Dialogue 6 — Transcript

[00:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: I'm here with

[00:03] Bob Dobbs: Cameron McEwen once again.

[00:06] Bob Dobbs: This is our sixth recording and we actually finished our introductory overview,

[00:14] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[00:15] Bob Dobbs: and we're going to go to the beginning of my pamphlet,

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: my broadside,

[00:21] Bob Dobbs: my book,

[00:23] Bob Dobbs: my menu that I put together back in October,

[00:29] Bob Dobbs: just before the collection.

[00:31] Bob Dobbs: It's called

[00:33] Bob Dobbs: What You Slash

[00:35] Bob Dobbs: We Didn't Know About President Trump.

[00:39] Bob Dobbs: So we have Cameron,

[00:42] Bob Dobbs: one of the few people who has read it,

[00:45] Bob Dobbs: and we're interested in what he has to say about it,

[00:49] Bob Dobbs: what he notices.

[00:51] Bob Dobbs: So

[00:51] Bob Dobbs: I'm bringing up my copy.

[00:55] Bob Dobbs: Where is my copy?

[00:58] Bob Dobbs: Have you got yours there?

[01:00] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[01:00] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[01:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[01:03] Bob Dobbs: right this second.

[01:10] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[01:11] Bob Dobbs: mine's coming up.

[01:14] Bob Dobbs: What do you notice first off?

[01:19] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[01:19] Cameron McEwen: I'm a little worried that when we talk about the early pages...

[01:27] Cameron McEwen: of the book that we're going to get back into the introduction that you're hoping to leave because the thing that strikes me at the start is you're wanting to get out of the cul-de-sac of

[01:44] Cameron McEwen: the typical things that are said about McLuhan,

[01:49] Cameron McEwen: medium is a message,

[01:50] Cameron McEwen: global village,

[01:51] Cameron McEwen: media ecology.

[01:53] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[01:56] Cameron McEwen: And then you get into the question of how the intuitive man takes precedence over the analytic man.

[02:08] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[02:08] Cameron McEwen: It comes from a letter

[02:10] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan wrote in

[02:12] Cameron McEwen: 1959. And if memory serves,

[02:19] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan just before then had been in Winnipeg,

[02:23] Cameron McEwen: And he had...

[02:26] Cameron McEwen: given the substance of that letter to a men's business club in Winnipeg.

[02:36] Cameron McEwen: So to me,

[02:37] Cameron McEwen: that's very interesting that

[02:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan sort of kept a foot in the place that he was not born in.

[02:54] Cameron McEwen: grew up in and remained in from age four or five until 22 or 23.

[03:04] Bob Dobbs: Let me say this.

[03:05] Bob Dobbs: The letter that he wrote that I'm quoting is to a businessman he didn't know.

[03:13] Bob Dobbs: So it's significant that he got the idea of writing to a businessman after speaking to them.

[03:19] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[03:23] Bob Dobbs: Maybe he got,

[03:24] Bob Dobbs: he might have been,

[03:26] Bob Dobbs: that person might have been recommended to Marshall from somebody at the meeting in Winnipeg.

[03:33] Cameron McEwen: It's possible.

[03:33] Cameron McEwen: I think it was written to a man by the name of Morgan.

[03:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[03:38] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[03:39] Cameron McEwen: wasn't Morgan an executive in

[03:42] Cameron McEwen: McLean Hunter or a firm like that?

[03:46] Cameron McEwen: I'll quickly look that up.

[03:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[03:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't recall.

[03:50] Bob Dobbs: You just need to look into the letters.

[03:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[03:52] Cameron McEwen: that's where I'm going right now.

[03:56] Cameron McEwen: But

[03:58] Bob Dobbs: I think the editor,

[04:00] Bob Dobbs: William Toy,

[04:01] Bob Dobbs: remarked on

[04:03] Bob Dobbs: Morgan's response,

[04:04] Bob Dobbs: right?

[04:05] Bob Dobbs: How else would I know it?

[04:12] Cameron McEwen: He certainly got a note.

[04:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[04:17] Bob Dobbs: the guy said,

[04:18] Bob Dobbs: I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

[04:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[04:23] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[04:23] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[04:25] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan probably liked responses like that from business people because that kind of response is honest and

[04:39] Cameron McEwen: doesn't try to eat

[04:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan stuff.

[04:44] Cameron McEwen: The academic response is almost always.

[04:48] Cameron McEwen: I know what you're talking about.

[04:50] Cameron McEwen: I know it better.

[04:54] Cameron McEwen: Here's how I digest it,

[04:56] Cameron McEwen: and here's what you should be thinking instead.

[05:00] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,

[05:01] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to add this to my CV,

[05:04] Cameron McEwen: which is now 98 pages long,

[05:07] Cameron McEwen: and should get me a travel grant somewhere.

[05:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[05:11] Bob Dobbs: if you ever drop by,

[05:13] Bob Dobbs: I might be able to help you.

[05:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[05:21] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[05:21] Bob Dobbs: Edgar Friedenberg,

[05:22] Bob Dobbs: who's quoted in

[05:25] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg Galaxy,

[05:26] Bob Dobbs: he did the book The Vanishing Adolescent.

[05:28] Bob Dobbs: He was a famous intellectual in America at that point.

[05:32] Bob Dobbs: And then he went,

[05:33] Bob Dobbs: he left America because of it,

[05:34] Bob Dobbs: and more went to Dalhousie and Halifax.

[05:36] Bob Dobbs: So I sat in on his classes for five years in 73,

[05:41] Bob Dobbs: 73 to 77,

[05:43] Bob Dobbs: something like that.

[05:44] Bob Dobbs: And he once told me that he met.

[05:48] Bob Dobbs: a major minister who'd be in the news back then,

[05:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[05:51] Bob Dobbs: minister of trade or something.

[05:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[05:54] Bob Dobbs: And

[05:55] Bob Dobbs: I guess the minister listened to Friedberg talk,

[06:01] Bob Dobbs: and then after came up and said,

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: here's my card.

[06:06] Bob Dobbs: If you ever need any help,

[06:07] Bob Dobbs: give me a call.

[06:12] Bob Dobbs: So I guess he thought Friedberg was a guy wandering off the street.

[06:17] Bob Dobbs: and present his problems to the group.

[06:20] Bob Dobbs: But the other story Friedenberg told me is that he was on a panel in the 1970s or so,

[06:28] Bob Dobbs: and Maurice McLuhan,

[06:29] Bob Dobbs: he was looking forward to being on a panel with McLuhan.

[06:32] Bob Dobbs: And Maurice McLuhan showed up.

[06:34] Bob Dobbs: And when Morris introduced himself,

[06:36] Bob Dobbs: he said that Marshall was an only child.

[06:42] Bob Dobbs: And Friedenberg told me he was shocked.

[06:45] Bob Dobbs: He kind of didn't respect McLuhan anymore after that.

[06:48] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[06:48] Bob Dobbs: he thought,

[06:48] Bob Dobbs: what,

[06:49] Bob Dobbs: that crazy family.

[06:50] Bob Dobbs: So

[06:52] Bob Dobbs: I thought that was an incredible inside statement.

[06:56] Cameron McEwen: That's a great example of

[06:58] Cameron McEwen: Irish humor.

[06:59] Bob Dobbs: Is it?

[07:01] Bob Dobbs: Irish.

[07:01] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[07:01] Cameron McEwen: definitely.

[07:02] Cameron McEwen: Irish,

[07:03] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[07:04] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan dad was a master of

[07:08] Cameron McEwen: Irish humor.

[07:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[07:10] Cameron McEwen: McCloughan.

[07:12] Cameron McEwen: I think it's in take today,

[07:14] Cameron McEwen: but I'm not exactly sure.

[07:16] Cameron McEwen: But he gives an example of Irish humor,

[07:20] Cameron McEwen: and he says an Irish bull.

[07:24] Cameron McEwen: Do you know the story of the Irish bull?

[07:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't recall it.

[07:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[07:29] Cameron McEwen: He says if you see three cows standing in a field,

[07:34] Cameron McEwen: the one that is lying down is the Irish bull.

[07:39] Bob Dobbs: And that's funny?

[07:41] Cameron McEwen: Very funny.

[07:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[07:42] Cameron McEwen: Three cows standing.

[07:45] Cameron McEwen: And the one that is flying down is the Irish bull.

[07:48] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[07:48] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[07:49] Bob Dobbs: you see,

[07:49] Bob Dobbs: three cows standing.

[07:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[07:53] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[07:54] Cameron McEwen: Cows as opposed to bull,

[07:55] Cameron McEwen: right?

[07:56] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[07:57] Bob Dobbs: If you see three cows standing,

[08:00] Bob Dobbs: the one lying down is the bull.

[08:03] Bob Dobbs: So there's four?

[08:05] Cameron McEwen: No.

[08:06] Cameron McEwen: No.

[08:06] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[08:06] Cameron McEwen: the whole thing turns in the fact that.

[08:11] Cameron McEwen: that it's supposed to be cows with no bull and they're supposed to be standing and not lying and the um the slipperiness of the story is the irish humor aka the irish bull yeah

[08:29] Bob Dobbs: bullshit yeah bullshit okay um i must have read that sounds familiar i didn't get it well it's very funny it's very funny

[08:41] Cameron McEwen: And it's exactly analogous to

[08:45] Cameron McEwen: Marshall's and only child said by his brother.

[08:49] Bob Dobbs: Who would ever say that?

[08:51] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[08:51] Bob Dobbs: he and Marshall were maybe a hidden comedy team,

[08:56] Bob Dobbs: at least privately.

[08:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[08:58] Cameron McEwen: that's one of the reasons that Marshall used to send

[09:01] Cameron McEwen: Maurice out to talk for him.

[09:02] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[09:04] Cameron McEwen: Maurice was a great wordsmith,

[09:07] Cameron McEwen: and that was both a source of...

[09:10] Cameron McEwen: pride with Marshall and an irritant because he thought that his brother tended to talk instead of understanding something.

[09:23] Cameron McEwen: And so on the one hand,

[09:26] Cameron McEwen: he appreciated it.

[09:28] Cameron McEwen: It was something that his brother got from his dad.

[09:32] Cameron McEwen: But on the other hand,

[09:34] Cameron McEwen: it pissed him off.

[09:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[09:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[09:37] Bob Dobbs: Another story.

[09:38] Bob Dobbs: So

[09:40] Bob Dobbs: I met Morris when I went to the center in 71.

[09:43] Bob Dobbs: I'd been there many times before,

[09:44] Bob Dobbs: but I went there in 71,

[09:47] Bob Dobbs: and he was the front guy at the front desk.

[09:49] Bob Dobbs: That later became George Thompson's role a couple years later.

[09:53] Bob Dobbs: And

[09:54] Bob Dobbs: I said

[09:56] Bob Dobbs: I'd come in from Nova Scotia,

[09:58] Bob Dobbs: and he said,

[09:59] Bob Dobbs: hmm,

[09:59] Bob Dobbs: it's very dark.

[10:00] Bob Dobbs: down there.

[10:04] Bob Dobbs: I was shocked at this rude commentary about where I'd come from.

[10:10] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[10:10] Bob Dobbs: well,

[10:11] Bob Dobbs: at least it's green.

[10:13] Bob Dobbs: That was all he'd come up with.

[10:14] Bob Dobbs: And that was that.

[10:16] Bob Dobbs: So then four years later,

[10:19] Bob Dobbs: on a Monday night,

[10:21] Bob Dobbs: I got to meet him again.

[10:22] Bob Dobbs: He was there.

[10:23] Bob Dobbs: And he had not been around.

[10:24] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know where he had gone.

[10:26] Bob Dobbs: But he had actually,

[10:27] Bob Dobbs: I found out later,

[10:28] Bob Dobbs: gone to Sheridan College.

[10:29] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[10:30] Bob Dobbs: out in Mississauga or someplace,

[10:31] Bob Dobbs: and taught there.

[10:33] Bob Dobbs: And there's a great video that a student made of Marshall,

[10:36] Bob Dobbs: January 75,

[10:38] Bob Dobbs: teaching at Morris'

[10:40] Bob Dobbs: class.

[10:42] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall says a lot to the students.

[10:44] Bob Dobbs: It's a very revealing interaction.

[10:47] Cameron McEwen: So Morris made have you ever seen that,

[10:50] Bob Dobbs: Richard,

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: somebody?

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: No,

[10:52] Bob Dobbs: no,

[10:52] Cameron McEwen: no,

[10:52] Cameron McEwen: no,

[10:52] Cameron McEwen: I haven't.

[10:54] Cameron McEwen: What I find interesting there is

[10:57] Cameron McEwen: I believe

[10:59] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan old friend from Winnipeg,

[11:02] Cameron McEwen: Carl Williams,

[11:04] Cameron McEwen: was the head of Sheridan College at that point.

[11:07] Bob Dobbs: No,

[11:09] Bob Dobbs: Williams was out there at

[11:12] Bob Dobbs: Western University.

[11:15] Cameron McEwen: No,

[11:15] Cameron McEwen: no,

[11:15] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[11:15] Cameron McEwen: he became the president of Western in 77,

[11:19] Cameron McEwen: I believe.

[11:20] Bob Dobbs: No,

[11:20] Bob Dobbs: no,

[11:22] Bob Dobbs: he was president when...

[11:26] Bob Dobbs: Subliminal seduction.

[11:28] Bob Dobbs: Wilson Brian Key got in trouble.

[11:30] Bob Dobbs: And

[11:31] Bob Dobbs: Key was teaching at Western,

[11:33] Bob Dobbs: I guess it was Western,

[11:34] Bob Dobbs: one of those places outside in Ontario someplace,

[11:38] Bob Dobbs: far from Toronto.

[11:39] Bob Dobbs: And

[11:41] Bob Dobbs: Williams did not help.

[11:43] Bob Dobbs: He was president.

[11:44] Bob Dobbs: He did not help the faculty flack that

[11:48] Bob Dobbs: Key was getting.

[11:49] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall wrote to him.

[11:51] Bob Dobbs: And I noticed this.

[11:52] Bob Dobbs: I have it,

[11:54] Bob Dobbs: the correspondence.

[11:55] Bob Dobbs: And...

[11:56] Bob Dobbs: Williams didn't come through for Key on behalf of Marshall.

[12:00] Bob Dobbs: So

[12:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm pretty sure I'm accurate on that,

[12:03] Bob Dobbs: 73-74.

[12:05] Bob Dobbs: Maybe he went to Sheridan.

[12:07] Bob Dobbs: Was he head of Sheridan?

[12:09] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[12:13] Cameron McEwen: I get a little mixed up with the names of the satellite campuses because the names change,

[12:19] Cameron McEwen: right?

[12:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[12:20] Cameron McEwen: So I think the

[12:23] Cameron McEwen: Mississauga campus.

[12:25] Cameron McEwen: It started off as maybe Mississauga

[12:28] Cameron McEwen: College, and then it became

[12:33] Cameron McEwen: Sheridan, unless I'm compressing two different places together.

[12:42] Cameron McEwen: And

[12:43] Cameron McEwen: I was under the impression that in the middle 70s,

[12:48] Cameron McEwen: that's where Williams was.

[12:52] Bob Dobbs: No,

[12:52] Bob Dobbs: no,

[12:52] Bob Dobbs: here it is.

[12:53] Bob Dobbs: I just did a quick...

[12:55] Bob Dobbs: run through here,

[12:58] Bob Dobbs: just brought him up,

[13:00] Bob Dobbs: where's this,

[13:01] Bob Dobbs: President's biography,

[13:04] Bob Dobbs: says Carl,

[13:06] Bob Dobbs: David Carlton Williams,

[13:10] Bob Dobbs: he was president from 67 to 77.

[13:14] Cameron McEwen: Just look what he,

[13:15] Bob Dobbs: look what it says,

[13:16] Bob Dobbs: Dr.

[13:16] Bob Dobbs: Williams,

[13:17] Bob Dobbs: and this is

[13:18] Bob Dobbs: Western University propaganda,

[13:20] Bob Dobbs: right,

[13:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[13:21] Bob Dobbs: it's an inside bio.

[13:23] Bob Dobbs: Dr.

[13:23] Bob Dobbs: Williams'

[13:24] Bob Dobbs: presidency was one of buoyant optimism,

[13:26] Bob Dobbs: during which Western,

[13:28] Bob Dobbs: the university,

[13:28] Bob Dobbs: continued to grow and diversify.

[13:30] Bob Dobbs: The range and depth of its intellectual pursuits,

[13:32] Bob Dobbs: the richness of its cultural life and athletic activity,

[13:35] Bob Dobbs: and the variety of social life on its campus all became more sophisticated as Western matured into a major university.

[13:42] Bob Dobbs: After completing undergraduate studies in his home province of Manitoba and pursuing graduate studies in psychology at the University of Toronto in

[13:50] Bob Dobbs: 1940, So where's...

[13:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is at

[13:53] Bob Dobbs: Mattis. No,

[13:54] Bob Dobbs: he's in St.

[13:55] Bob Dobbs: Louis at that time,

[13:57] Bob Dobbs: right?

[13:57] Bob Dobbs: 1940.

[13:58] Bob Dobbs: Williams served as an officer in the RCAF during the Second World War.

[14:01] Bob Dobbs: Following the war,

[14:02] Bob Dobbs: he returned to Toronto,

[14:04] Bob Dobbs: where he became vice president of two new colleges at Arendelle and Scarborough,

[14:08] Bob Dobbs: before being recruited as Western's fifth president.

[14:11] Bob Dobbs: So

[14:12] Bob Dobbs: Arendelle, Scarborough were,

[14:14] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[14:15] Bob Dobbs: parts of the University of Toronto.

[14:17] Bob Dobbs: That was before 67.

[14:19] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[14:20] Cameron McEwen: correct.

[14:20] Cameron McEwen: So I was growing up.

[14:21] Cameron McEwen: 67 was 77.

[14:25] Cameron McEwen: I think Arendale is one of the names of the campus in Mississauga.

[14:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[14:32] Bob Dobbs: I think you're right.

[14:33] Bob Dobbs: What's the one,

[14:34] Bob Dobbs: Sheridan,

[14:35] Bob Dobbs: let's look up,

[14:35] Bob Dobbs: let's put in

[14:37] Bob Dobbs: Arendelle and see what they say,

[14:41] Bob Dobbs: and then

[14:45] Cameron McEwen: Sheridan. By the way,

[14:47] Cameron McEwen: can I talk as you're looking that up?

[14:49] Bob Dobbs: No,

[14:49] Bob Dobbs: I got it here.

[14:50] Bob Dobbs: It's an historical neighborhood located within the central part of the city of Mississauga.

[14:58] Cameron McEwen: That's Arendelle,

[15:00] Cameron McEwen: right?

[15:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[15:01] Bob Dobbs: the center of the old village is just to the east of the Credit River Valley.

[15:06] Bob Dobbs: A large campus of the University of Toronto,

[15:08] Bob Dobbs: known as University of Toronto Mississauga,

[15:10] Bob Dobbs: is located on the west bank of the river,

[15:13] Bob Dobbs: and that probably is the most recent name.

[15:17] Bob Dobbs: I remember something being called Arendelle back in the

[15:21] Bob Dobbs: 1670s, so it became the University of Toronto Mississauga.

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: so now I'll do Sheridan.

[15:30] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[15:31] Cameron McEwen: See what happens there.

[15:34] Cameron McEwen: Both Bissell and

[15:35] Cameron McEwen: Williams were the presidents or the principal,

[15:40] Cameron McEwen: whatever the word is,

[15:42] Cameron McEwen: at

[15:42] Cameron McEwen: Sheridan. And just before Bissell became president of UT.

[15:51] Bob Dobbs: You said who was the other person?

[15:54] Cameron McEwen: Bissell and then Williams.

[15:56] Bob Dobbs: Hmm.

[15:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[15:57] Bob Dobbs: I know Bissell,

[15:58] Bob Dobbs: he was president of the University of Toronto in 59 or so,

[16:01] Bob Dobbs: so that would be the

[16:02] Bob Dobbs: 50s.

[16:03] Bob Dobbs: Let's see,

[16:05] Bob Dobbs: well,

[16:07] Bob Dobbs: it says here,

[16:09] Bob Dobbs: the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning,

[16:12] Bob Dobbs: previously called Sheridan College of Applied Arts and Technology,

[16:15] Bob Dobbs: commonly known as Sheridan College,

[16:20] Bob Dobbs: founded in 67,

[16:22] Bob Dobbs: the college of blah,

[16:23] Bob Dobbs: blah,

[16:23] Bob Dobbs: blah,

[16:24] Bob Dobbs: their campuses.

[16:26] Bob Dobbs: in Oakville,

[16:26] Bob Dobbs: Brampton,

[16:27] Bob Dobbs: Mississauga.

[16:28] Bob Dobbs: So it's something on its own.

[16:30] Bob Dobbs: It's not part of the University of Toronto.

[16:31] Bob Dobbs: In 2018,

[16:34] Bob Dobbs: it opened a campus in Brampton in partnership with Ryerson University.

[16:38] Bob Dobbs: So Sheridan is something separate,

[16:40] Bob Dobbs: right?

[16:41] Bob Dobbs: It's not part of the University of Toronto.

[16:43] Cameron McEwen: Maybe it was part of University of Toronto for a while.

[16:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[16:48] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,

[16:48] Cameron McEwen: but

[16:49] Cameron McEwen: I was sure that both Bissell and Williams were head of Sheridan.

[16:57] Cameron McEwen: I'd have to do further research to see if my brain is functioning correctly in thinking that.

[17:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[17:05] Bob Dobbs: but for those that have no interest in what we're pursuing here,

[17:11] Bob Dobbs: it's the way we work.

[17:13] Bob Dobbs: It's how you find out new stuff.

[17:16] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[17:18] Cameron McEwen: The note on this was mistaken in one respect,

[17:23] Cameron McEwen: and that was...

[17:24] Cameron McEwen: It said that he got out of the RCAF after the Second World War and then returned to Toronto.

[17:32] Cameron McEwen: But that's not the case.

[17:33] Cameron McEwen: He actually returned to Winnipeg.

[17:36] Bob Dobbs: You just know that or you're looking at something?

[17:43] Cameron McEwen: I've been recruited back to Toronto.

[17:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[17:45] Bob Dobbs: just a minute,

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[17:47] Bob Dobbs: You faded out.

[17:48] Bob Dobbs: I asked you,

[17:50] Bob Dobbs: he went back to Winnipeg.

[17:51] Bob Dobbs: You know that or you just looked it up?

[17:54] Cameron McEwen: No,

[17:55] Cameron McEwen: no,

[17:55] Cameron McEwen: no.

[17:55] Cameron McEwen: I know that.

[17:55] Cameron McEwen: I was speaking off the top of my head.

[17:57] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[17:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[17:59] Cameron McEwen: So he was head of the psychology department in Winnipeg after the Second World War for two or three years,

[18:08] Cameron McEwen: and then got back to Toronto,

[18:10] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[18:11] Cameron McEwen: in

[18:12] Cameron McEwen: 49. Okay.

[18:14] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[18:15] Bob Dobbs: Bissell was the eighth president of the University of Toronto,

[18:19] Bob Dobbs: 58 to 71.

[18:21] Bob Dobbs: Let's see,

[18:22] Bob Dobbs: where did he go?

[18:24] Bob Dobbs: He served in the Canadian Army.

[18:26] Bob Dobbs: He was made assistant professor at the University of Toronto.

[18:28] Bob Dobbs: In 1956 to 1958,

[18:31] Bob Dobbs: he went to Carleton College,

[18:32] Bob Dobbs: now Carleton University.

[18:33] Bob Dobbs: That's in Ottawa.

[18:34] Bob Dobbs: So he didn't go to Sheridan or any place.

[18:38] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[18:38] Cameron McEwen: I guess I was thinking of Carlton.

[18:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[18:42] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[18:42] Bob Dobbs: I'm just looking up Carl Williams,

[18:44] Bob Dobbs: if I can get a better thing on him.

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: Do they say anything?

[18:52] Bob Dobbs: Carl Williams.

[18:54] Cameron McEwen: As you're looking that up,

[18:55] Cameron McEwen: let me mention for everybody that

[18:57] Cameron McEwen: Carl Williams and McLuhan went to high school together.

[19:03] Cameron McEwen: And they graduated,

[19:06] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[19:07] Cameron McEwen: in 1927 or 1928,

[19:15] Cameron McEwen: and then both went to University of Manitoba.

[19:19] Cameron McEwen: But because McLuhan first took engineering and then stopped that,

[19:23] Cameron McEwen: and went into literature,

[19:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan ended up a year behind

[19:29] Cameron McEwen: Williams at

[19:31] Cameron McEwen: U of M.

[19:33] Cameron McEwen: Basically,

[19:34] Cameron McEwen: they had known each other when they were together in Toronto for

[19:42] Cameron McEwen: 30 years already around the middle

[19:47] Bob Dobbs: 50s. Yes.

[19:50] Bob Dobbs: The interesting thing about these guys,

[19:52] Bob Dobbs: Williams,

[19:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[19:56] Bob Dobbs: and who's the third guy?

[19:58] Cameron McEwen: Easterbrook.

[19:59] Bob Dobbs: Easterbrook,

[20:00] Bob Dobbs: who became a student at Harold Innis.

[20:02] Bob Dobbs: They were outsiders.

[20:04] Bob Dobbs: They were invading Toronto.

[20:06] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[20:07] Bob Dobbs: they had a different sensibility,

[20:08] Bob Dobbs: they thought,

[20:10] Bob Dobbs: from Winnipeg.

[20:12] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[20:13] Bob Dobbs: So that's an interesting infiltration they did.

[20:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[20:16] Bob Dobbs: so here's

[20:21] Bob Dobbs: Williams.

[20:22] Bob Dobbs: Okay, 1957,

[20:27] Bob Dobbs: I found a photograph of him.

[20:30] Bob Dobbs: He's seen in his photograph lecturing on psychology at the CBC.

[20:34] Bob Dobbs: There they are getting into media in 1957.

[20:37] Bob Dobbs: He became the first principal of Scarborough College and the vice president for planning Arendelle and Scarborough College in 1963.

[20:45] Bob Dobbs: Did I already say that?

[20:47] Bob Dobbs: Scarborough College?

[20:48] Cameron McEwen: We were talking about that,

[20:50] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[20:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[20:50] Bob Dobbs: that was in that other thing.

[20:52] Bob Dobbs: So that is different from

[20:57] Bob Dobbs: Arendelle.

[21:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[21:04] Cameron McEwen: I think you just said that he was involved in the planning for both Scarborough and Arendelle,

[21:11] Cameron McEwen: didn't you?

[21:12] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I did.

[21:14] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[21:16] Bob Dobbs: Going back.

[21:17] Bob Dobbs: Sheridan College,

[21:22] Bob Dobbs: Arendelle,

[21:22] Bob Dobbs: Mississauga.

[21:29] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I did.

[21:31] Cameron McEwen: I was talking,

[21:31] Cameron McEwen: I wasn't talking about far back.

[21:34] Cameron McEwen: I was talking about what you just said moments ago when you looked up Williams.

[21:44] Bob Dobbs: What did I say?

[21:46] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[21:46] Cameron McEwen: I thought you said that he,

[21:48] Cameron McEwen: I thought you read that he was involved in the planning for

[21:52] Cameron McEwen: Scarborough and Arendelle.

[21:54] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[21:55] Bob Dobbs: but I'm going back to the what was said in

[22:00] Bob Dobbs: Western.

[22:01] Bob Dobbs: Maybe they said that because I read it.

[22:04] Bob Dobbs: I read something a little while ago.

[22:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[22:06] Cameron McEwen: but that's not when you were talking about the picture of him lecturing at the CBC.

[22:15] Cameron McEwen: That's not at the Western blurb.

[22:19] Bob Dobbs: No,

[22:20] Cameron McEwen: it's on a page that's in a University of Toronto page.

[22:24] Cameron McEwen: And I think it was there that you read about him.

[22:28] Cameron McEwen: OK,

[22:28] Bob Dobbs: so look at this.

[22:30] Bob Dobbs: He,

[22:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[22:31] Bob Dobbs: at Western it says he returned to Toronto where he became vice president of two new colleges at Arendelle and Scarborough before being recruited as Western's fifth president.

[22:40] Bob Dobbs: The thing is,

[22:41] Bob Dobbs: is that

[22:42] Bob Dobbs: Sheridan is linked to

[22:45] Bob Dobbs: Ryerson because Sheridan's an applied arts technology place like Ryerson.

[22:50] Bob Dobbs: So the point,

[22:51] Bob Dobbs: what we have grandly discovered,

[22:54] Bob Dobbs: Williams did not go to Sheridan.

[22:57] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[22:58] Cameron McEwen: good.

[23:00] Cameron McEwen: Wasn't Ryerson a part of

[23:03] Cameron McEwen: University of Toronto up to a certain point?

[23:06] Bob Dobbs: I don't think so.

[23:07] Bob Dobbs: I never heard of it.

[23:07] Bob Dobbs: It was five religions,

[23:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[23:11] Bob Dobbs: Trinity,

[23:14] Bob Dobbs: St.

[23:14] Bob Dobbs: Michael's,

[23:15] Bob Dobbs: something else,

[23:16] Bob Dobbs: something else.

[23:17] Bob Dobbs: Four or five religions was made up the University of Toronto.

[23:20] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[23:21] Bob Dobbs: here we go again.

[23:22] Bob Dobbs: Let's look up the history of Ryerson.

[23:28] Cameron McEwen: These kinds of asides,

[23:30] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if it's very enlightening for the vast public.

[23:35] Bob Dobbs: No,

[23:35] Cameron McEwen: it isn't.

[23:36] Bob Dobbs: But they should learn how we,

[23:38] Bob Dobbs: this is how you discover things.

[23:41] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[23:41] Cameron McEwen: This is dialogue,

[23:42] Cameron McEwen: and this is words and ideas sparking off each other.

[23:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[23:49] Bob Dobbs: And so,

[23:52] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[23:53] Bob Dobbs: campus expansion.

[23:55] Bob Dobbs: Where is the?

[23:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[24:00] Bob Dobbs: During the Second World War,

[24:02] Bob Dobbs: some people and the Toronto Board of Education saw a need to provide specialized institutes that would provide educational vocational training for specific jobs for returning veterans.

[24:12] Bob Dobbs: So nothing to do with the University of Toronto.

[24:15] Bob Dobbs: The idea to create institutions that span the gap between secondary education and universities was the result of a trip undertaken by Kerr to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 43.

[24:26] Bob Dobbs: Kerr envisioning a similar institute established in Canada.

[24:28] Bob Dobbs: Wow,

[24:28] Bob Dobbs: it's based on MIT.

[24:30] Bob Dobbs: Kerr's effort to establish an institute of this nature led to the Legislative Assembly of Toronto of Ontario to pass a certain act to create vocational schools and technological institutes.

[24:40] Bob Dobbs: Although several new institutes were planned during the war,

[24:42] Bob Dobbs: their establishment was delayed by the advent of the Cold War and the potential need to remobilize.

[24:50] Bob Dobbs: However,

[24:50] Bob Dobbs: with the prospect of war diminished greatly by 1948,

[24:53] Bob Dobbs: the decision...

[24:54] Bob Dobbs: was made to open the Ryerson Institute of Technology in August 1948.

[25:01] Bob Dobbs: And you know,

[25:02] Bob Dobbs: the school was named after Edgerton Ryerson.

[25:05] Bob Dobbs: That is a relative of Barrington Nevitt.

[25:10] Bob Dobbs: So Nevitt came out of some established level,

[25:14] Bob Dobbs: establishment area of Toronto.

[25:18] Bob Dobbs: But his parents in particular were missionaries in China.

[25:23] Bob Dobbs: So let's...

[25:24] Bob Dobbs: see.

[25:27] Bob Dobbs: Edgerton Ryerson has established the Toronto Normal School,

[25:30] Bob Dobbs: imagine being called normal,

[25:32] Bob Dobbs: the Toronto Normal School in 1847 on the future site of the Ryerson Institute of Technology.

[25:39] Bob Dobbs: So nothing to do with

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan, I mean University of Toronto.

[25:45] Bob Dobbs: So that's Sheridan.

[25:47] Bob Dobbs: Sheridan is a branch in a way,

[25:49] Bob Dobbs: potential branch of Ryerson at some point.

[25:53] Bob Dobbs: It's like the out...

[25:54] Bob Dobbs: Outskirts,

[25:55] Bob Dobbs: extension of Ryerson.

[25:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: so we're talking,

[26:02] Bob Dobbs: how can we explain how we got here?

[26:06] Cameron McEwen: We got here through the letter that McLuhan wrote to the,

[26:11] Cameron McEwen: that's right,

[26:11] Cameron McEwen: and he was a

[26:15] Cameron McEwen: McLean Hunter executive.

[26:18] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan it was interesting both that he was a businessman man and that

[26:23] Cameron McEwen: He was in the business of media.

[26:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[26:27] Cameron McEwen: Because McLean says the Canadian monthly magazine.

[26:33] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[26:34] Bob Dobbs: And so you're looking at the letter now?

[26:38] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[26:38] Cameron McEwen: vaguely,

[26:38] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[26:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[26:39] Bob Dobbs: at the biography.

[26:41] Bob Dobbs: So that is where,

[26:43] Bob Dobbs: as far as we know,

[26:44] Bob Dobbs: he first said analytic man versus intuitive man.

[26:49] Bob Dobbs: Think he says it anywhere else before that?

[26:52] Cameron McEwen: I don't know of any.

[26:54] Bob Dobbs: like that but that's a it's an interesting way of putting uh concept versus percept yeah yes intuitive man which becomes you know a huge cliche in the 60s and 70s being intuitive but that's due to the electric effect right

[27:11] Cameron McEwen: yeah and it's all it's it's due to the electric effect in two different ways one way is completely superficial everybody was

[27:21] Cameron McEwen: talking about it and had no idea what they were talking about.

[27:25] Cameron McEwen: And then there's a technical way to talk about it.

[27:29] Cameron McEwen: And that is where intuitive man is a person that evaluates percepts.

[27:42] Bob Dobbs: And that may have come from

[27:44] Bob Dobbs: Mr. Buck,

[27:45] Bob Dobbs: B-U-C-K-E,

[27:47] Bob Dobbs: who was a psychologist,

[27:48] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[27:49] Bob Dobbs: the mentor to Walt Whitman,

[27:51] Bob Dobbs: who did a book on cosmic consciousness,

[27:54] Bob Dobbs: and I thought that was the first time I ever saw somebody using the word percepts back in the

[28:00] Bob Dobbs: 19th century.

[28:02] Bob Dobbs: Does that fit in here?

[28:06] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[28:07] Cameron McEwen: sure.

[28:07] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[28:09] Cameron McEwen: as we've discussed in previous conversations,

[28:14] Cameron McEwen: the whole topic of percept is very,

[28:18] Cameron McEwen: very important.

[28:19] Cameron McEwen: for McLuhan and the world today.

[28:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[28:24] Bob Dobbs: so when one read the letter,

[28:31] Bob Dobbs: when the book came out in 87,

[28:34] Bob Dobbs: so you're saying intuitive man,

[28:36] Bob Dobbs: it would be lucky if you knew he had written on ESP a couple of years before that.

[28:44] Bob Dobbs: And he's thinking ESP or gestural dance and these other factors.

[28:50] Bob Dobbs: as part of the meaning of intuitive man.

[28:52] Bob Dobbs: That's important.

[28:54] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't mean you're like,

[28:55] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[28:56] Bob Dobbs: you can figure out what a person's personality is or something,

[28:59] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[29:00] Bob Dobbs: It's not.

[29:02] Bob Dobbs: That's too superficial of the meaning of intuitive man.

[29:06] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[29:08] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely correct.

[29:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[29:11] Bob Dobbs: So just to wrap up here,

[29:12] Bob Dobbs: you got Williams,

[29:14] Bob Dobbs: five members of the

[29:15] Bob Dobbs: Explorations Group in the

[29:17] Bob Dobbs: 53 period.

[29:19] Bob Dobbs: 53 to 55.

[29:20] Bob Dobbs: It only went two years,

[29:22] Bob Dobbs: and he got three Winnipeg boys,

[29:25] Bob Dobbs: Carlton Williams,

[29:26] Bob Dobbs: who becomes president of the university.

[29:29] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan becomes famous and

[29:35] Bob Dobbs: Easterbrook becomes a well-known follower of the major scholar Harold Innis.

[29:42] Bob Dobbs: So it's pretty amazing that

[29:44] Bob Dobbs: Easterbrook ended up in the same field as McLuhan,

[29:47] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[29:49] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[29:52] Cameron McEwen: Easterbrook also became,

[29:55] Cameron McEwen: like Innis,

[29:56] Cameron McEwen: a chairman of...

[29:58] Cameron McEwen: the

[30:00] Cameron McEwen: Department of

[30:03] Cameron McEwen: Political Economy.

[30:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[30:05] Cameron McEwen: And

[30:05] Cameron McEwen: I think he was the chairman longer than Ennis.

[30:09] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[30:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[30:10] Bob Dobbs: so they're all successful.

[30:13] Bob Dobbs: Do they get high marks in high school?

[30:16] Bob Dobbs: Did you look into that?

[30:21] Cameron McEwen: I haven't looked into that.

[30:22] Cameron McEwen: I think

[30:24] Cameron McEwen: Rich Altman in Winnipeg.

[30:29] Cameron McEwen: May have looked into that.

[30:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[30:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[30:30] Cameron McEwen: I tried to look into McLuhan grades at University of Manitoba,

[30:35] Cameron McEwen: and they wouldn't give them to me.

[30:40] Cameron McEwen: The same legislation may pose difficulties for the high school.

[30:45] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[30:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[30:46] Bob Dobbs: So here are these three guys in high school together involved with each other.

[30:52] Cameron McEwen: No,

[30:52] Cameron McEwen: no.

[30:52] Cameron McEwen: Easterbrook is not in high school.

[30:54] Cameron McEwen: He was in...

[30:59] Cameron McEwen: McCloughan and Williams were going to a high school on the south side of Winnipeg,

[31:05] Cameron McEwen: and

[31:06] Cameron McEwen: Easterbrook was on the north side.

[31:08] Bob Dobbs: But somehow they spent a lot of time talking together,

[31:12] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[31:12] Bob Dobbs: even in high school days?

[31:14] Bob Dobbs: Or was it once they were in university?

[31:16] Cameron McEwen: I haven't been able to...

[31:18] Cameron McEwen: Sometimes you get the impression from what McCloughan says that he knew Easterbrook very early.

[31:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[31:25] Cameron McEwen: But.

[31:26] Cameron McEwen: How that would have happened,

[31:27] Cameron McEwen: I do not know.

[31:28] Cameron McEwen: Maybe through high school debating societies,

[31:34] Cameron McEwen: something like that.

[31:35] Cameron McEwen: But I haven't been able to confirm that McLuhan knew Easterbrook in high school.

[31:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[31:41] Cameron McEwen: and all I know is...

[31:42] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.

[31:43] Bob Dobbs: All you know is...

[31:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[31:45] Cameron McEwen: is that they didn't go to the same high school.

[31:48] Bob Dobbs: Did they go to the university together?

[31:52] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[31:52] Cameron McEwen: and not only did they go to university at the same time,

[31:55] Cameron McEwen: same time,

[31:56] Cameron McEwen: they were in the same engineering class.

[31:59] Cameron McEwen: So

[32:00] Cameron McEwen: I think that when McLuhan took engineering in 1928 at the University of Manitoba,

[32:07] Cameron McEwen: I think that's where he met Easterbrook,

[32:09] Cameron McEwen: but I'm not sure.

[32:11] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[32:11] Bob Dobbs: That's logical.

[32:12] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[32:12] Bob Dobbs: the thing is,

[32:14] Bob Dobbs: I think it's odd to me if it's true what McLuhan said.

[32:18] Bob Dobbs: They spent a lot of time talking late into the night.

[32:23] Bob Dobbs: And,

[32:23] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[32:23] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[32:24] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[32:24] Bob Dobbs: they didn't need much sleep.

[32:25] Bob Dobbs: They go,

[32:25] Bob Dobbs: maybe they slept in or something.

[32:27] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[32:28] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how rigorous university was,

[32:30] Bob Dobbs: but they seemed to be odd in the amount of debating and talking they did.

[32:35] Bob Dobbs: Did many other people have someone that they would talk and do nights for years,

[32:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[32:40] Bob Dobbs: into the early morning?

[32:42] Bob Dobbs: That's how it's presented.

[32:43] Bob Dobbs: They were really amazingly intellectually active with each other.

[32:47] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[32:51] Cameron McEwen: Winnipeg produced

[32:54] Cameron McEwen: a lot of great talent in those years.

[32:57] Cameron McEwen: It's unclear exactly why it was able to do it,

[33:04] Cameron McEwen: but probably in the case of McLuhan and Easterbrook,

[33:09] Cameron McEwen: they recognized in each other minds that were superior to those of most folks.

[33:23] Cameron McEwen: They recognized minds in each other that they had to understand if they were going to sort of grow intellectually,

[33:33] Cameron McEwen: grow out of themselves.

[33:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[33:35] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[33:35] Cameron McEwen: So so enter into dialogue as a way of being not encapsulated.

[33:45] Cameron McEwen: And then,

[33:45] Cameron McEwen: as you were just saying a few moments ago about their later careers,

[33:50] Cameron McEwen: all three of these people from Winnipeg.

[33:53] Cameron McEwen: excelled in Toronto.

[33:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[33:55] Cameron McEwen: They may even have thought that the people they encountered in Toronto were relatively dumb.

[34:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[34:01] Bob Dobbs: dull.

[34:02] Cameron McEwen: And,

[34:03] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[34:03] Cameron McEwen: And so when they,

[34:06] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[34:07] Cameron McEwen: when they got the Ford Foundation grant,

[34:12] Cameron McEwen: I think that they may have gone into the whole thing more or less as a lark.

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: well,

[34:20] Cameron McEwen: we'll...

[34:20] Bob Dobbs: Here's one thing,

[34:21] Bob Dobbs: though.

[34:22] Bob Dobbs: Reading Carpenter's explanation of the years just before 53,

[34:27] Bob Dobbs: they didn't like,

[34:28] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter told me,

[34:29] Bob Dobbs: they saw the CIA taking over anthropology and whatever else.

[34:35] Bob Dobbs: cultural studies,

[34:35] Bob Dobbs: whatever it would be.

[34:37] Bob Dobbs: And they purposely went in there to undermine that.

[34:41] Bob Dobbs: That's what Carpenter said to me.

[34:42] Bob Dobbs: Maybe bullshit,

[34:43] Bob Dobbs: and it's a retrospective thing that he made up,

[34:46] Bob Dobbs: but he would name the anthropologists that passed the CIA scrutiny and went on to become establishment guys that Carpenter didn't like,

[34:59] Bob Dobbs: and people like Dorothy Lee would get kicked out because they weren't controllable.

[35:04] Bob Dobbs: So

[35:05] Bob Dobbs: I saw that McLuhan and

[35:08] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter were trying to be an anti-environment to the situation.

[35:13] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[35:13] Bob Dobbs: maybe it was a lark to apply to the Fordham,

[35:17] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[35:18] Bob Dobbs: because they knew they were quite different and were pretty well going to fool them if they got something,

[35:23] Bob Dobbs: or at least their motives wouldn't be so respectable.

[35:28] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[35:29] Cameron McEwen: So,

[35:29] Cameron McEwen: oh yeah,

[35:30] Cameron McEwen: I think what you're saying is correct,

[35:32] Cameron McEwen: but I don't think it's the...

[35:33] Cameron McEwen: full picture.

[35:35] Cameron McEwen: So

[35:36] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter and Williams were kind of opposed in all of these things.

[35:41] Cameron McEwen: Williams would take the side of the administration.

[35:45] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter would be the anti-administration side.

[35:48] Cameron McEwen: And

[35:49] Cameron McEwen: I think the genius of McLuhan was that he could be very friendly,

[35:54] Cameron McEwen: very knowledgeable with both these guys.

[35:57] Cameron McEwen: So Carpenter and Williams hated each other,

[35:59] Cameron McEwen: thought they were pricks.

[36:02] Cameron McEwen: And

[36:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan got along just fine with both.

[36:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[36:06] Bob Dobbs: and it sounds like Easterbrook was the Selye,

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: quiet guy.

[36:12] Cameron McEwen: I think so.

[36:14] Cameron McEwen: He was,

[36:15] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[36:16] Cameron McEwen: a little bit like Maurice.

[36:19] Cameron McEwen: He was an old enough friend of McLuhan,

[36:22] Cameron McEwen: knew McLuhan well enough that he could disagree with him all the time.

[36:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[36:27] Cameron McEwen: And he did.

[36:28] Bob Dobbs: And he didn't take it personally.

[36:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[36:30] Bob Dobbs: he didn't get into a personality conflict.

[36:32] Cameron McEwen: After McLuhan died,

[36:34] Cameron McEwen: Easterbrook told somebody,

[36:35] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,

[36:36] Cameron McEwen: maybe Maurice,

[36:38] Cameron McEwen: that he regretted that he had disagreed with everything McLuhan said for his whole life long,

[36:45] Cameron McEwen: right?

[36:46] Bob Dobbs: Who said that?

[36:48] Cameron McEwen: Easterbrook.

[36:49] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[36:50] Bob Dobbs: because he,

[36:52] Bob Dobbs: somewhere,

[36:53] Bob Dobbs: as it's reported,

[36:54] Bob Dobbs: after he read Take Today,

[36:56] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[36:56] Bob Dobbs: holy cow,

[36:57] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan might have been on to something.

[37:00] Bob Dobbs: That blue is mine,

[37:01] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[37:03] Bob Dobbs: And he hadn't felt that up to that point.

[37:05] Bob Dobbs: So you're saying that he told Morris that he regrets that he argued so much with Marshall?

[37:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[37:12] Cameron McEwen: So are you familiar with a book called Speaking of Winnipeg?

[37:15] Bob Dobbs: No,

[37:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't have that.

[37:18] Cameron McEwen: All right.

[37:18] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[37:19] Bob Dobbs: it's probably available.

[37:22] Bob Dobbs: The interview with Finkelstein,

[37:24] Bob Dobbs: Finkelman or whatever?

[37:25] Cameron McEwen: Finkelman,

[37:26] Cameron McEwen: Finkelman.

[37:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[37:27] Bob Dobbs: I've read that interview.

[37:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[37:29] Cameron McEwen: okay,

[37:30] Cameron McEwen: good.

[37:30] Cameron McEwen: So in that,

[37:34] Cameron McEwen: when McLuhan says anything,

[37:36] Cameron McEwen: then

[37:37] Cameron McEwen: Easterbrook laughs at him and says,

[37:39] Cameron McEwen: well,

[37:39] Cameron McEwen: that's not really the case.

[37:43] Cameron McEwen: That's how the interview goes,

[37:45] Cameron McEwen: basically.

[37:45] Bob Dobbs: Really?

[37:46] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[37:46] Cameron McEwen: And,

[37:47] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[37:47] Cameron McEwen: and,

[37:50] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[37:50] Cameron McEwen: the two of them are making fun of the interview form.

[37:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[37:56] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[37:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[37:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan starts off by saying how the prairie meadowlark is the greatest songbird in the world.

[38:13] Cameron McEwen: It's Irish bull again,

[38:15] Cameron McEwen: right?

[38:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[38:15] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[38:17] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[38:18] Bob Dobbs: what is Easterbrook?

[38:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[38:21] Cameron McEwen: Easterbrook is an Irish.

[38:24] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[38:25] Cameron McEwen: oh yeah,

[38:26] Cameron McEwen: he's definitely a prairie.

[38:27] Cameron McEwen: Protestant,

[38:28] Cameron McEwen: if he was anything.

[38:30] Cameron McEwen: And he probably thought that

[38:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan enchantment with people like Chesterton was wrong-headed.

[38:41] Cameron McEwen: He didn't want the book.

[38:44] Bob Dobbs: He didn't want the Chesterton book.

[38:45] Bob Dobbs: He gave it to McLuhan.

[38:47] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[38:48] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[38:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[38:50] Bob Dobbs: so you have Carpenter's a wild energized marine.

[38:56] Bob Dobbs: Don Thiel used to talk about he was a total marine sensibility.

[38:59] Bob Dobbs: And he had been,

[39:00] Bob Dobbs: I may have mentioned this before,

[39:02] Bob Dobbs: he was the assistant to one of the main guys who ran the Nuremberg hearings or investigation of the Nazis.

[39:09] Bob Dobbs: So he would...

[39:10] Bob Dobbs: No,

[39:10] Cameron McEwen: I didn't know that.

[39:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[39:11] Bob Dobbs: and he would have found out about the secret importation of Nazis into the United States military.

[39:20] Bob Dobbs: He might have known a lot about that.

[39:22] Bob Dobbs: And that maybe put him on the outside.

[39:25] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[39:25] Bob Dobbs: as a working class guy,

[39:27] Bob Dobbs: marine guy,

[39:29] Bob Dobbs: becoming intellectual,

[39:31] Bob Dobbs: he would have an outsider mentality towards the naive establishment,

[39:34] Bob Dobbs: because he knew stuff that they didn't know from 1945.

[39:40] Cameron McEwen: Interesting.

[39:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[39:42] Bob Dobbs: And now,

[39:44] Bob Dobbs: what?

[39:45] Bob Dobbs: And then you had Jacqueline Turwitt,

[39:49] Bob Dobbs: who was

[39:50] Bob Dobbs: Giedion's product.

[39:54] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[39:55] Cameron McEwen: Or vice versa.

[39:57] Cameron McEwen: Maybe Giedion's English was never good,

[40:02] Cameron McEwen: and so she became his translator and editor.

[40:05] Bob Dobbs: Oh.

[40:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[40:07] Cameron McEwen: sometime around in the late...

[40:10] Cameron McEwen: 40s.

[40:10] Cameron McEwen: So before

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: Tyrwhitt,

[40:14] Cameron McEwen: Giedion's stuff was pretty rough.

[40:19] Cameron McEwen: Space,

[40:20] Cameron McEwen: time,

[40:20] Cameron McEwen: and architecture had been lectures at Harvard and people had helped him at

[40:26] Cameron McEwen: Harvard University Press to put that into decent English.

[40:30] Cameron McEwen: But then his essays in the

[40:34] Cameron McEwen: 1940s are very rough English.

[40:37] Cameron McEwen: But then not

[40:39] Cameron McEwen: He got Tyrwhitt as his editor and translator,

[40:42] Cameron McEwen: and sort of for the rest of his life,

[40:47] Cameron McEwen: I think he died in

[40:48] Cameron McEwen: 66, she was kind of the medium through which

[40:58] Cameron McEwen: Giedion was presented to the English-speaking world.

[41:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[41:03] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[41:03] Bob Dobbs: a side thing.

[41:04] Bob Dobbs: Do you know when Maurice McLuhan died?

[41:10] Cameron McEwen: I don't,

[41:10] Cameron McEwen: but if I had to guess,

[41:12] Cameron McEwen: I'd say around

[41:13] Cameron McEwen: 96.

[41:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay, because it's curious.

[41:16] Bob Dobbs: There's no obituary.

[41:17] Bob Dobbs: Very hard to find out what happened to him.

[41:20] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[41:21] Bob Dobbs: where did he disappear to once he wasn't teaching at Sheridan anymore?

[41:25] Bob Dobbs: It's odd that there's no record.

[41:28] Bob Dobbs: I may have seen the date in

[41:32] Bob Dobbs: Ottawa, and it would be somewhere in my archives,

[41:35] Bob Dobbs: but

[41:36] Bob Dobbs: I looked for years,

[41:37] Bob Dobbs: couldn't find anything on him.

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: And then maybe I finally saw it there,

[41:41] Bob Dobbs: but I can't remember what it was.

[41:44] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[41:47] Bob Dobbs: So,

[41:47] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[41:48] Bob Dobbs: the other important,

[41:49] Bob Dobbs: really important thing is,

[41:51] Bob Dobbs: who is James Joyce best buddy in his last couple of years?

[41:58] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[41:58] Cameron McEwen: I guess you're headed towards the Gideons.

[42:00] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[42:01] Bob Dobbs: This is really amazing.

[42:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[42:04] Bob Dobbs: space,

[42:04] Bob Dobbs: time,

[42:05] Bob Dobbs: and architecture.

[42:07] Bob Dobbs: That's Finnegans Wake.

[42:08] Bob Dobbs: It's about maybe even Ulysses.

[42:10] Bob Dobbs: Space,

[42:11] Bob Dobbs: time,

[42:12] Bob Dobbs: and architecture is different media anti-environment.

[42:15] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?

[42:17] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[42:17] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[42:17] Cameron McEwen: And that's not only is it different media anti-environment sort of via suggestion,

[42:27] Cameron McEwen: it is exactly different media anti-environment by intention.

[42:34] Cameron McEwen: So

[42:35] Cameron McEwen: Giedion...

[42:37] Cameron McEwen: In the early

[42:39] Cameron McEwen: 1940s was playing up the idea that the crisis of

[42:46] Cameron McEwen: Western civilization as seen in the Depression and then in World War II was a product of the disintegration of truth.

[42:59] Cameron McEwen: And what Giedion said was that if we're to regain a notion of truth.

[43:07] Cameron McEwen: to guide our civilization again as it once did.

[43:13] Cameron McEwen: What we need is for people from different faculties to speak together and to find the common truth that they already have,

[43:24] Cameron McEwen: but they don't know that they have.

[43:27] Cameron McEwen: So he used the image of an orchestra where everybody was playing.

[43:35] Cameron McEwen: in their own little cubicle,

[43:37] Cameron McEwen: a little bit like COVID,

[43:39] Cameron McEwen: actually.

[43:41] Cameron McEwen: So in orchestra,

[43:42] Cameron McEwen: everybody's playing in their own little cubicle,

[43:46] Cameron McEwen: and they don't know that they have some sort of common orchestration.

[43:54] Cameron McEwen: And so for Giedion,

[43:56] Cameron McEwen: the great need of Western civilization is for its best minds to speak together.

[44:04] Cameron McEwen: and to enunciate the common truth that they already have,

[44:09] Cameron McEwen: but they don't know.

[44:11] Cameron McEwen: So this is what McLuhan took up,

[44:14] Cameron McEwen: this notion from Giedion,

[44:17] Cameron McEwen: and it's what he presented to the University of Chicago in 1946-47 as what the University of Chicago should support.

[44:30] Cameron McEwen: His proposal wasn't...

[44:32] Cameron McEwen: for a new department at UC.

[44:35] Cameron McEwen: It was for UC to help get the money.

[44:38] Cameron McEwen: an independent college independent idea sorry an independent college did you say yeah okay in a college yeah so you know he wanted millions and millions of dollars and uh they just waved him away it was he was asking too much yeah but so

[44:58] Cameron McEwen: but the idea that Giedion had in the early

[45:02] Cameron McEwen: 40s and that McLuhan proposed to

[45:05] Cameron McEwen: UC in uh the late

[45:08] Cameron McEwen: 40s was the germ of the culture and technology seminar and what happened to McLuhan in 1953 to 1955 in that seminar is

[45:24] Cameron McEwen: he got knocked away from the ideal that he had from Giedion yeah he found out that it may be easy to uh say that we're going to get these people together and they're going to agree on.

[45:37] Cameron McEwen: truth,

[45:38] Cameron McEwen: but it doesn't happen,

[45:40] Cameron McEwen: right?

[45:40] Cameron McEwen: They just end up yelling at each other.

[45:45] Cameron McEwen: So then he had to find another way to go about this,

[45:53] Cameron McEwen: and a couple years later,

[45:55] Cameron McEwen: he came up with the idea of the medium as the message.

[45:59] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[45:59] Bob Dobbs: and yet he was always looking for a team to help him.

[46:05] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[46:06] Cameron McEwen: Because the essence of this whole thing was that human beings must already have access to truth.

[46:19] Cameron McEwen: Because the whole idea of constructing truth is what had led into the cul-de-sac.

[46:27] Cameron McEwen: It's what led into the Depression and the Second World War.

[46:31] Cameron McEwen: So constructing something.

[46:35] Cameron McEwen: where the great genius makes a crystal palace,

[46:39] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[46:41] Cameron McEwen: doesn't work.

[46:42] Cameron McEwen: And what's needed instead is to find out what already binds us.

[46:48] Bob Dobbs: What already what?

[46:50] Bob Dobbs: Binds us.

[46:50] Cameron McEwen: Binds us,

[46:51] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[46:52] Cameron McEwen: What is the medium that we're already participating in,

[46:57] Cameron McEwen: in families or in societies?

[47:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[47:04] Bob Dobbs: Is Giedion the founder of interdisciplinary studies?

[47:09] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[47:09] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if he was the founder,

[47:10] Cameron McEwen: but he was certainly a very strong proponent of it.

[47:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[47:15] Bob Dobbs: and when McLuhan celebrates Giedion and the Mechanical Bride,

[47:19] Bob Dobbs: it's his interdisciplinary mind,

[47:21] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[47:22] Bob Dobbs: that McLuhan is celebrating,

[47:24] Bob Dobbs: right?

[47:24] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,

[47:25] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[47:26] Cameron McEwen: So he probably,

[47:30] Cameron McEwen: by 1950,

[47:33] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan has ideas from Giedion,

[47:37] Cameron McEwen: but he is still in the process of digesting them.

[47:42] Cameron McEwen: And he won't,

[47:43] Cameron McEwen: and probably lifelong,

[47:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan will never have a complete handle on Giedion.

[47:53] Cameron McEwen: Because Giedion was a very great figure,

[47:56] Cameron McEwen: and there's no such thing as emptying out.

[48:02] Cameron McEwen: somebody of that kind of stature.

[48:04] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[48:05] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[48:05] Bob Dobbs: so

[48:07] Bob Dobbs: Joyce writes about the brain trust in Finnegans Wake,

[48:12] Bob Dobbs: and I think people know it as the advisors to

[48:17] Bob Dobbs: FDR, you know,

[48:18] Bob Dobbs: three letters,

[48:19] Bob Dobbs: like HCE.

[48:21] Bob Dobbs: Roosevelt had a brain trust or advisors.

[48:23] Bob Dobbs: Maybe people,

[48:25] Bob Dobbs: presidents before that had that,

[48:27] Bob Dobbs: But in my mind,

[48:29] Bob Dobbs: somehow...

[48:30] Bob Dobbs: The intelligence agencies were starting to do it,

[48:33] Bob Dobbs: like Tavistock in England.

[48:36] Bob Dobbs: They started to figure out how,

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: they had to coordinate a lot of new aspects once the electrification came in,

[48:43] Bob Dobbs: in the 20s and 30s.

[48:44] Bob Dobbs: So when they got into the war mode,

[48:46] Bob Dobbs: it was natural for a lot of more involved,

[48:51] Bob Dobbs: a lot of what McLuhan idealized,

[48:53] Bob Dobbs: quote idealized,

[48:55] Bob Dobbs: about coordination or cooperation between different specialisms into a...

[49:00] Bob Dobbs: multimedia view,

[49:02] Bob Dobbs: the intelligence agencies were forced to do that leading into World War II.

[49:06] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[49:09] Cameron McEwen: But that's a good example of something that could be good or bad,

[49:16] Cameron McEwen: depending on how it went about its business,

[49:22] Cameron McEwen: right?

[49:22] Cameron McEwen: So this kind of brain thrust can do the devil's work.

[49:28] Cameron McEwen: as easily as it can do God's work.

[49:32] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[49:32] Bob Dobbs: and it's Lewis and the men of 1914,

[49:37] Bob Dobbs: they...

[49:37] Bob Dobbs: interact a little bit,

[49:39] Bob Dobbs: but they certainly weren't a team.

[49:41] Bob Dobbs: But they were talking to each other in their art forms.

[49:45] Bob Dobbs: But Lewis was the one who criticized,

[49:47] Bob Dobbs: maybe he thought that the brain trust was going to the devil.

[49:52] Bob Dobbs: And he thought he'd move it out of that.

[49:56] Bob Dobbs: And that's what inspired McLuhan.

[49:58] Bob Dobbs: So he's reading Giedion,

[50:01] Bob Dobbs: and he meets the mind of Giedion on another level in a disciplinary mind,

[50:06] Bob Dobbs: Wyndham Lewis.

[50:07] Bob Dobbs: So he's really getting two different angles on it.

[50:11] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely,

[50:12] Cameron McEwen: and he met them both in 1943,

[50:15] Cameron McEwen: I believe.

[50:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:17] Bob Dobbs: he may have known Giedion before that,

[50:19] Bob Dobbs: but yes,

[50:20] Bob Dobbs: they met pretty closely at the same time.

[50:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[50:24] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[50:25] Cameron McEwen: obviously he met one of them before the other.

[50:28] Cameron McEwen: I suspect that he met Lewis before Giedion,

[50:31] Cameron McEwen: but

[50:34] Cameron McEwen: I don't think he knew anything about...

[50:37] Cameron McEwen: Giedion before 1943,

[50:41] Cameron McEwen: whereas he had read some Lewis already in 36.

[50:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:47] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[50:48] Bob Dobbs: No,

[50:48] Bob Dobbs: he knew Lewis better.

[50:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[50:50] Bob Dobbs: what's interesting,

[50:51] Bob Dobbs: Pound wanted this,

[50:52] Bob Dobbs: too,

[50:52] Bob Dobbs: Ezra Pound.

[50:55] Bob Dobbs: It's interesting how Lewis,

[50:57] Bob Dobbs: Joyce didn't seem to be that kind of guy,

[51:01] Bob Dobbs: maybe Elliott,

[51:03] Bob Dobbs: but definitely Lewis and Pound were looking to be part of a...

[51:07] Bob Dobbs: headquarters in an advisory capacity or researchers or something they wanted to be part of the brain trust that's why they developed theories of economics and politics and that and got into you know looking at social credit for pound and lewis is looking everywhere they

[51:26] Cameron McEwen: right they are what McLuhan became these are two people that couldn't exist in a bureaucratic environment

[51:36] Cameron McEwen: for more than about 11 seconds,

[51:39] Cameron McEwen: right?

[51:40] Cameron McEwen: Founded Lewis.

[51:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[51:42] Bob Dobbs: trying to be part of the bureaucracy or to start one on their own.

[51:47] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[51:47] Cameron McEwen: So when these guys have aspirations to be part of the brain trust,

[51:52] Cameron McEwen: what they mean is they wanted to be the brain trust all on their own.

[51:58] Bob Dobbs: They wanted to be the center for culture and technology.

[52:01] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,

[52:02] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[52:03] Bob Dobbs: Which made it a common bond in the mid of 1914.

[52:06] Bob Dobbs: They all desired to be that.

[52:08] Bob Dobbs: And,

[52:08] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[52:09] Bob Dobbs: McClellan writes about that as an Egyptian kind of art form when he talks about Burroughs.

[52:15] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[52:16] Bob Dobbs: And he talks about Lewis in that essay.

[52:19] Bob Dobbs: So

[52:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm just thinking right now that McClellan was just stunned by the people he met and the ideas he encountered.

[52:28] Bob Dobbs: He really dumped he went in the deep dive,

[52:31] Bob Dobbs: as they say,

[52:32] Bob Dobbs: very early.

[52:33] Bob Dobbs: And...

[52:34] Bob Dobbs: thought he was qualified to be part of these people,

[52:38] Bob Dobbs: among them.

[52:39] Bob Dobbs: You see that in his essays for the Manitoban.

[52:43] Bob Dobbs: He's thinking as a big view manager.

[52:48] Bob Dobbs: What is it?

[52:49] Bob Dobbs: What's that?

[52:50] Bob Dobbs: A brain trust kind of thinker.

[52:52] Bob Dobbs: Have you noticed that in his

[52:54] Bob Dobbs: Manitoban student articles?

[52:57] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[52:57] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[52:57] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[52:57] Cameron McEwen: he certainly took a very broad view.

[52:59] Cameron McEwen: He always did.

[53:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[53:03] Cameron McEwen: No question about that.

[53:05] Cameron McEwen: But he was very,

[53:09] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,

[53:11] Cameron McEwen: lucky or very gifted with the people that he met.

[53:17] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[53:18] Cameron McEwen: meeting people of the stature of

[53:21] Cameron McEwen: Lewis and Giedion,

[53:23] Cameron McEwen: more or less by chance.

[53:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[53:27] Cameron McEwen: It's incredible.

[53:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[53:30] Bob Dobbs: And then Lewis.

[53:32] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[53:33] Bob Dobbs: Innocent Pound and then Ted Carpenter and then everybody else he met in the States,

[53:39] Bob Dobbs: in other fields.

[53:40] Bob Dobbs: And,

[53:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[53:41] Bob Dobbs: that's the one thing somebody asked him,

[53:43] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: 60s,

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: 70s,

[53:46] Bob Dobbs: something about how do you look at your life?

[53:47] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[53:48] Bob Dobbs: I was just very lucky.

[53:50] Bob Dobbs: That's how he described himself,

[53:51] Bob Dobbs: a lucky person who had a chance to meet all kinds of,

[53:54] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[53:55] Bob Dobbs: interesting people.

[53:56] Cameron McEwen: That's correct.

[53:58] Cameron McEwen: But out of all of these...

[54:01] Cameron McEwen: great people,

[54:04] Cameron McEwen: he was able to actually make a close connection with only a very few of them.

[54:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[54:10] Cameron McEwen: And so

[54:13] Cameron McEwen: Harry Skornia was not a great figure by any stretch of the imagination,

[54:19] Cameron McEwen: but somehow he was able to make a connection with

[54:25] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and be a life-changing and

[54:30] Cameron McEwen: figure in the way these other folks weren't.

[54:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[54:35] Cameron McEwen: Quite amazing.

[54:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[54:37] Bob Dobbs: And just to go back,

[54:38] Bob Dobbs: would you say that we talked about how McLuhan always needed someone to talk to.

[54:43] Bob Dobbs: He had his father when he was a teenager and maybe his mother.

[54:47] Bob Dobbs: But would you say Easterbrook was his main guy in his late teens,

[54:51] Bob Dobbs: early 20s?

[54:52] Bob Dobbs: Or was there someone else you know of in Winnipeg?

[54:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[54:58] Cameron McEwen: I know that he was a debater and I know that he was.

[55:05] Cameron McEwen: part of a small group that used to meet on Monday nights,

[55:12] Cameron McEwen: by the way,

[55:13] Cameron McEwen: used to meet on Monday nights to discuss works Voices of Literature.

[55:18] Cameron McEwen: This is outside of regular classes.

[55:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[55:23] Cameron McEwen: So I think McLuhan was a sort of a natural born talker that he got from his father.

[55:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[55:32] Cameron McEwen: And just

[55:34] Cameron McEwen: His whole life long,

[55:36] Cameron McEwen: he was talking to people as a mode of talking to himself,

[55:40] Cameron McEwen: a mode of thinking.

[55:42] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[55:42] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[55:43] Cameron McEwen: And this often pissed people off because they felt like they were being used by McLuhan to talk to himself rather than to them.

[55:54] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[55:56] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[55:56] Bob Dobbs: That's a good way to put it.

[55:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[55:58] Bob Dobbs: So what,

[56:00] Bob Dobbs: again,

[56:01] Bob Dobbs: we're...

[56:02] Bob Dobbs: We get so involved talking about McLuhan,

[56:05] Bob Dobbs: but

[56:06] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to do something with McLuhan Innis pamphlet.

[56:11] Bob Dobbs: What do you notice about the beginning,

[56:13] Bob Dobbs: whether it's cul-de-sac or,

[56:15] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[56:15] Bob Dobbs: I'll just read you the table of contents.

[56:17] Bob Dobbs: Maybe that sparks something.

[56:19] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[56:21] Bob Dobbs: I say we begin with

[56:24] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan ideas of the global village and where he got them from.

[56:28] Bob Dobbs: Then we go into global theater.

[56:30] Bob Dobbs: And most people end with that if they get that far with McLuhan.

[56:35] Bob Dobbs: And they don't notice global membrane.

[56:38] Bob Dobbs: And

[56:41] Bob Dobbs: I add to global membrane Android Meme,

[56:44] Bob Dobbs: phase one and two,

[56:45] Bob Dobbs: and then the Anthropomorphic Physical,

[56:48] Bob Dobbs: and then the tech body.

[56:50] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[56:51] Bob Dobbs: any commentary on that sequence?

[56:56] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[56:56] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[56:57] Cameron McEwen: for me,

[56:58] Cameron McEwen: The interesting thing about this is that it is a sequence.

[57:03] Cameron McEwen: So as we've discussed in the past,

[57:06] Cameron McEwen: I like to think of McLuhan in terms of all at onceness.

[57:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[57:10] Cameron McEwen: And you tend to think in terms of a sequence like this.

[57:15] Cameron McEwen: But what would be especially interesting to me would be to listen to whether you're able to translate this sequence.

[57:27] Cameron McEwen: into all-at-once mode,

[57:31] Cameron McEwen: right?

[57:32] Cameron McEwen: Is this sequence translatable into simultaneous percepts?

[57:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[57:41] Bob Dobbs: I would say that the global village is simultaneous under electric effects.

[57:49] Bob Dobbs: And then when the satellite goes around the planet,

[57:51] Bob Dobbs: that moves it to another level.

[57:53] Bob Dobbs: So there's a simultaneity of the global village,

[57:56] Bob Dobbs: but it's...

[57:56] Bob Dobbs: put inside a frame which actually moves it beyond simultaneity?

[58:03] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[58:03] Bob Dobbs: what do you call the co-anesthetic?

[58:09] Bob Dobbs: That's what Donald Thiel term is.

[58:11] Bob Dobbs: You have the synesthetic interplay of the sensory modalities.

[58:16] Bob Dobbs: Then the co-anesthetic is technology moving you to the director's seat where you are able them um you

[58:25] Bob Dobbs: It's different from being the tactile organ that organizes synesthetically the sensory inputs.

[58:34] Cameron McEwen: How is it different?

[58:36] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[58:37] Bob Dobbs: Thiel defines it as,

[58:38] Bob Dobbs: I don't know where he got it from.

[58:40] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if he quotes somebody.

[58:43] Bob Dobbs: But the co-anesthetic is the fact that the person has more and more power over all these huge anti-environment,

[58:52] Bob Dobbs: which is where we ended up with the smartphone.

[58:55] Bob Dobbs: It all imploded and shrunk so that everybody was the director of their broadcasting.

[59:04] Bob Dobbs: They were in the central position.

[59:05] Bob Dobbs: Media were moving that way,

[59:07] Bob Dobbs: and he called it co-anesthetic.

[59:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[59:11] Cameron McEwen: so to me,

[59:15] Cameron McEwen: this is like the Finnegans Wake.

[59:23] Cameron McEwen: The difference...

[59:24] Cameron McEwen: between synesthetic and co-anesthetic would be that the...

[59:36] Cameron McEwen: There is a consciousness of the various modes that make up the synesthetic universe.

[59:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[59:49] Cameron McEwen: And that's like the awakening of the Finnegans Wake.

[59:56] Cameron McEwen: But what I don't understand is how there is seemingly.

[1:00:05] Cameron McEwen: something beyond that.

[1:00:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:00:10] Bob Dobbs: That's where I get into the global membrane and the Android Meme.

[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: So what you were just describing,

[1:00:17] Bob Dobbs: becoming conscious,

[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: that's the co-anesthetic,

[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: like the orchestrator,

[1:00:23] Bob Dobbs: the conscious orchestrator.

[1:00:26] Bob Dobbs: So that is the global theater beginning with the spaceship as a metaphor of the human floating around the planet but not inside it.

[1:00:35] Bob Dobbs: and not inside the media anti-environment.

[1:00:38] Bob Dobbs: He's starting to retrieve separateness.

[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:00:46] Cameron McEwen: So that's like the satellite as the co,

[1:00:50] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:00:51] Cameron McEwen: In co-anesthetic.

[1:00:52] Cameron McEwen: So the co,

[1:00:57] Cameron McEwen: at least in the past,

[1:00:58] Cameron McEwen: often had a hyphen,

[1:01:01] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:01:01] Cameron McEwen: If it was co-director or whatever.

[1:01:04] Cameron McEwen: It would be co and then a hyphen,

[1:01:06] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:01:06] Cameron McEwen: So what you're talking about is with the spaceship,

[1:01:13] Cameron McEwen: the hyphen is...

[1:01:17] Bob Dobbs: Brought in.

[1:01:18] Cameron McEwen: The hyphen was always there,

[1:01:20] Cameron McEwen: but it wasn't known to be there.

[1:01:23] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:01:24] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:01:24] Bob Dobbs: that's good.

[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: That's the interval.

[1:01:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: The hyphen would be the interval.

[1:01:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: so then you get to the global membrane,

[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: which he uses...

[1:01:33] Bob Dobbs: As far as I know,

[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: first in 64 in his review of Burroughs in December 64,

[1:01:39] Bob Dobbs: the membrane is a further implosion and interaction,

[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: don't want to say ESP,

[1:01:48] Bob Dobbs: but it might be,

[1:01:52] Bob Dobbs: that expands,

[1:01:53] Bob Dobbs: maybe it takes the co-anesthetic and then expands on the synesthetic again.

[1:01:59] Bob Dobbs: So it's more integrated.

[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: You agree?

[1:02:04] Bob Dobbs: That's what you were saying?

[1:02:05] Bob Dobbs: You were saying yes,

[1:02:05] Bob Dobbs: that's what you were thinking?

[1:02:09] Cameron McEwen: I sort of was thinking along those lines.

[1:02:11] Cameron McEwen: But I was thinking of it more or less as an objection to what you were doing.

[1:02:18] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:02:19] Cameron McEwen: Because you were talking about a sequence,

[1:02:23] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:02:24] Cameron McEwen: And whereas what I hear you saying just now and that I agree with is that

[1:02:32] Cameron McEwen: it seems like there's a kind of breathing in and breathing out going on here,

[1:02:37] Cameron McEwen: where the blast-off goes into satellite mode,

[1:02:46] Cameron McEwen: which emphasizes the interval,

[1:02:50] Cameron McEwen: the code,

[1:02:50] Cameron McEwen: the height.

[1:02:51] Bob Dobbs: And the separateness.

[1:02:52] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:02:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:02:54] Cameron McEwen: And then with the membrane,

[1:02:58] Cameron McEwen: I see this as a...

[1:03:01] Cameron McEwen: going back to the sin aesthetic,

[1:03:06] Cameron McEwen: but emphasized,

[1:03:09] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:03:09] Cameron McEwen: And so you have the going out to the satellite and then going back to the same anti-environment before,

[1:03:21] Cameron McEwen: but seen more clearly or seen more emphatically,

[1:03:25] Cameron McEwen: something like that.

[1:03:26] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:03:27] Bob Dobbs: and this is what in my...

[1:03:29] Bob Dobbs: essay,

[1:03:30] Bob Dobbs: The Cloning of ESP,

[1:03:31] Bob Dobbs: The Blocking and Merging Dynamic.

[1:03:34] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan says this somewhere in the Andrew McLuhan newsletters,

[1:03:37] Bob Dobbs: you have the outer trip,

[1:03:40] Bob Dobbs: cars,

[1:03:41] Bob Dobbs: jets,

[1:03:42] Bob Dobbs: airplanes,

[1:03:43] Bob Dobbs: and satellites,

[1:03:44] Bob Dobbs: while you have the inner trip,

[1:03:46] Bob Dobbs: which is going into the extensions of the central nervous system,

[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: radio,

[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: TV,

[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: and maybe computer circuitry,

[1:03:54] Bob Dobbs: and then the hologram maybe.

[1:03:56] Bob Dobbs: So there is the

[1:03:57] Bob Dobbs: outer trip of technology and the inner trip.

[1:04:00] Bob Dobbs: But they're going to more and more come together.

[1:04:03] Bob Dobbs: But the breaking point is when technology takes on a life of its own,

[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: in 1968 when he says they become living anti-environment,

[1:04:12] Bob Dobbs: that's a new separation,

[1:04:14] Bob Dobbs: but it's not the human.

[1:04:16] Bob Dobbs: Something is separating out from it,

[1:04:18] Bob Dobbs: and then the human brings it back in through miniaturization in the digital era.

[1:04:23] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:04:24] Bob Dobbs: It brings it back into...

[1:04:27] Cameron McEwen: I like the idea of the breathing in and breathing out again.

[1:04:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:04:31] Cameron McEwen: Very much.

[1:04:34] Cameron McEwen: I would just comment to the idea that there is an organic living reality to something that is not strictly human.

[1:04:49] Cameron McEwen: That is not only an expansionary idea,

[1:04:55] Cameron McEwen: it also goes into the interior landscape.

[1:04:59] Cameron McEwen: And it does so because...

[1:05:03] Cameron McEwen: One of the things that can become conscious from the director's seat,

[1:05:12] Cameron McEwen: from the satellite perspective,

[1:05:15] Cameron McEwen: is that perceptions are dominant inputs.

[1:05:24] Cameron McEwen: So it's not the case that humans have perceptions.

[1:05:28] Cameron McEwen: Perceptions have humans.

[1:05:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:05:32] Cameron McEwen: And perceptions are alive and are controlling and are huge.

[1:05:41] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:05:42] Cameron McEwen: I think what I hear you saying,

[1:05:45] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,

[1:05:46] Cameron McEwen: becoming conscious of after 68,

[1:05:50] Cameron McEwen: is this side of perceptions.

[1:05:54] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:05:54] Cameron McEwen: Percepts,

[1:05:55] Cameron McEwen: I should say.

[1:05:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:05:57] Bob Dobbs: that's a good way to do it.

[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: And he lays that out in his art critic talk in 1970,

[1:06:03] Bob Dobbs: August 70 in Ottawa,

[1:06:05] Bob Dobbs: where he's telling them there's no more concepts possible.

[1:06:07] Bob Dobbs: It's all percept.

[1:06:08] Bob Dobbs: He's very extreme on that.

[1:06:10] Bob Dobbs: That might be what you're getting at,

[1:06:13] Bob Dobbs: or he was getting at.

[1:06:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:06:17] Cameron McEwen: I think I mentioned to you before,

[1:06:18] Cameron McEwen: I found that online.

[1:06:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:06:21] Cameron McEwen: And then it's just an image online.

[1:06:26] Cameron McEwen: Then I digitized it and put it up in the blog in text.

[1:06:33] Cameron McEwen: And what's interesting about that is that it provides a way out of the cul-de-sac.

[1:06:40] Cameron McEwen: Because if the cul-de-sac is a product of concepts,

[1:06:45] Cameron McEwen: and if it turns out that you can never have a concept aside from a percept,

[1:06:51] Cameron McEwen: and if percepts are plural,

[1:06:53] Cameron McEwen: that means that the...

[1:06:55] Cameron McEwen: A cul-de-sac is an abstract construction that's not in any way necessary.

[1:07:05] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:07:06] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:07:06] Bob Dobbs: very good.

[1:07:07] Bob Dobbs: So then in the back of Take Today on the book sleeve,

[1:07:13] Bob Dobbs: you'll see McLuhan or Berry writing a dialectic between software and hardware.

[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: It's very important to notice when they put software in quotes and other times on the page not in quotes.

[1:07:25] Bob Dobbs: And hardwares in quotes and not in quotes.

[1:07:27] Bob Dobbs: The positioning of the quotation marks is important.

[1:07:31] Bob Dobbs: And I see that as moving to an etherealization,

[1:07:35] Bob Dobbs: which is where I bring in the meme.

[1:07:37] Bob Dobbs: So much of...

[1:07:39] Bob Dobbs: You talk to computer experts.

[1:07:41] Bob Dobbs: They say,

[1:07:41] Bob Dobbs: we haven't invented anything in computers in 50 years.

[1:07:44] Bob Dobbs: We haven't done anything.

[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: And I say,

[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: that's because you're living in software patterning and people are so engaged in developing memes.

[1:07:54] Bob Dobbs: social order of the day or some perception of it because people in

[1:08:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan definition of the brain they they had the meaning part they wanted to see the big picture as well as the details so the meme software patterns or what McLuhan would say finding out what's going on and he says in some interview somewhere that uh today

[1:08:18] Bob Dobbs: our only job will be to know what's going on you know where it's where it's

[1:08:24] Cameron McEwen: it's at.

[1:08:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:08:26] Bob Dobbs: it was where it's at was what he used to say,

[1:08:27] Bob Dobbs: but then he said just keeping up and knowing what's going on,

[1:08:30] Bob Dobbs: not even knowing where it's at,

[1:08:32] Bob Dobbs: just what's going on,

[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: that means a knowing,

[1:08:35] Bob Dobbs: and that to me sounds like a meme,

[1:08:37] Bob Dobbs: and that took over the last 30 years,

[1:08:40] Bob Dobbs: which frustrated hardware developers,

[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: the moon program,

[1:08:45] Bob Dobbs: all these things were subsumed into this endless production of memes,

[1:08:50] Bob Dobbs: which now the kids do daily on a...

[1:08:54] Bob Dobbs: tinier and speeded up level.

[1:08:56] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:08:56] Bob Dobbs: Processed memes every eight minutes,

[1:09:00] Bob Dobbs: say,

[1:09:00] Bob Dobbs: or every five hours.

[1:09:02] Bob Dobbs: But it was slower in the

[1:09:04] Bob Dobbs: 60s and 70s.

[1:09:05] Bob Dobbs: But definitely,

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: the invention of hardware was knocked off a bit.

[1:09:14] Bob Dobbs: And so what was called inflation or jobs being sent out to China or someplace was actually the Android Meme taking over.

[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: And everybody was engaged in what

[1:09:25] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would call surveillance.

[1:09:27] Bob Dobbs: And espionage became our daily activity.

[1:09:30] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm saying we get to.

[1:09:33] Bob Dobbs: With the Android Meme.

[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: And then the Android Meme.

[1:09:36] Cameron McEwen: So let me just say here that as you talk,

[1:09:42] Cameron McEwen: I'm constantly trying to translate what you say in linear terms into synchronic terms.

[1:09:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:09:54] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:09:54] Cameron McEwen: And so what I hear you saying there is that when the you

[1:10:02] Cameron McEwen: A better view or the better observation of percepts is possible from a satellite perspective,

[1:10:17] Cameron McEwen: but that better view is not necessarily for the better.

[1:10:24] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:10:25] Cameron McEwen: There are many ways in which that view becomes distorted.

[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: A despot.

[1:10:34] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan calls it a despot somewhere in Take Today.

[1:10:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:10:38] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[1:10:39] Cameron McEwen: That's very much like

[1:10:41] Cameron McEwen: Jungian psychology calling these kinds of...

[1:10:49] Bob Dobbs: Archetypes?

[1:10:50] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:10:51] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:10:52] Cameron McEwen: speaking of dominance,

[1:10:54] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:10:55] Cameron McEwen: Despot and dominance go together.

[1:10:57] Cameron McEwen: A despot is an authoritarian figure.

[1:11:02] Cameron McEwen: And a dominant is a god that is per se authoritarian.

[1:11:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:11:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:11:11] Cameron McEwen: so I...

[1:11:13] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:11:13] Bob Dobbs: it's a strange condition.

[1:11:16] Bob Dobbs: We need to keep up.

[1:11:17] Bob Dobbs: That's the despotic tyranny we're inside of.

[1:11:20] Bob Dobbs: It's not bureaucratic.

[1:11:22] Bob Dobbs: It's not freedom of speech.

[1:11:24] Bob Dobbs: It's the pressure to have a sense of what's going on because we're constantly making.

[1:11:30] Bob Dobbs: We know.

[1:11:31] Bob Dobbs: Uncautiously,

[1:11:31] Bob Dobbs: we're making sense,

[1:11:32] Bob Dobbs: not matching,

[1:11:34] Bob Dobbs: and we have to tune into what's been made.

[1:11:37] Bob Dobbs: And so news monopolized that,

[1:11:39] Bob Dobbs: the word that makes the market,

[1:11:41] Bob Dobbs: McClellan called it.

[1:11:43] Bob Dobbs: But there was a battle over what was more important.

[1:11:48] Bob Dobbs: And so you had endless conferences in all the fields,

[1:11:51] Bob Dobbs: everybody trying to say what the role of their field was in relation to the Android Meme and how could they become an Android Meme or a meme.

[1:12:00] Bob Dobbs: But it was Android Meme and robotic and Postman,

[1:12:06] Bob Dobbs: Postman,

[1:12:07] Bob Dobbs: Postman body was the process.

[1:12:10] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:12:10] Bob Dobbs: can you see that?

[1:12:11] Bob Dobbs: We are people,

[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: they spend their time the last 30,

[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: 40 years knowing what's going on.

[1:12:18] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:12:19] Bob Dobbs: did Eskimos do that or the Inuit?

[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: They were out there freezing and in their igloos and then a storm would come or not and then they'd say,

[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: we've got to go get those seal or whatever they hunted.

[1:12:29] Bob Dobbs: Is that a state of constant paranoia and involvement in exploiting anti-environment?

[1:12:36] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:12:37] Bob Dobbs: is that where we are today?

[1:12:39] Bob Dobbs: Exploiting what's going on?

[1:12:43] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:12:43] Bob Dobbs: to know what's going on.

[1:12:46] Cameron McEwen: When I translate this into my synchronic mode,

[1:12:51] Cameron McEwen: one of the first things I do is think that if we speak about today,

[1:12:58] Cameron McEwen: or if we speak about

[1:12:59] Cameron McEwen: Eskimos

[1:13:01] Cameron McEwen: 500 years ago or something like that,

[1:13:04] Cameron McEwen: we're always talking about something that is very,

[1:13:06] Cameron McEwen: very complex.

[1:13:08] Cameron McEwen: So there were dumb Eskimos and there were smart Eskimos.

[1:13:13] Cameron McEwen: There were

[1:13:14] Cameron McEwen: Eskimos that were smart about hunting but dumb about what to talk about in the igloo,

[1:13:19] Cameron McEwen: and there were people that were great in the igloo but shitty in hunting.

[1:13:24] Cameron McEwen: So it's a very,

[1:13:24] Cameron McEwen: very complicated situation,

[1:13:26] Cameron McEwen: And we can't talk about...

[1:13:28] Cameron McEwen: the Eskimos.

[1:13:29] Cameron McEwen: And similarly with today,

[1:13:33] Cameron McEwen: I think that what you're talking about is definitely something that's going on,

[1:13:40] Cameron McEwen: but is it going on as if there was nothing else going on?

[1:13:44] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:13:44] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.

[1:13:45] Cameron McEwen: I think what you're doing is you're pointing out that there are aspects of the interior landscape.

[1:13:55] Cameron McEwen: which now are emphasized in particular ways,

[1:14:01] Cameron McEwen: which have taken over.

[1:14:05] Cameron McEwen: Just as a weather front can sweep into an area and it basically takes over everything.

[1:14:15] Cameron McEwen: That doesn't mean that there aren't other things there.

[1:14:17] Cameron McEwen: It just means that they become inconsequential.

[1:14:22] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:14:22] Cameron McEwen: that's the new ground.

[1:14:24] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:14:26] Cameron McEwen: That doesn't mean that there,

[1:14:27] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:14:28] Cameron McEwen: nowadays there can be a grandmother sitting somewhere.

[1:14:34] Cameron McEwen: who doesn't have an iPhone,

[1:14:38] Cameron McEwen: doesn't know anything even about television or something,

[1:14:42] Cameron McEwen: and who can be very,

[1:14:44] Cameron McEwen: very intelligent.

[1:14:46] Cameron McEwen: But she is disappearingly small in the overall weather front or overall solution that is modern history.

[1:14:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:14:58] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:14:59] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:15:00] Cameron McEwen: I see you talking about...

[1:15:04] Cameron McEwen: a aspect of what's going on that is it's very clever the way that you talk about it and and convincing but I don't see it as history

[1:15:17] Cameron McEwen: I see it more like chemistry or more like meteorology meteorology yeah yeah okay well okay so I'm a a meteorologist.

[1:15:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:15:30] Cameron McEwen: and a good one.

[1:15:31] Bob Dobbs: A good one,

[1:15:32] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:15:32] Bob Dobbs: a good one.

[1:15:34] Bob Dobbs: So there is a sequence.

[1:15:40] Bob Dobbs: What is the simultaneity of what I'm talking about,

[1:15:44] Bob Dobbs: aside from the sequence?

[1:15:45] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:15:46] Bob Dobbs: a later weather,

[1:15:47] Bob Dobbs: a later ground comes in.

[1:15:49] Bob Dobbs: I got Android Meme phase one,

[1:15:50] Bob Dobbs: phase two.

[1:15:52] Bob Dobbs: And the thing that we were always trying to be tuned into and figure out what's going on.

[1:16:02] Bob Dobbs: in the 60s,

[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: 70s,

[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: 80s,

[1:16:04] Bob Dobbs: suddenly you didn't have to know what was going on.

[1:16:09] Bob Dobbs: It took on a life of its own.

[1:16:10] Bob Dobbs: It went somewhere else,

[1:16:12] Bob Dobbs: and what it was made up of,

[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: chemical bodies weren't involved in it.

[1:16:18] Bob Dobbs: So that's where I say the second phase of the Android Meme of the weather is the technology start doing it to themselves,

[1:16:26] Bob Dobbs: creating Android Meme,

[1:16:27] Bob Dobbs: so to speak,

[1:16:28] Bob Dobbs: something like that.

[1:16:29] Bob Dobbs: They're engaged in themselves.

[1:16:31] Bob Dobbs: And this leaves people with no reference point or no ground other than whatever obsession they can find.

[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: And then people start becoming eccentric,

[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: isolated,

[1:16:45] Bob Dobbs: and antisocial,

[1:16:48] Bob Dobbs: and robotic,

[1:16:50] Bob Dobbs: and all the things that villages 150 years ago would not understand.

[1:16:56] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:16:57] Cameron McEwen: And so you could say one way of taking that...

[1:17:00] Cameron McEwen: would be to say that it's a concrete embodiment of the cul-de-sac.

[1:17:05] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:17:06] Cameron McEwen: And so once we say it's a concrete embodiment of the cul-de-sac,

[1:17:09] Cameron McEwen: we can say it's one property of the percept that takes itself to be a concept.

[1:17:20] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:17:20] Cameron McEwen: So now we have a synchronic or all-at-once view of...

[1:17:29] Cameron McEwen: what you're talking about it's a translation of it um you're giving a what might be called the phenomenology um of it in the present world and i i am trying to do the uh chemical formula of

[1:17:47] Cameron McEwen: that possibility yeah um there's nothing in your sequence that is outside the possibilities of existence.

[1:17:57] Cameron McEwen: And so...

[1:17:59] Cameron McEwen: My interest is in those possibilities.

[1:18:01] Cameron McEwen: Your interest is in the sequence of their manifestation.

[1:18:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: and how we get to the tech body.

[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: So more and more,

[1:18:18] Bob Dobbs: humans aren't able to figure out the weather.

[1:18:23] Bob Dobbs: Maybe that's the way to say it.

[1:18:25] Bob Dobbs: And then the weather started to manifest this.

[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: Actually,

[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: I just realized that's what everybody says all the time.

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: I can't tell what season it is,

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: I just made a discovery.

[1:18:36] Bob Dobbs: I've updated my meteorological position.

[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: And it's proved in the pop culture where it's a commonality the last 20,

[1:18:44] Bob Dobbs: 30 years that people are experiencing winter in July and it's all mixed up.

[1:18:51] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:18:52] Bob Dobbs: I had an interesting...

[1:18:53] Cameron McEwen: I noticed that in both the exterior landscape...

[1:18:57] Cameron McEwen: and the interior landscape.

[1:18:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:18:59] Bob Dobbs: and they're getting all mixed up.

[1:19:04] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:19:04] Bob Dobbs: when I say they get all mixed up,

[1:19:06] Bob Dobbs: they're getting mixed up.

[1:19:07] Bob Dobbs: I'll have to just go back and see McLuhan already stated that.

[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: He said the inner and outer would get mixed up,

[1:19:13] Bob Dobbs: public and private awareness.

[1:19:14] Bob Dobbs: So what I'm developing,

[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: you can see the elements,

[1:19:19] Bob Dobbs: the basic elements,

[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: are already in McLuhan.

[1:19:21] Bob Dobbs: He's got it covered.

[1:19:23] Bob Dobbs: It's like the way he would say about Finnegans Wake,

[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: it had...

[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: Every technology that was possible was in Finnegans Wake.

[1:19:29] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: That would be coming.

[1:19:32] Cameron McEwen: That's why the all at once view needs to see,

[1:19:39] Cameron McEwen: it doesn't matter if it's in Joyce or in McLuhan or Hegel or Plato,

[1:19:45] Cameron McEwen: the question is,

[1:19:47] Cameron McEwen: do the range of possibilities that these people see cover all the eventualities?

[1:19:54] Cameron McEwen: And one of your tasks in life is to bring out...

[1:19:59] Cameron McEwen: eventualities that people may not have seen.

[1:20:02] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:20:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:20:03] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to find out what's actually new from the Eternals.

[1:20:08] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: so it is...

[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:20:13] Cameron McEwen: it's not new from the Eternals.

[1:20:16] Cameron McEwen: It's new,

[1:20:18] Cameron McEwen: unremarked.

[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:20:21] Bob Dobbs: It's in there somewhere,

[1:20:22] Bob Dobbs: but it hadn't been noticed.

[1:20:26] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:20:27] Bob Dobbs: I like this point that And...

[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: the weather's mixed up.

[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: Did people experience that in Aristotle's time?

[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: Maybe once in

[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: 10 years some weird anomaly happened.

[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: but that's taking it too literally.

[1:20:44] Cameron McEwen: The Greeks were very conscious of the fact that political constitutions were very finite,

[1:20:55] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:20:55] Cameron McEwen: Unlike modern America that

[1:20:58] Cameron McEwen: seems to think that

[1:21:01] Cameron McEwen: American democracy is the be-all and end-all of political forms in the universe,

[1:21:07] Cameron McEwen: the Greeks knew that democracy would self-destruct.

[1:21:13] Cameron McEwen: And so if you think of civil war and of the breakup of empires,

[1:21:25] Cameron McEwen: Thucydides is largely you

[1:21:28] Cameron McEwen: a history of the breakup of the Athenian Empire.

[1:21:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:21:33] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:21:33] Cameron McEwen: And so the Greeks were very conscious of weather,

[1:21:38] Cameron McEwen: but not in a literal sense.

[1:21:40] Cameron McEwen: They were conscious of it,

[1:21:42] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:21:42] Cameron McEwen: If tragedy is the weather of the internal landscape and civil war and war of the empire is exterior weather,

[1:21:53] Cameron McEwen: then you can say that the Greeks knew more about weather than we do.

[1:21:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: so this source told me that the seasons are getting mixed up because nature is trying to keep up with the speed of our perceptions,

[1:22:12] Bob Dobbs: technologically created.

[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: And so it didn't know what season it was,

[1:22:18] Bob Dobbs: trying to keep up with us,

[1:22:19] Bob Dobbs: because we were synesthetically hallucinating or altering or mixing up the dynamics more and more.

[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: So I always keep that in mind of what I'm trying to describe,

[1:22:32] Bob Dobbs: that whatever nature is,

[1:22:34] Bob Dobbs: because there's nature that is not what's categorized or an effect of visual space,

[1:22:40] Bob Dobbs: and then there's visual space nature.

[1:22:43] Bob Dobbs: But the holistic thing...

[1:22:46] Cameron McEwen: And then nature is seen from the satellite where it's disappeared.

[1:22:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:22:52] Bob Dobbs: And so all those factors are being caused by humans.

[1:22:57] Bob Dobbs: So you come to this point,

[1:23:01] Bob Dobbs: this crazy statement in Take Today,

[1:23:03] Bob Dobbs: which I think I brought up,

[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: where we have achieved,

[1:23:07] Bob Dobbs: what is it?

[1:23:08] Bob Dobbs: We have arrived at the recently achieved forms of consciousness.

[1:23:12] Bob Dobbs: That's in italics,

[1:23:15] Bob Dobbs: at the end of the book,

[1:23:16] Bob Dobbs: Take Today.

[1:23:17] Bob Dobbs: Remember I brought this up before?

[1:23:19] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:23:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:23:21] Bob Dobbs: What could be forms of consciousness?

[1:23:23] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:23:23] Bob Dobbs: that would be humans making things.

[1:23:27] Bob Dobbs: as they felt more removed from the process.

[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: But if they understood the technologies were them,

[1:23:36] Bob Dobbs: then they could say,

[1:23:36] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:23:36] Bob Dobbs: we're making this.

[1:23:38] Bob Dobbs: But the tech body is something that has really made us think that we can't control it.

[1:23:49] Bob Dobbs: So people have said for 50 years things are out of control.

[1:23:54] Bob Dobbs: There are people saying that in the 60s,

[1:23:56] Bob Dobbs: technology is out of control.

[1:23:58] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:23:58] Bob Dobbs: we've refined that and made it more threatening or more real with each new

[1:24:05] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme phase,

[1:24:06] Bob Dobbs: which was a result of the miniaturization and digitization and hologramization of everything.

[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: And you can see this is what Bucky Fuller would talk about or other thinkers.

[1:24:19] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:24:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm always interested in how we think past them.

[1:24:24] Bob Dobbs: Can we get past them?

[1:24:28] Bob Dobbs: Maybe the difference is...

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: Their crisis is not as bad as ours.

[1:24:37] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:24:40] Cameron McEwen: I think you said a whole lot there that would require some...

[1:24:46] Bob Dobbs: Parsing.

[1:24:47] Bob Dobbs: What would McLuhan say?

[1:24:48] Bob Dobbs: What was his phrase?

[1:24:50] Bob Dobbs: We need to...

[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: He had a phrase for that.

[1:24:54] Bob Dobbs: We need to break that down a bit,

[1:24:56] Bob Dobbs: Bob.

[1:25:01] Cameron McEwen: I hope he would say we need to step back.

[1:25:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:25:04] Bob Dobbs: Is that what he's saying?

[1:25:05] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[1:25:07] Cameron McEwen: Let's step back.

[1:25:08] Cameron McEwen: But in any case,

[1:25:09] Cameron McEwen: I think we need to step back for what you said.

[1:25:11] Cameron McEwen: And I think the key to trying to decipher all that is the word making.

[1:25:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:25:22] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:25:22] Cameron McEwen: Because when

[1:25:24] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talks about making,

[1:25:27] Cameron McEwen: he is not at all.

[1:25:29] Cameron McEwen: talking about making from scratch.

[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:25:34] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:25:35] Cameron McEwen: He is talking about the fact that when we see the truth of things,

[1:25:43] Cameron McEwen: we don't see the truth of things as a matching.

[1:25:46] Cameron McEwen: We're not capable of matching.

[1:25:49] Cameron McEwen: So we see the truth of things as making,

[1:25:55] Cameron McEwen: but people grew up that percept.

[1:25:59] Cameron McEwen: in two different ways.

[1:26:00] Cameron McEwen: Sometimes they think,

[1:26:02] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:26:02] Cameron McEwen: we're making it,

[1:26:03] Cameron McEwen: therefore there's nothing there.

[1:26:06] Cameron McEwen: Or they say,

[1:26:08] Cameron McEwen: we're making it,

[1:26:09] Cameron McEwen: therefore we don't know what is there.

[1:26:13] Cameron McEwen: And both of those are wrong,

[1:26:16] Cameron McEwen: because making is fully capable of true perception,

[1:26:25] Cameron McEwen: but it needs...

[1:26:28] Cameron McEwen: to be appreciated as something as brought up at the end of Take Today and at the end of Finnegans Wake as keys to given.

[1:26:41] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[1:26:43] Cameron McEwen: So what happens with making when it is dislodged from a uh

[1:26:56] Cameron McEwen: How can I say an allegiance?

[1:26:58] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:26:59] Cameron McEwen: when it's dislodged from an allegiance to what is given,

[1:27:06] Cameron McEwen: then making gets out of control.

[1:27:10] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:27:10] Bob Dobbs: that's definitely what I meant.

[1:27:13] Bob Dobbs: You're repeating me,

[1:27:14] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[1:27:15] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:27:15] Cameron McEwen: could be.

[1:27:16] Bob Dobbs: Complementary words.

[1:27:17] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to learn from you,

[1:27:19] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: I like what you say.

[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: That concretizes what I thought I was saying.

[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: But yeah,

[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: we got too much making.

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: they used to,

[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: a hundred years ago,

[1:27:31] Bob Dobbs: they complained about consumer mania,

[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: people being too passive,

[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: too much of consumer uniformity.

[1:27:37] Bob Dobbs: I've seen the last 20,

[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: 30 years,

[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: we're in producer mania over making.

[1:27:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:27:46] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: there's this,

[1:27:48] Bob Dobbs: I've heard about some thinking group,

[1:27:51] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what they're called.

[1:27:56] Bob Dobbs: Rebel Wisdom,

[1:27:57] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:27:59] Bob Dobbs: Intellectual Dark Web.

[1:28:01] Bob Dobbs: Some of those guys,

[1:28:02] Bob Dobbs: they use the term sense-making,

[1:28:05] Bob Dobbs: and I don't know if they use the word sense-matching,

[1:28:07] Bob Dobbs: but they're trying to find out what's happening with meaning,

[1:28:10] Bob Dobbs: and they came up with sense-making.

[1:28:12] Bob Dobbs: And they don't know anything about McLuhan,

[1:28:14] Bob Dobbs: but

[1:28:15] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had that already,

[1:28:18] Bob Dobbs: sense-making.

[1:28:18] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:28:19] Cameron McEwen: But I wonder if most people on the Intellectual Dark Web,

[1:28:23] Cameron McEwen: I don't think...

[1:28:25] Cameron McEwen: would mean sense-making in a good way.

[1:28:30] Cameron McEwen: Maybe Jordan Peterson would.

[1:28:33] Cameron McEwen: Another Albertan-born University of Toronto professor,

[1:28:38] Cameron McEwen: by the way.

[1:28:40] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:28:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:28:40] Bob Dobbs: he's the mirror image or the opposite of McLuhan.

[1:28:45] Bob Dobbs: Have I told you about this?

[1:28:50] Cameron McEwen: I'll just remind you one thing,

[1:28:52] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:28:52] Cameron McEwen: When we started,

[1:28:54] Cameron McEwen: You said something about your time being limited.

[1:28:57] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:28:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm fine to go on,

[1:28:59] Cameron McEwen: but...

[1:29:00] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:29:00] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: I've got another

[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: 15 or 20 minutes.

[1:29:04] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:29:04] Cameron McEwen: fine,

[1:29:05] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:29:05] Cameron McEwen: So talk about Jordan Peterson.

[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:29:08] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know where he's from.

[1:29:09] Bob Dobbs: He's from Alberta?

[1:29:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:29:12] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:29:14] Cameron McEwen: Born west of Edmonton.

[1:29:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:29:17] Bob Dobbs: so you have McLuhan...

[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: He is seen,

[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: I call him the Madison Avenue icon,

[1:29:25] Bob Dobbs: Madison Avenue's version of him,

[1:29:27] Bob Dobbs: as someone who is explaining the...

[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: disappearance of visual space and people think he's for the disappearance of it but he's an expert on what's coming new the

[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: masked man which is not just limited to tribal space so he is a guy coming out of visual space who's an expert on what's coming and what we're losing with visual space

[1:30:00] Bob Dobbs: It comes out of the University of Toronto.

[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: Fifty years later,

[1:30:04] Bob Dobbs: it's a different world.

[1:30:06] Bob Dobbs: It's now been,

[1:30:08] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:30:08] Bob Dobbs: the visual space world was the given in the first half of the 20th century for normal consciousness.

[1:30:18] Bob Dobbs: And then there's the radicalization by the global theater,

[1:30:21] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan on top of that.

[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:30:24] Bob Dobbs: the takeover of the masked man,

[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: tactile autonomy mixed in with...

[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: the merger creates a need for an anti-environment,

[1:30:37] Bob Dobbs: and so visual space is retrieved.

[1:30:41] Bob Dobbs: And it comes out of the University of Toronto,

[1:30:43] Bob Dobbs: and that's

[1:30:45] Bob Dobbs: Jordan Peterson providing an anti-environment like McLuhan,

[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: but in the opposite direction.

[1:30:53] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to figure out,

[1:30:54] Bob Dobbs: can we save visual space?

[1:30:56] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan wondering whether we...

[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: Can we save tribal space?

[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: Because he knows we're even going beyond tribal space.

[1:31:03] Bob Dobbs: So it's interesting that these two phenomenons come out of the same place,

[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: Toronto.

[1:31:15] Cameron McEwen: I agree that the parallels between the two of them are interesting.

[1:31:20] Cameron McEwen: Sometimes a picture of them looks very similar as well.

[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: yeah?

[1:31:28] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:31:28] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:31:31] Bob Dobbs: But let me,

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: before you say more,

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: I forgot this part.

[1:31:35] Bob Dobbs: They're both misinterpreted.

[1:31:37] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is,

[1:31:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:31:39] Bob Dobbs: the Madison Avenue icon of McLuhan is all wrong,

[1:31:42] Bob Dobbs: and everybody spends the rest of the next 20 years finding out that McLuhan wasn't what they thought he was.

[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:31:47] Bob Dobbs: it turns out,

[1:31:47] Bob Dobbs: I noticed,

[1:31:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[1:31:50] Bob Dobbs: I've seen a few YouTubes.

[1:31:51] Bob Dobbs: I haven't read his book or anything,

[1:31:52] Bob Dobbs: but I've picked up a lot from people talking about him,

[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: what his general pattern is.

[1:31:58] Bob Dobbs: And he was totally misinterpreted,

[1:32:00] Bob Dobbs: it seems.

[1:32:02] Bob Dobbs: Even got sick over it.

[1:32:05] Bob Dobbs: Just like McLuhan got sick.

[1:32:08] Bob Dobbs: So his

[1:32:09] Bob Dobbs: Madison Avenue image is way more complicated than what people thought they were consuming.

[1:32:16] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:32:18] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember what the disease that

[1:32:24] Cameron McEwen: Peterson first got was.

[1:32:27] Cameron McEwen: but it's um raps i wish i could remember the word because it's an interesting word and i'd never heard of it before yeah it made it basically it means uncontrollable restlessness uh did you say breathlessness or kinetic so that yes

[1:32:51] Cameron McEwen: it's a an inability to uh sit

[1:32:55] Cameron McEwen: an inability to stay in the same place for any more than a couple minutes or something like this and uh this uh i've seen a description of peterson by his daughter that could could have been applied perfectly to McLuhan um in the

[1:33:14] Cameron McEwen: 60s and 70s and in fact in um judith fitzgerald's book on McLuhan uh she describes him exactly like that

[1:33:25] Cameron McEwen: Right after the 1960 stroke,

[1:33:28] Cameron McEwen: you have somebody that's basically unrecognizable because he's become so frenetic.

[1:33:36] Cameron McEwen: He cannot sit still.

[1:33:38] Cameron McEwen: He cannot abide loud noises.

[1:33:42] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:33:43] Cameron McEwen: He is fidgeting all the time.

[1:33:46] Cameron McEwen: And then you flick over to the description of

[1:33:50] Cameron McEwen: Peterson by his daughter and it's identical.

[1:33:53] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:33:53] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:33:54] Cameron McEwen: So it's this.

[1:33:55] Cameron McEwen: Speaking in your terms,

[1:33:58] Cameron McEwen: I could say that the tech body took over these guys because they were threatening to usurp its function or something.

[1:34:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:11] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:34:11] Cameron McEwen: And so it came to possess these guys.

[1:34:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:17] Bob Dobbs: they both were trying to be anti-environment to their situation,

[1:34:21] Bob Dobbs: but were seen to promote it.

[1:34:25] Bob Dobbs: what they thought they were being in anti-environment to.

[1:34:28] Bob Dobbs: Peterson,

[1:34:28] Bob Dobbs: he's not promoting the...

[1:34:32] Bob Dobbs: What is that?

[1:34:35] Bob Dobbs: The hive mind or something.

[1:34:39] Bob Dobbs: What

[1:34:39] Bob Dobbs: Trump and them call communists or socialists,

[1:34:42] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:34:42] Bob Dobbs: The socialists take it over.

[1:34:44] Bob Dobbs: The hive mind,

[1:34:45] Bob Dobbs: the political correctness of that,

[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: or the cultural correctness.

[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: I don't think,

[1:34:50] Bob Dobbs: Peter's definitely not seen as promoting that.

[1:34:55] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:34:55] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:34:56] Cameron McEwen: of course not.

[1:34:56] Bob Dobbs: But he's seen as something outside of it.

[1:35:00] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan was not seen as someone outside of it.

[1:35:02] Bob Dobbs: So I'm looking for opposites in the two phenomenons.

[1:35:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:35:06] Cameron McEwen: but

[1:35:07] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that you're going to find them because

[1:35:10] Cameron McEwen: I think that they have a lot of commonalities.

[1:35:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:35:14] Cameron McEwen: A lot of commonalities.

[1:35:15] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:35:16] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:35:17] Cameron McEwen: Peterson is a very big fan of Jung.

[1:35:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:35:20] Cameron McEwen: And he talks about

[1:35:22] Cameron McEwen: Jung a lot.

[1:35:24] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:35:27] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan...

[1:35:28] Cameron McEwen: doesn't talk about Jung all that much,

[1:35:31] Cameron McEwen: but

[1:35:33] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan notion of percept is pretty close to what Jung meant by an archetype actually.

[1:35:43] Cameron McEwen: And he

[1:35:45] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan did in the

[1:35:47] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, did talk a fair amount about Jung and was clearly influenced by him.

[1:35:54] Bob Dobbs: Up to the point of

[1:35:57] Bob Dobbs: Harold Bloom wise saying,

[1:35:59] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:36:00] Bob Dobbs: Jung missed it.

[1:36:01] Bob Dobbs: There's other aspects that I'm going to point out that Jung missed about the cliché to archetype.

[1:36:07] Bob Dobbs: Maybe the materiality of it,

[1:36:09] Bob Dobbs: of anti-environment.

[1:36:13] Cameron McEwen: Could well be.

[1:36:14] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:36:14] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan didn't take Jung at his word,

[1:36:17] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:36:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:36:20] Cameron McEwen: Jung was a very influential figure very early in the century.

[1:36:26] Cameron McEwen: His essays were translated already before the

[1:36:29] Cameron McEwen: First World War,

[1:36:31] Cameron McEwen: some of his early essays.

[1:36:33] Cameron McEwen: And,

[1:36:34] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:36:35] Cameron McEwen: people read them and were intrigued by this different way of looking at psychology.

[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:36:44] Cameron McEwen: But then nearly everybody sort of chewed on him for a while and came up with,

[1:36:51] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:36:51] Cameron McEwen: their own version.

[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:36:54] Bob Dobbs: I was just thinking was the criticism of McLuhan,

[1:36:58] Bob Dobbs: his impersonalness,

[1:37:00] Bob Dobbs: his failure to deal with the individual.

[1:37:04] Bob Dobbs: Jordan fills that in.

[1:37:08] Bob Dobbs: But Jordan,

[1:37:10] Bob Dobbs: he misses the collectivity that's going on,

[1:37:14] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan pointed out,

[1:37:15] Bob Dobbs: the causes of it.

[1:37:17] Bob Dobbs: So they compliment each other about the popular perception of each one of them and what they're missing.

[1:37:22] Bob Dobbs: The other guy fills in what Peterson missed or McLuhan missed.

[1:37:28] Bob Dobbs: So what is it about Canada?

[1:37:31] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if there's something here about

[1:37:34] Bob Dobbs: Canada's in the interval.

[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: It's the borderline case,

[1:37:36] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan said,

[1:37:37] Bob Dobbs: and that means up against all kinds of multiple interfaces so that the figure is actually the center for culture and technology.

[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: we're in a tech body situation.

[1:37:49] Bob Dobbs: So Canada can't be its wonderful image of itself since Trudeau is the peacemaker in the middle of it all.

[1:37:56] Bob Dobbs: I don't think

[1:37:57] Bob Dobbs: Canadians realize that's gone.

[1:38:00] Bob Dobbs: But the go-back-a-step.

[1:38:03] Cameron McEwen: Western Canadians know it's gone,

[1:38:05] Cameron McEwen: believe me.

[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: So I was going to say that the go-back-a-step before the tech body.

[1:38:16] Bob Dobbs: We have two...

[1:38:19] Bob Dobbs: Media interval thinkers,

[1:38:21] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan and Peterson.

[1:38:23] Bob Dobbs: Peterson's in the interval of probably the answer of Marvin Physical,

[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: because what we've seen is the endorhomene shrunk and disappeared,

[1:38:32] Bob Dobbs: fooled everybody and disappeared.

[1:38:34] Bob Dobbs: You have people arguing over chemical body properties.

[1:38:37] Bob Dobbs: Are you hetero,

[1:38:38] Bob Dobbs: homo,

[1:38:39] Bob Dobbs: this or that,

[1:38:40] Bob Dobbs: multiple?

[1:38:41] Bob Dobbs: And you have race retrieval arguments and what else?

[1:38:47] Bob Dobbs: Body processes,

[1:38:48] Bob Dobbs: health,

[1:38:50] Bob Dobbs: what's a proper diet.

[1:38:53] Bob Dobbs: So the body is ripped apart and argued over,

[1:38:57] Bob Dobbs: even though it's not there anymore.

[1:38:59] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:39:01] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan and Jordan were mediators,

[1:39:06] Bob Dobbs: center of the cultural and technological interface,

[1:39:10] Bob Dobbs: in both cases,

[1:39:11] Bob Dobbs: but in opposite directions,

[1:39:14] Bob Dobbs: opposite purposes.

[1:39:16] Bob Dobbs: So Canada...

[1:39:17] Bob Dobbs: Was that.

[1:39:18] Bob Dobbs: It was the great,

[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: they called the great peacemaker,

[1:39:21] Bob Dobbs: but no,

[1:39:22] Bob Dobbs: it was the thing that wasn't a nation and could tolerate everybody,

[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: Wasn't in the argument.

[1:39:32] Bob Dobbs: Are you there?

[1:39:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:39:34] Cameron McEwen: I am,

[1:39:34] Cameron McEwen: but

[1:39:35] Cameron McEwen: I didn't follow you.

[1:39:37] Cameron McEwen: I went from not being the peacemaker to being a divided country and having all sorts of different people in it.

[1:39:50] Cameron McEwen: But those two things seem like a fair definition of peacemaker to me.

[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: that's what I mean,

[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:39:58] Bob Dobbs: I don't think the word peacemaker is accurate.

[1:40:01] Bob Dobbs: That's a hardware thing,

[1:40:04] Bob Dobbs: stopping wars.

[1:40:05] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:40:06] Bob Dobbs: Canadians were good at being the mediator in the software meme argument,

[1:40:12] Bob Dobbs: in the discussion,

[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: in the endless talking,

[1:40:15] Bob Dobbs: talking heads.

[1:40:17] Bob Dobbs: It had an image of fairness and interest in everybody.

[1:40:24] Bob Dobbs: Americans don't have that image.

[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: They're aggressive.

[1:40:26] Bob Dobbs: They take over.

[1:40:28] Bob Dobbs: They're what McLuhan called kinetic and manipulatory.

[1:40:30] Bob Dobbs: So that interval position,

[1:40:34] Bob Dobbs: I used to call Canada the Switzerland of the solar government.

[1:40:38] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:40:38] Bob Dobbs: the gnomes of Zurich were in Switzerland,

[1:40:43] Bob Dobbs: and they were of the secret world government on the finance banking level.

[1:40:48] Bob Dobbs: But we moved beyond that into the orbiting economy,

[1:40:51] Bob Dobbs: and Canada is the Switzerland of that new...

[1:40:57] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:40:57] Cameron McEwen: it would like to think of itself as that anyway.

[1:41:00] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:41:00] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:41:00] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:41:01] Bob Dobbs: and people like to think of Canada that way.

[1:41:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:41:03] Bob Dobbs: it was all agreed.

[1:41:07] Cameron McEwen: But it isn't.

[1:41:08] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:41:08] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:41:09] Bob Dobbs: I agree.

[1:41:09] Bob Dobbs: But the point is,

[1:41:11] Bob Dobbs: in the last stages of humans thinking that they could still manage a situation,

[1:41:15] Bob Dobbs: they had to assign roles.

[1:41:17] Bob Dobbs: So Canada had that role.

[1:41:19] Bob Dobbs: And everybody praised Canada.

[1:41:21] Bob Dobbs: But none of it worked.

[1:41:25] Bob Dobbs: I see McLuhan didn't work,

[1:41:27] Bob Dobbs: and Jordan doesn't work.

[1:41:28] Bob Dobbs: No anthropological or Anthropomorphic Physical thinker is up to speed at what we're dealing with.

[1:41:36] Bob Dobbs: So that's what my book,

[1:41:40] Bob Dobbs: and that's represented by Donald Trump.

[1:41:42] Bob Dobbs: He's the president we can't deal with,

[1:41:45] Bob Dobbs: or Postman.

[1:41:48] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:41:50] Bob Dobbs: As the tech bot.

[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: As always,

[1:41:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm sitting here.

[1:41:56] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:41:56] Cameron McEwen: look.

[1:41:57] Cameron McEwen: The problem is I'm trying to,

[1:41:59] Cameron McEwen: as you speak,

[1:42:00] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to translate this into a synchronic mode,

[1:42:03] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:42:04] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:42:04] Cameron McEwen: All at once mode.

[1:42:06] Cameron McEwen: And I'm fine when you talk about something getting out of control or not being controllable or something like this.

[1:42:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:42:18] Cameron McEwen: I don't have any problem seeing that as the natural extension of...

[1:42:27] Cameron McEwen: certain structures that are all at once possibilities in the interior landscape.

[1:42:36] Cameron McEwen: I have no problem seeing that and thinking that you're talking about good stuff.

[1:42:44] Cameron McEwen: But towards the end of your talk,

[1:42:46] Cameron McEwen: you seem to insist on the,

[1:42:54] Cameron McEwen: how can I say?

[1:42:56] Cameron McEwen: unsequenced as the essence of what was going on,

[1:43:04] Cameron McEwen: of how,

[1:43:05] Cameron McEwen: say,

[1:43:05] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and Peterson were failures,

[1:43:10] Cameron McEwen: and

[1:43:11] Cameron McEwen: Trump is able to trump their lack of success.

[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:43:20] Bob Dobbs: People thought they understood McLuhan.

[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: They still hoik him up.

[1:43:23] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:43:23] Bob Dobbs: this guy's good.

[1:43:24] Bob Dobbs: He makes sense of the world.

[1:43:26] Bob Dobbs: And others think Peterson makes sense.

[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: They're missing how they don't make sense.

[1:43:31] Bob Dobbs: And that's the mystery of Trump.

[1:43:33] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't make sense.

[1:43:35] Bob Dobbs: And he doesn't necessarily solve it.

[1:43:37] Bob Dobbs: But he's able to hijack the process and be the figure.

[1:43:42] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:43:42] Bob Dobbs: whoever thought,

[1:43:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:43:45] Bob Dobbs: 50 years ago,

[1:43:46] Bob Dobbs: geez,

[1:43:47] Bob Dobbs: you won't have Nixon to kick around again.

[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: we'll have Trudeau.

[1:43:50] Bob Dobbs: We'll have

[1:43:51] Bob Dobbs: Jimmy Carter,

[1:43:52] Bob Dobbs: Reagan to kick around.

[1:43:53] Bob Dobbs: But they're actually worried,

[1:43:54] Bob Dobbs: and it's journalistic people get paid to write articles about,

[1:43:58] Bob Dobbs: what are we going to do after Trump's gone?

[1:44:01] Bob Dobbs: Who the heck has ever been that important that we're fearful that we don't have any reason to be news agencies anymore?

[1:44:09] Bob Dobbs: Which shows you that what news people do,

[1:44:12] Bob Dobbs: they complain they're just giving opinions.

[1:44:14] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:44:14] Bob Dobbs: they're processing the meme,

[1:44:16] Bob Dobbs: the Android Meme.

[1:44:17] Bob Dobbs: They're trying to process the thing that's come alive and has taken over everything.

[1:44:23] Bob Dobbs: And that's why they don't do old-fashioned journalism or investigative reporting.

[1:44:27] Bob Dobbs: They're just there to help people talk through the craziness of each day.

[1:44:31] Bob Dobbs: And so you rearview mirror and say,

[1:44:34] Bob Dobbs: CNN is nothing but opinions,

[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: or Fox News,

[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: nothing but opinions.

[1:44:38] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:44:38] Bob Dobbs: that's the only way you make consciousness,

[1:44:40] Bob Dobbs: by talking.

[1:44:41] Bob Dobbs: So McCullough's dream of conversation being the greatest art has won and taken over.

[1:44:47] Bob Dobbs: And Frank Zappa's wrong when he said music is the best.

[1:44:51] Bob Dobbs: Conversation is the best.

[1:44:53] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:44:54] Cameron McEwen: 1807,

[1:44:58] Cameron McEwen: Hegel published a book called...

[1:45:01] Cameron McEwen: The phenomenology of spirit,

[1:45:02] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:45:03] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:45:03] Cameron McEwen: Phenomenology of this geist.

[1:45:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:45:07] Cameron McEwen: And what he tried to show is that in history,

[1:45:14] Cameron McEwen: you can see how mind comes to terms with itself.

[1:45:19] Cameron McEwen: And he shows that there's many dead ends that mind gets into.

[1:45:25] Cameron McEwen: There's many contradictions.

[1:45:28] Cameron McEwen: There's many riddles.

[1:45:30] Cameron McEwen: on and on and on like this.

[1:45:32] Cameron McEwen: And so as I listen to you,

[1:45:35] Cameron McEwen: I hear somebody talking about the phenomenology of mind brought up to date.

[1:45:41] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:45:42] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:45:43] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.

[1:45:45] Cameron McEwen: How does mind wrestle with itself and try to understand what's going on with it?

[1:45:52] Cameron McEwen: And,

[1:45:53] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:45:53] Cameron McEwen: I find it insightful and enjoyable.

[1:45:56] Bob Dobbs: Very good.

[1:45:58] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:45:58] Bob Dobbs: we will continue.

[1:46:00] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:46:01] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: I think I've reached my limit.

[1:46:03] Bob Dobbs: I have to do some stuff.

[1:46:03] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:46:03] Cameron McEwen: I understand.

[1:46:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:46:06] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:46:06] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:46:07] Cameron McEwen: keep up the good work.

[1:46:08] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:46:08] Cameron McEwen: did we get it?

[1:46:09] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?

[1:46:10] Cameron McEwen: I say keep up the good work.

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: thanks.

[1:46:14] Bob Dobbs: So we are discussing the book,

[1:46:15] Bob Dobbs: aren't we?

[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: We're doing it.

[1:46:17] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:46:17] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[1:46:18] Bob Dobbs: we got there.

[1:46:19] Cameron McEwen: In our own odd way.

[1:46:21] Cameron McEwen: Odd fellows.

[1:46:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:46:23] Bob Dobbs: So listen,

[1:46:24] Cameron McEwen: next week,

[1:46:26] Cameron McEwen: one housekeeping thing.

[1:46:27] Cameron McEwen: Next week is the

[1:46:28] Cameron McEwen: 24th.

[1:46:31] Cameron McEwen: Are we going to talk then,

[1:46:34] Cameron McEwen: or is that too close to Christmas to do?

[1:46:38] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: I don't celebrate much in Christmas,

[1:46:41] Bob Dobbs: so it's not a big deal.

[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: But

[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: I'll tell you if I'm available,

[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: and you'll say whether you're available.

[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: If not,

[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: we'll do it.

[1:46:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:46:48] Bob Dobbs: then we get into New Year's Eve.

[1:46:50] Bob Dobbs: So we'll see.

[1:46:51] Bob Dobbs: Let's just see what happens.

[1:46:52] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:46:53] Cameron McEwen: we'll just leave it open.

[1:46:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: thanks a lot,

[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[1:46:58] Bob Dobbs: Another great talk.

[1:46:59] Cameron McEwen: You too,

[1:47:00] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:47:00] Cameron McEwen: Bye-bye.

[1:47:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:47:01] Bob Dobbs: bye.