Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021) • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by jhbadger » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 10:51 PM UTC

hudon wrote: post #120

jhbadger wrote: post #68

Something that goes without comment by the uncritical author is Illich's vile comment that medical science and its quest to extend life at all costs "extends the suffering of cripples". In other words, he doesn't see the life of disabled people as having value.

To say that disabled people's lives have no value is vile, but that is not what he's saying. It's the unnecessary prolonging of suffering that Ivan Illich speaks against, the pressure to do everything humanly possible to eek out any extra week on one's lifespan, even if that extra week is a miserable one spent in agony. Now that is not to say that we should just jump off a bridge at the mere sight of suffering, but r…

I understand that argument, and respect the choices of people who choose not to be hospitalized at the end of their life but to die at home, but that's not the same thing as claiming that it is wrong to "extend the suffering of cripples". I can kind of excuse the use of the nasty slur "cripples" given that this interview was decades ago, but the strong implication is that he thought that disabled people just sat around suffering and would prefer not to have the medical technology needed to keep them living.

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

#142

Post by ceasefire » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 11:09 PM UTC

markhahn wrote: post #105

walleeee wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would contest the notion that a lack of religiosity must magnify discontent with death. Also it remains rather difficult to "opt out" of a protracted, likely intubated decline, at least in the US. Moreover there is no opting out of modernity writ large. This is the nature of multi-polar traps: choosing not to join an arms race is a local, temporary reprieve. The optionality modernity seems determined to optimize fo…

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.

Possibility remains that adverse conditions are not being masked by psychological devices, rather that these conditions are conducive to heightened spirituality (which may be present in varying degree in all humans).

one big support for this is the fact that many saints came from affluent backgrounds and chose the device of asceticism ("harsh life", "corporal despair", "terminal denial of certain pleasures", "dying to earthly life") to heighten their experience of spiritual communion and worship.

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

#143

Post by colonCapitalDee » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 11:27 PM UTC

tivert wrote: post #103

roenxi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add in that "we should get rid of all these modern flimflam" is generally a rallying cry by quite well off people who choose not to see the obvious future of poor people getting squelched as resources dry up. There are a lot of problems faced by modern society, and those problems are uncomfortably complicated. Most people don't understand the details of them. However, the incredible productivity of modern humans…

> and the unspeakably horrible lifestyles of centuries ago. That sounds like an over-the-top fairy tale to constructed justify modern society. I assume by "unspeakably horrible lifestyle" you don't mean something like "lack of color television." That's an assumption I have to state, because there are a surprising number of people who say they consider the lack of modern creature-comforts to be something "unspeakably…

The vast majority of people alive centuries ago were subsistence farmers. They were malnourished, overworked, underpaid, illiterate, had virtually no access to effective healthcare, and had no civil rights. Also, no color TV. By virtually any measure the quality of life in modern society globally is orders of magnitude better than it was centuries ago.

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

#144

Post by bitwize » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 11:41 PM UTC

hcks wrote: post #28

> critique of modern certitudes > it’s bottom of the barrel degrowthism Every. Single. Time.

Degrowth is inevitable. The only choice left is whether it happens relatively peaceably through a shift in values, or through war, exploitation, struggles over dwindling resources, and untold human and environmental destruction.

You are either a degrowther, or you are a fool who doesn't see what's going on (perhaps willfully).

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

#145

Post by XorNot » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 12:40 AM UTC

dan_mctree wrote: post #136

ses1984 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because why would consciousness continue after death when it didn't continue before birth?

What's different about the post-birth state compared to post-death?

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

#146

Post by XorNot » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 12:45 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

There have been 5 mass extinctions in known history. Probably more. Pre-anthropocene. The universe has no morality, there is no "natural order". Whether or not a mass extinction is happening right now is irrelevant in the universal scope of things: it would happen eventually anyway.

Maybe Yellowstone finally goes in a thousand years - geologically that would be "right now" as far as a future historian is concerned.

A mass extinction is terrible solely because of the impact it may have on humans, on human life. That's it.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/mass-extinctions

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

#147

Post by XorNot » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 12:46 AM UTC

markhahn wrote: post #108

heresie-dabord wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 destr…

surely it's not just an energy problem - but a resource problem. I dislike the "overconsumption" mantra (and its degrowth kin). The problem is waste - fast fashion is a great example. just stop making stupid choices - people still need clothes, and we still need lots of people.

But why even care? You can grow cotton. It's the ultimate bio-degradeable material.

The problem I have with "overconsumption" and consumerism people is they never actually seem to have any idea what the problem really is.

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

#148

Post by XorNot » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 12:49 AM UTC

hudon wrote: post #121

saghm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Criticizing modern medicine makes a lot of sense if you're a devout Catholic because the afterlife tempers the sadness of death > Similarly, we don't have to drag out our final years: we're free to opt out of medical treatments OTOH, Catholicism also is strongly against euthanasia, which is arguably at odds with the sentiment of not having to drag out final years. I think there's plenty of room for a philosophy to…

It isn't at odds, since in both cases (euthanasia and medically-prolonged end-of-life), it is the human person that is trying to control the ultimate outcome of life. The Catholic approach is to say "let God decide".

The Catholic approach is economical: it's expensive to keep dying people alive if you need resources to do so, but a religion promising eternal paradise is going to have a real propagation problem if a significant number of adherents commit suicide - and trying to carve out euthanasia exceptions wasn't going to play well to medieval peasants.

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

#149

Post by ses1984 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:37 AM UTC

dan_mctree wrote: post #136

ses1984 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would you assume that I assume a tabula rasa person assumes that consciousness ceases to continue with on death? I assume that they wouldn’t know what happens and have some baseline level of feelings about death.

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

#150

Post by palata » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

di4na wrote: post #79

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…

You forgot the road themselves. Note that Illich also refuse train, so you have to build them with all logistic to build them on bicycles cargo. On top of this, the ambulance we know how to build today are not the one from when we first managed to go faster than a bicycle (average human). Which means you would be stuck at state of the art engine, car, brakes, etc from the 30s. Or maybe the 10s even, as it was already…

> My usual test for a lot of critics of current systems that offer something "far better" with nearly no downside

The current system absolutely depends on fossil fuels, which are not unlimited. Also it brought us into a mass extinction (we are in it, that's a fact), and it is bringing climate change (which will just be a complication on top of the energy crisis when we pass peak production of fossil fuels - pretty soon).

I don't see that as "no downside"; our system is literally about to collapse.