The Conviviality of Ivan Illich (Part I) | by O.G. Rose | Oct, 2023 … – Medium

Essential Thinking for Thinking Life

Where there are no limits, totalization becomes possible, and where totalization is possible, so also might there be totalitarianism. David Hume realized this as a problem with philosophy: since we can philosophize about anything, there are no limits to philosophy, and that means governments, rulers, etc., could use philosophy to create for themselves a noncontingent and unlimited basis for their power. When government basis its legitimacy on the food it provides for a neighborhood, government is limited in its power by the degree it can provide that food, and furthermore its power doesnt extend beyond those for whom food is provided. But where governments legitimacy is based on justice, freedom, or a philosophical value (possible because of the spread of philosophical consciousness, as Dr. Livingston describes Hume), then there is no necessary limit on power. Yes, we might freely impose upon ourselves a limit (say if we understand the role of Determinations that we freely choose in making possible Necessities, as discussed with Hegel), but this act will easily seem strange and nonrational, making it hard for most people to do. As a result, where philosophical value becomes primary, a people are likely to find themselves unable to impose limitations on the power which is legitimized by that power. Unlimited power then becomes possible.

More can be said on Hume (as hopefully The Absolute Choice accomplishes), but what Hume warns regarding philosophy Ivan Illich warns similarly regarding technology and tools (both of which suggests Alex Eberts thinking on how limitless growth can become cancerous). What philosophy does for power in making it unlimited, so technology does the same for industry. To formulate a theory about a future society both very modern and not dominated by industry, it will be necessary to recognize natural scales and limits. Where there are no limits to technology, Illich suggests we will cease being human individuals and more so managers of technology, which is to say we will be used by technological ends versus use technology to extend human functions. Such a society, in which modern technologies service politically interrelated individuals rather than managers, [Illich] will call convivial.

Convivial for Illich designate[s] a modern society of responsibly limited tools, which for Illich is also needed if people are to stay human and thus communal, friends, and continue exercising the whole gambit of human activities and forms of community (all of which technology threatens). Illich would cultivate in us an apprehension that things or tools could destroy rather than enhance [graceful playfulness] in personal relations, which leaves us with either the choice of entirely abandoning society or learning to limit the technologies of society, neither of which will happen without direct and focused effort. The effort will require a choice, and if the choice is fundamentally a nonrational ascent to a humanity we cannot full rationalize, only live, this choice is Absolute.

I

Ivan Illich incorporated the parable of the Good Samaritan into his work deeply, which suggests Illichs view that the capacity for surprise [] is the essence of faith. Tools can remove surprise, and in fact it is arguably their purpose to do so, meaning that technology can be a threat to faith. Surprise is taken out of the face of the other today, thanks to technology that helps us always know what the other is doing (via say cellphones and social media), and furthermore thanks to initiatives it is possible for one [to] always know[] the other, in advance of any actual encounter (the society makes available services and appropriate profession[s] to which we can immediately refer the other) (all of which arguably makes the I-Thou encounter of Buber impossible). We can say that Illich is extremely concerned about The Preplanned (which I capitalize to suggest as a broad category), and for him the Good Samaritan suggests that the neighbor who we are to love (and who loving is necessary for loving God according to Christ) is the one whom we happen to come upon and find ourselves having to respond to and meet without any preset notions, ideas, or the like. We can only respond with what we have, and tools and the Preplanned threaten to train us to have nothing with which we can respond to the unexpected. Whats expected, sure, we can meet well, but the surprising and unexpected become something we cannot think or help. Illich often discusses how the corruption of the best is the worst, and Illich seems to suggest that where we prove incapable of handling the surprising and unexpected, we will be corrupted, for we are eventually hollowed out of the human capacities which make us capable of stopping corruption. In this way, a world which must be Preplanned is a world which will be corrupted, and a Preplanned best of all possible worlds is thus the worst.

David Carley notes how for Illich its critical to note that Jesus tells the story of the Samaritan in order to frustrate the request of that certain lawyer for a permanent airtight definition of the neighbor which can hence save us from the nakedness of being vulnerable to the unexpected (the Preplanned is clothing, like what Adam sought after The Fall). Carley notes that opponents often try to entangle Jesus in his own words or entrap him in some blunt formula, only to have him parry and dance out of their grasp with a story, a joke, or an answering question, all of which suggests that Jesus supports the Unplanned, suggesting the Anti-Christ is the Preplanned (please note I say Preplan versus Plan, for Jesus is not against a plan, only a plan which ignores or steamrolls otherness). Ultimately, we can say that conviviality is for Illich being like Jesus, and that means it is about avoiding the Preplanned in favor of readiness for the Unplanned, for it is only in this that humanity and humanness can be cultivated and earned. Tools of Conviviality are hence Tools for Being Christlike. Grace is Unplanned.

Illich suggests that what becomes Preplanned almost naturally slips into corruption. Schooling is said to generate social equality, for example, but Illich soon recognized that it actually produced the opposite effect (and yet had [nevertheless] become [] a worldwide religion). The movement from the Unplanned to the Preplanned regarding the Christian Church is described by Illich as a movement from Church as she [to] Church as it, and all initiatives whether in education, medicine, socializing, etc., are at risk of a similar devolution. The Church for Illich exists to discern and celebrate [a] mystery, which is essentially Unplanned, and any institution or system that lacks a sense of mystery will eventually become an it and Preplanned. Why does all this matter to Illich? Well, its because humans perish without mystery, and since progress today is defined technologically in terms of a movement from the Unplanned to the Preplanned, Illich saw that humanitys understanding of progress was self-effacing.

On this point, we might make a distinction in Illich between secrets and mystery, for he notes in Deschooling Society:

Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.

Honoring mystery for Illich is not to treat the world full of ideas and secrets which someone knows and the goal of people is to find those someones and gain from them the secrets. If the world is full of secrets versus essentially prove a mystery, then it is not the case that the world cannot ultimately be entirely Preplanned, for once we know all the secrets, it can be. No, for Illich, the world must ultimately entail a fundamental mystery that we must honor, not only because Illich believes this is simply true and the case, but also because for Illich this fundamental mystery provides a basis and justification for emphasizing the Unplanned.

Secrets are a counterfeit of mystery which try to fill the need for mystery, but ultimately they are in service of the Preplanned and technological vision of modernity, for if the world is full of (Gnostic) secrets, we need technology and plans to learn those secrets (and/or to maintain them in service of power). At the same time, technology can be used precisely to enhance education (as for Hegel knowledge is the Fall but also the Falls cure which also makes possible a greater Eden in New Jerusalem), if only it were used in service of the Unplanned. Regarding education, Illich discusses a need for new networks, readily available to the public and designed to spread equal opportunity for learning and teaching, before describing the TV and the possibility of something like it for helping create such networks. Personally, I find it hard to read these sections (found in the chapter Learning Webs) and not think of the laptop, and furthermore it should be noted that here Illich shows he is not anti-technology, only anti-dehumanizing technology, which is to say technology that removes the Unplanned and mysterious. Learning [today] is defined as the consumption of subject matter, which is the result of researched, planned, and promoted programs it is all Preplanned and thus prone to fall into corruption and dehumanization. For this to change not just in education but also politics, work, etc., our relation to tools and technology must shift but what is meant by this requires further elaboration.

II

Illichs hope was to make the expansion of freedom, rather than the growth of services [and technology] the criteria of social progress but to this some may counter and claim technology indeed increases freedom. To this, Illich might nod and say tools might expand freedom, but not in the way that humanity was mostly using them in his day, for technology was being used to move the world from a she to an it. There is no freedom where there is no humanity, and so tools only expand freedom to the degree they extend our humanity versus save us the trouble. Furthermore, [t]he concept of ownership cannot be applied to a tool that cannot be controlled, which is to say that once tools relate to us as an I(t)-It (to play off Martin Buber), we cannot say tools are even really tools (for that term suggests ownership), for they have rather become something else (our owners, perhaps).

Illich understood that shifting societys relationship to technology and bias for the Preplanned required undertak[ing] an archaeology of modern certainties, those ideas and feelings that seem too obvious and too natural ever to be put into question (an effort that perhaps suggests Foucault), for if we are to relate differently to technology in a manner that favors the Unplanned, that would require us to think through the zeitgeist and certainty that freedom is found in using tools to replace human functions and enable Preplanning for solving secrets versus extend human functions for the Unplanned to honor Mysteries. Living in the 2000s, it is admittedly hard to read Illich and not think he seems old-fashioned and misguided, and yet Illich himself is aware of this problem and knows he must make a case for why we feel this way (thus his attention to zeitgeist and ideology).

As an example of Illichs efforts, The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind argues how the movement from speech to writing contributes to us biasing and emotionally favoring the Preplanned over the Unplanned, suggesting that our bias favoring Preplanning and technology which replaces our human capacities (which moving forward I might call Replacement Technology or RT for short) is profoundly deep. It arises from all the way down, at the bottom level from where our notion of literacy even arises (to be literate is to be able to read versus speak, which for Neil Postman, considering The Death of Childhood, means an adult is someone who reads and thus is primed for systemization and Preplanning). William Ong makes the case that the scientific treatise was not possible before writing, for writing shifted our very thinking to think more scientifically, structured, and treatise-like, and perhaps then it is not by chance that a Preplanned world seems notably vulnerable to Scientism, both of which are motivated by literacy as reading and writing. If Ong is right, then writing changed human thinking to be more Preplanned versus Unplanned, which means, considering Illich, we are more susceptible to being less human, suffering Deleuzian capture, and corrupting institutions. But if writing has indeed changed how we think, then how can we think with Illich? Well, Illich must make a case that human thinking was not always this way, and so he engages in studies of history to help us think against the very way our thinking is now structured. Without this effort, why should we ever think we arent thinking well to Preplan? After all, its how thinking works.

In The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind, Illich writes:

It was not until the Middle Ages that letters ushered in a new type of society [] On one level, new ways of doing business, nourishing prayer life, and administering justice all became feasible through the written preservation of words [] The second way letters changed a society [] has been much less studied and is much more difficult to talk about. The reason for this research lacuna is probably that all the categories by which we talk about past societies have been acquired by reading. By their very nature they serve to describe. They are directly suited to saying things about a society in which social relations are governed by a reliance on written language.

Once writing changes how we think, the categories we use to understand the world are categories suited for ways of thinking which are writing-influenced, and this makes it remarkably difficult for us to discuss humanity before writing. It is perhaps like an Atheist trying to discuss Theism: he or she wont get everything wrong, but there might be natural limits on how much Atheist can think about Theism given that the Atheist believes there is nothing there to think about; likewise, when all thinking is shaped by writing, there seems to be no such thing as thought which isnt shaped by writing to consider. Similarly, like Heidegger, Illich suggests that once thinking is shaped by technology in favor of Preplanning, it seems like there is no such thing as a rationality which isnt instrumental rationality. No, this doesnt mean an Atheist cant think about God as well as a Theist (and arguably many Atheists are more educated about religion than many Theists), but rather the point is that it will require an odd way of thinking: the Atheist must think like a Theist while believing there is no God to think. Likewise, to think prewriting, we must engage in odd thinking relative to our post-writing mindset. Its doable, but we need reason to think we need to do it, which is what Illich hopes to provide with his historic studies.

As literacy became more general and, by the end of the medieval period, embraced by large sections of society, changes began to seep into everyones everyday life. Yes, obviously work will be done differently thanks to writing, but again if Ong is correct, then how people engaged in everyday thinking also changed, which is to say writing changed how people thought about themselves, their lives, and what mattered (a point which again suggests Heidegger). For one, writing contributed to people thinking of themselves more as individuals versus collectives, for it now became possible to learn the laws, the customs, etc. of a society without social interaction via verbal exchange. Oral culture obligat[ed] social relation[], and words were alive not through ink but in the living body of the person concerned, radically impacting our experience of language as particular, personal, and emotive. Now though, we dont consider a promise or contract valid unless its in writing, which means we associate truth and reality with the written word. By extension of this logic, likewise, we associate real thought with the Preplanned and structured, while false thought is Unplanned and improvised. Under this paradigm, Ivan Illich sees little hope of us losing our humanity, which is fundamentally improvisational, mysterious, and Unplanned.

The Invention of News by Andrew Pettegree aligns with Illich, and Pettegree notes how [o]ur medieval ancestors had a profound suspicion of information that came to them in written form [] a news report delivered verbally by a trusted friend or messenger was far more likely to be believed than an anonymous written report (seemingly the exact opposite of us today). Pettegrees book is fascinating in that it provides a historic case for how news evolved between oral and written traditions (to spread and grow as an industry, like government, news needed the written word), which suggests that Pettegree can be seen as doing work which Ivan Illich believed was necessary to erode modern certainty in the virtue of Preplanned Thinking. Pettegree notes that the movement from oral news to written news required the creation of trust in the written word, and Pettegree locates the advent of this trust in commerce (for which we actually have historical records, since it was written, which suggests that we might privilege the printed word because it has provided the vast bulk of surviving evidence of past events, suggesting another reason we might be biased against the oral). Pettegree writes on how international traders had to develop systems of sharing news, in an atmosphere of trust, and with a reasonable expectation that their correspondents would act on the information. It was a critical development in the history of news gathering. For written news to prove possible, this culture which developed in trade had to spread to the general public, which it gradually did alongside economic success (suggesting a point aligned with Ong that the written word changed how people thought and related to impersonal abstractions, eventually making possible justification based on abstraction and hence Humes philosophical consciousness).

As the years passed though, Pettegree observes how [n]o sooner was one issue on sale than news men were gathering copy for the next. There was little mental space for reflection and explanation, even if the style adopted in the newspapers (inherited from the manuscript newsletters) had allowed for this, which it did not. Also, [t]he more the newspapers extended their readership and their political influence, the less they were trusted. It was a difficult and complex legacy to carry into the age of Enlightenment. In this way, the success of news has always been one of the biggest threats to news, and when people feel the news is interested in popularity, they cease to trust it. But note how a distrust of the news seems to replace a distrust of the written word: the trust-ability of the written word over personal exchange is now assumed. Yes, words can be wrong, but words are still fundamentally and formally superior to oral exchange. Distrust of the news hides our trust in writing, which is now assumed, in a way similar to how our distrust of Facebook can hide our trust in technology, RT, and/or technological thinking as a whole. The distrust of the news provides evidence to us that we are still critically thinking, but this feeling only conceals from us our acceptance of the superiority of writing (even while we say we prefer speech, as Derrida noted in Of Grammatology).

In Illich arguing how writing changed the very orientations of everyday people, a simple question arises: Why couldnt this happen again? Further, are we so sure it hasnt already happened again? Illich is suggesting technology is indeed further shifting us, and we have been shifted to favor Preplanning over the Unplanned, making it impossible for us to be like Christ (given Illichs reading of the Good Samaritan). But since we can be like Christ, that means our failure is perhaps a failure of the best of things, which means we might now be the worst of things. The stakes are high. Also, looking ahead, if wed like to return to something like speech over writing, which is mainly to say the ways of thinking engendered by speech, we must go through Lacan and psychoanalysis. To move into writing is to move away from the subject and all the challenges of personhood, and those challenges require us to consider Freud, Lacan, talk therapy, and other psychoanalytical thinkers (who we may not have had to confront so urgently until now). Freud understood that psychoanalysis was needed more in First World Nations then poor, more manual civilizations, because First World Nations had more free time and thus more relations which were not externally meditated by tasks like plowing a field, loading a truck, or even raising a family. In this environment, without the right training, Freud understood pathologies would increase and mental health collapse, exactly as they have. If returning to speaking, per se, is what we must do to use technologies to extend humanity versus replace humanity, then we are incapable of using technology humanly without doing the work of the subject (a theme of Cadell Lasts work). Are we ready for that challenge? Can we face lack and The Real? Who would have thought that using technology would force us to return to facing ourselvesPerhaps a reason we like writing is precisely because it can help us escape this work, all while making us seem more objective and enlightened.

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Notes

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: xxiv.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: xxiv.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: xxiv.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: xxv.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 37.

This might suggest wisdom in Malcolm Muggeridge rejecting the use of television for evangelism.

Illich also discusses institutionalization and systemization as threats to surprise and thus genuine care, suggests that Illichs views of limiting technology apply just as well to systems in general. Today we suffer the enormity of the loss that occurs when care is mass-produced. Sin, for example, is hidden, because all failures become systemic rather than personal.(A)

(A) Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 37.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 37.

All of this suggests how technology contributes to us failing The Unarmored Test, a notion inspired by Raymond K Hessels excellent Notes from a Pod.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 35.

Illich particularly highlights how Christianity becomes the worst of things when corrupted precisely because it is the best of things, a notion I think which aligns with The Fall of Lucifer.

If there is truth to a progressive narrative which suggests the future is better than the past, then that would mean the more Preplanned the future is the more the future will prove a suffering and mutation of Christianity. (A)

(A) Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 1.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 36.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 36.

Im not sure, by Ivan Illich almost suggests that the written word contributed to our movement away from the Unplanned to the Planned, for contracts, signed documents, book, and the like all become possible, all of which made possible a making life more rigid and structured ([t]he reader was no longer physically incorporated into the order of the book but could impose his order on it).(A) In this way, we can see writing as a tool which risks conviviality just as much as Facebook. Similar in risk might also be labels and categorization, as Illich seems to suggest in H20 and the Waters of Forgetfulness: once water becomes H20, it looses it poetic character, which water needs to surprise us and avoid Preplanning (industrial treatment, beyond a certain intensity, deprives water of the metaphorical resonance it has always possessed).(B) In this way, reductionism can work against conviviality.

(A) Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 27.

(B) Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 25.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 3.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 12.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 4.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 7.

Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society. New York, NY: First Harrow Edition, 1972: 109.

Additionally, a world of mystery has nothing to intentionally hide, for what is hidden simply is hidden, allowing for greater equality and solidarity (all learners could have access without credentials or pedigree, for artificial systems of authority would not need to be created, but instead a natural system of guides to help people relate to the Unplanned mystery). (A)

(A) Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society. New York, NY: First Harrow Edition, 1972: 109.

Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society. New York, NY: First Harrow Edition, 1972: 110.

Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society. New York, NY: First Harrow Edition, 1972: 155.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 14.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 25.

Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 19.

As a note, Illich makes a fascinating point that it was easier to understand how language was gendered when it was spoken, for wed heard differences in words when spoken between men and women ([t]his gender contrast in speech is lost when it congeals as language on the page).(A)

(A) Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988:

Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 31.

Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 32.

Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 32.

Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 34.

Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press, 2014: 2.

Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press, 2014: 347

Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press, 2014: 39.

Do all major social and conceptual renaissances start in business and economics? It often seems that way.

Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press, 2014: 260.

Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press, 2014: 268.

Another point that Pettegree brought up is that when news was regarded less as a key to Gods purpose and more as a catalyst for action, then timeliness became critical. (A) In this way, religion might have helped news from becoming obsessed with speed, which has helped lead us into all the trouble involving speed that Paul Virilio discusses. And if news and information technology shapes thinking, if speed becomes critical, then fast thought might be real thought, destroying focus and possible more.

(A) Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press, 2014: 369.

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The Conviviality of Ivan Illich (Part I) | by O.G. Rose | Oct, 2023 ... - Medium