Jeglum, Jarod
Grade: 12
School: Divide County High School, Crosby ND Educator: Richard Norton
AWARD: Honorable Mention
The word “oversocialization”, although not invented by Theodore John "Ted" Kaczynski, first gained major notoriety from his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future or what is simply known as the Unabomber Manifesto. It is used to describe people who believe, in Ted Kaczynski’s words within his manifesto:
We are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other,
whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to
think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt,
they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations
for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term “oversocialized”
to describe such people.
Although Theodore Kaczynski is a psychopath with a flawed view of reality, the man does have a wealthy amount of education on the subject of the human condition to prove that he does indeed know what he is talking about, and to deny him the ability to spread his radical and controversial views or ignore them entirely is a great atrocity for this nation’s guarantee of freedom of speech and the sociological community’s development as a whole.
In my own words I would describe “oversocialized” as follows: when one believes that they are at fault for someone else’s problems or situations and believes that to make up for it they have to work
