Anyone here ever read "Tools for Conviviality"?

[otherlander]

Alright, I get the general thing about how we've surpassed the limits for useful growth, and gotten to a point where the effort we put into new technologies is greater than the increase in benefits that they give us. And that sometimes the efforts even become counterproductive, as in having more cars to go faster creates traffic jams to the point that a person could get to their destination more quickly by walking. Or new tools to make life easier wind up putting people out of work and making life harder for a good deal of the population. And I get the difference between convivial institutions like libraries and postal services and manipulative ones like schools and highways.

But how does the "watershed" concept apply? A watershed is an area of land from which water drains into a river. Illich calls the first watershed the peak of technology improving our lives, I think- right? Like the point at which new medical technology will save or improve the lives of the most people. And then from there it gets less helpful- more and more effort is put in for less and less improvement- until finally it reaches the second watershed, the point where it becomes directly harmful, like the point at which a lot of people start dying from iatrogenesis (illness caused by medical treatment). So how does the concept of a watershed apply to this? I'm not getting the metaphor.

[NOW tense]

1. The 2nd watershed

could be that we live longer than we should and all of our resources go to keeping ourselves alive longer. We have to be less afraid to die we are on that path our whole lives.

[otherlander]

3. Alright

I get how that's in line with his thinking about institutions which outgrow their usefulness, but still don't get how the idea of a "watershed" relates.

[noamnety]

2. Stan Goff's reading guide might be useful here

Watershed (literal definition): The specific land area that drains water into a river system or other body of water.

KEY CONCEPT ALERT:
Watershed (figurative definition, as used by Illich): A point in the historical process when a particular “tool” creates a quantum shift in society, like the sudden application of gravity feeding water into a terrain basin (literal watershed).

(that's from "lesson 2" on Tools for Conviviality)

http://www.insurgentamerican.net/intellectual-hardball/

and the Tools for Conviviality link is here, for anyone who is curious about it: http://www.opencollector.org/history/homebrew/tools.html

[otherlander]

4. Thanks.

Good link.

[On the Road]

5. Ivan Illich is Great

although his insights are more applicable to third world economies. The discipline needs thinkers like him who go beyond statistics to how economies can serve the day-to-day needs of their populations.

[otherlander]

7. Yep.

:D

[99th_Monkey]

6. Love Illich ... "Deschooling Society" is also an awesome read. ~nt~

[otherlander]

8. Oh yeah. I read that one.

Some of it was a bit over my head, but I liked the solutions that he suggested. The most interesting (to me) point that he made in Deschooling Society was that reformist, or even radical, political action by college people perpetuates the myth that a college degree is needed to have intelligent ideas about how to change society. Really got me thinking about how we can brigde that gap, and what can be done about the fact that people who don't have access to universities so often wind up not having forums to discuss their problems and broadcast their ideas to the public and to those in power.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. A watershed is primarily the line between 2 rivers' catchment areas

Oxford English Dictionary:
1 The line separating the waters flowing into different rivers or river basins; a narrow elevated tract of ground between two drainage areas (1803)
2. loosely. a. The slope down which the water flows from a water-parting. (1839)
b. The whole gathering ground of a river system. (1874)

So if you're walking between valleys, you're going up, until you reach a watershed - after which you're going down.

[otherlander]

10. Ah.

That makes it much clearer. Thanks.