an intercourse with ghosts: the unabomber, irony, and terror

I'm particularly proud of my debut in Mere Orthodoxy. My experiences reading the Unabomber Manifesto as a sixth grader are something I've wanted to write about for quite some time. Mentioned in essay: Ghosts, Kafka's letters, Byung-Chul Han, September 19th, 1995, Missouri, "Industrial Society and It's Future", CIA, MKUltra, ARPANET, LSD, fruit of the poisoned tree, alazon and eiron, bare life, Chesterton, Mao II, Ezra Pound watching the birth of a wasp. ​

"13. I’ve intentionally tried not to quote Kaczynski directly. What I’m writing isn’t so much about him but the wake he anticipated and the larger turbulence of which he was a part. But it’s worth quoting the single most insightful sentence in his manifesto: “We can do anything we want as long as it is UNIMPORTANT.” This attitude forms the gordian knot of our contemporary world. Belief in it accounts for the pathetic stoicism of our irony. And the longing for subversive truths which explain away the rich complexity of the world. It’s a cri de ceour, as petulant as it is pained. Crimped and claustrophobic. But it’s also vain. It ignores completely the ghosts still tarrying beside me as I write this, presiding over the ceremony of writing and insisting on a grand but living decorum."

Here.