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
humorous health doctors
Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.
balance progressive ends
The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.
learning reality information
Learning from programmed information always hides reality behind a screen.
diagnosis problem ethical
The depersonalizati on of diagnosis and therapy has changed malpractice from an ethical into a technical problem.
motivation school opportunity
In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.
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.
new-experiences suffering opaque
The new experience that has replaced dignified suffering is artificially prolonged, opaque, depersonalized maintenance.
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.
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.
loss satisfaction kind
Losses of a kind of satisfaction that have no market equivalent don't show up in the calculations of economists.
doctors long physicians
The medicalization of early diagnosis not only hampers and discourages preventative health-care but it also trains the patient-to-be to function in the meantime as an acolyte to his doctor. He learns to depend on the physician in sickness and in health. He turns into a life-long patient.