Ivan Illich in Conversation. - book reviews

Whole Earth Review, Winter, 1993 by J. Baldwin

We have gotten used to living among images, as Susan Sontag so graphically described in her book On Photography. Kids say, look at that sunrise, that's as beautiful as a postcard! A new generation is so used to having seen everything and heard everything by listening in to the production of programs, or looking at them, that they take reality for another form of program.

The moment you begin to think about the hungry in terms of calories, in your own fantasy you become a systems administrator. You become somebody who feels that he has the power, or at least ought to have the power, to turn lifelines off and on, because he who can turn them on can also by not doing what he ought to do to turn them off. The fantasy that Ethiopians are dependent on what we send them implies a tremendous vanity. I cease to think in terms of an individual hungry mouth into which a piece of bread will enter, and begin to speak in terms of tons, without my necessarily having either the intention or the capacity to take a piece of bread and share it with somebody else.

Ivan Illich in Conversation David Cayler, 1992; 299 pp. ISBN 0-88784-524-X $16 ($18.50 postpaid) from House of Anansi Press. 30 Les Mills Road, Don Mills, ON M3B 2T6, Canada; 416/445-3333