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Tools for Conviviality
A work of seminal importance, this book presents Ivan Illich's penetrating analysis of the industrial mode of production which characterises our contemporary world.
110 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Ivan Illich
88 books386 followersIvan Illich was an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest and critic of the institutions of contemporary western culture and their effects of the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, and economic development.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
November 30, 2019
Da un po' di tempo girovagando per la città, mi ritrovo a guardare più attentamente le automobili che tappezzano le strade, i marciapiedi e mi succede di analizzarle. il fatto è che senza farlo apposta ho realizzato che vedo tutte automobili nuove o comunque non così "vecchie". Perchè? La risposta è semplice, ormai gli "strumenti" che usiamo quotidianamente si "deteriorano" sempre più velocemente (obsolescenza programmata? :-P) e l'esempio delle automobili è palese, quanto inquietante. Mi ricordo al periodo della mia infanzia, ormai 30 anni or sono, il tappezzamento stradale dato dalle automobili parcheggiate o in transito c'era già, ma gli oggetti erano più vari, c'erano automobili molto più vecchie, antiche ecc... Quindi ci stiamo sempre più conformando alla suddetta obsolescenza?
L'esempio della automobile è un esempio, ma lo si può declinare a tutti gli altri (ormai sconfinati) "strumenti" della nostra vita.
Così arriviamo al saggio politico/sociale/ecologico che ho appena finito di leggere: "La convivialità". La convivialità c'è quando una società riesce (ci arriveremo mai?!) a eliminare i pregiudizi, la cattiveria, l'egoismo, insomma quando si arriverà ad instaurare una legame di relazioni sociali aperte alla gioia, al bene ed alla comodità altrui e proprie.
Ivan Illich in nemmeno 150 pagine ci racconta come la società odierna (nel caso del saggio, pubblicato nel 1973, di quegli anni, ma è declinabile tranquillamente anche alla nostra, di quasi 50 anni dopo, gli anni non li risente questo libro) è talmente narcotizzata e drogata dall'industrializzazione sfrenata, dove le libertà personali vengono meno e la creatività è sempre più messa a rischio dagli "strumenti" che l'industria ci propina e che noi consumiamo.
Libro fondamentale per chi come me vuol capire come funziona la "megamacchina" del potere costituito e vede nella convivialità e l'ecologia, il punto di partenza per una vita "nuova" e sana. Il sapere ed il conoscere sono indispensabili per potersi difendere dai soprusi.
Illich mi ha proprio sbalordito, scrittura a tratti anche complessa, ma sempre chiara ed aperta all'avvenire, non ha scritto un libro di regole da seguire, ma un saggio dove si analizza la società malata, sia nell'ambiente circostante che nell'anima degli individui che la abitano.
Un capolavoro, un libro che tutti dovrebbero leggere, per poi trarne le personali considerazioni/riflessioni!
L'industrializzazione moltiplica gli uomini e le cose. I sottoprivilegiati crescono di numero, mentre i privilegiati consumano sempre di più. Di conseguenza, tra i poveri aumenta la fame e tra i ricchi la paura. Guidato dal bisogno e dal sentimento d'impotenza, il povero reclama un'industrializzazione accelerata; spinto dalla paura e dal desiderio di proteggere il suo stare meglio, il ricco s'impegna in una difesa sempre più rabbiosa e rigida. Mentre il potere si polarizza, l'insoddisfazione di generalizza. La possibilità che pur ci è data di creare per tutti maggiore felicità con meno abbondanza, è relegata al punto cieco della visione sociale.
L'esempio della automobile è un esempio, ma lo si può declinare a tutti gli altri (ormai sconfinati) "strumenti" della nostra vita.
Così arriviamo al saggio politico/sociale/ecologico che ho appena finito di leggere: "La convivialità". La convivialità c'è quando una società riesce (ci arriveremo mai?!) a eliminare i pregiudizi, la cattiveria, l'egoismo, insomma quando si arriverà ad instaurare una legame di relazioni sociali aperte alla gioia, al bene ed alla comodità altrui e proprie.
Ivan Illich in nemmeno 150 pagine ci racconta come la società odierna (nel caso del saggio, pubblicato nel 1973, di quegli anni, ma è declinabile tranquillamente anche alla nostra, di quasi 50 anni dopo, gli anni non li risente questo libro) è talmente narcotizzata e drogata dall'industrializzazione sfrenata, dove le libertà personali vengono meno e la creatività è sempre più messa a rischio dagli "strumenti" che l'industria ci propina e che noi consumiamo.
Libro fondamentale per chi come me vuol capire come funziona la "megamacchina" del potere costituito e vede nella convivialità e l'ecologia, il punto di partenza per una vita "nuova" e sana. Il sapere ed il conoscere sono indispensabili per potersi difendere dai soprusi.
Illich mi ha proprio sbalordito, scrittura a tratti anche complessa, ma sempre chiara ed aperta all'avvenire, non ha scritto un libro di regole da seguire, ma un saggio dove si analizza la società malata, sia nell'ambiente circostante che nell'anima degli individui che la abitano.
Un capolavoro, un libro che tutti dovrebbero leggere, per poi trarne le personali considerazioni/riflessioni!
L'industrializzazione moltiplica gli uomini e le cose. I sottoprivilegiati crescono di numero, mentre i privilegiati consumano sempre di più. Di conseguenza, tra i poveri aumenta la fame e tra i ricchi la paura. Guidato dal bisogno e dal sentimento d'impotenza, il povero reclama un'industrializzazione accelerata; spinto dalla paura e dal desiderio di proteggere il suo stare meglio, il ricco s'impegna in una difesa sempre più rabbiosa e rigida. Mentre il potere si polarizza, l'insoddisfazione di generalizza. La possibilità che pur ci è data di creare per tutti maggiore felicità con meno abbondanza, è relegata al punto cieco della visione sociale.
March 8, 2008
Having a rather anti-professional stance myself, I was happy to come across Illich's work. He raises a lot of interesting issues and ideas. His basic premise is that over-industrialization has fashioned us into dependent clients of a professional elite. Or, in other words, our tools (using "tools" in the broadest sense, meaning both industry and social systems) have developed beyond our ability to use them as individuals/communities. We cannot learn on our own; we cannot heal on our own; etc. Sadly, however, I think his argument is weakened by being both too extreme and poorly argued. Still, as someone who on one hand didn't need much convincing and on the other wasn't going to be totally convinced, I found this a very interesting and provocative read. We should be talking about Illich.
April 18, 2013
Illich is an author that I frequently find being quoted by numerous authors that I value and respect. It was time for me to read directly from the source. This book was originally published in 1973, but it has stood the test of time, and Illich's insights into the nature of present day technologies and the need for fundamental technology reform are as relevant today as they were then. At the core of Illich's argument is a call to develop and implement technologies that promote and sustain the creative faculties of autonomous individuals living in authentic communities of deliberation and debate. I especially appreciated his shrewd insight that such a reform is not merely a matter of redirecting technologies to new or different ends/goals, but instead to design technologies differently. In many respects Illich anticipates Langdon Winner's superb point that the specific design of technologies precipitates distinctive forms of political relationship (i.e. including some, excluding others, giving voice and silencing, etc.) that should be the subject of ethical deliberation. Illich's style is succinct and accessible and I would recommend this book to a wide audience.
January 3, 2022
almost gave 4 stars. a few thoughts:
- illich is a super engaging writer / polemicist and his takedowns are super satisfying/often resonate
- this book feels way more thorough / thoughtful than deschooling society and integrates a lot of its points—I would def reach for this over it, although I think they are somewhat redundant / have a lot of the same ideas
- there's a ton of bizarre shit about population control that totally strikes me the wrong way in here
- there's def a 70s bent here where illich (who is an avowed socialist) uses a ton of stuff from milton friedman ('enlightened self-interest' LMAO) that strikes me as totally bizarre. especially when this is paired with a ton of degrowth stuff
Overall I agree pretty strongly w/ critics of Illich; while this was an interesting read / feels useful as a cultural reference point in tech I think a lot of it is super naive. Illich IDs the problem as institutionalization/formalization of industrial process but fails to get to *why* this happens—I don't actually think that 'changing our tools' is a valid solution bc capital's incentives will always compel it to make tools which deskill labor. A lot of this feels 'folk political' in the sense of hating formalization/scalable stuff and really focusing on the individual.
Regardless, pretty interesting/well written re issues w/ professionalization and 'treadmill' of consumer society. Def will take away some of the stuff around 'radical monopolies' and general idea of convivial tools.
- illich is a super engaging writer / polemicist and his takedowns are super satisfying/often resonate
- this book feels way more thorough / thoughtful than deschooling society and integrates a lot of its points—I would def reach for this over it, although I think they are somewhat redundant / have a lot of the same ideas
- there's a ton of bizarre shit about population control that totally strikes me the wrong way in here
- there's def a 70s bent here where illich (who is an avowed socialist) uses a ton of stuff from milton friedman ('enlightened self-interest' LMAO) that strikes me as totally bizarre. especially when this is paired with a ton of degrowth stuff
Overall I agree pretty strongly w/ critics of Illich; while this was an interesting read / feels useful as a cultural reference point in tech I think a lot of it is super naive. Illich IDs the problem as institutionalization/formalization of industrial process but fails to get to *why* this happens—I don't actually think that 'changing our tools' is a valid solution bc capital's incentives will always compel it to make tools which deskill labor. A lot of this feels 'folk political' in the sense of hating formalization/scalable stuff and really focusing on the individual.
Regardless, pretty interesting/well written re issues w/ professionalization and 'treadmill' of consumer society. Def will take away some of the stuff around 'radical monopolies' and general idea of convivial tools.
Want to read
January 13, 2008How to live together without power or dehumanizing each other? Sounds good in my book. I love Ivan Illich.
June 24, 2015
Kernels of insight buried in piles of manure
An interesting look back at 1970 utopian socialism. Many, if not most of the prescriptions are ridiculous, suggestions such as limiting all transportation to the speed of bicycles or setting maximum and minimum incomes very close.
The book does offer some healthy critiques of technology and its potential for dehumanization (not the language used in the book). Also some of the analysis of institutional structures like education, which is condemned as conditioning only for industrial production have some validity. Politics and even language are indicted as creating a society of consumers who are slaves to addiction or slaves to envy.
Offers a historical perspective on anti-progress arguments that still appear today, but today, the sharp teeth are covered by benign dentures.
An interesting look back at 1970 utopian socialism. Many, if not most of the prescriptions are ridiculous, suggestions such as limiting all transportation to the speed of bicycles or setting maximum and minimum incomes very close.
The book does offer some healthy critiques of technology and its potential for dehumanization (not the language used in the book). Also some of the analysis of institutional structures like education, which is condemned as conditioning only for industrial production have some validity. Politics and even language are indicted as creating a society of consumers who are slaves to addiction or slaves to envy.
Offers a historical perspective on anti-progress arguments that still appear today, but today, the sharp teeth are covered by benign dentures.
May 6, 2022
Pretty good screed.
Illich defines "conviviality" as the opposite of industrial productivity, or "autonomous, creative intercourse among persons and between individuals and their environment". Tools for conviviality are those which maximize an individual's autonomy and impose the fewest constraints on their freedom.
It's a thought-provoking work. Given that it's written in 1973, I naturally start to wonder what the same lens would say about the internet and its giant corporate rulers and gatekeepers. While Illich says not all centralized systems are incompatible with conviviality, the ways we're able to interact with tools like social networks, streaming platforms, etc. are very tightly constrained. It's interesting to imagine what a "convivial" twitter would look like, for example. Maybe the "fediverse" is more suited to conviviality.
Illich defines "conviviality" as the opposite of industrial productivity, or "autonomous, creative intercourse among persons and between individuals and their environment". Tools for conviviality are those which maximize an individual's autonomy and impose the fewest constraints on their freedom.
It's a thought-provoking work. Given that it's written in 1973, I naturally start to wonder what the same lens would say about the internet and its giant corporate rulers and gatekeepers. While Illich says not all centralized systems are incompatible with conviviality, the ways we're able to interact with tools like social networks, streaming platforms, etc. are very tightly constrained. It's interesting to imagine what a "convivial" twitter would look like, for example. Maybe the "fediverse" is more suited to conviviality.
July 26, 2018
When everyone was a farmer, you simply could not find yourself in your particular line of work. Everyone was a farmer! Illich sees this circumstance as one in which you were forced to find your identity in your character: What kind of farmer are you? That is, what kind of man, or person are you? Are you generous? Are you patient? Are you kind? Are you sober? Are you chaste? Are you temperate? Are you humble?
Just because the modern world is specialized, I see no reason not to look to the way things were as a guide to reality. We may not all be farmers, but we are all workers; all work has dignity. What really matters ultimately is one's character, not career -- or multiple careers. If you are x, or were x, but are no longer x, are you no longer you? Must you constantly look back to find yourself? If you are y today, but may cease to be y tomorrow, are you in danger of losing yourself? This inner anxiety due to attachment to a fake identity can be overcome by nurturing Illich's view that we are our character.
One can make the course of their life the inner person, not the particular circumstance in which that person lived, such as occupation. Society may be blinded by the present moment to confer greater honors on your past, present, or future, but the wise man, in my opinion, transcends human opinion and attaches to the reality of the one person he or she will always be -- the soul. And in this naked exposure to the reality of who one is, there is always a realization of what is truly right or wrong with oneself, not supressed by momentary accolades at work. There is also an awakening to seeking the truth, holding onto it, and becoming more and more morally excellent in light of it.
In this, one can die peacefully, not attached to childhood, young adulthood, a particular career one had -- or never had, having died too young, parenthood, and so on. One can seek virtue, be defined by it. Furthermore, one can stop evaluating others by their momentary property, beauty, and reputation, but by their true person as well. Friendships can be entered into, perhaps for the first time. They can develop, they can mature, they can embrace the truth about who we really are and foster the greatest intimacy possible. There can be no hidden pride about how one may be x or y instead of the z of one's companion; nor can one feel falsely inferior due to being a or b. The one soul we all are manifests itself and allows for a bond of mutual respect and love, patience for real faults, persistence in helping each other overcome then, and a developing -- not of a false identity, pushing each other to greater delusion, but of a real identity, where both become the truest persons they could ever be.
I believe this book can help make a man most adaptable to any situation, diligent to take the work available to him, knowing himself intimately -- who he really is, as well as those around him. At peace, compassionate, generous, patient, ... virtuous.
Just because the modern world is specialized, I see no reason not to look to the way things were as a guide to reality. We may not all be farmers, but we are all workers; all work has dignity. What really matters ultimately is one's character, not career -- or multiple careers. If you are x, or were x, but are no longer x, are you no longer you? Must you constantly look back to find yourself? If you are y today, but may cease to be y tomorrow, are you in danger of losing yourself? This inner anxiety due to attachment to a fake identity can be overcome by nurturing Illich's view that we are our character.
One can make the course of their life the inner person, not the particular circumstance in which that person lived, such as occupation. Society may be blinded by the present moment to confer greater honors on your past, present, or future, but the wise man, in my opinion, transcends human opinion and attaches to the reality of the one person he or she will always be -- the soul. And in this naked exposure to the reality of who one is, there is always a realization of what is truly right or wrong with oneself, not supressed by momentary accolades at work. There is also an awakening to seeking the truth, holding onto it, and becoming more and more morally excellent in light of it.
In this, one can die peacefully, not attached to childhood, young adulthood, a particular career one had -- or never had, having died too young, parenthood, and so on. One can seek virtue, be defined by it. Furthermore, one can stop evaluating others by their momentary property, beauty, and reputation, but by their true person as well. Friendships can be entered into, perhaps for the first time. They can develop, they can mature, they can embrace the truth about who we really are and foster the greatest intimacy possible. There can be no hidden pride about how one may be x or y instead of the z of one's companion; nor can one feel falsely inferior due to being a or b. The one soul we all are manifests itself and allows for a bond of mutual respect and love, patience for real faults, persistence in helping each other overcome then, and a developing -- not of a false identity, pushing each other to greater delusion, but of a real identity, where both become the truest persons they could ever be.
I believe this book can help make a man most adaptable to any situation, diligent to take the work available to him, knowing himself intimately -- who he really is, as well as those around him. At peace, compassionate, generous, patient, ... virtuous.
June 25, 2013
It is one of the most brilliant book i have ever read in recent time.The book was primarily written for the post industrial era of the west but the book seems more relevant and very appropriate now.He uses the term "Engineering obsolescence" to show how the modern world produces men for the sake of tools once the tools become obsolete the corresponding men also become obsolete and outdated.So the modern world and what he call us "impovershing wealth" with its tools takes away vital skills of the men by creating a radical monopoly with its tools,by means of the radical monopoly it creates a modernized poverty where the present is always robbed for the better future.Because of this state better health becomes an enemy of good health.By creating profession out of every sea shell the modern world has taken away the men independent efficiency to harness themselves and creating the tools they need becoz of this they are always dependent on some expert or the radical monopoly to do his work.The suggestion ivan illich gives is to inverse the structure"invert the present deep structure of tools" in order to "give people tools that guarantee their right to work with independent efficiency."his another book "right to unemployment can also be considered as an extension of this book.A stunning and life changing read for me!
May 9, 2011
Having read this again in my mid-life and after seeing with more open eyes the manipulative and oppressive state and culture of government, institutions and corporations, while experiencing a more intentional simple life by choosing the harder way (e.g., gardening, a using a bike as alternative transportation) I am beginning to parse services and products on a continuum between convivial and manipulative while tracking aspects that give them their place on the range of these two terms. This exercise is helping to see more fully the choices I have and setting boundaries to the “tools” that have greater promise of conviviality.
“I intend it to mean the autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value.” (Illich, Ivan (1975). Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 11).
“I intend it to mean the autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value.” (Illich, Ivan (1975). Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 11).
June 4, 2013
Much as I find Illich's social aims to be congruent with my own I still couldn't get into this book. As radical as Illich is (or is known to be) I found his views almost conservative in this book. For one there's a distorted romanticism with the past, as in admiring the builders of the pyramids because they were physically invested in their labor, as opposed to it being mediated by technology; ancient Egypt hardly seems like a beacon for a progressive labor movement. Also rolled my eyes at a "contraception leads to mass murdering" argument. Even the better parts of the book were pretty pedantic; easy to declare something, but harder to dig into the root of the problem and offer a roadmap to a solution.
August 30, 2014
Before reading this, I already shared a lot of his theses -- state socialism and capitalism are sides of an industrial coin; it is the structure of growth-focused institutions that is a problem, not who masters the structure; medicine, schooling, and transportation are corrupted and corrupting tools; credentialism and professional-protectionism are damaging society deeply;
But — and — this gave me the opportunity to do much more than self-congratulatorily stroke my pet bailiwick.
Win Win. Within limits. ;)
But — and — this gave me the opportunity to do much more than self-congratulatorily stroke my pet bailiwick.
Win Win. Within limits. ;)
January 26, 2015
If you are interested in science and technology studies, this is pretty cool, from a historical standpoint, anyway. If you are not, you will probably be disoriented - as I was - by Illich's occasional casual remarks to the effect that he thinks Mao is doing a great job in China and maybe one day the United States will follow his lead. So.
August 12, 2013
This essay takes a critical look at many large systems and structures that we take for granted. Read this if you like to think deeply about how society shapes you.
July 3, 2018
Illich espone le sue idee con forza, coraggio e senza cercare di imbonire il lettore: ne è prova l'uso non immediato del linguaggio (la stessa parola "convivialità"), l'assumere un ruolo necessariamente impopolare, il proporre tesi certo non immediatamente condivisibili, perché lontane anni luce dai valori oggi operanti. Un grande testo, davvero rivoluzionario, che mette necessariamente nella condizione di porsi tutti i problemi sollevati nel testo. Questo è il libro da leggere per affrontare il tema dei necessari freni allo sviluppo. Scritto nel 1973.
January 10, 2008
Illich's usual fair of gadfly anarchism and pseudo-empirical observations on the immanent collapse of western society under the weight of its radically monopolizing institutions. Read him, get a little drunk, if you can figure out a way to apply it, use it as a hermeneutic, or reference, by all means do so...but most people don't.
Read
October 15, 2008Ivan Illich is very smart, and a neglected perspective for radicals that I hope changes. I feel like there are not many people how have a perspective like he does even though he's written a few decades ago now.
Read
August 11, 2016The seeds of SonicRim's basic philosophy in respecting, harnessing and empowering the creativity and imagination of everyday people can be found in the brilliant vision of a Convivial Future outlined by Illich
December 6, 2014
Illich, a catholic priest, anarchist, and general social critic, correctly identifies that our machines possess us (perhaps somewhat like a demon requiring exorcism), and not the other way around as we commonly believe.
June 25, 2020
There's a lot here that will feel redundant if one has read Medical Nemesis or Deschooling Society, but the examples from those two fields serve well to prove Illich's broader points here about the structure of production and industrialization.
November 30, 2022
Rereading for a C4SS paper I'm writing.
April 25, 2020
The modern West has fallen prey to the tools they use. Tools have grown out of man's control, first becoming his master, and then ultimately man's executioner. The way forward from our current situation is not to abstain from tools, but to make convivial tools.
Convivial tools are tools which are free, creative, and can be used by anyone with minimal special training. Ivan Illich spends much of the book outlining examples of convivial tools and how many of our current tools aren't convivial. An example of a convivial tool is the alphabet. Almost anyone can learn to use the alphabet, and for his own purpose. The alphabet is cheap, it is not easily controlled by third parties, and people can take them or leave them as they wish. Other examples include the printing press (and I think email).
Contrasted with convivial tools are many of our modern tools. A nonconvivial tool would require special training, be too expensive to be used by most people, or would be limited to only a certain group of people. A dental drill could be convivial, but the licensing required limit it to dentists and make the tool nonconvivial. An example of a nonconvivial tool is a car. Like many nonconvivial tools, cars share the same serious problem where the means have turned into an end. Cars are also tools which require special training not available to everyone to use. They are too expensive to be used by all people, and not all people can use cars. In addition, cars create what Illich calls a radical monopoly on transportation. If I wanted to get from one side of Houston to the other, I can get there quite easily using cars, but I am not free to walk or bike there, at least not if I want to get there safely. Cars then have a monopoly on how to travel within the city. Cars are also not available for everyone to use, but only for the rich. Cars don't benefit the poor, but the poor have to pay for the usage of cars by the rich. Highways are considered public services, but they aren't. They are for private usage of those wealthy enough to own a car or have access to good public transportation. If highways were truly public utilities, then all would have the same access to them, but they are instead limited by income level.
Much of Tools for Conviviality is devoted to the themes I have written about above. The need for convivial tools and the captivity of modern, Western society to nonconvivial tools. As you may guess from what I have written above, this is not a cheerful book. Illich is profoundly pessimistic about modern, Western culture, and rejects many of the assumptions our society operates on unthinkingly. He denies that modern technology, public schooling, and modern medicine are good. All three have fallen out of balance with nature, and have become nonconvivial. As a result, the tools can no longer achieve their purpose. Public schooling no longer helps educate society, and modern medicine creates medical issues and limits our ability to be healthy. Tools for Conviviality is a challenging read, especially for those of us in the West.
Tools for Conviviality is also a challenging read because of the density of the material covered. A quick glimpse at the title and the chapter subsections will alert the reader what kind of book they should be expecting. Subsections titles include biological degradation, obsolescence, the demythologization of science, and the rediscovery of language. None of those sections are easy to read, but working through them to understand what Illich is saying is a worthwhile experience.
One of the reasons reading Illich is a worthwhile undertaking is because of the depth of his learning. Illich was a uniquely gifted man, and also one who was blessed with a unique life situation and community. He was one of the last true polymaths, a scholar of the middle ages who worked in 10 languages and developed his critique of Western society with the help of many other intelligent people and in several cultures. He does not reveal the depth of his erudition with copious footnotes (the book is free of footnotes), but you can tell the depth of his knowledge from his writing. The combination of individual brilliance, plus working in Latin America combine to give Illich a truly unique perspective.
My summary above of the book is woefully inadequate. I have mentioned what I understand to be the main ideas of the book, though many of the twists and turns and arguments I have left out. I hope I have conveyed the depth and importance of this book, and all thinking people would benefit from engaging with his arguments. Like Wendell Berry, Illich makes arguments which aren't easily rejected. They can be rejected, but more often they present hard truths we don't know what to do with. Even if you do end up disagreeing with Illich (or Berry), you need to face the depth of their struggle, the depth of their disagreement with our modern world, and their rejection of cultural axioms.
The weakest part of the book was the final chapter where Illich turned to predicting what will bring about a convivial society. I suspect he will be right about some things, but I am doubtful all of his predictions will prove accurate. For example, his hope in politics seems misguided and doesn't take into account the power political parties have over their voters. But I don't think the benefit of this book comes from the prognosis of the future. The strength of the book lies in Illich exposing modern Western assumptions and trying to shape our imaginations to what a better future looks like. More than any specific predictions, those two strengths make the book worth reading.
Reading the last chapter is also interesting in light of Illich's last years. He later would go on to repudiate his hopeful belief that a new future could be had. Instead we must renounce the assumptions of the world. This is what led to him dying of cancer and refusing to receive treatment. As I read Tools for Conviviality, I find myself wandering what a more mature Illich would have written as his conclusion. I also find myself wandering what does hope look like? Illich was a Catholic priest, and I am curious what part his faith played in providing him with hope. Faith is not explicit in this book, but from what I understand of Illich's life, his faith was always a guiding source for him. What would Illich's hope be given his faith? And how can that hope guide and shape my hope? And what does renunciation of the assumptions of the world look like for us? If Illich's prognosis is correct, then we are headed towards a crisis, but in the meantime our current ways are not working. We can learn much from Illich, though we still have to figure out our own path forward.
Convivial tools are tools which are free, creative, and can be used by anyone with minimal special training. Ivan Illich spends much of the book outlining examples of convivial tools and how many of our current tools aren't convivial. An example of a convivial tool is the alphabet. Almost anyone can learn to use the alphabet, and for his own purpose. The alphabet is cheap, it is not easily controlled by third parties, and people can take them or leave them as they wish. Other examples include the printing press (and I think email).
Contrasted with convivial tools are many of our modern tools. A nonconvivial tool would require special training, be too expensive to be used by most people, or would be limited to only a certain group of people. A dental drill could be convivial, but the licensing required limit it to dentists and make the tool nonconvivial. An example of a nonconvivial tool is a car. Like many nonconvivial tools, cars share the same serious problem where the means have turned into an end. Cars are also tools which require special training not available to everyone to use. They are too expensive to be used by all people, and not all people can use cars. In addition, cars create what Illich calls a radical monopoly on transportation. If I wanted to get from one side of Houston to the other, I can get there quite easily using cars, but I am not free to walk or bike there, at least not if I want to get there safely. Cars then have a monopoly on how to travel within the city. Cars are also not available for everyone to use, but only for the rich. Cars don't benefit the poor, but the poor have to pay for the usage of cars by the rich. Highways are considered public services, but they aren't. They are for private usage of those wealthy enough to own a car or have access to good public transportation. If highways were truly public utilities, then all would have the same access to them, but they are instead limited by income level.
Much of Tools for Conviviality is devoted to the themes I have written about above. The need for convivial tools and the captivity of modern, Western society to nonconvivial tools. As you may guess from what I have written above, this is not a cheerful book. Illich is profoundly pessimistic about modern, Western culture, and rejects many of the assumptions our society operates on unthinkingly. He denies that modern technology, public schooling, and modern medicine are good. All three have fallen out of balance with nature, and have become nonconvivial. As a result, the tools can no longer achieve their purpose. Public schooling no longer helps educate society, and modern medicine creates medical issues and limits our ability to be healthy. Tools for Conviviality is a challenging read, especially for those of us in the West.
Tools for Conviviality is also a challenging read because of the density of the material covered. A quick glimpse at the title and the chapter subsections will alert the reader what kind of book they should be expecting. Subsections titles include biological degradation, obsolescence, the demythologization of science, and the rediscovery of language. None of those sections are easy to read, but working through them to understand what Illich is saying is a worthwhile experience.
One of the reasons reading Illich is a worthwhile undertaking is because of the depth of his learning. Illich was a uniquely gifted man, and also one who was blessed with a unique life situation and community. He was one of the last true polymaths, a scholar of the middle ages who worked in 10 languages and developed his critique of Western society with the help of many other intelligent people and in several cultures. He does not reveal the depth of his erudition with copious footnotes (the book is free of footnotes), but you can tell the depth of his knowledge from his writing. The combination of individual brilliance, plus working in Latin America combine to give Illich a truly unique perspective.
My summary above of the book is woefully inadequate. I have mentioned what I understand to be the main ideas of the book, though many of the twists and turns and arguments I have left out. I hope I have conveyed the depth and importance of this book, and all thinking people would benefit from engaging with his arguments. Like Wendell Berry, Illich makes arguments which aren't easily rejected. They can be rejected, but more often they present hard truths we don't know what to do with. Even if you do end up disagreeing with Illich (or Berry), you need to face the depth of their struggle, the depth of their disagreement with our modern world, and their rejection of cultural axioms.
The weakest part of the book was the final chapter where Illich turned to predicting what will bring about a convivial society. I suspect he will be right about some things, but I am doubtful all of his predictions will prove accurate. For example, his hope in politics seems misguided and doesn't take into account the power political parties have over their voters. But I don't think the benefit of this book comes from the prognosis of the future. The strength of the book lies in Illich exposing modern Western assumptions and trying to shape our imaginations to what a better future looks like. More than any specific predictions, those two strengths make the book worth reading.
Reading the last chapter is also interesting in light of Illich's last years. He later would go on to repudiate his hopeful belief that a new future could be had. Instead we must renounce the assumptions of the world. This is what led to him dying of cancer and refusing to receive treatment. As I read Tools for Conviviality, I find myself wandering what a more mature Illich would have written as his conclusion. I also find myself wandering what does hope look like? Illich was a Catholic priest, and I am curious what part his faith played in providing him with hope. Faith is not explicit in this book, but from what I understand of Illich's life, his faith was always a guiding source for him. What would Illich's hope be given his faith? And how can that hope guide and shape my hope? And what does renunciation of the assumptions of the world look like for us? If Illich's prognosis is correct, then we are headed towards a crisis, but in the meantime our current ways are not working. We can learn much from Illich, though we still have to figure out our own path forward.
April 5, 2022
I've been looking for books that help me understand our world, and help me articulate my struggles with it for a while now. This is one of those books.
For example, it laid bare why I find difficulty in managing the speed at which the world operates - we've opted for a world that wants to go too fast at everything: cars, growth, new tech, travel, work. And my sense of being doesn't operate at that speed. It has taken me years to justify to myself that its ok to operate at my own pace. Now I can actually tell you why it's ok.
We make our tools and our tools make us. Illich takes the adage and truly sees how this affects our world. Seeing the word tool in the broadest sense, as:
"... those aspects of our current society that have been rationally designed." So any system that was created through some form of reasoned thinking is a tool.
Our most dangerous tool right now is industrial productivity. It has taken over our minds and our actions, and is steadily, no exponentially, chipping away at our world. At no point was this a convivial tool, still, it originally did improve lives enough that it wasn't resisted completely. But I don't totally know that story. It may also have just been imposed from on-high at a time when the working class really had little to no power. Regardless it generated wealth and products and people eventually liked it.
Illich sees how industrial productivity's ends have embedded themselves as values now. It has taken over many aspects of our thinking to the point that every person wants to be productive, have everything occur on the large scale ("making an impact"), and to have everything happen fast - from getting our knowledge on Google to making social change happen instantly, or never. "Better becoming the enemy of the good".
One of the biggest things I learned from this book, represented by how we have been warped by industrial productivity, was that we have a cognitive bias: we lose focus on the means and end up focusing on the ends. When something - an action, a tool, a way of being - is good (providing value) we tend to forget the origin of the goodness; instead we misattribute it to the thing itself.
The first happens when we see that something is of value (the means for something) and the second when the something that had value becomes divorced from the source of the value and is worshipped for its own sake (the ends).
Take schools. They were a tool intended as a place for learning. Which has value. But we inverted it. Schools now act as an overstructured place of learning where learning is measured by way of tests. The tests end up representing learning itself.
On top of that we see years of schooling as also representing learning instead of realizing anyone can learn. We have even socially stratified around the idea of years of schooling. With people who don't go through school or dropout being socially shunned. I always knew it was stupid to think this way but could never fully articulate why - the ends have become the means.
Schooling is now a commodity that doesn't really impart any learning, it imparts certification: how often do we now say that colleges are just a place for networking? Or that we should do a safe degree that ensures us a well-paying job? Or that we should go to prestigious schools - why do schools have prestige anyway? Because we've forgotten what we valued about schools in the first place.
This leads into the overprofessionalization of jobs. The sense that only a professional can practice law or medicine or be a professor. That you need certifications that testify to this. The certifications have become the means, losing what was actually valuable - the learning needed to help continue the dialogue of justice or the practice of healing or the practice of exposing what is not immediately obvious.
Illichs thoughts on medicine, another tool, are revealing too. Here's another modern institution where our cognitive bias has come to play a role. Originally it was made to help provide value by healing systematically. Now it offers us "get out of suffering free" cards. Instead of guiding us through the process of being human we are overdosed on opiates. And our lives are extended far beyond times when we can continue to have real meaning.
He doesn't say much about politics, trying to be focused on tools more directly, but he does have one of my favorite lines ever: "Changes in management is not a revolution."
**What is a convivial tool?**
A convivial tool is like the abacus or the telephone or the mail. You can work with it, use your primary experience to feel for how it functions, not necessarily its internals but just what it was meant to do and apply yourself creatively in the act of using it. As a complement to your own ways of being. You can also forget about it and live your life without feeling a sense of something truly missing.
I remember watching a documentary (called 100UP) about a woman who was able to manage a farm while past an age of 100. Every tool she's using to pull that off is convivial. They're helping her use her energy in a way she wishes to use it and in the best way she could use it for herself.
**How can we recognize when a tool is convivial?**
When we can identify what the source of value was for the tool. And identify that we're able to use it to gain that value to whatever degree we want to use it. So it can also be possible to be not used at all.
A lot of our current tools are not convivial. I can't imagine being without a car. Or a smartphone. Or the internet. Or my 15 years of schooling. I can't imagine not being without a sense of constant growth and a worldwide supply chain. Can't imagine pleasure-seeking not being my primary mode of being.
That last one is truly perplexing. We live in a world that, for those in upper economic strata, is filled with options for open ended hedonism. Yet the world always feels not enough: in other words, FOMO. Like we've overcommitted our hedonism. What a paradox!
Illich's suggestion for dealing with our current inhuman situation is to enforce humanity back onto it. To pull everything - productivity, speed, consumption - onto more human scales rather than industrial productivity scales. Essentially a form of what we would now consider 'austerity', though in my eyes it seems more luxurious than ascetic. To be slowed down. To be more and know (when it's only in the abstract) less. To use less. Sounds lovely. This isn't a design change. This is a systemic overhaul. We have systemic scalism and it needs to go.
There's more. So much more in this book. And I'm still wrestling with it. I love that!
For example, it laid bare why I find difficulty in managing the speed at which the world operates - we've opted for a world that wants to go too fast at everything: cars, growth, new tech, travel, work. And my sense of being doesn't operate at that speed. It has taken me years to justify to myself that its ok to operate at my own pace. Now I can actually tell you why it's ok.
We make our tools and our tools make us. Illich takes the adage and truly sees how this affects our world. Seeing the word tool in the broadest sense, as:
"... those aspects of our current society that have been rationally designed." So any system that was created through some form of reasoned thinking is a tool.
Our most dangerous tool right now is industrial productivity. It has taken over our minds and our actions, and is steadily, no exponentially, chipping away at our world. At no point was this a convivial tool, still, it originally did improve lives enough that it wasn't resisted completely. But I don't totally know that story. It may also have just been imposed from on-high at a time when the working class really had little to no power. Regardless it generated wealth and products and people eventually liked it.
Illich sees how industrial productivity's ends have embedded themselves as values now. It has taken over many aspects of our thinking to the point that every person wants to be productive, have everything occur on the large scale ("making an impact"), and to have everything happen fast - from getting our knowledge on Google to making social change happen instantly, or never. "Better becoming the enemy of the good".
One of the biggest things I learned from this book, represented by how we have been warped by industrial productivity, was that we have a cognitive bias: we lose focus on the means and end up focusing on the ends. When something - an action, a tool, a way of being - is good (providing value) we tend to forget the origin of the goodness; instead we misattribute it to the thing itself.
The first happens when we see that something is of value (the means for something) and the second when the something that had value becomes divorced from the source of the value and is worshipped for its own sake (the ends).
Take schools. They were a tool intended as a place for learning. Which has value. But we inverted it. Schools now act as an overstructured place of learning where learning is measured by way of tests. The tests end up representing learning itself.
On top of that we see years of schooling as also representing learning instead of realizing anyone can learn. We have even socially stratified around the idea of years of schooling. With people who don't go through school or dropout being socially shunned. I always knew it was stupid to think this way but could never fully articulate why - the ends have become the means.
Schooling is now a commodity that doesn't really impart any learning, it imparts certification: how often do we now say that colleges are just a place for networking? Or that we should do a safe degree that ensures us a well-paying job? Or that we should go to prestigious schools - why do schools have prestige anyway? Because we've forgotten what we valued about schools in the first place.
This leads into the overprofessionalization of jobs. The sense that only a professional can practice law or medicine or be a professor. That you need certifications that testify to this. The certifications have become the means, losing what was actually valuable - the learning needed to help continue the dialogue of justice or the practice of healing or the practice of exposing what is not immediately obvious.
Illichs thoughts on medicine, another tool, are revealing too. Here's another modern institution where our cognitive bias has come to play a role. Originally it was made to help provide value by healing systematically. Now it offers us "get out of suffering free" cards. Instead of guiding us through the process of being human we are overdosed on opiates. And our lives are extended far beyond times when we can continue to have real meaning.
He doesn't say much about politics, trying to be focused on tools more directly, but he does have one of my favorite lines ever: "Changes in management is not a revolution."
**What is a convivial tool?**
A convivial tool is like the abacus or the telephone or the mail. You can work with it, use your primary experience to feel for how it functions, not necessarily its internals but just what it was meant to do and apply yourself creatively in the act of using it. As a complement to your own ways of being. You can also forget about it and live your life without feeling a sense of something truly missing.
I remember watching a documentary (called 100UP) about a woman who was able to manage a farm while past an age of 100. Every tool she's using to pull that off is convivial. They're helping her use her energy in a way she wishes to use it and in the best way she could use it for herself.
**How can we recognize when a tool is convivial?**
When we can identify what the source of value was for the tool. And identify that we're able to use it to gain that value to whatever degree we want to use it. So it can also be possible to be not used at all.
A lot of our current tools are not convivial. I can't imagine being without a car. Or a smartphone. Or the internet. Or my 15 years of schooling. I can't imagine not being without a sense of constant growth and a worldwide supply chain. Can't imagine pleasure-seeking not being my primary mode of being.
That last one is truly perplexing. We live in a world that, for those in upper economic strata, is filled with options for open ended hedonism. Yet the world always feels not enough: in other words, FOMO. Like we've overcommitted our hedonism. What a paradox!
Illich's suggestion for dealing with our current inhuman situation is to enforce humanity back onto it. To pull everything - productivity, speed, consumption - onto more human scales rather than industrial productivity scales. Essentially a form of what we would now consider 'austerity', though in my eyes it seems more luxurious than ascetic. To be slowed down. To be more and know (when it's only in the abstract) less. To use less. Sounds lovely. This isn't a design change. This is a systemic overhaul. We have systemic scalism and it needs to go.
There's more. So much more in this book. And I'm still wrestling with it. I love that!
April 29, 2022
This book provides some effective critiques of industrial society, but like many such critiques, is short on practical solutions.
Illich's insights include our progress as human's along a spectrum of making use of tools to liberate ourselves, only to eventually be re-enslaved by mega-machines further down the same path. He warns particularly against our disintermediation from 'human' tasks such as providing the care in healthcare, or the learning in education, or the love in love-making. These cautions are well considered.
One persistent annoyance for me is Illich's Malthusian pessimism, which like a false prophet, he confidently asserts will destroy humanity in just a few short years (the book was written in 1973). One gets the sense he's missing something when it comes to the ability of technology to disrupt itself, or for competition to enter attractive markets to fragment power and influence for the ultimate benefit of consumers, etc.
Still, Illich's vision of a convivial way of life is beautiful, influenced as it is by traditional southern European mores of the good life.
Illich's insights include our progress as human's along a spectrum of making use of tools to liberate ourselves, only to eventually be re-enslaved by mega-machines further down the same path. He warns particularly against our disintermediation from 'human' tasks such as providing the care in healthcare, or the learning in education, or the love in love-making. These cautions are well considered.
One persistent annoyance for me is Illich's Malthusian pessimism, which like a false prophet, he confidently asserts will destroy humanity in just a few short years (the book was written in 1973). One gets the sense he's missing something when it comes to the ability of technology to disrupt itself, or for competition to enter attractive markets to fragment power and influence for the ultimate benefit of consumers, etc.
Still, Illich's vision of a convivial way of life is beautiful, influenced as it is by traditional southern European mores of the good life.
December 13, 2023
Very persuasive if read understanding it was written several decades ago. It presents a beautiful argument of how a convivial society could avoid a crisis, which ends up generating a deep depressive state when one acknowledges that we are in the midst of exactly that crisis and can’t solve any of it.
Read
April 30, 2024provided useful frameworks (two watersheds, criteria for evaluating tools, etc); especially enjoyed considering whether certain tools extend mans reach vs taking action out of there hands; provocative concepts worth chewing on
April 15, 2022
7 stars. Absolutely stunning book. Not even gonna try to summarize this in my own words. I guess the biggest commendation that I can give is that I've ordered about 20 copies of this on Amazon and will start to give this out to my friends and families as birthday presents. Key message from the book: don’t be a tool 😊
Here are the incredible points from this book:
I will identify six ways in which all people of the world are threatened by industrial development: 1 : overgrowth threatens the right to the fundamental physical structure of the environment with which man has evolved 2 : industrialization threatens the right to convivial work 3 : the over programming of man for the new environment deadens his creative imagination 4: new levels of productivity threaten the right to participatory politics. 5: enforced obsolescence threatens the right tradition: the recourse to president in language myth morals and judgment. 6: pervasive frustration by means of compulsory though engineered satisfaction constitutes a 6th and more subtle threat. Sonny: wow
Unchecked industrialization modernizes poverty.
Society can be destroyed when further growth of mass production renders the mileau hostile, when it extinguishes the free use of the natural abilities of societies members, when it isolates people from each other and locks them into a manmade shell, when it undermines the texture of community by promoting extreme social polarization and splintering specialization. Cancerous acceleration enforces social change at a rate that rules out legal cultural and political precedence as formal guidelines to present behavior. Sonny: wow
indirectly this realization profited from the new effectiveness attributed to medicine: work attendance was raised and with it efficiency on the job. The destructiveness of new tools was hidden from public view by new techniques of providing spectacular treatments for those who fell victims to industrial violence such as the speed of cars, tension on the job and poisons in the environment.
On a wide world scale but particularly in the US medical care concentrated on breeding a human stock that was fit only for domesticated life within an increasingly more costly man-made scientifically controlled environment. One of the main speakers at the 1970 AMA convention exhorted her pediatric colleagues to consider each newborn baby as a patient until the child could be certified as healthy. Sonny: WTF!?!
It has become fashionable to say that where science and technology have created problems is only more scientific understanding and better technology that can carry us past them.
I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and as such an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that in any society as conviviality is reduced below a certain level no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society's members.
Because our present institutions abridge basic human freedom for the sake of providing people with more institutional outputs.
Paradoxically a Society of simple tools that allows men to achieve purpose with energy fully under their own control is now difficult to imagine. Our imaginations have been industrially deformed to conceive only what can be molded into an engineered system of social habits that fit the logic of large scale production.
What is fundamental to a convivial society is not the total absence of manipulative institutions and addictive goods and services but the balance between those tools which create the specific demands they are specialized to satisfy and those complementary enabling tools which foster self realization.
Societies in which most people depend for most of their goods and services on the personal whim kindness or skill of another are called “underdeveloped” while those in which living has been transformed into a process of ordering from an all encompassing store catalog are called “advanced”. Sonny: reminds me of Amazon a little bit :)
Inevitably it organizes society into many layers of failure, with each layer inhabited by students from from school who believe that those who have consumed more education deserve more privilege because they are more valuable assets to society as a whole. A society constructed so that education by means of schools is a necessity for its functioning cannot be a just society.
To get the theoretical possibility of a postindustrial convivial lifestyle into a political program for new tools it must be shown that the prevailing fundamental structure of our present tools menaces the survival of mankind. It must be shown that this menace is imminent and that the effects of compulsory efficiency do more damage than good to most people in our generation.
Otherwise man will find himself totally enclosed within his artificial creation with no exit. It developed in a physical social and psychological milieu. That milieu will be a prisoner in the shell of technology unable to find again the ancient way of being to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years.
I speak about radical monopoly when one industrial production process exercises exclusive control over the satisfaction of a pressing need and excludes non industrial activities from competition. Cars can thus monopolize traffic. They can shape a city into their image practically ruling out locomotion on foot or bicycles in Los Angeles. They can eliminate river traffic in Thailand.
Significant benefits for the pour demand a reduction of the resources used by the rich while significant benefits for the rich make murderous demands on the resources of the poor. Yet the rich pretend that by exploiting the poor nations they will become rich enough to create a hyper industrial abundance for all.
New things are made because they are better than the things most people use which are not quite good. New models constantly renovate poverty. The consumer feels the lag between what he has and what he ought to get. He believes that products can be made measurably more valuable and allows himself to be constantly re educated for their consumption. The better replaces the good as the fundamental normative concept.
As a limited rate of change makes lawful community meaningless. Law is based on the retrospective judgment of peers about circumstances that occur ordinarily and are likely to occur again. If the rate of change which effects all circumstances accelerates beyond some point, such judgments cease to be valid. Lawful society breaks down.
In each or several of these dimensions a tool can threaten survival by making it unfeasible for most people to relate themselves in action to one of the greatest dimensions of their environment.
Man is inherently mobile and speeds higher than those he can achieve by use of his limbs must be proven to be of great social value to warrant support by public sacrifice. Counterfoil research must clarify and dramatize the relationship of people to their tools. It ought to hold constantly before the public the resources that are available and the consequences of their use in various ways. (sunny: wow)
Withdrawal from growth mania will be painful, but mostly for members of the generation which has to experience the transition and above all for those most disabled by consumption. If they apply it could be vividly remembered it might help the next generation avoid what they know would enslave them.
A tool can grow out of man's control first to become his master and finally to become his executioner. Sonny: is this the Internet today?
Forced expectations of better health corrupt society but they do so in only one particular sense. They foster a declining concern with healthful environments healthy lifestyles and competence in the personal care of one's neighbor.
Nazi doctors explored what the Organism can endure. They found out how long the average person can survive torture but this did not tell them anything about what someone can tolerate. These doctors were condemned under a statute signed in Nurenberg 2 days after Hiroshima and the day before the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
Western languages and above all English become almost inseparable from industrial production. I want to walk is restated as I need transportation. The subject in the first case designates himself as an actor and in the second as a consumer.
People who were born near highways cannot imagine a world without speed and the peasant in the Andes cannot grasp why anyone should travel that fast anyway?
The operating code of industrial tools encroachers on everyday language and reduces the poetic self affirmation of men to have barely tolerated and marginal protest. The consequent industrialization of man can be inverted only if the convivial function of language is recuperated but with a new level of consciousness. Language which is used by people jointly claiming and asserting each persons right to share in the shaping of the community becomes so to speak a second order tool to clarify the relationships of the people to engineered instrumentalies.
Liberty has been interpreted as a right to power tools, a right claimed without reasonable limitation by individuals and private associations in capitalist countries and by the state in socialist societies.
People would be confined from birth to death in a worldwide schoolhouse, treated in a worldwide hospital, surrounded by worldwide television screens, and the man made environment would be distinguishable in name only from a worldwide prison.
There can be no such thing as a majority opposed to an issue that has not arisen. A majority agitating for limits to growth is as ludicrous as a concept as one demanding growth at all costs.
I believe that growth will grind to a halt. The total collapse of the industrial monopoly and production will be the result of synergy and the failure of the multiple systems that fed the expansion. People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few. That the organization of the entire economy towards the better life has become the major enemy of the good life.
Observe the whirlpools below a waterfall. For many seasons that eddies stay in the same place no matter whether the water is high or low. Then suddenly one more stone falls into the basin and the entire array changes, and the old can never be reconstructed.
Even when he who upholds the formal structure of ordinary language and the procedure earns the scorn ridicule and persecution of his fellow revolutionaries the appeal of an individual to the formal structure embedded in a peoples history remains the most powerful instrument to say the truth and denounce the cancerous domination of the industrial dominance overproduction as the ultimate form of idolatry.
Here are the incredible points from this book:
I will identify six ways in which all people of the world are threatened by industrial development: 1 : overgrowth threatens the right to the fundamental physical structure of the environment with which man has evolved 2 : industrialization threatens the right to convivial work 3 : the over programming of man for the new environment deadens his creative imagination 4: new levels of productivity threaten the right to participatory politics. 5: enforced obsolescence threatens the right tradition: the recourse to president in language myth morals and judgment. 6: pervasive frustration by means of compulsory though engineered satisfaction constitutes a 6th and more subtle threat. Sonny: wow
Unchecked industrialization modernizes poverty.
Society can be destroyed when further growth of mass production renders the mileau hostile, when it extinguishes the free use of the natural abilities of societies members, when it isolates people from each other and locks them into a manmade shell, when it undermines the texture of community by promoting extreme social polarization and splintering specialization. Cancerous acceleration enforces social change at a rate that rules out legal cultural and political precedence as formal guidelines to present behavior. Sonny: wow
indirectly this realization profited from the new effectiveness attributed to medicine: work attendance was raised and with it efficiency on the job. The destructiveness of new tools was hidden from public view by new techniques of providing spectacular treatments for those who fell victims to industrial violence such as the speed of cars, tension on the job and poisons in the environment.
On a wide world scale but particularly in the US medical care concentrated on breeding a human stock that was fit only for domesticated life within an increasingly more costly man-made scientifically controlled environment. One of the main speakers at the 1970 AMA convention exhorted her pediatric colleagues to consider each newborn baby as a patient until the child could be certified as healthy. Sonny: WTF!?!
It has become fashionable to say that where science and technology have created problems is only more scientific understanding and better technology that can carry us past them.
I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and as such an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that in any society as conviviality is reduced below a certain level no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society's members.
Because our present institutions abridge basic human freedom for the sake of providing people with more institutional outputs.
Paradoxically a Society of simple tools that allows men to achieve purpose with energy fully under their own control is now difficult to imagine. Our imaginations have been industrially deformed to conceive only what can be molded into an engineered system of social habits that fit the logic of large scale production.
What is fundamental to a convivial society is not the total absence of manipulative institutions and addictive goods and services but the balance between those tools which create the specific demands they are specialized to satisfy and those complementary enabling tools which foster self realization.
Societies in which most people depend for most of their goods and services on the personal whim kindness or skill of another are called “underdeveloped” while those in which living has been transformed into a process of ordering from an all encompassing store catalog are called “advanced”. Sonny: reminds me of Amazon a little bit :)
Inevitably it organizes society into many layers of failure, with each layer inhabited by students from from school who believe that those who have consumed more education deserve more privilege because they are more valuable assets to society as a whole. A society constructed so that education by means of schools is a necessity for its functioning cannot be a just society.
To get the theoretical possibility of a postindustrial convivial lifestyle into a political program for new tools it must be shown that the prevailing fundamental structure of our present tools menaces the survival of mankind. It must be shown that this menace is imminent and that the effects of compulsory efficiency do more damage than good to most people in our generation.
Otherwise man will find himself totally enclosed within his artificial creation with no exit. It developed in a physical social and psychological milieu. That milieu will be a prisoner in the shell of technology unable to find again the ancient way of being to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years.
I speak about radical monopoly when one industrial production process exercises exclusive control over the satisfaction of a pressing need and excludes non industrial activities from competition. Cars can thus monopolize traffic. They can shape a city into their image practically ruling out locomotion on foot or bicycles in Los Angeles. They can eliminate river traffic in Thailand.
Significant benefits for the pour demand a reduction of the resources used by the rich while significant benefits for the rich make murderous demands on the resources of the poor. Yet the rich pretend that by exploiting the poor nations they will become rich enough to create a hyper industrial abundance for all.
New things are made because they are better than the things most people use which are not quite good. New models constantly renovate poverty. The consumer feels the lag between what he has and what he ought to get. He believes that products can be made measurably more valuable and allows himself to be constantly re educated for their consumption. The better replaces the good as the fundamental normative concept.
As a limited rate of change makes lawful community meaningless. Law is based on the retrospective judgment of peers about circumstances that occur ordinarily and are likely to occur again. If the rate of change which effects all circumstances accelerates beyond some point, such judgments cease to be valid. Lawful society breaks down.
In each or several of these dimensions a tool can threaten survival by making it unfeasible for most people to relate themselves in action to one of the greatest dimensions of their environment.
Man is inherently mobile and speeds higher than those he can achieve by use of his limbs must be proven to be of great social value to warrant support by public sacrifice. Counterfoil research must clarify and dramatize the relationship of people to their tools. It ought to hold constantly before the public the resources that are available and the consequences of their use in various ways. (sunny: wow)
Withdrawal from growth mania will be painful, but mostly for members of the generation which has to experience the transition and above all for those most disabled by consumption. If they apply it could be vividly remembered it might help the next generation avoid what they know would enslave them.
A tool can grow out of man's control first to become his master and finally to become his executioner. Sonny: is this the Internet today?
Forced expectations of better health corrupt society but they do so in only one particular sense. They foster a declining concern with healthful environments healthy lifestyles and competence in the personal care of one's neighbor.
Nazi doctors explored what the Organism can endure. They found out how long the average person can survive torture but this did not tell them anything about what someone can tolerate. These doctors were condemned under a statute signed in Nurenberg 2 days after Hiroshima and the day before the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
Western languages and above all English become almost inseparable from industrial production. I want to walk is restated as I need transportation. The subject in the first case designates himself as an actor and in the second as a consumer.
People who were born near highways cannot imagine a world without speed and the peasant in the Andes cannot grasp why anyone should travel that fast anyway?
The operating code of industrial tools encroachers on everyday language and reduces the poetic self affirmation of men to have barely tolerated and marginal protest. The consequent industrialization of man can be inverted only if the convivial function of language is recuperated but with a new level of consciousness. Language which is used by people jointly claiming and asserting each persons right to share in the shaping of the community becomes so to speak a second order tool to clarify the relationships of the people to engineered instrumentalies.
Liberty has been interpreted as a right to power tools, a right claimed without reasonable limitation by individuals and private associations in capitalist countries and by the state in socialist societies.
People would be confined from birth to death in a worldwide schoolhouse, treated in a worldwide hospital, surrounded by worldwide television screens, and the man made environment would be distinguishable in name only from a worldwide prison.
There can be no such thing as a majority opposed to an issue that has not arisen. A majority agitating for limits to growth is as ludicrous as a concept as one demanding growth at all costs.
I believe that growth will grind to a halt. The total collapse of the industrial monopoly and production will be the result of synergy and the failure of the multiple systems that fed the expansion. People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few. That the organization of the entire economy towards the better life has become the major enemy of the good life.
Observe the whirlpools below a waterfall. For many seasons that eddies stay in the same place no matter whether the water is high or low. Then suddenly one more stone falls into the basin and the entire array changes, and the old can never be reconstructed.
Even when he who upholds the formal structure of ordinary language and the procedure earns the scorn ridicule and persecution of his fellow revolutionaries the appeal of an individual to the formal structure embedded in a peoples history remains the most powerful instrument to say the truth and denounce the cancerous domination of the industrial dominance overproduction as the ultimate form of idolatry.
April 20, 2023
Ein sú áhrifamesta bókin. Skelfilega, agalega vel skrifuð. Ekki er ég öllu sammála en greining höfundar á þjóðfélagi voru er sláandi.
December 17, 2018
Written in 1973 but so eerily relevant to our world today. “Imperialist mercenaries can poison or maim but never conquer a people who have chosen to set boundaries to their tools for the sake of conviviality”.
June 27, 2022
Some fantastic ideas but bogged down by writing style (with a few exceptions) and distracted by an attempt at discussion about how the ideas could take hold more widely. Would have cut this in half and focused on the ideas, namely:
1. Being intentional and thoughtful about our relationship with technology and our tools and placing limits on our tools and our relationship to tools
2. Challenging the status quo of our systems and their aim (see, e.g., education/learning, transportation, medicine/healing)
3. Challenging the fundamental definition of progress and how we lock ourselves into a system
Implicit as well was forming intentional societies/communities around these ideas.
Wish it had better focus. Maybe a project I should undertake.
Edit: After reviewing my notes, I'm upgrading to four stars. The excerpts are that good. Going to paste in as many excerpts I pulled as I can from the last three sections.
III. The Multiple Balance
The demands made by tools on people become increasingly costly. This rising cost of fitting man to the service of his tools is reflected in the ongoing shift from goods to services in overall production. Increasing manipulation of man becomes necessary to overcome the resistance of his vital equilibrium to the dynamic of growing industries; it takes the form of educational, medical, and administrative therapies. Education turns out competitive consumers; medicine keeps them alive in the engineered environment they have come to require; bureaucracy reflects the necessity of exercising social control over people to do meaningless work. The parallel increase in the cost of the defense of new levels of privilege through: military, police, and insurance measures reflects that the fact that in a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
The belief in the possibility of this development [an industrially minded solution as the only way of preserving a viable environment] is founded on an erroneous supposition, namely, that "The historical achievement of science and technology has rendered possible the translation of values into technical tasks--the materialization of values. Consequently, what is at stake is the redefinition of values in technical terms, as elements in technological process. The new ends, as technical ends, would then operate in the project and in the construction of the machinery, and not only in its utilization." (quoting Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, Boston, 1970).
The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. Otherwise man will find himself totally enclosed within his artificial creation, with no exit. Enveloped in a physical, social, and psychological milieu of his own making, he will be a prisoner in the shell of technology, unable to find again the ancient milieu to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years. [RCF: What a banger quote.]
By "radical monopoly" I mean the dominance of one type of product rather than the dominance of one brand. I speak about radical monopoly when one industrial production process exercises an exclusive control over the satisfaction of a pressing need, and excludes nonindustrial activities from competition.
Cars can thus monopolize traffic. They can shape a city into their image--practically ruling out locomotion on foot or by bicycle in Los Angeles. They can eliminate river traffic in Thailand. That motor traffic curtails the right to walk, not that more people drive Chevies than Fords, constitutes radical monopoly.
Radical monopoly exists where a major tool rules out natural competence.
During the sixties the funeral homes obtained control over new cemeteries and began offering package deals, including the casket, church service, and embalming. Now legislation is being passed to make the mortician's ministrations compulsory. Once he gets hold of the body, the funeral director will have established a radical monopoly over burial, as medicine is at the point of establishing one over dying. [Again, kinda libertarian there.]
These basic satisfactions [the provision of basic needs by oneself and one's community] become scarce when the social environment is transformed in such a manner that basic needs can no longer be met by abundant competence. The establishment of radical monopoly happens when people give up their native ability to do what they can do for themselves and for each other, in exchange for something "better" that can be done for them only by a major tool. Radical monopoly reflects the industrial institutionalization of values. It substitutes the standard package for the personal response. It introduces new classes of scarcity and a new device to classify people according to the level of their consumption. This redefinition raises the unit cost of valuable service, differentially rations privilege, restricts access to resources, and makes people dependent. Above all, by depriving people of the ability to satisfy personal needs in a personal manner, radical monopoly creates radical scarcity of personal--as opposed to institutional--service. {RCF: Specialization and hyperspecialization.]
Protection against this general monopoly is as difficult as protection against pollution. People will face a danger that threatens their own self-interest but not one that threatens society as a whole. Many more people are against cars than are against driving them. They are against cars because they pollute and because they monopolize traffic. They drive cars because they consider the pollution created by one car insignificant, and because they do not feel personally deprived of freedom when they drive. It is also difficult to be protected against monopoly when a society is already littered with roads, schools, or hospitals, when independent action has been paralyzed for so long that the ability for it seems to have atrophied, and when simple alternatives seem beyond the reach of the imagination. Monopoly is hard to get rid of when it has frozen not only the shape of the physical world but also the range of behavior and of imagination. Radical monopoly is generally discovered only when it is too late. [RCF: Externalities and complimentarities.]
Both the balance that defines man's needs for a hospitable environment and the balance that defines everyone's needs for authentic activity are now close to the breaking point. And still this danger does not concern most people. It must now be explained why most people are either blind to this threat or feel helpless to correct it. I believe that the blindness is due to the decline in a third balance--the balance of learning--and that the impotence people experience is the result of yet a fourth upset in what I call the balance of power.
Learning thus becomes a commodity, and, like any commodity that is marketed, it becomes scarce. [RCF: The internet reversing this?] . . . When people become obsolete and need constantly to renew their educational security, when the accountant must be reprogrammed for each new generation of computers, then learning has indeed become scarce. Educator becomes the most vulnerable and confusing issue in the society.
Man will wither away just as much if he is deprived of nature, of his own work, or of his deep need to learn what he wants and not what others have planned that he should learn.
People are taught all this [the way the world "should" work according to the current industrial system] not by the teacher but by the curriculum hidden in the structure of the school. It does not matter what the teacher teaches so long as the pupil has to attend hundreds of hours of age-specific assemblies to engage in a routine decreed by the curriculum and is graded according to his ability to submit to it. [RCF: Schools are more about conditioning us for society than educating us.]
Newspapers, television, and radio were no longer just media of communication. They were pressed into the service of socialization. Periodicals expanded to accommodate all fit news, which meant that a few professional journalists got vast readerships, while the majority was reduced to token representation in the "Letters to the Editor" section. [RCF: Boy has this been flipped.]
Manipulative teaching tools raise the cost of learning. Now we only ask what people have to learn and then invest in a means to teach them. We should learn to ask first what people need if they want to learn and provide these tools for them. Professional teachers laugh at the idea that people would learn more from random access to learning resources than they can be taught. In fact, they frequently cite as proof for their skepticism the declining use of libraries. They overlook the fact that libraries are little used because they have been organized as formidable teaching devices. Libraries are not used because people have been trained to demand that they be taught.
This large [world] population can survive because of new tools. In turn, it spurs the search for even more powerful tools, and thereby demands more radical monopoly; this monopoly, in its turn, calls for more and more education. But, paradoxically, what people most need to learn, they cannot be taught or educated to do. If they are voluntarily to keep their numbers and consumption within bounds, they must learn to do so by living active and responsible lives, or they will perish--passive though well informed, frustrated yet resigned.
[RCF: He then goes into some very Malthusian and alarmist predictions which were not fulfilled. He also predicted that widespread birth control must happen within a year of when he wrote the book.]
Power is polarized, frustration is generalized, and the alternative of greater happiness at lower affluence is pushed into the blind spot of social vision.
This blindness is a result of the broken balance of learning. People who are hooked on teaching are conditioned to be customers for everything else. They see their own personal growth as an accumulation of institutional outputs, and prefer what institutions make over what they themselves can do.
Under the pressure of an expanding mega-machine, power is concentrated in a few hands, and the majority becomes dependent on handouts.
Movements that seek control over existing institutions give them a new legitimacy, and also render their contradictions more acute. Changes in management are not revolutions.
Growth would stop if women obtained equally creative work for all, instead of demanding equal rights over the gigantic and expanding tools now appropriated by men.
In any case, periodic innovations in goods or tools foster the belief that anything new will be proven better. . . . If new things are made because they are better, then the things most people use are not quite good. New models constantly renovate poverty. . . . The "better" replaces the "good" as the fundamental normative concept.
In a society caught up in the race for the better, limits on change are experienced as a threat. . . . Accelerating change has become both addictive and intolerable. At this point the balance among stability, change, and tradition has been upset; society has lost both its roots in shared memories and its bearings for innovation. Judgment on precedents has lost its value. [RCF: We have lost the ability to ask "what is this for?"]
Addicts of any kind are willing to pay increasing amounts for declining satisfactions. They have become tolerant to escalating marginal disutility. . . . Minds accustomed to thinking that transportation ought to provide speedy motion rather than reduction of the time and effort spent moving are boggled by this contrary hypothesis [i.e., an analysis of increasing marginal disutility and the menace of growth and the maximization of convivial production]. Man is inherently mobile, and speeds higher than those he can achieve by the use of his limbs must be proven to be of great social value to warrant support by public sacrifice.
IV. Recovery
I have argued that institutions are functional when they promote a delicate balance between what people can do for themselves and what tools at the service of anonymous institutions can do for them.
Finally, an increase in the rate of innovation is of value only when with it rootedness in tradition, fullness of meaning, and security are also strengthened.
Survival depends on establishing procedures which permit ordinary people to recognize these ranges [essentially within which tools remain convivial by maintaining the range of choice and motivation in both the operator and the client] and to opt for survival in freedom, to evaluate the structure built into tools and institutions so they can exclude those which by their structure are destructive, and control those which are useful.
This cognitive disorder [the mythification of science leading to a paralysis of the moral and political imagination] rests on the illusion that that the knowledge of the individual citizen is of less value than the "knowledge" of science. The former is the opinion of individuals. It is merely subjective and is excluded from policies. The latter is "objective"--defined by science and promulgated by expert spokesmen. This objective knowledge is viewed as a commodity which can be refined, constantly improved, accumulated and fed into a process now called "decision-making." This new mythology of governance by the manipulation of knowledge-stock inevitably erodes reliance on government by people. [RCF: seeing this in real time.]
Overconfidence in "better knowledge" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. PEople first cease to trust their own judgment and then want to be told the truth about what they know. Overconfidence in "better decision-making" first hampers people's ability to decide for themselves and then undermines their belief that they can decide.
Experts can define standards at levels slightly below those at which people complain with too much force. They can keep the public sullen and forestall mutiny.
People who speak a nominalist language habitually express proprietary relationships to work which they have. . . .
The shift from verb to noun reflects a transformation in the idea of ownership. [RCF: This is speaking of "having" work as opposed to "working".]
In a society whose language has undergone this shift, predicates come to be stated in terms of a commodity and claims in terms of competition for a scarce resource. . . . The subject in the first case designates himself as an actor, and in the second as a consumer.
Support of an ever-expanding productive society has become the overwhelmingly dominant purpose of the existing structure of politics and law.
Gradually, not only the police but even the courts and the legal system itself have come to be thought of as tools made for the service of an industrial state [RCF: Or they were to begin with....]. That they sometimes protect individuals against industrial claims has become an alibi for their habitual service of legitimizing the further concentration of power.
Unless people agree on a process that can be continuously, convivially, and effectively used to control society's tools, the inversion of the present institutional structure cannot be either enacted or, what is more important, precariously maintained. Managers will always re-emerge to increase institutional productivity and capture public support for the better service they promise.
V. Political Inversion
Liberty has been interpreted as a right to power tools, a right claimed without reasonable limitation by individuals and private associations in capitalist countries and by the state in socialist societies.
Man would live in a plastic bubble that would protect his survival and make it increasingly worthless. Since man's tolerance would become the most serious limitation to growth, the alchemist's endeavor would be renewed in the attempt to produce a monstrous type of man fit to live among reason's dreams. A major function of engineering would become the psychogenetic tooling of man himself as a condition for further growth. People would be confined from birth to death in a world-wide schoolhouse, treated in a world-wide hospital, surrounded by television screens, and the man-made environment would be distinguishable in name only from a world-wide prison. [RCF: Another reason for the metaverse, am I right?]
The ultimate obstacle to the restructuring of society is not the lack of information about which limits are needed, nor the lack of information about which limits are needed, nor the lack of people who would accept them if they become inevitable, but the power of political myths. [RCF: Those seem to be fraying, so we'll see.]
The total collapse of the industrial monopoly on production will be the result of synergy in the failure of the multiple systems that fed its expansion. This expansion is maintained by the illusion that careful systems engineering can stabilize and harmonize present growth, while in fact it pushes all institutions simultaneously toward their second watershed. Almost overnight people will lose confidence not only in the major institutions but also in the miracle prescriptions of the would-be crisis managers. The ability of present institutions to define values such as education, health, welfare, transportation, or news will suddenly be extinguished because it will be recognized as an illusion.
This crisis may be triggered by an unforeseen event, as the Great Depression was touched off by the Wall Street Crash. Some fortuitous coincidence will render publicly obvious the structural contradictions between stated purposes and effective results in our major institutions. People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few: that the organization of the entire economy toward the "better" life has become the major enemy of the good life.
When controls are weakened, those accustomed to control must seek new allies.
All these people [who recognize and are powerless against various radical monopolies] could form a voting majority, but not a party or a sect.
The same general crisis that could easily lead to one-man rule, expert government, and ideological orthodoxy is also the great opportunity to reconstruct a political process in which all participate. [RCF: He sometimes throws out these very idealistic statements but then provides little details or support.]
Defense of conviviality is possible only if undertaken by the people with tools they control. Imperialist mercenaries can poison or maim [RCF: or kill] but never conquer a people who have chosen to set boundaries to their tools for the sake of conviviality.
1. Being intentional and thoughtful about our relationship with technology and our tools and placing limits on our tools and our relationship to tools
2. Challenging the status quo of our systems and their aim (see, e.g., education/learning, transportation, medicine/healing)
3. Challenging the fundamental definition of progress and how we lock ourselves into a system
Implicit as well was forming intentional societies/communities around these ideas.
Wish it had better focus. Maybe a project I should undertake.
Edit: After reviewing my notes, I'm upgrading to four stars. The excerpts are that good. Going to paste in as many excerpts I pulled as I can from the last three sections.
III. The Multiple Balance
The demands made by tools on people become increasingly costly. This rising cost of fitting man to the service of his tools is reflected in the ongoing shift from goods to services in overall production. Increasing manipulation of man becomes necessary to overcome the resistance of his vital equilibrium to the dynamic of growing industries; it takes the form of educational, medical, and administrative therapies. Education turns out competitive consumers; medicine keeps them alive in the engineered environment they have come to require; bureaucracy reflects the necessity of exercising social control over people to do meaningless work. The parallel increase in the cost of the defense of new levels of privilege through: military, police, and insurance measures reflects that the fact that in a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
The belief in the possibility of this development [an industrially minded solution as the only way of preserving a viable environment] is founded on an erroneous supposition, namely, that "The historical achievement of science and technology has rendered possible the translation of values into technical tasks--the materialization of values. Consequently, what is at stake is the redefinition of values in technical terms, as elements in technological process. The new ends, as technical ends, would then operate in the project and in the construction of the machinery, and not only in its utilization." (quoting Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, Boston, 1970).
The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. Otherwise man will find himself totally enclosed within his artificial creation, with no exit. Enveloped in a physical, social, and psychological milieu of his own making, he will be a prisoner in the shell of technology, unable to find again the ancient milieu to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years. [RCF: What a banger quote.]
By "radical monopoly" I mean the dominance of one type of product rather than the dominance of one brand. I speak about radical monopoly when one industrial production process exercises an exclusive control over the satisfaction of a pressing need, and excludes nonindustrial activities from competition.
Cars can thus monopolize traffic. They can shape a city into their image--practically ruling out locomotion on foot or by bicycle in Los Angeles. They can eliminate river traffic in Thailand. That motor traffic curtails the right to walk, not that more people drive Chevies than Fords, constitutes radical monopoly.
Radical monopoly exists where a major tool rules out natural competence.
During the sixties the funeral homes obtained control over new cemeteries and began offering package deals, including the casket, church service, and embalming. Now legislation is being passed to make the mortician's ministrations compulsory. Once he gets hold of the body, the funeral director will have established a radical monopoly over burial, as medicine is at the point of establishing one over dying. [Again, kinda libertarian there.]
These basic satisfactions [the provision of basic needs by oneself and one's community] become scarce when the social environment is transformed in such a manner that basic needs can no longer be met by abundant competence. The establishment of radical monopoly happens when people give up their native ability to do what they can do for themselves and for each other, in exchange for something "better" that can be done for them only by a major tool. Radical monopoly reflects the industrial institutionalization of values. It substitutes the standard package for the personal response. It introduces new classes of scarcity and a new device to classify people according to the level of their consumption. This redefinition raises the unit cost of valuable service, differentially rations privilege, restricts access to resources, and makes people dependent. Above all, by depriving people of the ability to satisfy personal needs in a personal manner, radical monopoly creates radical scarcity of personal--as opposed to institutional--service. {RCF: Specialization and hyperspecialization.]
Protection against this general monopoly is as difficult as protection against pollution. People will face a danger that threatens their own self-interest but not one that threatens society as a whole. Many more people are against cars than are against driving them. They are against cars because they pollute and because they monopolize traffic. They drive cars because they consider the pollution created by one car insignificant, and because they do not feel personally deprived of freedom when they drive. It is also difficult to be protected against monopoly when a society is already littered with roads, schools, or hospitals, when independent action has been paralyzed for so long that the ability for it seems to have atrophied, and when simple alternatives seem beyond the reach of the imagination. Monopoly is hard to get rid of when it has frozen not only the shape of the physical world but also the range of behavior and of imagination. Radical monopoly is generally discovered only when it is too late. [RCF: Externalities and complimentarities.]
Both the balance that defines man's needs for a hospitable environment and the balance that defines everyone's needs for authentic activity are now close to the breaking point. And still this danger does not concern most people. It must now be explained why most people are either blind to this threat or feel helpless to correct it. I believe that the blindness is due to the decline in a third balance--the balance of learning--and that the impotence people experience is the result of yet a fourth upset in what I call the balance of power.
Learning thus becomes a commodity, and, like any commodity that is marketed, it becomes scarce. [RCF: The internet reversing this?] . . . When people become obsolete and need constantly to renew their educational security, when the accountant must be reprogrammed for each new generation of computers, then learning has indeed become scarce. Educator becomes the most vulnerable and confusing issue in the society.
Man will wither away just as much if he is deprived of nature, of his own work, or of his deep need to learn what he wants and not what others have planned that he should learn.
People are taught all this [the way the world "should" work according to the current industrial system] not by the teacher but by the curriculum hidden in the structure of the school. It does not matter what the teacher teaches so long as the pupil has to attend hundreds of hours of age-specific assemblies to engage in a routine decreed by the curriculum and is graded according to his ability to submit to it. [RCF: Schools are more about conditioning us for society than educating us.]
Newspapers, television, and radio were no longer just media of communication. They were pressed into the service of socialization. Periodicals expanded to accommodate all fit news, which meant that a few professional journalists got vast readerships, while the majority was reduced to token representation in the "Letters to the Editor" section. [RCF: Boy has this been flipped.]
Manipulative teaching tools raise the cost of learning. Now we only ask what people have to learn and then invest in a means to teach them. We should learn to ask first what people need if they want to learn and provide these tools for them. Professional teachers laugh at the idea that people would learn more from random access to learning resources than they can be taught. In fact, they frequently cite as proof for their skepticism the declining use of libraries. They overlook the fact that libraries are little used because they have been organized as formidable teaching devices. Libraries are not used because people have been trained to demand that they be taught.
This large [world] population can survive because of new tools. In turn, it spurs the search for even more powerful tools, and thereby demands more radical monopoly; this monopoly, in its turn, calls for more and more education. But, paradoxically, what people most need to learn, they cannot be taught or educated to do. If they are voluntarily to keep their numbers and consumption within bounds, they must learn to do so by living active and responsible lives, or they will perish--passive though well informed, frustrated yet resigned.
[RCF: He then goes into some very Malthusian and alarmist predictions which were not fulfilled. He also predicted that widespread birth control must happen within a year of when he wrote the book.]
Power is polarized, frustration is generalized, and the alternative of greater happiness at lower affluence is pushed into the blind spot of social vision.
This blindness is a result of the broken balance of learning. People who are hooked on teaching are conditioned to be customers for everything else. They see their own personal growth as an accumulation of institutional outputs, and prefer what institutions make over what they themselves can do.
Under the pressure of an expanding mega-machine, power is concentrated in a few hands, and the majority becomes dependent on handouts.
Movements that seek control over existing institutions give them a new legitimacy, and also render their contradictions more acute. Changes in management are not revolutions.
Growth would stop if women obtained equally creative work for all, instead of demanding equal rights over the gigantic and expanding tools now appropriated by men.
In any case, periodic innovations in goods or tools foster the belief that anything new will be proven better. . . . If new things are made because they are better, then the things most people use are not quite good. New models constantly renovate poverty. . . . The "better" replaces the "good" as the fundamental normative concept.
In a society caught up in the race for the better, limits on change are experienced as a threat. . . . Accelerating change has become both addictive and intolerable. At this point the balance among stability, change, and tradition has been upset; society has lost both its roots in shared memories and its bearings for innovation. Judgment on precedents has lost its value. [RCF: We have lost the ability to ask "what is this for?"]
Addicts of any kind are willing to pay increasing amounts for declining satisfactions. They have become tolerant to escalating marginal disutility. . . . Minds accustomed to thinking that transportation ought to provide speedy motion rather than reduction of the time and effort spent moving are boggled by this contrary hypothesis [i.e., an analysis of increasing marginal disutility and the menace of growth and the maximization of convivial production]. Man is inherently mobile, and speeds higher than those he can achieve by the use of his limbs must be proven to be of great social value to warrant support by public sacrifice.
IV. Recovery
I have argued that institutions are functional when they promote a delicate balance between what people can do for themselves and what tools at the service of anonymous institutions can do for them.
Finally, an increase in the rate of innovation is of value only when with it rootedness in tradition, fullness of meaning, and security are also strengthened.
Survival depends on establishing procedures which permit ordinary people to recognize these ranges [essentially within which tools remain convivial by maintaining the range of choice and motivation in both the operator and the client] and to opt for survival in freedom, to evaluate the structure built into tools and institutions so they can exclude those which by their structure are destructive, and control those which are useful.
This cognitive disorder [the mythification of science leading to a paralysis of the moral and political imagination] rests on the illusion that that the knowledge of the individual citizen is of less value than the "knowledge" of science. The former is the opinion of individuals. It is merely subjective and is excluded from policies. The latter is "objective"--defined by science and promulgated by expert spokesmen. This objective knowledge is viewed as a commodity which can be refined, constantly improved, accumulated and fed into a process now called "decision-making." This new mythology of governance by the manipulation of knowledge-stock inevitably erodes reliance on government by people. [RCF: seeing this in real time.]
Overconfidence in "better knowledge" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. PEople first cease to trust their own judgment and then want to be told the truth about what they know. Overconfidence in "better decision-making" first hampers people's ability to decide for themselves and then undermines their belief that they can decide.
Experts can define standards at levels slightly below those at which people complain with too much force. They can keep the public sullen and forestall mutiny.
People who speak a nominalist language habitually express proprietary relationships to work which they have. . . .
The shift from verb to noun reflects a transformation in the idea of ownership. [RCF: This is speaking of "having" work as opposed to "working".]
In a society whose language has undergone this shift, predicates come to be stated in terms of a commodity and claims in terms of competition for a scarce resource. . . . The subject in the first case designates himself as an actor, and in the second as a consumer.
Support of an ever-expanding productive society has become the overwhelmingly dominant purpose of the existing structure of politics and law.
Gradually, not only the police but even the courts and the legal system itself have come to be thought of as tools made for the service of an industrial state [RCF: Or they were to begin with....]. That they sometimes protect individuals against industrial claims has become an alibi for their habitual service of legitimizing the further concentration of power.
Unless people agree on a process that can be continuously, convivially, and effectively used to control society's tools, the inversion of the present institutional structure cannot be either enacted or, what is more important, precariously maintained. Managers will always re-emerge to increase institutional productivity and capture public support for the better service they promise.
V. Political Inversion
Liberty has been interpreted as a right to power tools, a right claimed without reasonable limitation by individuals and private associations in capitalist countries and by the state in socialist societies.
Man would live in a plastic bubble that would protect his survival and make it increasingly worthless. Since man's tolerance would become the most serious limitation to growth, the alchemist's endeavor would be renewed in the attempt to produce a monstrous type of man fit to live among reason's dreams. A major function of engineering would become the psychogenetic tooling of man himself as a condition for further growth. People would be confined from birth to death in a world-wide schoolhouse, treated in a world-wide hospital, surrounded by television screens, and the man-made environment would be distinguishable in name only from a world-wide prison. [RCF: Another reason for the metaverse, am I right?]
The ultimate obstacle to the restructuring of society is not the lack of information about which limits are needed, nor the lack of information about which limits are needed, nor the lack of people who would accept them if they become inevitable, but the power of political myths. [RCF: Those seem to be fraying, so we'll see.]
The total collapse of the industrial monopoly on production will be the result of synergy in the failure of the multiple systems that fed its expansion. This expansion is maintained by the illusion that careful systems engineering can stabilize and harmonize present growth, while in fact it pushes all institutions simultaneously toward their second watershed. Almost overnight people will lose confidence not only in the major institutions but also in the miracle prescriptions of the would-be crisis managers. The ability of present institutions to define values such as education, health, welfare, transportation, or news will suddenly be extinguished because it will be recognized as an illusion.
This crisis may be triggered by an unforeseen event, as the Great Depression was touched off by the Wall Street Crash. Some fortuitous coincidence will render publicly obvious the structural contradictions between stated purposes and effective results in our major institutions. People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few: that the organization of the entire economy toward the "better" life has become the major enemy of the good life.
When controls are weakened, those accustomed to control must seek new allies.
All these people [who recognize and are powerless against various radical monopolies] could form a voting majority, but not a party or a sect.
The same general crisis that could easily lead to one-man rule, expert government, and ideological orthodoxy is also the great opportunity to reconstruct a political process in which all participate. [RCF: He sometimes throws out these very idealistic statements but then provides little details or support.]
Defense of conviviality is possible only if undertaken by the people with tools they control. Imperialist mercenaries can poison or maim [RCF: or kill] but never conquer a people who have chosen to set boundaries to their tools for the sake of conviviality.
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