the mad scientist mad at science
Ted Kaczynski’s mail bombing campaign against universities and airlines began in 1978. The case spiraled out of control over the years as the FBI sought to locate him, the dreaded Unabomber. The FBI decided to call him the “una”bomber, with “una” standing for “university and airline” (somehow - feds are weird). Unbeknownst to them, he was living in a small primitive cabin in the Montana wilderness. His mail bombs and bombs planted at universities grew more elaborate and deadly over time.
Ted Kaczynski identified himself as “FC” in his communications to the FBI, and provided a string of numbers on each explosive device to verify that it was his work rather than a copycat. He also worked to maintain the vague illusion that his activities were not solitary. FC was said to stand for “Freedom Club,” ultimately, and the pronoun “we” was used.
Often, the FBI would receive bizarre red herrings via the Unabomber’s actions, such as a strange note left with one device mentioning someone named “Wu” who didn’t exist. Every device contained wood, likely because Kaczynski lived in primitive conditions at that point. Communications from “FC” included taunts directed at survivors of past explosions.
On Wednesday, the FBI released the text of one of four letters the elusive bomber mailed April 20 along with a package bomb that killed a timber industry lobbyist in Sacramento."People with advanced degrees aren't as smart as they think they are," reads the letter to David Gelernter, a Yale University computer scientist, who suffered extensive wounds to his abdomen, chest, face and hands after a mail bomb exploded in his office in June 1993.
"If you'd had any brains, you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn't have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source," said the letter, which used the FBI's headquarters in Washington as its return address.
Associated Press coverage of Kaczynski’s bizarre taunts to his victims.
Eventually, the Unabomber sent the FBI a document and requested its publication in either The New York Times or The Washington Post. Kaczynski warned that if his orders were not followed, more bombs would be planted. Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse Magazine, offered to publish the manifesto in full. Kaczynski bit back that if Penthouse published it, “FC” would plant two more bombs intended to kill.
This ultimately led to a strange scenario where The Washington Post published Kaczynski’s manifesto in September of 1995, titled Industrial Society and its Future as an eight page supplement. The FBI hoped that someone, somewhere, would recognize the Unabomber’s writing style and be able to identify him as Kaczynski, find him, and put a stop to the bombings.
So, what was the Unabomber on about, anyways? Why the mail bombs? What had they meant by “tech nerds changing things?” Even in grade school, I was a tech nerd, after all, so I needed to know about this, right? Who were these people blowing things up, and why? The manifesto quickly answered most questions. It would ultimately tell the FBI where to find Kaczynski, too. He was working alone, and his brother, David, recognized the writing style.
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.
Kaczynski, Ted. The Unabomber Manifesto: A Brilliant Madman's Essay on Technology, Society, and the Future of Humanity (p. 7). Panthera Classics. Kindle Edition.
A mad scientist, mad at science?!
In 1995, he was pulled from his cabin, and finally arrested. Everyone was watching on television. This was actually quite fascinating to many a grade schooler at the time. I myself found the whole thing curiously unsettling given how obsessed I (already) was with technology. Even at that age, and not able to read it, I knew the Unabomber’s “book” was all about how my hobbies were evil or whatever. Indeed, the manifesto references millennial trends like Sylvan Learning Centers that Kaczynski believed “brainwash” us kids into being “computer nerds.”
The grown-ups were quick to assure us that the mad scientist had already been caught, though, and we were safe to fly on planes again. I’d only flown on a plane once at that point, and I hadn’t even thought of the mad scientist, only Disney World. Mostly though, we were kids and didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation. I suspect that everyone has this feeling about the “news” prior to, reaching a certain age of awareness. It definitely pops up in situations where adults aren’t rather blatant with younger kids, and often, there’s no need to terrify them, so why bother?
Later, on the playground, the boys started a game of “playing Unabomber,” as odd as it sounds. There was one particular boy, Gus, who enjoyed being chased around (ie, being “it” at tag and hide-and-seek, perpetually). Of course, he insisted on being Kaczynski. He hid under the big green slide, because we weren’t allowed in any of the wooded areas around the playground anymore. I suspect most of the boys knew exactly where Gus was, but made a big show of searching for him and being FBI agents.
I wanted to play so much, I won’t lie. I was often ostracized from many of the activities the girls did at recess (singing on the swings, playing house under the jungle gym). The boys, though, and particularly Gus, weren’t keen on me as part of this one. Girls weren’t FBI agents. Instead, I got to “play bystander” essentially. I got told “Ma’am, it’s alright, we’ve got him! We’ve got him!”
Wait, what?
Now, as adults, we have a wider picture of the situation. Apparently, Ted Kaczynski was tested as having an IQ of 167. My own IQ, if I remember right, was, uh… quite a bit lower. Still, I’ll share my silly thoughts on his crime spree, such that they are.
Kaczynski was, of course, a victim of a literal, extant, nonfictional government mind control study called MKULTRA. This sadistic project involved LSD, and took place at Harvard, which he was attending at the age of only sixteen. While LSD can be a wonderful thing in some settings, I think we’d all agree that’s a recipe for an awful trip.
“He” also might’ve not been a man at all. A rather histrionic 1990s article tries to say that “gender confusion” had a role in Kaczynski’s discontent with society. If you read between the (very 1990s) lines, it paints a strange and tragic picture of the situation even more so than the one I already knew. A friend of mine from Facebook repeatedly argues that, were it not for Kaczynski’s experiences being tortured by MKULTRA, we might’ve even seen the first transgender winner of a Fields Medal instead of a crime spree.
Still others (more modern articles that I’ve found) tend to paint Kaczynski as a masculine incel-type figure who was motivated to kill by his lack of romantic companionship. Perhaps if only someone had held his hand or given him a hug, or smiled at him in the corridor, right? This reminds me a lot of the arguments we heard directly after Columbine, except more about the “office sort” rather than high schoolers.
I’m skeptical that any kind of desire for a partner specifically was the deeper motivation for this (or most other similar incidents). I know that a longing for love and connection to something larger can drive some bizarre and terrifying phenomena, though. It rarely matters whether there’s a “romantic” aspect to the loneliness, too, because the outcome is often the same.
In any case, it buries the lead a bit - what about those MKULTRA experiments, anyone?! Plenty of journalists have written about them, but those stories don’t spread as fast or as far as the ones that treat it as a footnote. People, clearly, want an explanation for his activities that makes some semblance of sense to most people, and “tortured with LSD by the government as a sixteen-year-old Harvard student” ain’t it, I guess.
As things do stand, Kaczynski became an ecofascist of sorts. He seemed to possess a genuine, deep hatred for industrialization. His second-greatest enemy was leftism, which he saw as the biggest stumbling block in the fight against industrialization.
The leftist is oriented toward large-scale 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 social planning, for affirmative action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims.
Kaczynski, Ted. The Unabomber Manifesto: A Brilliant Madman's Essay on Technology, Society, and the Future of Humanity (pp. 205-207). Panthera Classics. Kindle Edition.
He seemed to think it possible, even advantageous, to live both without advanced technology and without humanity’s natural collective impulse and sense of responsibility towards others - a depressing outlook indeed. I myself remain, especially with regards to technology, much as I was the very day the Unabomber’s manifesto saw publication. I embrace technology with enthusiasm, and I'm not fighting our natural human empathy. I’m a transhumanist, though I obviously hadn’t heard that term in the 1990s. In some ways, I really am one of the technonerds wanting to "change things" that Kaczynski feared.
I can’t speculate overmuch on Kaczynski’s unconscious motivations beyond pointing out what others have already said. I do sense a great degree of loneliness in him and a sort of “sour grapes” mentality when it came to people helping each other. I could be wrong, though.
He died by suicide on June 10th, 2023 in prison after a cancer diagnosis. Recently, Kaczynski’s had a memetic appeal to nihilists and thoughtless accelerationists of all sorts. A lot of modern takes on the case are colored by his enduring notoriety more than they are by Kaczynski’s actual crime spree or views. Plenty of the people who treat him as an icon haven’t actually read his manifesto and reduce it to a “technology is suspect” chestnut they can swallow.
If I could ask Kaczynski anything, it’d be a simple, “what did you think was going to happen?” I’ve wondered for decades what the Unabomber expected people would do after reading his manifesto.
One editorial argued that Kaczynski was competent to stand trial because the manifesto, in fact, read like the work of a “good grad student.” What. It’s coherent enough - I’ve read it. But what did Kaczynski expect? Did he want people to sit The Washington Post aside momentarily, pick up a hammer, and start smashing their electronics? Did he honestly think people would do that?