"The habitual passenger cannot grasp the folly of traffic based overwhelmingly on transport. His inherited perceptions of space and time and of personal pace have been industrially deformed. He has lost the power to conceive of himself outside the passenger role. Addicted to being carried along, he has lost control over the physical, social, and psychic powers that reside in man's feet. The passenger has come to identify territory with the untouchable landscape through which he is rushed. He has become impotent to establish his domain, mark it with his imprint, and assert his sovereignty over it. He has lost confidence in his power to admit others into his presence and to share space consciously with them. He can no longer face the remote by himself. Left on his own, he feels immobile. The habitual passenger must adopt a new set of beliefs and expectations if he is to feel secure in the strange world where both liaisons and loneliness are products of conveyance. To "gather" for him means to be brought together by vehicles. He comes to believe that political power grows out of the capacity of a transportation system, and in its absence is the result of access to the television screen. He takes freedom of movement to be the same as one's claim on propulsion. He believes that the level of democratic process correlates to the power of transportation and communications systems. He has lost faith in the political power of the feet and of the tongue. As a result, what he wants is not more liberty as a citizen but better service as a client. He does not insist on his freedom to move and to speak to people but on his claim to be shipped and to be informed by media. He wants a better product rather than freedom from servitude to it. It is vital that he come to see that the acceleration he demands is self-defeating, and that it must result in a further decline of equity, leisure, and autonomy."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"Energy and Equity" (1974)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Ivan Illich
Ivan Illich (4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian-born Christian anarchist, author, polymath, and polemicist.
63 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Ivan Illich →
Related Quotes
"Nenà štěstà bez závisti."
"Friendship in the Greek tradition, in the Roman tradition, in the old tradition, was always viewed as the highest poi…"
"I intend to discuss some perplexing issues which are raised once we embrace the hypothesis that society can be descho…"
"Churches also have their problems with a Jesus whose only economics are jokes. A savior undermines the foundations of…"
"Homo economicus was surreptitiously taken as the emblem and analogue for all living beings. A mechanistic anthropomor…"
"Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of …"
"Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us. Just before He started out on His public life, Jesus …"
"Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful s…"
"To the primitive the world was governed by fate, fact, and necessity. By stealing fire from the gods, Prometheus turn…"
"In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy."