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Is The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society And Its Future Worth Reading?

2026-01-13 06:27:01

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3 Answers

Freya

Reading the manifesto by Kaczynski called “Industrial Society and Its Future” is like holding a live wire – it’s very electrifying but also very dangerous. The critique of industrialization by Kaczynski is not completely new – as I already mentioned in the review of “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences” by Rousseau, and in the review of “Walden” by Thoreau. But what Kaczynski does in a very systematic way is so convincing on many points of alienation of modern man and the destruction of environment by industrial society, that one wants to retract his justification of violence in the manifesto.

Even if you’re only into philosophy or sociology this is worth a read just for the impact that it has had on culture. And yet, reading it is NOT comforting. Reading this alongside something more hopeful like ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ shows that critique doesn’t have to be destructive. This manifesto is a warning – not just to our society but to how easily even the most profound insight can curdle into fanaticism.

2026-01-14

Owen

It is a dense, often unsettling book, but it has been relevant to a increasing technologically-dependent world since it was written. I read it whilst deep into a critical- examination-of-modernity book (sorry I’ve forgotten the exact title) and some of the passages have remained etched into my brain ever since. For a man who engages in acts of extreme and shocking violence the Unabomber makes some very penetrating observations about how technology is able to strip people of their humanity. The big warning flag he raised was the extent to which we are dependent upon a complex array of systems. But his solution was of a radical, and ultimately completely morally defensible, kind of extremity that it is almost like watching a trainwreck – you can look away from the details of the crash, but the end result is horrific.

So, with caveats, I can recommend this. Take the context of violence out of it and treat it as a sort of novel to get you to think about some of the anxieties that we feel but do not quite articulate. It is best read as a sort of dark mirror of our present fears and to counterbalance it with something like The Shallows by Nicholas Carr would be excellent. It is not a ‘how-to’ manual; it is a rather extreme and ultimately repugnant solution to a set of problems with which we are all familiar.

2026-01-16

Ursula

I read the Unabomber Manifesto with a mix of morbid curiosity and trepidation. Although it was sometimes difficult to follow, the end result of reading the book was a pounding headache – not because the writing was particularly confusing, but because the arguments presented in the book are so extreme and pose such a challenge to the reader to consider them that by the end I was simply exhausted by the whole thing.

It is a very thought-provoking work, which I did not ‘enjoy’ in the sense that it is not an easy read. But it is a good read if you can handle some pretty tough thoughts. Read it with a critical eye, for it is a kind of Rorschach test for people’s thoughts about technology and progress.

2026-01-19

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