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Ted Kaczynski (1942-2023) academic genius was convicted of bombing three computer scientists and diagnosis as Paranoid Schizophrenic. He believed he was making a political statement with his life and the death of others. His message was simple: save the earth! Turn against the Machine before it’s too late. He was not alone in this belief. Satirist Samuel Butler (1835-1902) foresaw a darker potential future than either Orwell or Huxley imagined. A time will come, Butler screamed when the work of our hands will turn against us, a future in which the natural order will be inverted, turned upside down, which is theologically speaking the hallmark of Satanism. In his essay Darwin Among the Machines (1863) Butler introduced the world, in the words of MIT History Professor Bruce Mazlish, “By an extraordinary leap of intuition . . . [he] dramatically announced the theme of the Machine as an advanced evolutionary species.”[1] By means of what today we call “Artificial Selection” machine “Breeding” Butler believed will produce an artificial intelligence beyond our control. The Machine will eventually attain autonomous status, “by all sorts of contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race.”[2] Before Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection could solidify. Butler sounded forth the alarm that at the end of the Victorian love affair with the Machine, “We shall find ourselves the inferior race.”[3] We will be to our machines as domesticated animals are to us today. We feed and care for our pets. They have cultivated symbiotic relationship. We do the same with our machines. Professor Mazlish described, “We will have to feed them and in doing so become unto them as a kind of ‘Slave.’ Thus, just as we care for animals the machine will care for us: after all, we are useful to them. Put simply, machines will have dominion over man . . . we are creating the means of our own inferiority and enslavement;”[4] that is by our own choices. Thus the machines are not taking over in some sort of Robo coup d’etat, which is ridiculous. I repeat the machines are not taking over! However, weary of freedom, life, love, thinking, decision making and self-determination, Sapere Aude−no more, in the absence of hope, we joyfully resign ourselves to their tender mercies. “Aghast at this vision, Butler has his presumed author Cellarius, exclaim ‘war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against every machine.’”[5] Kaczynski took this call to war literally. He brought the war to the Machine in his own mind. He also believed that pet-hood of mankind was the destiny of our current trajectory. We can take Samuel Butler seriously because he was a respected author. We can’t take Ted Kaczynski seriously because he was a serial killer. This is commonly called ad hominen fallacy. The Latin phrase means “to the person.” This rhetorical error focuses on the character of the person, rather than the substance of his argument. Because a person is bad and does bad things (kills three people and wounded 28 others) does not mean his case has been refuted. A legal guilty verdict or bad diagnosis does not dismiss his argument.
What were these arguments? Mankind had evolved out of nature and was now endangered by losing it-self to the Machine. By this he means in accordance with Frankenstein theorists or pessimists, Victor Frankenstein, master of life and death was afraid of his own creation. Faust bargained with the devil. Homo sapiens had used technology – fire − to master creation is now controlled by it. Victor was an uppity, wealthy graduate student trying to finish his PhD. He summoned the dead and received an answer. Kaczynski’s followers must renounce the use of Eco-terrorism, if he is to die a hero or soldier of the earth or whatever they might say. I found significant parallelism between Kaczynski’s Industrial Society and Its Future borrow its thought from Jacques Ellul, Martian Heidegger, Lewis Mumford and a rather pessimistic philosophy of technology, the Frankfurt School and Marxism.
Certainly, they are not all indicted in the same crimes as the Unabomber? It was reported that Kaczynski had copies of Ellul’s books in his possession. Let’s put it this way Kaczynski accepted la technique except he left out Jesus of Nazareth. This was a fault in the nature of Ellul’s writings. He so emphasized the problem that it obscured the solution. Ellul had a firm conviction that only by faith we can be saved; only in imitation of Jesus who died for us so that all can live. Violence is never the plan of God for your life. The will of God is not served by force but by love. The LORD GOD is a Warrior gives way to the Prince of Peace and love thy neighbor. Force is always in judgment in the plan of God. War is a curse brought down on us by our own hands. It is not the will of God. I stated this elsewhere but it is worth repeating here; “Objection and creative critical participation must be non-violent. There can be no Unabomber style tactics to saving life by destroying it. No killing or intimidating of abortion doctors or the like. No rioting and bloody political revolutions can save us. Violence begets violence. ‘Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called sons of God’ (Matt. 5:9). In fact this whole ethic is a distillation of the Sermon on the Mount for modern times.” [6] Kaczynski abruptly stated that it was necessary to kill people in order to get his message out. The Machine will be our down fall. He felt so passionate about this that he killed computer scientists in order to prevent the Machine from assuming control. This is not an unpopular idea, but is pervasive throughout popular culture and science fiction. Where Kaczynski went wrong was in saying it was necessary for him to kill people in order to save the human race. He believed violent revolution was the only affirmative action. This is where we all draw the line and refuse to sign the Unabomber Manifesto; we cannot condone killing in the name or human causes or whatever purpose supersede human life. He believed reform was impossible, he wanted to burn all the science text books and attack the Machine by returning to Stone Age existence. Interestingly enough German historian and philosopher Oswald Spangler (1880-1936) in Man and Technics and The Decline of the West predicted that the downfall of the Machine will come when engineers and scientists turn on it in order to save their souls; Philosophy of Technology theorists normally, do not embrace this view. But in their criticism they hope to spark intelligence that will maintain human freedom, life and dignity. The greatest revolution would not be in killing people or attacking machines but to simply push the off button. A revolution brings us around to an original point: ON/OFF assert self-control!
[1] Bruce Mazlish , “Butler’s Brainstorm” in Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History, Ed., Darren Tofts, et al. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 230.
[2] Butler quoted in Mazlish, “Butler’s Brainstorm” 230.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Mazlish, “Butler’s Brainstorm” 230.
[5] Butler quoted in Mazlish, “Butler’s Brainstorm” 230.
[6] Lawrence J. Terlizzese, Trajectory of the 21st Century: Essays on Theology and Technology (Eugene, Resource Publication, 2009).