It is obviously necessary to recognize the relevance of a number of observations on which it is based, even if they are not really new.
The author mentions in the introduction to his ravings about some urban developers of this megalomania. It has almost become a bridge-to-asses, but we can not but share the horror he felt some real achievements concentration camp: bars, towers, buildings which are piled thousands of individuals, with the best intentions " social "of the world!
Another example of the race for the excess, the automobile. Fantastic instrument of freedom in the absolute, it became by his mad multiplication, an object constraints, wasted time and money. Needless to emphasize the monstrous traffic jams at peak hours obstructing the entrance or exit of megalopolises, or the roads of the holidays. Everyone has had the experience ....
Quite rightly, Olivier Rey engages in some observations relating to the same organization of society which he criticizes the increasingly large individual requirements and depersonalization institutions. He took the opportunity to bring up to date the criticisms at the time by Ivan Illich, whose name is a recurring theme throughout the book. As for example of public education he compared to a "poisoning", he laments the fact that without complex "parents, families, adults in general, laziness, convenience, discouragement, or simply because that they can not do otherwise, renounce educate children and young people leaving the school at the institution that claims to care so sen load "
On the health system become bloated, it is not tender. He begins by pointing extravagance of the definition proposed by the WHO in 1946, which made health "a state of complete physical welfare, mental and social, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity ". Always on the trail of Illich, he goes to war against the tide of current creed against social protection policies, stating that "this is not good news for family ties and friendship, when someone is sick, he is supported, not by his family or his friends, but by the social security ... "
Expanding his argument, he comes to challenge the materialistic conception of happiness, such as in the developed countries, which he likens to a sterile accumulation of satisfactions. Thus, he writes, "a human life is not a bag where the episodes come sentasser (without an abundance fullness) but a chain that links made of successive moments but claiming a meaning to this succession and an end: death. "
After Illich is Leopold Kohr, who is called to the rescue, including his book The Breakdown of Nations, in which he tried to show that there is only one cause behind all forms of social misery : excessive size! Olivier Rey reminds remained famous slogan, "Small is beautiful" that sinspira whole school of economic thought and which served as the manifesto published in the 70s by Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher. They were sort of precursor of the alter-globalization blooming today in the margins of the official paths, which prides itself on a new path, repudiating both the Marxists and the liberal canons sirens ...
And that's where the shoe hurts of course ...
For the work at this point in the toggle anti-liberal load, for which the author begins to release a pitch where partisanship trumps objectivity and specious often takes the place of seriousness.
Behind the legitimate questioning of the size of the structures, institutions, organizations and companies, unfortunately arise many of which are beginning to suspect a priori they hold much of the leftist vision and sometimes anarchist world.
Nevermind wacky sofa Illich thesis advocating to limit the speed of travel so that it does not exceed 25 km / h because of his views, high speeds cause a harmful concentration of power!
How to join the principle laid down by Kohr, assuming than any small state, monarchy or republic, would be by democratic nature unlike adults, who could not be, the only effect of their size! The US is there to remind quune great nation may well be based permanently on freedom, and The reverse, we could cite the small crowds totalitarian regimes
Nor can be convinced by the demonstrations in the form of tautology on impossibility for invariants BE organizations when they change of scale. In other words, a man of 10 meters would not even standing sil was proportionate like us. This is certain, but it does not prove quune structure must necessarily be small to be viable. The federal model that is built Switzerland adapts worry the US
Finally, what about the thoughts of the author WHEN IT arbitrarily claims that large numbers too have something satanic, evoking the wrath of God punishing David for trying to count its people? What about this astonishing assertion that wants "mass on it seems to attract disasters and calls the massacre? "Especially when the reasoning leads to the massive devaluation of the mark in the 30's the trigger the Nazi genocide ....
We find ourselves in fact, embedded in a confused and somewhat pedantic speech in which emerges repeatedly philosophy of degrowth, anti-liberalism and anti-capitalism which is dinned into our ears.
The author warned about veiling his many rhetorical precautions, but he can for example help to return to the virtues of the division of labor that enabled the industry to prosper. Against this, Olivier Rey would restore "good" user friendly "tools M. Illich, which increase the autonomy to do more for yourself than what we could do without them, unlike industrial tools , become so excessive, they paralyze personal faculties to act on the world. "
Of course craftsmanship and vernacular production design are friendly causes, but it is certain that if everyone had to make himself his shoes or his car, the world would be somewhat transfigured ...
More serious are the incessant attacks and instead primary that it addresses every turn to liberalism, which he sees mischief everywhere, so much quon can infer from this approach, it unfortunately sinscrit contemptuous ignorance in which he suffers in our country .
Can be judged on a few truisms grotesque denouncing eg about the status of women, "the cunning of the modern economic system, after ruining the ancient position of women, not having made a release Quà glimpse through a competition with men and recruitment into the ranks of employees! "
Sometimes this is the caricature that he indulges when he portrayed "liberal ideology of force which, when implanted, so radically destroys the faculty, mental and social, to admit a limit and to respect, what can only continue to reign until this quintervienne the invisible hand of the catastrophe, "or even" liberalism advocated by Mandeville in the eighteenth century, instead of urging people to virtue and temperance, push them to compete for wealth, the unlimited thirst to have. "
While it does not only lead to the paradox of Voegelin, who in 1950 noted the "decline of the West and unheard its progress at the same time", to conclude in the form of a oxymoron, "it is the same success that causes the decline ...
Overall, this long digression, is characterized above all by its inconsistency and its ideological clichés. Party on interesting premise, it is conducted at the end of a erratic reasoning to a nebulous conclusion, and devoid of concrete opportunities.
Olivier Rey, merely produce an nth anti-Liberal pamphlet, without much originality. It even comes to question the sense of responsibility which is based on love of freedom, doing his inept largumentation dIllich: "When I behave in a responsible way, I register myself in the system" . A linstar of his mentor, he prefers decency, but unfortunately it seems largely forgotten now washhouse
