In Honor of the 2023 Parallax Course: Look at the Birds of the Air (Starts November 4th, 2023)

The Conviviality of Ivan Illich (Part II)

O.G. Rose
22 min readOct 4, 2023

Essential Thinking for Thinking Life

Source 1, Source 2

III

As hopefully has been made clear, we see thanks to the written word a movement away from social interaction in favor if the impersonal and “objective,” which benefits power in helping power spread beyond localities, and furthermore contributes to associating Preplanned Thinking with “real thinking.” Discussing Mark Twain, Illich notes:

‘Thus, Twain brings into focus the trap of literacy. There is a whole world in Huck Finn that is closed to those without literacy. They can’t, for ironic example, read this marvelous work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And yet we must recognize a world rich with superstition and folklore, with adventure and beauty, that remains closed to those who are too tightly chained to letters.’³⁹

To be literate is to gain and lose: all progress is tragic and consists of tradeoffs between competing goods. If Ong is right, science as we know it is impossible without literacy, which means technology as we know it would be impossible, but with the mindset that makes technology possible, so we lose the mindset that makes it possible to experience the world as enchanted (as Charles Taylor discusses).⁴⁰ Oral cultures forced social relation to exchange information (and it hence always entailed a degree of the Unplanned, for people cannot be entirely predicted); today though, writing makes it possible for law, plans, ideas, etc. to be shared impersonally, which perhaps makes it easier for people to oppress one another because they don’t have to face them (which can incubate empathy). Similarly, it becomes easier to reduce the story ‘each person is given […] to tell [into] a ‘survival rate’ or [….] assigned ‘role,’ ’ as it is easier to treat people like numbers and statistics.⁴¹ The written word in this way might have contributed to dehumanization, a legacy for Illich which technology continues, but are we really ready to give up the gains of technology to avoid this dehumanization? If not, then we have to discern how to manage having technology without letting it dehumanize us, and that discernment itself will require us to be “human” and comfortable with the Unplanned — which is exactly out of what technology trains us.

Illich discussed ‘modern institutions in terms of rituals,’ noting how ‘schooling [was not seen as] a technique whose effectiveness ought to be assessed,’ which meant for Illich it should be ‘analyzed as a ritual because only then did it become evident that the major effect of these institutions was to make people believe in the necessity and goodness of what they were supposed to achieve.’⁴² Institutions made themselves into rituals which could not be critiqued only faithfully practiced, a transformation which perhaps became far easier when people could communicate and lay out orders without face-to-face interaction (for face-to-face, it would be harder to judge the workings of institutions according to only numbers and abstract metrics, for we would experience and face the suffering they caused when dysfunctional, a point which suggests Medical Nemesis). Furthermore, with the removal of “the face” (a point which suggests Levinas), we train ourselves and our thinking out of the habit of thinking subjectivity, personally, and contingently, which means we train ourselves out of the Unplanned into the Preplanned. Illich would have us use “tools” in a way that doesn’t remove “the face” (perhaps we could discuss “Facing Tools”), for the loss of “the face” is the loss of the human, which makes us susceptible to treat institutions like “rituals” we believe in.

Starts Nov 4th!

Here, a consideration between Ivan Illich and Postmodernism arises, which will also bring to focus Derrida. The written word is far easier to experience “as” Preplanned and thus think in terms of Preplanning and the like, and in this the mystery and Unplanned-ness of “the face” is moved from the person into the words with the question of interpretation, which suggests that the Postmodern concern with hermeneutics and the possibility of interpretation is arguably a distraction from the deeper mystery of people themselves. Yes, thinkers like Derrida focus on the problem of interpretation precisely to open us to “the other,” but it’s interesting to think that this effort might not be as effective as focusing on “the happenstance encounter” of the Good Samaritan like Ivan Illich does. In fact, to focus on hermeneutics could dilute the effort, benefiting power precisely thanks to the Postmodern effort to break power up.

Words must be interpreted, and so reading requires working with uncertainty, but this kind of “working with uncertainty” hermeneutically (say in Postmodernism) seems different from “working with uncertainty” personally (Ivan Illich). Now, I stress, Derrida engages in deconstruction of texts precisely to make us more “oral” and “face-to-face,” so we cannot simplistically say the choice is between Illich or Postmodernism. However, though the goals of Illich and Derrida strike me as identical, I’m not sure if focusing on the interpretation of words is as effective as learning to be “prepared for the Unplanned” like the Good Samaritan (and passing “The Unarmored Test,” for example). Yes, both Illich and Postmodernism want to make us more comfortable with uncertainty so that we avoid fundamentalism, totalitarianism, and the like, but how we “face uncertainty” seems critical; furthermore, if we focus on the uncertainty of writing, this might result in us unconsciously still accepting writing as authoritative over speech. Sure, we might believe “no final interpretation is possible,” but we might still think “no final interpretation is possible about what is most authoritative and ‘real.’ ” This isn’t to say Derrida would support this move, but the point is that “facing people” might help us be more ready for the Unprepared versus “facing interpretation.” Furthermore, words on a page are not alive and active, which means “the range of possibilities” words could present us with that we are Unprepared for is less than “the range of possibilities” with which people might present us. Yes, hermeneutics entail uncertainty, but that uncertainty is less dynamic than the uncertainty of people.

This all in mind, it is possible that Postmodernism has contributed to institutional and totalitarian power by training us for the Unprepared through hermeneutics, which is less effective than training for the Unprepared by facing people directly (and passing “The Unarmored Test”). Derrida wants to deconstruct “texts” (in the broad sense Derrida meant it) precisely for us to “encounter others,” but the very fact of having to go through texts first might be an act which suggests the primacy of texts and writing, which then might concede ground to institutions and systems that Illich would advise against (not because he is anti-institution, but because he realizes how hard it is to avoid the temptation of Preplanning). However, Postmodernism might have made this mistake not only because it has chosen a less effective focus on hermeneutics, but also because a focus on text might change “how” we see the world (recall Ong’s thinking).

In “The Gospel and the Gaze,” Illich tells us that he ‘suspected for a long time that, when people looked at each other or at the world it was not just their understanding of what was going on that varied, but also their experience,’ which is to say what we see changes how we see, which changes what we see — on and on — and if we spend little time “looking at people,” then how we experience people will change, perhaps helping us experience and see the world in a manner that favors Preplanning.⁴³ Discussing a Greek conception of sight, Illich notes:

‘When I look at you, I caress you with my eyes. If I look at your face, let’s say, my ray proceeds to its surface where the sun brings out your colour. My ray and your colour are then mixed and brought back to me by my withdrawing the ray into the liquid, glassy, inner part of the eye, where the image is understood.’⁴⁴

We are part of what we see, and what we see is part of us (a point that suggests Hegel over Kant). To look at words or to look at people — this is a choice not of what we will see but how.⁴⁵ This makes it possible to think of ‘appropriate seeing as part of virtue,’ for what we see changes us, and how we are changed shapes if we can be virtuous.⁴⁶

This in mind, if we focus on words then people, which is perhaps what Postmodernism does, by the time we get to people, we might not have the capacity to “see” them (I-Thou), for we might have “seen ourselves out of” that capacity (we “saw ourselves to the door,” per se). This might sound ridiculous, but keep in mind that with writing was removed the necessity of social interaction for communication, and no doubt the amount of direct and personalized social interaction which occurs has possibly decreased. With less socialization, we have easily developed different habits, and if James K.A. Smith is right that we basically are our habits, then it is not unimaginable that written words have changed how we see ourselves, the world, and others. If Postmodernism focuses on writing then, it might unintentionally transform “how” we see, which for Ivan Illich seems primary. If we increase uncertainty to combat totalization but don’t change “how we see,” we might just suffer anxiety: uncertainty must be accompanied by “new eyes” if it is to prove in service of the Unplanned and making us human.

Words today are perhaps more uncertain to us than people, and that might be because we can no longer “see” people in a way that makes them Mysteries, precisely because we have been looking at words and writing. Words don’t move on a piece of paper, while people are live and dynamic, and this motionlessness and “reliability” of words might contribute to us giving them authority and trust. Furthermore, we might find it easier to deal with people if we “make them like words” (versus “like the Word”), which also might (ironically) strike us an act of “honoring and elevating people,” precisely because we associate the written word with truth and authority. In the habit of doing this “for all the right reasons,” it then becomes easy to see people in terms which are ontologically similar to words, which is to say as quantifiable, unchanging, noncontingent, universal, etc. And this is exactly what has occurred; Illich tells us:

‘If you should doubt that human creatures are now ‘derived from information processes’ or humanity ‘constructed on the basis of a few abstract indices,’ you have only to think of the discourse of popular genetics, in which notional entities called genes ‘cause’ this or that condition, or of risk analysis, in which human beings are asked to identify themselves with statistical figments, or of the myriad [of] other contemporary discourses in which imponderable probabilities are supposed to govern human decisions.’⁴⁷

“Quantification” has triumphed over “qualification,” exactly as both Hegel and Leibniz feared, and this changes not just “what we see” but “how we see,” which changes who we are, which changes “how we see” — on and on. Metaphysical and philosophical choices are often not just “one and done”-choices, but rather create feedback loops that shape us for all our lives. Philosophical choices are every-day choices.

IV

‘Without obligating social relations based on orality in a uniform way, it engendered a growing tension between custom and legality’ — an easily experienceable split between “custom” and “legality” became possible thanks to the written word, a split which institutions and systems require to spread power and control (as especially enhanced when matched with the “philosophical consciousness” that David Hume warned about).⁴⁸ Law could be written and imposed on a people without interaction, and interaction always helps increase empathy and “the humanization of the other” (which is a reason why tribalism and isolationism can be so dangerous): thus, under writing, society could begin to feel cold and inhuman. Furthermore, notions of how tools and technology should be used could be considered and instituted without direct interaction with the social impacts or personal experience of the personal ramifications, making it easier to believe the “tools were helping society” when in fact they might not have been. Oral societies are inherently more decentralized than written societies, which comes with benefits and negatives, but the point is that written literacy makes possible totalitarianism (especially once mixed with “philosophical justification,” following Hume). And since the written world changes how we think, the very possibility of “thinking this problem” might now not be possible.

Ivan Illich tells us that his friend Prodi argued that the ‘extraordinary criminalization of sin holds the key to understanding Western political concepts,’ and whether this is true or not, “mass criminalization” seems to require writing and depersonalization.⁴⁹ We can only imprison masses of people if we don’t know them, and how can we convict people of crimes who we’ve never met? That would require writing, and does this not also suggest WWI and WWII are unimaginable in Oral Cultures? Based on Hume, Dr. Livingston argued that “total war” was not possible without philosophy, and if writing made us more metaphysical (as Derrida argued), then perhaps writing invented the whole world, where it become possible for everyone to be at war (and ‘dependent on medicine’ to cope with this possibility and survive the corresponding environment).⁵⁰ Does this mean we should get rid of writing, philosophy, and technology? Absolutely not: that would be to run. Fear is not the answer. The one who fears cannot be negated/sublated…(to allude to Hegel).

A constant concern of Ivan Illich is the problematic and dehumanizing ‘institutionalization of neighborliness,’ which leads to ‘a degradation of hospitality and its replacement by caregiving institutions.’⁵¹ This was perhaps impossible before writing was invented and replaced oral traditions, but now it is possible for us to create “widespread, impersonal help.” We mentioned before how institutions have become rituals for Illich, and this is a development which seems to require writing to be possible; otherwise, the face-to-face interactions of people and information-exchange would naturally keep institutions “checked and balanced.” For Illich, the problems of this mistake are vivid in healthcare — but only if we look closely. For as was the case with all fields and industries, ‘[t]he destructiveness of new tools was hidden from public view by new techniques of providing spectacular treatments.’⁵² Like with all religions, when institutions have proven destructive, we have looked away.

A case study of Illich’s point might be useful here, one focused on healthcare based on Medical Nemesis. Today we believe it is possible to ‘kill pain without killing a person,’ but Illich is not so sure, and if pain is necessary for life, then a healthcare system which removes pain at all costs might remove life in all circumstances.⁵³ And that’s currently what we have, making it for Illich the source of an ‘iatrogenic epidemic,’ which is to say “an epidemic of illness caused by doctors.”⁵⁴ Though we will focus on healthcare, we could just as easily discuss “stupidity caused by teachers” or “simplicity caused by technology” — there are many epidemics caused by a withdrawal of human functions and responsibilities (and as a ‘political program aimed at the limitation of professional management of health [for the sake of helping] people […] recover their powers for health care’ might be needed, so something similar might be needed in tech, education, etc.).⁵⁵ Illich saw that healthcare ‘sap[ped] the will of people to suffer their reality,’ so similarly might technology suck out of us a desire to think without Google search or learn storytelling for self-entertainment.’⁵⁶ If suffering is inevitable in life, then perhaps this means it is inevitable that we dislike life? Some say that life is suffering, but perhaps that is only because we have been trained out of feeling that suffering is life?

Illich is extremely critical of modern healthcare, and I will not review all of his argument here. ‘Although almost everyone believes that at least one of his friends would not be alive and well except for the skill of a doctor, there is in fact no evidence of any direct relationship between this mutation of sickness and the so-called progress of medicine’ — and with that Illich begins to make his case.⁵⁷ He claims that ‘by far the most important factor [in the decline of child mortality in numerous areas between 1860 and 1965] was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition’; he notes the importance of sanitation and claims that ‘environment is the primary determinant of the state of general health of any population.’⁵⁸ ⁵⁹ And so on — right or wrong, Illich hopes is to show that the institution of healthcare has made us less human and that, for this trade, we’ve gained hardly anything; so it goes with modern schooling; so it goes with modern technology. The philosophers once taught us that a good life could suffer a good death, but today we have ‘lost [our] faith in [our] ability to die.’⁶⁰ We are dependent. We need professionals. ‘The pharmaceutical invasion leads [us] to medication […] that reduces [our] ability to cope with a body for which [we] can still care.’⁶¹ And so we don’t care for it — we seek Transhumanism, perhaps the logical end of “pharmaceutical man.”

‘Cultured health is bounded by each society’s style in the art of living, feasting, suffering, and dying,’ which is to say that health is not merely about bodily function, and if we sacrifice everything for a healthy body, we might lose our health all the same.⁶² ‘To be human is not just to breathe,’ Illich tells us; ‘it is also to control one’s breathing.’⁶³ So it could be said about a society productivity or education: neither can be reduced to simple metrics captured by a machine or a school quiz. And yet it seems remarkably easy for us to think this, making us vulnerable to mistakes which cost us our humanity in copious ways. We don’t believe in something like “Conditionalism” (as I like to call it), which is to say we don’t believe “being human” requires conditoning or for us to meet a condition. We believe we just “are” human, and so it doesn’t matter what kind of healthcare, education, or technology we use: our humanity is safe — yes?

Illich continues to build his case. ‘Medical civilization is planned and organized to kill pain, to eliminate sickness, and to abolish the need for an art of suffering and of dying.’⁶⁴ Likewise, educational civilization is organized to kill nonconformity and curiosity, which abolishes the need for character and wonder. Technological civilization removes difficulty and labor, abolishing the need for community and humility. Illich understands that life is tragic, a tradeoff of competing goods (as Martha Nussbaum discusses), but today we believe that life entails only problems which can be solved. There are secrets, but not mysteries.

V

‘[A]n increase in the rate of innovation is of value only when with it rootedness in tradition, fullness of meaning, and security are also strengthened’ — a point which for Illich applies to all “tools,” whether it be a hospital, a school, a computer, a car, or what have you.⁶⁵ And yet paradoxically we have lost tradition, fullness of meaning, and security precisely thanks to efforts of Preplanning which were easily carried out precisely for the sake of strengthening tradition, increasing the fullness of meaning, advancing security, and what have you. Nobody intended nihilism or “The Meaning Crisis,” and no doubt Preplanning was engaged in for the sake of making life fuller — and yet here we are, impoverished in terms of tradition, meaning, and security.

What Ivan Illich realized is that what seems to make life better is actually what removes our humanity, which ultimately makes life worse. Removing pain seems like it would improve the quality of life, and up to a certain point it does, but after that the removal of pain is the removal of humanity. There is a point at which Preplanning is good (planning to some degree is inevitable, after all), but then there is a point at which Preplanning results in humans “practically” becoming like machines (even as we talk about human dignity). As discussed throughout O.G. Rose, a similar logic applies to rationality: up to a point, it is invaluable, but once it ceases to relate dialectically with “truth” and “nonrationality,” it becomes autocannibalistic. But why should we think that if rationality has worked so well for so long? Indeed, history cannot be a guide: as Nassim Taleb discusses, we are like the turkey up to Thanksgiving Day, and if the only way to stop our “festive execution” is through the limitation of tools, and if it is the case that ‘[l]imiting tools for the sake of freedom and conviviality is now such an issue that cannot be raised,’ then our fate could be sealed.⁶⁶ Can we still think the unthinkable? “The impossible” as Lev Shestov and Fondane emphasized? Seems irrational…

‘When maddening behavior becomes the standard of a society, people learn to compete for the right to engage in it. Envy blinds people and makes them compete for addiction.’⁶⁷ Illich believes the “horizon” and “plane” upon which we make decisions itself has been corrupted and dehumanized by Preplanning, a zeitgeist possible after writing and moralized by technology, “tools,” and bureaucracy. We still make choices and thus seem “free,” but the terms by which we make choices and deem some choices “worth making” is organized on a system of values (Preplanning). This system is naturally beyond choice and something we have mostly absorbed (as discussed in “Compelling” by O.G. Rose). Illich notes that ‘[m]onopolies […] have been recognized for a century as dangerous by-products of industrial expansion,’ and what he suggests here is the rise and spread of a “Monopoly of Preplanning,” which is to say an ontoepistemological monopoly.⁶⁸ Under this “Preplanning Monopoly,” ‘learning [becomes] education,’ humanity becomes “technology-user,” health becomes medicine, and life becomes studied versus created and lived.⁶⁹

This paper has argued that Illich defends the Unplanned against the Preplanned for the sake of defending our humanity (similar to how Raymond K Hessel suggests the Thymotic need for an “Unarmored Test”), and what we can say is that Illich believes that a zeitgeist of Preplanned Thinking (or PT for short) has taken over the world thanks to the history of writing, technology, bureaucracy, and management (The Managerial Revolution by Brunham is relevant for this topic). The dangers of PT couldn’t be predicted ahead of time, and those dangers are not evidence of a need to erase the causes of PT like writing or technology, but it is to say we require a negation/sublation of PT (to speak of Hegel), which is to say we need to identify the dangers of PT so that we might avoid PT as a zeitgeist and yet still use writing, technology, and the like. We could say that Illich wants us to have space in our hearts and minds for “Unplanned Thinking” (UT), which I would associate with the “nonrational” and “true” (as discussed in The True Isn’t the Rational); otherwise, we cannot avoid “capture” (Deleuze) or dehumanization in general.

Under PT, we naturally begin to associate “real thinking” with thinking that can be mapped out ahead of time, systematized, and quantified, which means that UT is considered “false thinking,” which is to say we begin to believe that it is “irrational” to engage in thinking that cannot be predicted ahead of time, is improvisational, and far more qualitative than quantitative. If Illich is right that the Unplanned is needed for “humans to be human,” then PT makes the thinking we need to be human irrational (and even “unthinkable”). It becomes irrational to be ready for the chance encounter of our “neighbor” on the side of the road, and though nobody would say being so prepared is irrational directly, that is “practically” the result. Rationality then, under PT, is in service of dehumanization, if humans are “the rational animal,” that means humans under PT are “the dehumanizing animal.” We are perhaps “less than animal” (“being animal” might be an advancement, as Deleuze might suggest).

Our world is one in which UT is “not real thinking” while PT is “real thinking,” and so to engage in “real thinking” is to think against humanity. If it cannot be written down, systematized, or quantified, it hardly seems “real” today, and yet if Illich is right, that means the only “real thinking” is that which can be “captured’ (Deleuze) and controlled. Like improvisation and qualification, UT sets limits on what can be “captured” by power, and so it is perhaps in the interest of power to replace UT with PT, as perhaps power has accomplished gradually through economics. Illich warns that ‘[t]he illusion that a higher culture is one that uses the highest possible quantities of energy must be overcome if we are to get tools into focus,’ but we learn from Vaclav Smil that economic growth and energy-consumption profoundly correlate, and so what Illich suggests would require a decline in economic growth.⁷⁰ Are we willing to sacrifice money for focus? If not, then PT will only spread.

The use of energy is fascinating to consider, for Illich notes how it used to be that the main energy for economic activity was ‘[h]uman metabolism [which] powered agriculture, manufacturing, and war.’⁷¹ This naturally set limits on how “totalizing” a system could become (humans must eat, sleep, be born, and die, after all), and furthermore metabolism as the “prime engine” helped keep the world in UT from “autonomous PT.” ‘The energy that rulers could control was the sum of the performance their subjects voluntarily or involuntarily conceded,’ but now thanks to machines, rulers seem to have no limit to the amount of energy they can control.⁷² Bringing together a few lines of thought from O.G. Rose, we can understand “modern totalization” as possible thanks to:

David Hume
A philosophical, abstract, and noncontingent justification for power
The spread of philosophical consciousness
(see The Absolute Choice by O.G. Rose)

Ivan Illich
The movement of human metabolism to other energy sources
The treatment of PT as “real thinking.”

These are certainly not the only causes of “modern totalization,” but they seem to be key shifts in the zeitgeist to make “totalization” possible, which also suggests that Deirdre McCloskey is correct to suggest the world is made by ideas (though Hegel might want to stress that material conditions, especially in terms of “information technology,” are central in shifts of ideas).⁷³ Illich would help us set limits on “modern totalization” which leads to “Too Big to Fail” systems and dysfunction which follows size (as Leopold Koh discusses), and though all of us might say we want “smaller systems” and “decentralization,” in practice we still tend to favor PT, for UT requires us to pay a price (in terms of anxiety and responsibility, economic growth, risk, etc.). ‘[This] price will not be paid unless the public learns to value the potential of a convivial society over the illusion of progress. It will not be paid voluntarily by those who confuse conviviality with intolerable poverty’ (exactly as PT would have us believe, perhaps as power wants).⁷⁴

Illich suggests a need for us to value and even moralize “human thought” as “realest thought,” and that would be Unplanned Thought. We tend to associate deepest thought with scientific and “objective” thinking, but Illich suggests a world in which we see the genius of jazz improvisation, of crafting a novel, of the Hip Hop Cyphers, of know how to responding to live and surprising situations, etc., as perhaps “the most human thought.” No, this doesn’t mean jazz is more important than science, but it does mean that both kinds of thinking play a role, and even if we might want to emphasize UT over PT, ultimately we want PT “ordered after and with” UT. Yes, Illich would have us choose UT over PT whenever we had to choose (especially when not obvious which was needed). Life needs both quality and quantity, and though everyone likely agrees with this when asked directly, practically under PT we slip into seeking “autonomous quantity” without qualification. This has brought about self-effacement.

‘Like intolerable pollution, intolerable monopoly cannot be defined in advance,’ which is to say we could not know that a “Preplanned Monopoly” was forming until it did.⁷⁵ In one way this is terrible, but in another way it suggests our innocence in how the world has formed. We should not feel guilty for what has happened, but we also should feel responsible for changing it.

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Notes

³⁹Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 105.

⁴⁰Was communication in silence possible before writing? Perhaps the “ability to think” in silence was trained and made possible by writing? Does this make us more metaphysical (alluding to Derrida)? A ‘deafening silence that [made] it impossible for the reader to know anything about the writer’ was perhaps not possible before writing, and if the author can be associated with “author-ity,” did writing make it possible for power to control us without speech? (A) Is this a great form of oppression?

(A) Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 127.

⁴¹Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 39.

⁴²Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 141.

⁴³Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 105.

⁴⁴Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 106.

⁴⁵For Illich, this suggests why it is paramount that God becomes flesh in Christianity, for it means God becomes to some degree “seeable,” which means “how” we see and experience God (and the world) changes.

⁴⁶Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 109.

⁴⁷Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 41.

⁴⁸Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 32.

⁴⁹Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 89.

⁵⁰Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1988: 4.

⁵¹Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 55.

⁵²Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 2.

⁵³Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 122.

⁵⁴Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 4.

⁵⁵Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 10.

⁵⁶Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 127.

⁵⁷Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 13.

⁵⁸Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 16.

⁵⁹Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 17.

⁶⁰Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 103.

⁶¹Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 76.

⁶²Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 130.

⁶³Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 129.

⁶⁴Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1976: 132.

⁶⁵Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 84.

⁶⁶Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 91.

⁶⁷Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 79.

⁶⁸Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 51.

⁶⁹Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 60.

⁷⁰Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 26.

⁷¹Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 26.

⁷²Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 26.

⁷³Also, I believe these points suggest “The Dialectic Between Creativity and Energy” by O.G. Rose, which argues a dialectic between energy and creativity generates the socioeconomic condition.

⁷⁴Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 56.

⁷⁵Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 55.

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For more, please visit O.G. Rose.com. Also, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram, Anchor, Facebook, and Twitter.

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O.G. Rose

Iowa. Broken Pencil. Allegory. Write Launch. Ponder. Pidgeonholes. W&M. Poydras. Toho. ellipsis. O:JA&L. West Trade. UNO. Pushcart. https://linktr.ee/ogrose