Energy and Equity

By Ivan Illich

Book Overview

Ivan Illich poses that human problems must be solved by the impressment of still more "energy slaves' to meet the expanding demand of human masters. The two solutions consist of securing the current source of the drug, or finding a different, more secure pusher. In this essay, Illich examines the question of whether or not humans need any more energy than is their natural birthright. Along the way he gives a startling analysis of the marginal disutility of tools. After a certain point, that is, more energy gives negative returns. For example, moving around causes loss of time proportional to the amount of energy which is poured into the transport system, so that the speed of the fastest traveller correlates inversely to the equality as well as freedom of the median traveller.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0714532010
• ISBN13: 9780714532011
• Release Date: September 2023
• Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 4.9" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

radical thinking on energy

Ivan Illich studied theology and philosophy in Rome, and earned a PhD in history in Salzburg. His career was one of political activism as a philosopher, writer, and a Catholic. He spent most of his life in the United States and Mexico, where he founded a center in Cuernavaca. Like much of Illich's writing, Energy and Equity is startlingly radical, so much so that it can be difficult to absorb. The book's central theme is that the real "energy crisis" consists of having too much, not too little, energy. He claims that both the United States and Mexico are "blinded to the fact that the threat of social breakdown is due neither to a shortage of fuel, nor to the wasteful, polluting and irrational use of available wattage, but to the attempt of industries to gorge society with energy quanta that inevitably degrade, deprive and frustrate most people." The voluntary simplicity movement represents a similar point of view, but the stark intellectual language employed by Illich fills a different role--one of intense mental aggression. In that way, his writing is refreshing, and may please the reader who likes to be challenged.