Things to doubt radically

I took this list of things to doubt from Erich Fromm’s introduction to Ivan Illich’s book “Celebration of Awareness.” Fromm (1900-1980) was a German-American social psychologist, sociologist, and humanistic philosopher. In his short essay Fromm describes himself and Illich as proponents of humanistic radicalism. Radical doubt, he defines, as is “a process of liberation from idolatrous thinking; a widening of awareness, of imaginative, creative vision of our possibilities and options.” In his book “Tools for Conviviality” Illich writes about “radical monopoly,” that there is no alternative to our modern institutions—that if you are sick you must go to doctors, if somebody is dead you must ring for an undertaker.. Some of the list below will be hard to doubt for some, but some—for example, “the dogma that increasing consumption makes man happy”—will be doubted by many. Please add to the list. The modern concept of “progress,” which means the principle of ever-increasing production,…