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Notes -
“Needs to die”? Isn’t that a little…extreme?
Yeah, of course dismissing the lunatic fringe shouldn’t be reason to dismiss the whole edifice. That’s true for most every subject. And as with other subjects, the most salient proponents are a good heuristic.
“Industrial Society And Its Consequences…” has memetic power. The broader narrative of the Unabomber, of mail bombing, of going crazy and living in a shack—they are common knowledge in a way that Ellul et al. are not. So if I want to argue against the popular understanding of anti-industrialization, it makes sense to argue against its mythic figures.
The correct conclusion of an inquiry into Uncle Ted isn’t that he was wrong. It’s that believing him uncritically, fetishizing him, is wrong. I would argue that this is exactly how he is viewed by your average doomer. It doesn’t matter how eloquently other academics have made the same audience.
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