Insight information
One thought alone occupies us; we cannot think of two things at the same time. Which is good for us, according to the world, but not according to God. – Pascal, Pensées, 1670
With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only points on which we absolutely insist are that the single overriding goal must be the elimination of modern technology, and that no other goal can be allowed to compete with this one. For the rest, revolutionaries should take an empirical approach. – Ted Kaczynski, “Industrial Society and Its Future”, The Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1995
The Unabomber was dead, the morning fog had all but burned away, the cobblestoned islands were coming into full view and our fine young woman was finally out in the world – in Paris of all places, April in Paris in new shoes on the river Seine just like Leslie Caron in An American in Paris and Lily Collins in Emily in Paris. Bring it on, she said to herself. All those French classes, enfin, une réalité. This with the joke voice, with an exaggerated American accent.
Yet for the first time in a long time – ever perhaps – and without ever seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary, she felt the presence of something overwhelming suddenly enter into the very centre of her being and take it over; and now, pushed out brutally and hovering above, she could see herself for what she was, a young, confident woman taking advantage of a change in the weather, no more rain the sun warm a perfect breeze and she entirely open to whatever glorious new thing life might bring. Bring it on, she said again. Bring it on! Not a thought in her head about her body, not a worry about her mind, a favourite playlist in her ears.
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
She had tried to like a recommended French playlist, in fact she did ❤️ it but it was like at the same time très trop boring so back she went to the usual streamings her parents had fed her since she was a little girl, which never failed to buck her up when she most needed bucking up.
You know I can't believe it when I hear that you won't see me
She was near the bridge in the scene with Gene Kelly. She could see Emily and she could see Amélie. She studied the cut of the stones in the arch. She could see Notre-Dame. The scaffolding pained her. The thought of the fire, the flames. All the techniques brought to bear. Bring it on, she said to herself, tapping her wrists gently with two fingers, lips barely moving, humming inside, her mind – her soul – light and bright and filled with the energising lustre of the golden sun. Bring it fucking on!
The curse – the fucking – as always, surprised her, made her blench a bit, and then it made her see things she did not want to see. All very fast. She crossed herself – sort of – touched her breast, patted her wrists lightly again with the same two sets of fingers – once on the outside, twice on the inside – it was a thing she did she didn’t know why no idea where it came from but it worked. Her hair was clean and silky. She was wearing a brand-new pink outfit with white gloves and a new pillbox hat and a new pair of very pretty pumps. The look, the total effect, was a miracle. She felt good. She looked good. She looked fucking amazing.
Cross touch pat pat pat pat pat pat t’es vraiment belle, toi, she said, exactly the way Leslie Caron would have said it. Or Jackie. I should do that, she thought, go to the Sorbonne just like Jackie take that course learn which fork all the names and the words, Flaubert, asperge, aubergine. Chouette!
The high point of her life, this is what Jackie had experienced. Le meilleur souvenir, even after the rest of it. That’s what Jackie said. The ups, the downs, the blood, the brains. The death. Can you imagine? She winced. She made the sign of the cross, she touched, she tapped. Everything red. Her nostrils assaulted by the smell of men’s piss. Why do the men who piss in the streets of Paris produce by far the stinkiest piss? Because of all the wine and cheese? No, because they don’t properly hydrate. Because they don’t know don’t think. She opened her bag, not a big brand name bag but a super chouette bag made by a young designer from Africa they say he’s going to LVMH she bought it in a boutique in the Marais it wasn’t cheap and out of it she took a really nice water bottle.
Bring. It. On.
Rule 14. Use the active voice.
The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive.
“Usually” in the above was actually double underlined in Kaczynski’s copy – the most dog-eared book in his log-cabin library. Other underlined sentences: “Write in a way that comes naturally”; “Revise and rewrite” ; “Do not explain too much”; “Omit needless words”; and “Be clear.”
Among the other most-read dog-eared on the cabin shelves (see photo above), in decreasing order of thumbedness:
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1964
Albert Camus, The Stranger, 1946
Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, 1947
Jules Michelet, History of the French Revolution, 1967
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, 1907
Food and Nutrition Board, Recommended Dietary Allowances, 1974
Guide to North American Birds, 1966
George W. Scotter & Halle Flygare, Wildflowers of the Canadian Rockies, 1986
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951
Henry Jacobwitz, Electronics Made Simple, 1958
National Rifle Association, The Basics of Rifle Shooting, 1987
M.H.A. Newman, Elements of the Topology of Plane Sets of Points, 1964
Betty Owen, Typing for Beginners, 1976
Andrew Robinson, Lost Languages, 1957
Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, 1992
Kenneth Keniston, The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society, 1966
Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women, 1976
Walking along the slow curve of the Quai Voltaire she studied the titles of books in the bouquiniste stalls, prints of plants and anatomies and landscapes cut with razor blades from large monographs or stolen from libraries, posters of film stars, posters of novelists and philosophers, ads for breakfast cereals, magazine covers, colonial soldiers, Eiffel towers; and then down the stairs to the water’s edge she watched the bateaux mouches with the waving tourists and took a few quickies of the sunbathers and the cyclists, and a man at an easel, a plein air watercolour of the fames and nymphs, a woman breastfeeding, men fishing and leering, kids smoking hash or crack or whatever it was kids smoked in this part of the world; and none of it registered, not even after she shared the best with her close friends; and none of it made her look back in at herself. She was untroubled. This was her day. She could do anything. She could take pictures. She could paint. The sky was a dark, dark blue and as high and as wide as she had ever seen it. This is a beautiful day and I have a chance to start everything over. Nothing can touch me. This is the second day of the rest of my life. This is the real me, finally, the first real me.
Enfin.
“Within four years of graduating from Harvard he would be firmly fixed in his life’s plan. According to an autobiography he wrote that chronicled his life until the age of twenty-seven, ‘I thought I will kill, but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection, so that I can kill again… If it doesn't work and if I can get back to civilisation before I starve then I will come back here and kill someone I hate.’”– Alston Chase, “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber,” The Atlantic, June 2020
She crossed the bridge, the pont, went down the steps, les marches? and was on the Right Bank, la Rive Droite, where she took in the steeple (?) of Saint Chapelle on the other side of the river, in which were held in gold bejewelled vessels and vaults the crown of thorns, the fragment of the True Cross, the lance, the sponge, the Blood of Christ, the Virgin's milk, the Virgin's hair and pieces of her veil. She took in all this and she gazed in awe. Ile Saint-Louis, the Cité, Notre-Dame. She heaved a great sigh. She was here. All this was here.
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field.” – W. V. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, 1950
He was W. V. Quine’s top student at Harvard. From him he learned how to define the reality of the world and our place in that reality. From Jacques Ellul – The Technological Society, which he first discovered in his third year at Harvard, and which was his most-read book after The Elements of Style – he learned to recognise what was inhuman in us, what techniques we should keep and what we should be ready to lose, what we should welcome and what we should reject with our very last ounce of strength. He was equally under the sway of Henry Murray, the head of the Harvard Psychological Clinic and a former lieutenant colonel in the OSS, the precursor of the CIA. A disciple of Carl Jung and a leading authority on Herman Melville – he owned the world’s largest collection of Melville-related books, manuscripts and artefacts – Murray co-developed, with Christiana Morgan, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which he called “the second best-seller that Harvard ever published, second only to the Harvard Dictionary of Music.”
He had a recorder and a zither in the cabin. He studied Bach and he played Bach and he wrote his own musical compositions.
He was shy. Especially around women.
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing. – Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851
A macaron next. Or the cupcakes she saw just now in her feed with the crazy line of influencers all the way around the fucking cross touch pat pat pat pat pat pat. Madeleines. Kouign-amann! Or a lobster roll – expensive but cheaper than New York. Or the best croissant. Or the third best baguette or a smash burger – where you fucking smash the ground beef onto the griddle with a spatula. Putain. Le fait d'écraser la viande permet de saisir l'extérieur de la viande, ce qui permet d'emprisonner tout le jus et la saveur. Imprison? Elle a fait le signe de croix. Croise, touche, tapote, tapote, tapote, tapote, tapote. Everything is about technique and efficiency. These are the only remaining sacred values. Or a jambon beurre. Or raw cookie dough, végane peanut butter with a spoon in a cup.
Another selfie. Of what?
Up ahead, past a sidestepped dogpile of children and a double dodge around a first-time rollerblader, she sees – everything after this will happen in the present tense forever – a très très belle femme elegantly dressed, an executive she thinks, the tenses confuse, sitting on a bench, reading the Wall Street Journal. American? “White House Says China Has Had Cuba Spy Base Since at Least 2019”. “Trump Faces 2024 Split Screen of Campaign and Criminal Trials”. She studies her discreetly: the cross of the woman's stockinged legs, the high black heels, the grey wool skirt and the matching blazer – chic! – then, awkward, not sure she should be doing what she was doing but doing it just the same, she pivots on the ball of her right foot and thrusts her bottom out, spins into a rolling crouch and sits down hard on the other end of the bench. Not elegant. The woman, startled by the sudden bounce, looks over and smiles. Her eyes flash. Bonjour, she says. No accent. Bonjour, our woman says. The wind kindles the twinkling gold of the blossoming trees. Everything is so perfect. But there is a hesitation, there is a moment of suspension. Isn’t there? She recognises it. Does she? Both looking, smiling. Looking. Looking down. The current broken.
The woman reading the Wall Street Journal returned to her reading. “Unabomber Ted Kaczynski Dies in Federal Custody”. She was absorbed. She did not hunger for acquaintance. She did not need new friends.
I picked you out, I shook you up
And turned you around
Turned you into someone new
Paranoids, according to Henry Murray – this from a report on post-war Germany that he presented to FDR – “cannot be treated successfully if they are not impressed, consciously or unconsciously, by the ability, knowledge, wisdom, or perhaps mere magnetic force, of the physician.”
The indwelling burning hunger of the paranoid is for recognition, power and glory–praise from those he respects. This hunger should be appeased as soon as possible, so that the paranoid thinks to himself: ‘The great man appreciates me. Together we can face the world.’ It is as if he thought: ‘He is God the Father and I am his chosen son. Special efforts must sometimes be made to achieve this end, since paranoids, being full of scorn, are not easy to impress.
Our woman, the woman in the brand-new pink outfit with the pillbox hat, popped her parents’ stream out of her head and studied the headlines and charts on the front and back pages of the other woman’s newspaper. She wished she could become so engrossed, so engaged, in this type of thing, this language, this knowledge, this heavy global machinery. The way the world works, she thought, the real world, she knew nothing of it. How did I get so far along in life and never have to encounter this? What have I been doing? Just as she was about to snap shut fold herself off the bench and slink back into another full day and night and day under the dirty sheets of her fat stupid past, the woman next to her on the bench folded and lowered the newspaper. Are you all right, she asked in a pleasant manner, as if to say, of course you're all right, you're beautiful, and what a gorgeous day! Yes, yes, I'm fine, I was just looking at your newspaper and I felt so suddenly foreign, like a stranger who can't speak the language. Any language. Anything meaningful. Did she actually say this? The woman laughed. A stranger yes, a foreigner. We all feel like that. All the time, really. Those that don't are lying to themselves. And dangerous. This newspaper, she said, these stories, most of it is nonsense. Most of everything printed here is pure invention. That's what I enjoy about it. You can make up your own world. You can come at it from any angle you want.
Provided you have money, of course, our woman hears herself say. The old her. A lot of money, she thought.
All you have to do is figure out what people want, said the other woman, with a conspiratorial wink and an even bigger smile. What they think they want. She rested her hand on the thigh of our lady. Our lady of perpetual faith, who noticed a plaque on the back of the bench between them: “À la mémoire de mes parents, Pierre et Marie-Jeanne Dupont, qui s'asseyaient ici presque tous les jours, se tenant la main et regardant la Seine défiler.”
The woman certainly was friendly. And what a smile!
Still, besides, Pillbox said. There is basic knowledge. A basic understanding of things. Which I lack.
Don't tell anyone, says the woman, and how will they know? Think of Marilyn Monroe. You’re too young, probably.
No! I love Marilyn Monroe! No, wait – to herself – do I? She of the milk-fed face and the skirt with no panties and the seven-day itch. Dumb as a doorknob.
That photo of her, said the executive woman. Also sitting on a bench, reading a book by James Joyce. Married to Arthur Miller. Well? Who was she? What do we know about what went on inside her head? She looked at her hard. Stared right into her.
Pillbox looked down and saw a condom wrapper on the ground. Then a second one. The events surrounding their opening and discard suddenly rushed into her brain.
It's much too late to find
When you think you've changed your mind
You'd better change it back or we will both be sorry
In 1959, during Kaczynski’s first year at Harvard – he was a prodigy, sixteen years old – Henry Murray, our Melville man, used him in his multiform assessment projects. He was asked to write his autobiography. He was told to answer questions on subjects such as toilet training, masturbation and erotic fantasies. He was given the Thematic Apperception Test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the California Psychological Inventory, the Maudalay Personality Inventory, an inventory of self-description, a temperament questionnaire, a time-metaphor test, a basic disposition test, a range of experience inventory, a philosophical outlook test, an odour association test, a word association test, an argument-completion test, a Wyatt finger-painting test, a projective-drawings test, and a Rosenzweig picture frustration test. The results were analysed and a profile developed. In total, he spent over two hundred hours under their scrutiny. His final test was a dyadic confrontation test based on stress tests Murphy had developed for the OSS in 1948. He and twenty-one other undergraduates were given a month in which to write a brief exposition of his personal philosophy of life: “an affirmation of the major guiding principles in accord with which he lived or hoped to live.” He was told he would be paired with a young law student to discuss and debate the respective merits of their two philosophies. Instead, he was taken into a room with a two-way mirror and strapped to a chair. A bright light was shone into his eyes and a motion-picture camera was trained on his face. Electrodes were glued to his chest and skull. Then a man named Otto, armed with the essay, hobbled into the room and berated him till he broke down and wept.
Condom wrappers: She thought about getting up and walking away. She thought of the mountain climber she had read about, the one who was trapped with his arm pinned under a boulder for five days, who finally had no choice but to take out his pocketknife and cut off his arm just below the elbow. This, too, was a technique. She thought of the ceramic bombs she had read about, terracotta pots filled with venomous scorpions launched from catapults. She thought of the man from the General Store stepping outside for a smoke, clutching his head, falling to the boardwalk. She thought of old women in aprons and head kerchiefs peeling potatoes in a dark wooden room lit by oil lamps. She thought of men sliding down the flanks of a whale, riding long knives plunged deep into the giant’s hide and fat.
She thought of a young mother ignoring her baby’s screams, trying to train it to sleep through the night, the Ferber Method, but giving up, the screams too much, and going upstairs and opening the door to the nursery and seeing a rat on her baby’s chest, eating her baby’s nose.
cross touch pat pat pat pat pat pat
She thought of her shoes, brand-new patent leather Louboutin pumps that smelled like the beasts of Hell.
The woman was still there, still smiling. She saw another condom wrapper, lying in the grass, a short toss away. Toss. A tosser. Un branleur. She thought of this. She thought of the poor man's arm still lying there, still crushed under the boulder, and how he had to cut and snap the bone. Another man – French? North African? – was hovering a short distance off, staring. She didn't register him, didn't separate him from the rest of her brain’s activity. He approached, smiling, said something to the woman in the grey wool skirt, then strolled off into the shrubbery behind their bench. The woman turned to her. It was very nice talking to you, she said, getting up, extending her hand.
Notre femme chapeau boîte à pilules nodded, smiled, shook the slender graceful hand.
Take the paper. Give it a peruse. I’ve finished with it.
The woman got up and followed the man into the shrubbery.
The woman in pink poured over the newspaper. What if the mountain climber didn't have a knife? What would he have done? Would he have bitten through his arm like an animal? Could she hear the man and woman talking, negotiating?
A lot of money, she thought. She began to read in earnest. Swaps. Futures. A lot of money.
There was another story of another mountain climber pinned under another rock, this time by the leg. He cut through the knee joint, said it was easy, like separating a chicken drumstick from the thigh.
“We’re filming this, Kaczynski, so think before you open your trap.” This was how Otto usually started.
“Sorry?”
“Sorry? I’ll fucking say you’re sorry. Do you ever think first, or do you just blurt out the first thing that comes into your thick fucking head?
“What is this?”
“You’re a moron, Ted. You call this a philosophy? I’ve read better ideas in comic books. You’re a fucking mess, Kaczynski. You’re a complete waste of my time.”
Ben & Jerry make a chicken-flavoured ice cream. She just saw this. Ben & Jerry Chicken and Waffles. Chick’n and Waffles! Buttermilk waffle-flavoured ice cream and sprinkles of crispy chick’n and waffle bits sprinkled in, and swirls of bourbon maple syrup. Don’t be silly. Not real bits of fried chicken. Not severed wings and bits of bone-in fried chicken. Only the taste of fried chicken. It’s some form of mimicry. Like what animals and insects do to avoid prey.
They were coupling now, making noises, slick and wet. Like animals. Or was she imagining this?
Chick’n & Waffles was only available in New York. A test market. The centre of the universe. But this is Paris and there is a new soul food place in the Marais. Soul food. She had a vague idea of what this was but then she found it on her phone. Or, she thought, drawing from the same feed, civet de lapin, a traditional winter dish prepared with rabbit and its blood, red wine, bacon, mushrooms, butter, flour, carrots, onions and garlic. Too hot, no? It’s almost summer!
I have money, she thought. Growth figures. Tech turnaround. Market slide. My second day. She took off her pillbox, placed it primly on her lap, and waited for the woman to return or a man to approach. Wake up she said to herself. This is a dream, silly! She sent out beams of light, visual rays to the objects that the she wished to see.
She remembered the celestial mechanics that she studied when she was a little girl. The machine-generated planetary ephemerides of the great astronomical almanacs.
Just now, the skies look bright, she said to herself.
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
I think I'm becoming radicalized
Oh, the hat… the hat…