Conviviality Part 1 Ft. Andrew

question being in my podcast on the Growth. So, when I first stumbled upon this concept of conviviality, I thought it was just, you know, one of those exciting, fluffy aged prop buzzwords, right, something you you throw into you know, your your propaganda, your conversations, your descriptions of a better world. You like, Oh, I would love to live in a world it's more convivial on these different things, convivial being defined in the Dictionary as the quality of being friendly

and lively. Right. Synonyms include amiability, affability, continuality, et cetera, et cetera. I didn't come here to be a thesaurus. I came here to talk about the deeper meanings behind these things. Right. So, in such in this world, in this term up in more depth, I ended up going down this rabbit hole and I discovered there's a whole history to the term that spans I mean, I mean, I'm not going as far back as its Latin origins, right. I mean, we could talk about the French and their

loan words making their way into the English language. We could talk about the Spanish concept of contivencia being interpreted literally as living in the company of others, or in one particular context, such as in Spain between the eighteenth and fifteenth centuries, describing deep, peaceful co existence between different

religious groups. But I'm not going that far back. I'm sticking to the history of the term, from ivan Ilich to the de growth movement to the conviviality manifestos that have come out of online and offline discussions, academic and non academic discussions of this idea of conviviality. Now, I gave a sort of a basic dictionary definition before, but I want to go a bit deeper, Right, So what

is conviviality exactly? Conviviality is about creating a fun and friendly atmosphere where people can come together and have a great time. That's it in this essence, right, It's I feel and you get when you're surrounded by lively conversations and laughter and a sense of celebration. You know, those moments where everyone's enjoying each other's company and it's a real sense of camaraderie. I think using conviviality as a

barometer is really helpful in organizing situations. Right. If you're in an environment where you are organized and where you're doing practice and you're not picking up those convivial vibes, it may be a sign that there's some toxicity in the mix there. I'm not saying that the work of activism has to be a trip to amusement park, right, It doesn't have to be a carnival, but I think

there does need to be facilidarity to exist. I think there should have some level of camaraderie and conviviality in the atmosphere. So you can think of conviviality as the spirit of hospitality and warmth. Right, It's like when you gather with your friends or when you have those family occasions and bring it around together. Even in work, police you know, when you and your workers get along really well and you're organizing to create this union and you're

going to take down your boss. It's a fun time, right, And so how do we get from this? You know, sort of seemingly simple, sociable idea of living and enjoying life in the company of others, making people feel welcome and included. How do we move from that idea this conviviality is a vital part of human interaction, to conviviality

in a more political context. How do we go from just talking about social connections and adding meaning to our lives and enjoying festivities and shift to conversations about the social and political state of the world. Right now, Right There's this one particular guy who's kind of responsible for this, A guy I personally like to call the illest, that being the one and only Australian philosopher, social critic and Catholic priest Ivan elch Over. The course, it was nearly

eighty years of life since nineteen twenty six. This multi hyphenate, I think that's the term where you use people who have a lot of different titles. Right, This multi hyphenate from Vienna, Italy had a significant impact on a bunch of fields, you know, from education to medicines, technology to social justice. I know his name because he came up a lot when I was doing research on unschooling, te school and and just the education system as a whole.

But apparently he's done a lot more than just that. He's challenged. He's challenged conventional thinking in all sorts of fields, and he's questioned the inherent assumptions and structures of modern society. Evans, And I hope he doesn't mind that I call me I Van, because I don't know if I'm pronouncing his German name correctly, right, his German lasting correctly, So just call him Ivan. He probably wouldn't mind, because he's dead. But Evan's intellectual journey took him through a bunch of

different paths, right. He studied theology and philosophy and eventually became a priest, and he lived and worked in different parts of the world, including Latin America, where he witnessed first hand the effects of development projects and the powerdynamics between developed and developing nations, and those experiences deeply influenced

his critical perspective on the modern industrialized world. He also became a very prolific author, known for his thought provoking and often controversial writings, such as The School and Society,

which he published in nineteen seventy one. Tools for Contoviality, published nineteen seventy three and Medical Nemesis, published in nineteen seventy six, and in these books he challenged established institutions and systems offered alternative visions that emphasized individual autonomy, community engagement, and wait for it, convivial relationships, ilicious or evans critique of education systems contributed to the development of altunative educational

approaches such as homeschooling, on schooling, and learner centered education. His examination of the medical establishment sparked discussions on patient empowerment and the need for a more participatory model of healthcare, something I would like to discuss in a future episode, though I would like to find someone in the disability justice space to have that discussion with, because that is an area of experiential ignorance for me. Yeah, So if

anybody has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. But Evan's legacy, right, it extends far beyond his lifetime, as it's clear he has elasting impact on critical theory, on social philosophy, and the quest for a more just and humane world. And I'm gassed up the guy a lot, and I'm sure he has some flaws that someone will no doubt inform me about and I have not read all of it. Yeah, he does go. He did go sign the Catholic jage barbing a priest. I s right, So I'm sure he

has his flaws. And I have not read all of his literature. I haven't even read Medical Nemesis yet. But in Tools of Conviviality in particular, I want to discuss his perspective on conviviality and its role in society. Right in the book, he expresses these deep concerns about the negative effects of modern institutions and systems, and he argued that they often hindered personal freedom, autonomy, and human flourishing.

He believed that many of our socialstructures had become oppressive, as they dictated not only how we should live, learn, and interact, but also how we saw ourselves as people. He argued that our systems had become highly centralized, reliant on professional expertise, and complex technologies that limited individual agency and self determination. Now, one could be bad faith, I suppose and say that, oh, is he saying that, you know, Ivan was anti complex technology? Is some sort of popular

culture vastardization of Luodites or something. But his concern was not necessarily on the technology itself and the complexity of technology, but more so how that technology slotted into the structure of society as a whole. Right, His concern was about how these elite professional groups had established what he called a rat monopoly over fundamental human activities, including health, agriculture,

home building, and learning. And this monopoly, it's monopoly is criticized and all the technology, but the monopoly, according to Ivan, had led to a detrimental war and subsistence that deprived formerly pasant societies of the essential skills and know how.

like the sort of social technological aspect of it. Of like the fact that this was combined with this massive sort of social technological push to you know, drive farmers into debt you know, so they could afford the inputs for this stuff, and what it did to sort of what it did to the actual farming communities, and what it did to people's livelihoods, and you know the way that like a lot of this was just the sort of smoke screen for like consolidation of major landowners, et cetera,

et cetera. Like I think I think he's pretty on the right point.

farming techniques. And the Green Revolution is basically responsible for a lot of the most damaging practices that we see in agriculture today, right from the heavy reliance on chemical inputs like futilizers and pesticides, which leads to you know, soil degradation, pollution, lost by diversity, you know, the emphasis on monocultures and replacements of traditional crop varieties of high

yielding ones. The reduced agrobi diversity and led to diseases proliferate in between certain species, intensive farming practices that could not be kept up with by small scale farmers, like Mio was saying, the consolidation of land and the ability to manage that land into these acribusiness corporations and major landowners.

people should have good things. Oh you're dirty red comedy you. But you know it's it's just well, it's just literally wealthier capitalism. But apparently that too much for a lot of capitalists. Apparently, I mean literally the reason we have welfare capitalism is because socialists forward for it in early twentieth century and early to mid twentieth century. So you know,

we have socialist to thank for everything basically. But I'm getting off track, right, So, like I was saying, this monopoly, this radical monopoly over fundamental human activities, that's a detrimental war and subsistence that are deprived peasant societies of the essential skills and know how, instead of promoting human flourishing, all this economic development ended up feeding into what Yvan has termed modernized poverty. And it's something I think about often, Right,

this idea of the poor back then versus the poor now. Right, And of course it depends on which society you're talking about, which time period you're talking about, But let's just pick some random like historic poor person. Right, let's just say, I don't know generic civilization. A. This person is poor, right, they after work, they have to work the land backbreaking toil.

Sometimes raiders would roll it and be like, oh, we're going to take your stuff now, and then they would like ride their horses away and probably I don't know, dab on you or whatever, or the raiders will roll in, they'll take your stuff and then they'll be like, oh, I want to stay. And then now you have to pay taxes to me every year. And you know, that's how a lot of states were created. But whether it's you know, nomadic warlords or settled warlords, at least you

had a house, at least you had a community. At least you had the ability to grow your own food, even though a lot of that food was being taxed. And you know, at least you had certain skills that you could use to sustain yourself. Right. Compare that to modern poverty, where you have this large swath of people who are dependent, who are mechanical parts in a system that they cannot fully understand, comprehend and control for themselves.

With this, you know, whole industrial revolution where you take this process of making a chair, for example, and you break it up into a bunch of different steps, and each person that step you knows how to do one thing, but they don't have to do the entire thing. Right Like the poor today versus the poor of yesteryear, the latter still had these skills for subsistence, and many of

today is poor, particularly the urban poor. Because I know the rural poor, a lot of them still sustain themselves, still practice you know, sustem, subsistence farm and that kind of thing, but particularly the urban poor, they don't even have like a lot of those skills to rely on

even sustain themselves in that level. For the urbanists in the audience, you might appreciate the Devan also talks about the dominance of cars and how they've created this radical monopoly over land sitting out urban environments into the domain of cars, which not only compromises the environment for pedestrians and cyclists, but also disrupts our innate mobility as human beings.

Steven takes it a step further right. And this particular opinion opinion of his is a bit shaky for me, so something I've been lettin stewing my brain a little bit more. But let me just read the quote the radical monopoly cars established is destructive in a special way. Cars create distance, speedy vehicles of all kinds, frendous scarce. They drive wedges of highways into populated areas and the next door tolls on the bridge over the remoteness between

people that was manufactured for their sake. This monopoly overland turn space into car fodder. It destroys the environment for feet and bicycles. Even if polices and buses could run as non pollutant, Even if planes and buses could run as non pollutant, non deplete and public services they're inhuman velocities, would degrademans in need mobility and force him to spend more time for the sake of travel. I'm sure he could pick up on why that particular opinion is a

bit shaky, right, Yeah, it's not just anti car. He's also a bit anti plane and bus.

know what you think of those inhuman velocities. But anyway, memes aside, I think the benefit of Evan's critique of the radical monopoly is that it provides a different perspective, right. It sheds light on the negative consequences of excessive specialization, technocratic control, and the prioritization of speed and efficiency over

human well being. Zoeb on YouTube actually has a really great video and the idea of efficiency as this ultimate moral good, So I recommend checking that out, especially since the standard narrative that we are utterly bombarded by is that all these things are uncontroversially good. Right. What I appreciate about Yvan and his ideas is that they challenge us to reconsider our relationship with systems, tools, and institutions, and he encourages us to strive for more balanced and

confivial society. And what does that convivial society look like to him? Well, let's continue Ivan's solution argues for the developments of new, accessible and user friendly instruments that would allow average citizens to regain practical knowledge and reclaim control over their lives, as well as resist the domination of specialized elites. That's why Ivan Ilich's book Tools for Conviviality is sponsored by Skills. All right, I know that was

a bad joke. Yvan believed that society should be organized to serve the needs and aspirations of individuals, rather than creating systems that limit their potential and autronomy. And so for Yvan conviviality. Here we are back to the original topic. Conviviality represented a society in which individuals had the power to shape their own lives, free from excessor dependence on

institutionalized systems. He envisioned a world people had access to convivial tools, simple, user friendly technologies that empowered them to take control of their own destinies. For example, the dominant education system separates learners from the real world and disempowers them. Ivan advocates for more self directed and community based education, where people could pursue knowledge and skills according to their

own interests and needs. Yvan also critiques the overreliance on medical professionals and call for a shift towards a more participatory model of healthcare that gives individuals access to information and resources that allow them to actively participate in their own health decisions rather than be in these passive recipients of medical interventions. In transportation systems, he also advocates for

more human skill and community oriented transportation alternatives. He envisions neighborhoods designed for walking and biking, which would foster social interactions and reduce the environmental impact of excessive motorized transport. In essence, Evan viewed Forviality as a transformative concept that aimed to restore individual agency and personal connections and a

sense of empowerment in society. He challenged the prevalance structures and systems that limited human potential and proposed more participatory, community driven alternatives, and to this day, his ideas continue to inspire discussions on how we can create a convivial society that values human relationships, self determination, and a shared

responsibility for shaping our own lives. What I found particularly interesting in researching this was learning that the book's vision of tools that would be developed maintained by a community of users that actually had significant influence on the first developers the personal computer mind blowing. I know, most notably one of the create first developers of the PC, Lee

Felt Felsenstein. Lee Felsenstein, He and several others were just were inspired by this idea within the book, because we remember Ivana's righting this before the internet, and they go and they take this idea, and then they make the internet or they make the personal computer, because computers existed prior to the personal computer, but they weren't as accessible, they weren't a tool of conviviality, whereas the personal computer of today is. And I just think that's beautiful and amazing.

But Ivan's ideas did more than just you know, shape the course of human history. He also would shaped the

creation of confiviulist movement. In twenty ten, eight years after Ivan died, and thirty seven years after Ivan published Tools for Conviviality, Raymond de Boiver published Convivialism, a philosophical Manifesto, and in it, Barvert begins by discussing the key theme in Michael Polland's books The Botany of Desire, which is a great read, by the way, and the Omnivars Dilemma, which I haven't read yet, but the key theme is

co evolution, right. The first book humorously suggests that plants manipulate humans to coevolve, with them taking care of their needs and exchange for nutrition or beauty, and the second book, the Omnivoice Dilemma, the importance of interconnected components for vibrant pharm is emphasized, corn serving as an example of a

plant that relies on humans for survival. WaveRT proposes that focusing on the prefix co in co evolution could have philosophical implications similar to William James's emphasis on the preposition with by you know. Examining the significance of these prepositions co, com con or coal as well as sin, the author

argues for a philosophy that recognizes omnipresent interconnection. Michael Polland's books do this well in the context of food, but Waver wants to take this The implications of this uh taken preposition seriously into a rearrange ing the philosophy itself, and now we're getting, you know, kind of heavy, right.

As Quavert argues, philosophers have often neglected the significance of interconnected relationships, while farmers recognize the importance of interconnectedness, you know, how things like land and water and stuff all work together. Modern philosophy, on the other hand, according to Bovair, since the Renaissance, has been focused on these self standing and independent entities, not interconnected entities. And I don't know how true this is because I'm not I didn't study philosophy.

I'm just communicating Barveao's arguments here, right. And so the idea of autonomy in modern philosophy, according to barve seem to exclude the with factor and existence, relegating relations and interconnections to a secondary rule. So Whatver is saying is that philosophy is sort on this foundation that we are autonomous and self sufficient first, right, and then everything else comes after. You know. Rousseau, for example, portrayed an idyllic

existence where connections, independencies of views as these impositions. You know, we went from being autonomous to being stuck in this web of interdependencies, and then as a result coming down to that the philosophical idea of liberation, uh for some ended up returning for some meant to return into this

original state of authenticity and disengagement from connections. The concept of freedom itself became something that was anti interdependency, and so the focus shifted away from this idea of humans

being inherently interdependent. But then this alternative point of view came about, right, and this shift coincided with the introduction of the terms symbiosis and biology, which combined the Greek word for life with the preposition with and the concept of symbiosis found its way eventually into everyday language and discourse.

So that's the Greek term symbiosis. Then we go to the Latin term conviviality, meaning with living, and that long predated you know, science and philosophy used to describe just ordinary experiences. And so to avoid getting lost into the philosopher's favorite past time of you know, navigating various words and all their package to boil a downed simplicity, Boivert is seeking to ask what a conviviulous turn in philosophy might look like and what changes in philosophy might be

taken place. For one, he's concerned with how embracing trivialism might change our understanding of metaphysics right by embracing this metaphors of existence as about the relation and conjunction between components or the interplane interconnectedness of various elements, rather than about a collection of separate units. You end up going from this position of isolation to this position of profound interrelation, and then you begin to focus on the interactions between

people rather than just the uh experiences within people. In the sphere of philosophical anthropology, while Fare argues that a convivial ton would mean redefined in humanity, you know, taking this concept that you know, we're not just these purely

logical and calculating beings. We are homo sapiens. And the term sapiens is derived from the Latin word for tasting, which highlights the human capacity to constantly try and test, to constantly experiments, to actually participate in interactions with our surroundings.

So in this convivial turn, we return to the original definition of for me, and we gave ourselves right as taste does, as flexible, educable, subject to investigation and improvement, constantly testing and experiment and then seeing what is best in specific contexts. Seeing that taste as sapiens, as homo sapiens, taste is inherently pluralistic, because there is no universe your cell taste, There is no single taste that is like, oh, this is the taste. Everybody must have care to this taste.

Everybody has a different taste. We talk about that when we talk about taste, and I think the implications are particularly profound when we bring it into the preferative this sphy of prefrigative politics. Right whereas tasters as experimenters, we are looking for ways to prefigure new social relations and institutions and relationships and structures and systems for the future in the here now, and that requires tastes, and that

requires experimentation. That requires an acceptance of pluralism because everyone has a different taste and everyone's going to bring something different to the table. That's beautiful. And then, also in the field of epistemology, the conribulists perspective challenges the opposition between subject and object and understand reality. Rejects the idea of the mind as a mere mirror reflects in reality

or project to impotant conceptual schemes onto reality. Because confivialism is about how the intermediaries, the facility to interactions, how they affect the way that we perceive and reflect on

reality itself. It also requires us to let go of this subject object dichotomy in our pursuit of knowledge and understanding, which itself has implications on even the field of science, because you know, the idea of the scientists and the popular imagination is you know the subject who is whatever that scientist is studying, that is the But convivialism causes suppose and reflect on how that subject, that object, and how intermediary is between them affect their perception of each other,

affect the subject, the scientist's ability to pursue knowledge and understanding affects the objects if the object is a person to do the same. And finally, Baver digs into the rigid division between nature and culture and how the convivialist perspective challenges that the continuous interactions and transformations that occur in existence makes it problematic to consider the divisions between human societies, between human societies and the ecosystems that surround

them as fundamental aspects of existence. Right, the boundary between nature and culture is one that constantly blues. It is difficult to place, particularly when there's an embrace by certain cultures of that interconnectedness and interdependence between their culture and the nature that surrounds them. And then when you see that blurring of lines between culture and nature, you might also recognize a blurring of lines between human and non human.

In the context of community, the idea of community being an exclusively human domain becomes less apt, I suppose, as it recognize the way that non humans influence and effect and engage and interact with humans in this you know, collectivity. We use terms like commun unity and city and society and stuff to refer to the human aspects of interaction, and we use things like ecosystem and biome to emphasize

non human aspects of interaction. But the interactions between humans, animals, plants, and inanimate entity is to not always thought so neatly into that metaphysical description of reality. Of course, we use these divisions for certain specific research purposes. We say, oh, I'm a sociologist, dom an anthropologists, I'm a biologist, and ecologists, etc.

But we can't forget that convivialism. Conviviality asks us not to forget that those are human impositions that we should not let obscure our ability to make sense of reality as a whole. I know, things got really heavy there. I hope that everything I said made sense and if you need a breather or some time to pause and reflect further on the implications on this simple, cute fun

to say a little Latin word, conviviality. We're going to take a pause here, but next time you can join us as we discuss how people have gone from this term to urge his ideas two Jave's philosophical indications to more recent manifestos of the convivial movement and how they can relate to the growth and beyond. You can find me on YouTube dot com slash andeurism, and you can support you on peaton dot com slash Saint True once again Montrue joined by Mio and this is It could

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