Unabomber: A Life of a Mind

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After the recent death of Steve Jobs, I found it hard to imagine that a man so rich, so powerful and unbelievably smart died of a cancer that may have been treated! How can one be so intelligent that s/he questions the authority of doctors? The answer is just plain stubbornness. Steve Job believed that he would not only beat his cancer, but he would find a cure! With so many resources at his fingertips, it was to be an easy task. One may say that with all the money he had, doctors and scientists’ would have worked overtime to find a cure. How could Ted Kaczynski a man so brilliant graduate from an Ivy League school one day, then later be the man who terrorizes people all over the United States? Unfortunately, Steve Jobs and Ted Kaczynski are only two among many examples of people whose pride has jeopardized their lives or that of others. Thesis: Early life, The Unabomber, Prison. Known by many as the Unabomber, Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski was born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago Illinois. According to Paul Ferguson in his article “Ted Kaczynski: Evil Man, or Tortured Soul?” featured on CNN, as a toddler, Kaczynski spent much of his time in the hospital when he was diagnosed with an allergic reaction that caused him to have Hives all over his body. According to Ferguson, hospital staff who photographed Ted stated that he looked terrorized. In their article “An Adlerian Analysis of the Unabomber,” Amy M. Leeper and her colleagues at the University of Texas explain that Ted’s “childhood was spent largely with his mother, who devoted all of her time to the education and care of her two sons”(169-70). In their article “Tracking down the Unabomber” Nancy Gibbs and Sam Allis suggest that Ted had the mind of a genius. According to “…... ... middle of paper ... ...What reasoning may one use to explain this type of behavior? How could such intelligent men go against proven facts? What one may learn from this strange behavior is that no one knows everything. These men who had such bright futures ahead of them, used only their judgment to completely destroy their lives. All for nothing. Now that is just plain Hubris! Maybe there is a fine line between genius and insanity. Works Cited Ferguson, Paul. “Ted Kaczynski: Evil Man, or Tortured Soul?” Time Warner, 2000. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. Gibbs, Nancy and Sam Allis. "Tracking Down The Unabomber." Time International (South Pacific Edition) 16 (1996): 24. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2011 Leeper, Amy M., Stephanie Carwile, and R. John Huber. "An Adlerian Analysis Of The Unabomber." Journal Of Individual Psychology 58.2 (2002): 169-76. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.

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