Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

• The Industrial Revolution has increased life expectancy while destabilizing society, causing widespread psychological suffering, and damaging nature.
• Continued technological development will worsen human indignities, social disruption, and environmental damage.
• If the industrial system survives, it will permanently reduce humans to engineered products and mere cogs in a social machine.
• A revolution against the technological basis of society is advocated to overthrow the current system rather than mere governments.
• Leftism is viewed as a major manifestation of society's deep troubles, serving as an introduction to broader modern problems.

If it survives, it may eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.

• The text defines leftism not strictly as an ideology or political movement, but rather as a collection of related psychological types.
• The authors acknowledge that their conception of modern leftism is rough, focusing primarily on two main underlying psychological tendencies.
• These two foundational psychological drivers are identified as 'feelings of inferiority' and 'oversocialization'.
• Feelings of inferiority encompass a broad spectrum of traits including low self-esteem, powerlessness, depressive tendencies, and guilt.
• Hypersensitivity to terminology and political correctness are cited as key behavioral manifestations of these deep-seated inferiority feelings.
• This hypersensitivity is often most pronounced not among actual marginalized groups, but among privileged activists and academics.

They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own.

• Leftists unconsciously view minority and disadvantaged groups as inferior, which drives their overidentification with them.
• Feminists are often motivated by a deep-seated fear that women may actually be less strong and capable than men.
• Leftists harbor a generalized animosity toward strong, successful, and traditional Western institutions.
• The leftist vocabulary rejects individualism and self-reliance in favor of collectivism and dependency on society.
• Art and philosophy favored by modern leftists frequently emphasize defeat, despair, and the rejection of reason and objective reality.

They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality.

• Leftists suffer from deep-seated feelings of inferiority that prevent them from feeling individually strong, driving them toward collectivism.
• Many leftist tactics exhibit a masochistic tendency and a strong underlying element of self-hatred.
• While leftists claim moral or compassionate motivations, their behavior is largely driven by hostility and a frustrated need for power.
• Leftist activism often harms the very groups it claims to help because aggressive approaches satisfy emotional needs rather than achieving practical goals.
• Even in a society with no social problems, leftists would invent issues merely to justify their activism.
• Oversocialization occurs when demanding societal moral codes impose a severe psychological burden, leading to guilt and self-deception.

If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to invent problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

• Society socializes children primarily by making them feel ashamed of behavior that violates expectations.
• Oversocialized individuals cannot engage in common minor misbehaviors without experiencing intense guilt and self-hatred.
• The oversocialized person is psychologically constrained to live life strictly on rails laid down by society.
• This deep sense of constraint and powerlessness makes oversocialization one of the most severe cruelties humans inflict on each other.
• Modern leftists, particularly intellectuals and the upper-middle class, are argued to be heavily oversocialized.
• Rather than rejecting core societal values, leftists typically rebel by accusing mainstream society of failing to live up to its own accepted moral principles.

Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him.

• Oversocialized leftists claim to rebel against society while actually pushing for the integration of minority groups into the existing system.
• Cultural preservation for such leftists is often reduced to superficial matters like food, music, and clothing rather than fundamental values.
• The core values leftists promote for marginalized groups—such as climbing the status ladder and becoming responsible parents—are identical to industrial-technological system values.
• The system is indifferent to superficial cultural differences as long as individuals conform to educational, economic, and behavioral standards.
• Even when oversocialized leftists engage in violence as a form of liberation from psychological restraints, they typically justify it using mainstream values.
• The psychological struggles of leftists reflect broader societal issues, including widespread low self-esteem and intense oversocialization.

In all essential respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals.

• The power process consists of four essential elements: a goal, effort, attainment of the goal, and autonomy.
• Individuals who can attain anything by mere wishing without effort develop serious psychological problems like boredom and demoralization.
• History demonstrates that secure, leisured aristocracies lacking struggle often become decadent and hedonistic.
• Consistent failure to reach important goals leads to defeatism, low self-esteem, and clinical depression.
• To avoid psychological distress, people require goals that demand effort paired with a reasonable rate of success.
• When physical needs are easily met, people frequently pursue artificial goals known as surrogate activities with intense energy.

At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized.

• Surrogate activities are artificial goals pursued for fulfillment rather than the satisfaction of basic biological needs.
• A rule of thumb helps identify surrogate activities by asking if a person would feel deprived of goal X while successfully meeting basic physical needs through interesting work.
• Activities like marine biology or excessive wealth accumulation serve as prime examples of surrogate pursuits.
• In modern industrial society, minimal effort and obedience are required to survive, leaving people free to pursue numerous surrogate activities.
• Common pursuits like scientific research, art, and athletic achievement function largely as surrogate activities for most participants.

If the answer is no, then the person’s pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity.

• People deeply involved in surrogate activities are often never satisfied and constantly strive for more, whether for wealth, science, or athletics.
• Biological needs in modern society are trivialized and met through a massive social machine rather than autonomous action.
• Most individuals require a degree of autonomy and personal control in working toward their goals, typically achieved through initiative or small group collaboration.
• Without adequate opportunity to experience the power process of having a goal, making an autonomous effort, and attaining it, people experience psychological and social symptoms like depression, anxiety, and frustration.
• Primitive societies generally suffered from far less stress and frustration compared to the massive scale of psychological problems seen in modern industrial society.

When one does not have adequate opportunity to go through the power process the consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism, abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc.

• Modern social and psychological problems stem from living under conditions radically different from our evolutionary past.
• Abnormal conditions in industrial society include excessive population density, isolation from nature, and rapid social change.
• Technological progress drives overcrowding and environmental isolation, which directly increase human stress and aggression.
• Rapid technological change destroys the stable framework and sense of security previously provided by the natural world.
• Conservative complaints about the decay of traditional values ignore how economic and technological growth inevitably cause that very decay.
• Technological societies must weaken family ties and local communities to ensure that individual loyalty remains directed primarily toward the system.

The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth.

• Advanced industrial societies demand loyalty to the system over personal ties, tolerating only tamed small-scale communities.
• Traditional explanations for modern psychological problems, such as crowding, rapid change, and community breakdown, are inadequate.
• Historically, pre-industrial cities, isolated rural areas, and the 19th-century American frontier experienced severe isolation and rapid change without comparable psychological distress.
• The crucial difference is that 19th-century pioneers created change through their own choices, satisfying their need for the power process.
• Modern societal problems and modern leftism are primarily caused by the acute disruption of the power process and a lack of autonomous agency.

The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense (largely justified) that change is imposed on him, whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he created change himself, by his own choice.

• Human drives are categorized into three groups based on the effort required to satisfy them, defining the essential 'power process.'
• Modern industrial society shifts natural human drives toward either effortless satisfaction or frustrating unfulfillability.
• Physical necessities in modern society are guaranteed with minimal effort, robbing individuals of meaningful autonomy and struggle in their work.
• To compensate for a lack of genuine challenges, advertising and marketing have created artificial needs that require serious effort to attain.
• Many people find these artificial pursuits insufficient, leading to widespread modern phenomena like purposelessness, anomie, and the identity crisis.

A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society.

• Most workers and business owners lack true autonomy, as their daily actions are dictated by employers, regulations, or rigid franchise systems.
• Franchise companies often actively screen out creative and initiative-driven individuals in favor of more docile workers.
• Modern people live primarily through what the overarching system does for them or to them, following pre-established channels.
• The power process is heavily disrupted by a severe lack of real goals and individual autonomy.
• Human drives for security are constantly frustrated because critical life decisions are made by distant, unknown elites.
• Unlike primitive humans who retained a sense of personal agency against threats, modern individuals feel profoundly helpless against systemic dangers.

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.

• Primitive humans faced natural risks like disease stoically, whereas modern threats are man-made and imposed by uninfluential entities.
• Modern man's security rests in the hands of remote, massive organizations, leaving individuals feeling frustrated and humiliated.
• Industrial society restricts transitory impulses, forcing individuals to navigate a rigid network of rules and regulations.
• Society permits personal freedom only in matters irrelevant to the functioning of the system, tightly regulating all important behaviors.
• Behavior is controlled through indirect coercion, psychological manipulation, and pervasive propaganda embedded within entertainment.
• Practical limitations such as vanishing wilderness and economic structures leave most individuals with no choice but to survive as employees.

We can believe in any religion (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system).

• Modern psychological phenomena like the mid-life crisis and fear of aging stem from a lack of fulfillment in the power process.
• Primitive societies feature natural successions of life stages where individuals readily accept aging after fulfilling real physical and social goals.
• Modern individuals fear physical deterioration because they have never used their bodies in a serious, practical way.
• Providing artificial opportunities for the power process fails because autonomous individuals must forge their own paths rather than rely on the system.
• Differences in individual drive for power and autonomy explain why some people remain satisfied with industrial-technological society.

A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food.

• Individuals vary greatly in how susceptible they are to advertising and marketing techniques.
• Highly susceptible people constantly crave new material goods, leading to perpetual financial stress despite high incomes.
• People with low susceptibility show little interest in money or material acquisition.
• Medium-susceptibility individuals work hard for goods, fulfilling part of their power process yet often lacking autonomy.
• Many people attempt to satisfy their need for power vicariously by identifying with powerful organizations or mass movements.

Some are so susceptible that, even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes.

• Surrogate activities are artificial goals pursued for fulfillment rather than practical necessity.
• Activities like bodybuilding, stamp-collecting, and sports serve as common examples of surrogate pursuits.
• Earning a living often functions partially as a surrogate activity when people invest excessive effort beyond basic survival needs.
• Excessive devotion to work, particularly among scientists and engineers, drives the perfection of the technological system at the expense of individual freedom.
• Most people fail to fully satisfy their need for the power process through surrogate activities and suffer from systemic overregulation.

This extra effort, together with the emotional investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system, with negative consequences for individual freedom.

• Scientists often claim their primary motives are pure curiosity or a desire to benefit humanity.
• The curiosity explanation fails because scientists focus on hyper-specific problems driven entirely by their professional specialization rather than natural wonder.
• The benefit of humanity explanation is contradicted by scientists working on irrelevant or dangerous topics with equal enthusiasm.
• Many scientists pursue their work with emotional intensity for personal fulfillment rather than broad humanitarian causes.
• The underlying motivation for most scientific work is the power process, making science a surrogate activity.
• Secondary motives like money and status also influence scientists, meaning science is not purely a surrogate activity but largely functions as one.

With possible rare exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal, to make an effort and to attain the goal.

• Science marches forward blindly, driven primarily by the psychological needs of researchers, government officials, and corporate funders rather than human welfare.
• The authors argue that industrial-technological society cannot be reformed to prevent the progressive narrowing of human freedom.
• Freedom is defined as the opportunity to undergo the power process to achieve real goals without interference from large organizations.
• True freedom means having autonomous control over one's life-and-death issues, such as food, shelter, and defense against environmental threats.
• Constitutional rights and legal forms of government matter less to personal freedom than a society's underlying economic and technological structure.

Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.

• Freedom of the press is largely ineffective for the average individual because mass media is controlled by large organizations.
• Individual speech and writing are easily drowned out by the vast volume of commercial entertainment and media content.
• Constitutional rights typically serve the needs of the social machine rather than the true freedom of the individual.
• Bourgeois theorists view liberty merely as a means to achieve collective ends like economic growth and societal progress.
• True freedom is compromised when rights can only be exercised in the prescribed manner dictated by the state or system.

In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people.

• Human freedom is frequently limited by unconscious psychological controls and socially conditioned norms rather than true personal needs.
• History consists of unpredictable events combined with stable, long-term trends.
• Small changes to long-term historical trends produce only transitory effects unless they align with the existing direction of the trend.
• Permanently altering a long-term historical trend requires changes large enough to transform society as a whole due to the interconnection of all parts.
• Large-scale permanent changes generate unpredictable consequences for society because of the extreme complexity of human systems.
• New types of societies cannot be rationally planned on paper, as societies evolve through unmanageable processes rather than conscious choice.

If a change is made that is large enough to alter permanently a long-term trend, then the consequences for the society as a whole cannot be predicted in advance.

• Reform alone is insufficient for lasting societal change because it usually just accelerates existing trends or proves to be merely transitory.
• True revolutions fundamentally alter the entire society rather than just one aspect, and they invariably produce unexpected and unintended outcomes.
• Utopian plans for new societies never materialize as originally intended by their creators.
• The American Revolution is categorized not as a true revolution, but as a war of independence followed by a political reform.
• The Founding Fathers did not alter America's trajectory, but merely continued along the path of representative democracy already established by British culture.
• The provided sociological principles serve as flexible guides to challenge naive assumptions about future societal development.

By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries or utopians set up a new kind of society, it never works out as planned.

• Technology has consistently strengthened the industrial system at the direct expense of individual freedom and local autonomy.
• Attempts to reform the system to protect freedom are either too timid to work or risk catastrophic disruption if made permanent.
• Naive schemes attempting to reconcile freedom with modern technology are destined to collapse or produce unintended results.
• The tight regulation of human behavior by rules and large organizations is an unavoidable requirement of any technologically advanced society.
• Formal regulations may increasingly be replaced by psychological tools like propaganda and mental health programs to compel compliance.

As explained in paragraphs 65-67, 70-73, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations, and his fate depends on the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot influence.

• Modern technological societies force children into unnatural, sedentary academic paths like science and engineering that contradict basic adolescent impulses.
• Systemic pressure to modify behavior causes a growing population of individuals to reject or fail to adjust to societal requirements.
• Technological advancement makes individual influence over major life decisions virtually impossible due to massive organizational scales.
• Advocates for local autonomy face the reality that modern infrastructure and environmental interconnectedness render true independence unachievable.
• The technological system ultimately exists independently of human needs, instead forcing human behavior to adapt to its own functional requirements.

It isn’t natural for an adolescent human being to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study.

• The technological system is driven by technical necessity rather than political or social ideologies like capitalism or socialism.
• Human needs are only met when advantageous to the system, which exerts constant pressure to mold human behavior.
• Society unquestioningly forces individuals to adapt to economic and technical demands, disregarding human costs like stress or humiliation.
• Efforts to provide workers with a sense of purpose or autonomy are strictly limited and ultimately serve the goals of the enterprise.
• Modern technology operates as an interconnected, unified system where the negative aspects cannot be separated from the positive ones.

The concept of mental health in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.

• Medical advancements are deeply dependent on the broader technological system and an economically rich society.
• Treating genetic diseases without addressing the root causes halts natural selection, leading to increased genetic degradation in the population.
• Preventing population-wide genetic degradation through intervention inevitably leads to humans becoming manufactured products rather than natural creations.
• Unregulated genetic engineering would yield disastrous consequences, inviting heavy government regulation into personal reproductive lives.
• Medical ethics codes cannot protect freedom, as they merely empower the majority or ruling class to impose their values on human genetics.

So that man in the future will no longer be a creation of nature, or of chance, or of God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions), but a manufactured product.

• Powerful entities use repeated small compromises to gradually strip away the autonomy of the weaker party over time.
• Technology functions as a more powerful social force than human aspirations for freedom.
• New technological advances initially appear optional and beneficial, freedom-enhancing additions to society.
• Widespread adoption of innovations like the automobile eventually reorganizes society to make dependence mandatory.
• Individual technological improvements consistently narrow the overall sphere of human freedom while remaining desirable in isolation.

When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily remain optional.

• Incremental genetic engineering will gradually transform humans from natural creations into engineered products.
• Technological progress moves in only one irreversible direction, creating permanent individual and societal dependence.
• The rapid accumulation of simultaneous threats to freedom overwhelms defenders and leads to widespread apathy.
• Specialized technicians consistently prioritize their professional work and goals over freedom, privacy, and rights.
• Defenders of freedom are disadvantaged because they strive to avoid negative outcomes rather than pursue positive rewards.

Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation.

• While the public relaxes after temporary victories, scientists and technologists continually work to expand control over individuals.
• Social arrangements like laws and ethics are transitory and cannot permanently protect freedom from technological advances.
• Technological progress is permanent, meaning any temporary barrier against threats like genetic engineering will eventually fail.
• Technology is a more powerful social force than freedom, unless upcoming systemic crises trigger a successful revolution.
• Compromising with a sick industrial system is foolish; it must be completely destroyed before it recovers and eliminates freedom.
• Society's failure to solve simpler problems like environmental degradation proves that reforming the system to protect freedom is impossible.

If he lets the strong man survive and only forces him to give the land back, he is a fool, because when the strong man gets well he will again take all the land for himself.

• Society lacks the capacity for rational, long-term social planning and addresses problems merely through competing self-interests.
• Environmental issues might eventually be solved because it serves the system's long-term material interests.
• Conversely, preserving human freedom and autonomy goes against the system's inherent need to control behavior.
• Because the technological system cannot be reformed to protect freedom, complete elimination of the system is the only solution.
• Revolution is surprisingly easier to achieve than reform because it inspires intense commitment and offers a total transformation.

A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world; it provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices.

• Revolutionaries are driven by a powerful vision and work harder than reformers because they are willing to undergo unlimited hardships.
• Historically, human nature has placed strict limits on how much pressure societies can exert on individuals before breaking down.
• When human endurance limits are passed, societies experience rebellion, crime, mental problems, or societal collapse.
• Modern technology is now changing these historical limits by developing ways to modify human beings directly.
• Instead of removing oppressive social conditions, modern society uses antidepressant drugs to make people tolerate intolerable environments.
• Surveillance techniques and propaganda are expanding alongside mind-altering drugs to increase control over human behavior.

Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs.

• Mass media and entertainment serve as psychological tools that provide modern people with necessary escape from stress and anxiety.
• Unlike primitive peoples who can find contentment in stillness, modern individuals suffer from chronic boredom and require constant occupation.
• Modern education and parenting techniques have evolved into scientific methods designed to instill system-approved values and behaviors.
• Mental health programs and psychotherapy ultimately function to induce conformity by reducing the psychological friction of resisting the system.
• Concepts like 'child abuse' are reinterpreted by authorities to target any rearing methods that produce behavior inconvenient for society.
• Psychological techniques alone may prove insufficient for future societal adjustment, likely necessitating biological methods like drugs, neurology, and genetic engineering.

In that sense the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity.

• Modern societal problems like crime, alienation, and rebellion threaten the survival of the industrial-technological system.
• To ensure its own survival, the system is forced to exert greater control over human behavior.
• Rather than adjusting society to fit human needs, future systems will modify and adjust humans to suit the needs of the system.
• Behavioral control will not emerge from totalitarian intentions, but rather through incremental, seemingly rational, and humanitarian responses to social problems.
• This evolutionary process of control is nearly impossible to resist because each individual advance appears beneficial or lesser in evil compared to the alternative.

In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.

• Gene therapy to eliminate criminal traits is viewed as humane, but high modern crime rates stem from societal pressures rather than innate defects.
• Treating individuals to remove antisocial tendencies acts as a method of re-engineering people to fit system requirements.
• Modern society labels any behavior inconvenient to the system as a 'sickness' and views behavioral manipulation as a cure.
• Technological interventions in human behavior, even if initially optional, eventually become mandatory as society reorganizes around them.
• Mass entertainment functions as a dependency for stress-reduction, enabling the system to impose greater psychological pressures without collapsing.

In a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, a parent will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable.

• Human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis that can be manipulated through electrical stimulation, drugs, and other physical interventions.
• Controlling human behavior is primarily a technical problem involving neurons, hormones, and molecules, making it heavily susceptible to scientific advancement.
• Technological control of human behavior will likely be introduced through incremental steps, preventing effective public resistance.
• Applying laboratory psychological techniques to a dysfunctional society presents massive integration challenges, as seen in failing educational systems.
• The modern system faces a critical survival crisis regarding human behavior control that will likely be resolved within the coming decades.

We all know what many of our schools are like. The teachers are too busy taking knives and guns away from the kids to subject them to the latest techniques for making them into computer nerds.

• The industrial system aims to completely socialize humans to ensure their behavior no longer threatens the technological infrastructure.
• Without resistance, technology will advance toward complete control over Earth, erasing human freedom for all but a tiny ruling class.
• Scientists and technicians will continue expanding control over humanity as a surrogate activity driven by the pursuit of power.
• A potential systemic breakdown could cause chaos, but it would also offer the human race a new chance at freedom.
• Opponents of industrial servitude must work to heighten social stresses to induce breakdown and propagate an anti-technology ideology.

Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion.

• The industrial system is unlikely to collapse solely through revolutionary action unless internal problems create severe vulnerabilities.
• A sudden technological breakdown would cause catastrophic death tolls due to overpopulation, while a gradual de-industrialization would still be chaotic.
• Revolutionaries may actually reduce ultimate disaster scales by hastening a breakdown before the system grows even larger.
• Many believe that preserving freedom and dignity is more important than avoiding physical pain or seeking a long, empty life.
• The ongoing survival of the industrial system guarantees continuous global suffering, including environmental destruction and psychological turmoil.

To many of us, freedom and dignity are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain.

• The Industrial Revolution failed to eliminate poverty and instead disrupted society with unforeseen consequences.
• Technophiles remain naive about how large changes trigger cascading, unpredictable social problems.
• Technological progress creates new problems faster than it solves existing ones, generating massive human suffering.
• Genetically engineered solutions to famine only enable population growth, which ultimately increases stress and aggression.
• A fully realized industrial system might eventually rely entirely on intelligent machines doing all human work.

Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape.

• Humanity might drift into total dependence on intelligent machines rather than handing over power voluntarily.
• As societal problems grow more complex, machine decisions will increasingly yield better practical results than human ones.
• Eventually, decisions will become too complex for humans, leaving machines in effective control with no option to shut them down.
• Alternatively, a tiny elite might retain control over large machine systems while making the masses superfluous.
• A humane elite might care for humans like domestic animals, using psychological or biological engineering to keep them happy yet unfree.

They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

• Machines taking over simpler tasks creates a surplus of lower-ability workers who struggle to find employment.
• Employed workers face increasing demands for higher training, reliability, and extreme specialization.
• The system will use psychological or biological engineering to mold humans into docile, compliant components.
• Competitive drives may be channeled into harmless or system-serving prestige struggles rather than true power.
• Pointless service-industry busy-work could leave humans seeking dangerous outlets like drugs and crime unless engineered to adapt.

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.

• The survival of the industrial-technological system will lead to extreme human dependence on large organizations and engineered traits.
• Wild nature will be entirely eliminated or reduced to managed remnants, and genetic engineering will ultimately transform humanity beyond recognition.
• Technology is forcing a radical new environment onto humans, requiring either artificial re-engineering or a painful process of natural selection.
• The authors reject the passive acceptance of technological progress, arguing that the system is not inevitable and can be stopped.
• The proposed strategy involves promoting social stress and instability while propagating an anti-technology ideology to spark a revolution.
• Drawing parallels to the French and Russian revolutions, the primary goal is not to build a new ideal society, but solely to destroy the existing one.

It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.

• An effective ideology requires both a negative critique and a positive ideal to gain enthusiastic support.
• Wild nature serves as the ideal counter-ideal to technology because it is independent of human management.
• Wild nature encompasses both the natural environment and human nature free from societal regulation.
• Eliminating industrial society relieves pressure on nature and stops the indefinite expansion of technological control.
• Without advanced technology, people naturally live close to the land and local autonomy tends to increase.

As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society—well, you can’t eat your cake and have it too.

• The primary goal should be to cultivate a core of intelligent, thoughtful, and rational individuals opposed to the industrial system.
• Propaganda for this core must avoid distorting facts or using intemperate language to maintain intellectual respectability.
• A simplified version of the ideology can be propagated to the unthinking majority without alienating the thoughtful minority.
• History is driven by active, determined minorities rather than the majority, making a deeply committed core more valuable than shallow support.
• Strategic conflict should be directed against the power-holding elite of industrial society rather than the general public.

History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants.

• Conflicts between rival groups often drive further technologization as each side seeks advantages.
• Efforts by minority groups to gain power within the technological system inadvertently absorb them into it.
• Ethnic conflicts are viewed as a distraction from the primary struggle against the industrial-technological system.
• The envisioned revolution focuses on technology and economics rather than traditional politics or government overthrows.
• Revolutionaries should avoid taking political power prematurely to ensure the public blames the system, not the leaders, for inevitable hardships.

Our real enemy is the industrial-technological system, and in the struggle against the system, ethnic distinctions are of no importance.

• Nationalistic fears of falling behind foreign powers drive continuous technological progress and economic competition.
• The industrial system must be attacked globally and simultaneously, even accepting the risk of temporary dictatorial control.
• Economic integration measures like NAFTA and GATT could eventually make worldwide systemic collapse easier to trigger.
• True individual power has declined while the collective, organizational power of the industrial system over nature has surged.
• Primitive humans possessed genuine practical autonomy within nature while causing vastly less collective environmental damage.

Holy robots! The world will fly off its orbit if the Japanese ever sell more cars than we do!

• The complete destruction of the industrial system must be the sole goal of revolutionaries to avoid compromise.
• Pursuing secondary goals like social justice would force revolutionaries to rely on and retain complex technology.
• Revolutionaries may use modern technology strictly as a tool to attack and dismantle the technological system itself.
• Humanity's relationship with technology is likened to an alcoholic struggling to resist a barrel of wine.
• Revolutionaries should have many children to pass on their rebellious social attitudes either genetically or through training.

Never forget that the human race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.

• Revolutionaries should reproduce abundantly to pass on their values, as the elimination of the industrial system will naturally solve population concerns.
• The single overriding goal of the revolution must be the elimination of modern technology without competing objectives.
• Historical claims that technology never regresses are false when distinguishing between small-scale and organization-dependent technology.
• Small-scale technology can survive in small communities without outside help, as seen in the survival of Roman crafts after the empire fell.
• Organization-dependent technology, like refrigeration, naturally regresses and is lost when the large-scale social systems supporting it break down.

An argument likely to be raised against our proposed revolution is that it is bound to fail, because (it is claimed) throughout history technology has always progressed, never regressed, hence technological regression is impossible.

• Rebuilding industrial society from scratch would take centuries because it requires a prolonged, multi-stage process of tool-making and economic development.
• The enthusiasm for technological progress is a relatively modern phenomenon unique to Western society since the seventeenth century.
• Leftism is fundamentally inconsistent with human freedom and wild nature because it relies on organized society and advanced technology to achieve its collectivist goals.
• Leftists seek collective power through mass movements and would ultimately embrace and promote technology if they ever gained control of the system.

You need tools to make tools to make tools to make tools…

• Historically, leftist groups advocate for freedom when they are a minority, only to impose harsher oppression than their predecessors once they gain power.
• Power-hungry leftists have repeatedly betrayed revolutionary allies and libertarian factions to seize absolute control, as seen in France, Russia, Spain, and Cuba.
• Leftism functions psychologically much like a religion, providing believers with a rigid moral certainty that resists logic or contradictory facts.
• The quasi-religious conviction of leftists compels them to believe they have a moral duty to impose their ideology on everyone.
• Modern movements related to the old left, including feminism and political correctness, share this same totalitarian tendency to invade private thought.

In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type, repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist revolutionaries, as well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have double-crossed them to seize power for themselves.

• Leftism functions as a totalitarian force driven fundamentally by the psychological need for power rather than genuine concern for societal issues.
• Activists utilize surrogate activities to satisfy their drive for power by identifying with social movements and pursuing endless goals.
• Because the underlying motivation is the feeling of power derived from the struggle, leftists are permanently unsatisfied and continuously escalate their demands.
• Even if every current social change demanded by leftists were instituted, they would quickly invent new evils to correct within a couple of years.
• Over-socialized leftists find their only morally acceptable outlet for the power drive in the struggle to impose their personal morality on everyone else.
• True believers exhibit a single-minded devotion that makes them powerful yet dangerous ingredients in revolutionary movements unless strictly focused on destroying technology.

The activists will never be satisfied until tobacco is outlawed, and after that it will be alcohol, then junk food, etc.

• Many individual leftists are decent and tolerant people who do not personally possess totalitarian tendencies.
• Power-hungry individuals tend to capture control of leftist movements because they strive hardest for power.
• Gentler leftists often go along with ruthless leaders rather than risk losing their faith in the movement.
• Historical examples like the USSR show how western leftists made excuses for communist aggression.
• Despite the mildness of many followers, the general character of leftism as a movement remains totalitarian.

Once the power-hungry types have captured control of the movement, there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to oppose them.

• The text outlines the typical psychological traits, moral stances, and catchphrases associated with modern leftism.
• Leftists typically favor social planning, collective responsibility, and various victim-oriented rights movements.
• Dangerous leftists include power-hungry dogmatists as well as quiet, oversocialized crypto-leftists who promote collectivism.
• Crypto-leftists differ from ordinary bourgeois individuals through their deep ideological belief and a psychological need to serve a collectivity.
• The authors acknowledge that their assertions involve broad generalizations, reliance on intuition, and potential inaccuracies.
• Despite admitted limitations, the authors remain confident in their overall portrait of leftism as a symptom of disrupted power processes.

The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer in a collectivistic ideology.

• Identification with victims and low self-esteem are distinct peculiarities often found in modern leftism compared to historical movements.
• The primary values of modern society are shaped because they directly serve the operational needs of the industrial system.
• Official discouragement of violence, racism, and poverty is driven by the system's need for stability and efficiency.
• Women are encouraged into careers to integrate them directly into the economic system while weakening traditional family solidarity.
• While most people prefer to avoid difficult psychological conflicts in decision-making, they still desire personal access and influence over leaders to maintain autonomy.

Women are encouraged to have careers because their talents are useful to the system and, more importantly, because by having regular jobs women become better integrated into the system and tied directly to it rather than to their families.

• Unmet goals trigger a destructive cycle of frustration, lowered self-esteem, anger, and aggression like domestic abuse.
• Prolonged frustration frequently results in depression, which manifests as guilt, sleep disorders, and frantic pleasure-seeking.
• Small-scale communities such as youth gangs and cults threaten the broader system because members pledge loyalty to each other rather than the state.
• Historically, modernizing societies often found it necessary to break down traditional family attachments to foster nationalism and state loyalty.
• While material acquisition is not purely an artificial creation, the advertising industry actively manipulates consumers into buying things they neither want nor need.

Our job is to make people buy things they don’t want and don’t need.

• Economic and physical insecurity has temporarily replaced the problem of purposelessness with frustration over achieving security.
• Guaranteeing universal security through society fails to solve the root problem because individuals remain dependent on the system.
• Conservative deregulation efforts primarily shift power from the government to large corporations rather than helping the average individual.
• Propaganda remains propaganda regardless of its intended purpose, often disguised as education when people approve of its goals.
• Personal freedom declined following the Industrial Revolution despite increased legal guarantees and formal rights.

The conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.

• Traditional workers enjoyed physical independence and set their own schedules.
• Urbanization and factories imposed new demands for regularity, obedience, and social conformity.
• Technological societies globally share similar daily routines despite differing ideologies.
• Accumulating individual technical improvements can ultimately strip away human autonomy.
• The modern system eases life in countless ways while depriving individuals of control over their fate.

The system makes an individual’s life easier for him in innumerable ways, but in doing so it deprives him of control over his own fate.

• The text focuses exclusively on value conflicts within the mainstream, deliberately excluding outsider perspectives like environmentalism.
• Self-interest often extends beyond material gains to fulfill psychological needs through the promotion of ideologies or religions.
• The system permits only planned, circumscribed freedom, keeping individuals on a leash to ensure continued control and growth.
• European society achieved greater efficiency and technological superiority over primitive societies despite subjecting people to higher pressure.
• An expanding law enforcement apparatus signals a deeply flawed society that relies on severe pressures to force rule-following.
• Emerging technologies and biological interventions threaten human freedom by expanding the system's capacity to control behavior.

The individual must always be kept on a leash, even if the leash is sometimes long.

• Nature can inspire a religious reverence that serves as a powerful counter-ideal and basis for rebellion against technology.
• Western society currently suffers from a religious vacuum, as traditional religions are stagnant, commercialized, or fragmented.
• Artificially concocted religions like Gaia fail because adherents are often just play-acting rather than genuinely believing.
• While a gradual disintegration of the industrial system is conceivable, a transition away from technology will likely be difficult and full of conflict.
• The economic and technological structure of a society dictates daily life far more than its political structure.
• Modern leftist and activist movements are often characterized by hostility, frustrated power needs, and specific ideological tones.

Do its adherents really believe in it or are they just play-acting? If they are just play-acting their religion will be a flop in the end.

• If the industrial system survives, it will permanently reduce humans to engineered products and mere cogs in a social machine.

If it survives, it may eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.

• Hypersensitivity to terminology and political correctness are cited as key behavioral manifestations of these deep-seated inferiority feelings.

They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own.

• Leftists harbor a generalized animosity toward strong, successful, and traditional Western institutions.

They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality.

• Even in a society with no social problems, leftists would invent issues merely to justify their activism.

If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to invent problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

• This deep sense of constraint and powerlessness makes oversocialization one of the most severe cruelties humans inflict on each other.

Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him.

• The core values leftists promote for marginalized groups—such as climbing the status ladder and becoming responsible parents—are identical to industrial-technological system values.

In all essential respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals.

• Individuals who can attain anything by mere wishing without effort develop serious psychological problems like boredom and demoralization.

At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized.

• A rule of thumb helps identify surrogate activities by asking if a person would feel deprived of goal X while successfully meeting basic physical needs through interesting work.

If the answer is no, then the person’s pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity.

• Without adequate opportunity to experience the power process of having a goal, making an autonomous effort, and attaining it, people experience psychological and social symptoms like depression, anxiety, and frustration.

When one does not have adequate opportunity to go through the power process the consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism, abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc.

• Conservative complaints about the decay of traditional values ignore how economic and technological growth inevitably cause that very decay.

The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth.

• The crucial difference is that 19th-century pioneers created change through their own choices, satisfying their need for the power process.

The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense (largely justified) that change is imposed on him, whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he created change himself, by his own choice.

• Many people find these artificial pursuits insufficient, leading to widespread modern phenomena like purposelessness, anomie, and the identity crisis.

A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society.

• Franchise companies often actively screen out creative and initiative-driven individuals in favor of more docile workers.

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.

• Behavior is controlled through indirect coercion, psychological manipulation, and pervasive propaganda embedded within entertainment.

We can believe in any religion (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system).

• Primitive societies feature natural successions of life stages where individuals readily accept aging after fulfilling real physical and social goals.

A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food.

• Highly susceptible people constantly crave new material goods, leading to perpetual financial stress despite high incomes.

Some are so susceptible that, even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes.

• Excessive devotion to work, particularly among scientists and engineers, drives the perfection of the technological system at the expense of individual freedom.

This extra effort, together with the emotional investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system, with negative consequences for individual freedom.

• The underlying motivation for most scientific work is the power process, making science a surrogate activity.

With possible rare exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal, to make an effort and to attain the goal.

• Science marches forward blindly, driven primarily by the psychological needs of researchers, government officials, and corporate funders rather than human welfare.

Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.

• True freedom is compromised when rights can only be exercised in the prescribed manner dictated by the state or system.

In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people.

• Large-scale permanent changes generate unpredictable consequences for society because of the extreme complexity of human systems.

If a change is made that is large enough to alter permanently a long-term trend, then the consequences for the society as a whole cannot be predicted in advance.

• True revolutions fundamentally alter the entire society rather than just one aspect, and they invariably produce unexpected and unintended outcomes.

By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries or utopians set up a new kind of society, it never works out as planned.

• Formal regulations may increasingly be replaced by psychological tools like propaganda and mental health programs to compel compliance.

As explained in paragraphs 65-67, 70-73, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations, and his fate depends on the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot influence.

• Modern technological societies force children into unnatural, sedentary academic paths like science and engineering that contradict basic adolescent impulses.

It isn’t natural for an adolescent human being to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study.

• Society unquestioningly forces individuals to adapt to economic and technical demands, disregarding human costs like stress or humiliation.

The concept of mental health in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.

• Preventing population-wide genetic degradation through intervention inevitably leads to humans becoming manufactured products rather than natural creations.

So that man in the future will no longer be a creation of nature, or of chance, or of God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions), but a manufactured product.

• Widespread adoption of innovations like the automobile eventually reorganizes society to make dependence mandatory.

When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily remain optional.

• Technological progress moves in only one irreversible direction, creating permanent individual and societal dependence.

Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation.

• Compromising with a sick industrial system is foolish; it must be completely destroyed before it recovers and eliminates freedom.

If he lets the strong man survive and only forces him to give the land back, he is a fool, because when the strong man gets well he will again take all the land for himself.

• Revolution is surprisingly easier to achieve than reform because it inspires intense commitment and offers a total transformation.

A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world; it provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices.

• Instead of removing oppressive social conditions, modern society uses antidepressant drugs to make people tolerate intolerable environments.

Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs.

• Mental health programs and psychotherapy ultimately function to induce conformity by reducing the psychological friction of resisting the system.

In that sense the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity.

• Rather than adjusting society to fit human needs, future systems will modify and adjust humans to suit the needs of the system.

In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system.

• Technological interventions in human behavior, even if initially optional, eventually become mandatory as society reorganizes around them.

In a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, a parent will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable.

• Technological control of human behavior will likely be introduced through incremental steps, preventing effective public resistance.

We all know what many of our schools are like. The teachers are too busy taking knives and guns away from the kids to subject them to the latest techniques for making them into computer nerds.

• Without resistance, technology will advance toward complete control over Earth, erasing human freedom for all but a tiny ruling class.

Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion.

• Many believe that preserving freedom and dignity is more important than avoiding physical pain or seeking a long, empty life.

To many of us, freedom and dignity are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain.

• Technological progress creates new problems faster than it solves existing ones, generating massive human suffering.

Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape.

• A humane elite might care for humans like domestic animals, using psychological or biological engineering to keep them happy yet unfree.

They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

• Pointless service-industry busy-work could leave humans seeking dangerous outlets like drugs and crime unless engineered to adapt.

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.

• The proposed strategy involves promoting social stress and instability while propagating an anti-technology ideology to spark a revolution.

It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.

• Wild nature serves as the ideal counter-ideal to technology because it is independent of human management.

As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society—well, you can’t eat your cake and have it too.

• History is driven by active, determined minorities rather than the majority, making a deeply committed core more valuable than shallow support.

History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants.

• Revolutionaries should avoid taking political power prematurely to ensure the public blames the system, not the leaders, for inevitable hardships.

Our real enemy is the industrial-technological system, and in the struggle against the system, ethnic distinctions are of no importance.

• The industrial system must be attacked globally and simultaneously, even accepting the risk of temporary dictatorial control.

Holy robots! The world will fly off its orbit if the Japanese ever sell more cars than we do!

• Humanity's relationship with technology is likened to an alcoholic struggling to resist a barrel of wine.

Never forget that the human race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.

• Historical claims that technology never regresses are false when distinguishing between small-scale and organization-dependent technology.

An argument likely to be raised against our proposed revolution is that it is bound to fail, because (it is claimed) throughout history technology has always progressed, never regressed, hence technological regression is impossible.

• Rebuilding industrial society from scratch would take centuries because it requires a prolonged, multi-stage process of tool-making and economic development.

You need tools to make tools to make tools to make tools…

• Power-hungry leftists have repeatedly betrayed revolutionary allies and libertarian factions to seize absolute control, as seen in France, Russia, Spain, and Cuba.

In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type, repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist revolutionaries, as well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have double-crossed them to seize power for themselves.

• Because the underlying motivation is the feeling of power derived from the struggle, leftists are permanently unsatisfied and continuously escalate their demands.

The activists will never be satisfied until tobacco is outlawed, and after that it will be alcohol, then junk food, etc.

• Gentler leftists often go along with ruthless leaders rather than risk losing their faith in the movement.

Once the power-hungry types have captured control of the movement, there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to oppose them.

• Crypto-leftists differ from ordinary bourgeois individuals through their deep ideological belief and a psychological need to serve a collectivity.

The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer in a collectivistic ideology.

• Women are encouraged into careers to integrate them directly into the economic system while weakening traditional family solidarity.

Women are encouraged to have careers because their talents are useful to the system and, more importantly, because by having regular jobs women become better integrated into the system and tied directly to it rather than to their families.

• While material acquisition is not purely an artificial creation, the advertising industry actively manipulates consumers into buying things they neither want nor need.

Our job is to make people buy things they don’t want and don’t need.

• Guaranteeing universal security through society fails to solve the root problem because individuals remain dependent on the system.

The conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.

• The modern system eases life in countless ways while depriving individuals of control over their fate.

The system makes an individual’s life easier for him in innumerable ways, but in doing so it deprives him of control over his own fate.

• The system permits only planned, circumscribed freedom, keeping individuals on a leash to ensure continued control and growth.

The individual must always be kept on a leash, even if the leash is sometimes long.

• Artificially concocted religions like Gaia fail because adherents are often just play-acting rather than genuinely believing.

Do its adherents really believe in it or are they just play-acting? If they are just play-acting their religion will be a flop in the end.