something I wrote in 2008, here for my own reference so don't read it.

HOW TO WRITE AND DO COMEDY

BY, TED BURNARD.

Ted Burnard has spent over 3 decades in the world of stand-up comedy and been making a living out of it for even less time than that.

Hello and welcome to stage one of how to write and do comedy.

This coarse doesn't promise to give you fame or fortune or any artistic credibility, or really any jokes especially. but what it does promise is to give you enough advice and technique for you to come up with an act that is at least only half as shit as some of the people on the open mic circuit at the moment. well as shit anyway, certainly not any shittier.

The first thing you have to do is give up all hope, don't aim to bring anything fresh or innovative in anyway to the world of comedy or performance. In fact it is probably easier, wiser and all around more truthful if you see it not so much as a performance but more a man standing in the corner of a pub shouting at other drunk men.

NB. if you are not a man and are something like a women, then i am very sorry the world of comedy is not for you. Unless you is minging or a lezzer in which case consider yourself an honorary man.

Remember comedy is easy; it's giving people exactly what they want about 2 seconds before they realise they want it. Which might sound quite hard but luckily everyone is exactly the same and everyone wants the same thing.

JOKES

Step one; jokes/ finding something funny to say.

very few successful acts make a go of it without having any jokes. those that do can be seen on channel 4, E4, and MTV. And BBC3, BBC1 ,BBC2 and radio 4 come to think of it, and E4+1.

Still to be a stand up your life will be much easier if you have at least one joke (well one is ideal. A half at least)

Most jokes are based around an idea, or as i like to call it a subject or thing. for example dog, mother in law, toaster etc. This is not the whole story as the idea is often funny as well. It can't just be a sandwich for example (unless it is a funny sandwich) No.

No. Often the subject (or victim) is laudable in some respect i.e. the dog is stinky, or the mother in law is obese or otherwise vile, the toaster doesn't work in a perfect manor. But just saying,

" I have a toaster:- it doesn't work perfectly".

is not quite a joke. (although could work as a parody piece) this is because there is no assumption on the part of the audience that the toaster would work perfectly so we have to embed that idea in their stupid brains first.

"Oh yes i have a brand new, very good toaster, in perfect working order:- It burns the toast much better than the old one"

remember it isn't funny now because we have dissected the frog and we are sober, and not in a room above a pub.

OTHER WAYS TO GENERATE JOKES.

WORK BACK: for example my wife is a rubbish driver, you could say she drives like a blind person, so if we put a twist on it and work back from the end...

my wife's blind:- she's a rubbish driver

AND remembering our lessons we've learnt already we can improve this joke no end...

My wife is blind, but it doesn't stop her she is brilliant at many tasks:- But she's a bit of a rubbish driver.

remember it's not funny now obviously!

What we have is the basis/ main frame-work for 2 jokes (more than enough). But at the moment they lack a little punch we can improve them by just going on a bit longer about our stupid idea and slightly going on to a different subject but not too much i.e.

My wife is blind, it doesn't stop her doing most things:- but she's a rubbish driver she nearly crashed twice last year.

I've got a brand new toaster it's perfect:- it burns the toast exactly like my wife used to, but it's rubbish at the constant nagging she was so good at.

This process is often referred to as "adding on the funny bit". you may notice the common theme of the wife, that's because it will help you when facing an audience because everyone there will have wives that they hate too. otherwise they'd be at home with them, right? not in some shit hole pub where you will spend your career.

which brings me to...

STAGE PRESENCE AND STAGE CRAFT

Just shout a lot and move around a lot, that way the audience won't notice when no one is laughing. o yeah and swear. and if anyone is offended when you start having a go a spastics just pretend it's ironic and they don't get it. and anyway it's Mencap now.

EDITING: Editing can be your strongest tool in your comedy box. short and snappy equals funny. you get the idea, if you go on too long about stuff, for a long time about things. often what can happen is that people can sometimes, on occasion, in fact more often than not; they become, what i can only describe as disinterested. And rather than laughing at your every word they don't do that and there is silence and pauses which people hate because it reminds them how worthless their lives are.

So make your jokes shorter e.g

"My wife's blind:- she's a shit driver"

"I've got a toaster :- my wife's a bitch"

join me again another time for more lessons and insights and we'll be gigging (and giggling) together in no time.

Cheers! and remember Give up all hope.

Glamour

Glamour:

I went to Argos today, to no avail, they do not have what I want. How could they?

 Wokingham; the suburbs in general are a sorry lot during the weekdays, depressing, robbed of their strident and autonomous members since they are at work, in the city. Every day is like Sunday. The suburbs are a depressing combination; an old folks home come crèche. Wokingham is more than most the former.

 

With-in this over-cast suburban market town environment I saw someone.
I didn't know him but vaguely recognised him, having seen him on occasion when I used to walk home from work a while back.

A young man perhaps early twenty's or even mid-teens?

He had a perpetual awkwardness about him; and amongst all that grey lunch-time misery I felt an overwhelming sense of empathy toward him. His gate and presence betrayed something about his internal emotional world. There was a self-consciousness manifest in his physicality being a tall somewhat bulky character not blessed with good looks, he walked with a slight stoop which spoke of his discomfort regarding his height and perhaps his esteem in general- I hope not, as there was also a stoic, down to earthiness about him, he did not seem stressed, distressed, or deluded. Perhaps his life may have been devoid of glamour, and although sometimes tedious maybe there was a greater sense of contentment and ultimately peace in his day to-day. But like so many he seemed somewhat used and used-up by modern life.

Most prominently, he was walking in his uniform to work his shift at Tesco, something which I have done in times past. Thus I projected my own scrawniness in place of his bulk & my shrewish bitterness in place of  his plain gormlessness, my George in place of his Lennie.*

But I not only projected myself and my own self-pity, and all those awkward, humiliating, adolescent (and beyond) moments onto him, but also all those other individuals whom within that same troublesome timespan I had belittled, and made life uncomfortable for. All those that I had made overtly self-conscious, and insecure, had attempted to rob them of their self-esteem. Victims of the same judgemental value which I now cast upon him, and who had been found wanting.

 

Of course I only rationalise this transference now, in retrospect. At the time I just felt the urge to engage and connect in some way, via language, symbolism, or a hug, Some empathic talisman. But, of course, I did not, could not, it being socially forbidden. No, the best I could do was to try and maintain eye contact long enough in order to communicate some sort of nodding half smile.

So in place of the authentic connection all I can do, is to say that if you are attractive, carefree, successful, of high status, if you are happy, then fuck you, fuck you all the way to hell, I only want to become one of you one day, so that I can bring the whole sorry bunch of you down from the inside.

DIE

And that is De-Individuation. - defining ones self in opposition to things. (with a dash of low self-esteem)


That's how I felt at the time anyway.


[from Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men]

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posture_(psychology)

 

 

There is No 'No God'

I wrote this on the back of an envelope a couple of weeks ago, after doing a bit of reading since then, I think it may be a spin on Bertrand Russell’s orbiting teapot concept from an Ignostic/Igtheism stance/viewpoint. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism But personally I'm more of a Jungian:-

...

There is no death.

We must best assume that there is nothing that anyone has ever experienced that can be called death. Since part of death is the negation of the self and therefore the absence of the experience of death, per-se.  Life after death is intrinsically contradictory. If it is Life after Death then how was the death a death at all? And if death has occurred how can, what remains, be meaningfully defined as Life? (like ice becoming water, they are distinct and one can never be the other.)

So death is really only definable as the absence of life.

Only in part, is life defined as the narrow lens of consciousness, through which we attempt to interpret the observable (one can be biologically alive and unconscious). To use Descartes Cartesian model, the idea that consciousness would have any value let alone ability without physical, biological manifestation is to place far too much weight/worth on the concept of constructed western consciousness and deny its fragmented reality.  So what we conventionally call the process of ‘experiencing’ must cease, thus, death does not translate to experiencing or consciousness. And by rights we cannot experience another’s death for/ with them, so no one can ‘experience’ death.

 Imagine walking down the street with a friend and they suddenly point and say “look. There is a dead person” we would expect to see some Ghost or Zombie- like figure, or more usually a corpse. Some signifier of the absence of life, but in reality we should rightly expect nothing, if it were not for the vague use of the word ‘person’ in there sentence. , Like Un-good, Death can be expressed in Orwellian language as Un-living or Non-life.

 

My favourite way of expressing this, (normally whilst in a pub) is to use the example of Ketchup. Picture a bottle of ketchup it seems unlikely that anyone would ever want to express something such as Non-Ketchup, or Un-ketchup, or No-Ketchup, or X-tchup. This ‘X-tchup’ would simply be defined and expressed as the absence of Ketchup.

So we have the abstract notion of Death (Non-life) defined purely by the absence of Life.

Similarly the abstract ‘X-tchup’ (Non-Ketchup) defined purely by the absence of Ketchup, and so on.

Now.

God.

Obviously we have the No-God as defined by the absence of God.

However there was (is) never a God in the same way that there is the bottle of Ketchup or in the same way that there is (the assumed) current Life of a James Mason. We assume to the best of our knowledge that there is empirically ‘The Bottle of Ketchup’ and that there is empirically the ‘Life of James Mason’. God has never been afforded this quantification. **

Thus we can no more quantifiably state ‘No-God’ than we can ‘God’*.

There was never a God so there can never be a No-God it remains constructed, vague, perhaps a manifestation for projected ideologies, the un-conscious, the sublime or personal wellbeing.

half full?

 

 

It seems that one thing that would unequivocally bring about the end of all religion would be for God to be empirically and quantifiably defined as real, and existing. Sapped of Its mystification & personal interpretation and no longer requiring faith, god would be found to be much the same as Carrots, Oxygen, Gravity, Syntax, Cognitive Dissonance, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, London Buses, or the Smell of Burnt Almonds, or any other Google-able Thing. It would be Ketchup.                

To define God is to Kill God.

I hope this is not a burden of proof debate. I suppose I could see how science might be regarded as the Ketchup used to define against the Non-existent, Non-Ketchup of God, but not being a creationist, I disagree that they fulfil those functions in relation to each other.

I don’t think I am shifting God around to conveniently slot into some Quantum Singularity at the edges of the universe or some unknown function of the pineal gland at the core of the brain. I don’t think God resides in anything except human anthropology and culture and the projected un-conscious. God exists as a reflection of our selves, to be found in the whole not the individual parts, to be continually reimagined by man. As an artist I think we best understand ourselves through the relationship between abstractions and events/observation. And I am at my most happy with ambiguities.  (Although I have just written a blog defining my ambiguities to myself, but that’s part of art too. And surely the most ambiguous thing of all is to define a rough frame work for your ambiguities, and then probably not stick to it.)

:Quote

-‘But why should you call this something “God”? I would ask: “Why not?” It has always been called “God.”’

-C.G. Jung.

An interesting lecture From Paul Bloom on the psychology of religious/any beliefs, natural assumptions and the double difference to authority figures. Which seems a much more insightful way to approach the subject than most manage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttSULfIoWHU

 

 

*Those best at quantifying God and thus destroying faith are often the religious and fundamental religious, thus the atheist debate. However I don’t think too many conclusions should be drawn from any individual’s choice to describe themselves in any specific religious way.   

** Re: Bobby Henderson’s /Dawkins’ “Flying spaghetti monster”: To me, this is ketchup, which is to say that I know what a flying spaghetti monster would be. (Flying, a monster, and largely composed of spaghetti) thus it exists in a specific abstract sense like a griffin or Cyclops or any other monster it exists notionally. Even perhaps in a similar way to “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”- (Chomsky)- we know what it means, but it doesn’t have any resonance for us again, its lack of ambiguity and history robs it of abstract, symbolic meaning. Although now the flying spaghetti monster is acquiring meaning  in the parades and art of Neo-Darwin atheists, which I quite like and is how new cultures and religion start.

Rape Joke

Rape Joke-

I’ve been reviewed for doing Stand-up, and apparently according to the review I am mildly outrageous; which makes no sense a bit like saying “he’s generically original” or “a tender rapist” oof! ethically grey circumstances veiled consent.

 

O Yeah! Pushing the boundaries with a rape joke, some people find it offensive some just tiresome a comedian comic friend of mine said, “I don’t think rape is very funny.” I said to him… “Well you should stop doing it then.”

He apologised immediately, gathered up his clothes and left the thicket.

 

-

In Edinburgh I had people walk out because of that joke, and I saw him (the walker) outside afterwards, he didn’t seem satisfied with my explanation that it was a joke about rape jokes, and offensiveness or the mundaneness of manufactured outrage. He made a sort of screwed up face as if to say ‘who do you think you’re kidding.’

Right, yeah, because you can’t use an art form to explore the boundaries, meanings, and expression inherent with-in that art form. If only he’d been there, with his screwed up face, when Marcel Duchamp, William Burroughs, or Franz Kafka were there constructing there works he could of saved them a lot of time and innovative effort by just walking off in befuddled disgust, and making a ‘who do you think you’re kidding’ face.

But maybe he’s right, because even if he and I had understood the context and implication of the meta-joke around which I was orbiting, the rest of the audience might not have, and instead just been laughing at the face value of a rape joke. So maybe he was walking out on the rest of the audience as much as the performer on stage. Except; that never would’ve happened because he was the only fucking audience member there. I had to stop the bloody show, if there’d of been anyone else there, I could’ve just carried on and he could’ve fucked off, I don’t care. So he either doesn’t acknowledge a mode of modernist meta-text that’s been around for at least a hundred years or he doesn’t know how an audience functions, he’s an idiot either way.

 I hate audiences, don’t leave though, please stay in your seats existing as an audience, I need your faceless mass to listen to me telling you that I hate you, it’s what fucking, Franz Kafka would do.

 

But perhaps it was not the contrived content of what I was saying on stage but rather the subtleties of context and performance that made him uncomfortable enough to leave. Most likely on this occasion my performance was not adept or eloquent enough to meaningfully convey these ideas about the state of stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh festival.

 And he thought: - this empty room, in a cave, at the back of some Goth bar at 11pm on a Sunday night is probably not the time or the place to listen to this mumbling, child face, skeleton boy fumble through what appears to be his first run through of this material, especially when he’s doing over complicated offensive stuff right at the beginning of the “show”.  

Also he had 3 young lads with him, like his son and his son’s friends or something, who I think liked it a bit, but he went anyway. And there was also 2 young girls sat on the other side of the room but it wasn’t going that well, so I stopped.

 

-

 And that was my first performance of a solo hour in Edinburgh a couple years back, cut short to under 15 minutes by poor attendance and then audience walk outs.

But luckily as I went out-side and wondered what to do next with my evening/life, I got chatting to someone enthusiastic, who was doing their own show somewhere else at some other time, and he ended up insisting on seeing my show, went round the bar got all his friends, and some other people and I started all over again to an entirely new audience, and I was the last show on,  so could do as long as I wanted, so did my full time and had a really good gig.

But I learnt that I should tread more carefully and try and walk my audience through any complicated bits. So I added a whole new bit on the end of my oh so clever rape joke, about how I wrote it whilst listening to Woman’s Hour on radio 4, as they were having a debate about just such issues.

And how jokes should function as jokes and not templates for codes of conduct, ethics, morality or endorsement and that perhaps this debate is more about the high status that light entertainment performers have gained rather than the content of their candour, as stand-up tends to represent it’s cultural origins rather than describe them, and if the clown still existed with-in his original outsider status then perhaps this debate would be defunct.

However, just so I’m not being misogynistic or making any gender power based polemic, or indulging in some personal prejudice I make sure that all my jokes about rape are implicitly and/or explicitly gender neutral by referencing man on man rape, which luckily and coincidently happens to also be intrinsically funnier.  

It’s either that or comedy just follows the base consensus of its audience and cannot be considered an art form in any way.

A brief note on the narratives of perspectives:

A brief note on the narratives of perspectives:

Imagine a fleeting time, yes all time is fleeting slipping into the past from the future. But imagine a time in life when this quality was accentuated through the fact of joy, the joy of freedom, companionship, transcendence, perhaps intoxication. An engagement of and with the present, when the longer narrative of life has been negated through activity without adherence to goals, this makes the fleeting prescient without conscious awareness. When the fleeting is extended to breaking point, this is a moment of both time and place. When in this ‘time space oasis’ everything is magnified beyond comparison, so that those engaged within it, when viewed from outside of this area of engagement, seem disproportionately to represent the fleeting.

 

This is the difference between getting up after a few drinks and enjoying dancing in a disco at the wedding reception, in contrast to standing in a field some distance from the marquee where the reception is taking place, the questionable music drifting on the cool night breeze, viewing the people with-in from a physical and emotional distance. Viewing them from afar the people appear fleeting and inconsequential in there preoccupations.

The (small) scale of and perspective on (the party goers) offer the illusion of in-sight. This view of the events offers a different but not more objective outlook as being separate misses the point of being lost within the events of the moment, of-coarse the viewer cannot attain that own perspective on himself and see his own inconsequential endeavours. Or rather this view is not attainable via the appropriate geographical distance to encompass all that is going on. Rather it is attainable through the mindfulness of the fleeting, to be both in the moment on the dance floor and apart from it viewing one’s self from the field.   

 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/while_the_band_played_on

Criticism and counter argument: The Unabomber Manifesto – Industrial Society & Its future by Theodore Kaczynski. (1995)

The other day at a friend’s house I noticed a book on his shelf - The Unabomber Manifesto – Industrial Society & Its future.  Having heard of it but knowing little other than it having been written by a bomber (Ted Kaczynski), I picked it up. The opening paragraph chimed with my Luddite tendency and general discontent with modern consumerism. Beyond the opening supposition however the book became abhorrent to me, and densely nonsensical. After a brief search on –line I found no serious academic engagement with it (quite understandably), but more worryingly no real criticism of it at all, it seems to receive at least 2 stars on sites like Google books and generally rates 4 or 5.

The only worthwhile place I could find it mentioned (fleetingly) is in a book I hold in high regard John Grey’s – Straw Dogs Thoughts on humans and other animals which superficially shares some of the anti- Technology motives but in-fact differs wildly. As Kaczynski’s out-look falls under a Utopian model (“if we can just achieve this one thing, then everything will be alright”) which is rejected by Grey.  I urge potential readers of Kaczynski’s Manifesto to seek Grey’s book in place of it, as well as many other more worthwhile reads.

From here on I will refer to The Unabomber Manifesto as UM and Theodore Kaczynski as the author. The manifesto is available to read on-line if you have to.  http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt

I Read up to about chapter 10 of UM before I gave up. Much like a shack built on poor or non-existent foundations I doubted the Author would ditch his original assumptions, but would further extrapolate on them. The telling, and some-what dangerous, thing about Kaczynski is that his observations are not always that wide of the mark. It is his interpretation and assumptions that are erroneous. The book stands as testament to the difference between academic and emotional intelligence, but really displays little insight on either. As far as possible, I will attempt to separate the contents of the text from the psychology and actions of the author, but since the function of the text is as a product of the former and justification of the later this may not be possible.

A Note on writing style and structure: The Author is always careful to never make distinct, specific insights, but makes broad generalisations in the guise of academic speech.  He will try and establish trends with no specific historic examples or data.

E.g.:  A quote from note 29 Chapter 4 “In all essential respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white middle class ideals.” This extract contains 3 qualifying sentiments “essential”, “most”, and “oversocialized,” in-fact “leftist” probably also has a meaning bespoke to the text and the Author. So the essence of the sentence reads; those who behave in the way I have defined, behave this way.   

This opaque subjectivity results in the text often being difficult to interpret in any meaningful way, following is an attempted analysis and counter points chapter by chapter.

Chapter 1: The opening chapter: This is the hook, a grand sweeping supposition, describing how unhappy we all are and how society is not serving us well enough, the inclination being we deserve more, presumably to be followed by a call to arms in order to seize for ourselves the justice we deserve. It’s not a very complex or insightful point; to say how rubbish it all is and the whole thing needs to be screwed up and start again. An Infinity drunks have muttered it under their breath at closing time. Countless politicians have summoned up similar discontent in order to gain or retain power and supposedly change things for the better.  The author is always careful to sugar the pill, life expectancy has increased but we are suffering in ways of quality. His observations are broadly accurate, but he never holds anything in comparison, of-coarse he can never talk of the good elements of industrial society and he cannot hold up example of the alternative feudal, or hunter gatherer, or post- industrial society he longs for.

It is an unsophisticated, but compelling, supposition to get back to a better time and place. To erase what has been done, in the hope that what remains is pure and just. It only takes a viewing of films like Mad Max, The Terminator, or Fight Club to sympathise with the authors’ point of a dystopian chain of events. But it is not possible to get back. The only time machine we have is with-in the confines of personal memory or the imagination. Time travel is fundamentally psychological in manifestation:” to return to a time before the bad things happen.” It is a notion indigenous to the psychologists couch, before the process of acceptance and individuation has begun.  

Freud's couch = Time Machine

The fact that it’s most likely this deep discontentment that has served as an evolutionary trait to compel us into the very position we hold today is overlooked by the author. Rather than: - We are Anxious as a product of society. In Fact: -We are Anxious Thus have created society. Our duplicitous and discontented nature, as our propensity for tool use, is deeply engrained with-in our Ape beginnings.

[Mark Rowland’s, The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness, is a brilliant book to begin to understand this.]

The author does not address wellbeing directly, he does not attempt to address the Individual(s) unhappiness in the current society/ circumstance. The Individuals poor state of being is not something to be addressed and readjusted by the individual. Rather it is enough that the societal system is implicitly and fundamentally wrong, the poor mental health of the individuals is merely resultant evidence of the wrongness.  Like the out-come of an equation.

The remainder of the opening chapter can be boiled down to 2 observations, the current global capitalism/Industrial society is unsustainable, and if one relies on unsustainable things, you’re heading for a fall. This is quite correct, but it is a quantitative evaluation involving expansive time scales. Not a binary ‘either or’ which necessitates the eradication of the industrial systems.  For instance Passage [3] is false;

   But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

- It is not just the size of the system but the speed of its collapse which is proportional to the disaster involved.  As well as the overlap involved between the colapse of one and the rise/evolution of another.

One only has to of experienced the inconvenience of poor public transport, errant IT, or an annoying boss to immediately sympathise with the opening chapter. The more we live in a technologically constructed environment the more we can find to be annoyed by it. The fundamentals extrapolated from the opening observations are, however, deeply erroneous.  

Chapter 2 & 3: The author equates compassion (expressed in the term Leftism) with the psychological state of Low- Self Esteem. (A phrase repeated throughout the text) Low Self Esteem is a broad and some-what ill-defined term applicable to many people in many circumstances; it is possible to exhibit it in reference to specific things (e.g. Weight gain) or as a general trait often entailing self-loathing projected as hostility of others. It is essentially an illogical set of assumptions about ones-self resulting in a burden of self-blame. It is normally experienced as a phase rather than a constant character trait. Thus the Authors accusation is hard to define and acts rather as an insinuation rather than a specific causal link. Presumably the ‘leftist’ projects his sense of inferiority via over- empathy with his chosen cause.

 Again it is a quantitative judgement, what is the right level of empathy? But it is no doubt a convenient formula to dismiss empathy all together: All Left sympathisers suffer from low Self-Esteem, therefore all sympathy is an illness.

Yet I see no reason why a deep sense of inferiority couldn’t equally drive the motives of a cut throat, market capitalist, or despot, or bully. Also one could pursue any number of left or green agendas as the result of narcissism (narcissism being an opposite extreme to poor self-regard).

 The Author goes on to equate PC speech with this low self-esteem theory. Politically Correct speech is an act of specificity in-order to acknowledge historical circumstance and prevent its re-occurrence, if anything it is an act of authority, often on behalf of others. If anything, this is the very opposite of low self-esteem, which often involves foggy thinking and insular self- orientated actions and thought.

Perfect illustrations of the authority of PC speech can be found with-in Stewart Lee’s stand-up routines on the journalist Rod Liddle’s reaction to the victims of the Suffolk strangler contained in his 2008 show 41^st Best Stand-up Ever, and his routine on Jimmy Hill’s use of the word nigger in his 2005 show Stand-up Comedian.

The author’s perception of the left as having an inferiority complex is ultimately manifest through the lefts in-action in following a similar course to his own i.e. the author is saying the left is wrong because they disagree with me. The roots of this thinking is actually specific to the authors own context within late 60’s American student campus protests where a peak interest in writers such as Herbert Marcuse lead to the violent actions of groups such as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO The), the authors position can be read as continuation of the efforts of groups such as this and a rejection of the subsequent distraction of the counter culture.

The 1960's Us Campus

In-fact the scientific evidence finds that empathy is learnt through play. Dr, Stuart Brown argues that play isn't just fun, it also helps brain development, boosts productivity and promotes fairness, justice and empathy.

Play is defined as a shared suspension of repercussions by those involved, they re-assure each other that this is play, the common shared thought ingrains empathy. Play is strongly related to a psychological malleability.

 The results of empathy can be seen in Richard Dawkins documentary “nice guys finish first” which deals with cold war theory, and ‘tit for tat’. It demonstrates that although in the short term betraying others may result in a gain, constant betrayal leads in individuals no longer being tolerated and so losing out. The film fails to point out that those who are the most desperate due to being ignored or treated poorly or simply not valuing co-operation, will betray others due to desperation of needing a short term gain. I would describe it as lack of empathy through ghettoization.
Richard Dawkins Nice Guys finnish First

“Nice strategies succeed because they have a sufficient expectation of meeting other nice strategies like themselves- There has to be a critical mass of nice strategies.”  Richard Dawkins

If you have no such expectation you will not adopt the nice strategy, a self -fulfilling mode.

So empathy exists within a kind of realistic optimism, which is the very opposite of low self-esteem. Whereas overly high self- esteem and narcissism seems to run concurrent with the right and Industrialisation.

Chapter 4: Named oversocialization, this is a term coined by the author to denote his perceived characteristic of overly PC thought as well as speech; a form of empathy via repression and self- editing following social norms via guilt, rather than indulging in mildly anti-social behaviour, or objective justice.  According to the author, apparently, it can lead to low self-esteem.

 Supposition and qualitative judgements sweep through the text; it consists of the psychology of the left (as above) and the support of the system via inaction by the left.  Again this seems to concern the events of the late 60’s when left liberals abandoned radical socialist politics in favour of eastern philosophy, therapy and self-definition via consumerism. The recent collapse in faith of guiding forces of consumerism makes the preoccupation rather mute.

-The dwindling strangle-hold of consumerism

As above, I would argue guilt and conformity are far from exclusive to a left or right agenda, or indeed an industrial society, both were rife in pre-industrialisation via religion and monarchy etc. In general people want to be told what to do (see Stanley Milgrim experiments).  Behaving as one thinks others are expecting you to behave (conformity) is often as a result of lack of communication, (again an element of low self-esteem is the projection onto others of one’s own self-perception, a kind of mild paranoia.)

Most of the time we care about what others think of us, more than they theme selves in-fact notice or care about us; a mild form of narcissism known as the ‘spotlight effect’. But that is small scale self-consciousness. The text is presumably referring to large scale social revolution, or disruption of society. Left leaning liberals tend to want the best for the greatest number, or at least a base line beneath which no-one should sink, this does not sit well with condoning violence, aggression etc. to obtain there ends.

 I think we (the left and most humans) are default reformists we are aware that a significant proportion of the current system does not work fully but we are aware moving back is impossible, so we want to try and retain the good aspects whilst changing what seems to not work, and a slower sustainable change has a better chance of working and being least painful to all involved, quick change like a crash diet doesn’t work, also we don’t kill people just because they disagree with us, we have a realistic optimism that rationality will win out.

The best out-side source I can quote in reference to this chapter is Adam Curtis series of 3 separate hour long documentaries called The Trap, which deals with the abandonment of Positive Liberty in favour of Negative Liberty, which is the freedom to believe in nothing. Perhaps the left has been culpable in embracing the freedom of the markets along with the right, but the implicit nature of un-sustainable systems is that they will collapse with or with-out intervention.

Chapter 5 & 6: The author constructs something he calls the power process, “in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals” –

 Although there is a relationship between achievement and Well-being, there is no empirical truth in this kind of ‘goal achievement’. Often anxiety is avoided or overcome through acceptance of ones limitations or goals are achieved through a process of deep stress and anxiety. Constant striving can overcome and crumble the will leading to a nervous breakdown or similar. Non goal based, enquiry/play/ exploration often has a hand in acquiring and maintaining effective mental health.

 The author also speaks of a lack of goals as a cause of ‘serious psychological problems’, rather it is depression that can cause a cease in desire and a sense of achievement. But it is not this clear cut as well-being can be defined as an absence of desire.

The basis for the author’s point is that modern society has fulfilled our base needs and therefore removed the (sense of) achievement of them, he goes on to argue that the achievements we have in place of those base needs are surrogates for the real thing. [6]

They had a right fucking good laugh in the old days, always up for the craic.

“When people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for themselves. In many cases they then pursue those goals with the same energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put in the search for physical necessities.”

This is not an anti-industry view, this is an anti-society view and runs counter to 30,000 years of human endeavour, ever since man spent time enacting shamanistic ceremonies and seeking out the dark of caves to paint his visions of anthropomorphised animals he has taken part in goals of non- physical necessity. The author suffers a serious misconception regarding hunter gather life-style it was not time or effort intensive as he thinks, one only has to view a group of apes sitting around grooming each-other or footage of a rainforest tribe sitting around bored and lazy. It was an existence based on foraging, planting and knowing the place where you lived. Even most animals do fuck all most of the time.

Humans in their unique disposition as continually unfulfilled have whittled, moulded, formed and created things for 30,000 years; there are archaeological finds of thousands of carved arrow heads beyond what any individual could use, crated purely because of the sense of achievement of making. Often achievement has nothing to do with drive and everything to do with play and enquiry, which is possible through increased free-time. You could say in simple terms anxiety performs the function of drive. This has nothing to do with the consequences of industrial society and everything to do with its creation.

One word for it is cognitive dissonance, our psychic investment in activity.

See: ‘How Art Made the World’: Nigel Spivey

 ‘30,000 Years of Art: The Story of Human Creativity Across Time and Space’: Phaidon Press Ltd

Chapter 7: Autonomy is a misnomer of the modern world; we all know we exert no control over the initial biological, psychological and sociological circumstances of our existence. (See Stanley Milgrims’ six degrees of separation experiment as covered in Malcolm Gladwells’ book ‘The Tipping Point’ as one example of the power of circumstance)

 Every act is carried out in the name of greater autonomy for all, whether raising taxes or cutting taxes, no state or individual in the western world would justify their actions via the restriction of freedoms. And yet personal autonomy is very rare, because it is not a necessity of life. We can only act in accordance to the information we have at any given time, we cannot obtain information we are not aware of by definition.  The only time we can obtain new information (or skills) in order to aid autonomy is through the intervention of out-side forces (normally the state e.g. school/ education,) or through personal revelation through our own avenue of enquiry (e.g. art, science, psychotherapy.)

Acts of supposed pure personal Will/drive only occur after years of gathering information and resources, which are acquired through reliance, relationships and interaction with other individuals and institutions.  Reliance actually frees us, how many of us could hope to achieve anything of consequence if we were required to tailor our own clothes, or build our own house, farm, and hunt or govern ourselves. Co-operation increases both dependency and autonomy.

 Luddite Laughs

UK situation comedy ‘The Good Life’ where characters embark on an autonomous lifestyle with hilarious consequences:

Even then autonomy is a very fleeting thing, which dissipates as the newly acquired information which initiated the autonomous act is absorbed into action and a new cycle of habit & routine and interaction & reliance develops. Autonomy can be equated to attachment.

To continually and constantly be autonomous and devoid of attachment  is not an attractive proposition, offering as it does no stability, like a lone wolf separate from the pack, hounded by its own instability/insecurity. The opposite of autonomy is dependency which requires a trust and security to function; mutual dependency can actually result in greater autonomy for both parties, as evidenced in nature and humans. (See Dawkins above) Obviously a balance between autonomy and dependency is desirable. There is no reason to think that we are any less autonomous now than as your average Ancient Roman/Greek/Egyptian was. Perhaps, in the long run, the agricultural revolution did more to restrict our societal autonomy than did the industrial one. Hunter gatherer societies were tied to their area of land where their expertise was relevant; we are tied to a relatively flexible system. The hunter gather shaped his environment as we can shape the system, slowly and in miniscule ways.

The author exerts that those who do not wield power over society in a way that he sees fit are by definition victims of low self-esteem as permeated through the industrial system. He neglects that it may be those who wield that power, and pay undue attention to the wielding of power, which may in-fact be the cause of certain anxiety (despots). Again an uneven distribution of power is far from an industrial innovation.

Chapter 8: The author is forced to acknowledge that most if not all past societies followed a similar template to the current one, but according to the author the current one is worse. He reasserts, because of the unfulfilled power process, which apparently was also disrupted by past societies/civilisations. It’s little wonder why, as a race, we have bothered with society at all if it causes us such discontentment and anxiety.

This chapter seems to be a concession to “common sense” thinking, mentioning as it does over-crowding in cities and the breakdown of families and communities. Of course it is not common at all; it is bespoke to a specific time and place. Some of us still live in small communities but those communities are not always as strongly tied to geography. There is an optimum level of socialisation too many friends’ results in a disregard for the individuals and a tendency towards disposability and too few friends results in insularism. Luckily most of us stick to a ‘natural’ level of socialisation.

“They usually consist of an inner circle of five "core" people and an additional layer of 10, he says. That makes 15 people - some will probably be family members - who are your central group and then outside that, there's another 35 in the next circle and another 100 on the outside. And that's one person's social world.”

BBC NEWS MAGAZINE: What's the ideal number of friends?  3/3/2009

The author contradicts himself; he condones attachment to small scale communities, which he thinks vital to his opaque form of autonomy. However; often certain types of autonomy are to be found in the anonymity of the large faceless system, rather than the rigid, brittle small community. If the individuals Will and aspirations are in keeping with the society then all is well and good if not then you’re fucked, this is true no matter what the scale. The fact that an individual makes up a larger proportion of a small community means his attachment/ responsibility as a member may result in less choice, power or autonomy.

 One thing unique about the present techno-web-verse is that we are aware of all possibilities, we know what we are missing out on, we are aware of the choices/friends we have not made and the paths we have not followed. But information is information. We cannot be given the options of the possibilities ahead without being made aware of what we are going to miss out on.

The formation of the United States of America

There’s a distinct idea of colonial frontier America that the author sees as a fulfilling way of existence. Of course this moment exists within a deeply flawed period in history when newly enfranchised  U.S. residents fought with each other to claim vast swaths of land which they viewed as their own, but which in-fact were rightfully attributed to the indigenous native American Indian tribes. (They didn’t own the land; this is not how they viewed their relationship with the land). One my well question the validity of the creation of these frontier settlements, but according to the author the pioneers need for their ‘power process’ was satisfied. If the fulfilment of the power process relies on such erroneous endeavours then its validity is highly questionable. Once the implicit worth of the ‘power process is called into question this negates the authors conceit.

The authors manifesto is no more revolutionary, insightful or grounded in reality than the twee constructions of Morris Dancing or the Town of Bourneville
There are fewer sureties in the modern world & one is likely to encounter a spectrum of experience immeasurable to our forest or plains dwelling ancestors. This could more than likely affect varying degrees of stimulation, anxiety or fluctuation in one’s psychological wellbeing, but perhaps that is just one of the challenges of our time. Practical problems of the past were also psychological tests in figuring out the best course of action to take, how to react to other people, events, materials, situations.

 Anxiety is not explicit to the in-put on us and our brains; it is conditional to the processing of that input. For example the death of a loved relative explained in the child’s Disney film ‘The Lion King’ via a song called ‘the circle of life’ or ‘the circle of shit’ as in the subversive U.S. animation South Park. As they both (life and shit) are included with-in the circle the distinction between life and shit is subjective, and a matter of processing. This is not a challenge of fact but of perception. We do not become masters of ourselves and our own wellbeing by eradicating that which we cannot process, but by being able to cope with those situations that we find perplexing.

Life-

Shit-

 Chapter 9: The author elucidates on his ‘power process’, he divides drives into 3 groups.

Drives 1, 2, 3

1: What we easily and basically achieve.

2: What we have to strive to achieve.

3: What is impossible and will never achieve.

The power process is achieving 2, but what functions as 1 for some folk, functions as 2 for others and what functions as 3 for some, as 2 for others. So the delineation is largely un-helpful and resoundingly un-insightful. 

The author goes on to attempt to describe the Freudian theory of sublimation, blurring it slightly with Cognitive dissonance, a term used in modern psychology. (Many of the following chapters describe/exhibit Cognitive dissonance and De-individuation.)

 Much of what I have said concerning chapter 5 & 6 applies here too. Anything invested with personal effort has important psychic currency, winning a medal from achievement in sport etc. is not the same as buying a medal. It performs a function beyond pure object.

The author asserts that we do not engage in fulfilling work enough due to ‘the system’. However work now varies greatly in intensity and time, hunter gatherer existence was not time intensive, but existed through knowledge of the area, but was reliant on seasons and other variables.

 

We bloody loved making all sorts of things in the old days for all sorts of reasons and still do, go us.

As already stated Industrial society does not cause discontentment, discontentment (merely a form of unfulfilled, potential energy) brings about Industrial society, the will to build and work with-in it, in an effort to bring about a conclusion to life, an answer, is an Enlightenment / narrative model of existence. Whether the goal is building factories or blowing them up it is still a goal. The discontentment of goals is what requires negation not the systems or society’s that are resultants of these goals and discontentment. For this peace of mind through negation look east to eternal, circular models of existence, where things exist in timeless moments, rather than fleetingly within systems and narratives.

Leaving the system is ambiguous, the borders are not rigid and one can repeatedly leave and re-enter, or potentially have one foot in and out, this varies from country to country, America is a young, violent, and suspicious country due largely to its unusual inception. If you dedicate your life to bringing down the system surely you are just as much a slave to it as if you dedicated your life to supporting it via running your own crappy business or committed consumption of its hideous tacky out-put.

Does the system exist beyond perception? The system cannot continue as it is, it is finite, it is changing, at present it largely relies on the processing of oil, there appear to be less toxins, and raw sewage and visible forms of pollution, but carbon emissions continue apace. We need the world more than it needs us. It is more than capable of expunging us from its cycle’s. We are likely to destroy our own environments and the things we rely on thus limiting and reducing our existence, the idea of us destroying nature or enacting irrevocable havoc upon the earth is pure egotism on our part. But this is no reason to act in a careless manor for our own sake we should seek harmony and sustainability.

The Author

With ‘Industrial Society & Its future’ Theodore Kaczynski, was seeking to construct an objective view of society that informed and resulted in his rejection of society as a whole. The reality in fact is that he was a product of his time and circumstance; from 1967-69 Kaczynski was assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, at the hub of the counter-culture hippy movement. Kaczynski had suffered from a child-hood disease which left him segregated & un-socialised, thrown into the institution of university at too young an age and with no other experience of life he floundered and was alienated.

His resentment eventually morphed with the kind of anti- establishment academia of that time such as Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ 1967 and political philosophies which courted terrorism and revolt, PLO & the ideas surrounding the Baader-Meinhof Group’s 'German Autumn' 1977, or even  the existentialist ideology of Jean-Paul Sartre, who argued that terrorism was a "terrible weapon but the oppressed poor have no others." Views expressed in the revolutionary film ‘The Battle of Algiers’ & Developed by Afro-Caribbean revolutionary Frantz Fanon; who used violence as a means to achieve goals, but also as an expression of freedom from Western bourgeois norms. In post 9/11, terrorism's context became radically altered from these academic ideals.

Due to his early childhood isolation and borderline autistic behaviour Kaczynski exhibited exceptional focus on his studies when younger and became a highly adept mathematician attending Harvard at age 16 in 1958 where he took part in an unforgivably cruel experiment.

From Wikipedia -

“He also participated in a multiple-year personality study conducted by Dr. Henry Murray, an expert on stress interviews. Students in Murray's study were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student. Instead they were subjected to a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment" -stress test, which was an extremely stressful, personal, and prolonged psychological attack. During the test, students were taken into a room and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a two-way mirror. Each student had previously written an essay detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations: the essays were turned over to an anonymous attorney, who would enter the room and individually belittle each student based in part on the disclosures they had made. This was filmed, and students' expressions of impotent rage were played back to them several times later in the study. - According to author Alston Chase, Kaczynski's records from that period suggest he was emotionally stable when the study began. Kaczynski's lawyers attributed some of his emotional instability and dislike of mind control to his participation in this study. Indeed, some have suggested that this experience may have been instrumental in Kaczynski's future actions.” - Wickipedia

A very sad thing indeed, to happen to someone who was already in such a brittle state of existence. I think initially Theodore Kaczynski was seeking respite, and subconsciously attempting some sort of self- healing with his retreat into the wilderness but a terrible thing happened (below) which mirrored the threat and attack upon the Self which he had experienced in the experiment above and he no longer felt safe anywhere. His experience with the experiment and at Berkley left a deep resentment of academics and progressive thinking as demonstrated in his writing and choice of targets (universities).  Subsequently he attempted to justify his course of action via academia as some form of self-therapy. His actions consisted of a, less than relentless, 16 bombs over the course of 17 years, killing 3 people his bombs functioned poorly due to parts being carved from wood. Rather than vindictive or furious his actions seemed the resigned results of some sort of logic equation.

The Author has since stated that the published version of UM is not the definitive version as if he is still trying to finalise that essay that was turned over to his anonymous interrogators at age 16/17

“The ultimate catalyst which drove him to begin his campaign of bombings was when he went out for a walk to one of his favourite wild spots, only to find that it had been destroyed and replaced with a road. About this, he said [note his description devoid of subjective terms like beautiful]

The best place, to me, was the largest remnant of this plateau that dates from the tertiary age. It's kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you find these ravines that cut very steeply in to cliff-like drop-offs and there was even a waterfall there. It was about a two days hike from my cabin. That was the best spot until the summer of 1983. That summer there were too many people around my cabin so I decided I needed some peace. I went back to the plateau and when I got there I found they had put a road right through the middle of it... You just can't imagine how upset I was. It was from that point on I decided that, rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on getting back at the system. Revenge.”

-Wikipedia

Odd since his bombings began in 1978…?

here is an interesting documentry concerning Ted Kaczynski http://youtu.be/xLqrVCi3l6E

May 2014: update

 I've stumbled on a counterpoint to UM try a search for: 

Kirkpatrick Sale unabomber

"He has read a lot in certain areas--no poetry, though, I'll bet--and has

   thought a lot about the particular things that concern him, but aside

   from a few flashes there is no suggestion of anything more than a

   routine mind and a dutiful allegiance to some out-of-the-ordinary

   critics of modern society.."

https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/sale_unabomber.analysis