What do Mahatma Ghandi, Pol Pot, and "The Unibomber" have in common?Individually,
What do Mahatma Ghandi, Pol Pot, and "The Unibomber" have in common?
- Mahatma Ghandi (x-y), by "passive resistance", won freedom for his country, India, from the British Empire.
- Pol Pot was prime minister of the new Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia from 1976 until overthrown by invading Vietnamese in January 1979.
- "The Unibomber" (apparently one of my tribe, a mathematician) sent exploding packages to various HITEC persons (including the noted computer scientist, xxx xxx), causing death and maiming.
- Ghandi wished to take his country back to the 17th century, before the British took over and turned India into a colony for British products. Ghandi's own spinning wheel represented the primitive technology he wanted for his country.
- It's estimated that, from 1975 to 1979, under Pol Pot's leadership, the government caused the deaths of at least one million people from forced labour, starvation, disease, torture, or execution while carrying out a program of radical social and agricultural reforms. The apparent purpose was to return Cambodia back to the conditions of the great Khmer State, beginning after 790 A.D., which included the great temple at Anghor Wat. (You can learn about the Kmer Rouge in a 1984 Oscar-winning film, The Killing Fields, based upon the writings of New York Times reporter, Sidney Schanberg. Haing S. Ngor, who escaped from these "killing fields" to Hollywood, receive an Oscar as supporting actor.)
- The Unibomber demanded that his "manifesto" be published in newspapers, advocating a return to an American era with a simple technology.
Thus, each wished to take Civilization back to the 17th century or earlier -- before the socalled Industrial Revolution (circa 1776). But that era required widespread SLAVERY, and today's populations and demands would require even more Slavery!
It's worse than that.
We can't return to the 18th century world, and especially not earlier, since THE EARTH OF THOSE TIMES NO LONGER EXISTS! So much top-soil has been lost; so many trees destroyed; so many streams and oceans polluted, etc., that LOW-TEC on the present EARTH could not support more than a fraction of the world's population. ONLY MORE TECHNOLOGY CAN SAVE US!!!