Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of It Could Happen
Speaker 1: Here with your guest host Andrew of the YouTube channel Andrewism. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Mia, and I'm looking to discuss a
Speaker 1: topic that I brought up in passing in a previous episode,
Speaker 1: that being the idea of conviviality, and the episode in
Speaker 1: question being in my podcast on the Growth. So, when
Speaker 1: I first stumbled upon this concept of conviviality, I thought
Speaker 1: it was just, you know, one of those exciting, fluffy
Speaker 1: aged prop buzzwords, right, something you you throw into you know,
Speaker 1: your your propaganda, your conversations, your descriptions of a better world.
Speaker 1: You like, Oh, I would love to live in a
Speaker 1: world it's more convivial on these different things, convivial being
Speaker 1: defined in the Dictionary as the quality of being friendly
Speaker 1: and lively. Right. Synonyms include amiability, affability, continuality, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I didn't come here to be a thesaurus.
Speaker 1: I came here to talk about the deeper meanings behind
Speaker 1: these things. Right. So, in such in this world, in
Speaker 1: this term up in more depth, I ended up going
Speaker 1: down this rabbit hole and I discovered there's a whole
Speaker 1: history to the term that spans I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not going as far back as its Latin origins, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could talk about the French and their
Speaker 1: loan words making their way into the English language. We
Speaker 1: could talk about the Spanish concept of contivencia being interpreted
Speaker 1: literally as living in the company of others, or in
Speaker 1: one particular context, such as in Spain between the eighteenth
Speaker 1: and fifteenth centuries, describing deep, peaceful co existence between different
Speaker 1: religious groups. But I'm not going that far back. I'm
Speaker 1: sticking to the history of the term, from ivan Ilich
Speaker 1: to the de growth movement to the conviviality manifestos that
Speaker 1: have come out of online and offline discussions, academic and
Speaker 1: non academic discussions of this idea of conviviality. Now, I
Speaker 1: gave a sort of a basic dictionary definition before, but
Speaker 1: I want to go a bit deeper, Right, So what
Speaker 1: is conviviality exactly? Conviviality is about creating a fun and
Speaker 1: friendly atmosphere where people can come together and have a
Speaker 1: great time. That's it in this essence, right, It's I
Speaker 1: feel and you get when you're surrounded by lively conversations
Speaker 1: and laughter and a sense of celebration. You know, those
Speaker 1: moments where everyone's enjoying each other's company and it's a
Speaker 1: real sense of camaraderie. I think using conviviality as a
Speaker 1: barometer is really helpful in organizing situations. Right. If you're
Speaker 1: in an environment where you are organized and where you're
Speaker 1: doing practice and you're not picking up those convivial vibes,
Speaker 1: it may be a sign that there's some toxicity in
Speaker 1: the mix there. I'm not saying that the work of
Speaker 1: activism has to be a trip to amusement park, right,
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be a carnival, but I think
Speaker 1: there does need to be facilidarity to exist. I think
Speaker 1: there should have some level of camaraderie and conviviality in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. So you can think of conviviality as the
Speaker 1: spirit of hospitality and warmth. Right, It's like when you
Speaker 1: gather with your friends or when you have those family
Speaker 1: occasions and bring it around together. Even in work, police
Speaker 1: you know, when you and your workers get along really
Speaker 1: well and you're organizing to create this union and you're
Speaker 1: going to take down your boss. It's a fun time, right,
Speaker 1: And so how do we get from this? You know,
Speaker 1: sort of seemingly simple, sociable idea of living and enjoying
Speaker 1: life in the company of others, making people feel welcome
Speaker 1: and included. How do we move from that idea this
Speaker 1: conviviality is a vital part of human interaction, to conviviality
Speaker 1: in a more political context. How do we go from
Speaker 1: just talking about social connections and adding meaning to our
Speaker 1: lives and enjoying festivities and shift to conversations about the
Speaker 1: social and political state of the world. Right now, Right
Speaker 1: There's this one particular guy who's kind of responsible for this,
Speaker 1: A guy I personally like to call the illest, that
Speaker 1: being the one and only Australian philosopher, social critic and
Speaker 1: Catholic priest Ivan elch Over. The course, it was nearly
Speaker 1: eighty years of life since nineteen twenty six. This multi hyphenate,
Speaker 1: I think that's the term where you use people who
Speaker 1: have a lot of different titles. Right, This multi hyphenate
Speaker 1: from Vienna, Italy had a significant impact on a bunch
Speaker 1: of fields, you know, from education to medicines, technology to
Speaker 1: social justice. I know his name because he came up
Speaker 1: a lot when I was doing research on unschooling, te
Speaker 1: school and and just the education system as a whole.
Speaker 1: But apparently he's done a lot more than just that.
Speaker 1: He's challenged. He's challenged conventional thinking in all sorts of fields,
Speaker 1: and he's questioned the inherent assumptions and structures of modern society. Evans,
Speaker 1: And I hope he doesn't mind that I call me
Speaker 1: I Van, because I don't know if I'm pronouncing his
Speaker 1: German name correctly, right, his German lasting correctly, So just
Speaker 1: call him Ivan. He probably wouldn't mind, because he's dead.
Speaker 1: But Evan's intellectual journey took him through a bunch of
Speaker 1: different paths, right. He studied theology and philosophy and eventually
Speaker 1: became a priest, and he lived and worked in different
Speaker 1: parts of the world, including Latin America, where he witnessed
Speaker 1: first hand the effects of development projects and the powerdynamics
Speaker 1: between developed and developing nations, and those experiences deeply influenced
Speaker 1: his critical perspective on the modern industrialized world. He also
Speaker 1: became a very prolific author, known for his thought provoking
Speaker 1: and often controversial writings, such as The School and Society,
Speaker 1: which he published in nineteen seventy one. Tools for Contoviality,
Speaker 1: published nineteen seventy three and Medical Nemesis, published in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, and in these books he challenged established institutions
Speaker 1: and systems offered alternative visions that emphasized individual autonomy, community engagement,
Speaker 1: and wait for it, convivial relationships, ilicious or evans critique
Speaker 1: of education systems contributed to the development of altunative educational
Speaker 1: approaches such as homeschooling, on schooling, and learner centered education.
Speaker 1: His examination of the medical establishment sparked discussions on patient
Speaker 1: empowerment and the need for a more participatory model of healthcare,
Speaker 1: something I would like to discuss in a future episode,
Speaker 1: though I would like to find someone in the disability
Speaker 1: justice space to have that discussion with, because that is
Speaker 1: an area of experiential ignorance for me. Yeah, So if
Speaker 1: anybody has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. But Evan's legacy, right,
Speaker 1: it extends far beyond his lifetime, as it's clear he
Speaker 1: has elasting impact on critical theory, on social philosophy, and
Speaker 1: the quest for a more just and humane world. And
Speaker 1: I'm gassed up the guy a lot, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: he has some flaws that someone will no doubt inform
Speaker 1: me about and I have not read all of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does go. He did go sign the Catholic jage
Speaker 1: barbing a priest. I s right, So I'm sure he
Speaker 1: has his flaws. And I have not read all of
Speaker 1: his literature. I haven't even read Medical Nemesis yet. But
Speaker 1: in Tools of Conviviality in particular, I want to discuss
Speaker 1: his perspective on conviviality and its role in society. Right
Speaker 1: in the book, he expresses these deep concerns about the
Speaker 1: negative effects of modern institutions and systems, and he argued
Speaker 1: that they often hindered personal freedom, autonomy, and human flourishing.
Speaker 1: He believed that many of our socialstructures had become oppressive,
Speaker 1: as they dictated not only how we should live, learn,
Speaker 1: and interact, but also how we saw ourselves as people.
Speaker 1: He argued that our systems had become highly centralized, reliant
Speaker 1: on professional expertise, and complex technologies that limited individual agency
Speaker 1: and self determination. Now, one could be bad faith, I
Speaker 1: suppose and say that, oh, is he saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: Ivan was anti complex technology? Is some sort of popular
Speaker 1: culture vastardization of Luodites or something. But his concern was
Speaker 1: not necessarily on the technology itself and the complexity of technology,
Speaker 1: but more so how that technology slotted into the structure
Speaker 1: of society as a whole. Right, His concern was about
Speaker 1: how these elite professional groups had established what he called
Speaker 1: a rat monopoly over fundamental human activities, including health, agriculture,
Speaker 1: home building, and learning. And this monopoly, it's monopoly is
Speaker 1: criticized and all the technology, but the monopoly, according to Ivan,
Speaker 1: had led to a detrimental war and subsistence that deprived
Speaker 1: formerly pasant societies of the essential skills and know how.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, like, I feel like that's a
Speaker 2: pretty I think I think it's pretty hard to.
Speaker 1: Like tour that line. Well, I don't know if I think.
Speaker 2: I think like I think specifically that line of agriculture
Speaker 2: is pretty hard to like not fought, like, not agree
Speaker 2: with if you look at the effects that the Green
Speaker 2: Revolution had on other people who do agriculture. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, and I think this goes to it, like
Speaker 2: this falls in with the sort of like you know,
Speaker 2: like the sort of social technological aspect of it. Of
Speaker 2: like the fact that this was combined with this massive
Speaker 2: sort of social technological push to you know, drive farmers
Speaker 2: into debt you know, so they could afford the inputs
Speaker 2: for this stuff, and what it did to sort of
Speaker 2: what it did to the actual farming communities, and what
Speaker 2: it did to people's livelihoods, and you know the way
Speaker 2: that like a lot of this was just the sort
Speaker 2: of smoke screen for like consolidation of major landowners, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Like I think I think he's pretty on
Speaker 2: the right point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, For those who don't know, by the way,
Speaker 1: the Green Revolution refers to a period of technological advance
Speaker 1: moments and agricultural strategies that took place during the mid
Speaker 1: twentieth century, primarily in developing countries. It aimed to increase
Speaker 1: agricultural productivity and food production to the adoption of high
Speaker 1: yielding crop varieties, increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, and modern
Speaker 1: farming techniques. And the Green Revolution is basically responsible for
Speaker 1: a lot of the most damaging practices that we see
Speaker 1: in agriculture today, right from the heavy reliance on chemical
Speaker 1: inputs like futilizers and pesticides, which leads to you know,
Speaker 1: soil degradation, pollution, lost by diversity, you know, the emphasis
Speaker 1: on monocultures and replacements of traditional crop varieties of high
Speaker 1: yielding ones. The reduced agrobi diversity and led to diseases
Speaker 1: proliferate in between certain species, intensive farming practices that could
Speaker 1: not be kept up with by small scale farmers, like
Speaker 1: Mio was saying, the consolidation of land and the ability
Speaker 1: to manage that land into these acribusiness corporations and major landowners.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think it's worth emphasizing that this was
Speaker 2: very explicitly seen as NATI communist thing. I mean, the
Speaker 2: state departments, like actual explicit line was a great revolution
Speaker 2: to stop a bred revolution. So like a big part
Speaker 2: of what this was about was like stopping land reform
Speaker 2: from happening, which right, yeah, is incredibly bleak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now it's the dominant practice globally and it's
Speaker 1: having detrimental impacts globally. And yeah, and and I mean
Speaker 1: some of those blood some of them are going to
Speaker 1: be dead very soon. Yeah, the rest of us have
Speaker 1: to suffer the consequences story of my life, yeap, which
Speaker 1: existence on this is right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you think that's sort of wild about it too,
Speaker 2: is that like the countries that did land reform like
Speaker 2: developed better capitalist economies and the ones who didn't.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, like, yeah, yay, the better doing copless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean and like yeah, it's like they're
Speaker 2: they're better. It turns out doing land reform actually does
Speaker 2: help both like non capitalist and capitalist economies. But unfortunately
Speaker 2: the green revolutionary people, the revolution people like already even
Speaker 2: like people who care about the efficiency of capitalism, they
Speaker 2: care about like the power of the land owning class.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and I mean that I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is a saying, but I might make it a
Speaker 1: say in I think socialists are bets are doing copitless
Speaker 1: and then copless.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean that's the entire is this is
Speaker 2: the entire story of China, right, It's like, yeah, like
Speaker 2: Brush's Leninism is a really really efficient way to turn
Speaker 2: a feudal economy into a capitalist economy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, if I was in charge of capitalism, I
Speaker 1: was going to make sure that the people at the
Speaker 1: bottom class brought into the system. Who will see and yeah,
Speaker 1: propaganding education is a part of it, but also you
Speaker 1: want to make sure they're not vulnerable to being radicalized.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is to ensure that
Speaker 1: the basic needs are met. Yeah, but you know, even
Speaker 1: arguing that will have some people, uh, misinformed, I would say,
Speaker 1: but well intentioned labeling you a socialist, like I think
Speaker 1: people should have good things. Oh you're dirty red comedy you.
Speaker 1: But you know it's it's just well, it's just literally
Speaker 1: wealthier capitalism. But apparently that too much for a lot
Speaker 1: of capitalists. Apparently, I mean literally the reason we have
Speaker 1: welfare capitalism is because socialists forward for it in early
Speaker 1: twentieth century and early to mid twentieth century. So you know,
Speaker 1: we have socialist to thank for everything basically. But I'm
Speaker 1: getting off track, right, So, like I was saying, this monopoly,
Speaker 1: this radical monopoly over fundamental human activities, that's a detrimental
Speaker 1: war and subsistence that are deprived peasant societies of the
Speaker 1: essential skills and know how, instead of promoting human flourishing,
Speaker 1: all this economic development ended up feeding into what Yvan
Speaker 1: has termed modernized poverty. And it's something I think about often, Right,
Speaker 1: this idea of the poor back then versus the poor now. Right,
Speaker 1: And of course it depends on which society you're talking about,
Speaker 1: which time period you're talking about, But let's just pick
Speaker 1: some random like historic poor person. Right, let's just say,
Speaker 1: I don't know generic civilization. A. This person is poor, right,
Speaker 1: they after work, they have to work the land backbreaking toil.
Speaker 1: Sometimes raiders would roll it and be like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: going to take your stuff now, and then they would
Speaker 1: like ride their horses away and probably I don't know,
Speaker 1: dab on you or whatever, or the raiders will roll in,
Speaker 1: they'll take your stuff and then they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to stay. And then now you have to
Speaker 1: pay taxes to me every year. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: how a lot of states were created. But whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, nomadic warlords or settled warlords, at least you
Speaker 1: had a house, at least you had a community. At
Speaker 1: least you had the ability to grow your own food,
Speaker 1: even though a lot of that food was being taxed.
Speaker 1: And you know, at least you had certain skills that
Speaker 1: you could use to sustain yourself. Right. Compare that to
Speaker 1: modern poverty, where you have this large swath of people
Speaker 1: who are dependent, who are mechanical parts in a system
Speaker 1: that they cannot fully understand, comprehend and control for themselves.
Speaker 1: With this, you know, whole industrial revolution where you take
Speaker 1: this process of making a chair, for example, and you
Speaker 1: break it up into a bunch of different steps, and
Speaker 1: each person that step you knows how to do one thing,
Speaker 1: but they don't have to do the entire thing. Right
Speaker 1: Like the poor today versus the poor of yesteryear, the
Speaker 1: latter still had these skills for subsistence, and many of
Speaker 1: today is poor, particularly the urban poor. Because I know
Speaker 1: the rural poor, a lot of them still sustain themselves,
Speaker 1: still practice you know, sustem, subsistence farm and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, but particularly the urban poor, they don't even
Speaker 1: have like a lot of those skills to rely on
Speaker 1: even sustain themselves in that level. For the urbanists in
Speaker 1: the audience, you might appreciate the Devan also talks about
Speaker 1: the dominance of cars and how they've created this radical
Speaker 1: monopoly over land sitting out urban environments into the domain
Speaker 1: of cars, which not only compromises the environment for pedestrians
Speaker 1: and cyclists, but also disrupts our innate mobility as human beings.
Speaker 1: Steven takes it a step further right. And this particular
Speaker 1: opinion opinion of his is a bit shaky for me,
Speaker 1: so something I've been lettin stewing my brain a little
Speaker 1: bit more. But let me just read the quote the
Speaker 1: radical monopoly cars established is destructive in a special way.
Speaker 1: Cars create distance, speedy vehicles of all kinds, frendous scarce.
Speaker 1: They drive wedges of highways into populated areas and the
Speaker 1: next door tolls on the bridge over the remoteness between
Speaker 1: people that was manufactured for their sake. This monopoly overland
Speaker 1: turn space into car fodder. It destroys the environment for
Speaker 1: feet and bicycles. Even if polices and buses could run
Speaker 1: as non pollutant, Even if planes and buses could run
Speaker 1: as non pollutant, non deplete and public services they're inhuman velocities,
Speaker 1: would degrademans in need mobility and force him to spend
Speaker 1: more time for the sake of travel. I'm sure he
Speaker 1: could pick up on why that particular opinion is a
Speaker 1: bit shaky, right, Yeah, it's not just anti car. He's
Speaker 1: also a bit anti plane and bus.
Speaker 2: To be fair, I'm also anti bus. But like planes,
Speaker 2: I don't know, like, are they great for the environment? No?
Speaker 2: Do you sometimes need to go to another continent?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So he is a He probably
Speaker 1: reads like r slash f cars and he's like, uh, y'all,
Speaker 1: don't take it far. You know you guys are liberals.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I highly recommend reading the actual book
Speaker 1: and full for further insight and context. And I do
Speaker 1: want to dig into his thoughts on a food in
Speaker 1: the future, but you know, food for thought. Let me
Speaker 1: know what you think of those inhuman velocities. But anyway,
Speaker 1: memes aside, I think the benefit of Evan's critique of
Speaker 1: the radical monopoly is that it provides a different perspective, right.
Speaker 1: It sheds light on the negative consequences of excessive specialization,
Speaker 1: technocratic control, and the prioritization of speed and efficiency over
Speaker 1: human well being. Zoeb on YouTube actually has a really
Speaker 1: great video and the idea of efficiency as this ultimate
Speaker 1: moral good, So I recommend checking that out, especially since
Speaker 1: the standard narrative that we are utterly bombarded by is
Speaker 1: that all these things are uncontroversially good. Right. What I
Speaker 1: appreciate about Yvan and his ideas is that they challenge
Speaker 1: us to reconsider our relationship with systems, tools, and institutions,
Speaker 1: and he encourages us to strive for more balanced and
Speaker 1: confivial society. And what does that convivial society look like
Speaker 1: to him? Well, let's continue Ivan's solution argues for the
Speaker 1: developments of new, accessible and user friendly instruments that would
Speaker 1: allow average citizens to regain practical knowledge and reclaim control
Speaker 1: over their lives, as well as resist the domination of
Speaker 1: specialized elites. That's why Ivan Ilich's book Tools for Conviviality
Speaker 1: is sponsored by Skills. All right, I know that was
Speaker 1: a bad joke. Yvan believed that society should be organized
Speaker 1: to serve the needs and aspirations of individuals, rather than
Speaker 1: creating systems that limit their potential and autronomy. And so
Speaker 1: for Yvan conviviality. Here we are back to the original topic.
Speaker 1: Conviviality represented a society in which individuals had the power
Speaker 1: to shape their own lives, free from excessor dependence on
Speaker 1: institutionalized systems. He envisioned a world people had access to
Speaker 1: convivial tools, simple, user friendly technologies that empowered them to
Speaker 1: take control of their own destinies. For example, the dominant
Speaker 1: education system separates learners from the real world and disempowers them.
Speaker 1: Ivan advocates for more self directed and community based education,
Speaker 1: where people could pursue knowledge and skills according to their
Speaker 1: own interests and needs. Yvan also critiques the overreliance on
Speaker 1: medical professionals and call for a shift towards a more
Speaker 1: participatory model of healthcare that gives individuals access to information
Speaker 1: and resources that allow them to actively participate in their
Speaker 1: own health decisions rather than be in these passive recipients
Speaker 1: of medical interventions. In transportation systems, he also advocates for
Speaker 1: more human skill and community oriented transportation alternatives. He envisions
Speaker 1: neighborhoods designed for walking and biking, which would foster social
Speaker 1: interactions and reduce the environmental impact of excessive motorized transport.
Speaker 1: In essence, Evan viewed Forviality as a transformative concept that
Speaker 1: aimed to restore individual agency and personal connections and a
Speaker 1: sense of empowerment in society. He challenged the prevalance structures
Speaker 1: and systems that limited human potential and proposed more participatory,
Speaker 1: community driven alternatives, and to this day, his ideas continue
Speaker 1: to inspire discussions on how we can create a convivial
Speaker 1: society that values human relationships, self determination, and a shared
Speaker 1: responsibility for shaping our own lives. What I found particularly
Speaker 1: interesting in researching this was learning that the book's vision
Speaker 1: of tools that would be developed maintained by a community
Speaker 1: of users that actually had significant influence on the first
Speaker 1: developers the personal computer mind blowing. I know, most notably
Speaker 1: one of the create first developers of the PC, Lee
Speaker 1: Felt Felsenstein. Lee Felsenstein, He and several others were just
Speaker 1: were inspired by this idea within the book, because we
Speaker 1: remember Ivana's righting this before the internet, and they go
Speaker 1: and they take this idea, and then they make the
Speaker 1: internet or they make the personal computer, because computers existed
Speaker 1: prior to the personal computer, but they weren't as accessible,
Speaker 1: they weren't a tool of conviviality, whereas the personal computer
Speaker 1: of today is. And I just think that's beautiful and amazing.
Speaker 1: But Ivan's ideas did more than just you know, shape
Speaker 1: the course of human history. He also would shaped the
Speaker 1: creation of confiviulist movement. In twenty ten, eight years after
Speaker 1: Ivan died, and thirty seven years after Ivan published Tools
Speaker 1: for Conviviality, Raymond de Boiver published Convivialism, a philosophical Manifesto,
Speaker 1: and in it, Barvert begins by discussing the key theme
Speaker 1: in Michael Polland's books The Botany of Desire, which is
Speaker 1: a great read, by the way, and the Omnivars Dilemma,
Speaker 1: which I haven't read yet, but the key theme is
Speaker 1: co evolution, right. The first book humorously suggests that plants
Speaker 1: manipulate humans to coevolve, with them taking care of their
Speaker 1: needs and exchange for nutrition or beauty, and the second book,
Speaker 1: the Omnivoice Dilemma, the importance of interconnected components for vibrant
Speaker 1: pharm is emphasized, corn serving as an example of a
Speaker 1: plant that relies on humans for survival. WaveRT proposes that
Speaker 1: focusing on the prefix co in co evolution could have
Speaker 1: philosophical implications similar to William James's emphasis on the preposition
Speaker 1: with by you know. Examining the significance of these prepositions co,
Speaker 1: com con or coal as well as sin, the author
Speaker 1: argues for a philosophy that recognizes omnipresent interconnection. Michael Polland's
Speaker 1: books do this well in the context of food, but
Speaker 1: Waver wants to take this The implications of this uh
Speaker 1: taken preposition seriously into a rearrange ing the philosophy itself,
Speaker 1: and now we're getting, you know, kind of heavy, right.
Speaker 1: As Quavert argues, philosophers have often neglected the significance of
Speaker 1: interconnected relationships, while farmers recognize the importance of interconnectedness, you know,
Speaker 1: how things like land and water and stuff all work together.
Speaker 1: Modern philosophy, on the other hand, according to Bovair, since
Speaker 1: the Renaissance, has been focused on these self standing and
Speaker 1: independent entities, not interconnected entities. And I don't know how
Speaker 1: true this is because I'm not I didn't study philosophy.
Speaker 1: I'm just communicating Barveao's arguments here, right. And so the
Speaker 1: idea of autonomy in modern philosophy, according to barve seem
Speaker 1: to exclude the with factor and existence, relegating relations and
Speaker 1: interconnections to a secondary rule. So Whatver is saying is
Speaker 1: that philosophy is sort on this foundation that we are
Speaker 1: autonomous and self sufficient first, right, and then everything else
Speaker 1: comes after. You know. Rousseau, for example, portrayed an idyllic
Speaker 1: existence where connections, independencies of views as these impositions. You know,
Speaker 1: we went from being autonomous to being stuck in this
Speaker 1: web of interdependencies, and then as a result coming down
Speaker 1: to that the philosophical idea of liberation, uh for some
Speaker 1: ended up returning for some meant to return into this
Speaker 1: original state of authenticity and disengagement from connections. The concept
Speaker 1: of freedom itself became something that was anti interdependency, and
Speaker 1: so the focus shifted away from this idea of humans
Speaker 1: being inherently interdependent. But then this alternative point of view
Speaker 1: came about, right, and this shift coincided with the introduction
Speaker 1: of the terms symbiosis and biology, which combined the Greek
Speaker 1: word for life with the preposition with and the concept
Speaker 1: of symbiosis found its way eventually into everyday language and discourse.
Speaker 1: So that's the Greek term symbiosis. Then we go to
Speaker 1: the Latin term conviviality, meaning with living, and that long
Speaker 1: predated you know, science and philosophy used to describe just
Speaker 1: ordinary experiences. And so to avoid getting lost into the
Speaker 1: philosopher's favorite past time of you know, navigating various words
Speaker 1: and all their package to boil a downed simplicity, Boivert
Speaker 1: is seeking to ask what a conviviulous turn in philosophy
Speaker 1: might look like and what changes in philosophy might be
Speaker 1: taken place. For one, he's concerned with how embracing trivialism
Speaker 1: might change our understanding of metaphysics right by embracing this
Speaker 1: metaphors of existence as about the relation and conjunction between
Speaker 1: components or the interplane interconnectedness of various elements, rather than
Speaker 1: about a collection of separate units. You end up going
Speaker 1: from this position of isolation to this position of profound interrelation,
Speaker 1: and then you begin to focus on the interactions between
Speaker 1: people rather than just the uh experiences within people. In
Speaker 1: the sphere of philosophical anthropology, while Fare argues that a
Speaker 1: convivial ton would mean redefined in humanity, you know, taking
Speaker 1: this concept that you know, we're not just these purely
Speaker 1: logical and calculating beings. We are homo sapiens. And the
Speaker 1: term sapiens is derived from the Latin word for tasting,
Speaker 1: which highlights the human capacity to constantly try and test,
Speaker 1: to constantly experiments, to actually participate in interactions with our surroundings.
Speaker 1: So in this convivial turn, we return to the original
Speaker 1: definition of for me, and we gave ourselves right as
Speaker 1: taste does, as flexible, educable, subject to investigation and improvement,
Speaker 1: constantly testing and experiment and then seeing what is best
Speaker 1: in specific contexts. Seeing that taste as sapiens, as homo sapiens,
Speaker 1: taste is inherently pluralistic, because there is no universe your
Speaker 1: cell taste, There is no single taste that is like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the taste. Everybody must have care to this taste.
Speaker 1: Everybody has a different taste. We talk about that when
Speaker 1: we talk about taste, and I think the implications are
Speaker 1: particularly profound when we bring it into the preferative this
Speaker 1: sphy of prefrigative politics. Right whereas tasters as experimenters, we
Speaker 1: are looking for ways to prefigure new social relations and
Speaker 1: institutions and relationships and structures and systems for the future
Speaker 1: in the here now, and that requires tastes, and that
Speaker 1: requires experimentation. That requires an acceptance of pluralism because everyone
Speaker 1: has a different taste and everyone's going to bring something
Speaker 1: different to the table. That's beautiful. And then, also in
Speaker 1: the field of epistemology, the conribulists perspective challenges the opposition
Speaker 1: between subject and object and understand reality. Rejects the idea
Speaker 1: of the mind as a mere mirror reflects in reality
Speaker 1: or project to impotant conceptual schemes onto reality. Because confivialism
Speaker 1: is about how the intermediaries, the facility to interactions, how
Speaker 1: they affect the way that we perceive and reflect on
Speaker 1: reality itself. It also requires us to let go of
Speaker 1: this subject object dichotomy in our pursuit of knowledge and understanding,
Speaker 1: which itself has implications on even the field of science,
Speaker 1: because you know, the idea of the scientists and the
Speaker 1: popular imagination is you know the subject who is whatever
Speaker 1: that scientist is studying, that is the But convivialism causes
Speaker 1: suppose and reflect on how that subject, that object, and
Speaker 1: how intermediary is between them affect their perception of each other,
Speaker 1: affect the subject, the scientist's ability to pursue knowledge and
Speaker 1: understanding affects the objects if the object is a person
Speaker 1: to do the same. And finally, Baver digs into the
Speaker 1: rigid division between nature and culture and how the convivialist
Speaker 1: perspective challenges that the continuous interactions and transformations that occur
Speaker 1: in existence makes it problematic to consider the divisions between
Speaker 1: human societies, between human societies and the ecosystems that surround
Speaker 1: them as fundamental aspects of existence. Right, the boundary between
Speaker 1: nature and culture is one that constantly blues. It is
Speaker 1: difficult to place, particularly when there's an embrace by certain
Speaker 1: cultures of that interconnectedness and interdependence between their culture and
Speaker 1: the nature that surrounds them. And then when you see
Speaker 1: that blurring of lines between culture and nature, you might
Speaker 1: also recognize a blurring of lines between human and non human.
Speaker 1: In the context of community, the idea of community being
Speaker 1: an exclusively human domain becomes less apt, I suppose, as
Speaker 1: it recognize the way that non humans influence and effect
Speaker 1: and engage and interact with humans in this you know, collectivity.
Speaker 1: We use terms like commun unity and city and society
Speaker 1: and stuff to refer to the human aspects of interaction,
Speaker 1: and we use things like ecosystem and biome to emphasize
Speaker 1: non human aspects of interaction. But the interactions between humans, animals, plants,
Speaker 1: and inanimate entity is to not always thought so neatly
Speaker 1: into that metaphysical description of reality. Of course, we use
Speaker 1: these divisions for certain specific research purposes. We say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm a sociologist, dom an anthropologists, I'm a biologist, and ecologists, etc.
Speaker 1: But we can't forget that convivialism. Conviviality asks us not
Speaker 1: to forget that those are human impositions that we should
Speaker 1: not let obscure our ability to make sense of reality
Speaker 1: as a whole. I know, things got really heavy there.
Speaker 1: I hope that everything I said made sense and if
Speaker 1: you need a breather or some time to pause and
Speaker 1: reflect further on the implications on this simple, cute fun
Speaker 1: to say a little Latin word, conviviality. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a pause here, but next time you can join
Speaker 1: us as we discuss how people have gone from this
Speaker 1: term to urge his ideas two Jave's philosophical indications to
Speaker 1: more recent manifestos of the convivial movement and how they
Speaker 1: can relate to the growth and beyond. You can find
Speaker 1: me on YouTube dot com slash andeurism, and you can
Speaker 1: support you on peaton dot com slash Saint True once
Speaker 1: again Montrue joined by Mio and this is It could
Speaker 1: Happen Here, Peace. It could Happen Here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,