    guides to thinking, that may provide a partial antidote to naive ideas
    about the future of society. The principles should be borne constantly
    in mind, and whenever one reaches a conclusion that conflicts with
    them one should carefully reexamine one's thinking and retain the
    conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so.

    INDUSTRIAL-TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY CANNOT BE REFORMED


    111. The foregoing principles help to show how hopelessly difficult it
    would be to reform the industrial system in such a way as to prevent
    it from progressively narrowing our sphere of freedom. There has been
    a consistent tendency, going back at least to the Industrial
    Revolution for technology to strengthen the system at a high cost in
    individual freedom and local autonomy. Hence any change designed to
    protect freedom from technology would be contrary to a fundamental
    trend in the development of our society.

    Consequently, such a change either would be a transitory one -- soon
    swamped by the tide of history -- or, if large enough to be permanent
    would alter the nature of our whole society. This by the first and
    second principles. Moreover, since society would be altered in a way
    that could not be predicted in advance (third principle) there would
    be great risk. Changes large enough to make a lasting difference in
    favor of freedom would not be initiated because it would realized that
    they would gravely disrupt the system. So any attempts at reform would
    be too timid to be effective. Even if changes large enough to make a
    lasting difference were initiated, they would be retracted when their
    disruptive effects became apparent. Thus, permanent changes in favor
    of freedom could be brought about only by persons prepared to accept
    radical, dangerous and unpredictable alteration of the entire system.
    In other words, by revolutionaries, not reformers.

    112. People anxious to rescue freedom without sacrificing the supposed
    benefits of technology will suggest naive schemes for some new form of
    society that would reconcile freedom with technology. Apart from the
    fact that people who make suggestions seldom propose any practical
    means by which the new form of society could be set up in the first
    place, it follows from the fourth principle that even if the new form
    of society could be once established, it either would collapse or
    would give results very different from those expected.

    113. So even on very general grounds it seems highly improbably that
    any way of changing society could be found that would reconcile
    freedom with modern technology. In the next few sections we will give
    more specific reasons for concluding that freedom and technological
    progress are incompatible.


    RESTRICTION OF FREEDOM IS UNAVOIDABLE IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY


    114. As explained in paragraph 65-67, 70-73, modern man is strapped
    down by a network of rules and regulations, and his fate depends on
    the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot
    influence. This is not accidental or a result of the arbitrariness of
    arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any
    technologically advanced society. The system HAS TO regulate human
    behavior closely in order to function. At work, people have to do what
    they are told to do, otherwise production would be thrown into chaos.
    Bureaucracies HAVE TO be run according to rigid rules. To allow any
    substantial personal discretion to lower-level bureaucrats would
    disrupt the system and lead to charges of unfairness due to
    differences in the way individual bureaucrats exercised their
    discretion. It is true that some restrictions on our freedom could be
    eliminated, but GENERALLY SPEAKING the regulation of our lives by
    large organizations is necessary for the functioning of
    industrial-technological society. The result is a sense of
    powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however,
    that formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by
    psychological tools that make us want to do what the system requires
    of us. (Propaganda [14], educational techniques, "mental health"
    programs, etc.)

    115. The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are
    increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior. For
    example, the system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It
    can't function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to
    excel in these fields. It isn't natural for an adolescent human being
    to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A
    normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the
    real world. Among primitive peoples the things that children are
    trained to do are in natural harmony with natural human impulses.
    Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active
    outdoor pursuits -- just the sort of things that boys like. But in our
    society children are pushed into studying technical subjects, which
    most do grudgingly.

    116. Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify
    human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people
    who cannot or will not adjust to society's requirements: welfare
    leeches, youth-gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical
    environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds.

    117. In any technologically advanced society the individual's fate
    MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any
    great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into
    small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the
    cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a
    society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that
    affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a
    million people, then each of the affected individuals has, on the
    average, only a one-millionth share in making the decision. What
    usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public
    officials or corporation executives, or by technical specialists, but
    even when the public votes on a decision the number of voters
    ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one individual to be
    significant. [17] Thus most individuals are unable to influence
    measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. Their is no
    conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society.
    The system tries to "solve" this problem by using propaganda to make
    people WANT the decisions that have been made for them, but even if
    this "solution" were completely successful in making people feel
    better, it would be demeaning.

    118 Conservatives and some others advocate more "local autonomy."
    Local communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes
    less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with
    and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer
    networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, the modern
    health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that
    technology applied in one location often affects people at other
    locations far away. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may
    contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream, and the
    greenhouse effect affects the whole world.

    119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs.
    Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs
    of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social
    ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the
    fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but
    by technical necessity. [18] Of course the system does satisfy many
    human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extent
    that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of
    the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For
    example, the system provides people with food because the system
    couldn't function if everyone starved; it attends to people's
    psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it
    couldn't function if too many people became depressed or rebellious.
    But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert
    constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the
    system. Too much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the
    educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a
    mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A
    chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask
    whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their
    time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put
    out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo "retraining,"
    no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in
    this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to
    technical necessity and for good reason: If human needs were put
    before technical necessity there would be economic problems,
    unemployment, shortages or worse. The concept of "mental health" in
    our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual
    behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without
    showing signs of stress.

    120. Efforts to make room for a sense of purpose and for autonomy
    within the system are no better than a joke. For example, one company,
    instead of having each of its employees assemble only one section of a
    catalogue, had each assemble a whole catalogue, and this was supposed
    to give them a sense of purpose and achievement. Some companies have
    tried to give their employees more autonomy in their work, but for
    practical reasons this usually can be done only to a very limited
    extent, and in any case employees are never given autonomy as to
    ultimate goals -- their "autonomous" efforts can never be directed
    toward goals that they select personally, but only toward their
    employer's goals, such as the survival and growth of the company. Any
    company would soon go out of business if it permitted its employees to
    act otherwise. Similarly, in any enterprise within a socialist system,
    workers must direct their efforts toward the goals of the enterprise,
    otherwise the enterprise will not serve its purpose as part of the
    system. Once again, for purely technical reasons it is not possible
    for most individuals or small groups to have much autonomy in
    industrial society. Even the small-business owner commonly has only
    limited autonomy. Apart from the necessity of government regulation,
    he is restricted by the fact that he must fit into the economic system
    and conform to its requirements. For instance, when someone develops a
    new technology, the small-business person often has to use that
    technology whether he wants to or not, in order to remain competitive.


    THE 'BAD' PARTS OF TECHNOLOGY CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE 'GOOD' PARTS


    121. A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in
    favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in
    which all parts are dependent on one another. You can't get rid of the
    "bad" parts of technology and retain only the "good" parts. Take
    modern medicine, for example. Progress in medical science depends on
    progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other
    fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive, high-tech
    equipment that can be made available only by a technologically
    progressive, economically rich society. Clearly you can't have much
    progress in medicine without the whole technological system and
    everything that goes with it.

    122. Even if medical progress could be maintained without the rest of
    the technological system, it would by itself bring certain evils.
    Suppose for example that a cure for diabetes is discovered. People
    with a genetic tendency to diabetes will then be able to survive and
    reproduce as well as anyone else. Natural selection against genes for
    diabetes will cease and such genes will spread throughout the
    population. (This may be occurring to some extent already, since
    diabetes, while not curable, can be controlled through the use of
    insulin.) The same thing will happen with many other diseases
    susceptibility to which is affected by genetic degradation of the
    population. The only solution will be some sort of eugenics program or
    extensive genetic engineering of human beings, so that man in the
    future will no longer be a creation of nature, or of chance, or of God
    (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions), but a
    manufactured product.

    123. If you think that big government interferes in your life too much
    NOW, just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic
    constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow
    the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings, because the
    consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous.
    [19]

    124. The usual response to such concerns is to talk about "medical
    ethics." But a code of ethics would not serve to protect freedom in
    the face of medical progress; it would only make matters worse. A code
    of ethics applicable to genetic engineering would be in effect a means
    of regulating the genetic constitution of human beings. Somebody
    (probably the upper-middle class, mostly) would decide that such and
    such applications of genetic engineering were "ethical" and others
    were not, so that in effect they would be imposing their own values on
    the genetic constitution of the population at large. Even if a code of
    ethics were chosen on a completely democratic basis, the majority
    would be imposing their own values on any minorities who might have a
    different idea of what constituted an "ethical" use of genetic
    engineering. The only code of ethics that would truly protect freedom
    would be one that prohibited ANY genetic engineering of human beings,
    and you can be sure that no such code will ever be applied in a
    technological society. No code that reduced genetic engineering to a
    minor role could stand up for long, because the temptation presented
    by the immense power of biotechnology would be irresistible,
    especially since to the majority of people many of its applications
    will seem obviously and unequivocally good (eliminating physical and
    mental diseases, giving people the abilities they need to get along in
    today's world). Inevitably, genetic engineering will be used
    extensively, but only in ways consistent with the needs of the
    industrial-technological system. [20]

    TECHNOLOGY IS A MORE POWERFUL SOCIAL FORCE THAN THE ASPIRATION FOR FREEDOM

    125. It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between
    technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful
    social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED
    compromises. Imagine the case of two neighbors, each of whom at the
    outset owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful
    than the other. The powerful one demands a piece of the other's land.
    The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, "OK, let's compromise.
    Give me half of what I asked." The weak one has little choice but to
    give in. Some time later the powerful neighbor demands another piece
    of land, again there is a compromise, and so forth. By forcing a long
    series of compromises on the weaker man, the powerful one eventually
    gets all of his land. So it goes in the conflict between technology
    and freedom.

    126. Let us explain why technology is a more powerful social force
    than the aspiration for freedom.

    127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom
    often turns out to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it
    very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A
    walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace
    without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of
    technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced
    they appeared to increase man's freedom. They took no freedom away
    from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn't
    want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel
    much faster than the walking man. But the introduction of motorized
    transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly
    man's freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it
    became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car,
    especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one
    likes at one's own pace one's movement is governed by the flow of
    traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various
    obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration,
    insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on
    purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer
    optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the
    arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority
    of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of
    employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that
    they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they
    must use public transportation, in which case they have even less
    control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the
    walker's freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually
    has to stop and wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to
    serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous
    and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note the important point we
    have illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item
    of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept
    or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many
    cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people
    eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)

    128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our
    sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF
    appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid
    long-distance communications . . . how could one argue against any of
    these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical
    advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to
    resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many
    advantages and no disadvantages. Yet as we explained in paragraphs
    59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created world
    in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in
    the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians,
    corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and
    bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence. [21]
    The same process will continue in the future. Take genetic
    engineering, for example. Few people will resist the introduction of a
    genetic technique that eliminates a hereditary disease It does no
    apparent harm and prevents much suffering. Yet a large number of
    genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an
    engineered product rather than a free creation of chance (or of God,
    or whatever, depending on your religious beliefs).

    129 Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is
    that, within the context of a given society, technological progress
    marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a
    technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become
    dependent on it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced
    innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a
    new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes
    dependent on it. (Imagine what would happen to the system today if
    computers, for example, were eliminated.) Thus the system can move in
    only one direction, toward greater technologization. Technology
    repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back -- short of the
    overthrow of the whole technological system.

    130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at
    many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and
    regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large
    organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic
    engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and
    computers, etc.) To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would
    require a long different social struggle. Those who want to protect
    freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the
    rapidity with which they develop, hence they become pathetic and no
    longer resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be
    futile. Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological
    system as a whole; but that is revolution not reform.

    131. Technicians (we use this term in its broad sense to describe all
    those who perform a specialized task that requires training) tend to
    be so involved in their work (their surrogate activity) that when a
    conflict arises between their technical work and freedom, they almost
    always decide in favor of their technical work. This is obvious in the
    case of scientists, but it also appears elsewhere: Educators,
    humanitarian groups, conservation organizations do not hesitate to use
    propaganda or other psychological techniques to help them achieve
    their laudable ends. Corporations and government agencies, when they
    find it useful, do not hesitate to collect information about
    individuals without regard to their privacy. Law enforcement agencies
    are frequently inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects
    and often of completely innocent persons, and they do whatever they
    can do legally (or sometimes illegally) to restrict or circumvent
    those rights. Most of these educators, government officials and law
    officers believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights, but
    when these conflict with their work, they usually feel that their work
    is more important.

    132. It is well known that people generally work better and more
    persistently when striving for a reward than when attempting to avoid
    a punishment or negative outcome. Scientists and other technicians are
    motivated mainly by the rewards they get through their work. But those
    who oppose technilogiccal invasions of freedom are working to avoid a
    negative outcome, consequently there are a few who work persistently
    and well at this discouraging task. If reformers ever achieved a
    signal victory that seemed to set up a solid barrier against further
    erosion of freedom through technological progress, most would tend to
    relax and turn their attention to more agreeable pursuits. But the
    scientists would remain busy in their laboratories, and technology as
    it progresses would find ways, in spite of any barriers, to exert more
    and more control over individuals and make them always more dependent
    on the system.

    133. No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs or
    ethical codes, can provide permanent protection against technology.
    History shows that all social arrangements are transitory; they all
    change or break down eventually. But technological advances are
    permanent within the context of a given civilization. Suppose for
    example that it were possible to arrive at some social arrangements
    that would prevent genetic engineering from being applied to human
    beings, or prevent it from being applied in such a ways as to threaten
    freedom and dignity. Still, the technology would remain waiting.
    Sooner or later the social arrangement would break down. Probably
    sooner, given that pace of change in our society. Then genetic
    engineering would begin to invade our sphere of freedom, and this
    invasion would be irreversible (short of a breakdown of technological
    civilization itself). Any illusions about achieving anything permanent
    through social arrangements should be dispelled by what is currently
    happening with environmental legislation. A few years ago it seemed
    that there were secure legal barriers preventing at least SOME of the
    worst forms of environmental degradation. A change in the political
    wind, and those barriers begin to crumble.

    134. For all of the foregoing reasons, technology is a more powerful
    social force than the aspiration for freedom. But this statement
    requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next
    several decades the industrial-technological system will be undergoing
    severe stresses due to economic and environmental problems, and
    especially due to problems of human behavior (alienation, rebellion,
    hostility, a variety of social and psychological difficulties). We
    hope that the stresses through which the system is likely to pass will
    cause it to break down, or at least weaken it sufficiently so that a
    revolution occurs and is successful, then at that particular moment
    the aspiration for freedom will have proved more powerful than
    technology.

    135. In paragraph 125 we used an analogy of a weak neighbor who is
    left destitute by a strong neighbor who takes all his land by forcing
    on him a series of compromises. But suppose now that the strong
    neighbor gets sick, so that he is unable to defend himself. The weak
    neighbor can force the strong one to give him his land back, or he can
    kill him. If he lets the strong man survive and only forces him to
    give his land back, he is a fool, because when the strong man gets
    well he will again take all the land for himself. The only sensible
    alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has
    the chance. In the same way, while the industrial system is sick we
    must destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its
    sickness, it will eventually wipe out all of our freedom.

    SIMPLER SOCIAL PROBLEMS HAVE PROVED INTRACTABLE


    136. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the
    system in such a way as to protect freedom from technology, let him
    consider how clumsily and for the most part unsuccessfully our society
    has dealt with other social problems that are far more simple and
    straightforward. Among other things, the system has failed to stop
    environmental degradation, political corruption, drug trafficking or
    domestic abuse.

    137. Take our environmental problems, for example. Here the conflict
    of values is straightforward: economic expedience now versus saving
    some of our natural resources for our grandchildren [22] But on this
    subject we get only a lot of blather and obfuscation from the people
    who have power, and nothing like a clear, consistent line of action,
    and we keep on piling up environmental problems that our grandchildren
    will have to live with. Attempts to resolve the environmental issue
    consist of struggles and compromises between different factions, some
    of which are ascendant at one moment, others at another moment. The
    line of struggle changes with the shifting currents of public opinion.
    This is not a rational process, or is it one that is likely to lead to
    a timely and successful solution to the problem. Major social
    problems, if they get "solved" at all, are rarely or never solved
    through any rational, comprehensive plan. They just work themselves
    out through a process in which various competing groups pursing their
    own usually short-term) self-interest [23] arrive (mainly by luck) at
    some more or less stable modus vivendi. In fact, the principles we
    formulated in paragraphs 100-106 make it seem doubtful that rational,
    long-term social planning can EVER be successful. 138. Thus it is
    clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for
    solving even relatively straightforward social problems. How then is
    it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of
    reconciling freedom with technology? Technology presents clear-cut
    material advantages, whereas freedom is an abstraction that means
    different things to different people, and its loss is easily obscured
    by propaganda and fancy talk.

    139. And note this important difference: It is conceivable that our
    environmental problems (for example) may some day be settled through a
    rational, comprehensive plan, but if this happens it will be only
    because it is in the long-term interest of the system to solve these
    problems. But it is NOT in the interest of the system to preserve
    freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the
    interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the
    greatest possible extent. Thus, while practical considerations may
    eventually force the system to take a rational, prudent approach to
    environmental problems, equally practical considerations will force
    the system to regulate human behavior ever more closely (preferably by
    indirect means that will disguise the encroachment on freedom.) This
    isn't just our opinion. Eminent social scientists (e.g. James Q.
    Wilson) have stressed the importance of "socializing" people more
    effectively.

    REVOLUTION IS EASIER THAN REFORM


    140. We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be
    reformed in a such a way as to reconcile freedom with technology. The
    only way out is to dispense with the industrial-technological system
    altogether. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed
    uprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature
    of society.

    141. People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much
    greater change than reform does, it is more difficult to bring about
    than reform is. Actually, under certain circumstances revolution is
    much easier than reform. The reason is that a revolutionary movement
    can inspire an intensity of commitment that a reform movement cannot
    inspire. A reform movement merely offers to solve a particular social
    problem A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one
    stroke and create a whole new world; it provides the kind of ideal for
    which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. For this
    reasons it would be much easier to overthrow the whole technological
    system than to put effective, permanent restraints on the development
    of application of any one segment of technology, such as genetic
    engineering, but under suitable conditions large numbers of people may
    devote themselves passionately to a revolution against the
    industrial-technological system. As we noted in paragraph 132,
    reformers seeking to limite certain aspects of technology would be
    working to avoid a negative outcome. But revolutionaries work to gain
    a powerful reward -- fulfillment of their revolutionary vision -- and
    therefore work harder and more persistently than reformers do.

    142. Reform is always restrainde by the fear of painful consequences
    if changes go too far. But once a revolutionary fever has taken hold
    of a society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for
    the sake of their revolution. This was clearly shown in the French and
    Russian Revolutions. It may be that in such cases only a minority of
    the population is really committed to the revolution, but this
    minority is sufficiently large and active so that it becomes the
    dominant force in society. We will have more to say about revolution
    in paragraphs 180-205.

    CONTROL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR


    143. Since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had
    to put pressures on human beings of the sake of the functioning of the
    social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society
    to another. Some of the pressures are physical (poor diet, excessive
    labor, environmental pollution), some are psychological (noise,
    crowding, forcing humans behavior into the mold that society
    requires). In the past, human nature has been approximately constant,
    or at any rate has varied only within certain bounds. Consequently,
    societies have been able to push people only up to certain limits.
    When the limit of human endurance has been passed, things start going
    rong: rebellion, or crime, or corruption, or evasion of work, or
    depression and other mental problems, or an elevated death rate, or a
    declining birth rate or something else, so that either the society
    breaks down, or its functioning becomes too inefficient and it is
    (quickly or gradually, through conquest, attrition or evolution)
    replaces by some more efficient form of society.

    [25]

    144. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the
    development of societies. People coud be pushed only so far and no
    farther. But today this may be changing, because modern technology is
    developing way of modifying human beings.

    145. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that amke
    them terribley unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their
    unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent
    in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical
    depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe
    that this is due to disruption fo the power process, as explained in
    paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of
    depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in
    today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people
    depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect,
    antidepressants area a means of modifying an individual's internal
    state in such a way as to enable him to toelrate social conditions
    that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that
    depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to
    those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.)

    146. Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the methods of
    controlling human behavior that modern society is developing. Let us
    look at some of the other methods.

    147. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden
    video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places,
    computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information
    about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the
    effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement).[26] Then
    there are the methods of propaganda, for which the mass communication
    media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been
    developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public
    opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important
    psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out
    large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man
    with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television,
    videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration,
    dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don't have work to
    do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all,
    because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most
    modern people must be contantly occupied or entertained, otherwise the
    get "bored," i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.

    148. Other techniques strike deeper that the foregoing. Education is
    no longer a simple affair of paddling a kid's behind when he doesn't
    know his lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them.
    It is becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child's
    development. Sylvan Learning Centers, for example, have had great
    success in motivating children to study, and psychological techniques
    are also used with more or less success in many conventional schools.
    "Parenting" techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make
    children accept fundamental values of the system and behave in ways
    that the system finds desirable. "Mental health" programs,
    "intervention" techniques, psychotherapy and so forth are ostensibly
    designed to benefit individuals, but in practice they usually serve as
    methods for inducing individuals to think and behave as the system
    requires. (There is no contradiction here; an individual whose
    attitudes or behavior bring him into conflict with the system is up
    against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape
    from, hence he is likely to suffer from stress, frustration, defeat.
    His path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system
    requires. In that sense the system is acting for the benefit of the
    individual when it brainwashes him into conformity.) Child abuse in
    its gross and obvious forms is disapproved in most if not all
    cultures. Tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no reason at all
    is something that appalls almost everyone. But many psychologists
    interpret the concept of abuse much more broadly. Is spanking, when
    used as part of a rational and consistent system of discipline, a form
    of abuse? The question will ultimately be decided by whether or not
    spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit in well
    with the existing system of society. In practice, the word "abuse"
    tends to be interpreted to include any method of child-rearing that
    produces behavior inconvenient for the system. Thus, when they go
    beyond the prevention of obvious, senseless cruelty, programs for
    preventing "child abuse" are directed toward the control of human
    behavior of the system.

    149. Presumably, research will continue to increas the effectiveness
    of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we
    think it is unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be
    sufficient to adjust human beings to the kind of society that
    technology is creating. Biological methods probably will have to be
    used. We have already mentiond the use of drugs in this connection.
    Neurology may provide other avenues of modifying the human mind.
    Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to occur in
    the form of "gene therapy," and there is no reason to assume the such
    methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of the
    body that affect mental funtioning.

    150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely
    to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of
    human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And
    a considerable proportion of the system's economic and environmental
    problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low
    self-esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won't
    study, youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse , other
    crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political
    corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict
    (i.e., pro-choice vs. pro-life), political extremism, terrorism,
    sabotage, anti-government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the
    very survival of the system. The system will be FORCED to use every
    practical means of controlling human behavior.

    151. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the
    result of mere chance. It can only be a result fo the conditions of
    life that the system imposes on people. (We have argued that the most
    important of these conditions is disruption of the power process.) If
    the systems succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human
    behavior to assure itw own survival, a new watershed in human history
    will have passed. Whereas formerly the limits of human endurance have
    imposed limits on the development of societies (as we explained in
    paragraphs 143, 144), industrial-technological society will be able to
    pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological
    methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems
    will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human
    being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.

    [27] 152. Generally speaking, technological control over human
    behavior will probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention
    or even through a conscious desire to restrict human freedom. [28]
    Each new step in the assertion of control over the human mind will be
    taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society, such as
    curing alcoholism, reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to
    study science and engineering. In many cases, there will be
    humanitarian justification. For example, when a psychiatrist
    prescribes an anti-depressant for a depressed patient, he is clearly
    doing that individual a favor. It would be inhumane to withhold the
    drug from someone who needs it. When parents send their children to
    Sylvan Learning Centers to have them manipulated into becoming
    enthusiastic about their studies, they do so from concern for their
    children's welfare. It may be that some of these parents wish that one
    didn't have to have specialized training to get a job and that their
    kid didn't have to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But
    what can they do? They can't change society, and their child may be
    unemployable if he doesn't have certain skills. So they send him to
    Sylvan.

    153. Thus control over human behavior will be introduced not by a
    calculated decision of the authorities but through a process of social
    evolution (RAPID evolution, however). The process will be impossible
    to resist, because each advance, considered by itself, will appear to
    be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance
    will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making
    the advance will seem to be less than that which would result from not
    making it (see paragraph 127). Propaganda for example is used for many
    good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred. [14]
    Sex education is obviously useful, yet the effect of sex education (to
    the extent that it is successful) is to take the shaping of sexual
    attitudes away from the family and put it into the hands of the state
    as represented by the public school system.

    154. Suppose a biological trait is discovered that increases the
    likelihood that a child will grow up to be a criminal and suppose some
    sort of gene therapy can remove this trait. [29] Of course most
    parents whose children possess the trait will have them undergo the
    therapy. It would be inhumane to do otherwise, since the child would
    probably have a miserable life if he grew up to be a criminal. But
    many or most primitive societies have a low crime rate in comparison
    with that of our society, even though they have neither high-tech
    methods of child-rearing nor harsh systems of punishment. Since there
    is no reason to suppose that more modern men than primitive men have
    innate predatory tendencies, the high crime rate of our society must
    be due to the pressures that modern conditions put on people, to which
    many cannot or will not adjust. Thus a treatment designed to remove
    potential criminal tendencies is at least in part a way of
    re-engineering people so that they suit the requirements of the
    system.

    155. Our society tends to regard as a "sickness" any mode of thought
    or behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible
    because when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain
    to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the
    manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a
    "cure" for a "sickness" and therefore as good.

    156. In paragraph 127 we pointed out that if the use of a new item of
    technology is INITIALLY optional, it does not necessarily REMAIN
    optional, because the new technology tends to change society in such a
    way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to
    function without using that technology. This applies also to the
    technology of human behavior. In a world in which most children are
    put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, a
    parent will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program,
    because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively
    speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or suppose a
    biological treatment is discovered that, without undesirable
    side-effects, will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which
    so many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of people
    choose to undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in
    society will be reduced, so that it will be possible for the system to
    increase the stress-producing pressures. In fact, something like this
    seems to have happened already with one of our society's most
    important psychological tools for enabling people to reduce (or at
    least temporarily escape from) stress, namely, mass entertainment (see
    paragraph 147). Our use of mass entertainment is "optional": No law
    requires us to watch television, listen to the radio, read magazines.
    Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on
    which most of us have become dependent. Everyone complains about the
    trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches it. A few have
    kicked the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along
    today without using ANY form of mass entertainment. (Yet until quite
    recently in human history most people got along very nicely with no
    other entertainment than that which each local community created for
    itself.) Without the entertainment industry the system probably would
    not have been able to get away with putting as much stress-producing
    pressure on us as it does.

    157. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that
    technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete
    control over human behavior. It has been established beyond any
    rational doubt that human thought and behavior have a largely
    biological basis. As experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as
    hunger, pleasure, anger and fear can be turned on and off by
    electrical stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain. Memories can
    be destroyed by damaging parts of the brain or they can be brought to
    the surface by electrical stimulation. Hallucinations can be induced
    or moods changed by drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human
    soul, but if there is one it clearly is less powerful that the
    biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were not the case
    then researchers would not be able so easily to manipulate human
    feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents.

    158. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have
    electrodes inserted in their heads so that they could be controlled by
    the authorities. But the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so
    open to biological intervention shows that the problem of controlling
    human behavior is mainly a technical problem; a problem of neurons,
    hormones and complex molecules; the kind of problem that is accessible
    to scientific attack. Given the outstanding record of our society in
    solving technical problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great
    advances will be made in the control of human behavior.

    159. Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological
    control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made
    to introduce such control all at once. But since technological control
    will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there
    will be no rational and effective public resistance. (See paragraphs
    127,132, 153.)

    160. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we
    point out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The
    Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way
    of life, and it is only 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.

    HUMAN RACE AT A CROSSROADS


    161. But we have gotten ahead of our story. It is one thing to develop
    in the laboratory a series of psychological or biological techniques
    for manipulating human behavior and quite another to integrate these
    techniques into a functioning social system. The latter problem is the
    more difficult of the two. For example, while the techniques of
    educational psychology doubtless work quite well in the "lab schools"
    where they are developed, it is not necessarily easy to apply them
    effectively throughout our educational system. We all know what many
    of our schools are like. The teachers are too busy taking knives and
    guns away from the kids to subject them to the latest techniques for
    making them into computer nerds. Thus, in spite of all its technical
    advances relating to human behavior the system to date has not been
    impressively successful in controlling human beings. The people whose
    behavior is fairly well under the control of the system are those of
    the type that might be called "bourgeois." But there are growing
    numbers of people who in one way or another are rebels against the
    system: welfare leaches, youth gangs cultists, satanists, nazis,
    radical environmentalists, militiamen, etc..

    162. The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to
    overcome certain problems that threaten its survival, among which the
    problems of human behavior are the most important. If the system
    succeeds in acquiring sufficient control over human behavior quickly
    enough, it will probably survive. Otherwise it will break down. We
    think the issue will most likely be resolved within the next several
    decades, say 40 to 100 years.

    163. Suppose the system survives the crisis of the next several
    decades. By that time it will have to have solved, or at least brought
    under control, the principal problems that confront it, in particular
    that of "socializing" human beings; that is, making people
    sufficiently docile so that their behavior no longer threatens the
    system. That being accomplished, it does not appear that there would
    be any further obstacle to the development of technology, and it would
    presumably advance toward its logical conclusion, which is complete
    control over everything on Earth, including human beings and all other
    important organisms. The system may become a unitary, monolithic
    organization, or it may be more or less fragmented and consist of a
    number of organizations coexisting in a relationship that includes
    elements of both cooperation and competition, just as today the
    government, the corporations and other large organizations both
    cooperate and compete with one another. Human freedom mostly will have
    vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent
    vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an
    arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for
    manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and
    physical coercion. Only a small number of people will have any real
    power, and even these probably will have only very limited freedom,
    because their behavior too will be regulated; just as today our
    politicians and corporation executives can retain their positions of
    power only as long as their behavior remains within certain fairly
    narrow limits.

    164. Don't imagine that the systems will stop developing further
    techniques for controlling human beings and nature once the crisis of
    the next few decades is over and increasing control is no longer
    necessary for the system's survival. On the contrary, once the hard
    times are over the system will increase its control over people and
    nature more rapidly, because it will no longer be hampered by
    difficulties of the kind that it is currently experiencing. Survival
    is not the principal motive for extending control. As we explained in
    paragraphs 87-90, technicians and scientists carry on their work
    largely as a surrogate activity; that is, they satisfy their need for
    power by solving technical problems. They will continue to do this
    with unabated enthusiasm, and among the most interesting and
    challenging problems for them to solve will be those of understanding
    the human body and mind and intervening in their development. For the
    "good of humanity," of course.

    165. But suppose on the other hand that the stresses of the coming
    decades prove to be too much for the system. If the system breaks down
    there may be a period of chaos, a "time of troubles" such as those
    that history has recorded: at various epochs in the past. It is
    impossible to predict what would emerge from such a time of troubles,
    but at any rate the human race would be given a new chance. The
    greatest danger is that industrial society may begin to reconstitute
    itself within the first few years after the breakdown. Certainly there
    will be many people (power-hungry types especially) who will be
    anxious to get the factories running again.

    166. Therefore two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to
    which the industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must
    work to heighten the social stresses within the system so as to
    increase the likelihood that it will break down or be weakened
    sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible. Second,
    it is necessary to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes
    technology and the industrial society if and when the system becomes
    sufficiently weakened. And such an ideology will help to assure that,
    if and when industrial society breaks down, its remnants will be
    smashed beyond repair, so that the system cannot be reconstituted. The
    factories should be destroyed, technical books burned, etc.

    HUMAN SUFFERING


    167. The industrial system will not break down purely as a result of
    revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to revolutionary
    attack unless its own internal problems of development lead it into
    very serious difficulties. So if the system breaks down it will do so
    either spontaneously, or through a process that is in part spontaneous
    but helped along by revolutionaries. If the breakdown is sudden, many
    people will die, since the world's population has become so overblown
    that it cannot even feed itself any longer without advanced
    technology. Even if the breakdown is gradual enough so that reduction
    of the population can occur more through lowering of the birth rate
    than through elevation of the death rate, the process of
    de-industrialization probably will be very chaotic and involve much
    suffering. It is naive to think it likely that technology can be
    phased out in a smoothly managed orderly way, especially since the
    technophiles will fight stubbornly at every step. Is it therefore
    cruel to work for the breakdown of the system? Maybe, but maybe not.
    In the first place, revolutionaries will not be able to break the
    system down unless it is already in deep trouble so that there would
    be a good chance of its eventually breaking down by itself anyway; and
    the bigger the system grows, the more disastrous the consequences of
    its breakdown will be; so it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening
    the onset of the breakdown will be reducing the extent of the
    disaster.

    168. In the second place, one has to balance the struggle and death
    against the loss of freedom and dignity. To many of us, freedom and
    dignity are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical
    pain. Besides, we all have to die some time, and it may be better to
    die fighting for survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but
    empty and purposeless life.

    169. In the third place, it is not all certain that the survival of
    the system will lead to less suffering than the breakdown of the
    system would. The system has already caused, and is continuing to
    cause , immense suffering all over the world. Ancient cultures, that
    for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory relationship with
    each other and their environment, have been shattered by contact with
    industrial society, and the result has been a whole catalogue of
    economic, environmental, social and psychological problems. One of the
    effects of the intrusion of industrial society has been that over much
    of the world traditional controls on population have been thrown out
    of balance. Hence the population explosion, with all that it implies.
    Then there is the psychological suffering that is widespread
    throughout the supposedly fortunate countries of the West (see
    paragraphs 44, 45). No one knows what will happen as a result of ozone
    depletion, the greenhouse effect and other environmental problems that
    cannot yet be foreseen. And, as nuclear proliferation has shown, new
    technology cannot be kept out of the hands of dictators and
    irresponsible Third World nations. Would you like to speculate abut
    what Iraq or North Korea will do with genetic engineering?

    170. "Oh!" say the technophiles, "Science is going to fix all that! We
    will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody
    healthy and happy!" Yeah, sure. That's what they said 200 years ago.
    The Industrial Revolution was supposed to eliminate poverty, make
    everybody happy, etc. The actual result has been quite different. The
    technophiles are hopelessly naive (or self-deceiving) in their
    understanding of social problems. They are unaware of (or choose to
    ignore) the fact that when large changes, even seemingly beneficial
    ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of
    other changes, most of which are impossible to predict (paragraph
    103). The result is disruption of the society. So it is very probable
    that in their attempt to end poverty and disease, engineer docile,
    happy personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create social
    systems that are terribly troubled, even more so that the present one.
    For example, the scientists boast that they will end famine by
    creating new, genetically engineered food plants. But this will allow
    the human population to keep expanding indefinitely, and it is well
    known that crowding leads to increased stress and aggression. This is
    merely one example of the PREDICTABLE problems that will arise. We
    emphasize that, as past experience has shown, technical progress will
    lead to other new problems for society far more rapidly that it has
    been solving old ones. Thus it will take a long difficult period of
    trial and error for the technophiles to work the bugs out of their
    Brave New World (if they ever do). In the meantime there will be great
    suffering. So it is not all clear that the survival of industrial
    society would involve less suffering than the breakdown of that
    society would. Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from
    which there is not likely to be any easy escape.

    THE FUTURE


    171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next
    several decade and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the
    system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be?
    We will consider several possibilities.

    172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in
    developing intelligent machines that can do all things better that
    human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be
    done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort
    will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might
    be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human
    oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

    173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we
    can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible
    to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the
    fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might
    be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand
    over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that
    the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor
    that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is
    that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a
    position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no
    practical choice but to accept all of the machines decisions. As
    society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and
    machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines
    make more of their decision for them, simply because machine-made
    decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. Eventually a
    stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the
    system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable
    of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in
    effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off,
    because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would
    amount to suicide.

    174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the
    machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have
    control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car of
    his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will
    be in the hands of a tiny elite -- just as it is today, but with two
    difference. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater
    control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be
    necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the
    system. If the elite is ruthless the may simply decide to exterminate
    the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or
    other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate
    until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the
    elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may
    decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human
    race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are
    satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic
    conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and
    that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure
    his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will
    have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove
    their need for the power process or to make them "sublimate" their
    drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human
    beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will
    not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic
    animals.

    175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in
    developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains
    necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the
    simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human
    workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening
    already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to
    get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they
    cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves
    useful in the present system.) On those who are employed,
    ever-increasing demands will be placed; They will need more and m ore
    training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more
    reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more
    like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly
    specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with
    the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The
    system will have to use any means that I can, whether psychological or
    biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities
    that the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for power into
    some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a
    society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society
    may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of
    directing competitiveness into channels that serve that needs of the
    system. We can imagine into channels that serve the needs of the
    system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless
    competition for positions of prestige an power. But no more than a
    very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is
    (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a
    person can satisfy his needs for power only by pushing large numbers
    of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity
    for power.

    176. Once can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than
    one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it
    may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real,
    practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being
    given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example,
    that a great development of the service of industries might provide
    work for human beings. Thus people will would spend their time
    shinning each others shoes, driving each other around inn taxicab,
    making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other's tables,
    etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race
    to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives
    in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets
    (drugs, , crime, "cults," hate groups) unless they were biological or
    psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.

    177. Needless to day, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all
    the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem
    to us mots likely. But wee can envision no plausible scenarios that
    are any more palatable that the ones we've just described. It is
    overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system
    survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed
    certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the
    "bourgeois" type, who are integrated into the system and make it run,
    and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever
    on large organizations; they will be more "socialized" that ever and
    their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly
    to a very great extent ) will be those that are engineered into them
    rather than being the results of chance (or of God's will, or
    whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to
    remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision
    and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild).
    In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is it is likely that
    neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as
    we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through
    genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular
    point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and
    other organisms have been utterly transformed.

    178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is
    creating for human begins a new physical and social environment
    radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural
    selection has adapted the human race physically and psychological. If
    man is not adjust to this new environment by being artificially
    re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long an painful
    process of natural selection. The former is far more likely that the
    latter.

    179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the
    consequences.

    STRATEGY


    180. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride
    into the unknown. Many people understand something of what
    technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude
    toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) don't think
    it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here
    some indications of how to go about stopping it.

    181. As we stated in paragraph 166, the two main tasks for the present
    are to promote social stress and instability in industrial society and
    to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the
    industrial system. When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and
    unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern
    would be similar to that of the French and Russian Revolutions. French
    society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their
    respective revolutions, showed increasing signs of stress and
    weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a
    new world view that was quite different from the old one. In the
    Russian case, revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the
    old order. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient
    additional stress (by financial crisis in France, by military defeat
    in Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we propose in
    something along the same lines.

    182. It will be objected that the French and Russian Revolutions were
    failures. But most revolutions have two goals. One is to destroy an
    old form of society and the other is to set up the new form of society
    envisioned by the revolutionaries. The French and Russian
    revolutionaries failed (fortunately!) to create the new kind of
    society of which they dreamed, but they were quite successful in
    destroying the existing form of society.

    183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have
    a positive ideals well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as
    well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is
    Nature. That is , WILD nature; those aspects of the functioning of the
    Earth and its living things that are independent of human management
    and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we
    include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the
    functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regulation
    by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God
    (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions).

    184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several
    reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the
    opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power
    of the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful;
    certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical
    environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and
    opposes technology. [30] It is not necessary for the sake of nature to
    set up some chimerical utopia or any new kind of social order. Nature
    takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long
    before any human society, and for countless centuries many different
    kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an
    excessive amount of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did
    the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To
    relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special
    kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial
    society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society
    has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very
    long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even pre-industrial
    societies can do significant damage to nature. Nevertheless, getting
    rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will
    relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can
    begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to
    keep increasing its control over nature (including human nature).
    Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial
    system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature,
    because in the absence of advanced technology there is not other way
    that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants or
    herdsmen or fishermen or hunter, etc., And, generally speaking, local
    autonomy should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology
    and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or
    other large organizations to control local communities.

    185. As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial
    society -- well, you can't eat your cake and have it too. To gain one
    thing you have to sacrifice another.

    186. Most people hate psychological conflict. For this reason they
    avoid doing any serious thinking about difficult social issues, and
    they like to have such issues presented to them in simple,
    black-and-white terms: THIS is all good and THAT is all bad. The
    revolutionary ideology should therefore be developed on two levels.

    187. On the more sophisticated level the ideology should address
    itself to people who are intelligent, thoughtful and rational. The
    object should be to create a core of people who will be opposed to the
    industrial system on a rational, thought-out basis, with full
    appreciation of the problems and ambiguities involved, and of the
    price that has to be paid for getting rid of the system. It is
    particularly important to attract people of this type, as they are
    capable people and will be instrumental in influencing others. These
    people should be addressed on as rational a level as possible. Facts
    should never intentionally be distorted and intemperate language
    should be avoided. This does not mean that no appeal can be made to
    the emotions, but in making such appeal care should be taken to avoid
    misrepresenting the truth or doing anything else that would destroy
    the intellectual respectability of the ideology.

    188. On a second level, the ideology should be propagated in a
    simplified form that will enable the unthinking majority to see the
    conflict of technology vs. nature in unambiguous terms. But even on
    this second level the ideology should not be expressed in language
    that is so cheap, intemperate or irrational that it alienates people
    of the thoughtful and rational type. Cheap, intemperate propaganda
    sometimes achieves impressive short-term gains, but it will be more
    advantageous in the long run to keep the loyalty of a small number of
    intelligently committed people than to arouse the passions of an
    unthinking, fickle mob who will change their attitude as soon as
    someone comes along with a better propaganda gimmick. However,
    propaganda of the rabble-rousing type may be necessary when the system
    is nearing the point of collapse and there is a final struggle between
    rival ideologies to determine which will become dominant when the old
    world-view goes under.

    189. Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not
    expect to have a majority of people on their side. History is made by
    active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a
    clear and consistent idea of what it really wants. Until the time
    comes for the final push toward revolution [31], the task of
    revolutionaries will be less to win the shallow support of the
    majority than to build a small core of deeply committed people. As for
    the majority, it will be enough to make them aware of the existence of
    the new ideology and remind them of it frequently; though of course it
    will be desirable to get majority support to the extent that this can
    be done without weakening the core of seriously committed people.

    190. Any kind of social conflict helps to destabilize the system, but
    one should be careful about what kind of conflict one encourages. The
    line of conflict should be drawn between the mass of the people and
    the power-holding elite of industrial society (politicians,
    scientists, upper-level business executives, government officials,
    etc..). It should NOT be drawn between the revolutionaries and the
    mass of the people. For example, it would be bad strategy for the
    revolutionaries to condemn Americans for their habits of consumption.
    Instead, the average American should be portrayed as a victim of the
    advertising and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying
    a lot of junk that he doesn't need and that is very poor compensation
    for his lost freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts. It
    is merely a matter of attitude whether you blame the advertising
    industry for manipulating the public or blame the public for allowing
    itself to be manipulated. As a matter of strategy one should generally
    avoid blaming the public.

    191. One should think twice before encouraging any other social
    conflict than that between the power-holding elite (which wields
    technology) and the general public (over which technology exerts its
    power). For one thing, other conflicts tend to distract attention from
    the important conflicts (between power-elite and ordinary people,
    between technology and nature); for another thing, other conflicts may
    actually tend to encourage technologization, because each side in such
    a conflict wants to use technological power to gain advantages over
    its adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between nations. It
    also appears in ethnic conflicts within nations. For example, in
    America many black leaders are anxious to gain power for African
    Americans by placing back individuals in the technological
    power-elite. They want there to be many black government officials,
    scientists, corporation executives and so forth. In this way they are
    helping to absorb the African American subculture into the
    technological system. Generally speaking, one should encourage only
    those social conflicts that can be fitted into the framework of the
    conflicts of power--elite vs. ordinary people, technology vs nature.

    192. But the way to discourage ethnic conflict is NOT through militant
    advocacy of minority rights (see paragraphs 21, 29). Instead, the
    revolutionaries should emphasize that although minorities do suffer
    more or less disadvantage, this disadvantage is of peripheral
    significance. Our real enemy is the industrial-technological system,
    and in the struggle against the system, ethnic distinctions are of no
    importance.

    193. The kind of revolution we have in mind will not necessarily
    involve an armed uprising against any government. It may or may not
    involve physical violence, but it will not be a POLITICAL revolution.
    Its focus will be on technology and economics, not politics. [32]

    194. Probably the revolutionaries should even AVOID assuming political
    power, whether by legal or illegal means, until the industrial system
    is stressed to the danger point and has proved itself to be a failure
    in the eyes of most people. Suppose for example that some "green"
    party should win control of the United States Congress in an election.
    In order to avoid betraying or watering down their own ideology they
    would have to take vigorous measures to turn economic growth into
    economic shrinkage. To the average man the results would appear
    disastrous: There would be massive unemployment, shortages of
    commodities, etc. Even if the grosser ill effects could be avoided
    through superhumanly skillful management, still people would have to
    begin giving up the luxuries to which they have become addicted.
    Dissatisfaction would grow, the "green" party would be voted out of of
    fice and the revolutionaries would have suffered a severe setback. For
    this reason the revolutionaries should not try to acquire political
    power until the system has gotten itself into such a mess that any
    hardships will be seen as resulting from the failures of the
    industrial system itself and not from the policies of the
    revolutionaries. The revolution against technology will probably have
    to be a revolution by outsiders, a revolution from below and not from
    above.

    195. The revolution must be international and worldwide. It cannot be
    carried out on a nation-by-nation basis. Whenever it is suggested that
    the United States, for example, should cut back on technological
    progress or economic growth, people get hysterical and start screaming
    that if we fall behind in technology the Japanese will get ahead of
    us. Holy robots The world will fly off its orbit if the Japanese ever
    sell more cars than we do! (Nationalism is a great promoter of
    technology.) More reasonably, it is argued that if the relatively
    democratic nations of the world fall behind in technology while nasty,
    dictatorial nations like China, Vietnam and North Korea continue to
    progress, eventually the dictators may come to dominate the world.
    That is why the industrial system should be attacked in all nations
    simultaneously, to the extent that this may be possible. True, there
    is no assurance that the industrial system can be destroyed at
    approximately the same time all over the world, and it is even
    conceivable that the attempt to overthrow the system could lead
    instead to the domination of the system by dictators. That is a risk
    that has to be taken. And it is worth taking, since the difference
    between a "democratic" industrial system and one controlled by
    dictators is small compared with the difference between an industrial
    system and a non-industrial one. [33] It might even be argued that an
    industrial system controlled by dictators would be preferable, because
    dictator-controlled systems usually have proved inefficient, hence
    they are presumably more likely to break down. Look at Cuba.

    196. Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that tend to
    bind the world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements
    like NAFTA and GATT are probably harmful to the environment in the
    short run, but in the long run they may perhaps be advantageous
    because they foster economic interdependence between nations. I will
    be eaier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis if he
    world economy is so unified that its breakdown in any on major nation
    will lead to its breakdwon in al industrialized nations.

    the long run they may perhaps be advantageous because they foster
    economic interdependence between nations. It will be easier to destroy
    the industrial system on a worldwide basis if the world economy is so
    unified that its breakdown in any one major nation will lead to its
    breakdown in all industrialized nations.

    197. Some people take the line that modern man has too much power, too
    much control over nature; they argue for a more passive attitude on
    the part of the human race. At best these people are expressing
    themselves unclearly, because they fail to distinguish between power
    for LARGE ORGANIZATIONS and power for INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS. It
    is a mistake to argue for powerlessness and passivity, because people
    NEED power. Modern man as a collective entity--that is, the industrial
    system--has immense power over nature, and we (FC) regard this as
    evil. But modern INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS have far
    less power than primitive man ever did. Generally speaking, the vast
    power of "modern man" over nature is exercised not by individuals or
    small groups but by large organizations. To the extent that the
    average modern INDIVIDUAL can wield the power of technology, he is
    permitted to do so only within narrow limits and only under the
    supervision and control of the system. (You need a license for
    everything and with the license come rules and regulations). The
    individual has only those technological powers with which the system
    chooses to provide him. His PERSONAL power over nature is slight.

    198. Primitive INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS actually had considerable
    power over nature; or maybe it would be better to say power WITHIN
    nature. When primitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare
    edible roots, how to track game and take it with homemade weapons. He
    knew how to protect himself from heat, cold, rain, dangerous animals,
    etc. But primitive man did relatively little damage to nature because
    the COLLECTIVE power of primitive society was negligible compared to
    the COLLECTIVE power of industrial society.

    199. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passivity, one should
    argue that the power of the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM should be broken, and
    that this will greatly INCREASE the power and freedom of INDIVIDUALS
    and SMALL GROUPS.

    200. Until the industrial system has been thoroughly wrecked, the
    destruction of that system must be the revolutionaries' ONLY goal.
    Other goals would distract attention and energy from the main goal.
    More importantly, if the revolutionaries permit themselves to have any
    other goal than the destruction of technology, they will be tempted to
    use technology as a tool for reaching that other goal. If they give in
    to that temptation, they will fall right back into the technological
    trap, because modern technology is a unified, tightly organized
    system, so that, in order to retain SOME technology, one finds oneself
    obliged to retain MOST technology, hence one ends up sacrificing only
    token amounts of technology.

    201. Suppose for example that the revolutionaries took "social
    justice" as a goal. Human nature being what it is, social justice
    would not come about spontaneously; it would have to be enforced. In
    order to enforce it the revolutionaries would have to retain central
    organization and control. For that they would need rapid long-distance
    transportation and communication, and therefore all the technology
    needed to support the transportation and communication systems. To
    feed and clothe poor people they would have to use agricultural and
    manufacturing technology. And so forth. So that the attempt to insure
    social justice would force them to retain most parts of the
    technological system. Not that we have anything against social
    justice, but it must not be allowed to interfere with the effort to
    get rid of the technological system.

    202. It would be hopeless for revolutionaries to try to attack the
    system without using SOME modern technology. If nothing else they must
    use the communications media to spread their message. But they should
    use modern technology for only ONE purpose: to attack the
    technological system.

    203. Imagine an alcoholic sitting with a barrel of wine in front of
    him. Suppose he starts saying to himself, "Wine isn't bad for you if
    used in moderation. Why, they say small amounts of wine are even good
    for you! It won't do me any harm if I take just one little drink..."
    Well you know what is going to happen. Never forget that the human
    race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.

    204. Revolutionaries should have as many children as they can. There
    is strong scientific evidence that social attitudes are to a
    significant extent inherited. No one suggests that a social attitude
    is a direct outcome of a person's genetic constitution, but it appears
    that personality traits tend, within the context of our society, to
    make a person more likely to hold this or that social attitude.
    Objections to these findings have been raised, but objections are
    feeble and seem to be ideologically motivated. In any event, no one
    denies that children tend on the average to hold social attitudes
    similar to those of their parents. From our point of view it doesn't
    matter all that much whether the attitudes are passed on genetically
    or through childhood training. In either case the ARE passed on.

    205. The trouble is that many of the people who are inclined to rebel
    against the industrial system are also concerned about the population
    problems, hence they are apt to have few or no children. In this way
    they may be handing the world over to the sort of people who support
    or at least accept the industrial system. To insure the strength of
    the next generation of revolutionaries the present generation must
    reproduce itself abundantly. In doing so they will be worsening the
    population problem only slightly. And the most important problem is to
    get rid of the industrial system, because once the industrial system
    is gone the world's population necessarily will decrease (see
    paragraph 167); whereas, if the industrial system survives, it will
    continue developing new techniques of food production that may enable
    the world's population to keep increasing almost indefinitely.

    206. With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only points on which
    we absolutely insist are that the single overriding goal must be the
    elimination of modern technology, and that no other goal can be
    allowed to compete with this one. For the rest, revolutionaries should
    take an empirical approach. If experience indicates that some of the
    recommendations made in the foregoing paragraphs are not going to give
    good results, then those recommendations should be discarded.

    TWO KINDS OF TECHNOLOGY


    207. An argument likely to be raised against our proposed revolution
    is that it is bound to fail, because (it is claimed) throughout
    history technology has always progressed, never regressed, hence
    technological regression is impossible. But this claim is false.

    208. We distinguish between two kinds of technology, which we will
    call small-scale technology and organization-dependent technology.
    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 until rather
    recent times did the sanitation of European cities that of Ancient
    Rome.

    209. 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. Take the refrigerator for example. Without factory-made
    parts or the facilities of a post-industrial machine shop it would be
    virtually impossible for a handful of local craftsmen to build a
    refrigerator. If by some miracle they did succeed in building one it
    would be useless to them without a reliable source of electric power.
    So they would have to dam a stream and build a generator. Generators
    require large amounts of copper wire. Imagine trying to make that wire
    without modern machinery. And where would they get a gas suitable for
    refrigeration? It would be much easier to build an icehouse or
    preserve food by drying or picking, as was done before the invention
    of the refrigerator.

    210. So it is clear that if the industrial system were once thoroughly
    broken down, refrigeration technology would quickly be lost. The same
    is true of other organization-dependent technology. And once this
    technology had been lost for a generation or so it would take
    centuries to rebuild it, just as it took centuries to build it the
    first time around. Surviving technical books would be few and
    scattered. An industrial society, if built from scratch without
    outside help, can only be built in a series of stages: You need tools
    to make tools to make tools to make tools ... . A long process of
    economic development and progress in social organization is required.
    And, even in the absence of an ideology opposed to technology, there
    is no reason to believe that anyone would be interested in rebuilding
    industrial society. The enthusiasm for "progress" is a phenomenon
    particular to the modern form of society, and it seems not to have
    existed prior to the 17th century or thereabouts.

    211. In the late Middle Ages there were four main civilizations that
    were about equally "advanced": Europe, the Islamic world, India, and
    the Far East (China, Japan, Korea). Three of those civilizations
    remained more or less stable, and only Europe became dynamic. No one
    knows why Europe became dynamic at that time; historians have their
    theories but these are only speculation. At any rate, it is clear that
    rapid development toward a technological form of society occurs only
    under special conditions. So there is no reason to assume that
    long-lasting technological regression cannot be brought about.

    212. Would society EVENTUALLY develop again toward an
    industrial-technological form? Maybe, but there is no use in worrying
    about it, since we can't predict or control events 500 or 1,000 years
    in the future. Those problems must be dealt with by the people who
    will live at that time.

    THE DANGER OF LEFTISM


    213. Because of their need for rebellion and for membership in a
    movement, leftists or persons of similar psychological type are often
    unattracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose goals and
    membership are not initially leftist. The resulting influx of leftish
    types can easily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so
    that leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the
    movement.

    214. To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature and opposes
    technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid
    all collaboration with leftists. 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. But this implies management of nature and of human life
    by organized society, and it requires advanced technology. You can't
    have a united world without rapid transportation and communication,
    you can't make all people love one another without sophisticated
    psychological techniques, you can't have a "planned society" without
    the necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the
    need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis,
    through identification with a mass movement or an organization.
    Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is
    too valuable a source of collective power.

    215. The anarchist [34] too seeks power, but he seeks it on an
    individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups
    to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes
    technology because it makes small groups dependent on large
    organizations.

    216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose
    it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is
    controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in
    society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands
    of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth.
    In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown
    again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were
    outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police,
    they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth;
    but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter
    censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had
    existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least
    as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of
    decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist
    professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in
    those universities where leftists have become dominant, they have
    shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic
    freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with
    leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if
    they ever get it under their own control.

    217. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type,
    repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist revolutionaries, as
    well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later
    have double-crossed them to seize power for themselves. Robespierre
    did this in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the
    Russian Revolution, the communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro
    and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism,
    it would be utterly foolish for non-leftist revolutionaries today to
    collaborate with leftists.

    218. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of
    religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because
    leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural
    being. But for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role much
    like that which religion plays for some people. The leftist NEEDS to
    believe in leftism; it plays a vital role in his psychological
    economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He has
    a deep conviction that leftism is morally Right with a capital R, and
    that he has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on
    everyone. (However, many of the people we are referring to as
    "leftists" do not think of themselves as leftists and would not
    describe their system of beliefs as leftism. We use the term "leftism"
    because we don't know of any better words to designate the spectrum of
    related creeds that includes the feminist, gay rights, political
    correctness, etc., movements, and because these movements have a
    strong affinity with the old left. See paragraphs 227-230.)

    219. Leftism is totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position
    of power it tends to invade every private corner and force every
    thought into a leftist mold. In part this is because of the
    quasi-religious character of leftism; everything contrary to leftists
    beliefs represents Sin. More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian
    force because of the leftists' drive for power. The leftist seeks to
    satisfy his need for power through identification with a social
    movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to
    pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph 83). But no
    matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the
    leftist is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate
    activity (see paragraph 41). That is, the leftist's real motive is not
    to attain the ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated
    by the sense of power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a
    social goal.[35]

    Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has
    already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to
    pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for
    minorities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equality
    of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors in some
    corner of his mind a negative attitude toward some minority, the
    leftist has to re-educated him. And ethnic minorities are not enough;
    no one can be allowed to have a negative attitude toward homosexuals,
    disabled people, fat people, old people, ugly people, and on and on
    and on. It's not enough that the public should be informed about the
    hazards of smoking; a warning has to be stamped on every package of
    cigarettes. Then cigarette advertising has to be restricted if not
    banned. The activists will never be satisfied until tobacco is
    outlawed, and after that it will be alco hot then junk food, etc.
    Activists have fought gross child abuse, which is reasonable. But now
    they want to stop all spanking. When they have done that they will
    want to ban something else they consider unwholesome, then another
    thing and then another. They will never be satisfied until they have
    complete control over all child rearing practices. And then they will
    move on to another cause.

    220. Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of ALL the things that
    were wrong with society, and then suppose you instituted EVERY social
    change that they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple of
    years the majority of leftists would find something new to complain
    about, some new social "evil" to correct because, once again, the
    leftist is motivated less by distress at society's ills than by the
    need to satisfy his drive for power by imposing his solutions on
    society.

    221. Because of the restrictions placed on their thoughts and behavior
    by their high level of socialization, many leftists of the
    over-socialized type cannot pursue power in the ways that other people
    do. For them the drive for power has only one morally acceptable
    outlet, and that is in the struggle to impose their morality on
    everyone.

    222. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, are True
    Believers in the sense of Eric Hoffer's book, "The True Believer." But
    not all True Believers are of the same psychological type as leftists.
    Presumably a truebelieving nazi, for instance is very different
    psychologically from a truebelieving leftist. Because of their
    capacity for single-minded devotion to a cause, True Believers are a
    useful, perhaps a necessary, ingredient of any revolutionary movement.
    This presents a problem with which we must admit we don't know how to
    deal. We aren't sure how to harness the energies of the True Believer
    to a revolution against technology. At present all we can say is that
    no True Believer will make a safe recruit to the revolution unless his
    commitment is exclusively to the destruction of technology. If he is
    committed also to another ideal, he may want to use technology as a
    tool for pursuing that other ideal (see paragraphs 220, 221).

    223. Some readers may say, "This stuff about leftism is a lot of crap.
    I know John and Jane who are leftish types and they don't have all
    these totalitarian tendencies." It's quite true that many leftists,
    possibly even a numerical majority, are decent people who sincerely
    believe in tolerating others' values (up to a point) and wouldn't want
    to use high-handed methods to reach their social goals. Our remarks
    about leftism are not meant to apply to every individual leftist but
    to describe the general character of leftism as a movement. And the
    general character of a movement is not necessarily determined by the
    numerical proportions of the various kinds of people involved in the
    movement.

    224. The people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements
    tend to be leftists of the most power-hungry type because power-hungry
    people are those who strive hardest to get into positions of power.
    Once the power-hungry types have captured control of the movement,
    there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of
    many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to
    oppose them. They NEED their faith in the movement, and because they
    cannot give up this faith they go along with the leaders. True, SOME
    leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies that
    emerge, but they generally lose, because the power-hungry types are
    better organized, are more ruthless and Machiavellian and have taken
    care to build themselves a strong power base.

    225. These phenomena appeared clearly in Russia and other countries
    that were taken over by leftists. Similarly, before the breakdown of
    communism in the USSR, leftish types in the West would seldom
    criticize that country. If prodded they would admit that the USSR did
    many wrong things, but then they would try to find excuses for the
    communists and begin talking about the faults of the West. They always
    opposed Western military resistance to communist aggression. Leftish
    types all over the world vigorously protested the U.S. military action
    in Vietnam, but when the USSR invaded Afghanistan they did nothing.
    Not that they approved of the Soviet actions; but because of their
    leftist faith, they just couldn't bear to put themselves in opposition
    to communism. Today, in those of our universities where "political
    correctness" has become dominant, there are probably many leftish
    types who privately disapprove of the suppression of academic freedom,
    but they go along with it anyway.

    226. Thus the fact that many individual leftists are personally mild
    and fairly tolerant people by no means prevents leftism as a whole
    form having a totalitarian tendency.

    227. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far
    from clear what we mean by the word "leftist." There doesn't seem to
    be much we can do about this. Today leftism is fragmented into a whole
    spectrum of activist movements. Yet not all activist movements are
    leftist, and some activist movements (e.g.., radical environmentalism)
    seem to include both personalities of the leftist type and
    personalities of thoroughly un-leftist types who ought to know better
    than to collaborate with leftists. Varieties of leftists fade out
    gradually into varieties of non-leftists and we ourselves would often
    be hard-pressed to decide whether a given individual is or is not a
    leftist. To the extent that it is defined at all, our conception of
    leftism is defined by the discussion of it that we have given in this
    article, and we can only advise the reader to use his own judgment in
    deciding who is a leftist.

    228. But it will be helpful to list some criteria for diagnosing
    leftism. These criteria cannot be applied in a cut and dried manner.
    Some individuals may meet some of the criteria without being leftists,
    some leftists may not meet any of the criteria. Again, you just have
    to use your judgment.

    229. The leftist is oriented toward largescale collectivism. He
    emphasizes the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of
    society to take care of the individual. He has a negative attitude
    toward individualism. He often takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be
    for gun control, for sex education and other psychologically
    "enlightened" educational methods, for planning, for affirmative
    action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims. He
    tends to be against competition and against violence, but he often
    finds excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of
    using the common catch-phrases of the left like "racism, " "sexism, "
    "homophobia, " "capitalism," "imperialism," "neocolonialism "
    "genocide," "social change," "social justice," "social
    responsibility." Maybe the best diagnostic trait of the leftist is his
    tendency to sympathize with the following movements: feminism, gay
    rights, ethnic rights, disability rights, animal rights political
    correctness. Anyone who strongly sympathizes with ALL of these
    movements is almost certainly a leftist. [36]

    230. The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most
    power-hungry, are often characterized by arrogance or by a dogmatic
    approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may
    be certain oversocialized types who avoid irritating displays of
    aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work
    quietly and unobtrusively to promote collectivist values,
    "enlightened" psychological techniques for socializing children,
    dependence of the individual on the system, and so forth. These
    crypto-leftists (as we may call them) approximate certain bourgeois
    types as far as practical action is concerned, but differ from them in
    psychology, ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to
    bring people under control of the system in order to protect his way
    of life, or he does so simply because his attitudes are conventional.
    The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system
    because he is a True Believer in a collectivistic ideology. The
    crypto-leftist is differentiated from the average leftist of the
    oversocialized type by the fact that his rebellious impulse is weaker
    and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated from the
    ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact that there is some deep
    lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a
    cause and immerse himself in a collectivity. And maybe his
    (well-sublimated) drive for power is stronger than that of the average
    bourgeois.

    FINAL NOTE

    231. Throughout this article we've made imprecise statements and
    statements that ought to have had all sorts of qualifications and
    reservations attached to them; and some of our statements may be
    flatly false. Lack of sufficient information and the need for brevity
    made it impossible for us to fomulate our assertions more precisely or
    add all the necessary qualifications. And of course in a discussion of
    this

    kind one must rely heavily on intuitive judgment, and that can
    sometimes be wrong. So we don't claim that this article expresses more
    than a crude approximation to the truth.

    232. All the same we are reasonably confident that the general
    outlines of the picture we have painted here are roughly correct. We
    have portrayed leftism in its modern form as a phenomenon peculiar to
    our time and as a symptom of the disruption of the power process. But
    we might possibly be wrong about this. Oversocialized types who try to
    satisfy their drive for power by imposing their morality on everyone
    have certainly been around for a long time. But we THINK that the
    decisive role played by feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem,
    powerlessness, identification with victims by people who are not
    themselves victims, is a peculiarity of modern leftism. Identification
    with victims by people not themselves victims can be seen to some
    extent in 19th century leftism and early Christianity but as far as we
    can make out, symptoms of low self-esteem, etc., were not nearly so
    evident in these movements, or in any other movements, as they are in
    modern leftism. But we are not in a position to assert confidently
    that no such movements have existed prior to modern leftism. This is a
    significant question to which historians ought to give their
    attention.

    NOTES

    1. (Paragraph 19) We are asserting that ALL, or even most, bullies and
    ruthless competitors suffer from feelings of inferiority.

    2. (Paragraph 25) During the Victorian period many oversocialized
    people suffered from serious psychological problems as a result of
    repressing or trying to repress their sexual feelings. Freud
    apparently based his theories on people of this type. Today the focus
    of socialization has shifted from sex to aggression.

    3. (Paragraph 27) Not necessarily including specialists in engineering
    "hard" sciences.

    4. (Paragraph 28) There are many individuals of the middle and upper
    classes who resist some of these values, but usually their resistance
    is more or less covert. Such resistance appears in the mass media only
    to a very limited extent. The main thrust of propaganda in our society
    is in favor of the stated values.

    The main reasons why these values have become, so to speak, the
    official values of our society is that they are useful to the
    industrial system. Violence is discouraged because it disrupts the
    functioning of the system. Racism is discouraged because ethnic
    conflicts also disrupt the system, and discrimination wastes the
    talent of minority-group members who could be useful to the system.
    Poverty must be "cured" because the underclass causes problems for the
    system and contact with the underclass lowers the moral of the other
    classes. Women are encouraged to have careers because their talents
    are useful to the system and, more importantly because by having
    regular jobs women become better integrated into the system and tied
    directly to it rather than to their families. This helps to weaken
    family solidarity. (The leaders of the system say they want to
    strengthen the family, but they really mean is that they want the
    family to serve as an effective tool for socializing children in
    accord with the needs of the system. We argue in paragraphs 51,52 that
    the system cannot afford to let the family or other small-scale social
    groups be strong or autonomous.)

    5. (Paragraph 42) It may be argued that the majority of people don't
    want to make their own decisions but want leaders to do their thinking
    for them. There is an element of truth in this. People like to make
    their own decisions in small matters, but making decisions on
    difficult, fundamental questions require facing up to psychological
    conflict, and most people hate psychological conflict. Hence they tend
    to lean on others in making difficult decisions. The majority of
    people are natural followers, not leaders, but they like to have
    direct personal access to their leaders and participate to some extent
    in making difficult decisions. At least to that degree they need
    autonomy.

    6. (Paragraph 44) Some of the symptoms listed are similar to those
    shown by caged animals.

    To explain how these symptoms arise from deprivation with respect to
    the power process:

    Common-sense understanding of human nature tells one that lack of
    goals whose attainment requires effort leads to boredom and that
    boredom, long continued, often leads eventually to depression. Failure
    to obtain goals leads to frustration and lowering of self-esteem.
    Frustration leads to anger, anger to aggression, often in the form of
    spouse or child abuse. It has been shown that long-continued
    frustration commonly leads to depression and that depression tends to
    cause guilt, sleep disorders, eating disorders and bad feelings about
    oneself. Those who are tending toward depression seek pleasure as an
    antidote; hence insatiable hedonism and excessive sex, with
    perversions as a means of getting new kicks. Boredom too tends to
    cause excessive pleasure-seeking since, lacking other goals, people
    often use pleasure as a goal. See accompanying diagram. The foregoing
    is a simplification. Reality is more complex, and of course
    deprivation with respect to the power process is not the ONLY cause of
    the symptoms described. By the way, when we mention depression we do
    not necessarily mean depression that is severe enough to be treated by
    a psychiatrist. Often only mild forms of depression are involved. And
    when we speak of goals we do not necessarily mean long-term, thought
    out goals. For many or most people through much of human history, the
    goals of a hand-to-mouth existence (merely providing oneself and one's
    family with food from day to day) have been quite sufficient.

    7. (Paragraph 52) A partial exception may be made for a few passive,
    inward looking groups, such as the Amish, which have little effect on
    the wider society. Apart from these, some genuine small-scale
    communities do exist in America today. For instance, youth gangs and
    "cults". Everyone regards them as dangerous, and so they are, because
    the members of these groups are loyal primarily to one another rather
    than to the system, hence the system cannot control them. Or take the
    gypsies. The gypsies commonly get away with theft and fraud because
    their loyalties are such that they can always get other gypsies to
    give testimony that "proves" their innocence. Obviously the system
    would be in serious trouble if too many people belonged to such
    groups. Some of the early-20th century Chinese thinkers who were
    concerned with modernizing China recognized the necessity of breaking
    down small-scale social groups such as the family: "(According to Sun
    Yat-sen) The Chinese people needed a new surge of patriotism, which
    would lead to a transfer of loyalty from the family to the state. .
    .(According to Li Huang) traditional attachments, particularly to the
    family had to be abandoned if nationalism were to develop to China."
    (Chester C. Tan, Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century,"
    page 125, page 297.)

    8. (Paragraph 56) Yes, we know that 19th century America had its
    problems, and serious ones, but for the sake of breviety we have to
    express ourselves in simplified terms.

    9. (Paragraph 61) We leave aside the underclass. We are speaking of
    the mainstream.

    10. (Paragraph 62) Some social scientists, educators, "mental health"
    professionals and the like are doing their best to push the social
    drives into group 1 by trying to see to it that everyone has a
    satisfactory social life.

    11. (Paragraphs 63, 82) Is the drive for endless material acquisition
    really an artificial creation of the advertising and marketing
    industry? Certainly there is no innate human drive for material
    acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people have
    desired little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy
    their basic physical needs (Australian aborigines, traditional Mexican
    peasant culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have
    also been many pre-industrial cultures in which material acquisition
    has played an important role. So we can't claim that today's
    acquisition-oriented culture is exclusively a creation of the
    advertising and marketing industry. But it is clear that the
    advertising and marketing industry has had an important part in
    creating that culture. The big corporations that spend millions on
    advertising wouldn't be spending that kind of money without solid
    proof that they were getting it back in increased sales. One member of
    FC met a sales manager a couple of years ago who was frank enough to
    tell him, "Our job is to make people buy things they don't want and
    don't need." He then described how an untrained novice could present
    people with the facts about a product, and make no sales at all, while
    a trained and experienced professional salesman would make lots of
    sales to the same people. This shows that people are manipulated into
    buying things they don't really want.

    12. (Paragraph 64) The problem of purposelessness seems to have become
    less serious during the last 15 years or so, because people now feel
    less secure physically and economically than they did earlier, and the
    need for security provides them with a goal. But purposelessness has
    been replaced by frustration over the difficulty of attaining
    security. We emphasize the problem of purposelessness because the
    liberals and leftists would wish to solve our social problems by
    having society guarantee everyone's security; but if that could be
    done it would only bring back the problem of purposelessness. The real
    issue is not whether society provides well or poorly for people's
    security; the trouble is that people are dependent on the system for
    their security rather than having it in their own hands. This, by the
    way, is part of the reason why some people get worked up about the
    right to bear arms; possession of a gun puts that aspect of their
    security in their own hands.

    13. (Paragraph 66) Conservatives' efforts to decrease the amount of
    government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For
    one thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated
    because most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the
    deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so
    that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it
    to private corporations. What this means for the average man is that
    government interference in his life is replaced by interference from
    big corporations, which may be permitted, for example, to dump more
    chemicals that get into his water supply and give him cancer. The
    conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting
    his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.


    14. (Paragraph 73) When someone approves of the purpose for which
    propaganda is being used in a given case, he generally calls it
    "education" or applies to it some similar euphemism. But propaganda is
    propaganda regardless of the purpose for which it is used.

    15. (Paragraph 83) We are not expressing approval or disapproval of
    the Panama invasion. We only use it to illustrate a point.

    16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were under British rule
    there were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of freedom than
    there were after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there
    was more personal freedom in pre-industrial America, both before and
    after the War of Independence, than there was after the Industrial
    Revolution took hold in this country. We quote from "Violence in
    America: Historical and Comparative perspectives," edited by Hugh
    Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, pages
    476-478: "The progressive heightening of standards of property, and
    with it the increasing reliance on official law enforcement (in 19th
    century America). . .were common to the whole society. . .[T]he change
    in social behavior is so long term and so widespread as to suggest a
    connection with the most fundamental of contemporary social processes;
    that of industrial urbanization itself. . ."Massachusetts in 1835 had
    a population of some 660,940, 81 percent rural, overwhelmingly
    preindustrial and native born. It's citizens were used to considerable
    personal freedom. Whether teamsters, farmers or artisans, they were
    all accustomed to setting their own schedules, and the nature of their
    work made them physically dependent on each other. . .Individual
    problems, sins or even crimes, were not generally cause for wider
    social concern. . ."But the impact of the twin movements to the city
    and to the factory, both just gathering force in 1835, had a
    progressive effect on personal behavior throughout the 19th century
    and into the 20th. The factory demanded regularity of behavior, a life
    governed by obedience to the rhythms of clock and calendar, the
    demands of foreman and supervisor. In the city or town, the needs of
    living in closely packed neighborhoods inhibited many actions
    previously unobjectionable.

    Both blue- and white-collar employees in larger establishments were
    mutually dependent on their fellows. as one man's work fit into
    another's, so one man's business was no longer his own. "The results
    of the new organization of life and work were apparent by 1900, when
    some 76 percent of the 2,805,346 inhabitants of Massachusetts were
    classified as urbanites. Much violent or irregular behavior which had
    been tolerable in a casual, independent society was no longer
    acceptable in the more formalized, cooperative atmosphere of the later
    period. . .The move to the cities had, in short, produced a more
    tractable, more socialized, more 'civilized' generation than its
    predecessors."

    17. (Paragraph 117) Apologists for the system are fond of citing cases
    in which elections have been decided by one or two votes, but such
    cases are rare.

    18. (Paragraph 119) "Today, in technologically advanced lands, men
    live very similar lives in spite of geographical, religious and
    political differences. The daily lives of a Christian bank clerk in
    Chicago, a Buddhist bank clerk in Tokyo, a Communist bank clerk in
    Moscow are far more alike than the life any one of them is like that
    of any single man who lived a thousand years ago. These similarities
    are the result of a common technology. . ." L. Sprague de Camp, "The
    Ancient Engineers," Ballentine edition, page 17.

    The lives of the three bank clerks are not IDENTICAL. Ideology does
    have SOME effect. But all technological societies, in order to
    survive, must evolve along APPROXIMATELY the same trajectory.

    19. (Paragraph 123) Just think an irresponsible genetic engineer might
    create a lot of terrorists.

    20. (Paragraph 124) For a further example of undesirable consequences
    of medical progress, suppose a reliable cure for cancer is discovered.
    Even if the treatment is too expensive to be available to any but the
    elite, it will greatly reduce their incentive to stop the escape of
    carcinogens into the environment.

    21. (Paragraph 128) Since many people may find paradoxical the notion
    that a large number of good things can add up to a bad thing, we will
    illustrate with an analogy. Suppose Mr. A is playing chess with Mr. B.
    Mr. C, a Grand Master, is looking over Mr. A's shoulder. Mr. A of
    course wants to win his game, so if Mr. C points out a good move for
    him to make, he is doing Mr. A a favor. But suppose now that Mr. C
    tells Mr. A how to make ALL of his moves. In each particular instance
    he does Mr. A a favor by showing him his best move, but by making ALL
    of his moves for him he spoils the game, since there is not point in
    Mr. A's playing the game at all if someone else makes all his moves.

    The situation of modern man is analogous to that of Mr. A. The system
    makes an individual's life easier for him in innumerable ways, but in
    doing so it deprives him of control over his own fate.

    22. (Paragraph 137) Here we are considering only the conflict of
    values within the mainstream. For the sake of simplicity we leave out
    of the picture "outsider" values like the idea that wild nature is
    more important than human economic welfare.

    23. (Paragraph 137) Self-interest is not necessarily MATERIAL
    self-interest. It can consist in fulfillment of some psychological
    need, for example, by promoting one's own ideology or religion.

    24. (Paragraph 139) A qualification: It is in the interest of the
    system to permit a certain prescribed degree of freedom in some areas.
    For example, economic freedom (with suitable limitations and
    restraints) has proved effective in promoting economic growth. But
    only planned, circumscribed, limited freedom is in the interest of the
    system. The individual must always be kept on a leash, even if the
    leash is sometimes long( see paragraphs 94, 97).

    25. (Paragraph 143) We don't mean to suggest that the efficiency or
    the potential for survival of a society has always been inversely
    proportional to the amount of pressure or discomfort to which the
    society subjects people. That is certainly not the case. There is good
    reason to believe that many primitive societies subjected people to
    less pressure than the European society did, but European society
    proved far more efficient than any primitive society and always won
    out in conflicts with such societies because of the advantages
    conferred by technology.

    26. (Paragraph 147) If you think that more effective law enforcement
    is unequivocally good because it suppresses crime, then remember that
    crime as defined by the system is not necessarily what YOU would call
    crime. Today, smoking marijuana is a "crime," and, in some places in
    the U.S.., so is possession of ANY firearm, registered or not, may be
    made a crime, and the same thing may happen with disapproved methods
    of child-rearing, such as spanking. In some countries, expression of
    dissident political opinions is a crime, and there is no certainty
    that this will never happen in the U.S., since no constitution or
    political system lasts forever.

    If a society needs a large, powerful law enforcement establishment,
    then there is something gravely wrong with that society; it must be
    subjecting people to severe pressures if so many refuse to follow the
    rules, or follow them only because forced. Many societies in the past
    have gotten by with little or no formal law-enforcement.

    27. (Paragraph 151) To be sure, past societies have had means of
    influencing behavior, but these have been primitive and of low
    effectiveness compared with the technological means that are now being
    developed.

    28. (Paragraph 152) However, some psychologists have publicly
    expressed opinions indicating their contempt for human freedom. And
    the mathematician Claude Shannon was quoted in Omni (August 1987) as
    saying, "I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to
    humans, and I'm rooting for the machines."

    29. (Paragraph 154) This is no science fiction! After writing
    paragraph 154 we came across an article in Scientific American
    according to which scientists are actively developing techniques for
    identifying possible future criminals and for treating them by a
    combination of biological and psychological means. Some scientists
    advocate compulsory application of the treatment, which may be
    available in the near future. (See "Seeking the Criminal Element", by
    W. Wayt Gibbs, Scientific American, March 1995.) Maybe you think this
    is OK because the treatment would be applied to those who might become
    drunk drivers (they endanger human life too), then perhaps to peel who
    spank their children, then to environmentalists who sabotage logging
    equipment, eventually to anyone whose behavior is inconvenient for the
    system.

    30. (Paragraph 184) A further advantage of nature as a counter-ideal
    to technology is that, in many people, nature inspires the kind of
    reverence that is associated with religion, so that nature could
    perhaps be idealized on a religious basis. It is true that in many
    societies religion has served as a support and justification for the
    established order, but it is also true that religion has often
    provided a basis for rebellion. Thus it may be useful to introduce a
    religious element into the rebellion against technology, the more so
    because Western society today has no strong religious foundation.

    Religion, nowadays either is used as cheap and transparent support for
    narrow, short-sighted selfishness (some conservatives use it this
    way), or even is cynically exploited to make easy money (by many
    evangelists), or has degenerated into crude irrationalism
    (fundamentalist Protestant sects, "cults"), or is simply stagnant
    (Catholicism, main-line Protestantism). The nearest thing to a strong,
    widespread, dynamic religion that the West has seen in recent times
    has been the quasi-religion of leftism, but leftism today is
    fragmented and has no clear, unified inspiring goal.

    Thus there is a religious vaccuum in our society that could perhaps be
    filled by a religion focused on nature in opposition to technology.
    But it would be a mistake to try to concoct artificially a religion to
    fill this role. Such an invented religion would probably be a failure.
    Take the "Gaia" religion for example. Do its adherents REALLY believe
    in it or are they just play-acting? If they are just play-acting their
    religion will be a flop in the end.

    It is probably best not to try to introduce religion into the conflict
    of nature vs. technology unless you REALLY believe in that religion
    yourself and find that it arouses a deep, strong, genuine response in
    many other people.

    31. (Paragraph 189) Assuming that such a final push occurs.
    Conceivably the industrial system might be eliminated in a somewhat
    gradual or piecemeal fashion. (see paragraphs 4, 167 and Note 4).

    32. (Paragraph 193) It is even conceivable (remotely) that the
    revolution might consist only of a massive change of attitudes toward
    technology resulting in a relatively gradual and painless
    disintegration of the industrial system. But if this happens we'll be
    very lucky. It's far more probably that the transition to a
    nontechnological society will be very difficult and full of conflicts
    and disasters.

    33. (Paragraph 195) The economic and technological structure of a
    society are far more important than its political structure in
    determining the way the average man lives (see paragraphs 95, 119 and
    Notes 16, 18).

    34. (Paragraph 215) This statement refers to our particular brand of
    anarchism. A wide variety of social attitudes have been called
    "anarchist," and it may be that many who consider themselves
    anarchists would not accept our statement of paragraph 215. It should
    be noted, by the way, that there is a nonviolent anarchist movement
    whose members probably would not accept FC as anarchist and certainly
    would not approve of FC's violent methods.

    35. (Paragraph 219) Many leftists are motivated also by hostility, but
    the hostility probably results in part from a frustrated need for
    power.

    36. (Paragraph 229) It is important to understand that we mean someone
    who sympathizes with these MOVEMENTS as they exist today in our
    society. One who believes that women, homosexuals, etc., should have
    equal rights is not necessarily a leftist. The feminist, gay rights,
    etc., movements that exist in our society have the particular
    ideological tone that characterizes leftism, and if one believes, for
    example, that women should have equal rights it does not necessarily
    follow that one must sympathize with the feminist movement as it
    exists today.

    If copyright problems make it impossible for this long quotation to be
    printed, then please change Note 16 to read as follows:

    16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were under British rule
    there were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of freedom than
    there were after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there
    was more personal freedom in pre-industrial America, both before and
    after the War of Independence, than there was after the Industrial
    Revolution took hold in this country. In "Violence in America:
    Historical and Comparative Perspectives," edited by Hugh Davis Graham
    and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, it is explained how in
    pre-industrial America the average person had greater independence and
    autonomy than he does today, and how the process of industrialization
    necessarily led to the restriction of personal freedom.
    _________________________________________________________________
  • lovelylil
    lovelylil

    Thanks for killing my thread satanus with your 40 page post. Couldn't you have posted a link to the manifesto?

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    'Thanks for killing my thread satanus'

    It's what i do. Anyhow, i'm the only one who has posted.

    S

  • still thinking
    still thinking

    could you give me a shortened summed up versian of this Satanus?

  • still thinking
    still thinking

    Any proof this money is going to his victims? Not that I want anything

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    Apparently, i have already taking up too much space.

    S

  • lovelylil
    lovelylil

    Satanus,

    Yes, you were the only one that posted but the thread was not up that long. NO ONE is going to read all of the manifesto as you posted it. And frankly scrolling thru 40 pages of text will turn off people who may have otherwise participated in a discussion here.

    Still Thinking,

    You can find a condensed version of the manifesto here;

    http://kengelhart.home.igc.org/unabombr.htm

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