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."
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."
Thompson represents "the Earth's idealism," the chart's herbal register.
"the Earth's idealism was Thomson. That's herbs."
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 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."
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."
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."
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."
Connections
The chart's third figure — the "Earth's idealism"/Gaia register, crystallized 1970 (Earth Day).