Nerd's Revenge
Trying to get into Harvard can drive you nuts. But if Alston Chase is right, it was the experience of Harvard and its "culture of despair" that was responsible for transforming a shy young mathematician named Ted Kaczynski, class of 1962, into the terrorist known as the Unabomber.
Chase (class of 1957) should know. He and Kaczynski took many of the same courses with the same professors, and their lives have coincided in other ways; both, for example, fled academia to settle in Montana. His book is several things at once: the story of the Unabombers career, an analysis of his personality, an account of the intellectual climate of Cold War America and a disquisition on the dangers of the hubristic intellect.
Contrary to popular belief, Chase says Kaczynski was quite sane, though neurotic. He was not a product of "the radical 1960s." Although he was a professor at Berkeley during the years 1967-69, he ignored the local upheavals and showed scant interest in politics. His animus toward technology and industrialism is shared by large numbers of Americans. The social agonies he suffered are the common lot of nerds everywhere.
In short, he was in many ways average, although "he took, one might say, his averageness to extreme lengths."
The truth, according to Chase, is that Kaczynski was a product of the 1950s. His development was conditioned by two factors: the massive investment by U.S. government agencies, especially the CIA, in military-oriented technology and the development of mind-control techniques; and an educational culture that exalted rationality at the expense of ethics.
At Harvard, "where lasting human relations are more rare than championship football teams," these factors combined to create "the culture of despair"the feeling of being a cog in a coldly intellectual, ethically vacant system dominated by technology. Kaczynski "looked into the abyss" with his undergraduate readings of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche and simultaneously underwent abusive psychological experiments at the hands of Professor Henry Murray. As a result, Chase contends, Kaczynski conceived a hatred of "the system" and a desire to take revenge on society.
Harvard and the Unabomber makes for a fascinating read. Chases intellectual versatility allows him to deftly juggle his complex material. His spare and clean style seems the prose equivalent of the clinical black-and-white cinematography of such Cold War classics as The Manchurian Candidate and Dr. Strangelove.
On the other hand, Chases thesis isnt entirely convincing. Readers may ask themselves why, if the culture of despair was so pervasive at Harvard, Kaczynski was such a unique case.
Still, the book is packed with food for thought. It will appeal to math-haters and humanists, but Poindexter, blowing things up in his parents basement, would also benefit from reading it. Chases message in a nutshell: Get away from that chemistry set or computer, and try to connect with your fellow human beings.
Harvard and the Unabomber By Alston Chase W. W. Norton & Co., 432 pages, $26.95