THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509230049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
FAILURE. A debilitating sense of failure underscores every carefully chosen word, every argument that he writes. Though intelligent and well-educated, he managed to fail: Maybe he flunked his Ph.D. oral exams; or conducted ill-conceived research, derived unsubstantiated results. But somehow he did not make the grade. And so the educational system, the university, rejected him as inferior. He failed. Grievously injured, he fights back.
The killer known as the ``Unabomber'' prompted quite an ethical debate last week when The Washington Post, in concert with The New York Times, published his 35,000-word manifesto for revolution against America's industrial-technological society.
Having killed three people and injured 23 others in mail bombings during the past 17 years, the Unabomber offered in June - not to be outdone by the Oklahoma City bombing - to stop killing if The Post or The Times would print his unaltered statement within three months. If ignored, he threatened to kill again.
I did not support The Post's decision to yield to the Unabomber's terrorist demands and do not see a true distinction (suggested by editors) between publishing his 232-paragraph, 36-footnote analysis as an eight-page supplement, as was done, or as``news'' in the main broadsheet. Print is print.
But having read every word of the manifesto, I now see some value in the newspapers' capitulation: The Unabomber will soon be caught; indeed, he wants to be caught. His statement is a giant Rorschach test that can, and will, be interpreted by psychology experts. To this end, with obvious disclaimers, I offer my own personality profile of the alienated and depressed Unabomber, a man steeped in ``failure'':
His field is psychobiology or logic, perhaps both. He numbers his paragraphs, writes in precise but uncreative language. He presents a lot of ``evidence'' about the world's troubles, but offers few solutions, mostly qualifications and doubts. And a general call for social disorder.
He considers himself a student of human behavior and repeatedly alludes, with some uncertainty, to conflicts between ``nature'' and ``nurture,'' reason and emotion. He prides himself on rationality, but his thinking is often simplistic, his treatment of opposing claims, which he recognizes and articulates, dismissive.
For example, he broadly states that ``19th century American society had an optimistic and self-confident tone,'' then concedes in a footnote: ``Yes, we know that 19th century America had its problems, and serious ones, but for the sake of brevity we have to express ourselves in simplified terms.''
His basic premise, neither uncommon nor unpopular, posits that post-industrial civilization has rendered man obsolete, dependent, unfulfilled and weak. Rousseau's ``noble savage,'' once in command of his own survival, now needs material consumption, shallow mass-media entertainment and anti-depressants to live - just as the technophiles planned.
``The Industrial Revolution and its consequences,'' he writes, ``. . . have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering . . . and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation.''
He dabbles in history and philosophy, does not know art, literature or law, and has a more than passing acquaintance with the sciences, but he is not a real scientist. He likely has been told this and resents it. He scoffs at scientists' claims that they are motivated by ``curiosity'' - which someone may have criticized him for lacking - or by a desire to ``benefit humanity.''
Science, he reasons, is just another human ``surrogate activity,'' an activity with an ``artificial goal,'' often that of selfish intellectual fulfillment. Industrial-technological society has stripped human beings of their ``power process,'' the process whereby they set, strive for and attain true survival goals - food, water, clothing, shelter, sex - that reward them with autonomy. He believes freedom has been severely compromised; individual power lost to the system.
The Unabomber calls for gradual erosion of industrial society and a return to Nature, to ``wildness'' and a ``hand-to-mouth existence,'' an Eden free of human management, regulation and control. But his concept of nature is hopelessly romantic; his understanding of human evolution minimal. (``Most people will agree that nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous appeal.'') Though he empathizes with radical environmentalists, he is not one of them.
Writing in the first-person plural, he seeks to elevate himself, and often seems like a parent instructing a child. Other times, he seems an unhappy child, tied to the same ``psychological leash'' that allegedly binds the ``oversocialized leftists,'' especially academics, whom he reproaches. I suspect that his father was a university scientist, a Ph.D., not an M.D. - his understanding of medicine is rudimentary - a chemist, physicist or engineer.
Repeatedly, he speaks of children being ``forced to study.'' He writes: ``No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects most of them hate.'' The FBI believes the Unabomber, in his 40s or 50s, grew up in Illinois. The University of Chicago, known for its high-caliber, no-nonsense academics, would be a good place to search for his father, perhaps during the heady nuclear-power days of the 1940s and '50s. (He cites nuclear physicist Edward Teller, who worked with Enrico Fermi at Chicago in the early 1940s and went to Berkeley to teach physics in 1958.)
He refers to both child and spouse abuse, differentiating between egregious acts that are unforgivable and less violent acts that he views as discipline and a consequence of industrial-technological stress. He lacks a female perspective, but is respectful of women. He makes no references to sports.
He disdains race-based affirmative action, perhaps feeling ``victimized'' by such policy, and attacks it as ``leftist'' paternalism and hypocrisy. He inordinately fears genetic engineering, perhaps because of his interest in psychobiology, but also because of his physical proximity to ongoing research. The FBI suspects he lives in the Berkeley area of San Francisco. The university may have rejected him. He has twice bombed the Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.
He reads science fiction and comic books (``Holy robots!'' he exclaims), popular science magazines and newspapers. He plays chess, may smoke and could be a recovered alcoholic. Certainly he knows the addiction rhetoric. He is not religious. He is rational man. Humorless. Always correct.
The Unabomber claims he has used violence to break through ``psychological restraints,'' through powerlessness and low self-esteem brought on by technological advances that have undermined his humanness. But his real quarrel is with leftists - white, upper-middle-class university intellectuals who have been socialized to ``think, feel and act morally,'' a burden they then have imposed on their ``inferiors.''
The truth is the Unabomber is a failed nerd. And he wants to come home.
MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is a lawyer, the book editor for The Virginian-Pilot
and an amateur detective.
by CNB