here's been some talk on this list lately about how we should distance environmentalism from the Unabomber, and foil attempts by the media to unite Shouldn't we also look inward, and see if in any way a love of aturedoes or can lead to antipathy to humans? he relationship between environmentalism and violence had been on my mindprior to Ted Kaczynski's arrest, because I had been reading _MindHunter_, JohnDouglas's memoir of his career heading the FBI's serial crimes unit. In passing,Douglas mentions a number of cases in which the killers were ardentenvironmentalists or living back to nature. It was hard to know what, ifanything, to make of this (or of the author's contention that an inordinatepercentage of serial killers drive Volkwagen Beetles). atching the FBI take Kaczynski away as the prime suspect in the Unabombercase, I thought, of course, of Henry Thoreau. Both were Harvard graduates whochose to remove themselves from industrial America to go it alone in a simplewilderness retreat. Thoreau is America's most famous recluse -- isn't it likelythat Kaczynski is familiar with Thoreau's writing, even that he was emulatinghim to a degree? If Kaczynski is the Unabomber, then an intellectual connection to Thoreau iseven more possible. After all, Thoreau is the father of North Americanenvironmentalism, and the Unabomber is most definitely an environmentalist.In his manifesto, after an exceedingly long discussion of how technology hadoverwhelmed society and smothered persnal freedom, he writes, "But as anideology, in order to gain support, must have positive ideals well as a negativeone; it must be FOR something as well as AGAINST something. The positiveideal that we propose is Nature. That is, WILD nature; those aspects of eunctioning of the Earth and its living things are independent of humanmanagement and free of human interference and control." Such sentiment wouldnot be misplaced on the ASLE list. Of course, most of us would take is...
