[00:02] Bob Dobbs: And we're looking at my charts I made years ago,
[00:07] Bob Dobbs: and we're finishing up the,
[00:10] Bob Dobbs: it's called Bob's Formula Chart,
[00:13] Bob Dobbs: which goes from 1750 to 2020,
[00:16] Bob Dobbs: and we went through the different levels.
[00:20] Bob Dobbs: We got down to the bottom.
[00:23] Bob Dobbs: So Cameron,
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: I'm looking at the Holeopathic Cliché Probes,
[00:28] Bob Dobbs: which is the
[00:29] Bob Dobbs: ALP ground on the left.
[00:32] Bob Dobbs: And then following that is the Anthropomorphic Physical.
[00:37] Bob Dobbs: I think we talked a bit about this,
[00:39] Bob Dobbs: but not...
[00:40] Bob Dobbs: Maybe we did.
[00:41] Bob Dobbs: Did we do PIROT?
[00:42] Bob Dobbs: We did PIROT and satellite and laser beam and all that stuff,
[00:45] Bob Dobbs: right?
[00:46] Bob Dobbs: We just didn't do...
[00:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[00:48] Cameron McEwen: depending on what you mean by did,
[00:50] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure that we did a very thorough analysis of those lines,
[00:59] Cameron McEwen: but we did briefly talk about all...
[01:02] Cameron McEwen: three of the horizontal lines at the bottom of that chart.
[01:07] Bob Dobbs: The three spaces,
[01:09] Bob Dobbs: three levels at the bottom.
[01:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[01:11] Cameron McEwen: the three levels.
[01:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[01:13] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember what I said about the flat line in the bottom section,
[01:20] Bob Dobbs: bottom level?
[01:23] Cameron McEwen: Actually,
[01:24] Cameron McEwen: I think that was at the very end of our conversation,
[01:28] Cameron McEwen: and you simply said that that was...
[01:31] Cameron McEwen: Flatline like a heart monitor in the hospital.
[01:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[01:38] Cameron McEwen: So that the ground had flatlined.
[01:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[01:43] Bob Dobbs: So you notice that
[01:47] Bob Dobbs: I've got,
[01:48] Bob Dobbs: as part of the actors acting out stresses and retrievals,
[01:55] Bob Dobbs: I've got holopathic cliche probes.
[01:57] Bob Dobbs: What the heck are they?
[01:59] Bob Dobbs: Ian,
[01:59] Bob Dobbs: I've...
[02:01] Bob Dobbs: I did talk about them and explain them,
[02:03] Bob Dobbs: but in my book,
[02:06] Bob Dobbs: I say holopathic cliche probes are memes.
[02:10] Bob Dobbs: So you've got memes as the enemy,
[02:16] Bob Dobbs: technological,
[02:16] Bob Dobbs: cultural enemy.
[02:18] Bob Dobbs: But the weaponry is satellite and laser beam.
[02:22] Bob Dobbs: So the imagery that would go with that for satellite and laser beam,
[02:28] Bob Dobbs: that would be Reagan's Star Wars.
[02:30] Bob Dobbs: which came in in 83 as a popular image,
[02:34] Bob Dobbs: and it's up against a rapidly changing turnover of culture of memes,
[02:42] Bob Dobbs: and,
[02:44] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[02:45] Bob Dobbs: memes,
[02:46] Bob Dobbs: as they are defined by Richard Dawkins.
[02:49] Bob Dobbs: But it became a kind of,
[02:55] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to say synesthetic culture,
[02:58] Bob Dobbs: but...
[02:59] Bob Dobbs: Culture started to be what the global theater occupants or actors engaged,
[03:06] Bob Dobbs: so there would be fads,
[03:07] Bob Dobbs: often coming out of America,
[03:09] Bob Dobbs: but as the baby boomers traveled around the world in the
[03:14] Bob Dobbs: 70s and 80s more,
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: and people did through jets,
[03:18] Bob Dobbs: other cultures became memes,
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: like world music.
[03:22] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?
[03:24] Bob Dobbs: Remember that?
[03:26] Cameron McEwen: I understand what you're saying,
[03:27] Cameron McEwen: but I'm not entirely clear how you're using the word name.
[03:32] Bob Dobbs: It's a pattern that everybody gets into.
[03:35] Bob Dobbs: It's like the phrase,
[03:36] Bob Dobbs: Where it's At.
[03:37] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was talking about in the 60s that people were trying to find out Where it's At,
[03:40] Bob Dobbs: so he'd play off the term,
[03:42] Bob Dobbs: the phrase,
[03:43] Bob Dobbs: Where it's At,
[03:44] Bob Dobbs: which suddenly became popular.
[03:46] Bob Dobbs: Or another one was doing your thing.
[03:49] Bob Dobbs: So those kind of phrases that became part of the language is actually what...
[03:55] Bob Dobbs: politicians and everybody would use the latest cliches that had been created in the speed up and increasing depth of consciousness.
[04:06] Bob Dobbs: So the phrase that would come out of it,
[04:10] Bob Dobbs: I would call a meme.
[04:12] Bob Dobbs: And it organized people's sense of community in a very fragmented situation,
[04:19] Bob Dobbs: but also a very imploded situation.
[04:21] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[04:23] Cameron McEwen: So a meme...
[04:24] Cameron McEwen: him.
[04:25] Cameron McEwen: Innis sense,
[04:26] Cameron McEwen: it's a medium.
[04:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[04:32] Bob Dobbs: This is where content,
[04:33] Bob Dobbs: the medium becomes content.
[04:35] Bob Dobbs: He starts to talk about it in the Playboy interview,
[04:39] Bob Dobbs: and then in Take Today on page 11,
[04:41] Bob Dobbs: he talks about how man becomes both figure and ground.
[04:47] Bob Dobbs: So man becomes not an extension of a medium,
[04:52] Bob Dobbs: but a creator.
[04:54] Bob Dobbs: of the medium or part of the medium and it would
[04:59] Bob Dobbs: It would be resolved as a pattern or a cliche or a fad.
[05:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[05:06] Cameron McEwen: So
[05:10] Bob Dobbs: I show that in my tiny note chart,
[05:12] Bob Dobbs: so I'll develop that when we bring that out.
[05:15] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[05:16] Cameron McEwen: good.
[05:16] Cameron McEwen: To me,
[05:17] Cameron McEwen: that's related to the flat line because when humans become figure and ground,
[05:26] Cameron McEwen: when humans become...
[05:29] Cameron McEwen: creators of creation,
[05:32] Cameron McEwen: that attempt at stability falls through itself and is finally revealed as groundless.
[05:47] Bob Dobbs: As groundless?
[05:48] Bob Dobbs: Did you say groundless?
[05:50] Cameron McEwen: Groundless,
[05:51] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[05:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[05:52] Bob Dobbs: I remember talking about that with Barry Nevitt in the late 80s.
[05:57] Bob Dobbs: We were in a groundless situation,
[05:59] Bob Dobbs: which is probably what I meant by the flatline.
[06:02] Bob Dobbs: But this led to incredible instability,
[06:05] Bob Dobbs: personally,
[06:06] Bob Dobbs: psychologically,
[06:07] Bob Dobbs: sociologically,
[06:08] Bob Dobbs: culture.
[06:09] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[06:11] Bob Dobbs: And for many people,
[06:12] Bob Dobbs: it was apocalyptic or Armageddon.
[06:14] Bob Dobbs: It just shattered them,
[06:16] Bob Dobbs: and they became zombies.
[06:17] Bob Dobbs: They fell back into some older pattern that they thought would last longer.
[06:23] Bob Dobbs: And that's the rise of fundamentalism all over the world.
[06:26] Bob Dobbs: including in science.
[06:29] Bob Dobbs: So everybody froze on the controls was my phrase back then.
[06:34] Bob Dobbs: And that's the part of the meaning of the flatline.
[06:39] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knew how to get out of that situation.
[06:42] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[06:43] Cameron McEwen: And that's what I call a cul-de-sac.
[06:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[06:46] Bob Dobbs: I agree.
[06:48] Bob Dobbs: A cul-de-sac.
[06:51] Cameron McEwen: To me,
[06:51] Cameron McEwen: this is a good place to bring up...
[06:55] Cameron McEwen: media and the inflation crowd good which
[06:59] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan wrote in 1973 and what I'd like to do just for the record is read a few passages from the very end of this essay because I think it
[07:15] Cameron McEwen: relates centrally to what we're talking about yeah I have a question about that he did a couple of New York Times op-eds
[07:23] Bob Dobbs: And one was called McLuhan,
[07:25] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[07:25] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[07:26] Bob Dobbs: and one was what you have,
[07:28] Bob Dobbs: and then the other one was a media approach to inflation.
[07:32] Bob Dobbs: Does the one you have begin talking about Nixon?
[07:39] Cameron McEwen: I know,
[07:39] Cameron McEwen: but it ends talking about Nixon.
[07:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[07:42] Bob Dobbs: Do you know the one called McLuhan,
[07:45] Cameron McEwen: I've seen it.
[07:46] Cameron McEwen: I probably have it somewhere,
[07:47] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[07:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[07:48] Bob Dobbs: because you might want to compare that in the media and the inflation crowd.
[07:54] Cameron McEwen: Great.
[07:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[07:56] Bob Dobbs: let's hear the quotes.
[07:58] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[07:58] Cameron McEwen: so he says,
[08:00] Cameron McEwen: if ordinary technologies are extensions of the human body in the quest to create new service anti-environment,
[08:09] Cameron McEwen: Sputnik,
[08:10] Cameron McEwen: October 4,
[08:10] Cameron McEwen: 1957,
[08:13] Cameron McEwen: and its successors may represent something quite different,
[08:18] Cameron McEwen: namely an extension of the planet itself,
[08:21] Cameron McEwen: creating a new ground.
[08:23] Cameron McEwen: for man in the sky and calling despotically for a new equilibrium and harmony of action and knowledge.
[08:34] Cameron McEwen: So that's the first quote that I want to bring up.
[08:38] Cameron McEwen: And I would relate that to the line in your chart that is the holeopathic cliche probe line that's...
[08:53] Cameron McEwen: I believe represents a flip from
[08:57] Cameron McEwen: ALP as ground to
[09:00] Cameron McEwen: HCE as ground.
[09:01] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[09:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[09:02] Bob Dobbs: you're talking about the third last one.
[09:05] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[09:06] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[09:07] Cameron McEwen: So that when human beings are no longer able to ground themselves in some particular
[09:21] Cameron McEwen: form of identity that belongs to the earth they're thrown into anti-environment where they need to make sense of the universe they and
[09:37] Cameron McEwen: come back from a sense of the universe to a sense of the planet and then from a sense of the planet back to a sense of their culture and their identity yes it
[09:50] Bob Dobbs: He talks about,
[09:51] Bob Dobbs: I think in the 60s,
[09:52] Bob Dobbs: that we were going to move into a new metaphysical revolution,
[09:56] Bob Dobbs: a renewed interest.
[09:57] Bob Dobbs: in metaphysics,
[09:58] Bob Dobbs: and he might have even mentioned that in Greece at the time of the phonetic alphabet,
[10:03] Bob Dobbs: but yes,
[10:05] Bob Dobbs: the people reaching out for a metaphysical pattern is a stress created by the situation you just described.
[10:13] Cameron McEwen: That's right,
[10:15] Cameron McEwen: and he actually continues the quotation I just made by something that relates very closely to this.
[10:24] Cameron McEwen: He says,
[10:25] Cameron McEwen: the satellites...
[10:26] Cameron McEwen: have,
[10:26] Cameron McEwen: as it were,
[10:27] Cameron McEwen: transformed the planet itself into a work of art,
[10:31] Cameron McEwen: inspiring a new need for programs and controls transcending all regional interests.
[10:39] Cameron McEwen: So what's interesting here is that a few minutes ago you brought up the quest for fundamentalism,
[10:51] Cameron McEwen: which is an attempt to find closure
[10:54] Cameron McEwen: in the face of complexity.
[10:58] Cameron McEwen: What McLuhan is saying here,
[10:59] Cameron McEwen: he's saying that we need to have programs and controls transcending all regional interests.
[11:05] Cameron McEwen: He doesn't mean regional only in terms of space.
[11:09] Cameron McEwen: He means regional in terms of any particular interest at all.
[11:16] Cameron McEwen: The programs and controls...
[11:18] Bob Dobbs: Any medium at all.
[11:21] Cameron McEwen: Sorry?
[11:21] Bob Dobbs: Any medium at all.
[11:24] Bob Dobbs: Interest or medium?
[11:25] Cameron McEwen: No,
[11:25] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that's the case.
[11:27] Cameron McEwen: I think it's the humans need to relate themselves to a medium that is somehow inclusive of all media.
[11:43] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[11:43] Bob Dobbs: they make it the hologram image,
[11:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[11:46] Bob Dobbs: the little part contains the whole.
[11:48] Bob Dobbs: People become extreme,
[11:50] Bob Dobbs: and that led to the culture wars about...
[11:52] Bob Dobbs: particular media mixes that they value.
[12:00] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[12:01] Cameron McEwen: but I think that what you're saying there is true,
[12:04] Cameron McEwen: but it's a very complicated action that you're talking about because you're talking about people taking particular actions,
[12:17] Cameron McEwen: which is one thing,
[12:18] Cameron McEwen: and you're talking about the understanding.
[12:22] Cameron McEwen: of people taking those particular actions,
[12:25] Cameron McEwen: which is another thing.
[12:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[12:28] Bob Dobbs: it's reactionary.
[12:30] Cameron McEwen: That's right,
[12:31] Cameron McEwen: and seeing how those belong together is the trick.
[12:35] Bob Dobbs: Is a what?
[12:36] Bob Dobbs: A trick?
[12:37] Cameron McEwen: The trick.
[12:37] Bob Dobbs: The trick,
[12:38] Bob Dobbs: right.
[12:41] Bob Dobbs: Take the Arabs.
[12:43] Bob Dobbs: They are manuscript culture.
[12:45] Bob Dobbs: And the electric identity crisis that came upon them,
[12:49] Bob Dobbs: they began to see...
[12:52] Bob Dobbs: say television,
[12:53] Bob Dobbs: movies,
[12:53] Bob Dobbs: American culture as the threat.
[12:55] Bob Dobbs: And that's what they went to war against.
[12:57] Bob Dobbs: So it was one media mix against another.
[13:01] Bob Dobbs: But in particular,
[13:02] Bob Dobbs: it was a manuscript bias that they had against technologies,
[13:09] Bob Dobbs: industrial electric technologies.
[13:11] Bob Dobbs: And then you can see that in different cultures or different nations around the world.
[13:16] Bob Dobbs: They favored...
[13:18] Bob Dobbs: something,
[13:18] Bob Dobbs: usually that became their tourist market.
[13:22] Bob Dobbs: They would wake up their cultural bias,
[13:25] Bob Dobbs: their cultural treasures,
[13:27] Bob Dobbs: for people to gawk at as museum tourists.
[13:32] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan criticized the West's bias to thinking the world was a museum.
[13:36] Bob Dobbs: And meanwhile,
[13:38] Bob Dobbs: everybody was involved with pattern recognition in the virtual world of computer satellite and the economy.
[13:47] Bob Dobbs: And you see a reference to that at the back on the outer sleeve of Take Today where he talks about software in quotes and software not in quotes.
[13:56] Bob Dobbs: I think that's a very interesting dialectic when you read the back page of the cover.
[14:01] Bob Dobbs: So these get the effect of Sputnik is gradually,
[14:08] Bob Dobbs: as more and more satellites go up and more of the popular images gets into outer space.
[14:16] Bob Dobbs: space,
[14:17] Bob Dobbs: that is actually,
[14:18] Bob Dobbs: as an effect,
[14:19] Bob Dobbs: a hologram that people are living in,
[14:21] Bob Dobbs: which I say is the word that makes the market.
[14:23] Bob Dobbs: And that hologram,
[14:25] Bob Dobbs: this satellite proscenium,
[14:26] Bob Dobbs: shrinks,
[14:27] Bob Dobbs: gets tinier and tinier,
[14:28] Bob Dobbs: like homeopathy.
[14:30] Bob Dobbs: And that's what a holeopathic situation is.
[14:32] Bob Dobbs: The global theater becomes tinier and tinier,
[14:37] Bob Dobbs: especially with the digital world.
[14:41] Bob Dobbs: But it begins with cable TV and the technologies just before.
[14:46] Bob Dobbs: the internet and that.
[14:50] Bob Dobbs: So you mentioned that holeopathic cliche probes comes out of the Anti-environment.
[14:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[14:57] Bob Dobbs: But it's the later merger and implosion of individuals and groups and media,
[15:05] Bob Dobbs: because the media is gradually disappearing,
[15:09] Bob Dobbs: and then it's all contained in your smartphone.
[15:13] Bob Dobbs: The metaphysical conceptualization,
[15:16] Bob Dobbs: which becomes ground of that,
[15:18] Bob Dobbs: are memes.
[15:20] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I'm trying to get at.
[15:22] Bob Dobbs: And,
[15:23] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[15:23] Bob Dobbs: it becomes an Android Meme automatic meme.
[15:26] Bob Dobbs: And so people become not zombies,
[15:34] Bob Dobbs: but they become a kind of uniformity of shared awareness all around the world,
[15:40] Bob Dobbs: like at airports and that,
[15:42] Bob Dobbs: that alienates those that value,
[15:46] Bob Dobbs: remember,
[15:47] Bob Dobbs: identify with older technologies.
[15:50] Bob Dobbs: I always think of what Norman Mailer said.
[15:52] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[15:52] Bob Dobbs: he traveled around the world a lot as a famous author,
[15:55] Bob Dobbs: and he said it was damn boring.
[15:57] Bob Dobbs: Every culture,
[15:58] Bob Dobbs: no,
[15:58] Bob Dobbs: every city,
[15:59] Bob Dobbs: every,
[15:59] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[16:00] Bob Dobbs: every nation around the world had the same airport.
[16:03] Bob Dobbs: And,
[16:03] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[16:03] Bob Dobbs: the popular disgust with McDonald's taking over anywhere,
[16:08] Bob Dobbs: everywhere.
[16:10] Bob Dobbs: That was,
[16:12] Bob Dobbs: you could say,
[16:13] Bob Dobbs: an eye bias about incredible variety that was happening in the airports and in hotels.
[16:21] Bob Dobbs: In depth,
[16:22] Bob Dobbs: through whatever entertainment was featured over the speakers,
[16:29] Bob Dobbs: So most people got alienated by the computerized digital tactility that was taking over,
[16:40] Bob Dobbs: that everybody's engaged in.
[16:42] Bob Dobbs: So,
[16:43] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[16:44] Bob Dobbs: someone like Frank Zappa would travel all over the world and he would study different discos.
[16:49] Bob Dobbs: But discos were everywhere.
[16:51] Bob Dobbs: So that was a new culture.
[16:53] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't electric.
[16:54] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't American imperialism.
[16:57] Bob Dobbs: It was everybody having access to new media at the same time.
[17:05] Bob Dobbs: And I,
[17:05] Bob Dobbs: what did McLuhan used to say?
[17:07] Bob Dobbs: Am I getting through to you?
[17:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[17:09] Cameron McEwen: definitely.
[17:13] Cameron McEwen: Just to skip ahead briefly through a mention,
[17:16] Cameron McEwen: and then we'll come right back to where you are.
[17:19] Cameron McEwen: But this kind of perception is what,
[17:26] Cameron McEwen: in your book,
[17:28] Cameron McEwen: you direct at Trump.
[17:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[17:34] Cameron McEwen: You differentiate between what everybody sees and what discusses everybody,
[17:42] Cameron McEwen: like you were just talking about with Muzak and McDonald's.
[17:48] Cameron McEwen: what could be seen with a different vision.
[17:51] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[17:53] Cameron McEwen: And so that,
[17:56] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[17:57] Cameron McEwen: relates very much to this essay.
[17:59] Cameron McEwen: So what I'd like to do here is just give you a few more quotes from the end of it,
[18:05] Cameron McEwen: because
[18:06] Cameron McEwen: I think it'll be helpful to us.
[18:08] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[18:08] Bob Dobbs: Now the phrase,
[18:09] Bob Dobbs: the inflation crowd...
[18:11] Bob Dobbs: That's the turnover of memes in the global theater,
[18:14] Bob Dobbs: then the global membrane,
[18:15] Bob Dobbs: and then turnover of holeopathic cliche probes.
[18:18] Bob Dobbs: That's,
[18:18] Bob Dobbs: to me,
[18:19] Bob Dobbs: the crowd mentation or pattern recognition.
[18:23] Bob Dobbs: And he talks by 74 about the problem,
[18:27] Bob Dobbs: the cognitive,
[18:28] Bob Dobbs: the addiction to the cognitive thrills of pattern recognition.
[18:32] Bob Dobbs: That's the inflation crowd for me,
[18:34] Bob Dobbs: not just money,
[18:35] Bob Dobbs: but of fads and memes.
[18:38] Bob Dobbs: It's inflated.
[18:41] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[18:42] Cameron McEwen: But
[18:44] Cameron McEwen: I think the heart of what he's talking about is the structural point,
[18:50] Cameron McEwen: right,
[18:50] Cameron McEwen: that as the individual finds herself more and more taken over by
[19:09] Cameron McEwen: the
[19:12] Cameron McEwen: anti-environment noise,
[19:14] Cameron McEwen: you could say,
[19:17] Cameron McEwen: the relationship between the individual anti-environment becomes increasingly disparate.
[19:27] Cameron McEwen: And the increasing tension between individuality and universality is what
[19:41] Cameron McEwen: generates the turn to the crowd,
[19:44] Cameron McEwen: which is to say the abdication of individuality,
[19:48] Cameron McEwen: which can no longer be maintained.
[19:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[19:52] Cameron McEwen: And that gets directly to what
[19:55] Cameron McEwen: I want to read here.
[19:56] Cameron McEwen: He says that
[19:57] Cameron McEwen: He says that creating a new ground for men,
[20:01] Cameron McEwen: we were just talking about how the new ground is in the sky,
[20:09] Cameron McEwen: right?
[20:10] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[20:11] Cameron McEwen: That's like saying the new individuality is in the crowd,
[20:16] Cameron McEwen: right?
[20:17] Cameron McEwen: It's crazy.
[20:18] Cameron McEwen: So he says here,
[20:20] Cameron McEwen: universal information services represents a desperate depreciation.
[20:27] Cameron McEwen: of our most exciting values.
[20:30] Cameron McEwen: And by exciting,
[20:31] Cameron McEwen: he doesn't mean something that we find greatly pleasurable or something like that.
[20:39] Cameron McEwen: He means values that ground us and that give us something to go out from.
[20:49] Cameron McEwen: So desperate depreciation of our most exciting values with the accompanying decline of personal...
[20:57] Cameron McEwen: Identity and worth,
[20:59] Cameron McEwen: right?
[21:00] Cameron McEwen: So we have what goes with the sky anti-environment ground is that the,
[21:11] Cameron McEwen: although this seems to be inflation in one sense,
[21:15] Cameron McEwen: it's actually also deflation to the same extent.
[21:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[21:20] Bob Dobbs: and stagflation.
[21:23] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[21:23] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[21:24] Cameron McEwen: stagflation is a combination of the two.
[21:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[21:28] Bob Dobbs: And he talks about,
[21:29] Bob Dobbs: in an article in
[21:32] Bob Dobbs: 1970, about,
[21:33] Bob Dobbs: he predicts in the 70s,
[21:34] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[21:34] Bob Dobbs: Great Depression.
[21:35] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[21:36] Bob Dobbs: he meant economically,
[21:37] Bob Dobbs: but also psychologically,
[21:38] Bob Dobbs: the two things you're talking about,
[21:40] Bob Dobbs: collectively and personally.
[21:44] Bob Dobbs: And they come together,
[21:45] Bob Dobbs: and no therapy can deal with this.
[21:49] Bob Dobbs: He had the best,
[21:50] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[21:50] Bob Dobbs: therapy for understanding this,
[21:52] Bob Dobbs: if you,
[21:53] Bob Dobbs: as everybody did,
[21:54] Bob Dobbs: found themselves in the cul-de-sac.
[21:57] Cameron McEwen: And his second sight there was seeing
[22:01] Cameron McEwen: 2021. Yes,
[22:03] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[22:04] Cameron McEwen: That's where we're at.
[22:05] Bob Dobbs: At the flat line.
[22:06] Cameron McEwen: Right there.
[22:08] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[22:08] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[22:08] Cameron McEwen: but in the new kind of depression,
[22:13] Cameron McEwen: economic and psychological,
[22:16] Cameron McEwen: that's coming down the pipe.
[22:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[22:18] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[22:19] Bob Dobbs: Let me see.
[22:20] Bob Dobbs: Did you know that line?
[22:25] Bob Dobbs: media ecology or something that's in take today and he says the future of ecology lies not in a national or international basis but in the realm of psychic ecology right remember that line yes
[22:41] Cameron McEwen: that's really important basically what we're talking about yes right when we talk about transcending all regional interests yes that's getting away from national and international national interest.
[22:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[22:55] Bob Dobbs: we see the conflict between the nationalists and the globalists.
[22:57] Bob Dobbs: That's the eye-ear,
[23:00] Bob Dobbs: or maybe later terms,
[23:02] Bob Dobbs: but that's what we're looking at in 2021.
[23:06] Bob Dobbs: And they're both forlorn figures,
[23:08] Bob Dobbs: like in my chart.
[23:11] Bob Dobbs: One is the enemy,
[23:12] Bob Dobbs: one's the weaponry.
[23:16] Cameron McEwen: In fact,
[23:17] Cameron McEwen: both the national and the international attempt to retain their ground.
[23:24] Cameron McEwen: in the earth when what has happened is that the ground of the earth has been flipped into the ground of the sky.
[23:34] Cameron McEwen: And so the two,
[23:37] Cameron McEwen: which seem to be at war with each other,
[23:40] Cameron McEwen: are actually brothers who are attempting to find ground where there is no ground.
[23:47] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[23:47] Bob Dobbs: And that's the phrase tuning the sky that he used.
[23:52] Bob Dobbs: So So...
[23:53] Bob Dobbs: You see,
[23:55] Bob Dobbs: I thought,
[23:58] Bob Dobbs: when on the radio,
[24:00] Bob Dobbs: I said McLuhan has come up with the terms for balance,
[24:05] Bob Dobbs: for therapy,
[24:06] Bob Dobbs: for whatever people think they're missing,
[24:09] Bob Dobbs: whatever you would call something that fills in that lack.
[24:14] Bob Dobbs: And I still think so.
[24:15] Bob Dobbs: And Corinne says it in one of those documentaries,
[24:18] Bob Dobbs: interviews,
[24:19] Bob Dobbs: maybe a CD,
[24:20] Bob Dobbs: a 90s
[24:21] Bob Dobbs: CD she's interviewed.
[24:22] Bob Dobbs: And she said,
[24:23] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[24:24] Bob Dobbs: Marshall is correct intellectually.
[24:26] Bob Dobbs: He has come up with the best statement that's simple enough that anybody could get it if they were patient enough.
[24:32] Bob Dobbs: And then she balks and says,
[24:34] Bob Dobbs: well,
[24:35] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if it's practical.
[24:36] Bob Dobbs: But she knew he had come up with a great,
[24:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[24:40] Bob Dobbs: the old Shelley thing,
[24:42] Bob Dobbs: poets are legislators of the world.
[24:44] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[24:44] Bob Dobbs: he completed that.
[24:46] Bob Dobbs: As a poet,
[24:46] Bob Dobbs: he came up with a legislating meme or process.
[24:51] Bob Dobbs: of looking at the situation,
[24:53] Bob Dobbs: a hauntology,
[24:55] Bob Dobbs: and that's what's missed.
[24:57] Bob Dobbs: People get Friedenberg and get enthusiastic,
[25:00] Bob Dobbs: but they have to do a little more study to realize how to see what we're talking about right now.
[25:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[25:08] Cameron McEwen: definitely,
[25:09] Cameron McEwen: definitely.
[25:10] Cameron McEwen: And the reason for that is what I'm just going to read now.
[25:20] Cameron McEwen: This is the very end of the essay.
[25:22] Cameron McEwen: And he's talked about how we need something beyond regional interest.
[25:28] Cameron McEwen: And then he said that that results in a desperate depreciation.
[25:33] Cameron McEwen: And the depreciation comes from the fact
[25:36] Cameron McEwen: that humans always had their ground on the earth in a certain sense it came from their language it came from their culture it came from a sense of themselves that they got from their mother whatever um and now this was being taken away yep
[25:54] Cameron McEwen: uh resulting in depreciation so at the end of the essay he says so extensive a dissolution of established forms brings a universal feeling of outrage
[26:06] Cameron McEwen: the pulse for massive retaliation.
[26:10] Cameron McEwen: The matter is stated Marshall McLuhan by Elias Canetti in his discussion of inflation and the crowd.
[26:19] Cameron McEwen: So what we have here is a quotation from
[26:25] Cameron McEwen: Canetti. What he says is,
[26:27] Cameron McEwen: no one ever forgets a sudden depreciation of themselves,
[26:32] Cameron McEwen: for it is too painful.
[26:34] Cameron McEwen: Unless he
[26:35] Cameron McEwen: thrust it onto someone else,
[26:37] Cameron McEwen: he carries it with him for the rest of his life.
[26:41] Cameron McEwen: And the crowd as such never forgets its depreciation.
[26:46] Cameron McEwen: But remember,
[26:47] Cameron McEwen: when we're talking about the crowd,
[26:48] Cameron McEwen: we're talking about the divorce between the individual and the crowd and the inability of the individual to hold out against the crowd.
[26:58] Cameron McEwen: And so when Canetti says the crowd as such never forgets its depreciation,
[27:05] Cameron McEwen: That's because what the crowd is as such is that depreciation of individuality,
[27:13] Cameron McEwen: right?
[27:14] Cameron McEwen: The crowd is the destruction of the individual,
[27:19] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[27:21] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[27:22] Bob Dobbs: But remember,
[27:23] Bob Dobbs: there's also the destruction of the tribal crowd,
[27:26] Bob Dobbs: too,
[27:27] Bob Dobbs: in the other cultures.
[27:29] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[27:29] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[27:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[27:30] Cameron McEwen: we're going to,
[27:31] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[27:32] Cameron McEwen: the crowd.
[27:34] Cameron McEwen: When the crowd overtakes the individual,
[27:36] Cameron McEwen: that's not a stable ground.
[27:39] Cameron McEwen: That's a ground that explodes and implodes.
[27:43] Cameron McEwen: Nothing is more explosive and implosive than a figure that has taken over its ground or a ground that has taken over its figure.
[27:55] Cameron McEwen: And so when the tension between the individual and the crowd can no longer be maintained and
[28:03] Cameron McEwen: flips over into only the crown.
[28:06] Cameron McEwen: That's not a stable situation.
[28:08] Cameron McEwen: That's the most unstable situation.
[28:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[28:13] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[28:14] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[28:15] Cameron McEwen: That's the flat line,
[28:16] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[28:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[28:18] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[28:18] Bob Dobbs: what's interesting is when you've read a lot of McLuhan articles like we have,
[28:24] Bob Dobbs: he repeats his themes,
[28:25] Bob Dobbs: meteor extensions of our bodies,
[28:26] Bob Dobbs: but I found that every article,
[28:30] Bob Dobbs: what is the word,
[28:31] Bob Dobbs: uncannily,
[28:34] Bob Dobbs: would add a few new words.
[28:37] Bob Dobbs: And the words you're saying there,
[28:39] Bob Dobbs: the depreciation of values,
[28:41] Bob Dobbs: exciting values,
[28:41] Bob Dobbs: different terms,
[28:42] Bob Dobbs: he never said them in any previous article.
[28:45] Bob Dobbs: But he adds a little aspect of what's going on in normal terms,
[28:52] Bob Dobbs: not jargon,
[28:54] Bob Dobbs: not meaty jargon,
[28:55] Bob Dobbs: which helps you understand that,
[28:57] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[28:57] Bob Dobbs: he's not seeing this as a great thing or a bad thing.
[29:02] Bob Dobbs: dangerous thing.
[29:03] Bob Dobbs: It's balance.
[29:05] Bob Dobbs: And he shows common words.
[29:08] Bob Dobbs: And he would do that.
[29:09] Bob Dobbs: Like,
[29:09] Bob Dobbs: if you take that article in 73,
[29:11] Bob Dobbs: then look at McLuhan,
[29:12] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[29:12] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[29:12] Bob Dobbs: I think it is,
[29:14] Bob Dobbs: on Watergate in 74,
[29:17] Bob Dobbs: and then immediate approach to inflation,
[29:19] Bob Dobbs: he adds a few more little words.
[29:21] Bob Dobbs: And another aspect of maybe practical institutional problems.
[29:25] Bob Dobbs: Like often,
[29:26] Bob Dobbs: people,
[29:26] Bob Dobbs: when they first read him,
[29:27] Bob Dobbs: it was too abstract.
[29:28] Bob Dobbs: He just seemed to be talking.
[29:30] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[29:31] Bob Dobbs: about vast spaces and vast stretches of time,
[29:35] Bob Dobbs: and how do you apply it?
[29:36] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[29:37] Bob Dobbs: it's almost like he would scan through his articles when he had a new one to read.
[29:41] Bob Dobbs: He'd say,
[29:41] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[29:42] Bob Dobbs: I did that,
[29:42] Bob Dobbs: he'd check that off,
[29:43] Bob Dobbs: and I did psychology,
[29:45] Bob Dobbs: I did sociology,
[29:46] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[29:46] Bob Dobbs: now the next one is maybe the art world.
[29:49] Bob Dobbs: And so he would add a little interesting new twist to it.
[29:52] Bob Dobbs: And that's why his articles were a story.
[29:55] Bob Dobbs: If you knew,
[29:56] Bob Dobbs: it'd be the same old themes on every article,
[29:59] Bob Dobbs: but then he'd add a new twist.
[30:00] Bob Dobbs: And what you just read,
[30:01] Bob Dobbs: he never writes those sentences again with those words.
[30:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[30:07] Cameron McEwen: I would use a slightly different image.
[30:11] Cameron McEwen: You're talking about him going through the articles and checking off what he's done.
[30:16] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that he thought that way.
[30:21] Cameron McEwen: I think he was like an artist who had his studio,
[30:27] Cameron McEwen: and he would get up every day,
[30:30] Cameron McEwen: and he would have to decide,
[30:32] Cameron McEwen: am I going to make a new picture today?
[30:34] Cameron McEwen: If I am,
[30:35] Cameron McEwen: what's next?
[30:36] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[30:36] Cameron McEwen: what's its theme and all that sort of stuff?
[30:38] Cameron McEwen: Or am I going to add maybe a few strokes to this painting that I did the other day or this painting that I did last year?
[30:48] Cameron McEwen: And these new words and new phrases that you're talking about are kind of new strokes.
[30:56] Cameron McEwen: They're things that he probably wasn't quite sure himself that they would work.
[31:06] Cameron McEwen: He would know that he would have to come back into the studio in the next week or the next month.
[31:11] Cameron McEwen: And he knew what it was like to regret having spoiled a picture by adding stuff to it or regret having done a picture at all maybe and having to throw it out.
[31:27] Cameron McEwen: But Innis process,
[31:30] Cameron McEwen: he was not entirely conscious.
[31:35] Cameron McEwen: of everything that was going on,
[31:37] Cameron McEwen: but he had a sense of,
[31:41] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[31:42] Cameron McEwen: what color seems to be missing here.
[31:46] Cameron McEwen: How could I put a little stroke here?
[31:48] Cameron McEwen: And by doing that,
[31:52] Cameron McEwen: he was revealing through his sense of what do I do today,
[32:03] Cameron McEwen: He was revealing.
[32:04] Cameron McEwen: a whole new sense of the human psyche.
[32:08] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[32:09] Bob Dobbs: And how to live today,
[32:10] Bob Dobbs: how we live constant pattern recognition.
[32:12] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[32:13] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[32:14] Bob Dobbs: And your personal myth,
[32:15] Bob Dobbs: which would be the media you engage as a routine.
[32:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[32:22] Bob Dobbs: what you've just spelled out is what I meant,
[32:24] Bob Dobbs: but you did it a lot more precisely or colorfully using the artist metaphor.
[32:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[32:31] Bob Dobbs: like...
[32:32] Bob Dobbs: I would think,
[32:32] Bob Dobbs: no,
[32:33] Bob Dobbs: he didn't even sit there and review,
[32:35] Bob Dobbs: check his articles.
[32:35] Bob Dobbs: He might,
[32:36] Bob Dobbs: but he knew his work so well,
[32:38] Bob Dobbs: he knew what he had done.
[32:40] Bob Dobbs: And then he would get a new idea or say,
[32:44] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[32:44] Bob Dobbs: I haven't done that part yet.
[32:46] Bob Dobbs: I haven't talked about social services or something.
[32:49] Bob Dobbs: And so he would do it in the next article.
[32:51] Bob Dobbs: He kind of knew his work so well,
[32:53] Bob Dobbs: he would think up the next color to add naturally.
[32:57] Bob Dobbs: It would just come to him.
[32:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[32:59] Cameron McEwen: I don't want to take any time.
[33:01] Cameron McEwen: What he would do is,
[33:02] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[33:03] Cameron McEwen: in
[33:05] Cameron McEwen: Media and the Inflation Crowd,
[33:07] Cameron McEwen: there are paragraphs of this essay that appear elsewhere.
[33:15] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[33:16] Cameron McEwen: In almost all of his essays,
[33:19] Cameron McEwen: there are chunks of other stuff.
[33:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[33:21] Cameron McEwen: And so what McLuhan would do is he would take a chunk here and a chunk there,
[33:27] Cameron McEwen: and he would kind of interface them.
[33:30] Cameron McEwen: and wonder if he had skipped something or if it didn't make sense when they were brought together.
[33:37] Cameron McEwen: And Innis sense,
[33:39] Cameron McEwen: it's almost like a sculptor using his tactile sense to try to figure out if the shape that he had before
[33:54] Cameron McEwen: him,
[33:55] Cameron McEwen: partially from maybe past attempts.
[33:59] Cameron McEwen: shaping it,
[34:01] Cameron McEwen: if this made sense now.
[34:04] Cameron McEwen: And so he would make a little gouge here and round out something there and sort of feel his way forward.
[34:14] Cameron McEwen: And what we find from him is a model of what it is to think.
[34:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[34:23] Bob Dobbs: integrated thinking,
[34:24] Bob Dobbs: not in the literate left hemisphere synthesis.
[34:29] Bob Dobbs: But somehow alive with the support of Second Sight and invigorated with what was going on.
[34:40] Bob Dobbs: As he said once or twice in the Monday night seminars,
[34:43] Bob Dobbs: this French critic came over and he was talking with the meaninglessness everywhere.
[34:50] Bob Dobbs: And Marsh said,
[34:50] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[34:51] Bob Dobbs: no,
[34:51] Bob Dobbs: no,
[34:51] Bob Dobbs: not for me.
[34:52] Bob Dobbs: I find meaning everywhere.
[34:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[34:58] Bob Dobbs: And he would demonstrate it.
[35:00] Bob Dobbs: Anything that happened,
[35:01] Bob Dobbs: like streaking,
[35:02] Bob Dobbs: which happened in 73,
[35:04] Bob Dobbs: 74,
[35:04] Bob Dobbs: he had a great pattern about it immediately.
[35:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[35:08] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[35:08] Cameron McEwen: the passing fancy.
[35:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[35:11] Bob Dobbs: Or the other part was the streaker was telling us that why are we getting all dressed up with nowhere to go?
[35:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[35:22] Bob Dobbs: So,
[35:24] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[35:24] Bob Dobbs: there's a good bunch of articles in 73,
[35:26] Bob Dobbs: 74 that he did in newspapers and that.
[35:29] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[35:29] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[35:30] Cameron McEwen: he was constantly alive.
[35:31] Cameron McEwen: But let me just finish this.
[35:34] Cameron McEwen: I'm almost at the end of this essay.
[35:36] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[35:36] Cameron McEwen: I want to add about Canetti.
[35:38] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[35:39] Cameron McEwen: I'm in the middle of the Canetti quote.
[35:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[35:44] Bob Dobbs: but wait a minute.
[35:45] Bob Dobbs: I want to point out that Canetti,
[35:47] Bob Dobbs: he would quote a lot in that period,
[35:49] Bob Dobbs: but especially he had a great insight about why the Jews suffered in Germany in the
[35:57] Bob Dobbs: 30s. They became the scapegoat.
[35:59] Bob Dobbs: of the Germans who were losing their identity the way you've been describing.
[36:04] Bob Dobbs: You had a great section where Canetti pointed that out.
[36:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[36:09] Cameron McEwen: So that's actually very important to what I'm about to read.
[36:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[36:16] Cameron McEwen: Because he says,
[36:18] Cameron McEwen: the crowd as such never forgets its depreciation.
[36:22] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[36:23] Cameron McEwen: And remember that
[36:25] Cameron McEwen: I think...
[36:26] Cameron McEwen: I don't know about Canetti,
[36:27] Cameron McEwen: but I think McLuhan is thinking of the crowd here in terms of the breakage of the tension between the individual and the collective or the universal.
[36:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[36:41] Cameron McEwen: So Canetti goes on as follows.
[36:45] Cameron McEwen: The crowd as such never forgets its depreciation.
[36:47] Cameron McEwen: The natural tendency afterwards is to find something which is worth even less than itself.
[36:55] Cameron McEwen: which one can despise as one was despised.
[36:59] Cameron McEwen: It is not enough to take over an old contempt and maintain it at the same level.
[37:06] Cameron McEwen: What is wanted is a dynamic process of humiliation.
[37:11] Cameron McEwen: Something must be treated in such a way that it becomes worth less and less as the unit of money did during the inflation.
[37:21] Cameron McEwen: And this process must be continued.
[37:24] Cameron McEwen: until its object is reduced to a state of utter worthlessness.
[37:30] Cameron McEwen: So that relates exactly to what you were just saying about the Jews.
[37:36] Cameron McEwen: The last line of this essay,
[37:39] Cameron McEwen: which is what McLuhan adds to the
[37:43] Cameron McEwen: Canetti quote,
[37:44] Cameron McEwen: is as follows.
[37:46] Cameron McEwen: The Watergate affair is precisely such a dynamic process of...
[37:53] Cameron McEwen: humiliation.
[37:55] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[37:56] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[37:57] Cameron McEwen: so we have to think of this.
[38:00] Cameron McEwen: I'll just briefly mention the fact that what's going on with Trump recapitulates the Watergate affair in the way that is being talked about here.
[38:13] Cameron McEwen: But we'll get to that when we discuss your book.
[38:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[38:18] Cameron McEwen: What I want to bring up here is that
[38:21] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan
[38:23] Cameron McEwen: takes up from Canetti the idea of humiliation and how it's necessary to humiliate the other as a way of getting a sense of oneself.
[38:37] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[38:38] Cameron McEwen: humiliate comes from humus,
[38:42] Cameron McEwen: earth,
[38:43] Cameron McEwen: right?
[38:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[38:44] Cameron McEwen: And we've just talked about how humans in the satellite anti-environment directed to the sky.
[38:54] Cameron McEwen: away from the earth.
[38:55] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[38:55] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[38:56] Cameron McEwen: And that's like what you have in the uh uh holeopathic uh cliche probe uh line of your chart.
[39:06] Cameron McEwen: You have this kind of flip between
[39:10] Cameron McEwen: ALP and
[39:11] Cameron McEwen: HCE so that instead of people finding ground and ground they find it in the air in the
[39:24] Cameron McEwen: figures of the air,
[39:25] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[39:26] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[39:27] Cameron McEwen: And so here Innis essay,
[39:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan very nicely says that so we have to find our new ground in the sky,
[39:41] Cameron McEwen: and it has to be beyond all regional interest.
[39:45] Cameron McEwen: And once we are thrown into anti-environment where we're depreciated,
[39:53] Cameron McEwen: The natural tendency is to seek humiliation,
[39:58] Cameron McEwen: that is to say to go back to the earth,
[40:01] Cameron McEwen: right?
[40:01] Cameron McEwen: And the way to go back to the earth is to find something.
[40:07] Cameron McEwen: that is so worthless that in depreciating it into its farthest reaches of worthlessness,
[40:23] Cameron McEwen: we make contact again with our ground in Earth,
[40:29] Cameron McEwen: right?
[40:29] Cameron McEwen: And of course,
[40:30] Cameron McEwen: all that's ridiculous,
[40:31] Cameron McEwen: but that's the history we're living.
[40:34] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[40:34] Bob Dobbs: and one of the first memes...
[40:36] Bob Dobbs: to come out of the post-war era is ecology and trying to,
[40:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[40:43] Bob Dobbs: archetypalizing the ground,
[40:45] Bob Dobbs: the earth.
[40:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[40:46] Cameron McEwen: correct.
[40:47] Bob Dobbs: Which was actually the wrong direction to go in
[40:50] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan terms.
[40:52] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't to provide understanding.
[40:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[40:56] Cameron McEwen: the ecology and pollution only became illuminated,
[41:02] Cameron McEwen: you could say,
[41:03] Cameron McEwen: from a satellite perspective.
[41:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[41:06] Bob Dobbs: once we were up in the air.
[41:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[41:08] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[41:10] Cameron McEwen: So what people were doing and are doing in their concern for ecology and pollution,
[41:17] Cameron McEwen: all that sort of stuff,
[41:18] Cameron McEwen: is that it's a variety of what you call lockdown rule,
[41:27] Cameron McEwen: where people are attempting to find meaning through organization.
[41:36] Cameron McEwen: But they are,
[41:39] Cameron McEwen: as you just said,
[41:40] Cameron McEwen: looking in the wrong direction.
[41:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[41:43] Bob Dobbs: So a trend to prove the flip from male to female,
[41:49] Bob Dobbs: male becoming the retrieved ground or the ground role taken over by men or the male,
[41:56] Bob Dobbs: is you see by the late 70s,
[41:58] Bob Dobbs: early 80s,
[41:59] Bob Dobbs: and
[42:00] Bob Dobbs: I heard a lot about this in Carolyn's practice.
[42:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[42:04] Bob Dobbs: she had a lot of baby boomer patients.
[42:06] Bob Dobbs: They all were getting Bernard out,
[42:08] Bob Dobbs: and they thought their women's lib or whatever feminist doctrines they had would take over with their reasonableness or rationality.
[42:17] Bob Dobbs: It's obvious women should be allowed to participate more.
[42:21] Bob Dobbs: But there was a larger,
[42:23] Bob Dobbs: Postman,
[42:24] Bob Dobbs: discarnate condition in the sky that was wearing everybody down,
[42:28] Bob Dobbs: but especially women.
[42:29] Bob Dobbs: And so women gave up in the
[42:33] Bob Dobbs: 80s.
[42:33] Bob Dobbs: The feminist myth or meme died and women became,
[42:39] Bob Dobbs: well,
[42:39] Bob Dobbs: yuppie males,
[42:40] Bob Dobbs: yuppie executives,
[42:41] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of strange things,
[42:43] Bob Dobbs: which didn't work either.
[42:45] Bob Dobbs: So we saw that in the erosion of the feminist movement.
[42:53] Bob Dobbs: It was called the second wave and it didn't make it.
[42:57] Bob Dobbs: It didn't make it to the 90s.
[42:59] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[42:59] Bob Dobbs: today,
[43:00] Bob Dobbs: Me Too.
[43:01] Bob Dobbs: That's a lot of humiliation and resentment in that.
[43:06] Bob Dobbs: And so these terms that you're pointing out by McLuhan,
[43:10] Bob Dobbs: you see in Kroker,
[43:11] Bob Dobbs: you see in the postmodernists,
[43:12] Bob Dobbs: usually
[43:13] Bob Dobbs: Kroker is an inventory of all the different postmodernist architects.
[43:18] Bob Dobbs: And so you have resentment,
[43:21] Bob Dobbs: disgust,
[43:22] Bob Dobbs: and a bunch of other terms that Kroker sees everywhere,
[43:27] Bob Dobbs: and that is in the 80s and
[43:28] Bob Dobbs: 90s.
[43:29] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan got there first describing it in simple terms,
[43:34] Bob Dobbs: like eroding of values.
[43:38] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[43:39] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[43:41] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't call that first,
[43:42] Cameron McEwen: though.
[43:43] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[43:43] Cameron McEwen: an awful lot of this stuff
[43:45] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche was talking about in the 1880s.
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: He saw the technical ground.
[43:51] Bob Dobbs: That's the problem with a lot of postmodernists.
[43:53] Bob Dobbs: They didn't study McLuhan enough.
[43:55] Bob Dobbs: They thought they were discovering ground.
[44:00] Bob Dobbs: a pattern that was new,
[44:02] Bob Dobbs: but it had been done in a more basic,
[44:05] Bob Dobbs: practical way by McLuhan already.
[44:07] Bob Dobbs: I did an essay.
[44:08] Bob Dobbs: I went through all the major postmodernists and took all their themes from all their books,
[44:12] Bob Dobbs: their main themes,
[44:14] Bob Dobbs: and showed by chapter and verse where McLuhan said it before them.
[44:21] Cameron McEwen: And you just need to look at history to know that none of those supposed
[44:27] Cameron McEwen: answers work.
[44:30] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[44:30] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan understood that himself.
[44:32] Bob Dobbs: He says back in 53,
[44:33] Bob Dobbs: as he's laying out,
[44:35] Bob Dobbs: I think it's in Culture Without Literacy,
[44:37] Bob Dobbs: the first issue of Explorations,
[44:39] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[44:40] Bob Dobbs: we're going to present this program,
[44:42] Bob Dobbs: but it's going to include a lot of self-correction.
[44:47] Bob Dobbs: See,
[44:48] Bob Dobbs: whoever presented a program and allowed it to be a two-way corrective process,
[44:55] Bob Dobbs: a dialogue.
[44:56] Bob Dobbs: Everything in the Gutenberg Galaxy was the one-way song,
[44:59] Bob Dobbs: to quote
[45:00] Bob Dobbs: Wyndham Lewis.
[45:01] Bob Dobbs: You had the solution and he imposed it on everybody.
[45:06] Bob Dobbs: Whereas
[45:08] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was saying,
[45:09] Bob Dobbs: no,
[45:10] Bob Dobbs: we don't have a final literate declarative statement,
[45:17] Bob Dobbs: but we do have a process that requires a cul-de-sac comprehensive understanding of how it will unravel you and also inspire you.
[45:29] Bob Dobbs: Maybe art movements did that,
[45:31] Bob Dobbs: but it was around art objects.
[45:35] Bob Dobbs: Take the Pre-Raphaelites.
[45:37] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan saw that everybody was involved with this process,
[45:40] Bob Dobbs: and they could engage in the participatory-anticipatory detached dialogue that they were being forced to experience anyways with the new memes that were thrown at people or evoked by people.
[45:55] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[45:56] Cameron McEwen: An awful lot of this stuff can be found in I.A.
[46:00] Cameron McEwen: Richards.
[46:01] Cameron McEwen: And
[46:02] Cameron McEwen: I think I.A.
[46:03] Cameron McEwen: Richards...
[46:04] Cameron McEwen: was a continuing important influence on
[46:09] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan. McLuhan was sort of talking about the same thing as Richards,
[46:15] Cameron McEwen: but he saw Richards as being too psychological,
[46:23] Cameron McEwen: too materialistic.
[46:29] Bob Dobbs: And so he would flip over to Levis.
[46:33] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[46:33] Cameron McEwen: But
[46:35] Cameron McEwen: I'm talking about in the
[46:39] Cameron McEwen: 60s, let's say,
[46:40] Cameron McEwen: he was pretty much over Levis,
[46:42] Cameron McEwen: but he wasn't over Richards.
[46:44] Cameron McEwen: So the trajectory I see is in the
[46:49] Cameron McEwen: 30s, he was decidedly Levis versus Richards.
[46:55] Cameron McEwen: And then over the next 30 or 40 years,
[46:58] Cameron McEwen: he becomes less and less Levis and more and more Richards.
[47:02] Bob Dobbs: When was that?
[47:03] Bob Dobbs: What was the name of the essay,
[47:04] Bob Dobbs: Ems?
[47:05] Bob Dobbs: Leavis vs.
[47:06] Bob Dobbs: Richards in the 44 or so.
[47:08] Bob Dobbs: What was that?
[47:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[47:09] Cameron McEwen: that's 44.
[47:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[47:11] Bob Dobbs: Poetic exegesis versus rhetorical exegesis,
[47:14] Bob Dobbs: right?
[47:15] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[47:15] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[47:16] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[47:16] Bob Dobbs: So poetic exegesis was making a world and rhetorical exegesis was what Leavis was doing or Richards was doing?
[47:25] Bob Dobbs: Remember the difference?
[47:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[47:33] Cameron McEwen: I'd have to go back to the essay to look,
[47:34] Cameron McEwen: but if I,
[47:36] Cameron McEwen: off the top of my head,
[47:38] Cameron McEwen: I think he would probably associate Richards with rhetoric.
[47:42] Cameron McEwen: He,
[47:42] Cameron McEwen: in 1935,
[47:47] Cameron McEwen: I think it was,
[47:48] Cameron McEwen: maybe 34,
[47:49] Cameron McEwen: 35,
[47:51] Cameron McEwen: he attended a lecture series of
[47:55] Cameron McEwen: Richards on rhetoric that then became a book.
[48:00] Cameron McEwen: I forget what it's called.
[48:01] Cameron McEwen: called the art of rhetoric or something like this but
[48:05] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was very much taken by Richards lectures and later by his book and later by
[48:17] Cameron McEwen: Richards notion in the
[48:20] Cameron McEwen: 1950s of feed forward which was basically the notion you were just talking about of coming back on oneself
[48:31] Bob Dobbs: Self-correction.
[48:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[48:34] Bob Dobbs: So what is the main theme he gets from Richards that he's still using in the 60s?
[48:39] Bob Dobbs: Feed forward?
[48:41] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[48:42] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[48:43] Cameron McEwen: the main theme from Richards is the complication of language and all that that implies.
[48:50] Cameron McEwen: And so
[48:51] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan basically spent a lifetime gnawing on that question.
[48:58] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[48:59] Bob Dobbs: but he saw it.
[49:01] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[49:01] Bob Dobbs: in that letter to Pound,
[49:04] Bob Dobbs: you guys,
[49:08] Bob Dobbs: Pound and Joyce and them,
[49:09] Bob Dobbs: you understood the role of words and language in the creative process,
[49:14] Bob Dobbs: but I have to deal with the fact that words have become a drug.
[49:17] Bob Dobbs: See,
[49:17] Bob Dobbs: so that's a later phase,
[49:19] Bob Dobbs: a later problem that would make Lee
[49:22] Bob Dobbs: Richards weak in the long run.
[49:25] Bob Dobbs: He'd use them for metaphors,
[49:27] Bob Dobbs: but he had broken into a new territory.
[49:31] Bob Dobbs: of Wyndham Lewis of media anti-environment.
[49:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[49:38] Cameron McEwen: you know that.
[49:38] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[49:40] Cameron McEwen: I get a little nervous when you talk about new territory,
[49:45] Cameron McEwen: advancing beyond,
[49:46] Cameron McEwen: and all that sort of stuff.
[49:47] Cameron McEwen: But
[49:49] Cameron McEwen: I think
[49:50] Cameron McEwen: Levis introduced
[49:52] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan to the idea that the ambiguities of language
[50:00] Cameron McEwen: have a certain grammar to them and that this universal grammar
[50:06] Cameron McEwen: can be applied to almost any problem.
[50:09] Cameron McEwen: The difference with Richards is that McLuhan might be seen as saying,
[50:15] Cameron McEwen: well,
[50:15] Cameron McEwen: let's look at the very center of this dynamic and see what it implies.
[50:23] Cameron McEwen: And for McLuhan,
[50:23] Cameron McEwen: what it implied was a sense of language that wasn't only material as it was for Richards and that
[50:34] Cameron McEwen: implicated religion and implicated a way out of the cul-de-sac.
[50:40] Cameron McEwen: Whereas for Richard,
[50:43] Cameron McEwen: because all language,
[50:46] Cameron McEwen: including the understanding of language,
[50:49] Cameron McEwen: was material and limited,
[50:51] Cameron McEwen: then he never got out of the cul-de-sac.
[50:54] Cameron McEwen: And in fact,
[50:55] Cameron McEwen: he wrote a play,
[50:58] Cameron McEwen: I think it was in 1954,
[51:00] Cameron McEwen: right in the middle 50s anyway.
[51:03] Cameron McEwen: And it was called A Hole in the Universe.
[51:07] Cameron McEwen: And basically it had to do with the flatlining of everything.
[51:12] Bob Dobbs: Interesting.
[51:13] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[51:14] Bob Dobbs: Leavis seems to be influenced by Lewis.
[51:17] Bob Dobbs: Leavis Lewis.
[51:19] Bob Dobbs: What is Richard's influence by Elliot?
[51:23] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[51:24] Cameron McEwen: very much.
[51:25] Cameron McEwen: Elliot and
[51:26] Cameron McEwen: Richard were very good friends.
[51:32] Cameron McEwen: Richards was a determined materialist.
[51:37] Cameron McEwen: And so for a low,
[51:41] Cameron McEwen: he was a great teacher,
[51:43] Cameron McEwen: and McLuhan owed a huge amount to him.
[51:47] Cameron McEwen: At the end of the day,
[51:50] Cameron McEwen: he just couldn't take Richards all that seriously.
[51:55] Cameron McEwen: And the same thing with Elliot Richards,
[51:57] Cameron McEwen: right?
[51:57] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[51:58] Cameron McEwen: So
[52:00] Cameron McEwen: Richards...
[52:02] Cameron McEwen: I think was a seminal figure but he was just so determined a materialist and by the way he was a mountaineer so both
[52:17] Cameron McEwen: he and his wife they climbed many of the highest mountains on earth so you can see this dialectic between reference to the sky and humiliation to the earth
[52:31] Cameron McEwen: taking place in
[52:32] Cameron McEwen: Richards.
[52:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah, so
[52:38] Bob Dobbs: Levis and Lewis would move McLuhan out of the psychological of Richards in the 30s and 40s so he could appreciate
[52:47] Bob Dobbs: Gideon and Innis.
[52:50] Bob Dobbs: But when you get into the late 60s,
[52:52] Bob Dobbs: where the individual is being elevated to or transformed into a...
[53:00] Bob Dobbs: Discarnate super angel,
[53:03] Bob Dobbs: that's what I meant.
[53:04] Bob Dobbs: You start to confront your personal metaphysics,
[53:07] Bob Dobbs: and that might put you back into the psychological again,
[53:10] Bob Dobbs: because you're actually bigger,
[53:13] Bob Dobbs: and you're going around all the mixed corporate media anti-environment,
[53:16] Bob Dobbs: and digital life makes that even more extreme.
[53:19] Bob Dobbs: That might have retrieved Richards for him,
[53:22] Bob Dobbs: if you think of him as psychology.
[53:25] Bob Dobbs: You see what I mean?
[53:27] Bob Dobbs: Seeing the major media in the
[53:29] Bob Dobbs: 30s, 40s,
[53:29] Bob Dobbs: and 50s,
[53:31] Bob Dobbs: the macro anti-environment,
[53:33] Bob Dobbs: Levis and Lewis would seem more relevant,
[53:35] Bob Dobbs: and Elliott would fade off.
[53:38] Bob Dobbs: But it would come back in the
[53:40] Bob Dobbs: 70s as he saw the implosion of what
[53:43] Bob Dobbs: Theo called the co-anesthetic that put everybody in the director's chair.
[53:49] Bob Dobbs: And then that anticipated the digital effect of everybody being the center of everything and broadcasting from their own.
[53:56] Bob Dobbs: discarnate position.
[53:58] Bob Dobbs: I see that as retrieving,
[54:00] Bob Dobbs: at least for literate people or Westerners,
[54:03] Bob Dobbs: the metaphysical and the psychological.
[54:07] Bob Dobbs: And that would then account for the fad of
[54:11] Bob Dobbs: Jung that happened in the 70s and 80s.
[54:13] Bob Dobbs: He got retrieved.
[54:15] Bob Dobbs: And yet,
[54:16] Bob Dobbs: Jung mixes the collective and individual in his psychology.
[54:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[54:24] Cameron McEwen: definitely.
[54:28] Cameron McEwen: I would have to think more about the timeline you're setting out as markers,
[54:35] Cameron McEwen: but it's certainly true that
[54:37] Cameron McEwen: Jung was retrieved.
[54:40] Cameron McEwen: He had been very,
[54:41] Cameron McEwen: very important in the
[54:44] Cameron McEwen: 20s and 30s,
[54:46] Cameron McEwen: and then became important in slightly different ways in the
[54:51] Cameron McEwen: 60s, 70s time period.
[54:55] Cameron McEwen: And
[54:58] Cameron McEwen: Jung is a very interesting form of Kuhn,
[55:04] Cameron McEwen: exactly because of what you mentioned.
[55:06] Cameron McEwen: It is this tension between the individual and the collective.
[55:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[55:11] Cameron McEwen: So when
[55:13] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan writes Ong in 1944 and says that
[55:18] Cameron McEwen: Jung may be more important for the church than Thomas,
[55:22] Cameron McEwen: it's that individual collective tension that he has in mind.
[55:28] Cameron McEwen: And the idea that if the church is going to survive Innis present form,
[55:36] Cameron McEwen: it's going to have to.
[55:39] Cameron McEwen: confront that tension.
[55:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[55:45] Bob Dobbs: and archetypes will be a part of that dialogue.
[55:47] Bob Dobbs: Memes as archetypes.
[55:49] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[55:53] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[55:53] Bob Dobbs: so what in the
[55:56] Bob Dobbs: 90s and 2000s who's retrieved?
[55:59] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche?
[55:59] Cameron McEwen: You mean in culture generally?
[56:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[56:05] Bob Dobbs: in post-modernism,
[56:06] Bob Dobbs: the post-modern era.
[56:09] Bob Dobbs: Is Nietzsche retrieved like Jung was in the 60s and 70s?
[56:14] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[56:15] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche certainly was retrieved sort of a little bit.
[56:22] Cameron McEwen: But,
[56:25] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[56:26] Cameron McEwen: post-modernism is very self-centered,
[56:31] Cameron McEwen: right?
[56:31] Cameron McEwen: It's sort of,
[56:32] Cameron McEwen: it's a kind of juggling act where people are constantly saying,
[56:36] Cameron McEwen: look at me,
[56:37] Cameron McEwen: look at me.
[56:38] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[56:39] Bob Dobbs: and that anticipates the digital world.
[56:42] Bob Dobbs: That's what the trend was.
[56:43] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[56:43] Bob Dobbs: Tom Wolfe's friend of McLuhan,
[56:45] Bob Dobbs: the me decade.
[56:47] Bob Dobbs: There was a shrink.
[56:49] Bob Dobbs: The media anti-environment,
[56:50] Bob Dobbs: which were gigantic through most of the 20th century,
[56:52] Bob Dobbs: were shrinking.
[56:53] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I mean by holeopathic.
[56:55] Bob Dobbs: So that the individual,
[56:58] Bob Dobbs: the sense of a human being,
[57:01] Bob Dobbs: which had senses plus extended senses,
[57:04] Bob Dobbs: was...
[57:05] Bob Dobbs: dominating or swallowing all the media anti-environment.
[57:09] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I meant by the Anthropomorphic Physical coming back.
[57:14] Bob Dobbs: That's what that next level is about.
[57:17] Bob Dobbs: The holy pathoclesial probes lead to people being bigger than media anti-environment as they shrunk.
[57:22] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[57:23] Cameron McEwen: right.
[57:24] Cameron McEwen: And so,
[57:24] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[57:25] Cameron McEwen: if you can,
[57:25] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[57:27] Cameron McEwen: I think of
[57:28] Cameron McEwen: Goya's painting of
[57:32] Cameron McEwen: Saturn eating his children.
[57:34] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if you remember that great picture of the massive Saturn bestriding the Earth and eating people as he goes.
[57:48] Cameron McEwen: So when people think that they're eating and digesting the meat of anti-environment,
[57:59] Cameron McEwen: what they're really doing is destroying themselves,
[58:02] Cameron McEwen: leading to the flatline.
[58:04] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[58:05] Cameron McEwen: So
[58:06] Cameron McEwen: I take it that that's what your vertical line is saying in the last three levels there.
[58:13] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[58:14] Bob Dobbs: and it's also the media are eating themselves as well as...
[58:20] Bob Dobbs: You see,
[58:20] Bob Dobbs: he says in
[58:23] Bob Dobbs: Explorations in the 50s somewhere that the printing press made nature,
[58:29] Bob Dobbs: and that includes humans,
[58:31] Bob Dobbs: as its content.
[58:32] Bob Dobbs: So the industrial progressive mandate came in of processing the earth.
[58:36] Bob Dobbs: So the image of Goya's painting of a monster eating humans,
[58:42] Bob Dobbs: that's the Gutenberg Galaxy.
[58:45] Bob Dobbs: When you get into the 20th century and the electric media,
[58:48] Bob Dobbs: the media swallow other media.
[58:52] Bob Dobbs: And McComb called it a civil war and print sat on the sidelines.
[58:56] Bob Dobbs: So the Andromeda is eating each of its parts.
[59:00] Bob Dobbs: And that's partly what I'm showing here.
[59:03] Bob Dobbs: So the Gorgon,
[59:05] Bob Dobbs: well,
[59:06] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[59:07] Bob Dobbs: the Gorgon,
[59:07] Bob Dobbs: the monster,
[59:09] Bob Dobbs: to update
[59:12] Bob Dobbs: Goya is an image of,
[59:22] Bob Dobbs: say,
[59:23] Bob Dobbs: the movie Exorcism.
[59:25] Bob Dobbs: And
[59:25] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said that was a great,
[59:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[59:28] Bob Dobbs: popular,
[59:29] Bob Dobbs: got a great reception.
[59:30] Bob Dobbs: because it expressed how people were possessed by media anti-environment.
[59:35] Bob Dobbs: So that began with the printing press and extremists,
[59:39] Bob Dobbs: but then the media anti-environment themselves were swallowed and redigested and spit out again,
[59:47] Bob Dobbs: recycled in the,
[59:50] Bob Dobbs: say,
[59:50] Bob Dobbs: latter half of the 20th century,
[59:53] Bob Dobbs: once you have the anti-environment.
[59:56] Cameron McEwen: This is by each other,
[59:58] Cameron McEwen: right?
[59:58] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[59:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:00:00] Cameron McEwen: The media eating,
[1:00:01] Cameron McEwen: swallowing,
[1:00:02] Cameron McEwen: spitting out,
[1:00:03] Cameron McEwen: et cetera.
[1:00:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:00:05] Cameron McEwen: So what's interesting to me here is if this is taken in a synesthetic.
[1:00:12] Cameron McEwen: a synchronic sense rather than a diachronic sense,
[1:00:17] Cameron McEwen: that is to say in the all at once or the big now sense.
[1:00:23] Cameron McEwen: So this dynamic of the media themselves is something that is always going on.
[1:00:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:00:31] Cameron McEwen: And the eating of each other is something that
[1:00:39] Cameron McEwen: is already described by Plato.
[1:00:42] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: Plato says that the dynamic of history is what he called the gigantomachia.
[1:00:49] Cameron McEwen: And the machia in
[1:00:53] Cameron McEwen: Greek is battle,
[1:00:56] Cameron McEwen: B-A-T-T-L-E.
[1:00:57] Cameron McEwen: And so the great,
[1:01:00] Cameron McEwen: the gigantic battle that is the meaning of being,
[1:01:05] Cameron McEwen: you could say,
[1:01:08] Cameron McEwen: is
[1:01:09] Cameron McEwen: Always going on,
[1:01:11] Cameron McEwen: says Plato.
[1:01:12] Cameron McEwen: And the two of the great giants that are at war,
[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: namely the gods in the sky versus the titans of the earth,
[1:01:26] Cameron McEwen: those two are trying to reduce each other to nothing.
[1:01:32] Cameron McEwen: They're trying to take over everything.
[1:01:35] Cameron McEwen: They're trying to eat the other,
[1:01:36] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[1:01:37] Cameron McEwen: But the third member...
[1:01:39] Cameron McEwen: of this peculiar battle is the child.
[1:01:43] Cameron McEwen: And what the child sees is that both are necessary even in order to have the battle.
[1:01:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:01:51] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:01:51] Cameron McEwen: So the meaning of life is a three-fold contest between two powers that are trying to eat each other and a third power that embraces those two.
[1:02:03] Cameron McEwen: And a third power can never be alone by itself as if it were the truth.
[1:02:09] Cameron McEwen: Because it is the belonging together of those two gigantic antagonistic powers,
[1:02:19] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:02:20] Cameron McEwen: And the two gigantic antagonistic powers can also never be alone because the power that they're trying to eat is as powerful as it is,
[1:02:32] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:02:32] Cameron McEwen: So you have this image already in Plato and
[1:02:37] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle understood it as...
[1:02:40] Cameron McEwen: Plato's greatest student.
[1:02:44] Cameron McEwen: Already in Plato,
[1:02:46] Cameron McEwen: you have this image of the dynamic of life between this threefold process.
[1:02:53] Cameron McEwen: And my reading of McLuhan is that he is a kind of revitalization of this ancient image,
[1:03:04] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:03:05] Cameron McEwen: In his uh
[1:03:08] Cameron McEwen: writings in
[1:03:09] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, he keeps talking about the ancient quarrel.
[1:03:17] Cameron McEwen: And the ancient quarrel is usually seen by him in terms of a threefold.
[1:03:22] Cameron McEwen: So it can be the trivium,
[1:03:24] Cameron McEwen: or it can be different types of art,
[1:03:28] Cameron McEwen: different types of criticism.
[1:03:31] Cameron McEwen: But at the end of the day,
[1:03:33] Cameron McEwen: it's always a complex where you need to understand
[1:03:38] Cameron McEwen: the integrity,
[1:03:39] Cameron McEwen: as you always say,
[1:03:40] Cameron McEwen: but the integrity is not something aside from the unintegrated powers.
[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: Did you say unintegrated?
[1:03:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:03:54] Cameron McEwen: the integrated is somehow able to relate itself to that which is unintegrated.
[1:04:02] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:04:03] Cameron McEwen: That's the trick.
[1:04:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:04:05] Bob Dobbs: and what you're saying is what I meant by
[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: Shem, Sean,
[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: and Issy,
[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: Issy being the child and then the older brothers.
[1:04:12] Bob Dobbs: So you have this fight.
[1:04:14] Cameron McEwen: That's the top of the chart.
[1:04:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:04:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:04:16] Bob Dobbs: You have the actors acting out this process,
[1:04:19] Bob Dobbs: cultural enemy versus weaponry versus sociological,
[1:04:23] Bob Dobbs: psychological lag.
[1:04:28] Bob Dobbs: So.
[1:04:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:04:29] Cameron McEwen: I can see that.
[1:04:30] Cameron McEwen: That's cool.
[1:04:31] Cameron McEwen: You've got a lot built into these things which people have to chew on these things.
[1:04:44] Cameron McEwen: And if what they want to do is sort of look at them and get some sort of schema for understanding,
[1:04:54] Cameron McEwen: they're not going to get it because each one of these things is like an hors d'oeuvre.
[1:05:02] Cameron McEwen: And if you eat
[1:05:05] Cameron McEwen: 50 hors d'oeuvres,
[1:05:07] Cameron McEwen: you're not going to get the taste of any one.
[1:05:11] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[1:05:13] Bob Dobbs: So we come to this thing,
[1:05:15] Bob Dobbs: what the heck does lockdown Bob Rule mean?
[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: I made this notion in 95.
[1:05:25] Bob Dobbs: Here it is 25 years later.
[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:05:28] Bob Dobbs: 25 years later.
[1:05:32] Bob Dobbs: Incredible implosions and bifurcations have happened.
[1:05:39] Bob Dobbs: We're into the flatline.
[1:05:44] Bob Dobbs: I thought that because I was at the Center of Culture and Technology and had taken over the mantle of McLuhan,
[1:05:51] Bob Dobbs: at least he made me feel that way once I thought I understood him.
[1:05:56] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: He empowers one if you can master his process,
[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: his pattern recognition.
[1:06:10] Bob Dobbs: methodology.
[1:06:11] Bob Dobbs: So now what happened is it came true.
[1:06:18] Bob Dobbs: And this is a something that's recognized by well-known people,
[1:06:27] Bob Dobbs: but not by the average citizen.
[1:06:29] Bob Dobbs: And where I am today.
[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:06:33] Bob Dobbs: you find it interesting the way
[1:06:35] Bob Dobbs: I'm presenting the book as a way of looking at Trump.
[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: guess what?
[1:06:39] Bob Dobbs: Trump is now
[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: in regular talks with me about what the heck my charts mean.
[1:06:45] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that incredible?
[1:06:47] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:06:47] Cameron McEwen: it is incredible in many senses of incredible.
[1:06:51] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:06:51] Bob Dobbs: and it's all classified until today.
[1:07:00] Bob Dobbs: What's today?
[1:07:01] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:07:01] Bob Dobbs: still the 20th.
[1:07:04] Bob Dobbs: For me,
[1:07:05] Bob Dobbs: the conversations with the president are generally classified.
[1:07:09] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:07:10] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what it means now.
[1:07:12] Bob Dobbs: He's not president anymore.
[1:07:14] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,
[1:07:16] Bob Dobbs: that is a personal surprise that happened to me from 1990 to 2020.
[1:07:23] Bob Dobbs: I thought I was in a position of,
[1:07:26] Bob Dobbs: as we have with the first quote,
[1:07:29] Bob Dobbs: superiority in relation to media.
[1:07:32] Bob Dobbs: Superiority complex.
[1:07:34] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:07:35] Bob Dobbs: in the first quote,
[1:07:36] Bob Dobbs: you have to have an arrogance to media.
[1:07:38] Bob Dobbs: So I had that,
[1:07:39] Bob Dobbs: and I would express it in many ways in media and radio interviews and everything all these years.
[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: But back then,
[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: I meant,
[1:07:55] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure what I meant,
[1:07:57] Bob Dobbs: because I had myself as president.
[1:08:00] Bob Dobbs: I think I was thinking that everybody would be forced to be in that position.
[1:08:05] Bob Dobbs: As more and more anti-environment and technologies were absorbed,
[1:08:08] Bob Dobbs: you'd be standing there as something and you weren't sure how human you were.
[1:08:15] Bob Dobbs: So it would become a discussion in yourself about what are you Anthropomorphic Physical,
[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: okay?
[1:08:23] Bob Dobbs: How much do you project images of human from different past,
[1:08:27] Bob Dobbs: different cultures?
[1:08:29] Bob Dobbs: Innis everything's disappeared situation,
[1:08:33] Bob Dobbs: and I'm looking at memes.
[1:08:36] Bob Dobbs: memes become the enemy under shim and they're fighting against the monster of terrorism dirty bombs and things up against whatever meme became popular for a while in
[1:08:54] Bob Dobbs: government or culture in terrorism so there's this i think let me just
[1:09:04] Cameron McEwen: interject here to see if I'm following.
[1:09:08] Cameron McEwen: What I hear you saying is something like you were taking over
[1:09:17] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan way of interrogating things and you began to think of this way of interrogation as being a kind of archetype.
[1:09:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:09:33] Cameron McEwen: And so by calling this archetype
[1:09:38] Cameron McEwen: Bob, you were not inflating yourself,
[1:09:44] Cameron McEwen: your chemical body to be the meaning of everything.
[1:09:47] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:09:48] Cameron McEwen: What you were doing is you were saying that everybody in a certain way is Bob if they understand the archetype of interrogation.
[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:10:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan liked to quote that
[1:10:06] Bob Dobbs: Rabelais saying,
[1:10:07] Bob Dobbs: he demanded everybody...
[1:10:09] Bob Dobbs: To put down his plow,
[1:10:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:10:11] Bob Dobbs: this is in the
[1:10:12] Bob Dobbs: 1500s or something,
[1:10:13] Bob Dobbs: put down his plow and read his books.
[1:10:16] Bob Dobbs: You remember that quote?
[1:10:18] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:10:19] Bob Dobbs: Which might be partly a Maritain thing,
[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: but the title,
[1:10:24] Bob Dobbs: Center for Culture and Technology.
[1:10:27] Bob Dobbs: What a megalomaniac statement.
[1:10:31] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if people realized that when they would go and look up...
[1:10:37] Bob Dobbs: the Center for Culture and Technology.
[1:10:41] Bob Dobbs: They probably felt that he was putting on,
[1:10:43] Bob Dobbs: or it was pretty central what he was doing,
[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: but they didn't probably get the humor to put on part of it,
[1:10:51] Bob Dobbs: and actually the complementary accuracy of it.
[1:10:55] Bob Dobbs: And so you have that quote in that book by the British guy in the late 60s where McLuhan says,
[1:11:00] Bob Dobbs: I'm the only one who knows what's going on.
[1:11:03] Bob Dobbs: I think that,
[1:11:04] Bob Dobbs: and he would add to that.
[1:11:06] Bob Dobbs: that he had the guts to pretend he knew what was going on.
[1:11:09] Bob Dobbs: And he saw all the discipline and all the experts.
[1:11:11] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have that arrogance.
[1:11:12] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have that put on.
[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: And they were weak,
[1:11:16] Bob Dobbs: anemic.
[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: You remember that quote?
[1:11:19] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[1:11:19] Bob Dobbs: they don't even pretend to know what's happening.
[1:11:22] Bob Dobbs: He pretended to know what was happening.
[1:11:24] Bob Dobbs: And he came up with a pretty good pretense that sounded pretty real for a lot of people.
[1:11:30] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:11:30] Cameron McEwen: So the pretend,
[1:11:34] Cameron McEwen: the pretend.
[1:11:35] Cameron McEwen: there might be understood as a mask.
[1:11:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:11:39] Cameron McEwen: And he could be saying that people need to put on this same mask whereby they will understand how
[1:11:55] Cameron McEwen: to interrogate each other,
[1:11:58] Cameron McEwen: how to interrogate themselves,
[1:12:00] Cameron McEwen: how to interrogate their fate,
[1:12:03] Cameron McEwen: and this mutual...
[1:12:04] Cameron McEwen: This interrogation enabled by this mask is our only way forward.
[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: And,
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: he had that phrase exploring ignorance for discovery.
[1:12:16] Bob Dobbs: But the other thing is in the review of William Burroughs and Burroughs was a major challenger to McLuhan in the creative writing world or the put on world of who knows what's going on.
[1:12:35] Bob Dobbs: So in it,
[1:12:35] Bob Dobbs: he talks about LSD gives you consumer dreams,
[1:12:39] Bob Dobbs: but heroin allows you to put on the whole universe.
[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: So we've gone towards a media that are heroin in the way they inflate people,
[1:12:50] Bob Dobbs: where they put on many universes now,
[1:12:53] Bob Dobbs: or many images of different realms,
[1:12:56] Bob Dobbs: while maybe being an indifferent conductor of imagery.
[1:13:02] Bob Dobbs: There's so much imagery that goes along.
[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: which was the LSD dream.
[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: You have super eating,
[1:13:10] Bob Dobbs: digestion of images rapidly coming at you or incredibly slowing down,
[1:13:17] Bob Dobbs: depending.
[1:13:17] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:13:19] Bob Dobbs: I think it was pretty amazing insight.
[1:13:22] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan figured out the meaning of each drug's effect and then saw,
[1:13:28] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:13:28] Bob Dobbs: he didn't state it,
[1:13:29] Bob Dobbs: but you could see how it applied to media.
[1:13:31] Bob Dobbs: So consumerism.
[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: of the black mirror today is people having a super LSD experience.
[1:13:42] Bob Dobbs: They're contemplating the endless distraction of content that they can get on their smartphones,
[1:13:52] Bob Dobbs: but they tend not to be a broadcaster,
[1:13:55] Bob Dobbs: not in the sense of being centered for culture and technology.
[1:13:58] Bob Dobbs: They'll broadcast on their
[1:13:59] Bob Dobbs: Facebook page or within forums and small groups.
[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: echo chambers,
[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: they call them.
[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: But the larger inflation of oneself,
[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: like heroin supposedly does,
[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: where you put on the whole universe,
[1:14:17] Bob Dobbs: those people go into politics.
[1:14:19] Bob Dobbs: So Trump is a major,
[1:14:21] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:14:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:14:22] Bob Dobbs: heroin addict,
[1:14:24] Bob Dobbs: super inflated and puts on everything rather than being a good consumer,
[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: though he would,
[1:14:33] Bob Dobbs: they said at night.
[1:14:34] Bob Dobbs: would watch all the TV talk shows all night long.
[1:14:39] Bob Dobbs: So we have a mixture of both,
[1:14:42] Bob Dobbs: actually,
[1:14:42] Bob Dobbs: for the millennials and younger.
[1:14:46] Bob Dobbs: But as the media,
[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: as we get into
[1:14:51] Bob Dobbs: Web 1.0,
[1:14:53] Bob Dobbs: that hyped up the co-anesthetic and the heroin experience more than the LSD experience.
[1:15:03] Bob Dobbs: That became the popular image of the hacker or the computer nerd.
[1:15:08] Bob Dobbs: He's there eating junk food and stoned on something while making code.
[1:15:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:15:20] Bob Dobbs: That's someone who's become what they beheld.
[1:15:24] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:15:25] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:15:26] Cameron McEwen: So the you're talking about the inflation and psychological decentralization of
[1:15:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, you could say,
[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: or not so much McLuhan,
[1:15:41] Cameron McEwen: but of the type of interrogation that McLuhan was.
[1:15:46] Cameron McEwen: trying to define and trying to practice.
[1:15:48] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:15:50] Cameron McEwen: And you could say that that psychological decentralization was naturally at war with other types of psychological decentralization,
[1:16:03] Cameron McEwen: and that would take us back to the
[1:16:05] Cameron McEwen: Giganto Machia that I was talking about from Plato.
[1:16:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:16:09] Cameron McEwen: But what I'd like to do at this point,
[1:16:14] Cameron McEwen: instead of going in that direction,
[1:16:16] Cameron McEwen: I'd like to point out that the interesting thing about McLuhan is that he never lost his sense of his own absurdity.
[1:16:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:16:27] Cameron McEwen: Of himself having a smell and having,
[1:16:30] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:16:32] Cameron McEwen: worn out clothes and worn out cliches and all of this sort of stuff.
[1:16:37] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:16:38] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[1:16:39] Cameron McEwen: in the essay that I was quoting from before,
[1:16:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talks about,
[1:16:44] Cameron McEwen: quote,
[1:16:45] Cameron McEwen: The vast reservoir of failures past and future to come,
[1:16:51] Cameron McEwen: it is this great Saragossa sea of forlorn endeavors to which we are now in the process of assigning ourselves.
[1:17:01] Cameron McEwen: So he has a tremendous sense of both his importance and his insight and of his stupidity and absurdity.
[1:17:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:17:14] Bob Dobbs: and he expresses this.
[1:17:15] Bob Dobbs: in the
[1:17:16] Bob Dobbs: 50s, he talks about
[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: Baudelaire, who had a hebdominal,
[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: or every seven days,
[1:17:24] Bob Dobbs: seminar in his life,
[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: wherever it was in Paris.
[1:17:28] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says he approached the existence of his time with great humility.
[1:17:37] Bob Dobbs: Remember that phrase?
[1:17:39] Bob Dobbs: I don't think it was humiliation.
[1:17:41] Cameron McEwen: I don't remember it,
[1:17:42] Cameron McEwen: but it sounds right.
[1:17:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: it's in one of his essays,
[1:17:45] Bob Dobbs: the great humility of Baudelaire confronting anti-environment.
[1:17:48] Bob Dobbs: And that's what you were just saying about McLuhan.
[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:17:52] Cameron McEwen: But not only confronting anti-environment,
[1:17:54] Cameron McEwen: confronting himself.
[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: And this is what everybody missed.
[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: Maybe they would project this because they were that way.
[1:18:04] Bob Dobbs: They were biased.
[1:18:05] Bob Dobbs: But people were intimidated by what appeared to be McLuhan huge ego.
[1:18:11] Bob Dobbs: But if you...
[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: hung out with him,
[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: you'd see the humility in what you're describing and the sense of the absurd and the forlorn lost condition of everybody.
[1:18:24] Bob Dobbs: You had to mingle with him to see both parts,
[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: So you wouldn't get thrown by what a lot of people thought he was a crazy megalomaniac like Wyndham Lewis or something.
[1:18:38] Bob Dobbs: And you can see Finnegans Wake.
[1:18:42] Bob Dobbs: Say that again?
[1:18:43] Cameron McEwen: I say you can see that in somebody like Carl Sharpe,
[1:18:47] Cameron McEwen: that what he wasn't,
[1:18:51] Cameron McEwen: although he had a good understanding of McLuhan,
[1:18:55] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[1:18:56] Cameron McEwen: and had sort of the desire to follow McLuhan,
[1:19:04] Cameron McEwen: he did so by going into social work,
[1:19:07] Cameron McEwen: not by going into metaphysical thinking.
[1:19:13] Cameron McEwen: into media ecology.
[1:19:16] Bob Dobbs: Who is this?
[1:19:18] Cameron McEwen: Carl Scharfe.
[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:19:21] Bob Dobbs: Carl Scharfe.
[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: S-C-H-A-R-F-E,
[1:19:27] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:19:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:19:28] Cameron McEwen: that's a German word,
[1:19:30] Cameron McEwen: Scharfe.
[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: we all...
[1:19:31] Cameron McEwen: I don't know how he pronounced it.
[1:19:33] Cameron McEwen: Did he pronounce it Scharfe?
[1:19:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:19:34] Bob Dobbs: he was always...
[1:19:35] Bob Dobbs: He was Carl Scharfe.
[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: That's what everybody said.
[1:19:40] Cameron McEwen: All right,
[1:19:40] Cameron McEwen: good.
[1:19:41] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:19:41] Bob Dobbs: hi.
[1:19:42] Bob Dobbs: Did you meet him?
[1:19:44] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:19:44] Cameron McEwen: but I read all sorts of stuff in the
[1:19:50] Cameron McEwen: Innis Herald.
[1:19:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:19:53] Bob Dobbs: Carl Scarf was,
[1:19:54] Bob Dobbs: he was this almost homeless guy.
[1:19:56] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:19:57] Bob Dobbs: he would be around with the same clothes,
[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: didn't have much money,
[1:20:02] Bob Dobbs: and he edited the anti-abortion.
[1:20:07] Bob Dobbs: Catholic newsletter or something that Eric's wife was on,
[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: the staff also.
[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: And he would,
[1:20:15] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:20:15] Bob Dobbs: he would...
[1:20:17] Bob Dobbs: I often walked home from the Monday night seminars with him or walked in the same direction.
[1:20:22] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: I was living with a woman who we could afford really good,
[1:20:27] Bob Dobbs: organic,
[1:20:28] Bob Dobbs: healthy food.
[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: But Carl,
[1:20:31] Bob Dobbs: we always stopped off and he'd go in to get his supper,
[1:20:35] Bob Dobbs: which would be a McDonald's hamburger.
[1:20:38] Bob Dobbs: And I thought,
[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: this guy is going to get unhealthy.
[1:20:42] Bob Dobbs: But he didn't have the money.
[1:20:44] Bob Dobbs: But he was very devoted to
[1:20:46] Bob Dobbs: Mediacology and he became very close to the McLuhan family.
[1:20:51] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:20:54] Cameron McEwen: And died young from his habits,
[1:20:56] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:20:57] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:20:57] Bob Dobbs: And he and Wayne Constantino both died young.
[1:21:00] Bob Dobbs: And they were similar in their lifestyles.
[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: What was it,
[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: Carl?
[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: He used to he would come up to me sometimes in the center and he'd stand too close to you.
[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: He'd be like an Arab.
[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: Remember,
[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: they have to be like eight inches or something from you.
[1:21:18] Bob Dobbs: And he would get up real close to your face and interrogate you about something.
[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: I would just keep my cool and let the guy be that close.
[1:21:27] Bob Dobbs: But it was kind of funny what he did.
[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: I think he did it intentionally.
[1:21:32] Bob Dobbs: He had read enough Edward Hall or whatever his name is,
[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: the hidden language to do that.
[1:21:39] Bob Dobbs: So he was...
[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: He was an artist,
[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: a painter,
[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: cartoonist.
[1:21:44] Bob Dobbs: So in that sense,
[1:21:46] Bob Dobbs: he was aggressive like Wyndham Lewis.
[1:21:49] Bob Dobbs: He had a Wyndham Lewis aspect to him.
[1:21:53] Bob Dobbs: But it's interesting,
[1:21:55] Bob Dobbs: you know of him just from the Innis Herald.
[1:22:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:22:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:22:02] Bob Dobbs: like he was the student at the college.
[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: He somehow got the job of editing it and steering it into a lot of McLuhan articles.
[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: in the late 70s and the school didn't seem to mind it.
[1:22:17] Bob Dobbs: He hijacked the paper.
[1:22:19] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:22:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:22:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:22:22] Cameron McEwen: Some of his articles and interviews basically were the whole issue.
[1:22:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:22:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:22:31] Bob Dobbs: He had found a medium to put on Toronto with.
[1:22:35] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:22:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:22:37] Bob Dobbs: So the...
[1:22:39] Bob Dobbs: So we talked about the drugs.
[1:22:43] Bob Dobbs: What is it about,
[1:22:44] Bob Dobbs: Carl?
[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: We were talking about Marshall combining megalomania or super arrogance with humility,
[1:22:53] Bob Dobbs: which was our case.
[1:22:54] Bob Dobbs: That's your individual versus the collective.
[1:22:57] Bob Dobbs: The individual more and more.
[1:22:59] Cameron McEwen: But the whole point is to focus on the tension.
[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:23:04] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:23:05] Cameron McEwen: So the tension can vary from extreme.
[1:23:08] Cameron McEwen: extremely explosive to different but integrated.
[1:23:15] Cameron McEwen: And the whole
[1:23:16] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan technique that you're talking about is how to go from the explosive and implosive tension to the integrated tension.
[1:23:30] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:23:30] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:23:30] Bob Dobbs: Derek emphasized,
[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: Derrick de Kerckhove,
[1:23:33] Bob Dobbs: that the individual versus the collective comes in with literacy.
[1:23:36] Bob Dobbs: So he would talk about...
[1:23:39] Bob Dobbs: the newly littered individual up against the collective,
[1:23:42] Bob Dobbs: so he'd replay McLuhan,
[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: but he saw the printing press exaggerated that.
[1:23:48] Bob Dobbs: But then I would say,
[1:23:50] Bob Dobbs: once you get to the telegraph,
[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: or at least movies and radios in the first half of the 20th century,
[1:23:55] Bob Dobbs: that's a battle between collectivities,
[1:23:58] Bob Dobbs: or what Marshall called the archetypes of the collective unconscious,
[1:24:01] Bob Dobbs: or the media unconscious.
[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: But what surprised people was the digital flipped into...
[1:24:08] Bob Dobbs: retrieving the super angelic individual against media collectivity.
[1:24:14] Bob Dobbs: So it retrieves the individual versus collective from the Gutenberg,
[1:24:19] Bob Dobbs: Alzi,
[1:24:19] Bob Dobbs: and back.
[1:24:21] Bob Dobbs: But it's a whole new level of ethereal,
[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: virtual engaging of anti-environment you can't see anymore.
[1:24:29] Bob Dobbs: You're in your phone,
[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: so they're meme or memetic.
[1:24:33] Bob Dobbs: You're fighting memes.
[1:24:34] Bob Dobbs: And I have that,
[1:24:35] Bob Dobbs: the holeopathic cliche probes versus the satellite or air ground,
[1:24:42] Bob Dobbs: the discarnate angelic,
[1:24:43] Bob Dobbs: the satellite and laser beam.
[1:24:45] Bob Dobbs: And we now have a major issue with narcissism.
[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: You've seen that's a new fad in diagnosis of public nuisances.
[1:24:56] Bob Dobbs: Have you noticed that?
[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:24:58] Cameron McEwen: I haven't noticed it.
[1:25:02] Cameron McEwen: but it's impossible to miss the fact.
[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: So that's partly,
[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: what I meant by me.
[1:25:11] Bob Dobbs: I'd be subject to the same stresses that everybody would be.
[1:25:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:25:20] Cameron McEwen: that's what I understand.
[1:25:25] Cameron McEwen: You aren't the archetype,
[1:25:27] Cameron McEwen: but the archetype can be called you.
[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:25:30] Bob Dobbs: and then out of it came the book,
[1:25:34] Bob Dobbs: The Church of the SubGenius,
[1:25:35] Bob Dobbs: 1983,
[1:25:37] Bob Dobbs: The Book of the SubGenius,
[1:25:39] Bob Dobbs: and they featured the archetype J.R.
[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: Bob Dobbs,
[1:25:43] Bob Dobbs: who they show in cartoons.
[1:25:47] Bob Dobbs: scenarios in the book,
[1:25:48] Bob Dobbs: all through history,
[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: he's always there.
[1:25:50] Bob Dobbs: He's back there with Moses,
[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: he's there with
[1:25:53] Bob Dobbs: Napoleon, you know,
[1:25:54] Bob Dobbs: name anybody,
[1:25:55] Bob Dobbs: he's there.
[1:25:56] Bob Dobbs: He's the archetype.
[1:25:58] Bob Dobbs: And the cartoon image was based on my father.
[1:26:04] Bob Dobbs: And so you'll see the spitting image.
[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: So a curious synchronicity with leading avant-garde artists,
[1:26:13] Bob Dobbs: which gathers around the church SubGenius,
[1:26:17] Bob Dobbs: I call that Xenochrony.
[1:26:19] Bob Dobbs: That's what's going to be,
[1:26:20] Bob Dobbs: that's a title on the chart,
[1:26:21] Bob Dobbs: so I'm leading into the chart here,
[1:26:23] Bob Dobbs: the tiny note chart.
[1:26:24] Bob Dobbs: Xenochrony was Frank Zappa's term for he would take,
[1:26:31] Bob Dobbs: he recorded all his concerts and everything.
[1:26:34] Bob Dobbs: So he'd take a guitar solo from one song,
[1:26:36] Bob Dobbs: one concert,
[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: and then take some drum stuff or a bass or horns from another song at a different time.
[1:26:45] Bob Dobbs: Totally not to be relatable.
[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: That would be the supposition.
[1:26:51] Bob Dobbs: And then he put them together,
[1:26:53] Bob Dobbs: and he would want them to stay separate and dissonant,
[1:27:00] Bob Dobbs: but they often merged or synced up.
[1:27:03] Bob Dobbs: So that was strange synchronization.
[1:27:05] Bob Dobbs: So that's Zeno.
[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: So he came up with the word xenochrony,
[1:27:09] Bob Dobbs: and so then I applied it to my own media life where many times...
[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: people would say,
[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: you've talked about this and that,
[1:27:19] Bob Dobbs: and that's in that movie,
[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: Bob.
[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: That movie's about you.
[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't go around looking for movies about me,
[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: but I'm told by others,
[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: so they see it.
[1:27:31] Bob Dobbs: So I had a public synchronization or synchronicity going on,
[1:27:37] Bob Dobbs: which I used as called xenochrony,
[1:27:40] Bob Dobbs: whereas many people often today...
[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: and they report to you and me and everybody,
[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: they have synchronicities all the time,
[1:27:48] Bob Dobbs: more and more because of the nature of,
[1:27:50] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[1:27:51] Bob Dobbs: our media situation.
[1:27:53] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:27:54] Bob Dobbs: I said,
[1:27:55] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:27:56] Bob Dobbs: you've got a lot of synchronicity,
[1:27:57] Bob Dobbs: but you don't have xenochrony,
[1:27:59] Bob Dobbs: strange synchronization,
[1:28:00] Bob Dobbs: which I have because I've talked about it in public for years.
[1:28:03] Bob Dobbs: People know the concept from me,
[1:28:05] Bob Dobbs: adapted from Zappa,
[1:28:07] Bob Dobbs: and they will point out where they see examples of my synchronicity.
[1:28:12] Bob Dobbs: that I didn't even know about.
[1:28:14] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?
[1:28:15] Bob Dobbs: And that is a key part of the tiny note chart,
[1:28:19] Bob Dobbs: which we can start,
[1:28:21] Bob Dobbs: depending on how much time you have,
[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: we can start going into.
[1:28:25] Bob Dobbs: But that's a key factor in the me phenomenon.
[1:28:30] Cameron McEwen: That's a question I wanted to ask you.
[1:28:34] Cameron McEwen: You said,
[1:28:36] Cameron McEwen: you used the word me many times in your discussion there.
[1:28:42] Cameron McEwen: where you were talking about movies about me or movies with me and people seeing me in different things.
[1:28:55] Cameron McEwen: So before we talked about
[1:28:58] Cameron McEwen: Bob as the archetype of investigation or interrogation.
[1:29:06] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:29:08] Cameron McEwen: And we talked about the importance of humility and of knowing one's self-absurdity.
[1:29:16] Cameron McEwen: So when you use the word me,
[1:29:19] Cameron McEwen: how does that relate to the discussion of the archetypal you and the absurd you?
[1:29:28] Bob Dobbs: That's in the word media.
[1:29:34] Bob Dobbs: That's media.
[1:29:36] Cameron McEwen: And how do you understand?
[1:29:37] Cameron McEwen: Me,
[1:29:38] Cameron McEwen: Diane.
[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: That,
[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan would say,
[1:29:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:29:42] Bob Dobbs: on the frontier in the old westerns,
[1:29:45] Bob Dobbs: you had to forge a new identity every day because there was,
[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[1:29:49] Bob Dobbs: less continuity of a town or a city,
[1:29:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:29:55] Bob Dobbs: there wasn't a anti-environment.
[1:29:57] Cameron McEwen: That's like Bob as the archetype of interrogation.
[1:30:03] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:30:04] Bob Dobbs: So you have to forge a new identity,
[1:30:06] Bob Dobbs: or you're forced to by everybody else forging new identities every day.
[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: So you die every day.
[1:30:13] Bob Dobbs: And Bob Dylan,
[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: his Malinowski songs,
[1:30:17] Bob Dobbs: he tapped into this as a young poet.
[1:30:18] Bob Dobbs: He described it a lot in his middle songs,
[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: or middle 60s songs.
[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: Do you know that he said in 1985,
[1:30:25] Bob Dobbs: if you want to understand the
[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: 60s, you read Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan.
[1:30:31] Bob Dobbs: And that's pretty perceptive by a guy who was ravaged by a fame that threw him for a loop.
[1:30:38] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:30:41] Bob Dobbs: He somehow later...
[1:30:43] Bob Dobbs: figured out that McLuhan was a good guide to surviving what he went through in his fame level and certainly would like to have a discussion with him about it sometime.
[1:30:57] Bob Dobbs: Because
[1:30:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: there's Peter Gabriel,
[1:30:59] Bob Dobbs: there's a couple of artists who mention McLuhan in their lyrics,
[1:31:05] Bob Dobbs: but they don't say McLuhan is a guide to the incipient tumultuous.
[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: of the
[1:31:12] Bob Dobbs: 60s. You know what I mean?
[1:31:14] Bob Dobbs: That's a pretty perceptive statement from a pop star or a celebrity.
[1:31:19] Bob Dobbs: Another character is Jack Nicholson.
[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: He,
[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: in an interview in the early
[1:31:24] Bob Dobbs: 70s, said when he read McLuhan about cliché,
[1:31:28] Bob Dobbs: maybe he read from Cliché to archetype,
[1:31:29] Bob Dobbs: but he said that really crystallized whatever he thought he was doing as an actor.
[1:31:35] Bob Dobbs: He figured out how to act through McLuhan notion of cliché.
[1:31:40] Bob Dobbs: And then Mary McLuhan knew Jack Dickinson and
[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: Warren Beatty in the mid-80s at a place.
[1:31:49] Bob Dobbs: That guy I told you,
[1:31:50] Bob Dobbs: David Greenberg,
[1:31:52] Bob Dobbs: who was the last McLuhan to bring McLuhan to L.A.,
[1:31:55] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: he ran an artist hangout place in Los Angeles.
[1:32:02] Bob Dobbs: And so Mary was a friend of David and would go there,
[1:32:06] Bob Dobbs: and that's how she met.
[1:32:08] Bob Dobbs: Nicholson and Beatty,
[1:32:09] Bob Dobbs: but they would go to the beach often and read
[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: Understanding Media to each other,
[1:32:18] Bob Dobbs: Understanding Media.
[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: I always thought that was in there,
[1:32:23] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:32:24] Bob Dobbs: media,
[1:32:24] Bob Dobbs: media.
[1:32:26] Bob Dobbs: And Ted Carpenter marries the DIA Foundation,
[1:32:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:32:31] Bob Dobbs: the major art institution in New York,
[1:32:33] Bob Dobbs: DIA.
[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: was created by his wife's family.
[1:32:41] Cameron McEwen: But I still don't understand how you're understanding
[1:32:46] Cameron McEwen: DIA. How are you understanding me dying?
[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: me dying,
[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:32:53] Bob Dobbs: means dying.
[1:32:53] Cameron McEwen: Dying?
[1:32:54] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:32:55] Cameron McEwen: so you're using it as not the meaning of the word,
[1:33:04] Cameron McEwen: But as I said,
[1:33:06] Cameron McEwen: suggestion as yeah um okay i understand so then what i would say to that is that the i think you said um you would have to die every day to your um identity um
[1:33:22] Cameron McEwen: what i understand McLuhan to be talking about in all at onceness is that the on the spectrum of human possibilities
[1:33:35] Cameron McEwen: In order for there to be different possibilities,
[1:33:39] Cameron McEwen: there have to be gaps,
[1:33:40] Cameron McEwen: there have to be borders that differentiate the different possibilities from each other.
[1:33:48] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:33:49] Cameron McEwen: So in all at once-ness,
[1:33:52] Cameron McEwen: there is a kind of death,
[1:33:54] Cameron McEwen: there is something that cannot be experienced and where there is no identity.
[1:34:03] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:34:03] Cameron McEwen: it's the nobody on the frontier,
[1:34:05] Cameron McEwen: as
[1:34:06] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would say.
[1:34:07] Bob Dobbs: Everybody into nobody.
[1:34:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:34:10] Cameron McEwen: that in the all-at-once spectrum,
[1:34:16] Cameron McEwen: where every human being is a kind of player of this piano,
[1:34:24] Cameron McEwen: there is death and non-identity,
[1:34:28] Cameron McEwen: both between human beings and that piano,
[1:34:32] Cameron McEwen: and...
[1:34:34] Cameron McEwen: in between each of the keys of that piano.
[1:34:38] Cameron McEwen: So the me dia in your sense describes this sort of total picture of life's possibilities on the one hand which are universal and in a sense infinite as
[1:34:54] Cameron McEwen: contrasted to the finite individual and what brings cohesion to all of this.
[1:35:02] Cameron McEwen: is what McLuhan calls tactility.
[1:35:05] Cameron McEwen: It is the non-identity and depth that is between each of the possibilities.
[1:35:13] Cameron McEwen: and between the range of possibilities and the finite individual.
[1:35:18] Bob Dobbs: And then I would say the opposite to what you're saying and include that in a tactile interplay.
[1:35:26] Cameron McEwen: The opposite being time?
[1:35:29] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what it is.
[1:35:31] Bob Dobbs: Whatever you left out.
[1:35:34] Cameron McEwen: One interesting thing of me,
[1:35:35] Cameron McEwen: Daya,
[1:35:36] Cameron McEwen: is that
[1:35:39] Cameron McEwen: Daya or...
[1:35:42] Cameron McEwen: For example,
[1:35:43] Cameron McEwen: in dialogue.
[1:35:44] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:35:45] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:35:46] Cameron McEwen: Dia means through,
[1:35:49] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:35:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:35:50] Cameron McEwen: So me,
[1:35:51] Cameron McEwen: dia,
[1:35:52] Cameron McEwen: can be understood as the necessity of me going through a process where the me becomes essentially changed or changed through obliteration.
[1:36:08] Bob Dobbs: Through the vanishing point.
[1:36:10] Bob Dobbs: But that would be one mirror.
[1:36:12] Bob Dobbs: We have to include now all the different sensory vanishing points or whatever a throughness would be in each sensory mode and its extension.
[1:36:23] Bob Dobbs: And when I say throughness,
[1:36:25] Bob Dobbs: throughput,
[1:36:26] Bob Dobbs: I think LaRouche uses that word a lot,
[1:36:28] Bob Dobbs: throughput.
[1:36:30] Bob Dobbs: Do you know that word any worse?
[1:36:33] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:36:33] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:36:34] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:36:35] Cameron McEwen: throughput is often used in describing manufacturing.
[1:36:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:36:41] Bob Dobbs: That's what he was writing about.
[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: so we've got a lot of manufactured tunnels we go through now.
[1:36:51] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:36:52] Cameron McEwen: if we think about the spectrum that I was just calling a piano,
[1:36:57] Cameron McEwen: but if we think of the spectrum of possibilities,
[1:37:01] Cameron McEwen: the dia,
[1:37:04] Cameron McEwen: the through that separates all the different possibilities,
[1:37:12] Cameron McEwen: Those aren't necessarily the same.
[1:37:14] Cameron McEwen: So when you talk about the need to go through all these different mirrors,
[1:37:20] Cameron McEwen: that is part of the image that I'm describing.
[1:37:26] Cameron McEwen: It would be anybody who says,
[1:37:30] Cameron McEwen: I know what all of those blanks is about,
[1:37:35] Cameron McEwen: is obviously nuts.
[1:37:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:37:39] Bob Dobbs: what is it?
[1:37:40] Bob Dobbs: Didn't McLuhan say that the insane person makes connections and then makes them rigid,
[1:37:49] Bob Dobbs: gets rigid in the process of making connections?
[1:37:53] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[1:37:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:37:54] Cameron McEwen: Exactly,
[1:37:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:37:56] Bob Dobbs: So how are we doing for the time?
[1:37:59] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:37:59] Cameron McEwen: I'm doing,
[1:38:00] Cameron McEwen: I could do a little longer,
[1:38:01] Cameron McEwen: but how are you doing?
[1:38:04] Bob Dobbs: I'm okay.
[1:38:04] Bob Dobbs: We can go.
[1:38:05] Bob Dobbs: I'd like to...
[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: go into the beginning of the tiny note chart.
[1:38:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:38:10] Cameron McEwen: that's fine.
[1:38:10] Cameron McEwen: That's fine.
[1:38:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:38:11] Bob Dobbs: let's get the transition there.
[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: There may be any time you want to go back and talk about this chart,
[1:38:18] Bob Dobbs: you're welcome.
[1:38:19] Bob Dobbs: We can hop back and forth,
[1:38:20] Bob Dobbs: get into the big now of what we're talking about.
[1:38:24] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:38:26] Cameron McEwen: Let me just point out that
[1:38:28] Cameron McEwen: Xenos in Greek means the stranger.
[1:38:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:38:32] Bob Dobbs: Xeno.
[1:38:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:38:35] Bob Dobbs: X-E-N.
[1:38:35] Bob Dobbs: Z-E-N-O.
[1:38:36] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:38:37] Bob Dobbs: stranger.
[1:38:38] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm referring to.
[1:38:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:38:41] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[1:38:42] Cameron McEwen: It's times that are somehow times,
[1:38:48] Cameron McEwen: times plural that are somehow times singular,
[1:38:51] Cameron McEwen: and that time plural can be conceived as the meeting of strangers.
[1:39:01] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:39:02] Bob Dobbs: Times,
[1:39:03] Bob Dobbs: times juxtaposed.
[1:39:05] Bob Dobbs: The meeting of strangers?
[1:39:06] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you're saying?
[1:39:07] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:39:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:39:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:39:09] Bob Dobbs: so the Tiny Note Chart is times and spaces.
[1:39:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:39:14] Bob Dobbs: so
[1:39:15] Bob Dobbs: I click on the chart.
[1:39:17] Bob Dobbs: Can you bring up the chart for yourself?
[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: Do you know where it is?
[1:39:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:39:20] Cameron McEwen: I have it in
[1:39:21] Cameron McEwen: PDF form.
[1:39:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:39:24] Bob Dobbs: so this is that.
[1:39:25] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:39:25] Bob Dobbs: I have it.
[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: so first of all,
[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: it's a piece of paper.
[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: It's visual.
[1:39:34] Bob Dobbs: And it's print.
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: So it's a specialized view of what I'm going to call the Android Meme,
[1:39:42] Bob Dobbs: which is the internet world of the early
[1:39:48] Bob Dobbs: 90s and then on.
[1:39:50] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:39:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm aware of the bias of the presentation of the picture of the Android Meme.
[1:40:00] Bob Dobbs: So that's at the top.
[1:40:01] Bob Dobbs: At the very top,
[1:40:02] Bob Dobbs: by,
[1:40:02] Bob Dobbs: say,
[1:40:03] Bob Dobbs: a chain letter of...
[1:40:04] Bob Dobbs: phase shifts.
[1:40:05] Bob Dobbs: So there's the reference to the letter,
[1:40:07] Bob Dobbs: to the visual artifact,
[1:40:09] Bob Dobbs: visual space,
[1:40:10] Bob Dobbs: and it's connected,
[1:40:11] Bob Dobbs: more visual space stuff.
[1:40:14] Bob Dobbs: And it refers to the letter that's searched for in Finnegans Wake.
[1:40:21] Bob Dobbs: So Finnegans Wake also,
[1:40:24] Bob Dobbs: it shows the co-anesthetic and the synchronistic in extremists in that book about
[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: LSD versus heroin.
[1:40:35] Bob Dobbs: Joyce has got those two modalities or effects in that book.
[1:40:40] Bob Dobbs: So I wanted to say that half an hour ago.
[1:40:47] Cameron McEwen: I wanted to add half an hour ago that when McLuhan reads Burroughs,
[1:40:52] Cameron McEwen: he takes Burroughs himself to satirize in a certain way the drugs.
[1:40:59] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan doesn't read
[1:41:01] Cameron McEwen: Burroughs as saying,
[1:41:03] Cameron McEwen: if you go to heroin,
[1:41:04] Cameron McEwen: you get the answer.
[1:41:05] Cameron McEwen: He reads
[1:41:07] Cameron McEwen: Burroughs as presenting a conflict of worlds.
[1:41:13] Cameron McEwen: where no one world is the answer.
[1:41:16] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[1:41:17] Bob Dobbs: And note that he mentions Lewis,
[1:41:25] Bob Dobbs: parallels Joyce and Lewis,
[1:41:29] Bob Dobbs: and he says they're rigid media colleges.
[1:41:33] Bob Dobbs: They panic.
[1:41:36] Bob Dobbs: He has the shut-off button,
[1:41:38] Bob Dobbs: I think is the phrase.
[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: They're trying to make the button go on or off.
[1:41:45] Bob Dobbs: When he encountered media colleges close to his perceptual style,
[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: he distanced himself from them.
[1:41:53] Bob Dobbs: It allowed him to take another detached,
[1:41:55] Bob Dobbs: maybe what you would say move into tactility,
[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: in relation to an innocent media college.
[1:42:06] Bob Dobbs: So he makes fun of Joyce.
[1:42:09] Bob Dobbs: panicking Innis situation but if you don't have Joyce in the neighborhood
[1:42:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan looks like he's panicking in the way he presents
[1:42:21] Bob Dobbs: Joyce's you get what I'm saying
[1:42:24] Cameron McEwen: So there's anybody anybody can be taken as panicking if they're taken to represent a certain position
[1:42:32] Bob Dobbs: yeah and so Don Theall used to mention that Finnegans Wake satirized apocalyptic visions or those that thought they were coming to an ending point you know and you would like an end times uh uh reference point or cliche so that's pretty sophisticated uh that Joyce is including all stages of apprehension uh so it has to include um a satire of what you think the book is warning people about
[1:43:06] Bob Dobbs: He has to satirize himself in a way.
[1:43:09] Cameron McEwen: Sure,
[1:43:10] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[1:43:10] Cameron McEwen: The letter is in a dung heap.
[1:43:13] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:43:14] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:43:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:43:15] Bob Dobbs: so looking at the chart,
[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: the Dobbs formula chart,
[1:43:23] Bob Dobbs: we took the,
[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: I have to bring it back up.
[1:43:34] Bob Dobbs: So I'm going back to the formula chart.
[1:43:37] Bob Dobbs: And you have the telegraph level at the top,
[1:43:40] Bob Dobbs: then movies.
[1:43:41] Bob Dobbs: That's on the left,
[1:43:42] Bob Dobbs: ground.
[1:43:43] Bob Dobbs: Telegraph,
[1:43:43] Bob Dobbs: movies,
[1:43:44] Bob Dobbs: radio,
[1:43:44] Bob Dobbs: television.
[1:43:45] Bob Dobbs: That's four.
[1:43:46] Bob Dobbs: Then computer and atom bomb,
[1:43:48] Bob Dobbs: satellite,
[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: laser,
[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: beam makes six.
[1:43:51] Bob Dobbs: And then you've got seven,
[1:43:54] Bob Dobbs: eight,
[1:43:54] Bob Dobbs: nine.
[1:43:54] Bob Dobbs: Holy pathy,
[1:43:55] Bob Dobbs: cliche,
[1:43:55] Bob Dobbs: probes,
[1:43:56] Bob Dobbs: Anthropomorphic Physical,
[1:43:56] Bob Dobbs: physical,
[1:43:57] Bob Dobbs: and flat line.
[1:43:59] Bob Dobbs: So seven and eight become the tiny note chart.
[1:44:05] Bob Dobbs: The flat line.
[1:44:07] Bob Dobbs: is at the bottom of the chart.
[1:44:10] Bob Dobbs: So let me go back to the chart,
[1:44:14] Bob Dobbs: to the tiny note chart.
[1:44:18] Bob Dobbs: And you look at the very bottom.
[1:44:21] Bob Dobbs: It says,
[1:44:22] Bob Dobbs: waiting for organic bodies,
[1:44:24] Bob Dobbs: the spinning clothing crystals have danced the hex advertisement.
[1:44:29] Bob Dobbs: So that's the sixth level.
[1:44:31] Bob Dobbs: That's off the chart.
[1:44:32] Bob Dobbs: It's the observer looking at the Android Meme.
[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: And it's...
[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: from a completely new situation.
[1:44:39] Bob Dobbs: So the flat line is indicated by that statement.
[1:44:46] Bob Dobbs: The flat line is you're sort of off the chart.
[1:44:48] Bob Dobbs: Does that mean anything to you?
[1:44:54] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:44:54] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:44:56] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if it means to me what it should mean,
[1:44:59] Cameron McEwen: but the way I hear it is the kind of superiority that you...
[1:45:06] Cameron McEwen: indicate at the start of your book and that McLuhan said was necessary for media analysis.
[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:45:14] Bob Dobbs: and there's also the humility.
[1:45:15] Bob Dobbs: So the humility comes from the second quote at the start of the book,
[1:45:20] Bob Dobbs: where every politician or lawyer has a conflict of interest.
[1:45:25] Bob Dobbs: They're in the web.
[1:45:27] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:45:29] Cameron McEwen: and for Joyce,
[1:45:30] Cameron McEwen: and I think also,
[1:45:31] Cameron McEwen: I think McLuhan really appreciated this in Joyce,
[1:45:35] Cameron McEwen: it's the humble part.
[1:45:44] Cameron McEwen: of everybody isn't necessarily that their thought isn't perfect or something like this.
[1:45:51] Cameron McEwen: It's that they are physical bodies subject to breakdown that are an image and
[1:46:07] Cameron McEwen: a cause,
[1:46:07] Cameron McEwen: you might say,
[1:46:09] Cameron McEwen: of intellectual breakdown.
[1:46:12] Cameron McEwen: The intellectual breakdown isn't
[1:46:14] Cameron McEwen: kind of in charge of things.
[1:46:17] Cameron McEwen: Instead,
[1:46:18] Cameron McEwen: the incarnation is in charge of things,
[1:46:24] Cameron McEwen: and the incarnation is inherently humble.
[1:46:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: what was,
[1:46:33] Bob Dobbs: did you say muffle in your opening statement?
[1:46:35] Bob Dobbs: Humble.
[1:46:36] Cameron McEwen: Humble,
[1:46:36] Cameron McEwen: as in humiliation.
[1:46:38] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:46:38] Bob Dobbs: humble.
[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: I didn't get that.
[1:46:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:46:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: I agree with that.
[1:46:44] Bob Dobbs: So then,
[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: so you have a chain letter of phase shifts.
[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: So that's the linearity as you go through the sequence.
[1:46:52] Cameron McEwen: Let me,
[1:46:52] Cameron McEwen: can I talk about that just for a second?
[1:46:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:46:57] Cameron McEwen: You say a chain letter of phase shifts.
[1:47:01] Cameron McEwen: And so a chain letter is normally something that unfolds in time.
[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:47:08] Cameron McEwen: In linear time,
[1:47:10] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:47:10] Cameron McEwen: But it's possible.
[1:47:12] Cameron McEwen: to think of a chain letter as something that's instantaneous,
[1:47:17] Cameron McEwen: as something that is all at once,
[1:47:22] Cameron McEwen: where you have the different links of the chain forming some kind of spectrum,
[1:47:32] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[1:47:33] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:47:33] Cameron McEwen: So then,
[1:47:35] Cameron McEwen: having said that,
[1:47:36] Cameron McEwen: what I want to do is I just want to take a look at the um
[1:47:42] Cameron McEwen: etymology of phase because phase normally is taken to be something in time one after another yes right phase is almost like stage
[1:48:02] Cameron McEwen: but if I can find
[1:48:06] Cameron McEwen: I had this a second ago but I have so many windows open that I can't oh here we are
[1:48:11] Cameron McEwen: Here we are.
[1:48:12] Cameron McEwen: Phase goes back to phases of the moon,
[1:48:22] Cameron McEwen: particular recurrent appearance,
[1:48:25] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:48:26] Cameron McEwen: So here,
[1:48:27] Cameron McEwen: phase as a noun,
[1:48:30] Cameron McEwen: even with the
[1:48:32] Cameron McEwen: Greek, was already associated with the moon and with the recurrent phases of the moon.
[1:48:41] Cameron McEwen: And so phase in the etymological sense gets away from phase as a linear stage and comes to be a circular movement like the phases of the moon,
[1:48:54] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:48:55] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:48:55] Cameron McEwen: And that was that notion of phase,
[1:48:59] Cameron McEwen: which is related to phanine in Greek,
[1:49:02] Cameron McEwen: which means to show,
[1:49:04] Cameron McEwen: and we have that word in phenomena and phenomenology,
[1:49:09] Cameron McEwen: things like that.
[1:49:12] Cameron McEwen: The Greek notion of something showing itself is related to how the moon shows itself.
[1:49:21] Cameron McEwen: It never shows itself all at once.
[1:49:24] Cameron McEwen: It shows itself in phases,
[1:49:27] Cameron McEwen: but those phases are circular,
[1:49:30] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:49:30] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:49:31] Cameron McEwen: And then we have the use of the
[1:49:40] Cameron McEwen: A word phase meaning like a phase can be thought as relating to
[1:49:56] Cameron McEwen: speaking.
[1:49:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to think of what the etymology is there but the phasing
[1:50:12] Cameron McEwen: There was a
[1:50:13] Cameron McEwen: Greek word for talk.
[1:50:16] Cameron McEwen: which is phas and that word we have in English in words like fantasy
[1:50:38] Cameron McEwen: for example right yes so once when we realize that phase
[1:50:45] Cameron McEwen: is related to fantasy and to words that have to do with a kind of speaking or a kind of expressing that comes out of us,
[1:51:00] Cameron McEwen: we can see how phase was related to the moon and that the moon was expressing itself,
[1:51:08] Cameron McEwen: was talking to us in terms of its phases.
[1:51:12] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:51:13] Cameron McEwen: I just want to bring out
[1:51:14] Cameron McEwen: how the use of the word phase in your tiny note chart is actually a very complicated question of what
[1:51:29] Cameron McEwen: a phase shift could amount to.
[1:51:33] Cameron McEwen: It's got a very deep history and a very complicated history.
[1:51:39] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:51:39] Bob Dobbs: so a couple of points.
[1:51:40] Bob Dobbs: So the chain letter is
[1:51:44] Bob Dobbs: Linear and connected.
[1:51:45] Bob Dobbs: And then what's below the title?
[1:51:47] Bob Dobbs: Cyclotron.
[1:51:48] Bob Dobbs: There's your circle.
[1:51:49] Bob Dobbs: Cyclotron of holeopathic cliche probes.
[1:51:52] Bob Dobbs: So you know what a cyclotron is.
[1:51:54] Bob Dobbs: I think McLuhan uses that word once or twice.
[1:51:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:51:58] Cameron McEwen: I think he does.
[1:51:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:52:00] Bob Dobbs: So you have,
[1:52:01] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:52:02] Bob Dobbs: in his introduction to Counterblast 1969,
[1:52:04] Bob Dobbs: he says Wyndham Lewis put himself into a cyclotron of his time and obliterated himself.
[1:52:11] Bob Dobbs: Remember that sentence?
[1:52:13] Bob Dobbs: In the preface to Counterblast,
[1:52:17] Bob Dobbs: he talks about self-condemned is about that,
[1:52:20] Bob Dobbs: what he did to himself.
[1:52:23] Bob Dobbs: So he put himself in the cyclotron of memes and media.
[1:52:28] Bob Dobbs: And then I have underneath causes merging with effects.
[1:52:31] Bob Dobbs: And causes is,
[1:52:33] Bob Dobbs: got quotes around it.
[1:52:35] Bob Dobbs: And that's referring to page 137 of Take Today,
[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: the bottom of the page.
[1:52:43] Bob Dobbs: Did we discuss that quote?
[1:52:45] Bob Dobbs: I think we did.
[1:52:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:52:49] Cameron McEwen: Are you talking about the very bottom?
[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:52:54] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:52:54] Cameron McEwen: but of the tiny note chart or of the page?
[1:52:56] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:52:56] Cameron McEwen: no,
[1:52:56] Bob Dobbs: of page 137 in Take Today.
[1:52:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:52:59] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:53:00] Cameron McEwen: that's what I thought you were saying.
[1:53:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:53:01] Cameron McEwen: so we have discussed that.
[1:53:02] Cameron McEwen: That's where you see the typography is very important to McLuhan meaning.
[1:53:11] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:53:12] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:53:14] Bob Dobbs: do you know what a chain letter is,
[1:53:18] Bob Dobbs: Lee?
[1:53:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:53:19] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:53:20] Bob Dobbs: you send it out to somebody,
[1:53:22] Bob Dobbs: and then they're supposed to make 10 copies or something.
[1:53:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:53:26] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[1:53:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:53:28] Bob Dobbs: So I'm referring to that popular meaning.
[1:53:33] Bob Dobbs: Maybe it's the only meaning,
[1:53:34] Bob Dobbs: a chain letter,
[1:53:35] Bob Dobbs: phase shifts.
[1:53:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:53:37] Bob Dobbs: So I've got...
[1:53:38] Cameron McEwen: One of the implications of a chain letter is that...
[1:53:42] Cameron McEwen: you send it out to 10 people and they're supposed to send it out to 10 people each yeah but um each person that gets the letter is supposed to send a dollar or something back to the original person yes and so uh if the chain letter works uh you wake up one day and you're a millionaire that's right okay
[1:54:03] Cameron McEwen: so um is that a ponzi scheme yes well i mean it all depends
[1:54:11] Cameron McEwen: If it misrepresents itself,
[1:54:12] Cameron McEwen: it's a Ponzi scheme.
[1:54:14] Cameron McEwen: If it just says,
[1:54:16] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:54:16] Cameron McEwen: this is a way of me getting money from everybody,
[1:54:20] Cameron McEwen: then it's not.
[1:54:23] Bob Dobbs: It's not,
[1:54:24] Bob Dobbs: did you say?
[1:54:25] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:54:26] Cameron McEwen: If it doesn't misrepresent itself,
[1:54:28] Cameron McEwen: it's not a Ponzi scheme.
[1:54:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:54:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:54:32] Bob Dobbs: So the title is,
[1:54:34] Bob Dobbs: Xenochronous Bob's Tiny Note
[1:54:36] Bob Dobbs: Equals the Grand Wazoo's Decad Dance.
[1:54:39] Bob Dobbs: or decade dance or decadence.
[1:54:42] Bob Dobbs: So the Grand Wazoo was an orchestra that Zappa formed in 72 into 73,
[1:54:50] Bob Dobbs: and he toured with it in the fall of 72.
[1:54:53] Bob Dobbs: And it was a different direction from the music that he seemed to be specializing in in the late 60s,
[1:55:00] Bob Dobbs: early 70s.
[1:55:01] Bob Dobbs: It brought in a jazz fusion aspect in a very original way.
[1:55:07] Bob Dobbs: So the Decad...
[1:55:09] Bob Dobbs: is developed by
[1:55:11] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt in his book,
[1:55:12] Bob Dobbs: ABC of Prophecy.
[1:55:14] Bob Dobbs: So you have this dance.
[1:55:17] Bob Dobbs: within the cyclotron and it's creating all kinds of synchronicities or matchings that people more and more are getting inflated by and zappa talked about the universe being at
[1:55:33] Bob Dobbs: the ground of it being a big note so this is my answer to that this is a tiny note and so i'm going to show the xenochrony that's
[1:55:46] Bob Dobbs: possible in the Android Meme which is web 1.0 and then predicts web 2.0 accidentally or or it was implied in the big now of the chart i don't know so
[1:56:03] Bob Dobbs: waiting for organic bodies at the bottom the spinning clothing crystals so the spinning aspect of the cyclotron and media is closed and they get more and more crystallized
[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what that means.
[1:56:18] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard talks about the crystal.
[1:56:21] Bob Dobbs: They get crystallized,
[1:56:23] Bob Dobbs: consolidated,
[1:56:27] Bob Dobbs: counter the melting of the implosion.
[1:56:31] Bob Dobbs: And they dance the hexade,
[1:56:34] Bob Dobbs: which is two steps past the tetrad.
[1:56:38] Bob Dobbs: And all this process is...
[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: is trying to get an integral something,
[1:56:45] Bob Dobbs: which I'm calling organic bodies,
[1:56:48] Bob Dobbs: but it has to consider the other bodies,
[1:56:52] Bob Dobbs: the chip body,
[1:56:52] Bob Dobbs: TV body,
[1:56:53] Bob Dobbs: and the astral body,
[1:56:54] Bob Dobbs: not just the chemical body.
[1:56:57] Bob Dobbs: And that can mean more bodies,
[1:56:58] Bob Dobbs: and with ION,
[1:57:00] Bob Dobbs: we found out about the mystery body.
[1:57:03] Bob Dobbs: So I kind of predict what's going to happen to me in the next
[1:57:08] Bob Dobbs: 15 years.
[1:57:09] Bob Dobbs: from 1995 to 2009,
[1:57:12] Bob Dobbs: 14 years.
[1:57:13] Bob Dobbs: But I didn't know that then.
[1:57:16] Cameron McEwen: So what you're talking about is below the tiny note chart,
[1:57:20] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:57:21] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:57:21] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:57:22] Cameron McEwen: it's off the chart.
[1:57:23] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:57:24] Bob Dobbs: it's the hexadic line.
[1:57:26] Bob Dobbs: It's in the hexadic position.
[1:57:28] Cameron McEwen: Gotcha.
[1:57:29] Bob Dobbs: And it was inspired by
[1:57:32] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn's work in New York from 1993 to 1996.
[1:57:38] Bob Dobbs: 97 98 uh some people in new york uh we're doing we're working with a new technology and a patient of carolyn's uh was in new york knew these people came to her and asked her if she'd be interested Innis and she said sure so the wife of the inventor came to toronto in august
[1:58:01] Bob Dobbs: 1990 and showed her what this technology could do it could treat aids it already done one study and it was
[1:58:07] Bob Dobbs: pretty successful.
[1:58:10] Bob Dobbs: So she said,
[1:58:11] Bob Dobbs: that's interesting.
[1:58:12] Bob Dobbs: I'd like to go to New York and work on that.
[1:58:16] Bob Dobbs: So we go to New York in 93.
[1:58:19] Bob Dobbs: She's back and forth in 92.
[1:58:22] Bob Dobbs: She finished her practice the last week of
[1:58:26] Bob Dobbs: December 1991.
[1:58:29] Bob Dobbs: So it took her a year to withdraw from the Toronto medical practice.
[1:58:35] Bob Dobbs: But she was using the technology right away for a year in Toronto.
[1:58:39] Bob Dobbs: Then in 1992,
[1:58:41] Bob Dobbs: as the inventor got funding to do the second study,
[1:58:47] Bob Dobbs: we waited for that through 1992,
[1:58:49] Bob Dobbs: and then we got to go to New York in February 1993.
[1:58:53] Bob Dobbs: So by 1995,
[1:58:56] Bob Dobbs: I could see the results of this technology.
[1:58:59] Bob Dobbs: It was pretty amazing.
[1:59:00] Bob Dobbs: So what it was...
[1:59:04] Bob Dobbs: Walter Kaufmann,
[1:59:05] Bob Dobbs: he was the inventor,
[1:59:06] Bob Dobbs: he would take herbs and potentize them,
[1:59:11] Bob Dobbs: which means make them holeopathic.
[1:59:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay?
[1:59:15] Bob Dobbs: So he had two dynamics there,
[1:59:18] Bob Dobbs: herbs and homeopathy.
[1:59:19] Bob Dobbs: So the solution that came out of that process would be put into a syringe needle,
[1:59:27] Bob Dobbs: which would then be laid in a little box,
[1:59:31] Bob Dobbs: a little...
[1:59:32] Bob Dobbs: Nice little holder.
[1:59:36] Bob Dobbs: Oop,
[1:59:38] Bob Dobbs: what's that?
[1:59:40] Bob Dobbs: Are you still there?
[1:59:46] Bob Dobbs: Did you get cut off?