In Response to Mr. Kaczinski


    I personally hold the view that the present world civilization is less
environmentally insensitive and less dehumanizing than any other in recorded
history. Thus I cannot concur with Mr. Kaczinski's "Unabomber Manifesto"
essay conclusions. The issues and analysis he presents is nevertheless very
insightful and of practical use to me for addressing what I believe is an
issue in vital need of a hopeful direction.
    Put in my terms, the issue is that masculine dominance through simple
belligerence against associates no longer wins respect from everybody else.
In my own life, analytically developed methods and devices have been essential
to my successful belligerent dominance of others. These method and devices
must also be of a sort that allows my complete autonomy from the people I'm
dominating. Thus I need what Mr. K. calls technology and, as Mr. k. notes in
paragraph 209, it must be not of the sort that is organizationally dependent.
Ideally, for me, my belligerence is entirely indirect, that is, without any
personal contact being involved. If I even make eye contact with the other
people then complex feelings arise in me that hopelessly muddy the resolve
I require to complete my dominance. In paragraph 33 Mr. K. defines this
dominance pattern as "the power process". I rename it "surrogate drama" in
recognition of the same dynamic occurring in regular human dramatic relations
involving no technology at all.
    In paragraph 173 Mr. K. describes a theoretical intelligent machine that
can command such respect that its judgment on all major concerns is eventually
adopted over all human agents. This is my image of the nature of natural
human melodrama, that it is an artificially created mechanism that wins this
kind of respect, to the horror of the men objective enough to notice.
    In Mr. K's definition surrogate drama requires four aspects: goal, effort,
attainment of goal, and autonomy. In my experience of the "nonsurrogate" form
of drama the goal must be verbally declared to the others in the drama, the
effort must be done using methods familiar to the others, the determination of
what constitutes success must be left to the others and autonomy is a
deliberate gift of the others, in the form of a unique heirarchically defined
social role. Significantly, I have observed that someone in a drama who
violates these rules becomes the object of painful character assassination by
the others, often to the point of causing psychotic behavior, in desperation,
to stop the attack by establishing formal distance.
    Mr. K. defines this behavior in paragraph 9 as "leftist". Since mailing
bombs to strangers is an example I immediately presumed he referred to himself
as an example. In his subsequent elaboration I became more certain but he
later, in paragraph 229, specifies that a leftist is a psychotic person who
remains committed to the human drama that oppresses them. Mr. K. expresses no
fidelity to the human drama into which he mailed his bombs, so in that sense
he is not a leftist. In my view this is splitting hairs; I consider all
psychotics to be created equal; if he's agonizing about their life expression
then I'd say he's fidelitous to their drama.
    For me as a child, and for the two year period in which I adopted an
emotionally based identity, the much simpler surrogate drama was unavailable
due to my dependence, for life meaning, on the physical presense of others.
At the age of five I was forced, by social circumstance, to develop a form
of temporary life meaning with no other defined individuals in it. Copying
other boys I was able to successfully do this. I noted right away that my
spontaneous need to express was far simpler to manage within the new form of
meaning. The resulting sense of fulfillment had a feeling of hollowness to it
though, unless the expression directly involved my personal life force in
contact with the natural world. As a teenager I noted that the natural world
provided me an emotional channel back to the human drama. Due to this I became
reverent about the natural world and reverent about my own profound indirect
influence on others that nature channeled. I developed a code of morals about
my influence, of a Boy Scout sort.
    So far in my life I have met no resistance to my surrogate drama. In my
understanding of the term, I am a free man. Mr. K. warns in paragraph 2 that
the emerging predominance of organizationally based technology will soon end
that. In paragraph 139 he notes that the industrial system has demonstrated a
will of its own to suppress technical autonomy of individuals. That I have
observed in my life the industrial system only suppresses the freedom to be
what I call a jerk, not an aspiration I have ever held. In my establishing of
my own Sovereign Citizenship I have arrived at the conclusion that the monster
he is concerned about is an imaginary product of advertising. He describes the
development of this beginning with paragraph 144 and gives a clear example in
note 11.
    In paragraph 150 he notes that the technological methods for controlling
psychotic people are getting exact to the point where wholistic exploration
of dramatic reality may no longer be possible. I have noted this in the kids
of my neighbors. An enormous range of dramatic reality is visciously prohibited
at home by their mothers. That I recall, my own parents completely ignored my
dramatic explorations so I found this quite as shocking as Mr. K. does. Like
Mr. K. I note that a lot of the control effort is focused on convincing the
children to oppress themselves and then use various drugs and entertainment
to live with the bad feelings.
    Contrary to Mr. K, from my reading about other cultures and former times
I observe that the sugar and television, store-bought class of methods of my
neighbors are quite crude compared to the Voodoo class  of methods used by
cultures with simpler technology. A parent in America today can be an
effective mind controller with no training and no social context. The clear
evidence to me that this meat axe approach fools no-one is the common
assumption that all teenagers will disrespect their parents, and all other
authorities. The societies that don't use technological mind control don't
appear to have this assumption.
    While the victom's addiction to the commercial mind control devices is
quite overwhelming to many, I have met very few who seem convincingly unaware
of their deplorable condition, and countless people who are loudly cynical
about it. The phenomena is certainly not catching a majority unawares as Mr. K
suggests in paragraph 152. I have read of many many primitive cultures which
incorporate, without significant protest, serious self-mutilation, horrible
initiations, ritual warfare, brutal sexism and suffocating taboos. Clearly
his worry, expressed in paragraph 151, that people can be forcibly altered
by a system to accept horrible oppression, is a real possibility; but I cannot
believe the current clumsy approach to that can be successful.
    What I think has happened is that commercial and political advertising has
focused heavily on claiming success with this kind of changing of human
nature. I argue that these sources claim credit as a bluff to draw admiration
to their products or candidates. It is the "Columbus causing the solar
eclipse" scenario. For example, my experience as a fourth grade class
president showed me that a democratic process obliterates leadership so
totally that any claim to run any part of America must be illusion, yet many
people have claimed to or been accused of running parts of America where
events have gone their way, giving them then the power to claim respect or
votes. Many soda pop ads I've seen claim that their product is already hugely
popular due to it's taste, when in fact no-one I've ever met can stand their
actual taste at room temperature with all the bubbles gone, so their appeal
must be for something else.
    Some organizations advertise both ways on a given matter. For example one
social service place I volunteered at does massive ad campaigns at considerable
expense claiming to the public that they collect donated free food to give to
the homeless and needy, implying low overhead by requesting only food
donations. Having worked there I observed that all the donated food is sold,
at a fair market price, to other unadvertised agencies that do in fact give
away the food. Were I to donate food I would prefer to skip the distributor.
The same company submits government grant requests claiming to significantly
reduce the community strain from whining indigents, and spends all the money
on overhead.
    I call this sort of commerce "predatory activity". Mr. K. assesses this
sort of commerce in paragraph 148 with examples of organizational offers of
"help" that amount to seduction into brainwashing. Having spent a lot of my
life living with whining indigents I am clear the vast majority of them devote
their personal lives to independent predation of the same sort. Likewise
many public donors and taxpayers tell me they really appreciate being able to
be brutally competitive knowing that the presumed causualties of their
heartlessness are being "rescued".
    I find this all quite bizarre but see nothing in need of fixing. My
personal concern has been to avoid confusion and avoid being swept by group
dynamics into corrupt involvement. A friend who worked for three ecology
advocacy groups told me roughly half the donations she was collecting were
spent to cover the cost of fundraising. From what I've read, this is normal.
Such organizations clearly are motivated to paint the ecological picture as
horrible as possible and so are not a reliable source. From what I've read,
by far the most documented threat to the ozone layer is volcanos, which cannot
be legislated or manhandled and so are not discussed by ecology people. Mr. K.
himself slides into this in paragraph 145 where he mentions institutionalized
use of drugs to ease the depression of tormented people as if it were a modern
development, with no remark about the use of alcohol for this purpose for all
of recorded history. Also very significantly, in paragraph 176, where he points
out the current economic trend of nonprofessional workers finding only menial
humbling service jobs available, he fails to note that noncommercial art such
as his essay and mine is also booming in the copious spare time of the insanely
efficient economy that he and I already live in. I have often noted people
compromising their presentation of the whole picture to support a thesis.
    So I see advertising as a very real threat to sanity and, indirectly,
freedom of life focus. I don't view Mr. K. as my advocate in this either. He
appears to be motivated to badrap the human hobby of organizing, to help
rationalize his brutally anti-intimate esthetic. While I would not censor his
writing from my personal library solely because he is a heartless murderer,
his clear motivation to slant the truth has me somewhat dubious. I only pardon
him his propaganda because virtually all writers on this sort of subject are
deliberately feeding confusion about contrary arguments whereas Mr. K. appears
to be genuinely convinced that logic will carry his viewpoint. At no point
does he overtly insult his reader's intelligence.
    Mass advertising to complete strangers on the scale that happens nowadays
seems to me undisputably a modern force, totally silencing the shouting in the
marketplace that preceeded it. The ploy of offerring free services or trinkets
in trade for being a willing object of it has been enormously successful at
winning attention. I think the most significant result has been the melodrama
of consumers giving reverent focus to products or services in unison,
dissolving the objective solitude that analytic-style dominating requires.
Reluctantly following the enthusiastic women into this mire of random emotion
sharing, men have lost a lot of their former majesty. The men who my attention
has been drawn to in my lifetime display an unhappy fatalism, the cancellation
of political freedom from the inside, from their own values.
    I believe it is this widespread blank look that has panicked Mr. K, and it
worries me as well. Particularly I need contact with feminine spirits in my
life to keep a balanced grip on reality and light-heartedness, so the complete
feminine abandonment of the natural world and enthusiastic embracing of the
commercial world of verbal chaos and mind control devices has driven me to
concur with Mr. K's dim view of this development, in my practical expression
of lifestyle. In a letter to a friend I itemized a list of self-preservation
biases that I've settled on to hold off predatory commercial influence:

-I make every personal interaction as spiritually romantic as the other person
 will allow. If I feel bored I focus on other familiar people or I people
 watch.
-I preserve and use a hangout spot, or living room, visible to the street.
-I share my kitchen, and any children I get serious about, with at least three
 other adults.
-I religiously avoid TV, radio and the recorded music of strangers. I get all
 my news second hand from other people.
-I play music to other people as much as inspiration will facilitate.
-I travel as little as practical and generally on foot.
-I stay out of the economy as much as possible, especially that that includes
 customer service, entertainment, or mood altering food and drugs.
-I keep the ringer on the phone turned off.
-I write only to create a message to another familiar person or to use for
 instruction.
-I avoid discussing any subject that inspires shared cynicism.
-I minimize all solitary activities unless they can be done easily in a shared
 space, with easy interruption.
-I abandon all machines, cars, businesses or analysis that I cannot really
 master the maintenance of. I use the oldest device or method that will
 adequately serve.
-I borrow only living space, never anything else of importance.
-I spend less than $2000 per year per person.
-I drive only to leave town or to carry a huge load.
-I vote only by filling out surveys or deciding purchases, and give both very
 serious thought.
-If at all possible I replace all possessions with handmade art from friends
 that can be used for the same purpose. I decorate the mundane, hide the ugly
 and obliterate all catchy printed words or logos (regardless of content). I
 make icons out of the revered items I no longer have use for.
-I hide all tools and work spaces.
-I stay outside as much as possible, dressed appropriately.
-I grab opportunities to be athletic in a silly way.
-As much as possible I encourage the lifestyle choices of everyone else,
 regardless. I suggest alternatives only to someone who asks.
-I focus on getting enough sleep.
-I stay out of the rain.

    As I view matters, organizationally based technology is a new and
irreversable organic phenomenon that, like other such things, has an
overflowering period which devastates the former ecological balance, but
which will settle after a while into the ancient human social pattern of
Matriarchy and focus on noncommercial art, that I believe preceded the
invention of simple technology. I also believe there is ample historical
basis for assuming that in ages with an internationally interactive world
having only simple technology clan warfare ensured that life was generally
tedious, brutal and short. I think the human drive to organize comes from
this concern, to resolve belligerence without cold-heartedness, and answer
the friendly wish for urban sanitation and majestic dreaming.
    It is my experience that as a member of a good-hearted "siamese" intimacy
of five to fifteen people, like Mr. K. mentions in paragraph 42, my psychic
strength for preserving my sanity in commerce is exponentially greater with
no feeling of compromise to important autonomy. I believe we will, in the long
run, be forced to establish such groups, forced for survival to create love
feelings and fidelity in ourselves with a handful of others, unrelated to sex,
work, agreements, dreams, biases or even lifestyle. My solution to Mr. K's
worry is to welcome this development, to deliberately try to keep such a
pattern of fidelity, as a nicer way to live whether or not it becomes a
matter of survival.
    Beginning with paragraph 100, Mr. K. outlines a theory of social designing
that jibes with my own intuition in recommending against being deliberately
manipulative of the big scale. While I think it can be debated that people
have created large real effects in the past, from my reading the results are
always significantly other than what the creators intended. So like Mr. K,
my focus is on promotion of my ideology, including my belief that nature is
the sanest director of a world of sane, well-informed people.
     In discussion with many many people and in the majority of the theatric
presentations I've seen in my life, I have been quite troubled by the overt
even flamboyant adoration of senseless physical and psychic violence. The
kids in my neighborhood playact the same at my house a lot, keeping me in a
constant wrestle with both the gleeful brutal mockery of creative uniqueness
and the deliberate invention of causes to base violence on.
     In my view, all creative uniqueness is worthy of at least the minimal
reverence granted to someone trying to take a shit, and the willingness
to initiate the vanquishing of another is in the same class as littering in
a public park, sometimes unavoidable but never ever a noble expression. I
don't find any important diference between the American revolutionary army
and the common murderers that get arrested. Likewise I am appaulled that a
senseless screaming bitch gets vindicated by the police who jail the husband
who beat her up for it; and by the psychologist who vindicated one of my
roommates that was cleverly picking on people over the drunken jerk who
terrorized him out of the house for it.
     The common world of 40 hour a week jobs and resturants and schools has
the same look of deadly boredom portrayed by the Mall rats. My life expression
offers innumerable opportunities for people to use me for entertainment and
so I see it happen quite a lot; someone psychically hiding in a crowd will
send me the verbal equivalent of a wolf whistle; apparently in the sincere
belief that they are encouraging my uniqueness, though they are clearly not
ever going to stand out in a crowd likewise for fear of being treated the same.
     I need a world that's not so bored to tears. I need a world in which
children are invited to act in a play depicting the nude sexual fondness of
people like me and my girlfriend. I need a world that puts only minimal
regulation on any homemade motor vehicle that is truly unique, or any home
construction that is clearly not commercially motivated. I need a world that
does whatever is neccesary to get individuals to voluntarily be cute and
fascinating in public. I need orgasm to be a beautiful wonder and righteous
angry voices to go unheard.


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