A techno-scientific subject

The New York Times, 1995: an article is released about the industrialised society and its future. The author argues that industrialisation and technological revolutions have been disastrous for the human race, despite positive consequences such as increased life expectancy: “they have destabilised society, made life unsatisfactory, subjected human beings to indignities, caused much psychological suffering and serious damage to the natural world”. Therefore, the author defends “a revolution against the industrial system… which may be sudden or relatively gradual”, but which in any case will not be a political revolution, but will seek to “overthrow the economic and technological bases of today’s society”.

The issues are well known to us, of course: the alienation caused by new forms of work, the drift towards artificial goals (compulsive buying, entertainment consumerism), the risk of future ‘developments’ such as genetic engineering or robotics, the danger of humans being ‘adjusted’ to fit the needs of the socio-economic system (and not vice versa), the perhaps irreversible damage to nature.

The article’s author is an American mathematician, who studied at Harvard and completed an excellent doctoral thesis in Michigan (1967, on the theory of geometric functions), later becoming the youngest “assistant professor” in the history of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Berkeley. Top level, no doubt. However, something was not right about all this, and in a few years the young prodigy left university teaching and research. He retired to an idyllic place in Montana seeking to reintegrate himself into natural life, wanting to be self-sufficient, and lived in an isolated cabin with no electricity. But even there, in a remote part of the countryside, the effects of ‘modern life’ arrived: after a few years, the wild landscape around his hut was destroyed by real estate ‘development’ and industrial projects.

Theodore Kaczynski became famous for his violent actions between 1978 and 1995, years in which he mailed, or sometimes hand-delivered, a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that killed 3 people and injured 23 others. The devices bore the initials ‘FC’, which Kaczynski would later explain as a reference to ‘Freedom Club’. The victims of his campaign were carefully chosen: university professors, engineers, computer shop owners, executives such as the president of United Airlines… In all cases, key players in the economic, industrial and technological system.

With great skill, the terrorist left false clues in his bombs, avoiding to leave his own fingerprints; if there were fingerprints on the devices, they did not match those found on his letters. The FBI carried out a very long and expensive investigation to find him, during which they identified him as UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber) and that is why the media called him the Unabomber. It was the FBI itself and Attorney General Janet Reno who supported the publication of his manifesto The Industrial Society and its Future (1995), hoping that publishing it would help locate the dangerous terrorist. Indeed, Kaczynski’s brother, David, recognised the style and gave them the lead.

An insane man? Sure, although his case reminds us of very different figures, like Grothendieck himself. A dangerous madman and nothing else? Perhaps, but there is another possible explanation, much more disturbing.

The long essay written in 1995 is perfectly coherent, well argued and quite incisive. As one expert put it, it is perhaps not the work of a genius, but certainly not of a madman: “his pessimism about the direction of civilisation and his rejection of the modern world are shared, especially by the most educated people in the country”. And now comes the interesting, the alarming news. Kaczynski’s mind had received particularly intense training, so much so that one could say that he was a techno-scientific subject, a true product of the ‘brave new world’ of 20th century science, industrial economy and technology.

Poor Theodore not only received an excellent mathematical education during high school (he was a very outstanding student) and in the best universities of the USA, for more than a decade. With his doctoral thesis and his contract at Berkeley, he achieved the success that every young mathematician seeks. But at Harvard he had also received another kind of training.

In his second year, Kaczynski entered into a psychological study developed by the prestigious professor Henry Murray; in reality, it was a brutal experiment designed to control behaviour and explore reactions under intense stress. A malicious project apparently financed by the CIA, in the context of what was called MK Ultra (a programme that gave rise to some 150 projects around mind control and interrogation, developed in 80 different institutions). It was 1959, all this was happening under the sign of the Cold War and the insane era of McCarthyism. The same expert as above describes Dr Murray’s research as “an intentionally brutalising psychological experiment”.

Subjects were told to discuss their personal philosophy with another student, and were asked to write essays about their beliefs and aspirations. These essays were given to a lawyer, who in a new session would confront the subject with “vehement, abrupt, and personally abusive” attacks using the contents of the essay as a weapon. Meanwhile, the subject’s reactions were monitored with electrodes. The sessions were filmed and the expressions of anger and rage of those ‘guinea pigs’ were later shown to them repeatedly. There was a new encounter every week, in which someone humiliated and verbally abused Kaczynski and his companions. The procedure lasted for three years.

Consequently, Kaczynski’s mind had been shaped, inside and out, in techno-scientific contexts. His extreme sensitivity to the effects of the industrial and technological world, to the “indignities” that human beings come to suffer, the psychological suffering and the “serious damage to the natural world”, undoubtedly had to do with his terrible youthful experience. In an unbalanced way, this led him to seek ‘solutions’ within the most violent tradition of anarchism; but everything indicates that his goal was not selfish, he wanted to change the world. The final product of these 20th century ‘experiments’ should make us suspicious of the hasty and improvised way in which so many technological and social changes are set in motion. Our future is at stake.

PS: I don’t claim to have explained or analysed the Unabomber case completely. I am not an expert on the subject. But I find the story extremely instructive, even if it were to be taken as a story no more valid than others, a moral tale based on very real facts. To learn more, read Alston Chase’s book, Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist (Norton, 2003). The connection between Murray and MK Ultra is very likely, but not entirely certain: most of MK Ultra’s documents were destroyed in 1973 by order of CIA director Richard Helms; the project was started in 1953 by CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles. It was investigated by a US Congressional Committee and its results were released in 1975. Some of the participating subjects died.