The New Age teacher Bob names among the small set of thinkers he studied intently and placed on the Tiny Note Chart alongside LaRouche, McLuhan, and Kroker. Thompson stands for the "Earth's idealism" — Gaia, the Earth Day moment — and is mapped to the herbs of the MIHR device. New to it — start with dialogue 12, where Bob lays out the chart's structure.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the chart's third figure — the New Age / Gaia register between McLuhan and Kroker
In the MIHR-parts mapping, William Irwin Thompson — a Gaia-talking New Age guru — is the herbs.
"I think [William Irwin] Thompson, who was a New Age guru and talked about Gaia, I think he was herbs."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 12 (28 Jan 2021), 2:10:50
On the chart Thompson is the 1967–72 figure, crystallized at 1970, the year of Earth Day.
"[William Irwin] Thompson is 67 to 72. Crystallized in 1970. That's when Earth Day started. He was part of that world."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 12 (28 Jan 2021), 2:20:20
Thompson represents "the Earth's idealism," the chart's herbal register.
"the Earth's idealism was Thomson. That's herbs."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 12 (28 Jan 2021), 2:12:03
Fleshed out as the chart's Buddhist register — Pacific Shift, the five mentalities, the moiré, and the Zurich years
On the traditions each figure "dances on the toes" of, Thompson's register is Buddhism — between McLuhan's Catholic Thomism and Kroker's Marxism.
"Thompson is Buddhism, Kroker is Marxism, and I'm, you could say maybe anarchy…"Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 14 (18 Feb 2021), 42:21
Bob invokes Thompson's model of mind — five charts or phases with "different victims" across 20,000 years, the modern victim being "the mind" itself, "a left-hemisphere opinionated mind."
"Thompson says that the mind has five charts, five phases, and there's different victims in each phase over 20,000 years."William Irwin Thompson, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 14 (18 Feb 2021), 3:08:21
The register stops being a chart-slot and becomes a lived predicament — Earth-as-art-form after Sputnik, and the first dialogue where iON openly contests Bob over the quadrant
The chart's 1967–72 quadrant mapped to ecology and preservationism — the "back to the land" turn (The Limits to Growth, the "Club of Ruin") — which iON rereads as fatalism, a coming "new dark age"; Bob holds the dark age inevitable, iON that the quadrant is "too fatalistic," and "we're actually in the Thompson Quadrant right now."
"Thompson is the focus on first nature and trying to preserve it."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 17 (11 Mar 2021), 45:27
Pushed deeper into time — credited with going back past McLuhan to the "original cultures" and how they "form body percept"
Bob places Thompson deeper in time than McLuhan — going back to "the original cultures" to show how they "form body percept," extending McLuhan's ideas to the archaic ground McLuhan left implicit.
"He gets into the original cultures and shows how they form body percept."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 35 (26 Aug 2021), 1:41:56
The five-phase schema's victims finally named in order — animals, woman, man-and-language, agriculture, and at last the mind — the sequence Bob left blank when the model first entered the chart
Thompson's five phases get their victims enumerated at last — each stage of human development consuming a different sacrifice, animals through agriculture, the run-up to the modern phase whose victim is the mind itself.
"The first victim was animals, then woman, then man and language, I think it was, then agriculture, some phase in there."William Irwin Thompson, quoted by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 42 (9 Dec 2021), 1:57:21
The almost-successor is finally measured against the succession — the man Toronto proposed as McLuhan's replacement is shown asking for the Tetrad, sending his audience back to McLuhan, and dying inside the political sequence the manuscript tracks, which closes his arc as witness rather than heir
Thompson is given a position on the chart's terms rather than his own — refusing both the Chip Body and the chemical one, which makes his nineties books an occupancy of the interval rather than a third programme.
"He was in between the conflict, so he'd make fun of Ray Kurzweil. He'd make fun of the jackass people. He was in the interval."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 75 (28 Sep 2023), 1:58:46
The exchange is reported as a measure of the gap — the man Toronto once billed as McLuhan's replacement wanted the Tetrad explained and never asked about the Five Bodies, which quietly reverses the succession.
"The only thing he asked me to do in this course is lectures at the... Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York was explained a Tetrad. He hadn't got his head around that yet."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 75 (28 Sep 2023), 2:00:02
Thompson's return from San Francisco is read as a conversion Bob takes credit for — the plea from the lectern is the moment the Lindisfarne circle is told to go back to the source Bob had been supplying it all along.
"and then he makes a special plea, read McLuhan. He gave us a warning."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 75 (28 Sep 2023), 2:01:37
The death is dated by an election rather than a calendar, which is how the page's other lives are timed too — placing Thompson's end inside the political sequence the Trump manuscript is written about.
"He died the day Trump lost, around that time, first week of November 2020, when he died."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 75 (28 Sep 2023), 2:03:06
Connections
The chart's third figure — the "Earth's idealism"/Gaia register, crystallized 1970 (Earth Day).