Ted Kaczynski (in the unabomber manifesto) claims that if all we had to do was worry about our next meal and staying alive, we'd be content and free from stress, anxiety and depression. It makes initially -- you wake up, hunt, cook, eat and sleep. No time for existential dread or any other of our modern spiritual problems.
However, why are poor people, workers in sweat shops etc. so unhappy in their struggle?
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man can't live on bread alone
Good thing we got industrialized then, because antinatalism is the way and the more people that realize this, the better.
Fpbp
The people in your example are still slaves to the industrial society
Slightly related, is the tv series any good?
Well yeah that was kinda the point. Survival, and just survival, lets us live peacefully. Once we start chasing these brass rings, or "surrogate activities" to fill up our time, we fall into a trap.
These poor people who sell their labor are constantly slapped in the face by their economic superiors. When they watch TV they have to endure smug assholes buying million-dollar houses and thousand-dollar bags. People constantly belittle them, there's always stress about paying bills, about paying for medical services, about not being evicted. All of this pressure adds up even more because the proles usually hate their jobs or are 'neutral' about them (meaning: they don't care about their occupation but try to fulfill their lives out of work), which makes them look for meaning outside of the workplace. The only catch is, when you work for 8-10 hours/day and sleep 6/8/ day and commute for 1/2 hours/day, you have no time to do anything fulfilling of your life.
It's a death trap.
That's not what FC claims. FC's main claim is for freedom -- freedom, ultimately, is what allows for anything that we do to give rise to happiness.
The poor person or sweat shop worker is 100% not a free person. Comparatively, a man living fully off-the-grid is much closer to freedom and thus is likely to be happy if he's able to find a daily rhythm. Note that it's not something that's guaranteed to follow, but as FC states, true happiness and contentedness is only possible in a non-industrial society.
1/2
if by "surrogate activities" you mean doing anything outside the scope of mere survival, what you're talking about is reducing human needs down to rationality and removing the animal instinct from humanity.
2/2
Dosto quote:
"Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in bliss so that nothing but bubbles would dance on the surface of his bliss, as on a sea...and even then every man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive rationality his fatal fantastic element...simply in order to prove to himself that men still are men and not piano keys."
Notes?
You should actually read the essay before commenting on it imo
yes
I've been meaning to, is my take wrong?
What about my freedom to build planes, ruin nature, and buy iPhones every few months?
And how is it better when you're literally always just looking for plants to eat, chopping food, worrying about dying of starvation or from illness in the winter?
They're alienated from their species-being unlike the hunter-gatherers
I'm not that guy but surrogate activity is a phrase that he coined
ITT: people that have never read industrial society and it's future discuss it
Because you stop having meme worries.
>98. ... It should not be assumed that a person has enough freedom just because he SAYS he has enough. Freedom is restricted in part by psychological controls of which people are unconscious, and moreover many people's ideas of what constitutes freedom are governed more by social convention than by their real needs.
I've read it. His premises about survival and happiness can be taken out of the whole anti-technology context and still make sense. Which is why I think there are working class people that can be very happy (those who are moderately intelligent and don't drink/eat too much), while the middle class is on antidepressants.
It's a hard question defining what freedom is. Hegel had a good answer, although ultimately it always devolves into an argument about free will.
I wonder what teddy thinks about the new iPhone with facial recognition
>Those who seek work find rest, those who seek rest find boredom.
Pretty much disproves Marxist ideas. If none of us were forced to wake up early, go to work and earn a living, we'd all be at home addicted to painkillers. 99% of people don't study or create shit in their free time, they spend it watching television and stuffing themselves. If they didn't have to work 8 hours a day they'd just do that all day. Capitalism keeps forces us to work and be happy.
given that definition,
how is it that we fall into a trap by pursuing "surrogate activities"?
Because you create an artificial goal for yourself while ignoring the fact that freedom and nature is nonexistent today.
The surrogate activities are not as satisfying or fulfilling as an activity that has a necessary external goal.
In an industrial society our necessary external goals are not met autonomously though, so we don't get fulfillment from them either.
Kanye plz
How is that remotely Kanye? If anything, Kanye is exactly one of the motherfuckers surfing on the poor. His clothing line and Yeezy shit are absolute memes.
selling a white tshirt for $50 baka
>However, why are poor people, workers in sweat shops etc. so unhappy in their struggle?
The alienation of being an industrial lumpenprole caught in a cage of abstraction and rigidity is wholly different than being a pre-symbolic forest dweller.
We can barely begin to imagine what a life without dates, time and obligation is like.
*prole desu, no lumpen
Because they aren't peasants;they must live off of money and not food -- and they never have enough money, and they never have enough money. In addition, culture is being destroyed, the work is exhausting, their children are forced to work or prostitute, and above all, they are demeaned at every step.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. They don't create because they are made to hate creation through creation becoming an act of work, rather than pleasure. Yet, you see people who genuinely do love to create, and are many of the most fulfilled people one may ever meet.
Is good, I like that it not only focus in the search and prosecution of him but also give insight into his life and his ideas.
Pretty sure if you asked tribespeople to do repetitive manual labor for 10 hours a day they'd be pretty fucking unhappy.
lol who put some malignaggi on Veeky Forums
Ted Kaczynski was a failed stem dweeb, he didn't know anything about history, anthropology or philosophy, which is why he became a terrorist hiding in the woods, take life advice from a failed terrorist not the best idea
Oh, I don't know, maybe because their existence barely qualifies as life? Because their wives get uglier every year, because their kids get shit for toys, because the only salvation they have is two shots of vodka on friday, because their offspring will most likely live a life just as poor, if not worse?
This talk of "simple life" is cool and dope while it's just a talk. Once you experience this so called "simple" life, you'll quickly understand why all working people want is to get away from it, and never remember their past.
Yeah what kind of sucka!
Getting a new iPhone for Christmas and whatever other shit you think will make you happy is actually just masking a deeper problem. This is what the "culture industry" refers to, you're made to want things you don't need by associating them with virtues that actually have a value. Freudian psychology is used to do this, short documentary below if you haven't seen it.
>However, why are poor people, workers in sweat shops etc. so unhappy in their struggle?
Not a commie, but they're alienated from their own work, that seems obvious to me. No satisfaction is possible for a man who is exploited in systems as harsh, unforgiving and inhuman as the sweatshop ones.
By the way this should be an obvious conclusion that you can reach in Kaczynsky writings: should it surprise us that industrialized work is not supported by the man who wrote "Technological Slavery" and "Industrial Society and its Future"?
For one - I never liked and probably never will like Apple products.
Next, this isn't about luxuary. This isn't about getting yourself a nice cup of 20000$ gold plated icecream. It's about basic relief things, that middle class has access to, but working class can't even afford.
Like, if you have kids, think of what price tag would you place on your life, if you would not be able to present them a gift on their birthday. Think of what would your life look like, if the best memory of your year would be visiting McDonalds with your family, and not eating mashed potatoes for once.
THIS is what "simple life" is. And it's an urban "simple" life. Strip the civilazation off, and you'll get disease, you'll get dangerous wildlife, you'll get no fucking shelter until you find an empty cavity, or kill somebody to get one.
Fuck simple life. People deserve complicated lives, people deserve AT LEAST enough money and free time to buy their relatives a small present for a special date, and spend some time enjoying what matters.
Like a man said earlier, this is a death trap. You can't pull out and recollect yourself, because you barely earn enough to support your life. And fuck, people probably would risk it and quit their jobs, if only they didn't have families. Family is what chains you to your shitty job. You can't just give up in hopes of better, when you risk your children starving. And you can't learn anything new, because your work schedule allows you to get up in the morning, spend half an hour on a trip to your job, work there from nine to thirteen hours(Yes, these jobs exist, I had them), drive back home, take a shower, have a shitty fast cooked dinner, fall asleep, wake up six hours later, repeat.
Fucking Christ, this isn't life. This is barely an existence, for what it's worth. I got lucky, I got parents to back me up. Some folks don't have this luxury.
Kaczynski was a brilliant man but he was also a fool. Struggle, toil, and conflict don't bring us happiness. They bring us meaning. These are completely different things, and they are not mutually exclusive. It's entirely possible to have a sense of meaning and purpose while living an utterly miserable existence with no aim other than brute survival. I have no doubt that poor Africans are free from the pathologies and neuroses that plague modern Westerners, but so what? Who cares if you don't have to take Zoloft when you're starving or your entire family is raped and killed machete wielding cannibals?
If Kacyznski and his followers were successful in overthrowing industrial civilization and it actually took, what then? We know that the sun will eventually die out and the earth will be destroyed. Without the technology to leave the planet, the human race will inevitably go extinct, thus rendering this entire struggle pointless.
It's extremely unromantic, but in the long term, drugs, VR, neural implants/upgrades, etc. will probably provide the best solution to man's existential angst.
#TeamMustaphaMond
>all we had to do was worry about our next meal
>free from stress, anxiety and depression
What the fuck am I reading?
It's extremely stressful constantly having to worry about being able to afford food
>why are poor people, workers in sweat shops etc. so unhappy in their struggle?
are they?
I'd wager depression is more prevalent in middle class households
I'm sure a terrorist loony's opinion is worth discussing.
>be a primitive savage working "stress free"
>hoodlums from the next shithut village come over and take all your shit
Thanks Ted you stupid fuck
>Struggle, toil, and conflict don't bring us happiness. They bring us meaning.
Nice
That's wrong too. They give us purpose.
>a failed stem dweeb
>child genius, doctor at 25, made powerful, untraceable explosive devices out of scraps
>he didn't know anything about history, anthropology or philosophy,
>his manifesto was widely praised
Settle down cultie
You, maybe, not us.
>a promising academic career in 1969, then between 1978 and 1995 killed 3 people, and injured 23 others
Yes, and? He was an idiotic dweeb who had a severe case of autism and felt like spewing his weak ideas around. Soon you're going to bring up Leopold and Loeb and point out how smart they were as an argument as to why they did have a point killing that 13 year old kid.
sweatshop workers aren't worried about catching their next meal, they're worried about being 30 seconds late to their slave labour for fear of being thrown out on the streets.
Then do it, literally nobody is stopping you. We both know you won't go native because you're a LARPer posting on a Uzbekistani Horsebreeding Enthusiast Yurt.
>idiotic
>dweeb
>autism
>weak ideas
get the fuck out of here, you pansy redditor
it's people like ted that reshape reality as we know it, not some actual dweeb status quo shill
>b-but killing people is wrong!
Calling the FBI as we speak.
So if I kill you for being a faggot am I wrong?
i don't even agree with ted. it's just self-evident that any meaningful change comes with a price
just be yourself
>he thinks anprim worries are more important than modern consumerist worries
Embrace relativism my man
>pretty much disproves Marxist ideas
>What is "he who does not work, does not eat"?
I just want to be Conan the barbarian and live by the law of the knife. Is that so much to ask for?
You're not reading, because your reading comprehension is shit
>make a bow so you can kill them before they get to your village
>your fellow villagers throw their faeces at you and eject you from the village for accelerating technological development
Not entirely true. When America was being setting, one of the things the native Americans found repugnant about the European lifestyle is how much time they spent working. This would suggest that the natives had much time to themselves outside of hunting and providing.
*outside of hunting, providing and starving whenever an unexpected change hit them due to their overreliance on a single good source
Yeah, for sure. Man, is there anything anarcho- that's not absolutely retarded or what.
That's the point of the essay. We literally are stopped from doing it. What land can you live on for free anymore? You can't hunt without a government licence. Etc.
>They don't create because they are made to hate creation through creation becoming an act of work, rather than pleasure
Capitalist society places a lot of emphasis on entertainment and relaxation, because they're some of the reasons why most people buy things. Work is shown to be a "necessary evil", and since creation is work it's written off as the same.
It's awfully convenient that it's better for those on top that there's fewer content producers but that's probably a happy coincidence for them rather than an explicit conspiracy against creativity
How can Pauly D do pull-ups with a 45 pound weight for 15 reps and still can't punch?
You don't punch with your lats
Jej. Get a license for whatever and fuck off to the woods, what's stopping you? Or is the licence your only excuse?
Best post ITT
They're unhappy because their work is hard and other people are making them do it. If you work directly for your own survival, you're happy because there's nothing to worry about. If you work for others for money, and the work is hard and the money is little, you're miserable.
Your pic shows that only people who don't need glasses would win. And this is good. Modern technology and medicine has made us weak and barely able to live. AnPrim would reduce human suffering after a period of great suffering. This great suffering could have been prevented if modern tech didn't keep our freaks alive.
This is hilarious and I'm saving it, but the anprim, who presumably still has a memory, can recognise what that orange shape is, can see how it moves, would win. It's a funny joke image but for it to work it needs to invalidate itself.
Wrong, they're a big component in punching . Look at bruce Lee's lats
Nah, an anprim who just had glasses would have just transitioned to anprimism, so he probably lived a physically easy life in modern civilisation. Go up to a random person on the street and ask them if they know how to fight a tiger and even if they knew how, I'd they could physically do what they needed to do
No, you're switching the joke, the joke is meant to be that he can't see the tiger, and the joke, as I said, invalidates itself. In reality, nobody would try it without a firearm.
Creation is not considered work. It hasn't been in a long time. Painting art is not a job. Neither is writing nor making music. If you're one of the lucky few who can make a living by creating art, you might pass as a working man. Otherwise you're the office clerk who plays the guitar, the nurse who paints, or a good for nothing leech on society with a notebook full of his poetry.
>Creation is not considered work. It hasn't been in a long time. Painting art is not a job. Neither is writing nor making music.
t. bitter amateur
I get paid for my art, cocksucker. And not by meatshields via Patreon, either.
Is it government money?
Right. Like every other sperglord on this board.
>B-but I was published
>I made $6
>It only took 5 years and 1500 pages of Star Trek loli fanfic
Sit down.
>Working in a sweatshop is a primitivist ideal
Poor people living in cramped urban environments are not living in tune with nature.