As enclosure by the lords increased national productivity by denying the individual peasant to keep a few sheep, so the encroachment of the loudspeak… - Ivan Illich

But this does not mean that the transition from our present to a convivial mode of production can be accomplished without
serious threats to the survival of many people. At present the relationship between people and their tools is suicidally
distorted. The survival of Pakistanis depends on Canadian grain, and the survival of New Yorkers on world-wide exploitation
of natural resources. The birth pangs of a convivial world society will inevitably be violently painful for hungry Indians and
for helpless New Yorkers. I will later argue that the transition from the present mode of production, which is
Overwhelmingly industrial, toward conviviality may start suddenly. But for the sake of the survival of many people it will be
Tools for Conviviality
Page 7 Document developed using Purpledesirable that the transition does not happen all at once. I argue that survival in justice is possible only at the cost of those
sacrifices implicit in the adoption of a convivial mode of production and the universal renunciation of unlimited progeny,
affluence, and power on the part of both individuals and groups. This price cannot be extorted by some despotic Leviathan,
nor elicited by social engineering. People will rediscover the value of joyful sobriety and liberating austerity only if they
relearn to depend on each other rather than on energy slaves. The price for a convivial society will be paid only as the result
of a political process which reflects and promotes the society-wide inversion of present industrial consciousness. This
political process will find its concrete expression not in some taboo, but in a series of temporary agreements on one or the
other concrete limitation of means, constantly adjusted under the pressure of conflicting insights and interests.

In fact, healthy students often redouble their resistance to teaching as they find themselves more comprehensively manipulated. This resistance is due not to the authoritarian style of a public school or the seductive style of some free schools, but to the fundamental approach common to all schools-the idea that one person's judgment should determine what and when another person must learn.

Churches also have their problems with a Jesus whose only economics are jokes. A savior undermines the foundations of any social doctrine of the Church. But that is what He does, whenever He is faced with money matters. According to Mark 12:13 there was a group of Herodians who wanted to catch Him in His own words. They ask "Must we pay tribute to Caesar?" You know His answer: "Give me a coin – tell me whose profile is on it!." Of course they answer "Caesar's." The drachma is a weight of silver marked with Caesar's effigy. A Roman coin was no impersonal silver dollar; there was none of that "trust in God" or adornment with a presidential portrait. A denarius was a piece of precious metal branded, as it were, like a heifer, with the sign of the personal owner. Not the Treasury, but Caesar coins and owns the currency. Only if this characteristic of Roman currency is understood, one grasps the analogy between the answer to the devil who tempted Him with power and to the Herodians who tempt Him with money. His response is clear: abandon all that which has been branded by Caesar; but then, enjoy the knowledge that everything, everything else is God's, and therefore is to be used by you. The message is so simple: Jesus jokes about Caesar. He shrugs off his control. And not only at that one instance… Remember the occasion at the Lake of Capharnaum, when Peter is asked to pay a twopenny tax. Jesus sends him to throw a line into the lake and pick the coin he needs from the mouth of the first fish that bites. Oriental stories up to the time of Thousand Nights and One Night are full of beggars who catch the fish that has swallowed a piece of gold. His gesture is that of a clown; it shows that this miracle is not meant to prove him omnipotent but indifferent to matters of money. Who wants power submits to the Devil and who wants denarri submits to the Caesar.