I use Excel to calculate the ages of the oldest rocks in the Solar System. If I was using it to find accounting loopholes for a private equity firm, I'd probably kill myself.

Ted's problem is that he equates the tools and the processes of post-industrial society with its people. Just because the possibility exists for these surrogate activities to replace meaningful work doesn't mean we all succumb automatically.

I'm impressed you made it half way, the man was not a natural writer by any means.

His MKULTRA handler gave it to him

"Hey Big Ted how's your brain feeling"

"Good enough to mostly make sense" Industrial Society and its Future

froopy dude coming though

I agree

Kaczynski was the proto Incel-Shooter.
Had his head way up his own ass, really weird thoughts on women and all this was somehow the fault of everybody else. Him getting glazed as somehow good or admirable leaves a real foul taste in my mouth every time.

Kaczynski was a quintessential reactionary ecofascist, no additional qualifier required. But a lot of people have their first encounter with radical social critique in his writings, so absent any further critical theory his direct acts are often categorized as romantic rebellion, rather than the grossly misdirected randomized murders that they were.

It's quite the coincidence that as soon as there was a charismatic (In a way) Harvard grad with a CIA mind-control experiment in his past writing wheat pasted manifestos about technology as the root of all evil while he blew up civilian science researchers, NYTimes - The supposed dignified record of the political center - Was willing to post that shit in full page spread, unsolicited. They didn't do anything of the sort for a certain charismatic alleged green mario, when he identified social class as the blame. It's almost as if social hierarchy wants to skirt blame for it's externalities and instead misdirect it onto scapegoats.

It's what the lack of historical materialism does to a mfer.

the industrial revolution could have been done without capitalism actively choosing to destroy so many lives in the name of profit..

Yeah, I see the industrial revolution as an inevitable consequence of the agricultural revolution.

Which is to say:
The agricultural revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Our poor spines.

Right now*

We've almost caused, and now will forever have the capacity to cause, a mass extinction event with nuclear bombs. If the cold war had turned hot we probably wouldn't be saying the industrial revolution was "worth it".

There's also the more slow motion extinction event in the form of climate change.

But yes for those living in the west from 1950 ~ 2150 it's a good deal

To quote Zhou Enlai when asked in 1968 about the impacts of the French revolution "it's too early to say"

Only if you’re basing your assertion on inherently biased criteria. For many in the west it’s better sure, but what about the majority of people in impoverished countries, or less fortunate people in general? How about non-human species that have been losing their natural habitats to pollution and global warming inch by inch, or just human interference in general? Or even species that have been outright driven to extinction by human activity?

I’m not so sure any of that is worth it for a new smart phone every year with only marginally better features. And I hear the new hyped-up technology is pretty much the epitome of an infinite amount of monkeys on typewriters desperate to type up Shakespeare.

No he did not he was a weird transphobic tweak w no sense of how the world actualy works