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Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

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Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#81

Post by palata »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #52
palata wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only it is cost prohibitive (because of reuse of means of production, mass production impact on cost, etc) but also it is really hard to actually engineer this stuff without a lot of experiments and needs for it, which do not happen if you restrict the use of these stuff to a limited niche. Couldn't one argue that there is not that much engineering needed to keep producing emergency vehicles that we already hav…

> Couldn't one argue that there is not that much engineering needed to keep producing emergency vehicles that we already have And what you would do when the necessary knowledge would be lost? 'It wouldn't be' you want to say? But who would want to spend an entire life for doing things what would be replaced like once in a decade? > It's not like an ambulance fundamentally changes every year. Not every year but modern…

I do agree that dramatically reducing the number of private cars is a challenge. But I strongly believe that we don't have a choice.

I see it this way: our society is built upon abundant energy, which is mostly (and by far) fossil fuels. Yes, renewable grow fast (while still being marginal), but they grow fast in a world of abundant fossil fuels. Cut the fossil fuels entirely today, and we are dead.

The thing is: fossil fuels are not unlimited; in the close future, we will have passed the peak of production for all of them (conventional peak oil was in 2008, Europe feels it since then). So we are going towards a world with less fossil energy, and we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today). Hence it seems pretty reasonable to think that we will have less energy in the future. And therefore, we need to do less, and it will be more costly.

That's not necessarily the end of the world, that's just different (though probably more complicated).

> Do you expect to still pay $20 for that?

No. I expect to have to do less with less. I am not saying that I will necessarily live better, just that my survival depends on my society being able to do it.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#82

Post by draven »

KnuthIsGod wrote: post #58
tazjin wrote: post #26

I dislike reading this kind of article, where it feels like the author swallowed a thesaurus and is using every second word to (often unnecessarily) display how clever they are. Note how actually clever texts (probably including the source texts that this is about!) are rarely written like that.

Reads like pretty normal English to me, even though English is my second language.

Same here, but my native language is French and words with latin or greek roots are perhaps more familiar to me ?

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#83

Post by indigo945 »

narinxas wrote: post #73
indigo945 wrote: post #72

> Illich defined conviviality as “autonomous and creative > intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons > with their environment.” He contrasted this to “the > conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon > them by others” from above and afar in the name of > advancing progress. For someone who claims to criticize "Western" thought, this appears to be quite deeply steeped in a particular Wes…

he's a westerner, clearly; nobody has contested this. it's interesting how you not see any distinction between an autonomous creative impulse from the self outwards to the community and environment AND the enviroment prompting some person who was taught a conditioned response already to enact certain behavior. the difference is between "inner impulse from the individual outwards to their environment" and "external en…

    > it's interesting how you not see any distinction between an autonomous 
    > creative impulse from the self outwards to the community and environment AND 
    > the enviroment prompting some person who was taught a conditioned response 
    > already to enact certain behavior.
Of course I see it, but, again, understanding this as a meaningful distinction is a cultural prejudice. Besides, in Confucian thought, moral behavior is the result of consciously cultivating moral feelings, in at least partial contrast to following spontaneous impulses. Some Confucian thinkers, like Mencius, do believe that humans have an innately good and moral inclination that precedes conscious learning, but even Mencius does not consider this to be a stable moral foundation to stand on. Van Norden, in his translation of Mencius, comments on a dialogue between Mencius and a student that although impulsive moral

    > inclinations manifest themselves spontaneously in everyone to a certain 
    > degree, cultivation is necessary to fully develop them. Part of this 
    > cultivation is using one’s heart, whose function (literally, “office”) is 
    > “reflecting” [...]. What is the “it” the heart will “get” if it reflects? 
    > Zhu Xi says it is the Pattern of whatever things or affairs one 
    > encounters; to “get it” is to understand how things are and how they 
    > should be. [1]
This pattern (the Taiji, in Zhu Xi's parlance) is, of course, highly hierarchical. And it is, as I think becomes clear here, not just the correct and natural order of the cosmos, but also the fundamental requirement to correctly process one's own (social) impulses.

Without this moral cultivation, man is no better than an animal, slave to his own desires. To wit, it's not about "freedom with responsibility", it's about "freedom through responsibility": (consciously) conditioned responses are the very form liberation takes.

As an aside: I deliberately didn't say "Chinese" thought, as Daoism - without a doubt a Chinese philosophy - turns this idea on its head, advocating to free man not through, but from conviviality.

[1]: Van Norden 2008: Mengzi. With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. P. 156.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#84

Post by palata »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #74
palata wrote: post #13

> In his words, “By breaching the limits set on man by nature and history, industrial society engendered disability and suffering in the name of eliminating disability and suffering. … The warming biosphere is making it intolerable to think of industrial growth as progress; now it appears to us as aggression against the human condition.” This resonates with me.

> industrial society I dislike blaming "industrial society" as an impersonal, abstract villain. The fact is that it is humans who may either organise themselves and build a society or fail in the trying. Modern industry and the modern economy have achieved remarkable, good things on a global scale . Even on the scale of our solar system, if we consider the exploration of other planets. The fact is that humans have tr…

> the modern economy have achieved remarkable, good things on a global scale.

There is no doubt about that. But it has also brought us into a mass extinction (that's happening right now), it brought climate change (it will add to the biodiversity issue), and it relies very heavily on fossil fuels which are not unlimited.

> to his solutionless critique.

I believe that we need to agree on the problem before we can find solutions. I strongly believe that we have an energy problem, and the biodiversity loss and climate problem are consequences of it. In my view, we need to do less with less (a.k.a. degrow). Doesn't mean we "go back to the Middle Age", just that we address different challenges (instead of "how do I get people to buy an iPhone every year?", maybe "how do I get people to keep the benefits of smartphones without overconsumption?).

The thing is that some people seem to believe that on the contrary, we should not care about our survival on Earth and start looking at other solar systems (which is, in my understanding of the current fundamental state of physics, absolutely impossible). Some even seem to believe that surviving on Mars would be better than "having less" on Earth...

Of course we as a species probably won't agree, and therefore we won't really control where it goes: we will just have to deal with whatever happens.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#85

Post by maegul »

glfharris wrote: post #78
nakedneuron wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT to the rescue: Illich's main argument revolved around the idea that individuals are inherently social creatures, connected to the natural world, their communities, and, in his view as a religious person, to God's grace. He believed that Western modernity disrupted this holistic interconnectedness of life.

That's so much more readable, even as someone who's read some Illich.

I haven’t read Illich, but I like both. Obviously the original from the article is more verbose, and if one doesn’t like that or finds it difficult or distracting, I am by no means going to hold it against them and in fact sympathise.

But there is a certain degree of imagery to the original text that I benefit from and enjoy.

Rending asunder is quite different from “disrupt”; the generality of “relational beings embedded…” is meaningful compared to the somewhat trite “social creatures” … etc.

Generally, many journalistic writers could really benefit from realising they are and probably never will be novelists or poets and that their job is to educate, edify and provide information and insight, which is often impeded by their insistence on exercising their literary rather than communication skills. But also, digging into the expressiveness one can muster with their language can work well for those willing and able to digest it when the topic or mood suits the language.

Personally, I got the feeling that this article falls more in the latter than the former, though I can see the friction some would have with the style.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#86

Post by heresie-dabord »

palata wrote: post #84
heresie-dabord wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> industrial society I dislike blaming "industrial society" as an impersonal, abstract villain. The fact is that it is humans who may either organise themselves and build a society or fail in the trying. Modern industry and the modern economy have achieved remarkable, good things on a global scale . Even on the scale of our solar system, if we consider the exploration of other planets. The fact is that humans have tr…

> the modern economy have achieved remarkable, good things on a global scale. There is no doubt about that. But it has also brought us into a mass extinction (that's happening right now), it brought climate change (it will add to the biodiversity issue), and it relies very heavily on fossil fuels which are not unlimited. > to his solutionless critique. I believe that we need to agree on the problem before we can find…

> we should not care about our survival on Earth and start looking at other solar systems

Wacky thinking. Another modern achievement, some very wealthy people literally have more money than neurons. ^_^

> I strongly believe that we have an energy problem

There is no doubt that the challenge is now. But our industrial and technical capabilities can solve the problem... if corrupt petrostate kakistocracies don't destroy civilisation first.

I also agree that "overconsumption" is a clear failure to scale.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#87

Post by woodruffw »

nakedneuron wrote: post #70
liquidpele wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow you were not kidding…. > Illich’s central contention was that persons are relational beings embedded in a matrix of the natural cosmos, convivial community with others and, as a fallen but still faithful priest, God’s grace. As the maverick thinker saw it, Western modernity rent asunder this multidimensional oneness of “Life.” The whole thing is full of this… sounds like Depak Chopra level word salad trying…

ChatGPT to the rescue: Illich's main argument revolved around the idea that individuals are inherently social creatures, connected to the natural world, their communities, and, in his view as a religious person, to God's grace. He believed that Western modernity disrupted this holistic interconnectedness of life.

This both ablates (Illich’s “fallen” status) and distorts (natural cosmos vs. natural world, the latter being “scientific” in exactly the way Illich ordinarily critiques) the original meaning of the sentence.

ChatGPT is a remarkable achievement in machine learning, but this demonstrates exactly why it can’t be used to accurately summarize complex ideas.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#88

Post by oa335 »

tazjin wrote: post #26

I dislike reading this kind of article, where it feels like the author swallowed a thesaurus and is using every second word to (often unnecessarily) display how clever they are. Note how actually clever texts (probably including the source texts that this is about!) are rarely written like that.

I disagree, I thought it was well written and clear.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#89

Post by oa335 »

liquidpele wrote: post #59
tazjin wrote: post #26

I dislike reading this kind of article, where it feels like the author swallowed a thesaurus and is using every second word to (often unnecessarily) display how clever they are. Note how actually clever texts (probably including the source texts that this is about!) are rarely written like that.

Holy cow you were not kidding…. > Illich’s central contention was that persons are relational beings embedded in a matrix of the natural cosmos, convivial community with others and, as a fallen but still faithful priest, God’s grace. As the maverick thinker saw it, Western modernity rent asunder this multidimensional oneness of “Life.” The whole thing is full of this… sounds like Depak Chopra level word salad trying…

What is wrong with that passage? I think it very artfully and concisely describes Ilichs views.
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