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* Commitment to avoid causing physical or emotional harm to others.
* Absolute respect and preservation of all human lives, without exceptions.
* Unconditional rejection of violence under any circumstances.
* Belief that every human has the right to live, and recognition of the dignity, worth, and autonomy of every individual.
* Full acceptance of differing viewpoints, cultures, religions, and lifestyles.
* Consistent practice of understanding and sharing the feelings of others, and alleviating their suffering.
* Refraining from initiating force against others.
* Resolution of differences and conflict through conversation and mutual understanding, rather than force or coercion.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-...
The substantive research is all of human psychology, biology, and sociology.
Those things endowed with the capability of effortful judgement, abstracting from more "primitive" (biologically ancestral) instances.
See, the unabomber manifesto was essentially a moral argument. "These things cause damage" is a moral observation. (Because how are you going to define "damage" without moral judgment?) "Therefore we should destroy technology" is a moral judgment (because you can't get there without the moral judgment of "humans should not be damaged").
So, the point is, I'm not going to trust the moral judgment of a murderer. Every fact he says in the manifesto may be correct. But his moral judgment is self-evidently terrible. And he reaches his conclusions through that moral judgment.
The only thing that distinguishes Kaczynsky from, well, any random dude, are the bombs. Otherwise he is a no one. And random dude that did not send bombs makes more sense to listen to.
Yet, from a utilitarian perspective, I honestly don't know if intent matters when we're talking about third-party maiming and death. Our society disrupts and injures the bodies, minds, and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, if not billions, on a daily basis.
And in that sense, Kaczynski, Ellul, or really any dissident of the status quo could, can, and do point out victims of society that outnumber Kaczynski's by several orders of magnitude. The victims are not directly and immediately visible, don't have power-holding advocates, and have little to no incentive to disrupt their own lives to discover, let alone undo, the causes of their problems. And if they do, they encounter a system most unwilling to listen or change.
All of this contributes to these innocents being left unmourned and the causes of their tragedies, like minefields for future generations, left unresolved (Kaczynski mails mines and dies in prison; Kissinger sows fields of mines and lives to be a centenarian and the eldest diplomat).
For an example directly related to maiming, consider the allegations of SawStop. A technology was invented to prevent serious maiming when operating table saws in 2002. The inventor attempted to license the technology to manufacturers only to (allegedly, their lawsuit was dismissed due to supposed tardiness in filing) encounter a cartel among tool manufacturers that colluded to prevent adoption of the technology because it would become obligate to all models to prevent legal liability, which would largely eliminate budget saw models.
The number of finger or hand amputations in the US annually is in the thousands, for one type of tool.
Or consider meat packing (excluding power-butchering injuries that typically include hand and finger amputation):
"There are many serious safety and health hazards in the meat packing industry. These hazards include exposure to high noise levels, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, musculoskeletal disorders, and hazardous chemicals (including ammonia that is used as a refrigerant). Musculoskeletal disorders comprise a large part of these serious injuries and continue to be common among meat packing workers. In addition, meat packing workers can be exposed to biological hazards associated with handling live animals or exposures to feces and blood which can increase their risk for many diseases."
And this is an industry where undocumented workers are prioritized because they lack the language and advocacy to receive adequate compensation and legal protections.
Even something as benign-seeming as a Nalgene bottle follows a similar kind of delayed statistical violence. BPA, shown to be independently unsafe, gets replaced with Triton, unshown to be anything. Triton is effectively an analog with likely xenoestrogenic and endocrine disrupting capabilities, yet can slip through a loophole with decades of profitability before the externalities start directly emerging.
I lost my grandmother to ovarian cancer, likely caused by long-term use of asbestos-laced baby powder. A certain corporation gets a single $9 billion penalty for poisoning millions over decades; I and countless others lose their family members. This corporation's gross profit last year was something like $64 billion.
Now I also understand the argument that if industrial society has caused these things, they have also enabled untold material prosperity globally and billions of additional lives to live. Maiming, industrial accidents, and toxicity are the price to pay for this and they all "happen" to be the aberration rather than the norm, with constant incremental improvements as circumstances allow.
And yet, I think I'd rather have less sophisticated stuff and fewer unhappy people alive at any present moment if I could guarantee that those living on this planet now and those born in the future could live healthier, happier, and more meaningful lives as a result. Killing and maiming people in retaliation is a terrible way of getting there. As a final note, I'm currently in the process of my own exodus to leave the city (wish me luck!) to follow this path of voluntary simplicity and pacifism, lest anyone accuse me of trying to improve society somewhat.