Section V.4D of Belonging Again II.1
On Ivan Illich and Ironies of Comfort and (Un)free Time
‘Money devalues what it cannot measure,’ Illich tells us, and that means money suggests what it cannot buy is that which doesn’t really matter (perhaps contributing to the loss of “social capital” and social gatherings), and yet “the unpriced” might be what matters most of all.⁵⁷⁶ This is a similar dynamic that arises between “wage labor” and “shadow work,” and if it is the case that money requires what it cannot buy to function (as it could be the case that society requires what cannot be monetized), then we will find further reason to think that economics is “fundamentally incomplete.” Furthermore, if the conditions that make possible the Artifex and Rhetoric cannot be measured in terms of money, money might devalue what it requires to avoid the DEH and thus maintain its worth (“incompleteness” makes possible irony).⁵⁷⁷
Professor Michael Sandel in What Money Can’t Buy points out that money and pricing can crowd out civic duty and self-motivation. In line with the thought of Daniel Pink, since self-motivation is an engine of creative thinking, a failure to keep market economies from expanding into market societies can result in a dwindling of the Artifexian class, the impulsion of “the material dialectic” of Marx, and collapse of the market economy. This is because creativity can cultivate the capacity to discern values other than monetary values, for creative individuals must have vision and drive to complete their creation long before money is involved. A creative person has to value what he or she envisions for his or her self: though it may generate revenue eventually, this internal value and “internal coordination” has to come first. Creativity can cultivate character, and it is through character that people can discern values other than market ones. Creativity also forces individuals to stand by what they believe in, and so take their beliefs very seriously — but perhaps only where “creativity is created” versus where “creativity is stimulated.”
Favoring Discourse over Rhetoric, marketization can help us avoid angst, for when the markets decide our values, we don’t have to decide them for ourselves. If we did choose them, we would have to pick standards of value by which to make these decisions, and this could cause anxiety and be an additional hardship to add to our already-oversized pile of responsibilities, and yet creativity like Rhetoric, which the market requires, can force an individual to take on “the big questions” (which rise above basic, “low order” causality). An Artifexian can ask, “Why am I doing this?” “What if this doesn’t work out?” “What will other people think?” — questions which can lead to questions like “Who am I?” “What matters to me?” “Why am I here?” It is perhaps not by chance that the loss of creativity and dwindling of the Artifex class has coincided with a loss of philosophy and political discourse, suggesting that when Rhetoric dwindles so also dwindles the capacity to recognize the loss. Furthermore, if such abstract thinking is “unnatural” and yet needed for Rhetoric, then perhaps we can say that the very way the brain works is a reason why we head toward Discourse and so “The Great Stagnation.” And problematically, First World Nations are where necessity might no longer compel us, and so our lives be guided basically by how our brains work (“everything is permitted,” and what occurs then is that which we are “naturally toward” or what we are “trained toward”).⁵⁷⁸ If we don’t train our brains to operate according to “high order” Rhetoric versus “low order” Discourse, then growth will likely slow and lessen into (self-effacing) comfort.
First World Nations head into low growth not because they must but because they naturally tend to be satisfied and less creative (for why create if we’re comfortable?). It’s because they work (which suggests we might problematically define “working” by what generates “nihilism”) — Marcuse was right. And gradually, thanks to that effectiveness, the entire socioeconomic order is made “in the image and likeness” of Discourse. As Illich notes
‘we are the witnesses of a barely perceptible transformation in ordinary language: verbs which formerly expressed satisfying actions have been replaced by nouns which name packages designed for passive consumption only — ‘to learn’ becomes ‘to accumulate credits.’ A profound change in individual and social self-images is here reflected.’⁵⁷⁹
If this change is natural for a nation to undergo as it becomes a First World Nation, then “The Great Stagnation” is easily natural as well, for what Illich writes suggests a cultural shift that is evident even in language that leads to an erosion of the “noneconomic environment” needed for creative exploration and the incubation of the Artifex. ‘Wherever the shadow of economic growth touches us, we are left useless unless employed on a job or engaged in consumption,’ which is to say we are only considered “useful” when we are paid or spend, and if we try to sustain ourselves without “expert help,” we are often seen negatively: ‘the attempt to build a house or set a bone outside the control of certified specialists appears as anarchic conceit.’⁵⁸⁰ Furthermore, ‘[t]he man who produces his own ‘housing’ is looked upon as a deviant who refuses to cooperate with the local pressure group for the delivery of mass-produced housing units.’⁵⁸¹ In other words, if we “do it on our own,” we are irrational and even immoral, but if this kind of spirit and attempt is necessary for the Artifex, this means Discourse leads us to moralize against the way of life which incubates needed creativity in favor of self-effacing Discourse.
‘[Illich’s] aim has been to detect and denounce the false affluence which is always unjust because it can only frustrate,’ and Illich suggests First World Nations lead to a “false affluence” because they disable and limit human capacity, which leave us to feel frustrated with ourselves (hardly wealthy).⁵⁸² In this state, we might be more vulnerable to problems and crises, and problematically we tend to respond to crisis with ‘a headlong rush [into] the escalation of management,’ worsening our trouble in a self-feeding cycle.⁵⁸³ This logic Illich sees in experts he also applies to technology, and it should be noted how we also tend to respond to failures of technology with more technology (suggesting two angles that contribute to “The Great Stagnation”). ‘The hypothesis was that machines [could] replace slaves. The evidence shows that, used for this purpose, machines enslave men. Neither a dictatorial proletariat nor a leisure mass can escape the dominion of constantly expanding industrial tools.’⁵⁸⁴ The implications for this are profound, for it means that a world in which AI and robots take care of our jobs, our manual labor, etc., is a world that is fundamentally wrong: if robots do everything for us, humanity will cease being human (we might become like the rats in the “rat utopia experiment,” as discussed by Samuel Barnes and Owen, an experiment which might be particularly useful for understanding “The Great Stagnation”). As Hegel ironically taught that the slave has a power over the master, so we might make technology master over us in making it our “slaves.” This doesn’t mean technology can’t help us at all, but it does mean that we lose something for everything which technology does instead. Perhaps it’s worth the tradeoff, but the point is that there is a tradeoff: there is no free lunch (and what exactly we trade might not be clear until much later).
‘One can see in this pattern [against leisure and ‘doing our own work’] a reflection of the belief that useful activities by which people both express and satisfy their needs can be replaced indefinitely by standardized goods or services,’ or by technology.⁵⁸⁵ Again, when an expert, professional, or technology isn’t involved, what are doing can be seen as “deviant,” unless that is we are using our “free time” to consume, spend, or “hang out” with others, which suggests that a social dimension can come to serve Discourse (which I think can be associated with the “Extrovert Ideal” that Susan Cain discusses in Quiet). If we do something by ourselves to develop a skill that isn’t acknowledged by the market or can be done by a “professional,” we can be seen not only as irrational but antisocial, which means that the use of time and condition which can help friendship blossom according to Illich and Allan Bloom can come to be seen as antithetical to friendship. Once this occurs, a “friendcession” and “loss of social capital” amidst a “Great Stagnation” seems likely.
As there is social pressure against “doing our own work” and “being alone,” there is also social pressure to gather status and recognition, which might be positive if it was Thymotic (as Owen discusses) and/or involved us increasing and building our “human capacities” (like Illich stresses). Instead, this status is tied to our positioning in the socioeconomic hierarchy and tends to be relative to how well we can manage, systemize, or use technology, which means our status is tied to how much we contribute to the spread of Discourse and live according to its terms. We are hence “recognized’ by the system according to the system, and those who work in favor of Rhetoric then are those who are likely denied status, which can be a mark of shame and anxiety. The citizens can then pressure and judge one another according to status, and so “nudge” one another into Discourse so that they “do something with their lives” (as people who care about us would want for us, yes?). In this way, we can see how Discourse operates socially, even outside the economic system (the system changes our “towardness” everywhere, just like new technologies, following “Representing Beauty” by O.G. Rose). If we are to develop Rhetoric, we will need to locate status and honor in Childhood, not its opposite.
After the 20th century, we seem to know that doing everything the government tells us is tyranny, but we are yet to realize that doing everything experts or technology tell us can also be controlling. But isn’t it irrational to not follow the experts and to not use advanced technology? Indeed, isn’t it irrational not to listen to the king if he represents God? Rationality is god-like (but cannot sustain itself “autonomously,” I fear), and following its “social religion” we overlook ‘the decline in the individual-personal ability to do or to make, which is the price of every additional degree of commodity affluence.’⁵⁸⁶ But perhaps this tradeoff is worth it: the problem is that it’s hard to tell because Discourse structures our “towardness” away from the capacity to even think about this tradeoff and rightly judge it.⁵⁸⁷
‘The waning of the current professional ethos is a necessary condition between needs, contemporary tools, and personal satisfaction. The first step toward this emergence is a skeptical and non-deferential posture of the citizen towards the professional expert [a point which suggests Marcuse]. Social reconstruction begins with a doubt raised among citizens.’⁵⁸⁸ If we never doubt Discourse, Rhetoric will prove doomed and its vanishing invisible, and strangely there seems to be a subconscious connection between “experts” and “technology,” where doubting one is considered to be “doubting everything” (perhaps because it is all conflated under “progress”). Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but it continually feels to me that “technology” and “experts” are conflated (perhaps because the technology is ever-so-advanced that it requires ever-greater experts to manage, not that the experts will necessarily know much better). If everyone needs “tools” to function, but not everyone can be an expert, then we have a problem, for ‘[i]ndividuals need tools to move and to dwell.’⁵⁸⁹ This in mind, it’s clear Illich is not arguing for an abolishment of computers or even experts, but rather he is encouraging us to realize that we must consciously use tools to enhance and extend human capacities versus replace them (as we need experts in extending humanity versus replacing it). Illich believed we are free in the increase of our capacities, and in technologies, systems, experts, etc. being replacements of our capacities externalized from us, there runs the risk of us thinking we have capacity because these “tools” and “accessible experts” can accomplish our tasks at our demand, thus making us seem powerful. But in this we are like the master for Hegel, fooled into believing he or she has the power when really the slave is capable. ‘To the degree that [the person] masters his tools, he can invest the world with his meaning,’ and where we are all “masters,” the world can be meaningless.⁵⁹⁰ Today, for Illich, in becoming “masters,” ‘[o]ur 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.’⁵⁹¹ And what do we produce? Machinehood. Experthood. Machines creating machines. Experts justifying experts. Infinite. ‘People feel joy as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative; while the growth of tools beyond a certain point, increases regimentation, dependence, exploitation, and impotence.’⁵⁹² And beyond this point, tools which cannot be stopped must develop.⁵⁹³
Illich writes:
‘The crisis can be solved only if we learn to invert the present deep structure of tools; if we give people tools that guarantee their right to work with high, independent efficiency, thus simultaneously eliminating the need for either slaves or masters and enhancing each person’s range of freedom. People need new tools to work with rather than tools that ‘work’ for them.’⁵⁹⁴
Illich would deconstruct the entire framework of “slave and master” and have us surrender any and all hopes of living with “slaves” who will do everything for us — that “dream” and fantasy is leading to an improper development and design of tools and technology (which, as this dream develops, contributes to us losing the capacity to see the trouble with it). Technology which becomes our “slaves” or “slave-like” removes our powers to be human; we must instead imagine a world where technology enhances our humanity by increasing the opportunities by which we might improve capable. Perhaps we recognized the trouble with experts like Illich did and thought technology could help us avoid the problem without losing the efficiency, but that does not seem to be the case. We must become more human. We must be Children.
In Abyssal Arrows, published by Philosophy Portal, Carl Hayden Smith discusses the difference between “Hyperhumanism” and “Transhumanism,” and I think Illich would agree with emphasizing Hyperhumanism, which would be an “extension of humanity” versus a replacement. Smith’s work is useful here, and it leads nicely into more from Illich:
‘People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them in use in caring for and about others. Prisoners in rich countries often have access to more things and services than members of their families, but they have no say in how things are to be made and cannot decide what to do with them. Their punishment consists in being deprived of what I shall call ‘conviviality.’ They are degraded to the status of mere consumers.’⁵⁹⁵
The prisoner might have more than free people, and yet the prisoner is not free. With this, Illich is making the point that we today might be making ourselves prisoners in the act of gaining more than we ever had before (we might be using our technologies to make ourselves prisoners amidst everything we need). Illich notes that ‘[a]s the value of services rose, it became almost impossible for people to care’; likewise, as the things needed for freedom were provided, it has become nearly impossible for us to be free (for it has become increasingly difficult for us to increase the capacities needed for freedom without being “nonrational”).⁵⁹⁶ We are prisoners in plentitude. We are rats in utopia. Illich claims that ‘we need procedures to ensure that controls over the tools of society are established and governed by political process rather than by decisions by experts,’ but I don’t think this is possible in a world that lacks the ontoepistemological category of “nonrationality” — hence the work of The True Isn’t the Rational.⁵⁹⁷ Illich writes:
‘I choose the term ‘conviviality’ to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment […] 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.’⁵⁹⁸
We cannot produce or economically grow into conviviality; in fact, all we can do is grow out of it. Our only hope is a change of metric and orientation which is not given to us “rationally” or from facticity, but must instead be chosen “nonrationally” regardless experience — an act of which we might not even have a category in our minds for thinking.⁵⁹⁹ Products of writing, science, systems, institutions, and the like, the very ways according to which we think have been shifted and altered. How might we think what is now beyond the categories of thought? Must we be “shaken out of a dogmatic slumber” by a disaster? Or might beauty awaken us? It’s hard to say, but we must be awake, for ‘[t]ools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as selfdom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user.’⁶⁰⁰ “Chosen by the user” is central, and for Illich we can only so choose if our thinking is not bound to categories beget by technology that we cannot think beyond. To choose technology, we have to think as humans, and saving the human is Illich’s project. This is for us to redeem and save the subject, as taken on at Philosophy Portal by Cadell Last and thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, and Lacan.⁶⁰¹
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Notes
⁵⁷⁶Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 23.
⁵⁷⁷On this point, another reason First World Nations might fall into stagnancy might be captured in What Money Can’t Buy by Michael J. Sandel, which can be seen as a description of how Rhetoric slips into Discourse once everything is seen in terms of the economics and money which Rhetoric makes possible. Sandle warns that market societies (defined from market economies) are growing, which are societies that are willing to value everything through market terms (even at the expense of other values) — he opens his book immediately with descriptions of the costs for upgrading prison cells, a ‘car pool lane while driving solo,’ costs for ‘an Indian surrogate mother to carry a pregnancy,’ and more.¹ ‘We live at a time when almost everything can be bought and sold,’ and for Sandel this means ‘we need to think through the moral limits of markets.’² ³ Illich would agree, agreeing also that adding a price to something isn’t inconsequential, for ‘[m]arkets leave their mark’ and can make us “toward’ Discourse over Rhetoric.⁴
Sandel warns that for a thing or action to be given a market value transforms how humans perceive and interact with that phenomenon, for what we ‘outsource’ to price can ‘demean’ what is outsourced.⁵ Money changes the meaning of goods, and this can be for the good or the bad, but we won’t even “think the tradeoffs” if we don’t even recognize the difference between ‘a market economy’ and ‘a market soceity.’⁶ The moment I try to pay children to read, they may view reading not as a good in itself, but as a means to an end (making us toward “extrinsic motivation” versus “intrinsic motivation”). Though money often incentivizes, Sandel notes, it doesn’t necessarily incentivize toward the end an “employer” has in mind. When I begin giving children $2 for every book they read, this may incentivize them not to become better readers but to read shorter and easier books. Similarly, some efforts to incentivize Rhetoric might lead us into Discourse, a significant problem we must keep in mind as we further think our “problem of scale.”
Sandel notes how it’s possible to pay for express line tickets and special seating during baseball games, and though this might seem harmless, it does mean that we cannot assume that the rich and poor both share the same experience of a given baseball game, or that the rich and the poor can lament equally about long lines. Like a world where we don’t share the same shows or books, this could lead to “social atomization” and separation, which could contribute to class division and alienation (I find it hard not to see this happening as Sandel goes through his examples). Will a society be more unified or less if we started to have to ‘pay to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July?’⁷ Would it be better off and more practical? (It would be more organized by Discourse…)
Monetary values aren’t always bad, but they aren’t always good either (“high order Rhetoric” needs and includes “low order thinking” — the problem is that the other way around can naturally become autonomous). Money shouldn’t be involved in areas that will corrupt rather than improve (which areas are which requires discernment and character to determine), and furthermore we shouldn’t assume that what is more efficient is necessarily better (Sandel makes this point considering ‘moneyball’).⁸
‘Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life,’ but where everything is priced, “common life” will become “common lives according to class tiers.”⁹ Is this better? Is this a society in which creativity flourishes?
¹Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 3.
²Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 5.
³Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 7.
⁴Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 9.
⁵Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 10.
⁶Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 11.
⁷Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 33.
⁸Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 179.
⁹Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012: 203.
⁵⁷⁸Unless they perhaps educate themselves out of it, humans seem like they cannot avoid wanting purpose and asking, “What’s the point?” Creativity arguably enables an individual to synthesis all experiences and phenomena in one’s life into a produced whole, hence making it possible to give everything in one’s life “a point.” Nothing in a creative life ever must be pointless: an Artifexian can direct anything and everything “toward” a point of his or her making. Nothing lacks the potential for value. This in mind, the movement toward market societies and the monetization of everything (all of which favors Discourse) is perhaps an effort to fill the void left by the loss of the individual capacity to add creative values to life. Since people have lost the capacity to add values, people require the market to add it for them (a line of thought expanded upon in “On Materialism, Purpose, and Discernment” by O.G. Rose).
Helping balance consumption away from being self-effacing, the creative individual has a standard by which to determine what he or she should consume (“What contributes to my project?”). In this sense, creativity equips an individual with “Creative Judgment,” which might have a teleological basis. Through creativity, an individual can determine which things “fit” the ends of his or her making. Also, what is consumed by a creative individual is usually directed toward a project and so “recycled” into it. A noncreative individual, on the other hand, may decide what to consume through emotions (which can lead to problems expounded upon in “Emotional Judgment” by O.G. Rose), or may use reason, but without creating wealth to replace what is consumed (these points might shed light on why many creative individuals are involved with environmental and sustainability movements).
⁵⁷⁹Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 8.
⁵⁸⁰Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 10.
⁵⁸¹Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 29.
⁵⁸²Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 14.
⁵⁸³Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 20.
⁵⁸⁴Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 10.
⁵⁸⁵Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 28.
⁵⁸⁶Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 30.
⁵⁸⁷Illich discusses “the history of contingency” in human thought and its relation to Christianity, and a reason we might rely on experts and technology is precisely to avoid having to face and experience the radical contingency of being. And yet the very emergence of “The Managerial State” required contingency to occur, a strange double move which Illich can help us grasp.
‘The world comes to be considered as something contingent’ thanks to Christianity, according to Ivan Illich, for the world is made from nothing and thus could have easily not been created at all.¹ In other words, the cosmos becomes ‘something which does not bear within itself a reason or reason to exist,’ and so being is not “given” but instead ‘pure gift’ (and only “given as gift,” per se).² Once the notion of contingency is born, it then becomes possible to imagine God’s Will as contingent, which then means it is possible to ‘understand[] things without reference to God […] because once God’s will has become totally arbitrary it has also become, in a sense, redundant, and the connection between God and the world can easily be cut.’³ Illich notes that ‘[a] contingent nature at its noon is gloriously alive, but it is also uniquely vulnerable to being purified and cleaned of its aliveness [as possible because it’s contingent] in the sunset of contingency.’⁴ Furthermore, contingency is frightening, and this very anxiety can then drive us to try to avoid it — a possibility which contingency also makes possible.
We need contingency in order for it to be possible to rid ourselves of contingency, and in this way the realization of contingency is also the realization of the possibility of (paradoxically and perhaps self-effacingly) freeing ourselves of it through technology, expertise, and the like. “The worst of things is possible in the best of things” for Illich, and we see something similar at play with contingency. It should be noted that contingency was possible in Judaism before Christianity, but there seems to be something about Christianity, the doctrine of grace, the idea that God can choose to do something radically different like send Christ into creation, and the like which brings “contingency” and “possibility” to the forefront of our thinking, and though on the one hand contingency can be seen as making possible experiences of the Unknown, Beauty, and Mystery, on the other hand contingency can be seen as a threat and something we need to “subdue” (to use language from Genesis), and unfortunately there is something about humans which seems to gravitate toward trepidation. With contingency, the possibility of being Unprepared arises, yes, but the very anxiety of this Unpreparedness can drive us into Preplanning — as technology suggests is possible. In this way, by birthing contingency, Christianity birthed the seeds of its own possible corruption with the temptation of Preplanning in response to the possibly-glorious Unplanned.
Illich admits that he is ‘pretty much alone among historians of science in pointing to a world conceived in the spirit of contingency as the origin of the modern conception of tools,’ but he believes he has made the case through his work that Preplanning is our response to an Unplanned cosmos, and in this we come to use tools and technology to control contingency.⁴ Unfortunately, since humanity requires contingency to be human, this means we have invented tools that can cause self-effacement, and we must somehow train ourselves to use our tools to “extend humanity” versus “replace humanity.” A theological notion that this helps support is the belief that God “sustains being,” which is to say we are in ‘a universe of continuous creation,’ but this universe ‘[lies] continuously in the hands of God,’ which is to say that there is something God must do for the universe to be sustained.⁵ Likewise, there is something we must do to remain human, and Illich places that necessity in our relation to technology.
Along with critiquing “thoughtless uses of technology,” throughout all his works, Illich can be seen as critiquing and opposing the ‘fetishism of rules and norms’ in favor of a “Good Samaritan model,” which isn’t merely ‘a stage on the road to a universal morality of rules.’⁶ Illich says that he has ‘chosen […] to write as a historian curious about the undeniable historical consequences of Christian belief,’ and Illich believes that beliefs (say “absorbed” from writing and “ritualistic institutions”) make history.⁷ ‘Belief refers to what exceeds history,’ Illich says, ‘but it also enters history and changes it forever.’⁸ Belief is not merely a thing we choose but functions as the horizon on which things are defined as themselves, and yet rarely do we think about our beliefs. Illich highlights how this impacts our understanding of the neighbor (and thus the orientation of our moral compass), for today we believe that ‘[m]y neighbor is who I choose, not who I have to choose.’⁹ This changes everything and arguably puts ethics in service of my tribe: ethics nearly becomes anti-ethics. Furthermore, if the neighbor is someone I choose, the neighbor is someone I can plan for, and thus Preplanning defines my relationship to my neighbor, which then makes it possible for institutions and systems to care for my neighbor, which of course seems rational and “effective” to do. ‘By assigning the duty to behave in this way to an institution [though, Church Father John Chrysostom warned that] Christians would lose the habit of reserving a bed and having a piece of bread ready in every home, and their households would cease to be Christian homes.’¹⁰ Indeed, the State provides. God is good.
We today might think we are beyond rules and norms, but in our rebellion against “oppressive ethics” we simply turn around and create new ones (our age is radically obsessed with “right behavior” in both Conservatism and Liberalism). We say we don’t need rules, and then learn the game of education where we cite authorities and do what the teacher says; we say we want to think for ourselves, and then look for professionals to tell us how to live our lives; and so on. And this doesn’t mean institutions and authorities are bad, but it does mean we are constantly in the business of looking beyond ourselves to those who would save us from self-discernment and choice, both of which are necessary for us to stay human. The Preplanned can save us from existential anxiety, while the Unplanned would have us view (for example) our neighbor as ‘[t]he one [we] happen across, stumble across, who is wounded there in the road.’¹¹ But what if we’re busy? What if that person is immoral? What if we have a job to do? Then we fail to make room for the Unplanned in our Preplanned life, and in this way risk dehumanization and proving “capturable” (Deleuze). If we are capable though of helping “The One We Stumble Upon” and don’t, would this be an example of the ‘corruption of the best [which] produces a unique evil that only becomes fully intelligible when one gasps its origin?’¹² Perhaps. Always perhaps. (The Other is who Ethics questions or perhaps isn’t an-Other at all — and yet monsters are monstrous to love. For Christ’s sake.)
Illich resisted calling our age ‘post Christian,’ preferring instead to say ‘it is apocalyptic,’ which for him meant “revelatory” and “a time of great decision” versus necessarily a time of destruction and crisis.¹³ This is the choice between “replacing humanity” and “extending humanity,” and Illich sees us as engaging in replacement without even perhaps realizing it. He explores technology, education, healthcare, and writing historically to help awaken us, aware that we are entering an age with even more “replacing technology” that will tempt us into Preplanning more than ever before (we will soon be tempted to perpetually ‘consort[] with the seductive nonentities [which] are constantly being conjured up all around [us]’ thanks to VR).¹⁴ Today, we are experiencing the consequences and dangers of “failing to be human” which results from a forsaking of the (“high order,” Rhetorical…)Unplanned, but before long we might not even be able to tell that we’ve lost our humanity in loving the Unplanned. After all, we’ll be able to see reason that everything is going according to plan…
¹Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 65.
²Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 65.
³Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 68.
⁴Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 70.
⁵Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 75.
⁶Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 74.
⁷Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: xii.
⁸Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 48.
⁹Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 48.
¹⁰Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 51.
¹¹Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 54.
¹²LCayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: xiii.
¹³Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: xvi.
¹⁴Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 177.
¹⁵Cayley, David and Ivan Illich. The Rivers North of the Future. Toronto, Canada: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2005: 119.
⁵⁸⁸Illich, Ivan. The Right to Useful Unemployment. Brewer Street, London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1978: 40.
⁵⁸⁹Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 11.
⁵⁹⁰Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 21.
⁵⁹¹Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 14–15.
⁵⁹²Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 20.
⁵⁹³But how do we “impose limits on them?” Won’t that reduce productivity? Won’t that stifle growth? Indeed, we might have to act “nonrationality” (the address for “Nash Equilibria”), which is a category of activity we might not even have in our minds as possible, conflating “nonrational” with “irrational” — but that is a topic discussed throughout The True Isn’t the Rational by O.G. Rose.
⁵⁹⁴Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 10.
⁵⁹⁵Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 11.
⁵⁹⁶Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 3.
⁵⁹⁷Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 12.
⁵⁹⁸Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 11.
⁵⁹⁹We could say that a world without conviviality is all causation without creation, but how can this change if we don’t even have in our minds a distinction between “causation” and “creation” (if the terms are similes)?
⁶⁰⁰Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1973: 22.
⁶⁰¹1In ancient civilization, we were perhaps “autonomously nonrational,” but after the Enlightenment we became more “autonomously rational”: our challenge now is to be “(non)rational.” We are to be Hyperhuman instead of Transhuman if we are to keep the gains of progress. We must learn to be human and know how to be human, and we must do so now. Otherwise, we likely will not be addressed, and we will not generate for generations.
The centipede could walk until the ladybug asked him how he did it; likewise, we knew how to be human until we had to ask how we managed to be human. As discussed in Belonging Again (Part I), it was once “given” how we should live our lives, think, etc., but now we are free, which means we are less vulnerable to mass movements, but that also means we must decide for ourselves how to be human — and we have not taken up that mantel, as suggested by “The Great Stagnation.” We’ve often acted like things are still “given,” when they are not, and similarly we’ve applied that “thoughtlessness” to technology, creating a Preplanned world, which Ivan Illich saw threatened our humanity. We must today learn how to be human where it is no longer “given,” and yet nobody thinks they don’t know “how” to be human — that’s part of the problem.
How did we end up nonhuman when no one intended to end up nonhuman? Subtly. Discreetly. Slowly. And then one day we woke up and the damage was done, which included our inability to tell the damage was done. Nobody intends to live bad lives, so why do they? Nobody intends for their tools to control them, so why are they controlled? Well, it’s because we don’t know what we don’t know, and we can’t know everything if we want to stay human. (Autocannibalism is natural. Automastery in humanity is the goal.) Ivan Illich saw the fate of humanity tied to our relationship with technology, and he also understand that the very use of technology changed how we thought about tech in ways that made us less likely to use technology to “extend humanity.” Rather, technology naturally teaches us to use technology to “replace humanity,” and that lesson is long in session. Should we go Amish? We wouldn’t need seemingly philosophy for that, nor an invitation to share in a discussion on how we might use technology as “tools of conviviality” versus “means of replacing humanity.” Technology is an art, and thus requires training. You can hurt yourself cooking if you don’t know what you’re doing, and yet we also must eat. Illich was Pro-Human, and humans require tools. Artificial Intelligence will easily help us be more human, but Illich understand such a possibility required us to pay “Attention” on how we used technology; if not, all of us could end up “a Thomas More who caved.” In Hegel, everything is contingent, and the future is entirely open. There are no guarantees, and so there is hope.
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