We have failed...through our lack of responsible awareness...and thus added to suffering around the world. All of us are cripples-some physically, some mentally, some emotionally. We must, therefore, strive cooperatively to create a new world. There is no time left for destruction, for hatred, for anger. We must build, in hope and joy and celebration.
Ivan IllichCulture makes pain tolerable by interpreting it's necessity; only pain perceived as curable is intolerable.
Ivan IllichIt takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they "speak with the accent of natives" they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds.
Ivan IllichTraditional society was more like a set of concentric circles of meaningful structures, while modern man must learn how to find meaning in many structures to which he is only marginally related. In the village, language and architecture and religion and work and family customs were consistent with one another, mutually explanatory and reinforcing. To grow into one implied a growth into others.
Ivan Illich