[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[00:02] Bob Dobbs: once again,
[00:03] Bob Dobbs: it's Bob and Ewen Cameron,
[00:05] Bob Dobbs: and this is our
[00:07] Bob Dobbs: 24th episode being recorded on April 29,
[00:11] Bob Dobbs: 2021.
[00:15] Bob Dobbs: And in our last episode,
[00:16] Bob Dobbs: which was a marvelous episode,
[00:21] Bob Dobbs: at the end,
[00:23] Bob Dobbs: I was making some comments,
[00:25] Bob Dobbs: wrap-up comments,
[00:26] Bob Dobbs: and
[00:27] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron could hear me,
[00:29] Bob Dobbs: but I couldn't hear him,
[00:30] Bob Dobbs: so he was sort of responding.
[00:32] Bob Dobbs: I didn't hear it,
[00:33] Bob Dobbs: so he gave up and hung up,
[00:36] Bob Dobbs: and I gave up and hung up.
[00:37] Bob Dobbs: So it was an aborted ending.
[00:40] Bob Dobbs: And what I was saying Ewen Cameron that I didn't think he heard,
[00:45] Bob Dobbs: talking about this third position,
[00:47] Bob Dobbs: neither acoustic or visual space,
[00:49] Bob Dobbs: this tactile space in between,
[00:54] Bob Dobbs: I said,
[00:57] Bob Dobbs: it's like McLuhan talked about the Zen interval.
[01:02] Bob Dobbs: Then I mentioned the golden section.
[01:07] Bob Dobbs: Then I was trying to think of something else,
[01:09] Bob Dobbs: so I looked up the quotes later,
[01:11] Bob Dobbs: and he talks about at the beginning of this sequence of sentences,
[01:17] Bob Dobbs: which is like his essence of his epiphany,
[01:21] Bob Dobbs: he says the
[01:25] Bob Dobbs: East has the integrity of the interval,
[01:28] Bob Dobbs: and the West has the integrity of the object.
[01:32] Bob Dobbs: And oral culture resolves the split between East and West.
[01:37] Bob Dobbs: East being the integrity of the interval,
[01:42] Bob Dobbs: and the West being the integrity of the object.
[01:45] Cameron McEwen: Where is this from,
[01:46] Cameron McEwen: Bob?
[01:46] Cameron McEwen: I didn't hear where you said...
[01:48] Bob Dobbs: It's hot and cool,
[01:52] Bob Dobbs: and it's page 108 of the hardback.
[01:55] Bob Dobbs: Before you go over to 109,
[01:57] Bob Dobbs: which you were laughing at me remembering the precise page last week.
[02:02] Bob Dobbs: And at the top of 109,
[02:03] Bob Dobbs: he talks about the dynamic symmetry of tensions among proportions.
[02:10] Bob Dobbs: He yields the golden section in space.
[02:12] Cameron McEwen: And what's the section of Hot and Cool that this is in?
[02:17] Cameron McEwen: Is this one of the introductory sections?
[02:21] Bob Dobbs: No,
[02:22] Bob Dobbs: it's well into the book,
[02:24] Bob Dobbs: and there's been essays by other people,
[02:26] Bob Dobbs: and then he went back to quoting early McLuhan.
[02:29] Bob Dobbs: And so he would do that.
[02:31] Bob Dobbs: He would do early McLuhan,
[02:32] Bob Dobbs: then there'd be some more essays by people,
[02:36] Bob Dobbs: and then maybe early
[02:39] Bob Dobbs: 60s McLuhan,
[02:40] Bob Dobbs: and then it ends with a long interview,
[02:42] Bob Dobbs: which was his up-to-date statement.
[02:47] Cameron McEwen: When I said introductory material,
[02:48] Cameron McEwen: what I meant was that the hot and cool is divided into different sections,
[02:53] Cameron McEwen: like you just indicated,
[02:55] Cameron McEwen: but there's usually an introductory portion.
[03:00] Cameron McEwen: of those sections.
[03:02] Cameron McEwen: And
[03:03] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[03:04] Cameron McEwen: I don't have hot and cool in front of me,
[03:06] Cameron McEwen: but I think you're quoting from one of the introductory parts of one of the sections.
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: it's probably the second section.
[03:19] Bob Dobbs: So,
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: but it starts with that statement,
[03:22] Bob Dobbs: the integrity of the East and West will be resolved in oral culture.
[03:26] Bob Dobbs: And I was talking to some people about this.
[03:29] Bob Dobbs: And I said,
[03:29] Bob Dobbs: actually,
[03:30] Bob Dobbs: he,
[03:31] Bob Dobbs: I mentioned you,
[03:32] Bob Dobbs: I said,
[03:33] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron feels that by the late
[03:35] Bob Dobbs: 50s, he would say it got resolved in tactile culture.
[03:44] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true.
[03:46] Cameron McEwen: The use of tactile,
[03:54] Cameron McEwen: he used the word tactile and tactility.
[03:58] Cameron McEwen: fairly early,
[03:59] Cameron McEwen: but he didn't come to use it as a name for the interval until sometime in the
[04:08] Cameron McEwen: 60s, I believe.
[04:11] Cameron McEwen: But you're absolutely right that around 1960,
[04:16] Cameron McEwen: he was starting to correlate the type of relation between the subject and the object and the nature of the object.
[04:28] Cameron McEwen: And that's what people need to understand is that when the relation changes,
[04:38] Cameron McEwen: so do the subject and the object.
[04:41] Cameron McEwen: So it's the signature of the Gutenberg galaxy.
[04:46] Cameron McEwen: is the attempt to hold either the subject or the object constant and to define everything else in the world in terms of one or the other.
[04:59] Cameron McEwen: And so the significant move is to realize that the relationship between subject and object is prior to both of those.
[05:10] Cameron McEwen: And so the third position arises when the...
[05:15] Cameron McEwen: when a person releases him or herself from fixation on either the subject or the object and goes over to the third position defined by tactility.
[05:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[05:30] Bob Dobbs: perfect.
[05:31] Bob Dobbs: And so I cited that because we were wrapping up and talking about us achieving parity on the tactility point,
[05:40] Bob Dobbs: getting on the same page more than
[05:43] Bob Dobbs: I had been before.
[05:45] Bob Dobbs: So then I brought up the phrase magic casements of being.
[05:50] Bob Dobbs: And I wanted to see what you thought of that.
[05:52] Bob Dobbs: I like that phrase.
[05:54] Bob Dobbs: Does that casement,
[05:55] Bob Dobbs: does that mean window?
[05:57] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[05:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[05:58] Cameron McEwen: magic.
[06:00] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.
[06:01] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[06:02] Cameron McEwen: that phrase,
[06:04] Cameron McEwen: I forget exactly which essay it's in,
[06:07] Cameron McEwen: but he uses that phrase in the early
[06:11] Bob Dobbs: 1950s. Yeah,
[06:11] Bob Dobbs: I think it's in the 1954 famous one.
[06:14] Bob Dobbs: Catholic humanism.
[06:17] Cameron McEwen: Could be.
[06:17] Bob Dobbs: I think it's in there.
[06:19] Bob Dobbs: So the magic casements of being,
[06:22] Bob Dobbs: the magic windows on being of being.
[06:25] Bob Dobbs: He says in the sequence that leads up to the Golden Session Statement on 108 and 109,
[06:33] Bob Dobbs: he says it leads to the intuition of being,
[06:38] Bob Dobbs: the epiphany and revelation,
[06:40] Bob Dobbs: he says in the previous sentences.
[06:42] Bob Dobbs: And that's interesting.
[06:44] Bob Dobbs: It includes the tactile version of being or the non-object of being or the,
[06:55] Bob Dobbs: it's only an intuition of being.
[06:57] Bob Dobbs: You don't know if you're being.
[07:01] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that's what he's saying there.
[07:05] Cameron McEwen: I think what he's saying is that when you realize a different relationship,
[07:13] Cameron McEwen: to the world,
[07:14] Cameron McEwen: where the world informs you instead of you trying to inform the world,
[07:20] Cameron McEwen: then you intuit being in the sense of you have an immediate relationship to its reality.
[07:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[07:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[07:30] Bob Dobbs: because before that,
[07:31] Bob Dobbs: he talks about the importance of Hopkins,
[07:34] Bob Dobbs: Gerard Manley Hopkins sprung rhythm.
[07:37] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[07:38] Bob Dobbs: That's before.
[07:40] Bob Dobbs: You have an epiphany or he talks about the...
[07:42] Bob Dobbs: the epiphany or revelation,
[07:43] Bob Dobbs: then the sprung rhythm.
[07:45] Cameron McEwen: All of this talk is about changing the relationship to,
[07:53] Cameron McEwen: I don't even know the right word.
[07:55] Cameron McEwen: Let's say to the object or to what confronts you.
[07:58] Cameron McEwen: But what happens with the change relationship is that that object changes and at the very instant that that object changes,
[08:07] Cameron McEwen: so does the subject.
[08:08] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[08:09] Cameron McEwen: So it's the realization of the third.
[08:12] Cameron McEwen: position.
[08:13] Cameron McEwen: So the reason that's epiphany is that the whole world changes.
[08:17] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[08:19] Bob Dobbs: I noticed that Kroker uses the words interpellate,
[08:23] Bob Dobbs: P-E-L-L-A-T-E.
[08:26] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what that means?
[08:28] Bob Dobbs: Offhand?
[08:28] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[08:29] Cameron McEwen: Phelan means to touch.
[08:31] Cameron McEwen: So interpellation means to intercommunication.
[08:37] Bob Dobbs: And that's what you're describing?
[08:39] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[08:40] Bob Dobbs: object and subject relationship,
[08:42] Bob Dobbs: they're both changed or change each other.
[08:45] Bob Dobbs: That's interpolation,
[08:46] Bob Dobbs: right?
[08:48] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[08:48] Cameron McEwen: It could be called that.
[08:49] Cameron McEwen: It's not an everyday word.
[08:52] Bob Dobbs: No.
[08:53] Cameron McEwen: One would have to find out why he wanted to go to a technical word like that.
[08:59] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[09:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[09:00] Bob Dobbs: so he has interpolate.
[09:02] Bob Dobbs: I remember looking it up and,
[09:05] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[09:06] Cameron McEwen: knowing the meaning.
[09:07] Cameron McEwen: I think it's a medical word.
[09:09] Cameron McEwen: I believe that different procedures done by doctors have to do with Explorations.
[09:16] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[09:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[09:18] Bob Dobbs: So,
[09:18] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[09:18] Bob Dobbs: I remember years ago looking it up.
[09:20] Bob Dobbs: Then I forgot,
[09:22] Bob Dobbs: and then I saw it recently.
[09:23] Bob Dobbs: It's okay.
[09:24] Bob Dobbs: Didn't look it up.
[09:25] Bob Dobbs: So I'm asking you,
[09:26] Bob Dobbs: and you're saying yes.
[09:28] Bob Dobbs: It's the meaning I thought it meant.
[09:30] Cameron McEwen: Thinking about it,
[09:31] Cameron McEwen: thinking about it,
[09:32] Cameron McEwen: it probably is etymologically related to the word feel,
[09:37] Cameron McEwen: right?
[09:38] Cameron McEwen: Because
[09:39] Cameron McEwen: P words in Latin and Greek become F words in Germanic languages.
[09:45] Cameron McEwen: So for example,
[09:46] Cameron McEwen: fire becomes pyre in
[09:50] Cameron McEwen: Greek, right?
[09:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[09:51] Cameron McEwen: And or father becomes Potter.
[09:55] Cameron McEwen: There's there's many,
[09:57] Cameron McEwen: many,
[09:57] Cameron McEwen: many examples.
[09:59] Cameron McEwen: Poor
[09:59] Cameron McEwen: and
[10:00] Cameron McEwen: Italian is for in
[10:03] Cameron McEwen: English, on and on and on.
[10:05] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[10:06] Bob Dobbs: and you said that was peel becomes peel.
[10:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[10:10] Cameron McEwen: or Explorations,
[10:11] Cameron McEwen: pell.
[10:12] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[10:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[10:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[10:15] Bob Dobbs: so did you want to talk about what you mentioned before we started recording now or we'll get into that later?
[10:22] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[10:22] Cameron McEwen: we are recording now,
[10:23] Cameron McEwen: right?
[10:24] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[10:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[10:26] Cameron McEwen: So,
[10:27] Cameron McEwen: no,
[10:27] Cameron McEwen: I think.
[10:28] Cameron McEwen: what I'd like to say is important for an understanding of the tech body,
[10:35] Cameron McEwen: because it seems to me that your idea about the tech body is that it's negative,
[10:44] Cameron McEwen: and that one of the peculiar things about it is that although it's negative,
[10:54] Cameron McEwen: it has a lot of things to say that are truth.
[10:57] Cameron McEwen: that are penetrating.
[11:00] Cameron McEwen: And so
[11:01] Cameron McEwen: I want to put forward the idea that we shouldn't decide in advance if the tech body is positive or negative.
[11:10] Cameron McEwen: I think it could well turn out that the tech body either is not entirely negative or is not negative at all.
[11:22] Bob Dobbs: No,
[11:22] Bob Dobbs: and I would agree with you.
[11:24] Bob Dobbs: So.
[11:28] Bob Dobbs: We haven't determined what the tech body is going to do.
[11:31] Bob Dobbs: Right now,
[11:32] Bob Dobbs: ION says it is trying to take people's power.
[11:36] Bob Dobbs: It wants to get as much power as possible.
[11:39] Bob Dobbs: But
[11:40] Bob Dobbs: ION has said in other points that our relationship to technology will be more intimate,
[11:45] Bob Dobbs: friendly,
[11:46] Bob Dobbs: or not classified as negative.
[11:49] Bob Dobbs: So definitely what you just said,
[11:51] Bob Dobbs: ION has said about the tech body.
[11:53] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[11:53] Bob Dobbs: but
[11:54] Bob Dobbs: When I talk to people about it,
[11:57] Bob Dobbs: and then I say ion is different from the check body,
[12:00] Bob Dobbs: I usually put a positive spin on ion and a bit negative from tech body because ion is not trying to take away people's power.
[12:10] Bob Dobbs: So
[12:11] Bob Dobbs: I get stuck in there.
[12:12] Bob Dobbs: Words undermine me,
[12:14] Bob Dobbs: but
[12:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm ready to correct it if you notice what you did.
[12:20] Cameron McEwen: But the...
[12:24] Cameron McEwen: What you call taking away the power,
[12:28] Cameron McEwen: in an important sense,
[12:30] Cameron McEwen: is a giving away of the power.
[12:32] Bob Dobbs: That's what I mean.
[12:35] Bob Dobbs: Like the Jews gave their power to the Ark of the Covenant,
[12:37] Bob Dobbs: and nowadays people are giving their power to the Black Mirror.
[12:40] Bob Dobbs: And that's the tech body.
[12:43] Bob Dobbs: So we're giving the power,
[12:46] Bob Dobbs: and the tech body enjoys getting the power.
[12:49] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[12:49] Cameron McEwen: correct.
[12:51] Cameron McEwen: But what's interesting about what we're doing here...
[12:55] Cameron McEwen: is that we're going into that black power.
[13:02] Cameron McEwen: The only way for people to change their position,
[13:07] Cameron McEwen: to go from what might be called position one or position two into position three,
[13:14] Cameron McEwen: is to interrogate the black power.
[13:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[13:18] Cameron McEwen: you're saying power.
[13:20] Bob Dobbs: T as in Tom.
[13:23] Cameron McEwen: No,
[13:23] Cameron McEwen: power is...
[13:24] Bob Dobbs: P as in P,
[13:24] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[13:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[13:26] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[13:26] Cameron McEwen: And that...
[13:31] Bob Dobbs: That's what we call the nothingness we were saying last week.
[13:34] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[13:34] Cameron McEwen: correct.
[13:35] Cameron McEwen: So you have to go through the interval,
[13:39] Cameron McEwen: which appears only negative,
[13:43] Cameron McEwen: in order to realize that the interval is,
[13:47] Cameron McEwen: in fact,
[13:48] Cameron McEwen: what enables who you are and what the world is.
[13:53] Bob Dobbs: So it's not negative?
[13:55] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely not.
[13:56] Cameron McEwen: But the incredible thing about thinking is that what seems most hopeless,
[14:03] Cameron McEwen: what seems most dark,
[14:05] Cameron McEwen: what seems most stupid,
[14:07] Cameron McEwen: turns out to be the key to where you need to go.
[14:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[14:12] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[14:15] Bob Dobbs: how does fear relate to that black power?
[14:19] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[14:20] Cameron McEwen: fear is correlate.
[14:21] Cameron McEwen: with a certain sense of identity and with a certain sense of world.
[14:26] Cameron McEwen: So when people are sort of on the cusp of thinking,
[14:32] Cameron McEwen: death seems like a terrible thing.
[14:36] Cameron McEwen: It seems like the only certainty we have is death,
[14:41] Cameron McEwen: and it's feared.
[14:43] Cameron McEwen: But that is the mirror that needs to be gone through.
[14:49] Cameron McEwen: It's a representation of death.
[14:52] Cameron McEwen: It's not death itself.
[14:54] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[14:54] Bob Dobbs: so the...
[14:57] Bob Dobbs: that's when you're stuck with an incomplete understanding of the SubGenius relationships.
[15:02] Bob Dobbs: That's what you were just describing.
[15:06] Bob Dobbs: You'll be limited about yourself or confused and limited and confused about the world,
[15:12] Bob Dobbs: the object.
[15:12] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[15:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[15:13] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[15:14] Cameron McEwen: And you're desperately trying to swim in that water.
[15:19] Cameron McEwen: And so you're grabbing at whatever little fragments of flotsam and jetsam are around you.
[15:25] Cameron McEwen: And that doesn't work.
[15:28] Cameron McEwen: What you need to do is you need to realize that the water is what buoys you up,
[15:34] Cameron McEwen: not some piece of wood that happens to be around.
[15:38] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[15:39] Bob Dobbs: So do you agree with Krishnamurti that the path to truth is individual or pathless?
[15:49] Bob Dobbs: He said there's no one path.
[15:51] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[15:54] Bob Dobbs: That's an old cliche,
[15:56] Bob Dobbs: but you wouldn't say how to go into that nothing.
[16:02] Cameron McEwen: No.
[16:03] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[16:03] Cameron McEwen: No,
[16:04] Cameron McEwen: because every path is a representation that comes from the rearview mirror.
[16:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[16:15] Bob Dobbs: So we are trying to prompt people to fall into the nothing,
[16:22] Bob Dobbs: to go through the vanishing point.
[16:25] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[16:25] Cameron McEwen: we're trying to prompt them into a questioning of what they think they can rely on.
[16:37] Cameron McEwen: And that's a fearsome process,
[16:40] Cameron McEwen: but it's the only door into the third position.
[16:45] Bob Dobbs: And Eric's definition of manipulative satire as an attempt to wake people is the same situation,
[16:53] Bob Dobbs: to trick them into it.
[16:54] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.
[16:54] Cameron McEwen: Sort of.
[16:55] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[16:57] Cameron McEwen: I'm not a big fan of that whole topic,
[17:02] Cameron McEwen: because
[17:03] Cameron McEwen: I believe
[17:05] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan sort of grabbed onto Menippean satire as a way of excusing the fact that he didn't correct his work,
[17:15] Cameron McEwen: or that he repeated himself,
[17:17] Cameron McEwen: or that he...
[17:18] Bob Dobbs: He made it in the 70s.
[17:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[17:21] Cameron McEwen: or that he told old jokes.
[17:25] Cameron McEwen: instead of making up a fresh lecture or something like that.
[17:29] Cameron McEwen: So
[17:30] Cameron McEwen: Menippean satire can be used to cover sins.
[17:34] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[17:35] Cameron McEwen: And so I'm suspicious of it.
[17:39] Cameron McEwen: I agree with Eric that
[17:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan made attempts to overturn what people thought they saw,
[17:51] Cameron McEwen: thought they believed.
[17:54] Cameron McEwen: thought who they were.
[17:57] Cameron McEwen: But to allow that to sort of cover everything he was doing in the
[18:06] Cameron McEwen: 70s, I think that's not right.
[18:09] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[18:09] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[18:10] Bob Dobbs: do you know the distinction that Don Theall makes between Menippean satire and Varronian satire?
[18:17] Cameron McEwen: No,
[18:17] Cameron McEwen: I don't.
[18:18] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[18:18] Bob Dobbs: so Varro lived at the time of Christ back there around then,
[18:22] Bob Dobbs: and he discovered the text
[18:23] Bob Dobbs: of Menippus.
[18:25] Bob Dobbs: And Menippus was outrageous,
[18:27] Bob Dobbs: and he lived about 220 B.C.
[18:30] Bob Dobbs: or B.C.E.
[18:34] Bob Dobbs: And what he did that was outrageous is he mixed poetry and prose.
[18:40] Bob Dobbs: They were meant to be separate,
[18:41] Bob Dobbs: but he mixed them together.
[18:43] Bob Dobbs: It was outrageous in the early phonetic days,
[18:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[18:47] Bob Dobbs: the early writing in Greek culture.
[18:49] Bob Dobbs: So he mixed his media.
[18:52] Bob Dobbs: is what McLuhan would say later.
[18:54] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,
[18:54] Bob Dobbs: the definition of Menippean satire in the 20th century,
[18:59] Bob Dobbs: if you look it up,
[19:00] Bob Dobbs: is basically making fun of philosophers,
[19:04] Bob Dobbs: having philosophers pontificate and sense-making them look absurd.
[19:08] Bob Dobbs: That's the standard interpretation of Menippean satire.
[19:13] Bob Dobbs: But what happened is that
[19:15] Bob Dobbs: Varro discovers
[19:19] Bob Dobbs: Menippus.
[19:21] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what Varro called it.
[19:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if he used the term Menippean.
[19:25] Bob Dobbs: I haven't read anything by him on that level.
[19:28] Bob Dobbs: But what happened in the Dark Ages,
[19:30] Bob Dobbs: it all disappeared.
[19:32] Bob Dobbs: And
[19:33] Bob Dobbs: John Dryden,
[19:35] Bob Dobbs: the British poet,
[19:36] Bob Dobbs: he was a poet,
[19:37] Bob Dobbs: right?
[19:38] Bob Dobbs: Poet and essayist.
[19:39] Bob Dobbs: He discovered Varro,
[19:42] Bob Dobbs: recognized it was a different satire from Horace or Juvenal.
[19:46] Bob Dobbs: They were more satires of public figures or human foibles.
[19:53] Bob Dobbs: So he,
[19:54] Bob Dobbs: because he discovered it through Varro,
[19:57] Bob Dobbs: he called it Varronian satire.
[19:59] Bob Dobbs: So Varronian satire held for a couple of hundred years until Bakhtin,
[20:06] Bob Dobbs: B-A-K-H-T-I-N,
[20:07] Bob Dobbs: the Russian critic,
[20:09] Bob Dobbs: in the
[20:09] Bob Dobbs: 30s, 40s,
[20:10] Bob Dobbs: 50s,
[20:11] Bob Dobbs: whenever he wrote his books,
[20:13] Bob Dobbs: he wrote on Rabelais and he retrieved the word Menippean satire.
[20:17] Bob Dobbs: He retrieved Menippean.
[20:19] Bob Dobbs: And then.
[20:20] Bob Dobbs: Julia Kristeva did a book in the late 60s,
[20:24] Bob Dobbs: Desire in Language,
[20:27] Bob Dobbs: responding to Bakhtin.
[20:30] Bob Dobbs: Bakhtin influenced her in some way,
[20:32] Bob Dobbs: and so she popularized Menippean satire.
[20:35] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knew that
[20:37] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan knew the term Menippean satire for some reason in the
[20:41] Bob Dobbs: 50s, or
[20:42] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall would say he did,
[20:44] Bob Dobbs: because Don Theall uses the term Menippean satire in his 1971 book.
[20:49] Bob Dobbs: The Medium is the rear-view mirror,
[20:50] Bob Dobbs: talking about Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
[20:53] Bob Dobbs: When I read that book around 71,
[20:55] Bob Dobbs: 72,
[20:55] Bob Dobbs: that's when I first saw the term
[20:57] Bob Dobbs: Menippean.
[20:59] Bob Dobbs: Then I was with Eric around 75,
[21:02] Bob Dobbs: and he mentioned to me that his father was a Menippean satirist.
[21:05] Bob Dobbs: So
[21:06] Bob Dobbs: I started to look into it,
[21:08] Bob Dobbs: but it wasn't until I read Eric's PhD,
[21:11] Bob Dobbs: the one that was at the Ann Arbor repository,
[21:17] Bob Dobbs: because his book of 1997,
[21:18] Bob Dobbs: The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake,
[21:20] Bob Dobbs: has a very short section on Menippean satire,
[21:23] Bob Dobbs: and the rest of the book is dealing with the Ten Thunders of Finnegans Wake.
[21:26] Bob Dobbs: But his PhD has a long section on the history of Menippean satire and how it was defined.
[21:33] Bob Dobbs: And
[21:34] Bob Dobbs: Eric's main point was you can't take one description of Menippean satire,
[21:38] Bob Dobbs: one definition,
[21:39] Bob Dobbs: which is what was circulating in criticism in the 20th century,
[21:45] Bob Dobbs: because
[21:45] Bob Dobbs: new technologies change society,
[21:47] Bob Dobbs: and the Menippean satire is always a response to the changing effects in the medium.
[21:54] Bob Dobbs: So the
[21:55] Bob Dobbs: Menippean satire is from,
[21:58] Bob Dobbs: say,
[21:58] Bob Dobbs: some guy in 400 A.D.,
[22:02] Bob Dobbs: and then 1200 A.D.,
[22:06] Bob Dobbs: Alan of Lille,
[22:07] Bob Dobbs: L-I-L-L-E is one of those guys in there,
[22:09] Bob Dobbs: and then Rabelais in the 16th century.
[22:11] Bob Dobbs: So these major technological phases,
[22:13] Bob Dobbs: which he noticed was every...
[22:14] Bob Dobbs: 400 years,
[22:16] Bob Dobbs: you'd get a different kind of a cynical,
[22:21] Bob Dobbs: based on the philosophy of cynicism,
[22:23] Bob Dobbs: traditionally,
[22:24] Bob Dobbs: a cynical attempt to wake up the reader,
[22:27] Bob Dobbs: rather than fascinate them with a story or hypnotize them.
[22:31] Bob Dobbs: So that goal in the writer changed in the manuscript culture to the print culture and then to the
[22:42] Bob Dobbs: Tristram Shandy,
[22:43] Bob Dobbs: the newspaper beginning of industry culture,
[22:47] Bob Dobbs: and then the Electric Age,
[22:48] Bob Dobbs: which created
[22:49] Bob Dobbs: Pound's Cantos
[22:50] Bob Dobbs: and Finnegans Wake.
[22:52] Bob Dobbs: They were a different kind of Menippean satire.
[22:54] Bob Dobbs: So
[22:56] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall pointed this out in one of his books,
[22:58] Bob Dobbs: that
[22:59] Bob Dobbs: Varronian satire was not so aligned with the philosophy of cynicism,
[23:06] Bob Dobbs: and was just a joyful,
[23:08] Bob Dobbs: hedonistic almost,
[23:09] Bob Dobbs: enjoyment of the world.
[23:12] Bob Dobbs: whereas McLuhan was a little more cynical and bitter or aggressive because of the Cine philosophy.
[23:22] Bob Dobbs: And so he said
[23:23] Bob Dobbs: Wyndham Lewis was the Menippean,
[23:26] Bob Dobbs: not Varronian.
[23:28] Bob Dobbs: Joyce was the Varronian,
[23:29] Bob Dobbs: James Joyce.
[23:30] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan was more by temperament like Wyndham Lewis,
[23:35] Bob Dobbs: Theall thought,
[23:36] Bob Dobbs: so that McLuhan was a Menippean and not a Varronian.
[23:40] Bob Dobbs: Theall will probably say he was a Varronian because I know he belonged to nudist groups.
[23:48] Bob Dobbs: He would go down to the Bahamas and find a nudist beach.
[23:51] Bob Dobbs: He and his wife would walk around nude.
[23:53] Bob Dobbs: And one day,
[23:54] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I ever told you this story,
[23:56] Bob Dobbs: along comes Trudeau on the beach.
[23:58] Bob Dobbs: This was about 1970 with his bodyguard.
[24:03] Bob Dobbs: And I think he said the bodyguards were nude too.
[24:09] Bob Dobbs: So Trudeau was,
[24:11] Bob Dobbs: Don would say,
[24:12] Bob Dobbs: a Varronian.
[24:15] Bob Dobbs: But
[24:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan wrote in Interior landscape,
[24:18] Bob Dobbs: in his essay on Joyce,
[24:20] Bob Dobbs: one of those two,
[24:21] Bob Dobbs: he says that Joyce was a lot more fun and,
[24:27] Bob Dobbs: in Theall terms,
[24:28] Bob Dobbs: Varronian,
[24:29] Bob Dobbs: though McLuhan doesn't use that word,
[24:30] Bob Dobbs: than Lewis.
[24:32] Bob Dobbs: So if McLuhan could notice that Joyce was more fun,
[24:35] Bob Dobbs: then he would appreciate Varronian versus
[24:39] Bob Dobbs: Wyndham Lewis
[24:40] Bob Dobbs: Menippean. Anyways.
[24:43] Bob Dobbs: We only know Don Theall making these distinctions and making that statement up resolving what McLuhan was.
[24:50] Bob Dobbs: So if you hadn't heard it,
[24:51] Bob Dobbs: now you know.
[24:52] Bob Dobbs: You've learned something else.
[24:54] Cameron McEwen: Let me say that for me,
[24:57] Cameron McEwen: the first discussion concerning the history of Menippean satire,
[25:04] Cameron McEwen: for me,
[25:04] Cameron McEwen: that's way too linear.
[25:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[25:09] Cameron McEwen: I much prefer to think of all these different.
[25:12] Cameron McEwen: possibilities as instantaneous,
[25:16] Cameron McEwen: all at once.
[25:17] Cameron McEwen: And the
[25:18] Cameron McEwen: Varronian seems to capture the simultaneous aspect better than what you were describing as the Menippean.
[25:29] Cameron McEwen: But I would just,
[25:31] Cameron McEwen: personally,
[25:32] Cameron McEwen: I would just see these as different chords on the piano of perceptual possibility.
[25:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[25:41] Bob Dobbs: so you would not link.
[25:43] Bob Dobbs: the type of Menippean satire,
[25:45] Bob Dobbs: the changes in Menippean satire to changes in technology?
[25:52] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[25:52] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't say
[25:54] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't link them.
[25:56] Cameron McEwen: I would say that you have to start with an idea of the possibility,
[26:05] Cameron McEwen: the instantaneous or Alan Watts possibility,
[26:10] Cameron McEwen: which then expresses itself.
[26:12] Cameron McEwen: variously in history and one of the ways that history can vary how the possibilities are expressed is technology so for example if you think of carbon
[26:31] Cameron McEwen: in the deep earth pressure can make carbon into diamonds but when we breathe
[26:43] Cameron McEwen: we produce carbon dioxide,
[26:45] Cameron McEwen: another form of carbon.
[26:48] Cameron McEwen: So it would be crazy for somebody to say,
[26:51] Cameron McEwen: well,
[26:51] Cameron McEwen: diamonds and carbon dioxide are the same thing,
[26:56] Cameron McEwen: right?
[26:56] Cameron McEwen: Obviously,
[26:57] Cameron McEwen: they're not.
[26:58] Cameron McEwen: So the question is,
[27:00] Cameron McEwen: how do we account for their variety?
[27:04] Cameron McEwen: And so what I'm saying about the differences in
[27:08] Cameron McEwen: Menippean satire over time is that we have to,
[27:12] Cameron McEwen: to first account for them as possibilities.
[27:16] Cameron McEwen: And once we've done that,
[27:17] Cameron McEwen: then we can begin to look at the different Explorations in history.
[27:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[27:23] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[27:25] Cameron McEwen: And what we're going to find when we do that,
[27:27] Cameron McEwen: what we're going to find is what you set out in your Tiny Note chart.
[27:31] Cameron McEwen: We're going to find that instead of a linear expression in history,
[27:37] Cameron McEwen: that there's very involved epicycles.
[27:41] Cameron McEwen: and vortices and all sorts of crazy contortions of time.
[27:49] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[27:50] Bob Dobbs: well said.
[27:52] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[27:53] Bob Dobbs: let's go to...
[27:54] Cameron McEwen: So let me just go from where we were a few minutes ago and try and say something more about TechBody.
[28:05] Cameron McEwen: One of the themes that we've been talking about is the...
[28:09] Cameron McEwen: need to differentiate between the Anthropomorphic Physical mean and the tech body.
[28:18] Cameron McEwen: And
[28:19] Cameron McEwen: I would say that one of the things that I'm learning in conversation with you,
[28:25] Cameron McEwen: one of the reasons that I appreciate our conversation so much,
[28:29] Cameron McEwen: is that through you I'm able to understand things that I haven't thought about enough.
[28:38] Cameron McEwen: So
[28:39] Cameron McEwen: For example,
[28:40] Cameron McEwen: with the Anthropomorphic Physical meme,
[28:43] Cameron McEwen: it's not the case that the Anthropomorphic Physical meme takes over human understanding and human personality and all this sort of stuff.
[28:58] Cameron McEwen: Not because...
[29:00] Cameron McEwen: It couldn't do it,
[29:01] Cameron McEwen: but because when we talk about these things,
[29:04] Cameron McEwen: we don't know what we're talking about,
[29:06] Cameron McEwen: right?
[29:07] Cameron McEwen: We do not know what human understanding,
[29:09] Cameron McEwen: human will,
[29:10] Cameron McEwen: and all this stuff is.
[29:12] Cameron McEwen: And so we can regard the Anthropomorphic Physical meme as entirely negative or as a difficult problem or any of this sort of stuff,
[29:25] Cameron McEwen: But all of that is...
[29:28] Cameron McEwen: a way of not interrogating what it is as a way of trying to understand who we are.
[29:36] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[29:37] Bob Dobbs: We don't know what is Anthropomorphic Physical.
[29:40] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[29:41] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[29:43] Cameron McEwen: We're in the process of trying to find that out.
[29:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[29:46] Cameron McEwen: And if we think,
[29:48] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[29:49] Cameron McEwen: we know very well what that is,
[29:51] Cameron McEwen: and that's being taken over by some
[29:56] Cameron McEwen: rival power or something like that,
[29:59] Cameron McEwen: we're cutting ourselves off from a proper interrogation.
[30:03] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[30:04] Bob Dobbs: Because the tech body may be part of ourselves,
[30:07] Bob Dobbs: part of the human.
[30:10] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[30:12] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[30:13] Cameron McEwen: all of these things are kind of up in the air.
[30:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[30:16] Cameron McEwen: These are questions that we need to go through in order to understand what the hell we're talking about.
[30:25] Bob Dobbs: So you think the major philosophers,
[30:28] Bob Dobbs: Plato,
[30:28] Bob Dobbs: Aristotle,
[30:29] Bob Dobbs: Aquinas,
[30:29] Bob Dobbs: whoever,
[30:31] Bob Dobbs: that's the area they were exploring.
[30:34] Bob Dobbs: They were rigorously,
[30:36] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to say honest,
[30:38] Bob Dobbs: but rigorously not wanting to be duped.
[30:42] Bob Dobbs: So they questioned very deeply,
[30:46] Bob Dobbs: way beyond what average people would do about their being.
[30:52] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[30:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[30:54] Cameron McEwen: Obviously,
[30:55] Cameron McEwen: the great philosophers,
[30:57] Cameron McEwen: especially
[30:59] Cameron McEwen: 25 centuries ago,
[31:09] Cameron McEwen: they did not use the same language.
[31:14] Cameron McEwen: They did not have the same techniques of exploring these things that we do.
[31:20] Cameron McEwen: However,
[31:23] Cameron McEwen: the great...
[31:24] Cameron McEwen: minds of the past were great minds.
[31:30] Cameron McEwen: And we are just sort of Ivins in comparison and trying to understand some of these great things like what is a human being?
[31:44] Cameron McEwen: Who is a human being?
[31:46] Cameron McEwen: What should we do?
[31:47] Cameron McEwen: What is death?
[31:48] Cameron McEwen: All of these sorts of great questions are questions that
[31:54] Cameron McEwen: the great minds have looked into in a very,
[31:59] Cameron McEwen: very deep way so that when we explore these questions,
[32:03] Cameron McEwen: one way to do it is to explore these great minds.
[32:08] Cameron McEwen: If anybody wants to understand anything deeply about themselves,
[32:12] Cameron McEwen: one of the best ways to do it is to select any of the great thinkers,
[32:18] Cameron McEwen: so Plato,
[32:19] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle.
[32:21] Cameron McEwen: Kierkegaard.
[32:22] Cameron McEwen: I mentioned Kierkegaard because at one point when I was in grad school,
[32:27] Cameron McEwen: I had a course and
[32:30] Cameron McEwen: I went to the first,
[32:32] Cameron McEwen: it was a tutorial,
[32:33] Cameron McEwen: and I went to the first meeting with my tutor and he said to me,
[32:40] Cameron McEwen: I want you to read every book of Kierkegaard that's been translated and then come back to me.
[32:49] Cameron McEwen: And so...
[32:50] Cameron McEwen: I had one meeting with him at the start of the course and one meeting at the very end.
[32:56] Cameron McEwen: And
[32:57] Cameron McEwen: I still hadn't finished all of Kierkegaard,
[32:59] Cameron McEwen: but I had read a very great deal of
[33:02] Cameron McEwen: Kierkegaard. And it was a wonderful experience for me.
[33:07] Cameron McEwen: Because
[33:09] Cameron McEwen: I remember when I first read a complete book and understood how an argument could unfold itself over
[33:18] Cameron McEwen: 400 pages.
[33:20] Cameron McEwen: It was the
[33:22] Cameron McEwen: Admiral Mahan's book on the influence of sea power in the world.
[33:28] Cameron McEwen: And I had never understood before that moment,
[33:30] Cameron McEwen: that was my freshman year of college,
[33:33] Cameron McEwen: I had never understood how an argument could take place over 400 pages.
[33:39] Cameron McEwen: And then I understood that.
[33:41] Cameron McEwen: And then when I was in grad school and I read all of this stuff by Kierkegaard,
[33:45] Cameron McEwen: I realized that an argument could be extended not over 400 pages,
[33:49] Cameron McEwen: but 400 books.
[33:53] Cameron McEwen: And this,
[33:57] Cameron McEwen: to get into any kind of depth about any question whatsoever,
[34:02] Cameron McEwen: some...
[34:06] Cameron McEwen: authority,
[34:06] Cameron McEwen: you could say,
[34:07] Cameron McEwen: needs to be questioned.
[34:10] Cameron McEwen: Because the questions of any authority come back into a questioning of yourself.
[34:18] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[34:19] Bob Dobbs: So when we talk about different techniques of being a catalyst to get someone to explore the nothing,
[34:26] Bob Dobbs: is that what that guy did?
[34:28] Bob Dobbs: That professor did to you?
[34:30] Cameron McEwen: I think so.
[34:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[34:32] Cameron McEwen: I think so.
[34:33] Cameron McEwen: I think he appreciated the point that in order to think deeply about anything,
[34:41] Cameron McEwen: you have to get yourself involved with somebody who's been there.
[34:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[34:50] Bob Dobbs: So he did that with every student?
[34:53] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[34:54] Cameron McEwen: I really don't know.
[34:55] Cameron McEwen: I think my impression is only some.
[34:59] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[35:00] Bob Dobbs: And where...
[35:01] Bob Dobbs: You had talked to him a bit before he said that,
[35:03] Bob Dobbs: right?
[35:05] Cameron McEwen: We knew each other,
[35:06] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[35:07] Cameron McEwen: In fact,
[35:08] Cameron McEwen: he wrote a book on Kierkegaard,
[35:10] Cameron McEwen: and I may have read that book,
[35:12] Cameron McEwen: and that may have been why I decided to take a course with him.
[35:16] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[35:16] Cameron McEwen: And then in our first conversation,
[35:20] Cameron McEwen: he realized that
[35:22] Cameron McEwen: I'd read his book,
[35:24] Cameron McEwen: but I hadn't read a hell of a lot of Kierkegaard,
[35:29] Cameron McEwen: I hadn't read any of the fat books.
[35:32] Cameron McEwen: The what books?
[35:35] Bob Dobbs: The fat books.
[35:36] Cameron McEwen: Fat,
[35:36] Cameron McEwen: F-A-T.
[35:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[35:38] Cameron McEwen: His Philosophical Fragments is like 200 pages.
[35:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[35:42] Cameron McEwen: But his concluding,
[35:45] Cameron McEwen: what's it called?
[35:47] Cameron McEwen: I think it's something like concluding remarks to the Philosophical Fragments is like
[35:53] Cameron McEwen: 500 to 600 pages.
[35:55] Cameron McEwen: So he realized that...
[35:58] Cameron McEwen: My knowledge of Kierkegaard came through a few key texts,
[36:05] Cameron McEwen: but
[36:07] Cameron McEwen: I didn't know
[36:08] Cameron McEwen: Kierkegaard in any kind of depth.
[36:11] Cameron McEwen: And so he said,
[36:12] Cameron McEwen: well,
[36:13] Cameron McEwen: you read all this stuff and come back.
[36:16] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[36:16] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[36:16] Bob Dobbs: what college was that?
[36:18] Cameron McEwen: That was when I was at University of Alberta.
[36:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[36:22] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[36:27] Bob Dobbs: So we're going to go with it.
[36:30] Cameron McEwen: Go ahead.
[36:30] Cameron McEwen: I didn't,
[36:31] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry,
[36:31] Cameron McEwen: that was,
[36:32] Cameron McEwen: I don't know why I talked about that stuff.
[36:35] Cameron McEwen: But it's my way of saying that when we're thinking about the,
[36:42] Cameron McEwen: when we're thinking about memes,
[36:44] Cameron McEwen: that's right,
[36:45] Cameron McEwen: when we're thinking about memes and we're thinking about the tech body,
[36:50] Cameron McEwen: one of the things which seems to me to be happening is that the memes Thanks.
[36:57] Cameron McEwen: are kind of bubbles.
[37:00] Cameron McEwen: They're things that capture people's minds,
[37:05] Cameron McEwen: capture people's attention,
[37:07] Cameron McEwen: capture people's energy,
[37:09] Cameron McEwen: and after a while they dissipate themselves and they get replaced by a new meme.
[37:16] Cameron McEwen: And this comes back to where we started all of our conversations with the cul-de-sac,
[37:23] Cameron McEwen: right?
[37:24] Cameron McEwen: People are caught up in this meme and that meme and then again this meme and then another one tomorrow and all this stuff.
[37:32] Cameron McEwen: That is what the cul-de-sac looks like.
[37:36] Cameron McEwen: That's how it functions.
[37:39] Cameron McEwen: The cul-de-sac functions via memes and at the end of the cul-de-sac when you realize that it doesn't have any exit,
[37:48] Cameron McEwen: that's where you get an understanding of memes.
[37:52] Cameron McEwen: but you don't know how to go to any place else.
[37:56] Cameron McEwen: And so when you're talking about the magic casements or when we're talking about the different relationships,
[38:02] Cameron McEwen: what we're talking about is what you have to see at the end of the cul-de-sac in order to know where else you can go.
[38:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[38:12] Bob Dobbs: so it's very appropriate that I put my quadrant as Anthropomorphic Physical because I was exploring myself and what was out there through
[38:22] Bob Dobbs: those other anti-environment symbolized by
[38:24] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan, LaRouche,
[38:25] Bob Dobbs: Thompson,
[38:26] Bob Dobbs: and Kroker,
[38:27] Bob Dobbs: but there were all other terms in each quadrant.
[38:30] Bob Dobbs: So according to what you just said,
[38:34] Bob Dobbs: I was exploring the Anthropomorphic Physical.
[38:36] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[38:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[38:38] Bob Dobbs: And I was saying we were all doing that,
[38:40] Bob Dobbs: forced to do that,
[38:42] Bob Dobbs: under the eschatological phase of the anti-environment that we'd got the cul-de-sac we put ourselves into.
[38:50] Bob Dobbs: Remember that fourth level of exegesis,
[38:52] Bob Dobbs: ultimate mysteries?
[38:53] Bob Dobbs: That's where people got to over the last 30,
[38:56] Bob Dobbs: 40 years in a way no other society had gotten to in a long time,
[39:01] Bob Dobbs: maybe.
[39:07] Cameron McEwen: No?
[39:08] Cameron McEwen: I think by and large,
[39:10] Cameron McEwen: when people are thinking about that these days,
[39:14] Cameron McEwen: it's pretty trivial.
[39:16] Cameron McEwen: After all,
[39:17] Cameron McEwen: let's just think about the
[39:19] Cameron McEwen: 19th century for a minute.
[39:22] Cameron McEwen: The
[39:22] Cameron McEwen: 19th century is not only the Gutenberg Galaxy.
[39:27] Cameron McEwen: In the
[39:27] Cameron McEwen: 19th century,
[39:28] Cameron McEwen: you have all of these convents and monasteries.
[39:33] Cameron McEwen: monasteries and people who are in this going off,
[39:43] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[39:43] Cameron McEwen: to the Lake District and contemplating the ultimate mysteries and all that sort of stuff.
[39:51] Cameron McEwen: So when people dedicate their lives to something,
[39:57] Cameron McEwen: you have a seriousness that's lacking now.
[40:01] Cameron McEwen: People say,
[40:01] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[40:02] Cameron McEwen: I'm involved with the Ultimate Mysteries,
[40:03] Cameron McEwen: and then they go off and say,
[40:05] Cameron McEwen: well,
[40:05] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[40:06] Cameron McEwen: what's the latest iPhone,
[40:07] Cameron McEwen: or how much RAM should I have?
[40:12] Bob Dobbs: They spend a weekend in a retreat and think about it for half an hour.
[40:17] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[40:17] Cameron McEwen: correct.
[40:19] Bob Dobbs: They do avoid reading,
[40:21] Bob Dobbs: in-depth reading,
[40:24] Bob Dobbs: more and more.
[40:25] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[40:27] Bob Dobbs: Lots of people here on the beach reading books,
[40:29] Bob Dobbs: but they're just reading novels and airport stuff.
[40:32] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[40:34] Bob Dobbs: I don't see them reading Kierkegaard.
[40:40] Bob Dobbs: So you're saying we're more trivial today.
[40:44] Bob Dobbs: When you were talking about bubbles,
[40:45] Bob Dobbs: I thought of his 1955 use of the word spume,
[40:50] Bob Dobbs: S-P-U-M-E,
[40:52] Bob Dobbs: describing television.
[40:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[40:55] Bob Dobbs: Did I bring up that?
[40:56] Bob Dobbs: Last week?
[40:58] Bob Dobbs: I think I did.
[40:58] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[40:59] Cameron McEwen: you have mentioned it in the past.
[41:01] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if it was last week.
[41:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[41:03] Cameron McEwen: But it's an excellent term for sure.
[41:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[41:08] Cameron McEwen: And it's very germane to what we're talking about here with the tech body.
[41:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[41:13] Cameron McEwen: Because the yo-yo.
[41:20] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,
[41:20] Cameron McEwen: at one point he says,
[41:22] Cameron McEwen: and then you're walking the dog.
[41:24] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[41:26] Cameron McEwen: People may not know that that's a move in yo-yo.
[41:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[41:30] Bob Dobbs: that's a type of,
[41:32] Bob Dobbs: you touch the ground.
[41:34] Cameron McEwen: That's right,
[41:34] Cameron McEwen: and you let the yo-yo walk along the ground.
[41:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[41:37] Bob Dobbs: it moves,
[41:39] Bob Dobbs: bottling up and stopping.
[41:41] Cameron McEwen: That's right,
[41:41] Cameron McEwen: so that's walking the dog.
[41:46] Cameron McEwen: Take body,
[41:46] Cameron McEwen: do it.
[41:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[41:49] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[41:50] Cameron McEwen: But if somebody didn't know it was...
[41:55] Cameron McEwen: a yo-yo move.
[41:57] Cameron McEwen: Then it's interesting to think that,
[42:04] Cameron McEwen: well,
[42:04] Cameron McEwen: I'm walking the dog and I'm sort of in control here,
[42:08] Cameron McEwen: and the tech body is saying,
[42:10] Cameron McEwen: no,
[42:12] Cameron McEwen: you think you're in control,
[42:14] Cameron McEwen: but you're being controlled in ways that you haven't investigated.
[42:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[42:20] Bob Dobbs: now,
[42:21] Bob Dobbs: You listened to a bit of the recording last week.
[42:26] Bob Dobbs: What was it?
[42:28] Bob Dobbs: You felt the tech body sounded like me.
[42:32] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[42:34] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[42:35] Bob Dobbs: when Ion first showed up,
[42:40] Bob Dobbs: it took a while for a few other people to interact with Ion.
[42:45] Bob Dobbs: But I had a friend who was very funny,
[42:47] Bob Dobbs: and he showed up.
[42:50] Bob Dobbs: It was a month or so after
[42:51] Bob Dobbs: Ion showed up in March 2009.
[42:54] Bob Dobbs: And
[42:56] Bob Dobbs: Ion, for the first time,
[42:57] Bob Dobbs: started cracking jokes and being funny as he interacted with me and this other guy who was funny.
[43:06] Bob Dobbs: And so I realized,
[43:07] Bob Dobbs: hmm,
[43:08] Bob Dobbs: Ion's,
[43:09] Bob Dobbs: whatever Ion is,
[43:10] Bob Dobbs: is exploring us and absorbing each human that we encountered.
[43:17] Bob Dobbs: And he would adopt,
[43:18] Bob Dobbs: take in what they were.
[43:20] Bob Dobbs: So he would add it to his repertoire.
[43:23] Bob Dobbs: So...
[43:24] Bob Dobbs: It's not wrong to say,
[43:26] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[43:26] Bob Dobbs: so then a couple months later,
[43:29] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn and I were doing the Emerald Tablets,
[43:32] Bob Dobbs: and then we were doing a book of medicine,
[43:35] Bob Dobbs: where Carolyn would go through every disease she could come up with,
[43:39] Bob Dobbs: every ailment,
[43:40] Bob Dobbs: and have
[43:41] Bob Dobbs: Ian give his opinion about what it is,
[43:43] Bob Dobbs: what caused it,
[43:43] Bob Dobbs: and what to do about it.
[43:45] Bob Dobbs: So after an amazing display of medical knowledge for weeks,
[43:50] Bob Dobbs: I asked Ian,
[43:51] Bob Dobbs: I said,
[43:51] Bob Dobbs: how come you know all this medicine?
[43:53] Bob Dobbs: And they said,
[43:54] Bob Dobbs: we get it all from Carolyn Dean.
[43:57] Bob Dobbs: So that was the first clue that they were just absorbing the person and what they knew.
[44:04] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[44:04] Bob Dobbs: I would then massage.
[44:08] Bob Dobbs: It didn't just view back Carolyn Dean version of medicine.
[44:15] Bob Dobbs: It would know the basics and then give its unique view of it.
[44:21] Bob Dobbs: So
[44:21] Bob Dobbs: I gradually got to understand that I had a kind of ESP.
[44:26] Bob Dobbs: You would absorb what you were and express it.
[44:33] Bob Dobbs: And then you would recognize,
[44:36] Bob Dobbs: well,
[44:36] Bob Dobbs: that's a lot of what I have.
[44:38] Bob Dobbs: thought or not.
[44:39] Bob Dobbs: You may not recognize it.
[44:41] Bob Dobbs: So when you say the tech body is me,
[44:44] Bob Dobbs: sounds like me,
[44:46] Bob Dobbs: that is pretty close to the fact of Ion.
[44:50] Bob Dobbs: Because in a way,
[44:51] Bob Dobbs: Ion's an empty vessel.
[44:52] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't have anything.
[44:55] Bob Dobbs: It's just in a state of bliss or something.
[44:57] Bob Dobbs: And what he called non-physical,
[45:01] Bob Dobbs: so he would look to what the human was thinking to get stuff to say.
[45:06] Bob Dobbs: I was interested in conversing.
[45:09] Bob Dobbs: So
[45:09] Bob Dobbs: I'm pointing out that it's a good statement you made,
[45:13] Bob Dobbs: that the tech body would sound like me because it's talking to me.
[45:18] Bob Dobbs: And this is the tech body that's similar to ION.
[45:21] Bob Dobbs: If the tech body talked to you,
[45:23] Bob Dobbs: it might be a whole different something that comes out of it.
[45:28] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[45:29] Bob Dobbs: I've had several other people interview the tech body,
[45:32] Bob Dobbs: and I guess they're probably different.
[45:34] Bob Dobbs: I haven't really...
[45:36] Bob Dobbs: gone into it or really checked it.
[45:39] Bob Dobbs: But I was thinking about that earlier today,
[45:42] Bob Dobbs: that I want to tell you that.
[45:44] Bob Dobbs: You get my point that the tech body is,
[45:47] Bob Dobbs: it mimes us.
[45:49] Bob Dobbs: It takes us,
[45:51] Bob Dobbs: takes what we have and throws it back.
[45:54] Bob Dobbs: So a lot of the ideas in his discussion with McLuhan,
[46:01] Bob Dobbs: I understand because I've...
[46:03] Bob Dobbs: thought of them before,
[46:04] Bob Dobbs: but I never thought of the yo-yo,
[46:06] Bob Dobbs: right?
[46:07] Bob Dobbs: I am brings in their own unique metaphor to make a McLuhan point,
[46:11] Bob Dobbs: and I would know the McLuhan point,
[46:13] Bob Dobbs: but not that way to get to it.
[46:17] Bob Dobbs: So,
[46:19] Bob Dobbs: as we look at this,
[46:22] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking that the Freemasons,
[46:25] Bob Dobbs: they had certain rituals to trigger people,
[46:28] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[46:29] Bob Dobbs: they get them to act out death and put them in a coffin.
[46:32] Bob Dobbs: some other things I've heard about.
[46:35] Bob Dobbs: And so different secret societies would have different ways to flip people into the blackness,
[46:43] Bob Dobbs: the nothing.
[46:45] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan liked to study all these different techniques and ways.
[46:49] Bob Dobbs: So that was his period of looking into secret societies.
[46:54] Bob Dobbs: Do you have anything to say about what...
[46:59] Bob Dobbs: What would be a technique of flipping someone into being forced to look into the nothing?
[47:06] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[47:07] Bob Dobbs: somebody might say in that movie,
[47:10] Bob Dobbs: Silence of the Lambs,
[47:11] Bob Dobbs: I think it was called,
[47:12] Bob Dobbs: that that guy forced people to look at nothing by killing them or threatening to kill them.
[47:20] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[47:20] Bob Dobbs: there's some of these serial killers,
[47:21] Bob Dobbs: they love the fear they create.
[47:23] Bob Dobbs: That's what they would report later.
[47:27] Bob Dobbs: Is that a...
[47:29] Bob Dobbs: Just another version to get somebody to go into the nothing,
[47:31] Bob Dobbs: or you would balk at that and say no?
[47:35] Cameron McEwen: I'd balk at that because that's the big problem with Menippean satire.
[47:42] Cameron McEwen: These things,
[47:46] Cameron McEwen: on the one hand,
[47:51] Cameron McEwen: are subject to superficial definition,
[47:55] Cameron McEwen: and on the other hand are very...
[47:58] Cameron McEwen: very serious things.
[48:01] Cameron McEwen: So,
[48:01] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[48:02] Cameron McEwen: one way of looking at history,
[48:07] Cameron McEwen: as
[48:07] Cameron McEwen: James Joyce said,
[48:09] Cameron McEwen: history is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake.
[48:13] Cameron McEwen: History is this confrontation with death on a mass,
[48:23] Cameron McEwen: mass scale,
[48:25] Cameron McEwen: a terrible thing,
[48:26] Cameron McEwen: right?
[48:27] Cameron McEwen: And um
[48:28] Cameron McEwen: We can't be flip and just say,
[48:31] Cameron McEwen: well,
[48:31] Cameron McEwen: that's,
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: it's kind of a Zen process.
[48:36] Cameron McEwen: And oh,
[48:37] Cameron McEwen: no,
[48:37] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[48:37] Cameron McEwen: this is terrible.
[48:39] Cameron McEwen: What's done to people and what is continually done to people and what has always been done to people.
[48:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[48:47] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[48:47] Cameron McEwen: so it's like the
[48:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan always talked about
[48:51] Cameron McEwen: Conrad's Africa.
[48:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[48:54] Cameron McEwen: and what...
[48:57] Cameron McEwen: What happens in Conrad's
[48:59] Cameron McEwen: Africa is the horror,
[49:01] Cameron McEwen: the horror,
[49:02] Bob Dobbs: right?
[49:04] Cameron McEwen: And so the whole idea of the horror...
[49:10] Cameron McEwen: being some sort of exemplary introduction or initiation into the nothing is way too flippant.
[49:22] Cameron McEwen: But that said,
[49:24] Cameron McEwen: when we look at history,
[49:27] Cameron McEwen: when we look at the depths of the psyche and find all of the terrible things that we do to people in our life,
[49:40] Cameron McEwen: lives and are sort of unforgivable,
[49:44] Cameron McEwen: but we still do them.
[49:46] Cameron McEwen: When we look at these exterior and interior horrors,
[49:50] Cameron McEwen: they are things that we have to interrogate and they're things that help to define the end of the cul-de-sac.
[50:01] Cameron McEwen: We need to interrogate those things as very serious matters.
[50:09] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.
[50:11] Cameron McEwen: figure out what they mean,
[50:15] Cameron McEwen: what they intend,
[50:18] Cameron McEwen: right?
[50:18] Cameron McEwen: What they want to say.
[50:24] Bob Dobbs: So you judge people on their seriousness or you wait to see if they are serious.
[50:31] Bob Dobbs: That professor saying you read all these books,
[50:34] Bob Dobbs: that's where he's checking to see how serious you are,
[50:36] Bob Dobbs: right?
[50:38] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[50:40] Cameron McEwen: On one level,
[50:41] Cameron McEwen: on one level,
[50:42] Cameron McEwen: other level,
[50:43] Cameron McEwen: saying,
[50:43] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[50:44] Cameron McEwen: you have no idea what seriousness is.
[50:49] Cameron McEwen: Look at somebody who has written all these books.
[50:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[50:56] Bob Dobbs: seriously.
[50:56] Cameron McEwen: I'm serious.
[50:59] Bob Dobbs: So when you say that you don't find many McLuhan interesting to talk to and then you find me interesting,
[51:05] Bob Dobbs: That's because you think that I...
[51:07] Bob Dobbs: take this issue seriously.
[51:09] Bob Dobbs: That would be a big factor in this.
[51:11] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[51:14] Cameron McEwen: The interesting thing about your mind is that it's alive.
[51:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[51:20] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[51:20] Bob Dobbs: that's taking life seriously,
[51:22] Bob Dobbs: right?
[51:23] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[51:24] Cameron McEwen: In order to have a live mind,
[51:29] Cameron McEwen: you need to be able to go up and go down and go from one side to the other side.
[51:37] Cameron McEwen: You have that in a remarkable way.
[51:40] Cameron McEwen: And so then when we're talking,
[51:43] Cameron McEwen: I get insight into ideas that I probably should have had before,
[51:49] Cameron McEwen: but I didn't.
[51:50] Bob Dobbs: Because you didn't encounter someone who triggered them.
[51:54] Cameron McEwen: Maybe,
[51:54] Bob Dobbs: maybe,
[51:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[51:56] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[51:57] Bob Dobbs: I remember McLuhan one night in the Monday night seminar talking about how many people at Acadia University were stupid,
[52:04] Bob Dobbs: but meaning...
[52:06] Bob Dobbs: professors in that.
[52:08] Bob Dobbs: He was meaning they didn't have an alive mind,
[52:10] Bob Dobbs: I guess.
[52:12] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[52:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[52:14] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[52:14] Cameron McEwen: they're just bureaucrats of the spirit.
[52:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[52:18] Bob Dobbs: So you can't tell,
[52:22] Bob Dobbs: you can't predict and imitate having an alive mind,
[52:25] Bob Dobbs: can you?
[52:27] Cameron McEwen: No.
[52:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[52:28] Bob Dobbs: So you can tell it's kind of a spontaneity or something that people have.
[52:34] Bob Dobbs: Have you encountered people?
[52:36] Bob Dobbs: who have an alive mind that aren't reading McLuhan or anything.
[52:41] Bob Dobbs: You've encountered many alive minds,
[52:43] Bob Dobbs: right,
[52:44] Bob Dobbs: in your life.
[52:44] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[52:46] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[52:47] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[52:48] Cameron McEwen: And the problem is the economy is able to harness alive minds to things that are negative.
[53:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[53:02] Cameron McEwen: And that's one of our great problems.
[53:05] Cameron McEwen: is that you have people that are just astonishingly intelligent,
[53:10] Cameron McEwen: but they're doing things that are ultimately either useless or outright bad.
[53:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[53:19] Cameron McEwen: And,
[53:19] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[53:19] Cameron McEwen: I spent a lot of my life in a business context,
[53:26] Cameron McEwen: and one of the reasons that I did that was that,
[53:29] Cameron McEwen: by and large,
[53:31] Cameron McEwen: that
[53:32] Cameron McEwen: the people that I knew in business were more intelligent than the people I knew at Acadia University.
[53:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[53:38] Bob Dobbs: and probably the most corrupt use of the alive mind is in entertainment.
[53:47] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[53:48] Bob Dobbs: Movies,
[53:49] Bob Dobbs: talk shows,
[53:49] Bob Dobbs: Saturday Night Live,
[53:51] Bob Dobbs: there's a lot of...
[53:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[53:52] Cameron McEwen: but I don't find many alive minds there.
[53:56] Cameron McEwen: I really don't.
[53:57] Bob Dobbs: Not anymore.
[53:58] Bob Dobbs: Maybe in the 60s and 70s.
[54:01] Bob Dobbs: when Saturday Night Live started.
[54:02] Bob Dobbs: But yes,
[54:03] Bob Dobbs: there's something about entertainment that has become incredibly dull.
[54:07] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[54:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[54:09] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[54:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[54:10] Bob Dobbs: It's not entertainment anymore.
[54:12] Bob Dobbs: Something,
[54:12] Bob Dobbs: it's taken over.
[54:14] Bob Dobbs: It's become life in the office or something.
[54:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[54:19] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[54:21] Cameron McEwen: it's become something that degrades people.
[54:24] Cameron McEwen: They think they're enjoying something,
[54:27] Cameron McEwen: but it's actually degrading them.
[54:34] Cameron McEwen: It's evil,
[54:35] Cameron McEwen: really.
[54:35] Cameron McEwen: It's...
[54:36] Cameron McEwen: um
[54:38] Cameron McEwen: touching them inappropriately,
[54:40] Cameron McEwen: and they don't even know that they're being touched.
[54:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[54:43] Bob Dobbs: That's the new excessive tactility that we've been in for 30 or 40 years.
[54:50] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[54:50] Cameron McEwen: Maybe that's an interesting way of looking at it,
[54:52] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[54:53] Bob Dobbs: Tactility as an extended anti-environment numbs people.
[54:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[54:59] Cameron McEwen: that's good.
[55:00] Cameron McEwen: That's good.
[55:00] Cameron McEwen: And that relates directly to the idea of live minds being harnessed.
[55:08] Cameron McEwen: And thereby,
[55:12] Cameron McEwen: what can I say?
[55:14] Cameron McEwen: If you take a wild horse that's live and you domesticate it,
[55:20] Cameron McEwen: it's lost something.
[55:22] Cameron McEwen: And that's what happens to live minds when they get involved with this stuff,
[55:29] Cameron McEwen: is that they get harnessed,
[55:32] Cameron McEwen: they get domesticated,
[55:34] Cameron McEwen: they lose their...
[55:37] Cameron McEwen: live minds,
[55:38] Cameron McEwen: and that's a tragedy.
[55:40] Cameron McEwen: It's terrible.
[55:41] Cameron McEwen: And then,
[55:43] Cameron McEwen: so you find country clubs filled with people like this,
[55:48] Cameron McEwen: and oftentimes they're able to make great jokes.
[55:51] Cameron McEwen: Oftentimes they depreciate themselves in ways that are very funny.
[55:58] Cameron McEwen: But at the end of the day,
[56:02] Cameron McEwen: their lives are empty because
[56:06] Cameron McEwen: What they've done is they've dedicated themselves to something that wasn't worthy of their dedication.
[56:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[56:12] Bob Dobbs: of their energy,
[56:13] Bob Dobbs: of their intelligence.
[56:17] Bob Dobbs: I had a thought about...
[56:23] Cameron McEwen: Could I...
[56:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[56:24] Cameron McEwen: go ahead.
[56:26] Cameron McEwen: All right,
[56:26] Cameron McEwen: so over the past week I've had this image of memes
[56:34] Cameron McEwen: as bubbles that are kind of rising in the sea.
[56:40] Cameron McEwen: And one bubble breaks and another one comes on,
[56:45] Cameron McEwen: or maybe there's
[56:47] Cameron McEwen: 20 or a million bubbles at the same time,
[56:51] Cameron McEwen: and a certain number are breaking and a certain number are coming to life.
[56:57] Cameron McEwen: But they're all bubbles.
[56:58] Cameron McEwen: They're not in contact with reality.
[57:01] Cameron McEwen: they're only in contact with whatever that
[57:04] Cameron McEwen: particular bubble allows.
[57:06] Cameron McEwen: And their identity is also confined in that bubble.
[57:11] Cameron McEwen: So my image is that you have all these memes and what is necessary is for all of the memes together to
[57:26] Cameron McEwen: become science.
[57:29] Cameron McEwen: And the reason they need to become science is that science to
[57:33] Cameron McEwen: is a way of being ultimately serious about what you're talking about,
[57:42] Cameron McEwen: allowing anybody to question what you think,
[57:48] Cameron McEwen: being required to test what you think,
[57:52] Cameron McEwen: being entirely open to all of the possibilities that are before you.
[58:00] Cameron McEwen: so the
[58:01] Cameron McEwen: The definition of a meme,
[58:03] Cameron McEwen: as far as I'm concerned,
[58:04] Cameron McEwen: is a limitation on people's experience.
[58:13] Cameron McEwen: And the opening up of that experience can be called a turn to science.
[58:23] Cameron McEwen: And how would that take place?
[58:25] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[58:26] Cameron McEwen: you could say the power that structures memes.
[58:30] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,
[58:31] Cameron McEwen: a power that keeps the memes self-enclosed,
[58:35] Cameron McEwen: that gives them a false sense of identity,
[58:39] Cameron McEwen: a false sense of pleasure,
[58:41] Cameron McEwen: a false sense of who the other is,
[58:43] Cameron McEwen: a false sense of what the world is,
[58:45] Cameron McEwen: on and on and on.
[58:47] Cameron McEwen: The power that does that might be construed.
[58:54] Cameron McEwen: as something entirely negative,
[58:56] Cameron McEwen: but if that power is interrogated,
[59:02] Cameron McEwen: that would be a way to science.
[59:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[59:05] Cameron McEwen: And so what led me to think about the black body being not negative,
[59:12] Cameron McEwen: or we shouldn't treat it as negative,
[59:15] Cameron McEwen: we should treat it as something that we can converse with and learn from.
[59:23] Cameron McEwen: is that if it's in control of all of these bubbles or all these yo-yos,
[59:29] Cameron McEwen: like the yo-yo master,
[59:32] Cameron McEwen: then that power is exactly what we encounter at the end of the cul-de-sac.
[59:42] Cameron McEwen: And so it's a power that we can interrogate in order to know what direction to take out of the cul-de-sac.
[59:54] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[59:55] Bob Dobbs: as Ian would say to me,
[59:57] Bob Dobbs: beautiful words,
[59:58] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron,
[59:59] Bob Dobbs: but you couldn't be further from the truth.
[1:00:04] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:00:05] Bob Dobbs: it's well said what you said,
[1:00:06] Bob Dobbs: but it's not enough,
[1:00:08] Bob Dobbs: probably.
[1:00:10] Bob Dobbs: You didn't finish or you couldn't finish.
[1:00:12] Bob Dobbs: You have to stop at some point.
[1:00:15] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:00:15] Cameron McEwen: I'll just remark that we're within a page or two of your interview with the Black Bodies.
[1:00:27] Cameron McEwen: What I was just saying is that we need to interrogate it.
[1:00:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:00:31] Cameron McEwen: you're about to do that.
[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:00:34] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:00:34] Bob Dobbs: I kept thinking I had something to say.
[1:00:42] Bob Dobbs: Did McLuhan get in trouble in the
[1:00:47] Bob Dobbs: 70s, lost his aliveness,
[1:00:50] Bob Dobbs: or he was amazingly alive?
[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: regardless of his health problems,
[1:00:56] Bob Dobbs: or he just got more and more frustrated,
[1:00:58] Bob Dobbs: or it was inevitable what he got into.
[1:01:01] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall said that McLuhan acted out our lives.
[1:01:04] Bob Dobbs: He was a canary in the mine going through what everybody was going to go through.
[1:01:11] Bob Dobbs: And I guess,
[1:01:12] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:01:12] Bob Dobbs: I'll go back to the eschatological situation.
[1:01:18] Bob Dobbs: People are more confronted by the...
[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: more chance to find their emptiness and the uncomfortable experience of it today because everything is finished so quickly.
[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:01:32] Cameron McEwen: but you see,
[1:01:33] Cameron McEwen: that's what I already disagreed with a while back in our conversation.
[1:01:38] Cameron McEwen: I don't believe that at all.
[1:01:40] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:01:40] Bob Dobbs: what do you believe is happening?
[1:01:44] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:01:44] Cameron McEwen: I believe that we're becoming more superficial rather than less.
[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: that's what I mean.
[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: that's what I mean.
[1:01:50] Bob Dobbs: The eschological,
[1:01:53] Bob Dobbs: it's like saying we've extended tactility and debased it.
[1:01:58] Bob Dobbs: The stripping away of everything,
[1:02:00] Bob Dobbs: which McLuhan even said in the Malinowski,
[1:02:04] Bob Dobbs: that a person for the first time is not hypnotized by cultures anymore because there's too many of them,
[1:02:13] Bob Dobbs: and so you recognize them more than you would if you lived in one culture at a slower pace.
[1:02:19] Bob Dobbs: He said we're moving into the highest decibels of consciousness.
[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: But the problem was that nobody noticed the cause of anti-environment of it.
[1:02:30] Bob Dobbs: They just frantically or panic-wise,
[1:02:33] Bob Dobbs: hysterically,
[1:02:34] Bob Dobbs: were forced into the eschatological of confronting nothing.
[1:02:40] Bob Dobbs: That's maybe a common theme in novels and that,
[1:02:44] Bob Dobbs: but it seems to be a fact.
[1:02:48] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so at all.
[1:02:51] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:02:51] Cameron McEwen: when McLuhan talking about we're being forced to confront different cultures and all this sort of stuff,
[1:03:02] Cameron McEwen: there's a whole range of confrontations with different cultures.
[1:03:07] Cameron McEwen: And the idea that we have a kind of smorgasbord now of...
[1:03:15] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:03:16] Cameron McEwen: the Thai and the Burmese and the Czechoslovakian and the Latvian and all that sort of stuff.
[1:03:22] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:03:23] Cameron McEwen: that's so superficial.
[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: but I also mean radio,
[1:03:27] Bob Dobbs: TV,
[1:03:27] Bob Dobbs: and books,
[1:03:29] Bob Dobbs: forms,
[1:03:31] Bob Dobbs: not just,
[1:03:31] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:03:32] Bob Dobbs: cultural cuisine or content.
[1:03:35] Bob Dobbs: We have so many different sensory forms.
[1:03:38] Bob Dobbs: What we did now,
[1:03:39] Bob Dobbs: it's hard to say what sensory form is happening.
[1:03:44] Bob Dobbs: But we did in the mid-20th century.
[1:03:47] Bob Dobbs: You had the radio era,
[1:03:49] Bob Dobbs: and then you'd watch TV and deal with that.
[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: Then you'd read the newspaper.
[1:03:52] Bob Dobbs: Then you'd swim in a lake or something.
[1:03:55] Bob Dobbs: Then you'd fix your car or drive your car.
[1:03:59] Bob Dobbs: The variety of sensory input.
[1:04:02] Bob Dobbs: And I say that with McLuhan point that sensory input is not experience.
[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: He says that in Culture Is Our Business.
[1:04:09] Bob Dobbs: What do you think of that statement,
[1:04:11] Bob Dobbs: sensory input is not experience?
[1:04:15] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:04:16] Cameron McEwen: I'd have to look at it.
[1:04:20] Bob Dobbs: It's the beginning of one of the chapters.
[1:04:24] Cameron McEwen: One of the best things about McLuhan is he says that sensory input...
[1:04:32] Cameron McEwen: is not some sort of immediate apprehension,
[1:04:38] Cameron McEwen: that there's already shaping forces,
[1:04:42] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:04:43] Cameron McEwen: So the passage that you really like about the input of food is not the same as its output.
[1:04:53] Cameron McEwen: That already happens at the level of perception.
[1:04:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:04:56] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:04:57] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan knew that.
[1:05:00] Cameron McEwen: So...
[1:05:04] Cameron McEwen: the passage you're talking about,
[1:05:05] Cameron McEwen: sensory input is not experience.
[1:05:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:05:13] Cameron McEwen: so
[1:05:14] Cameron McEwen: I don't know exactly what he means there.
[1:05:16] Cameron McEwen: If he means that the photons coming into the eye are not the same thing as experience,
[1:05:26] Cameron McEwen: what he means is the photons,
[1:05:28] Cameron McEwen: as soon as they hit the eye,
[1:05:31] Cameron McEwen: take on some kind of meaning,
[1:05:33] Cameron McEwen: and that meaning is shaped.
[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: So as the photons excite the back of the eye and that goes into the optic nerve and all that sort of stuff,
[1:05:49] Cameron McEwen: at the same instant that that is happening,
[1:05:53] Cameron McEwen: so is the correlation of what is seen with the...
[1:06:00] Cameron McEwen: rearview mirror with our hopes and expectations.
[1:06:05] Cameron McEwen: In short,
[1:06:06] Cameron McEwen: it's immediately transformed into experience.
[1:06:13] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:06:13] Bob Dobbs: But I think of it as the people throw their chemical bodies into all kinds of experiences today because there are opportunities to encounter different experiences more so than any before.
[1:06:27] Bob Dobbs: just because you can fly anywhere on the planet.
[1:06:32] Bob Dobbs: So that's the sensory experiences that the body has become trivialized.
[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: So it comes back to what you were talking about,
[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: the trivial situation.
[1:06:43] Bob Dobbs: And that experience,
[1:06:45] Bob Dobbs: real experience,
[1:06:46] Bob Dobbs: is not sensory input,
[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: which is tourism.
[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: It is some kind of Explorations with a detachment of...
[1:06:57] Bob Dobbs: something else,
[1:06:58] Bob Dobbs: which might be the meme,
[1:07:00] Bob Dobbs: or the memetic,
[1:07:02] Bob Dobbs: which gets trivialized.
[1:07:04] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:07:05] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said that we now have the opportunity to retrieve the Greek world of metaphysics and contemplation,
[1:07:15] Bob Dobbs: more so than ever we had since Greek times.
[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: He seemed to be idealizing the Greek experience in Athens.
[1:07:25] Bob Dobbs: And now we were...
[1:07:26] Bob Dobbs: We were able to do it again.
[1:07:29] Bob Dobbs: What do you think?
[1:07:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:07:29] Cameron McEwen: but the key word in what you're saying there is we.
[1:07:35] Cameron McEwen: And the question is,
[1:07:38] Cameron McEwen: who is that we?
[1:07:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:07:40] Cameron McEwen: And that we is not the crowd.
[1:07:46] Cameron McEwen: The we is individuals who are serious.
[1:07:57] Cameron McEwen: have certain resources today that people have not had in the past.
[1:08:04] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:08:04] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[1:08:07] Cameron McEwen: one of McLuhan favorite things was the anthropological interrogation of primitive cultures.
[1:08:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan thought that that was a very important thing that only happened at the turn of the
[1:08:22] Cameron McEwen: 20th century,
[1:08:24] Cameron McEwen: and that...
[1:08:26] Cameron McEwen: It introduced a whole new way of thinking about language,
[1:08:31] Cameron McEwen: thinking about how we're constrained by language,
[1:08:37] Cameron McEwen: but also exposed to things by language.
[1:08:41] Cameron McEwen: And he agreed with Elliot and Richards that that was a very important thing.
[1:08:49] Cameron McEwen: But it's not the case that that's going on in culture at large.
[1:08:55] Cameron McEwen: There's a very big difference between the we of
[1:08:59] Cameron McEwen: Elliot,
[1:09:00] Cameron McEwen: Richards,
[1:09:01] Cameron McEwen: Empson, and McLuhan,
[1:09:04] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[1:09:04] Cameron McEwen: and Leavis.
[1:09:05] Cameron McEwen: Big difference between that we and the regular we.
[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: that's why he wrote to Pound,
[1:09:11] Bob Dobbs: because I am not of the we party.
[1:09:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:09:15] Bob Dobbs: He puts we in quotes.
[1:09:17] Bob Dobbs: I am not of the we party.
[1:09:20] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:09:21] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:09:22] Cameron McEwen: And so that's why I was talking about trying to break out of the mean bubble.
[1:09:29] Cameron McEwen: How does that happen?
[1:09:31] Cameron McEwen: It's got an individual aspect because there's a demand on the individual to be serious and to take things as far as they can be taken.
[1:09:41] Cameron McEwen: But there's also a social aspect,
[1:09:43] Cameron McEwen: and that is how are we at last to Thank you.
[1:09:48] Cameron McEwen: bring serious thinking to bear on public and social policy.
[1:09:55] Cameron McEwen: And so one of the reasons that McLuhan kept saying,
[1:09:59] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:09:59] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:09:59] Cameron McEwen: we have to see the virtues of the Middle Ages,
[1:10:03] Cameron McEwen: is that he and others,
[1:10:06] Cameron McEwen: like
[1:10:07] Cameron McEwen: Gilson, believed that in the Middle Ages,
[1:10:12] Cameron McEwen: there was a better accord between serious thinking
[1:10:17] Cameron McEwen: thought and social order than there is today.
[1:10:21] Cameron McEwen: And that was one of the ideas that Chesterton actually brought to McLuhan around 1930 already.
[1:10:28] Bob Dobbs: Would he have come up with the idea Chesterton,
[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: that there was essential unity in the medieval experience?
[1:10:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:10:37] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:10:38] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:10:38] Cameron McEwen: of course it's not as if everybody in the Middle Ages was a SubGenius or was a More.
[1:10:47] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:10:47] Cameron McEwen: a moral saint or something like that.
[1:10:50] Cameron McEwen: Middle Ages was very,
[1:10:51] Cameron McEwen: very complicated.
[1:10:53] Cameron McEwen: And so it's just a question of nearer and further away from some kind of unity.
[1:11:06] Bob Dobbs: Some kind of what?
[1:11:08] Cameron McEwen: Unity.
[1:11:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:11:10] Bob Dobbs: So the...
[1:11:16] Bob Dobbs: And so McLuhan saw a retrieval under electric conditions of that unity,
[1:11:21] Bob Dobbs: the tactile unity.
[1:11:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:11:23] Cameron McEwen: I think he did.
[1:11:25] Cameron McEwen: But he didn't think that bitter experience taught him that it was a very,
[1:11:32] Cameron McEwen: very difficult problem.
[1:11:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:11:35] Cameron McEwen: He was not able,
[1:11:37] Cameron McEwen: within his own family,
[1:11:40] Cameron McEwen: to bring his thought.
[1:11:45] Cameron McEwen: to any kind of understanding.
[1:11:47] Cameron McEwen: And then at the University of Toronto,
[1:11:50] Cameron McEwen: even worse experience.
[1:11:53] Bob Dobbs: How do you know about his family?
[1:11:55] Bob Dobbs: What are you basing that on?
[1:11:58] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:11:59] Cameron McEwen: them dropping
[1:12:01] Cameron McEwen: Catholicism as an example.
[1:12:03] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:12:05] Bob Dobbs: But Eric didn't.
[1:12:07] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:12:09] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:12:12] Cameron McEwen: I think that Michael...
[1:12:13] Cameron McEwen: was very,
[1:12:14] Cameron McEwen: very important for
[1:12:16] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan as a kind of...
[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: Barometer.
[1:12:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:12:24] Cameron McEwen: of the modern age.
[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:12:26] Cameron McEwen: So he knew from Michael that it was serious stuff,
[1:12:36] Cameron McEwen: and he appreciated that.
[1:12:38] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if Michael knew that at the time or if he even knows it now,
[1:12:42] Cameron McEwen: but...
[1:12:44] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,
[1:12:45] Cameron McEwen: one of the keys to McLuhan thought in the
[1:12:48] Cameron McEwen: 60s and 70s is just Michael sort of growing up and McLuhan trying to understand his thinking.
[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: that's in that period when Michael got in trouble for the dope bust or whatever it was that happened,
[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: in New York City.
[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: The letters,
[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: his correspondence with
[1:13:08] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan correspondence with his friends.
[1:13:10] Bob Dobbs: close friends where he would discuss it.
[1:13:12] Bob Dobbs: It's very interesting.
[1:13:13] Bob Dobbs: He's really trying to figure it out,
[1:13:14] Bob Dobbs: what happened to his son.
[1:13:18] Bob Dobbs: Have you read some of those letters?
[1:13:21] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:13:22] Cameron McEwen: But I would like to.
[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: I'm hoping that
[1:13:25] Cameron McEwen: I'll be able to see some of the stuff that you have.
[1:13:30] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: But you know about it.
[1:13:36] Bob Dobbs: Where did you get that from?
[1:13:41] Cameron McEwen: I think that a lot of McLuhan published and unpublished writings are autobiographical.
[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:13:49] Cameron McEwen: And you can read a lot of his own life through them.
[1:13:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:13:56] Bob Dobbs: Matter of fact,
[1:13:57] Bob Dobbs: it's a blank verse or transparent novel or a diary.
[1:14:04] Bob Dobbs: He took his diary and he made a language out of it to cover up that it was personal because he was trying to be impersonal.
[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: That's what he got from
[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: Eliot. But it became personal.
[1:14:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:14:19] Cameron McEwen: but
[1:14:21] Cameron McEwen: I think McLuhan wouldn't like the distinction.
[1:14:24] Cameron McEwen: between impersonal and personal.
[1:14:27] Cameron McEwen: I think one of the things he probably wasn't able to teach his children was that by looking at things impersonably is not the same thing as being impersonal with them.
[1:14:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:14:45] Cameron McEwen: And that is a very,
[1:14:47] Cameron McEwen: I know from my own kids,
[1:14:48] Cameron McEwen: that's a very difficult thing to teach.
[1:14:56] Bob Dobbs: Very difficult.
[1:14:59] Cameron McEwen: How to be not...
[1:15:00] Cameron McEwen: How to be personal through the impersonal.
[1:15:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:15:04] Cameron McEwen: For example,
[1:15:08] Cameron McEwen: kids are usual,
[1:15:09] Cameron McEwen: and students too,
[1:15:12] Cameron McEwen: or people in general,
[1:15:15] Cameron McEwen: think that being personal means joining them in their meme.
[1:15:23] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:15:23] Bob Dobbs: matching with them.
[1:15:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:15:25] Cameron McEwen: that's not good.
[1:15:29] Cameron McEwen: So the real educator,
[1:15:32] Cameron McEwen: in the etymological sense of educate,
[1:15:35] Cameron McEwen: right,
[1:15:36] Cameron McEwen: to lead out of,
[1:15:39] Cameron McEwen: the real educator nearly always appears as a negative figure.
[1:15:45] Cameron McEwen: And that gets back to the tech body again.
[1:15:47] Cameron McEwen: And my idea is that the tech body is exactly.
[1:15:54] Cameron McEwen: what needs to be interrogated as kind of the power of memeing.
[1:16:00] Bob Dobbs: Good.
[1:16:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:16:02] Bob Dobbs: So I was talking about that.
[1:16:06] Bob Dobbs: As you know,
[1:16:07] Bob Dobbs: in the back of Take Today,
[1:16:08] Bob Dobbs: where he wrote about hardware and software,
[1:16:10] Bob Dobbs: occasionally he puts the word software in quotes,
[1:16:13] Bob Dobbs: but not always.
[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: So you have to read it very carefully to see why it's said in quotes in one sentence,
[1:16:20] Bob Dobbs: but not in another.
[1:16:23] Bob Dobbs: And then you juxtapose that with the fact that people in the computer industry say nothing's been added to the computers the last 30 or 40 years.
[1:16:32] Bob Dobbs: They haven't had radical technological breakthroughs.
[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: We're just using them for the same purpose,
[1:16:39] Bob Dobbs: processing data in some way.
[1:16:42] Bob Dobbs: So since we live more and more in mentation,
[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: externalized,
[1:16:52] Bob Dobbs: People's lives have been just trying to keep up with the latest trends of pattern,
[1:16:58] Bob Dobbs: which are memes.
[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: So we live in endless software and pattern recognition,
[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: which has been popularized as memes.
[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: And because we have not been able to get out of the etherealized nothingness,
[1:17:16] Bob Dobbs: trivialization of information in its excess today.
[1:17:22] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:17:23] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:17:25] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: do you think that is correct when Postman said we're amusing ourselves to death?
[1:17:32] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:17:34] Bob Dobbs: You accept that?
[1:17:35] Cameron McEwen: That is,
[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: I accept it,
[1:17:37] Cameron McEwen: but it's not the,
[1:17:43] Cameron McEwen: how can I say,
[1:17:44] Cameron McEwen: you can go from there in different ways.
[1:17:48] Cameron McEwen: And I think
[1:17:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan went from...
[1:17:50] Cameron McEwen: That idea,
[1:17:51] Cameron McEwen: which he certainly shared,
[1:17:54] Cameron McEwen: he went in different directions from what Postman wanted to do.
[1:17:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:18:01] Bob Dobbs: Have you read Postman?
[1:18:03] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:18:05] Bob Dobbs: What is it about him that doesn't attract you?
[1:18:11] Bob Dobbs: Did you see him?
[1:18:13] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:18:16] Cameron McEwen: Basically,
[1:18:17] Cameron McEwen: I know very,
[1:18:18] Cameron McEwen: very little about the man.
[1:18:20] Cameron McEwen: I believe he was involved with the Etc.
[1:18:24] Cameron McEwen: crowd,
[1:18:24] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:18:25] Bob Dobbs: The who?
[1:18:27] Cameron McEwen: The magazine or journal.
[1:18:28] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:18:28] Cameron McEwen: Etc.
[1:18:29] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:18:29] Bob Dobbs: Etc.
[1:18:31] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:18:31] Cameron McEwen: so that is not the,
[1:18:38] Cameron McEwen: what was it called?
[1:18:40] Cameron McEwen: General semantics.
[1:18:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:18:42] Cameron McEwen: general semantics.
[1:18:44] Cameron McEwen: That's not...
[1:18:47] Cameron McEwen: the direction from McLuhan stuff that I think is interesting.
[1:18:52] Cameron McEwen: I don't think it leads anywhere.
[1:18:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:18:55] Bob Dobbs: so you knew from reading the Etc.
[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: articles,
[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: just the milieu around the magazine did not prompt you to look into
[1:19:04] Bob Dobbs: Postman.
[1:19:05] Cameron McEwen: Right. Yeah,
[1:19:06] Bob Dobbs: I see.
[1:19:09] Cameron McEwen: And I'll just mention,
[1:19:11] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[1:19:11] Cameron McEwen: we're about five or even four minutes from...
[1:19:16] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:19:16] Cameron McEwen: We need to wrap up.
[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:19:18] Bob Dobbs: So we're not going to do any of the content of the text here then today.
[1:19:22] Bob Dobbs: This is a different kind of conversation.
[1:19:24] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:19:27] Bob Dobbs: So the meme.
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: You see,
[1:19:32] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[1:19:32] Bob Dobbs: there's a section in
[1:19:35] Bob Dobbs: Tony Schwartz's recordings where he says,
[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: in the future,
[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: just knowing what's going on will be all that you have to do.
[1:19:42] Bob Dobbs: That will be your job,
[1:19:43] Bob Dobbs: to know.
[1:19:45] Bob Dobbs: To me,
[1:19:45] Bob Dobbs: that means he's predicting,
[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: unconsciously,
[1:19:50] Bob Dobbs: say,
[1:19:51] Bob Dobbs: by default,
[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: that we will be just endlessly driven by the cognitive thrills of pattern recognition.
[1:20:00] Bob Dobbs: And so a lot of people are fascinated by their black mirrors because they can scroll through and make patterns or memes.
[1:20:08] Bob Dobbs: The kids turn to a meme thing.
[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: This is a...
[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: a very ethereal activity that people are engaging.
[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: You could say the mind is ethereal,
[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: at least some images of it.
[1:20:22] Bob Dobbs: And we have extended that and exaggerated the etherealization of engaging mental pattern recognitions or responding mentally to pattern recognitions.
[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: And so we're in a world of the Android Meme,
[1:20:37] Bob Dobbs: an endless meme.
[1:20:38] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:20:39] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: yes.
[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: And so just if we say...
[1:20:44] Cameron McEwen: What is McLuhan talking about that would be different from that?
[1:20:48] Cameron McEwen: He's talking about a way of knowing what's going on that,
[1:20:53] Cameron McEwen: first of all,
[1:20:54] Cameron McEwen: appreciates that we can know what's going on.
[1:20:58] Cameron McEwen: And appreciating that we can know that we can know means that we're accepting information from...
[1:21:13] Cameron McEwen: the outside,
[1:21:15] Cameron McEwen: but real information,
[1:21:17] Cameron McEwen: not information that some guy in Hollywood sitting around a swimming pool,
[1:21:24] Cameron McEwen: sipping a margarita,
[1:21:27] Cameron McEwen: is completing a script for his weekly show.
[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:21:35] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:21:36] Cameron McEwen: So there's a big difference about where the information is coming from and what it's about.
[1:21:43] Cameron McEwen: And that's...
[1:21:43] Cameron McEwen: So that's the transition that has to be made.
[1:21:45] Cameron McEwen: You have to come out of the bubble of bullshit into the bubble of reality.
[1:21:53] Cameron McEwen: And the first fact about the bubble of reality is that we can know it.
[1:22:03] Cameron McEwen: The situation of the world is such that we can actually know that we're related.
[1:22:11] Cameron McEwen: intimately to the real.
[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: Carry on.
[1:22:18] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:22:19] Cameron McEwen: when people's job is just appreciating what's going on,
[1:22:24] Cameron McEwen: that is like worship.
[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: That's what?
[1:22:29] Bob Dobbs: It's like worship?
[1:22:31] Cameron McEwen: It's like,
[1:22:32] Cameron McEwen: L-I-K-E,
[1:22:33] Cameron McEwen: worship.
[1:22:35] Bob Dobbs: To look at what's going on.
[1:22:37] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:22:38] Cameron McEwen: It's first of all appreciating.
[1:22:41] Cameron McEwen: Life,
[1:22:43] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:22:44] Cameron McEwen: What we have been given,
[1:22:46] Cameron McEwen: the keys to given.
[1:22:48] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:22:49] Bob Dobbs: The last,
[1:22:49] Bob Dobbs: the fitting its weight,
[1:22:51] Bob Dobbs: last page.
[1:22:51] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:22:51] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[1:22:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:22:59] Bob Dobbs: So when Postman says we're amusing ourselves to death,
[1:23:03] Bob Dobbs: what he misses is we're not amusing ourselves.
[1:23:06] Bob Dobbs: We're exploring the cul-de-sac with no help.
[1:23:12] Bob Dobbs: and therefore superficially,
[1:23:13] Bob Dobbs: but endlessly engaging every day,
[1:23:16] Bob Dobbs: more and more processing information,
[1:23:19] Bob Dobbs: looking at your texting and whatever your phone is showing you.
[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: So it makes one think they couldn't know.
[1:23:29] Bob Dobbs: It's too much to know.
[1:23:31] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan meant by the knowing,
[1:23:34] Bob Dobbs: that's what he meant by the agent intellect,
[1:23:36] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:23:37] Bob Dobbs: in his
[1:23:38] Bob Dobbs: 1950 talk.
[1:23:40] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:23:41] Bob Dobbs: The agent intellect.
[1:23:43] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:23:44] Cameron McEwen: which comes from Aristotle.
[1:23:46] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:23:47] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:23:48] Cameron McEwen: one of the great minds in the history of the world where one could really explore these questions is
[1:23:57] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle.
[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah, now this point about how we could know,
[1:24:05] Bob Dobbs: we are discouraged from thinking we can know anymore.
[1:24:09] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:24:10] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan attempted to give people means to know.
[1:24:14] Bob Dobbs: He even said at one point,
[1:24:16] Bob Dobbs: The present-day sages and economists and commentators don't even pretend to know what's going on.
[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: So that meant McLuhan pretended to know what was going on.
[1:24:28] Bob Dobbs: So there was the pretense,
[1:24:29] Bob Dobbs: which was the cul-de-sac and the nothing,
[1:24:32] Bob Dobbs: but he also made good patterns about what was happening,
[1:24:37] Bob Dobbs: even though it might be a pretending.
[1:24:39] Bob Dobbs: But that might be more a Postman than pretending.
[1:24:43] Bob Dobbs: But it's interesting he said that.
[1:24:44] Bob Dobbs: They don't even pretend to know what's going on.
[1:24:47] Bob Dobbs: And I see McLuhan pretending to know or representing that you could appear to know.
[1:24:54] Bob Dobbs: So that's what he meant by being rational,
[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: not logical,
[1:25:01] Bob Dobbs: not visually biased logic or linear or even irrational acoustic Cayce or rhythms.
[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: The rational was to know in that situation.
[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: So the third position is a kind of knowing.
[1:25:15] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:25:17] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:25:17] Cameron McEwen: That's why I say that the only way to break out of the memes is to cross the threshold into science.
[1:25:27] Cameron McEwen: But science is not some conclusion to anything.
[1:25:34] Cameron McEwen: It's the start of a new way of living.
[1:25:38] Cameron McEwen: And the start of the new way of living is exposure to the real and appreciating what it means to be exposed.
[1:25:46] Cameron McEwen: to the real.
[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: And maybe that's what he meant.
[1:25:50] Bob Dobbs: The Greeks had a potential to live that way,
[1:25:53] Bob Dobbs: at least the aristocrats or the ones who had the leisure,
[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: they could live that way.
[1:26:00] Bob Dobbs: He thought how it was presented to us was they were living that way and we could do that today,
[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: not live in a state of panic and hysteria of trying to keep up with the memes.
[1:26:14] Bob Dobbs: And the patterns and the incessant pressure to be informed of what the issues are,
[1:26:20] Bob Dobbs: that's the new harassment.
[1:26:21] Bob Dobbs: That's the new hell.
[1:26:23] Bob Dobbs: That's the new variation of the cul-de-sac phenomenon.
[1:26:27] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:26:29] Bob Dobbs: So do you feel that you've reached a poise in the situation?
[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: You wouldn't get there.
[1:26:36] Bob Dobbs: It wouldn't be a conclusion.
[1:26:38] Bob Dobbs: But have you,
[1:26:39] Bob Dobbs: in your studies,
[1:26:39] Bob Dobbs: say,
[1:26:40] Bob Dobbs: the last 10 years,
[1:26:41] Bob Dobbs: have you gotten to a poise?
[1:26:44] Bob Dobbs: to the point that you could say what you're saying.
[1:26:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:26:48] Cameron McEwen: maybe.
[1:26:49] Cameron McEwen: I had,
[1:26:55] Cameron McEwen: I more or less did nothing but try to interrogate the cul-de-sac for,
[1:27:04] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,
[1:27:05] Cameron McEwen: 15 years or so.
[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:27:07] Cameron McEwen: After I graduated from college.
[1:27:10] Cameron McEwen: and um
[1:27:12] Cameron McEwen: It wasn't a very happy time in my life,
[1:27:14] Cameron McEwen: and I wasn't able to make other people very happy,
[1:27:19] Cameron McEwen: but
[1:27:20] Cameron McEwen: I felt like it was something I had to do.
[1:27:23] Cameron McEwen: And eventually,
[1:27:25] Cameron McEwen: I thought I found a way of describing how you can get out of that situation.
[1:27:34] Cameron McEwen: And so that was...
[1:27:41] Cameron McEwen: 40,
[1:27:42] Cameron McEwen: let's say 40 years ago.
[1:27:44] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: You're saying that you explored the nothing.
[1:27:50] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely.
[1:27:50] Bob Dobbs: In a restlessness or under a lot of pressure,
[1:27:54] Bob Dobbs: and it led somewhere.
[1:27:57] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:27:59] Cameron McEwen: So since I found a position that
[1:28:07] Cameron McEwen: I thought was one of poise.
[1:28:11] Cameron McEwen: as you say,
[1:28:11] Cameron McEwen: and as
[1:28:12] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan often uses the word poise.
[1:28:14] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:28:18] Cameron McEwen: I've spent the last 40 years trying to describe it.
[1:28:21] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: That was important to be able to describe it.
[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: That would be the knowing part.
[1:28:26] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:28:28] Bob Dobbs: To hoik up our subconscious assumptions.
[1:28:30] Bob Dobbs: You know how he uses that phrase,
[1:28:31] Bob Dobbs: hoik?
[1:28:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:28:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:28:34] Bob Dobbs: To hoik up our subconscious assumptions into an awareness,
[1:28:37] Bob Dobbs: a knowing,
[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: an ability to say what it is.
[1:28:41] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:28:42] Cameron McEwen: And that relates directly to where you are with the black body and stuff,
[1:28:47] Cameron McEwen: because the black body is saying that we know nothing about ourselves.
[1:28:54] Cameron McEwen: We're completely controlled.
[1:28:58] Cameron McEwen: And as
[1:29:00] Cameron McEwen: I was saying earlier,
[1:29:01] Cameron McEwen: and as you will get to in your interview later on in the brochure,
[1:29:09] Cameron McEwen: What we have to do is interrogate the power of this life in the meme,
[1:29:18] Cameron McEwen: life in the bubble.
[1:29:19] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:29:19] Bob Dobbs: and you're calling it a black body there.
[1:29:25] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:29:25] Cameron McEwen: it could be.
[1:29:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah?
[1:29:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:29:27] Cameron McEwen: like that's a conflation of the black mirror and the black body and the end of the cul-de-sac,
[1:29:34] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:29:35] Bob Dobbs: And the singularity and the black hole,
[1:29:37] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:29:38] Bob Dobbs: Modern images.
[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:29:41] Bob Dobbs: so let's end with that fine point and get ready to wrestle with the cul-de-sac for another seven days.
[1:29:53] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:29:53] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[1:29:53] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:29:54] Cameron McEwen: I can't next.
[1:29:55] Cameron McEwen: In seven days,
[1:29:56] Cameron McEwen: I'll be in the hospital getting my knee replaced.
[1:29:59] Cameron McEwen: So in two weeks,
[1:30:01] Cameron McEwen: we'll try.
[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:30:03] Bob Dobbs: and you may not be eligible even then.
[1:30:08] Cameron McEwen: All right.
[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:30:10] Bob Dobbs: you may still be under sedation or pain or whatever.
[1:30:13] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:30:14] Cameron McEwen: I doubt it.
[1:30:15] Cameron McEwen: I doubt it,
[1:30:15] Cameron McEwen: but we'll see.
[1:30:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:30:17] Cameron McEwen: We'll just see what happens.
[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: No pressure,
[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: though.
[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: If you can't do it,
[1:30:20] Bob Dobbs: that's okay.
[1:30:21] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: so we have done 24 episodes.
[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: I will now stop the recording.
[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:30:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay.