Whether we are already fully in the grip of the technocapital AI singularity or not, you likely feel as though there\u2019s not much we can do.\u00a0As allies of future generations, we aren\u2019t giving up so easily.\u00a0To quote the author of\u00a0Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,<\/em>\u00a0we \u201cwake in the night at the least sound in fear of what our life and or children\u2019s lives may be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

This fear is not new. The question of technology, media, and institutions became unavoidable in the 20th Century. Yet, when we think of institutions, the most radical critiques people have encountered came from either Michel Foucault or J\u00fcrgen Habermas. These thinkers towered over the theory scene in the 1970s and 80s, as radicals took their \u201clong march through the institutions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

When it comes to theories of social change, the tendency is to put our hopes in leaving the existing institutions, the current order failing, or some overnight revolution to bring us salvation. Otherwise, we lean in and do the best we can with what\u2019s afforded by the existing institutions. Reform or revolution. Nothing ever changes, so we keep putting our hopes in education.\u00a0So progressives say, \u201cIf only more people had access to a better education, then that would solve the problems.\u201d But we have not thought seriously enough about the nature of our institutions, or this thing called \u201ceducation\u201d that they offer.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0The most radical critiques of schooling that teachers encounter issue from Paulo Friere, bell hooks, and Henry Giroux, but none of these ever got to the root of institutions themselves. The theorist who did this is Ivan Illich.\u00a0Gaining brief stardom in the 70s, Ivan Illich was the father of the deschooling movement, inspiring hundreds of radical schools and generations of homeschooling parents. But this characterization of his work, as the anti-school guy, was his ultimate demise. For that only takes account of a surface level of his work. Illich was immediately misunderstood and quickly abandoned.<\/p>\r\n

The issue goes so far beyond schools. We spend our entire lives mediated through institutions that totalize, instrumentalize, and reduce humans \u2013 all of our possibilities \u2013 to something predictable, calculable, and exchangeable, easy to control. The interests of state and capital here overlap entirely.\u00a0Our desires are thus turned into commodities, and our timenergy into labor power. Illich doesn\u2019t stop here though. For institutions are not the whole picture\u2026<\/p>\r\n

When people think of schooling today they think of studying for exams, not learning for the sake of learning. When people think of hospitals, they think of treating illnesses, not human-to-human care and well being, When people think of transportation they think of speed and efficiency not the possibility of sustained, regular, and meaningful connections.\u00a0 When people think of reading, they think of collecting information, not lingering with an idea.The move from schooling to schole requires serious inquiry into the conditions of possibility for this mode.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

I\u2019m calling for a sincere and earnest revival of Illich. While most introductions to Illich limit their engagement to his earlier books, a series of polemics against schooling and institutionalized consumer society, I want to go deeper and lead us to a more robust understanding of who and what a human is for Illich. With his help, we will reopen the question of what we are, what we can be, and the type of lives we are willing to give our time and energy to bring into being, if there are to be humans in the future.<\/p>\r\n

The course begins in June!\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Tier 1: AUDIT: Access to the lecture Zoom calls + 6 months of access to the lecture recordings and the forum.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Tier 2: LONG-TERM BUY-IN: Everything from Tier 1 + Long-term buy-in and access to the course, forum, and lectures.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Tier 3: CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM: Everything from Tiers 1 & 2 + Direct constructive critical feedback from Bryan and Dave (via voice messages and\/or marked up reviews of your assignments). This includes the writer’s workshop and office hours package.<\/p>\r\n

Tier 4: ASSESSMENT & ACCOUNTABILITY: Everything from Tiers 1-3 + (1) Access to any of the live and recorded exegetical reading sessions of this text that Dave or Bryan will do + (2) Two 1-on-1 Zoom calls with Dave and\/or Bryan. The first is to be scheduled while the course is ongoing, and the second is to be conducted after the course is over, for a constructive criticism session dealing with your final project.<\/p>\r\n

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