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I can't disagree strongly enough.
I don't know or care about Ellul, or Weil. I know and care about Kaczynski, and the reason I know and care about him is because he was willing to commit violence in service of his ideals. The very fact that he is willing to kill or
dielive in prison for his ideals gives them weight that simply writing never can.Ted was a man of both words and actions, where too many people are simply men of words. That engenders admiration, and rightly so. His "domestic terrorism" was him following his thoughts to their natural conclusions and then acting on them. It is that last part that is so rare, and it is the last part that gives the Unabomber the long shadow across history that Ellul can't ever match.
I don't care if he was wrong or right, not really. I admire him for being willing to risk his life and his freedom on ideals, so long as those ideals have the least bit of appeal to me.
See, this comment is a perfect encapsulation of why I find vitalism and its offshoots so frustrating. No no no no, a million times no, the vast majority of people should not “fight for their ideals”, let alone “die for their ideals,” because their ideas suck ass. Ted K’s ideas sucked ass pretty much across the board, despite the fact that he was an evidently brilliant and cognitively-gifted man. If a guy that smart couldn’t manage to come up with ideas any better than those, what hope is there for the great mass of the rest of humanity?
Men should be willing to fight and die in defense of their specific people/nation/homeland, and it is even right and proper for them to be willing to fight and die for the betterment and glorification of the same - but absolutely not for something as bloodless and fallible as “ideals”. Absolutely nobody gained anything from Ted K’s actions, and nor could anyone even theoretically have gained anything from them, which demonstrates pretty conclusively as far as I’m concerned that the ideals motivating them probably weren’t worth much.
Respecting anyone committing violence is not moral but it is true that actually violence have accelerated the adoption of ideas and ideologies. When it comes to effectiveness it is simply false to pretend that it hasn't been effective.
Well if Ted's ideas were taken very seriously like with marxism, it would have been a fucking disaster. Although the norms of the 19th century were too oppressive for the working class for my taste.
But it is possible that Ted's ideas could lead to some more opposition to technological authoritarianism, or more recognition of society's and technology's trajectory of breaking community bonds.
I wouldn't say that people should be unwilling to die for any ideals. Hell even for opposing a totalitarian technological world goverment. But not to impose the more extreme ideological visions, even opposite ones.
The "don't die for ideals" argument has a certain problem. What if you live in a world were Communists, fascists, Primitivists, Transhumanist totalitarians, cultural marxists, or people who want to force you to decarbonize and restrict your consumption have ideals. Should you to oppose them be willing to fight for your ideals?
I am all for protecting one's people as being important, but it isn't the only thing important. Most ideologies including those promoted as respectable ones come in a package that usually if you stretch it and aren't careful can reach a point where you are fighting to impose something that is horrible and worse than the status quo.
But in that case its a case of people who are fanatical and have worse ideals than the status quo but are just mistaken about their own virtue. The reality is being the biggest fanatics around aint good but if you group aint willing to fight for your ideals others willing to fight for theirs will impose their vision on the world.
Great point. I am not so sure that smart people are that great at managing of not being insane about key important issues.
Still, there isn't an alternative to trying to have reasonable ideals dominate. It would probably help if people aren't too eager to fanatically promote super ambitious and radical visions for the world and die to impose them. But you still need people who have a strong ethos to dominate. This would result in less people like Ted from going to radical paths.
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