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Ted Kaczynski always struck me as the smart guy who was pissed off that the world wasn't being run in a way he approved of. He also struck me someone who suffered from profound social isolation, no matter where he was. I remember an interview with his brother David describing a failed hiking trip where they tried to live off the land. They couldn't forage enough food and David turned to some store-bought granola bars he'd brought. Ted had a massive temper tantrum about it which caused David to pack up and head back to the trail head. It's not like David was some citified yuppie either, he spent some time living off the grid in the Texas desert. He just wasn't the same as Ted and Ted was angry about it.
I also really don't think we can discount the effect his mental illness had on him. Without it he probably would have ended up just another North Pond Hermit.
One can blame this on the MK-ultra study or autism, but what Ted had is very simple: he's a uniquely principled man.
Reasoning oneself into violence from rational application of first principles isn't uncommon. And such a strong conviction is not only useful, I think it's admirable, and admired. Richard Stallman has a similar virtue if for principles that did not require violence.
Discounting Ted as mentally ill is something he was extremely keen for people not to do, and I think he has a point because it's a cop out for people to refuse to contemplate the disturbing: that maybe some of the failings of our world are worth killing for and that we do not do so more out of cowardice than practicality.
I simply believe it is in my interest to smear, discount and erase the ideas of those who try to spread them through terrorism. What they have to say is not valuable enough to warrant even one death.
Then you must erase all of humanity's patrimony. For it all has been spread at the point of the sword.
This is a childish notion. All ideas, including the want to prevent terrorism, require death. You just like your tribute to be paid behind your back.
It would take a rather broad standard of "requiring death" to encompass all ideas. I've heard all that jazz before. "If you don't take the jab they will Literally Kill You [if you care to escalate to that point]!".
What did TK offer in exchange for his oh so principled will to murder? Security? Prosperity? Stability? Justice? No, he killed for publicity to try and get people to read words he wasn't the first or the last to write, and those other ideologues have a clear advantage of not being terrorists.
Conviction is a dime a dozen. I could find thousands of convicted schizos on the Internet. Men with unshakable beliefs who are sadly only correct twice a day.
Making it subjective won't let you easily escape from this. All morality up and including some devotion to truth itself requires violence to be enacted in the world. Yes, all laws are mandates to kill and that's not speaking broadly, it's just how it is.
The State is by nature a terrorist organization insofar as terrorism is political violence. It exists for that sole purpose. And saying unsanctioned political violence is evil is only saying that one prefers an instantiated order over another one. Which is fine, but rests solely on moral evaluation and no other criteria.
You've decided this isn't an advantage and are just begging the question. It is an advantage. Ellul was never as popular as Ted.
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Crazy person claims he's totally sane
, everyone else is nuts. Film at 11.I never see this kind of lionization of ISIS or the Weathermen ETA in The Motte /ETA, so you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical of the hagiography.
Edit: missing a few words
How many such people convince the jury and expert witnesses that they are?
Ted wasn't crazy. He was evil. His judgement was not impaired. He had full knowledge of the consequences of his actions and he still decided that killing was okay to achieve his political goals.
You and many others really enjoy the luxury of thinking nobody sane can just decide to start making people explode. But it is a delusion. There are endless perfectly sane justifications to kill one's fellow man and the reason it doesn't happen all the time is the one guy with the biggest stick renting it for money and nothing else.
I have a simple explanation for this and it's that you haven't looked for it. I've seen plenty of it. For those groups and all others. For the IRA, for the Confederacy, for Hezbollah, for Zapatistas, for CJNG, for all manners of people with guns and an idea.
And I must say I appreciate the core of every single instance of it. People of great evil still possess this one rare and venerable virtue: they are great.
Romanticizing armed revolt and crime is a universal cultural touchstone. And wherever you live you are most likely heir to such a hagiography, for the people who founded your own society and its righteous promise of peace and order had to be knaves of this same kind to make it happen.
His actions didn't achieve his political goals. Considering the backlash too, the net consequences of his actions might have been a negative for his political goals.
Undertaking actions contrary to your goals (even for sociopaths whose goals don't include "fewer bombing victims") is only rational if there was reason to expect the exact opposite result instead and failure is just bad luck. And yet "murdering people is bad PR" should have been an easily foreseen consequence; it was not an unpredictable outcome.
I don't really understand how you can say that. He did get his demands met, his manifesto published, his ideas heard by the world and ultimately created a huge cult following. He went from being a crank in the woods to one of the most influential philosophers of his decade. One serious people find relevant and reference to this day and not merely to denounce him. Is that not political success?
It may be unfortunate, but killing people was a very successful way of promoting his ideas, and Ellul's brand of techno-skepticism is now infinitely more popular because of his actions that it would have been without. However many caveats people put in front of saying it, I've yet to meet someone who utterly denies the man had a point and his descriptive analysis was devoid of merit. And none of those people would have heard of him if he didn't use violence.
You may have had a point if we were talking about Timothy McVeigh, who was apparently truly surprised his revenge didn't trigger a second american revolutionary war, but I do not think for a second Ted ever thought his crusade would end in his life, by his hand. It was always about seeding his ideas. Which despite the ignominious cost, was an indeniable success.
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Fair, amended.
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Being "uniquely principled" is a similar mode of failure to many rationalists: reasoning from first principles and not sanity-checking your conclusions.
You call it failure. I call it atypical but necessary.
Sometimes it is the entire world that is insane and must be reminded of it. Which is why we need people of such unyielding moral character, if in small numbers.
This is a slogan. It isn't actually true.
I disagree to such a powerful degree that it is hard to put into words.
All I can do is gesture at the whole of Abrahamic civilization and it's namesake.
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