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Activist Times Inc. unabom
OK. here goes:
Part 1 of a 5 or 6 page doc entitled
(hey!!! be glad i didn't call
it a trilogy and go 9 books.):
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MARC FRUCHT'S GUIDE TO THE UNABOMBER'S MANIFESTO.
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stonington, ct. dec. '95
If I had to pick a few thousand words to print in the paper and
assure the reading public that this is basically what the unabomber people
are saying in their manifesto they certainly wouldn't be what you saw and
perplexed over in the WASHington Post those first few months while you
waited for the "real unabridged unedited" (yeah right) edition to come out:
(you will notice that hardly any of these here words match what the Post
chose to include)
But I've put three dots everywhere I've cut, and have kept in the
paragraph #'s so you can look this all up if you can. See for yourself.
The only reason I'm trying to put my two scheckels in here, is I believe
you are being lied to, abused and there, hurt. The "few-thousand-words-they-
need-to-know" were published August 2, 1995. The "full unedited uncensored"
version was not published until 3 months later. Never mind the fact that
I believe there's some footnotes missing, and possibly some entire lines and
paragraphs, I think the time delay was unfair enough. Someone has decided
what you need to know, when you need to know it, and I believe with all my
heart that this is wrong. By way of reopening government, or at least seeking
real forum, here are the words I think were more important than the others.
I'll highlight those that match the August publication, and I've begun and
ended with short poems of my own, as I've always believed that metaphor is
much more effective, important, and useful along with rhetoric and propaganda.
<picture. wooden metronome>
Please Photocopy and Distribute Widely. -mf-
TO THE TECHNOCRAT a poem by marc frucht. Dec. 23, 1995
I
So what will YOUR bones bemoan
When paleopeople pluck them back up from the craggy earth--
Your youngers entrusted them to til time imemo-real?
Eczema, mine cry that'll be all, pray,
'cept maybe vegetarian: all but the first quarter century.
Walked a lot maybe. Ran too much-- too many 10K's too much pasta.
Will they know about my sex life? How about drug use?
Abuse for that matter-- those silly teen-time years.
Caffeine-- my only real addiction I fear, 'cept if you count food in general.
I'll leave this mark if I can: before during or after I pass
(maybe I already did) "BEWARE," my humerus'll read, like a strange
Egyptio-hyro-glypho curse. "If you roll me (or any of mine other mariners
For that matter) I will rock you."
Marco said that. Try for double or nothing?
II
Roll the bones, my anthrofools.
Turn the stones-- use obtrusive tools,
Pluck up trees and leave a mess:
You'll get yours' - ye, sevenfold or less.
<picture. 2 story log cabin>
1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for
the human race...
4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This
revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may
be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades...
50. The conservatives are fools: they whine about the decay of traditional
values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic
growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid drastic
changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing
rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such
rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.
(CON'T NEXT ISSUE)
Part 2 of . - . . - . . . - . . - . . . - . - . . . - . - .
MARC FRUCHT'S GUIDE TO THE UNABOMBER'S MANIFESTO
. . - . - . - . . . - . . - . . . - . . - . . - .
67...our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have no control
over these decisions and usually we do not even know the people who make
them. "(We live in a world in which relatively few people- maybe 500 or 1000
make the important decisions"--
Phillip B. Heyman of Harvard Law school, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York
Times, April 21, 1995.) Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a
nuclear power plant are properly maintained; on how much pesticide is allowed
to get into our food or how much pollution into our air; on how skillful (or
incompetent) our doctor is; whether we lose or get a job may depend on
decisions made by government economists or corporation execs and so forth.
Most individuals are not in a position to secure themselves against these
threats to more (than) a very limited extent. The individual's search for
security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness.
NOTE 11. ..we can't claim that today's acquisition-oriented culture is
exclusively a creation of advertising and marketing industry. But it is
clear that the advertising and marketing industry has had an important part
in creating that culture. The big corporations that spend millions on
advertising wouldn't be spending that kind of money without solid proof that
they were getting it back in increased sales. One member of FC met a sales
manager a couple of years ago who was frank enough to tell him, "our job
is to make people buy things they don't want and don't need." He then
described how an untrained novice could present people with the facts about
a product, and make no sales at all, while a trained and experienced
professional salesman would make lots of sales to the same people. This
shows that people are manipulated into buying things they don't really want.
68. ...Psychological security does not closely correspond with physical
security. What makes us FEEL secure is not so much objective security as a
sense of confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive man
threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or
travel in search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts,
but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The
modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things against
which he is helpless: nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, environmental
pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large
organizations, nationwide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt his
way of life.
NOTE 12. The problem of purposeless seems to have become less serious during
the last 15 years or so, because people now feel less secure physically and
economically than they did earlier, and the need for security provides them
with a goal. But purposelessness has been replaced by frustration over the
difficulty of attaining security. We emphasize the problem of purposelessness
because the liberals and leftists would wish to solve our social problems
by having society guarantee everyone's security; but if that could be done
it would only bring back the problem of purposelessness.
75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. The needs and
purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular
reluctance about passing on to the next stage... it is not the primitive
man, who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the
deterioration of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use
for his body beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man whose
need for the power process has been satisfied during his life who is best
prepared to accept the end of that life.
76. In response... someone will say, "Society must find a way to give people
the opportunity to go through the power process." For such people the value
of the opportunity is destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to
them. What they need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as
the system GIVES them their opportunities it still has them on a leash. To
attain autonomy they must get off that leash.
80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing
techniques. Some are so susceptible that, even if they make a great deal of
money they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the shiny new toys that
the marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So they always feel hard-
pressed financially even if their income is large, and their cravings are
frustrated.
94. ...One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large
corporation) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly
and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse
freedom with mere permissiveness.
(CON'T NEXT ISSUE.)
PART 3 OF MARCO'S GUIDE TO THE UNABOMBER'S MANIFESTO
72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters
that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do
what we please. We can believe in any religion we like (as long as it does
not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system). We can do anything
we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the
system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior.
(tune in next time when we analyze 95, 97, 114, 123, note 19, 125, and 127
of unabom's megamanual on the meaning of life.)
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DISCLAIMER all the views you see before you are not necessarily those
----------
of Prime Anarchist Productions members at large or small. But they
probably ought to be.
PART IV OF MARC FRUCHT'S GUIDE TO THE UNABOMBER'S MANIFESTO.
Previously Published in paper form December 1995. Timed but oh so timely.
95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain
number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as
important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a
society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of
the society then by its laws or its form of government.
NOTE 16. When the American colonies were under British rule there were
fewer and less effective guarantees of freedom than there were after the
American Constitution went into effect, yet there was more personal freedom
in pre-industrial America, both before and after the War of Independence
than there was after the Industrial Revolution took hold in this country...
95. (con't) Most of the Indian nations of New England were monarchies, and
many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators.
But in reading about these societies one gets the impression that they
allowed far more personal freedom than our society does...
97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not serve
to guarantee much more than what might be called the bourgeois conception
of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception a "free" man is
essentially an element of a social machine and has only a certain set of
prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are designed to serve the
needs of the social machine more than those of the individual... But what
kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only as someone else
prescribes? FC's conception of freedom is not that of ... bourgeois
theorists.
[I almost spelled that terrorist, had to do a doubletake]
The trouble with such Theorists is that they have made the
development and application of social theories their surrogate activity.
Consequently the theories are designed to serve the needs of the theorists
more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a
society on which the theories are imposed.
(CONTINUED NEXT ISSUE)
[For those just joining in, and others keep in mind:
this is just a primer. I've picked the ones that I think we need to know
about. I've left out the ones the Washington Post and New York Times picked
that didn't seem to make sense, kept in the most important 4500 words. At
least that's MY opinion. Read the whole thing please and make up your own
mind. I urge you NOT TO BELIEVE ME BLINDLY OR THE OTHER PRESSES]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PART V OF MARC FRUCHT'S GUIDE TO THE UNABOMBER'S MANIFESTO
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"by way of reopening government... here are the words I think
were more important than that which NYTimes and WASHPost picked."
-=)-
114....modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations
and his fate depends on the actions of persons remote from him whose
decisions he cannot influence. This is not accidental or a result of the
arbitrariness of arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any
technologically advanced society. The system HAS to regulate human behavior
closely in order to function. At work people have to do what they're told...
or production would be thrown into chaos... It is true some restrictions
on our freedom could be eliminated, but GENERALLY SPEAKING the regulation of
our lives by large organizations is necessary for the functioning of
industrial-technological society. The result is a sense of powerlessness on
the part of the average person. It may be, however, that formal regulations
will tend to increasingly be replaced by psychological tools that make us
want to do what the system requires of us. (propoganda, educ. techniques,
"mental health" programs, etc.)
123. If you think that big government interferes in your life too much NOW,
just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic constitution of
your children. Such regulation will inevitibly follow the introduction of
genetic engineering of human beings, because the consequences of
unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous.
NOTE 19. Just think an irresponsible genetic engineer might create a lot
of terrorists.
125. It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology
and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force
and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises...
127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often
turns out to threaten it very seriously later... Since the introduction
of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such
a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance
of their jobs, shopping areas and recreation, so that they HAVE TO depend
on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public
transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own
movement than when driving a car... (when a new item of technology is
introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses,
it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology
changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED
to use it.)
MARC FRUCHT'S GUIDE TO THE UNABOMBER'S MANIFESTO.
Part 6. (Continued from ATI 75.)
145. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them
terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness.
Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society.
It is well known that the rate of clinical depression has been greatly increasing
in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process...
In effect, anti-depressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state
in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise
find intolerable. (Yes we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin.
We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant
role.)
NOTE 26. ... if a society needs a large, powerful law enforcement establishment
then there is something gravely wrong with that society; it must be subjecting
people to severe pressures if so many refuse to follow the rules, or follow
them only because forced. Many societies in the past have gotten along with
little or no formal law-enforcement.
[...and now a word from our monsters...]
LADIES AND GENDERMEN, WE NOW RETURN TO PART 7 OF mARC wEISENhEIMER'S
GUIDE TO THE UNABOMBER'S MANIFESTO.
151. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result
of mere chance. It can only be a result of the conditions of life that the
system imposes on people...If the system succeeds in imposing sufficient
control over human behavior to assure its own survival, a new watershed
in human history will have been passed... in the future, social systems
will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, the human
being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.
162. The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to overcome
certain problems that threaten its survival, among which the problems of
human behavior are the most important. If the system succeeds in acquiring
sufficient control over human behavior quick enough, it will probably
survive. Otherwise it will break down. We think the issue will likely be
resolved within the next several decades.
PART 8 OF MARCO'S GUIDE TO THE UNABOMBER'S MANIFESTO.
169...it is not at all certain that survival of the system will lead to
less suffering than breakdown of the system would. The system has already
caused, and is continuing to cause, immense suffering all over the world.
Ancient cultures, that for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory
relationship with each other and with their environment, have been
shattered by contact with industrial society, and the result has been a
whole catalogue of economic, environmental, social and psychological
problems. One of the effects of the intrusion of industrial society has
been that over much of the world traditional controls on population have
been thrown out of balance. Hence, the population explosion, with all that
that implies... and as nuclear proliferation has shown, new technology
cannot be kept out of the hands of dictators and irresponsible Third
World nations. Would you like to speculate about what Iraq or North Korea
will do with genetic engineering?
170...technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is
not likely to be any easy escape.
180. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into
the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress
is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think
it is inevitable. But we (FC) don't think it is inevitable. We think it
can be stopped, and we give here some indications of how to go about
stopping it.
180...an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a
positive ideal as well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as well
as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is nature. That is,
WILD nature: those aspects of the functioning of the Earth and its living
things that are independent of human management and free of human interference
and control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean
those aspects of the functioning of the human individual that are not subject
to regulation by organized society but are products of chance, or free will,
or God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions.)
[the following is continuation of Marco's Guide to the Unabomber's
Manifesto. Basically the paragraphs that prime thought were more
important than those NYTIMES and WASHPOST (sic) chose.(better
explanation next issue)]
184. Nature makes a perfect counterideal to technology for several reasons.
Nature... is the opposite of technology... Most people will agree that
nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The
radical environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature
and opposes technology... It is not necessary for the sake of nature to
set up some chimerical utopia of any new kind of social order. Nature takes
care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any
human society, and for countless centuries many different kinds of human
societies coexisted with nature without doing it any excessive amount of
damage...
AND NOW, PART 10: THE CONCLUSION OF MF'S GUIDE TO THE FC'S MANIFESTO
Originally published Dec. '95. Stonington. CT.
"If I had to pick a few thousand words to print in the paper and assure
the reading public that this is basically what the Unabomber people are
saying, it surely wouldn't be them that WASH POST picked..." MF.
200. Until the industrial system has been thoroughly wrecked, the destruction
of that system must be the revolutionaries' ONLY goal. Other goals would
distract attention and energy from the main goal. More importantly, if the
revolutionaries permit themselves to have any other goal than the destruction
of technology, they will fall right back into the technological trap, because
modern technology is a unified, tightly organized system, so that, in
order to retain SOME technology, one finds oneself obliged to retain MOST
technology, hence one ends up sacrificing only token amounts of tech.
(note 203 applies here. See intro quote. (ATI #71))
215. The anarchist too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or
small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups to be able to
control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes tech. because it
makes small groups dependent on large organizations.
NOTE 34. This statement refers to our particular brand of anarchism. A wide
variety of social attitudes have been called "anarchist," and it may be that
many who consider themselves anarchists would not accept our statement of
paragraph 215. [ed note: you said a mouthful, toots!] It should be noted, by
the way, that there is a nonviolent anarchist movement whose members probably
would not accept FC as anarchist and certainly would not approve of FC's
violent methods. [ed note: ibid!!!]
231. Throughout this article we've made imprecise statements and statements
that ought to have had all sorts of qualifications and reservations attached
to them; and some of our statements may be flatly false. Lack of sufficient
info and the need for brevity made it impossible for us to formulate our
assertions more precisely or add all the necessary qualifications. And of
course in a discussion of this kind one must rely heavily on intuitive
judgement, and then can sometimes be wrong. So we don't claim this article
expresses more than a crude approximation to the truth.
Here, as I promised in part 1 is my metaphorical ending. I call it
SIR ISAAC NEWT: A Fig For Ishmael's Hate.
by MF.
Dedicated to Presidents Of The United States Of America
I
O new Hank eighth, I pity thee
Ye who serveth wives three.
One in Heaven, dead too young,
Another Lovely Lady One.
Third a Pope who you helped stuff,
By robbing goat and billary gruff.
II
So count your cash all you so skimmed
Three pouches full, you black sheep you;
Chucking scepter into lake of fire- son, so swim.
Swim, swim mariner -- lest passing piranhas rip your flesh
Look starboard. See Orion's belt; hides nothing
Yet vexing, churning: you're ripe for gulfs to wash.
Hank Hate, O you moved heaven and earth
Have your way you miscreant -- for you --
A murky mire, lake of fire, craggy barren hearth.
III
So stuff your pockets lawless one
Matthias, Jason's lizard son.
Still whore and rob and symonize
Whilst our welfare slips past your eyes;
All the turtlewax in the world,
Can never mask the freedom you have furled.
