From 1978 to 1995, the Freedom Club (FC) sent bombs through the mail, to universities and airlines, triggering an FBI investigation named UNABOM.

In an agreement that would end the bombings, the “manifesto” of the Freedom Club, Industrial Society and its Future, was published in the New York Times and the Washington Post in 1995.

The goal of Theodore Kaczynski and the Freedom Club was to tear down modern technology, so that society could return to a dignified, free existence, comparable to 1800s frontier society in the US. It was argued that industrial society is all-consuming and constantly encroaching, so people couldn’t ever choose to have just some of it.

The essay makes some compelling points about the meaning of life and the structure of our society; and was clearly formulated over many years of thought, by a man with a strong academic background − Kaczynski was an assistant professor of mathematics. I think it’s intellectually dishonest that the common response to Kaczynski is simply that the essay is a “manifesto” of a crazy person; and therefore it doesn’t justify debate. It’s logically coherent and free of any contradictions (at least, in my interpretation) − something that cannot be said for every current, popular world-view being followed.

After reading the essay recently, it was puzzling to me why it didn’t attract more followers − why haven’t we seen anyone else joining the Freedom Club and bringing down airlines for instance? It’s not like airlines do a great job at keeping their passengers happy or even treating them like human beings. Upon trawling the Internet and speaking to people, all I could find was “the Unabomber is a terrorist, so he’s wrong."

How to Disagree by Paul Graham

Surrogate Activities

The central argument of Kaczynski / FC is that modern life is meaningless; and people must adopt “surrogate activities” to avoid depression and hopelessness. Such a theme is echoed by psychologist Eric Fromm in his 1941 work, Escape from Freedom, where he argues that since it’s no longer a challenge to stay alive, our natural threshold of fear goes unsatisfied and drives us insane, unless we become alcoholics; workaholics; or generally distract ourselves in some way from the overwhelming amount of freedom we have.

Kaczynski’s response to the overbearing freedom is to purge technology so that we’ll again have a challenging life where it’s difficult to stay alive and where we’ll be able to fulfill our psychological “power struggle” reminiscent of Nietzsche’s will to power − Kacyznski himself moved to a cabin without electricity or water.

Ted Kaczynski stands outside his cabin near Lincoln, Montana, in June 1972.

Even if most people in industrial-technological society were well satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed to that form of society, because (among other reasons) we consider it demeaning to fulfill one’s need for the power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an organization, rather than through pursuit of real goals.

It’s debatable for me whether keeping oneself alive the hard way is a “real” goal, but anyway, it’s hard to deny that many people absorb into their identity, their love of some particular group. Maybe even a group that’s pursuing a surrogate activity, like a sporting team.

If we consider “useful jobs”, then that’s still no safe-haven from criticism − Price’s Law finds that 50% of the productive work in a population is done by the square root of the population. In a company of 100, there will be 10 people producing just as much as the other 90!! This law alone implies that many people must have bullshit, meaningless jobs.

Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society.

Opiod overdoses in the US are on the same scale as COVID deaths.

It is hard to argue against Kaczynski’s claim that many modern humans live meaningless lives, but I disagree with how he classifies real goals vs surrogate activities. His most debatable classification is when he discusses why scientists are motivated in their work:

The “benefit of humanity” explanation doesn’t work any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race most of archaeology or comparative linguistics for example. Some other areas of science present obviously dangerous possibilities. Yet scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as those who develop vaccines or study air pollution.

It’s really two claims he’s making here:

1. Curiosity Isn’t Really Fulfilling

In his 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, psychologist Abraham Maslow identified a ranking of psychological desires that humans feel compelled to conquer:

If we were to return to frontier society with nothing more advanced than a blacksmith, then we’d arguably be stuck in the deficiency needs section of the pyramid. Kaczynski agrees that later goals are happening, but that they just don’t count as real goals. On this distinction, I don’t feel that he provides adequate justification; and I have the view that self-actualisation is indeed a real goal. Kaczynski talks about evolution and natural selection; that academic pursuits are not biologically ingrained in us, but I feel that such goals were always there and that we just haven’t been able to satisfy the earlier needs, so few people ever got to the stage of thinking much about transcendence.

2. Advancement of the Human Race Isn’t a Real Goal

I would perhaps go as far as inserting an extra need into Maslow’s pyramid: the need for the advancement of mankind, which I’d put just below Transcedence. There is an undeniably large population who express concern for the survival of the planet; and for the powerful who aren’t part of this group, they often seem more interested in greed, so these powerful people might not actually be at the stage of self-actualisation − their contributions are only going to enrich themselves and not really leave a mark as a great thinker or someone who society would be proud of.

Of course, it’s possible that my identification with any pro-environment or pro-humanity agenda is because I’m a raging leftist:

The leftist seeks to satisfy his need for power through identification with a social movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph 83). But no matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the leftist is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate activity (see paragraph 41). That is, the leftist’s real motive is not to attain the ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated by the sense of power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a social goal.

Another perspective on the need to advance mankind is the Gaia Hypothesis of chemist James Lovelock. The theory is that the world is a self-regulating system, with its various organisms inadvertently serving a higher purpose of keeping the Earth alive, for the eventual creation of superintelligent beings, probably robots. In this theory, humans are the creators of the superintelligent robots (or at least, the precursor robots).

The world has indeed evolved from the early thermo-acido-philic and methanogenic bacteria towards the oxygen-enriched atmosphere today that supports more complex life. The ensuing Great Oxidation Event resulted in the Oxygen-producing cyanobacteria causing the mass exctinction of Paleoproterozoic organisms; and it also cooled the planet.

By Lovelock’s hypothesis, our progression towards superintelligent AI is a goal of Gaia (and therefore as natural as the evolution of apes to humans); whereas Kacyznski feel the creation of superintelligent AIs is unnatural and undesirable:

As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and as machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more and more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machine off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

Here, Kaczynski makes a compelling prediction of the future that has similarities in Cloud Atlas and perhaps Black Mirror. For me, it’s a much more convincing scenario than the idea of killer robots getting out of control; a theory being pushed in the UN.

Although I see it as plausible, I also think that it’s avoidable: it has been described in Keeping Governments Relevant in the Web3 Era, how open-source software can allow end users to collaborate in the wide-reaching systems powering society. If they wanted less involvement in the system, then the advances in software and robotics are allowing greater self-suffciency, through the use of robotic assistants. I have a broad interpretation of what it means to be a cyborg and I would see exoskeletons and brain implants to be not too different to the use of a wristwatch; a calendar; or even a pair of socks. I’d be surprised if Kaczynski wasn’t wearing socks, in his isolated cabin.

Image: © Simon Stålenhag http://www.simonstalenhag.se/

If the advancement of humanity was not a real goal and did not exist in my proposed spot within Maslow’s Hierarchy, then it would imply that someone could reach the top of the pyramid, to Übermensch status, while holding a desire to destroy the world, like The Joker perhaps. But where is such a character? The evil geniuses we see in Batman or the Powerpuff Girls just don’t exist in the real world.

By contrast, improving the world; and even building new worlds, is a phenomenally popular activity − Sim City; The Sims; Spore; and Eve Online were all sensationally popular games, paving the way for more modern titles like Second Life and Animal Crossing.

By playing world-building games, does it inspire people and move them towards self-actualisation; or is it a downward-spiral depression mechanism, like sleeping all day? Sure some people die during a video-game addiction, but that’s Starcraft. Nobody was getting anxiety, stressing about the cost of rent for their Sims family − those people owned their home!

Life hack right here!

Industrial Society is Not Serving Human Needs

Kaczynski disparages economic growth as a pointless goal that diverges from human needs. Humans are meant to be protected by constitutional rights, but such rights are a bourgeois conception of freedom:

According to the bourgeois conception, a “free” man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of the individual. Thus the bourgeois’s “free” man has economic freedom because that promotes growth and progress; he has freedom of the press because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders; he has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserved liberty only if they used it to promote progress (progress as conceived by the bourgeois).

Not only is the system disrespectful to human rights, it’s disrespectful to the environment:

It is not at all certain that survival of the system will lead to less suffering than breakdown of the system would. The system has already caused, and is continuing to cause, immense suffering all over the world. Ancient cultures, that for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory relationship with each other and with their environment, have been shattered by contact with industrial society, and the result has been a whole catalogue of economic, environmental, social and psychological problems.

People campaigning to end Aboriginal deaths in custody. Image: David Jackmanson

When nations aggressively pursue GDP growth without accounting for environmental damage, or even thinking about the mental health of their citizens, then it becomes easier to agree with Kaczynski’s claim that the system is causing worldwide suffering. It’s hopeful to see that Bhutan, Iceland and New Zealand are explicitly integrating a Happiness Index, alongside GDP.

On the point of environmental suffering, it’s reassuring that there’s been progress holding companies to account for the environmental damage they’re wreaking, but the rise of carbon offsets as a way out is resulting in polluters continuing their bad behaviour. Cory Doctorow compares them to papal indulgences: can’t I just keep amassing gold off the back of the peasants and then pay to get my camel through the eye of the needle?

It’s already sufficiently difficult to measure the suffering being imposed by the polluter, but now we’re also supposed to measure the benefit provided elsewhere; and hope that the money : destruction exchange rate is exactly right. Doctorow highlights that the fundamental premise of carbon offsets is that capitalism is the solution.

The market is rife for abuse and inherently when we pay for someone to plant a tree, it’s land that someone else in the past must have cleared − whether it was the current owner or even someone as far back as the indigenous owners.

“Even when carbon offsets are real – when an actual forest slated for logging was spared thanks to offsets – they are apt to fail, as when that forest is destroyed in climate-change-created wildfires.” − Cory Doctorow

Where Doctorow stops short of Kaczynski’s methods for change, Kim Stanley Robinson is prepared to edge a bit closer, in The Ministry for the Future, where he writes about fictional characters taking matters into their own hands: launching sulphur into the atmosphere or carrying out terrorist attacks against those perceived to be guilty of climate destruction.

What Starts as Optional, Becomes Less So

Kaczynski argues that we can’t have just a bit of technology, because it has a habit of encroaching uninvited throughout society:

When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s freedom of locomotion.

When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one’s own pace; one’s movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional.

Since the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker’s freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway.

It’s easy to agree that in much of the anglophone Western world, your participation in society depends on a car. In this chart from City Monitor, we can see the full extent of the problem − for its population, Sydney and Melbourne are more walkable / cyclable than their North-American counterparts, but nowhere close to China or continental Europe. As explained by Climate Town, car-dependent suburban sprawl is uneconomical to maintain and results in a poor quality of life.

Since Kaczynski’s essay in 1995, we can also see how email addresses have become required (how good is email btw 💕💌💞); and in South Korea, even plastic surgery is now required. In this documentary, we see that even to get a job as a marketer, a straight man feels pressured into getting plastic surgery:

Kaczynski argues that it’s naïve to think that we can phase out technology smoothly; and that “technophiles” will fight stubbornly at every step. We can see that this is very much true for fossil fuels; and even for radon makeup, people were still using it, while knowing that it probably wasn’t so good for their long-term health. Going by Kaczynski’s logic, we should only predict an increase in the popularity of plastic surgery in South Korea.

Perhaps we can agree with Kaczynski that technological change is inevitable; and that it’s hard to resist it. Those who oppose it inevitably get stepped on; and afterwards, it’s not like anybody has any sympathy for those who got in the way.

Technological Progress Impacts Traditional Values

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 the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

Perhaps the most relatable example of technology enabling a breakdown of values is when it comes to reproductive biology. By giving women the power to readily avoid pregnancy, the contraceptive pill allowed women to have multiple sexual partners without being caught; and even if they stayed faithful, they could delay their decision to “fully commit” (by having a child). Email allows women to easily tell their friends that they’re in an abusive relationship and that they’re having trouble escaping; and computer vision could take it one step further, detecting people in abusive relationships without them explicitly having to emit messages from a potentially compromised computing device.

How Uber secretly lobbied for women to drive in Saudi Arabia

The System Gradually Removes Freedoms

In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then each of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a one-millionth share in making the decision.

… Thus most individuals are unable to influence measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. There is no conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society. The system tries to “solve” this problem by using propaganda to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for them, but even if this “solution” were completely successful in making people feel better, it would be demeaning.

… Need more technical personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. 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. When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo “retraining,” no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity.

In terms of forcing children into a constrained way of life, we’ve previously explored this concept in Children Who Almost Exist. The conclusion there was that people only care about human suffering when it’s children who are suffering; and that children are forced into an education system whose incentives are barely connected to market pressures, resulting in useless schools being propped up, so they can continue wasting decades of people’s lives.

Kaczynski’s example of people being encouraged to study science is evidently true, although he didn’t explicitly predict the latest trend, where it’s only females being encouraged into the field − searching for variations of STEM or study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), you’ll see countless images of female engineers or female students, noticeably outweighing the number of males. This is despite the fact that in reality, women make up 13% of the US engineering workforce. For those unaware of the backstory, the justification for the skewed advertising is that women should represent 50% of the engineering population; and that showing more female engineers will encourage girls into the field.

Ada Twist, Scientist is a 2016 children’s picture book written by Andrea Beaty and illustrated by David Roberts. The story was well received and praised for encouraging children, especially girls, to develop an interest in STEM. The book also received a television series adaptation in 2021 − Wikipedia

The point about removing freedoms and forcing conformity is further elaborated and leads to an ultimate prediction of most humans being subjugated:

It is NOT in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent.

… the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite — just as it is today, but with two differences.

Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race.

They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

While considering these arguments, readers might be thinking of Google; Jeff Bezos; or Bill Gates, but it’s important to point out that Kaczynski is relying on his assertion discussed earlier, that technology necessarily falls into the hands of some sort of global mega-corp like IBM or Tyrell Corporation.

Image: James Gilleard

We earlier refuted Kaczynski’s claim, by pointing to the the autonomy enabled by robotic assistants and open-source software. We’ve also seen that in the last few decades, a big & powerful megacorp has less of a guaranteed fate. Clayton Christensen’s 1997 work, The Innovator’s Dilemma has been “one of the most − if not the most − important books chronicling how innovation takes place”. It describes how large, incumbent companies become stale in their thinking; and that their employees are incentivised to play it safe rather than to innovate. Large corporations inevitably have internal gatekeepers; the employees have little vested interest in a world-changing idea generated internally; plus there’s the fact that the organisation will be governed by Price’s Law, such that most of the employees are doing useless busy-work.

There are prescient examples of large companies being slow to change; and falling by the wayside: Kodak, Nokia, Blackberry and sometimes even Google.

By making ourselves open to innovation; and quickly adapting to new technological realities, we can avoid ending up in Kaczynski’s prediction of a soulless society run by technological giants draining us of free-will. It’s more than just robots and open-source software though − we must be able to quickly adapt our institutions and power structures. One of the greatest advantages for Australia is ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to choose new parties, without “wasting” their vote between the more presumed showdown between large incumbent #1 vs large incumbent #2. Australia is well-positioned to elect governments that will guide us into innovation; and out of the fatalistic charade predicted by Kaczynski. An even faster process for institutional change is Nationality as a Service.

The System Becomes Bland

A corollary of the conformity to the system is that society will end up lacking in variety. If people are constrained in their ability to innovate or even to be different, then they’ll keep churning out the same ideas and products.

Most workers are someone else’s employee and, as we pointed out in paragraph 61, 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 and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. …

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.

“These are four major business districts in Sydney, Santiago, London, and Frankfurt … which is where?" − well Sydney is probably the one that’s the most dead.

For Australia, this uniformity is especially concerning − in the 2018-19 financial year, our simple economy was relying on tourism as its 4th largest export, employing 5% of the national workforce. What’s the point of visiting Australia if it’s going to be the same as anywhere else though? Visiting any city, it can look much the same. One can visit an art gallery and see the same modern art that has been shilled for tax writeoffs; visit a zoo and see the same depressed lions and tigers; or eat the same Big Mac at McDonald’s.

Amongst other approaches, we can avoid such uniformity by making it as easy as possible for entrepreneurs to create unique business ventures.

Leftists are Self-Serving Hypocrites

Kaczynski’s essay is just as much about dystopic technology as it is about his despisal of “leftists”. So although other groups might also have their flaws, let’s keep this article limited to the already broad scope of Kaczynski’s analysis. His argument is most clearly laid out when he accuses “leftists” of being led by “bourgeois theorists”:

The trouble with such theorists is that they have made the development and application of social theories their surrogate activity. Consequently the theories are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which the theories are imposed.

Kaczynski later elaborates on his criticism of their long-term objectives:

Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past.

When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done.

In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else’s academic freedom. (This is “political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control.

The argument about purging people for their views is still a topic of conversation 27 years later; and is generally termed “cancel culture”. Incidents framed as cancel culture include banning the US president from Twitter; or boycotting JK Rowling for being a “TERF”.

The cancel culture debate has been covered pretty widely and there isn’t really anything new to say here − Paul Graham points out that most people don’t even think cancel culture is a thing, because they’re incapable of forming an opinion that might get someone cancelled. Let’s instead focus on a more compelling confluence of Kacyznski’s ideas − affordable housing.

Image: King of Hearts

Especially in left-leaning San Francisco, there have long been complaints that poor people can’t afford to live in convenient places; and that something has to be done about it. The government is an obvious agent to be petitioned for change, especially since they often force landowners to build short houses, as opposed to anything more dense. Rather than just allowing affordable housing though, the government has been roped into actually building the housing itself, through eg this $200 million of funding. This money will create 400 units. This is the sort of pointlessly small, virtue-signalling gesture that has let the housing crisis last for so long. San Francisco and the wider state of California are both governed by the Democratic Party, which typically aligns itself with left-leaning issues like housing affordability, but as discussed in this video by the New York Times, they’re not prepared to change zoning laws and let the market take care of things, because then their own homes would be surrounded by high-density apartments rather than long driveways and golf courses:

Affordable housing, but not in my neighbourhood!

The idea of governments building housing is not necessarily bad − Singapore for instance has 79% of its residents living in public housing. When the San Francisco mayor explicitly mentions though, that these homes are meant to be tackling homelessness, then one has to wonder whether the units will actually provide residents with a dignified existence. Not only does Singapore care about its own citizens living in homes, it has made explicit interventions to ensure that 200,000 foreign workers were provided dormitories, complete with food, Wi-Fi and medical care. Notice that the Singaporean press release doesn’t include the undertone “like it or lump it − this place is better than being homeless!”

Conclusion

When we explored earlier how world-building games tap into the arguably fundamental human urge to advance humanity, the exploration ended perhaps prematurely, but now having considered a fuller scope of Kaczynski’s insight, let’s explore the world-building a bit more. In his 1972 work, The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov tells the story of a world where there are two prominent races − a long-living rock-like race; and a blob-like race with a short lifespan. The blob race has three sexes who typically form three-way relationships. Spoiler alert The three-way blob couples can evolve into the rock race, but only if they give birth; and only if they themselves realise (without being told!) that they can evolve into the rock race through some sort of orgasm / concentration experience. End Spoiler.

Could it be that world-building is an ingrained human trait, because we’re living in a simulation and the only way to escape it is similarly to realise that we can become gods?

Whether we’re living in a simulation or not, we should be able to agree that advancing humanity is an innate desire that most people find themselves unable to achieve. Therefore a society which gives people the tools to advance humanity will enable its population to move up the hierarchy of needs, freeing them from the opiod-inducing nihilism of modern society. The modern world is run on software, so giving people tools to advance humanity means enabling them to contribute to open-source software.

Enabling a dignified life also means enabling citizens to participate in life-long education: at worst, the education would be a surrogate activity; but at best, it could enable citizens to grow the sphere of human knowledge and reach self-actualisation.

New technology is going to consume our lives anyway, so governments have a responsibility to empower their citizens to play a part in the creation of this new technology. We urgently need to amass citizens into steering the path of technological progress towards a productive goal, and not towards a depression-inducing Big Brother that we cannot unplug.

Thus people would spent their time shining each other’s shoes, driving each other around in taxicabs, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other’s tables, etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless busy-work.

If Australia continues on the path it’s on, we’ll end up becoming irrelevant in the modern world and our days will be consumed bickering over who’s more woke. Do you want that; or do you want to create the future? Fulfill your innate desires and become your full self! Spread the word of the Non-Human Party!