TrueLife - Technological Slavery: Ted Kaczynski’s Warning and the Rise of the Machine Mind (Reading #3)

Starting point is 00:00:01 Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

Starting point is 00:00:49 The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Oh, everybody. Hope your day's going awesome. The sun is shining, the birds are singing. We are in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic lockdown. Lockdown, Blade Runner, Total Recall, 1984, Brave New World.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Something like that. I hope that you guys can find a reason to smile. I hope you can find something to love, something to look forward to, and something to do. As for this podcast, we are getting into some more of the industrial society and its future, according to the writings of Theodore John Kaczynski, reading number three. This particular reading is going to be sources of social problems. However, I wanted to give you guys a little look ahead into some other interesting ideas that we'll be talking about. The Nature of Freedom, some principles of history.

Starting point is 00:02:20 Industrial technological society cannot be reformed. How about this? The restriction of freedom is unavoidable in industrial society. The bad parts of technology cannot be separated from the good parts. And is technology a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom? We're going to get into all that, ladies and gentlemen. Hope you're having a great day. Let's get started on some of the sources of social problems.

Starting point is 00:03:00 And I want you to think about as you are listening to this, do you agree, do you disagree? Is there more to add? Do you know people that are going through some of these things? Let's check them out. Here we go. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society. But in modern industrial society, they are present on a massive scale. We aren't the first to mention that the world.

Starting point is 00:03:30 world today seems to be going crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive societies. Abuse of women was common among the Australian Aborigines. transsexuality was fairly common among some of the American Indian tribes. But it does appear that generally speaking, the kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society.

Starting point is 00:04:19 We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that society requires people to live. under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved. That is for sure. And to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process as the most important of the abnormal conditions

Starting point is 00:05:03 to which modern society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems, we will discuss some of the other sources. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of,

Starting point is 00:05:26 population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change, and the breakdown of natural small-scale communities, such as the extended family, the village, or the tribe. I would agree with all of those. What do you guys think? I have normal conditions. Excessive density of population. Yes. Where I live, I live in Honolulu.

Starting point is 00:05:59 There's so many cranes downtown and they're just constantly building bigger, taller, newer buildings. And it's just becoming so dense. And I always think to myself, you know, as a delivery driver, I deliver to some of the new buildings, the construction sites, some of the older buildings. And I always speak to the doorman. Here's a, you know, I got a quick joke for you. Do you know the difference between a good building and a bad building? And for those of you that don't live in like a city, there's all these skyscrapers, okay? And there's really tall buildings and people are always wondering, is that a good building?

Starting point is 00:06:40 Is that a bad building? So do you know the difference between a good building and a bad building to live in? Anyone? A good building has a doorman. A bad building has a man at the door. Pretty classic, right? Anyways, I always talk to the guys at the front desk, and I ask them, especially in the new buildings, like, hey, who's buying all these things, man? And a lot of the times, the doorman, you know, he'll speak of, oh, well, you know, there's this celebrity that bought one, and then there's this person that bought one.

Starting point is 00:07:19 And I go, what? Is there a lot of, like, vacancy rates? and a lot of times there's really not that many vacancy rates and I got into a conversation a while back with a guy that says the majority of places being bought up in these high-rise and mind you these are not cheap high-rises these are like you know a million dollars for 800 square foot one bedroom overlook in the ocean

Starting point is 00:07:44 and it's a tower with like 800 units in it maybe a thousand units so a lot of these places are being bought by, you know, hedge funds or groups of people getting together to invest money and property. And then they can write it off later or, you know, they can put it in whatever they're going to put it in some sort of financial instrument. So there's all these people that don't even live there buying properties as an investment that they can maybe Airbnb or they can just rent out or. or just right off, you know, and as they do that, they're constantly driving up the price

Starting point is 00:08:27 and, you know, driving out the people. So it's right on par with his idea of excessive density of population. Also, isolation of man from nature. The more people are herded into cities, the more, you know, you get away from that connection of the planet, you get away from your connection of Earth. instead of being in the jungle, you're in the concrete jungle.

Starting point is 00:08:55 The rapidity of social change, the breakdown of natural small-scale communities. Although I would argue that in a weird way, there's a return to small-scale communities online, which is not the same in that there's no real visceral connection to family or traditions or stuff like that. However, it is sort of a small-scale community. Back to the book. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial societies were predominantly rural.

Starting point is 00:09:42 The industrial revolution vastly increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population. that lives in them. Additionally, modern agricultural technology has made it possible for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did before. Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers

Starting point is 00:10:10 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. If their use is restricted, people who use the devices are frustrated by the regulations. But if these machines had never been invented, there would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them. For primitive societies, the natural world, which usually changes only slowly, provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of security. In the modern world, it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other

Starting point is 00:10:56 way around. And modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus, there is no stable framework. The conservatives are fools. They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently, it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid drastic changes in technology and the economy of society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values. The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups.

Starting point is 00:11:46 I think that's important. Let's read that part again. the breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. beyond that, a technological society has to weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern society, an individual's loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a small-scale community. But if the internal loyalties of small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the system,

Starting point is 00:12:45 such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system. Yeah, that's something to think about. How many of you live in the community that you were raised in? You know, there's a lot of talk, at least in the U.S., there's a lot of talk about people moving to where the opportunities are, moving to an area that is more positioned for growth so that you can have a better life. Whereas before, a better life meant being around people you cared about and trusted that could help you take care of your family.

Starting point is 00:13:32 Right? And then I guess that's why you could also see the people waiting, you know, in today's society, people have less kids. People are waiting to be older to have kids. All in the idea of performing for the system. you know, we're, we're so caught up in, like, growth and, hey, everyone should be able to be, we should have, like, a gay person and then, like, a, a white person and a lesbian and, you know, every single minority should be able to be the president, you know, like, I don't think that

Starting point is 00:14:25 should be everybody's goal. Like, I don't want to be the president. Like, who cares what color or race or gender the president is. But we put so much, we put so much emphasis on like equality and like, hey, it's not fair that this person can't make as much money. It's such a narrow field to focus on.

Starting point is 00:14:47 Like, shouldn't we be focusing on everybody should have an equal opportunity to be happy or be forfeited.

Starting point is 00:15:03 filled instead of have a position at a workplace. It seems to me that that's like the focus of equality. Like we're not talking about equality of quality of life. We're talking about this person gets paid more money. You know, and then it just comes back to whenever we argue about shit like that, we're getting away from the fact that our society is collapsed. Yeah, I think there's more there. Suppose that a public official or a corporation executive appoints his cousin, his friend, or his uncle, to a position rather than appointing the person best qualified for the job.

Starting point is 00:16:00 Happens all the time? He has permitted personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system, and that is nepotism or discrimination, both of which are terrible sins in modern society. would be industrial societies that have done a poor job of subordinating personal or local loyalties to loyalty to the system are usually very inefficient. Look at Latin America. Thus, an advanced industrial society can tolerate only those small-scale communities that are emasculated, tamed, and made into tools of the system. Crowding, rapid change, and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as, sources of social problems.

Starting point is 00:16:44 But we do not believe that they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems to the

Starting point is 00:17:02 same extent as modern man. In America, today there still are uncrowded rural areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban areas. the problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas.

Starting point is 00:17:18 Thus, crowding does not seem to be the decisive factor. On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended families and small-scale social groups to at

Starting point is 00:17:36 least the same extent as there are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles, that they belong to no community at all, yet they do not seem to have developed problems as a result.

Starting point is 00:17:58 Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and deep. A man might be born and raised in a log cabin outside the reach of law and order and fed largely on wild meat. And by the time he arrived at old age, he might be working at a regular job and living in an ordered community with effective law enforcement. This was a deeper change than that which typically occurs in the life of a modern individual, yet it does not seem to have led to psychological problems. In fact, 19th century American society had an optimistic and self-confident tone, quite unlike that of today's society.

Starting point is 00:18:41 the difference we argue is that modern man has the sense largely justified that change is imposed on him whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense also largely justified that he created change himself

Starting point is 00:19:02 by his own choice I think that's a more true today than when this was written and that might actually be the divide between, say, the older generation and the newer generation. You know, a lot of people believe that they create the change. And a lot of those people are, in fact, you know, a lot of the boomers or a lot of the people that sit at the heads of corporations that, you know, they believe that they make the change

Starting point is 00:19:41 and maybe they do. however the majority of people have changed thrust upon them in those days an entire county might have only a couple of hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity than a modern county is hence the pioneer farmer participated as a member of a relatively small group in the creation of new ordered community one may well question whether the creation of this community was an improvement

Starting point is 00:20:20 but at any rate it satisfied the pioneers need for the power process it would be possible to give other examples of societies in which there has been rapid change and or lack of close community ties without the kind of massive behavioral aberration that is seen in today's industrial society

Starting point is 00:20:45 we contend that the most important cause of social and psychological problems in modern society is the fact that people have insufficient opportunity to go through the power process in a normal way. We don't mean to say that modern society is the only one in which the power process has been disrupted. Probably most, if not all, civilized societies have interfered with the power process to a greater or lesser extent. But in modern industrial society, the problem has become particularly acute.

Starting point is 00:21:26 Leftism, at least in its recent mid to late 20th century form, is in part a symptom of deprivation with respect to the power process. disruption of the power process in modern society. We divide human drives into three groups. One, those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort. Two, those that can be satisfied, but only at the cost of serious effort. And three, those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the process of satisfying

Starting point is 00:22:10 The drives of a second group, the more drives there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, and depression. In modern industrial society, natural human drives tend to be pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to consist increasingly of artificially created drives. in primitive societies physical necessities generally fall into group two they can be obtained but only at the cost of serious effort

Starting point is 00:22:49 but modern society tends to guarantee the physical necessities to everyone in exchange for only minimal effort hence physical needs are pushed into group one they may be disagreement about whether the effort needed to hold a job as minimal

Starting point is 00:23:06 but usually in lower to middle level jobs whatever effort is required is merely that of obedience you sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously and in any case you have hardly

Starting point is 00:23:26 any autonomy in work so that the need for the power process is not well served social needs such as sex love and status often remain in group two, in modern society, depending on the situation of the individual. But except for people who have a particularly strong drive for status,

Starting point is 00:23:49 the effort required to fulfill the social drives is insufficient to satisfy adequately the need for the power process. So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group two, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs, hence they fall into group two. Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely through pursuit of the artificial, needs created by the advertising and marketing industry and through surrogate activities.

Starting point is 00:24:43 Well, that is very sad. Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process, largely through the pursuit of the artificial needs created by advertising and marketing industries. It makes sense, right? Like when you think about how addicted we are to consuming, how we're constantly being just bombarded with advertisement and Black Friday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, graduation, congratulations. You know, Easter, like everything, including man, has become so commodified that we're just competing to gain status. You know, we're just competing for. You know, we're just competing

Starting point is 00:25:45 for artificial needs. I mean, it's no wonder our system is breaking down. You know, and here's something to think about, too. If you live in a first world country and you've traveled to a third world country, you realize how far ahead the industrial world is from some third world nations. You know, and it's sad,

Starting point is 00:26:20 if you really want to put things in perspective, think about how the lockdown is treating you and you know my heart goes out to everybody who's struggling right now or may have had somebody pass away in their family or or is a victim of any kind of abuse or anything like that

Starting point is 00:26:40 and has to go to some food lines or whatever but you know in this country we do have it seems like we are trying to provide food to people and resources Do you have any idea how this lockdown is going to decimate poor countries? Like, again, if you live in the first world country, we are so rich.

Starting point is 00:27:07 We have so much. So much so that the third world will never catch up to us. And like this is just going to exasperate. Like if you think about, like look at Elon Musk or Larry Ellison or any of the billionaires versus the common working person in United States. The common working person in United States is like the billionaire to a person living in sub-Saharan Africa. I think that's a pretty accurate description.

Starting point is 00:27:42 And so when you look at the world or you think about unfairness and you think about billionaires or whatever, just realize that you're kind of a billionaire. And for me, that's what I do sometimes. helps me to put things in perspective. Like sometimes it is going on these rabbit holes of like, man, this person has so much. And then I think, well, man, so do I compared to these people. It's a good rule of thumb to always think to yourself, compared to what?

Starting point is 00:28:10 This person has so much compared to what? This situation is like this compared to what? Like this, it's just, it's all relative, right? It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society. The purposelessness is often called by other names such as a neat enemy or middle class vacuity. vacuity. We suggest that the so-called identity crisis is actually a search for the sense of purpose,

Starting point is 00:29:08 often the commitment, often for commitment to a suitable surrogate activity. It may be that existentialism is in large part a response to the purplessness, purposelessness of modern life. Very widespread in modern society is the search for fulfillment. But we think that for the majority of people, an activity whose main goal is fulfillment, that is a surrogate activity, does not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment. In other words, it does not fully satisfy the need for the power process. The need can be fully satisfied only through activities that have external goals. goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing the status ladder, or

Starting point is 00:30:14 functioning as part of the system in some other way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals autonomously. Most workers are someone else's employee, and as we pointed out, must spend their days doing what they are told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even most people who are in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of small business persons that entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations are doubtless unnecessary.

Starting point is 00:31:00 But for the most part, government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago, and many of the franchise granting companies require applicants for franchisees to take a personality test that is designed to exclude those who have creativity and initiative. because such persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people who most need autonomy.

Starting point is 00:31:47 All right, let me just knock that part out again because I think that that is something you're not going to hear anywhere else. A large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that many of the franchise granting companies require applicants for franchises to take a personality test. That is designed to exclude those who have creativity and initiative because such persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the franchise system.

Starting point is 00:32:27 This excludes from social. small business, many of the people who most need autonomy. Today, people live more by virtue of what the system does for them or to them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides the opportunities must be exploited in accord with rules and regulations and techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of success. Thus, the power process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in the pursuit of goals.

Starting point is 00:33:23 But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that fall into group three. the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no matter how much effort one makes. One of these drivers, one of these drivers is the need for security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people. We have no control over these decisions, and usually we do not even know the people who make them.

Starting point is 00:33:56 We live in a world in which relatively few people, maybe 500 or 1,000 make the important decisions. Philip B. Heyman of Harvard Law School. Think about that for a minute. We live in a world in which relatively few people, 500 to 1,000,

Starting point is 00:34:17 make all the important decisions. Wow. Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear flower plant are properly maintained on how much pesticide allowed to get into our food or how much pollution into our air on how skillful or incompetent or our doctor is whether we lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by government economists or corporation executives and so forth most

Starting point is 00:34:52 individuals are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats to more than a very limited extent the individual's search for security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy, hence modern man suffers from less, not more, than the amount of insecurity that is normal for human beings. But psychological security does not closely correspond with physical security. makes us feel secure is not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our ability to

Starting point is 00:35:39 take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can't fight in self-defense or travel in search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The modern individual, on the other hand, is threatened by many things against which he is. is helpless. Nuclear accidents, carcinogens and food, environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large organizations, nationwide social or economic phenomena, and that may disrupt his way of life. It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the things that threaten him, disease, for example, but he can accept the risk of disease

Starting point is 00:36:30 stoically. It is part of the nature of things. It is no one's fault unless it is the fault of some imaginary and personal demon. But threats to the modern individual tend to be man-made. They are not the results of chance, but are imposed on him by other persons whose decisions he, as an individual, is unable to influence. Consequently, he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry. Thus primitive man, for the most part, has his security in his own hands, either as an individual or as a member of a small group, whereas the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or organizations that are too remote or too large for him to be personally to influence them. So modern man's drive for security tends to fall into groups, one and three. In some areas, food, shelter, etc., his security is assured at the cost of only trivial effort, whereas in other areas he cannot attain security.

Starting point is 00:37:44 The foregoing greatly simplifies the real situation, but it does indicate in a rough general way how the condition of modern man differs from that of primitive man. have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessarily frustrated in modern life, hence fall into group three. One may become angry, but modern society cannot permit fighting. In many situations, it does not even permit verbal aggression. When going somewhere, one may be in a hurry, or one may be in a mood to travel slowly, but But one generally has no choice but to move with the flow of traffic and obey the traffic signals.

Starting point is 00:38:31 One may want to do one's work in different ways, but usually one can work only according to the rules laid down by one's employer. In many other ways as well, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations, explicit or implicit, that frustrate many of his impulses and thus interfere with the power process. of these regulations cannot be dispensed with because they are necessary for the functioning of industrial societies. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system, we can generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like, as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system. We can go to bed with anyone we like as long as we practice quote unquote safe sex we can do anything we like as long as it is unimportant but in all important matters the system tends increasingly to regulate

Starting point is 00:39:30 our behavior that is so true it's it's this illusion of freedom you know it's this illusion of having choice and i think carlin goes over that pretty well when he talks about the illusion of choice You know, we have like three insurance companies and, you know, three different banks, but we have 28 different flavors of bagels. You could make a choice as long as it's an unimportant choice. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation. and by organizations other than government or by a system as a whole.

Starting point is 00:40:19 Most large organizations use some form of propaganda to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to commercials and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda, an example of indirect coercion. There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer's orders. Legally, there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild, like primitive people, or from going into business for ourselves.

Starting point is 00:40:54 But in practice, there is very little wild country left. And there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence, most of us can survive only as someone else's employee. We suggest that moderns... We suggest that modern man's obsession with longevity and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power process. The midlife crisis also is such a symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly common in modern society, but almost unhundred. heard of in primitive societies.

Starting point is 00:41:46 In primitive societies, life is a succession of stages. Excuse me. The needs and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment, but to get meat that is necessary for food. In young women, the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on social power. It won't discuss that part here.

Starting point is 00:42:21 This phase, having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of fulfillment. We suggest that fulfillment, we suggest that fulfillment, we suggest that. suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process. We suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities. Again, having successfully raised his children going through the power process by providing them with the physical necessities, the primit,

Starting point is 00:43:12 The primitive man feels that his work is done, and he is prepared to accept old age, if he survives that long, and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration, and death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expand in trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have been able to the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any practical use, have never gone through the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man who has never had a practical use for his body

Starting point is 00:44:02 beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man whose need for the power process has been satisfied during his life, who is best prepared to accept the end of that life. In response to the arguments of this section, someone will say, society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through the power process. This won't work for those who need autonomy in the power process. For such people, the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. what they need is to find or make their own opportunities.

Starting point is 00:44:43 As long as the system gives them their opportunities, it still has them on a leash. To attain autonomy, they must get off that leash. Wow. How is that for a chapter? So much truth in that. So much psychology. So much philosophy. So much understanding.

Starting point is 00:45:06 So much discipline. And so much truth. I think it speaks to the heart of so much of the issues we have in our world today. And the fact that we don't talk about that kind of stuff, that we just slap a technological band-aid over it. You know, we try and we try to solve all these issues under the guise of fairness and equality. Like we're running from the very thing that would free us. And the longer we stay in it, the longer we allow the guise of technology to give us a false sense of hope, like the worst we're going to be.

Starting point is 00:45:58 You know, I think I talked about it a little bit on the last podcast. However, if you look at humanity over the, maybe the last thousand years, it just seems like we are becoming this domesticated animal. you know, and I know for a fact in the last podcast I talked about nonviolent behavior and how that is that is drilled into kids at a young age and, you know, how political correctness and, you know, all these behaviors that are supposed to make us better humans are really just making us more obedient slaves. And that, you know, I, I moved to Hawaii in 06, and I was amazed at the different cultural values. I think that Hawaii still is on some level like a warrior culture. And I think being over here in some ways has changed the level of my understanding of life in a lot of ways. You know, they heard a good quote one time that said, you know, live in New York once before it makes you hard.

Starting point is 00:47:21 live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. However, in New York, like, there's a hardness of sarcasm. There's a hardness of voice. There's a hardness of anger and animosity. But in Hawaii, there's a hardness of, like, violence. And I think that's true in a lot of cultures that haven't really been under the Western system. Like, look, there's a hierarchy.

Starting point is 00:48:05 And the hierarchy isn't the guy in glasses that can write code. The hierarchy is the big guy that'll beat the living shit out of you and your fucking family. Like, the strong man. And, you know, the Bill Gates and the Larry Ellison's

Starting point is 00:48:22 and the Elon Musk's, these people can only rule the world as long as there are no strong men. Like, those guys would be murdered. or locked up in monasteries to count beans and do other things that was what happened in the Middle Ages. You know, we had all these philosophers and scientists that were behind the scenes making discoveries. And on the flip side, you had knights out just smashing people over the heads. I guess we have that in some ways today with the military going around the world, however.

Starting point is 00:48:56 You know, I could foresee a time when, when, you know, you could argue that right now is the return of the strong man. If you look at Bolsonaro, Trump, and Erdogan and Putin, and, you know, it's almost like we're returning to this, okay, we're done with this more gentler, kindler world of, of globalism to help everybody out. it's going to be great. And now you're seeing a sort of return to militant nationalism where like the middle class is beginning to rise up again and just say, look, we're not doing this. You're taking all our shit. You've taken all these things from our country and you've given them to your friends and you've raised up this country out of poverty.

Starting point is 00:49:45 But at what cost? At bringing down this country? It's like the great mediocrity. Like on some levels it seems to me. that the goal of globalism is to produce a world mediocrity of, let's just have everything be mediocre. Let's just have it all be okay. And there won't ever be a fight.

Starting point is 00:50:06 We'll never be at war. Like, and it's just so, it's so naive to me. Like the longer you put, it's like a toothache. The longer you put it off, the worse it's going to be. And people will go along to get along for a long time until they don't. And I think that's what we're seeing right now with this election, with what's going on in Poland and Hungary, and what's going on around the world is beginning to be this backlash of, okay, we tried that, it didn't work, now we're going to do it our way. Well, that's what I got for today, you guys. I love you.

Starting point is 00:50:46 And I hope you're getting out of this book, some of the things I'm getting out of it. I think it's incredibly fascinating. There's so much in here. Again, I don't agree with everything that's in there, but, you know, I, I don't think anybody should agree with everything. I remember this guy Luther told me, if everybody always agrees someone's bullshit. Well, that's what I got for you guys today, and we're going to keep knocking this thing out. Tomorrow we're going to get into how some people adjust to these stress factors and these new ideological battle lines that are being drawn. So we got for today.

Starting point is 00:51:27 As always, tell your friends you love them. I hope you have something to look forward to, something to do, and someone to love. Aloha.

TrueLife - Technological Slavery: Ted Kaczynski’s Warning and the Rise of the Machine Mind (Reading #3)

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