Ideally, I would begin (and end) this piece by answering the above question
with an unequivocal "no" -- by calling attention to, say, Time's April 15
'perp walk' cover (the one highlighting prime-suspect Kaczynski's widow's
peak and red, feral eyes), and leaving it at that. I would like to, but I
can't.
Why not? Because it's more complicated than that. Because Kaczynski, if
guilty (a qualification that the ladies and gentlemen of the jur -- excuse
me, mass media, seem to have momentarily overlooked), was both utterly mad
in his methods, and essentially correct in his analysis of the issues we
face. Because in this case (as in every case in which, for example, some
enraptured prophet kills in the name of his Iron Age deity), we must
attempt to evaluate separately, if possible, the message and the messenger.
And because, finally, during the course of a perfectly ordinary book tour
this past fall, I was asked, three times, whether or not I was the
Unabomber.
Neither a literalist nor a paranoiac, I assumed, initially, that the
question was a joke, albeit a slightly tasteless one, posed by harried
interviewers faced with filling in a half-hour of air time with the author
du jour. Only afterward did I realize that the question, though asked
lightly, had serious implications. I had written an angry book after all, a
book criticizing not only the technological utopianism of the age but what
I saw as the predominantly corporate (and profoundly undemocratic) spirit
behind it. Though none of my interviewers actually thought I was him (and
none, certainly, believed I'd confess to them if I were), all three were
untroubled by their off-the-cuff linkage of critic and terrorist, skeptic
and murderer.
But let me be clear. I'm neither whining nor being oversensitive. Fielding
Unabomber questions ("Well, Bob, I'm glad you asked that question...")
seemed to me, and still seems to me, simply part of the larger absurdity of
peddling -- on radio and TV -- a book about the insidious effects of
mediating technologies. But the whole business -- the questions, the
inherent assumptions about technology and "progress," the ubiquity of the
technologies themselves -- got me thinking. It pointed to the lock on the
cultural debate currently enjoyed by the technological elite. To criticize
the status quo, to question, say, the de facto assumptions of the
self-described "Net religionists" and faux revolutionaries at Wired, was to
find oneself, by definition, on the outside, looking in. Argument from the
inside, so to speak, was rapidly becoming an oxymoron
Finding themselves trapped in a syllogism of almost Freudian neatness
(agree with us, you're fine; disagree, you're repressing), most critics --
with a few notable exceptions -- seemed inclined to play into their own
marginalization, perhaps hoping to turn their handicap into an asset by
exaggerating it. Lacking both Cliff Stoll's colorful personality and
Kirkpatrick Sale's fondness for crowbars, I found myself in the doubly
unenviable position of being lumped with the Luddites yet off the short
list of "token opposition" voices. The menu of options seemed clear: to
join Kevin Kelly and the other technoevangelists in the wired choir, press
1; to smash a computer with Kirkpatrick Sale, press 2. To exit, press 3.
The high-tech arena in which the 'debate,' such as it was, unfolded, itself
underscored the extent to which even the privilege of dissent had been
co-opted by the new technologies and the corporate powers behind them.
Sitting in a remote studio in San Diego, for example, waiting to debate
Sherry Turkle on a 'live' CNN talk show airing out of Atlanta, I was
struck, first, by the high-tech wizardry involved in the whole business,
and second, by the largely invisible but inescapable presence of the
CNN/MCI monolith at my back; I didn't need to hear the corporate
advertisements bracketing, say, the Jim Lehrer News Hour, to understand
that my argument had been made possible by the "generosity" of the very
folks I was criticizing. Like a serf invited to denounce the monarchy from
inside the palace walls, I had two choices: accept the situation (and
swallow the dose of hypocrisy that came with it), or disappear.
All this -- the short-circuiting of the debate over our culture's
infatuation with technology, the effective demonization (or
marginalization) of those who would argue with the spirit of the times, the
rhetorical sleight of hand which has succeeded in simultaneously masking
the digerati's absurdities and contradictions while painting their critics
as zealots of one political stripe or other -- all this, and more, came
back to me this past week while reading the news of Ted Kaczynski's arrest.
If nothing else, the orgy of self-congratulation the event unleashed (not
among the Feds, who arguably deserved to pat themselves on the back for
potentially putting one more maniac out of business, but among the members
of the mass media), confirmed not only how entrenched the pro-technology,
pro-growth forces had lately grown, but how difficult it would soon be to
argue with them without immediately being labeled anti-progress, or worse,
anti-American.
Hyperbole? Liberal paranoia? Writing in the April 22 issue of Newsweek, Joe
Klein made clear the totemic feast being prepared by the anti-environment
right. The Unabomber's crimes, he explained, were a natural outgrowth of
his unhealthy obsession with individual empowerment "at the expense of the
established order," his suspicion of industrial/technical society, and,
most obviously, his "politics of nostalgia and fetishism." A "full service"
maniac, Klein wrote, the Unabomber had criticized the notion of
technological "progress," suggested that the regulation of individual lives
by large organizations was a characteristic of the modern industrialized
state, and (more unbelievable still), argued that our cultural survival
would require a reassessment of our relation to the natural world.
Pitching to himself, Klein then proceed to hit the ball out of the park.
"The headlong pursuit of Nature," he explain, "is what happens when
prosperous societies grow indolent and parochial, and begin to indulge
themselves." The veneration of Nature ("a perennial touchstone for rebels
of all ideological flavors"), comes "at the expense of the established
order... it sanctifies the individual, not the mass. It is about liberation
from authority, a return to a simple, more primitive time." Was that all?
Nope. We'd better watch out, Klein warned, darkly. Germans under Bismark
had liked nature too, and we know what that led to: 15 million dead in
Europe.
But enough. Tripe of this sort can be found on both sides of the political
spectrum. My reason for mentioning it here is that it exemplifies the
increasingly authoritarian, anti-individual slant of the pro-technology
elite, an elite dead-set on associating even middle-of-the-road critics
like myself with bomb-throwing fanatics, labeling environmentalists and
slow-growth proponents as primitivists enamored of the "politics of
nostalgia and fetishism," and tarring advocates of individual empowerment
as traitors to the mass cause.
Which brings me, finally, back to my title. Sympathy for the Unabomber? Not
in this lifetime. If guilty, Kaczynski is worth despising for two reasons:
first, for destroying, in a particularly cowardly way, people who deserved
no such fate. And second, for providing ammunition to his ideological
enemies, for making it easy for them to demonize those, like myself,
seeking to keep open a legitimate debate about our technological future.
For the moment, the Unabomber, whoever he was, has single-handedly closed
off that debate. In the last analysis, he was his own worst enemy. And mine
as well.
(May 3, 1996)
"...I think the Unabomber has brought [anti-technology ideas] more attention than all the reasoned essays and dialog by thoughtful people like Mr. Slouka, Mr. Stoll, et al.
"People pay attention when other people kill for a cause. Do I think the Unabomber was justified in ANY WAY? No I don't. But my reading of history suggests that real changes in a society are only caused by breaking the law either in peaceable means, or by violence."
