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 monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous.
When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.
We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it's so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive.
If a star or studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened - as if somebody was trying to demote them.
If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily "ours" but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes.
We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root - almost literally.
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