Ivan Illich Quotes

Passé un certain point, plus d'énergie signifie moins d'équité. Au rythme du plus rapide moyen de transport, on voit gonfler le traitement de faveur réservé à quelques-uns aux frais des autres.

The multinational corporations which have dominated the economy are now being complemented, and may one day be replaced, by supernationally planned service agencies. These enterprises present their services in ways that make all men feel obliged to consume them. They are internationally standardized, redefining the value of their services periodically and everywhere at approximately the same rhythm.

À bicyclette, l'homme va de trois à quatre fois plus vite qu'à pied, tout en dépensant cinq fois moins d'énergie. En terrain plat, il lui suffit alors de dépenser 0,15 calorie pour transporter un gramme de son corps sur un kilomètre. La bicyclette est un outil parfait qui permet à l'homme d'utiliser au mieux son énergie métabolique pour se mouvoir : ainsi outillé, l'homme dépasse le rendement de toutes les machines et celui de tous les animaux.

"The man who knows that nothing in demand is out of production soon expects that nothing produced can be out of demand. Not to go where one can go would be subversive. It would unmask as folly the assumption that every satisfied demand entails the discovery of an even greater unsatisfied one. Not to produce what is possible would expose the law of "rising expectations" as a euphemism for a growing frustration gap, which is the motor of a society built on the co-production of services and increased demand."

Le vélo élève la mobilité autogène de l'homme jusqu'à un nouveau degré, au-delà duquel il n'y a plus en théorie de progrès possible. À l'opposé, la cabine individuelle accélérée a rendu les sociétés capables de s'engager dans un rituel de la vitesse qui progressivement les paralyse.

But this does not mean that the transition from our present to a convivial mode of production can be accomplished without
serious threats to the survival of many people. At present the relationship between people and their tools is suicidally
distorted. The survival of Pakistanis depends on Canadian grain, and the survival of New Yorkers on world-wide exploitation
of natural resources. The birth pangs of a convivial world society will inevitably be violently painful for hungry Indians and
for helpless New Yorkers. I will later argue that the transition from the present mode of production, which is
Overwhelmingly industrial, toward conviviality may start suddenly. But for the sake of the survival of many people it will be
Tools for Conviviality
Page 7 Document developed using Purpledesirable that the transition does not happen all at once. I argue that survival in justice is possible only at the cost of those
sacrifices implicit in the adoption of a convivial mode of production and the universal renunciation of unlimited progeny,
affluence, and power on the part of both individuals and groups. This price cannot be extorted by some despotic Leviathan,
nor elicited by social engineering. People will rediscover the value of joyful sobriety and liberating austerity only if they
relearn to depend on each other rather than on energy slaves. The price for a convivial society will be paid only as the result
of a political process which reflects and promotes the society-wide inversion of present industrial consciousness. This
political process will find its concrete expression not in some taboo, but in a series of temporary agreements on one or the
other concrete limitation of means, constantly adjusted under the pressure of conflicting insights and interests.

All governments stress an employment-intensive force of production, but are unwilling to recognize that jobs can also destroy the use-value of free time. They all stress a more objective and complete professional definition of people's needs, but are insensitive to the consequent expropriation of life.

P24- the power of school loss to divide social reality has no boundaries education becomes unworldly and the world becomes noneducational

P3- every simple need to which an institutional answer is found permit the invention of a new class of poor and a new definition of poverty

Creative, exploratory learning requires peers currently puzzled about the same terms or problems.

The exhaustion and pollution of earth's resource is, above all, the result of man's self-image, of a regression in his consciousness. Some would like to speak about a mutation of collective consciousness which leads to a conception of a man as an organism dependent not on nature and individuals, but rather on institutions. This institutionalization of substantive values, this belief that a planned process of treatment ultimately gives results desired by the recipient, this consumer ethos, is at the heart of the Promethean fallacy.
Efforts to find a new balance in the global milieu depend on the deinstitutionalization of values.

Rather than asking how the earth’s surface can be preserved for people, they ask how reservations necessary for the survival of people can be established on an earth that has been reshaped for the sake of industrial outputs.

The proposal that doctors not be licensed by an in-group does not mean that their services shall not be evaluated, but rather that this evaluation can be done more effectively by informed clients than by their own peers.

A vast amount of contemporary clinical care is incidental to the curing of disease, but the damage done by medicine to the health of individuals and populations is very significant.

La consommation obligatoire d'un bien qui consomme beaucoup d'énergie (le transport motorisé) restreint les conditions de jouissance d'une valeur d'usage surabondante (la capacité innée de transit). La circulation nous offre l'exemple d'une loi économique générale : tout produit industriel dont la consommation par personne dépasse un niveau donné exercice un monopole radical sur la satisfaction d'un besoin. Passé un certain seuil, l'école obligatoire ferme l'accès au savoir, le système de soins médicaux détruit les sources non thérapeutique de la santé, le transport paralyse la circulation.