Reading

from Time Magazine cover story, August 28, 1995 titled THE EVOLUTION OF DESPAIR

There's a little bit of the Unabomber in most of us. We may not share his approach to airing a grievance, but the grievance itself feels familiar. In the recently released excerpts of his … 35,000-word essay, the serial bomber complains that the modern world, for all its technological marvels, can be an uncomfortable, "unfulfilling" place to live. It makes us behave in ways "remote from the natural pattern of human behavior." Amen. VCRs and microwave ovens have their virtues, but in the everyday course of our highly efficient lives, there are times when something seems deeply amiss. Whether burdened by an overwhelming flurry of daily commitments or stifled by a sense of social isolation (or, oddly, both); whether mired for hours in a sense of life's pointlessness or beset for days by unresolved anxiety; whether deprived by long workweeks from quality time with offspring or drowning in quantity time with them--whatever the source of stress, we at times get the feeling that modern life isn't what we were designed for.

And it isn't. The human mind--our emotions, our wants, our needs--evolved in an environment lacking, for example, cellular phones. And, for that matter, regular phones, telegraphs and even hieroglyphs--and cars, railroads and chariots… What isn't natural is going crazy--for sadness to linger on into debilitating depression, for anxiety to grow chronic and paralyzing. These are largely diseases of modernity. When researchers examined rural villagers in Samoa, they discovered what were by Western standards extraordinarily low levels of cortisol, a biochemical by-product of anxiety. And when a Western anthropologist tried to study depression among the Kaluli of New Guinea, he couldn't find any.[1]

SERMON

Yes, I think there is a little of the Unabomber in most of us. Many of us experience dissatisfaction with the rapid advance of technology and the changes it foists on our lives. Many of us long for the simpler times of bygone days. Many of us have ideas about how to tinker with the world to improve or protect it. Thankfully, only a tiny few become so absorbed in their discontent that they lash out at the symbols of their misery with the intent to kill.

I was attracted to the Unabomber manifesto because I have my own doubts about the goodness of our wild ride down the path of technological revolution. Having been intimate with science and technology most of my life, I was caught between my love of knobs, dials and meters, blinking light-emitting diodes, circuit boards full of mysterious black packages of machine logic with metal legs, colorfully banded resistors locked in place by silvery solder, and the horrifying uses to which these parts were put to use in cruise missiles and in sophisticated jet fighters, wreaking havoc and killing people by the hundreds. Advances in technology have always been intimately linked to the insatiable appetite for blood of the war machine. The relentless advance of technology creates new dilemmas that stretch and tear our social fabric as we struggle with defining and controlling the beginning and ending of a life and whether we have the right to modify and create new life in the test tube. Part of my own decision to leave behind my electronic toys was to focus the creative power of my mind toward addressing the problems of technology rather than creating more of them.

The advance of technology has enemies in every generation. In 1812 around the stomping grounds of Robin Hood in Nottingham, England a rebellion arose against the introduction of weaving machines which replaced the communities' thriving cottage industry producing lace and stockings of high quality. The rebels were called the Luddites after a poor feebleminded lad named Ned Ludd who accidentally broke two stocking frames in a factory. Soon any broken loom was chalked up jokingly to Ned Ludd.

In the spring of 1812, the displaced weavers formed a guerrilla army to try to disrupt the factory production by secretly destroying the machines. It wasn't long before the military got involved and quelled the rebellion in a government crackdown with many Luddites convicted, imprisoned or hanged. Their movement was crushed, but fear of and resistance to technological change continues to this day.

So, I read all 232 numbered paragraphs and 36 footnotes of the Unabomber's 35,000 word manifesto I had discovered archived on the Internet to pass the time on my long flight back from California earlier this month. Much to my surprise, I found it to be a carefully reasoned and constructed argument, some of which rang true to me. Although the actions of the Unabomber come from a pathologically emotionally disturbed person, sometimes from the edge of sanity can come the most penetrating critiques of modern society. Some of our greatest artists, composers and writers were more than a little bit mad. Perhaps their madness separated them enough from the crowd to get a clearer view of our collective insanity.

The main thrust of the Manifesto is to criticize the technological-industrial system. The Unabomber argues the system exists not for the good of individual human beings but to perpetuate and expand the power and control of the collective at the expense of individual autonomy. The people the manifesto sees as the enemies are those who serve the expansion of the system rather than resist it. Most culpable are the broadly classed "Leftists" who claim they are for individual rights and autonomy but once in power are happy to cooperate with the system to achieve their collective idealistic ends.

The effect of the technological system is to rob individuals of their freedom in trade for meaningless security. What is lost is what the Unabomber identifies as what makes life meaningful: participation in something he calls "the power process". Participation in the power process has four elements: goals, effort, attainment of goals and autonomy. According to the Unabomber, a satisfying experience of the power process requires all four elements. Without goals, without effort to achieve, without attainment of goals or without autonomy, we will lack the experience of satisfying meaning. And without meaning, we (and especially the Unabomber) experience feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem, guilt, self-hatred, feelings of powerlessness and depression.

What technological society most impinges upon is individual autonomy, which the Unabomber claims most people need, especially highly intelligent people like the Unabomber. The technological society does this by robbing us of work with a component of compelling necessity which requires serious effort. In a technological society, our basic drives can either be satisfied with minimal effort or are unattainable no matter how much effort is expended. For example, in modern society, food, clothing and shelter are attainable without significant effort, which prevents them from being a source of meaning. Personal security is an example of an unattainable drive through individual effort in a world that contains toxic waste dumping, dangerous additives to foods, and nuclear power plants which if breached could poison the land for 100,000 years. Only the technological system can provide this sort of security which requires increasing dependence on it as it grows bigger and bigger and more and more complex.

The most disturbing aspect of his manifesto for me was his analysis of how technology takes over our lives, not initially by force or some robot police squad but rather through seduction. Let me read you an excerpt from the manifesto:

126. Let us explain why technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom.

127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support systems. When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man's freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man's freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one's own pace, one's movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport, the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation…

128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable [promising new freedom].

In a rare moment of vivid writing, in paragraph 203, the Unabomber cautions, "Never forget that the human race with technology is like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine." Much like an addiction, the attraction to technological progress becomes over time a restrictive necessity which begins to narrow and run our lives. And gradually we lose our freedom.

This critique hit home for me as I have been promoting Internet technology to interconnect UU ministers, which could easily in a few years from now go from a expansion of communication to a freedom-limiting time constraint. It is already happening for me. I feel increasingly bound to my electronic mail as I communicate with more and more people and they depend on me to be available to respond to their needs. The streamlined efficiency of electronic communication is both attractive and entrapping.

Much as we delight in its products, the Unabomber asserts that the technological system cannot be reformed and preserved because of its pervasively powerful grip on everything and everyone. The bigger a system is, the harder it is to change. The Unabomber believes only through destructive revolution can the system be crushed and dismantled. The Unabomber is realistic in recognizing he doesn't know what the end of the technological age will mean and what will rise from the rubble, but he is so dissatisfied with life today, it must be smashed.

The Unabomber's desired solution to this state of affairs is to turn the clock back 10,000 years and return to primitive tribes in relation to WILD NATURE. The necessity of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in a small tribe, the Unabomber thinks, brings the most satisfaction of the need to participate in this power process which gives the maximum feeling of autonomy in accomplishing the goal of survival. Unfortunately, the Unabomber's dewy-eyed visions of such a benevolent society have little verifiable substance in the archeological record. Indeed, the anthropological record provides little support for Jean-Jacques Rousseau's notion of the "noble savage" and rather more for Thomas Hobbes' assertion that life for our distant ancestors was "nasty, brutish, and short."[2]

The struggle against the advance of technology is hardly a new idea and has been fostered by many over the years. In his analysis of the Manifesto, Kirkpatrick Sale, a Nation contributing editor, and author most recently, of Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution (Addison-Wesley) observes:

It is hard to believe, but he seems woefully ignorant of the long Luddistic strain in Western thought going back at least to William Blake and Mary Shelley, and he does not once cite any of the great modern critics of technology such as Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Paul Goodman, Max Weber, E.F. Schumacher or Rachel Carson, nor any of the contemporary laborers in this vineyard.

Despite all the critics of technology and our own periodic discontent with it, people's desire for it has not abated. Those who have gone without the comforts of modern living and the teeming masses of the undeveloped world lust after technology and its benefits. I do actually think hot running water, indoor plumbing, refrigerators, central air conditioning, my computer, microwave, answering machine, and my email service have contributed significantly to my quality of living.

Much to the Unabomber's consternation, many are indeed quite content trading some of their autonomy for what he calls "surrogate work" defined by the needs of the system rather than basic human needs. He has the most contempt for scientists and engineers who find meaning and contentment feeding the system with innovation. As he puts it:

But even if most people in industrial-technological society were well satisfied, we would still be opposed to that form of society, because (among other reasons) we consider it demeaning to fulfill one's needs for the power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an organization, rather than through pursuit of real goals.

It is precisely here that any merit in his argument falls apart. Even if everyone was satisfied, the Unabomber claims the superiority of his value system as the ultimate arbiter. Even if people are content with the cost- benefit tradeoff of technology, the Unabomber is not, so he asserts his values as primary, much like a child in a fit of self-absorbed rage.

What the Unabomber misses is the fundamental nature of existence which doesn't care a hoot for his participation in his power process. The system is really the same force which drives evolution forward toward greater and greater complexity. Imagine how the poor red blood cells feel as their freedom to roam the ocean waves was constricted to the inside of our circulatory system moving oxygen molecules around our bodies. What about the hard-working muscles in our heart we kill by clogging up our arteries with cholesterol. No pleasant afternoon session of photosynthesis for the lining of the large intestine processing feces. The Unabomber wants to pull down our technological society to satisfy a narrowly defined need for power and meaning. The constant drive of the life process vastly overwhelms any fanciful ideological conception of a happy existence.

What the Unabomber completely misses is the truth that autonomy, power and control are not the keys to happiness and satisfaction. There is no doubt that their absence can bring great suffering to the unenlightened mind. In the absence of power and control, one can easily project them as the solution to one's troubles. But ultimately we are a speck of dust to the tremendous forces which wash across this planet. A meteor could fall from the sky and wipe out 90% of mammalian life; a nuclear war could freeze us in the darkness of a nuclear winter; a plague could decimate the population. We could be unjustly imprisoned for a crime we did not commit. Our beloved could be killed by a drunk driver. We could be diagnosed with a terminal disease. The stock market could crash tomorrow. We are a far, far way from total control of our lives and often determined by our circumstances.

Yet even in misery, there is meaning.

The key to a good life is learning how to engage creatively with the life we are living today. With or without technology, each day has many blessings to share with us. Just to open one's eyes and experience the delight of seeing. To open one's ears and enjoy the bliss of experiencing hearing. The sheer pleasure of touching and being touched. The feeling of a gentle breeze and the satisfaction of a cool drink of water. The excitement of learning something new, the fulfillment of giving comfort and sustenance to another in need, the treasured moments of seeing one's efforts come to fruition. The sources of satisfaction are abundant to those who are willing to let all of life in and be in non-judgemental relationship with its magnificence.

What the Unabomber fails to grasp is what the Universalists have proclaimed: the goodness of creation and the benevolence of the Creator. We are already saved, already worthy, already redeemed. The Unabomber has no faith to lift him above the brutishness of existence to see its greater glory. The Unabomber has no experience of the transforming power of love which knits together the fabric of existence and suffuses it with meaning. That love can even operate in the heart of technology.

When we feel the little bit of the Unabomber we may have in us rising, may we remember that a good life isn't found as greatly in freely controlling our circumstances but rather in our loving engagement with the world as we find it, trusting in the goodness which resides in its nature. It is in loving engagement we will find our peace.

Copyright (c) 1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.