[D66] Silence is a Commons - Ivan Illich

[R.O.]

https://web.archive.org/web/20140712120815/http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Silence.html


  Silence is a Commons by Ivan Illich


      Computers are doing to communication
      what fences did to pastures
      and cars did to streets.


    by Ivan Illich

Minna-san, gladly I accept the honour of addressing this forum on 
Science and Man. The theme that Mr. Tsuru proposes, "The 
Computer-Managed Society," sounds an alarm. Clearly you foresee that 
machines which ape people are tending to encroach on every aspect of 
people's lives, and that such machines force people to behave like 
machines. The new electronic devices do indeed have the power to force 
people to "communicate" with them and with each other on the terms of 
the machine. Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is 
effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use.

The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics constitutes 
a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most 
people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the 
sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them 
become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political 
process breaks down, because people cease to be able to /govern 
/themselves; they demand to be /managed./

I congratulate Asahi Shimbun on its efforts to foster a new democratic 
consensus in Japan, by which your more than seven million readers become 
aware of the need to limit the encroachment of machines on the style of 
their own behaviour. It is important that precisely Japan initiate such 
action. Japan is looked upon as the capital of electronics; it would be 
marvellous if it became for the entire world the model of a new politics 
of self-limitation in the field of communication, which, in my opinion, 
is henceforth necessary if a people wants to remain self-governing.

Electronic management as a political issue can be approached in several 
ways. I propose, at the beginning of this public consultation, to 
approach the issue as one of *political ecology*. Ecology, during the 
last ten years, has acquired a new meaning. It is still the name for a 
branch of professional biology, but the term now increasingly serves as 
the label under which a broad, politically organized general public 
analyzes and influences technical decisions. I want to focus on the new 
electronic management devices as a technical change of the human 
environment which, to be benign, must remain under political (and not 
exclusively expert) control. I have chosen this focus for my 
introduction, because I thus continue my conversation with those three 
Japanese colleagues to whom I owe what I know about your country - 
Professors Yoshikazu Sakamoto, Joshiro Tamanoi and Jun Ui.

In the 13 minutes still left to me on this rostrum I will clarify a 
distinction that I consider fundamental to political ecology. I shall 
distinguish the /environment as commons /from the /environment as 
resource. /On our ability to make this particular distinction depends 
not only the construction of a sound theoretical ecology, but also - and 
more importantly - effective ecological jurisprudence Minna-san, how I 
wish, at this point, that I were a pupil trained by your Zen poet, the 
great Basho. Then perhaps in a bare 17 syllables I could express the 
distinction between the /commons /within which people's subsistence 
activities are embedded, and /resources /that serve for the economic 
production of those commodities on which modem survival depends. If I 
were a poet, perhaps I would make this distinction so beautifully and 
incisively that it would penetrate your hearts and remain unforgettable. 
Unfortunately I am not a Japanese poet. I must speak to you in English, 
a language that during the last 100 years has lost the ability to make 
this distinction, and - in addition - I must speak through translation. 
Only because I may count on the translating genius of Mr. Muramatsu do I 
dare to recover Old English meanings with a talk in Japan.

"Commons" is an Old English word. According to my Japanese friends, it 
is quite close to the meaning that /iriai/ still has in Japanese 
"Commons," like /iriai, /is a word which, in preindustrial times, was 
used to designate certain /aspects /of the environment. People called 
commons those parts of the environment for which customary law exacted 
specific forms of community respect. People called commons that part of 
the environment which lay beyond their own thresholds and outside of 
their own possessions, to which, however, they had recognized claims of 
usage, not to produce commodities but to provide for the subsistence of 
their households. The customary law which humanized the environment by 
establishing the commons was usually unwritten. It was unwritten law not 
only because people did not care to write it down, but because what it 
protected was a reality much too complex to fit into paragraphs. The law 
of the commons regulates the right of way, the right to fish and to 
hunt, to graze, and to collect wood or medicinal plants in the forest.

An oak tree might be in the commons. Its shade, in summer, is reserved 
for the shepherd and his flock; its acorns are reserved for the pigs of 
the neighbouring peasants; its dry branches serve as fuel for the widows 
of the village; some of its fresh twigs in springtime are cut as 
ornaments for the church - and at sunset it might be the place for the 
village assembly. When people spoke about commons, /iriai, /they 
designated an aspect of the environment that was limited, that was 
necessary for the community's survival, that was necessary for different 
groups in different ways, but which, in a strictly economic sense, was 
/not perceived /as /scarce./

When today, in Europe, with university students I use the term "commons" 
(in German /Almende /or /Gemeinheit, /in Italian /gli usi civici) /my 
listeners immediately think of the eighteenth century. They think of 
those pastures in England on which villagers each kept a few sheep, and 
they think of the "enclosure of the pastures" which transformed the 
grassland from commons into a resource on which commercial flocks could 
be raised. Primarily, however, my students think of the innovation of 
poverty which came with enclosure: of the absolute impoverishment of the 
peasants, who were driven from the land and into wage labour, and they 
think of the commercial enrichment of the lords.

In their immediate reaction, my students think of the rise of a new 
capitalist order. Facing that painful newness, they forget that 
enclosure also stands for something more basic. The enclosure of the 
commons inaugurates a /new ecological order: /Enclosure did not just 
physically transfer the control over grasslands from the peasants to the 
lord. Enclosure marked a radical change in the attitudes of society 
towards the environment. Before, in any juridical system, most of the 
environment had been considered as commons from which most people could 
draw most of their sustenance without needing to take recourse to the 
market. After enclosure, the environment became primarily a resource at 
the service of "enterprises" which, by organizing wage-labor, 
transformed nature into the goods and services on which the satisfaction 
of basic needs by consumers depends. This transformation is in the blind 
spot of political economy.

This change of attitudes can be illustrated better if we think about 
roads rather than about grasslands. What a difference there was between 
the new and the old parts of Mexico City only 20 years ago. In the old 
parts of the city the streets were true commons. Some people sat on the 
road to sell vegetables and charcoal. Others put their chairs on the 
road to drink coffee or tequila. Others held their meetings on the road 
to decide on the new headman for the neighbourhood or to determine the 
price of a donkey. Others drove their donkeys through the crowd, walking 
next to the heavily loaded beast of burden; others sat in the saddle. 
Children played in the gutter, and still people walking could use the 
road to get from one place to another.

Such roads were not built for people. Like any true commons, the street 
itself was the result of people living there and making that space 
liveable. The dwellings that lined the roads were not private homes in 
the modern sense - garages for the overnight deposit of workers. The 
threshold still separated two living spaces, one intimate and one 
common. But neither homes in this intimate sense nor streets as commons 
survived economic development.

In the new sections of Mexico City, streets are no more for people. They 
are now roadways for automobiles, for buses, for taxis, cars, and 
trucks. People are barely tolerated on the streets unless they are on 
their way to a bus stop. If people now sat down or stopped on the 
street, they would become obstacles for traffic, and traffic would be 
dangerous to them. The road has been degraded from a commons to a simple 
resource for the circulation of vehicles. People can circulate no more 
on their own. Traffic has displaced their mobility. They can circulate 
only when they are strapped down and are moved.

The appropriation of the grassland by the lords was challenged, but the 
more /fundamental transformation /of grassland (or of roads) from 
commons to resource has happened, until recently, without being 
subjected to criticism. The appropriation of the environment by the few 
was clearly recognized as an intolerable abuse By contrast, the even 
more degrading transformation of people into members of an industrial 
/labour force and into consumers /was//taken, until recently, for 
granted. For almost a hundred years the majority of political parties 
has challenged the accumulation of environmental resources in private 
hands. However, the issue was argued in terms of the private utilization 
of these resources, not the distinction of commons. Thus anticapitalist 
politics so far have bolstered the legitimacy of transforming commons 
into resources.

Only recently, at the base of society, a new kind of "popular 
intellectual" is beginning to recognize what has been happening. 
Enclosure has denied the people the right to that /kind /of environment 
on which - throughout all of history - the /moral economy of survival 
/had been based. Enclosure, once accepted, redefines community. 
Enclosure underlines the local autonomy of community. Enclosure of the 
commons is thus as much in the interest of professionals and of state 
bureaucrats as it is in the interest of capitalists. Enclosure allows 
the bureaucrats to define local community as impotent - /"ei-ei 
schau-schau!!!" /- to provide for its own survival. People become 
economic individuals that depend for their survival on commodities that 
are produced /for them. /Fundamentally, most citizens' movements 
represent a rebellion against this environmentally induced redefinition 
of people as consumers.

Minna-san, you wanted to hear me speak on electronics, not grassland and 
roads. But I am a historian; I wanted to speak first about the pastoral 
commons as I know them from the past in order then to say something 
about the present, much wider threat to the commons by electronics.

This man who speaks to you was born 55 years ago in Vienna. One month 
after his birth he was put on a train, and then on a ship and brought to 
the Island of Brac. Here, in a village on the Dalmatian coast, his 
grandfather wanted to bless him. My grandfather lived in the house in 
which his family had lived since the time when Muromachi ruled in Kyoto. 
Since then on the Dalmatian Coast many rulers had come and gone - the 
doges of Venice, the sultans of Istanbul, the corsairs of Almissa, the 
emperors of Austria, and the kings of Yugoslavia. But these many changes 
in the uniform and language of the governors had changed little in daily 
life during these 500 years. The very same olive-wood rafters still 
supported the roof of my grandfather's house. Water was still gathered 
from the same stone slabs on the roof. The wine was pressed in the same 
vats, the fish caught from the same kind of boat, and the oil came from 
trees planted when Edo was in its youth.

My grandfather had received news twice a month. The news now arrived by 
steamer in three days; and formerly, by sloop, it had taken five days to 
arrive. When I was born, for the people who lived off the main routes, 
history still flowed slowly, imperceptibly. Most of the environment was 
still in the commons. People lived in houses they had built; moved on 
streets that had been trampled by the feet of their animals; were 
autonomous in the procurement and disposal of their water; could depend 
on their own voices when they wanted to speak up. All this changed with 
my arrival in Brac.

On the same boat on which I arrived in 1926, the first loudspeaker was 
landed on the island. Few people there had ever heard of such a thing. 
Up to that day, all men and women had spoken with more or less equally 
powerful voices. Henceforth this would change. Henceforth the access to 
the microphone would determine whose voice shall be magnified. Silence 
now ceased to be in the commons; it became a resource for which 
loudspeakers compete. Language itself was transformed thereby from a 
local commons into a national resource for communication. As enclosure 
by the lords increased national productivity by denying the individual 
peasant to keep a few sheep, so the encroachment of the loudspeaker has 
destroyed that silence which so far had given each man and woman his or 
her proper and equal voice. Unless you have access to a loudspeaker, you 
now are silenced.

I hope that the parallel now becomes clear. Just as the commons of space 
are vulnerable, and can be destroyed by the motorization of traffic, so 
the commons of speech are vulnerable, and can easily be destroyed by the 
encroachment of modem means of communication.

The issue which I propose for discussion should therefore be clear: how 
to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices and systems upon 
commons that are more subtle and more intimate to our being than either 
grassland or roads - commons that are at least as valuable as silence. 
Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary 
for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape 
people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for 
speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for 
moving.

Such a transformation of the environment from a commons to a productive 
resource constitutes the most fundamental form of environmental 
degradation. This degradation has a long history, which coincides with 
the history of capitalism but can in no way just be reduced to it. 
Unfortunately the importance of this transformation has been overlooked 
or belittled by political ecology so far. It needs to be recognized if 
we are to organize defense movements of what remains of the commons. 
This defense constitutes the crucial public task for political action 
during the eighties. The task must be undertaken urgently because 
commons can exist without police, but resources cannot. Just as traffic 
does, computers call for police, and for ever more of them, and in ever 
more subtle forms.

By definition, resources call for defense by police. Once they are 
defended, their recovery as commons becomes increasingly difficult. This 
is a special reason for urgency.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

/Ivan Illich is doing to computers what he did to education 
(De-Schooling Society, 1971), to energy (Energy and Equity, 1974), to 
medicine (Medical Nemesis, 1975), and to sex roles (Vernacular Gender, 
1983). Each time it has been radical analysis that changes our 
perception of what is really going on. Each time, and with growing 
clarity, it is an economic/historical analysis having to do with the 
idea of scarcity as a means of exploitation. This article is from 
Illich's remarks at the "Asahi Symposium Science and Man - The 
computer-managed Society," Tokyo, Japan, March 21, 1982. The ideas here 
are part of a book Illich is working on, The History of Scarcity./

- Stewart Brand

The CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter 1983

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