Hi Chris. I got a loan of “Content and Consciousness” from the California library system. I’m just getting started. I think Illich’s critiques are overblown, but I’m interested in seeing his prescriptions for improvement. In my current view he appears to be poorly grounded in what is, and what’s possible.
Thanks again for expanding my horizons. This is the first time I’ve heard of Isabelle Stengers.
I don’t have the knowledge base to comment on your first two paragraphs.
I think I understand the “importing of the anxieties of market completion into scientific discourse”, but I’m not sure I know what you mean by “enslaving the sciences to technology”.
I take it that with “the calamity humanity recently inflicted upon itself out of fear of a disaster” you are referring to the covid pandemic. Yes?
I heartily agree that “Authentic knowledge is the result of following the questions wherever they lead – even and especially when they lead down the slowest path that brings us to further questions. Desire for rapid decisions cannot be allowed to undermine our commitment to collectively pursuing the truth at its own speed.” This ideal cannot always be met, but currently, for a variety of reasons, we appear to be moving away rather than toward it.
“Whenever we let fear of calamity overwhelm our clarity of thinking, we place ourselves in immense danger”. Although the free flow of ANY emotion is intrinsic to our humanity, for any significant social decision to be productive, emotion needs to stay out of the driver’s seat.
I might be starting to share your dim view of various current institutions. Last night my wife had us start to watch “Encounters”, a five episode Netflix documentary supposedly presenting hard evidence for encounters with outer space aliens. This morning I got suckered into watching a slick, long sales video: https://www.bostonbrainscience.com/os/
for brain enchantment pills (I think - I cut off before the hard pitch) that claimed to be backed by many peer reviewed scientific articles. It seems to me that at least in the US a significant chunk of the population is living in a reality that is quite at odds with what is.
Thanks for these comments, Frank - truly appreciated!
Regarding Illich, I am not expecting at any point to bring you fully around to Illich's way of thinking - but I think it helpful to understand him and his arguments. It is also vital to appreciate that he lived primarily outside of the industrialised world and was speaking to a fair degree to those who had not committed to industrialisation about the risks of making these changes uncritically. (Another Illich piece in two weeks! Perhaps this is the one you'll see eye-to-eye with... 😉)
Some clarifications:
“enslaving the sciences to technology”
When or if the existence of the funding structures for the sciences presumes technological outcomes (i.e. saleable outcomes), we have enslaved the sciences to technology. You could replace 'technology' with 'money' in that sentence with little loss of meaning. This circumstance is not yet total, but the disparities are vast. A clear example is pharmaceutical corporations wriggling free from pharmacovigilance, which ought to be the most rigorous scientific obligation towards this field. But the money pulls in the other direction, to favour the technology over the scientific investigation.
"I take it that with 'the calamity humanity recently inflicted upon itself out of fear of a disaster' you are referring to the covid pandemic. Yes?"
The disaster was the ill-advised response to this group of viruses, aye. The disease itself need not and should not have been a disaster, but we made it thus. Comparisons with the 1957 and 1968 influenza outbreaks in the western nations are apposite, and sobering. SARS-CoV-2 had a lower IFR (infection fatality ratio) than either of those influenza strains, yet the all-cause mortality in this more recent event was far higher. Interventions should not kill more people than the diseases they are deployed against, and when they do we should all be ashamed.
"It seems to me that at least in the US a significant chunk of the population is living in a reality that is quite at odds with what is."
To some extent, this might always have been so. The difference today is the scale of the funding put towards active curation of these bizarre alternative realities for various purposes. Again, this is another example of what I mean by “enslaving the sciences to technology” - scientific process deployed primarily as marketing...
As always, your commentaries are greatly appreciated, Frank.
Hi Chris. I got a loan of “Content and Consciousness” from the California library system. I’m just getting started. I think Illich’s critiques are overblown, but I’m interested in seeing his prescriptions for improvement. In my current view he appears to be poorly grounded in what is, and what’s possible.
Thanks again for expanding my horizons. This is the first time I’ve heard of Isabelle Stengers.
I don’t have the knowledge base to comment on your first two paragraphs.
I think I understand the “importing of the anxieties of market completion into scientific discourse”, but I’m not sure I know what you mean by “enslaving the sciences to technology”.
I take it that with “the calamity humanity recently inflicted upon itself out of fear of a disaster” you are referring to the covid pandemic. Yes?
I heartily agree that “Authentic knowledge is the result of following the questions wherever they lead – even and especially when they lead down the slowest path that brings us to further questions. Desire for rapid decisions cannot be allowed to undermine our commitment to collectively pursuing the truth at its own speed.” This ideal cannot always be met, but currently, for a variety of reasons, we appear to be moving away rather than toward it.
“Whenever we let fear of calamity overwhelm our clarity of thinking, we place ourselves in immense danger”. Although the free flow of ANY emotion is intrinsic to our humanity, for any significant social decision to be productive, emotion needs to stay out of the driver’s seat.
I might be starting to share your dim view of various current institutions. Last night my wife had us start to watch “Encounters”, a five episode Netflix documentary supposedly presenting hard evidence for encounters with outer space aliens. This morning I got suckered into watching a slick, long sales video: https://www.bostonbrainscience.com/os/
for brain enchantment pills (I think - I cut off before the hard pitch) that claimed to be backed by many peer reviewed scientific articles. It seems to me that at least in the US a significant chunk of the population is living in a reality that is quite at odds with what is.
Thanks for these comments, Frank - truly appreciated!
Regarding Illich, I am not expecting at any point to bring you fully around to Illich's way of thinking - but I think it helpful to understand him and his arguments. It is also vital to appreciate that he lived primarily outside of the industrialised world and was speaking to a fair degree to those who had not committed to industrialisation about the risks of making these changes uncritically. (Another Illich piece in two weeks! Perhaps this is the one you'll see eye-to-eye with... 😉)
Some clarifications:
“enslaving the sciences to technology”
When or if the existence of the funding structures for the sciences presumes technological outcomes (i.e. saleable outcomes), we have enslaved the sciences to technology. You could replace 'technology' with 'money' in that sentence with little loss of meaning. This circumstance is not yet total, but the disparities are vast. A clear example is pharmaceutical corporations wriggling free from pharmacovigilance, which ought to be the most rigorous scientific obligation towards this field. But the money pulls in the other direction, to favour the technology over the scientific investigation.
"I take it that with 'the calamity humanity recently inflicted upon itself out of fear of a disaster' you are referring to the covid pandemic. Yes?"
The disaster was the ill-advised response to this group of viruses, aye. The disease itself need not and should not have been a disaster, but we made it thus. Comparisons with the 1957 and 1968 influenza outbreaks in the western nations are apposite, and sobering. SARS-CoV-2 had a lower IFR (infection fatality ratio) than either of those influenza strains, yet the all-cause mortality in this more recent event was far higher. Interventions should not kill more people than the diseases they are deployed against, and when they do we should all be ashamed.
"It seems to me that at least in the US a significant chunk of the population is living in a reality that is quite at odds with what is."
To some extent, this might always have been so. The difference today is the scale of the funding put towards active curation of these bizarre alternative realities for various purposes. Again, this is another example of what I mean by “enslaving the sciences to technology” - scientific process deployed primarily as marketing...
As always, your commentaries are greatly appreciated, Frank.
Chris.