.png)
By Karmyn Jones
Ted Kaczynski, also referred to as the Unabomber, is famously known as the man who successfully hid from the FBI for 17 years. He actively sent bombs through the mail from 1978 to 1995, killing three and injuring many others. Over many years, Kaczynski became infuriated with the world as he watched it be destroyed. He believed the only way to stop this was by hurting the people who run major corporations, specifically science, lumber, and technology companies. In his documentary, he said he targeted figureheads of the digital revolution to save humanity from itself. On September 19, 1995 The New York Times published what they called “The Manifesto.” This was a 35,000 word paper Kaczynski wrote outlining his beliefs and motives for killing. “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences,” Kaczynski’s manifesto begins, “have been a disaster for the human race.”
Ted Kaczynski had two motivations when becoming the Unabomber. One was personal, towards his family and those who hurt him, the second towards society as a whole. Kaczynski is considered a genius. He graduated high school at 15 and went on to study at Harvard University. When he was a sophomore, 17 years old, he was asked by Henry A. Murray to participate in an experiment on how stress affected humans. The Murray experiment may have worsened both of his motivations. Kaczynski and other students were placed in front of bright lights and wired to electrodes while research team members attacked their beliefs. The purpose was to humiliate the students to cause severe stress and eventually destroy their psyche. Murray himself described the interrogation as “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive.” One specific harmful experiment included Murray humiliating Kaczynski in front of many professors. He claimed Kaczynski’s mother had not only signed a permission slip for him to participate in the study, but had also sent a horrifying letter back. This was untrue, but the test was meant to dismantle Kaczynski’s psyche. These tests in breaking Kaczynski’s confidence and psyche are thought by many to be the cause of the violence he presented later in life.
Many people automatically assume Kaczynski is crazy, however he is not. It is quite disturbing, but his views, aside from the violence, are so familiar to many humans. His rejection of the modern world is a view that is shared by many highly educated people. Because of this, the reason he felt the need to go to such extreme measures to share his values was because of the unethical psychological experiments done on him, over three years, by Henry A. Murray. Many people use the argument that there were other people in the studies that did not become the Unabomber and Kaczynski could have been on that path without ever meeting Murray. Kaczynski’s path to becoming the Unabomber was a combination of his previous theories about society as well as the Murray experiment.
Kaczynski had a previous belief that science and technology were destroying humanity. While being studied these beliefs strengthened. Murray used unethical practices when conducting his experiments, and this caused Kaczynski to form a deeper distrust of society and science. In his mind, this explained his unhappiness. Murray was one scientific figure that hurt him, so Kaczynski formed the belief that everyone that believed in science and technology were unfavorable. Over the years, he formed the belief that morality was non-rational, because of what had been done to him, making him feel free to murder.
Kaczynski’s violence was potentially caused by a mixture of the beliefs he formed early in life as a result of the hurt his family put him through and the experiments Murray put him through. Kaczynski is not evil, but misguided. The psychological experiments Kaczynski went through deconstructed his confidence and identity. These had lasting impacts that caused Kaczynski to fear science and technology, resulting in his want to kill.