Convivial tool

Ivan Illich invents the concept of convivial tool in Tools for conviviality (1973) in order to give bases to the advent of an post-industrial company.

User-friendliness

To eat, it is also to share a moment with the others: family, friends, in love (), colleagues, buddies, customers, etc Meal of Sunday, meal of businesses or dinner to the candles, the meal are the occasion to exchange, make knowledge, to entrust, to have fun, work, negotiate, sell, reflect, allure, fight, etc It can do without much things around a table.

The act to eat has many social and emotional implications. One only eats seldom by taste but by need or obligation, and the reduction of the meal to its strict food function withdraws much of its interest to him. A child does not like to only eat, and the isolated elderly lose the appetite because of loneliness.

Meal taken jointly with joint art of living, the " convivialité" from Ivan Illich passes to a critical reflection of a company from where the citizens are absent.

The criticism of the industrial society exposed by Illich in “user-friendliness” rests on a nonMarxist reflection and not anarchist of capitalism. It stops neither on the exploitation of the Man by the Man nor on the domination of the Man by the State. The critic of Illich denounces the constraint which the industrial society inflicts with the Man. Via the concept of " against productivity of the outil" , Illich explains why at a certain time of the industrial development of a company, the institutions, installation by the latter, become ineffective. Thus, the school standardizes and rejects instead of forming, the car immobilizes instead of transporting, medicine does not look after more but makes sick, energy does not ensure more comfort but endangers.

Illich does not cease denouncing the disproportion of the " outils" in the industrial society. The hugeness of the latter is such as it crushes the individual who thus loses his autonomy and his dignity. Thus, when it takes the example of the school, Illich déconstruit the laudatory Vulgate school. By monopolize the mission of education, the school does not teach any more: it excludes nonthe graduates. Moreover, the monopoly of the school, like source of education, enables him to only decide what is worth the sorrow to be taught or not. Thus, they are useful whole pieces of knowledge which is put aside (environment, citizenship, solidarity and co-operation, etc). According to Illich, it would be necessary to stop sacrilizing the school as many contemporary progressists do it and developing other forms of training (groups of teaching in network, houses of further education, exchanges between individuals, etc) in the relation between Autonomie and heteronomy

As a large defender of the principle of autonomy (the Man must remain free of its choices in all circumstances), Illich strikes violent attacks to another " monopoly radical": the car. It does not support the idea that the Man is at this point dependant on a tool. Vis-a-vis their personal vehicle, many citizens thus passed from the statute of control to the statute of constraint. Illich militates for a cultural change of the Homme report/ratio - car. If one adds all the costs inherent in the possession with a car (purchase of the vehicle, gasoline, garage, revisions, tolls, maintenance, insurances, parkings, etc) more time spent to work to be able to pay this expenditure, one realizes social costs higher than that of a taxi or a common transport.

Illich defines, then, three essential criteria so that an instrumentation or an institution is regarded as Juste or " conviviale" :

- it should not degrade personal autonomy while being made essential

- it causes neither slave, nor Master

- it widens the personal operating range

In a last time, Illich denounces the economic growth like ultimate end of the industrial society. According to him, after having reached a certain level of economic development, each company is endangered to want to grow more. He regards the uninterrupted growth as harmful for three reasons:

- it generates social costs (exclusion and/or unemployment, precariousness, alienation)

- it puts in danger the conditions of existence of the Man on ground

- it creates new needs unceasingly

L thus acts to substitute for the industrial society dominated by requirements of economic growth and financial (TO HAVE MORE), a convivial company (TO BE WELL) in which the conditions of a life authentically human on ground will be assured. It is also about the topic of " to have or être" of Erich Fromm.

To have or be

To have children or to be parents, such is the question which has all the importance in art to like and art of living at Erich Fromm in the union-with-world by a constructive and creative freedom (freedom to) or a destroying freedom (freedom from).

As the company where we live is dedicated to the property and the profit, we see only seldom indices of the mode “being” of existence and the majority of people consider the mode “to have” like most natural, if not the only acceptable way to live. All that made that it is particularly difficult for the individuals to include/understand the nature of the mode “being” and, even, realize that the mode “to have” is only one of the possible orientations. These two concepts are however enracinés in the human experiment. None of both should be, cannot be examined in an abstracted way, purely cerebral; both are reflected in our daily life and must be treated concretely. Some examples very simple and very fundamental of the demonstration to have and be in the daily life will help us to include/understand the two modes of existence which propose with the choice of the Man.

To learn

In the mode “to have” existence, the students attend a course, hear words, include/understand their logical structure and their significance and, of their better, register the words in their book, in order to be able, later, to recover their notes in memory and to pass their examinations. But the contents, the substance of the course are not integrated into their personal system of thought and, consequently, do not enrich it nor do not widen it. Instead of that, they transform the words which they hear in given groups of thought or overall theories, that they store. The student and the contents of the courses remain foreign one with the other, regardless of the fact that each student became the owner of a collection of assertions uttered by a third author or transmitter of this information

The students of the mode “to have” have only one goal: to cling so that they have " appris" , either by firmly entrusting it to their memory, or by preserving their notes preciously. They do not have to produce nor to create something again. In fact, the individuals of the type “to have” feel rather constrained by thoughts or novel ideas relative to a topic, because the innovation calls in question the given sum of information which they received. Indeed, for that which is primarily connected to the world according to the mode” to have it”, ideas which cannot be easily stored (or consigned in writing) have something of alarming - as all that evolves/moves and changes - and is thus not controllable.

The process of teaching has very an other quality for the students who belong to the mode “being” of relation in the world. To start, they do not go to the course, even to the first, as a " count rase". They thought before of the problems which the course will tackle and have with the spirit certain questions, certain problems which are clean for them. The topic worried them and interests them. They prepared there and there are “committed”.

Instead of being passive receptacles of words and ideas, they lend the ear, they “listen” and, which is even more important, they “receive” and “react” in an active and productive way. What they listen to stimulates their own process of thought. New questions, new ideas, new prospects wake up in their spirit. Their listening is an alive process. They listen to with interest what the professor says and wake up spontaneously with the life by reaction so that they hear.

They are not satisfied to acquire knowledge which they can bring on their premises and learn by heart. Each one of these students “was touched” and “changed”: each one (or each one) is different from what it was before the course. Obviously, this mode of teaching can succeed only if the course presents a stimulative material. An empty chattering cannot cause a reaction in conformity with the mode “being”, and, in this case, the students of the mode “being” like to better do the deaf person ear in order to concentrate on the process of their own thought.

The word " intérêt" deserve, at the very least, that one pays attention to him while passing. In the everyday usage, it became a pale expression, used; but its essential significance is contained in its Latin root: interest " to be in, or among " . This interest, in the active direction, was expressed as Middle English by the term “to list” (to make an effort actively, to be sincerely interested by) that one finds nothing any more but in his negative form “listless” (indifferent, inattentive, apathetic). The root is the same one as for the “lust” freudien (carnal desire), but in the verb “to list”, it is not a question of a desire whose one is subject to the influence, but of a “desire”, a free and active interest, or of an effort tending towards something. “To list” is the key expression of the anonymous author (medium of XIVe century) of “The Cloud off Unknowing” (" Fog of the unknown " - Evelyn Underhill, ED.). The fact that the language did not retain the word that in its negative form is symptomatic change of spirit of the company since XIIIe century until our days.

Concept of convivial tool

The term of tool is used here in a very broad direction, i.e. any instrument, object or institution put at the service of an intentionality or like means of an end (screwdriver, television set, factory of cassoulet, highways, language, educational establishment, allowed to build, laws, etc). Any human action and social relation are thus done by the means of tools. Illich shows however that the tools are not neutral and model the social relationship between the men as well as the report/ratio of the man in the world. This concept would be included/understood better in the relation between Autonomie and heteronomy and in the " to have or être" of Erich Fromm.

Illich thus distinguishes the tools according to their degree from user-friendliness . The convivial tool is controlled by the man and allows him to work the world with the liking of its intention, its imagination and its creativity. It is a tool which makes autonomous and which returns " able to take care of direction by charging the world with signes". It is thus a tool with which to work and not a tool which works in the place of the man. Contrary the not-convivial tool dominates it and works it.

A convivial tool must thus according to him answer 3 requirements:

it must be generating of efficiency without degrading personal autonomy
it should cause neither slave nor main
it must widen the personal operating range

Here some examples:

convivial tools: the bicycle, the roll of the dice, engines, the telephone, the hydraulic force, the drilling machine, the hoist…
not-convivial tools: the car (which create the distances and refashion the cities with the detriment of the pedestrians and cyclists), the school for all (which produces dunces and the segregation who goes with), our health systems (which industrialize birth and dead, and which generate false hopes, prolongation of the suffering, loneliness and degradation of genetic inheritance), the loan with interest (which created the idea of the " manque" time), the construction standards (which deprive the individuals to build their own house)…

It specifies thus that the user-friendliness of a tool is independent of its technological level or its level of complexity (Illich quotes the telephone like example). A convivial tool can moreover be denatured by its operator or his users (e.g. abusive telephony who harms the social relations, libraries which one locks up in universities closed with the public, dental extraction that one holds for the monopoly of a profession, engines designed to prevent the individual from repairing them…)

According to him, the tools become not-convivial by crossing certain thresholds. It thus distinguishes a first threshold which is crossed when one takes the means for an end (for example when an institution manages from there to fix itself its ends) and that the statistical measurement of the effectiveness becomes the only goal (it gives the example of health). A second threshold is crossed when the supposed industrial tools to meet needs create new evils more serious than the first (concept of marginal desutility).

A criticism of the industrial society

According to Illich, " the man does not nourish only goods and services, but of freedom to work the objects which surround it, to give them form to his taste, to make use of it with and for the autres". A company which drives back this user-friendliness becomes according to him prone to a feeling of lack, the hypertrophy of the productivity not being able to manage to satisfy the needs created.

For Illich, the man becomes with the industrial era " the accessory of the méga-machine" , " a wheel of the bureaucratie" , " a raw material which the outil" works; , institutions drawing up the individuals according to the production targets. The not-convivial products, not being able to be accessible to all, generate frustration of the poor and dissatisfaction of the rich person. Generalized industrialization brings in addition to a homogenization of all, the cultural uprooting and the standardization of the personal relations.

It underlines moreover the paradox according to which, in spite of the level reached and formerly unthinkable of skill to equip itself, it is more than ever difficult for us to imagine a company simply equipped and convivial.

Towards an post-industrial company

Illich considers that a convivial company would be " incomparably more effective than all the rough companies of the past, and incomparably more autonomous than all the programmed companies of the présent" and qu'" recognizes; a company where each one would know what is enough would be perhaps a poor company, it would be surely rich surprises and libre".

The transition towards such an post-industrial company requires according to him triple renouncement: with overpopulation, with the superabundance and surpouvoir. The design of the new necessary tools to a release with respect to the not-convivial tools which surround us, it, is conditioned by a complete inversion of the institutions which govern the application of the results drawn from sciences and technology.

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