Anybody interested in learning more about the life of Ted Kaczynski AKA The Unabomber?

Anybody interested in learning more about the life of Ted Kaczynski AKA The Unabomber?

In this thread I'll post quotations about:

>his childhood
>his relationship with women
>his relationship with his family
>his time in college
>his life after dropping out of society
>his favorite books, and reading habits
>the way acquaintances perceived him

If there's anything you want to know I'll try and find the relevant quotations.

Other urls found in this thread:

scribd.com/doc/296487035/Unabomber-Letters
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm
nihilsentimentalgia09.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/unibomber-manifesto.pdf
mataromorir.espivblogs.net/files/2015/01/Kaczynski-Technological-Slavery.pdf
yahoo.com/news/the-unabomber-takes-on-the-internet-201549030.html
stephenjdubner.com/journalism/101899.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

leaving this tab open for later after some dev.

i know that he was a genius and wrote a manifesto prior to the bombing but thats it.

>his relationship with women

Was he a beta cuck or a chad?

On Ted's attitude towards girls as a young man

>"Lorin De Young played trombone with Kaczynski in the school band [...] He was quiet, immature, very bright in math and science. He was just a whiz," he said. "But he was socially inept ... he wasn't interested in girls, he didn't play sports, he wasn't much of a musician."
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On Ted's romantic / sexual experiences

>"aside from his mother, who doted on him as a boy, there appears to have been no substantive relationship with a woman in all his life"

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On Ted's affection for his female factory supervisor

>"His supervisor was Ellen Tarmichael, a soft-spoken but no-nonsense woman [...] Ted Kaczynski became interested in late July 1978. He was 36, and she was 29. [...] They had two dates, Ms. Tarmichael recalled. She said he seemed intelligent and quiet, and she accepted a dinner invitation in late July. It was a French restaurant, David said, and Ted "ordered wine and he smelled it, he made a big deal of it." David added, "He had a good time." [...] Two weeks later, they went apple-picking and afterward went to his parents' home and baked a pie. That was when she told him she did not want to see him again. "I felt we didn't have much in common besides our employment," she said. "Ted did a total shutdown," retreating into his room, David said. He also wrote an insulting limerick about Ms. Tarmichael, made copies and posted them in lavatories and on walls around the factory. He did not sign the limerick, but his relationship with the woman was known."

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On Ted's sole date with a girl

>"In her first public comments, Ellen Tarmichael said she dated Kaczynski twice, sharing dinner with him at a restaurant and picking apples and baking an apple pie another time. She said that while baking the pie at Kaczynski's parents' house, she told him she didn't want to see him again"

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Cont...

I feel like I read a Time magazine article on him years ago. At what point did he actually denounce technology and move to his cabin off the grid? I guess what precipitated that change.

I am not the OP but I'll post some things I've heard, and possible topics of discussion. The OP or others should feel free to correct me about any of this, as I"m not going to be terribly careful about fact-checking before posting.

Ted was a brilliant mathematician, completing some advanced degree (either/both of a master's/PhD.) at a fancy college (Harvard?) At some point in his career as a student, he came into contact with a psychology researcher who made use of him in a quite sadistic psychology experiment, where Ted was regularly berated and had his confidence capriciously upset for no other reason than to run the experiment. I have heard that this was associated with "MKUltra", but I haven't been able to substantiate that - just a blurb I heard once.

the NPR radio program "Radio Lab" once devoted a segment to discussing this traumatic period of Ted's life.

Anyhow, my understanding is that the above stressor is what ultimately "broke" Ted, developing him into what he became. I don't know much about his life during the 70s/80s, or the timeline of his murders, so OP could fill those in. Apparently one shrink (or Ted himself) once characterized Ted as being a possible transexual, which led Ted (understandably along with the above) to hate shrinks in general.

I have read his manifesto on one occasion, years ago; I found it to be a very well-written, cogent, logically developed piece of writing - unusual for a violent criminal. The unusual thoughtfulness of the manifesto has been regularly commented on, and it therefore has a certain literary merit (thus justifying this thread on Veeky Forums). IIRC it was originally published in Penthouse magazine, and then Ted's brother instantly recognized the writing style, and figured it was his brother doing these things, subsequently tipping the authorities.

Ted currently resides at ADX Florence, a Colorado supermax where they keep not just murderers, but those whom the State hates most palpably, as they threaten the State itself - and yet they are wanted alive, for whatever reason. The current population includes surviving Al-Qaeda, the Boston bomber (who will be put to death in Terre Haute, IN someday - as McVeigh was), the /old/ world trade center bombers,

Ted's body count wasn't even that high. Just 3-4 people IIRC. I'd be interested to know what his more significant mathematical writing was.

OP here. I'll answer questions as soon as I can. It takes some time to find the relevant quotes so apologies for any delay. I may as well finish posting all the women-related stuff.

Cont...
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On Ted telling his penpal about his regrets

>"Kaczynski also lamented the fact that he did not have a family [...] your fortune is not all bad, because you have a wife and three children and all are healthy," the letter said. "... I wish I had a wife and children!""
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On Ted's letters and what they reveal

>"The letters show a disgruntled employee, a spurned suitor awkward with women, a son bitter toward his mother for making him that way, and a helpful fellow gardener."

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On Ted’s job at a truck stop in Montana

>"In the late summer of 1974, Ted also pumped gas and sold tires for a few weeks at Kibbey Korner Truck Stop in Raynesford, 100 miles east of Lincoln. It was a drifter's job -- a bunk went with it -- and no one held it for long […] Ted's brief sojourn in Raynesford was also notable for a crude romantic overture he made to a 19-year-old college student who was working as a waitress in the truck-stop restaurant […]To the waitress, Sandra Hill, he was just a shy, clean-shaven co-worker, a dozen years her senior. She said she had paid him little attention, and had no idea he was interested in her until she went back to school that fall and received three letters from him. One invited her to move with him to northern Canada and be his squaw. The second was almost a resume, in which he, as if applying for work, told her he was a Harvard graduate who had written and published papers in scientific journals. The third said he assumed she was not interested because she had ignored the first two."

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Cont...

Cont...
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On Ted’s struggles with women

>"Beginning in the spring of 1988, Mr. Kaczynski made several contacts with mental health systems around the issue of establishing relationships with women. He indicates that in 1988 he was suffering from insomnia and a renewed interest in getting advice and moral support to establish a relationship with a woman. He describes picking a psychologist's name out of the phone book and writing her a letter about his interest. He indicates that his decision to seek this type of counseling resulted after having a dream about a young woman. Upon awakening he had the idea that perhaps at age 45 it was not too late for him to establish a relationship, and at that point he thought of leaving his isolated life in Montana and finding a job and a female for himself. As noted, he sent a detailed letter to the therapist and saw her once. He had a positive experience in the session and subsequently sought employment. He states that during the session the therapist, Elizabeth Gilbertson, had mentioned the thought of her arranging a meeting with him and some of her female clients. He subsequently wrote her a letter with the hopes of reminding her to do so, but she did not pick up on his implied message."

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On Ted’s desire to undergo a sex change procedure

>"While at the University of Michigan he sought psychiatric contact on one occasion at the start of his fifth year of study. As referenced above, he had been experiencing several weeks of intense and persistent sexual excitement involving fantasies of being a female. During that time period he.became convinced that he should undergo sex change surgery. He recounts that he was aware that this would require a psychiatric referral, and he set up an appointment at the Health Center at the University to discuss this issue."

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On Ted’s struggles to view himself as attractive

>"He describes at length his inability to figure out whether or not he was attractive to women and references a passing comment of a friend of his family's at the age of 15, that made him believe he was quite attractive. […] At times in his writings, he focuses, in an extraordinary amount of detail, on passing or short lived relationships or potential relationships with females. This is illustrated by his discussion of his relationships with (REDACTED) when he was 10, (REDACTED) when he was 16, (REDACTED) when he was 17, (REDACTED) when he was 32, "Ms. Z" when he was in graduate school, and (REDACTED) when he was 36.”

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Cont...

his favourite books pls

If anybody is reading please bump to keep the thread alive.

Cont...

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On Ted’s sadness over his lack relationships

>"He did show the capacity for sadness in interviews and would frequently tear up when remembering fleeting relationships he had with individuals. In that regard, it was noted that he tends to form very rapid intense emotional attachments to individuals, primarily women, but also men. (REDACTED). Historically, he has developed love relationships that were never reciprocated with individuals and maintained them for extended periods of time, idealizing them and at time devaluing them. […] It was not until 1994 at the age of 50, that he further explored this issue and asked another woman, whom he did not know well, whether he was physically attractive. He indicated she responded he was "run of the mill" and at that point in time he no longer wondered why he had never developed a successful relationship with a woman. As described, he had grappled with that issue for more than 30 years because he had been told he was physically attractive at the age of 15 and he held onto that belief; so he could never understand why women were not attracted. Having now been told by another female in 1994 that he was simply average in looks, it immediately provided him with an explanation for why he had never established a relationship with a woman.”

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On Ted's attempt to impress a female environmentalist

>"Years later, it was a far more laconic Ted Kaczynski who hand-delivered a job-seeking letter to Becky Garland, who comes from the unofficial first family of environmentalists in Lincoln. [...] In the spring of 1994, Kaczynski came into the sporting goods store and gave Teresa Garland a legal-size envelope with wild white carrot seeds. He had some success with the vegetable and thought Garland might be interested in trying it. The envelope wasn't addressed or signed, "just precise instructions on what to do with them," she recalled."

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sounds like Ted's preoccupation with looks + manifesto + latent effeminacy + social awkwardness starts to twin him ever stronger with Rodger.

>She said that while baking the pie at Kaczynski's parents' house, she told him she didn't want to see him again

Stone cold.

On Ted's resignation from his college job

>"While Ted Kaczynski never showed any strong feelings about the activism around him, the campus riots and protests must have had a significant impact on the young academic. [...] On January 20th 1969, the young professor wrote a terse, two sentence letter of resignation from his post at Berkeley University [...] A close friend of Kaczynski's father, child psychologist Ralph K. Meister, claimed it was young Ted's fear that his students would become makers of atomic bombs that prompted him to resign."

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On Ted's hatred of noise caused by technology

>"He also wrote two letters to The Chicago Tribune, one on snowmobiles, the other on motorcycles. He denounced both as noisy, air-polluting machines that spoiled the beauties of nature [...] "Technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people's hands. For example, a variety of noise-making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles, etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise.""

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On Ted's reasons for leaving Berkeley

>"In the summer of 1969, at the age of 27, Mr. Kaczynski left Berkeley, determined to seek a simpler life in a remote area. [...] Living again at home, Mr. Kaczynski kept mostly to his bedroom. Awaiting word on his land application, he did nothing for more than a year. His parents urged him to get a job, not to make money but to give him something to do, to ease his mind. But the effort failed. Investigators who had access to letters Mr. Kaczynski wrote later said the parents' efforts were interpreted by their brooding son as unwarranted intrusions, pressure to conform to a world he hated"

__________

This is a tricky question to answer in full using just quotations, as the manifesto itself focuses on the issue of why he opposed technological advances. I should add to the above that he disliked his teaching job and his students consistently complained that he was too quiet and serious, which likely played a part in his deciding to resign.

On Ted's appreciation for Joseph Conrad

>"At a Burger King restaurant next to the bus terminal in Sacramento, Mike Singh, the manager, remembered him. He was carrying what appeared to be an armful of books [...] He used the name Conrad to sign the registration book [at a nearby hotel], and took a $22.50-a-night room without a bath."

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On books as companionship for Ted in his cabin

>"The furnishings were the fragments of his life: the books for companionship and the bunk for the lonely hours, the wood stove where night after night he watched dying embers flicker visions of a wretched humanity, the typewriter where, the authorities say, the justifications for murder had been crafted like numbered theorems."

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On Ted's mother teaching him to read

>"Wanda Kaczynski was especially well-read and articulate, familiar with science and the works of Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Thackeray and other authors whose books crowded her shelves. [...] Wanda kept a diary about her boy and read to him daily from children's books, then from classic boys' literature and later from surprisingly advanced materials. A neighbor said Teddy was in grade school when Wanda began reading him articles from Scientific American that a college student might find challenging"

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On the Kaczynski's love of books and young Ted's personality

>"Dr. Roy Weinberg, a neighbor, remembered the Kaczynskis as "a serious family." "They read books all the time," he said. [...] But he remembered Teddy as skinny and self-absorbed. "He was strictly a loner," Dr. Weinberg said. "This kid didn't play. No. No. He was an old man before his time.""

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On one classmate's memory of bookish Ted

>"But most classmates and club members regarded him as alien, or not at all. To Bill Phelan, Teddy was a nerd: thin, short, quiet, painfully shy. "He was reading books, and I was playing sports and drinking beer," Mr. Phelan said. "He wasn't in my world. He was in his own world.""

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On another classmate's memory of bookish Ted

>""He was the smartest kid in the class," Mr. Mosny said. "He was just quiet and shy until you got to know him. Once he knew you, he could talk and talk." But when the others began attending dances and dating, Teddy stayed home, Mr. Mosny said. "I'd try to get him to go to the sock hops, but he always said he'd rather play chess or read a book.""

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Cont...

Cont...
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On Ted's visits to the local library in Montana

>"More often, he stopped at the Lincoln Library where Beverly Coleman worked. "Sometimes he came in once a week because we saved newspapers for him and he picked them all up," she said. "Just our local tribunes, from Missoula and Great Falls and Helena." He also wanted scientific books and classic literature, she said, usually in English, but often in the original German or Spanish. These had to be ordered from the University of Montana in Missoula, or Montana State at Bozeman."

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On a census taker's memory of Ted's cabin

>"the usually unwashed Mr. Kaczynski did not raise eyebrows around Lincoln, where many people live secluded lives. "He was just a private person and enjoyed being up there by himself," said Joseph Youderian, who interviewed him for the 1990 census and was one of the few locals who entered his cabin. He saw shelves of books, a bunk, a wash basin and a man of few words. "I didn't push it. That's the way he wanted to live.""

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On the types of books Ted bought

>"Across the street at Aunt Bonnie's Bookstore, Mr. Kaczynski would stop to buy a book from the 25-cent rack, said Anne Haire, the owner. They were usually old, obscure sociology or political science texts, she said, "the books nobody else wants to buy.""

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On Lincoln residents' memory of Ted

>"He was a really strange man," Orr added. "He left people alone and people left him alone." [...] Beverly Coleman used to work in the Lincoln Library where she remembers Kaczynski spent a lot of time and carried books home in saddlebags that straddled his bike. [...] "A sharp man," she said. "But he was very quiet. A very gentle man."

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On the books found in Ted's cabin

>"When he bought books, he went for discounts and sales, rarely spending more than $2. About 60 of those books were in his cabin when the FBI closed in last week."

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On Ted's family's reading habits

>"At home, family life seemed normal, if a bit intellectual. The Kaczynskis kept philosophy books on the coffee table."

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On Ted's reading habit inside his cabin

>"Daylight seeped in through two windows. Each was just a foot square. One was so close to the roof that it did little good. He slept on a narrow cot. He stacked his books--Shakespeare, Thackeray--against the walls. He had one door. It had three locks. [...] He had no running water; he dipped plastic jugs into a stream 75 feet from the cabin. He had no electricity; he read by candlelight."

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Cont...

Cont...
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On Ted's vocabulary as a child

>"On one occasion, when he was 11, he joined his mother, Dorothy O'Connell and another neighbor in a game of Scrabble. "Teddy came along and sat down and beat all three of us," O'Connell says. "His vocabulary at that age was so great he could beat three grown women.""

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On Ted's favorite book as a child

>"A year or so later, the Kaczynskis took a vacation. Teddy had a favorite book. He knocked on Dorothy O'Connell's door with the book under his arm, and he gave it to her for safekeeping until he got back home. She put it out of harm's way, on top of her refrigerator. One day she happened to take it down and look at it. She was stunned. The book was called, "Romping through Mathematics, From Addition to Calculus.""

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On Ted's use of the school library

>""Ted would use the school library for more intensive studies beyond the texts. There was a four-volume set on mathematics in my basement. Ted borrowed that." He took all of the hard courses, and he skipped at least one grade. Rippey gave him straight A's. [Teacher Robert F. Rippey] ranks Ted Kaczynski among his top four or five students in 50 years of teaching."

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On Ted's visits to the local library in rural Montana

>"Ted also spent time at the Lincoln library, a small building with wood siding and a green tin roof. He sat in a front corner, where the newspapers were, and read. He also spent time in a back corner, where research books included an Encyclopedia of Associations, a Who's Who, and postal guides from everywhere."

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On the FBI's link between Ted and Joseph Conrad

>"In Joseph Conrad's novel "The Secret Agent," a brilliant but mad professor abandons academia in disgust for the isolation of a tiny room, his "hermitage." There, clad in ragged, soiled clothes, he fashions a bomb used in an attempt to destroy an observatory derisively referred to as "that idol of science." [...] Federal authorities believe Theodore J. Kaczynski, the former mathematics professor who loved Conrad's works well enough to read them about a dozen times, may have drawn upon the 1907 novel. Even before identifying Kaczynski as a suspect in the Unabomber case, FBI agents noted the parallels between Conrad's theme of science as a false icon and the Unabomber's targeting of scientists and technological experts and his condemnation of technology in letters to news organizations."

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good thread

Solid thread, OP.

Thanks for the thread user.

Do you have any quotes about his reflections on his actions after he was arrested?

Very good thread.

The following are about Ted as a child and young man
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On one childhood neighbour's reaction to seeing Ted on the news

>"When former neighbor Evelyn Vanderlaan, 78, heard that the Kaczynskis' whiz-kid son, Teddy, was in the news, "I figured he had won the Nobel Prize or something.""

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On Ted telling a stranger about his unhappy childhood

>"An earnest, almost pleading fellow in search of work. That was the message that came with Kaczynski's hand-delivered letter two years ago to Becky Garland, a local environmental activist whose family runs the local sporting goods store. [...] he also revealed a grown man who still lamented a childhood truncated by his academic success. He was "letting us know a little bit about his childhood, just that he had missed a lot of it, by his education," recalled Garland, who read the letter the same day her sister received it in the summer of 1994. "Being educated so much . . . he was different because of it.""

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On young Ted as a childish prankster

>"As a high school student in suburban Chicago, Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was a "socially inept" prankster who built small bombs, two former classmates say. [...] Lorin and Jo Ann De Young, who run a small private school in San Jose, said Kaczynski's intellectual brilliance wasn't matched emotionally. "Ted was just very socially immature," Lorin De Young said Monday. "He was a little bit of a prankster. I guess just to get attention.""

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On young Ted as out-of-place at school

>"Kaczynski never wore the Levis and engineer boots sported by others at Evergreen Park High School, said classmate Wayne Tripton. Instead, he carried a leather briefcase. [...] Still, Tripton said he doesn't remember Ted standing out in a crowd. "It was like Ted could be there and be disappeared at the same time.""

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On Ted’s isolation throughout his life

>"His adolescence and college years were marked by an almost total absence of interpersonal relationships. Early psychological testing showed an extreme elevation on the introversion scale and associated depressive feelings that would be consistent with his alienation at that point in time. […]Mr. Kaczynski recounts, in painful detail, his absence of any real or personal relationships with women, in addition to his absence of any consistent ongoing relationships with men"

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Cont...

Good stuff OP. I'm curious where you're getting the stuff from. Articles? or is there a good biography of Kaczynski?

I'll finish posting about his childhood and then try and find quotations for this, if that's alright.

Cont...
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On Ted’s elementary school experience

>"Mr. Kaczynski attended kindergarten and grades one through four at Sherman Elementary School in Chicago […] “Mr. Kaczynski described this skipping a grade as a pivotal event in his life. He remembers not fitting in with the older children and being the subject of Psychiatric Report Page 8 considerable verbal abuse and teasing from them. He did not describe having any close friends during that period of time."

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On Ted recalling his unhappiness at school

>"Throughout his writings and conversations, he focuses on the fact that he was moved from the fifth to seventh grade. He identifies this as the cause of his lack of development of social skills, a problem that continues with him to the present. Between the seventh and 12th grade, he perceived "a gradual increasing amount of hostility I had to face from the other kids. By the time I left high school, I was definitely regarded as a freak by a large segment of the student body.""

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On the kinder side of young Ted's personality

>"On Ted's brother David remembering his kindness

>"He remembered small acts of kindness, too: how Ted once nailed a spool to the bottom of a screen door so that David, a toddler too small to reach the handle, could go in and out; how Ted later imparted his knowledge of woodsmanship and plant life, and how Ted only a few years ago sent him a picture of a child in a baseball cap with a note flecked with nostalgia. It said, "This picture reminded me of you and what kind of child you were."""

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On highschool classmate Bill Phelan's memory of Ted

>"By the time he entered Evergreen Park Community High School, Teddy was having more trouble fitting in. [...] most classmates [...] regarded him as alien, or not at all. To Bill Phelan, Teddy was a nerd: thin, short, quiet, painfully shy. "He was reading books, and I was playing sports and drinking beer," Mr. Phelan said. "He wasn't in my world. He was in his own world.""

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On highschool classmate Loren De Young's memory of Ted

>"Loren De Young remembered him as a kind of nonperson. "He was never really seen as a person, as an individual personality," he said. "He was always regarded as a walking brain, so to speak.""

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Cont...

At least 30 different sources (I can supply individually on request), from in-depth articles, police reports, official court documents, psychological examinations, interviews and so on.

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On one neighbour's memory of young Ted as a loner

>"But the neighbors noticed something else. "He was always a loner," remembers Emily Butcher, now in her 90s. "He walked with his head down. Like this." Emily Butcher drops her head even more deeply onto her cane. "Even when he reached high school," says LeRoy Weinberg, who lived behind the Kaczynskis, "Ted never acknowledged a greeting. He just kept his head to the ground. . . . He was a loner.""

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On young Ted helping a disabled girl in his area

>"The little girl recovered, but she was left with a speech difficulty. One day, after the toddler had returned home, Dorothy O'Connell heard her daughter cry out excitedly, "Hassgropper!" "Oh, no, Janice," Teddy John Kaczynski explained, quietly and patiently. "Grasshopper. This is an insect." Then Dorothy O'Connell listened with fascination as Teddy John told the child just how many legs a grasshopper has and what biological phylum, or classification, it belongs to."

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On Ted's struggle to fit in socially

>"His aunt still remembers the cut of his arrogance. "Once when I was over to his home, he was just sitting there, and his father said to him, 'Why don't you have some conversation with your aunt?' And he answered: 'Why should I? She wouldn't understand me anyway.' "[...] As Teddy entered his teens, his social handicaps were increasingly apparent. David said his brother sometimes joined him and his friends in a softball game on the playground, even though they were far younger. The same thing happened later in life, too. "The contacts were through me in a sense," David said. "The important thing was the relationship with me, or I'm a buffer. That made him feel safe.""

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On Ted's parents' concern for their young son

>"Concerned over his social development, the Kaczynskis consulted school guidance counselors, but never took Teddy to a psychiatrist or psychologist, David said. Teddy often went into moody depressions, retreating to his bedroom for days on end, coming down only for meals. "He was not happy in school," David said. "I think he had become during adolescence more withdrawn.""

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> I'll finish posting about his childhood and then try and find quotations for this, if that's alright.

You do you my friend, I'm enjoying all the info

On Ted's lack of remorse

>"In the entries that have been disclosed, Mr. Kaczynski expressed no remorse for his victims. After a bomb in 1985 ripped through the arm of John E. Hauser, a pilot and graduate engineering researcher at the University of California at Berkeley who hoped to become an astronaut, Mr. Kaczynski wrote, in a coded journal that was deciphered by Federal agents: ''I am no longer bothered by having crippled this guy. I laughed at the idea of having any compunction about crippling an airplane pilot.''"

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On Ted explaining his actions and defending his character

>"You asked how someone like me, who seems to be sensitive to other people's feelings and not vicious or predatory, could do what I've done. Probably the biggest reason why you find my actions incomprehensible is that you have never experienced sufficiently intense anger and frustration over a long enough period of time. Yo don't know what it means to be under an immense burden of frustrated anger or know how vicious it can make one. Yet there is no inconsistency between viciousness toward those whom one feels are responsible for one's anger, and gentlesness toward other people. If anything, having enemies augments one's kindly feelings toward those whom one regards as friends or as fellow victims."

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On Ted justifying his actions

>"Do I feel that my actions were justified? To that I can give you only a qualified yes."

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On Ted's recent letter from prison to a correspondent about technology

>"If I could, I would eliminate all advanced technology everywhere, including medical and agricultural technology"

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Intended for:

Fascinating stuff, what topics does he tend to write about with pen pals?

A great variety of topics really over the last two decades, including 9/11, environmental changes, a more articulated account of his primitivist beliefs (i.e. his proposed solution to the problem of a technological society), the rise of the internet, government spying, Julian Assange, suicide, and the prison environment.

not him but
where can i find these stuff

10/10 Fred

Yeah, I'm interested on if you can expound on his contentment with the prison environment and his primitivist beliefs.

The following quotations are about Ted's time at Harvard University and further college experience

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On one fellow Harvard students' memory of Ted

>"what they remembered about him at Harvard were his annoying trombone blasts in the dead of night, the primordial stench of rotting food that drifted from his room, his odd metronomic habit of rocking back and forth on a chair as he studied, and his icy aloofness as he strode through the suite, saying nothing, slamming his door to shut them out."

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On Harvard suitmate Patrick McIntosh's memory of Ted

>""I don't recall more than 10 words being spoken by him." [...] "He was intensely introverted," Mr. McIntosh said of Mr. Kaczynski. "He wouldn't allow us to know him. I never met anybody like him who was as extreme in avoiding socialization. He would almost run to his room to avoid a conversation if one of us tried to approach him.""

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On Ted's summers away from college

>"Ted returned to Evergreen Park [his parents' house] in the summers and spent most of his time in his room. David said his brother liked classical music and folk singers, but disliked "products of the mass culture." He did not like television or rock 'n' roll, and loud noises infuriated him, David said."

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On Ted's struggle to fit in with richer students

>"Barely 16 years old, he went to Harvard. In the late 1950s, it was a men's club, wealthy, WASPy and elitist. When Ted Kaczynski, the shy, Polish-American son of a sausage maker, arrived, eyes down and wearing a garish plaid jacket, he was met by students who wore suits and ties to class."

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Cont...

Many if not most of his letters are on the internet, a fresh batch was released earlier this year.

One useful link: scribd.com/doc/296487035/Unabomber-Letters

The Smoking Gun (website) has a bunch of them too if you search "unabomber" on there.

As for his letters regarding primitivism, I found them in a book called "Technological Slavery" published by Feral House, which also includes his manifesto in full. To provide something of a basic summary of said beliefs, he makes it clear that he realizes that a pre-, or indeed post-technological society will be a very difficult one in terms of survival. He recounts his experience tanning animal hides for clothing and scavenging for food and so on, and says even these hardships are worth it to avoid living in a technological society. He proposes a world wherein small tribes of individuals forego any form of advanced technology (I believe he is okay with knives and so on) and lives an essentially hunter-gatherer lifestyle or at least in small rural communities and farmsteads.

I don't have many quotations at hand about his thoughts about prison, I just recall him complaining at length about the noise and subsequent inability to concentrate or think, his experience living with Timothy Leary and various other high-status terrorists, his contemplation of suicide and why he has not chosen to do so (despite an attempt early on), and so on.

*Timothy McVeigh

Thanks a lot.

I'm curious about his justification for living in a society without technology, what's his objection to it besides cars and motorcycles noise pollution?

Cont...
__________

On Ted's obscurity in college

>"If Ted was a misfit in high school, he virtually disappeared in college. "With only 17 people in that place, you would think I would remember everything about this guy," Bauer says. "I don't." It was not that this was 38 years ago. "If you had asked me that question a year after graduation, I would have given the same response.""

__________

On Ted as a quiet and forgettable roommate

>"Ted spent almost no time in the common room. He was "extremely reclusive," Patrick S. MacIntosh, another of the Midwesterners, told the Boston Globe. In the three years that Ted Kaczynski lived in Eliot House, MacIntosh says, "I don't recall more than 10 words being spoken by him. Ted stands out only for being completely without relationship to anyone in the suite.""

__________

On Ted's untidy room in college

>"The suitemates also remember Ted's housekeeping. "His room was an unholy mess, the worst mess I've ever seen in my life," MacIntosh says. "Sometimes it smelled like he had left his lunch in there for weeks.""

__________

On Ted's academic ability

>"Indeed, Ted was more than an independent thinker. He was independent, period. While most students wanted help with their research, Duren says, Ted Kaczynski worked alone. He was meticulous. He wrote his explanations and proofs in greater detail than Duren and other professors considered necessary, and he printed the proofs in neat, square, evenly spaced letters."

__________

On Ted as a studious loner

>"Ted Kaczynski was a loner socially, as well. John Remers, who lived in East Quad, took classes with him. He remembers that Ted always ate by himself. "I doubt I ever exchanged a word with him," Remers says. "What struck me is that he was never with people. He didn't seem to socialize. He was totally self-absorbed, always at the library and focused on math." In his second year, Ted moved off campus and lived in small rooms on nearby streets. "He behaved well to other people," Duren says, "but he was wrapped up in the work he was doing.""

__________

Again the theoretical aspect of his actual manifesto is difficult to summarize, though besides the fact that technology annoyed him personally, he also felt that the natural environment he had loved all his life was being devastated by loggers and oil companies etc (he had several run-ins with loggers near his cabin), and that, according to this thesis, every form of technology is inextricably linked to other forms (for example, a development in the automobile industry may well result in that same development being applied to the aviation industry) meaning that regulation cannot work (because apparently innocuous advances in a relatively harmless industry will inevitably lead to similar advancements in a more sinister industry) and therefore the only solution is to do away with the whole thing. He also complains that a lack of autonomy is an unavoidable consequence of technology and advanced industry, and cites the fact that automobiles have gradually become a norm over time, meaning that the natural environment has been adjusted to suit the demands of an automobile-centric society, whether those who wish to own a vehicle or participate in the culture of traffic jams and highways care to or not. I may be providing too vague or insufficient a summary, though these I believe are some of the fundamental points he argues, though he also talks about the misery of human beings in an industrial society (similar to the argument Adam Lanza makes about depressed chimps) and the inevitable spying on citizens using technology.

If Ted had only studied Buddhism he would have overcome his neuroses that stunted his emotional development.

OP, a somewhat interesting fact about that is that Ted's brother David, who was opposite to him in many respects, was and still is a Buddhist. He married his wife in a Buddhist ceremony which Ted refused to attend, and David's Buddhist wife persuaded him to call the police and tell them his brother was probably the Unabomber by reminding him of the notion of karma and how that belief should encourage him to stop Ted harming others.

Pic related are the two brothers, with Ted on the right.

Thanks a lot OP, I've been reading all the writings of his compiled in the book Technological Slavery for the past few days and have been engrossed, this thread is icing on the cake.

The following quotations are about Ted's life after he left academia.

__________

On Ted's disappearance

>"Ted's high school classmate, Bill Widlacki, heard that he was back in Illinois doing menial work. "Then, all of a sudden," Widlacki says, "he disappeared.""

__________

On Ted moving to live with his brother

>"Ted lived in a tent on their property in Stemple Pass. He built his plywood cabin. Part of the time, however, he stayed with David. He worked for two weeks at Kibbey Corner Truck Stop, owned by Joe Visocan, in Raynesford, population 50, about 35 miles east of Great Falls."

__________

On Ted resigning angrily from his job at a truck stop

>"His letter of resignation, published by the Great Falls Tribune, said"

>"Dear, sweet Joe:

>"You fat con man. You probably think I treated you badly by quitting without notice, but it's your own fault. You gave me this big cock-and-bull story about how much money I could make selling tires and all that crap. 'The sky's the limit,' and so forth. If you had been honest with me, I would not have taken the job in the first place; but if I had taken it, I wouldn't have quit without giving you a couple of weeks' notice. Anyhow, I have a check coming. I am enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope in which you can send it. I had better get that check, because I know what authorities to complain to if I don't get it. If I have to complain about the check, then, while I'm at it, I might as well complain about the fact that you don't have a proper cage for putting air in split-rim tires, which, if I am not mistaken, is illegal.

>"Love and kisses,

>"Ted Kaczynski"

__________

Cont...

one bump, this is one thread I'd meant to check on after work.

There are a number of interesting quotations throughout the thread, which themselves count as a form of literature. However it is past time that we had a link to the Manifesto itself:

washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm

I feel that it is appropriate to compare Ted's Manifesto with that of Marx and Engels for multiple reasons. We begin with surface banalities, but the more one compares the two texts, the more they are of a historical piece.

Here (above), in one web page, we have the so-called Unabomber Manifesto, which is properly titled "Industrial Society and its Future". I wish to point out that although the two are in some significant sense unrelated, it is notable that in American society, two of the first documents that come to mind with the word "manifesto" are the Communist Manifesto, and the so-called Unabomber Manifesto, neither of which has either such title as its offical title. Both documents concern themselves with different aspects of industrial, modern life, although both share this same root concern. The documents are even of comparable length, and would ordinarily occupy a few dozen pages of printed material in any manuscript. Longer than a Declaration, shorter than, say, a novella. Something which requires an afternoon, or perhaps an hour or two to be read, and some serious thought to engage with the text, but not terribly long either.

Something else which I've taken an interest in, is that apparently Marx has certain apocryphal writings about mathematics (which might be compared with whatever professional mathematical work the mathematician Ted produced, as a counterpoint of each person's expertise) . Of course, Marx was no mathematician, but employed modeling throughout Capital so it makes sense that he would eventually consider pure math in some capacity.

Also, both men were extreme-bookish NEET types, who actively sought to impact history, in fashions which have not been appreciated since. A key difference being that Ted vaguley indicts "leftism" in general throughout his treatise.

I think that there is something worthwhile to this Marx/Kaczynski comparison.

so I'm guessing most people here relate to him on some level?

t. not fbi

*** ORIGINAL MANIFESTO ***

nihilsentimentalgia09.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/unibomber-manifesto.pdf

*** COLLECTED WRITINGS ***

mataromorir.espivblogs.net/files/2015/01/Kaczynski-Technological-Slavery.pdf

Bump. Thanks for all this OP.

Huh. Why's it whenever I read about these kind of people they always turn out way more outgoing and social than me despite them supposedly being crazy outcasts? I've never had a friend, let alone a girlfriend in my life. My parents don't send me letter or give me advice. Even though I'm more of a loser I'd never hurt anyone, in fact I'd gladly give my life for someone. Must be some genetics that creates monsters.

bump

You're not a genius

I understand you are 15.

I'm an adult.

OP here. I will continue posting some quotations today. The following ones are about Ted's relationship with his father.
__________

On Ted's father and their hikes in his youth

>"When he was 10, the Kaczynskis went on a camping trip -- the father often took them out in the summer and taught them to appreciate the woods, plants and animals -- and for vacation reading, Teddy took along a volume of "Romping Through Mathematics from Addition to Calculus,""

__________

On Ted's growing distance from his family

>"David said [...] "He would remember something that my father said or my mother said, and it would be great weight, and he would attach some significance to it. He would build out of a few facts a picture that was unrecognizable." From then on, Ted told David, he would not open a letter from his brother unless it had a line drawn under the stamp to indicate a family emergency."

__________

On Ted's father's disgust for his son's lifestyle

>"Ted's father, who had visited him at his cabin and had left in disgust at the way his older son was living, had retired from part-time work when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in the late 1980's. When his condition began to deteriorate, his family informed Ted in a letter. His response was a brief call from the Lincoln post office."

__________

On Ted's father's death

>"In October 1990, Theodore Kaczynski, recently diagnosed with fatal lung cancer, shot himself to death while his wife and David were in another room of the house. Lombard police and neighbors don't recall Ted coming home at the time of his father's death."

__________

On Ted's reaction to his father's death

>"he did call during that service to offer condolences to his mother, and David's reaction was to worry about his brother. "I often thought about that conversation," he said. He envisioned Ted at a pay phone, awkwardly trying to express condolences to a mother he had ignored for years. "That's a Ted that's human, who I understand and love," David said."

__________

Every time Ted is brought up it makes me reflect on my own life and discover similarities with him, though I am admittedly nowhere near as smart as he is.

I reckon that is true of anyone though because we are all similar in quite a few ways.

I want to write him a letter and send him some stamps but I doubt he would respond to me as I recall him saying he is often busy.

I'm just trying to make a point that it's definitely partly genetics or other factors considering I'm unlike him despite being even more of a loner. Just brought it up because most of these quotes keep mentioning his loneliness.

Forgot to mention that I'm an only child, my father left the day I was born, my mother suffered from severe depression and neglected me. I know no one cares about me since I'm a nobody, I'm just trying to make a point about Ted's loneliness.

>people are different

Wow, good going kid.

He's in supermax. He's about as unbusy as a person can be.

Lots of people have written and gotten responses. Example: yahoo.com/news/the-unabomber-takes-on-the-internet-201549030.html

Of course, but what makes one a killer? I'm almost like the opposite of him and in these quotations they make it seem like it was loneliness that created darkness.

>created darkness

Are you retarded, or just fifteen?

Why are you name calling? What you said is a mean thing and it can hurt people's feelings; I hope you can take that into consideration. I know Veeky Forums is supposedly a mean place but you don't have to conform to those unprincipled standards, friend.

I'm using the term "darkness" as euphemism for Ted's mentioned immorality. I'm not trying to write formal document.

fuck off

thanks for posting OP.

posting Teddy reading list for innawoods

>it only goes up to C

You'll be posting many more images if you intend to reach Z.

Trolled.

hehe

...

could only find two pages as images, and I know how the chins don't like to post links or clickbait.

Fiction:
Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang, 1975

Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina, 1945

Albert Camus, The Stranger, 1946

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, 1907 *

James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer, 1823 *

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859 *

Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems & Letters, 1959

Fyodor Dostoevski, Brothers Karamazov, 1878 *

T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, 1930

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, 1929

Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874 *

Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, 1987

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, 1951

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man, 1916

Franz Kafka, The Trial, 1925
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 1941 *

Richard Lattimore, The Revelation of John, 1962 **

Jack London, Martin Eden, 1913

W. Somerset Maugham, Razor's Edge, 1944 *

Eugene O'Neill, The Iceman Cometh, 1946

Alexandra Orme, Comes the Comrade!, 1949 *

George Orwell, 1984, 1949 *

Horacio Quiroga, The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories, 1935 *

Ernest Seton-Thompson, Wild Animals I Have Known, 1898

William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, 1596 *

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, 1906

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, 1937 *

Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks and The Raid, 1862 *

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, 1862

Don Armando Palacio Valdes, Maximina, 1888 *

H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898

Sloan Wilson, Ice Brothers, 1979

Non-Fiction:

Arthur Bremer, An Assassin's Diary, 1973

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, 1970

Allan R. Buss, Individual Differences: Traits and Factors, 1976 *

FC, Industrial Society & Its Future, 1995 *

Norman Cousin, Modern Man is Obsolete, 1945
Robert V. Daniels, Red October, The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, 1967 **

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of the Species, 1859

L. Sprague De Camp, Ancient Engineers, 1960 *

Bernard DeVoto, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1953

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1964 *

H.J. Eysenck, Sense and Nonsense in Psychology, 1957 *

Richard Flacks, Making History, 1988

patrician desu

George W. Scotter & Halle Flygare, Wildflowers of the Canadian Rockies, 1986 **

Food and Nutrition Board, Recommended Dietary Allowances, 1974 *

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930

Euell Gibbons, Handbook of Edible Wild Plants, 1979 *

Richard Gombin, The Radical Tradition, 1978*

Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized

System, 1956 *

Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, 1992

Robert Gurr, Violence in America, Vol I & II, 1979, 1989 *

Osborne Russell & Aubrey L. Haines, Journal of a Trapper, 1965 *

William Least Heat-Moon, PrairyErth, 1993

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951 *

Henry Jacobwitz, Electronics Made Simple, 1958 *
Glen R. Johnson, Tracking Dog, 1975 *

Kenneth Keniston, The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society, 1966

Horace Kephart, Camping and Woodcraft, 1988 *
Irving Kohn, Meteorology for All, 1946 **

R.W,B. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, & Tradition in 19th

Century America, 1955

Tom McIver, Anti-Evolution: A Reader's Guide to Writings Before and After

Darwin, 1992 **

Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1848

Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, 1964

Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa, 1928

Arthur P. Mendel, ed., Essential Works of Marxism, 1961 *

Jules Michelet, History of the French Revolution, 1967 *

Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women, 1976 *

David A. Conway and Ronald Munson, The Elements of Reasoning, 1990

National Rifle Association, The Basics of Rifle Shooting, 1987 *

M.H.A. Newman, Elements of the Topology of Plane Sets of Points, 1964 *

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, all too Human, 1878

Vaslav Nijinsky, Diary of Vaslav Nijinski, 1937

Evan Hendricks, Trudy Hayden, and Jack D. Novik, Your Right to Privacy,

1980 *

Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John

Brown, 1970

Betty Owen, Typing for Beginners, 1976 *

Anthony Gooch and Angela Garcia de Pareded, Spanish-English/

English-Spanish Dictionary, 1978 *

Lila Pargment, Beginner's Russian Reader, 1977 *

William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 1843 *
Richard Rhodes, The Inland Ground, 1969

Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods, 1942

David Riesman, Abundance for What?, 1964 *

Andrew Robinson, Lost Languages, 1957 *

Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, 1972

Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic, 1917

Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, 1947

J.W. Schultz, My Life as an Indian, 1935 *

E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973

Robert Silverberg, The Pueblo Revolt, 1970

Chandler S. Robbins, Bertel Brunn, Herbert S. Zim, & Arthur Singer, Field

Guide to North American Birds, 1966 **

Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, 1976 *

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1918

Micheal Spivak, Calculus On Manifolds, 1966

Walter Starkie, Raggle-Taggle: Adventures with a Fiddle in Hungary, 1933 *

William Strunk, Jr., Elements of Style, 1959 *

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883 *

United States Department of Justice, The Science of Fingerprints, 1973 *

Frank Waters, Book of Hopi, 1963

William Whyte, The Organization Man, 1956 *

William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain, 1925

Colin Wilson, The Outsider, 1956

I wonder what his fascination with languages is. He has a lot of books on a wide range of languages, notably several on Russian. Is it just a matter of interest (since after all he obviously has a life-long affair with books and learning) or is there a particular reason for this?

>Is it just a matter of interest (since after all he obviously has a life-long affair with books and learning) or is there a particular reason for this?
Are you retarded?

Nah, he was disinterested that's why he had those books.

I think you're the retarded one here. The user was asking why he specifically read books on language, which obviously had nothing to do with survival in nature, chemistry, technology etc.

To answer your question, he read about the Spanish language I believe both because his brother was a Spanish teacher for a while and because Ted himself had a penpal in Mexico who he often corresponded with in Spanish. As for Russian, it's unclear though he did read a great deal about Russian radical politics and the revolution there, and he discussed these subjects in interviews. Perhaps he wanted to read certain books in the original language. Though, perhaps a more obvious answer is that he spent close to 20 years barely working and spending the majority of his time alone by himself, so he may have just wanted to learn as much as he could about whatever subjects were available. I notice he read books about Latin, Chinese, Russian, Spanish and other languages.

>''I am no longer bothered by having crippled this guy. I laughed at the idea of having any compunction about crippling an airplane pilot.''

Stone cold nigga.

I'm not that guy but you're an asshole.

>I think you're the retarded one here.
How ironic.

>To answer your question, he read about the Spanish language I believe both because his brother was a Spanish teacher for a while and because Ted himself had a penpal in Mexico who he often corresponded with in Spanish.
>penpal
Pen pal is two words.

>"Pen pals (or penpals, pen-pals, penfriends or pen friends) are people who regularly write to each other, particularly via postal mail."

You got me. Now I'm mad.

If he weren't a hypocritical faggot he wouldn't have taken books that were made with modern printing technology, he wouldn't have used telephones to express condolences to his mum, and he wouldn't keep correspondence with people using the postal service that relies on the automobiles he claims to loathe.

He's just a smegma stain like the rest of us.

Except there's literally nothing wrong with being a hypocrite. It doesn't change anything that he wrote.

>wouldn't have used telephones

__________

On Ted's anger towards public payphones

>"Kaczynski wrote an angry letter in 1991 complaining that two pay phones didn't work and the phone company was "robbing the public." The phones weren't broken. "He didn't understand how they worked," says Bob Orr of Lincoln Telephone. "He came to the office. We gave him his dime back.""

__________

He could've deduced or read a book on how phones work but decided to stay ignorant. Yeah, this guy's a moron.

Hehe *high five*

"Das Kapital" was not published in 1848, but rather in 1867. What was published in 1848 was the Communist Manifesto, being a short, joint effort between Marx and Engels.

When people say "Das Kapital", they are usually simply referring to the first volume of a three volume series of books, the first of which was the only volume to be published during Marxs' lifetime. This is the book that I have referred to above. After Marx died in 1883, Engels gathered up Marxs' notes and prepared publication of volumes 2 and 3, posthumously. Despite this heroic piece of editing on Engels' part, all three books (of the Kapital trilogy) are credited only to Karl Marx.

Completing this trilogy was one of the last things that Engels did with his life. Capital, Volume 3 appeared for the first time in 1894, and Engels promptly dropped dead in 1895.

Just scrolled through this thread and I'd also like to add that you're a huge asshole.

Anyways, thanks for all the info OP. This has been a great read

>implying anyone has a choice but to use technology
>implying that's not what he means by the phrase "technological slavery" in the first place

And a communist who participate in the market economy is a hypocrite, and the libertarian who takes government money is a hypocrite, and...

Damn, wonder what his resignation letter to his academic position said

> no "Gravity's Rainbow"

step up, ted

Dubs checked.

It's too bad Veeky Forums wasn't around in his day. He would have fit right in, and maybe worked out his issues here, rather than via nail bombs.

It makes you wonder what happened there. She sounds like a pragmatic person. She was his direct supervisor and must surely have realized the complications involved with dating a subordinate and yet still felt compelled to break it off during the second date rather than later.

I mean, just how bad could it have been at his parents' farm?

OP, this is the best thread I've ever read on Veeky Forums. In context, that's damning with small praise but I would say the same even if we weren't posting in this den of debauchery.

As you've clearly read many sources on the subject of Kaczynski, I have a question or two if you'll permit me:

What would you do if you had a child in order to avoid the social disconnect that Kaczynski (damn these Polish names) suffered from?

Did his parents observe a religion?

Drop the trip, faggot.

THE FIELDS MEDAL

>nail bombs.
moderate kek

OP, another question: has Kaczynski even expressed an opinion on McVeigh? What did he say?

>Did his parents observe a religion?

Found the answer to this one, at least. Steven Dubner, the writer half of the "Freakonomics" duo, conducted interviews of David and Ted Kaczynski as well as David's wife, Linda Patrik, in 1999.

stephenjdubner.com/journalism/101899.html

>Ted and David's parents, Wanda and Theodore R. Kaczynski, were atheists, working-class intellectuals who valued education and dearly wanted their sons to succeed on a higher plane.

Not OP, but I've read a bit about him.

His parents, especially his father, pressured him from an early age to excel academically. His father wanted him to skip a grade and his father pressured him to accept a scholarship to Harvard so that he could have a successful son, not because he wanted what was best for Ted. At Harvard he lived in the same building as other prodigy types, and even among that crowd of children who had been pressured most of their lives to focus on academics he stood out as extremely focused and a-social.

Ted embodies the burn-out child prodigy. He was brilliant but his father drove him so hard that when he got to actually make decisions for himself, he decided to reject everything his parents wanted for him.

To avoid my son becoming like Kaczynski I would just let him decide what he wanted to do with his life. If Kaczynski had been allowed to have a real childhood he might have come to math on his own and done great work. A lot of the child prodigies you hear about are in the same situation as Kaczynski, and never accomplish anything significant in later life because it was never really their choice.

Anyway, thanks for one of the best threads I've seen on here. Makes me realize how much I hate all of the memes and shitposting.

I was a functioning Leftist who could have political conversations with people before I read his manifesto and realized he was describing me. And then began the reactionary years

Did Ted smoke cigs ?
Did he ever use recreational drugs?
Whats his opinion on them?

bump. keep going, OP