Maybe it’s what scientists call “confirmation bias,” but I’m finding it hard to muster good counterarguments to any of them, even the last. I’m about a third of the way through the book at the moment, and the way that the four arguments are being filled out is worryingly convincing. I have a tendency toward sentimentality around these issues, so I appreciate his discipline. Kaczynski’s prose is sparse, and his arguments logical and unsentimental, as you might expect from a former mathematics professor with a degree from Harvard. What is needed is a new revolutionary movement, dedicated to the elimination of technological society. The political left is technological society’s first line of defense against revolution.Ĥ. Only the collapse of modern technological civilization can avert disaster.ģ. Technological progress is carrying us to inevitable disaster.Ģ. Here are the four premises with which he begins the book:ġ. I seem to be at a point in my life where I am open to hearing this again. But the clarity with which he makes them, and his refusal to obfuscate, are refreshing. By his own admission, his arguments are not new. It’s not that Kaczynski, who is a fierce, uncompromising critic of the techno-industrial system, is saying anything I haven’t heard before. Some books do that, from time to time, and this is beginning to shape up as one of them. I’VE RECENTLY BEEN reading the collected writings of Theodore Kaczynski. Sek is also the root word of sickle, saw, schism, sex, and science. The Proto-Indo-European root of scythe is the word sek, meaning to cut, or to divide. Like the tool, the word, too, has older origins. Basic, curved cutting tools for use on grass date back at least ten thousand years, to the dawn of agriculture and thus to the dawn of civilizations. But archaeology pushes that date much further out Roman scythes have been found with blades nearly two meters long. Scythe, originally rendered sithe, is an Old English word, indicating that the tool has been in use in these islands for at least a thousand years. That lack of mastery, and the promise of one day reaching it, is part of the complex beauty of the tool.Įtymology can be interesting. Probably you never master it, just as you never really master anything. I’ve been doing it for years, but I’ve still not mastered it. When the edge of your blade thickens with overuse and oversharpening, you need to draw the edge out by peening it-cold-forging the blade with hammer and small anvil. Peen is a word of Scandinavian origin, originally meaning “to beat iron thin with a hammer,” which is still its meaning, though the iron has now been replaced by steel.
#SHROUDED IN SANITY HOW CAN I TELL MY SANITY HOW TO#
And you need to know how to use your peening anvil, and when. You need to take a couple of stones out into the field with you and use them regularly-every five minutes or so-to keep the edge honed. None of them, of course, is any use at all unless it is kept sharp, really sharp: sharp enough that if you were to lightly run your finger along the edge, you would lose blood. Beneath and around them scuttle any number of harder-to-spot competitors for the summer grass, all finding their place in the ecosystem of the tool. These are the big mammals you can see and hear. I also have a couple of ditch blades (which, despite the name, are not used for mowing ditches in particular, but are all-purpose cutting tools that can manage anything from fine grass to tousled brambles) and a bush blade, which is as thick as a billhook and can take down small trees. My collection includes a number of grass blades of varying styles-a Luxor, a Profisense, an Austrian, and a new, elegant Concari Felice blade that I’ve not even tried yet-whose lengths vary between sixty and eighty-five centimeters. From the genus blade fans out a number of ever-evolving species, each seeking out and colonizing new niches. This thin crescent of steel is the fulcrum of the whole tool. Into this little assemblage slides the tang of the blade. On the bottom of the snath is a small hole, a rubberized protector, and a metal D-ring with two hex sockets. Onto the snath are attached two hand grips, adjusted for the height of the user. I call it the snath, as do most of us in the UK, though variations include the snathe, the snaithe, the snead, and the sned. THE HANDLE, which varies in length according to the height of its user, and in some cases is made by that user to his or her specifications, is like most of the other parts of the tool in that it has a name and thus a character of its own.
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