A surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the “fulfillment” that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp-collecting. Some people are more “other-directed” than others, and therefore will more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity simply because the people around them treat it as important or because society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that way. Theodore J. Kaczynski
About This Quote

A person who pursues a surrogate activity is one who derives gratification from the activity for reasons other than the achievement of the goal itself. A person who pursues an activity because he needs to fulfill some need may be acting, in fact, unconsciously. However, most people are not so simple as to pursue an activity for only one reason. They have a mix of motives for doing what they do, and these motives can vary widely.

Source: Industrial Society And Its Future: The Unabomber Manifesto

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