Joey Abely

11/11/2018

Dr. Drown

English – 122

 

Hiding… But from what?

 

A mastermind was born; the product of Harvard and the University of Michigan, Ted Kaczynski. Was he too smart for his own good?

How can someone hide for so long from highly paid professionals, the best the world has to offer, and not get caught? I explored many passages on the Unabomber over one main question, “How did he get away with sending these deadly packages for so long?”. This was a controversial topic based off of the many authors opinions. I learned through reading many of these articles and writings on the Unabomber by many different authors that not one writer will have the same opinion as the next. Their writings will differ greatly but the facts will stay the same. The only conclusion I can come to when reading all of these articles is he got away for so long by building a remote cabin in the middle of the woods and living there until he eventually was caught due to his own stupidity. He built the cabin because he knew that it was in an extremely remote wooded area that very few people traveled through. Also a driving force for building the cabin where he did was that there was a spot that he would go to, only about two miles away, that he enjoyed very much. He however couldn’t control the adaptations of humans and soon, due to nearby construction cutting down the forest, was coming in contact with hikers and hunters often. After coming in contact with a few he lessened his walks to his favorite spot. After not going to the spot for many months he decided he needed to go back. To his surprise and anger when he went back to the spot he was appalled to see that it has been destroyed and a roadway was now running straight through it, ““When I got there I found they had put a road right through the middle of it” His voice trails off; he pauses, then continues, “You just can’t imagine how upset I was. It was from that point on I decided that, rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on getting back at the system. Revenge. That wasn’t the first time I ever did any monkey wrenching, but at that point, that sort of thing became a priority for me.” (Kelly) he was outraged; he decided to then manifest a plan to get back at society which then he became uncareful and was caught some months later.

This is my conclusion to the answer of my question. I made many text to text connections and interpretations to put all of that together to figure out the downfall of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. But then a more relevant and essential question came into my mind, “ Since Ted Kaczynski did all of this out of the advancement of technology; what does it mean to be technologically free?”. According to the Unabomber he was enraged because, “It is not possible to make a lasting compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through repeated compromises. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that, within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it.” he wanted to break away from this pattern that he was sure would be the downfall of mankind. That is why the Unabomber was sending bombs all over the place trying to send his message across to the people off the world living around and with all of this technology. If he could have had it his way everyone would be living in shacks with no vehicles, no running water, no electricity, and nothing we have came to know today. He was so driven at this that when he was denied his manifesto publishing at the New York Times he knew that to be heard he had to become big.

He however was not the only one living like this at the time, there were people living off the grid in remote areas of the United States the exact same way he was with no running water, electricity, etc… . A popular place to live off the grid during that time was and is still Alaska. Alaska makes it easy to jump off grid, minimal government interference, small living style homes, and a small population made it easy to become a nobody in civilization. But what did these people living off the grid have to say about the Unabombers point he was trying to get across? Jack Levin an expert on serial killing at the University of Northeastern said, “It was the wrong decision…, It is short sighted. Do you think we would negotiate with Son of Sam? How about Jeffrey Dahmer? The problem is, it rewards a terrorist and it inspires dozens of wannabe serial killers.” and that was the problem indeed. The Unabomber did inspire many wanna be serial killers to do things like this to get their point across. Was this just an act of terrorism or an ingenious way of getting his manifesto finally published?