Christian Conviviality in a Hyperindustrial World: Reflecting on Ivan Illich - Part 1

Greystone Conversations

To recover our humanity in an increasingly inhuman world, we must recover tools of conviviality. So what makes a tool convivial. For Ivan Illich, tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used by anybody as often or as seldom as desired for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user. That is, convivial technologies are accessible, flexible, and most importantly noncorrosive. But this runs hard against the grain of a world in which we've been catechized from our youth to believe that without the tools of the professional guild, especially the credentials that they alone can give, we are uneducated, worthless, anonymous, even meaningless. Is there a better way? Unless we find it, we risk destroying one another and ourselves.

In an earlier conversation, and in other Greystone contexts, we've suggested the importance of appreciating the exodus event as liberation not from oppression in general, but oppressions of various particular sorts clarified, identified, and addressed throughout the canon of Christian scripture. One of which is the oppression of the endless demands of productivity. In the Egyptian's sabbath-less world--a world as real now as it was back then--work is a 24/7 reality yielding a mode of life driven by productivity, commodification, and, of necessity, competition. In such a world, you can only have competitors since you need a Sabbath space of rest and rejoicing without labor in order to have a neighbor. To put it differently, if nobody can work in sabbath time and in sabbath space, then, because of that time and space, your neighbor is your neighbor and not your competitor, and life as a result is clearly more than work and productivity. The world in which we live now appears to be very similar to that world from which Yahweh liberated his people, and is thus a world in constant tension with what we are and who we are for as human beings made in the image of God. But how do we articulate the nature of this problem, how do we better understand the way things should be and how we ought to be by reflecting wisely on how and why things are the way they are? Is the solution as simple as opting for traditional liberalism or traditional conservativism? Or is it perhaps a matter of tweaking this or that minor feature of every day life for a better end? Or is the diagnosis and thus the solution far deeper than this and more wide-ranging?

As an organization and institution, Greystone is driven by a unique mission that includes recalling the ways it used to be valued in ministerial and theological formation contexts. The way, that is, communal, slow, thoughtful, textual, conversational, theological, focused on quality rather than quantity, hospitable, realistic, and humble. And we endeavor to bring these old ways into the new world in which we now live. Taking our cue from the role of the Sabbath in the exodus event, we see our mission as a call to renewal not in the form of revolution but of courageous and thoughtful resistance to the commodification and hypeindustrialization of relationships and processes in our world, believing that this resistance is quite key to the church's welfare and success in the world. Along side which we commend a better way--the better way--of the biblical world and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Today's podcast, part one of a two-part series, explores and reflects upon hyperindustrialization and the influence of Ivan Illich on much of what might be considered The Greystone Way.

To discuss the life and work of Ivan Illich, Dr. Mark A. Garcia, President and a Fellow in Scripture and Theology at Greystone Theological Institute, sits down with Greystone's Associate Fellow in Ethics and Culture, Michael Sacasas.
The Skill of Hospitality: Ivan Illich on technology and the human future