IVAN ILLICH is not your standard intellectual. His home was not in the academy and his work forms no part of an approved curriculum. He issued no manifestos and his utterly original writings both confound and clarify as they examine one modern assumption after another. He is radical in the most fundamental sense of that word and therefore not welcome on any usual reading list. The authoritative New York Review of Books last mentioned him thirty years ago, one editor terming him too catastrophic in his thinking. The New York Times, in its 2002 obituary, dismissed his ideas as “watered-down Marxism” and “anarchist panache”. Even in death, he deeply upset the acolytes of modernity.
I knew Ivan Illich and had the pleasure of enjoying many hours at his table in lively conversation with his friends in Cuernavaca, Oakland, State College, and Bremen. His gaze was piercing yet it was warm and totally embracing. His hospitality was unmatched and his aliveness and friendship well embodied his ideas that in print were so provocative – and difficult.
Illich was a radical because he went to the root of things. He questioned the very premises of modern life and traced its many institutional excesses to developments in the early and Medieval Church. In his writings, he strove to open up cracks in the certitudes of our modern worldview. He questioned speed, schools, hospitals, technology, economic growth and unlimited energy – even if derived from the wind or the sun. Yet, he flew constantly across continents and mastered rudimentary programming. He once told me computers were an abomination but many years later used them like a pro. Yes, there were contradictions and as you read these essays, take a step back. Probe for the deeper meaning.
As California’s governor, I am building America’s first high speed rail system and pushing a relentless expansion of renewable energy. Yet, I still reflect on Illich’s ideas about acceleration and transportation and even energy. Illich makes you think. He forces you to question your own deepest assumptions. And as you do, you become a better thinker.
Illich said equity would not come with more economic growth. That’s a hard doctrine. We all want our GDP to grow. Yet look at the growth in inequality these last twenty years. Could he have seen that coming? Illich warned of counter-productivity, the negative consequences of exceeding certain thresholds. Are there tipping points in standardized schooling, medical interventions, transportation, energy consumption and the devices it makes possible? Illich wrote of learning as opposed to being taught in classrooms. Now the internet is opening access to knowledge and making learning possible outside of institutional constraints.
Illich early on warned of the ecological dangers of poisons and pollution generated by modern technologies, but he thought the breakdown in our social and cultural traditions was more pressing and more dangerous.
The way he lived, the simplicity and the caring of one human being for another, illuminates the underlying message of all his writings. He saw in modern life and its pervasive dependence on commodities and the services of professionals a threat to what it is to be human. He cut through the illusions and allurements to better ground us in what it means to be alive. He was joyful but he didn’t turn his gaze from human suffering. He lived and wrote in the fullness of life and confronted – with humor and uncommon clarity – the paradoxes and contradictions, the possibilities and yes, the limitations of being mortal.
These essays will provoke you but they will also shine some light on the wonders of our time, its dangers and accompanying illusions.
Jerry Brown
Governor of California
May 2013