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[ba-unrev-talk] Ivan Illich


Hello,    (01)

I'm Mei Lin Fung, a few weeks ago, Eugene Kim mentioned my name when he
described
the Core Planning Committee for the Bootstrap Alliance.    (02)

I've owned the Ivan Illich books for 24+ years - momentos of the radical
reading during
a mis-spent youth - mis-spent being "schooled" !    (03)

Now with a young daughter in elementary school, I'm glad to have absorbed
his clear thinking so long ago - I'm finding it is a slippery slope to start
down the road
to academic excellence with your child.    (04)

There is so much built-in conformity in school, and stress on individual
performance.    (05)

No wonder it is hard to start to collaborate meaningfully, when there is so
much
un-learning that needs to be done, to learn
that teamwork can offer a path out of the zero-sum games.    (06)

I've been intrigued by the story of how cathedrals came to be built.
Massive projects, requiring work over multiple generations - at a time
when having enough food, clothing and shelter were still real issues for
each family.    (07)

The initiators did not start with building plans. They
thought about what organizational structures could sustain and complete
a massively complex project that would extend beyond several lifetimes.
(Co-evolution!)    (08)

Craft guilds, religious orders,...
 the Masonic Society's members are called Masons.    (09)

One vignette: As part of the project, one of the villages involved in the
construction
needed to transport heavy loads (stones?) to the site. They sold off some of
their milk
cows and bought bulls to pull the loads. That winter, the shortage of milk,
lead to
illness and death of some of their children. The price paid was heavy indeed
for
the cathedrals of the middle ages, that still stand today.    (010)

Tools for Conviviality offer a human-centric perspective that can inform
the technology tools and organizational structures we work in/on/with today.    (011)

Mei Lin    (012)



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
[mailto:owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org]On Behalf Of Henry K van Eyken
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 11:31 AM
To: ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
Subject: Re: [ba-unrev-talk] virtual book club?    (013)


It must be about 12 - 15 years ago that I found myself listening to an
address by
Ivan Illich. He spoke for maybe 45 min. or so, his speech so polished, every
comma
and period in place. He stood there, tall, not leaning on anything, spoke
without a
note, without bodily contortions. Smooth, man, smooth. I have never seen or
heard
anything like it!    (014)

Henry    (015)

Jack Park wrote:    (016)

> ...
>
> Today's Web research led me to the works of Ivan Illich.  Turns out that
> two of his books are on-line.  I'll make a deep quotation from the
> introduction to one of them -- _Tools for Conviviality_ -- which follows a
> previous book _Deschooling Society_. &c., &c.    (017)