Man... I hate seeing all this. I wish everybody could be happy, and truly happy. I'd tell you all to read Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, but I'm not sure if any of you would even know where to get it, for one, and for two, I'm sure you all think the "unabomber"(Ted) was a "bad" person. Nobody knows the real story, but in his manifesto he puts it best:
"26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a
sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the
most important means by which our society socializes
children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or
speech that is contrary to society's expectations. If
this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially
susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed
of HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the
oversocialized person are more restricted by society's
expectations than are those of the lightly socialized
person. The majority of people engage in a significant
amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty
thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work,
they hate someone, they say spiteful things or they use
some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The
oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he
does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and
self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even
experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are
contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think
"unclean" thoughts. And socialization is not just a
matter of morality; we are socialized to conform to many
norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of
morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a
psychological leash and spends his life running on rails
that society has laid down for him. In many
oversocialized people this results in a sense of
constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe
hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the
more serious cruelties that human being inflict on one
another.
34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have
anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has
power, but he will develop serious psychological
problems. At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and
by he will become acutely bored and demoralized.
Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History
shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become
decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that
have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured,
secure aristocracies that have no need to exert
themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and
demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that
power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to
exercise one's power.
41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are
less satisfying than the pursuit of real goals (that is,
goals that people would want to attain even if their need
for the power process were already fulfilled). One
indication of this is the fact that, in many or most
cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate
activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the
money-maker constantly strives for more and more wealth.
The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves
on to the next. The long-distance runner drives himself
to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue
surrogate activities will say that they get far more
fulfillment from these activities than they do from the
"mundane" business of satisfying their biological needs,
but that is because in our society the effort needed to
satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to
triviality. More importantly, in our society people do
not satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by
functioning as parts of an immense social machine. In
contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy
in pursuing their surrogate activities.
44. But for most people it is through the power process
having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining
the goal -- that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense
of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate
opportunity to go through the power process the
consequences are (depending on the individual and on the
way the power process is disrupted) boredom,
demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings,
defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration,
hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism,
abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating
disorders. etc. [6]
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.
59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those
drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2)
those that can be satisfied but only at the cost of
serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately
satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power
process is the process of satisfying the drives of the
second group. The more drives there are in the third
group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually
defeatism, depression, etc.
61. In primitive societies, physical necessities
generally fall into group 2: They can be obtained, but
only at the cost of serious effort. But modern society
tends to guaranty the physical necessities to everyone
[9] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical
needs are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement
about whether the effort needed to hold a job is
"minimal"; but usually, in lower- to middle-level jobs,
whatever effort is required is merely that of OBEDIENCE.
You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and
do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do
it. Seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously, and
in any case you have hardly any autonomy in work, so that
the need for the power process is not well served.)
61. In primitive societies, physical necessities
generally fall into group 2: They can be obtained, but
only at the cost of serious effort. But modern society
tends to guaranty the physical necessities to everyone
[9] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical
needs are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement
about whether the effort needed to hold a job is
"minimal"; but usually, in lower- to middle-level jobs,
whatever effort is required is merely that of OBEDIENCE.
You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and
do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do
it. Seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously, and
in any case you have hardly any autonomy in work, so that
the need for the power process is not well served.)
61. In primitive societies, physical necessities
generally fall into group 2: They can be obtained, but
only at the cost of serious effort. But modern society
tends to guaranty the physical necessities to everyone
[9] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical
needs are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement
about whether the effort needed to hold a job is
"minimal"; but usually, in lower- to middle-level jobs,
whatever effort is required is merely that of OBEDIENCE.
You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and
do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do
it. Seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously, and
in any case you have hardly any autonomy in work, so that
the need for the power process is not well served.)
65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning
money, climbing the status ladder or functioning as part
of the system in some other way, most people are not in
a position to pursue their goals AUTONOMOUSLY. Most
workers are someone else's employee and, as we pointed
out in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what
they are told to do in the way they are told to do it.
Even people who are in business for themselves have only
limited autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of
small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands
are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of
these regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the
most part government regulations are essential and
inevitable parts of our extremely complex society. A
large portion of small business today operates on the
franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street
Journal a few years ago that many of the
franchise-granting companies require applicants for
franchises to take a personality test that is designed to
EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because
such persons are not sufficiently docile to go along
obediently with the franchise system. This excludes from
small business many of the people who most need autonomy.
66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system
does FOR them or TO them than by virtue of what they do
for themselves. And what they do for themselves is done
more and more along channels laid down by the system.
Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides,
the opportunities must be exploited in accord with rules
and regulations [13], and techniques prescribed by
experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of
success.
67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society
through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of
autonomy in the pursuit of goals. But it is also
disrupted because of those human drives that fall into
group 3: the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no
matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is
the need for security. 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 1,000 make the important decisions" --
Philip B. Heymann 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 executives; 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.
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 (as long as it
does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the
system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as
we practice "safe sex"). 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.
73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules
and not only by the government. Control is often
exercised through indirect coercion or through
psychological pressure or manipulation, and by
organizations other than the government, or by the system
as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of
propaganda [14] to manipulate public attitudes or
behavior. Propaganda is not limited to "commercials" and
advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously
intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For
instance, the content of entertainment programming is a
powerful form of propaganda. An example of indirect
coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work
every day and follow our employer's orders. Legally there
is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild
like primitive people or from going into business for
ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild
country left, and there is room in the economy for only
a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of
us can survive only as someone else's employee."
That was just a brief account of certain random parts that I thought were important(they are numbered by paragraph). That is just from the beginning too, the whole manifesto is 70 pages long. I haven't even read it all yet, but the man was a genius, and if you study what he was doing, who he killed, and the reasons why, you might think he was a hero, like me. For instance, he killed the CEO of the largest(practically only one) logging company in the US. Just and example. I'm glad he killed that guy, those assholes need to stop cutting down trees and grow more hemp. Hemp produces like... well.. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but a shit load of more paper per acre, plus it grows back in like 3-5 months, instead of about 200 hundred years. Any ways... I'm ranting now. The whole point is that I feel great sadness for our society. If anyone seriously wants to learn more, contact me. Sorry for the length of the post.... but I had to put some shit up.
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