So I read Kaczynski's work, and I think his entire idea of "surrogate activities" is useless. His entire separation of a surrogate activity vs non-surrogate activities hinges on the idea that you have to get something that satisfies your biological needs out of a task. Yet, he cites reproduction as a non-surrogate activity because it provides fulfillment. He also generalizes using "most people" without any sort of empirical backing to his assumptions.
If someone were chasing a boar with a spear, only to have it escape from them in the wild, they have not achieved the goal X of feeding themselves and the task is an objective failure. Maybe they learn something, but they don't get what they wanted, and they haven't satisfied their biological need. This should, according to Kaczynski's definition and reasoning, be a surrogate activity. I highly doubt any human, either paleolithic or otherwise, would love or enjoy coming back empty handed after a hunt. Famine is also well documented throughout history, so it's very clear that despite technological and sociological simplicity, paleolithic and later societies did not in fact get to satisfy all their biological needs, or even to get satisfaction from attempting them. As you die the painful death of starvation, would you be comforted by someone telling you, "at least it was a biological need!"?
I don't really see any usefulness to this idea except to try to resonate with people who think that humans somehow want to be subject to the whims of nature or that it's in their best interest to be on the edge of death all the time as you literally compete with nature. Society was created by humans to escape the unjust and capricious reality of wild living, to the point where myths frequently portray gods as vengeful when they send floods or kill off all edible animals with disease.
I'm not quite sure what you're implying, that genocide would be bad especially given that Whites are the minority worldwide.
Primitive living is for Africans, Native Americans, Aboriginals, and Eskimos. All other races, especially Whites, have developed civilization because of their inherent potential.
Gabriel Young
I agree that he tried too hard to sound objective and academic. Regardless, it seems obvious to me that happiness comes from achievement and the pride and security of having achieved or produced something the individual considers worth doing. Modern society is not based on production, but on consumption. We are expected to waste our time learning nothing in school, then we earn a salary so we can watch TV, play games, and buy stuff in our free time. Very few jobs allow you to create something real by yourself or produce something directly for the ones you care. We have traded a society of that was in touch with our spiritual needs for one that fulfills our material ones. People feel depressed, aimless, and useless because very few of them are in a position where they perceive themselves as contributing to anything.
I take his work like I take Marx's. As an intelligent criticism, but with logically incorrect, impractical, and/or practically undesirable solutions.
To be more convincing that his solutions were correct, he should have followed up later in the manifesto or in a separate work with examples and hard data on why he came to his conclusions, rather than taking gratuitous assumptions like many socio-philosophical works. There's plenty of interviews floating around with native tribes, he could have asked experts if they had an appreciably higher satisfaction with their life by some empirical means.
> it seems obvious to me that happiness comes from achievement and the pride and security of having achieved or produced something the individual considers worth doing. This is why I don't understand why he cited "scientific work, athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation, climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional physical satisfaction, and social activism" together as surrogate activities.
Scientific work, artistic work, even gaining promotions both provide satisfaction as well as produce clearly defined improvements to society. Consumerism isn't optimal, but it seems as though he was targeting people he personally didn't like or who were preventing anarcho-primitavism. The people who invented spears, bows, and agriculture, are of the same or a similar vein to the people doing scientific or engineering work nowadays.
>Scientific work, artistic work, even gaining promotions both provide satisfaction as well as produce clearly defined improvements to society His point, if I recall correctly, is that while these things do make those people happy, they would be much happier of they were doing something which humans have evolved to do for tens of thousands of years. Scientific work is fun, but it is not fulfilling in the way that making the very food your wife and children eat is fulfilling.
Anthony Barnes
It saddens me that so many westerners go to your country and shit up those beautiful beach areas. I have played a couple full moon parties in Ko pha'ngan and travelers around to the most popular beaches, all fucked up with litter and trash, which would otherwise be paradise. Also have to say that Thai people in general are based.
Isaac Mitchell
I'm a white guy in Taiwan, retard.
Samuel Reed
>We are expected to waste our time learning nothing in school, We learn practical skills like reading, basic algebra and geometry, physical fitness, nutrition, how to avoid STDs and drugs, critical thinking (at least at decent schools), and even how to build or weld in certain places. Those aren't useless skills, especially if you're smart. And that's only below college level.
>then we earn a salary so we can watch TV, play games, and buy stuff in our free time. Very few jobs allow you to create something real by yourself or produce something directly for the ones you care.
For the people who don't get satisfaction from their jobs or goals, yes, this is the case. That's why the monetary compensation is meant to allow you resources to spend not only on staying alive but enjoying your life. People have proven through the natural evolution of society that they would rather pay someone to do other essential tasks like food production than to have to do it themselves so they can either undertake something more profitable/important/satisfying.
>We have traded a society of that was in touch with our spiritual needs for one that fulfills our material ones. People feel depressed, aimless, and useless because very few of them are in a position where they perceive themselves as contributing to anything.
There's still plenty of spiritual communities available; that's why religion sticks around. Also, given that there were frequent peasant revolts throughout feudal religious societies (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts doesn't even list all of them because not all were noteworthy) there were clearly other deficiencies in past societies that have been at least partially addressed by the current state of society.
Ian Sanders
lol
Kevin Evans
I mean, I'm an engineer and I can make food with my girlfriend. It's fun, but I wouldn't want to do that all the time. I've tried to garden before and it hasn't panned out well for multiple different reasons. I've also gone on hunting trips where we got nothing more than squirrels. That failure could be fatal in primitive societies. It's much more preferable to be able to pay for a guaranteed food supply than to scrape for potentially nothing.
Also; exponential growth has cultural and biological effects as well. While the rate of biological change is slower than that of culture or the economy, in time and already we have selected for traits which are not selected for in nature. Such as neotony and intelligence. Intelligence past the average does not net you much more advantage in nature but it does in a society.
Elijah White
Kacyznski in general is retarded. He memorized all this stuff about history but never even really bothered to explain how you would repress the re-emergence of capital after the collapse or revolution. Then he targets a group of comparative nobodies. Make no mistake - math or no, Kaczynski and most of his followers are retarded.
Nicholas Howard
Fuck you kike
Jackson Anderson
Yeah, anarcho-X is broken because you can't stop people from organizing or developing better tools and then beating out people with less organization and worse tools.
Wow I didn't realize it was Jewish to want logical consistency.
James Reyes
I don't think you understand the concept of a goal, just because you don't achieve that goal doesn't invalidate the premise of the goal, so no its still a non-surrogate activity by definition because its reaching "toward" a biological goal. pretentious retard.
Bentley Baker
I'm not a Luddite but its obvious the psychological damage that modern society has on humanity. The rise of depression and other mental illnesses are the most obvious forms of evidence for this.
Kevin Green
Uncle Ted was brilliant, but also deeply flawed. He was an MK Ultra test subject in college, they scrambled his brain, and he went insane. He has a lot of good critiques of modernism, but his solution is basically just "deindustrialize it," which would come with its own problems, and which is not really specific enough to be a real solution.
It's the equivalent of being asked how to win at basketball, and your answer is, "you just win it."
Leo Taylor
I think it's worse to fail to satisfy your biological goal despite trying than to succeed in fulfilling biological needs as well as attaining some sort of fulfillment through fulfilling activities, which may or may not be funded by unfulfilling activities.
Mason Phillips
Yeah, hopefully a solution is figured out soon. It doesn't have to be reversion; someone could try synthesizing spiritualism or in person community with modern technology. Unfortunately most upstart thought schools with a physical presence nowadays or even in the past 300 years or so are cults.
Cooper Miller
Yeah, like I said I agree that there are a lot of problems with modern society but there were also problems with pre-modern society as well as no society that were addressed by the evolution of society into its current form(s).
