In this new kind of world neither the vitality of nature nor the creative act of God makes things what they are. This birthright is withdrawn, and th… - Ivan Illich

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In this new kind of world neither the vitality of nature nor the creative act of God makes things what they are. This birthright is withdrawn, and things come to be what they are because of their genetic code, as we would say today.

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About Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich (4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian-born Christian anarchist, author, polymath, and polemicist.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Ivan D. Illich Ivan Dominic Illich

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Additional quotes by Ivan Illich

"A convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the most autonomous action by means of tools least
controlled by others. People feel joy, as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative; while the
growth of tools beyond a certain point increases regimentation, dependence, exploitation, and impotence. I use the term
"tool" broadly enough to include not only simple hardware such as drills, pots, syringes, brooms, building elements, or
motors, and not just large machines like cars or power stations; I also include among tools productive institutions such as
factories that produce tangible commodities like corn flakes or electric current, and productive systems for intangible
commodities such as those which produce "education," "health," "knowledge," or "decisions." I use this term because it
allows me to subsume into one category all rationally designed devices, be they artifacts or rules, codes or operators, and to
distinguish all these planned and engineered instrumentalities from other things such as basic food or implements, which in a
given culture are not deemed to be subject to rationalization. School curricula or marriage laws are no less purposely shaped
social devices than road networks. 5"

A society dedicated to the protection of equally distributed, modern and effective tools for the exercise of productive liberties cannot come into existence unless the commodities and resources on which the exercise of those liberties is based are equally distributed to all.

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