The myth of progress manifested in tool form.

“Wilderness can be saved permanently,” claims Ted Kaczynski, “only by eliminating the technoindustrial system.” I am beginning to think that the neo-environmentalists may leave a deliciously ironic legacy: proving the Unabomber right.

The Unabomber opens his book with these four premises, which the author of the Orion article agrees with. Kingsworth describes reading the Unabomber and how he found himself agreeing with him.

Here are the four premises with which Kaczynski begins the book:

1. Technological progress is carrying us to inevitable disaster.
2. Only the collapse of modern technological civilization can avert disaster.
3. The political left is technological society’s first line of defense against revolution.
4. What is needed is a new revolutionary movement, dedicated to the elimination of technological society.

The above quote is from an Orion Magazine article by Paul Kingsworth. Link to the whole article below.

Another quote from this great article:

“Romanticizing the past” is a familiar accusation, made mostly by people who think it is more grown-up to romanticize the future. But it’s not necessary to convince yourself that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers lived in paradise in order to observe that progress is a ratchet, every turn forcing us more tightly into the gears of a machine we were forced to create to solve the problems created by progress. It is far too late to think about dismantling this machine in a rational manner—and in any case who wants to? We can’t deny that it brings benefits to us, even as it chokes us and our world by degrees. Those benefits are what keep us largely quiet and uncomplaining as the machine rolls on, in the words of the poet R. S. Thomas, “over the creeds and masterpieces”:

The machine appeared
In the distance, singing to itself
Of money. Its song was the web
They were caught in, men and women
Together. The villages were as flies
To be sucked empty.
God secreted
A tear. Enough, enough,
He commanded, but the machine
Looked at him and went on singing.

Another quote from the Orion piece:

We are not gods, and our machines will not get us off this hook, however clever they are and however much we would like to believe it.

civilization is going to collapse, so what to do w/ourselves?

I don't agree with Kaczinsky's criminal attempt to harm people he believe were contributing to our collapse but I agree with what Kingsworth:  Kacinsky was onto something right.