The Future as Past

...Alas, those living in poverty do not appear to share his disdain for the perquisites of wealth...

...After all, it would seem that if a society is rich enough to offer hospital care, university education, professionally built housing, etc., to all its citizens, the "autonomy" they lose in accepting these benefits is a price well worth paying...

...A serious question in underdeveloped countries, for instance, is whether limited healthcare funds should be spent on a cardiac room for the capital city's hospital or for training paramedics to go out into the villages...

...Illich's response, as those familiar with his work know, is to deny that these are benefits...

...Illich writes: "Two-thirds of mankind can still avoid passing through the industrial age, by choosing right now a postindustrial balance in their mode of production which the hyperindustrial nations will be forced to adopt as an alternative to chaos...

...If his complaints were restricted to Latin America and the rest of the Third World, Illich would have a valid point...

...A few examples will illuminate Illich's position: Modern technology could enable laymen to give at least rudimentary medical treatment, yet we are more dependent on doctors and hospitals now than people were 50 years ago...

...His thesis is simple: Industrial society is approaching a great crisis, indeed a "catastrophe," and growth must stop...

...They might wish for somewhat less growth in exchange for somewhat better income distribution or somewhat more spending on social reform, yet they are unlikely to assert, as does Illich, that the fruits of industrialism are "trivial...

...Indeed, ecological disaster will soon compel the "advanced" nations to return to a less institutionalized social order...

...Success, even survival, is contingent on association with these institutions?which Illich would replace with "tools for conviviality" in order to restore personal freedom...

...5.95 Reviewed by Elliott Abrams After the publication of De-schooling Society, Ivan Illich announced that he had nothing more to say about education and would move on to new subjects...

...And building codes in Third-World cities that prevent the massive use of cheap prefabricated housing parts, when thousands live in overcrowded shacks at the edge of town, are clearly inequitable...

...Likewise, if college scholarships were widely available, expenditure on education would not constitute a gross injustice...

...He largely rejects the existence of expertise, and contends that almost all professional training (including that of physicians, surgeons and dentists) is worthless...

...A New Yorker profile of Illich described him as having "the aristocrat's sentimental attraction-Recalling Tolstoy's-To cultures of poverty untainted by bourgeois aspirations...

...it could produce housing components people could assemble themselves, yet we have less to do with the construction of our homes than ever before...

...Many of us, he declares, possess imaginations that have been "industrially deformed" and "industrially distorted," so that we cannot "experience the sober joy of life in this voluntary though relative poverty which lies within our grasp...

...Illich fails, however, to limit his case to underdeveloped nations, thereby weakening his entire argument...

...A Catholic priest, a moralist rather than a scientist, Illich is primarily interested in the place of individuals in society, and he believes industrialism must be supplanted by a "convivial" order built on a human scale, wherein people will be creative, autonomous and happy...

...The wealthy industrial nations, therefore, offer no model to the Third World...

...Illich finds it lamentable that people drive fast cars, no longer die in their own homes, and must attend school instead of entering apprenticeships...

...For the problem in industrialized countries is not a lack of resources, but mobilizing political support for proper resource allocation and for a more equitable distribution of income...

...But, in fact, the notion of a coming cataclysm is only marginal for Illich-it merely underscores the need for radical social change that he would favor under any circumstances...

...If everyone were guaranteed access to doctors and hospitals, the spending patterns for medicine that Illich decries would be less objectionable...

...it could allow us to obtain excellent educations on our own, yet formal schooling and certification have created an elaborate knowledge industry...

...As with Deschooling Society, Illich makes some interesting points in Tools for Conviviality, but taken as a whole the book is unpersuasive...

...Echoing his 1968 comments about education, he maintains: "Everywhere in Latin America more money for schools means more privilege for a few at the cost of most, and this patronage of an elite is explained as a political ideal...

...Why, then, doesn't Illich restrict himself to writing about the Third World, requesting simply that the impoverished masses not be neglected in the course of development...

...In this book his topic is Modern Civilization, which he disposes of in a mere 110 pages...

...While Illich notes that individual autonomy is in no way reduced for those who can afford doctors, architects or professors, he insists that this only aggravates matters by adding the element of inequality: "The principal source of injustice in our epoch is political approval for the existence of tools that by their very nature restrict to a very few the liberty to use them in an autonomous way...

...Although Illich believes he has a vision of the future, most readers will probably be sufficiently "industrially deformed" to recognize it as little more than a sentimentalized portait of the past...

...Illich's central criticism is that modern technology, instead of being used "to extend human capability," smothers the individual in huge, impersonal "tools," such as schools, hospitals and factories...