Motus Mentis

I ought to have noted the death, last Saturday, of the mathematician and terrorist Theodore “Unabomber” Kaczynski, who died last Saturday at the age of 81.

From Wikipedia:

He was a mathematics prodigy, but abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive lifestyle. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski murdered three individuals and injured 23 others in a nationwide mail bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the natural environment. He authored Industrial Society and Its Future, a 35,000-word manifesto and social critique opposing industrialization, rejecting leftism, and advocating for a nature-centered form of anarchism.

I’ve never read his 1995 manifesto, but I think I will do so now. Those I know who have read it tell me that he understood, at a profound human level, the problem of modernity; that he was NRx “avant la lettre”. It’s a pity he ruined it all: as much as one might like to, one simply cannot approve of mailing bombs to people.

You can find a copy of his manifesto here.