“corruptio optimi pessima” - the corruption of the best is the worst

 It doesn’t seem to matter much where I travel in my mind lately, in the end I nudge up  against Illich  and his sense of “corruptio optimi pessima” - the corruption of the best is the worst of all.

The Magnet and I are working with a group of Auckland teachers planning a term long inquiry  framed by the question - From where will the Tui  sing?

The learning experiences planned for students explore connections and interdependencies  [relationships if you like] past, present and future, between and within people, communities, environments, and ecosystems.

In attempting to recreate an environment (regenerate native bush) to bring back the Tui,  students must look past simple “what does it eat?” questions, to more complex “what does it  need for successful sex?" questions.  For it is only when sexual activity occurs – all that  nesting, mating, egg laying and chick rearing - that we can feel confident that any return  of the Tui’s song is more than a flash of  faddish edu_enviro_activism.   

It is this “How can we alter our surroundings?” and “How do our surroundings alter us?” thinking that interests me. I am always trying to create conditions for better learning outcomes for kids – altering the surroundings as it were – BUT I have to admit that the  surroundings of school also alter me.

Illich argued “the corruption of the best is the worst” about Christianity where he claimed  “a community of spirit” has been betrayed by church systems and methods designed to control,institutionalise, and manage Christian vocation. The Rivers North of the Future 2005

“In the early years of Christianity it was customary in a Christian household to have an  extra mattress, a bit of candle and some dry bread in case the Lord Jesus should knock at  the door in the form of a stranger without a roof.” p54

Over time the role of Christian hospitality was replaced by Church based, and then state  based care giving institutions - free choice became a task - “the free choice of the  householder has become the task of an institution”.

In the 21st century Christian “hospitality” is too often degraded and replaced by the provision/ funding  of welfare institutions by the state.  Our 21st century learners know little of hospitality and everything about  the “service industries’ - know only the institutionalisation of neighbourliness

The “agencies and charitable institutions” we create for those whom we leave unattended make  us comfortable about abandoning the “I thou” relationship.  We absolve ourselves from the  responsibility of “hospitality” and leave the decisions over who will access these agencies  to others.

Corruption through institutionalisation, control, and management  can be applied to more  than neighbourliness.   

Corruption features in Doc Searle’s  recent post where Dave Rogers claims that  competition for commodities in the context of VRM and Web 2.0 environments is consuming us – blinding us from what Illich would call the “I thou” relationship.

None of this VRM, or Web 2.0 bullshit is important. It's all crap. You and I have a certain  amount of time here in this life. "Changing the world," isn't why we're here. That's just a  line of shit they feed you, so that your time and attention and energy are devoted to  serving the needs of the competing entities. We aren't consumers, we are the consumed.
All we have, all we'll ever have, in this brief life is each other. All of our virtues, all  of them, are compromised and corrupted each and every day in the name of competition. Maybe  not by everybody, every day, but all of them are, every day. And because there is no logical  end to competition, it will only continue to get worse.
Everything that we somehow, in our heart of hearts, still think really matters, is being  lost, little by little, every day as we compete with one another over nearly everything. Not  the least of which are these stupid arguments about bullshit internet technologies, and how  to get along better with the people who want to sell you something. 

Illich has long argued that when education/ health is seen as a commodity we alter the “I  thou” relationship - Roger's sense of "our time and attention and energy” is diverted to “fulfil self  generated needs”.  In education you only need to read the Statement of Intent 2007-2012 MoE Government Themes  and Ministerial Priorities Ch 2 p18 to appreciate that the NZ Government sees knowledge as a  “commodity” - as something to be marketed to increase our competitive economy in the world. 

“Economic Transformation is about continuing our journey towards a thriving and  internationally competitive economy with a highly skilled workforce. The education system is  a critical contributor to economic development. It is responsible for equipping New  Zealanders with the skills and competencies needed for a productive, adaptable workforce in  an increasingly globalised world.” pdf download

Geetha Narayanan is alert to what happens when the importance of knowledge is described in terms of competitive advantage/commodity

Further, this pressure is resulting in a disconnect between the means and ends of education. 
The larger democratic ideals of social justice, of interdependence and of co-evolution  through cooperation and collaboration are being increasingly marginalised in favour of  greater accountability through testing, the drive towards nationalised curriculum, which  suffers from a ‘one size fits all’ mindset, and the need to develop competitive advantages  in a networked world that has a globalised economic structure.

All this thinking interests me because when I work in schools I perpetuate the  institutionalised commodity – I feed the tui rather than pointing it somewhere where it can  nest, mate and raise chicks.  I support an institution that has been designed to always be  needed.   

I want to believe that we have escaped a corruption of purpose when we invent different ways  of “doing school”, I talk about it enough, but I suspect that despite good intentions any alternative delivery system for “education” in  New Zealand must necessarily become an institution to manage and control.  As such new ways of “school” in all its  imaginings must  treat learning as a commodity, and function primarily to fulfil  self-generated needs.

Is why Lucychili's suggestion that I read Lessig’s Required Reading: the next 10 years post was such a connect moment for  me

"Corruption" in my view is the subtle pressure to take views or positions because of the  financial reward they will bring you. "Subtle" in the sense that one's often not even aware  of the influence.

Planting an area in harakeke , kowhai and Kaka beak  to attract the nectar eaters is analagous to setting up an institution for learning, setting up a school - in that it does not acknowledge  that no amount of institutionally controlled and funded planting will result in a self sustaining Tui population if we do not also bring certain death to the rats who disrupt the  Tui's reproductive cycle.

The profession of teaching in school, like planting harakeke for Tui without eradicating the  rats, it represents an institutionalised dependency (of learning), and as such represents “corruptio optimi pessima”. 

And I am part of this

Comments

[Karyn Romeis]

This is an interesting line of thought, Arti, and it highlights an interesting tension. My observation is that we are seeing the diminuition of the physical community - that whole thing of the extended family, the village, etc. as people increasingly "mind their own business". To a certain extent we do still see it within the church, but even there, the societal pressures to "butt out" are encroaching.

I don't know how much quantifiable research there has been into the matter, but I suspect the increasingly disaffected stance of teenagers from some of the deprived urban areas can be attributed to this erosion. People are becoming increasingly isolated. Recent figures in the UK suggest an all time high in one-person households and the requirement for housing to meet that demand.

However, in their isolation, many have turned to online communities. Within my own online community/ies I find an extraodinary level of open-handedness, of mutual support and encouragement, of generosity with advice and counsel that is often no longer encountered in the physical - especially in the reticent, reserved UK. However, I have also brushed with a few really destructive online communities which seem to be characterised by sniping and in-fighting, so it isn't all good.

The backlash of that is the extent to which some people, my own teenage sons included, seem to find the online community increasingly preferable to the physical, and consequently neglect their physical-realm relationships, further damaging the fragile tissue of that community. We have to set boundaries in our home in order to be able to have any contact with our sons at all. They push back against it at first, but if we can just engage them f2f, those moments are so beneficial for us all.

[Artichoke]

Thanks for your thoughts shared Karyn,

I am still trying to make some sense of this but I am not sure that an online environment where we “look” at each other through a screen answers this sense of corruption – Illich’s sense that purpose is betrayed through commodification and institutionalisation of health, education etc since oftentimes these communities you offer as an alternative are a subset of the institution - formed as part of institutional delivery of education etc .

And I guess if they did and we increasingly relied upon our sense of being from these sterile/transmitted light from a screen based interfaces it would be a frightening comment on how technology has corrupted our sense of what it is to be human.

I like the way Illich captures the way we know another – the significance of the lingering gaze - and this kind of reverses the way friendship and community develop

This 1996 discussion he has with Jerry Brown is an interesting development of these ideas

Brown: So we start with a world where the good society creates the virtue and the virtue is the basis of friendship. Now it's reversed. Now it seems we have to create the friendship and in the context of the friendship virtue is practiced and that might lead to a community which might lead to a society which might be a whole other kind of politics.

[adexterc]

This is a wonderful post. Although I am on summer break, I will think about it much. I work with the same students in both formal and non-formal situations. The battle I fight is that the formal continuously enroaches on the non-formal. I now have a bit more understanding. Thank you.
Just a question; Do you all use system dynamics software/modeling systems to discuss the Tui issues?

[Dougald]

A very thoughtful post which I'm glad to have stumbled across!

Illich's thought is strange and subtle, deeply provocative and often misheard. I've had people incensed at the suggestion that institutional provision might be more demeaning than hospitality and the old [pre-17th C] sense of 'charity'. Some friends on the left insist he was a clever fool who didn't realise he was justifying neoliberalism! (I guess he'd have been happy with the 'fool' part, though not in its intended sense...)

One subtlety that's often missed is the extent to which Illich was arguing against the importance we place on institutions, rather than arguing for the total abolition of institutions. (Of course, to question that importance undermines the kind of institutions of compulsion on which he focused, such as our schools and hospitals.) But this may be relevant to technologies like the internet - they may be helpful, but become dangerous when we put importance on them, treat them as essential or good-in-themselves, and misplace what matters. (This idea seems to be there in Dave Rogers and Doc Searle's conversation.)

Illich was certainly very wary of all the faith that people were investing in the internet - but he was also quick to acquire a laptop and saw how helpful it was in the context of the libraries he loved. (Have you read 'The Challenges of Ivan Illich'? There are some illuminating essays from his friends and companions, including biographical material.)

Anyway, glad to have discovered your blog!

[Leigh]

Hey Arti,

Since I've started (increasingly forced) to focus on my f2f relationships of formal work, I have neglected the online relationship with you and many others that meet with me via RSS. It has taken me too long to discover this new post, a beautiful and emotionally relevant post, I wish I'd seen it earlier/forever. Anyone who thinks that our online relationships stop online is mistaken. Anyone who thinks there is a competition between us is also mistaken. Online (at least my online) is cooperation. There is a mattress and a dry piece of bread at my house for you, and anyone who knows you online! And I expect the same your end.. well, I hope for the same at least. This electronic interface bridges a physical barrier and allows us/them to connect and find meaning and hope in the absence of such a thing locally. This electronic interface is largely free of rats, where our local and every day settings are plagued by rats. I had hoped that the new and old spirits of hospitality would grow and grow online, to a point where our local and every day would start to be affected, where rats would be no longer welcome, where cooperation, decentralisation, generosity and freedom would flourish. Many critics are mistaken in thinking that people are forming emotional relationships with technology, they are wrong. We are forming relationships with people and perhaps building new communities from the long gone communities around us. I still hold hope, and every now and then I see proof that it is not a delusion. But until that day starts to prevail, this little tui will remain in the sanctuary of this electronic connection, and the narrow channels of connectedness that promise a rat free existence, and will every now and then venture out into hostile lands to fight the corruption.

[roseg]

A fine thing for Doc Searls to be saying after a lifetime of making "selling" look like the art of conversation and encouraging people like the Tara Hunts of the world to believe they're onto something spiritual.

We're all rats. The only difference is the degree, I reckon.

[lucychili]

via oldaily downes.ca
http://whatisthemessage.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-marketing-politics-and-power.html

[lucychili]

http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/TouchingCulture.pdf

[Artichoke]

Apologies for the delay in responding … some artichoke blog posts are more significant than others, and this one proved more undermining than I anticipated – writing it and reflecting upon it has meant that I have had to confront some personal demons before replying – and yes Rose finding and embracing the inner rat was part of this …

In response to adexterc: The Tui study is relying on quite simple concept and argument mapping software – Inspiration, Reasonable and Rationale. We are also using a set of HOT visual thinking organizers we have developed for generalisation, prediction, evaluation and causal thinking. I would much enjoy learning more about the software modeling systems you would recommend for this kind of study.

In response to Dougald: Thanks for your comments, and delighted to discover someone else who is interested in Illich. I will admit that I am in love with the thinking of Ivan Illich. Part of the fascination lies in fighting to understand his deliciously complex thinking and the other part lies in the way so many of his thoughts are being “rediscovered” unacknowledged in much simpler and more brutal contexts in the age of the 21st Century learner. Without the advantages of tertiary study – I am always uncertain of my interpretation. I have a well thumbed copy of the Challenges of Ivan Illich and have also gained much from reading David Cayley’s “Ivan Illich in Conversation”. My current favourite read is “In the Vineyard of the Text” it helps me understand so much of what is claimed for the digital age. I think that after 20 odd years I am getting better at figuring out the nuance in Illich but will admit that I have absolutely no idea about most of Paul Celan’s poetry – another fixation for me.

And Leigh and Rose I am so glad that I was brave enough to allow our online friendship to be tested and found sturdy by our f2f FLNW experiences in Dunedin – I suspect our online/offline connection could well represent a living metaphor for the rat king