Dialogue 4 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: here I am with Cameron starting our third session and

[00:08] Bob Dobbs: Cameron would like to talk about an interesting theme he finds that I bring up that he has thought a lot about.

[00:17] Bob Dobbs: It's the cul-de-sac theme.

[00:19] Bob Dobbs: So lead off with that Cameron.

[00:24] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[00:24] Cameron McEwen: so when I was an undergraduate

[00:29] Cameron McEwen: I got...

[00:30] Cameron McEwen: very interested in Nietzsche.

[00:33] Cameron McEwen: One of the professors at Princeton was Walter Kaufmann,

[00:37] Cameron McEwen: who has done more translation of

[00:42] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche than anybody else,

[00:44] Cameron McEwen: I believe,

[00:45] Cameron McEwen: and who wrote an influential monograph on Nietzsche in the

[00:53] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, and at least for a few decades.

[00:57] Cameron McEwen: He was sort of the dean of

[01:00] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche interpretation in the United States.

[01:04] Cameron McEwen: So

[01:05] Cameron McEwen: I didn't always agree with

[01:10] Cameron McEwen: Kaufmann's take on

[01:11] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche, but I was certainly spurred to read

[01:18] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche and to think about him.

[01:22] Cameron McEwen: And

[01:24] Cameron McEwen: I...

[01:25] Cameron McEwen: At Princeton,

[01:26] Cameron McEwen: you have to write an undergraduate thesis,

[01:28] Cameron McEwen: and I ended up doing my thesis on the second untimely meditation of Nietzsche.

[01:38] Cameron McEwen: At the time,

[01:38] Cameron McEwen: I couldn't speak German,

[01:40] Cameron McEwen: so I was working in translations,

[01:42] Cameron McEwen: but my interest in

[01:45] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche was one of the factors that led me to go and study in Germany.

[01:53] Cameron McEwen: and to learn German there.

[01:55] Cameron McEwen: And I've remained highly interested in

[02:00] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche ever since and often discuss

[02:06] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche in my blog.

[02:10] Cameron McEwen: So one of the...

[02:12] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[02:13] Bob Dobbs: when are you at Princeton and studying Nietzsche?

[02:15] Bob Dobbs: Late 60s?

[02:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[02:18] Cameron McEwen: well,

[02:18] Cameron McEwen: I graduated in 66,

[02:20] Cameron McEwen: so the middle

[02:21] Bob Dobbs: 60s. Okay.

[02:23] Bob Dobbs: And when did you go to Germany or learn German?

[02:29] Cameron McEwen: I went to Germany in 1970 and studied

[02:35] Cameron McEwen: German there as a second language in Munich.

[02:41] Cameron McEwen: And then for the next

[02:44] Cameron McEwen: 30 or so years,

[02:47] Cameron McEwen: I was regularly in

[02:50] Cameron McEwen: Germany again.

[02:52] Cameron McEwen: and gradually came to be able to think in German or dream in German,

[03:01] Cameron McEwen: which is sort of the test if you know another language well.

[03:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[03:09] Bob Dobbs: now didn't you visit Macomb in 1970?

[03:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[03:13] Cameron McEwen: although I now think it must have been the fall of 68.

[03:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[03:19] Bob Dobbs: so you're thinking...

[03:20] Bob Dobbs: You've graduated in 66.

[03:23] Bob Dobbs: You're thinking,

[03:23] Bob Dobbs: where do I go next?

[03:24] Bob Dobbs: You're interested in McLuhan.

[03:27] Bob Dobbs: Did we ever talk about how you discovered McLuhan?

[03:30] Bob Dobbs: How did you become aware of him in that period?

[03:34] Cameron McEwen: Actually,

[03:34] Cameron McEwen: while I was still at Princeton,

[03:37] Cameron McEwen: my dad brought up McLuhan.

[03:41] Cameron McEwen: My dad was a great nationalist,

[03:47] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[03:48] Cameron McEwen: so that any...

[03:50] Cameron McEwen: Anytime he ran across somebody who was a Canadian and seemed noteworthy,

[03:57] Cameron McEwen: he would phone me or write me a letter and bring it up.

[04:02] Cameron McEwen: And through him,

[04:04] Cameron McEwen: I began to read a few things of

[04:08] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan. I think he might even have sent me

[04:13] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan Hot and Cool after it was published in the middle

[04:19] Cameron McEwen: 60s.

[04:20] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[04:20] Bob Dobbs: that was published in 67.

[04:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[04:25] Bob Dobbs: so now I remember,

[04:26] Bob Dobbs: it may not have been on the recorded part,

[04:29] Bob Dobbs: the one where we,

[04:30] Bob Dobbs: our first session that got aborted.

[04:33] Bob Dobbs: And I remember you telling me how your father would turn you on to different things.

[04:37] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[04:37] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[04:38] Bob Dobbs: He wouldn't read McLuhan himself,

[04:40] Bob Dobbs: but he thought it was good for you,

[04:41] Bob Dobbs: right?

[04:42] Cameron McEwen: Exactly,

[04:43] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[04:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[04:44] Bob Dobbs: So you find McLuhan in 67,

[04:47] Bob Dobbs: 68.

[04:49] Bob Dobbs: And you said you visited him in 68?

[04:51] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[04:52] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[04:52] Cameron McEwen: So I had already,

[04:54] Cameron McEwen: for the time I visited

[04:56] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,

[04:57] Cameron McEwen: I had read.

[05:00] Cameron McEwen: A fair amount of him.

[05:02] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember in detail exactly which books I had read,

[05:09] Cameron McEwen: but I had read enough that I thought it would be interesting to study with him.

[05:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[05:14] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[05:14] Bob Dobbs: this is a dramatic point because you get turned off by the scene and that leaves you open to do Nietzsche.

[05:22] Bob Dobbs: If you had not been repulsed by the scene,

[05:27] Bob Dobbs: no more Nietzsche,

[05:28] Bob Dobbs: maybe.

[05:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[05:30] Cameron McEwen: I had already been very interested in Nietzsche,

[05:35] Cameron McEwen: so it was one of the things that I brought up with

[05:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan in person was a topic I often deal with in the blog.

[05:44] Cameron McEwen: And that is,

[05:45] Cameron McEwen: I tried to convince,

[05:48] Cameron McEwen: or at least to interest McLuhan in the idea that there were problems in philosophy that had...

[06:00] Cameron McEwen: existed at least since the time of Nietzsche,

[06:03] Cameron McEwen: that his work might answer.

[06:06] Cameron McEwen: But he wasn't interested at all.

[06:11] Cameron McEwen: He just seemed to indicate that,

[06:12] Cameron McEwen: well,

[06:13] Cameron McEwen: that's conceptual thinking or something like that.

[06:18] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[06:19] Cameron McEwen: When I think about it.

[06:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[06:21] Bob Dobbs: go ahead.

[06:22] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[06:22] Cameron McEwen: I just wanted to say that one of the reasons I think this was the fall of 68 was that But...

[06:30] Cameron McEwen: And

[06:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan handlers,

[06:33] Cameron McEwen: if you will,

[06:35] Cameron McEwen: were asking him very,

[06:37] Cameron McEwen: very easy questions and very repetitive questions.

[06:42] Cameron McEwen: And

[06:42] Cameron McEwen: I thought that this indicated a lack of thinking or just a lack of curiosity at the center.

[06:53] Cameron McEwen: But in retrospect,

[06:57] Cameron McEwen: I'm thinking maybe.

[06:59] Cameron McEwen: They were trying to re-engage

[07:01] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan mind following his operation in New York.

[07:06] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[07:06] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[07:07] Bob Dobbs: the Watsons were there,

[07:09] Bob Dobbs: weren't they?

[07:11] Cameron McEwen: Not that I remember.

[07:12] Cameron McEwen: Not that I remember.

[07:13] Bob Dobbs: You didn't know the people around.

[07:15] Bob Dobbs: You don't know who the handlers were,

[07:16] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[07:18] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[07:18] Cameron McEwen: I knew his brother was there.

[07:20] Cameron McEwen: I knew Eric was there.

[07:22] Bob Dobbs: Harley Parker?

[07:24] Cameron McEwen: That I don't remember.

[07:27] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[07:27] Bob Dobbs: so...

[07:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[07:29] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[07:30] Bob Dobbs: It's a year later from his surgery,

[07:33] Bob Dobbs: but he's very sensitive to noises.

[07:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[07:36] Bob Dobbs: maybe.

[07:37] Bob Dobbs: We have the recordings of him with Tony Schwartz through 68.

[07:42] Bob Dobbs: He sounds pretty normal,

[07:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[07:44] Bob Dobbs: even though he had surgery just a few months before.

[07:49] Cameron McEwen: I've seen some interviews of him,

[07:55] Cameron McEwen: maybe through you.

[07:58] Cameron McEwen: where he actually sounds quite acute not too long after the operation.

[08:03] Cameron McEwen: Surprisingly acute.

[08:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[08:07] Cameron McEwen: He sounded anything but acute when I was there.

[08:11] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[08:12] Bob Dobbs: So there was something dull.

[08:17] Bob Dobbs: Handicapped was the vibe around him.

[08:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[08:21] Cameron McEwen: That's what it seemed to me.

[08:23] Cameron McEwen: It may have been a stupid observation on my part.

[08:28] Cameron McEwen: But that's what I felt,

[08:29] Cameron McEwen: and

[08:30] Cameron McEwen: I just gave up on the idea of trying to work with them.

[08:34] Bob Dobbs: And is that based on visiting two or three times or just one time in that period,

[08:40] Bob Dobbs: that week,

[08:41] Bob Dobbs: that year?

[08:43] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[08:44] Cameron McEwen: I had a good friend in Toronto with whom I was staying,

[08:51] Cameron McEwen: and

[08:53] Cameron McEwen: I suppose over a week's time,

[08:57] Cameron McEwen: I was at the center maybe four or five times.

[09:02] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[09:03] Bob Dobbs: so you had a chance to observe it.

[09:05] Bob Dobbs: Did you experience a Monday night seminar?

[09:09] Cameron McEwen: Not a Monday night seminar,

[09:11] Cameron McEwen: but an afternoon seminar.

[09:14] Cameron McEwen: Some sort of graduate seminar,

[09:16] Cameron McEwen: supposedly.

[09:16] Cameron McEwen: But man,

[09:18] Cameron McEwen: it was just so dull and so unimaginative.

[09:24] Cameron McEwen: compared to seminars that I've experienced at Princeton that

[09:28] Cameron McEwen: I just thought,

[09:29] Cameron McEwen: well,

[09:29] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[09:30] Cameron McEwen: this isn't something I can do.

[09:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[09:32] Bob Dobbs: and it was slow.

[09:35] Bob Dobbs: You knew McLuhan had surgery at the time?

[09:39] Cameron McEwen: That I can't remember,

[09:41] Cameron McEwen: but I don't think I did.

[09:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[09:46] Bob Dobbs: And now it's slow because the students didn't understand what McLuhan was saying?

[09:52] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[09:52] Cameron McEwen: it just...

[09:57] Cameron McEwen: what I remember is that

[10:00] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would say to students,

[10:02] Cameron McEwen: well,

[10:02] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[10:03] Cameron McEwen: what's the new word?

[10:05] Cameron McEwen: And then the students would sort of go around and one would say,

[10:10] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[10:11] Cameron McEwen: the twist.

[10:12] Cameron McEwen: Or another one would say psychedelic or something,

[10:15] Cameron McEwen: right?

[10:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[10:16] Cameron McEwen: And eventually,

[10:19] Cameron McEwen: and McLuhan wouldn't really react.

[10:21] Cameron McEwen: And then finally a word would come up and he'd say,

[10:25] Cameron McEwen: yes,

[10:25] Cameron McEwen: that's the word.

[10:26] Cameron McEwen: And he would.

[10:28] Cameron McEwen: he would begin to talk about it or something,

[10:30] Cameron McEwen: right?

[10:31] Cameron McEwen: And

[10:33] Cameron McEwen: I tried to ask,

[10:34] Cameron McEwen: well,

[10:35] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[10:35] Cameron McEwen: how do you decide what the word is?

[10:38] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[10:39] Cameron McEwen: And he would either get angry or,

[10:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[10:43] Cameron McEwen: ignore it.

[10:46] Bob Dobbs: And you,

[10:47] Bob Dobbs: he'd get angry at you for asking that.

[10:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[10:50] Cameron McEwen: Or,

[10:50] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[10:51] Cameron McEwen: not really angry.

[10:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[10:52] Bob Dobbs: just a little irritated.

[10:54] Cameron McEwen: Dismissive.

[11:01] Bob Dobbs: So it was an odd vibration between you two the whole time,

[11:07] Bob Dobbs: right?

[11:08] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[11:09] Bob Dobbs: Out of sync.

[11:11] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[11:12] Bob Dobbs: so when you go and do Nietzsche in Germany in 70,

[11:19] Bob Dobbs: are you still watching McLuhan?

[11:21] Bob Dobbs: And,

[11:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[11:21] Bob Dobbs: a freak,

[11:22] Bob Dobbs: Cliché to Archetype comes out in 71.

[11:27] Bob Dobbs: Counterblast in 69,

[11:29] Bob Dobbs: Culture Is Our Business in 70.

[11:31] Bob Dobbs: Were you aware of those books coming out?

[11:35] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember the exact titles I was reading.

[11:40] Cameron McEwen: I doubt that I read them all,

[11:42] Cameron McEwen: but some of them,

[11:44] Cameron McEwen: definitely.

[11:45] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[11:45] Bob Dobbs: so you kept following McLuhan book-wise,

[11:48] Bob Dobbs: and you had no desire to go back to the coach house.

[11:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[11:58] Bob Dobbs: So now we come to the point here is that the cul-de-sac idea you have become aware of in the mid-60s or in 70 when studying Nietzsche.

[12:10] Bob Dobbs: So let's talk about the cul-de-sac as Nietzsche presented it.

[12:14] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[12:15] Cameron McEwen: So for Nietzsche,

[12:16] Cameron McEwen: the entire Western civilization entered a cul-de-sac with Plato,

[12:23] Cameron McEwen: basically.

[12:25] Cameron McEwen: And then the civilization goes through six steps through which it discovers that it's in a cul-de-sac.

[12:38] Bob Dobbs: You're saying the time of Plato is a cul-de-sac?

[12:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[12:41] Cameron McEwen: already.

[12:43] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche says that.

[12:45] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[12:46] Cameron McEwen: So in his history of an error,

[12:50] Cameron McEwen: which is basically the traversing of...

[12:54] Cameron McEwen: the cul-de-sac of Western thought,

[12:56] Cameron McEwen: he begins with Plato.

[12:58] Cameron McEwen: So the first step in this cul-de-sac is,

[13:01] Cameron McEwen: I,

[13:02] Cameron McEwen: Plato,

[13:02] Cameron McEwen: am the truth.

[13:04] Cameron McEwen: And

[13:05] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche sets out six steps and then comments on each one.

[13:14] Cameron McEwen: And with the,

[13:15] Cameron McEwen: I,

[13:15] Cameron McEwen: Plato,

[13:16] Cameron McEwen: am the truth,

[13:19] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche's comment is that this makes sense.

[13:24] Cameron McEwen: This is sort of a good idea,

[13:26] Cameron McEwen: but progressing from there presents problems,

[13:30] Cameron McEwen: right?

[13:31] Cameron McEwen: So when he gets up to

[13:33] Cameron McEwen: Kant, let's say,

[13:34] Cameron McEwen: at the end of the

[13:37] Cameron McEwen: 18th century,

[13:39] Cameron McEwen: he says that

[13:41] Cameron McEwen: Western thought now does not believe that it can get in touch with the thing in itself,

[13:50] Cameron McEwen: but it believes that the thing in itself.

[13:53] Cameron McEwen: can still be directive,

[13:56] Cameron McEwen: can still supply some sort of ethic.

[13:59] Cameron McEwen: And he calls that a pale Königsbergian fog.

[14:03] Cameron McEwen: And

[14:04] Cameron McEwen: Königsberg is where

[14:05] Cameron McEwen: Kant taught and lived.

[14:08] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[14:09] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[14:11] Bob Dobbs: So what are the six phases historically?

[14:15] Bob Dobbs: What's phase two?

[14:17] Bob Dobbs: That's past Plato,

[14:18] Bob Dobbs: right?

[14:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[14:21] Cameron McEwen: I'll have to...

[14:23] Bob Dobbs: I'm looking at your note you sent me,

[14:25] Bob Dobbs: progress of the idea becomes more cunning,

[14:27] Bob Dobbs: more insidious,

[14:28] Bob Dobbs: more incomprehensible.

[14:29] Bob Dobbs: It becomes a woman,

[14:30] Bob Dobbs: it becomes Christian.

[14:32] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[14:33] Cameron McEwen: So after Plato,

[14:36] Cameron McEwen: the second step would be that the church develops a theology based on the truth,

[14:49] Cameron McEwen: but the truth is no longer something immediate.

[14:54] Cameron McEwen: as it might be thought to be with Plato,

[14:57] Cameron McEwen: it's now mediated.

[14:59] Cameron McEwen: through the church and through church dogma,

[15:04] Cameron McEwen: through the sacraments,

[15:05] Cameron McEwen: etc.

[15:06] Cameron McEwen: And

[15:07] Cameron McEwen: McCloughan, I'm sorry,

[15:09] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche,

[15:11] Cameron McEwen: regards this as a feminization of the idea because it's kind of

[15:16] Cameron McEwen: Plato with makeup,

[15:17] Cameron McEwen: if you will.

[15:18] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[15:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[15:20] Bob Dobbs: we don't want to go into too much detail.

[15:22] Bob Dobbs: So what's phase three?

[15:24] Bob Dobbs: The old son in the background,

[15:26] Bob Dobbs: Nordic and Konigsbergian.

[15:29] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[15:29] Cameron McEwen: So that's what I mentioned before.

[15:31] Cameron McEwen: At the end of the

[15:32] Cameron McEwen: 17th century,

[15:34] Cameron McEwen: the possibility that humans can relate to what Kant called the thing in itself is denied.

[15:46] Cameron McEwen: But the thing in itself is still regarded as a directive for thought,

[15:50] Cameron McEwen: as something that thought can aim at,

[15:53] Cameron McEwen: and even as something that can supply some sort of ethic.

[15:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[15:58] Bob Dobbs: now each,

[15:59] Bob Dobbs: these,

[15:59] Bob Dobbs: each phases are updatings of the cul-de-sac.

[16:03] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[16:03] Cameron McEwen: It's advancing into the cul-de-sac.

[16:06] Bob Dobbs: What was that word?

[16:09] Bob Dobbs: Man.

[16:12] Bob Dobbs: Man seeing into the cul-de-sac.

[16:13] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you said?

[16:15] Cameron McEwen: No,

[16:15] Cameron McEwen: advancing into.

[16:18] Cameron McEwen: Each step is a step of advance into the cul-de-sac until the cul-de-sac becomes plain as what it is.

[16:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[16:30] Bob Dobbs: but is

[16:32] Cameron McEwen: Plato in a cul-de-sac?

[16:35] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[16:35] Cameron McEwen: we have the same problem here,

[16:36] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[16:37] Cameron McEwen: where if we say,

[16:39] Cameron McEwen: was there tactility in the Gutenberg Galaxy?

[16:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[16:43] Cameron McEwen: there was tactility,

[16:45] Cameron McEwen: but it didn't know it.

[16:45] Cameron McEwen: It was the attempt to think aside from tactility,

[16:52] Cameron McEwen: but in order to do so,

[16:54] Cameron McEwen: it had to implicate tactility,

[16:57] Cameron McEwen: right?

[16:57] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[17:00] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche's notion of the cul-de-sac is that it begins with

[17:04] Cameron McEwen: Plato, but

[17:08] Cameron McEwen: Plato didn't engage with that idea.

[17:11] Cameron McEwen: Plato didn't perceive that he was going into or was taking this road that had no exit.

[17:22] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[17:22] Bob Dobbs: so the cul-de-sac is what is going to be Nietzsche's time.

[17:28] Bob Dobbs: In full bloom.

[17:30] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[17:31] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[17:31] Bob Dobbs: I got that.

[17:33] Bob Dobbs: So then you've got the cock crow of positivism.

[17:37] Bob Dobbs: That's the 19th century?

[17:40] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[17:40] Cameron McEwen: the beginning of the

[17:41] Cameron McEwen: 19th century comp in the later part of the

[17:46] Cameron McEwen: 19th century.

[17:47] Cameron McEwen: It's the idea that the thing in itself that we're supposedly given direction by

[17:58] Cameron McEwen: and yet can't grasp is useless,

[18:02] Cameron McEwen: right?

[18:03] Cameron McEwen: What's the use of an idea that we can never have?

[18:09] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[18:10] Cameron McEwen: And so he calls that the cock crow of positivism is to realize that the thing in itself or truth or God is unreachable and therefore we should get rid of it.

[18:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[18:26] Bob Dobbs: did we talk about the chemical elements last time?

[18:30] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[18:31] Cameron McEwen: we did.

[18:32] Cameron McEwen: Not in this context,

[18:34] Cameron McEwen: but we did talk about them,

[18:36] Cameron McEwen: and certainly the era that we're talking about here was also the era of the chemical elements being discovered.

[18:47] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[18:47] Bob Dobbs: so how do you relate that to what Nietzsche's noticing?

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: Is there any connection?

[18:55] Cameron McEwen: That's a good question.

[18:56] Cameron McEwen: It has several answers.

[19:03] Cameron McEwen: Chemistry had a great boom all during the

[19:10] Cameron McEwen: 19th century.

[19:12] Cameron McEwen: But at the end of the

[19:13] Cameron McEwen: 19th century,

[19:14] Cameron McEwen: chemistry,

[19:15] Cameron McEwen: physics became aware of difficulties that they didn't know how to solve.

[19:25] Cameron McEwen: right so um the uh chemistry was based on the atom but nobody knew what the atom was so the the discovery of the atom and the atomic structure and the electron and all that stuff that

[19:42] Cameron McEwen: comes at the beginning of the 20th century and at the end of the

[19:48] Cameron McEwen: 19th century the problems with trying to discover

[19:54] Cameron McEwen: what the atom was in physics trying to discover if there was an aether

[20:00] Cameron McEwen: An ether that light could travel through and that bore the waves of light,

[20:07] Cameron McEwen: that was a problem in physics.

[20:10] Cameron McEwen: So you could say that the hard sciences,

[20:15] Cameron McEwen: as well as the humanities,

[20:16] Cameron McEwen: entered into a cul-de-sac in the latter part of the

[20:20] Cameron McEwen: 19th century.

[20:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[20:21] Bob Dobbs: now remember we brought up

[20:23] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan biological metaphor.

[20:26] Bob Dobbs: And is McLuhan saying biology replaces physics?

[20:30] Bob Dobbs: and chemistry as a framer of

[20:34] Bob Dobbs: Western thought?

[20:36] Cameron McEwen: I don't know about that,

[20:37] Cameron McEwen: but my impression of some of your stuff is that you don't mind saying something close to that.

[20:49] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[20:50] Cameron McEwen: You like the idea of some kind of collective biology taking over.

[20:59] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[20:59] Bob Dobbs: the chemical body,

[21:00] Bob Dobbs: I call it.

[21:02] Cameron McEwen: Is that the chemical body?

[21:05] Bob Dobbs: No,

[21:05] Bob Dobbs: that's the chemical body.

[21:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah?

[21:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[21:08] Bob Dobbs: that's the beginning of,

[21:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[21:10] Bob Dobbs: Claude Bernard and the interior landscape and the bag of chemicals,

[21:14] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan calls it.

[21:15] Bob Dobbs: Human body,

[21:16] Bob Dobbs: the bag of chemicals and

[21:18] Bob Dobbs: Western chemical physics and biological knowledge dominates the world as the Western imperialism going into the 20th century.

[21:29] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[21:30] Cameron McEwen: right.

[21:30] Bob Dobbs: So

[21:31] Cameron McEwen: I guess I would...

[21:32] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.

[21:34] Cameron McEwen: I was thinking of your advance from there,

[21:39] Cameron McEwen: that at least my impression is that you find biology,

[21:49] Cameron McEwen: the organic life in entities that are not...

[21:59] Cameron McEwen: The entities of regular science,

[22:04] Cameron McEwen: the media themselves,

[22:06] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[22:08] Cameron McEwen: they're forces that are anything but chemical.

[22:15] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[22:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[22:16] Bob Dobbs: let's just put that aside for a second and finish this.

[22:20] Bob Dobbs: So this cul-de-sac at the end of the 19th century you just described,

[22:25] Bob Dobbs: that's Nietzsche's time.

[22:27] Bob Dobbs: Does he talk,

[22:28] Bob Dobbs: like you still got four,

[22:29] Bob Dobbs: five,

[22:30] Bob Dobbs: and six.

[22:31] Bob Dobbs: Are they part of Nietzsche's thinking,

[22:33] Bob Dobbs: the cul-de-sac?

[22:34] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[22:34] Cameron McEwen: yes.

[22:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[22:35] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[22:36] Cameron McEwen: So we actually did talk about four,

[22:41] Cameron McEwen: which is positivism,

[22:42] Cameron McEwen: which is to say that what we can see and touch and hear is all there is.

[22:51] Cameron McEwen: There isn't anything in itself that lies beyond all of this,

[22:55] Cameron McEwen: right?

[22:56] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I mean by biology as a framer.

[23:00] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[23:00] Bob Dobbs: we get the extreme of materialistic atheism or science saying this is all there is,

[23:08] Bob Dobbs: what we come up with.

[23:10] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[23:12] Bob Dobbs: And then,

[23:12] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[23:13] Bob Dobbs: what's left over religion is the anti-environment to that.

[23:17] Bob Dobbs: But the early 20th century brings in an interest in retrieval of occult systems.

[23:23] Bob Dobbs: As a counter-depositism.

[23:25] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[23:25] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche went into that stuff,

[23:26] Bob Dobbs: didn't he?

[23:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[23:29] Cameron McEwen: I don't know about if he went into the occult.

[23:33] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche went insane in 1990 and died.

[23:37] Cameron McEwen: 1890.

[23:39] Bob Dobbs: 1890.

[23:44] Cameron McEwen: 1890,

[23:45] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[23:46] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.

[23:46] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[23:47] Bob Dobbs: And when did he die?

[23:51] Cameron McEwen: He died,

[23:52] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[23:53] Cameron McEwen: just after 1900.

[23:55] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if he died in 1900,

[23:56] Cameron McEwen: 1901,

[23:57] Cameron McEwen: 1902.

[23:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[24:00] Bob Dobbs: I can look that up.

[24:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[24:01] Bob Dobbs: so five and six,

[24:03] Bob Dobbs: he's dealing with this.

[24:06] Bob Dobbs: What is the real,

[24:07] Bob Dobbs: what does he come up with?

[24:10] Bob Dobbs: Two more developments of closer completion of an impenetrable cul-de-sac or something.

[24:18] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[24:19] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[24:19] Cameron McEwen: you mentioned...

[24:20] Cameron McEwen: You mentioned that the second half of the

[24:25] Cameron McEwen: 19th century was sort of the high tide of materialism.

[24:30] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[24:30] Cameron McEwen: People thinking that they had a good handle on what the real was.

[24:36] Cameron McEwen: And by thinking about the real as materialism,

[24:43] Cameron McEwen: they would make the same advances in the humanities and social sciences.

[24:49] Cameron McEwen: As the hard sciences had made,

[24:51] Cameron McEwen: thinking about the same thing.

[24:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[24:54] Cameron McEwen: So what

[24:56] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche says is that the...

[25:01] Cameron McEwen: there's no,

[25:02] Cameron McEwen: the step five is that there's no real reason to call this reality.

[25:08] Cameron McEwen: It's just before we could say reality was the thing in itself or God or truth or something.

[25:18] Cameron McEwen: But now what we're saying is that all of these entities sort of fall away and all we have is what we perceive,

[25:28] Cameron McEwen: what we can

[25:29] Cameron McEwen: touch materialism.

[25:32] Cameron McEwen: And so

[25:33] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche says,

[25:34] Cameron McEwen: but then people said,

[25:36] Cameron McEwen: well,

[25:37] Cameron McEwen: if what we used to call reality is gone,

[25:42] Cameron McEwen: why are we transferring that to materialism?

[25:46] Cameron McEwen: Why don't we say that materialism is just one possibility that we in the West might entertain?

[25:59] Cameron McEwen: But there's nothing any more true or real about this materialism of ours than there is about any other conception,

[26:09] Cameron McEwen: right?

[26:09] Cameron McEwen: So let's just drop reality and say that we're dealing with some fairly subjective notion for reasons of utility or something,

[26:26] Cameron McEwen: right?

[26:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[26:27] Bob Dobbs: So you're including five and six,

[26:29] Bob Dobbs: the way you've laid it out here,

[26:31] Bob Dobbs: in what you just said.

[26:33] Cameron McEwen: No,

[26:33] Cameron McEwen: well,

[26:33] Cameron McEwen: not really,

[26:34] Cameron McEwen: because the decisive step in six,

[26:37] Cameron McEwen: and it's here that I think there's a relation with your notion of the cul-de-sac,

[26:43] Cameron McEwen: is that

[26:45] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche says we've done away with the real world,

[26:50] Cameron McEwen: and so all we have left is the apparent world.

[26:54] Cameron McEwen: the world that appears to us that we can touch and hear and smell.

[26:58] Cameron McEwen: But he says,

[27:00] Cameron McEwen: if all we have is the apparent world,

[27:03] Cameron McEwen: then we have no world.

[27:05] Cameron McEwen: So the apparent world also disappears.

[27:08] Cameron McEwen: And the logic behind this is that in order to specify what the apparent world is,

[27:16] Cameron McEwen: there has to be some real factor.

[27:19] Cameron McEwen: So,

[27:20] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[27:23] Cameron McEwen: a poet.

[27:24] Cameron McEwen: can specify something as real,

[27:27] Cameron McEwen: but the poet can only specify something as real if the poet has reality.

[27:35] Cameron McEwen: And if we're withdrawing reality from everything,

[27:38] Cameron McEwen: including from the poet,

[27:40] Cameron McEwen: then there's no way to specify what's real,

[27:44] Cameron McEwen: and everything just dissolves.

[27:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[27:52] Bob Dobbs: Is that...

[27:54] Bob Dobbs: Those writings,

[27:55] Bob Dobbs: I guess that's the end of his writing,

[27:58] Bob Dobbs: those later stages,

[27:59] Bob Dobbs: is that when he's considered insane?

[28:02] Cameron McEwen: No,

[28:03] Cameron McEwen: that's two or three years before that.

[28:06] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[28:07] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche was writing with a fever pitch before he went insane,

[28:13] Cameron McEwen: and I think he published four or five books in the late

[28:21] Cameron McEwen: 1880s.

[28:22] Cameron McEwen: just before he collapsed.

[28:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[28:25] Bob Dobbs: so since I've engaged second-sight people who seem to have it,

[28:32] Bob Dobbs: Michael Blake Read was a medium for the evergreens that McLuhan went to in 1976.

[28:39] Bob Dobbs: I discovered

[28:40] Bob Dobbs: Michael in 1980 and then did many sessions,

[28:43] Bob Dobbs: 64 sessions for over 24 years,

[28:47] Bob Dobbs: most of them $500 each,

[28:48] Bob Dobbs: so I spent a lot of money on him.

[28:50] Bob Dobbs: But at one point,

[28:52] Bob Dobbs: I could talk to any dead person I wanted.

[28:54] Bob Dobbs: And I did many people,

[28:56] Bob Dobbs: including ours with McLuhan.

[28:59] Bob Dobbs: But I did Nietzsche.

[29:02] Bob Dobbs: And Nietzsche said that he faked the insanity because he was sick of his audience,

[29:07] Bob Dobbs: sick of attention.

[29:09] Bob Dobbs: He didn't want his fame anymore.

[29:10] Bob Dobbs: And he just wanted to be left alone.

[29:12] Bob Dobbs: So he put up that wall.

[29:18] Bob Dobbs: Maybe.

[29:19] Bob Dobbs: On the other side,

[29:20] Bob Dobbs: he was making,

[29:21] Bob Dobbs: covering,

[29:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[29:22] Bob Dobbs: coming up with an alibi for his silly behavior.

[29:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[29:26] Bob Dobbs: but that's an interesting thing that,

[29:29] Bob Dobbs: and Mark Stahlman was part of that session,

[29:33] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[29:34] Bob Dobbs: And

[29:36] Bob Dobbs: Mark thought that was pretty interesting.

[29:39] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[29:41] Bob Dobbs: so you have that.

[29:42] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[29:42] Bob Dobbs: one night in a McLuhan seminar,

[29:45] Bob Dobbs: Monday night seminar,

[29:46] Bob Dobbs: he was talking to somebody,

[29:47] Bob Dobbs: and I was.

[29:48] Bob Dobbs: standing there eavesdropping.

[29:50] Bob Dobbs: And he started going on about how

[29:52] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche studied effects.

[29:53] Bob Dobbs: He was almost saying Nietzsche was an early media ecologist.

[30:04] Cameron McEwen: Does that make sense to you,

[30:07] Cameron McEwen: that

[30:09] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would say that?

[30:09] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[30:09] Cameron McEwen: it does.

[30:10] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,

[30:11] Cameron McEwen: to me,

[30:12] Cameron McEwen: can be frustrating at times because he'll say something and you'll think,

[30:17] Cameron McEwen: well,

[30:17] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[30:17] Cameron McEwen: that's kind of an interesting statement,

[30:20] Cameron McEwen: but then it's hard to follow it up.

[30:24] Cameron McEwen: And so I spend a fair amount of time at the blog.

[30:29] Cameron McEwen: looking through

[30:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan writings and trying to specify things that he says in terms of quotations taken out of his books and interviews over many years.

[30:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[30:49] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[30:49] Bob Dobbs: So the cul-de-sac,

[30:52] Bob Dobbs: as a McLuhan,

[30:53] Bob Dobbs: I look at these six phases and I can see the...

[30:58] Bob Dobbs: the technology of the day creating anti-environment you know it's easy to project media dynamics on each phase right yeah it's easier for you than for me okay that's a good point because you do remain stuck at the cul-de-sac well

[31:16] Cameron McEwen: maybe yeah but uh that's why when you when you say that that's that's one more reason that i'm very interested to know how you

[31:27] Cameron McEwen: see the cul-de-sac.

[31:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[31:29] Cameron McEwen: how'd I get out of it?

[31:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[31:32] Cameron McEwen: well,

[31:34] Cameron McEwen: my whole idea of McLuhan that I even presented to him is that he does have ideas to get out of it,

[31:41] Cameron McEwen: but I don't know that you and I have the same view of that.

[31:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[31:45] Bob Dobbs: you presented that to McLuhan?

[31:48] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[31:48] Cameron McEwen: of course.

[31:49] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[31:51] Bob Dobbs: was it the cul-de-sac idea?

[31:53] Cameron McEwen: Did you use those words?

[31:55] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[31:57] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[31:57] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[31:58] Cameron McEwen: I could have talked about the general problem of Western civilization,

[32:10] Cameron McEwen: of losing meaning,

[32:12] Cameron McEwen: of losing orientation,

[32:16] Cameron McEwen: but it would have come directly from

[32:18] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche because that's what I had done my thesis on.

[32:24] Cameron McEwen: And my whole approach

[32:25] Cameron McEwen: to McLuhan was that

[32:28] Cameron McEwen: I thought that the work I had done on Nietzsche and the work I had done on Thomas

[32:35] Cameron McEwen: Kuhn on the structure of scientific revolutions brought an interesting angle to his work.

[32:43] Cameron McEwen: And as I say,

[32:45] Cameron McEwen: he just dismissed that as conceptual stuff.

[32:49] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[32:49] Bob Dobbs: So let's,

[32:53] Bob Dobbs: you didn't understand McLuhan.

[32:55] Bob Dobbs: that well at that time.

[32:56] Bob Dobbs: You maybe thought you did,

[32:57] Bob Dobbs: but you've learned a lot more over the last 40 years,

[33:01] Bob Dobbs: right?

[33:02] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[33:02] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[33:03] Bob Dobbs: And you have a deeper understanding of McLuhan.

[33:05] Bob Dobbs: Would you still present,

[33:07] Bob Dobbs: what,

[33:07] Bob Dobbs: you present it in 68 to him that needs to be solved or gave some indications of solving the cul-de-sac and applying it to McLuhan?

[33:17] Bob Dobbs: Whatever you said,

[33:19] Bob Dobbs: would you still say that today?

[33:23] Cameron McEwen: I think so,

[33:23] Cameron McEwen: yes.

[33:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[33:24] Bob Dobbs: well,

[33:25] Bob Dobbs: let's hear it then.

[33:26] Bob Dobbs: Let's hear a little bit about what he thought was conceptual.

[33:30] Cameron McEwen: All right.

[33:33] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[33:34] Cameron McEwen: remember that at the same time that I'm talking about this stuff,

[33:40] Cameron McEwen: I'm aware that you have a different conception of the cul-de-sac and a different conception of how to get out of it,

[33:48] Cameron McEwen: and I'm very interested in hearing about that.

[33:51] Cameron McEwen: But if we take my...

[33:54] Cameron McEwen: view,

[33:54] Cameron McEwen: then it is that

[33:57] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche defined the cul-de-sac,

[33:59] Cameron McEwen: but did not define a way out of it,

[34:02] Cameron McEwen: at least in my view.

[34:04] Cameron McEwen: So what

[34:06] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche did was he described how Western thought had come to nullity,

[34:12] Cameron McEwen: you might say,

[34:13] Cameron McEwen: how

[34:14] Cameron McEwen: Western thought had found reality just turned to dust in its hands and had...

[34:23] Cameron McEwen: no way of finding something firm again.

[34:31] Cameron McEwen: So with as a possible answer to that,

[34:37] Cameron McEwen: and by the way,

[34:39] Cameron McEwen: this relates to McLuhan reading of

[34:41] Cameron McEwen: Burroughs, because

[34:44] Cameron McEwen: I think there were parts of what Burroughs had to say in that same TLS issue with McLuhan in 1964.

[34:53] Cameron McEwen: Before,

[34:54] Cameron McEwen: I think

[34:54] Cameron McEwen: Burroughs brought things to mind for McLuhan.

[34:58] Cameron McEwen: that he much appreciated.

[35:00] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[35:00] Cameron McEwen: And one of the things that he talks about is he mentions a couple times,

[35:09] Cameron McEwen: forget me.

[35:11] Cameron McEwen: And what he's saying there as a literary technique is that you don't write from the eye.

[35:21] Bob Dobbs: Who says that?

[35:22] Bob Dobbs: Is this?

[35:23] Bob Dobbs: Burroughs.

[35:24] Cameron McEwen: Burroughs says that.

[35:24] Cameron McEwen: This is in Burroughs.

[35:25] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[35:26] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[35:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[35:30] Cameron McEwen: don't write from the eye.

[35:31] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[35:31] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[35:32] Cameron McEwen: So listen to the murmur of the voices that are coming to you,

[35:40] Cameron McEwen: right?

[35:41] Cameron McEwen: Not what you are writing on your typewriter for others.

[35:46] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[35:47] Cameron McEwen: And this is very close to what McLuhan had discovered with

[35:53] Cameron McEwen: André Girard in...

[35:56] Cameron McEwen: 1958,

[35:59] Cameron McEwen: namely the distinction between light through,

[36:07] Cameron McEwen: which is light coming towards us,

[36:09] Cameron McEwen: as opposed to light on,

[36:11] Cameron McEwen: which is light coming from us.

[36:13] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[36:14] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[36:15] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[36:15] Bob Dobbs: light on is reflecting off the page.

[36:18] Bob Dobbs: Is that light coming from us?

[36:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[36:23] Cameron McEwen: the distinction is light through as...

[36:26] Cameron McEwen: as through a stained glass window yeah and light and and light on which is what we produce what we certify right the whole mechanism of the cul-de-sac for nietzsche turns

[36:41] Cameron McEwen: on the idea that that um reality what once there is no such thing as an objective thing in itself or god

[36:55] Cameron McEwen: or dogma that people simply accept.

[36:59] Cameron McEwen: Once there is no objective marker,

[37:03] Cameron McEwen: then reality depends upon subjective certification.

[37:08] Cameron McEwen: And then

[37:10] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche says,

[37:10] Cameron McEwen: well,

[37:11] Cameron McEwen: but if subjective certification itself depends upon reality,

[37:16] Cameron McEwen: then there is no subjective certification.

[37:19] Cameron McEwen: Therefore,

[37:19] Cameron McEwen: there is no reality.

[37:21] Cameron McEwen: End of story.

[37:23] Bob Dobbs: Are you saying that Nietzsche used the terms light on and light through?

[37:28] Cameron McEwen: No.

[37:28] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying that that difference,

[37:33] Cameron McEwen: which McLuhan came across in late 1958 in New York,

[37:37] Cameron McEwen: that difference is one way of explicating what was going on with Nietzsche.

[37:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[37:46] Cameron McEwen: It's imported to him,

[37:48] Cameron McEwen: in my view.

[37:49] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[37:55] Cameron McEwen: So remember,

[37:56] Cameron McEwen: we're talking about the cul-de-sac and how we can get out of it.

[38:00] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[38:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[38:04] Bob Dobbs: it seems obvious to me,

[38:07] Bob Dobbs: through my McLuhan bias,

[38:08] Bob Dobbs: that Nietzsche was talking about percept,

[38:12] Bob Dobbs: and he had given up the conceptual,

[38:15] Bob Dobbs: the book culture.

[38:17] Bob Dobbs: Isn't he arguing just with books?

[38:22] Cameron McEwen: I think that's a good way of putting it.

[38:24] Cameron McEwen: but without but without turning the percepts i mean you're putting your finger exactly on the way out of the cul-de-sac yeah and and that is to turn to percepts but not percepts as my production rather

[38:39] Cameron McEwen: percepts is coming to me that's light on that's light no that's what that's what McLuhan calls light through okay coming to me all right

[38:54] Cameron McEwen: And what's interesting about percepts is that they are inherently plural,

[38:59] Cameron McEwen: right?

[39:00] Cameron McEwen: So we mentioned this whole idea when we were talking about the

[39:03] Cameron McEwen: Paleolithic hunter in our last conversation,

[39:08] Cameron McEwen: right?

[39:08] Cameron McEwen: Where the Paleolithic hunter has percepts that come to him as ways of understanding what he or she is looking at,

[39:21] Cameron McEwen: right?

[39:21] Cameron McEwen: And that's different from...

[39:23] Cameron McEwen: developing concepts and interrogating the objective world through some kind of making precise through the subject.

[39:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[39:38] Bob Dobbs: so McLuhan says the illiterate eye is a passive eye.

[39:42] Bob Dobbs: Light bounces off things and comes to him.

[39:47] Bob Dobbs: You're saying light through is light coming to the observer.

[39:51] Bob Dobbs: That's the definition of the passive eye,

[39:55] Bob Dobbs: the non-broadcasting eye,

[39:57] Bob Dobbs: the primitive eye broadcasts.

[39:58] Bob Dobbs: Have you seen those ideas?

[40:01] Bob Dobbs: The carpenter does them,

[40:02] Bob Dobbs: and I think they became what they beheld.

[40:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[40:06] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[40:07] Cameron McEwen: what you're saying is true.

[40:08] Cameron McEwen: It's just that these terms can be used in different ways,

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: in different contexts.

[40:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[40:16] Bob Dobbs: so when you're saying that you don't mean when you say light on,

[40:21] Bob Dobbs: no,

[40:21] Bob Dobbs: light through comes to me,

[40:25] Bob Dobbs: that's not the passive literate eye.

[40:30] Cameron McEwen: No,

[40:30] Cameron McEwen: absolutely not.

[40:31] Cameron McEwen: The percepts are inherently plural,

[40:40] Cameron McEwen: and the literate eye that finds itself dissolving through its own questions and through practical problems that it can't solve,

[40:56] Cameron McEwen: that literate eye depends on the person.

[41:00] Cameron McEwen: upon perceptions that it doesn't acknowledge.

[41:04] Cameron McEwen: It builds conceptions on top of perceptions that then hide the perceptions.

[41:12] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[41:15] Bob Dobbs: So Nietzsche didn't fully understand that,

[41:18] Bob Dobbs: so he didn't move into percept,

[41:21] Bob Dobbs: is what you're saying.

[41:23] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[41:23] Bob Dobbs: And now in

[41:25] Bob Dobbs: Verbi Vocal Visual,

[41:27] Bob Dobbs: 1957,

[41:29] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan.

[41:29] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan comments on

[41:31] Bob Dobbs: Wittgenstein, who came to the edge but refused to jump into the abyss.

[41:36] Bob Dobbs: You remember that sentence?

[41:39] Cameron McEwen: Vaguely,

[41:39] Cameron McEwen: yes.

[41:40] Cameron McEwen: I know it's there.

[41:41] Bob Dobbs: That sounds like the same criticism you're making of Nietzsche.

[41:44] Bob Dobbs: He couldn't jump into the abyss of percept.

[41:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[41:50] Cameron McEwen: so,

[41:50] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[41:51] Cameron McEwen: what's the abyss?

[41:53] Cameron McEwen: The abyss is the gap of transformation.

[42:01] Cameron McEwen: Acoustic space.

[42:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[42:03] Cameron McEwen: and the thing that I learned from you the last time that emerged in my brain from our conversation,

[42:11] Cameron McEwen: put it that way,

[42:13] Cameron McEwen: is that the difference between visual space and acoustic space is the difference between light through,

[42:24] Cameron McEwen: that is to say,

[42:26] Cameron McEwen: perceptions coming.

[42:28] Cameron McEwen: to us because the ear doesn't have the same kind of active function as the eye,

[42:38] Cameron McEwen: right?

[42:38] Cameron McEwen: So you have the ear is the organ of light through and the eye is the organ of light on.

[42:50] Cameron McEwen: And ultimately,

[42:52] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan will want to say you need both,

[42:55] Cameron McEwen: but

[42:56] Cameron McEwen: Coming out of the 19th century,

[42:58] Cameron McEwen: the great need was to understand and to live in the acoustic world as supplying potential answers to the cul-de-sac.

[43:09] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[43:10] Bob Dobbs: And would you say that the men of 1914,

[43:13] Bob Dobbs: Lewis,

[43:15] Bob Dobbs: not so much Yeats maybe,

[43:17] Bob Dobbs: but Eliot,

[43:18] Bob Dobbs: Pound,

[43:18] Bob Dobbs: and Joyce,

[43:20] Bob Dobbs: they did get into percept that Nietzsche couldn't do?

[43:24] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that what McLuhan claims?

[43:28] Cameron McEwen: I think so,

[43:29] Cameron McEwen: although all of these people,

[43:33] Cameron McEwen: and also including McLuhan,

[43:35] Cameron McEwen: have the problem that it's one thing to vaguely understand something,

[43:41] Cameron McEwen: it's another thing to make it precise,

[43:44] Cameron McEwen: and it's especially another thing to be able to communicate it.

[43:48] Cameron McEwen: And our whole present world situation tells us that

[43:54] Cameron McEwen: that communication has not been achieved.

[43:57] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[43:58] Bob Dobbs: but McLuhan,

[44:01] Bob Dobbs: he comes to the technology,

[44:04] Bob Dobbs: and I guess we can see it in Joyce and Elliott and Pound.

[44:08] Bob Dobbs: They see the technological factor,

[44:10] Bob Dobbs: and definitely in Lewis.

[44:12] Bob Dobbs: So did McLuhan figure something out that Joyce and them didn't figure out?

[44:20] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[44:21] Cameron McEwen: I think in his own mind...

[44:24] Cameron McEwen: he'd probably say that it was necessary to be religious in ways that most of them didn't understand.

[44:33] Cameron McEwen: Maybe Eliot did,

[44:34] Cameron McEwen: but

[44:35] Cameron McEwen: Pound and

[44:37] Cameron McEwen: Lewis and Joyce did not.

[44:41] Bob Dobbs: Did you say maybe Pound?

[44:42] Bob Dobbs: Maybe Pound?

[44:44] Cameron McEwen: No,

[44:44] Cameron McEwen: that

[44:47] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan thought Eliot was on the right track by turning to religion,

[44:52] Cameron McEwen: but that Lewis...

[44:53] Cameron McEwen: Pound and Joyce were on a wrong path,

[44:58] Cameron McEwen: ultimately.

[45:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[45:02] Bob Dobbs: with the cul-de-sac that Nietzsche's talking about,

[45:05] Bob Dobbs: we now know what you're referring to.

[45:08] Bob Dobbs: What did you say to McLuhan that Nietzsche contributes to what you thought McLuhan had figured out?

[45:20] Cameron McEwen: I thought that by looking at Nietzsche,

[45:24] Cameron McEwen: that

[45:25] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan contribution could be clarified.

[45:31] Cameron McEwen: And people would understand its importance.

[45:38] Bob Dobbs: Of McLuhan.

[45:39] Bob Dobbs: Of McLuhan.

[45:40] Bob Dobbs: The importance of McLuhan.

[45:41] Cameron McEwen: Of McLuhan,

[45:41] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[45:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[45:42] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[45:43] Bob Dobbs: Because Nietzsche had a certain weight?

[45:47] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[45:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[45:48] Cameron McEwen: had a weight,

[45:48] Cameron McEwen: but not as a guy with

[45:55] Cameron McEwen: X million mentions in academic papers or something like that.

[46:00] Cameron McEwen: but as a guy who articulated the fate of the modern world.

[46:06] Bob Dobbs: The what of the modern world?

[46:08] Cameron McEwen: Fate.

[46:09] Bob Dobbs: Fate.

[46:10] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[46:11] Bob Dobbs: So

[46:12] Bob Dobbs: I see McLuhan dismissing all book culture because the electric age just wiped it out.

[46:21] Bob Dobbs: And he had to be careful talking that way.

[46:26] Bob Dobbs: But we found him really blatantly doing it to the art critics in 1970,

[46:30] Bob Dobbs: right?

[46:31] Bob Dobbs: We talked about that in the last session.

[46:37] Cameron McEwen: But remember,

[46:38] Cameron McEwen: it's one thing for book culture to be wiped out.

[46:42] Cameron McEwen: It's another thing to recall all at once-ness,

[46:49] Cameron McEwen: where book culture has its equal claim with every other kind of culture.

[46:54] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[46:55] Bob Dobbs: So there's the cul-de-sac McLuhan was in.

[47:00] Cameron McEwen: How do you mean?

[47:03] Bob Dobbs: Remember he said in Playboy,

[47:05] Bob Dobbs: a world that is dead,

[47:08] Bob Dobbs: but we can't let go of it,

[47:10] Bob Dobbs: and we can't get to a world that's powerless to be born.

[47:13] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember that?

[47:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[47:15] Cameron McEwen: yes,

[47:15] Cameron McEwen: and that's a sentiment that was very common in the

[47:24] Cameron McEwen: 1920s.

[47:26] Cameron McEwen: I remember there's a quote from Rilke,

[47:31] Cameron McEwen: right?

[47:33] Cameron McEwen: And we are such disinherited children to whom no longer what's been and not yet what's coming belongs.

[47:43] Cameron McEwen: That's the English translation.

[47:46] Cameron McEwen: I can't recall the German off the top of my head.

[47:49] Cameron McEwen: But that idea that...

[47:53] Cameron McEwen: We Are Disinherited Children was used by

[47:57] Cameron McEwen: Erich Heller.

[47:58] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if you remember that guy from the

[48:01] Cameron McEwen: 50s and 60s,

[48:02] Cameron McEwen: but quite an acute observer of the scene.

[48:06] Bob Dobbs: You mean the San Francisco Longshoremen?

[48:09] Cameron McEwen: No,

[48:09] Cameron McEwen: no,

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: no.

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: No,

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: no,

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: no.

[48:15] Cameron McEwen: You're right that it was Eric something,

[48:17] Cameron McEwen: but not Heller.

[48:18] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[48:19] Cameron McEwen: who's Erich Heller?

[48:20] Bob Dobbs: I don't know Erich Heller.

[48:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[48:22] Cameron McEwen: he wrote a book called The Disinherited Mind.

[48:26] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[48:26] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[48:27] Cameron McEwen: Which

[48:28] Cameron McEwen: I thought was excellent in defining the cul-de-sac.

[48:32] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[48:33] Bob Dobbs: so what was I going to say there?

[48:34] Bob Dobbs: You were,

[48:36] Bob Dobbs: I thought,

[48:36] Bob Dobbs: just before that.

[48:39] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[48:39] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[48:40] Bob Dobbs: they were,

[48:41] Bob Dobbs: the

[48:41] Bob Dobbs: 1920s, they were called the lost generation,

[48:43] Bob Dobbs: right?

[48:44] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[48:46] Bob Dobbs: And,

[48:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[48:47] Bob Dobbs: that's so perfect in retrospect.

[48:48] Bob Dobbs: They're all disembodied,

[48:49] Bob Dobbs: discarded in the radio world,

[48:51] Bob Dobbs: which is an amazing new medium.

[48:53] Bob Dobbs: And that'll loosen your bearings.

[48:59] Bob Dobbs: And then politically,

[49:00] Bob Dobbs: look what happened.

[49:01] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[49:02] Bob Dobbs: huge,

[49:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[49:03] Bob Dobbs: retrieved tribalism or mass man at the speed of light.

[49:09] Bob Dobbs: That's going to intimidate that generation.

[49:13] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[49:14] Cameron McEwen: But this reminds me of...

[49:17] Cameron McEwen: Something you said in our last recording,

[49:20] Cameron McEwen: and you were referring to contemporary times and saying that the effect of the cul-de-sac now was going to be felt in civil wars.

[49:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[49:37] Cameron McEwen: And

[49:37] Cameron McEwen: I think you're right.

[49:39] Cameron McEwen: I think when people are disinherited and lost,

[49:44] Cameron McEwen: they become desperate to find a way out.

[49:47] Cameron McEwen: And so the potentially great contribution of somebody like McLuhan would be to show that there's a way out that doesn't involve violence.

[50:02] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan over and over again talks about how if you're lost,

[50:07] Cameron McEwen: you tend to become violent,

[50:09] Cameron McEwen: and that if we are to solve problems of violence in the modern world,

[50:15] Cameron McEwen: then we have to secure identities,

[50:20] Cameron McEwen: right?

[50:20] Cameron McEwen: And this is almost this topic right here is what I tried to present to McLuhan either in the very late

[50:29] Cameron McEwen: 60s or 1970,

[50:32] Cameron McEwen: but he...

[50:32] Cameron McEwen: he was not interested.

[50:35] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[50:35] Bob Dobbs: their terms were wrong.

[50:36] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[50:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:43] Cameron McEwen: I'm not trying to claim any credit.

[50:46] Cameron McEwen: I should have pursued the idea.

[50:50] Cameron McEwen: I should have just stayed in Toronto and I didn't have to have to study with the guy.

[50:56] Cameron McEwen: I could have just gone to seminars.

[50:59] Cameron McEwen: I didn't have to go to University of Toronto.

[51:01] Cameron McEwen: I should have done something like what you did.

[51:03] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[51:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[51:05] Bob Dobbs: I knew one had to keep hanging around him because he had more to unfold.

[51:11] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[51:11] Bob Dobbs: I knew that.

[51:12] Bob Dobbs: But the,

[51:15] Bob Dobbs: so,

[51:16] Bob Dobbs: you just said you went in 68 and 70.

[51:20] Bob Dobbs: You weren't sure which the date was.

[51:22] Bob Dobbs: It's a one-time visit for a week.

[51:25] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[51:26] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[51:26] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[51:26] Cameron McEwen: And.

[51:27] Bob Dobbs: And you think it's late 68.

[51:28] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[51:28] Bob Dobbs: you just jumped to 70.

[51:30] Bob Dobbs: It's not 70.

[51:30] Bob Dobbs: It's 1968,

[51:32] Bob Dobbs: right?

[51:33] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[51:34] Cameron McEwen: I think so.

[51:34] Cameron McEwen: The reason I brought in 70 is that

[51:38] Cameron McEwen: I don't have any firm anchor that I can say this was 68 or this was 69 or 70.

[51:45] Cameron McEwen: But I'm pretty sure it was

[51:46] Cameron McEwen: 68. Okay.

[51:50] Bob Dobbs: So we are witnessing this week.

[51:57] Bob Dobbs: The drama of what we're reviewing is really blatant right now in the king of the mountain,

[52:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[52:05] Bob Dobbs: America.

[52:05] Bob Dobbs: It's pretty incredible.

[52:07] Bob Dobbs: So let's try to help the situation with what we think we got here.

[52:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[52:14] Bob Dobbs: so we got a cul-de-sac.

[52:16] Bob Dobbs: So the powerless to be born and the inability to forget,

[52:22] Bob Dobbs: to drop the past.

[52:24] Bob Dobbs: That's a good quote,

[52:25] Bob Dobbs: right?

[52:27] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[52:28] Bob Dobbs: And it might come from someone else.

[52:31] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure.

[52:35] Bob Dobbs: In my mind,

[52:35] Bob Dobbs: I think he was calling someone else.

[52:37] Bob Dobbs: But if you know where he said it other than there,

[52:42] Bob Dobbs: maybe it was his.

[52:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[52:46] Cameron McEwen: so let me just read a sentence that I sent you an email,

[52:51] Cameron McEwen: but

[52:52] Cameron McEwen: I probably sent you too much email for you to...

[52:56] Cameron McEwen: I've gone into this stuff in any detail.

[53:00] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[53:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm actually right in the middle of the crisis in the White House.

[53:05] Bob Dobbs: I'm a direct advisor to it.

[53:09] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[53:10] Bob Dobbs: You want to hear?

[53:11] Bob Dobbs: Here's a neat anecdote.

[53:12] Bob Dobbs: Do you know who Sidney Powell is?

[53:14] Cameron McEwen: Of course.

[53:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[53:16] Bob Dobbs: so you're following.

[53:16] Bob Dobbs: You're not totally ignoring the news.

[53:18] Bob Dobbs: You're up on the characters.

[53:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[53:22] Cameron McEwen: this morning before our conversation,

[53:24] Cameron McEwen: I read.

[53:26] Cameron McEwen: the lawsuit that she filed in Georgia.

[53:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[53:30] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know.

[53:31] Bob Dobbs: So she did do it yesterday.

[53:33] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[53:33] Bob Dobbs: I'm still doing Wednesday.

[53:34] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[53:35] Bob Dobbs: I haven't gone to bed yet.

[53:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[53:37] Cameron McEwen: so it was late last night.

[53:40] Cameron McEwen: She filed in both Georgia and Michigan.

[53:43] Cameron McEwen: Both are,

[53:44] Cameron McEwen: well,

[53:45] Cameron McEwen: one of them is 100 pages and one of them is

[53:47] Cameron McEwen: 75.

[53:49] Cameron McEwen: And she introduces a lot of evidence.

[53:56] Cameron McEwen: concerning mathematical improbabilities,

[54:01] Cameron McEwen: probable software manipulation,

[54:06] Cameron McEwen: gaps in the security of the machines,

[54:10] Cameron McEwen: gaps in the security of the ballots themselves,

[54:13] Cameron McEwen: etc.

[54:14] Cameron McEwen: So it'll be very interesting to see what happens.

[54:17] Bob Dobbs: And did she get any coverage in the Kuhn world?

[54:23] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[54:23] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[54:24] Cameron McEwen: I never watched that.

[54:25] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[54:26] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[54:26] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[54:26] Cameron McEwen: that's the issue.

[54:28] Bob Dobbs: They won't cover her.

[54:30] Bob Dobbs: But maybe they have to now.

[54:30] Cameron McEwen: Of course they won't.

[54:32] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[54:33] Bob Dobbs: so listen to this.

[54:34] Cameron McEwen: Bill,

[54:34] Cameron McEwen: just ignore it.

[54:35] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[54:36] Bob Dobbs: so my assistant in

[54:39] Bob Dobbs: Georgia, you know,

[54:43] Bob Dobbs: is part of our business.

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: And he got an email out of the blue from Lynn Wood and Sidney Powell.

[54:52] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[54:52] Bob Dobbs: I know how they would have found out about him.

[54:55] Bob Dobbs: Because they are aware of me and Carolyn and my partner in

[55:00] Bob Dobbs: Atlanta that is...

[55:02] Bob Dobbs: meets with Trump occasionally.

[55:06] Bob Dobbs: He got an email asking them to come to one of their offices,

[55:12] Bob Dobbs: Lynn Woods or Sidney.

[55:15] Bob Dobbs: This is Wednesday.

[55:16] Bob Dobbs: And when he gets there,

[55:18] Bob Dobbs: the first thing Sidney says,

[55:21] Bob Dobbs: is Bob going to help us save Trump?

[55:25] Bob Dobbs: That was her question on her big day.

[55:29] Bob Dobbs: And so I heard about this later,

[55:31] Bob Dobbs: but my...

[55:33] Bob Dobbs: assistant said,

[55:34] Bob Dobbs: well,

[55:35] Bob Dobbs: I'll have to,

[55:36] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what he would say to that.

[55:37] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know he'd ask that.

[55:38] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't know he'd ask that.

[55:40] Bob Dobbs: He didn't know,

[55:41] Bob Dobbs: so I have to get back to him,

[55:42] Bob Dobbs: and then I'll tell you.

[55:44] Bob Dobbs: So then

[55:45] Bob Dobbs: I told him,

[55:46] Bob Dobbs: sure,

[55:47] Bob Dobbs: I'll help.

[55:50] Bob Dobbs: So there's levels of involvement here that are too strange in this context.

[55:59] Bob Dobbs: But they do involve second sight,

[56:01] Bob Dobbs: so that's another.

[56:02] Bob Dobbs: point here.

[56:04] Bob Dobbs: Sidney Powell is very aware of what we do,

[56:06] Bob Dobbs: what I do,

[56:08] Bob Dobbs: the scandalous stuff that I do on the radio.

[56:11] Bob Dobbs: And it's an amazing story,

[56:13] Bob Dobbs: but I don't want to get distracted.

[56:14] Bob Dobbs: But that's what I mean.

[56:17] Bob Dobbs: I'm directly involved in the drama of what's going on.

[56:25] Cameron McEwen: Good.

[56:26] Bob Dobbs: So back to let's get back to the ivory tower quickly.

[56:34] Cameron McEwen: The thing of it is that just as in the

[56:37] Cameron McEwen: 20s, the ivory tower is deeply implicated in practical affairs because the cul-de-sac into which the ivory tower has collapsed is

[56:58] Cameron McEwen: spreading into practical affairs.

[57:03] Cameron McEwen: in a way that's very dangerous.

[57:05] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[57:06] Bob Dobbs: and the ivory tower is what

[57:09] Bob Dobbs: I used to call the solar government,

[57:11] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[57:11] Bob Dobbs: Echelon,

[57:12] Bob Dobbs: the satellites around the planet that are organized for espionage purposes or maybe other stuff too by New Zealand,

[57:22] Bob Dobbs: America,

[57:23] Bob Dobbs: Britain,

[57:23] Bob Dobbs: and Canada.

[57:24] Bob Dobbs: You know about Echelon?

[57:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[57:27] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[57:27] Cameron McEwen: so that's the five I's.

[57:28] Cameron McEwen: When I write it,

[57:31] Cameron McEwen: I don't write five.

[57:32] Cameron McEwen: E-Y-E.

[57:33] Cameron McEwen: I write

[57:34] Cameron McEwen: 5-A-Y-E.

[57:36] Bob Dobbs: And what's that?

[57:37] Bob Dobbs: The British saying

[57:38] Bob Dobbs: I in Parliament?

[57:41] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[57:41] Cameron McEwen: just

[57:42] Cameron McEwen: I meaning yes.

[57:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[57:44] Bob Dobbs: the four yeses,

[57:45] Bob Dobbs: five yeses.

[57:46] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[57:46] Cameron McEwen: Just whatever you say,

[57:48] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[57:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[57:52] Bob Dobbs: As we talk,

[57:54] Bob Dobbs: so there was the cul-de-sac of Nietzsche's time.

[57:57] Bob Dobbs: Then there's the cul-de-sac

[57:59] Bob Dobbs: that goes further than Nietzsche because it's newer technology in the men of

[58:04] Bob Dobbs: 1914's time.

[58:04] Bob Dobbs: Then there's the cul-de-sac of McLuhan time,

[58:07] Bob Dobbs: and then we have our cul-de-sac.

[58:09] Bob Dobbs: And in my story,

[58:12] Bob Dobbs: in what we're reviewing,

[58:15] Bob Dobbs: I bring it to the tech body,

[58:17] Bob Dobbs: which is a very dramatic phenomenon if it's real,

[58:21] Bob Dobbs: right?

[58:22] Bob Dobbs: This is an incredible cul-de-sac.

[58:26] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[58:27] Bob Dobbs: you tend to say that every generation or school of thought doesn't get out of the cul-de-sac,

[58:34] Bob Dobbs: or they don't want to.

[58:37] Bob Dobbs: You talk about this in different ways in your blog,

[58:39] Bob Dobbs: right?

[58:40] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[58:40] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[58:42] Cameron McEwen: But it's a very,

[58:45] Cameron McEwen: very complex thing that is more complicated than an inability or an undesirability or something like that.

[58:57] Cameron McEwen: It's a kind of fate of the world,

[59:00] Cameron McEwen: and how to think about it is deeply embedded in the whole problem.

[59:10] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[59:10] Bob Dobbs: so I run through six phases.

[59:14] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche's dealing with the global village cul-de-sac and all the different media dynamics of that era.

[59:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[59:21] Cameron McEwen: let me,

[59:22] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[59:22] Cameron McEwen: if I can,

[59:23] Cameron McEwen: what I'd like to do is I'd like to...

[59:27] Cameron McEwen: indicate a place in your book that nicely brings out what Nietzsche was talking about.

[59:39] Cameron McEwen: So on page 50,

[59:43] Cameron McEwen: you have a quotation near the top of the page from

[59:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan Notes on Burroughs.

[59:53] Cameron McEwen: This is page 50 of your book.

[59:56] Cameron McEwen: 52 of PDF.

[1:00:01] Bob Dobbs: This is the one that begins

[1:00:03] Bob Dobbs: Burroughs disdains the hallucinatory drugs or the other one?

[1:00:09] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:00:09] Cameron McEwen: this is print page 50 and

[1:00:14] Cameron McEwen: Joyce was sure he had worked out a formula.

[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: I have it.

[1:00:17] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:00:18] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:00:19] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:00:20] Cameron McEwen: Joyce, I'll just read two things.

[1:00:23] Cameron McEwen: One is from

[1:00:25] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan on Burroughs and that's from December

[1:00:29] Cameron McEwen: 28th.

[1:00:30] Cameron McEwen: 1964.

[1:00:31] Cameron McEwen: So he must have written it in

[1:00:34] Cameron McEwen: November or October or something of 64,

[1:00:38] Cameron McEwen: which is a couple months after he and Burroughs had appeared in the

[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: Times Literary

[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: Supplement in,

[1:00:47] Cameron McEwen: I think it was August.

[1:00:49] Cameron McEwen: It was August.

[1:00:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:00:50] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:00:51] Cameron McEwen: So he says,

[1:00:52] Cameron McEwen: Joyce was sure he had worked out a formula for total cultural understanding and control.

[1:00:57] Cameron McEwen: The idea of art is...

[1:00:58] Cameron McEwen: total programming for anti-environment.

[1:01:00] Cameron McEwen: It's tribal,

[1:01:01] Cameron McEwen: mental,

[1:01:02] Cameron McEwen: Egyptian.

[1:01:03] Cameron McEwen: It is also an idea of art to which electric technology leads quite strongly.

[1:01:10] Cameron McEwen: We live science fiction.

[1:01:12] Cameron McEwen: The bomb anti-environment.

[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: That's one of my favorite quotes.

[1:01:18] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: So let me read another one for you.

[1:01:21] Bob Dobbs: But remember,

[1:01:22] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[1:01:22] Bob Dobbs: like Burroughs.

[1:01:23] Bob Dobbs: You didn't say that part.

[1:01:24] Bob Dobbs: Like Burroughs,

[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: Joyce was sure he had worked out the formula.

[1:01:29] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:01:30] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:01:30] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:01:30] Cameron McEwen: Sorry.

[1:01:32] Cameron McEwen: You've got a couple things in quotation marks there.

[1:01:36] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:01:36] Cameron McEwen: Interesting.

[1:01:37] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:01:37] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:01:38] Cameron McEwen: So what I'm going to read you now came from

[1:01:45] Cameron McEwen: Andrew Chrystall,

[1:01:46] Cameron McEwen: I believe,

[1:01:47] Cameron McEwen: and was something that you have on your website,

[1:01:53] Cameron McEwen: and it's a letter to Wilfred Watson.

[1:01:57] Cameron McEwen: from October 1964.

[1:02:00] Cameron McEwen: So it's written just at the same time that McLuhan must have been writing his notes on Burroughs.

[1:02:07] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:02:08] Cameron McEwen: And you'll see that it overlaps with it very strongly.

[1:02:12] Cameron McEwen: He says,

[1:02:13] Cameron McEwen: talk about blind spots in regions of maximal impact.

[1:02:19] Cameron McEwen: Looking at the diabolical principle just now,

[1:02:25] Cameron McEwen: that was

[1:02:26] Cameron McEwen: 1931 book of

[1:02:28] Cameron McEwen: Wyndham Lewis.

[1:02:30] Cameron McEwen: Looking at the diabolical principle just now,

[1:02:32] Cameron McEwen: I read loud and clear that art must be totally environmental.

[1:02:36] Cameron McEwen: It must be the content of nothing whatsoever.

[1:02:40] Cameron McEwen: Ergo,

[1:02:41] Cameron McEwen: the vortex equals total involvement equals Lewis wants nothing less for art than the power to create total anti-environment for life and death.

[1:02:54] Cameron McEwen: There must be no art as content of some other set of skills or interests.

[1:03:01] Cameron McEwen: I find it a bit staggering to confront Lewis as a man who really wanted to be Pontifex,

[1:03:08] Cameron McEwen: Maximus,

[1:03:09] Cameron McEwen: of a magical priesthood.

[1:03:11] Cameron McEwen: I suppose Yeats,

[1:03:12] Cameron McEwen: Joyce,

[1:03:13] Cameron McEwen: and Pound had similar aspirations.

[1:03:16] Cameron McEwen: Their priesthood was to create new worlds of perception.

[1:03:20] Cameron McEwen: They were to be world engineers who shaped the totality

[1:03:24] Cameron McEwen: of human awareness.

[1:03:26] Cameron McEwen: Their pigments and materials were not to be paint or words,

[1:03:30] Cameron McEwen: but all the resources of the age.

[1:03:32] Cameron McEwen: Such were the pharaohs.

[1:03:34] Cameron McEwen: They made of the world a perception lab.

[1:03:38] Cameron McEwen: Amazing.

[1:03:41] Bob Dobbs: That's the Wilford Watson.

[1:03:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:03:44] Cameron McEwen: And both of them talk about

[1:03:47] Cameron McEwen: Lewis. Both of them talk about

[1:03:50] Cameron McEwen: Egypt.

[1:03:52] Cameron McEwen: And both of them talk about,

[1:03:58] Cameron McEwen: unknowingly,

[1:04:00] Cameron McEwen: talk about Nietzsche's idea of the cul-de-sac.

[1:04:04] Cameron McEwen: You're saying both of them.

[1:04:05] Bob Dobbs: You mean Watson and his response?

[1:04:08] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:04:08] Cameron McEwen: I mean the notes on Burroughs on the one hand and the letter to Watson on the other.

[1:04:15] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:04:16] Bob Dobbs: you're saying both articles,

[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: both writings cover the same point.

[1:04:19] Cameron McEwen: Both writings by McLuhan.

[1:04:21] Cameron McEwen: At the same time.

[1:04:22] Cameron McEwen: At the same time,

[1:04:23] Cameron McEwen: yes.

[1:04:24] Cameron McEwen: And both of them define what

[1:04:27] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche means by the cul-de-sac because what both of them set out is that the artist,

[1:04:38] Cameron McEwen: and the artist here can be the scientist,

[1:04:41] Cameron McEwen: it can be just somebody at a bridge club telling us what he or she thinks of the world.

[1:04:50] Cameron McEwen: The artist takes up the Egyptian stance of defining the world,

[1:04:59] Cameron McEwen: and the presupposition

[1:05:02] Cameron McEwen: which Nietzsche saw,

[1:05:04] Cameron McEwen: was that that artist must him or herself be real in order to do that.

[1:05:13] Cameron McEwen: And if that reality is taken away from the artist,

[1:05:17] Cameron McEwen: then everything falls apart.

[1:05:19] Cameron McEwen: And that's what the cul-de-sac is.

[1:05:21] Cameron McEwen: And here's McLuhan in 1964 writing to Watson where he says just that.

[1:05:28] Cameron McEwen: He says that the artist wants to be this.

[1:05:32] Cameron McEwen: uh pope uh that dictates what the reality of things is and that's ridiculous right and he says that's what Joyce wanted to do that's what lewis wanted to do that's what yates wanted to do that's what pound wanted to do and

[1:05:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is indicating his disagreement with that yes and i i believe what he's saying is that if the artist instead of being the

[1:06:01] Cameron McEwen: director of reality is the receiver of realities plural.

[1:06:10] Bob Dobbs: Realities what?

[1:06:11] Bob Dobbs: Whirl or swirl?

[1:06:14] Cameron McEwen: Plural.

[1:06:17] Cameron McEwen: Plural.

[1:06:19] Cameron McEwen: Not singular.

[1:06:20] Cameron McEwen: Realities plural.

[1:06:20] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:06:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:06:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:06:21] Cameron McEwen: Not singular,

[1:06:21] Cameron McEwen: but plural.

[1:06:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:06:22] Cameron McEwen: It's the role of the artist to find one of the percepts that are incoming.

[1:06:32] Cameron McEwen: that avoids or gets out of the cul-de-sac.

[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: let me,

[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: when I read this notes on Burroughs,

[1:06:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:06:42] Bob Dobbs: many times through the years,

[1:06:43] Bob Dobbs: I eventually realized that

[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: Joyce and Burroughs were panic,

[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: he's saying they're panic media colleges.

[1:06:52] Bob Dobbs: They want to turn off the anti-environment.

[1:06:55] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:06:55] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[1:06:56] Bob Dobbs: he's a little more flexible.

[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: we don't need to turn it off with finality.

[1:07:02] Bob Dobbs: We just turn it off for six months and then note the services and bring it back on.

[1:07:07] Bob Dobbs: And so I thought it's the only time when he confronted a media ecologist equal to what you would think McLuhan was about.

[1:07:15] Bob Dobbs: If you're a Neil Postman guy,

[1:07:17] Bob Dobbs: let's turn off TV,

[1:07:18] Bob Dobbs: get rid of it for a long time.

[1:07:21] Bob Dobbs: That's a panic media ecologist.

[1:07:23] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan is pointing out his vision is different from Burroughs and Joyce because he's not a panic media ecologist.

[1:07:30] Bob Dobbs: And he wouldn't.

[1:07:32] Bob Dobbs: hit the off button,

[1:07:35] Bob Dobbs: the shut on button or something he says in that article,

[1:07:40] Bob Dobbs: he wouldn't panic like them.

[1:07:42] Bob Dobbs: He'd turn it off in a few months.

[1:07:44] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan has the advantage that after the bomb,

[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: after

[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: World War II,

[1:07:51] Bob Dobbs: the panic of culture moving into the 1940 period,

[1:07:56] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan knows we survived it.

[1:07:59] Bob Dobbs: And he knows we've got a whole bunch of newer,

[1:08:00] Bob Dobbs: different problems,

[1:08:02] Bob Dobbs: a different kind of softer cul-de-sac,

[1:08:05] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:08:06] Bob Dobbs: cool television and that,

[1:08:07] Bob Dobbs: and then the anti-environment.

[1:08:10] Bob Dobbs: So have you noticed that?

[1:08:12] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is the contrarian.

[1:08:14] Bob Dobbs: If you bring in someone close to him,

[1:08:16] Bob Dobbs: he'll bring out another aspect of himself that he never says.

[1:08:21] Bob Dobbs: He hasn't seen me.

[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: You get what I'm saying there.

[1:08:23] Cameron McEwen: So absolutely,

[1:08:25] Cameron McEwen: I get what you're saying.

[1:08:27] Cameron McEwen: But.

[1:08:28] Cameron McEwen: As usual,

[1:08:29] Cameron McEwen: there's the difference between you and me that I would put it in terms of all at once-ness.

[1:08:35] Cameron McEwen: Whereas what you say is he's not panicking.

[1:08:39] Cameron McEwen: He's turning off television,

[1:08:41] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[1:08:41] Cameron McEwen: for six months or three months or something.

[1:08:43] Cameron McEwen: So you would say it's not long.

[1:08:47] Cameron McEwen: You would say the media are compatible enough with each other that only a temporary...

[1:08:56] Cameron McEwen: um dislocation is needed yeah so and and the way i would rephrase that is i would say um these media are contemporary they have the same time right it's all at once and so what's necessary to get out of the panic is

[1:09:14] Cameron McEwen: to realize that the metaphor or the transformation or the The tactility between these media is...

[1:09:26] Cameron McEwen: How can I say?

[1:09:27] Cameron McEwen: Ecological.

[1:09:28] Bob Dobbs: Ecological.

[1:09:28] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:09:29] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:09:30] Cameron McEwen: Or electric.

[1:09:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:09:32] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:09:32] Cameron McEwen: They're in touch with each other.

[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:09:36] Bob Dobbs: I indicate that.

[1:09:39] Bob Dobbs: Probably these quotes come after.

[1:09:40] Bob Dobbs: But remember,

[1:09:41] Bob Dobbs: he says in the mid-60s that for the first time,

[1:09:45] Bob Dobbs: humans are not conditioned because they move from one kind anti-environment to another and they don't get stuck in anyone.

[1:09:52] Bob Dobbs: And the multi-shifting creates a new detachment.

[1:09:56] Bob Dobbs: You would know where that quote is?

[1:09:58] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I'm referring to?

[1:10:00] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:10:02] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:10:04] Cameron McEwen: I don't recall it in the book,

[1:10:05] Cameron McEwen: but it's certainly a very important aspect of McLuhan thought.

[1:10:10] Cameron McEwen: He talks about that in the middle

[1:10:13] Cameron McEwen: 40s when he begins to talk about the maelstrom,

[1:10:17] Cameron McEwen: and then he says that specifically in the preface to

[1:10:21] Cameron McEwen: Mechanical Bride.

[1:10:23] Cameron McEwen: So you're absolutely right that that's a very important component.

[1:10:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:10:28] Bob Dobbs: let me find it.

[1:10:29] Bob Dobbs: What's a word that's in it?

[1:10:33] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:10:33] Bob Dobbs: I just put my search button in.

[1:10:37] Bob Dobbs: Can you think of a multi?

[1:10:41] Bob Dobbs: For the first time?

[1:10:42] Bob Dobbs: Maybe something like that.

[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: For the first time.

[1:10:46] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if that gets me there.

[1:10:55] Bob Dobbs: Yay,

[1:10:56] Bob Dobbs: it did.

[1:10:56] Bob Dobbs: It worked.

[1:10:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah?

[1:10:58] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:10:59] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:10:59] Cameron McEwen: so let's see.

[1:10:59] Bob Dobbs: What page is that?

[1:11:01] Bob Dobbs: It looks like 128.

[1:11:04] Cameron McEwen: Is that PDF or print?

[1:11:07] Bob Dobbs: PDF.

[1:11:08] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:11:12] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:11:12] Bob Dobbs: PDF,

[1:11:13] Bob Dobbs: this is what I get when I go to the

[1:11:15] Bob Dobbs: New Esperations Journal and click on that one.

[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: That's PDF,

[1:11:19] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:11:20] Bob Dobbs: When you say print,

[1:11:21] Bob Dobbs: what is that?

[1:11:24] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:11:25] Cameron McEwen: the print page is the...

[1:11:28] Cameron McEwen: number at the top of each page and the PDF page is what you can change on the bar at the top you know where the arrows are for going up and down okay right beside that is the

[1:11:43] Cameron McEwen: PDF page so you're talking about the print page or the PDF page the PDF okay so that's 126 and here's

[1:11:55] Cameron McEwen: The quote from

[1:11:56] Cameron McEwen: Notes on Burroughs again?

[1:11:57] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:11:57] Cameron McEwen: no.

[1:11:57] Cameron McEwen: I'm on page

[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: 128. 128.

[1:12:06] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:12:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: So are we both looking at the PDF?

[1:12:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:12:19] Cameron McEwen: This is the quote from Prospect.

[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: Let me read it.

[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:12:24] Cameron McEwen: Go ahead.

[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: And this is in 62.

[1:12:26] Bob Dobbs: This is before Burroughs.

[1:12:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:12:30] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:12:30] Bob Dobbs: and I think it is this,

[1:12:31] Bob Dobbs: and he's saying this to an art magazine.

[1:12:34] Bob Dobbs: So he gets his most inspired things,

[1:12:38] Bob Dobbs: it seems,

[1:12:39] Bob Dobbs: or unique things in for anti-environment,

[1:12:43] Bob Dobbs: for art audiences.

[1:12:45] Bob Dobbs: They bring out the more interesting McLuhan.

[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: and I think it is this multiplicity of media.

[1:12:52] Bob Dobbs: that is now enabling man to free himself from media for the first time in history.

[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: What an amazing sentence.

[1:12:59] Bob Dobbs: He has been the victim,

[1:13:00] Bob Dobbs: the servomechanism of his technologies,

[1:13:02] Bob Dobbs: his media from the beginning of time.

[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: But now,

[1:13:05] Bob Dobbs: because of the sheer multiplicity of them,

[1:13:07] Bob Dobbs: he is beginning to awaken,

[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: because he can't live with them all.

[1:13:12] Bob Dobbs: There's your simultaneousness,

[1:13:14] Bob Dobbs: all-at-onceness.

[1:13:15] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:13:16] Bob Dobbs: see,

[1:13:16] Bob Dobbs: this is an amazing quote,

[1:13:18] Bob Dobbs: because this is where anti-environment is the artist.

[1:13:22] Bob Dobbs: the sculptor.

[1:13:23] Bob Dobbs: We are becoming awake not by any art objects.

[1:13:28] Bob Dobbs: And in this mid-60s,

[1:13:30] Bob Dobbs: he's always saying how ridiculous the art object is.

[1:13:33] Bob Dobbs: So the art process,

[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: mimes the act of learning.

[1:13:36] Bob Dobbs: He makes a lot out of the learning processes anti-environment.

[1:13:40] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean there?

[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:13:43] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[1:13:44] Cameron McEwen: that's what we've been talking about,

[1:13:46] Cameron McEwen: but I'll explain that in a little while.

[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: So here's...

[1:13:51] Bob Dobbs: If Finnegans Wake had become awake,

[1:13:55] Bob Dobbs: maybe Joyce saw that.

[1:13:57] Bob Dobbs: Joyce may have seen this process that Marshall's spelling out here,

[1:14:01] Bob Dobbs: but it would be riddled with doubt and all the problems that Joyce had himself in his career and his personal life.

[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: Here's McLuhan,

[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: a more relaxed position,

[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: can see this without much personal agony.

[1:14:19] Bob Dobbs: that Joyce was going through.

[1:14:23] Bob Dobbs: But it may include what Joyce was showing,

[1:14:26] Bob Dobbs: the process.

[1:14:27] Bob Dobbs: As Barry Nevitt said on page

[1:14:31] Bob Dobbs: 297 of Take Today,

[1:14:34] Bob Dobbs: where they say the recent retrievals of tribal unconscious are now replaced by the recently achieved forms of consciousness.

[1:14:44] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:14:45] Bob Dobbs: I asked,

[1:14:45] Bob Dobbs: what are the recently achieved forms of consciousness?

[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: And he says,

[1:14:48] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake.

[1:14:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: granting Barry the same awareness as a good student of McLuhan that he got to this point.

[1:14:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:14:56] Bob Dobbs: maybe 1972,

[1:14:57] Bob Dobbs: 10 years later,

[1:14:58] Bob Dobbs: so he understood what McLuhan was saying in 62,

[1:15:00] Bob Dobbs: and he was telling me the process that had been externalized in an ecological interplay in the global theater was leading to this incredible awake condition,

[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: or what McLuhan called collective consciousness,

[1:15:13] Bob Dobbs: not collective unconsciousness.

[1:15:16] Bob Dobbs: These are the ideas

[1:15:17] Bob Dobbs: I've meditated on for 50,

[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: 40 years.

[1:15:20] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:15:21] Bob Dobbs: these quotes and these points.

[1:15:24] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:15:25] Cameron McEwen: But notice,

[1:15:26] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:15:26] Cameron McEwen: how this actually recapitulates what we were talking about before,

[1:15:32] Cameron McEwen: because what happens when a person becomes free of the multiplicity of media is not that suddenly

[1:15:55] Cameron McEwen: the media become sort of transparent to him or her,

[1:16:00] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:16:01] Cameron McEwen: It's rather that there's a change in the direction of media.

[1:16:13] Cameron McEwen: Instead of media controlling how things are seen or heard or smelled,

[1:16:20] Cameron McEwen: now the media...

[1:16:24] Cameron McEwen: in their plurality,

[1:16:26] Cameron McEwen: multiplicity,

[1:16:27] Cameron McEwen: as he says in this quote,

[1:16:30] Cameron McEwen: are perceived as incoming.

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:16:36] Cameron McEwen: And it's precisely the freedom that humans have situated between incoming information that

[1:16:51] Cameron McEwen: allows

[1:16:53] Cameron McEwen: media to become intelligible.

[1:16:58] Bob Dobbs: Let me respond to that.

[1:17:00] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:17:01] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is the doctor explaining to contemporary humans how they got to this awake state by default.

[1:17:13] Bob Dobbs: They don't know that's where they've gotten.

[1:17:16] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: And he's telling you how you got there.

[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: He's giving the prescription for the disease.

[1:17:23] Bob Dobbs: He's,

[1:17:24] Bob Dobbs: what is it,

[1:17:24] Bob Dobbs: the diagnosis?

[1:17:25] Bob Dobbs: He's giving the diagnosis.

[1:17:27] Bob Dobbs: And this leads to a huge indifference to anything anybody else brings up.

[1:17:32] Bob Dobbs: Because everybody's going to talk from their specialist situation,

[1:17:36] Bob Dobbs: as he has in Take Today.

[1:17:39] Bob Dobbs: One of the final chapters is specialist ills versus specialist cures.

[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: He knows that we're in a new zone,

[1:17:47] Bob Dobbs: a new water.

[1:17:48] Bob Dobbs: The fish is fresh out of the water,

[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: as he says at the end of A Warm Piece in the Gold Village in 68.

[1:17:54] Bob Dobbs: He is,

[1:17:55] Bob Dobbs: and you know,

[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: there's that quote,

[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: I'm the only one who knows what's going on.

[1:17:58] Bob Dobbs: If you get what he's saying here,

[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: he is the only one capable of saying this,

[1:18:03] Bob Dobbs: and you can't lock him in.

[1:18:04] Bob Dobbs: He's not a Freudian.

[1:18:06] Bob Dobbs: He's not an anarchist.

[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: He's none of those categories.

[1:18:10] Bob Dobbs: As a matter of fact,

[1:18:10] Bob Dobbs: he's a discarnate Egyptian pharaonic being.

[1:18:16] Bob Dobbs: He's in charge.

[1:18:17] Bob Dobbs: He is in the pharaonic position by seeing this.

[1:18:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:18:21] Cameron McEwen: he doesn't like,

[1:18:23] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:18:23] Cameron McEwen: he's very critical of the pharaonic position in those two earlier quotes that we read.

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: They are not conscious.

[1:18:31] Bob Dobbs: They don't get there.

[1:18:33] Bob Dobbs: The bomb is the exclamation point of history.

[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: He has the advantage of being after that.

[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: And he says in that quote,

[1:18:42] Bob Dobbs: the previous one,

[1:18:43] Bob Dobbs: the bomb anti-environment.

[1:18:45] Bob Dobbs: It's very interesting how he talks about the bomb.

[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: The bomb is anti-environment of information.

[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: He talks about it quite differently than normal

[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: United Nations talk,

[1:18:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:18:56] Bob Dobbs: about this terrifying weapon.

[1:18:59] Cameron McEwen: That's why he uses the phrase media fallout.

[1:19:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:19:03] Bob Dobbs: there you have it.

[1:19:05] Bob Dobbs: That's other factors,

[1:19:06] Bob Dobbs: other bombs.

[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: when you're talking about being the doctor and making the diagnosis and the prescription,

[1:19:15] Cameron McEwen: The difference we have is that

[1:19:19] Cameron McEwen: I don't think he's describing a new situation.

[1:19:23] Cameron McEwen: I think he's describing the situation that is always the case,

[1:19:29] Cameron McEwen: but up until now has been unknown.

[1:19:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:19:34] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:19:35] Bob Dobbs: He's conscious.

[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: He's the first to see what was unknown.

[1:19:39] Bob Dobbs: And so this is why he's a complete...

[1:19:42] Bob Dobbs: put on and he can say that all his communications are satirical because he's not inside them he's fully conscious of them and he's putting them on and correct and so what that would mean is that

[1:19:56] Cameron McEwen: All a human experience is some kind of Postman.

[1:20:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:20:02] Cameron McEwen: And he understands the mechanism of the Postman.

[1:20:06] Bob Dobbs: And all the different types of Postman.

[1:20:09] Bob Dobbs: Other people call them cultures.

[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: Like he says,

[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: James Joyce is,

[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: an expert in all cultures.

[1:20:14] Bob Dobbs: He can live in any one of them.

[1:20:16] Bob Dobbs: That's one step,

[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: before McClellan.

[1:20:19] Bob Dobbs: McClellan comes after that.

[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: He's more aware.

[1:20:21] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:20:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:20:23] Cameron McEwen: But so then,

[1:20:24] Cameron McEwen: now let's...

[1:20:26] Cameron McEwen: This again recaptures everything we were talking about.

[1:20:30] Cameron McEwen: If we're asking about how do you get out of the cul-de-sac,

[1:20:34] Cameron McEwen: the answer is to realize that when a person is in the cul-de-sac,

[1:20:41] Cameron McEwen: that is a perception.

[1:20:44] Cameron McEwen: But there are other perceptions,

[1:20:47] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:20:47] Cameron McEwen: And so the whole extrication out of the cul-de-sac takes place

[1:20:53] Cameron McEwen: through the realization,

[1:20:55] Cameron McEwen: number one,

[1:20:55] Cameron McEwen: that perceptions are plural,

[1:20:57] Cameron McEwen: and number two,

[1:20:58] Cameron McEwen: that any one of them is available to us.

[1:21:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:21:03] Bob Dobbs: that's what I call quadrophrenia.

[1:21:06] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:21:08] Bob Dobbs: Which is man's normal split condition,

[1:21:12] Bob Dobbs: and especially if he's literate,

[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: he's got the schizophrenia,

[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: but anti-environment mirrors,

[1:21:17] Bob Dobbs: echoes the schizophrenia back at him.

[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: So you're made up of four.

[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: types or two types of split making four parts two splits two quadrophrenia the anti-environment doing in front of you oh that's probably another bringing the cul-de-sac world the cul-de-sac has been externalized in

[1:21:37] Bob Dobbs: some way oh oh and and all sorts of very frightening ways absolutely all right and and so you can see the men of 1914 to begin to see that's coming

[1:21:50] Bob Dobbs: But they don't have the advantage of Postman world,

[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan does.

[1:21:56] Bob Dobbs: But

[1:21:57] Bob Dobbs: I like the way McLuhan perfectly completes their work.

[1:22:00] Bob Dobbs: And I call them all those four or five guys,

[1:22:03] Bob Dobbs: including Yates'

[1:22:04] Bob Dobbs: vortices,

[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: because they all contributed to the Lewis scene there,

[1:22:09] Bob Dobbs: besides the painters and sculptors around Lewis himself.

[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: Joyce and them are working on other parts of the vortices.

[1:22:18] Bob Dobbs: vortices dilemma which he spelled out pretty good in blast McLuhan is a vortices he's carrying on those guys work he's a member of the union i agree with that yeah and

[1:22:34] Bob Dobbs: um and so uh carl williams or one of those guys maybe it was carpenter uh talking about the exploration group and the division between their specialist activities.

[1:22:48] Bob Dobbs: But Carpenter says,

[1:22:51] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan thought poetry was the solution.

[1:22:54] Bob Dobbs: And now if you think of little books and little poetry,

[1:22:58] Bob Dobbs: that's not going to mean it.

[1:22:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan didn't mean,

[1:23:00] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:23:01] Bob Dobbs: a couple of poems by

[1:23:02] Bob Dobbs: W.H. Auden or something.

[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: Poetry was the media poetics,

[1:23:07] Bob Dobbs: a new meaning.

[1:23:09] Cameron McEwen: That's what he was writing about in that letter to Watson.

[1:23:12] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:23:13] Bob Dobbs: And that's where you get cliché to archetype.

[1:23:15] Bob Dobbs: That's the theme in that letter.

[1:23:18] Bob Dobbs: They're talking about how to do the book.

[1:23:21] Bob Dobbs: And Watson is a pretty aware guy.

[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: He's a playwright doing multimedia plays out there in Western Canada.

[1:23:30] Bob Dobbs: He's a good guy for McLuhan to talk to.

[1:23:34] Bob Dobbs: So it's interesting.

[1:23:42] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter's wrong to say that Marshall saw the answer in poetry.

[1:23:47] Bob Dobbs: Because people would think that's just Leonard Cohen stuff or something.

[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:23:52] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan said in the seminars a couple of times,

[1:23:55] Bob Dobbs: when a poet would want to present his poetry,

[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: he'd listen to the guy,

[1:24:01] Bob Dobbs: but he wouldn't tolerate it very long.

[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: And he usually said,

[1:24:04] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:24:04] Bob Dobbs: that's too long.

[1:24:05] Bob Dobbs: Too many words.

[1:24:08] Bob Dobbs: And then he would point out that rock and roll is our modern,

[1:24:11] Bob Dobbs: rock is our modern poetry.

[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: A lot of literate poets didn't get that.

[1:24:18] Bob Dobbs: They thought they were still in the ivory tower,

[1:24:20] Bob Dobbs: some superior position.

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: They didn't recognize the,

[1:24:23] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:24:24] Bob Dobbs: as he says in that early

[1:24:26] Bob Dobbs: 70s lecture,

[1:24:26] Bob Dobbs: rock destroys the Goomer galaxy,

[1:24:29] Bob Dobbs: visual space,

[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: and our whole heritage.

[1:24:32] Bob Dobbs: But it's poetry as anti-environment.

[1:24:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:24:38] Cameron McEwen: I agree with all this stuff.

[1:24:41] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[1:24:42] Cameron McEwen: I have a different way of...

[1:24:43] Cameron McEwen: Thinking about it,

[1:24:44] Cameron McEwen: I believe,

[1:24:45] Cameron McEwen: but...

[1:24:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:24:49] Bob Dobbs: you're free to try to define the difference.

[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: I'm interested in that.

[1:24:53] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:24:54] Cameron McEwen: I'm...

[1:24:56] Cameron McEwen: Sometimes I feel like

[1:24:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm taking the direction away from your rap.

[1:25:08] Cameron McEwen: One of the things that

[1:25:10] Cameron McEwen: I'm hoping to do in the course of our conversations is understand better where you're coming from.

[1:25:19] Cameron McEwen: And that,

[1:25:20] Cameron McEwen: to me,

[1:25:20] Cameron McEwen: means understanding the resonances.

[1:25:25] Cameron McEwen: and what you say.

[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: let me say this in response to that.

[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: You're right that concept and percept are not so different.

[1:25:34] Bob Dobbs: They're intertwined more than people,

[1:25:37] Bob Dobbs: regular McLuhan use them.

[1:25:39] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that right?

[1:25:40] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that what you point out a lot?

[1:25:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:25:49] Cameron McEwen: the problem is that...

[1:25:53] Cameron McEwen: Percept and concept are subject to the same dynamics as medium and message or figure and ground or center and margin.

[1:26:05] Cameron McEwen: These things have a range over which they can flip.

[1:26:10] Cameron McEwen: So you can have concept as figure and ground of percept,

[1:26:19] Cameron McEwen: but at the other extreme,

[1:26:20] Cameron McEwen: you can have percept.

[1:26:21] Cameron McEwen: is figure and ground of concept.

[1:26:23] Cameron McEwen: And then all of the possibilities in between those two,

[1:26:28] Cameron McEwen: including the middle,

[1:26:30] Cameron McEwen: where they're in resonance.

[1:26:32] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:26:32] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:26:32] Bob Dobbs: remember in

[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: They Became What They Beheld,

[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: he has a visual pun,

[1:26:40] Bob Dobbs: an overlay,

[1:26:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:26:42] Bob Dobbs: those things,

[1:26:43] Bob Dobbs: Trump Thiel,

[1:26:46] Bob Dobbs: where the glass,

[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: outlined the glass,

[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: can become an old lady's...

[1:26:51] Bob Dobbs: face,

[1:26:52] Bob Dobbs: and he says,

[1:26:53] Bob Dobbs: literate man flips them back and forth.

[1:26:56] Bob Dobbs: He sees one,

[1:26:57] Bob Dobbs: then the other.

[1:26:58] Bob Dobbs: And preliterate man does not flip them back and forth.

[1:27:04] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that relevant to what you're just saying?

[1:27:10] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[1:27:11] Cameron McEwen: If he's saying preliterate man doesn't flip them,

[1:27:15] Cameron McEwen: does preliterate man see them both at the same time?

[1:27:19] Bob Dobbs: Or we cannot conceive how he sees him.

[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: It's just too,

[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: we're not conditioned that way,

[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: that simply.

[1:27:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: I can say,

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: he sees him at the same time,

[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: but it might be even more than that.

[1:27:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:27:33] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:27:33] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that completely.

[1:27:35] Cameron McEwen: That's because if we say that modern humans have reverted to the

[1:27:44] Cameron McEwen: Paleolithic hunter stage,

[1:27:49] Cameron McEwen: Saying that is different from being that.

[1:27:52] Cameron McEwen: And you could say that the disinherited children of the Postman Galaxy era are trying to learn how to be what they are.

[1:28:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:28:06] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:28:06] Bob Dobbs: that situation.

[1:28:08] Bob Dobbs: And he started to see that with unisex.

[1:28:12] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:28:12] Bob Dobbs: the biological form was getting blurred by the discarnate.

[1:28:18] Bob Dobbs: electrified form and it dimmed down the visual categories of race or gender and all that.

[1:28:28] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:28:29] Bob Dobbs: though,

[1:28:30] Bob Dobbs: so then we come,

[1:28:31] Bob Dobbs: we do,

[1:28:31] Bob Dobbs: I do the global villas,

[1:28:33] Bob Dobbs: global theater,

[1:28:34] Bob Dobbs: global membrane,

[1:28:35] Bob Dobbs: then I go into the Android Meme.

[1:28:37] Bob Dobbs: So what is that?

[1:28:39] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:28:40] Bob Dobbs: I think that,

[1:28:41] Bob Dobbs: I mean by that,

[1:28:42] Bob Dobbs: that technologies aren't extensions of human faculties anymore.

[1:28:48] Bob Dobbs: The last one was a satellite,

[1:28:49] Bob Dobbs: the extension of the planet.

[1:28:51] Bob Dobbs: Then when you get into this digital world and weirdness,

[1:28:55] Bob Dobbs: it's the extending of whatever they are,

[1:28:59] Bob Dobbs: the software algorithms or something.

[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: Whereas Eric says in his book,

[1:29:05] Bob Dobbs: what's that one in 1998,

[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: The Electric Breakthrough?

[1:29:09] Cameron McEwen: Electric Language.

[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:29:11] Bob Dobbs: Electric Language.

[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: He sees that the digital technologies are extensions,

[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: further extensions of the parts of the brain.

[1:29:19] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking,

[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: that's still an extension of the human form.

[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: The Android Meme is technology extending itself.

[1:29:27] Bob Dobbs: And that's the difference.

[1:29:30] Bob Dobbs: This is a new problem.

[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if McLuhan first saw it.

[1:29:34] Bob Dobbs: Definitely the experience we have living in it is presented and fitting his wake,

[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: especially in

[1:29:42] Bob Dobbs: Web 2.0,

[1:29:44] Bob Dobbs: in social media.

[1:29:45] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:29:45] Bob Dobbs: what a painting

[1:29:47] Bob Dobbs: Joyce did.

[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: of Web 2.0 world,

[1:29:51] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:29:54] Cameron McEwen: I would talk about this differently.

[1:29:56] Cameron McEwen: I would go back to what we were earlier talking about with perceptions,

[1:30:01] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:30:01] Cameron McEwen: You're talking about the subjectivity becoming autonomous and is no longer sort of encapsulated in humans.

[1:30:13] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:30:13] Cameron McEwen: That there's an autonomous subjectivity.

[1:30:17] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[1:30:18] Cameron McEwen: when McLuhan was reading Jung.

[1:30:22] Cameron McEwen: in the early

[1:30:24] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, this was the sort of question that he was asking himself.

[1:30:30] Cameron McEwen: So in regard to the trivial arts,

[1:30:33] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:30:33] Cameron McEwen: of his thesis,

[1:30:35] Cameron McEwen: are these trivial arts things that we think about and control,

[1:30:42] Cameron McEwen: or are we thought by them?

[1:30:47] Cameron McEwen: Are we what?

[1:30:48] Bob Dobbs: Did you say thought by them?

[1:30:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:30:52] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:30:54] Cameron McEwen: So when he says to his Jesuit friends in

[1:30:58] Cameron McEwen: 1944 that more important than Thomas for the Catholic Church is to understand analytic psychology,

[1:31:06] Cameron McEwen: that is to say Jung,

[1:31:09] Cameron McEwen: that's what he's talking about.

[1:31:10] Cameron McEwen: He's saying if we're going to get a new direction for the church,

[1:31:16] Cameron McEwen: we have to understand these autonomous subjectivities.

[1:31:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:31:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:31:24] Bob Dobbs: Do you know the article 1946,

[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: Out of the Castle and Into the Counting House?

[1:31:31] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:31:31] Cameron McEwen: I have that.

[1:31:33] Cameron McEwen: I haven't read it in some years,

[1:31:34] Cameron McEwen: but I have it.

[1:31:35] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:31:36] Bob Dobbs: I was talking to Blake and Clinton last Friday.

[1:31:40] Bob Dobbs: And Clinton,

[1:31:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:31:42] Bob Dobbs: has access to what we can't get access to,

[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: the 40s writings.

[1:31:48] Bob Dobbs: And he's having quite a time.

[1:31:49] Bob Dobbs: I think you've talked to him about it,

[1:31:50] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:31:51] Bob Dobbs: Communicated about it.

[1:31:52] Cameron McEwen: Talked to him,

[1:31:53] Cameron McEwen: but yeah,

[1:31:53] Cameron McEwen: communicated,

[1:31:54] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:31:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:31:55] Bob Dobbs: and so he sees,

[1:31:59] Bob Dobbs: he's familiar with McLuhan

[1:32:01] Bob Dobbs: 40s state of mind.

[1:32:01] Bob Dobbs: It was quite different from the

[1:32:03] Bob Dobbs: 50s.

[1:32:04] Bob Dobbs: And so

[1:32:05] Bob Dobbs: I brought up this article,

[1:32:07] Bob Dobbs: and he checked the archive list at

[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: Ottawa, and it wasn't listed.

[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: I hadn't checked that out.

[1:32:15] Bob Dobbs: And I got it back in the 70s in Toronto,

[1:32:18] Bob Dobbs: whatever book it was in.

[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: or magazine.

[1:32:23] Bob Dobbs: So he was able to find it online and have a PDF,

[1:32:28] Bob Dobbs: and he gave it to Blake,

[1:32:29] Bob Dobbs: and so we were Zooming,

[1:32:32] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[1:32:33] Bob Dobbs: And so we started to read it,

[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: and they were so amazed at it that we just kept reading it.

[1:32:40] Bob Dobbs: And we read the whole thing,

[1:32:42] Bob Dobbs: and Clinton,

[1:32:43] Bob Dobbs: who had been trying to figure out how to write something,

[1:32:45] Bob Dobbs: summarizing what he had...

[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: learned from the 40s McLuhan,

[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: he realized this article is the summary.

[1:32:56] Bob Dobbs: And it was incredible.

[1:32:57] Bob Dobbs: All the different aspects of his grievances in the 40s were in this article.

[1:33:03] Bob Dobbs: So my first curiosity was,

[1:33:06] Bob Dobbs: were you aware of it?

[1:33:07] Bob Dobbs: Go back and read it.

[1:33:09] Bob Dobbs: A lot of the,

[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: my Bob's Mediology album,

[1:33:13] Bob Dobbs: one of the things they used to say on the radio,

[1:33:15] Bob Dobbs: everything's disappeared.

[1:33:16] Bob Dobbs: He was saying that in the

[1:33:17] Bob Dobbs: 40s in this article.

[1:33:20] Bob Dobbs: Humans were gone,

[1:33:22] Bob Dobbs: just as he says in 1950,

[1:33:25] Bob Dobbs: Orwell's describing 1900,

[1:33:27] Bob Dobbs: not 1984.

[1:33:29] Bob Dobbs: And he says that in another place in Takeda,

[1:33:31] Bob Dobbs: he says Orwell's describing 1934.

[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: But such vast cancellations of human experience by the 20th century is in that article.

[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: So I recommend it because it's not listed.

[1:33:46] Bob Dobbs: I don't know where or how I found it.

[1:33:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't think it's in...

[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: In the bibliography,

[1:33:51] Bob Dobbs: it might be,

[1:33:53] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:33:53] Bob Dobbs: the one that Marge Stewart made and the guy in Florida.

[1:33:56] Bob Dobbs: Do you know where you saw it?

[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: How did you discover it?

[1:34:00] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:34:00] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember.

[1:34:02] Cameron McEwen: It was years ago.

[1:34:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:34:05] Cameron McEwen: But probably in one of the bibliographies.

[1:34:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:10] Bob Dobbs: so,

[1:34:10] Bob Dobbs: but it's funny,

[1:34:11] Bob Dobbs: it's not listed in Ottawa.

[1:34:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:34:15] Cameron McEwen: sometimes things there are listed in funny ways.

[1:34:20] Cameron McEwen: I'll have to take a look.

[1:34:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:34:21] Bob Dobbs: check that.

[1:34:22] Cameron McEwen: See if it's really not there.

[1:34:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:34:28] Bob Dobbs: So you just quoted the

[1:34:29] Bob Dobbs: 40s.

[1:34:31] Bob Dobbs: I got refreshed on what his amazing statement in the

[1:34:37] Bob Dobbs: 40s was in that article,

[1:34:38] Bob Dobbs: which I just re-experienced on Friday,

[1:34:40] Bob Dobbs: last Friday.

[1:34:42] Cameron McEwen: Let me just go from something you just said.

[1:34:45] Cameron McEwen: You were talking about disappearance.

[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:34:48] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:34:50] Cameron McEwen: The sixth step.

[1:34:53] Cameron McEwen: of

[1:34:54] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche's history of an error,

[1:34:56] Cameron McEwen: which is written,

[1:34:57] Cameron McEwen: I believe,

[1:34:58] Cameron McEwen: in 1887.

[1:35:01] Cameron McEwen: The sixth step is that,

[1:35:04] Cameron McEwen: more or less,

[1:35:05] Cameron McEwen: we got rid of the real world,

[1:35:09] Cameron McEwen: and we were left with only the apparent world.

[1:35:12] Cameron McEwen: But when we have only the apparent world,

[1:35:18] Cameron McEwen: the apparent world itself is dissolved.

[1:35:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:35:21] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:35:22] Cameron McEwen: that so that's

[1:35:23] Cameron McEwen: disappearance,

[1:35:24] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:35:24] Cameron McEwen: The whole cul-de-sac that

[1:35:27] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche describes is the disappearance of everything.

[1:35:33] Cameron McEwen: So when you say that

[1:35:36] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan goes back to the case of

[1:35:38] Cameron McEwen: 1900, in fact,

[1:35:40] Cameron McEwen: he goes back to the

[1:35:43] Cameron McEwen: 1880s, which is when Nietzsche saw this.

[1:35:47] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:35:47] Bob Dobbs: But then he says that's the effect of the telegraph.

[1:35:52] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:35:56] Bob Dobbs: When

[1:35:57] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche says reality is gone,

[1:36:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan comes along and shows the constituents or elements of reality by inventorying the media of the day.

[1:36:09] Bob Dobbs: And then he says that leads to no more visual space.

[1:36:14] Bob Dobbs: Is it more useful that McLuhan spells out the constituents or your chemical elements of the mix of reality than...

[1:36:23] Cameron McEwen: that just conceptually writing reality is gone absolutely absolutely that's the the whole key to answering the problem of reality is gone is to say or to demonstrate that reality is gone only given certain media presupposition right media experiences media

[1:36:47] Cameron McEwen: conditions correct correct and so with other media Yes.

[1:36:52] Cameron McEwen: Reality is reinstituted.

[1:36:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:36:57] Cameron McEwen: And then the great difficulty that

[1:37:01] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to think is that it's not good enough to see one of these medias canceling the other.

[1:37:10] Cameron McEwen: The trick is to be able to appreciate them all at once.

[1:37:16] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:37:16] Bob Dobbs: all at once.

[1:37:17] Bob Dobbs: I get that point there,

[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: the way you're saying that.

[1:37:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:37:20] Bob Dobbs: he says in the Mike McManus interview,

[1:37:22] Bob Dobbs: the problem today is the media are canceling each other out.

[1:37:26] Bob Dobbs: And so we're lost.

[1:37:28] Bob Dobbs: We're no identity.

[1:37:30] Bob Dobbs: We don't know how to re-put on the media anti-environment.

[1:37:34] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:37:35] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:37:36] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:37:37] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: now,

[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: if Marshall was alive today,

[1:37:40] Bob Dobbs: the implosion of the Android Meme in front of us,

[1:37:43] Bob Dobbs: and then the tech body pops out of it,

[1:37:45] Bob Dobbs: this monstrous,

[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: amazing friend of ours,

[1:37:49] Bob Dobbs: that we call the tech body that put Trump in and is creating the Cayce right now to living,

[1:37:58] Bob Dobbs: what do you call it,

[1:37:59] Bob Dobbs: a demon,

[1:38:00] Bob Dobbs: a golem,

[1:38:04] Bob Dobbs: what is it,

[1:38:05] Bob Dobbs: typhon,

[1:38:07] Bob Dobbs: that phantom before me,

[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:38:09] Bob Dobbs: and oh,

[1:38:10] Bob Dobbs: what a blow that phantom gave me,

[1:38:11] Bob Dobbs: whatever terms we have of something that's a...

[1:38:17] Bob Dobbs: A reality that bugs us,

[1:38:22] Bob Dobbs: that drives many people crazy.

[1:38:25] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:38:26] Bob Dobbs: they have a ghost in their home really actively disturbing anti-environment all the time.

[1:38:30] Bob Dobbs: That's the tech body.

[1:38:33] Bob Dobbs: So it's hard to describe the tech body,

[1:38:35] Bob Dobbs: but the merger in the Android Meme,

[1:38:40] Bob Dobbs: the implosion within the technology external to us,

[1:38:43] Bob Dobbs: that subjectivity that's out there,

[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: Derek De Kerckhove has written a recent essay on the disappearance of self,

[1:38:51] Bob Dobbs: time,

[1:38:51] Bob Dobbs: and space.

[1:38:52] Bob Dobbs: I see that as the Android Meme phase,

[1:38:56] Bob Dobbs: and the tech body is after that.

[1:38:58] Bob Dobbs: And the tech body is here confronting us,

[1:39:01] Bob Dobbs: and humans are really at a loss of how to respond to it.

[1:39:07] Bob Dobbs: And that led to our,

[1:39:08] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:39:09] Bob Dobbs: our huge cul-de-sac,

[1:39:11] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:39:12] Bob Dobbs: The stopping of the economy.

[1:39:15] Bob Dobbs: Is that the cul-de-sac externalized in some blatant way that affects the chemical body,

[1:39:23] Bob Dobbs: not just the discarnate body?

[1:39:27] Cameron McEwen: I think I would say yes to that.

[1:39:29] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:39:32] Cameron McEwen: the difficulty is that

[1:39:36] Cameron McEwen: I don't see these things as phases.

[1:39:40] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[1:39:41] Cameron McEwen: I try to think of these...

[1:39:43] Cameron McEwen: sort of as all at once-ness for how can I put this if if media are

[1:39:55] Cameron McEwen: elements,

[1:39:57] Cameron McEwen: right,

[1:39:57] Cameron McEwen: so that the medium is the elementary structure of human experience,

[1:40:04] Cameron McEwen: then

[1:40:04] Cameron McEwen: I see what you call phases as very complex molecules of media elements.

[1:40:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:40:17] Bob Dobbs: So would you say that the tech body...

[1:40:20] Bob Dobbs: was anti-environment of the caveman.

[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: That whatever media they had harassed them like the tech body does today to us.

[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: Is that your all at once?

[1:40:35] Bob Dobbs: It's always the same struggle of something externalized that becomes anti-environment?

[1:40:41] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:40:42] Cameron McEwen: but the anti-environment never singular.

[1:40:45] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:40:46] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:40:46] Cameron McEwen: if you take one...

[1:40:49] Cameron McEwen: family in

[1:40:51] Cameron McEwen: Paleolithic times,

[1:40:53] Cameron McEwen: that family was just as diverse as families are today.

[1:40:57] Cameron McEwen: And then if you went out of the Cavell and you went over three or four caves to another family,

[1:41:05] Cameron McEwen: those families would be just as diverse as families are today.

[1:41:09] Cameron McEwen: So it's not as if today we have one haunting that is felt.

[1:41:18] Cameron McEwen: by everybody in the same way.

[1:41:22] Cameron McEwen: There is definitely a haunting,

[1:41:25] Cameron McEwen: just like a person can become physically ill from the flu or something like this.

[1:41:32] Cameron McEwen: But it's not the case that everybody has the same flu and everybody has the same consequences from it,

[1:41:45] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:41:46] Cameron McEwen: So what I find so valuable...

[1:41:48] Cameron McEwen: in what you talk about is that there's an aspect of McLuhan that I don't understand so well.

[1:41:56] Cameron McEwen: And that is how he was such an accurate predictor of what was happening around him and what would happen.

[1:42:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:42:06] Cameron McEwen: And that is,

[1:42:08] Cameron McEwen: and when he talks about those things,

[1:42:10] Cameron McEwen: those are very complex things that he's talking about.

[1:42:14] Cameron McEwen: And you seem to me to better cap.

[1:42:18] Cameron McEwen: capture that complexity than i'm able to do okay so that's like the difference between chemistry and meteorology right right right okay um which we began with that's what you first proposed to me yeah you know a couple months ago um i

[1:42:38] Bob Dobbs: wanted to say when he says on page 11 i take today um he says something and then he says but man is still the content

[1:42:47] Bob Dobbs: Are you talking about the same man as content through all of the technological phases?

[1:42:57] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you're emphasizing?

[1:42:58] Bob Dobbs: The constant of man?

[1:43:01] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:43:01] Cameron McEwen: but man,

[1:43:02] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[1:43:02] Cameron McEwen: is a very,

[1:43:04] Cameron McEwen: very complex thing.

[1:43:06] Cameron McEwen: Saying man is a little bit like saying nature.

[1:43:10] Cameron McEwen: And look at nature.

[1:43:10] Cameron McEwen: Nature's got all of these elements,

[1:43:12] Cameron McEwen: and the elements combine into...

[1:43:14] Cameron McEwen: compounds and molecules and into bacteria and viruses and animals and on

[1:43:23] Bob Dobbs: Yes. OK,

[1:43:24] Bob Dobbs: so

[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: I'm certainly aware of the all at once-ness today and then including what apparently is different times.

[1:43:40] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:43:40] Bob Dobbs: my buddy

[1:43:41] Bob Dobbs: Ion talks about.

[1:43:43] Bob Dobbs: the big now,

[1:43:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:43:44] Bob Dobbs: it's all,

[1:43:45] Bob Dobbs: all of it's happening.

[1:43:47] Bob Dobbs: Um,

[1:43:48] Bob Dobbs: I can project that into what you're saying.

[1:43:51] Bob Dobbs: Um,

[1:43:53] Bob Dobbs: so my alibi would be that when I write this book,

[1:43:59] Bob Dobbs: I want to dumb it down for people who don't read too much to be able to read it.

[1:44:04] Bob Dobbs: I'm not going to splash them with Finnegans Wake.

[1:44:08] Bob Dobbs: I'm just going to make it literally biased.

[1:44:13] Bob Dobbs: because it fits into how they think.

[1:44:15] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:44:15] Bob Dobbs: waking them up,

[1:44:17] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if this kind of article does that.

[1:44:19] Bob Dobbs: You have to confront Finnegans Wake to be awakened.

[1:44:23] Bob Dobbs: Every citizen has to go through Finnegans Wake.

[1:44:25] Bob Dobbs: They've got to figure out why would this book happen,

[1:44:27] Bob Dobbs: this ridiculous book that you can't read.

[1:44:29] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:44:30] Bob Dobbs: And McClellan explains why Finnegans Wake happened.

[1:44:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm probably doing more...

[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: If you don't do Finnegans Wake,

[1:44:38] Bob Dobbs: you're doing concepts,

[1:44:39] Bob Dobbs: if you're right.

[1:44:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:44:41] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:44:41] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:44:43] Cameron McEwen: You can't get past it.

[1:44:46] Cameron McEwen: In notes on Burroughs,

[1:44:50] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan has this great...

[1:44:53] Cameron McEwen: phrase.

[1:44:53] Cameron McEwen: He says,

[1:44:54] Cameron McEwen: it's necessary today to live the discontinuous non-story.

[1:45:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:45:03] Bob Dobbs: Now that's McLuhan words?

[1:45:05] Cameron McEwen: That's McLuhan words.

[1:45:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:45:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:45:08] Cameron McEwen: That's a great line.

[1:45:10] Bob Dobbs: And you can see Bojart is doing the same thing.

[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: he calls it the,

[1:45:15] Bob Dobbs: whatever it was,

[1:45:16] Bob Dobbs: he called the ideal,

[1:45:17] Bob Dobbs: the ideal something.

[1:45:18] Bob Dobbs: He had some term in his later writings for the present.

[1:45:22] Bob Dobbs: But it was,

[1:45:23] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:45:23] Bob Dobbs: the wrong wording compared to McLuhan apparently practical pointing out of actual anti-environment.

[1:45:34] Bob Dobbs: And then Baudrillard has that book,

[1:45:35] Bob Dobbs: The Perfect Crime,

[1:45:37] Bob Dobbs: where the crime is not committed against anybody,

[1:45:41] Bob Dobbs: but it did happen.

[1:45:43] Bob Dobbs: Something like that.

[1:45:44] Bob Dobbs: That's like saying non-story.

[1:45:47] Bob Dobbs: You see,

[1:45:48] Bob Dobbs: Marshall,

[1:45:49] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,

[1:45:49] Bob Dobbs: that was the other point I wanted to make.

[1:45:50] Bob Dobbs: You take his vision in the

[1:45:53] Bob Dobbs: 40s, and then from the

[1:45:55] Bob Dobbs: 50s on,

[1:45:56] Bob Dobbs: all the different kinds of novels or writings or experiments done,

[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: they all revolve around McLuhan,

[1:46:04] Bob Dobbs: who lays it out very simply in the

[1:46:09] Bob Dobbs: 50s and 60s.

[1:46:10] Bob Dobbs: The core of the world,

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: and then all these,

[1:46:15] Bob Dobbs: like Philip K.

[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: Dick,

[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:46:17] Bob Dobbs: making a novel that...

[1:46:19] Bob Dobbs: goes back to the Roman Empire and says the Roman Empire is still in charge.

[1:46:23] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:46:24] Bob Dobbs: How he makes fantastic science fiction scenarios.

[1:46:27] Bob Dobbs: But all the different types of writing,

[1:46:30] Bob Dobbs: from Pynchon to

[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: Cormac McCarthy,

[1:46:34] Bob Dobbs: or name anybody who became a figure at some point,

[1:46:37] Bob Dobbs: Norman Mailer,

[1:46:38] Bob Dobbs: Joseph Heller,

[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: they're all playing in the novelistic form with the same issues that McLuhan doing.

[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: And that's why McLuhan can say,

[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: he could say he had made a new kind of novel,

[1:46:49] Bob Dobbs: but it was a simple novel,

[1:46:52] Bob Dobbs: at least in its terms,

[1:46:53] Bob Dobbs: compared to the incredible variety Baroque writing style of a Pynchon.

[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:46:58] Bob Dobbs: His stuff is real simple.

[1:47:02] Bob Dobbs: Take Derrida.

[1:47:03] Bob Dobbs: And Derrida came up with the word hauntology,

[1:47:05] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:47:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: He's talking about the haunting,

[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: the ghost,

[1:47:10] Bob Dobbs: the tech body.

[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: So it's interesting.

[1:47:14] Bob Dobbs: You can look at everybody as the same person saying the same thing with their unique cultural conditioning or media biases.

[1:47:22] Bob Dobbs: It's incredible how the idea that there is only one person or two,

[1:47:27] Bob Dobbs: a male and a female,

[1:47:28] Bob Dobbs: say,

[1:47:29] Bob Dobbs: that's all there ever was.

[1:47:31] Bob Dobbs: It's one person,

[1:47:32] Bob Dobbs: it's a couple,

[1:47:34] Bob Dobbs: and they're children,

[1:47:35] Cameron McEwen: I guess.

[1:47:37] Bob Dobbs: That's a monad view?

[1:47:43] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:47:43] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.

[1:47:44] Cameron McEwen: so.

[1:47:44] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:47:47] Cameron McEwen: it's a monad view in one sense,

[1:47:48] Cameron McEwen: and that is that the monad,

[1:47:53] Cameron McEwen: in order to exist,

[1:47:56] Cameron McEwen: has to fit in the universe somehow.

[1:48:00] Cameron McEwen: So that fit,

[1:48:02] Cameron McEwen: which defines the monad,

[1:48:04] Cameron McEwen: also defines the universe.

[1:48:08] Bob Dobbs: And that's not good,

[1:48:09] Bob Dobbs: and that's not,

[1:48:10] Bob Dobbs: we wouldn't find that a comfortable idea.

[1:48:14] Bob Dobbs: 300 years ago,

[1:48:15] Bob Dobbs: beginning of print,

[1:48:16] Bob Dobbs: you might find that.

[1:48:19] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:48:19] Cameron McEwen: 300 years ago,

[1:48:20] Cameron McEwen: you're almost talking about Leibniz,

[1:48:22] Cameron McEwen: and it was Leibniz's idea,

[1:48:24] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: that was taken up.

[1:48:26] Cameron McEwen: But it's not,

[1:48:27] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:48:27] Cameron McEwen: but it's not,

[1:48:28] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:48:28] Cameron McEwen: but it's not at all a bad idea,

[1:48:32] Cameron McEwen: because then if you say,

[1:48:34] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:48:35] Cameron McEwen: this monad.

[1:48:39] Cameron McEwen: how might it be articulated?

[1:48:41] Cameron McEwen: And one answer to that could be Finnegans Wake.

[1:48:44] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:48:45] Cameron McEwen: When you say a man and a woman and their children.

[1:48:48] Bob Dobbs: And they're in a bed.

[1:48:49] Bob Dobbs: It's a guy dreaming.

[1:48:50] Cameron McEwen: There you are.

[1:48:51] Bob Dobbs: Sleeping,

[1:48:51] Bob Dobbs: supposedly.

[1:48:52] Bob Dobbs: But he's actually listening to the radio and other media.

[1:48:55] Bob Dobbs: So when you read Plato,

[1:49:01] Bob Dobbs: you can see you're reading McLuhan.

[1:49:04] Bob Dobbs: When you're reading McLuhan,

[1:49:05] Bob Dobbs: you might be reading Heidegger.

[1:49:07] Bob Dobbs: Or

[1:49:08] Bob Dobbs: Leibniz.

[1:49:10] Bob Dobbs: That's how you read

[1:49:12] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan. I read all of these people as voices.

[1:49:17] Cameron McEwen: Just like when I listen to you,

[1:49:20] Cameron McEwen: I hear different voices and try and figure out sort of their orchestration.

[1:49:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:49:26] Bob Dobbs: their orchestration,

[1:49:27] Bob Dobbs: their temporary hierarchy.

[1:49:32] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:49:32] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:49:32] Bob Dobbs: that's pretty neat.

[1:49:34] Bob Dobbs: I think we understand each other better after this conversation.

[1:49:43] Bob Dobbs: So what would you look at next?

[1:49:51] Cameron McEwen: I think it's been a disservice to you to jump around in the book because you've got so many things going on and so many hours talking to different people and stuff.

[1:50:04] Cameron McEwen: It's asking too much to say,

[1:50:07] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[1:50:08] Cameron McEwen: look at page 40 and now look at page 63 and all this stuff.

[1:50:12] Cameron McEwen: So I think what we might do is just start at the beginning of your book and just go through.

[1:50:22] Cameron McEwen: What we both think on our two sides are sort of highlights or at least points that deserve more discussion or something.

[1:50:34] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:50:34] Bob Dobbs: that's good.

[1:50:36] Bob Dobbs: I don't mind either way.

[1:50:39] Bob Dobbs: I don't mind jumping around,

[1:50:40] Bob Dobbs: but yeah,

[1:50:41] Bob Dobbs: we've jumped around for a few hours now in two sessions,

[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: three sessions.

[1:50:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:50:47] Bob Dobbs: And let's try the linear approach,

[1:50:50] Bob Dobbs: I guess.

[1:50:51] Bob Dobbs: On the surface,

[1:50:52] Bob Dobbs: it's a linear approach.

[1:50:53] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:50:55] Cameron McEwen: It won't be linear because any point that gets highlighted will then go off from that into all sorts of other directions,

[1:51:08] Cameron McEwen: and the linearity will be broken.

[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:51:13] Bob Dobbs: I don't think I'm deluded saying we're actually talking about McLuhan in a way no one's heard before.

[1:51:21] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[1:51:21] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[1:51:23] Cameron McEwen: I think what we're doing is we're trying to think about

[1:51:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and think with

[1:51:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan. Yeah.

[1:51:33] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:51:34] Cameron McEwen: I think that's,

[1:51:35] Cameron McEwen: he couldn't ask for anything more than that.

[1:51:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:51:38] Bob Dobbs: And you feel that hasn't been done by many people?

[1:51:42] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so,

[1:51:43] Cameron McEwen: no.

[1:51:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:51:45] Cameron McEwen: I think that the McLuhan industry largely exists.

[1:51:50] Bob Dobbs: to obviate the man yeah yeah which seems to happen in the information society to anybody all through cultural history they get absolutely slain today all right well okay we've uh do you have an idea how long we've gone uh

[1:52:08] Bob Dobbs: today uh um just over two hours i think oh that's good we did just over two hours last week so that's probably the limit okay really good

[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: Thanks a lot,

[1:52:20] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[1:52:20] Bob Dobbs: It's really amazing talking to you.

[1:52:23] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:52:23] Cameron McEwen: same here,

[1:52:24] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:52:24] Cameron McEwen: I appreciate it.

[1:52:26] Cameron McEwen: Are we now set for Thursdays?

[1:52:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:52:29] Cameron McEwen: Did we leave

[1:52:30] Cameron McEwen: Wednesdays definitively?

[1:52:32] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:52:32] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:52:33] Cameron McEwen: That's fine.

[1:52:33] Bob Dobbs: Thursday's better for me.

[1:52:35] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:52:35] Bob Dobbs: I'll talk to you next week.

[1:52:37] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:52:38] Cameron McEwen: thanks,

[1:52:38] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:52:38] Cameron McEwen: Appreciate it.

[1:52:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:52:39] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: Thanks a lot,

[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: too.

[1:52:41] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[1:52:41] Bob Dobbs: bye.