Even If Nonpolluting Power Were Feasible And Abundant, The Use Of Energy On A Massive Scale Acts On Society Like A Drug That Is Physically Harmless But Psychically Enslaving. A Community Can Choose Between Methadone And "cold Turkey"-between Maintaining Its Addiction To Alien Energy And Kicking It In Painful Cramps-but No Society Can Have A Population That Is Hooked On Progressively Larger Numbers Of Energy Slaves And Whose Members Are Also Autonomously Active.

-Ivan Illich

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Even If Nonpolluting Power Were Feasible And

Ivan Illich

Even If Nonpolluting Power Were Feasible And Abundant, The Use Of Energy On A Massive Scale Acts On Society Like A Drug That Is Physically Harmless But Psychically Enslaving. A Community Can Choose Between Methadone And "cold Turkey"-between Maintaining Its Addiction To Alien Energy And Kicking It In Painful Cramps-but No Society Can Have A Population That Is Hooked On Progressively Larger Numbers Of Energy Slaves And Whose Members Are Also Autonomously Active.

Topic

Turkeys

Kicking It

Numbers

The Knowledge Of The Individual Citizen Is Of Less Value Than The Knowledge Of Science. The Former Is The Opinion Of Individuals. It Is Merely Subjective And Is Excluded From Policies. The Latter Is Objective - Defined By Science And Promulgated By Expert Spokesmen. This Objective Knowledge Is Viewed As A Commodity Which Can Be Refined... And Fed Into A Process, Now Called Decision-making. This New Mythology Of Governance By The Manipulation Of Knowledge-stock Inevitably Erodes Reliance On Government By People.

Government

People

Decision