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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)

#131

Post by quacked »

chubot wrote: post #98
marttt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great introduction to his lines of thinking was (to me) "Ivan Illich in Conversation" by David Cayley [0]. Essentially a book-length interview. While I find him truly interesting, there is an annoyance: he is strongly critical about "traditional" school system, while holding a PhD himself. I've always found this kind of thing somewhat controversial. I wonder if he did consider dropping out during his studies; and i…

Yeah the tone and style of the text kinda bugged me. Who talks like that? I'm definitely sympathetic to the kind of ideas he's advocating, but it's dressed up in a language that makes it seem untrue. It's not surprising to me that he has a Ph.D. Picking something random from the beginning of Tools for Conviviality : https://co-munity.net/system/files/ILLICH%201973_tools_for_c... For several years at CIDOC in Cuernava…

> Is he actually saying that alternatives to mass education are LESS ethically tolerable than compulsory graded schools?

Yes, but he's hiding his point in poor phrasing. Compulsory, graded schools are one solution for disseminating mass education. Another solution for disseminating mass education are personalized learning platforms run by algorithms, or video courses that are taught by a teacher far away from the student. These futuristic, alternative solutions are "technically more feasible and ethically less tolerable".

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

#132

Post by quacked »

ttoinou wrote: post #18
bmj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Weirdly, only left wing people read him. But he's actually quite libertarian compatible. There are quite a few on the Right that read Illich as well. He was, essentially, a communitarian anarchist. Some of his thought is well-received on the Right, particularly his critique of institutionalized education and medicine.

Interesting, I've never read about that. Who are those people ? Unless you mean people forming Kibbutz, then yeah

There's a heavily online right-wing presence that admires Ilich; of the people who could be described as "right-wing" I've seen that talk about Ilich, most are either hobby homesteaders or people with advanced CS/engineering degrees that read a lot of "online rationalist" work about a decade ago.

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

#133

Post by liquidpele »

oa335 wrote: post #89
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…

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

Artful yes, concise... I don't think that word means what you think it means.

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

#134

Post by thfuran »

pas wrote: post #111
markhahn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't it more that people cleave to magical thinking, archaic though it is, because they have trouble dealing with the despair of poor health and final death? one big support for this is the gradual decline of religiosity in areas of the world where life is improving. conflated, of course, with the hegemonistic aspect of organized religion.

One argument is that we simply replaced the archaic (religion-focused) dogma with a modern (consumerist, individualist, hyperpoliticized) one, but their function is the same, to serve as complex death denial rituals.

That doesn't sound likely to be a compelling argument.

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

#135

Post by Eumenes »

quacked wrote: post #130
slibhb wrote: post #75

Criticizing modern medicine makes a lot of sense if you're a devout Catholic because the afterlife tempers the sadness of death. For non-believers, though, earthly life is all there is, so reducing suffering, disease, and poverty are much more pressing goals -- goals that might be worth a little alienation. I would emphasize choice: people can (and do) embrace alternative ways of life, from the Amish to kibbutzim. Si…

> You can also opt out of modernity in smaller ways, decisions like not owning a car, not watching TV, and so on. Sure, if you reduce the effects of "modernity" to only your own ability to consume goods and services. One cannot "opt out" of the degeneration of social will, or the increasing demand for control over each part of our lives by unaccountable bureaucracies.

I, too, would like an anarchist time machine

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

#136

Post by dan_mctree »

ses1984 wrote: post #127
telmo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lack of religiosity is the default state On the contrary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligio... > and with it you get the default discontent with death That is a huge assumption. There is a huge variety of ways in which societies, cultures and individuals relate and have related with death.

Popular or widespread doesn't mean it’s default. Religion is part of culture and that’s something that’s passed down person to person. A blank culture or no culture has no religion. Tabula rasa. I’m not assuming anything, I’m not pegging the default discontent with death to a particular value, I don’t know what it is and it’s irrelevant. I’m just saying the some religions, with certain concepts of afterlife, like cat…

Why do you assume a tabula rasa person would assume that consciousness ceases to continue on death? I don't think there's anything obvious that would suggest this goes one way or the other and that different people could end up settling for different conclusions. An obvious natural guess would be that it'd be similar to sleeping, as in, you would see dreams

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

#137

Post by thriftwy »

ajuc wrote: post #100
tazjin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having some difficulty with the meaning of words, hm?

Illyin was a russian fascist. Openly so.

It was during these times when a significant chunk of American establishment and some members of British royal family were not less fascist leaning than him. I understand that they're also all not vogue now, but it still has to be reminded.

He moved to Switzerland before German fasicsm turned out real bad.

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

#138

Post by pdonis »

palata wrote: post #81
justsomehnguy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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: fos…

> we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today)

Yes, we do: nuclear. The reasons why nuclear energy has not taken hold as widely as it should have are political, not technical. We could be at the point today where no fossil fuels need to be burned anywhere in the world if we had started building nuclear plants on a larger scale back in the 1970s, as soon as it became clear that OPEC was not going to play nice when they thought they could extract more money from their customers by restricting supply.

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

#139

Post by nonrandomstring »

ttoinou wrote: post #117
nonrandomstring wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mumford and Postman also expand that list. Of Illich I've only fully read "Tools for Conviviality", which I'd say is a manifesto for Humane Technology of a kind.

Thank you for the recs ! Would you have one book per author to rec ? And indeed Illich is not anti-tech, he's not a luddite

For Lewis Mumford [0] maybe "Myth of the Machine" - with his concept of "megatechnics" - is more readable than the earlier "Technics and Civilisation", but his earlier insights seem ever more relevant.

For Neil Postman [1] the standard reader is "Technopoly", but for me "Amusing Ourselves to Death" is a real treat. It was literally a description of social media and modern "performance politics" 40 years too early.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postman

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

#140

Post by crabmusket »

ttoinou wrote: post #117
nonrandomstring wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mumford and Postman also expand that list. Of Illich I've only fully read "Tools for Conviviality", which I'd say is a manifesto for Humane Technology of a kind.

Thank you for the recs ! Would you have one book per author to rec ? And indeed Illich is not anti-tech, he's not a luddite

Luddites were not anti-tech, you're thinking of the Amish
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