I wrote a pair of pieces recently that discuss who Christ and Antichrist are in the thought of Ivan Illich.  For their exposition, they reference the works of Ivan with David Cayley, including his interview series Corruptio Optimi Pessima, and Ivan's 1970s critique of institutions within the broader perspective that the institutional substitution of personal activity is a characteristic of Antichrist.

Here they are:

https://verasvir.com/2025/08/14/christ-in-the-thought-of-ivan-illich/

https://verasvir.com/2025/08/14/antichrist-in-the-thought-of-ivan-illich/

I would be happy to discuss these people and ideas.

Thank you for your time,

Hamilton

Please enjoy, and I look forward to your comments.

Best,

Luke

I feel odd being the only one posting to the forum, but perhaps this doesn't matter! Anyway, I have a double bill of Ivan Illich reflections at Stranger Worlds this month and next month. The first one, Facing Books, picks up from an essay from In the Mirror of the Past, for which I remain eternally grateful to be referred to by the people gathered here.

Facing Books
The transition from the book to the computer as the dominant metaphor for mind
https://strangerworlds.substack.com/p/facing-books

The second one runs in a different direction from Illich's thought about the relationship between empire and grammar. I'll try to remember to pop by and drop a link to that when it runs.

With unlimited love,

Chris.

As Illich makes clear, computers have done for communication what fences did to pastures and cars did to open pathways. In each case, we witness the transformation of our commons into spaces that can be owned and therefore policed. Even without knowing how the internet was to shape the twenty first century, Illich already understood that the arrival of electronic computation was the industrialisation of communication, and with it thought itself. For all thought rests at its heart on discourse, a principle that was well understood before the twentieth century but that has gradually been buried under the illusionary conflation of knowledge with mere facts.

Pushback welcome!

Chris.

Over at Stranger Worlds and How to Live in Them, I've just run my first piece riffing off Illich's thought. This 3-minute reflection, "The Police and the Commons", is based upon "Silence is a Commons", as will be another one coming next month. (Also, I now have my copy of In the Mirror of the Past, and so I expect to be writing more reflections on Illich's thought later this year - thanks again for the tip about this volume!)

This week's piece actually follows indirectly from last week's, "The Axe and the Tree", which although it does not mention Heidegger still builds towards the central point of "The Question Concerning Technology", and serves as a prelude to "The Police and the Commons" by framing the contrast between resources and commons via an African proverb.

Anyway, I thought I would share these 3-minute reflections here for anyone who is interested:

• "The Axe and the Tree"
• "The Police and the Commons"

Comments at Stranger Worlds are restricted to paid subscribers, but I would welcome your comments here, of course, and if you're interested in what I'm trying to do with this series of short essays I would also welcome you joining as a free subscriber (which will email you all these ~750 word essays as they go up each Tuesday).

With unlimited love,

Chris.