Ivan Illich
Ivan Illich
Ivan Illichwas an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and "maverick social critic" of the institutions of contemporary Western culture and their effects on the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, transportation, and economic development...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSociologist
Date of Birth4 September 1926
CountryUnited States of America
technology support choices
The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies.
two envy addiction
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
new-experiences suffering opaque
The new experience that has replaced dignified suffering is artificially prolonged, opaque, depersonalized maintenance.
pain suffering culture
Culture makes pain tolerable by interpreting it's necessity; only pain perceived as curable is intolerable.
meaningful men circles
Traditional society was more like a set of concentric circles of meaningful structures, while modern man must learn how to find meaning in many structures to which he is only marginally related. In the village, language and architecture and religion and work and family customs were consistent with one another, mutually explanatory and reinforcing. To grow into one implied a growth into others.
expectations poor-nations rich
In both rich and poor nations consumption is polarized while expectation is equalized.
jesus anarchist anarchism
Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us.
government people decision
The knowledge of the individual citizen is of less value than the knowledge of science. The former is the opinion of individuals. It is merely subjective and is excluded from policies. The latter is objective - defined by science and promulgated by expert spokesmen. This objective knowledge is viewed as a commodity which can be refined... and fed into a process, now called decision-making. This new mythology of governance by the manipulation of knowledge-stock inevitably erodes reliance on government by people.
hands choices style
A low-energy policy allows for a wide choice of life-styles and cultures. If, on the other hand, a society opts for high energy consumption, its social relations must be dictated by technocracy and will be equally degrading whether labeled capitalist or socialist.
teaching learning advancement
The pupil is ... 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.
wages consumption household
The household has become the place where the consumption of wages takes place
kindness skills people
Societies in which most people depend for most of their goods and services on the personal whim, kindness, or skill of another are called underdeveloped, while those in which living has been transformed into a process of ordering from an all-encompassing store catalogue are called advanced.
prayer distance men
There is no greater distance than that between a man in prayer and God
morning liars ideas
I was recently told, 'You're a liar!' when I said to somebody I walked down the spine of the Andes. Every Spaniard in the sixteenth, seventeenth century did that. The idea that somebody could just walk! He can jog perhaps in the morning, but he can't walk anywhere! The world has become inaccessible because we drive there.