Re: Tools for Conviviality (Ivan Illich)
This is a comment on Ivan Illich book Tools for Conviviality (1973). In his book, Illich focuses three topics:
- the problems with institutionalized education and knowledge (it leads to an institutionalized society)
- the issue with dominant technocratic elites and assembly line structures in the industrial society (we replaced slaves with machines and robots, but have become “machines” ourselves)
- the need to develop new instruments for the reconquest of practical knowledge by the average citizen
The prophetic aspects of Illich’s text are inspiring. Illich is talking about issues that we know and discuss today, but probably were not that obvious in the 70’s. He criticizes deconstructive forces that burden the postmodern society, where more wants more and solutions cause new problems, and asks for more sustainable solutions. He mentions problems such as energy consuption and the well-being of individual citizens.
The third topic in Illich’s text (mentioned above), the regain of individual and independent power, knowledge and development, makes me think of an old meditation movement called Mindfulness. Mindfulness was brought to the Western academic world by, among others, Ellen J. Langer (Harvard University), who desribes Mindlessness (the opposite of Mindfulness) as:
It is about the mindsets that lead human beings—even the smartest of them—to become stupid and ‘mindless.’ Its power as drama in demonstrating that mindlessness leads not only to the banality of dullness, but to a giving up of life itself.
Ellen Langer’s desription of mindless people makes me think of Illich critic on institutionalisation of societies and their machine-like (mindless) citizens. Surely, there must be a connection there. Personally, I would argue that the life that I have lead so far, as a grown-up (the life that I to some extent is trying to move away from) to a large extent has made me a less independent, less creative, and less mindful person.
