It Could Happen Here - Conviviality Part 1 Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Andrew and Mia discuss the radical potential of conviviality, its history, and work of theologian Ivan Illich on the subjectSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....

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Starting point is 00:00:57 or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking music, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and
Starting point is 00:01:20 influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to another episode of It Could Happen Here with your guest host, Andrew of the YouTube channel Andrewism. Today I'm joined by Mia and I'm looking to discuss a topic that I brought up in person in a previous episode, that being the idea of conviviality and the episode in question being in my podcast on degrowth. So when I first stumbled upon this
Starting point is 00:02:15 concept of conviviality, I thought it was just, you know, one of those exciting, fluffy, exciting, fluffy, agitprop buzzwords, right? Something you throw into your propaganda, your conversations, your descriptions of a better world. You're like, oh, I would love to live in a world that's more convivial on these different things. Convivial being defined in the dictionary as the quality of being friendly and lively, right? being defined in the dictionary as the quality of being friendly and lively right synonyms include amiability affability congeniality etc etc I didn't come here to be a thesaurus I came here
Starting point is 00:02:54 to talk about the deeper meanings behind these things right so in searching this word 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 tomb 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 convivencia, being interpreted literally as living in the company of others, or in one particular context, such as in Spain between the 18th and 15th centuries, describing the peaceful coexistence between different religious groups.
Starting point is 00:03:42 But I'm not going that far back. I'm sticking to the history of the term from Ivan Illich to the degrowth 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 that feeling 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
Starting point is 00:04:35 other's company and there's a real sense of camaraderie i think using uh conviviality as a barometer is really helpful in organizing situations, right? If you're in an environment where you are organizing, where you're doing praxis, 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 an amusement park, right? It doesn't have to be a carnival. But I think there does need to be, for solidarity to exist, I think there should have some level of camaraderie and conviviality uh 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
Starting point is 00:05:36 occasions and bring everyone together even in the workplace you know when you and your workers get along really well and you're organizing to create this union you're gonna take down your boss it's a fun time right um 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 welcomed 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.
Starting point is 00:06:16 How do we go from just talking about social connections and adding meaning to our lives and uh enjoying festivities and shift to conversations about the social and political state of the world right now right um there's this one particular guy who's kind of responsible for this um a guy i personally like to call the illest, that being the one and only Australian philosopher, social critic and Catholic priest, Ivan Illich. Over the course of his nearly 80 years of life since 1926, this multi-hyphenate, I think that's the term we 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 medicine, technology to social justice. I know his name because he came up a lot when i was doing research
Starting point is 00:07:25 on unschooling de-schooling um and just the education system as a whole but apparently he's done a lot more than just that he's challenged conventional thinking in all sorts of fields and he's questioned the inherent assumptions and structures of modern society. Ivan's, and I hope he doesn't mind that I call him Ivan, because I don't know if I'm pronouncing his German name correctly, right? His German last name correctly. So I just call him Ivan. He probably wouldn't mind because he's dead, but Ivan'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 firsthand the effects of development projects and the power dynamics between developed and developing nations.
Starting point is 00:08:19 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 1971, Tools for Conviviality, published in 1973, and Medical Nemesis, published in 1976. 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.
Starting point is 00:09:00 Illich's or Ivan's critique of education systems contributed to the development of alternative educational approaches such as homeschooling, unschooling 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,
Starting point is 00:09:19 something I would like to discuss in a future episode, though I would like to find find someone uh in the disability justice space to have that discussion with because that is an area of uh experiential ignorance for me yeah so if anybody has any suggestions i'd appreciate it but ivan's legacy right it extends far beyond his lifetime as it's clear he has a lasting impact on critical theory on social philosophy and the quest for a more just and humane world I know I'm gassing up the guy a lot and I'm sure he has some flaws that someone will no doubt uh inform me about and I have not read all of it so yeah he does he did co-sign the catholic church by being a priest i assume right so i'm sure he has his flaws um and i have not read all
Starting point is 00:10:13 of his literature i haven't even read um 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 social structures 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 relying on professional expertise and complex technologies that limited individual agency and self-determination now one could be bad faith I suppose
Starting point is 00:11:07 and say that oh is he saying that you know Ivan was anti-complex technology is he uh some sort of popular culture bastardization of luddites or something but um 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 radical monopoly over fundamental human activities including including health, agriculture, home building, and learning. And this monopoly, this monopoly is criticizing all the technology,
Starting point is 00:11:50 but the monopoly, according to Ivan, had led to a detrimental war and subsistence that deprived formerly peasant societies of their essential skills and know-how. Yeah, and I mean, like, I feel like that's a pretty, I think it's pretty hard to, like. To that line.
Starting point is 00:12:11 Well, I don't know if it's, I think, like, I think specifically that line in agriculture is pretty hard to, like, not agree with. If you look at the effects that the Green Revolution had on the people who do agriculture. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, and I think this goes to it, at the effects that the green revolution had on on the people who do agriculture oh yeah how sure yeah i mean and i think this goes to it like this falls in with the sort of like you know like the sort of social technological aspect of it of like the fact that this was combined with this massive
Starting point is 00:12:36 sort of social technological push to you know drive farmers into debt um 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 a sort of smokescreen for like consolidation of major landowners, et cetera, et cetera. Like, I think he's pretty, he's pretty right about that.
Starting point is 00:12:59 On point there, yeah, yeah. For those who don't know, by the way, the Green Revolution refers to a period of technological advancements and agricultural strategies that took place during the mid-20th century primarily in developing countries it aimed to increase agricultural productivity and food production through the adoption of high yielding crop varieties increased use of fertilizers pesticides and modern farming techniques and the green revolution is basically responsible for a lot of the most damaging practices
Starting point is 00:13:28 that we see in agriculture today, right? From the heavy reliance on chemical inputs like fertilizers and pesticides, which leads to, you know, soil degradation, water pollution, lost biodiversity, you know, the emphasis on monocultures and replacements of traditional crop varieties with high yielding ones that reduced agrobiodiversity and led to diseases proliferating
Starting point is 00:13:50 between certain species intensive farming practices that could not be kept up with by small-scale farmers like mia was saying the consolidation of land and the ability to manage that land into these agribusiness corporations and major landowners. Yeah, and I think it's worth emphasizing that this was very explicitly seen as an anti-communist thing. I mean, the State Department's actual explicit line was a green revolution to stop a red revolution. was a green revolution to stop a red revolution. So a big part of what this was about was stopping land reform from happening, which is incredibly bleak. Yeah, and now it's the dominant practice globally
Starting point is 00:14:35 and it's having detrimental impacts globally. Yeah, and I mean- Some of those people are dead. Some of them are going to be dead very soon. And the rest of us have to suffer the consequences. Story of my life. Yeah. Story of my existence on this earth, right?
Starting point is 00:14:54 Yeah. The other thing that's sort of wild about it too, is that like the countries that did land reform, like developed better capitalist economies than the ones who didn't. But, you know like yeah yay they're better doing capitalist yeah well i mean like yeah it's like they're better it turns out doing land reform actually does help both like non-capitalist and capitalist economies but
Starting point is 00:15:19 unfortunately the green revolutionary people the green revolution people like aren't even like people who care about the efficiency of capitalism. They care about the power of the landowning class. Well, yeah. And I mean, I don't know if this is a saying, but I might make it a saying. I think socialists are better doing capitalism than capitalists are. Yeah. This is the entire story of China, right? It's like, yeah, Marxist-Leninism is a really, really efficient way to turn a feudal economy into a capitalist economy.
Starting point is 00:15:51 Yeah. Like if I was in charge of capitalism, I was going to make sure that the people at the bottom class bought into the system wholesale. And yeah, propaganda education is a part of it. But also, you want to make sure they're not vulnerable to being radicalized the best way to do that is to ensure the basic needs are met yeah but you know even arguing that will have some people uh misinformed i would say but well-intentioned labeling you a socialist um like i think people should have good things oh you dirty red comet you you know it's it's just well it's just literally wealthier capitalism but apparently that's too much for a lot of capitalists and apparently i
Starting point is 00:16:42 mean literally the reason we have welfare capitalism is because uh socialists fought for it um in the early 20th century and early to mid 20th century so you know we have socialists to thank for everything basically but i'm getting off track right so like i was saying uh this monopoly this radical monopoly over fundamental human activities that to a detrimental war and subsistence that had deprived peasant societies of the essential skills and know-how instead of promoting human flourishing all this economic development ended up feeding into what Ivan 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
Starting point is 00:17:33 period you're talking about but let's just pick some random um like historic uh poor person right let's just say i don't know generic civilization a um this person is poor right they have to work they have to work the land backbreaking toil sometimes raiders would rule it and be like oh we're gonna 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 um 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
Starting point is 00:18:34 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 uh control for themselves with this you know whole uh 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 only knows how to do one thing but they don't know how to do the entire thing um right like the poor today versus the poor of yesteryear the latter still had these skills for subsistence and many of today's poor particularly the urban poor because
Starting point is 00:19:25 i know the rural poor a lot of them still uh sustain themselves still practice um you know susten subsistence farming that kind of thing but particularly the urban poor they don't even have like a lot of those skills to rely on to even sustain themselves in that level uh for the urbanists in the audience, you might appreciate that Ivan also talks about the dominance of cars and how they've created this radical monopoly
Starting point is 00:19:50 over land, turning our urban environments into the domain of cars, which not only compromises the environment for pedestrians and cyclists, but also disrupts
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Starting point is 00:22:03 Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.
Starting point is 00:22:22 And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful
Starting point is 00:22:52 family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:23:15 Stephen takes it a step further, right? And this particular opinion of his is a bit shaky for me. So it's something I've been letting stew in my brain a little bit more. But let me just read the quote. The radical monopoly cars establish is destructive in a special way. Cars create distance. Speedy vehicles of all kinds render space scarce. They drive wedges of highways into populated areas. scarce. They drive wedges out of highways into populated areas and then extort tolls on the bridge over the remoteness between people that was manufactured for their sake. This monopoly
Starting point is 00:23:53 over land turns space into car fodder. It destroys the environment for feet and bicycles. Even if places and buses could run as non-polluting, even if planes and buses could run as non-polluting, non-depleting public services, their inhuman velocities would degrade man's innate 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? It's not just anti-car, he's also a bit anti-plane and bus. To be fair, I'm also anti-bus,
Starting point is 00:24:29 but planes, I don't know. Are they great for the environment? No. Do you sometimes need to go to another continent? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he is, he probably reads like
Starting point is 00:24:43 R slash F cars and he's like, y'all don't take it far enough liberals but yeah um so i highly recommend reading the actual book in full for further insight and context and i do want to dig into his thoughts on it further in the future but you know food for thought let me know what you think of those inhuman velocities um but anyway memes aside i think the benefit of evans 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 zoe b on youtube actually has a really great video on the idea of efficiency as this ultimate moral good so i recommend checking that
Starting point is 00:25:43 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 ivan 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 convivial society and what does that convivial society look like to him well let's continue Ivan's solution argues for the development 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 illich's book
Starting point is 00:26:30 tools for conviviality is sponsored by skillshare all right i know that was a bad joke um ivan believed that society should be organized to serve the needs and aspirations of individuals rather than creating systems that limit their potential and autonomy. And so for Ivan, 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 excessive dependence on institutionalized systems. He envisioned a world where 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 a more self-directed and community-based education
Starting point is 00:27:31 where people could pursue knowledge and skills according to their own interests and needs. Ivan also critiques the over-reliance on medical professionals and called 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 being these passive recipients of medical interventions. In transportation systems, he also advocates for more human-scale 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, Ivan viewed conviviality as a transformative concept that aimed to restore individual agency and personal connections
Starting point is 00:28:21 and a sense of empowerment in society. He challenged the prevailing 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 and maintained by a community of users
Starting point is 00:28:56 that actually had significant influence on the first developers of the personal computer. Mind-blowing, I know. Most notably, one of the great first developers of the pc lee fell felsenstein lee felsenstein um he and several others were just were inspired by this idea uh within the book because remember ivana's writing this before the internet um and they go and they take this idea and then they make the internet or they make the personal computer because computers existed
Starting point is 00:29:31 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 shape the creation of a convivialist movement in 2010 eight years after Ivan died and 37 years after Ivan published tools for conviviality raymond de boivier published convivialism a philosophical manifesto and in it boivier begins by discussing the key theme in michael pollan's books the botany of desire which is a great read by the way and the omnivores 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 co-evolve with them taking care of their needs in exchange for nutrition or beauty
Starting point is 00:30:31 and the second book the omnivore's dilemma the importance of interconnected components for a vibrant farm is emphasized with corn serving as an example of a plant that relies on humans for survival Boisvert proposes that focusing on the prefix co- in coevolution can 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 col, as well as sin, the author argues for a philosophy that recognizes omnipresent interconnection. Michael Pollan's books do this well in the context of food, but Boisvert wants to take the implications of this taken preposition seriously into a rearrangement of philosophy itself.
Starting point is 00:31:30 And now we're getting, you know, kind of heavy, right? As Poivre 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 um modern philosophy on the other hand according to barbara since the renaissance has been focused on these self-standing and independent entities not interconnected entities i don't know how true this is because i i'm not uh i didn't study philosophy but i'm just um communicating boivea's arguments here right um and so the idea of autonomy in modern philosophy according to
Starting point is 00:32:18 boivea seemed to exclude the with factor in existence relegating relations and interconnections to a secondary role so what they're saying is that philosophy is taught on this foundation that we are autonomous and self-sufficient first right and then everything else comes after you know um russo for example portrayed an idyllic existence where connections independencies were viewed as these impositions you know um we went from being autonomous to being stuck in this web of interdependencies and then as a result coming out of that, the philosophical idea of liberation for some meant returning to this original state of authenticity and disengagement from connections. The concept of freedom itself became something that was anti-interdependency. As the focus shifted away from this idea of humans being inherently interdependent.
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Starting point is 00:34:13 I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Duda Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you
Starting point is 00:35:09 love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.
Starting point is 00:35:40 On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.
Starting point is 00:36:00 Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.
Starting point is 00:36:16 Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts. But then this alternative point of view came about, right? And this shift coincided with the introduction of the term symbiosis in biology, which combined the Greek word for life
Starting point is 00:36:57 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 um 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 uh 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 pastime of you know navigating various words and all their baggage um to boil it down to simplicity
Starting point is 00:37:36 Boisvert is seeking to ask what a convivialist turn in philosophy might look like and what changes in philosophy might be taking place. For one, he's concerned with how embracing convivialism might change our understanding of metaphysics, right? By embracing this metaphor of existence as about the relation and conjunction between components, about the interplay and 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
Starting point is 00:38:30 the interactions between people rather than just the experiences within people in the sphere of philosophical anthropology Boisvert argues that a convivial term would mean redefining humanity taking this concept that we're not just these purely logical and calculating beings we are homo sapiens
Starting point is 00:38:56 and the term sapiens is derived from the Latin word for tasting which highlights the human capacity to constantly try and test, to constantly experiment, to actively participate in interactions with our surroundings. So in this convivial turn, we return to the original definition of the name we gave ourselves,
Starting point is 00:39:32 right? original definition of the name we gave ourselves right as tasters as flexible educable subject investigation and improvement uh constantly testing and experimenting and seeing what is best in specific contexts um seeing the taste as sapiens as homo sapiens taste is inherently pluralistic because there is no universal taste there is no single taste that is like oh this is the taste everybody must adhere 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 uh when we bring it into the preferent of the sphere of preferent of politics right where as tasters as experimenters we are looking for ways to prefigure um new social relations and institutions and relationships and structures and systems for the future in the here now and that requires taste and that requires experimentation
Starting point is 00:40:32 that requires an acceptance of pluralism because everyone has a different taste and everyone's going to bring something different to the table and that's beautiful and then also in the field of epistemology the confivialist perspective challenges the opposition between subject and object and understanding reality it rejects the idea of the mind as a mere mirror reflecting reality or projecting potent conceptual schemes onto reality because confivialism is about how the intermediaries the facilitator 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
Starting point is 00:41:29 scientist in the popular imagination is you know the subject who is whatever that scientist is studying that is the object but convivialism causes us to pause and reflect on how that subject that object and how intermediaries between them affect their perception of each other affect their 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 Boisvert 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 um 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 right the boundary between nature and culture is one that constantly blues it is difficult to place
Starting point is 00:42:51 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, becomes less apt i suppose as i recognize the way that non-humans uh influence and affect and engage and interact with humans in this you know collectivity we use terms like community and city and society and stuff to refer to the human aspects of interaction and we use
Starting point is 00:43:50 things like ecosystem and biome to emphasize non-human aspects of interaction but the interactions between humans animals plants and inanimate entities do not always slot 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 i'm an anthropologist i'm a biologist an ecologist 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 heady 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 little Latin word, conviviality, we're going to take a pause here um but next time you can join us as we discuss
Starting point is 00:45:09 how people have gone from this term to urges ideas to uh poivre's philosophical indications to more recent manifestos of the convivial movement and how they can relate to degrowth and beyond you can find me on youtube.com slash andrewism and you can support me on patreon.com slash st true um once again i'm andrew joined by mia, and this is It Could Happen Here. Peace. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app,
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