“Evil the natural way”: The chimerical utopias of Henry David Thoreau and Theodore John Kaczynski

Abstract

This article contrasts the lives of poet and essayist Henry David Thoreau and convicted “Unabomber” Theodore John Kaczynski, focusing particularly upon their written work. Using Thoreau’s Walden and “Civil Disobedience” and Kaczynski’s “Industrial Society and Its Future” as a foundation for analysis, this article contrasts the authors’ views on industrialization, on autonomy and self‐sufficiency, and on the appropriate deference to law. Although their lives followed different trajectories, both men formulated similar worldviews. Both quit society, going into the wilderness to live deliberately and to think. Both wrote passionately about the evils of contemporary society and urged people to create authentic lives through simplification. Both were skeptical about the moral authority of law. Indeed, Kaczynski’s murderous bombing campaign can be interpreted as the culmination of many of the principles previously articulated by Thoreau.

Keywords:

• Civil Disobedience
• Kaczynski
• Manifesto
• Thoreau
• Unabomber
• Walden

Notes

James C. Oleson, J. D., Ph.D received his doctorate in criminology from the University of Cambridge in 1998 and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 2001. He is currently on leave from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, serving as a 2004–2005 Supreme Court Fellow at the Administrative Office of United States Courts.

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Notes on contributors

J.C. Oleson

James C. Oleson, J. D., Ph.D received his doctorate in criminology from the University of Cambridge in 1998 and his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 2001. He is currently on leave from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, serving as a 2004–2005 Supreme Court Fellow at the Administrative Office of United States Courts.