Category Archives: philosophy

>Theodore Kaczynski, The Unabomber – Part Fourteen

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Before summarizing what I’ve written about Kaczynski, I’d like to write about his life in the wild. As stated earlier, this wasn’t as ”into the wild” as people seem to think. He was always in sight of his nextdoor neighbour, for example. The place he chose offered no solitude. The area was pretty much clogged with summer and hunting cabins. Snowmobilers, hunters, gold diggers and loggers constantly roamed the woods. If he’d went further into the wild he’d also find much cheaper places. The thing is that being this close to civilization made it easier for him to execute his revenge. Planting the bombs required travelling. Had he been too far off it would have been too time consuming getting where he wanted to kill. Also, with all these people disturbing the peace he would increasingly become very angry. They fueled his hatred.

The cabin in the lower left.

As we now know, the culture of despair had undergone transformation, from worry about society to worry about nature. Ecologists in the 1940’s concluded that in nature, every part plays a role in keeping the system in balance. If the system loses parts we will suffer ecological collapse.
Guided by this reasoning, ecologists began searching for signs of balance in nature. However, they could only find very few, and instead found great instability. Therefore, by the 1960’s, they would conclude that we were in the middle of a global environmental crisis. This caused pessimism to spread and it obviously nurtured the culture of despair, and The Unabomber and his anti-technology agenda.
However, by the mid-1980’s, most ecologists would realize that their previous assumptions were false. There is no balance in nature. There never had been any balance to find. But in the 1970s, they didn’t know that… And in 1971 Ted starts to build his cabin.

Many young people were willing to try anything to get away from everyday pessimism, slave-like labour and hopelessness. They wanted to reach a higher level of consciousness. Self-hypnosis, meditation, dream journals, Tai Chi, karate, Feldenkrais, Kabbalism, Buddhism, therapy studies… stuff like that. Some of them sought escape in nature, hoping to construct new communities, often supported by the economy of marijuana. They moved out and grew pot, so to speak.
Some of them soon embraced a form of terrorism labelled ”ecotage” – ecological sabotage – dedicated to saving nature, where monkeywrenching soon became the thing to do. Monkeywrenching is a tactic which was used at first by students protesting the Vietnam war. It’s all about vandalism in the name of environmental protection, like destroying machinery, roadside signs, hammering lots of nails into the trees which will cause chain saws to virtually explode in the operator’s hand… At first, since these people did harm to property, not people, they were treated almost as harmless by the national media. But like all historical movements, ecotage came to have its imitators who didn’t shy from real violence. Alston Chase writes in his book Harvard and the Unabomber: ”In these groups, America was for the first time encountering the mind of the modern terrorist”.

Another group of people, sometimes called the Silent Generation, believed that the collapse had already occured. They found that their world had simply disappeared. The 1960’s should have been their days of joy, their salad days, but instead everything went over their heads. The 1960’s were years of chaos. They didn’t fit in. Some of them simply kept low profiles, getting on with their day to day lives, sticking to the family and the job. Others sought escape in nature. 
But while the young people were motivated by a desire to get close to nature, the Silent Generation wanted to get away from a world gone mad, away from public life, away from people. The young were optimistic and active, the Silents were pessimistic and passive. Kaczynski’s birth date – 1942 – lay at what demographers consider to be the gap between the Silents and the youngsters. He was pessimistic, but he also wanted action. Despair and commitment would be a deadly combination.

Kaczynski’s life in the cabin was mostly dedicated to learning and gathering information. He was a frequent visitor to the library, to say the least. He read books on woodcraft, botany, organic chemistry, poison antidotes, nutrition, pesticides, Indian customs, rifle shooting, first aid, wilderness medicine, seeds, weeds, trees, animal tracks, mushrooms, edible and poisonous plants, wildflowers… You name it, he read it and made efficient use of it.
The cabin he built was ten by twelve foot (3 x 3,5 metres), and he also dug a root cellar and planted a garden. Instead of digging a well, he got water from a creek with a hose. Life would’ve been good, but as Chase writes: ”No sooner had he settled in his Eden than serpents appeared”. Kaczynski was very sensitive to noise, and the sounds of chainsaws, snowmobiles, jet planes, helicopters, people – the serpents – made him even more angry. So he decided to take action. He strung wires across trails hoping to get the bikers, he shot at helicopters and he destroyed peoples’ stuff.
He writes in his journal:

Risky to commit crime so close to home. But I figured if I did not get those guys, the anger would literally kill me. Anyway, so one night in fall I sneaked over there, though they were home, and stole their chainsaw, buried it in a swamp. That was not enough, so couple weeks later when they had left the place, I chopped my way into their house, smashed up interior pretty thoroughly. It was a real luxury place. They also had a mobile home there. I broke into that too, found silver painted motorcycle inside, smashed it up with their own axe. They had four snowmobiles sitting outside. I thoroughly smashed engines of those with the axe.

By the summer of 1977 he wrote:

I set a booby-trap intended to kill someone, but I won’t say what kind or where because if this paper is ever found the trap might be harmlessly removed.

When Exxon did seismic explorations for oil, using dynamite from helicopters in the area:

 Early August I went and camped out […] hoping to shoot up a helicopter in area east of crater mountain. Proved harder than I thought, because helicopters always in motion, never know where they will go next. Tall trees in way of shot. Only once had half a glance. Two quick shots, roughly aimed, as copter crossed space between two trees. Missed both. When I got back to camp I cried, partly from frustration at missing, but mostly grief about what is happening to the country. It is so beautiful. But if they find oil, disaster. Even if not find oil, the blasts and helicopters ruin it.  Desecration. Where can I go now for peace and quiet?

The removal of the cabin as evidence.

The cabin, now an artifact owned by the FBI, I think.

As Kaczynski slowly became addicted to violence his campaign of terror slowly made him feel worse. He hated his family, and wanted to break totally with them, but he was dependent on their financial aid. The more complex his bombs, the more money he needed, and his family was the only source of income. His anger and frustration went off the charts. In February 1987, when planting the very deadly bomb number twelve, he was seen by an employee who gave a good portrait of him, and Kaczynski was frightened. Between 1987 and 1992 he stopped with his bombings, instead testing new mixtures and devices to find the perfect detonator at secret sites in the wilderness behind his cabin.

>Socialized death sentence

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You punch in at 8:30 every morning, except you punch in at 7:30 following a business holiday, unless it’s a Monday, then you punch in at 8 o’clock. Punch in late and they dock ya!
Incoming articles get a voucher, outgoing articles provide a voucher. Move any article without a voucher and they dock ya!
Letter size a green voucher, oversize a yellow voucher, parcel size a maroon voucher. Wrong color voucher and they dock ya!
6787049A/6. That is your employee number. It will not be repeated! Without your employee number you cannot get your paycheck.
Inter-office mail is code 37, intra-office mail 37-3, outside mail is 3-37. Code it wrong and they dock ya!
This has been your orientation. Is there anything you do not understand, is there anything you understand only partially? If you have not been fully oriented, you must file a complaint with personnel. File a faulty complaint and they dock ya!

Isn’t it strange? A job I loved a couple of months ago (November 2008) has turned into crap. This isn’t supposed to be a blog about my private life, but some things cannot go unnoticed. Work kills.
Dystopia, one of the best bands to ever grace this beautiful planet infested with rotten humans, puts it well in their super smash hit Socialized Death Sentence. Check out the earlier Dystopia post for even more joy. Happy time!


I am just a fucking slave
bust my ass for minimum wage
Before I’m paid the system comes and takes half away…
for bombs someday
My boss hates my fucking guts
I was never good enough
If I’m injured on the job
he’ll say ‘tough luck’
He’ll find someone else to fuck
My job… My life

Landlord’s pissed, rent is due
Haven’t worked in a few
If I don’t pay I get evicted
I’m fucking screwed
What am I supposed to do?
Each day… I die

Your… Your job sucks
The system fucks
A timeclock head
I’m dead
Employed… Mind void
Destroyed… Can’t avoid

I try… to survive
…losing…
Work, work
Socialized death sentence
System, system
Fucked all around
Work, work
like taking cyanide
System, system
Washing it down…
And I die again tomorrow…
When I wake up

This is Louis Harrell with his retirement award from J.P. Stevens Mill, his employer, shortly before his death 1978. Harrell died at age 62 of byssinosis, or “brown lung,” after years of inhaling dust generated in cotton manufacture. Brown lung – a term coined by Ralph Nader – occurs almost exclusively in cotton processing workers who handle raw cotton.
Byssinosis could have been recognized sooner. Health officials as far back as the 1930s were aware of the dangers of workers’ prolonged exposure to cotton dust. Because it was able to control the outflow of health data, the cotton industry stalled acknowledgment of the disease for 50 years. Finally in 1978 OSHA imposed a protective standard on textile factories. It estimated that 35,000 people had the disease and 100,000 more were at risk.
Today cotton production and byssinosis are largely ended in the US, but both are common in the third world.

>Theodore Kaczynski, The Unabomber – Part Thirteen

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The 60’s were years of chaos. People began feeling a sense of disillusionment with the system. To Kaczynski this would become disastrous. As he continued to suffer through Murray’s experiments, he began to worry about society’s use of ”mind control”. He was convinced that academics – in particular scientists – were servants of the system, employed to develop techniques for behavioral control of populations. And Murray, who treated human beings as guinea pigs, and who was at the forefront in his field, widely accepted by everybody, wasn’t the only cause for Kaczynski’s conviction.

Alston Chase, in his book Harvard and the Unabomber, has a seemingly endless list of what caused the chaos and conviction:
Technological progress, the space race, the escalation of the Cold War, the sexual revolution, the birth of drug culture, television, the civil rights revolution, consumerism, the environmental awakening, The Cuban missile crisis, A Clockwork Orange, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, The Manchurian Candidate (a movie about brainwashing and mind control), the first Wal-Mart store, the birth-control pill, the women rights movement, Timothy Leary, the assassinations of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the ”Summer of Love”, anti-Vietnam war protests, riots in hundreds of cities and college campuses, the moon landings, Woodstock, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cambodia bombings…

In 1967 around 150,000 people marched against the Vietnam War in New York and San Francisco. Later that year, another 150,000 protestors marched against the Pentagon. The CIA launched ”Operation CHAOS”, a plan to spy on American citizens that would eventually collect the names of 300,000 people. In March 1968, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover initiated a Counter-intelligence program against what they called ”Black-Nationalist-Hate-Groups”. Two weeks later, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. triggered race riots in 125 cities, causing 46 deaths, 21,270 arrests, and involving 55,000 National Guard and federal troops. In November, students at San Francisco State College began a strike against the war that would last five months.
At Harvard, April 9, 1969, the home of Theodore Kaczynski, things would change too. Without warning, three hundred students charged the steps of the administration buildings and hung the red and black banner of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) from a window. Altogether, forty-one students were injured.
Chaos reigned and The Age of Reason had come to an end. The last nails in the coffin of the Western civilization was about to be driven down.

The influental French philosopher, historian and sociologist Michel Foucault had come to the conclusion that ”there was morality nowhere” (in the words of Norman Cantor). ”His culture is a culture of political despair. He sees only a struggle for power, a manipulation of ideas and ethical values by all groups of society through all moments of time, including the present.”
The shift of emphasis from the individual to the system reinforced feelings of helplessness. The system ruled and everyone was a victim. This was eventually distilled down into one thought: The system rested on power alone and therefore must be destroyed.

Theodore Kaczynski chose to retreat to the wilderness. He wanted to escape the clutches of civilization and then later plot its destruction.

>"We’re sympathetic towards the occult…"

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We’re sympathetic towards the occult and the secret arts. We are not occultists, however. We weren’t born with the kind of will it takes, let alone the patience to educate and develop such a will into the perfect instrument of a wizard or hypnotist. But we sympathize with occultism, especially since it tends to express itself in ways that many who read and even think they understand it don’t understand a thing. Its arcane attitude is arrogantly superior. It is, in addition, a rich source of mysterious and terrifying sensations: astral larvae, the strange beings with strange bodies evoked in its temples by ritual magic, and the immaterial presences that hover all around our unperceiving senses, in the physical silence of inner sound – all of this comforts us in darkness and distress with the caress of its sticky, horrid hand.
But we don’t sympathize with occultists when they act as apostles and champions of humanity; this strips them of their mystery. The only valid reason for an occultist to operate in the astral realm is for the sake of a higher aesthetic, not for the insidious purpose of doing good to others.
Almost unawares we harbour an ancestral sympathy for black magic, for the forbidden forms of transcendental science, and for the Lords of Power who sold themselves to Condemnation and degenerate Reincarnation. The eyes of our weak, vacillating souls lose themselves – like a bitch in heat – in the theory of inverse degrees, in corrupted rites, and in the sinister curve of the descendent, infernal hierarchy.
Like it or not, Satan exerts an attraction on us like a male on a female. The serpent of Material Intelligence has wound around our heart, as around the symbolic caduceus of the God who communicates: Mercury, lord of Understanding.

Those of us who aren’t homosexuals wish we had the courage to be. Our distaste for action can’t help but feminize us. We missed our true calling as housewives and idle chatelaines because of a sexual mix-up in our current incarnation. Although we don’t believe this one bit, to act as though we do smacks of irony’s very blood.

None of this is out of meanness, just weakness. In private we adore the Bad, not because it’s bad, but because it’s stronger and more intense than the Good, and all that is strong and intense is attractive to nerves that should have belonged to a woman. Pecca fortiter can’t apply to us, for we have no force,not even the force of intelligence, which is the only one we could ever claim. To think of sinning forcefully – that’s the most we can do with this severe dictum. But even this is not always possible, for our inner life has its own reality which we sometimes find painful just because it is a reality. The existence of laws governing the association of ideas (along with all other mental operations) is insulting to our inherent lack of discipline.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, published for the first time 50 years after his death. Pessoa died in 1935.

NATRIUMBIKARBONAT

Plötsligt en ångest…
Åh, vilken ångest, vilken kväljning från mage till själ!
Vilka vänner jag har haft!
Vilken tomhet i alla städer jag har passerat igenom!
Vilken metafysisk dynga alla mina föresatser!

En ångest,
en tröstlöshet i själens hud,
armarna hänger vanmäktiga vid krafternas solnedgång…
Jag förnekar.
Jag förnekar allt.
Jag förnekar mer än allt.
Jag förnekar i ord och handling alla gudar
och förnekelsen av dem.
Men vad är det som fattas mig,
som jag känner fattas i mage och blodomlopp?
Vad är det för tom förvirring som tröttar ut min hjärna?

Skall jag dricka något eller ta livet av mig?
Nej, jag skall leva vidare. Seså! Jag skall leva vidare.
Le-va vi-da-re…
Le–va–vi–da–re…

Gode Gud! Vilken buddism kommer mitt blod att stelna!
Att avstå från vidöppna dörrar,
inför ett landskap alla landskap
utan hopp i frihet
utan samband,
en tillfällighet i tingens ytas inkonsekvens,
monoton men sömndrucken,
och vilka vindar när dörrar och fönster slås upp på vid gavel!
Vilken angenäm sommar, de andras!

Ge mig något att dricka, för jag är inte törstig!

Fernando Pessoa (under heteronymen Álvaro de Campos), 1930

>Belief and Bloodshed: The Religion of Genocide

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First and last illustrations in this article are stolen from Babalon Graphics.
Go there for more relevant art.

My belief in humanity and God was shattered many years ago. The belief in humanity and God to do good, that is. But ignorance, injustice, hypocrisy and plain evil are always present, and thus form the basis of the ultimate truth of mankind.
There’s no doubt in my mind that humanity would be better off dead, and it seems to me quite strange how one could see it any other way. What signs are there that tell of a brighter future? Signs of dystopia are present wherever there are humans.
It should be obvious. The history of mankind is sealed with blood. Man was put on earth to fight, wage war and destroy. That’s what history tells us, and why would this ever change? Mankind is not good enough. Never will be. Our future breed is the last, to quote a brilliant Neurosis song (read the lyrics here), and rightfully so.

The shrouded reason, the bleeding answer
The human plague in womb
Bring clouds of war
Let us rest
Our future breed is the last

Violence and religion have been closely related since the dawn of civilization. While institutionalized religions have used violence against both their disciples and their real (or imagined) opponents, there is also this thing with religion as a provider of spiritual and material comfort to its victims of political/social violence. It works both ways; religious faith can both motivate aggression as well as constrain it. Religion helps to normalize genocide by providing myths of ultimate redemption, or by saying that it’s ok to annihilate your neighbour… In short, religion is used to legitimize and motivate mass murder.

Christian churches were clearly involved on many levels in preparing the theological, moral, political and mythical basis for genocide in this century. The Institute and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, established in 1939, greatly contributed to spread the idea of Aryan-Christianity by ”proving” that Jesus was racially an Aryan who fought to destroy the Jews. Such German Christians defined themselves both as a chosen people and as a victimized people, and they were socially and academically respected. Even though there were supporters as well as opposers to Nazism among the church leaders, what most of them had in common was the dislike of Jewish presence in Germany. Instead of discussing the moral of what was going on, they provided the perpetrators of the atrocities with religious comfort. They provided a cozy home where the killers could find peace and support, resulting in moral numbness.


We all know about the traditional Jewish concept of Jews as the Chosen People, the Jewish exclusivity and the Holocaust with a capital H. It’s pretty ironic then that the Nazis adopted this concept, them being the racial superiors, the Chosen Ones, and that the Jewish victims, and those who helped rescue them, went for the Christian concept of universalism: all people are equal – especially the weak (!).
Nowadays universalism is rarely to be seen as the racist Zionist movement continues its relentless massacre. The Zionist movement insists on the uniqueness of the Holocaust and is consequently refusing to consider any other case of mass murder as comparable. For example, Zionists do not look upon Armenians as fellow victims of genocide. For many Jews the Holocaust was directly related to Christian antisemitism. Armenians are Christians. Hence, no support from the Zionists. Also, the state of Israel needs to maintain good relations with Turkey, which has never even acknowledged the Armenian genocide, not even expressing regret for it. Politics and religion, not a very good mix.

Speaking of the Holocaust, Palestine radical author Hayim Israel Tsimrman puts the blame for the Holocaust on the younger generation of pious Jews in the 1930s who rejected tradition and betrayed their task of carrying Judaism forward. Their abandonment of religion along with their failure to return to the Land of Israel made it even worse. In his book Tamim Pa’alo, written shortly after the war, he argues that this is the answer to the question ”Why did God do this to this nation?”.
Radical, indeed.

The genocide in Rwanda can be traced back to the impact of the Catholic church on the population. The Belgian and French colonialism – for its own purposes – separated the inhabitants into the ethnic groups of Tutsi and Hutu. The church took part in this process and shifted its support from one group to another according to whoever was in power. This eventually led to the phenomenon of priests taking an active part in decieving the Tutsi population, calling them to seek shelter in the churches, which then became sites of mass murder. Here was the true face of the church, who claimed to bring Western civilization and Western morality to non-European and non-Christian peoples. The Vatican still denies any role in this genocide, and many of those clergy men who were involved are still active in Rwanda.


Back in the day of the mighty Inquisition, one was able to escape getting killed simply by converting to Christianity, thus losing one’s true identity, risking social exclusion and most importantly facing divine punishment. The horror!
Modern genocide tend to outrule this option, since religion tends to be related to race. The most extreme example might be how Serbian religious nationalists claim that Slavic Muslims suffer from a defective gene and therefore must be cleansed by murder or expulsion, since they cannot be transformed even by conversion.

Genocide – savagery, limitless brutality and cruelty.
Spirituality – love, compassion and humanness.
They walk together, hand in hand.

Article inspired by the book In God’s Name (2001).

>Repetition III

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LEVITICUS 15

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying,
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man hath a running issue out of his flesh, because of his issue he is unclean.
3 And this shall be his uncleanness in his issue: whether his flesh run with his issue, or his flesh be stopped from his issue, it is his uncleanness.
4 Every bed, whereon he lieth that hath the issue, is unclean: and every thing, whereon he sitteth, shall be unclean.
5 And whosoever toucheth his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
6 And he that sitteth on any thing whereon he sat that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
7 And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
8 And if he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean; then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
9 And what saddle soever he rideth upon that hath the issue shall be unclean.
10 And whosoever toucheth any thing that was under him shall be unclean until the even: and he that beareth any of those things shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
11 And whomsoever he toucheth that hath the issue, and hath not rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
12 And the vessel of earth, that he toucheth which hath the issue, shall be broken: and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water.
13 And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean.
14 And on the eighth day he shall take to him two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, and come before the LORD unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and give them unto the priest:
15 And the priest shall offer them, the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the LORD for his issue.
16 And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.
17 And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.
18 The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even.
19 And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.
20 And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean.
21 And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
22 And whosoever toucheth any thing that she sat upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
23 And if it be on her bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even.
24 And if any man lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth shall be unclean.
25 And if a woman have an issue of her blood many days out of the time of her separation, or if it run beyond the time of her separation; all the days of the issue of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her separation: she shall be unclean.
26 Every bed whereon she lieth all the days of her issue shall be unto her as the bed of her separation: and whatsoever she sitteth upon shall be unclean, as the uncleanness of her separation.
27 And whosoever toucheth those things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
28 But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean.
29 And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
30 And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness.
31 Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is among them.
32 This is the law of him that hath an issue, and of him whose seed goeth from him, and is defiled therewith;
33 And of her that is sick of her flowers, and of him that hath an issue, of the man, and of the woman, and of him that lieth with her that is unclean.