Context 📑

Industrial Society and Its Future, widely called the Unabomber Manifesto, is a 35,000 word essay by Ted Kaczynski contending that the Industrial Revolution began a harmful process of technology destroying nature, while forcing humans to adapt to machines, and creating a sociopolitical order that suppresses human freedom and potential. The manifesto formed the ideological foundation of Kaczynski's 1978–1995 mail bomb campaign, designed to protect wilderness by hastening the collapse of industrial society.

It was originally printed in 1995 in supplements to Washington Post and New York Times after Kaczynski offered to end his bombing campaign for national exposure. Attorney General Janet Reno authorized the printing to help the FBI identify the author. The printings and publicity around them eclipsed the bombings in notoriety, and led to Kaczynski's identification by his brother, David Kaczynski.

The manifesto argues against accepting individual technological advancements as purely positive without accounting for their overall effect, which includes the fall of small-scale living, and the rise of uninhabitable cities. While originally regarded as a thoughtful critique of modern society, with roots in the work of academic authors such as Jacques Ellul, Desmond Morris, and Martin Seligman, Kaczynski's 1996 trial polarised public opinion around the essay, as his court-appointed lawyers tried to justify their insanity defense around characterizing the manifesto as the work of a madman, and the prosecution lawyers rested their case on it being produced by a lucid mind.

While Americans abhorred Kaczynski's violence, his manifesto expressed ideas that continue to be commonly shared among the American public. A 2017 Rolling Stone article stated that Kaczynski was an early adopter of the concept that:

"We give up a piece of ourselves whenever we adjust to conform to society's standards. That, and we're too plugged in. We're letting technology take over our lives, willingly."

The Labadie Collection of the University of Michigan houses a copy of Industrial Society and its Future, which has been translated into French, remains on college reading lists, and was updated in Kaczynski's 2016 Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, which defends his political philosophy in greater depth. - From Wikipedia

Disclaimer ⚠️

I am not praising Ted Kaczynski nor do I support his actions. I do not support a terrorist who killed 3 innocent people as well as injuring 23 others, while also attempting to bomb a passenger airplane. I'm only creating this repository because I admire his philosophy on technology. I'm also doing this for archival reasons and for accessibility to anyone wanting to read the manifesto.

Table of contents 📖

Section number	Title	Paragraphs
1	Introduction	1~5
2	The psychology of modern leftism	6~9
3	Feelings of inferiority	10~23
4	Oversocialization	24~32
5	The power process	33~37
6	Surrogate activities	38~41
7	Autonomy	42~44
8	Sources of social problems	45~58
9	Disruption of the power process in modern society	59~76
10	How some people adjust	77~86
11	The motives of scientists	87~92
12	The nature of freedom	93~98
13	Some principles of history	99~110
14	Industrial-technological society cannot be reformed	111~113
15	Restriction of freedom is unavoidable in industrial society	114~120
16	The ‘bad’ parts of technology cannot be separated from the ‘good’ parts	121~124
17	Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom	125~135
18	Simpler social problems have proved intractable	136~139
19	Revolution is easier than reform	140~142
20	Control of human behavior	143~160
21	Human race at a crossroads	161~166
22	Human suffering	167~170
23	The future	171~179
24	Strategy	180~206
25	Two kinds of technology	207~212
26	The danger of leftism	213~230
27	Final note	231~232
28	Notes

Download 📥

git clone https://github.com/Existential-Kernel/Unabomber-manifesto

Compiling the tex file yourself 🛠️

It's recommended to compile the .tex file yourself, since pdf files can be injected with malware. But if you're too lazy to compile it or if you're on windows, you can directly open Manifesto.pdf in the root directory of the repository. However, if you don't want to take any risks and compile the tex file, then make sure to download the following software:

• Update your system with sudo dnf/apt/pacman/yum update -y depending on your distro (unless you're on windows, scrub)
• Download Perl (It should be already installed if you're using linux, their download page indicates if you have it installed so it's worth checking before skipping this part | link
• Download pip (It's not preinstalled in every distro, but it's most likely already available in yours) | link

After having all the above mentioned prerequesites, do:

# chmod +x Unabomber-manifesto
# cd Unabomber-manifesto
# make

NOTE: If you don't want to compile it and just want to directly read the manifesto, you can directly access the pdf in the root directory.

Command	Info
make	Basically does everything
make install	Install latexmk.py for compiling
make compile	Compile the Manifesto.tex file
make open	Automatically opens the Manifesto.pdf file
make clean	Removes all the build files such as .log, .aux etc...
make uninstall	Uninstall latexmk.py

Contributing 🤝

If you find any errors, misplacements, wrong syntaxing, typos, missing paragraphs, out of place sections, code optimisations etc... Please create a pull request or an issue on the error you found. It would be greatly appreciated.

TO DO 🗒️

• Somehow figure out a way to make the compiling process compatible with windows

Useful Links 🔗

Full audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TkFmmdmk50

Alternative audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0nR2U4msHQ

Manifesto wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber_Manifesto

Ted Kaczynski wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski