School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.
Ivan IllichRead
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that consumerism creates individuals who are enslaved by their desires for material goods and by their jealousy of others' possessions.
Ivan Illich's quote highlights the dual nature of enslavement in a consumer-driven society. It argues that people become 'slaves' either by becoming addicted to material goods or by feeling envious of what others possess. This reflects a deeper critique of consumer culture, pointing to how it can diminish individual freedom and fulfillment by fostering unhealthy desires and comparisons.
In practice
This quote can be shared during discussions about the impact of advertising on our values.
School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.
School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition.
The pupil is ... 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.
The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting.
Effective health care depends on self-care; this fact is currently heralded as if it were a discovery.
Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organised to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.
The self-despisers are less intent on their own increase than on the diminution of others. Where self-esteem is unobtainable, envy takes the place of greed.
Peace without justice is tyranny
Whoever be the instruments of any good to us, of whatever sort, we must look above them, and eye the hand and counsel of God in it, which is the first spring, and be duly thankful to God for it. And whatever evil of crosses or afflictions befalls us, we must look above the instruments of it to God.
Holiness has nothing to do with what we know and everything to do with Who we know.
Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.
Is it treason to say the truth? A bitter truth, but no less true for that.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.