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Left-wing highlighting of the most relevant recent news stories.Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Liberal advocates of US global domination often act as if McDonald's is a soft form of power acting as an object lesson in the virtues of American life (put aside it unhealthiness and ugliness). Apparently, McDees sees things differently.
Ivan Illich died on Monday. He was 76. Although not read or discussed lately, the questions he raised in his work in the 70s--about the ways bureaucratic institutions aggravate the problems they are conceptualized as solving, about the malign effects of many technologies, about the domination of society by professionals, remain highly relevant. It became harder to criticize schooling when the political consensus moved to the evisceration, rather than expansion of schooling--but someday we will return to his critique.
Terrible obituary for Illich in the New York Times.
Sample his writings here.
Vintage Illich: "Underdevelopment as a state of mind occurs when mass needs are converted to the demand for new brands of packaged solutions which are forever beyond the reach of the majority... I mean the translation of thirst into the need for a coke... The dynamic underdevelopment that is now taking place is the exact opposite of what I believe education to be: namely, the awakening awareness of new levels of human potential and the use of one's creative powers to foster human life. Underdevelopment, however, implies the surrender of social consciousness to prepackaged solutions."
Fittingly, this op-ed by Lizabeth Cohen raises Illich-like questions about how the economic 'solution' of mass consumption exascerbates other problems.
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