Conviviality

Before we wrestle with Illich's fascinating essay, let's get some terms defined.

Conviviality--autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment.  Here's the wikipedia discussion:   "A tool may accept more than one utilisation, sometimes even distant from its original use. A tool accepts expression from its user. On the contrary, with a machine, humans become servants, their role consisting only of running the machine for a single purpose."

Iatrogenic--Doctor Induced.


Thoughts on the following quote?


"A convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others. People feel joy, as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative; while the growth of tools beyond a certain point increases regimentation, dependence, exploitation, and impotence. I use the term "tool" broadly enough to include not only simple hardware such as drills, pots, syringes, brooms, building elements, or motors, and not just large machines like cars or power stations; I also include among tools productive institutions such as factories that produce tangible commodities like corn flakes or electric current, and productive systems for intangible commodities such as those which produce "education," "health," "knowledge," or "decisions." I use this term because it allows me to subsume into one category all rationally designed devices, be they artifacts or rules, codes or operators, and to distinguish all these planned and engineered instrumentalities from other things such as basic food or implements, which in a given culture are not deemed to be subject to rationalization. School curricula or marriage laws are no less purposely shaped social devices than road networks."

From Tools for Conviviality

Here's an interesting quote:

"It has become fashionable to say that where science and technology have created problems, it is only more scientific understanding and better technology that can carry us past them. The cure for bad management is more management. The cure for specialized research is more costly interdisciplinary research, just as the cure for polluted rivers is more costly nonpolluting detergents. The pooling of stores of information, the building up of a knowledge stock, the attempt to overwhelm present problems by the introduction of more science is the ultimate attempt to solve a crisis by escalation."

Thus, did developing better weapons eliminate war?   Did developing better medicine eliminate disease?   And at what costs?

Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich is an  Austrian Philosopher.   Here's a link to his wikipedia page 

Here's a link to the full text of Tools for Conviviality

Here's the link for Ivan Illich's Energy and Equity

Some questions:

To what degree is our day spent just transporting ourselves from one location to the next?
Our there ways to structure our societies to make the best use of our time?
What would that look like?