By Joe Mancini
Published in December 2021
It is encouraging to see a resurgence in awareness and understanding of the ideas of Ivan Illich. Much credit for this revitalization goes to David Cayley and his staunch determination to keep the flame alive. Earlier this year, Penn State University Press published Cayley’s latest work, Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey. This book is a masterpiece of storytelling that unpacks the insight behind Illich’s writings while intertwining his influential work on the ground as a priest, activist, itinerant scholar and founder of an alternative education culture in Cuernavaca, Mexico. This book is truly Cayley’s gift to the reader, providing a key to help decode our tumultuous world.
Cayley tells the story of Ivan Illich through descriptions of the many ways in which society has managed to sleep walk into a fully and completely institutionalized existence. When Illich started writing in the 1950’s he, similar to many of his peers, saw the possibility that institutions could be democratically managed and turned into instruments of creativity, diversity and cultural support. Illich’s insights flowered in the 1970’s with books on medicine, energy, schooling, work and tools that proclaimed the possibility of an alternative future that incorporated limits, space for the homemade, access to tools, learning networks and self-care. Yet at the same time the scope for institutions grew and expanded with little interest in making decentralized structures effective. Rather, the combination of digitalization, dependence on consumerism, centralized tools and management techniques became the means for dominating cultural structures. The ideals of Tools for Conviviality were swarmed by dominating institutional growth.
Illich warned of the institutionalized cage that was being built. In Tools for Conviviality he had already predicted what would happen if limits and balances were not found. He described an “uninhabitable social and natural environment in which personal initiative would shrink, polarization would grow,” “all bridges to a normative past” would be broken and “the world [would be] transform[ed] … into a treatment ward in which people are constantly taught, socialized, normalized, tested and reformed.”
The Art of Living
The world that has been created through institutions and technology gives the illusion of freedom but this technocratic world holds little meaning if our culture has forgotten how to teach the art of living. The search for meaning and foundation is now being conducted after our social and cultural traditions have begun to fade. The art of living is the heart of culture. It is a deep understanding of the meaning of suffering. It is the teaching of relationship building and the importance of compassion. It is practicing how to know who is my neighbour. It is creating room for seeing joy in the success of others. Dorothy Day taught that the only way to personally deepen the meaning of love is by taking less and giving to others. The art of living is not taught in institutions, it is lived in cultures where the common good is “summoned through solidarity” and comes alive in day to day work.
In this dense but readable journey of the Illich story, David Cayley follows three themes that are relevant to Working Centre ideas on how to re-embed the art of living into culture. In other words, how to slow down the institutional train and start building a more intentional culture in our neighbourhoods. This is less a political program than the importance of teaching culture to one another.
Multiple Balances
David draws a portrait of Illich as a philosopher of complementarity, a philosopher who saw the need for multiple balances on every question, and especially how contradiction and proportionality were a fact of human existence. Illich drew these insights into his works, describing the social reality on the ground. He was certain that as the number of cars increased, bikes and people were pushed off the road. Even with a new push for bike lanes, it is hard to refute that conclusion. The more schooling dominates society, the greater the number of people who are marginalized by credentialism. One size fits all solutions are worse than an illusion, they turn into dominating structures that reduce autonomous action. Complementarity for Illich was a principle of opposition to large, centralizing structures and it offers a means towards developing limits. His hope for multiple balances was creating room for decentralized ways of acting that renounce grand plans and instead contribute to projects and simple daily living that make the community better.
Constitution of Limits
A core tenant of Illich’s thought was his concern that society had an “impossible dream of endless growth and ever-intensifying institutional care.” Cayley summarizes Illich’s opposition to this dream in one catchy phrase – a Constitution of Limits.
How can we embrace limits both to understand our humanity and to create structures at the grassroots that avoid dominating interventions that reduce autonomous action? Illich, as Cayley often emphasizes, had no more use for state imposed healthcare than state mandated environmental plans. Illich used all his life energy to teach and describe how human communities can use less and share more. But now, as consumption of the earth’s resources skyrocket beyond sustainability, absolute limits are on the table. COP26 considered capping fossil fuel use. The Globe and Mail wrote an editorial supporting the Liberal government’s proposed cap on greenhouse gases from the oil and gas industry which now represents 26% of all greenhouse gases in Canada. Limits are part of our inherent reality. How can we embrace them before even more limits are imposed?
Tools for Conviviality
Community Tools projects at The Working Centre have tried to reflect Illich’s insights from his book Tools for Conviviality. Cayley helps the reader understand the multiple meanings behind inverting the structure of tools, or as Illich framed it:
“The crisis can only be solved if we 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.”
In Illich’s language, bikes, gardens, recycling projects, housing all have the potential to be tools where culture grows from the cooperative structure. These projects use tools to model reciprocity, generate sustainable income, recognize the meaning of limits, teach craft and instill the virtues of cooperation. They are gathering places for friendship and service to the community.
David Cayley takes the reader through Illich’s 60-year battle with the forces of institutionalization. As a consummate outsider, Illich found strength through lasting friendships. Cayley returns the gift of that friendship as he generously elaborates on Illich’s imagination for the common good of becoming fully human.
