Dialogue 30 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is Cameron McEwen and Bob Dobbs once again,

[00:05] Bob Dobbs: and this is our

[00:06] Bob Dobbs: 30th episode.

[00:07] Bob Dobbs: And we're continuing to analyze my book,

[00:12] Bob Dobbs: which is titled,

[00:13] Bob Dobbs: What We

[00:14] Bob Dobbs: Slash You Didn't Know About Trump.

[00:18] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[00:19] Bob Dobbs: and we started,

[00:21] Bob Dobbs: we did the ending of the book,

[00:24] Bob Dobbs: the past 10 episodes,

[00:27] Bob Dobbs: analyzing the interview,

[00:29] Bob Dobbs: my interview with the tech body.

[00:30] Bob Dobbs: Now we jump to the beginning of the book,

[00:33] Bob Dobbs: now that we know the punchline,

[00:35] Bob Dobbs: and

[00:36] Bob Dobbs: I went through my first statement on Donald Trump,

[00:42] Bob Dobbs: President Trump,

[00:43] Bob Dobbs: in the spring of 2017,

[00:45] Bob Dobbs: and I brought in

[00:46] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan pattern of two approaches to art,

[00:51] Bob Dobbs: the cathartic and the cognitive.

[00:53] Bob Dobbs: And we discussed that,

[00:55] Bob Dobbs: and Cameron has some more thoughts about that part.

[00:58] Bob Dobbs: And it's actually page...

[01:01] Bob Dobbs: One,

[01:03] Bob Dobbs: page one of the book,

[01:05] Bob Dobbs: if you want to see the section on the cognitive...

[01:09] Cameron McEwen: No,

[01:09] Cameron McEwen: no,

[01:09] Cameron McEwen: it's page six of the book,

[01:11] Cameron McEwen: the start of the fourth section.

[01:17] Bob Dobbs: Page four,

[01:18] Bob Dobbs: how President Donald Trump has become the first executive political leader to put on the shamanic tradition.

[01:24] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[01:24] Cameron McEwen: So we talked about the shamanic tradition.

[01:28] Cameron McEwen: By the way,

[01:29] Cameron McEwen: you were...

[01:30] Cameron McEwen: I'm always using the

[01:32] Cameron McEwen: American pronunciation,

[01:33] Cameron McEwen: shaman,

[01:34] Cameron McEwen: and I was using the English pronunciation,

[01:37] Cameron McEwen: shaman,

[01:38] Cameron McEwen: but they're the same thing.

[01:42] Cameron McEwen: And

[01:44] Cameron McEwen: I complimented you on the idea of using these two schools to explicate another way of looking Trump.

[01:57] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[01:57] Bob Dobbs: and it's actually page four.

[02:00] Bob Dobbs: on my book.

[02:05] Bob Dobbs: Has the title...

[02:06] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[02:06] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[02:07] Cameron McEwen: So

[02:09] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.

[02:09] Cameron McEwen: We always get mixed up between the pages of the book and the PDF pages.

[02:14] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[02:14] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[02:14] Cameron McEwen: So yes,

[02:16] Cameron McEwen: it's page four in what can be called the print.

[02:22] Cameron McEwen: But at any rate,

[02:23] Cameron McEwen: we agree it starts how President Donald Trump has become the first executive political leader.

[02:30] Cameron McEwen: put on the shamanic tradition.

[02:32] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[02:35] Bob Dobbs: and now you can begin to say your response to what we said last week.

[02:39] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[02:40] Cameron McEwen: good.

[02:40] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[02:40] Cameron McEwen: so

[02:41] Cameron McEwen: I think it's very interesting what you do.

[02:46] Cameron McEwen: By saying that you want to use the cognitive point of view,

[02:54] Cameron McEwen: what you point out is that unlike the ethical view,

[03:00] Cameron McEwen: It does not have hostility to discontinuity,

[03:04] Cameron McEwen: and it does not have indifference to all popular art.

[03:09] Cameron McEwen: That's a reference to the quotation right at the start of page four that you take from a Joyce essay at the start of Interior landscape.

[03:22] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[03:23] Cameron McEwen: So once it is understood that discontinuity is fine and...

[03:31] Cameron McEwen: the analysis of popular art is also fine,

[03:35] Cameron McEwen: then that gives an interesting approach Trump,

[03:40] Cameron McEwen: which you're going to take.

[03:41] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[03:42] Cameron McEwen: So

[03:43] Cameron McEwen: I think that's an excellent idea.

[03:45] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[03:45] Cameron McEwen: However,

[03:46] Cameron McEwen: the problem is that you,

[03:49] Cameron McEwen: on page five,

[03:51] Cameron McEwen: when you're talking about the two schools,

[03:54] Cameron McEwen: the ethical and the moral and the other is cognitive and technical,

[03:58] Cameron McEwen: You say one's...

[04:00] Cameron McEwen: One is sort of conceptual.

[04:02] Cameron McEwen: This is the third line of page five.

[04:05] Cameron McEwen: One is sort of conceptual,

[04:07] Cameron McEwen: the ethical view,

[04:08] Cameron McEwen: and then the cognitive approach is perceptual.

[04:11] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[04:12] Cameron McEwen: the problem with this is that there is,

[04:17] Cameron McEwen: for McLuhan at least,

[04:18] Cameron McEwen: there is nothing that is not already perceptual.

[04:23] Cameron McEwen: The difference between different...

[04:30] Cameron McEwen: types of experience is not that one can lack perception and another one can have it.

[04:37] Cameron McEwen: It is that some or indeed most of experience cover over their percepts with concepts.

[04:46] Cameron McEwen: So we don't want to start off on what you're doing by correlating ethical and moral with what

[04:59] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan calls

[05:00] Cameron McEwen: conceptual and cognitive and technical with what he calls perceptual.

[05:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[05:05] Bob Dobbs: he doesn't do,

[05:08] Cameron McEwen: does he do that?

[05:09] Cameron McEwen: No,

[05:09] Cameron McEwen: no,

[05:09] Cameron McEwen: he wouldn't do that because for

[05:13] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, what he calls vertical and horizontal experience or what he calls conceptual versus ethical,

[05:27] Cameron McEwen: these are dualisms that he ultimately rejects.

[05:34] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[05:34] Bob Dobbs: So what...

[05:35] Bob Dobbs: What I did is I took terms he wrote in the early

[05:40] Bob Dobbs: 50s, ethical and moral versus cognitive technical,

[05:42] Bob Dobbs: and I overlaid

[05:44] Bob Dobbs: 60s terms,

[05:45] Bob Dobbs: conceptual and perceptual.

[05:48] Bob Dobbs: And you're saying that's a mistake.

[05:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[05:51] Cameron McEwen: but he may not use conceptual and perceptual in the early

[05:56] Cameron McEwen: 50s, but he's already well aware that all dualisms are Gutenbergian.

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[06:05] Cameron McEwen: So,

[06:07] Cameron McEwen: it's not the case that he wants to go about saying one view is right and the other view is wrong.

[06:15] Cameron McEwen: It's just,

[06:16] Cameron McEwen: these are two examples of experience,

[06:23] Cameron McEwen: both of which may be analyzed more deeply.

[06:28] Cameron McEwen: That said,

[06:29] Cameron McEwen: to take one of them and to say that it's an interesting approach to...

[06:34] Cameron McEwen: Trump an excellent idea.

[06:38] Cameron McEwen: It's just that we don't want to mix it up with

[06:41] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan ultimate position.

[06:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[06:44] Bob Dobbs: So he does all kinds of dialectics or doubles,

[06:49] Bob Dobbs: commercial versus non-commercial,

[06:53] Bob Dobbs: visual versus acoustic.

[06:54] Bob Dobbs: He does that in his work,

[06:57] Bob Dobbs: his later work,

[06:58] Bob Dobbs: once he gets into Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media.

[07:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[07:02] Bob Dobbs: People read that and they take him as opposites,

[07:05] Bob Dobbs: right?

[07:05] Bob Dobbs: They get into dualism.

[07:08] Bob Dobbs: Why do you think that he's putting on the dualism?

[07:13] Bob Dobbs: But what they think is dualism,

[07:15] Bob Dobbs: and they don't get that it isn't.

[07:17] Cameron McEwen: There you go.

[07:18] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly the point.

[07:20] Cameron McEwen: If

[07:21] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is read deeply,

[07:25] Cameron McEwen: then he doesn't do dualisms.

[07:28] Cameron McEwen: He explicitly rejects them.

[07:31] Cameron McEwen: However,

[07:33] Cameron McEwen: when people bring their normal style of reading to McLuhan,

[07:38] Cameron McEwen: and this is,

[07:39] Cameron McEwen: in my view,

[07:41] Cameron McEwen: this is how

[07:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan has only been read thus far,

[07:47] Cameron McEwen: then he seemed to be not only a dualist,

[07:51] Cameron McEwen: but he seemed to be some sort of historicist.

[07:55] Cameron McEwen: He seemed to be himself a Gutenbergian figure,

[08:00] Cameron McEwen: right?

[08:01] Cameron McEwen: It's ridiculous.

[08:02] Cameron McEwen: So the point of what I'm trying to point out in your book here is not something against your book.

[08:14] Cameron McEwen: I'm simply trying to make the Alan Munton point that in reading McLuhan,

[08:20] Cameron McEwen: we should never take a dualism as definitive.

[08:25] Cameron McEwen: We need to see him making a point about experience.

[08:31] Cameron McEwen: that is ultimately going to be undermined by

[08:35] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan own Explorations.

[08:38] Bob Dobbs: Why?

[08:38] Bob Dobbs: Because you read it?

[08:43] Bob Dobbs: I'm not understanding you there.

[08:46] Bob Dobbs: It undermines his Explorations because you're reading it.

[08:52] Bob Dobbs: You get it by a book or an article.

[08:56] Bob Dobbs: So then you start subliminally doing the dualism.

[09:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[09:00] Cameron McEwen: that's an interesting point that in a book,

[09:06] Cameron McEwen: each letter comes after the one before and the lines go chronologically and it's all black and white.

[09:15] Cameron McEwen: So in a certain way,

[09:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is constrained by that.

[09:20] Cameron McEwen: And the whole point of what he is trying to do is to kind of work against the current.

[09:30] Cameron McEwen: And that working against the current is actually what defines the great figures of the tradition.

[09:39] Cameron McEwen: So when Plato,

[09:41] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[09:43] Cameron McEwen: in his dialogues,

[09:45] Cameron McEwen: has

[09:46] Cameron McEwen: Socrates talking to various people in various settings,

[09:51] Cameron McEwen: one of the things that's going on is

[09:55] Cameron McEwen: Plato is trying to use the seemingly chronological dialogue form to get away from that seeming chronology.

[10:09] Cameron McEwen: And it's a very difficult not,

[10:11] Cameron McEwen: K-N-O-T,

[10:14] Cameron McEwen: to point out and to unravel.

[10:18] Cameron McEwen: And you could say that the whole tradition is the attempt to get that K-N-O-T not figure out how to submit

[10:34] Cameron McEwen: ourselves to it instead of.

[10:38] Cameron McEwen: either misseeing it or not seeing it at all or denying it or something like this to try to figure out our relationship to that

[10:50] Cameron McEwen: KNOT.

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: Right. Do you think Zen attempts to do that or is successful in doing it?

[10:59] Cameron McEwen: I didn't hear your first word.

[11:03] Bob Dobbs: Zen.

[11:04] Bob Dobbs: Zen Buddhism.

[11:05] Cameron McEwen: Oh.

[11:06] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[11:07] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[11:08] Cameron McEwen: Zen

[11:09] Cameron McEwen: Buddhism, like everything,

[11:13] Cameron McEwen: is not one thing.

[11:16] Cameron McEwen: Some insights in Zen do that superlatively.

[11:26] Cameron McEwen: Others get into some sort of Gutenbergian explication and don't work.

[11:35] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[11:36] Bob Dobbs: so are those ones that are red?

[11:40] Bob Dobbs: That's then that's red and not done in the oral method of the monastery?

[11:45] Cameron McEwen: No,

[11:46] Cameron McEwen: that's not the case.

[11:50] Cameron McEwen: What you're pointing out is more an illustration of the problem.

[11:56] Cameron McEwen: It's not the sort of the end of the problem.

[12:04] Cameron McEwen: I think it's

[12:05] Cameron McEwen: seventh letter,

[12:07] Cameron McEwen: I could have the number wrong,

[12:08] Cameron McEwen: but I think it's the seventh letter of Plato.

[12:10] Cameron McEwen: He says that this is a doctrine which cannot be shared in writing,

[12:17] Cameron McEwen: can only be shared orally between someone who knows and somebody who wants to learn it.

[12:24] Cameron McEwen: And that's the distinction you're making.

[12:27] Cameron McEwen: But the tradition since

[12:33] Cameron McEwen: Plato's

[12:34] Cameron McEwen: time and starting in Plato's time has largely been written.

[12:38] Cameron McEwen: And in those 2,500 years,

[12:42] Cameron McEwen: there's been many,

[12:43] Cameron McEwen: many great figures who were not automatically limited just because they were writing.

[12:53] Cameron McEwen: They saw great things,

[12:57] Cameron McEwen: but they were unable to communicate it.

[13:01] Cameron McEwen: And so then when

[13:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan starts off in the

[13:07] Cameron McEwen: 1930s and 40s.

[13:09] Cameron McEwen: The problem that he has is not only to try to sort of figure things out,

[13:18] Cameron McEwen: like any person in his

[13:21] Cameron McEwen: 20s and early 30s,

[13:23] Cameron McEwen: but he also is clear that one of the great problems in the tradition is precisely communication.

[13:32] Cameron McEwen: Things that have been seen have been lost all the time.

[13:38] Cameron McEwen: So he had these two problems to figure out,

[13:41] Cameron McEwen: right?

[13:42] Cameron McEwen: How to,

[13:45] Cameron McEwen: what do I know and how do I know it?

[13:48] Cameron McEwen: And sort of

[13:49] Cameron McEwen: Kantian questions.

[13:51] Cameron McEwen: And secondly,

[13:52] Cameron McEwen: if I do figure something out,

[13:54] Cameron McEwen: how can I say it?

[13:55] Cameron McEwen: How can I communicate it?

[13:57] Cameron McEwen: And

[13:58] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that up until now.

[14:02] Cameron McEwen: we can say that he didn't succeed in communicating because none of the McLuhan get it.

[14:12] Cameron McEwen: And that's what

[14:13] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to do,

[14:14] Cameron McEwen: and that's one of the things you say you're doing in your book.

[14:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[14:19] Bob Dobbs: So did anybody do both,

[14:24] Bob Dobbs: get it and communicate it among the greats?

[14:28] Cameron McEwen: No.

[14:30] Cameron McEwen: That's the cul-de-sac in which we're in.

[14:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[14:33] Bob Dobbs: And that may be inevitable.

[14:36] Bob Dobbs: I think you've said that.

[14:40] Cameron McEwen: The non-communication?

[14:42] Bob Dobbs: The cul-de-sac that we're in is always there,

[14:47] Bob Dobbs: always been there,

[14:48] Bob Dobbs: and we don't get out of it.

[14:49] Bob Dobbs: Do you go that far?

[14:51] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[14:51] Cameron McEwen: I would go that far,

[14:52] Cameron McEwen: but the cul-de-sac,

[14:54] Cameron McEwen: which is always there,

[14:57] Cameron McEwen: is not always there exclusively.

[15:00] Cameron McEwen: It's not alone there.

[15:02] Cameron McEwen: Also,

[15:02] Cameron McEwen: the solution is there,

[15:04] Cameron McEwen: but between the cul-de-sac and the solution,

[15:07] Cameron McEwen: there is a gap.

[15:09] Cameron McEwen: And that's a resonating gap,

[15:12] Cameron McEwen: but it's a gap which,

[15:16] Cameron McEwen: if humans are to survive,

[15:20] Cameron McEwen: we need to cross.

[15:22] Cameron McEwen: But we need to cross it in a way that doesn't just go from one side to the other.

[15:28] Cameron McEwen: It would be just one more dualism.

[15:31] Cameron McEwen: So we could say that we need to see the benefit.

[15:39] Cameron McEwen: or the promise or the gift of the cul-de-sac.

[15:43] Cameron McEwen: And when that is seen,

[15:45] Cameron McEwen: then we're out of it.

[15:46] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[15:47] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[15:48] Bob Dobbs: do you feel you've done that and are communicating it?

[15:52] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[15:54] Cameron McEwen: no in both of your questions.

[15:58] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[15:58] Bob Dobbs: But you are criticizing it or pointing out the problem.

[16:02] Bob Dobbs: Did everybody of the greats point out the problem?

[16:05] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[16:07] Cameron McEwen: The only difference is...

[16:09] Cameron McEwen: Today,

[16:10] Cameron McEwen: our situation is much more dangerous and much more fragile just because of atomic weapons and their increasing spread around the world.

[16:23] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[16:24] Bob Dobbs: So is that a new wrinkle to the cul-de-sac that McLuhan was just pointing out?

[16:32] Bob Dobbs: It was kind of obvious?

[16:36] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure I understand.

[16:37] Cameron McEwen: Are you saying that the...

[16:38] Cameron McEwen: The new wrinkle was obvious but not seen,

[16:41] Cameron McEwen: something like that?

[16:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[16:43] Bob Dobbs: the new wrinkle is that we can wipe ourselves out.

[16:45] Bob Dobbs: Everybody talked about that or did since

[16:49] Bob Dobbs: 1945. Yes.

[16:52] Bob Dobbs: Did McLuhan find a different way to talk about what was obvious?

[16:56] Bob Dobbs: That this was different,

[16:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[16:58] Bob Dobbs: the world could blow itself up.

[17:00] Bob Dobbs: That didn't seem to be possible before.

[17:02] Bob Dobbs: And now we're in a new situation.

[17:04] Bob Dobbs: Was that the only newness that McLuhan was communicating?

[17:08] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[17:08] Cameron McEwen: not at all.

[17:09] Cameron McEwen: Not at all.

[17:11] Cameron McEwen: Like you say,

[17:12] Cameron McEwen: or as you say,

[17:13] Cameron McEwen: there were many people.

[17:17] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[17:18] Cameron McEwen: almost the whole intellectual world,

[17:20] Cameron McEwen: when the United States dropped those two bombs,

[17:24] Cameron McEwen: the whole intellectual world was shocked and thought that everybody thought that we were into a new era that had broken.

[17:38] Cameron McEwen: with all of previous history.

[17:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[17:41] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[17:41] Bob Dobbs: he then Wright pretty quickly in the Southern Quality about that situation in the first couple of pages of that article.

[17:50] Bob Dobbs: Is he saying something different than what Bertrand Russell or somebody would be saying?

[17:55] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[17:55] Cameron McEwen: because for

[17:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, even then,

[18:02] Cameron McEwen: the danger was not definitive.

[18:07] Cameron McEwen: And the difference between sort of the automatic nihilism of the modern world is that it sees the danger as definitive and sees no way out of it,

[18:24] Cameron McEwen: and that's the cul-de-sac.

[18:26] Cameron McEwen: Whereas

[18:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan always saw the danger not as being definitive,

[18:34] Cameron McEwen: and he saw the...

[18:38] Cameron McEwen: especially the Catholic Church,

[18:40] Cameron McEwen: as having a kind of counter answer to the danger.

[18:45] Cameron McEwen: But he was,

[18:50] Cameron McEwen: especially in the late

[18:52] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, he was increasingly conscious that he didn't know how to express that properly.

[19:00] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[19:00] Bob Dobbs: So was he the only one seeing something?

[19:04] Cameron McEwen: No,

[19:04] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.

[19:05] Cameron McEwen: I think um

[19:07] Cameron McEwen: For example,

[19:08] Cameron McEwen: I'm doing a lot of work on

[19:09] Cameron McEwen: T.S. Eliot at the moment.

[19:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[19:12] Cameron McEwen: And his,

[19:14] Cameron McEwen: Eliot's four quartets,

[19:17] Cameron McEwen: which were sort of written between 1935,

[19:22] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[19:22] Cameron McEwen: was Burnt Norton and Little Gidding.

[19:25] Cameron McEwen: The last of the quartets was published during the war,

[19:29] Cameron McEwen: maybe in 1943 or 40.

[19:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[19:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[19:33] Cameron McEwen: so...

[19:35] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,

[19:36] Cameron McEwen: when he was struggling with how to say things properly,

[19:42] Cameron McEwen: was intensely involved with the four quartets.

[19:45] Cameron McEwen: He and

[19:46] Cameron McEwen: Hugh Kenner were reading them very closely.

[19:50] Bob Dobbs: And with the intention of doing a book,

[19:52] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[19:53] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[19:54] Cameron McEwen: together.

[19:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[19:55] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[19:56] Cameron McEwen: And then instead of that,

[19:58] Cameron McEwen: both of them published on Eliot in 1948,

[20:06] Cameron McEwen: 49,

[20:07] Cameron McEwen: 50,

[20:07] Cameron McEwen: and 51.

[20:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[20:08] Cameron McEwen: And in 51,

[20:09] Cameron McEwen: Kenner even published a book on

[20:11] Cameron McEwen: Eliot.

[20:12] Bob Dobbs: Yes. Okay,

[20:13] Bob Dobbs: so is McLuhan seeing something that others aren't seeing?

[20:22] Cameron McEwen: in this period,

[20:23] Bob Dobbs: after 1945,

[20:29] Bob Dobbs: why is McLuhan going to become a phenomenon in the 50s and

[20:33] Bob Dobbs: 60s?

[20:36] Bob Dobbs: If he's dealing with the same cul-de-sac everybody else is dealing with.

[20:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[20:41] Cameron McEwen: well,

[20:41] Cameron McEwen: that's a difficult question because a lot of it has to do with technological developments,

[20:48] Cameron McEwen: especially with

[20:51] Cameron McEwen: TV.

[20:52] Cameron McEwen: And it also has to do with a kind of depression that got into the educationalists who increasingly saw that schooling wasn't working.

[21:09] Cameron McEwen: And so the technical developments plus the educational problems were both very important to the National Association of

[21:21] Cameron McEwen: Educational Broadcasts.

[21:23] Cameron McEwen: And it was with them that McLuhan developed his characteristic.

[21:30] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[21:30] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[21:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[21:31] Cameron McEwen: I would say not his prominence because his report for them was issued in 1960,

[21:38] Cameron McEwen: and it would be another five or six years before he became prominent.

[21:42] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[21:42] Cameron McEwen: But what he did do with the

[21:45] Cameron McEwen: National Association of Educational Broadcasters was develop the notion.

[21:52] Cameron McEwen: that there was a way of talking about our problems,

[21:58] Cameron McEwen: our problems in education especially,

[22:01] Cameron McEwen: but also problems in business and politics,

[22:06] Cameron McEwen: which could be put in technological terms or the terms of new media.

[22:13] Cameron McEwen: And it was that combination which then led to his prominence.

[22:18] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[22:18] Bob Dobbs: So was he...

[22:21] Bob Dobbs: Plato,

[22:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[22:22] Bob Dobbs: famously quotes the statement by Thoth that writing will,

[22:29] Bob Dobbs: well,

[22:31] Bob Dobbs: the pharaoh,

[22:31] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[22:32] Bob Dobbs: the king says writing will create forgetfulness.

[22:34] Bob Dobbs: That's sort of trying to talk about the problem of communication,

[22:37] Bob Dobbs: right?

[22:38] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,

[22:39] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[22:40] Bob Dobbs: So did people,

[22:42] Bob Dobbs: did somebody say that about the printing press,

[22:46] Bob Dobbs: the way Plato did it and the way McLuhan did it later?

[22:52] Cameron McEwen: Do you mean somebody in between Plato and Macaulay?

[22:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[22:55] Bob Dobbs: like at the time of Shakespeare,

[22:56] Bob Dobbs: did someone point out the problem of medium?

[23:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[23:02] Cameron McEwen: well,

[23:02] Cameron McEwen: I think so.

[23:03] Cameron McEwen: I think that's exactly what Innis did.

[23:09] Bob Dobbs: No,

[23:09] Bob Dobbs: I mean at the time of the printing press.

[23:12] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[23:13] Cameron McEwen: back then.

[23:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[23:14] Cameron McEwen: No,

[23:15] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so,

[23:16] Cameron McEwen: but

[23:18] Cameron McEwen: I would have to give that some thought.

[23:21] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that there were people until the 20th century.

[23:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[23:29] Cameron McEwen: no,

[23:30] Cameron McEwen: let's maybe Mallarmé or maybe

[23:35] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche. I'm not so sure that Nietzsche saw the problem with printing per se.

[23:47] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche is definitive.

[23:51] Cameron McEwen: when it comes to the characterization and problems of the Gutenbergian perspective,

[24:03] Cameron McEwen: but he doesn't trace it to Gutenberg.

[24:06] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[24:07] Bob Dobbs: He's aware of the medium problems.

[24:11] Bob Dobbs: What is he aware of?

[24:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[24:14] Cameron McEwen: well,

[24:15] Cameron McEwen: he's aware of the fact that Gutenbergian perception leads to nothing.

[24:22] Cameron McEwen: He realizes that there's no foundation there,

[24:25] Cameron McEwen: that it leads to nothing,

[24:26] Cameron McEwen: to nihilism,

[24:28] Cameron McEwen: and that that nihilism cannot help but pervade society.

[24:33] Cameron McEwen: And when it pervades society,

[24:35] Cameron McEwen: it will then lead to universal war.

[24:38] Cameron McEwen: And he was right in all of that.

[24:41] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[24:42] Cameron McEwen: And

[24:43] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche is especially interesting in his analysis of morality.

[24:48] Cameron McEwen: Because what he says there is that...

[24:51] Cameron McEwen: The human being is a moral animal.

[24:55] Cameron McEwen: The human being cannot get away from morality.

[24:59] Cameron McEwen: And so when all morality falls through itself into nothing,

[25:03] Cameron McEwen: that doesn't mean that the animal will cease to be moral.

[25:07] Cameron McEwen: It just means that the animal will attempt to find morality where it can't be found.

[25:13] Cameron McEwen: And the whole problem of modernity for Nietzsche,

[25:16] Cameron McEwen: and I think he's right,

[25:18] Cameron McEwen: is that Um,

[25:20] Cameron McEwen: The human beings will use morality to justify war,

[25:27] Cameron McEwen: to justify mind control,

[25:31] Cameron McEwen: to justify all of the worst evils that human beings are capable of,

[25:37] Cameron McEwen: and it will call them moral.

[25:39] Cameron McEwen: And there's where we are today.

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: I overheard McLuhan saying to a professor on a Monday night that

[25:45] Bob Dobbs: Nietzsche studied the effects.

[25:47] Bob Dobbs: is that

[25:48] Bob Dobbs: too superficial a statement to put any weight into it?

[25:51] Bob Dobbs: No,

[25:52] Bob Dobbs: no,

[25:53] Cameron McEwen: that's an excellent statement.

[25:58] Cameron McEwen: As I was saying before,

[25:59] Cameron McEwen: I don't think Nietzsche talks very much about print as a cause,

[26:05] Cameron McEwen: and

[26:06] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan may have been thinking of that.

[26:10] Cameron McEwen: But for McLuhan,

[26:10] Cameron McEwen: there's nothing wrong with talking about effects.

[26:14] Cameron McEwen: For McLuhan,

[26:15] Cameron McEwen: that's the way you do things.

[26:18] Bob Dobbs: But he is proposing a science of causes.

[26:24] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[26:25] Cameron McEwen: but what you do is you interrogate effects and then try to come up with causes.

[26:37] Cameron McEwen: Personally,

[26:37] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that McLuhan was all that great in defining causes.

[26:46] Cameron McEwen: and defining the investigations that the exposure of causes would enable.

[26:56] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[26:56] Bob Dobbs: because he named TV as a cause and radio as a cause of World War II,

[27:02] Bob Dobbs: people were struck by that.

[27:05] Bob Dobbs: They had not thought of that.

[27:07] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[27:08] Bob Dobbs: He was original in pointing out new causes,

[27:12] Bob Dobbs: but whether he was successful in communicating what that meant.

[27:15] Bob Dobbs: is what you're wondering about.

[27:17] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[27:18] Cameron McEwen: partially that,

[27:19] Cameron McEwen: but he,

[27:21] Cameron McEwen: in the examples you just gave,

[27:23] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan getting in his own way.

[27:27] Cameron McEwen: As Eliot says,

[27:29] Cameron McEwen: I have to use words to communicate with you.

[27:31] Cameron McEwen: And

[27:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is using found objects,

[27:35] Cameron McEwen: namely television and radio,

[27:38] Cameron McEwen: as if they could be causes.

[27:40] Cameron McEwen: It's a little bit like somebody holding up a...

[27:45] Cameron McEwen: gold bar and saying this is an element.

[27:49] Cameron McEwen: No,

[27:50] Cameron McEwen: a gold bar is not an element.

[27:52] Cameron McEwen: A gold bar is composed of an element,

[27:56] Cameron McEwen: namely gold.

[27:57] Cameron McEwen: But the gold bar is not an element.

[28:00] Cameron McEwen: An element is something completely different.

[28:03] Cameron McEwen: And similarly with radio and TV.

[28:06] Cameron McEwen: These are not causes.

[28:09] Cameron McEwen: These are the effects of causes.

[28:13] Cameron McEwen: talking about them as if they were causes,

[28:16] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is getting in his own way.

[28:18] Cameron McEwen: But on the other hand,

[28:20] Cameron McEwen: how to talk about media as causes is very,

[28:25] Cameron McEwen: very difficult.

[28:26] Cameron McEwen: And maybe you have to talk about radio and TV as they're found in a home in order to try to get people to think about media at all.

[28:37] Cameron McEwen: But that's the problem of communication.

[28:39] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly why we've had...

[28:42] Cameron McEwen: 2,500 years of brilliant people not being able to communicate what they were seeing.

[28:51] Bob Dobbs: And what did you just say about the radio and TV in the home?

[28:53] Bob Dobbs: I might have missed that.

[28:55] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[28:56] Cameron McEwen: that those are found objects.

[28:59] Cameron McEwen: They are not the same as the underlying media which enabled them.

[29:07] Cameron McEwen: It's the difference between the gold bar and gold as elements.

[29:11] Cameron McEwen: that I was talking about a minute ago.

[29:13] Bob Dobbs: So what enabled radio and TV?

[29:15] Bob Dobbs: What underlying elements enabled them?

[29:17] Cameron McEwen: Tactility.

[29:20] Cameron McEwen: The electricity.

[29:23] Cameron McEwen: The form that enables a newspaper,

[29:34] Cameron McEwen: telegraph,

[29:36] Cameron McEwen: it turns out that it's a form that even enables language.

[29:41] Cameron McEwen: But it's a form that we were largely unconscious of for thousands of years,

[29:47] Cameron McEwen: even though we were exemplifying it.

[29:50] Cameron McEwen: So everybody was going around.

[29:52] Cameron McEwen: talking,

[29:54] Cameron McEwen: but they didn't understand what they were doing.

[29:57] Cameron McEwen: And they didn't understand it because in their attempt to understand it,

[30:02] Cameron McEwen: they would take a Gutenbergian perspective in which the ontology had to be singular.

[30:10] Cameron McEwen: It had to come to a point.

[30:12] Cameron McEwen: So you had to try to explain language,

[30:16] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[30:16] Cameron McEwen: in terms of a point.

[30:18] Cameron McEwen: And that was ridiculous because language is inherently

[30:22] Cameron McEwen: Dialogical.

[30:23] Cameron McEwen: So it's only with the development of electrical devices that human beings begin to understand how something can be fundamental and plural.

[30:37] Cameron McEwen: Electricity gives human beings that vision,

[30:43] Cameron McEwen: right,

[30:43] Cameron McEwen: that bipolar back and forth vision.

[30:48] Cameron McEwen: that they didn't have before.

[30:50] Cameron McEwen: And so now they can begin to understand something like language or something like reality as if these things could be plural,

[30:58] Cameron McEwen: that is to say gapped,

[31:01] Cameron McEwen: but not dualistic.

[31:03] Cameron McEwen: And for McLuhan,

[31:05] Cameron McEwen: that's a great thing.

[31:07] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[31:07] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[31:08] Bob Dobbs: what about the thinkers who fail to understand their communication bias or structure before the printing press?

[31:16] Bob Dobbs: You wouldn't call them Gutenbergian.

[31:18] Bob Dobbs: What would you call them?

[31:19] Cameron McEwen: Why not?

[31:20] Cameron McEwen: They can be called Gutenbergian because what Gutenberg did was kind of amplify literacy.

[31:29] Cameron McEwen: So from

[31:33] Cameron McEwen: 400 B.C.,

[31:34] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[31:36] Cameron McEwen: when literacy was beginning to become general,

[31:41] Cameron McEwen: in effect,

[31:42] Cameron McEwen: you have Gutenberg already.

[31:44] Cameron McEwen: And indeed,

[31:45] Cameron McEwen: if you say with McLuhan that...

[31:47] Cameron McEwen: all is always now,

[31:48] Cameron McEwen: there's all-at-onceness,

[31:51] Cameron McEwen: then the Gutenbergian form of experience is a perpetual possibility.

[32:01] Cameron McEwen: We can imagine lots of people in caves or in tribal societies who were sort of literal in...

[32:16] Cameron McEwen: their experience or in their expression prior to there being literacy as letters.

[32:26] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[32:26] Bob Dobbs: So the Gutenberg effect is not tied to writing,

[32:32] Bob Dobbs: any kind of writing.

[32:33] Cameron McEwen: No,

[32:33] Cameron McEwen: ultimately not.

[32:34] Cameron McEwen: That's the same thing that we were saying about radio and TV in the house.

[32:39] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly right.

[32:40] Cameron McEwen: All writing is an example of something deeper than writing.

[32:47] Bob Dobbs: Is this what Derrida was trying to get at with his idea of text?

[32:53] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[32:55] Cameron McEwen: I don't like to talk about Derrida because there is a huge amount of the guy's work that

[33:01] Cameron McEwen: I haven't read,

[33:02] Cameron McEwen: and I'm not particularly interested in reading it.

[33:05] Cameron McEwen: But when,

[33:07] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[33:09] Cameron McEwen: Derrida criticizes McLuhan as trying to go back into orality.

[33:17] Cameron McEwen: And then Derrida says,

[33:18] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[33:18] Cameron McEwen: but there's only text,

[33:20] Cameron McEwen: and so

[33:21] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is kind of a dreamer,

[33:23] Cameron McEwen: and he doesn't really know what he's talking about.

[33:27] Cameron McEwen: But what Derrida did not understand in McLuhan is that orality was not kind of an exclusive,

[33:39] Cameron McEwen: ontological goal that

[33:44] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was setting out.

[33:46] Cameron McEwen: Instead,

[33:47] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to say that orality is a possibility for human beings,

[33:52] Cameron McEwen: but at the same time,

[33:53] Cameron McEwen: so was textuality.

[33:55] Cameron McEwen: And so what McLuhan was interested in was the transitive gap between those two.

[34:04] Cameron McEwen: Whereas what

[34:05] Cameron McEwen: Derrida seems to me from limited amount of reading of none of them,

[34:11] Cameron McEwen: he sees the same contrast,

[34:13] Cameron McEwen: but does not see a transitive gap.

[34:16] Cameron McEwen: gap between them.

[34:17] Cameron McEwen: He sees a non-transitive gap,

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: which then leads him to say that

[34:22] Cameron McEwen: Everything is text.

[34:25] Bob Dobbs: What does transitive mean there?

[34:27] Cameron McEwen: Transitive?

[34:28] Cameron McEwen: Dialogical.

[34:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[34:30] Cameron McEwen: Back and forth.

[34:31] Cameron McEwen: Transformative in

[34:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan language.

[34:34] Bob Dobbs: How is transitive used in grammar?

[34:38] Bob Dobbs: Transitive verbs,

[34:39] Bob Dobbs: I think it is.

[34:41] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[34:42] Cameron McEwen: there's transitive verbs and intransitive.

[34:44] Cameron McEwen: And transitive verbs are ones that relay the subject to an object.

[34:50] Cameron McEwen: That is...

[34:51] Cameron McEwen: what transitive means.

[34:52] Cameron McEwen: It means relational.

[34:55] Cameron McEwen: And intransitive verbs do not relate to an object.

[34:58] Cameron McEwen: They can only have indirect objects.

[35:00] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[35:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[35:02] Bob Dobbs: So did you,

[35:04] Bob Dobbs: in your trips to Europe,

[35:06] Bob Dobbs: didn't you go to a Derrida seminar and met him?

[35:10] Cameron McEwen: No,

[35:11] Cameron McEwen: I didn't.

[35:12] Cameron McEwen: I went many times to a seminar in Italy.

[35:19] Cameron McEwen: where

[35:20] Cameron McEwen: Derrida had talked previous to when I was there,

[35:26] Cameron McEwen: but

[35:27] Cameron McEwen: I've never met Derrida.

[35:28] Cameron McEwen: I've been to lectures by Derrida,

[35:31] Cameron McEwen: but I've never met the man personally.

[35:34] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[35:34] Bob Dobbs: but you were in the audience.

[35:36] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[35:36] Cameron McEwen: but not there,

[35:38] Cameron McEwen: not when I was in Europe.

[35:40] Cameron McEwen: The only time,

[35:42] Cameron McEwen: actually I think it's twice,

[35:43] Cameron McEwen: the only times that I heard Derrida were in the United States.

[35:48] Cameron McEwen: states and one in New York and one in Chicago.

[35:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[35:52] Bob Dobbs: Would you,

[35:53] Bob Dobbs: if you had an opportunity,

[35:54] Bob Dobbs: stood up at the end and asked a question?

[35:58] Cameron McEwen: Maybe,

[35:59] Cameron McEwen: but

[36:01] Cameron McEwen: I found when I went to philosophical meetings and would stand up and ask questions,

[36:13] Cameron McEwen: generally

[36:14] Cameron McEwen: I was beaten down.

[36:18] Cameron McEwen: as being a business person.

[36:20] Cameron McEwen: I would be the only person who is a quote-unquote businessman at the conference or in the seminar or something like that,

[36:29] Cameron McEwen: and people hated the fact that I was there.

[36:35] Cameron McEwen: They wouldn't let me ask questions.

[36:38] Cameron McEwen: Really,

[36:38] Bob Dobbs: they would just dismiss it.

[36:41] Bob Dobbs: How did they know you were a businessman?

[36:46] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[36:46] Cameron McEwen: sometimes they were people that knew me,

[36:50] Cameron McEwen: and sometimes they were people who just had some idea about me from rumor.

[36:59] Cameron McEwen: But it was very,

[37:00] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[37:00] Cameron McEwen: in most of these conferences,

[37:01] Cameron McEwen: very,

[37:02] Cameron McEwen: very unusual for a business guy to be there.

[37:05] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[37:06] Cameron McEwen: And even worse,

[37:07] Cameron McEwen: a business guy to ask questions that they weren't sure of the answer.

[37:12] Bob Dobbs: That they weren't sure of the answer.

[37:14] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you just said?

[37:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[37:15] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[37:16] Bob Dobbs: And so most of them were professors?

[37:23] Cameron McEwen: Are you meaning professors in terms of...

[37:25] Cameron McEwen: In the audience.

[37:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[37:26] Cameron McEwen: but do you mean professors in terms of rank or professors just as a general term for academics?

[37:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[37:34] Bob Dobbs: academics.

[37:34] Bob Dobbs: Were they academics?

[37:35] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[37:35] Cameron McEwen: they were

[37:37] Cameron McEwen: 100%. 100%

[37:37] Cameron McEwen: academics.

[37:39] Bob Dobbs: And so they were suffering the Gutenberg illusion.

[37:42] Bob Dobbs: They were non-McLuhanites.

[37:44] Bob Dobbs: They...

[37:44] Bob Dobbs: They believed in that dialectic or duality between business and thinking or whatever they thought they were doing.

[37:52] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[37:53] Cameron McEwen: for sure.

[37:53] Cameron McEwen: For sure.

[37:55] Cameron McEwen: But that was largely kind of unthought.

[38:00] Cameron McEwen: I think generally it was considered that I was kind of butting into affairs that I shouldn't be butting into.

[38:16] Bob Dobbs: Did anybody speak to you after,

[38:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[38:19] Bob Dobbs: when they're smoothing?

[38:21] Bob Dobbs: The lecture's over.

[38:23] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,

[38:23] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[38:26] Cameron McEwen: So there were sometimes there were quite famous people that were very kind to me.

[38:39] Cameron McEwen: They would come up and they would say,

[38:41] Cameron McEwen: that was a very good question,

[38:42] Cameron McEwen: but,

[38:42] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[38:44] Cameron McEwen: um,

[38:44] Cameron McEwen: most of these people don't get it because,

[38:48] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[38:49] Cameron McEwen: at these conferences there can be,

[38:52] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[38:53] Cameron McEwen: 100 people,

[38:54] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[38:55] Cameron McEwen: and,

[38:56] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[38:56] Cameron McEwen: 98 of them are careerists.

[39:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[39:02] Cameron McEwen: They don't,

[39:03] Cameron McEwen: they really don't think,

[39:06] Cameron McEwen: they don't have a calling.

[39:10] Cameron McEwen: They're there to kind of...

[39:14] Cameron McEwen: rub off on the fame of a few people that are there who do think and they're there to make connections so they can publish their papers or whatever.

[39:28] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[39:28] Bob Dobbs: practical.

[39:29] Bob Dobbs: They're the business people.

[39:30] Bob Dobbs: They're in the business.

[39:33] Cameron McEwen: That's correct.

[39:33] Cameron McEwen: That is absolutely correct.

[39:35] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[39:38] Cameron McEwen: And so if there's an explicit business person there,

[39:41] Cameron McEwen: then,

[39:43] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[39:43] Cameron McEwen: they...

[39:43] Cameron McEwen: The ground.

[39:44] Bob Dobbs: You're the ground.

[39:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[39:49] Cameron McEwen: it certainly reminds them of what they're doing and what they don't want to admit they're doing.

[39:53] Bob Dobbs: And so the...

[39:57] Bob Dobbs: The more famous ones would be polite and acknowledge you and say it was a good question and put everybody else down.

[40:03] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[40:03] Bob Dobbs: they don't understand what your question is about.

[40:06] Bob Dobbs: But he would say,

[40:07] Bob Dobbs: because you're a businessman,

[40:08] Bob Dobbs: they wouldn't go that far,

[40:09] Bob Dobbs: right?

[40:10] Cameron McEwen: No,

[40:11] Cameron McEwen: no,

[40:11] Cameron McEwen: no,

[40:11] Cameron McEwen: of course not.

[40:12] Cameron McEwen: But,

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: anybody that actually thinks doesn't,

[40:21] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[40:21] Cameron McEwen: characterize people as an academic or a business guy or something like that.

[40:30] Cameron McEwen: it's more of a question of does this person know what he or she is talking about or not?

[40:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[40:37] Bob Dobbs: you're interested in what you're trying to communicate or understandable communication.

[40:43] Bob Dobbs: The color,

[40:44] Bob Dobbs: the clothing is irrelevant.

[40:46] Bob Dobbs: You're actually looking at their mind and through the eyes probably and see if they respond to you.

[40:55] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[40:56] Cameron McEwen: So just as a good example,

[41:00] Cameron McEwen: I was at a conference,

[41:01] Cameron McEwen: I think it was around 1980.

[41:02] Cameron McEwen: It was actually quite a famous conference on hermeneutics in

[41:10] Cameron McEwen: Kansas,

[41:11] Cameron McEwen: University of Kansas in Lawrence.

[41:14] Cameron McEwen: And there were people from all over the world there.

[41:18] Cameron McEwen: So it was a big conference.

[41:20] Cameron McEwen: And that's where

[41:23] Cameron McEwen: I met John O'Neill,

[41:24] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[41:25] Cameron McEwen: from New York.

[41:27] Cameron McEwen: York.

[41:27] Cameron McEwen: And

[41:28] Cameron McEwen: John, excuse me,

[41:29] Cameron McEwen: John was one of the people that was very kind and sort of considerate and a little bit apologetic.

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: For you having wandered into the wrong place.

[41:45] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[41:46] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[41:47] Cameron McEwen: But

[41:48] Cameron McEwen: I would say one of the big stars was Paul de Man.

[41:53] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[41:53] Bob Dobbs: I know what you mean.

[41:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[41:55] Cameron McEwen: And he was a friend,

[41:56] Cameron McEwen: a very close friend of Derrida.

[41:58] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[42:00] Cameron McEwen: And so at one point,

[42:05] Cameron McEwen: de Man came up to me and said,

[42:08] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[42:09] Cameron McEwen: that was an interesting question.

[42:11] Cameron McEwen: We should,

[42:12] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[42:13] Cameron McEwen: have a drink or something like this.

[42:14] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[42:15] Cameron McEwen: And he was very,

[42:17] Cameron McEwen: for the whole conference,

[42:19] Cameron McEwen: he was very kind to me.

[42:20] Cameron McEwen: And then we had the same ride going.

[42:25] Cameron McEwen: from

[42:25] Cameron McEwen: Lawrence over to Kansas City to get our flights out of there.

[42:31] Cameron McEwen: And so de Man,

[42:35] Cameron McEwen: I thought,

[42:37] Cameron McEwen: was a very thoughtful,

[42:39] Cameron McEwen: very kind guy,

[42:42] Cameron McEwen: and

[42:44] Cameron McEwen: I liked him.

[42:46] Bob Dobbs: Even though he was a Nazi.

[42:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[42:49] Cameron McEwen: maybe at one point in his life he had certainly worked.

[42:54] Cameron McEwen: with the Nazis and written stuff that they found acceptable for sure.

[43:02] Bob Dobbs: His career ended in a bit of a scandal that was unfair,

[43:04] Bob Dobbs: you'd say?

[43:06] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if it was unfair,

[43:07] Cameron McEwen: but the man could not be defined simply in terms of what he did during the Second World War.

[43:21] Cameron McEwen: He also had to be seen as

[43:24] Cameron McEwen: a man who became friends with people like

[43:27] Cameron McEwen: Derrida and had great insight into hermeneutics.

[43:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[43:36] Bob Dobbs: Hey,

[43:37] Bob Dobbs: here's an interesting side point.

[43:38] Bob Dobbs: It was in Lawrence,

[43:39] Bob Dobbs: Kansas that Ion showed up.

[43:44] Cameron McEwen: I thought he was in Georgia or someplace like that.

[43:46] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[43:47] Bob Dobbs: J.W.,

[43:48] Bob Dobbs: the man in Georgia.

[43:50] Bob Dobbs: in Atlanta,

[43:51] Bob Dobbs: met Carol and I in Lawrence,

[43:52] Bob Dobbs: Kansas,

[43:53] Bob Dobbs: because we were visiting a female professor there who claimed she had a cold fusion device.

[44:01] Cameron McEwen: That's funny.

[44:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[44:03] Bob Dobbs: it was an interesting encounter for a few days.

[44:05] Bob Dobbs: A lot of strange things happened,

[44:07] Bob Dobbs: but we flew back to Maui.

[44:12] Bob Dobbs: We had just gotten there a couple months before.

[44:15] Bob Dobbs: This is in October 2008,

[44:17] Bob Dobbs: and he flew back to Atlanta,

[44:18] Bob Dobbs: and then the next day called.

[44:20] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn,

[44:21] Bob Dobbs: or me,

[44:21] Bob Dobbs: whoever answered,

[44:22] Bob Dobbs: and said he has to write something because all these ideas are flooding in his head.

[44:28] Bob Dobbs: And he didn't know where they were coming from,

[44:29] Bob Dobbs: but he thought he should write it down,

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: even though he wasn't a writer.

[44:32] Bob Dobbs: And later,

[44:34] Bob Dobbs: we found out that that was the beginning of Ion impressing on his brain.

[44:39] Cameron McEwen: But why was this guy from Georgia in Lawrence,

[44:44] Cameron McEwen: Kansas?

[44:46] Bob Dobbs: He was a billionaire,

[44:47] Bob Dobbs: and he was going to buy or invest in the thing.

[44:51] Bob Dobbs: If the woman could convince him,

[44:52] Bob Dobbs: it was real.

[44:53] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[44:53] Cameron McEwen: I see.

[44:53] Cameron McEwen: So he was there for the same reason that you were.

[44:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[44:56] Bob Dobbs: we were all there.

[44:58] Bob Dobbs: We arranged.

[44:59] Bob Dobbs: I had found out about her accidentally,

[45:02] Bob Dobbs: and I told him six to eight months before that.

[45:05] Bob Dobbs: And he thought,

[45:07] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[45:07] Bob Dobbs: let's go see her.

[45:09] Bob Dobbs: And that required six months of preparation of his.

[45:14] Bob Dobbs: of his travel itinerary because he needed a lot of security.

[45:20] Cameron McEwen: So how had you met him in the first place?

[45:24] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn had gone to Atlanta in the summer,

[45:29] Bob Dobbs: August,

[45:29] Bob Dobbs: September 2005,

[45:31] Bob Dobbs: to see a medical friend.

[45:33] Bob Dobbs: And these people,

[45:34] Bob Dobbs: I think I've said this in previous episodes,

[45:37] Bob Dobbs: these people were part of a,

[45:39] Bob Dobbs: they were Christians,

[45:41] Bob Dobbs: and they would...

[45:43] Bob Dobbs: do some kind of crazy Christian thinking and go to Las Vegas and gamble.

[45:49] Bob Dobbs: With their Christian thinking,

[45:51] Bob Dobbs: they would do well.

[45:54] Bob Dobbs: And so it was kind of a superstitious cult.

[45:56] Bob Dobbs: But Carol didn't know anything about that.

[45:58] Bob Dobbs: She went down to see her friend,

[46:00] Bob Dobbs: and her friend took her to a meeting of the cult.

[46:03] Bob Dobbs: And

[46:04] Bob Dobbs: J.W. was asked,

[46:06] Bob Dobbs: because he was known locally as a billionaire and an expert on banking and money,

[46:11] Bob Dobbs: he was asked to take care of

[46:14] Bob Dobbs: their winnings or to invest in the Iraqi dinar.

[46:19] Bob Dobbs: So he wasn't engaged in the cult,

[46:22] Bob Dobbs: but he was the guy that would interview everybody to see if they were susceptible to be in it.

[46:28] Bob Dobbs: So

[46:29] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn was thrown into an interview with him,

[46:32] Bob Dobbs: and that was interesting.

[46:36] Bob Dobbs: He interviewed Carolyn,

[46:37] Bob Dobbs: but Carolyn wasn't trying to be in the cult,

[46:39] Bob Dobbs: but it was just an odd confluence of...

[46:43] Bob Dobbs: of situations.

[46:44] Bob Dobbs: So she came back to

[46:47] Bob Dobbs: New York and City Island and three,

[46:49] Bob Dobbs: two or three months later,

[46:51] Bob Dobbs: JW called her out of the blue and asked to speak to me because she had quoted me,

[46:57] Bob Dobbs: probably some McLuhan stuff,

[46:59] Bob Dobbs: to him and he couldn't get it out of his mind.

[47:02] Bob Dobbs: So he wanted to ask me what I meant.

[47:05] Bob Dobbs: So we started talking and I didn't know him and we never stopped talking.

[47:10] Bob Dobbs: We're still talking today.

[47:12] Bob Dobbs: But Ion took him over.

[47:17] Bob Dobbs: That was early 2006.

[47:21] Bob Dobbs: And Ion,

[47:21] Bob Dobbs: we realized,

[47:22] Bob Dobbs: officially came through March 18,

[47:24] Bob Dobbs: 2009.

[47:26] Bob Dobbs: But in October

[47:28] Bob Dobbs: 22 or so,

[47:28] Bob Dobbs: in 2008,

[47:31] Bob Dobbs: something happened there.

[47:34] Bob Dobbs: And maybe he was feeling it the day before when he flew out,

[47:37] Bob Dobbs: but it was right then.

[47:39] Bob Dobbs: And he couldn't talk about what he was going through in his mind because he had to deal with this woman and her scene.

[47:46] Bob Dobbs: So we did that,

[47:47] Bob Dobbs: and basically the woman wasn't real,

[47:51] Bob Dobbs: so we dropped it,

[47:53] Bob Dobbs: and we went back to Maui,

[47:55] Bob Dobbs: and he went to

[47:56] Bob Dobbs: Georgia, and he called the next day or within a day or two to talk about what was happening in his brain.

[48:02] Bob Dobbs: And we didn't know.

[48:06] Bob Dobbs: So Carolyn said,

[48:07] Bob Dobbs: well,

[48:07] Bob Dobbs: I've got more time here in Maui.

[48:09] Bob Dobbs: Say your stuff and I'll type it up.

[48:12] Bob Dobbs: So he started dictating to Carolyn.

[48:15] Bob Dobbs: And then shortly after that,

[48:16] Bob Dobbs: he would step out to his patio and he'd go into another world,

[48:22] Bob Dobbs: literally,

[48:23] Bob Dobbs: transported to some weird place.

[48:25] Bob Dobbs: And so that started to happen.

[48:26] Bob Dobbs: So he would talk to us about it,

[48:28] Bob Dobbs: but he was very nervous about talking to us about it because he was embarrassed.

[48:34] Bob Dobbs: He thought we might think he was a nut,

[48:35] Bob Dobbs: but we didn't because we had gone to medians before,

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: but we didn't know he was channeling or anything,

[48:40] Bob Dobbs: but we were interested in what someone was going through,

[48:43] Bob Dobbs: the person wasn't ill,

[48:45] Bob Dobbs: and then a couple months later,

[48:47] Bob Dobbs: he started seeing 100 more ghosts in his home,

[48:52] Bob Dobbs: sitting around talking to him.

[48:53] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[48:53] Bob Dobbs: you remember me telling you this?

[48:56] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[48:56] Cameron McEwen: now,

[48:57] Cameron McEwen: with the ghosts,

[48:59] Cameron McEwen: you've come up to what you've talked about before.

[49:03] Cameron McEwen: Everything prior to that,

[49:05] Cameron McEwen: the whole from 2005 to

[49:08] Cameron McEwen: 2008 or 2009 or wherever you are now.

[49:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[49:12] Cameron McEwen: no,

[49:12] Cameron McEwen: you hadn't talked about that.

[49:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[49:14] Cameron McEwen: The whole

[49:15] Cameron McEwen: Lawrence connection is kind of amusing.

[49:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[49:18] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[49:18] Bob Dobbs: you had a nice connection there and I had a nice connection there.

[49:21] Bob Dobbs: And,

[49:22] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[49:22] Bob Dobbs: William Burroughs was living there.

[49:24] Cameron McEwen: Separated by 25 years.

[49:26] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[49:27] Bob Dobbs: is that what it was?

[49:28] Bob Dobbs: 25 years?

[49:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[49:28] Cameron McEwen: I was 1980.

[49:31] Cameron McEwen: 1980,

[49:32] Cameron McEwen: right.

[49:32] Cameron McEwen: You were...

[49:32] Cameron McEwen: 2005 or 6.

[49:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[49:34] Bob Dobbs: and so Burroughs was living there,

[49:36] Bob Dobbs: thinking of McLuhan article.

[49:38] Cameron McEwen: That's right,

[49:38] Cameron McEwen: he was there,

[49:39] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[49:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[49:40] Cameron McEwen: And Ginsberg was there for...

[49:43] Cameron McEwen: off and on.

[49:44] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[49:45] Bob Dobbs: And Burroughs was shooting his paintings.

[49:47] Bob Dobbs: That's how he made painting.

[49:48] Bob Dobbs: He would shoot at the canvas.

[49:53] Bob Dobbs: So we're there in 2005.

[49:54] Bob Dobbs: I think he died in 96,

[49:55] Bob Dobbs: 97.

[49:56] Bob Dobbs: So he wasn't there in 2005,

[49:59] Bob Dobbs: 2008.

[50:00] Bob Dobbs: He'd gone.

[50:01] Bob Dobbs: But anyways,

[50:04] Bob Dobbs: so because the ghosts were talking

[50:07] Bob Dobbs: I just had this crazy idea that the...

[50:10] Bob Dobbs: spirits called the evergreens that were channeled through Michael Blake Read who i had a long experience with we're back because jw says to me one of the ghosts said say hi to bob and jw said well what who are you what's going on here and the ghost said i'm dr beater and

[50:28] Bob Dobbs: so jw called me up the next day said do you know dr uh peter beater and i said yeah he died march uh 87 i did a

[50:39] Bob Dobbs: I was involved in the gold deal with Bakken Palace with Dr.

[50:43] Bob Dobbs: Beater.

[50:44] Bob Dobbs: And so J.W.

[50:46] Bob Dobbs: said,

[50:46] Bob Dobbs: well,

[50:47] Bob Dobbs: these ghosts,

[50:48] Bob Dobbs: he was among the ghosts.

[50:50] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[50:51] Bob Dobbs: and that's when I got my brilliant idea.

[50:53] Bob Dobbs: This is the original nutty idea.

[50:56] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[50:56] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[50:57] Bob Dobbs: these are the ghosts that speak through Michael Blake Read,

[51:01] Bob Dobbs: who had stopped channeling them in

[51:04] Bob Dobbs: November 2004.

[51:07] Bob Dobbs: And that was triggered by an event in the Coach House that I was trying to have him do a session in the Coach House.

[51:12] Bob Dobbs: People wanted to talk to McLuhan,

[51:14] Bob Dobbs: and that didn't happen.

[51:15] Bob Dobbs: And then he decided then to stop anyways.

[51:18] Bob Dobbs: So this is four years later,

[51:21] Bob Dobbs: and four and a half years later,

[51:23] Bob Dobbs: and

[51:24] Bob Dobbs: I had the idea,

[51:25] Bob Dobbs: these are the evergreens.

[51:26] Bob Dobbs: I'd spent many hours talking to them.

[51:29] Bob Dobbs: So I said,

[51:30] Bob Dobbs: let's get on the phone tomorrow,

[51:32] Bob Dobbs: and

[51:33] Bob Dobbs: I'll try to talk to the spirits in your home.

[51:37] Bob Dobbs: And so we did that,

[51:38] Bob Dobbs: and then one spirit started talking,

[51:42] Bob Dobbs: what we thought was a spirit,

[51:43] Bob Dobbs: and that turned out to be Ion.

[51:45] Bob Dobbs: So that's how it started.

[51:47] Bob Dobbs: But it began,

[51:47] Bob Dobbs: in my experience of JW,

[51:50] Bob Dobbs: it was the second time I met him.

[51:51] Bob Dobbs: I met him in April 2007 at his home.

[51:54] Bob Dobbs: He invited us there after me talking to him on the phone for a year.

[51:58] Bob Dobbs: And then now this is the second time I meet him,

[51:59] Bob Dobbs: and it's in Lawrence,

[52:00] Bob Dobbs: Kansas.

[52:01] Bob Dobbs: and that,

[52:04] Bob Dobbs: in retrospect,

[52:04] Bob Dobbs: is when he started to have this.

[52:06] Bob Dobbs: weird takeover of himself by whatever ion is.

[52:10] Cameron McEwen: So let me get clearer about these evergreens.

[52:17] Cameron McEwen: I always had the impression up until now that the evergreens were sort of on our side and that you were channeling through them.

[52:31] Cameron McEwen: But now it sounds like you're channeling to them.

[52:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[52:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm not channeling.

[52:35] Bob Dobbs: Michael Blake Read.

[52:37] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[52:37] Cameron McEwen: so Reed,

[52:38] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[52:38] Bob Dobbs: In August 1974,

[52:41] Bob Dobbs: accidentally interrupted,

[52:43] Bob Dobbs: he was sleeping in his on St.

[52:46] Bob Dobbs: Clair Avenue West near McLuhan Church,

[52:49] Bob Dobbs: and somebody was on the phone talking,

[52:54] Bob Dobbs: and

[52:55] Bob Dobbs: Michael Blake Read started talking to the person that the phoner was talking to.

[53:00] Bob Dobbs: It was actually his mistress.

[53:03] Bob Dobbs: And...

[53:04] Bob Dobbs: So the guy looks and says,

[53:06] Bob Dobbs: what the heck,

[53:07] Bob Dobbs: Michael's interrupting my phone call here.

[53:09] Bob Dobbs: And he gets off the phone and starts talking to Michael,

[53:13] Bob Dobbs: and Michael's asleep.

[53:14] Bob Dobbs: And then Michael starts saying all these crazy things.

[53:16] Bob Dobbs: So he gets the rest of the staff and people in the building to come in and talk to Michael.

[53:21] Bob Dobbs: And they interviewed Michael,

[53:23] Bob Dobbs: who remains asleep and is saying stuff.

[53:26] Bob Dobbs: And then the voices they were talking to said,

[53:29] Bob Dobbs: we're leaving.

[53:30] Bob Dobbs: And then

[53:31] Bob Dobbs: Michael woke up.

[53:32] Bob Dobbs: And he's looking at these people staring at him,

[53:34] Bob Dobbs: and he doesn't know what had happened.

[53:36] Bob Dobbs: And when they told him,

[53:37] Bob Dobbs: he didn't believe it.

[53:38] Bob Dobbs: And so they said,

[53:40] Bob Dobbs: we're going to do it again.

[53:41] Bob Dobbs: So they arranged a few days later to sit him down.

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: And they didn't,

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what they thought,

[53:46] Bob Dobbs: how they make it happen,

[53:47] Bob Dobbs: but they put him to sleep,

[53:49] Bob Dobbs: or he went to sleep,

[53:51] Bob Dobbs: and the spirits started talking to them.

[53:53] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have names for him yet.

[53:54] Bob Dobbs: And they recorded it.

[53:56] Bob Dobbs: And so when it was over,

[53:57] Bob Dobbs: Michael woke up.

[53:59] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[54:00] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[54:01] Bob Dobbs: what bullshit happened this time and they played the recording to him and he was shocked and so he left that building uh which was actually teaching a silver mind control so it was a bit of a anti-environment happening there and uh he went off and became a medium he

[54:18] Cameron McEwen: starts uh you know doing it for people and charging money so i i thought you were talking about the time that he stopped being oh okay that's august 74 or

[54:30] Bob Dobbs: No,

[54:31] Bob Dobbs: that's August.

[54:31] Bob Dobbs: So I have to finish this.

[54:32] Bob Dobbs: So in August 74,

[54:34] Bob Dobbs: he starts August,

[54:35] Bob Dobbs: September,

[54:36] Bob Dobbs: and he goes for 30 years.

[54:39] Bob Dobbs: And he does anti-environment sessions in 19 countries,

[54:43] Bob Dobbs: and the government,

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: American government used him.

[54:45] Bob Dobbs: He's very famous for those that were into finding out about him.

[54:50] Bob Dobbs: And years later,

[54:52] Bob Dobbs: in

[54:54] Bob Dobbs: 95, I discovered the evergreens in 80 and started going to them regularly from 85 on.

[55:01] Bob Dobbs: I had a five-year break after my first.

[55:04] Cameron McEwen: Did you say you discovered the evergreens?

[55:07] Bob Dobbs: I discovered Michael Blake Read channeled the evergreens on Q107 in Toronto.

[55:12] Bob Dobbs: He was interviewed by a local talk show.

[55:16] Cameron McEwen: Sometimes you say,

[55:19] Cameron McEwen: I was going to the Evergreen as a short form of saying I was going to

[55:24] Cameron McEwen: Michael Blake Read and then through him to the Evergreen.

[55:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[55:28] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[55:28] Bob Dobbs: I've said this story four million times.

[55:31] Bob Dobbs: And usually it's around people who know what I'm referring to or something.

[55:35] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[55:35] Bob Dobbs: So it's shorthand.

[55:37] Bob Dobbs: It's lazy.

[55:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[55:38] Bob Dobbs: I have to.

[55:39] Bob Dobbs: It's not many new people I'm talking about,

[55:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[55:43] Bob Dobbs: talking to.

[55:44] Bob Dobbs: So I got to be more particular.

[55:45] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[55:46] Bob Dobbs: I.

[55:48] Bob Dobbs: I did a couple of sessions in 1980,

[55:53] Bob Dobbs: and then I waited to see if this stuff came true.

[55:55] Bob Dobbs: And it did.

[55:58] Bob Dobbs: So

[55:59] Bob Dobbs: I got back with them in 1985.

[56:00] Bob Dobbs: And from that point on,

[56:02] Bob Dobbs: I saw them at least once a year when they came to Toronto,

[56:05] Bob Dobbs: or twice a year.

[56:07] Bob Dobbs: Because Michael moved from the Toronto area to

[56:12] Bob Dobbs: Vancouver in 1985.

[56:15] Bob Dobbs: Thank you.

[56:15] Bob Dobbs: He had met McLuhan in the 60s.

[56:17] Bob Dobbs: He was an advertising executive in Toronto.

[56:19] Bob Dobbs: He'd gone to a conference,

[56:21] Bob Dobbs: and Buckminster Fuller was there,

[56:22] Bob Dobbs: and he met Buckminster Fuller,

[56:23] Bob Dobbs: and he spent a whole evening late into the past midnight with McLuhan and a bunch of people in the hotel room.

[56:31] Bob Dobbs: That was interesting that he knew who McLuhan was because once I realized I could talk to dead people through Michael,

[56:38] Bob Dobbs: the Evergreens would bring dead people,

[56:40] Bob Dobbs: I started talking to McLuhan.

[56:42] Bob Dobbs: But in 95...

[56:45] Bob Dobbs: I call up Corinne,

[56:46] Bob Dobbs: and I haven't talked to her in 13,

[56:49] Bob Dobbs: 14 years,

[56:51] Bob Dobbs: since I did the archives,

[56:53] Bob Dobbs: and I don't remember why I called her up.

[56:56] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[56:57] Bob Dobbs: I was going to go to the Evergreens,

[56:58] Bob Dobbs: and I just thought I'd be friendly,

[57:00] Bob Dobbs: because she had told me she used to talk to Marshall after he died in the kitchen.

[57:05] Bob Dobbs: She told me that one night.

[57:07] Bob Dobbs: And then I met a woman in New York who had met Corinne briefly,

[57:11] Bob Dobbs: didn't know her,

[57:11] Bob Dobbs: but Corinne told her about that.

[57:13] Bob Dobbs: So it wasn't just said to me.

[57:15] Bob Dobbs: So I knew

[57:16] Bob Dobbs: Corinne was interested in,

[57:18] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[57:18] Bob Dobbs: the spiritual,

[57:19] Bob Dobbs: or whatever you call this,

[57:20] Bob Dobbs: communication.

[57:21] Bob Dobbs: So I called her up at 95 and said,

[57:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to be seeing the Evergreens and explain to her who they are.

[57:26] Bob Dobbs: And halfway through explaining who they are,

[57:28] Bob Dobbs: she said,

[57:29] Bob Dobbs: I know them.

[57:29] Bob Dobbs: I've been to the Evergreens.

[57:31] Bob Dobbs: That's what she said.

[57:32] Bob Dobbs: And

[57:34] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[57:34] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[57:35] Bob Dobbs: well,

[57:35] Bob Dobbs: that's interesting.

[57:35] Bob Dobbs: So I said,

[57:36] Bob Dobbs: well,

[57:36] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to be there tomorrow.

[57:38] Bob Dobbs: I talk to Marshall a lot.

[57:40] Bob Dobbs: And I can say this stuff to her because she had told me she talked to him.

[57:44] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[57:44] Bob Dobbs: do you have any questions for him?

[57:45] Bob Dobbs: And she thought for a minute or so and said,

[57:48] Bob Dobbs: no,

[57:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't have any questions.

[57:50] Bob Dobbs: So I didn't ask anything on her behalf.

[57:53] Bob Dobbs: But

[57:54] Bob Dobbs: 15 years later,

[57:56] Bob Dobbs: around 2010,

[57:58] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[57:58] Bob Dobbs: 95 to 2010,

[58:00] Bob Dobbs: I'm involved with Mary McLuhan a lot and talking to her.

[58:04] Bob Dobbs: And she one day tells me,

[58:06] Bob Dobbs: I was looking through my stuff and I came across this folder and it's something called the evergreens.

[58:12] Bob Dobbs: Didn't you know something about them?

[58:14] Bob Dobbs: She remembered the name.

[58:15] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[58:15] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[58:15] Bob Dobbs: that's the medium that your mother told me she went to.

[58:18] Bob Dobbs: She said,

[58:18] Bob Dobbs: well,

[58:18] Bob Dobbs: I have here the record of the family going to Michael Blake Read and the transcripts of each kid's reading.

[58:28] Bob Dobbs: And I don't know if

[58:30] Bob Dobbs: Marshall was listed there.

[58:32] Bob Dobbs: And she couldn't tell whether Marshall was there.

[58:35] Bob Dobbs: But she told me a bit about,

[58:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[58:39] Bob Dobbs: without.

[58:39] Bob Dobbs: violated the privacy,

[58:40] Bob Dobbs: told me what the report said.

[58:43] Bob Dobbs: And she said,

[58:44] Bob Dobbs: maybe I'll give you a copy someday,

[58:46] Bob Dobbs: which she never did.

[58:47] Bob Dobbs: But she had found this,

[58:49] Bob Dobbs: and she had not gone to the Evergreens because she was in California.

[58:53] Bob Dobbs: But she found out they had given her a copy of it,

[58:56] Bob Dobbs: and it happened in 76.

[58:58] Bob Dobbs: So here's McLuhan had overlapped with the Evergreens and Michael Blake Read.

[59:03] Bob Dobbs: So that was auspicious for my life.

[59:07] Bob Dobbs: When people say,

[59:08] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[59:08] Bob Dobbs: you're a nut.

[59:09] Bob Dobbs: claiming you talked to McLuhan through the evergreens.

[59:11] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[59:12] Bob Dobbs: well,

[59:12] Bob Dobbs: he did it himself.

[59:13] Bob Dobbs: And back in 74,

[59:18] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[59:19] Bob Dobbs: Mary has,

[59:21] Bob Dobbs: Ms.

[59:22] Bob Dobbs: Corrine told me she did the evergreens until 95.

[59:24] Bob Dobbs: So in 74,

[59:25] Bob Dobbs: I call up

[59:26] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan, and I congratulate Eric's article on the Thunders in the James Joyce Quarterly.

[59:33] Bob Dobbs: And then I mentioned that I was living on bananas,

[59:37] Bob Dobbs: eating a lot of bananas for some...

[59:39] Bob Dobbs: crazy vegetarian.

[59:41] Bob Dobbs: I became a fruitarian at one point.

[59:45] Bob Dobbs: So I was talking,

[59:46] Bob Dobbs: and he said,

[59:47] Bob Dobbs: as soon as I said it,

[59:48] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[59:48] Bob Dobbs: no,

[59:48] Bob Dobbs: no,

[59:48] Bob Dobbs: that's not good.

[59:49] Bob Dobbs: Edgar Cayce says bananas are bad.

[59:51] Bob Dobbs: He quoted Edgar Cayce for fuck's sake.

[59:54] Cameron McEwen: Okay?

[59:55] Bob Dobbs: You know who that is?

[59:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[59:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[59:58] Bob Dobbs: That was a shock.

[1:00:00] Bob Dobbs: This Catholic guy quoting a medium and following his dietary suggestions and telling me to watch out.

[1:00:07] Bob Dobbs: Not good to live on bananas.

[1:00:13] Cameron McEwen: But he could well have been joking.

[1:00:17] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:00:17] Bob Dobbs: he was serious.

[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: then when I met Don Theall,

[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: he talked about they investigated mediums and everything.

[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: All the time in the early

[1:00:26] Bob Dobbs: 50s, when he was a graduate student of Marshall,

[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: they would go around the corner to Bay and

[1:00:33] Bob Dobbs: Queen or something,

[1:00:34] Bob Dobbs: and there was a health food store there.

[1:00:35] Bob Dobbs: This is in 51,

[1:00:36] Bob Dobbs: 52,

[1:00:37] Bob Dobbs: 53.

[1:00:38] Bob Dobbs: And the guy had all these occult books Forsdale,

[1:00:43] Bob Dobbs: and they would go there and buy books.

[1:00:46] Bob Dobbs: And then Don,

[1:00:47] Bob Dobbs: years later,

[1:00:47] Bob Dobbs: gave me a list of all the occult books they studied,

[1:00:50] Bob Dobbs: and a lot of them was medieval stuff,

[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: very obscure.

[1:00:54] Bob Dobbs: manuscript titles they really went into it in depth as part of his looking into conspiracies and secret societies and Don's the only one who really did that with Marshall so that confirmed his interest in that stuff he seriously studied oh he definitely was interested yeah there's a difference between being

[1:01:16] Cameron McEwen: interested in something as a symptom or as a something to try to understand

[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: difference between that and following something right well like me I don't follow anything he was like me he was investigating but he was serious he knew his stuff he knew Cayce and and of course other people commented on how superstitious Marshall was he

[1:01:42] Bob Dobbs: would he wouldn't travel on a full moon or and things like that you know one of the older academics

[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: at the Fordham Conference in 98 did a whole paper on all of McLuhan superstitions that he'd found out about.

[1:01:55] Bob Dobbs: He listed them all off.

[1:01:58] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:01:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had a lot,

[1:02:00] Bob Dobbs: and people noticed them and communicated to this guy,

[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: so he did a paper on it.

[1:02:06] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,

[1:02:07] Bob Dobbs: so it was a surprise in 74,

[1:02:11] Bob Dobbs: but later as I found out more and more about Marshall with Don's help,

[1:02:16] Bob Dobbs: I could see why he would quote Cayce.

[1:02:20] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:02:24] Bob Dobbs: this is all digression because you brought up Lawrence,

[1:02:26] Bob Dobbs: Kansas,

[1:02:27] Bob Dobbs: and I'm telling you that it's interesting that that,

[1:02:30] Bob Dobbs: in a way,

[1:02:31] Bob Dobbs: is where

[1:02:33] Bob Dobbs: JW started to have this effect on him.

[1:02:36] Bob Dobbs: And then,

[1:02:37] Bob Dobbs: so,

[1:02:38] Bob Dobbs: later we realized that he was seeing ghosts and traveling to other dimensions and feeling all these ideas is that he was beginning to,

[1:02:48] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:02:49] Bob Dobbs: channel.

[1:02:50] Bob Dobbs: And so all this stuff was coming into his head,

[1:02:53] Bob Dobbs: and maybe it pushed him into astral regions.

[1:02:57] Bob Dobbs: So that all made sense once Iron showed up,

[1:03:02] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:03:03] Cameron McEwen: what had been happening.

[1:03:05] Cameron McEwen: How do you think about that in terms of bodies?

[1:03:13] Cameron McEwen: Do you see him as having,

[1:03:15] Cameron McEwen: you know...

[1:03:17] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:03:17] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:03:17] Bob Dobbs: my bodies is...

[1:03:19] Bob Dobbs: You have your physical or chemical body,

[1:03:21] Bob Dobbs: ruled by Western chemistry and knowledge,

[1:03:24] Bob Dobbs: so I call it the chemical body.

[1:03:26] Bob Dobbs: And then most cultures believe there's more than the physical,

[1:03:30] Bob Dobbs: so I call that the astral body.

[1:03:33] Bob Dobbs: The collective wisdom of culture is the astral body,

[1:03:35] Bob Dobbs: astral archive.

[1:03:37] Bob Dobbs: Then we added the TV body and the chip body,

[1:03:40] Bob Dobbs: and then

[1:03:42] Bob Dobbs: I figured there was stuff we didn't know at all,

[1:03:45] Bob Dobbs: and I called that the mystery body.

[1:03:47] Bob Dobbs: When Ian showed up...

[1:03:49] Bob Dobbs: Aion learned about my five bodies from me,

[1:03:52] Bob Dobbs: probably already knew it because it had ESP,

[1:03:56] Bob Dobbs: but let me spell it out at some point.

[1:03:58] Bob Dobbs: And they said,

[1:03:59] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:03:59] Bob Dobbs: we're here to make the mystery body understandable.

[1:04:02] Bob Dobbs: We're going to,

[1:04:04] Bob Dobbs: I was calling it the interior landscape.

[1:04:06] Bob Dobbs: If I didn't know what it was,

[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: it was a landscape.

[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: Once I knew more about it,

[1:04:10] Bob Dobbs: it would be the mystery body.

[1:04:12] Bob Dobbs: And so Aion said,

[1:04:13] Bob Dobbs: we're going to make the interior landscape,

[1:04:14] Bob Dobbs: which you know nothing about,

[1:04:16] Bob Dobbs: we're going to make you know a lot about it through us.

[1:04:18] Bob Dobbs: because we're from the interior landscape,

[1:04:20] Bob Dobbs: and then you'll know and understand the mystery body.

[1:04:23] Bob Dobbs: So later,

[1:04:25] Bob Dobbs: I had a five-bodied situation.

[1:04:26] Bob Dobbs: Before then,

[1:04:27] Bob Dobbs: it was only four bodies with the interior landscape.

[1:04:30] Bob Dobbs: But then I added mystery body once I learned a lot from Ion.

[1:04:34] Bob Dobbs: So that's what the five bodies are.

[1:04:37] Cameron McEwen: Great,

[1:04:37] Cameron McEwen: but what I was trying to figure out is,

[1:04:41] Cameron McEwen: so your friend

[1:04:43] Cameron McEwen: J.W. is mostly or entirely in the astral body when he is acting as a medium,

[1:04:57] Cameron McEwen: and what he communicates is then about the mystery body.

[1:05:00] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:05:01] Cameron McEwen: Do I understand that right?

[1:05:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:05:03] Bob Dobbs: you could say it's about the astrobotty,

[1:05:04] Bob Dobbs: but...

[1:05:05] Bob Dobbs: There's a lot about the astrobody that Aion tells us that no one knew before.

[1:05:11] Bob Dobbs: Aion says this is the first time humans have talked to what Aion calls themselves non-physical,

[1:05:18] Bob Dobbs: which is pretty amazing if that's true.

[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: And so there's a lot of new stuff about traditional astrobody,

[1:05:24] Bob Dobbs: theosophical knowledge,

[1:05:25] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:05:25] Bob Dobbs: or the Dalai Lama's knowledge,

[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: different shamanistic knowledge,

[1:05:29] Bob Dobbs: whatever you,

[1:05:30] Bob Dobbs: however you come across it.

[1:05:32] Bob Dobbs: Aion corrects a lot of it.

[1:05:34] Bob Dobbs: tells us what's really going on and that's why i've been talking to over 31 000 hours it's very interesting and a lot of brand new stuff and um so i would agree with you i'd call ion more

[1:05:50] Bob Dobbs: than the astrobody it's the all the bodies and the mystery especially and then it all worked towards our products and our actual

[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: free electricity device,

[1:06:02] Bob Dobbs: these are actual things that Ion made,

[1:06:04] Bob Dobbs: told us how to make,

[1:06:06] Bob Dobbs: that's the hexadic body,

[1:06:08] Bob Dobbs: which is the sixth part of my Tiny Note chart.

[1:06:12] Bob Dobbs: My Tiny Note chart is five levels anticipating hexadic.

[1:06:17] Bob Dobbs: And it was inspired by the medical work that Carol did in New York in the early

[1:06:23] Bob Dobbs: 90s and mid-90s with this technology that treated AIDS successfully.

[1:06:28] Bob Dobbs: And it was an odd contraption.

[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: made up of,

[1:06:32] Bob Dobbs: you took a syringe needle and you put it in a little casement and you would make an electric charge interact with the tip of the needle as

[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: you injected holeopathic remedies into acupuncture points.

[1:06:53] Bob Dobbs: So combined acupuncture,

[1:06:54] Bob Dobbs: homeopathy,

[1:06:57] Bob Dobbs: herbs,

[1:06:58] Bob Dobbs: herbal remedies,

[1:06:58] Bob Dobbs: homeopathized or tetrad.

[1:07:01] Bob Dobbs: and electric magnetism,

[1:07:04] Bob Dobbs: or electricity,

[1:07:04] Bob Dobbs: or whatever you call that,

[1:07:06] Bob Dobbs: in this device.

[1:07:06] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:07:08] Bob Dobbs: herbs,

[1:07:08] Bob Dobbs: homeopathy,

[1:07:10] Bob Dobbs: acupuncture,

[1:07:11] Bob Dobbs: and magnetic electric pulse.

[1:07:15] Bob Dobbs: And it was an incredible thing,

[1:07:17] Bob Dobbs: and I said,

[1:07:18] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:07:18] Bob Dobbs: this is a new kind of device that regular science can't explain.

[1:07:24] Bob Dobbs: And so I made the Tiny Note chart to express,

[1:07:28] Bob Dobbs: environmentally,

[1:07:29] Bob Dobbs: where we were coming from.

[1:07:31] Bob Dobbs: Now we're going to come to the word electricity.

[1:07:34] Bob Dobbs: But before I say that,

[1:07:36] Bob Dobbs: I extrapolated this little invention into a sociological phenomenon,

[1:07:40] Bob Dobbs: a new medium.

[1:07:42] Bob Dobbs: And I called it the Decad,

[1:07:44] Bob Dobbs: because the first five parts were monad,

[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: dyad,

[1:07:48] Bob Dobbs: triad,

[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: tetrad,

[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: and pentad.

[1:07:51] Bob Dobbs: I got the word pentad from Zingrone.

[1:07:54] Bob Dobbs: And so I predicted the Decad,

[1:07:57] Bob Dobbs: and that turned out to be a prediction of ions showing up.

[1:08:01] Bob Dobbs: And so we've been living with the hexadic quote body for 13,

[1:08:06] Bob Dobbs: 12 years,

[1:08:07] Bob Dobbs: since 2009.

[1:08:10] Cameron McEwen: But all these bodies are,

[1:08:12] Cameron McEwen: they're not things that come and go in historical time,

[1:08:16] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:08:16] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:08:17] Cameron McEwen: they're perennial,

[1:08:23] Cameron McEwen: they're perennially there,

[1:08:25] Cameron McEwen: but they're not always expressed just like...

[1:08:30] Cameron McEwen: any element or any possibility.

[1:08:32] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: The TV and computer or digital body were expressed at some point in the big now,

[1:08:41] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:08:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:08:43] Cameron McEwen: By the way,

[1:08:44] Cameron McEwen: you may hear the noise of the coffee machine here.

[1:08:46] Cameron McEwen: I'm making myself a little coffee like I did last time.

[1:08:49] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:08:50] Bob Dobbs: So that whole thing about electricity,

[1:08:54] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:08:54] Bob Dobbs: half an hour ago...

[1:08:56] Bob Dobbs: When

[1:08:57] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[1:08:58] Bob Dobbs: I got you to say the electricity is the common ground or cause.

[1:09:02] Bob Dobbs: Remember that?

[1:09:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:09:03] Cameron McEwen: of course.

[1:09:04] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:09:05] Bob Dobbs: that's what the Kirchhoff does.

[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: He'll say,

[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: it's electricity,

[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: that's causing all these weird new phenomena for humans since the telegraph.

[1:09:16] Bob Dobbs: So he calls it electricity.

[1:09:18] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't say TV radio.

[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: So maybe he's thinking of what you're thinking of.

[1:09:25] Cameron McEwen: the ground itself.

[1:09:29] Bob Dobbs: What did you say?

[1:09:33] Cameron McEwen: It's not wrong to see electricity as a ground,

[1:09:37] Cameron McEwen: but it is wrong to see it as a culminating ground,

[1:09:42] Cameron McEwen: as if it were able Trump other grounds.

[1:09:47] Cameron McEwen: It's not.

[1:09:48] Cameron McEwen: It's one possibility amongst other possibilities,

[1:09:58] Cameron McEwen: and the point is...

[1:10:01] Cameron McEwen: Not to see its triumph,

[1:10:03] Cameron McEwen: but to see its place amongst other possibilities.

[1:10:12] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:10:13] Cameron McEwen: I think to Kirchhoff,

[1:10:16] Cameron McEwen: sees it as sort of a culmination rather than as one of a series of other possibilities.

[1:10:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:10:27] Bob Dobbs: So you're saying electricity doesn't trump.

[1:10:30] Bob Dobbs: the Gutenberg environment?

[1:10:32] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:10:34] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:10:36] Cameron McEwen: It does so in time,

[1:10:40] Cameron McEwen: but the two of them are in all-at-onceness,

[1:10:47] Cameron McEwen: as McLuhan would say.

[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:10:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:10:51] Bob Dobbs: So we were just discussing

[1:10:58] Bob Dobbs: Oh yeah,

[1:10:59] Bob Dobbs: the communication problem.

[1:11:00] Bob Dobbs: So what is it that McLuhan did that others didn't do,

[1:11:11] Bob Dobbs: and he failed to communicate it,

[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: or he didn't do anything,

[1:11:15] Bob Dobbs: he just used modern words for his now,

[1:11:19] Bob Dobbs: from his now.

[1:11:22] Bob Dobbs: It was the same Socratic dialogue.

[1:11:26] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:11:26] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:11:27] Cameron McEwen: everybody...

[1:11:29] Cameron McEwen: speaks from their now or from the now.

[1:11:33] Cameron McEwen: Everybody speaks from possibilities in different senses,

[1:11:39] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:11:40] Cameron McEwen: Language itself is a series of possibilities.

[1:11:43] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:11:45] Cameron McEwen: I guess one of the things I think

[1:11:47] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake is about is using language,

[1:11:52] Cameron McEwen: being conscious of the underlying possibilities.

[1:11:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[1:12:00] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan was doing in a certain way wasn't different from what other people were doing.

[1:12:10] Cameron McEwen: He was trying to understand what being a living human being is all about,

[1:12:18] Cameron McEwen: trying to understand what being a family man is all about,

[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: trying to earn enough money from Acadia University to keep his family.

[1:12:28] Cameron McEwen: fed and clothed.

[1:12:31] Cameron McEwen: All of that was fairly typical.

[1:12:34] Cameron McEwen: But what was untypical about

[1:12:35] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and what he shared with lots of other people in the tradition but not too many people that were contemporaneous with him was that he could see solutions

[1:12:52] Cameron McEwen: to problems which were enormous hang-ups in the world.

[1:12:57] Cameron McEwen: Hang-ups

[1:12:59] Cameron McEwen: for people individually and hang-ups for whole societies and for nations.

[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: He could see a solution.

[1:13:09] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:13:10] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:13:10] Cameron McEwen: He could see a solution,

[1:13:12] Cameron McEwen: but he wasn't able to communicate it,

[1:13:15] Cameron McEwen: just as has happened throughout history.

[1:13:19] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:13:19] Bob Dobbs: So he's inspired.

[1:13:22] Cameron McEwen: I would say so,

[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: yes.

[1:13:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:13:25] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:13:25] Bob Dobbs: he did once talk,

[1:13:27] Bob Dobbs: I did a lot of talking to him through the Evergreens,

[1:13:30] Bob Dobbs: or through Michael Blake Read,

[1:13:31] Bob Dobbs: and he'd come in and the Evergreens would feature him.

[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: And at one time he stressed,

[1:13:39] Bob Dobbs: like I would approach it as a media coliseum,

[1:13:41] Bob Dobbs: talk about media and whatever,

[1:13:44] Bob Dobbs: and he said at one point,

[1:13:45] Bob Dobbs: this is a vision,

[1:13:46] Bob Dobbs: Bob.

[1:13:47] Bob Dobbs: I have a vision.

[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: That's what you're getting at there with when I say inspiration,

[1:13:52] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:13:53] Bob Dobbs: He had a vision.

[1:13:54] Cameron McEwen: I think so,

[1:13:55] Cameron McEwen: yes.

[1:13:55] Cameron McEwen: But people need to be careful that that's using vision in a different sense from

[1:14:03] Cameron McEwen: Gutenbergian vision.

[1:14:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:14:04] Bob Dobbs: right.

[1:14:05] Cameron McEwen: As opposed to some sort of musical vision or something.

[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: he saw a solution.

[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: That's what the vision was.

[1:14:12] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:14:13] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:14:15] Cameron McEwen: And note how that's how both

[1:14:19] Cameron McEwen: Dante's Commedia and

[1:14:22] Cameron McEwen: Eliot's Four Quartets.

[1:14:23] Cameron McEwen: Both end with a vision.

[1:14:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:14:26] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:14:27] Bob Dobbs: And...

[1:14:28] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:14:28] Bob Dobbs: that's why

[1:14:29] Bob Dobbs: I'm glad I went to this crackpot,

[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: Michael Blake Read,

[1:14:33] Bob Dobbs: pretending he was channeling

[1:14:35] Bob Dobbs: Indies, because that idea,

[1:14:37] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:14:38] Bob Dobbs: suspending disbelief and say,

[1:14:40] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:14:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking to a McLuhan spirit,

[1:14:42] Bob Dobbs: and he says it was a vision.

[1:14:44] Bob Dobbs: You never heard McLuhan say that,

[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: He never said,

[1:14:48] Bob Dobbs: I have a vision.

[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: He avoided that kind of talk.

[1:14:52] Bob Dobbs: So to hear him say it helped me see him differently.

[1:14:57] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:14:58] Bob Dobbs: Which pushed me in the right direction in understanding what you mean by saying he had a solution.

[1:15:04] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:15:05] Bob Dobbs: it's,

[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:15:08] Bob Dobbs: so we're in this cul-de-sac.

[1:15:10] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to do something.

[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: I've had a vision of the tech body,

[1:15:13] Bob Dobbs: but actually it was ION that told me,

[1:15:15] Bob Dobbs: but my vision is interacting with the reality of ION.

[1:15:20] Bob Dobbs: And he's pointing out the tech body,

[1:15:21] Bob Dobbs: and I'm trying to explain it,

[1:15:23] Bob Dobbs: what I see Trump.

[1:15:25] Bob Dobbs: That's what's happening here.

[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: So I'm in the cul-de-sac.

[1:15:29] Bob Dobbs: We're going to hopefully go through this and figure out if I did get something communicated.

[1:15:35] Bob Dobbs: With the proviso that nobody succeeded.

[1:15:38] Bob Dobbs: With the proviso nobody succeeded so far.

[1:15:41] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[1:15:42] Cameron McEwen: right.

[1:15:42] Bob Dobbs: And then what do you say?

[1:15:44] Cameron McEwen: We're on parallel tracks,

[1:15:45] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[1:15:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:15:49] Cameron McEwen: We both see that a kind of communication is a great...

[1:15:56] Cameron McEwen: need in the contemporary world.

[1:16:04] Bob Dobbs: We feel we could do it.

[1:16:07] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:16:09] Cameron McEwen: Or at least in my case,

[1:16:11] Cameron McEwen: I don't say that I could do it.

[1:16:13] Cameron McEwen: I say that I'm called to attempt it and

[1:16:18] Cameron McEwen: I hope that I can do it.

[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm in the same boat.

[1:16:24] Bob Dobbs: And I'm actually

[1:16:26] Bob Dobbs: more public than you in the electric now.

[1:16:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:16:31] Bob Dobbs: much more.

[1:16:32] Bob Dobbs: None of you are in the electric now,

[1:16:33] Bob Dobbs: but you've written a lot,

[1:16:34] Bob Dobbs: and a lot of people are reading your work,

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: so they get you that way.

[1:16:38] Bob Dobbs: So we're in opposite,

[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: opposite media,

[1:16:41] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:16:43] Cameron McEwen: That's true,

[1:16:43] Cameron McEwen: although I don't think it's true to say a lot of people are reading my stuff.

[1:16:48] Cameron McEwen: I think almost no one.

[1:16:51] Bob Dobbs: Do you have a way of knowing who clicks on your site?

[1:16:54] Cameron McEwen: No.

[1:16:55] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:16:55] Cameron McEwen: I don't.

[1:16:56] Cameron McEwen: I should try to set that up.

[1:16:57] Cameron McEwen: It is certainly possible.

[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: if there were 100 people reading it,

[1:17:04] Bob Dobbs: two have communicated to you,

[1:17:05] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: They're not telling you.

[1:17:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:17:09] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:17:09] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:17:11] Cameron McEwen: I know that people read my stuff now and again.

[1:17:16] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:17:20] Cameron McEwen: When stuff about McLuhan is questioned in Google,

[1:17:24] Cameron McEwen: It's my stuff frequently comes up.

[1:17:28] Cameron McEwen: Google seems to like my stuff.

[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: At the top?

[1:17:31] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:17:32] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:17:32] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:17:33] Bob Dobbs: that's pretty neat.

[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: maybe.

[1:17:37] Cameron McEwen: It's hard to say what it means.

[1:17:39] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:17:40] Cameron McEwen: I think when people get a hit on my stuff,

[1:17:44] Cameron McEwen: they may read a post,

[1:17:46] Cameron McEwen: maybe even two.

[1:17:48] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:17:50] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that anybody is reading.

[1:17:54] Cameron McEwen: all my stuff.

[1:17:55] Cameron McEwen: All my stuff there is,

[1:17:58] Cameron McEwen: first,

[1:17:58] Cameron McEwen: it's very extensive.

[1:18:00] Cameron McEwen: And secondly,

[1:18:01] Cameron McEwen: it's in digital form.

[1:18:03] Cameron McEwen: And people just don't understand digital form.

[1:18:07] Cameron McEwen: That's one of the things that

[1:18:08] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to get across.

[1:18:10] Cameron McEwen: But people are locked into literary form.

[1:18:18] Cameron McEwen: As far as I can see,

[1:18:19] Cameron McEwen: there's very few people understand

[1:18:23] Cameron McEwen: how to do digital research.

[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: they can read your stuff,

[1:18:29] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:18:30] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[1:18:31] Bob Dobbs: But more is required.

[1:18:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:18:35] Cameron McEwen: so my stuff,

[1:18:37] Cameron McEwen: first of all,

[1:18:39] Cameron McEwen: there are various classifications that are assigned to every post.

[1:18:44] Cameron McEwen: But you can also do a simple search or an advanced search.

[1:18:49] Cameron McEwen: And it's by reading.

[1:18:53] Cameron McEwen: deeply through advanced search that you come to understand stuff.

[1:19:00] Cameron McEwen: So just as an example,

[1:19:03] Cameron McEwen: if...

[1:19:04] Cameron McEwen: You're doing some work on Eliot and you're reading the

[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: Four Quartets,

[1:19:10] Cameron McEwen: which

[1:19:11] Cameron McEwen: Kenner and McLuhan were doing at the end of the

[1:19:14] Cameron McEwen: 1940s. And by that time,

[1:19:16] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had already been reading

[1:19:19] Cameron McEwen: Eliot intensely for 15 years or so.

[1:19:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:19:25] Cameron McEwen: So they're reading the Four Quartets.

[1:19:28] Cameron McEwen: And if they were,

[1:19:30] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that they did this,

[1:19:32] Cameron McEwen: but.

[1:19:33] Cameron McEwen: presumably they did if you read a little getting which is the last of the four quartets you simply can't understand it unless you read it in terms of the last of the cantos of the Divine Comedy right

[1:19:49] Cameron McEwen: so yeah that kind of exemplifies how digital research works digital research is inherently transparent to other stuff

[1:20:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah. And...

[1:20:02] Cameron McEwen: As you read it in linear fashion,

[1:20:05] Cameron McEwen: you have to also read it in vertical fashion,

[1:20:10] Cameron McEwen: through the stuff that's below.

[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:20:12] Cameron McEwen: And there's even more stuff below than there is above.

[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: so people don't do that,

[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: you can tell.

[1:20:21] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:20:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:20:22] Cameron McEwen: And that's what

[1:20:23] Cameron McEwen: I believe,

[1:20:25] Cameron McEwen: that is how

[1:20:26] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake is constructed.

[1:20:28] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:20:29] Cameron McEwen: That it's a surface.

[1:20:32] Cameron McEwen: that is transparent,

[1:20:34] Cameron McEwen: and that transparency is actually built into the surface.

[1:20:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: so there may be,

[1:20:44] Bob Dobbs: there's me and Andrew Chrystall and,

[1:20:46] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[1:20:47] Bob Dobbs: maybe Clinton,

[1:20:49] Bob Dobbs: three other people who have read a lot.

[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: I haven't read all of it.

[1:20:53] Bob Dobbs: I haven't kept up with your latest,

[1:20:55] Bob Dobbs: but I read a lot of it through many years.

[1:20:59] Bob Dobbs: But I'm naming the people that you know have read a lot of it,

[1:21:01] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that

[1:21:05] Cameron McEwen: Andrew Clinton knows.

[1:21:07] Cameron McEwen: I read a lot with Clinton.

[1:21:14] Cameron McEwen: I just don't think that

[1:21:18] Cameron McEwen: I'm able to express to

[1:21:23] Cameron McEwen: Clinton what I think McLuhan was doing.

[1:21:27] Bob Dobbs: Verbally or in your writing?

[1:21:30] Cameron McEwen: Either one.

[1:21:32] Bob Dobbs: In your conversation with him,

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: he's not getting it.

[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: You can tell.

[1:21:37] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:21:37] Bob Dobbs: so,

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: geez,

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: maybe I'm the only guy who's reading it seriously.

[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: Is there anybody I wouldn't know that told you they're reading it?

[1:21:49] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[1:21:49] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:21:49] Cameron McEwen: I have some friends that read some of my stuff.

[1:21:55] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:21:56] Cameron McEwen: I think...

[1:21:57] Cameron McEwen: My stuff probably taken in volume is like trying to eat rice without water or something.

[1:22:08] Cameron McEwen: I think that Wright in a way that most people will find very dry and they'll have a hard time trying to take it in.

[1:22:22] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:22:24] Cameron McEwen: I think myself...

[1:22:27] Cameron McEwen: That that's an unfortunate thing,

[1:22:33] Cameron McEwen: but it's not inexplicable.

[1:22:37] Cameron McEwen: People understand things only at the right time to do it,

[1:22:42] Cameron McEwen: only when they're ready to do it.

[1:22:45] Cameron McEwen: And so

[1:22:48] Cameron McEwen: Wright in a way that where I try to pack as much stuff in as I can.

[1:22:57] Cameron McEwen: but with a clear surface.

[1:23:03] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:23:04] Cameron McEwen: Joyce Wright with an unclear surface to make it somehow clear of all the stuff that he's packing in there.

[1:23:17] Cameron McEwen: Whereas

[1:23:18] Cameron McEwen: I try to write with a clear surface that gets into the deep stuff,

[1:23:25] Cameron McEwen: night

[1:23:28] Cameron McEwen: in the words that I'm using,

[1:23:32] Cameron McEwen: but in the stuff that's underneath it that you have to find out through digital research,

[1:23:39] Cameron McEwen: namely through advanced search.

[1:23:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:23:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:23:43] Bob Dobbs: so

[1:23:48] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure if we can say about the communication problem.

[1:23:54] Bob Dobbs: You were saying that McLuhan saw something.

[1:23:57] Bob Dobbs: And he sees a solution.

[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: Why couldn't he communicate?

[1:24:01] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:24:01] Bob Dobbs: why can't anybody communicate it?

[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: Or is that maybe the cul-de-sac we're in?

[1:24:06] Bob Dobbs: And it's not going to be ever communicated if you have a vision.

[1:24:12] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:24:13] Cameron McEwen: the inability to communicate in one way does indeed define the cul-de-sac.

[1:24:20] Cameron McEwen: But ultimately,

[1:24:21] Cameron McEwen: the cul-de-sac is only one possibility for humans.

[1:24:29] Cameron McEwen: It is conceivably,

[1:24:30] Cameron McEwen: it's a fatal cul-de-sac.

[1:24:35] Cameron McEwen: Eliot says in the Four Quartets,

[1:24:36] Cameron McEwen: that which is only living can only die.

[1:24:39] Cameron McEwen: And that may be applicable to the whole species.

[1:24:43] Cameron McEwen: But on the other hand,

[1:24:45] Cameron McEwen: the cul-de-sac is not the only possibility that is before,

[1:24:54] Cameron McEwen: in all senses of before,

[1:24:56] Cameron McEwen: not the only possibility that is before humans.

[1:25:01] Cameron McEwen: So humans aren't necessarily...

[1:25:05] Cameron McEwen: going to be drawn to the bottom of the maelstrom.

[1:25:11] Cameron McEwen: They may find some possibility of getting back to the surface,

[1:25:19] Cameron McEwen: as

[1:25:20] Cameron McEwen: Poe's mariner did.

[1:25:22] Cameron McEwen: But how that is going to happen is the great question.

[1:25:27] Cameron McEwen: It presumably is going to take place through communication of a vision.

[1:25:33] Cameron McEwen: But is that possible?

[1:25:35] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[1:25:36] Cameron McEwen: Is it possible for me?

[1:25:38] Cameron McEwen: I really don't know.

[1:25:39] Cameron McEwen: Is it possible for you?

[1:25:40] Cameron McEwen: Again,

[1:25:41] Cameron McEwen: I really don't know.

[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:25:43] Bob Dobbs: I am living it.

[1:25:45] Bob Dobbs: Ion has,

[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: as non-physical,

[1:25:47] Bob Dobbs: if you take it on face value what it's saying,

[1:25:50] Bob Dobbs: has merged with the physical.

[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: And this is the great religious vision of prophets,

[1:25:56] Bob Dobbs: that this merger,

[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: you could say of heaven and earth,

[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: is happening.

[1:26:01] Bob Dobbs: Two-thirds of humanity is not going to survive it,

[1:26:05] Bob Dobbs: ION says,

[1:26:05] Bob Dobbs: and I'm in the middle of dealing with that right now,

[1:26:08] Bob Dobbs: this is what ION says,

[1:26:09] Bob Dobbs: in public and in private.

[1:26:12] Bob Dobbs: But there is a solution which we are providing,

[1:26:17] Bob Dobbs: which

[1:26:19] Bob Dobbs: ION makes possible,

[1:26:21] Bob Dobbs: but

[1:26:22] Bob Dobbs: I caused it,

[1:26:23] Bob Dobbs: because I accidentally evoked ION,

[1:26:25] Bob Dobbs: though sometimes when

[1:26:27] Bob Dobbs: ION is in a cheeky mood...

[1:26:29] Bob Dobbs: He'll say,

[1:26:29] Bob Dobbs: you think you evoked this,

[1:26:31] Bob Dobbs: Bob?

[1:26:33] Bob Dobbs: The apparent surface,

[1:26:34] Bob Dobbs: it appears to me,

[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: but maybe there's larger historical forces involved.

[1:26:39] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[1:26:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm in the middle of the huge mystical vision or inspirational situation that all the greats have.

[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: there are a lot of other people who are dealing with mediums and channeling.

[1:26:53] Bob Dobbs: It's a fad.

[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: You're aware of that,

[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:26:56] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:26:57] Bob Dobbs: New Age fad.

[1:26:59] Bob Dobbs: But

[1:27:00] Bob Dobbs: I think that Ion's a little more solid,

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: especially because we make stuff.

[1:27:04] Bob Dobbs: And we do,

[1:27:06] Bob Dobbs: for Carolyn,

[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: her vision is actually able to treat pretty well any ailment you come up with,

[1:27:12] Bob Dobbs: with our products.

[1:27:13] Bob Dobbs: So that's a pretty exciting experience for her,

[1:27:15] Bob Dobbs: and I get to watch it.

[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: And then I can claim,

[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: I caused this because she got it from Ion,

[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: I brought Ion to her.

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:27:25] Bob Dobbs: I feel that whatever drama McLuhan

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: put himself in,

[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: thinking he had a solution,

[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: I know exactly what he's experiencing.

[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm old enough to know it,

[1:27:37] Bob Dobbs: and I'm in the middle of doing it.

[1:27:39] Bob Dobbs: And I'm pretty sure the greats are around encouraging us.

[1:27:44] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: I like to call that a megalomania.

[1:27:48] Bob Dobbs: So I've definitely got a megalomania,

[1:27:51] Bob Dobbs: and I brought it out of view

[1:27:53] Bob Dobbs: 10 episodes ago.

[1:27:56] Bob Dobbs: when we got you going to Washington and what you were going to say,

[1:28:00] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:28:01] Bob Dobbs: Remember that?

[1:28:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:28:02] Cameron McEwen: sure.

[1:28:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:28:03] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:28:04] Bob Dobbs: I think you glimpse

[1:28:07] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan drama and your experience of it yourself.

[1:28:11] Bob Dobbs: And I'm doing it in my medium,

[1:28:13] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[1:28:15] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:28:17] Cameron McEwen: So the big difference between what you do and what I do is that you have

[1:28:25] Cameron McEwen: a kind of faith or belief in megalomania.

[1:28:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:28:32] Cameron McEwen: You believe that if,

[1:28:35] Cameron McEwen: as McLuhan,

[1:28:36] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[1:28:38] Cameron McEwen: talks about in terms of the guy,

[1:28:43] Cameron McEwen: the blind guy that wrote...

[1:28:46] Cameron McEwen: Jacques.

[1:28:48] Cameron McEwen: Sorry?

[1:28:49] Bob Dobbs: Jacques.

[1:28:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:28:51] Cameron McEwen: Varronian or...

[1:28:52] Bob Dobbs: La Lule,

[1:28:53] Bob Dobbs: not Jockey Lule,

[1:28:54] Bob Dobbs: but yeah,

[1:28:56] Bob Dobbs: sometimes I forget.

[1:28:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:28:57] Cameron McEwen: we know who we're talking about.

[1:28:59] Cameron McEwen: At any rate,

[1:29:01] Cameron McEwen: in the course of that,

[1:29:04] Cameron McEwen: I believe the guy...

[1:29:07] Cameron McEwen: says that when people are talking to a blind person,

[1:29:12] Cameron McEwen: they think they can communicate better by talking louder.

[1:29:16] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:29:16] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:29:17] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:29:20] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan...

[1:29:22] Bob Dobbs: Lucy ran.

[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: Jacques Lucy ran.

[1:29:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:29:27] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan apparently liked that because the rest of his life,

[1:29:31] Cameron McEwen: after he read that book,

[1:29:33] Cameron McEwen: he always talked about...

[1:29:36] Cameron McEwen: how some people believe that you can communicate by talking louder.

[1:29:42] Cameron McEwen: He thought that was kind of funny.

[1:29:44] Cameron McEwen: But in a way,

[1:29:46] Cameron McEwen: that's what you do.

[1:29:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm louder.

[1:29:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:29:49] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:29:49] Cameron McEwen: Or talk more,

[1:29:53] Cameron McEwen: how can I say,

[1:29:54] Cameron McEwen: more expansively,

[1:29:56] Cameron McEwen: with more dimensions.

[1:29:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:29:58] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:29:59] Cameron McEwen: With more power,

[1:30:01] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:30:03] Cameron McEwen: And I'm taking the opposite.

[1:30:06] Cameron McEwen: I take the view that communication may happen through less.

[1:30:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:30:12] Cameron McEwen: Through...

[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: Very quiet.

[1:30:14] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:30:15] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:30:16] Cameron McEwen: And tending to be as depreciative as possible.

[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:30:24] Bob Dobbs: You've heard of Captain Beefheart,

[1:30:25] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:30:27] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: And his famous album,

[1:30:28] Bob Dobbs: Trout Mask Replica,

[1:30:29] Bob Dobbs: he has a song,

[1:30:31] Bob Dobbs: I think it's on that album,

[1:30:32] Bob Dobbs: and as a Canadian you'd get this,

[1:30:34] Bob Dobbs: it's called...

[1:30:35] Bob Dobbs: Steal softly through snow.

[1:30:38] Bob Dobbs: That's what you do.

[1:30:40] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:30:41] Bob Dobbs: Whereas he has another song.

[1:30:42] Cameron McEwen: What?

[1:30:44] Cameron McEwen: That's what I attempt to do.

[1:30:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:30:46] Cameron McEwen: It's not easy to be as little as possible.

[1:30:49] Bob Dobbs: I know,

[1:30:49] Bob Dobbs: because the snow can squeak.

[1:30:52] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[1:30:53] Bob Dobbs: a certain kind of snow.

[1:30:55] Cameron McEwen: And leaves footprints.

[1:30:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: I would say,

[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: it just comes to me,

[1:31:01] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:31:02] Bob Dobbs: I'm doing Dachau Blues.

[1:31:03] Bob Dobbs: which is his song about the concentration camp and the poor Jews.

[1:31:10] Bob Dobbs: I am on the air with something that is saying two-thirds of humanity is not going to make it through these viruses over the next year or two,

[1:31:19] Bob Dobbs: which is pretty,

[1:31:20] Bob Dobbs: that's pretty loud,

[1:31:21] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:31:21] Bob Dobbs: That's megalomaniac loudness.

[1:31:25] Bob Dobbs: And he's talking about the global...

[1:31:27] Cameron McEwen: It's a very bold prediction.

[1:31:29] Bob Dobbs: Bold,

[1:31:30] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[1:31:30] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:31:31] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan understood.

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: He said cities were concentration camps,

[1:31:34] Bob Dobbs: and he knows we've become a global concentration camp.

[1:31:38] Bob Dobbs: And so it's Dachau Blues we're experiencing right now.

[1:31:42] Cameron McEwen: Maybe,

[1:31:42] Cameron McEwen: maybe.

[1:31:44] Cameron McEwen: I've been there.

[1:31:44] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if you have.

[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: I've been there.

[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:31:47] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:31:48] Cameron McEwen: And so you know that over the gate to Dachau is Arbeit macht frei.

[1:31:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:31:55] Bob Dobbs: work makes free.

[1:31:56] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:31:58] Cameron McEwen: And you could say that that is...

[1:32:02] Cameron McEwen: the controlling thought of the modern world.

[1:32:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:32:09] Cameron McEwen: When McLuhan talks about people going out to be alone,

[1:32:14] Cameron McEwen: the controlling thought there is Arbeit,

[1:32:17] Cameron McEwen: Mach,

[1:32:17] Cameron McEwen: Frei.

[1:32:17] Cameron McEwen: That is to say that the person,

[1:32:21] Cameron McEwen: everybody going out has made up a persona.

[1:32:26] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:32:26] Cameron McEwen: And that persona is what makes them free.

[1:32:32] Cameron McEwen: That is to say that makes them independent of what anybody thinks,

[1:32:37] Cameron McEwen: what anybody sees in them.

[1:32:39] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:32:40] Cameron McEwen: So it's people chewing gum in the

[1:32:44] Cameron McEwen: 1950s. Yeah.

[1:32:45] Cameron McEwen: It's people looking at their phone now.

[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: Today,

[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:32:50] Cameron McEwen: When people look at their phone or chew gum,

[1:32:52] Cameron McEwen: what they're saying is,

[1:32:54] Cameron McEwen: I don't give a shit if you're looking at me.

[1:32:56] Cameron McEwen: I already know who I am.

[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[1:32:59] Cameron McEwen: And that...

[1:33:00] Cameron McEwen: And that supposedly mocked Fry,

[1:33:02] Cameron McEwen: but it doesn't.

[1:33:04] Cameron McEwen: It's the exact opposite.

[1:33:08] Cameron McEwen: It controls us in the cul-de-sac.

[1:33:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:33:14] Bob Dobbs: well said.

[1:33:14] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:33:17] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:33:19] Bob Dobbs: we're trying to get into my text here,

[1:33:22] Bob Dobbs: and you're interviewing me,

[1:33:25] Bob Dobbs: but you do all the talking.

[1:33:28] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:33:29] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure that...

[1:33:29] Cameron McEwen: people would say exactly that.

[1:33:32] Cameron McEwen: I do some of the talking.

[1:33:34] Cameron McEwen: You had quite an extensive bit of talking about Lawrence.

[1:33:40] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: but that was personal stuff.

[1:33:42] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't deep philosophy like you do.

[1:33:48] Bob Dobbs: But,

[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:33:50] Bob Dobbs: so we come back to this problem where I screw up in my first sentence and say the word conceptual.

[1:33:59] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:34:00] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that it screws it up.

[1:34:02] Cameron McEwen: What I would say is that it brings up deep issues that from in terms of McLuhan that we need to be clear about.

[1:34:12] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:34:12] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:34:13] Cameron McEwen: But that's a that's really a different question from how to look Trump.

[1:34:20] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:34:20] Cameron McEwen: I agree that looking Trump and what you call the amoral perceptual school is a very.

[1:34:28] Cameron McEwen: sort of interesting perspective.

[1:34:31] Cameron McEwen: And it's the sort of perspective that McLuhan will come to see as Menippean later.

[1:34:38] Cameron McEwen: Not at this point in time.

[1:34:41] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:34:43] Cameron McEwen: once you see

[1:34:44] Cameron McEwen: Trump a Menippean perspective,

[1:34:47] Cameron McEwen: then you can see him as a sort of donkey and ass,

[1:34:53] Cameron McEwen: but as a talking ass.

[1:34:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:34:56] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:34:57] Cameron McEwen: as an ass that has something to say to us,

[1:35:01] Cameron McEwen: but we have to understand the language of the donkey.

[1:35:05] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:35:05] Bob Dobbs: he's a communicating ass.

[1:35:07] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[1:35:08] Cameron McEwen: correct.

[1:35:09] Bob Dobbs: And he has not stopped communicating.

[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: He's more prominent now than he was when he was president.

[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: He's back.

[1:35:16] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:35:17] Bob Dobbs: Being interviewed.

[1:35:17] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:35:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:35:19] Cameron McEwen: But the communicating that's going on is not the communicating that we can see from...

[1:35:27] Cameron McEwen: all of the press releases,

[1:35:30] Cameron McEwen: and now he's actually going to rallies and stuff like that.

[1:35:35] Cameron McEwen: That's a communication that is,

[1:35:42] Cameron McEwen: in your perspective,

[1:35:44] Cameron McEwen: I believe,

[1:35:44] Cameron McEwen: and also in mine,

[1:35:46] Cameron McEwen: that communicates something at a deeper level.

[1:35:51] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[1:35:52] Cameron McEwen: he's doing all this communicating.

[1:35:55] Cameron McEwen: And that's actually happening and actually increasing,

[1:35:58] Cameron McEwen: but there's another sort of communication that's going on at a deeper level,

[1:36:03] Cameron McEwen: and that's what you want to say about

[1:36:06] Cameron McEwen: Trump nobody knew.

[1:36:08] Bob Dobbs: That we don't know.

[1:36:09] Bob Dobbs: We don't see.

[1:36:12] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:36:12] Bob Dobbs: so how do we...

[1:36:15] Bob Dobbs: You've clarified,

[1:36:16] Bob Dobbs: what do you call it?

[1:36:17] Bob Dobbs: You've made the proviso about the conceptual and the ethical.

[1:36:23] Bob Dobbs: So...

[1:36:24] Bob Dobbs: You've explained what I'm doing.

[1:36:26] Bob Dobbs: I'm going the cognitive route,

[1:36:28] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:36:29] Bob Dobbs: I point out that all the commentary is ethical and moral.

[1:36:35] Bob Dobbs: I cite

[1:36:37] Bob Dobbs: Joe Scarborough.

[1:36:38] Bob Dobbs: Does he mean anything to you?

[1:36:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:36:42] Cameron McEwen: he doesn't mean anything to me,

[1:36:43] Cameron McEwen: but I know he's a host in the morning program and that he's married to his partner.

[1:36:49] Bob Dobbs: who is a daughter of...

[1:36:51] Bob Dobbs: It's the big new Brzezinski,

[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: who was a reader of McLuhan.

[1:36:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:36:57] Cameron McEwen: he was a Canadian.

[1:36:58] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: Montreal,

[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:37:00] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:37:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: so we have a deep state daughter and an Explorations asshole,

[1:37:13] Bob Dobbs: Joe Scarborough,

[1:37:15] Bob Dobbs: trying to talk about the other asshole,

[1:37:17] Bob Dobbs: Donald Trump.

[1:37:20] Bob Dobbs: They're not doing too well.

[1:37:21] Bob Dobbs: Their ratings are going down.

[1:37:24] Bob Dobbs: Because they're taking the ethical view.

[1:37:28] Bob Dobbs: They're not going to get anywhere.

[1:37:29] Bob Dobbs: You can't Trump.

[1:37:33] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[1:37:34] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: if I told her that,

[1:37:36] Bob Dobbs: she'd say,

[1:37:37] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:37:37] Bob Dobbs: I'm immoral and that's stupid,

[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: and they'll maintain their moral stance about this horrible person.

[1:37:45] Bob Dobbs: They can't get out of their cul-de-sac.

[1:37:48] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:37:48] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:37:49] Cameron McEwen: That's not only a cul-de-sac they can't get out of,

[1:37:57] Cameron McEwen: in a certain way it's the cul-de-sac.

[1:38:00] Cameron McEwen: And you can get into it in other ways,

[1:38:02] Cameron McEwen: but as I was saying earlier about Nietzsche,

[1:38:06] Cameron McEwen: the bottom problem of modernity has to do with morality,

[1:38:11] Cameron McEwen: has to do with the human animal that needs morality.

[1:38:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:38:19] Cameron McEwen: So these people are expressing what human beings are,

[1:38:24] Cameron McEwen: and what human beings are is very dangerous.

[1:38:29] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:38:29] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:38:31] Bob Dobbs: I partly am thinking of an interview with Richard Kostelanetz,

[1:38:36] Bob Dobbs: New York Times,

[1:38:36] Bob Dobbs: January 67.

[1:38:38] Bob Dobbs: And in there,

[1:38:39] Bob Dobbs: if I got it right,

[1:38:40] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says to Richard,

[1:38:45] Bob Dobbs: who's a young student,

[1:38:47] Bob Dobbs: early just beginning journalist he says people need concepts to get a grip on reality

[1:38:54] Bob Dobbs: So I don't know what he invoked that,

[1:38:57] Bob Dobbs: because it's a conversational article,

[1:38:59] Bob Dobbs: not just a question-answer thing.

[1:39:01] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:39:01] Bob Dobbs: it's a picturesque presentation of McLuhan interacting with

[1:39:06] Bob Dobbs: Kostelanetz. So he might have been asking,

[1:39:11] Bob Dobbs: being a young baby boomer person,

[1:39:13] Bob Dobbs: he's totally into literary criticism and concepts,

[1:39:16] Bob Dobbs: so he's biased toward being conceptual,

[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: naturally,

[1:39:20] Bob Dobbs: as a North American.

[1:39:22] Bob Dobbs: And he's probably asking McLuhan about what are percepts?

[1:39:25] Bob Dobbs: How come you say your work's not conceptual,

[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: it's perceptual?

[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: What the heck is the role of concepts,

[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: which I see you providing me as new concepts?

[1:39:35] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:39:35] Bob Dobbs: that's what the student would say.

[1:39:37] Bob Dobbs: And he says,

[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:39:39] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:39:39] Bob Dobbs: concepts are necessary for people to get a grip on reality.

[1:39:44] Bob Dobbs: How would you analyze that statement?

[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: What is he saying?

[1:39:47] Bob Dobbs: Is there something more you'd say before I say something?

[1:39:51] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:39:51] Cameron McEwen: just in order to understand that,

[1:39:53] Cameron McEwen: you would have to see more of the context.

[1:39:57] Cameron McEwen: So I could talk.

[1:39:58] Bob Dobbs: I remember it was quite out of context or it just pops up.

[1:40:05] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I have to look up the article for you sometime.

[1:40:07] Bob Dobbs: But just saying that it stands out.

[1:40:12] Bob Dobbs: To me,

[1:40:12] Bob Dobbs: he's saying,

[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:40:14] Bob Dobbs: I want to hear what you say.

[1:40:16] Bob Dobbs: Take it for what it is.

[1:40:17] Bob Dobbs: Pops out.

[1:40:18] Bob Dobbs: No context.

[1:40:19] Bob Dobbs: What do you think he's saying?

[1:40:20] Bob Dobbs: saying there?

[1:40:22] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:40:23] Cameron McEwen: I think he might be saying a couple different things.

[1:40:26] Cameron McEwen: One thing he might be saying is that most people in the contemporary world require concepts to understand reality,

[1:40:40] Cameron McEwen: and when they employ those concepts,

[1:40:44] Cameron McEwen: they oversee the percepts that have led them to those

[1:40:50] Cameron McEwen: concepts.

[1:40:51] Cameron McEwen: So to that extent,

[1:40:54] Cameron McEwen: their experience is blind.

[1:40:57] Cameron McEwen: But he could also be sort of eliding the difference between percepts and concepts.

[1:41:06] Cameron McEwen: And he may be saying that,

[1:41:07] Cameron McEwen: look,

[1:41:08] Cameron McEwen: there's no such thing as direct experience.

[1:41:11] Cameron McEwen: There's only experience that has certain presuppositions.

[1:41:15] Cameron McEwen: And we can call those presuppositions what we will.

[1:41:18] Cameron McEwen: And one name for them could be concepts.

[1:41:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:41:23] Bob Dobbs: did you say the presuppositions we have?

[1:41:26] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:41:27] Bob Dobbs: That we overlay the percepts.

[1:41:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:41:31] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:41:34] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying the second possibility of what he might be saying is that there is no direct experience.

[1:41:41] Cameron McEwen: There is no matching.

[1:41:46] Cameron McEwen: so that

[1:41:48] Cameron McEwen: We know truth through direction.

[1:41:53] Cameron McEwen: Instead,

[1:41:54] Cameron McEwen: all experience has presuppositions.

[1:41:57] Cameron McEwen: All experience is indirect.

[1:42:00] Cameron McEwen: It's mediated.

[1:42:01] Cameron McEwen: That's why media are so important.

[1:42:04] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:42:04] Cameron McEwen: so then in this vein,

[1:42:08] Cameron McEwen: he could be saying that there are many names for those presuppositions,

[1:42:13] Cameron McEwen: one of which is concepts.

[1:42:17] Cameron McEwen: And there,

[1:42:18] Cameron McEwen: concepts would be used positively,

[1:42:21] Cameron McEwen: whereas in the first instance,

[1:42:23] Cameron McEwen: concepts would be used negatively.

[1:42:26] Cameron McEwen: Depending on context,

[1:42:27] Cameron McEwen: he could be saying either one.

[1:42:30] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:42:30] Bob Dobbs: So the way I took it years ago was,

[1:42:36] Bob Dobbs: knowing that he emphasized percept,

[1:42:38] Bob Dobbs: whatever that meant,

[1:42:39] Bob Dobbs: and played down the word concept,

[1:42:44] Bob Dobbs: he was saying that...

[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: his work is presented in books that naturally favors conceptual responses as the one understood the difference between constant percept as if one thought he was saying so he

[1:43:01] Bob Dobbs: says I'm writing books because I know people will interpret them conceptually morally ethically and in their limit limitations

[1:43:15] Bob Dobbs: fall into the problem again.

[1:43:18] Bob Dobbs: But at the same time,

[1:43:20] Bob Dobbs: he thought books were useful in anti-environment to the electric age.

[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: He said in the 50s that he was looking for a new role for books.

[1:43:32] Bob Dobbs: And I think he thought he found it.

[1:43:34] Bob Dobbs: That was part of his solution,

[1:43:36] Bob Dobbs: his vision,

[1:43:37] Bob Dobbs: was he found a way to use books.

[1:43:39] Bob Dobbs: And he would counter the natural book effect,

[1:43:44] Bob Dobbs: Cheers.

[1:43:44] Bob Dobbs: people go conceptual or moral or try to get a point of view from the book,

[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: a conclusion,

[1:43:51] Bob Dobbs: and miss the dialogical,

[1:43:54] Bob Dobbs: unless it was blatantly dialogical like a Socratic presentation.

[1:44:00] Bob Dobbs: So he knew that's where he was expressing his cul-de-sac,

[1:44:06] Bob Dobbs: right there,

[1:44:07] Bob Dobbs: to Richard Kostelanetz,

[1:44:09] Bob Dobbs: that people need concepts to get a grip on reality.

[1:44:13] Bob Dobbs: Unfortunately.

[1:44:15] Bob Dobbs: He didn't say unfortunately there.

[1:44:17] Bob Dobbs: But if the book is in anti-environment,

[1:44:20] Bob Dobbs: there's a role for the conceptual misinterpretation of himself by the reader.

[1:44:27] Bob Dobbs: So that's the service of the situation,

[1:44:29] Bob Dobbs: Wychwood Park get to your point that concept is percept in the global theater.

[1:44:37] Cameron McEwen: It can be.

[1:44:38] Cameron McEwen: It can be.

[1:44:39] Cameron McEwen: The one thing I would say is that when...

[1:44:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan thinks that books and the reading of books is

[1:44:53] Cameron McEwen: Gutenbergian by nature.

[1:44:56] Cameron McEwen: It's not because the individual reader,

[1:44:59] Cameron McEwen: or not only because the individual reader is looking at the black and white marks and following along a linear pathway.

[1:45:08] Cameron McEwen: It's mostly because the anti-environment.

[1:45:13] Cameron McEwen: is mediated.

[1:45:15] Cameron McEwen: The anti-environment has a certain idea about factory productivity,

[1:45:21] Cameron McEwen: certain idea about children's learning,

[1:45:25] Cameron McEwen: certain idea about how education works,

[1:45:28] Cameron McEwen: and all of these things are directing the reading of books to

[1:45:38] Cameron McEwen: Gutenbergian linearity.

[1:45:41] Cameron McEwen: And we,

[1:45:42] Cameron McEwen: and that

[1:45:43] Cameron McEwen: in itself has a great danger to it.

[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:45:47] Bob Dobbs: let me say this.

[1:45:49] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said once,

[1:45:51] Bob Dobbs: you don't have to read books to be Gutenberg-ized if you live in anti-environment,

[1:45:58] Bob Dobbs: say,

[1:45:59] Bob Dobbs: 100 years ago.

[1:46:00] Cameron McEwen: That's right,

[1:46:02] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[1:46:03] Cameron McEwen: So then,

[1:46:04] Cameron McEwen: as you rightly say,

[1:46:06] Cameron McEwen: when McLuhan sees the book as potentially an anti-environment,

[1:46:12] Cameron McEwen: When he sees the book as something that needs to be saved,

[1:46:17] Cameron McEwen: what he's trying to do is say to people,

[1:46:20] Cameron McEwen: and he did say this,

[1:46:21] Cameron McEwen: by the way,

[1:46:22] Cameron McEwen: very,

[1:46:22] Cameron McEwen: very clearly,

[1:46:23] Cameron McEwen: but nobody heard it.

[1:46:26] Cameron McEwen: We're in a situation where the values that are prompted by the book,

[1:46:33] Cameron McEwen: saved by the book,

[1:46:36] Cameron McEwen: analogous to the book,

[1:46:38] Cameron McEwen: all of those values are under extreme threat.

[1:46:42] Bob Dobbs: threat.

[1:46:43] Cameron McEwen: And if you idiots out there can't see this extreme threat,

[1:46:48] Cameron McEwen: then it's going to destroy you.

[1:46:51] Cameron McEwen: So what we need to do is we need to see the book on the one hand as typical of what is destroying us,

[1:47:00] Cameron McEwen: but on the other hand,

[1:47:01] Cameron McEwen: as what could save us,

[1:47:04] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:47:04] Cameron McEwen: Namely,

[1:47:05] Cameron McEwen: we need to see the book as one as representative of

[1:47:11] Cameron McEwen: one possibility amongst others,

[1:47:13] Cameron McEwen: and seeing one possibility amongst others is the only thing that can save us.

[1:47:20] Cameron McEwen: So if you see the book properly,

[1:47:23] Cameron McEwen: we're saved.

[1:47:24] Cameron McEwen: If you see the book improperly,

[1:47:26] Cameron McEwen: we're doomed.

[1:47:28] Bob Dobbs: And he felt that the hardest book ever was the best example of the book to be read,

[1:47:36] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:47:37] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake.

[1:47:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:47:39] Cameron McEwen: I guess so.

[1:47:41] Cameron McEwen: That's part of

[1:47:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan that I don't understand because

[1:47:46] Cameron McEwen: I don't understand enough of Finnegans Wake to understand that.

[1:47:50] Cameron McEwen: But you're right that he did definitely think that and say that.

[1:47:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:47:55] Bob Dobbs: And it was his antidote to the LSD fad among his students.

[1:47:59] Bob Dobbs: He pointed out that you'll get a richer LSD experience by doing Finnegans Wake than doing the chemical.

[1:48:05] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:48:06] Bob Dobbs: So it's interesting.

[1:48:10] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you need to...

[1:48:13] Bob Dobbs: I think maybe given a Gutenberg response to Finnegans Wake,

[1:48:16] Bob Dobbs: you think you need to be familiar with almost every page and a lot of the content to get it.

[1:48:21] Bob Dobbs: Maybe one does,

[1:48:22] Bob Dobbs: if you're a Gutenbergian.

[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't say that.

[1:48:27] Bob Dobbs: I tell people,

[1:48:28] Bob Dobbs: this is an example of the way literature changed due to radio and movies

[1:48:35] Bob Dobbs: 100 years ago.

[1:48:38] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:48:39] Bob Dobbs: It's a bizarre world that people had stumbled into after World War I or during the war.

[1:48:44] Bob Dobbs: And you needed a strange book to show people the now that they were experiencing.

[1:48:50] Bob Dobbs: And so that's why

[1:48:52] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake is written properly and no other book,

[1:48:55] Bob Dobbs: personally linear,

[1:48:56] Bob Dobbs: is.

[1:48:57] Bob Dobbs: And if you tell that to people,

[1:48:58] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how much they really deeply understand it,

[1:49:03] Bob Dobbs: but it gives them a beginning point to realize,

[1:49:05] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:49:06] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:49:06] Bob Dobbs: I don't have to understand every...

[1:49:08] Bob Dobbs: 60 languages and all that?

[1:49:09] Bob Dobbs: No.

[1:49:10] Bob Dobbs: Murray Schafer said that Marshall just kept telling everybody in his class that the book was not a book,

[1:49:15] Bob Dobbs: it was a radio program.

[1:49:17] Bob Dobbs: So I've got to work with that idea,

[1:49:20] Bob Dobbs: figure out what it means.

[1:49:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:49:22] Cameron McEwen: so I think what I hear you saying there,

[1:49:24] Cameron McEwen: and what I think is interesting,

[1:49:26] Cameron McEwen: is

[1:49:28] Cameron McEwen: I hear you saying that any section of

[1:49:32] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake may be taken as a hologram.

[1:49:37] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:49:37] Cameron McEwen: And that every section of the book,

[1:49:41] Cameron McEwen: just like a hologram,

[1:49:43] Cameron McEwen: is a reproduction of the whole.

[1:49:46] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.

[1:49:48] Cameron McEwen: There's no point in understanding the whole.

[1:49:52] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:49:53] Bob Dobbs: So you could say that you understand it.

[1:49:59] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[1:49:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:50:00] Cameron McEwen: see,

[1:50:01] Cameron McEwen: but it's interesting,

[1:50:02] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:50:02] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that I understand even a small section well enough to say.

[1:50:10] Cameron McEwen: But I take your point that if you know enough.

[1:50:15] Cameron McEwen: about some section of

[1:50:18] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake,

[1:50:19] Cameron McEwen: then you understand it all.

[1:50:21] Cameron McEwen: By the way,

[1:50:22] Cameron McEwen: some of my posts concern what I call Wakees,

[1:50:29] Cameron McEwen: namely the language of Finnegans Wake.

[1:50:31] Cameron McEwen: And if you're speaking a language,

[1:50:35] Cameron McEwen: basically either you do or you don't.

[1:50:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:50:38] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:50:38] Cameron McEwen: And you don't have to,

[1:50:40] Cameron McEwen: let's say that you claim to speak English,

[1:50:45] Cameron McEwen: That doesn't mean that you are about to speak every sentence that has ever been spoken in English.

[1:50:54] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:50:55] Cameron McEwen: It simply means that you can understand somebody who's speaking English.

[1:51:00] Bob Dobbs: Which reminds me.

[1:51:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:51:02] Bob Dobbs: finish that.

[1:51:02] Bob Dobbs: Continue your sentence.

[1:51:04] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:51:04] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:51:04] Cameron McEwen: just that

[1:51:05] Cameron McEwen: I think that's what you're saying about Finnegans Wake.

[1:51:08] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:51:09] Cameron McEwen: You can either speak some portion,

[1:51:11] Cameron McEwen: in which case you can understand.

[1:51:15] Cameron McEwen: the relevant sense of understanding in Finnegans Wake,

[1:51:19] Cameron McEwen: or you don't.

[1:51:20] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.

[1:51:22] Bob Dobbs: Zingrone wrote in his printed version of his talk at Fordham,

[1:51:25] Bob Dobbs: the 1998 conference,

[1:51:30] Bob Dobbs: he said that McLuhan is divided between those who think Finnegans Wake is the key to all of McLuhan and those that don't.

[1:51:37] Bob Dobbs: So I thought that was a good statement.

[1:51:42] Bob Dobbs: You're leaning towards being on the Finnegans Wake side,

[1:51:44] Bob Dobbs: but not completely yet because you don't feel you've mastered it.

[1:51:51] Cameron McEwen: That's partly true,

[1:51:52] Cameron McEwen: but also

[1:51:55] Cameron McEwen: I don't believe that it's the key to McLuhan because

[1:52:02] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, although he was a great fan of Joyce and thought he was one of the funniest guys,

[1:52:11] Cameron McEwen: guys that ever lived,

[1:52:12] Cameron McEwen: he didn't follow

[1:52:14] Cameron McEwen: Joyce in all respects.

[1:52:17] Bob Dobbs: No.

[1:52:17] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:52:19] Cameron McEwen: Joyce was a great critic of the Catholic Church and thought that if somebody were like McLuhan,

[1:52:29] Cameron McEwen: sort of sitting in a pew with some grandmothers and thinking that the grandmothers had great insight.

[1:52:39] Cameron McEwen: That was something that Joyce couldn't share,

[1:52:41] Bob Dobbs: didn't want to share.

[1:52:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:52:46] Bob Dobbs: so

[1:52:51] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall made a lot out of this,

[1:52:55] Bob Dobbs: that Marshall actually didn't like Joyce.

[1:52:58] Bob Dobbs: He was the Lewis guy,

[1:53:00] Bob Dobbs: and he agreed with Lewis'

[1:53:01] Bob Dobbs: criticism of Joyce.

[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: And you remember,

[1:53:05] Bob Dobbs: he thinks Joyce is a black mass.

[1:53:08] Bob Dobbs: So you know of Don Theall objections to Marshall's Joyce phatic?

[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:53:17] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:53:18] Cameron McEwen: I'd be interested to hear more about it,

[1:53:20] Cameron McEwen: but what I do know about it and what I understand from what you just said,

[1:53:26] Cameron McEwen: I don't think is true.

[1:53:29] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't agree with that at all.

[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: but Theall serves to highlight it,

[1:53:34] Bob Dobbs: to test people,

[1:53:36] Bob Dobbs: about what they get from Finnegans Wake.

[1:53:40] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:53:40] Bob Dobbs: let me see,

[1:53:41] Bob Dobbs: what else would I say about that?

[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:53:45] Bob Dobbs: have you read any of Theo's books?

[1:53:48] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:53:49] Cameron McEwen: I've read the two McLuhan books.

[1:53:54] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:53:54] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:53:54] Bob Dobbs: but you haven't read Beyond the Word and James Joyce Co-anesthetic.

[1:53:59] Bob Dobbs: No.

[1:54:00] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:54:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:54:02] Bob Dobbs: so you're reading now

[1:54:03] Bob Dobbs: Helix Trollosis,

[1:54:05] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:54:07] Cameron McEwen: I'm not,

[1:54:07] Cameron McEwen: well...

[1:54:08] Cameron McEwen: I'm not reading it now.

[1:54:10] Cameron McEwen: I read a little bit of it when we talked about it.

[1:54:13] Cameron McEwen: And if at some future point we go through it in some detail,

[1:54:18] Cameron McEwen: then I'll read it then.

[1:54:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:54:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:54:20] Bob Dobbs: I think you mentioned it last week.

[1:54:21] Bob Dobbs: We have to go through it before you'll talk about it.

[1:54:24] Bob Dobbs: But the...

[1:54:26] Bob Dobbs: you know go through a paragraph by paragraph uh that book is very influenced by don theon and of course you read the McLuhan statement you thought it was silly what he was writing um maybe

[1:54:41] Bob Dobbs: uh don is not a McLuhan so you couldn't object to what he says about steel because you don't know feel enough maybe so okay so i wanted to bring up that book and that's

[1:54:55] Bob Dobbs: still on the side.

[1:54:57] Bob Dobbs: So we're...

[1:54:58] Cameron McEwen: Let me just go back for half a second to the idea that

[1:55:02] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was a Lewisite and agreed with

[1:55:07] Cameron McEwen: Lewis's critique of Joyce.

[1:55:09] Bob Dobbs: I don't agree with that.

[1:55:12] Bob Dobbs: I know what I said is wrong,

[1:55:14] Bob Dobbs: but you got to use wrong statements to get at McLuhan.

[1:55:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:55:19] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:55:19] Cameron McEwen: And you were citing

[1:55:22] Cameron McEwen: Theol. You weren't speaking in your own voice.

[1:55:26] Cameron McEwen: I just want to say that

[1:55:29] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that Don had that view,

[1:55:32] Cameron McEwen: but if he did,

[1:55:34] Cameron McEwen: I just think that's wildly mistaken.

[1:55:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is more critical of Lewis,

[1:55:42] Cameron McEwen: I would say,

[1:55:43] Cameron McEwen: than he ever was of Joyce.

[1:55:46] Cameron McEwen: And the statement about a black mass can be taken in many different ways.

[1:55:56] Cameron McEwen: It's not necessarily just 100%

[1:56:03] Cameron McEwen: critical of

[1:56:05] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake.

[1:56:06] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:56:06] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[1:56:07] Cameron McEwen: It can be an appreciation of

[1:56:10] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake.

[1:56:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:56:12] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:56:13] Bob Dobbs: to me,

[1:56:14] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall represents a super student of McLuhan,

[1:56:18] Bob Dobbs: and look at the confusion that still comes out of it.

[1:56:21] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:56:22] Bob Dobbs: human condition.

[1:56:22] Cameron McEwen: I agree with you completely there.

[1:56:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:56:25] Bob Dobbs: that's the issue here.

[1:56:28] Cameron McEwen: And his thesis,

[1:56:31] Cameron McEwen: which covered

[1:56:34] Cameron McEwen: Joyce and Eliot and Pound and

[1:56:36] Cameron McEwen: I think everybody but Lewis,

[1:56:39] Cameron McEwen: it's way

[1:56:40] Cameron McEwen: too wide to be useful.

[1:56:50] Cameron McEwen: All of those people require a lifetime of thought.

[1:56:54] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:56:55] Bob Dobbs: what I found useful about it was that it gave a clue of what Marshall said and what a smart student picked up in Marshall's classes in the early

[1:57:04] Bob Dobbs: 50s.

[1:57:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah, I agree with that.

[1:57:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:57:09] Bob Dobbs: Because I know what McLuhan said back then,

[1:57:11] Bob Dobbs: and Don is saying that.

[1:57:14] Bob Dobbs: And so

[1:57:15] Bob Dobbs: Don is a good listener,

[1:57:18] Bob Dobbs: a good mime,

[1:57:20] Bob Dobbs: a good absorber of what McLuhan was doing.

[1:57:22] Bob Dobbs: And some of the other people in the class said he was the brightest student of the McLuhan students.

[1:57:28] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:57:29] Bob Dobbs: some of those people in those CD-ROMs talk about Don.

[1:57:33] Bob Dobbs: People who,

[1:57:34] Bob Dobbs: one of them was a woman who was in the class.

[1:57:37] Bob Dobbs: She said there was a core of them that really liked McLuhan and were into him,

[1:57:41] Bob Dobbs: but Don was the leader,

[1:57:43] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:57:45] Bob Dobbs: And the rest probably got nowheres in any way.

[1:57:49] Bob Dobbs: And then that's why Don was,

[1:57:50] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:57:50] Bob Dobbs: hired by Marshall to be the first assistant around him and helped draft the communication seminar proposal for Ford,

[1:58:03] Bob Dobbs: for the Ford grant.

[1:58:04] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[1:58:05] Cameron McEwen: and was a major guy in writing up.

[1:58:07] Cameron McEwen: protocols for the seminar.

[1:58:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:58:10] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:58:11] Bob Dobbs: Don, and he knew this.

[1:58:15] Bob Dobbs: He dedicated his life to misunderstanding McLuhan,

[1:58:18] Bob Dobbs: because he was pissed off at McLuhan in some way,

[1:58:21] Bob Dobbs: personally,

[1:58:24] Cameron McEwen: right.

[1:58:24] Cameron McEwen: So we have to understand what's going on there.

[1:58:30] Cameron McEwen: A person that sees stuff doesn't

[1:58:38] Cameron McEwen: automatically communicate what is seen.

[1:58:43] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[1:58:44] Cameron McEwen: communication is almost impossible.

[1:58:50] Cameron McEwen: And therefore,

[1:58:53] Cameron McEwen: it's necessary to talk to people on and on and on that aren't getting what is said.

[1:59:02] Bob Dobbs: It's necessary to talk to them.

[1:59:04] Cameron McEwen: Pardon me?

[1:59:05] Bob Dobbs: He's saying it's necessary to talk to people who aren't getting it.

[1:59:09] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:59:10] Cameron McEwen: There's no other possibility.

[1:59:12] Cameron McEwen: So you talk and talk and talk and attempt communication.

[1:59:17] Cameron McEwen: That's the only thing you can do,

[1:59:20] Cameron McEwen: but it doesn't work.

[1:59:22] Cameron McEwen: It hasn't worked since Plato.

[1:59:24] Cameron McEwen: So all you can do is attempt communication,

[1:59:31] Cameron McEwen: and there's nothing else.

[1:59:34] Cameron McEwen: to do.

[1:59:36] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:59:37] Bob Dobbs: I proved that.

[1:59:38] Bob Dobbs: I've been on the radio for 40 years paying attention to everybody's confusion about McLuhan.

[1:59:45] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:59:45] Cameron McEwen: but in trying to communicate that to people,

[1:59:52] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that you've been successful.

[1:59:54] Bob Dobbs: I've had much enthusiasm,

[1:59:56] Bob Dobbs: but I personally,

[1:59:57] Bob Dobbs: privately know they didn't get it.

[1:59:59] Bob Dobbs: They think they got it.

[2:00:01] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[2:00:02] Cameron McEwen: So here you are,

[2:00:03] Cameron McEwen: you're saying um

[2:00:04] Cameron McEwen: You spent 40 years talking to people and trying to explain to people,

[2:00:12] Cameron McEwen: but without communicating.

[2:00:14] Cameron McEwen: And that's the great problem.

[2:00:16] Cameron McEwen: So if we're thinking about McLuhan and Theall,

[2:00:20] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan has only got so many students,

[2:00:23] Cameron McEwen: and only a few of them really get anything,

[2:00:27] Cameron McEwen: and only a few of the few are willing to speak.

[2:00:33] Cameron McEwen: spend more and more time with McLuhan in an attempt to define what's going on.

[2:00:39] Cameron McEwen: So that kind of,

[2:00:40] Cameron McEwen: what I just said,

[2:00:41] Cameron McEwen: kind of describes the trajectory between

[2:00:45] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and Theol,

[2:00:47] Cameron McEwen: but you can only take that trajectory so far.

[2:00:52] Cameron McEwen: If you repeatedly,

[2:00:55] Cameron McEwen: repeatedly,

[2:00:56] Cameron McEwen: repeatedly describe certain points to a person and they don't get it.

[2:01:03] Cameron McEwen: After a while,

[2:01:03] Cameron McEwen: you just give up.

[2:01:07] Bob Dobbs: I play music.

[2:01:09] Bob Dobbs: I don't give up,

[2:01:09] Bob Dobbs: I play music.

[2:01:11] Cameron McEwen: But that must have happened between McLuhan and Theall.

[2:01:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan must have said to himself,

[2:01:17] Cameron McEwen: at least,

[2:01:19] Cameron McEwen: I can't continue spending all this energy on this guy.

[2:01:22] Cameron McEwen: He's never going to get it.

[2:01:24] Cameron McEwen: And Theall must have thought that,

[2:01:26] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:01:26] Cameron McEwen: this shows that McLuhan a dork.

[2:01:29] Cameron McEwen: Ultimately.

[2:01:31] Bob Dobbs: And I think McLuhan felt that about

[2:01:33] Bob Dobbs: George Thompson,

[2:01:34] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt,

[2:01:35] Bob Dobbs: and his son,

[2:01:36] Bob Dobbs: Eric.

[2:01:38] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[2:01:39] Bob Dobbs: Nobody got him to his satisfaction.

[2:01:42] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[2:01:44] Cameron McEwen: But that's not an untypical.

[2:01:47] Bob Dobbs: That's the usual.

[2:01:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:01:49] Cameron McEwen: that's the way it goes.

[2:01:51] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:01:52] Bob Dobbs: I don't think you're an optimist.

[2:01:55] Bob Dobbs: I think you think humanity is going to do themselves in because they can't get it on a mass level.

[2:02:07] Cameron McEwen: I know you don't want to say it.

[2:02:09] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that humanity is without help,

[2:02:12] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:02:14] Cameron McEwen: I would call myself a Christian,

[2:02:17] Cameron McEwen: and I would say that there is a ground to history that doesn't depend upon humans achieving some level of communication with each other.

[2:02:33] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:02:34] Bob Dobbs: So...

[2:02:37] Bob Dobbs: That's the act of faith that Eric likes to talk about?

[2:02:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:02:42] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[2:02:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:02:46] Bob Dobbs: Eric,

[2:02:47] Bob Dobbs: he says faith is,

[2:02:48] Bob Dobbs: speaking as a Christian,

[2:02:50] Bob Dobbs: he says faith is a percept.

[2:02:53] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[2:02:54] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:02:56] Cameron McEwen: you know.

[2:02:56] Cameron McEwen: Are you that way?

[2:03:00] Cameron McEwen: We're back at the start of our conversation.

[2:03:02] Cameron McEwen: There's nothing that's not a percept.

[2:03:05] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:03:07] Cameron McEwen: So he's saying nothing.

[2:03:08] Cameron McEwen: He's saying nothing.

[2:03:10] Bob Dobbs: To say that faith is a person.

[2:03:15] Cameron McEwen: That doesn't work.

[2:03:16] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:03:17] Bob Dobbs: Now listen to this.

[2:03:18] Bob Dobbs: You know what Ion,

[2:03:19] Bob Dobbs: how Ion defines faith,

[2:03:20] Bob Dobbs: it's sense-making.

[2:03:22] Bob Dobbs: Faith is sense-making.

[2:03:24] Bob Dobbs: What do you think of that?

[2:03:27] Cameron McEwen: I think it could be helpful.

[2:03:30] Bob Dobbs: That's perceptual more than saying the word percept that Eric does.

[2:03:36] Bob Dobbs: Faith in first steps says nothing,

[2:03:38] Bob Dobbs: but to say faith is sense-making,

[2:03:40] Bob Dobbs: that's saying something,

[2:03:42] Bob Dobbs: because you can look at your image of yourself.

[2:03:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:03:49] Cameron McEwen: I tend to understand that in terms of

[2:03:54] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan idea of going out to be alone.

[2:03:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:03:59] Cameron McEwen: You could say that going out to be alone is a forced sense-making,

[2:04:04] Cameron McEwen: and I take it what you're...

[2:04:06] Cameron McEwen: talking about from

[2:04:09] Cameron McEwen: Ion is a sense-making that is not through force.

[2:04:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:04:14] Cameron McEwen: It's a sense-making that is beyond force.

[2:04:22] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:04:22] Cameron McEwen: he has a term,

[2:04:23] Bob Dobbs: a phrase for it.

[2:04:24] Bob Dobbs: He uses it a lot.

[2:04:25] Bob Dobbs: Ion says conditioned response.

[2:04:28] Bob Dobbs: A conditioned response.

[2:04:30] Bob Dobbs: That's sense-making because you're conditioned by anti-environment.

[2:04:36] Bob Dobbs: all that you interact with to tell you what you think you are.

[2:04:40] Bob Dobbs: That's how you get your sense-making.

[2:04:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:04:43] Cameron McEwen: but I...

[2:04:46] Cameron McEwen: To live?

[2:04:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:04:50] Cameron McEwen: I don't know about that,

[2:04:51] Cameron McEwen: but I do know that it's not obvious how you go from there to faith.

[2:04:58] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:05:00] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:05:00] Bob Dobbs: but you're communicating faith in a...

[2:05:05] Bob Dobbs: normal way,

[2:05:07] Bob Dobbs: what we understand Christians have.

[2:05:10] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:05:11] Bob Dobbs: you think that something will save humanity,

[2:05:14] Bob Dobbs: or some of humanity.

[2:05:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:05:23] Cameron McEwen: saving is a very complicated matter.

[2:05:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:05:28] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[2:05:28] Cameron McEwen: So,

[2:05:29] Cameron McEwen: Christians talk about being saved.

[2:05:32] Cameron McEwen: That has nothing to do with

[2:05:34] Cameron McEwen: whether or not the world is going to be saved.

[2:05:37] Cameron McEwen: So saving is a very complicated matter.

[2:05:43] Cameron McEwen: How and if it might occur sort of at large for the world,

[2:05:50] Cameron McEwen: I don't claim to know.

[2:05:52] Cameron McEwen: I have hopes,

[2:05:54] Cameron McEwen: and I attempt to do what little I can do to try to illuminate.

[2:06:04] Cameron McEwen: the conditions that may have something to do with that.

[2:06:10] Cameron McEwen: But then how that general saving or lack of saving,

[2:06:17] Cameron McEwen: how that relates to individuals being saved,

[2:06:21] Cameron McEwen: that's a whole different question.

[2:06:25] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:06:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't think you really believe that the species will wipe itself out completely.

[2:06:33] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that's a matter of belief.

[2:06:36] Cameron McEwen: I think it's certainly a possibility.

[2:06:39] Cameron McEwen: And to me,

[2:06:40] Cameron McEwen: the worrisome thing is that so many other beings...

[2:06:47] Cameron McEwen: animal beings and plant beings and the being of past people that did so much in terms of culture,

[2:07:02] Cameron McEwen: but also just in terms of normal life.

[2:07:06] Cameron McEwen: All of this,

[2:07:06] Cameron McEwen: this past being,

[2:07:08] Cameron McEwen: animal being,

[2:07:08] Cameron McEwen: plant being,

[2:07:11] Cameron McEwen: basically depends upon our So,

[2:07:14] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:07:14] Cameron McEwen: straightening ourselves out.

[2:07:17] Cameron McEwen: And that's a very bleak prospect.

[2:07:23] Cameron McEwen: If we wipe ourselves out,

[2:07:24] Cameron McEwen: we wipe out all that other stuff.

[2:07:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:07:27] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:07:33] Bob Dobbs: I might take the tact that you're emphasizing the cul-de-sac too much.

[2:07:38] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[2:07:39] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[2:07:39] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[2:07:40] Bob Dobbs: he says that...

[2:07:42] Bob Dobbs: Not understanding,

[2:07:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:07:43] Bob Dobbs: not matching is normal in human communication.

[2:07:46] Bob Dobbs: You're quite relaxed about it.

[2:07:49] Bob Dobbs: That's another factor is to be relaxed about the confusion that humans have.

[2:07:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:07:54] Cameron McEwen: but wait a sec.

[2:07:55] Cameron McEwen: Don't say not matching is confusion.

[2:08:00] Cameron McEwen: Matching is confusion for McLuhan.

[2:08:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:08:03] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[2:08:03] Bob Dobbs: You're not matching.

[2:08:04] Bob Dobbs: You think you are,

[2:08:05] Bob Dobbs: but you're not.

[2:08:08] Bob Dobbs: Matching is very difficult.

[2:08:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:08:12] Cameron McEwen: but it's not,

[2:08:13] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:08:14] Cameron McEwen: matching is not difficult,

[2:08:15] Cameron McEwen: it's impossible.

[2:08:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:08:18] Bob Dobbs: right.

[2:08:19] Cameron McEwen: People think they are matching.

[2:08:21] Cameron McEwen: There is no such thing as matching because of the nature of language,

[2:08:25] Cameron McEwen: because everything is mediated.

[2:08:27] Bob Dobbs: And the ethical view,

[2:08:29] Bob Dobbs: that's the kind of view,

[2:08:30] Bob Dobbs: the ethical view is that people think they're matching.

[2:08:35] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[2:08:36] Cameron McEwen: and want to match,

[2:08:37] Cameron McEwen: and believe in matching.

[2:08:40] Cameron McEwen: associate morality with matching,

[2:08:42] Cameron McEwen: etc.,

[2:08:42] Cameron McEwen: etc.

[2:08:43] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[2:08:44] Cameron McEwen: But that's not,

[2:08:45] Cameron McEwen: what you said was not matching is confusion.

[2:08:51] Cameron McEwen: But for McLuhan,

[2:08:52] Cameron McEwen: the not matching,

[2:08:54] Cameron McEwen: which you can see in art or music or Shakespeare or Plato,

[2:09:02] Cameron McEwen: that,

[2:09:02] Cameron McEwen: it's through understanding of not matching.

[2:09:07] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:09:08] Bob Dobbs: I know.

[2:09:09] Bob Dobbs: I was tentative in what I said,

[2:09:11] Bob Dobbs: and as McLuhan would say,

[2:09:12] Bob Dobbs: I may have got that backwards.

[2:09:15] Bob Dobbs: But I was tentative because I wasn't sure if you could match at all with what I was trying to say.

[2:09:21] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[2:09:23] Bob Dobbs: Anyway,

[2:09:23] Bob Dobbs: I think that's a good point.

[2:09:25] Bob Dobbs: We've come to this key terminology,

[2:09:29] Bob Dobbs: matching and making,

[2:09:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[2:09:31] Bob Dobbs: and that's a beginning point of any...

[2:09:35] Bob Dobbs: Surveyed McLuhan,

[2:09:35] Bob Dobbs: you got to begin with that.

[2:09:37] Bob Dobbs: So I'm sure I do in the beginning pages here.

[2:09:42] Bob Dobbs: So let's try to get into the text.

[2:09:46] Bob Dobbs: Though I do want to mention this.

[2:09:48] Bob Dobbs: There's this book that I mentioned in 2017,

[2:09:52] Bob Dobbs: Unshackled,

[2:09:53] Bob Dobbs: The Dustbin of Donald Trump.

[2:09:56] Bob Dobbs: And it's a collection of pop culture images and movies,

[2:10:01] Bob Dobbs: books,

[2:10:02] Bob Dobbs: say from the

[2:10:03] Bob Dobbs: 50s on.

[2:10:05] Bob Dobbs: and how that American archetype of these odd people anticipated Trump.

[2:10:10] Bob Dobbs: He was the consolidation of the archetype.

[2:10:14] Bob Dobbs: I recommend that book to you.

[2:10:16] Bob Dobbs: It's a very small book.

[2:10:17] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[2:10:18] Cameron McEwen: and written by who?

[2:10:21] Bob Dobbs: Scott Woods and Phil somebody.

[2:10:24] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[2:10:25] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[2:10:26] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[2:10:26] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[2:10:26] Bob Dobbs: here it is.

[2:10:27] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:10:27] Bob Dobbs: look,

[2:10:28] Bob Dobbs: right on the bottom of page five.

[2:10:32] Bob Dobbs: is the link to it on Amazon.

[2:10:34] Cameron McEwen: Oh yeah,

[2:10:35] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[2:10:35] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[2:10:36] Cameron McEwen: I see that.

[2:10:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:10:37] Bob Dobbs: Phil Delio.

[2:10:39] Bob Dobbs: So,

[2:10:40] Bob Dobbs: I know Scott Woods,

[2:10:41] Bob Dobbs: I don't know Phil Delio.

[2:10:44] Bob Dobbs: And we,

[2:10:47] Bob Dobbs: me and Dave Newfeld,

[2:10:49] Bob Dobbs: who made the McLuhan albums,

[2:10:51] Bob Dobbs: are acknowledged by Scott and Phil as inspirations for the book.

[2:10:56] Bob Dobbs: Our talk about Trump ago.

[2:11:00] Bob Dobbs: And this is a Toronto person's...

[2:11:02] Bob Dobbs: Scott,

[2:11:02] Bob Dobbs: who hates Trump he almost doesn't realize the value of this book.

[2:11:09] Bob Dobbs: But

[2:11:10] Bob Dobbs: I'd be very interested in your reaction to the images they get from pop culture to show the composite that makes up Donald Trump.

[2:11:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:11:20] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[2:11:21] Cameron McEwen: It's like

[2:11:22] Cameron McEwen: Charlie Chaplin in that sense.

[2:11:25] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[2:11:26] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[2:11:26] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:11:27] Cameron McEwen: I haven't read the book,

[2:11:28] Cameron McEwen: but from what you're saying.

[2:11:31] Cameron McEwen: Just as Chaplin kind of personifies a whole series of people from society over the

[2:11:42] Cameron McEwen: 30 or 40 years before his movies,

[2:11:46] Cameron McEwen: I can see that

[2:11:48] Cameron McEwen: Trump be seen in the same way as a kind of the culminating archetype of all of these weirdos.

[2:11:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:12:00] Bob Dobbs: of what Ion says is that...

[2:12:03] Bob Dobbs: The Larry Flynt archetype of fuck you.

[2:12:07] Bob Dobbs: I'm a millionaire now.

[2:12:09] Cameron McEwen: And I don't have to listen to you.

[2:12:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:12:12] Cameron McEwen: that's an interesting thought.

[2:12:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:12:14] Cameron McEwen: You know what?

[2:12:14] Cameron McEwen: We should do it.

[2:12:15] Cameron McEwen: I see it's 730.

[2:12:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:12:17] Cameron McEwen: we got to hit it.

[2:12:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:12:19] Cameron McEwen: we'll end.

[2:12:19] Cameron McEwen: But that's a very good place to start again.

[2:12:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:12:23] Cameron McEwen: Because we've come to making and matching.

[2:12:26] Cameron McEwen: We've come to the...

[2:12:32] Cameron McEwen: big questions that are involved in your text and what we need to do is get back to your text yeah and get out get away from all our sidebars that are lasting for the whole interview right see if

[2:12:47] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if it's on Kindle probably is get the book and it's an easy read very easy that's your assignment try to read this book before next

[2:12:57] Cameron McEwen: Thursday I'll see what I can do yeah

[2:13:00] Cameron McEwen: I've got lots of other assignments,

[2:13:02] Cameron McEwen: but I'll see if I can do it.

[2:13:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:13:04] Bob Dobbs: Maybe it will just require a couple of weeks,

[2:13:07] Bob Dobbs: but buy it.

[2:13:09] Bob Dobbs: Definitely need to buy it.

[2:13:11] Bob Dobbs: It's an example of me finding something very obscure that I find really useful.

[2:13:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:13:18] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[2:13:18] Cameron McEwen: but it's not that obscure to you.

[2:13:20] Cameron McEwen: You know one of the authors.

[2:13:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:13:22] Bob Dobbs: but nobody else does.

[2:13:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't think anybody bought their book.

[2:13:27] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:13:29] Bob Dobbs: Again,

[2:13:29] Bob Dobbs: great talking to you,

[2:13:30] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[2:13:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:13:31] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[2:13:31] Bob Dobbs: Very good concept.

[2:13:33] Cameron McEwen: Look forward.

[2:13:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:13:35] Bob Dobbs: you hoiked up a lot of good concepts there.

[2:13:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:13:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:13:41] Bob Dobbs: Talk to you later.

[2:13:42] Cameron McEwen: Talk to you later.

[2:13:43] Bob Dobbs: Bye-bye.