[00:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[00:01] Bob Dobbs: this is Cameron McEwen and Bob Dobbs,
[00:04] Bob Dobbs: and we're doing our
[00:06] Bob Dobbs: 33rd episode,
[00:08] Bob Dobbs: and we're on page 27 of my book on
[00:14] Bob Dobbs: Trump we're looking at the
[00:18] Bob Dobbs: Jean Baudrillard quote that starts at the top,
[00:23] Bob Dobbs: well,
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: just at the top of the page.
[00:27] Bob Dobbs: So I say...
[00:28] Bob Dobbs: However,
[00:28] Bob Dobbs: there was one writer who was noticing the disappearance of medium and message,
[00:33] Bob Dobbs: medium and message in quotes,
[00:34] Bob Dobbs: at approximately the same time as McLuhan.
[00:37] Bob Dobbs: The following is an extraordinary quotation from Jean Baudrillard.
[00:43] Cameron McEwen: Let me just say there that we kind of,
[00:49] Cameron McEwen: in our last few conversations,
[00:52] Cameron McEwen: we skipped over the stage of...
[00:58] Cameron McEwen: medium and message that you present before this because we discussed that early on in our exchanges.
[01:08] Cameron McEwen: So here I just want to say that quote-unquote the disappearance of medium and message is a phrase that has many many different meanings depending on how a disappearance is
[01:24] Cameron McEwen: cashed.
[01:25] Cameron McEwen: And I
[01:28] Cameron McEwen: In the Baudrillard quotation,
[01:33] Cameron McEwen: he will use one sense of disappearance,
[01:38] Cameron McEwen: but I think it's a very different sense of disappearance from what McLuhan would take it as.
[01:46] Cameron McEwen: And I think that
[01:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan notion of disappearance is richer than Baudrillard.
[01:55] Cameron McEwen: But having said that,
[01:56] Cameron McEwen: let's go on to the...
[01:57] Cameron McEwen: quotation.
[01:58] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[01:58] Bob Dobbs: and you pointed out back then that McLuhan says he doesn't know what a medium is.
[02:04] Bob Dobbs: It was the late
[02:05] Bob Dobbs: 50s?
[02:06] Bob Dobbs: Yes. That quote you found?
[02:08] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[02:09] Cameron McEwen: but he meant that,
[02:10] Cameron McEwen: but he didn't mean that as
[02:13] Cameron McEwen: I don't understand it,
[02:14] Cameron McEwen: and it's disappeared,
[02:16] Cameron McEwen: and it's of no use.
[02:19] Cameron McEwen: He meant in the late
[02:22] Cameron McEwen: 50s, by the medium as the message,
[02:24] Cameron McEwen: he already meant
[02:26] Cameron McEwen: that we need to regard that as a scientific problem.
[02:29] Cameron McEwen: We need to try to,
[02:31] Cameron McEwen: we're not going to get anywhere until we specify what a medium actually is,
[02:37] Cameron McEwen: what its structure is.
[02:40] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[02:41] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[02:42] Bob Dobbs: So I'll read the quotation.
[02:45] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard says,
[02:47] Bob Dobbs: and this is in,
[02:49] Bob Dobbs: what is the title of the book?
[02:52] Bob Dobbs: Do I have the title of the book?
[02:54] Bob Dobbs: End of the quote?
[02:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[02:55] Cameron McEwen: the title of the book is on page 29.
[02:58] Bob Dobbs: I see it.
[02:59] Cameron McEwen: Simulations.
[03:01] Bob Dobbs: Simulations came out in 1981,
[03:05] Bob Dobbs: at least in Simiotext in Columbia University.
[03:09] Bob Dobbs: They printed it,
[03:10] Bob Dobbs: but
[03:11] Bob Dobbs: I don't know when he did Simulations in Paris.
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: And it's a particular article,
[03:18] Bob Dobbs: the precession of Simulacra.
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: So we'll just say the late 70s,
[03:22] Bob Dobbs: I think he wrote this.
[03:23] Bob Dobbs: 77,
[03:26] Bob Dobbs: 8,
[03:26] Bob Dobbs: 9,
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: 80.
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: Maybe in my copy I can look up and see if they give the French origins in the credits.
[03:37] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[03:37] Cameron McEwen: you do give two dates,
[03:39] Cameron McEwen: right?
[03:39] Cameron McEwen: You give 1981 and 1983.
[03:42] Cameron McEwen: I took that to mean that the French was 1981 and the translation was 83.
[03:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[03:49] Cameron McEwen: But
[03:50] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure if that's me.
[03:51] Cameron McEwen: It could also be that...
[03:53] Cameron McEwen: The essay appeared by itself in 1981,
[04:00] Cameron McEwen: and in 1983 it got put into a collection.
[04:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[04:05] Bob Dobbs: Simutex did it in 83.
[04:08] Bob Dobbs: Something in Paris did it in 81,
[04:12] Bob Dobbs: but it might have been written,
[04:14] Bob Dobbs: in my memory,
[04:15] Bob Dobbs: I think he wrote it in 77,
[04:21] Cameron McEwen: 78.
[04:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[04:22] Cameron McEwen: that makes sense.
[04:22] Cameron McEwen: You say at one point,
[04:22] Cameron McEwen: Adam.
[04:22] Cameron McEwen: approximately the same time as McLuhan.
[04:25] Cameron McEwen: So
[04:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, his career ended in 79,
[04:32] Cameron McEwen: and so if you were speaking,
[04:39] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[04:39] Cameron McEwen: from knowledge at approximately the same time as McLuhan,
[04:42] Cameron McEwen: that would point to
[04:44] Cameron McEwen: 77, 78.
[04:45] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[04:46] Bob Dobbs: it's actually,
[04:47] Bob Dobbs: he actually says it in 71 to the priest.
[04:51] Bob Dobbs: The
[04:52] Bob Dobbs: TV guy interviews him.
[04:53] Bob Dobbs: That's where he says,
[04:54] Bob Dobbs: funny and hard to tell the difference between medium and message.
[04:57] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[04:58] Bob Dobbs: And then he does the stage before that in 74,
[05:03] Bob Dobbs: 75.
[05:04] Bob Dobbs: So it's actually completely erroneous.
[05:08] Bob Dobbs: That's why I say approximately.
[05:11] Bob Dobbs: Approximately the same time.
[05:12] Bob Dobbs: So considering that they both aren't,
[05:17] Bob Dobbs: they're thinking ahead of what they publish.
[05:19] Bob Dobbs: I'll say it that way.
[05:22] Bob Dobbs: They're ahead of them.
[05:23] Bob Dobbs: They don't publish their latest stuff right away.
[05:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[05:27] Bob Dobbs: so...
[05:27] Bob Dobbs: The quote goes,
[05:29] Bob Dobbs: we are witnessing the end of perspective and panoptic space.
[05:33] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[05:33] Bob Dobbs: that's visual space in the Gutenberg world through the Vanishing
[05:37] Bob Dobbs: Point book.
[05:38] Bob Dobbs: That happened 100 years before.
[05:40] Bob Dobbs: So that's not a brilliant statement for me in relation to McLuhan.
[05:46] Bob Dobbs: What do you say to that?
[05:48] Cameron McEwen: No,
[05:49] Cameron McEwen: I agree with you.
[05:49] Cameron McEwen: To me,
[05:50] Cameron McEwen: the whole crux of the quotation lies in the question of uh,
[05:57] Cameron McEwen: whether or not Baudrillard really has seen the end of perspective and panoptic space.
[06:05] Cameron McEwen: I believe he says that that's all gone and then immediately reinstitutes it.
[06:13] Bob Dobbs: But we'll see.
[06:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[06:14] Cameron McEwen: We'll see.
[06:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[06:16] Bob Dobbs: we are witnessing the end of perspective and panoptic space,
[06:18] Bob Dobbs: and in the brackets,
[06:20] Bob Dobbs: which remains a moral hypothesis bound up with every classical analysis of the
[06:25] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[06:25] Bob Dobbs: objective essence of power,
[06:28] Bob Dobbs: end of brackets,
[06:29] Bob Dobbs: and hence the very abolition of the spectacular.
[06:34] Bob Dobbs: And I think he's thinking of Guy Debord.
[06:36] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to get past Guy Debord,
[06:38] Bob Dobbs: right?
[06:39] Bob Dobbs: Who did the spectacle book in the late 60s.
[06:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[06:44] Cameron McEwen: but he's also talking about the abolition of the spectator.
[06:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[06:49] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[06:50] Bob Dobbs: Now the spectacular.
[06:52] Bob Dobbs: And that's what McLuhan was saying.
[06:54] Bob Dobbs: So he caught up with McLuhan there.
[06:56] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[06:56] Bob Dobbs: there are no spectators in global theater,
[06:59] Bob Dobbs: just actors.
[07:00] Bob Dobbs: Is that what he used to say?
[07:02] Bob Dobbs: I think that's what it was.
[07:04] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[07:05] Cameron McEwen: But then you have to then once you say that there's only actors,
[07:15] Cameron McEwen: then you have to say,
[07:16] Cameron McEwen: well,
[07:16] Cameron McEwen: actors of what?
[07:19] Cameron McEwen: And if there is no what?
[07:20] Cameron McEwen: then there probably is no actor.
[07:23] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[07:23] Bob Dobbs: but he then added crew,
[07:26] Bob Dobbs: everybody's crew.
[07:28] Bob Dobbs: There's no passengers in the global theater,
[07:33] Bob Dobbs: only crew.
[07:35] Bob Dobbs: So that was his update of everybody's an actor.
[07:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[07:40] Bob Dobbs: the very abolition of the spectacular.
[07:42] Bob Dobbs: That's what we're witnessing.
[07:44] Bob Dobbs: Television,
[07:45] Bob Dobbs: in the case of The Louds,
[07:46] Bob Dobbs: did you see The Loud TV show?
[07:48] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember that?
[07:49] Cameron McEwen: I think I must have.
[07:50] Cameron McEwen: That's like 40 or
[07:52] Cameron McEwen: 50 years ago,
[07:53] Cameron McEwen: right?
[07:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[07:53] Bob Dobbs: service environment.
[07:54] Bob Dobbs: 76,
[07:56] Bob Dobbs: 77,
[07:56] Bob Dobbs: something like that,
[07:58] Bob Dobbs: I think.
[07:58] Bob Dobbs: It was just a taping of a family in operation in California where there was no privacy,
[08:08] Bob Dobbs: basically.
[08:12] Bob Dobbs: I think it caused a lot of stress in the family.
[08:15] Bob Dobbs: very successful.
[08:16] Bob Dobbs: A lot of people were talking about it,
[08:18] Bob Dobbs: probably more than they expected.
[08:20] Bob Dobbs: And
[08:21] Bob Dobbs: Loud went on to
[08:23] Bob Dobbs: New York,
[08:23] Bob Dobbs: Lance Loud,
[08:24] Bob Dobbs: the son,
[08:25] Bob Dobbs: went on to be a critic or something in the Warhol world,
[08:29] Bob Dobbs: a scene maker in New York City.
[08:32] Bob Dobbs: He became famous in that context later.
[08:36] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,
[08:37] Bob Dobbs: television,
[08:37] Bob Dobbs: in the case of the Louds,
[08:39] Bob Dobbs: for example,
[08:39] Bob Dobbs: is no longer a spectacular medium.
[08:42] Bob Dobbs: We are no longer in the society of spectacle,
[08:45] Bob Dobbs: that's Guy Debord's title,
[08:46] Bob Dobbs: which the situationists talked about.
[08:48] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[08:48] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard was the editor of the situationists,
[08:51] Bob Dobbs: did you know that?
[08:53] Cameron McEwen: No.
[08:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[08:54] Bob Dobbs: so the situationists run around the late 60s,
[08:56] Bob Dobbs: and they peak with the protests and that in
[09:01] Bob Dobbs: May 68.
[09:03] Bob Dobbs: And the situationists were the ideologues.
[09:09] Bob Dobbs: The anarchistic ideologues that got a lot of attention in that period,
[09:15] Bob Dobbs: in May 68,
[09:17] Bob Dobbs: well,
[09:18] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard,
[09:20] Bob Dobbs: whatever they were doing in the level of publication,
[09:23] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard was the editor.
[09:25] Bob Dobbs: So he was hanging out with the situationists.
[09:28] Bob Dobbs: So we are no longer in the society of the spectacle which the situationists talked about.
[09:33] Bob Dobbs: The situationists talked about.
[09:35] Bob Dobbs: nor in the specific types of alienation and repression which this implied.
[09:40] Bob Dobbs: The medium itself is no longer identifiable as such,
[09:43] Bob Dobbs: and the merging of the medium and the message,
[09:45] Bob Dobbs: he puts McLuhan in brackets,
[09:47] Bob Dobbs: is the first great formula of this new age.
[09:51] Bob Dobbs: So the formula is not the medium is the message,
[09:54] Bob Dobbs: the merging of the two.
[09:56] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that different from saying the medium is the message?
[10:01] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[10:01] Cameron McEwen: yes,
[10:02] Cameron McEwen: it's very different.
[10:03] Cameron McEwen: Because as McLuhan would say,
[10:07] Cameron McEwen: the gap is where the action is.
[10:09] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would say that the problem here is that
[10:13] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard is slipping into the non-structural.
[10:19] Cameron McEwen: When he says that,
[10:21] Cameron McEwen: he started the paragraph by saying,
[10:24] Cameron McEwen: we're witnessing the end of perspective in panoptic space.
[10:28] Cameron McEwen: And that ends in a...
[10:32] Cameron McEwen: dot.
[10:34] Cameron McEwen: It ends in a non-differentiated punctuation that then is supposed to be the reality of the space leading to that point.
[10:50] Cameron McEwen: So he starts off by saying,
[10:52] Cameron McEwen: we're witnessing the end of that,
[10:54] Cameron McEwen: and then at the end of the paragraph he says,
[10:56] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[10:56] Cameron McEwen: but there's the medium and the message are going to merge into some point.
[11:01] Cameron McEwen: So he reinstitutes,
[11:03] Cameron McEwen: at least in my reading,
[11:04] Cameron McEwen: he reinstitutes perspective and panoptic space at the very moment that he says that they have disappeared.
[11:12] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[11:15] Bob Dobbs: He's thinking of medium in the first meaning that McLuhan had in the
[11:19] Bob Dobbs: 50s, you know,
[11:20] Bob Dobbs: the object,
[11:20] Bob Dobbs: the TV set sitting in your living room.
[11:23] Cameron McEwen: And there he's right.
[11:25] Cameron McEwen: There he's right.
[11:27] Cameron McEwen: But that doesn't mean that...
[11:30] Cameron McEwen: The medium and the message have coalesced,
[11:33] Cameron McEwen: right?
[11:34] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[11:35] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[11:36] Bob Dobbs: the medium is the spigger,
[11:38] Bob Dobbs: the TV,
[11:39] Bob Dobbs: and the message is what the TV does to people.
[11:45] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't see that McLuhan,
[11:47] Bob Dobbs: a little later,
[11:49] Bob Dobbs: said the medium was the environmental technologies already in the society that television is affecting.
[11:55] Bob Dobbs: So it's a...
[11:57] Cameron McEwen: But McLuhan...
[11:58] Cameron McEwen: I mean
[11:59] Cameron McEwen: There's two different,
[12:00] Cameron McEwen: well,
[12:00] Cameron McEwen: there's probably a whole bunch of different contexts that need to be referenced here.
[12:10] Cameron McEwen: One is,
[12:11] Cameron McEwen: what is Baudrillard saying and why is he saying it?
[12:14] Cameron McEwen: Another is,
[12:15] Cameron McEwen: is he right about
[12:17] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan? So when McLuhan was talking about
[12:23] Cameron McEwen: TV sets or radio,
[12:26] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[12:27] Cameron McEwen: as a medium,
[12:29] Cameron McEwen: In the
[12:30] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, he was not saying that we need to take these things in a literal sense.
[12:38] Cameron McEwen: What he was saying was,
[12:40] Cameron McEwen: if you want to understand what media do to us,
[12:47] Cameron McEwen: you need to look at,
[12:49] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[12:50] Cameron McEwen: what letters did to the Greeks or what
[12:53] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg did to the Renaissance.
[12:57] Cameron McEwen: And that's happening to us now through TV and radio.
[13:02] Cameron McEwen: So it was a strategy for communication.
[13:06] Cameron McEwen: It wasn't an identification of something literal as the medium.
[13:13] Cameron McEwen: And what's humorous about this,
[13:15] Cameron McEwen: this is already in the
[13:18] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, so well over 60 years ago,
[13:24] Cameron McEwen: the
[13:25] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan industry,
[13:27] Cameron McEwen: still very frequently talks about media in a literal sense.
[13:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[13:34] Cameron McEwen: Stupid.
[13:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[13:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[13:36] Bob Dobbs: the medium itself is no longer identifiable as such,
[13:39] Bob Dobbs: and the merging of the medium and the message is the first great formula of this new age.
[13:45] Bob Dobbs: There is no longer any medium in the literal sense.
[13:48] Bob Dobbs: It is now intangible,
[13:49] Bob Dobbs: diffused,
[13:50] Bob Dobbs: and diffracted in the real,
[13:53] Bob Dobbs: and it can no longer even be said that the latter...
[13:55] Bob Dobbs: it would be the real,
[13:56] Bob Dobbs: is distorted by it.
[13:58] Bob Dobbs: There's no longer any medium in the literal sense.
[14:01] Bob Dobbs: It's now intangible.
[14:03] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[14:03] Bob Dobbs: that's partly right.
[14:04] Bob Dobbs: That was the source of meaning.
[14:06] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.
[14:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[14:09] Bob Dobbs: But he shifted to that.
[14:11] Bob Dobbs: He didn't start off that way.
[14:14] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[14:15] Cameron McEwen: Let's remember that the complications of reading this stuff
[14:24] Cameron McEwen: need to be respected.
[14:28] Cameron McEwen: If we look at how research is done in the physical science,
[14:38] Cameron McEwen: every once in a while I can hear a beep.
[14:39] Cameron McEwen: Is that anything that we need to be aware of?
[14:42] Bob Dobbs: You're hitting your phone.
[14:45] Bob Dobbs: You're hitting something on your phone.
[14:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[14:48] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[14:48] Cameron McEwen: all right.
[14:49] Cameron McEwen: If it's me,
[14:50] Cameron McEwen: I got to stop it.
[14:51] Cameron McEwen: All right.
[14:53] Cameron McEwen: So...
[14:54] Cameron McEwen: If you think of a paper,
[14:56] Cameron McEwen: let's say in medicine,
[14:59] Cameron McEwen: and it's talking about how different proteins fold in a certain way,
[15:05] Cameron McEwen: and if they don't fold in that way,
[15:07] Cameron McEwen: then that causes disturbances in the brain or something.
[15:13] Cameron McEwen: It's very,
[15:14] Cameron McEwen: very complicated stuff.
[15:17] Cameron McEwen: And when we read quotations,
[15:23] Cameron McEwen: like the one that we're reading now,
[15:26] Cameron McEwen: we shouldn't think...
[15:29] Cameron McEwen: that its analysis is ultimately simple.
[15:34] Cameron McEwen: What we should think is that the interior landscape is ultimately,
[15:41] Cameron McEwen: if we don't kill ourselves first,
[15:44] Cameron McEwen: it's ultimately going to be seen as just as complicated as the interior landscape.
[15:50] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[15:51] Cameron McEwen: And what's going on here with Baudrillard is not some sort of simple thing work.
[15:58] Cameron McEwen: It's either Gutenbergian or it's electric or it's paleolithic or something like that.
[16:06] Cameron McEwen: No,
[16:07] Cameron McEwen: It's he's thinking out of a very,
[16:12] Cameron McEwen: very complicated formula.
[16:17] Cameron McEwen: And the best we can say now in terms of the exact analysis is that there.
[16:28] Cameron McEwen: seem to be different properties in what's going on.
[16:34] Cameron McEwen: And those properties are the clues that we need to follow if we're going to really understand what's going on.
[16:43] Cameron McEwen: So we need to take what he's saying here in this complexity and in the fact that we don't really understand that complexity.
[16:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[16:54] Bob Dobbs: I agree.
[16:56] Bob Dobbs: So there's no longer any medium in the literal sense.
[16:58] Bob Dobbs: It is now intangible,
[17:00] Bob Dobbs: diffused,
[17:00] Bob Dobbs: and diffracted in the real,
[17:01] Bob Dobbs: and it can no longer even be said that the latter is distorted by it.
[17:06] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[17:06] Cameron McEwen: and that's a very good statement,
[17:09] Cameron McEwen: because if we really don't understand the real,
[17:16] Cameron McEwen: then the talk about distortion of it makes no sense.
[17:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[17:21] Bob Dobbs: and this is when I started saying...
[17:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[17:26] Bob Dobbs: in the 80s,
[17:27] Bob Dobbs: that the Android Meme is extending technology,
[17:31] Bob Dobbs: not our body parts,
[17:33] Bob Dobbs: body faculties.
[17:35] Bob Dobbs: And our body faculties and parts and that is what people assume was the real.
[17:40] Bob Dobbs: So
[17:41] Bob Dobbs: I agree with this sentence if it means that the media is not affecting the human organism as much as it's affecting other media in the mix.
[17:52] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[17:52] Bob Dobbs: it was already...
[17:54] Bob Dobbs: doing it in general anyways,
[17:55] Bob Dobbs: the media and the print affected the manuscript culture,
[17:59] Bob Dobbs: or manuscripts,
[18:02] Bob Dobbs: but in the Android Meme phase,
[18:04] Bob Dobbs: it's taking on a reality or dynamic that is not connected to the real.
[18:12] Bob Dobbs: So,
[18:13] Bob Dobbs: I agree with him here,
[18:16] Bob Dobbs: that the latter,
[18:17] Bob Dobbs: the real,
[18:17] Bob Dobbs: is not affected.
[18:19] Bob Dobbs: If
[18:19] Bob Dobbs: I take the real to mean what I mean,
[18:21] Bob Dobbs: which he may not,
[18:24] Bob Dobbs: He goes on and uses the real a lot of different ways throughout his career,
[18:30] Bob Dobbs: or in a way that's different or odd.
[18:33] Bob Dobbs: So then...
[18:34] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[18:35] Cameron McEwen: Notice that what that does is it introduces a kind of third dimension to what's going on here.
[18:45] Cameron McEwen: You've got
[18:47] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard is talking about McLuhan,
[18:51] Cameron McEwen: and you are citing
[18:52] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard.
[18:54] Cameron McEwen: And each one of these has its own complications.
[19:01] Cameron McEwen: And then when the three of them are put together,
[19:04] Cameron McEwen: you have a very,
[19:05] Cameron McEwen: very complicated three-dimensional matrix.
[19:11] Cameron McEwen: And there,
[19:12] Cameron McEwen: all I can say is that we just need to keep in mind how complicated that matrix is as we proceed.
[19:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[19:21] Bob Dobbs: that's partly why I took this quote.
[19:23] Bob Dobbs: It was nice and complicated,
[19:25] Bob Dobbs: and it showed a bunch of thinking that got it out of the simple level of the medium is the message.
[19:33] Bob Dobbs: So its complexity is why I picked it,
[19:37] Bob Dobbs: to show that I was aware of complexities in this situation,
[19:41] Bob Dobbs: that I could read a complex statement.
[19:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[19:46] Bob Dobbs: so the next paragraph says,
[19:48] Bob Dobbs: such a mixture.
[19:49] Bob Dobbs: No.
[19:50] Bob Dobbs: Does that mean in this or interpenetrating mixture?
[19:55] Bob Dobbs: MIHR?
[19:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[19:57] Cameron McEwen: that's a good question and it's one of the reasons that any time serious work is done it has to work with the original.
[20:07] Cameron McEwen: We don't really know how the translation has worked here,
[20:12] Cameron McEwen: but it's an interesting word.
[20:14] Cameron McEwen: It's interesting exactly in the ways that you just indicated.
[20:19] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[20:20] Bob Dobbs: So Baudrillard's doing pretty good in what I think is going on in that period.
[20:26] Bob Dobbs: So such a mixture,
[20:27] Bob Dobbs: such a viral,
[20:28] Bob Dobbs: endemic,
[20:29] Bob Dobbs: chronic,
[20:30] Bob Dobbs: alarming presence of the medium.
[20:32] Bob Dobbs: That's a good list.
[20:34] Bob Dobbs: Viral,
[20:34] Bob Dobbs: chronic,
[20:35] Bob Dobbs: alarming.
[20:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[20:36] Cameron McEwen: but he's just said that the medium has disappeared.
[20:42] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[20:44] Cameron McEwen: Now he says,
[20:45] Cameron McEwen: in the paragraph ahead,
[20:46] Cameron McEwen: he says,
[20:48] Cameron McEwen: The medium itself is no longer identifiable.
[20:52] Cameron McEwen: And now he's saying presence of the medium.
[20:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[20:57] Bob Dobbs: So he's either,
[20:59] Bob Dobbs: it's badly translated,
[21:01] Bob Dobbs: or he's kind of a sloppy thinker.
[21:05] Cameron McEwen: Or.
[21:06] Cameron McEwen: In my view,
[21:08] Cameron McEwen: neither one of those,
[21:09] Cameron McEwen: but instead there is a kind of complicated formula going on here where we can see its effects in this text,
[21:20] Cameron McEwen: but we don't really have a good handle on what is generating it.
[21:25] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[21:25] Bob Dobbs: and it's very hard to talk about.
[21:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[21:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[21:30] Bob Dobbs: such a mixture.
[21:32] Bob Dobbs: Such a mixture,
[21:33] Bob Dobbs: such a viral,
[21:34] Bob Dobbs: endemic,
[21:34] Bob Dobbs: chronic,
[21:35] Bob Dobbs: alarming presence of the medium,
[21:36] Bob Dobbs: without our being able to isolate its effects,
[21:39] Bob Dobbs: spectralized like those publicity holograms sculptured in empty space with laser beams.
[21:47] Bob Dobbs: What is that?
[21:48] Bob Dobbs: The publicity holograms.
[21:50] Bob Dobbs: Is that the effect of the TV-computer-satellite mixture?
[21:57] Cameron McEwen: No,
[21:57] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.
[21:58] Cameron McEwen: I think he's saying that...
[22:01] Cameron McEwen: We're in anti-environment that is produced in a technological way that gives
[22:20] Cameron McEwen: us evidence of a medium,
[22:23] Cameron McEwen: but we can't get a handle on it.
[22:29] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[22:29] Cameron McEwen: he immediately goes on to say the dissolution of
[22:32] Cameron McEwen: TV into life,
[22:34] Cameron McEwen: dissolution of life into TV,
[22:37] Cameron McEwen: an indiscernible chemical solution.
[22:40] Cameron McEwen: So he's saying that once he says basically that there is no real in the preceding paragraph,
[22:51] Cameron McEwen: now what he's doing is he's saying,
[22:53] Cameron McEwen: what is it like to live in a situation where there is no real?
[22:59] Cameron McEwen: And that's what he's describing here.
[23:01] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[23:02] Bob Dobbs: So like those publicity holograms,
[23:04] Bob Dobbs: and there weren't too many experiences of the publicity hologram at that point,
[23:11] Bob Dobbs: like those publicity holograms sculptured in empty space with laser beams,
[23:16] Bob Dobbs: the event filtered by the medium,
[23:19] Bob Dobbs: that's not a good statement.
[23:22] Bob Dobbs: That's the old thing,
[23:23] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[23:25] Bob Dobbs: the medium.
[23:26] Bob Dobbs: He's altering,
[23:27] Bob Dobbs: so I'm speaking,
[23:28] Bob Dobbs: so I'm altering what I'm saying because I'm speaking.
[23:32] Bob Dobbs: The event filtered by the medium.
[23:34] Bob Dobbs: But then he defines that as the dissolution of TV into life,
[23:37] Bob Dobbs: the dissolution of life into TV.
[23:39] Bob Dobbs: Nobody thought that when they're reading,
[23:41] Bob Dobbs: we'll call it Simple McLuhan in the
[23:43] Bob Dobbs: 50s. They didn't think of the dissolution of life into TV,
[23:46] Bob Dobbs: right?
[23:48] Bob Dobbs: They might have thought it 10 years later after a couple of LSD trips or something.
[23:53] Bob Dobbs: And he does begin in late 60s talking about the technologies coming alive.
[23:59] Bob Dobbs: So,
[24:00] Bob Dobbs: spectralize.
[24:01] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.
[24:03] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[24:03] Cameron McEwen: when you say that the event filtered by the medium is not right,
[24:10] Cameron McEwen: I think we have to understand that
[24:13] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard has event and medium here in quotation marks.
[24:22] Cameron McEwen: There are no...
[24:23] Cameron McEwen: quotation marks in the translation that we have.
[24:27] Cameron McEwen: And I don't know about the French original,
[24:29] Cameron McEwen: but I know that when he's talking about an indiscernible chemical solution,
[24:35] Cameron McEwen: when he's talking about the dissolution of life into TV,
[24:38] Cameron McEwen: etc.,
[24:40] Cameron McEwen: he's not saying event as some sort of factual event in front of us,
[24:47] Cameron McEwen: and he's not talking about medium as if that could be identified.
[24:52] Cameron McEwen: Instead,
[24:53] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is that event and medium have dissolved,
[25:01] Cameron McEwen: and we only have them as questions.
[25:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[25:06] Bob Dobbs: that's right.
[25:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[25:09] Bob Dobbs: Can isolated effects spectralize,
[25:12] Bob Dobbs: like those purposely hologram-sculpted in empty space with laser beams,
[25:17] Bob Dobbs: the event filtered by the medium?
[25:19] Bob Dobbs: The dissolution of TV into life,
[25:21] Bob Dobbs: the dissolution of life into TV,
[25:22] Bob Dobbs: an indiscernible chemical solution.
[25:25] Bob Dobbs: Then a colon,
[25:26] Bob Dobbs: then it says,
[25:27] Bob Dobbs: we are all louds,
[25:29] Bob Dobbs: doomed not to invasion,
[25:30] Bob Dobbs: to pressure,
[25:32] Bob Dobbs: to violence,
[25:33] Bob Dobbs: and to blackmail by the media and the models,
[25:35] Bob Dobbs: but to their induction,
[25:37] Bob Dobbs: to their infiltration,
[25:38] Bob Dobbs: to their illegible violence.
[25:41] Bob Dobbs: That's a pretty good statement.
[25:42] Cameron McEwen: We are all louds.
[25:43] Cameron McEwen: I like that a lot.
[25:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[25:46] Bob Dobbs: We are all louds.
[25:47] Bob Dobbs: Do not to invasion,
[25:48] Bob Dobbs: to pressure,
[25:49] Bob Dobbs: to violence,
[25:50] Bob Dobbs: and to blackmail.
[25:51] Bob Dobbs: So all the maybe assumed pressures or effects of the media,
[25:58] Bob Dobbs: and they are not that.
[26:00] Bob Dobbs: That's what's important.
[26:02] Bob Dobbs: There's some other.
[26:04] Cameron McEwen: Weird thing going on.
[26:06] Cameron McEwen: What he's talking about is the disappearance of the literal.
[26:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[26:12] Cameron McEwen: If you don't have literal persons and literal media,
[26:19] Cameron McEwen: then you can have invasion pressure and violence and blackmail.
[26:24] Cameron McEwen: Those things are once the...
[26:30] Bob Dobbs: Those things are what?
[26:34] Bob Dobbs: It flipped out.
[26:36] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[26:36] Cameron McEwen: can you hear?
[26:38] Bob Dobbs: Only now,
[26:38] Bob Dobbs: so repeat that sentence.
[26:41] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[26:41] Cameron McEwen: what I'm saying is,
[26:43] Cameron McEwen: he's saying do not put Asian pressured violence into PECMIL.
[26:48] Cameron McEwen: The reason for that is that when the literal has dissolved,
[26:54] Cameron McEwen: then you can't have those things anymore.
[26:58] Cameron McEwen: So this is when he then says the violence is illegible.
[27:04] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly right.
[27:05] Cameron McEwen: As you said,
[27:06] Cameron McEwen: it's a very good statement.
[27:08] Bob Dobbs: It's what?
[27:10] Bob Dobbs: Last word?
[27:12] Cameron McEwen: A very good statement.
[27:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[27:16] Cameron McEwen: In my old age and dotage,
[27:18] Cameron McEwen: do I not pronounce my words properly?
[27:23] Bob Dobbs: No,
[27:23] Bob Dobbs: your phone is slightly altering.
[27:27] Bob Dobbs: You didn't move,
[27:28] Bob Dobbs: did you?
[27:29] Bob Dobbs: You're where you were.
[27:30] Bob Dobbs: You're sitting there.
[27:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[27:32] Cameron McEwen: same phone,
[27:33] Cameron McEwen: same chair.
[27:34] Bob Dobbs: We had this happen last week,
[27:35] Bob Dobbs: I think.
[27:36] Bob Dobbs: It starts to drop out a little bit.
[27:40] Bob Dobbs: So
[27:41] Bob Dobbs: I'll just call it.
[27:42] Cameron McEwen: The number of houses is terrible.
[27:45] Cameron McEwen: Sometimes it's only one.
[27:47] Bob Dobbs: Only one what?
[27:49] Cameron McEwen: Bar.
[27:50] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[27:51] Bob Dobbs: you mean that's what it is now?
[27:58] Cameron McEwen: No,
[27:58] Cameron McEwen: I've got two bars at the moment.
[28:01] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[28:01] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[28:02] Bob Dobbs: So that's why I have to ask you to repeat yourself.
[28:08] Bob Dobbs: Nothing wrong with you.
[28:09] Bob Dobbs: It's the phone.
[28:10] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[28:12] Bob Dobbs: And to blackmail,
[28:14] Bob Dobbs: to not to invasion,
[28:15] Bob Dobbs: not to pressure,
[28:16] Bob Dobbs: not to violence,
[28:17] Bob Dobbs: and not to blackmail by the media and the models,
[28:21] Bob Dobbs: but to their induction,
[28:24] Bob Dobbs: doom,
[28:25] Bob Dobbs: to induction,
[28:26] Bob Dobbs: to their infiltration,
[28:27] Bob Dobbs: to their illegible violence.
[28:31] Bob Dobbs: That can't even be translated as so accurate.
[28:34] Bob Dobbs: Illegible violence.
[28:36] Bob Dobbs: There's violence,
[28:37] Bob Dobbs: but it's pretty hard to tell who's doing what to who.
[28:40] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[28:42] Bob Dobbs: when you understand this,
[28:43] Bob Dobbs: then you can see the interrogatory and constant questioning on every line sitting its wake.
[28:50] Bob Dobbs: Then you understand that that's the right way to talk about the anti-environment,
[28:55] Bob Dobbs: what Joyce is doing,
[28:57] Bob Dobbs: not to write simple story,
[28:59] Bob Dobbs: a simple narrative.
[29:00] Bob Dobbs: and psychological billiard balls banging around,
[29:05] Bob Dobbs: personalities and that,
[29:07] Bob Dobbs: to talk about the present.
[29:10] Bob Dobbs: The wake gets to this end.
[29:13] Cameron McEwen: But I think it's,
[29:14] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure that it's correct to say that
[29:17] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake is the quote-unquote right way.
[29:21] Cameron McEwen: It's one of the possible ways.
[29:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[29:26] Bob Dobbs: but very appropriate.
[29:29] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[29:29] Cameron McEwen: I'm not saying it's not appropriate,
[29:31] Cameron McEwen: but
[29:32] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[29:32] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake exists as something that puts the question of,
[29:39] Cameron McEwen: quote unquote,
[29:40] Cameron McEwen: the right way in question.
[29:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[29:43] Bob Dobbs: that's right.
[29:44] Cameron McEwen: It's always doubling back on itself and going vertical instead of horizontal and horizontal instead of vertical and into Irish instead of English or into
[29:56] Cameron McEwen: German instead of Irish.
[29:58] Bob Dobbs: etc etc well that's what i'm doing as i talk here or good i say right welcome uh i welcome that okay but we must be careful of the negative twist discourse
[30:14] Bob Dobbs: gives this it is a question neither of an illness nor of a viral complaint that very good statement we must be careful the negative twist discourse gives this discourse is going to probably fail
[30:26] Bob Dobbs: And we're already reading his discourse and it's barely making it.
[30:32] Bob Dobbs: It is a question neither of an illness nor of a viral complaint.
[30:35] Bob Dobbs: Again,
[30:36] Bob Dobbs: it's a question...
[30:38] Bob Dobbs: of the whole deal.
[30:40] Bob Dobbs: He's got the whole range there covered,
[30:43] Bob Dobbs: from illness to viral complaint.
[30:46] Bob Dobbs: And it's neither.
[30:47] Bob Dobbs: Rather,
[30:48] Bob Dobbs: we must think of the media as if they were in outer orbit.
[30:52] Bob Dobbs: So they're in outer orbit,
[30:53] Bob Dobbs: but also a sort of genetic code which controls the mutation of the real into the hyperreal,
[31:00] Bob Dobbs: just as the other micro-molecular code controls the passage of the signal from a representative sphere of meaning Thank you.
[31:08] Bob Dobbs: to the genetic sphere of the program signal.
[31:11] Bob Dobbs: Boy,
[31:11] Bob Dobbs: that's quite a sentence.
[31:12] Bob Dobbs: Let's go back up.
[31:14] Bob Dobbs: Rather,
[31:14] Bob Dobbs: we must think of the media as if they were in outer orbit,
[31:18] Bob Dobbs: a sort of genetic code which controls the mutation of the real into the hyperreal.
[31:24] Bob Dobbs: So you're saying media are sort of a genetic code and goes beyond the real,
[31:32] Bob Dobbs: just as the other micro-molecular code controls the passage of the signal.
[31:36] Bob Dobbs: from a representative sphere of meaning to the genetic sphere of the program signal.
[31:42] Bob Dobbs: I think I understand that,
[31:46] Bob Dobbs: but I don't know if I could explain it.
[31:48] Bob Dobbs: The genetic sphere,
[31:49] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[31:50] Bob Dobbs: electric space is a sphere.
[31:52] Bob Dobbs: It's genetic.
[31:54] Bob Dobbs: Why is he emphasizing the genetic code?
[31:59] Cameron McEwen: Because what he wants to do is he wants to...
[32:06] Cameron McEwen: indicate the medium or media plural as the genesis of the unreal situation that
[32:21] Cameron McEwen: he's just described.
[32:24] Cameron McEwen: How are we to think through the dissolution of life into TV?
[32:33] Cameron McEwen: And his suggestion is...
[32:35] Cameron McEwen: that we have to think of it as a kind of genetic code which controls this mutation of the real.
[32:43] Cameron McEwen: But he also says that it's an outer orbit.
[32:47] Cameron McEwen: And
[32:48] Cameron McEwen: I think I agree with that very much.
[32:51] Cameron McEwen: I think he's saying that this is not something that we can understand as a literal genetic code.
[33:03] Cameron McEwen: It's something.
[33:05] Cameron McEwen: that's like a genetic code,
[33:08] Cameron McEwen: but as seen from very,
[33:09] Cameron McEwen: very far away.
[33:11] Cameron McEwen: And if we're ever to understand that genetic code,
[33:18] Cameron McEwen: it's going to require a great deal more work.
[33:23] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[33:23] Bob Dobbs: so the genetic code for him represents not the matching of meaning.
[33:31] Bob Dobbs: No,
[33:31] Bob Dobbs: no.
[33:32] Bob Dobbs: It's the programmed.
[33:33] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[33:34] Bob Dobbs: Marshall talked a lot about the programmed environment.
[33:38] Bob Dobbs: He did occasionally mention the
[33:41] Bob Dobbs: DNA and things,
[33:42] Bob Dobbs: but he didn't put it together like this.
[33:45] Bob Dobbs: He didn't have them touch each other.
[33:49] Bob Dobbs: He just mentioned,
[33:51] Bob Dobbs: he talked about DNA as an acronym.
[33:56] Bob Dobbs: What do you call it when you make
[33:58] Bob Dobbs: LBJ, these shortened?
[34:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[34:03] Cameron McEwen: abbreviation or...
[34:04] Bob Dobbs: Abbreviation,
[34:05] Bob Dobbs: letterings.
[34:06] Bob Dobbs: Is that an anagram?
[34:07] Bob Dobbs: No,
[34:08] Bob Dobbs: anagram goes back and forth.
[34:11] Bob Dobbs: Forget what that's called when you do that.
[34:14] Bob Dobbs: But that's what he thought,
[34:17] Bob Dobbs: that language or writing or science had to use these iconic models.
[34:23] Bob Dobbs: That's maybe what
[34:25] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard thinking of,
[34:26] Bob Dobbs: the genetic sphere of the program signal.
[34:30] Bob Dobbs: Because a program signal can be something that's informative,
[34:32] Bob Dobbs: has meaning,
[34:34] Bob Dobbs: but he's making it part of the genetic area.
[34:39] Cameron McEwen: But the most important thing,
[34:41] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[34:42] Cameron McEwen: in the sentence is that when we look at genetic code,
[34:48] Cameron McEwen: we shouldn't think of,
[34:50] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[34:50] Cameron McEwen: genetic code,
[34:51] Cameron McEwen: that's biology,
[34:52] Cameron McEwen: that's DNA,
[34:53] Cameron McEwen: and all that sort of stuff.
[34:54] Cameron McEwen: We need to see the genesis.
[34:58] Cameron McEwen: genetic code.
[35:00] Cameron McEwen: And so the question that's being posed is what is the genesis of this dissolution of
[35:14] Cameron McEwen: TV into life and life into TV?
[35:18] Cameron McEwen: And that genesis has to do with origin.
[35:24] Cameron McEwen: So it's not the case that we can say well
[35:28] Cameron McEwen: We know what TV is,
[35:29] Cameron McEwen: and we know what life is,
[35:31] Cameron McEwen: and so we're talking about the interaction of these two known entities.
[35:36] Cameron McEwen: And no,
[35:37] Cameron McEwen: the word Genesis indicates that...
[35:44] Cameron McEwen: The relation of the entities is original.
[35:49] Cameron McEwen: We can't take the two pieces or entities to be something that we're going to relate to the code as a secondary matter.
[35:59] Cameron McEwen: Instead,
[36:00] Cameron McEwen: the genesis indicates that it's a primary or an original matter.
[36:07] Cameron McEwen: So trying to understand the genesis of the hyperreal as something original is a very interesting question.
[36:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[36:16] Bob Dobbs: And this is an example,
[36:19] Bob Dobbs: say,
[36:20] Bob Dobbs: college students
[36:21] Bob Dobbs: 10, 15 years later,
[36:23] Bob Dobbs: after the baby boomers who read
[36:25] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan.
[36:27] Bob Dobbs: This appeals to them,
[36:29] Bob Dobbs: and it's a lot more complicated than McLuhan writing.
[36:32] Bob Dobbs: Though for most people,
[36:33] Bob Dobbs: they thought they couldn't understand McLuhan.
[36:36] Bob Dobbs: So it seemed...
[36:37] Bob Dobbs: complicated.
[36:38] Bob Dobbs: But once you got familiar with McLuhan or figured out most of it,
[36:42] Bob Dobbs: it was very simple compared to these kind of statements.
[36:47] Bob Dobbs: So that's part of Derrida and the postmodern writers.
[36:50] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what you say.
[36:53] Bob Dobbs: They use more words.
[36:54] Bob Dobbs: They complicate it.
[36:55] Bob Dobbs: They got good metaphors.
[36:58] Bob Dobbs: They take advantage of the genetic world that's happening around people.
[37:05] Cameron McEwen: But we have to understand that you
[37:08] Cameron McEwen: One of the things that's going on here is that
[37:11] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard, when he's writing,
[37:13] Cameron McEwen: is thinking.
[37:28] Cameron McEwen: He is trying to work out these problems in his own mind.
[37:34] Cameron McEwen: His trial,
[37:35] Cameron McEwen: his tribal,
[37:35] Cameron McEwen: what was that,
[37:35] Cameron McEwen: in his own mind?
[37:36] Cameron McEwen: He's trying to work out these problems in his own mind.
[37:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[37:37] Cameron McEwen: So it's not a...
[37:37] Cameron McEwen: translation of McLuhan,
[37:40] Cameron McEwen: except in the sense that when McLuhan was writing,
[37:43] Cameron McEwen: he too was trying to figure out stuff.
[37:46] Cameron McEwen: So it's not a matching between two things.
[37:53] Cameron McEwen: Rather,
[37:53] Cameron McEwen: it's a parallel between two people thinking.
[38:00] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[38:00] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan was not trying to write cleverly.
[38:03] Bob Dobbs: This is more clever writing.
[38:05] Bob Dobbs: So he's thinking self-consciously about himself,
[38:09] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan wouldn't be doing that.
[38:11] Bob Dobbs: He would be looking anti-environment in kind of a simple way,
[38:16] Bob Dobbs: not with postmodern schizoid complexities that people enjoyed.
[38:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[38:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan distrusted this way of thinking.
[38:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[38:32] Cameron McEwen: He thought,
[38:33] Cameron McEwen: and I think...
[38:34] Cameron McEwen: there's some truth to this.
[38:36] Cameron McEwen: He thought that it was easy to get into the,
[38:40] Cameron McEwen: to sort of relax into these complexities as if the complexities could be taken as the answer to the needed investigation.
[38:58] Bob Dobbs: No way.
[39:00] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[39:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[39:02] Bob Dobbs: so I don't know.
[39:03] Bob Dobbs: I think we've covered that.
[39:04] Bob Dobbs: I'll just reread it.
[39:06] Bob Dobbs: Rather,
[39:06] Bob Dobbs: we must think of the media as if they were in outer orbit,
[39:10] Bob Dobbs: a sort of genetic code which controls the mutation of the real and the hyperreal,
[39:14] Bob Dobbs: just as the other micro molecular code controls the passage of the signal from a representative sphere of meaning to the genetic sphere of the program signal.
[39:25] Bob Dobbs: So what's appropriate here is juxtaposing outer space and inner space.
[39:29] Bob Dobbs: You know?
[39:30] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[39:30] Cameron McEwen: that's a good point.
[39:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[39:33] Bob Dobbs: Outer trip,
[39:34] Bob Dobbs: what's he say?
[39:35] Bob Dobbs: Outer,
[39:38] Bob Dobbs: if I just move it,
[39:39] Bob Dobbs: it goes away too far.
[39:45] Bob Dobbs: Where are we?
[39:46] Cameron McEwen: We're at the end of 27,
[39:53] Cameron McEwen: top of 28.
[39:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[39:55] Bob Dobbs: in outer orbit,
[39:56] Bob Dobbs: much as they were in outer orbit,
[39:58] Bob Dobbs: and then the genetic,
[39:59] Bob Dobbs: micro-molecular code.
[40:02] Bob Dobbs: So that's useful.
[40:06] Bob Dobbs: So then the next paragraph.
[40:07] Bob Dobbs: The whole traditional mode of causality is brought into question.
[40:11] Bob Dobbs: Now that's Gutenbergian causality,
[40:13] Bob Dobbs: right?
[40:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[40:16] Bob Dobbs: And he says,
[40:18] Bob Dobbs: this is his definition of causality.
[40:20] Bob Dobbs: The perspective,
[40:22] Bob Dobbs: deterministic mode,
[40:23] Bob Dobbs: the active,
[40:24] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,
[40:25] Bob Dobbs: active,
[40:26] Bob Dobbs: critical mode,
[40:27] Bob Dobbs: the analytical mode.
[40:29] Bob Dobbs: The distinction between cause and effect,
[40:31] Bob Dobbs: between active and passive,
[40:32] Bob Dobbs: between subject and object,
[40:33] Bob Dobbs: between ends and means,
[40:35] Bob Dobbs: the whole traditional mode of causality is brought into question.
[40:38] Bob Dobbs: The perspective,
[40:41] Bob Dobbs: the mode,
[40:41] Bob Dobbs: and the dialectics,
[40:43] Bob Dobbs: like cause and effect,
[40:45] Bob Dobbs: active and passive,
[40:47] Bob Dobbs: ends and means.
[40:48] Bob Dobbs: It is in this mode...
[40:50] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[40:50] Cameron McEwen: let's just hold up for half a second here.
[40:58] Cameron McEwen: When he talks about the distinction,
[41:04] Cameron McEwen: it's possible to get into some difficulties there because he says after the colon,
[41:13] Cameron McEwen: the whole traditional mode of causality is brought into question.
[41:16] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[41:17] Cameron McEwen: Then he puts colon,
[41:18] Cameron McEwen: the perspective.
[41:20] Cameron McEwen: The analytical mode,
[41:22] Cameron McEwen: the distinction.
[41:27] Cameron McEwen: The threat there is that these are going to be taken as singular and as literal.
[41:35] Cameron McEwen: So he's kind of balancing on a knife edge here,
[41:39] Cameron McEwen: and we'll have to see what happens to him.
[41:43] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[41:46] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to keep writing going.
[41:49] Bob Dobbs: So he believes in writing this.
[41:52] Bob Dobbs: That gets into a bit of Gutenberg effect.
[41:56] Bob Dobbs: The distinction between cause and effect,
[41:58] Bob Dobbs: between active and passive,
[41:59] Bob Dobbs: between subject and object,
[42:00] Bob Dobbs: between ends and means.
[42:01] Bob Dobbs: It is in this mode that it can be said.
[42:05] Bob Dobbs: So what is this mode?
[42:08] Bob Dobbs: It's not the traditional mode,
[42:11] Bob Dobbs: unless he means...
[42:12] Bob Dobbs: No,
[42:13] Bob Dobbs: he doesn't mean that.
[42:14] Bob Dobbs: What does he mean?
[42:15] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to point to the new now again.
[42:18] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[42:19] Cameron McEwen: sort of.
[42:19] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[42:20] Cameron McEwen: I remember something very complicated is going on here,
[42:28] Cameron McEwen: and it's probably wrong already to call it something.
[42:33] Cameron McEwen: It's probably more like a very complicated chemical formula where different types of
[42:48] Cameron McEwen: thought.
[42:49] Cameron McEwen: are being activated as he goes along.
[42:53] Cameron McEwen: So the singular,
[42:58] Cameron McEwen: this mode,
[43:01] Cameron McEwen: is very inappropriate to what he was talking about before with the dissolution of life into TV.
[43:12] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[43:13] Cameron McEwen: But it recaptures the singularities that he just had.
[43:18] Cameron McEwen: the perspective,
[43:19] Cameron McEwen: the analytic mode,
[43:21] Cameron McEwen: the distinction.
[43:23] Cameron McEwen: And then he goes on to say this mode.
[43:25] Cameron McEwen: So what he's trying to think through is how do we talk about this stuff beyond literalism?
[43:38] Cameron McEwen: And it's not an easy thing to even pose as a question,
[43:45] Cameron McEwen: let alone answer.
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[43:50] Bob Dobbs: so when he goes,
[43:51] Bob Dobbs: it is in this mode,
[43:52] Bob Dobbs: his brain is in the oral mode,
[43:55] Bob Dobbs: and so he's sloppily writing what he's talking or thinking,
[44:01] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[44:02] Bob Dobbs: He's not looking at the words like he does in other parts.
[44:06] Cameron McEwen: I agree with you.
[44:10] Cameron McEwen: He's fallen into a poor way of talking here.
[44:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[44:14] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[44:15] Cameron McEwen: He's just said that...
[44:17] Cameron McEwen: We can't understand TV literally,
[44:20] Cameron McEwen: but then he says TV watches us,
[44:23] Cameron McEwen: TV...
[44:23] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[44:24] Cameron McEwen: you've faded out.
[44:30] Bob Dobbs: Can you repeat that sentence again?
[44:32] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[44:32] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.
[44:34] Cameron McEwen: I wonder what...
[44:35] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.
[44:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[44:38] Cameron McEwen: we won't worry about it because we'll just repeat.
[44:41] Cameron McEwen: So,
[44:42] Cameron McEwen: he's just said that we can't take TV literally.
[44:46] Cameron McEwen: And now he says TV watches us,
[44:48] Cameron McEwen: TV alienates us,
[44:49] Cameron McEwen: TV manipulates us,
[44:51] Cameron McEwen: TV informs us.
[44:52] Cameron McEwen: So the question that's posed here is how do we talk about what's going on without falling into Carl Williams?
[45:02] Cameron McEwen: And to me,
[45:05] Cameron McEwen: he falls into Carl Williams here,
[45:08] Cameron McEwen: but it's hard to know if he is doing this entirely unconsciously or...
[45:14] Cameron McEwen: Maybe he's doing it consciously in the sense of saying,
[45:22] Cameron McEwen: well,
[45:22] Cameron McEwen: here's the problem.
[45:23] Cameron McEwen: How do I really say this?
[45:26] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[45:27] Bob Dobbs: When he says he's in this mode,
[45:29] Bob Dobbs: he means the perspective mode.
[45:33] Bob Dobbs: And so he's saying,
[45:34] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[45:35] Bob Dobbs: if I went into the perspective mode,
[45:37] Bob Dobbs: which is obsolete,
[45:38] Bob Dobbs: then all I can say is TV watches us,
[45:40] Bob Dobbs: alienates us,
[45:41] Bob Dobbs: TV manipulates us.
[45:43] Bob Dobbs: Then he says,
[45:44] Bob Dobbs: throughout all this,
[45:45] Bob Dobbs: one is dependent on the analytical conception,
[45:48] Bob Dobbs: that's what I just said he did,
[45:50] Bob Dobbs: whose vanishing point is the horizon between reality and meaning.
[45:55] Bob Dobbs: He's repeating himself in every couple of sentences.
[45:59] Bob Dobbs: He's saying the same thing again,
[46:02] Bob Dobbs: right?
[46:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[46:03] Cameron McEwen: he's turning over the earth.
[46:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[46:07] Cameron McEwen: Like somebody plowing or something.
[46:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[46:09] Cameron McEwen: And he's trying to find ways of saying what is difficult to say in order to find what is difficult to find.
[46:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[46:22] Bob Dobbs: Throughout all this,
[46:23] Bob Dobbs: one is dependent on the analytical conception whose vanishing point is the horizon between reality and meaning.
[46:30] Bob Dobbs: That's really Gutenbergian.
[46:33] Bob Dobbs: That's not,
[46:34] Bob Dobbs: the medium is not altering reality and meaning.
[46:39] Bob Dobbs: That's included,
[46:40] Bob Dobbs: but many other things.
[46:41] Bob Dobbs: So it's too much emphasis on maybe the philosophical,
[46:46] Bob Dobbs: the Gutenbergian philosophical there,
[46:48] Bob Dobbs: reality and meaning.
[46:50] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[46:50] Bob Dobbs: you have books out.
[46:52] Bob Dobbs: What's the meaning of today?
[46:53] Bob Dobbs: How do we deal with the meaning crisis?
[46:56] Bob Dobbs: That's a repeated cliche.
[46:59] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[47:00] Cameron McEwen: but he's indicating that the reality and meaning have vanished.
[47:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[47:09] Cameron McEwen: So he's agreeing with,
[47:11] Cameron McEwen: he's not asserting that we can think about reality in a literal way or meaning in a literal way like...
[47:21] Cameron McEwen: those books do,
[47:23] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is it's very difficult to use words in a situation where life has dissolved into TV.
[47:39] Cameron McEwen: Words belong to the prior regime,
[47:43] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[47:44] Cameron McEwen: So now we're in a new regime,
[47:46] Cameron McEwen: or we think we're in a new regime,
[47:48] Cameron McEwen: or
[47:49] Cameron McEwen: It appears we're in a new regime,
[47:52] Cameron McEwen: or we are somehow forced to think about a new regime,
[47:57] Cameron McEwen: but we don't know how to do it.
[47:58] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[47:59] Bob Dobbs: and he's constantly repeating the problem.
[48:02] Bob Dobbs: He's aware of the problem.
[48:04] Bob Dobbs: And,
[48:04] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[48:05] Bob Dobbs: then if he was a full McLuhan,
[48:07] Bob Dobbs: he would quote Finnegans Wake to show that Joyce was already aware of it.
[48:12] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[48:12] Bob Dobbs: It's good to give that...
[48:15] Bob Dobbs: perspective remembering of someone years ago having to write his book the way he did to get this point across.
[48:23] Bob Dobbs: It's hard to write book anymore.
[48:26] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[48:26] Cameron McEwen: But at the end of his life,
[48:29] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was reading a lot of Heidegger,
[48:31] Cameron McEwen: and he really liked
[48:35] Cameron McEwen: Heidegger's recourse to the pre-Socratics.
[48:40] Cameron McEwen: We could say that these problems were thought years ago in Finnegans Wake,
[48:45] Cameron McEwen: but they were also thought more than 2,500 years ago by the pre-Socratics.
[48:53] Cameron McEwen: Or at least it's arguable.
[48:54] Cameron McEwen: It's arguable.
[48:56] Cameron McEwen: I don't want to assert that somehow it's obviously true.
[49:01] Cameron McEwen: Great.
[49:04] Bob Dobbs: So being Orwell in McLuhan,
[49:09] Bob Dobbs: We can see how to analyze this so far.
[49:13] Bob Dobbs: We see the problem he's created for himself because he wants to write.
[49:19] Bob Dobbs: But let's see if he can get somewhere.
[49:21] Bob Dobbs: I think he tries to.
[49:25] Bob Dobbs: So he's really showing the cul-de-sac,
[49:27] Bob Dobbs: right?
[49:27] Bob Dobbs: He's showing the cul-de-sac.
[49:30] Bob Dobbs: So this is why it's a very good quote to have.
[49:32] Bob Dobbs: You've got to pay attention to read this.
[49:36] Bob Dobbs: Probably most people couldn't read it.
[49:39] Bob Dobbs: They would say,
[49:39] Bob Dobbs: why stick him in there,
[49:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[49:41] Bob Dobbs: in this McLuhan world?
[49:43] Bob Dobbs: No,
[49:43] Bob Dobbs: you've got to have this.
[49:46] Bob Dobbs: On the contrary,
[49:47] Bob Dobbs: we must imagine TV on the DNA model as an effect in which the opposing poles of determination vanish according to a nuclear contraction or retraction of the old polar schema,
[49:59] Bob Dobbs: which has always maintained a minimal distance between a cause and effect between a subject and an object.
[50:05] Bob Dobbs: There is,
[50:05] Bob Dobbs: repeating the cul-de-sac,
[50:07] Bob Dobbs: precisely the meaning gap.
[50:09] Bob Dobbs: The discrepancy,
[50:09] Bob Dobbs: the difference,
[50:10] Bob Dobbs: the smallest possible margin of error,
[50:13] Bob Dobbs: irreductible under penalty of reabsorption in an aleatory and indeterminable process which discourse can no longer even account for,
[50:21] Bob Dobbs: since it is itself a determinable order.
[50:24] Bob Dobbs: Talk about describing the cul-de-sac.
[50:27] Bob Dobbs: This is quite interesting in that sense,
[50:29] Bob Dobbs: isn't it?
[50:30] Cameron McEwen: No,
[50:33] Cameron McEwen: it's well done,
[50:34] Cameron McEwen: I believe.
[50:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[50:37] Bob Dobbs: Even though...
[50:39] Bob Dobbs: He's missing stuff,
[50:41] Bob Dobbs: missing something.
[50:43] Bob Dobbs: On the contrary,
[50:44] Bob Dobbs: we must imagine TV on the DNA model.
[50:46] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[50:46] Bob Dobbs: why would we have to?
[50:49] Bob Dobbs: Because the genetic...
[50:51] Cameron McEwen: That goes back to the whole Genesis question.
[50:55] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[50:57] Cameron McEwen: We have to go back to what could be the original impetus to
[51:06] Cameron McEwen: TV as life.
[51:08] Cameron McEwen: And life is TV.
[51:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[51:11] Bob Dobbs: life.
[51:12] Bob Dobbs: I thought you said.
[51:13] Bob Dobbs: L-I-F-E.
[51:14] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[51:15] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[51:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[51:16] Bob Dobbs: so the DNA model is referring to biology or life.
[51:20] Bob Dobbs: That's what he's...
[51:21] Cameron McEwen: No,
[51:23] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying that just a couple paragraphs above,
[51:28] Cameron McEwen: we were talking about how genetic actually echoes genesis.
[51:35] Cameron McEwen: So when he's saying we must imagine TV in the DNA model,
[51:40] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is if we're going to say that life dissolves into TV and TV dissolves into life,
[51:50] Cameron McEwen: we have to understand that somehow as something original.
[51:55] Cameron McEwen: We can't start as if we knew what TV and life are.
[52:01] Cameron McEwen: We have to imagine...
[52:06] Bob Dobbs: He blipped out.
[52:07] Bob Dobbs: We have to imagine what?
[52:10] Cameron McEwen: All of the ways that life and TV can appear,
[52:14] Cameron McEwen: either alone or in their relationship,
[52:16] Cameron McEwen: we have to imagine how those can be generated,
[52:21] Cameron McEwen: right?
[52:21] Cameron McEwen: The DNA model says you take all of the human beings on Earth,
[52:30] Cameron McEwen: and you take all of the animals,
[52:32] Cameron McEwen: and you take all of the plants,
[52:33] Cameron McEwen: and you take everything that's alive.
[52:37] Cameron McEwen: All of that can be explained through DNA.
[52:43] Cameron McEwen: And so what he's saying here is that if we're going to understand where we are in life,
[52:51] Cameron McEwen: we're going to have to understand complications on that kind of model as some kind of original genesis that can generate all
[53:05] Cameron McEwen: of these.
[53:06] Cameron McEwen: complications.
[53:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[53:11] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[53:11] Bob Dobbs: wouldn't a cul-de-sac generate all these contradictions?
[53:15] Bob Dobbs: No,
[53:16] Cameron McEwen: the cul-de-sac is the result of our complete inability to understand these complications in their genesis.
[53:31] Cameron McEwen: So all we're left with is a kind of universal blank.
[53:37] Cameron McEwen: And that's what the cul-de-sac is.
[53:41] Bob Dobbs: Yet there's making projected on it by humans.
[53:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[53:45] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[53:45] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[53:45] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[53:46] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[53:46] Cameron McEwen: humans,
[53:47] Cameron McEwen: because they can't and won't live in the blank,
[53:51] Cameron McEwen: then they revert to living in the Gutenberg galaxy,
[53:54] Cameron McEwen: which,
[53:55] Cameron McEwen: of course,
[53:56] Cameron McEwen: is inappropriate and generates all kinds of problems,
[54:00] Cameron McEwen: but that's what we decide to do.
[54:03] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[54:07] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[54:08] Bob Dobbs: On the contrary,
[54:09] Bob Dobbs: we must imagine TV on the DNA model as an effect in which the opposing poles of determination vanish according to a nuclear contraction or retraction of the old pole schema,
[54:20] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg,
[54:20] Bob Dobbs: that's all Gutenberg,
[54:21] Bob Dobbs: which has always maintained a minimal distance between a cause and effect between the subject and an object.
[54:27] Bob Dobbs: Precisely the meaning gap,
[54:29] Bob Dobbs: the discrepancy,
[54:30] Bob Dobbs: the difference,
[54:30] Bob Dobbs: the smallest possible margin of error,
[54:33] Bob Dobbs: irreductible under penalty of reabsorption.
[54:36] Bob Dobbs: in an aleatory and interminable process,
[54:39] Bob Dobbs: more nothingness,
[54:42] Bob Dobbs: which discourse can no longer even account for,
[54:45] Bob Dobbs: since it is itself a determinable order.
[54:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[54:48] Bob Dobbs: that makes sense as you read it.
[54:53] Bob Dobbs: And then if I want to...
[54:54] Cameron McEwen: It's a kind of definition of the cul-de-sac.
[54:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[54:59] Bob Dobbs: he keeps doing this.
[55:01] Bob Dobbs: And so
[55:02] Bob Dobbs: I understand what he's saying,
[55:04] Bob Dobbs: but I don't feel the need to...
[55:06] Bob Dobbs: put into my words.
[55:08] Bob Dobbs: I get his words.
[55:10] Bob Dobbs: And my words are just saying,
[55:11] Bob Dobbs: well,
[55:11] Bob Dobbs: that's the cul-de-sac.
[55:12] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[55:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[55:20] Bob Dobbs: The next paragraph.
[55:26] Bob Dobbs: It is this gap,
[55:27] Bob Dobbs: which above was the meaning gap.
[55:29] Bob Dobbs: It is this gap which vanishes in the genetic coding process.
[55:33] Bob Dobbs: We're in determinacy.
[55:34] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[55:34] Bob Dobbs: people might find it hard to figure out,
[55:36] Bob Dobbs: how is this a genetic coding process?
[55:38] Bob Dobbs: You got a way of explaining it?
[55:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[55:43] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[55:44] Cameron McEwen: that's what we've been talking about.
[55:45] Cameron McEwen: I think in genetic coding process,
[55:48] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand genesis.
[55:51] Cameron McEwen: You have to understand that this is,
[55:53] Cameron McEwen: he's not talking about literal genetic coding.
[55:57] Cameron McEwen: He's talking about the
[56:02] Cameron McEwen: what might be called the parallel.
[56:05] Cameron McEwen: genetic coding of reality in a situation where reality,
[56:16] Cameron McEwen: according to all of our old codes,
[56:19] Cameron McEwen: has disappeared,
[56:20] Cameron McEwen: has dissolved.
[56:22] Cameron McEwen: So what he's saying is that in order to come to grips with this gap that has vanished,
[56:32] Cameron McEwen: the gap that has vanished is the
[56:34] Cameron McEwen: is the gap that was operable in all of the old ways of understanding,
[56:40] Cameron McEwen: all of the ways that are now null and void.
[56:44] Cameron McEwen: So he's saying that if we're going to understand where we're at,
[56:51] Cameron McEwen: we also have to understand how the cul-de-sac came about.
[56:57] Cameron McEwen: What was its genesis?
[57:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[57:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[57:07] Bob Dobbs: I want to see if he says anything new here,
[57:10] Bob Dobbs: next to this paragraph.
[57:12] Bob Dobbs: I doubt it.
[57:13] Bob Dobbs: He's going to repeat himself again.
[57:15] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[57:17] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?
[57:18] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[57:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[57:20] Bob Dobbs: It is this gap which vanishes in the genetic coding process,
[57:23] Bob Dobbs: where indeterminacy is less a product of molecular randomness than a product of the abolition,
[57:28] Bob Dobbs: pure and simple,
[57:28] Bob Dobbs: of the relation.
[57:30] Bob Dobbs: So that's interesting.
[57:31] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[57:31] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says in Hot and Cool,
[57:34] Bob Dobbs: only relations exist.
[57:36] Bob Dobbs: So
[57:37] Bob Dobbs: I think he understood what Baudrillard is saying here,
[57:41] Bob Dobbs: that the connections,
[57:42] Bob Dobbs: no,
[57:42] Bob Dobbs: the interplay,
[57:44] Bob Dobbs: the resonance,
[57:44] Bob Dobbs: the vibration,
[57:45] Bob Dobbs: the action of the gap has gone.
[57:48] Bob Dobbs: And he kind of talks about that in the op-ed of
[57:53] Bob Dobbs: September
[57:54] Bob Dobbs: 74 in New York Times.
[57:56] Bob Dobbs: So he's pointing out there's no gap.
[57:59] Bob Dobbs: So in a way,
[57:59] Bob Dobbs: there's no tactility.
[58:01] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[58:02] Bob Dobbs: But he can...
[58:03] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.
[58:05] Cameron McEwen: There's no gap,
[58:06] Cameron McEwen: there's no tactility,
[58:07] Cameron McEwen: there's no relation in the
[58:12] Cameron McEwen: Gutenbergian matrix.
[58:17] Cameron McEwen: And the whole question is,
[58:21] Cameron McEwen: how are we going to account for that disappeared matrix as a way of potentially finding a way to recount
[58:34] Cameron McEwen: where we are now.
[58:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[58:44] Bob Dobbs: I'm inclined to say he's failing here,
[58:46] Bob Dobbs: but it's important to point out,
[58:49] Bob Dobbs: I don't think,
[58:51] Bob Dobbs: so someone who's read McLuhan should find this very useful because they should note the wrestling with the idea concept of the gap.
[59:00] Bob Dobbs: That's a big McLuhan word.
[59:01] Bob Dobbs: So it's important to see how Baudrillard recognizes that and talks around it or through it or something.
[59:09] Bob Dobbs: And can't get out of it,
[59:12] Bob Dobbs: but let's see.
[59:14] Bob Dobbs: It is this gap which vanishes in the genetic coding process where indeterminacy is...
[59:19] Bob Dobbs: Remember at the end of
[59:22] Bob Dobbs: Lhasa Media,
[59:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[59:24] Bob Dobbs: the media landscape can't be controlled nor recognized.
[59:30] Bob Dobbs: What was it?
[59:31] Bob Dobbs: the two points,
[59:33] Bob Dobbs: the end of laws of media.
[59:35] Bob Dobbs: Unchartable.
[59:37] Bob Dobbs: It's unchartable,
[59:39] Bob Dobbs: the sea we're in.
[59:42] Bob Dobbs: That's a simple way to say what he's doing here.
[59:45] Bob Dobbs: It is this gap which vanishes in the genetic coding process where indeterminacy is less a product of molecular randomness than a product of the abolition,
[59:54] Bob Dobbs: pure and simple,
[59:54] Bob Dobbs: of the relation.
[59:55] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[59:55] Bob Dobbs: this is good talking to the quantum physicists.
[1:00:00] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if they would recognize this.
[1:00:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:00:03] Bob Dobbs: the principle of indeterminacy is less a product of molecular randomness.
[1:00:09] Bob Dobbs: I wonder if that's literally out of their book,
[1:00:13] Bob Dobbs: the quantum physicist's book,
[1:00:14] Bob Dobbs: Quantum Mechanics.
[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: And it's not a product of the abolition,
[1:00:20] Bob Dobbs: pure and simple,
[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: of the relation.
[1:00:22] Bob Dobbs: And it's less a product.
[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: wait,
[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: it's less a product than a product.
[1:00:26] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:00:26] Bob Dobbs: it is.
[1:00:27] Bob Dobbs: Sorry.
[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: Less a product.
[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: randomness,
[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: but it's a product of relation.
[1:00:34] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:00:34] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says that,
[1:00:35] Bob Dobbs: that kind of contradicts what I just said,
[1:00:38] Bob Dobbs: but I think that relational perception is going to suffer here.
[1:00:44] Bob Dobbs: In the process...
[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: Remember that he's talked about,
[1:00:49] Cameron McEwen: in the preceding paragraphs,
[1:00:51] Cameron McEwen: he's talked about how the literal things disappear,
[1:00:57] Cameron McEwen: like subject and object.
[1:00:59] Cameron McEwen: So what he's talking about here in the abolition,
[1:01:01] Cameron McEwen: pure and simple,
[1:01:02] Cameron McEwen: of the relation,
[1:01:03] Cameron McEwen: is you can't have a relation.
[1:01:06] Cameron McEwen: between things that have disappeared.
[1:01:09] Cameron McEwen: Relation needs to have poles.
[1:01:12] Cameron McEwen: And so he has talked about the disappearance of poles,
[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: and I believe he goes on to talk about that more.
[1:01:23] Cameron McEwen: And it's correct that the world of Gutenbergian perception is inherently dualistic,
[1:01:33] Cameron McEwen: but it's dualistic in
[1:01:35] Cameron McEwen: a way that implies a monistic solution.
[1:01:40] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan,
[1:01:42] Cameron McEwen: when he's reading a text,
[1:01:44] Cameron McEwen: he always wants to know if it's either dualistic or monistic because either one of those points to Gutenberg.
[1:01:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:01:54] Bob Dobbs: The gap here is Gutenberg.
[1:01:57] Bob Dobbs: That's Baudrillard bias.
[1:01:59] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:02:00] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:02:00] Cameron McEwen: But what I want to point out here,
[1:02:02] Cameron McEwen: and I think it's...
[1:02:05] Cameron McEwen: sort of the subtext of what you've been saying,
[1:02:10] Cameron McEwen: is that
[1:02:11] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard is giving us an example of thought and action.
[1:02:16] Cameron McEwen: He's always going over the same things.
[1:02:20] Cameron McEwen: He's looking to see if there's a slight variation that might be interesting to follow up.
[1:02:28] Cameron McEwen: That's what thinking does,
[1:02:29] Cameron McEwen: real thinking.
[1:02:30] Cameron McEwen: And that's what real writing does.
[1:02:33] Cameron McEwen: And so...
[1:02:34] Cameron McEwen: The reason that it's important to have a quotation like this in the middle of considerations of
[1:02:44] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is that in reading McLuhan,
[1:02:50] Cameron McEwen: we always need to bring some notion of thinking to our reading.
[1:02:58] Cameron McEwen: And by and large,
[1:03:01] Cameron McEwen: when people have read McLuhan...
[1:03:04] Cameron McEwen: They have approached him as if they knew very well what thinking was.
[1:03:09] Cameron McEwen: And then when they read McLuhan,
[1:03:12] Cameron McEwen: either they don't find any thinking at all,
[1:03:16] Cameron McEwen: which is what people were charging him with in the
[1:03:20] Cameron McEwen: 1970s, or they find thinking that is simplistic,
[1:03:27] Cameron McEwen: that we're going to go beyond McLuhan.
[1:03:30] Cameron McEwen: So in contemporary McLuhan research,
[1:03:33] Cameron McEwen: You find phrases like extending
[1:03:38] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan, right,
[1:03:40] Cameron McEwen: or going beyond,
[1:03:41] Cameron McEwen: beyond McLuhan,
[1:03:42] Cameron McEwen: etc.,
[1:03:46] Cameron McEwen: which is ridiculous in that the reading that is brought to
[1:03:53] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and that is then seen in McLuhan is not real thinking.
[1:04:02] Cameron McEwen: What you do with McLuhan and what I try to do with McLuhan is we try to say,
[1:04:06] Cameron McEwen: okay,
[1:04:07] Cameron McEwen: let's start with a notion of thinking that is very complex.
[1:04:14] Cameron McEwen: And let's let
[1:04:16] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan not only be doing that complex thinking,
[1:04:20] Cameron McEwen: but doing it in a way that can inform and enlighten our notion of complex thinking.
[1:04:32] Cameron McEwen: So then McLuhan goes from somebody who's writing conceivably stupid stuff to somebody who is informative,
[1:04:45] Cameron McEwen: who is attempting in a situation where communication has become very,
[1:04:54] Cameron McEwen: very difficult.
[1:04:55] Cameron McEwen: He's attempting in that difficulty to communicate.
[1:05:00] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:05:01] Bob Dobbs: when you say thinking,
[1:05:02] Bob Dobbs: can that be largely saying making?
[1:05:08] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:05:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:05:11] Cameron McEwen: If we think of making as contrasted to matching,
[1:05:15] Cameron McEwen: then that's exactly what thinking is.
[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: And being confident about it.
[1:05:28] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure what you mean there.
[1:05:31] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:05:33] Bob Dobbs: knowing that's what you're doing,
[1:05:34] Bob Dobbs: making,
[1:05:35] Bob Dobbs: that it's fragile,
[1:05:39] Bob Dobbs: a fallacy,
[1:05:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:05:41] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:05:41] Bob Dobbs: you think my fallacy is wrong,
[1:05:44] Bob Dobbs: the more you understand,
[1:05:45] Bob Dobbs: accept that.
[1:05:47] Bob Dobbs: That makes your thinking stronger.
[1:05:55] Bob Dobbs: Pierce or...
[1:05:55] Bob Dobbs: Sure.
[1:05:55] Bob Dobbs: Pierce's.
[1:05:55] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[1:05:56] Cameron McEwen: It's like a painter.
[1:05:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:05:59] Cameron McEwen: A painter who,
[1:06:01] Cameron McEwen: like,
[1:06:02] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:06:03] Cameron McEwen: Picasso or Clay or somebody,
[1:06:07] Cameron McEwen: when they approach the canvas and they know that they're not matching something,
[1:06:13] Cameron McEwen: then they need to...
[1:06:17] Cameron McEwen: to have a certain courage and a certain confidence just to pick up the brush,
[1:06:24] Cameron McEwen: take a certain color or mixture of colors,
[1:06:28] Cameron McEwen: and put it on the canvas.
[1:06:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:30] Bob Dobbs: that's what I meant by confidence,
[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: kind of confidence.
[1:06:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:32] Cameron McEwen: exactly,
[1:06:33] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[1:06:34] Cameron McEwen: I'm just trying to bring out what you already said.
[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: so that's a good point to make.
[1:06:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:06:43] Cameron McEwen: it's like Explorations requires...
[1:06:47] Cameron McEwen: that you get in the boat,
[1:06:51] Cameron McEwen: go across the ocean,
[1:06:55] Cameron McEwen: find something,
[1:06:57] Cameron McEwen: some strange land or something.
[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: go across the river Styx,
[1:07:02] Bob Dobbs: meet your maker.
[1:07:04] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,
[1:07:05] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[1:07:06] Cameron McEwen: That's sort of the ultimate Explorations,
[1:07:09] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:07:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:07:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:07:13] Cameron McEwen: so that requires huge confidence.
[1:07:18] Cameron McEwen: You could say that when people in Paleolithic times were penetrating into caves that were completely unknown,
[1:07:31] Cameron McEwen: completely dark,
[1:07:35] Cameron McEwen: had all sorts of dangers to them,
[1:07:40] Cameron McEwen: and they still did that,
[1:07:42] Cameron McEwen: that was defining.
[1:07:45] Cameron McEwen: what human beings are.
[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: yes.
[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: So in the process of molecular control,
[1:07:53] Bob Dobbs: which goes from the DNA nucleus to the substance it informs,
[1:07:57] Bob Dobbs: there is no more traversing of an effect,
[1:07:59] Bob Dobbs: of an energy,
[1:08:00] Bob Dobbs: of a determination,
[1:08:01] Bob Dobbs: of any message,
[1:08:04] Bob Dobbs: order,
[1:08:04] Bob Dobbs: signal,
[1:08:05] Bob Dobbs: impulse,
[1:08:06] Bob Dobbs: message.
[1:08:07] Bob Dobbs: All these attempt to render the matter inintelligible to us,
[1:08:10] Bob Dobbs: but by analogy,
[1:08:12] Bob Dobbs: re-transcribing in terms of inscription,
[1:08:15] Bob Dobbs: vector decoding,
[1:08:17] Bob Dobbs: a dimension of which we know nothing.
[1:08:21] Bob Dobbs: It is no longer,
[1:08:23] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:08:23] Bob Dobbs: just a second,
[1:08:32] Bob Dobbs: it is no longer even a dimension,
[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: or perhaps it is the fourth,
[1:08:35] Bob Dobbs: that which is defined,
[1:08:37] Bob Dobbs: however,
[1:08:37] Bob Dobbs: in Einsteinian relativity by the absorption of the distinct poles of space and time.
[1:08:41] Bob Dobbs: So here he is.
[1:08:43] Bob Dobbs: say,
[1:08:43] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:08:43] Bob Dobbs: this is what it could be.
[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:08:45] Bob Dobbs: not that.
[1:08:47] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:08:47] Bob Dobbs: erase.
[1:08:48] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:08:48] Bob Dobbs: erase.
[1:08:49] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:08:49] Bob Dobbs: Eckhart,
[1:08:50] Bob Dobbs: the hand that writes the true thing.
[1:08:52] Bob Dobbs: Only the hand that erases writes the true thing.
[1:08:54] Bob Dobbs: That's what he's doing here.
[1:08:57] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:08:59] Bob Dobbs: I think it's still a little mark against him that he can't quote Finnegans Wake.
[1:09:07] Bob Dobbs: You see,
[1:09:07] Bob Dobbs: if you can read Finnegans Wake,
[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: then you know how to do what he's saying.
[1:09:12] Bob Dobbs: We've got to learn how to do.
[1:09:14] Bob Dobbs: When you know how to read the wake,
[1:09:17] Bob Dobbs: you've arrived at what he's hoping to get to,
[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: or what he's trying to say.
[1:09:24] Bob Dobbs: The wake did it already.
[1:09:26] Bob Dobbs: That should be,
[1:09:27] Bob Dobbs: any media colleges or paramedic colleges should know enough about the wake to say that,
[1:09:34] Bob Dobbs: to understand,
[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:09:36] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:09:36] Bob Dobbs: he's redoing Finnegans Wake,
[1:09:37] Bob Dobbs: just as McLuhan was.
[1:09:39] Bob Dobbs: Though McLuhan curiously...
[1:09:41] Bob Dobbs: got out of the bookish part of Finnegans Wake and showed it in a larger medium,
[1:09:47] Bob Dobbs: larger context,
[1:09:48] Bob Dobbs: larger environment.
[1:09:51] Bob Dobbs: It was just another desperate attempt by a sophisticated POB trying to deal with the fact that,
[1:09:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:09:58] Bob Dobbs: the anti-environment was becoming life.
[1:10:01] Bob Dobbs: Life was invading him as TV.
[1:10:05] Bob Dobbs: So maybe that's too many words.
[1:10:08] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:10:09] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to go back to...
[1:10:12] Bob Dobbs: where we were.
[1:10:14] Cameron McEwen: But I think that
[1:10:18] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard needs to be given credit here because
[1:10:25] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake can't be taken as the answer.
[1:10:30] Cameron McEwen: And it can't be taken as the answer because the whole book is a question about answers.
[1:10:39] Cameron McEwen: So the
[1:10:44] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake can be taken as posing a question about human life,
[1:10:51] Cameron McEwen: about being itself,
[1:10:53] Cameron McEwen: about the multiple personalities that every single person is,
[1:11:02] Cameron McEwen: and how complicated that becomes in a family of multiple personalities.
[1:11:10] Cameron McEwen: in a society of yet more,
[1:11:12] Cameron McEwen: in a world of yet more,
[1:11:14] Cameron McEwen: in a historical sequence of yet more,
[1:11:18] Cameron McEwen: of a future contemplation of yet more.
[1:11:21] Cameron McEwen: That's a very,
[1:11:22] Cameron McEwen: very sort of cyclonic vision.
[1:11:27] Cameron McEwen: And one way of understanding McLuhan is to understand him as trying to communicate where we're at on the basis of or coming from that
[1:11:44] Cameron McEwen: cyclonic vision.
[1:11:47] Cameron McEwen: So in a similar way,
[1:11:49] Cameron McEwen: we could say,
[1:11:50] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:11:50] Cameron McEwen: here's Baudrillard.
[1:11:51] Cameron McEwen: He is in that situation.
[1:11:57] Cameron McEwen: And communicate.
[1:11:59] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:12:00] Bob Dobbs: you're blipping out.
[1:12:01] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard is what?
[1:12:03] Cameron McEwen: Is trying to come from that same cyclonic process to communicate about it.
[1:12:13] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: let me throw something here.
[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: You know how
[1:12:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan liked the Elliott quote when Elliott was reviewing Joyce's Ulysses?
[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: we will continue.
[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: With the discoveries made by Joyce,
[1:12:27] Bob Dobbs: like a scientist,
[1:12:29] Bob Dobbs: we're not repeating the experiment.
[1:12:31] Bob Dobbs: We understand what the experiment shows,
[1:12:33] Bob Dobbs: and we'll make further other kinds of experiments with the same problem.
[1:12:40] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm saying.
[1:12:41] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard is working with the
[1:12:44] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake experiment,
[1:12:47] Bob Dobbs: or style,
[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: or mode,
[1:12:50] Bob Dobbs: and we don't know if he realizes that.
[1:12:53] Bob Dobbs: And I think you would have to acknowledge the wake to show that you know that.
[1:13:00] Bob Dobbs: So I think the Eliot quotes are perfect here.
[1:13:02] Bob Dobbs: This is what McLuhan was doing.
[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: He was continuing with the discoveries of Joyce,
[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: discovery being maybe a style of writing.
[1:13:14] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan didn't worry about...
[1:13:22] Bob Dobbs: Dealing choice.
[1:13:23] Bob Dobbs: He knew that there was a breakthrough area in the lab,
[1:13:27] Bob Dobbs: which welcomed other kinds of experiments.
[1:13:33] Bob Dobbs: You see,
[1:13:36] Cameron McEwen: the problem I have,
[1:13:36] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[1:13:37] Cameron McEwen: with what you're talking about now is it's hard for me to understand the priority that you're giving the weight.
[1:13:46] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:13:47] Cameron McEwen: are you saying it has a chronological priority?
[1:13:53] Cameron McEwen: Or is this a conceptual priority?
[1:13:55] Bob Dobbs: It's whatever Elliot meant when he said,
[1:14:01] Bob Dobbs: you learn something from Joyce,
[1:14:02] Bob Dobbs: and then,
[1:14:04] Bob Dobbs: like a scientist with Einstein,
[1:14:06] Bob Dobbs: you recognize the problem they've raised,
[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: and you work with that problem.
[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: And you're not stealing the problem.
[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: You're engaging the problem that the previous person has.
[1:14:21] Cameron McEwen: spelled out in a new way that that's right but you don't you don't believe you don't believe that mclean and Baudrillard just to take two examples you don't believe that they are furthering what
[1:14:37] Cameron McEwen: Joyce was doing you believe if i understand you correctly you believe the opposite you believe that Joyce already did what these people are trying to do yeah well
[1:14:50] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:14:51] Cameron McEwen: that's a very different thing from science,
[1:14:53] Cameron McEwen: isn't it?
[1:14:53] Cameron McEwen: Science starts with something that,
[1:14:56] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[1:14:57] Cameron McEwen: Einstein did,
[1:14:59] Cameron McEwen: and it's respected in this complexity and in this probability,
[1:15:07] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[1:15:09] Cameron McEwen: But then you test it and try and find out if there aren't ways of making it either more precise or in the...
[1:15:21] Cameron McEwen: most,
[1:15:23] Cameron McEwen: how can I say,
[1:15:23] Cameron McEwen: most revolutionary way,
[1:15:34] Cameron McEwen: the whole schema needs to be overturned.
[1:15:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:15:40] Bob Dobbs: Which is what Baudrillard is trying to do with McLuhan here.
[1:15:42] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:15:47] Cameron McEwen: you think?
[1:15:47] Cameron McEwen: I think that he is.
[1:15:50] Cameron McEwen: trying to do that with some of McLuhan terms.
[1:15:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:15:54] Cameron McEwen: But whether he's actually doing it with,
[1:15:59] Cameron McEwen: to whether he thinks that he's really sort of going beyond McLuhan,
[1:16:04] Cameron McEwen: getting rid of McLuhan or something,
[1:16:06] Cameron McEwen: I don't see that in this quotation.
[1:16:10] Cameron McEwen: I see him as sort of picking up the ball from where
[1:16:17] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan left it.
[1:16:18] Cameron McEwen: And,
[1:16:19] Cameron McEwen: um,
[1:16:21] Cameron McEwen: seeing what he can do with it.
[1:16:23] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:16:25] Bob Dobbs: he's...
[1:16:27] Bob Dobbs: He's doing that,
[1:16:28] Bob Dobbs: but not with a full enough understanding of McLuhan.
[1:16:34] Bob Dobbs: He's taking a simple level of McLuhan and thinking,
[1:16:39] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:16:39] Bob Dobbs: that didn't get all the way.
[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: I know what to fix or
[1:16:43] Bob Dobbs: I can come up with something better than McLuhan.
[1:16:47] Bob Dobbs: But he doesn't understand.
[1:16:49] Cameron McEwen: I haven't seen that in the quotation so far,
[1:16:53] Cameron McEwen: and I've never read any
[1:16:55] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard.
[1:16:57] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:16:59] Cameron McEwen: all I can say is that
[1:17:02] Cameron McEwen: I hear what you're saying and I'll look for that idea as we go further.
[1:17:09] Bob Dobbs: Remember,
[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: he said that this is the new formula or the formula for a new age.
[1:17:15] Bob Dobbs: That's exactly what McLuhan said about the modern poet.
[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: He creates a magical formula.
[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:17:27] Bob Dobbs: So he's recognizing,
[1:17:29] Bob Dobbs: but I can't tell whether he's saying we're in a different situation from McLuhan formula.
[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: If he is acknowledging McLuhan,
[1:17:43] Bob Dobbs: doesn't know if he can prove on it,
[1:17:46] Bob Dobbs: then he's doing what
[1:17:48] Bob Dobbs: Elliott said,
[1:17:49] Bob Dobbs: taking the discoveries of Joyce and doing further studies with it.
[1:17:55] Bob Dobbs: But.
[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if he's doing that.
[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking of McLuhan statements and Ellie's statements.
[1:18:05] Bob Dobbs: I can stick him on what he's doing,
[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: but
[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: I think he mentions that he's in the cul-de-sac on the Gutenberg side too much.
[1:18:17] Bob Dobbs: He should point out that he's aware that he's failing a little more.
[1:18:24] Bob Dobbs: And maybe if he could use quotes from Finnegans Wake like McLuhan did.
[1:18:29] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:18:29] Bob Dobbs: back then in the 60s,
[1:18:31] Bob Dobbs: people read McLuhan,
[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: Warren Peace,
[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: and Global Village,
[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: and they'd see these quotes,
[1:18:35] Bob Dobbs: they'd say,
[1:18:35] Bob Dobbs: what is that?
[1:18:36] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:18:38] Bob Dobbs: they wouldn't know how to read it.
[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: They wouldn't read it.
[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: They'd just say,
[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:18:42] Bob Dobbs: I guess this is McLuhan just trying to be difficult or cute or something.
[1:18:48] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:18:48] Bob Dobbs: But when you know the Wake,
[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: you know how to read it to a good extent.
[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: You see how well positioned these quotes are.
[1:18:57] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: he found the right quotes to position to what he was writing in the middle column.
[1:19:04] Bob Dobbs: It's quite an art form,
[1:19:05] Bob Dobbs: what he's doing with Finnegans Wake there.
[1:19:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:19:09] Bob Dobbs: so we're at,
[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: it is this gap which vanishes in the genetic coding process where indeterminacy is less a product of molecular randomness than a,
[1:19:19] Bob Dobbs: that's the Gutenberg anarchist,
[1:19:22] Bob Dobbs: a random person.
[1:19:23] Bob Dobbs: than a product of the abolition,
[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: pure and simple,
[1:19:26] Bob Dobbs: of the relation.
[1:19:26] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:19:27] Bob Dobbs: that's,
[1:19:28] Bob Dobbs: man,
[1:19:28] Bob Dobbs: there's no relation.
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: That's what McLuhan used to say.
[1:19:35] Bob Dobbs: There are no connections in matter,
[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: he used to say in the seminar.
[1:19:40] Bob Dobbs: No connections in matter.
[1:19:41] Bob Dobbs: And the scientists say,
[1:19:42] Bob Dobbs: what are you talking about?
[1:19:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:19:44] Bob Dobbs: it's the connections.
[1:19:48] Cameron McEwen: He's going beyond no connections.
[1:19:53] Cameron McEwen: In McLuhan sense here,
[1:19:54] Cameron McEwen: he's going to the cul-de-sac.
[1:19:58] Cameron McEwen: He's saying that the gap vanishes.
[1:20:01] Cameron McEwen: With the gap vanishing,
[1:20:03] Cameron McEwen: the relation vanishes,
[1:20:05] Cameron McEwen: and we're in a situation of nothingness,
[1:20:13] Cameron McEwen: of nihilism.
[1:20:15] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:20:15] Cameron McEwen: And he's trying to think through the fate of nihilism.
[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: And he's listing off all the words that are said in the Information Society and pointing out how inadequate they are.
[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: it's a society with a new order,
[1:20:32] Bob Dobbs: with a lot of signaling,
[1:20:33] Bob Dobbs: a lot of modeling,
[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: a lot of messaging,
[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: and substance is or isn't.
[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: And it informs.
[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: This is a good inventory of cliché phrases about the Information
[1:20:45] Bob Dobbs: Society or that the Information Society evokes.
[1:20:47] Bob Dobbs: And people think they're talking about something.
[1:20:48] Bob Dobbs: And you say,
[1:20:49] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:20:49] Bob Dobbs: none of those words work.
[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: In the process of molecular control,
[1:20:53] Bob Dobbs: which goes from the DNA nucleus to the substance,
[1:20:55] Bob Dobbs: it informs there is no more traversing of an effect of an energy.
[1:21:00] Bob Dobbs: Imagine that.
[1:21:01] Bob Dobbs: There's no energy of a determination of any message.
[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: Order,
[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: signal,
[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: impulse,
[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: message,
[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: all these attempt to render the matter intelligible to us,
[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: but by analogy,
[1:21:10] Bob Dobbs: re-transcribing in terms of inscription,
[1:21:12] Bob Dobbs: vector,
[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: decoding,
[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: a dimension of which we know nothing,
[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: is no longer even a dimension.
[1:21:17] Bob Dobbs: Perhaps it is the fourth.
[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: That which is defined,
[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: however,
[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: in Einsteinian relativity by the absorption of the distinct poles of space and time.
[1:21:26] Bob Dobbs: In fact,
[1:21:27] Bob Dobbs: this whole process only makes sense to us in the negative form.
[1:21:31] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:21:31] Bob Dobbs: that's an important point.
[1:21:33] Cameron McEwen: Very important.
[1:21:34] Cameron McEwen: That's sort of a summation of everything you've said so far.
[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:21:39] Bob Dobbs: So this leads to contemporary cynicism.
[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: Mistaking the...
[1:21:45] Bob Dobbs: non-negative as negative,
[1:21:49] Bob Dobbs: because you're going to have to look at it differently.
[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: And this might lead to an optimistic,
[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: what appears to be an optimistic bubbling,
[1:21:56] Bob Dobbs: like McLuhan sometimes appeared to have.
[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: But it's only because he's not getting duped into the rearview mirror of negative that Gutenberg creates.
[1:22:07] Bob Dobbs: So it only makes sense in a negative form.
[1:22:10] Bob Dobbs: So you get a lot of people writing books,
[1:22:12] Bob Dobbs: thinking they're getting somewhere.
[1:22:17] Cameron McEwen: I've noticed that it's a trend in the baby boom.
[1:22:20] Cameron McEwen: Everything,
[1:22:22] Cameron McEwen: everything,
[1:22:22] Cameron McEwen: politics,
[1:22:25] Cameron McEwen: journalism,
[1:22:26] Cameron McEwen: art,
[1:22:28] Cameron McEwen: nothing makes sense.
[1:22:31] Cameron McEwen: And so then the only way to understand it is to put a negative sign in front of it all.
[1:22:41] Cameron McEwen: Of course,
[1:22:41] Cameron McEwen: that doesn't get you anywhere.
[1:22:43] Cameron McEwen: That just gets you into nihilism.
[1:22:46] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:22:47] Bob Dobbs: and that's what he meant by the solid majority,
[1:22:49] Bob Dobbs: or the nihilism of that condition.
[1:22:53] Bob Dobbs: The solid majority mistaking annihilation for them,
[1:22:59] Bob Dobbs: and not recognizing,
[1:23:00] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:23:01] Bob Dobbs: they faked the assassination of you.
[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: You think you got shot.
[1:23:06] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:23:06] Bob Dobbs: you didn't.
[1:23:08] Bob Dobbs: If you see,
[1:23:08] Bob Dobbs: the medium is the mediated part.
[1:23:12] Bob Dobbs: You're mediated.
[1:23:14] Bob Dobbs: In fact,
[1:23:14] Bob Dobbs: this whole process only makes sense to us in the negative form.
[1:23:17] Bob Dobbs: Kroker goes on about the general cynical condition of the peasant,
[1:23:25] Bob Dobbs: present.
[1:23:29] Bob Dobbs: And that could be,
[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: that is Trump did.
[1:23:33] Bob Dobbs: Trump accidentally,
[1:23:37] Bob Dobbs: consciously projected a positive form.
[1:23:42] Bob Dobbs: By actually being very negative about everything that was going on around him,
[1:23:47] Bob Dobbs: making fun of his competitors,
[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: insulting them.
[1:23:53] Bob Dobbs: He pushed negative to extremes so that people thought he was a positive force.
[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:24:00] Bob Dobbs: the average citizen saw there was something breakthrough or optimistic or energetic Trump.
[1:24:12] Bob Dobbs: Even though energy is not the right word to use.
[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:24:17] Cameron McEwen: People sense that there's something fake in nearly everything.
[1:24:27] Bob Dobbs: Did you say something fake?
[1:24:29] Cameron McEwen: Fake.
[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:24:31] Cameron McEwen: People sense that.
[1:24:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:24:33] Cameron McEwen: But they also know that there's nothing fake about their...
[1:24:42] Cameron McEwen: Personal identity,
[1:24:44] Cameron McEwen: their relationship with their family,
[1:24:47] Cameron McEwen: their need for clean water,
[1:24:48] Cameron McEwen: their need for clean air,
[1:24:50] Cameron McEwen: all that sort of stuff.
[1:24:51] Cameron McEwen: So people sense that the people that are running the country in every form,
[1:25:04] Cameron McEwen: politicians,
[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: the journalists,
[1:25:07] Cameron McEwen: the academics,
[1:25:08] Cameron McEwen: the business people.
[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: The Hollywood.
[1:25:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: exactly entertainment people sense that there's something very fake going on there a huge hypocrisy that nobody's acknowledging and they don't know how to acknowledge it correct correct so and the basis of the fake
[1:25:30] Cameron McEwen: is nihilism is that um where everything has disappeared and nothing is true and nothing is right.
[1:25:43] Cameron McEwen: Some people are desperate for a solution.
[1:25:49] Cameron McEwen: And those people that are desperate for a solution have come into power in various ways,
[1:25:57] Cameron McEwen: both in the apparent government and in the deep government.
[1:26:04] Cameron McEwen: Both of them are reactions to nihilism.
[1:26:09] Cameron McEwen: And the common guy...
[1:26:11] Cameron McEwen: The common guy knows that the starting point is wrong,
[1:26:16] Cameron McEwen: that reality has not disappeared,
[1:26:19] Cameron McEwen: that their relationship with their kids and their wife and their job and the hamburger place and all that sort of stuff is real.
[1:26:28] Cameron McEwen: So we don't need all of the bullshit solutions to an unreal problem.
[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: let me say something.
[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: You know that quote?
[1:26:39] Bob Dobbs: Maybe Churchill or something,
[1:26:40] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if it was Churchill,
[1:26:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:26:42] Bob Dobbs: in the worst of times.
[1:26:44] Bob Dobbs: Or in troubling times,
[1:26:46] Bob Dobbs: the worst become the most motivated and the good become passive.
[1:26:50] Bob Dobbs: That quote,
[1:26:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:26:51] Cameron McEwen: that's yeah.
[1:26:53] Bob Dobbs: So the average person is the good.
[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: He sees the worse or over motivated out of their mistake.
[1:27:00] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:27:02] Cameron McEwen: I believe that's the case.
[1:27:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:27:04] Bob Dobbs: And the other thing I want to say,
[1:27:05] Bob Dobbs: this is great.
[1:27:06] Bob Dobbs: This line,
[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: in fact,
[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: this whole process only makes sense to us in the negative form.
[1:27:11] Bob Dobbs: I finally got to something to say,
[1:27:13] Bob Dobbs: this Trump.
[1:27:14] Bob Dobbs: This is what Trump dealing with or Trump expressing.
[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: This is,
[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: I would say,
[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: in terms of this is supposed to be about Trump,
[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: this book.
[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: There,
[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: I got to say something about Trump from that sentence.
[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: It's the first thing that evoked Trump phenomenon.
[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: So let's note that,
[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: page 28.
[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:27:39] Bob Dobbs: see,
[1:27:39] Bob Dobbs: I remember one night a
[1:27:41] Bob Dobbs: French art critic came.
[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: Monday night seminar and he was sitting back watching what people could say but every now and then he'd sort of express it despairing something you know you despair how the world had come and so Guttenberg even the way he was sitting you
[1:27:59] Bob Dobbs: could see it and McLuhan said no no no I find meaning everywhere and the guy said you're kidding what are you saying
[1:28:09] Bob Dobbs: You find meaning everywhere because everybody knew there was nothing meaningful anymore,
[1:28:13] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:28:14] Bob Dobbs: That was the cliché,
[1:28:15] Bob Dobbs: the cliché nihilism.
[1:28:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:28:18] Cameron McEwen: so here's the quotation you were looking for.
[1:28:22] Cameron McEwen: It's from Yeats.
[1:28:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeats?
[1:28:22] Cameron McEwen: It's from Yeats.
[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:28:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:28:26] Cameron McEwen: and
[1:28:27] Cameron McEwen: Second Coming.
[1:28:28] Cameron McEwen: And the quotation is,
[1:28:29] Cameron McEwen: the best lack all conviction,
[1:28:32] Cameron McEwen: while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
[1:28:35] Bob Dobbs: That's exactly what you were saying.
[1:28:38] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:28:38] Cameron McEwen: And so that's...
[1:28:39] Cameron McEwen: That's modern life right there.
[1:28:41] Bob Dobbs: That's what?
[1:28:43] Cameron McEwen: Modern life.
[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: Modern life.
[1:28:45] Bob Dobbs: And what's interesting,
[1:28:47] Bob Dobbs: you weren't remembering when you were saying it that Yates said it,
[1:28:52] Bob Dobbs: I don't think.
[1:28:53] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:28:53] Bob Dobbs: And so you were discovering it or rediscovering it for yourself,
[1:28:57] Bob Dobbs: and then you find out you're doing it almost 100 years after
[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: Yates saw it.
[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:29:03] Bob Dobbs: that's the electric eternity where we keep repeating ourselves in the electric world.
[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: situation we're in.
[1:29:10] Cameron McEwen: It's simultaneity.
[1:29:11] Cameron McEwen: It's the big now.
[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: That's a good way to look at the now.
[1:29:17] Bob Dobbs: You can't get out of the now.
[1:29:18] Bob Dobbs: Very hard to get out of the now.
[1:29:21] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:29:21] Cameron McEwen: impossible.
[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?
[1:29:24] Cameron McEwen: It's not difficult.
[1:29:25] Cameron McEwen: It's impossible.
[1:29:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:29:28] Bob Dobbs: But nothing separates one pole from the other,
[1:29:30] Bob Dobbs: the initial from the terminal.
[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: There's just a sort of contraction into each other.
[1:29:35] Bob Dobbs: That's good.
[1:29:38] Bob Dobbs: A fantastic telescoping,
[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan used the word telescoping a lot.
[1:29:43] Bob Dobbs: A collapsing of the two traditional poles into one another.
[1:29:47] Bob Dobbs: An implosion,
[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: there's a McLuhan word,
[1:29:50] Bob Dobbs: an absorption of the radiating model of causality of the differential mode of determination with its positive and negative electricity,
[1:29:57] Bob Dobbs: an implosion of meaning.
[1:29:59] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:29:59] Bob Dobbs: that's,
[1:30:01] Bob Dobbs: again,
[1:30:01] Bob Dobbs: repeating what he said already.
[1:30:04] Bob Dobbs: This is where simulation begins.
[1:30:06] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: is the simulation fake?
[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: The problem is everybody thinks it's fake,
[1:30:11] Bob Dobbs: but it's a new reality.
[1:30:13] Bob Dobbs: It's a new,
[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: it's real,
[1:30:15] Bob Dobbs: like you would say,
[1:30:16] Bob Dobbs: nature.
[1:30:18] Bob Dobbs: People think media are not real as nature,
[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: but they are.
[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: Or this present situation makes it seem that way,
[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: and the word fake doesn't apply.
[1:30:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:30:32] Cameron McEwen: just wait a minute.
[1:30:34] Cameron McEwen: There are different readings.
[1:30:36] Cameron McEwen: of that sentence.
[1:30:37] Cameron McEwen: This is where simulation begins.
[1:30:41] Cameron McEwen: If we think of the worst are full of passionate intensity,
[1:30:48] Cameron McEwen: coming out of the cul-de-sac is in many cases simply simulation.
[1:30:56] Cameron McEwen: And that's because people must exist,
[1:30:59] Cameron McEwen: but they don't know how to exist,
[1:31:01] Cameron McEwen: they don't know why to exist,
[1:31:04] Cameron McEwen: they just exist.
[1:31:06] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:31:06] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:31:07] Cameron McEwen: And they,
[1:31:10] Cameron McEwen: the ones,
[1:31:11] Cameron McEwen: let's say like Obama,
[1:31:13] Cameron McEwen: Obama is maybe the greatest simulation ever.
[1:31:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:31:19] Cameron McEwen: So in that sense,
[1:31:23] Cameron McEwen: what
[1:31:24] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard is saying here is that the,
[1:31:27] Cameron McEwen: from the cul-de-sac,
[1:31:30] Cameron McEwen: there are various types of genesis.
[1:31:36] Cameron McEwen: And the,
[1:31:41] Cameron McEwen: between...
[1:31:43] Cameron McEwen: The people that have no conviction in the sense of they don't know how to ground what they know is real,
[1:31:52] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:31:52] Cameron McEwen: So they lack all conviction in that sense.
[1:31:56] Cameron McEwen: Their simulation is that they go about their business in a real way,
[1:32:04] Cameron McEwen: but without real ground.
[1:32:07] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.
[1:32:08] Cameron McEwen: They see in Trump way of...
[1:32:12] Cameron McEwen: potentially grounding what they know must be grounded.
[1:32:17] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[1:32:18] Cameron McEwen: personally,
[1:32:19] Cameron McEwen: I think it's a tragedy that that great task has been laid on somebody Trump,
[1:32:26] Cameron McEwen: because I don't think he's got the ability to take care of it.
[1:32:31] Cameron McEwen: Who knows?
[1:32:33] Cameron McEwen: But the other sense of simulation is that people come out of the cul-de-sac as sort of morally intense.
[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: individuals and they can destroy the world in their intensity right yeah their fake is lethal yes correct yes so the word simulation is uh as theo would say it's ambivalent i
[1:32:58] Bob Dobbs: mean people will use the word simulation if they hear it to mean oh this is fake and they don't get the reality part of the electric media that mcclure was trying to point out
[1:33:09] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[1:33:10] Cameron McEwen: And notice that that's built into the word simulation.
[1:33:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:33:17] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:33:17] Cameron McEwen: Simulation cannot be singular.
[1:33:21] Bob Dobbs: Did you say cannot be singular?
[1:33:24] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[1:33:25] Bob Dobbs: But this is singular.
[1:33:27] Cameron McEwen: A simulation is inherently plural.
[1:33:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:33:30] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:33:31] Bob Dobbs: That's what you mean.
[1:33:32] Bob Dobbs: I thought you meant that word there.
[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: This is where simulation begins.
[1:33:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:33:37] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:33:37] Cameron McEwen: I mean that...
[1:33:38] Cameron McEwen: Simulation is inherently SubGenius.
[1:33:42] Bob Dobbs: And the title does have an S,
[1:33:44] Bob Dobbs: simulations.
[1:33:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:33:48] Bob Dobbs: So that's pretty good,
[1:33:51] Bob Dobbs: what we're saying here.
[1:33:56] Bob Dobbs: This is where simulation begins.
[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: let's see what he says in the last paragraph.
[1:34:00] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,
[1:34:01] Cameron McEwen: with the word begins,
[1:34:03] Cameron McEwen: we have to think back to what he was earlier saying about genetic code in Genesis.
[1:34:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:34:10] Cameron McEwen: So what he's been trying to get at is that we need to get to the beginning.
[1:34:17] Cameron McEwen: But getting to the beginning of anything is the hardest thing of all.
[1:34:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:34:23] Bob Dobbs: you can easily say it's the end of something,
[1:34:25] Bob Dobbs: but you can't find the beginning of the next phase or the new.
[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: And that's what the first sentence was.
[1:34:31] Bob Dobbs: Remember,
[1:34:32] Bob Dobbs: we were at the end of perspective or something?
[1:34:36] Bob Dobbs: And so now he's saying...
[1:34:38] Bob Dobbs: Now he's going to try to describe what the beginning is,
[1:34:41] Bob Dobbs: or what is beginning,
[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: not perspective.
[1:34:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: so he says,
[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: everywhere in whatever political,
[1:34:51] Bob Dobbs: biological,
[1:34:52] Bob Dobbs: psychological,
[1:34:52] Bob Dobbs: media domain,
[1:34:54] Bob Dobbs: so that's a good listing of all the factors,
[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: a lot of the factors,
[1:34:59] Bob Dobbs: where the distinction between poles can no longer be maintained,
[1:35:02] Bob Dobbs: one enters into simulation everywhere.
[1:35:05] Bob Dobbs: what you were trying to say,
[1:35:06] Bob Dobbs: political,
[1:35:07] Bob Dobbs: biological,
[1:35:07] Bob Dobbs: psychological,
[1:35:08] Bob Dobbs: media,
[1:35:08] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:35:09] Bob Dobbs: Every institution.
[1:35:11] Bob Dobbs: And hence,
[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: into absolute manipulation.
[1:35:14] Bob Dobbs: Not passivity,
[1:35:15] Bob Dobbs: but the non-distinction of active and passive.
[1:35:18] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:35:20] Bob Dobbs: that means being passive is also active.
[1:35:24] Bob Dobbs: And being active is also passive.
[1:35:26] Bob Dobbs: There's no distinction.
[1:35:27] Bob Dobbs: So you can't tell who genuinely is doing something and can't blame the person who looks like they're doing nothing.
[1:35:34] Bob Dobbs: If you...
[1:35:35] Bob Dobbs: see that,
[1:35:35] Bob Dobbs: you've got to check your interpretation of what you think is active and passive,
[1:35:39] Bob Dobbs: because you're missing the point that you can't make the distinction.
[1:35:44] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:35:46] Cameron McEwen: right.
[1:35:46] Cameron McEwen: And you could say that exactly that was what
[1:35:52] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was looking into between,
[1:35:55] Cameron McEwen: say,
[1:35:56] Cameron McEwen: 1945 and 1955,
[1:35:59] Cameron McEwen: because that's really the question of advertising.
[1:36:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:36:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:36:03] Cameron McEwen: Advertising is the need to get people to do something actively where they are,
[1:36:12] Cameron McEwen: in fact,
[1:36:12] Cameron McEwen: passive.
[1:36:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:36:15] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:36:16] Bob Dobbs: I know that I was different as a radio broadcaster because I didn't judge the value of what anybody was saying.
[1:36:26] Bob Dobbs: I pretended or accepted that this was a brave attempt.
[1:36:31] Bob Dobbs: whatever they were saying,
[1:36:32] Bob Dobbs: how skillful or not,
[1:36:35] Bob Dobbs: I understood the cul-de-sac.
[1:36:37] Bob Dobbs: I wasn't being hypocritically fair to everybody.
[1:36:40] Bob Dobbs: Everybody has right to their opinion,
[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: not that at all.
[1:36:44] Bob Dobbs: And I knew I was doing something different because people would get pissed off and say,
[1:36:48] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:36:48] Bob Dobbs: you're not,
[1:36:50] Bob Dobbs: you actually believe those people,
[1:36:52] Bob Dobbs: the stupid people,
[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: they call it.
[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:36:54] Bob Dobbs: they had an idea of who the stupid people were.
[1:36:56] Bob Dobbs: I said,
[1:36:57] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:36:57] Bob Dobbs: no.
[1:36:57] Cameron McEwen: Are you talking about me here,
[1:36:59] Cameron McEwen: Bob?
[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:37:00] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking about myself.
[1:37:02] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how you get to come into this.
[1:37:04] Bob Dobbs: This is just a little quick here.
[1:37:07] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:37:07] Cameron McEwen: but you're talking about interviewing people on a recorded...
[1:37:13] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:37:13] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:37:13] Cameron McEwen: ...that are in fact stupid.
[1:37:16] Bob Dobbs: No.
[1:37:16] Cameron McEwen: Anyway,
[1:37:16] Cameron McEwen: I just...
[1:37:17] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: you're limiting me.
[1:37:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking about the interaction with callers and that.
[1:37:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:37:24] Cameron McEwen: like me.
[1:37:25] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:37:26] Bob Dobbs: This is a...
[1:37:28] Bob Dobbs: You can't have a radio show with just one caller for two hours.
[1:37:31] Bob Dobbs: Oh.
[1:37:32] Bob Dobbs: Everybody would turn...
[1:37:33] Bob Dobbs: You'd get fired,
[1:37:34] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: Not enough variety.
[1:37:36] Bob Dobbs: But the,
[1:37:37] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: I'm getting an idea about why people,
[1:37:41] Bob Dobbs: some like me,
[1:37:42] Bob Dobbs: some don't like me,
[1:37:43] Bob Dobbs: because of that fact that I'm looking at simulation as real.
[1:37:48] Bob Dobbs: I'm not even trying to figure out what is real.
[1:37:51] Bob Dobbs: That's,
[1:37:52] Bob Dobbs: there's the beginning.
[1:37:53] Bob Dobbs: Don't try to figure out what's real or to get uptight about something.
[1:37:58] Bob Dobbs: We're still trying to figure out what to get uptight about or what to take a stand on.
[1:38:04] Bob Dobbs: And I...
[1:38:05] Bob Dobbs: If I have come up with something to take a stand on,
[1:38:07] Bob Dobbs: it's very complicated.
[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:38:09] Cameron McEwen: right.
[1:38:10] Cameron McEwen: I think you put your finger on something very important there.
[1:38:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:38:16] Cameron McEwen: As far as I can see,
[1:38:20] Cameron McEwen: at least since the
[1:38:22] Cameron McEwen: 1970s, you have acted as a kind of radar station that can pick up all sorts of stuff.
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: And of course,
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: a radar station.
[1:38:34] Cameron McEwen: It doesn't say,
[1:38:35] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:38:35] Cameron McEwen: I don't like this message,
[1:38:36] Cameron McEwen: and turn it off or something like that.
[1:38:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:38:40] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:38:42] Cameron McEwen: But you're a radar station that...
[1:38:45] Bob Dobbs: I let it all stick to me.
[1:38:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:38:48] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[1:38:49] Cameron McEwen: But you also allow...
[1:38:51] Cameron McEwen: There is a feedback mechanism where this is a radar station that improves its ability to pick up on the basis of what's coming in.
[1:39:02] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:39:02] Cameron McEwen: And that's...
[1:39:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:39:06] Bob Dobbs: hold it.
[1:39:06] Bob Dobbs: You're blurring out,
[1:39:07] Bob Dobbs: so restate that again.
[1:39:09] Cameron McEwen: It's like an AI radar station that is able to improve itself on the basis of what it picks up.
[1:39:20] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:39:21] Bob Dobbs: And this is incredible on this point.
[1:39:24] Bob Dobbs: Captain Beefheart put out an album at the end of his career,
[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: late 70s,
[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: early 80s.
[1:39:30] Bob Dobbs: One of his last albums,
[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: it was called Doc at the Radar Station.
[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: That's what I am,
[1:39:34] Bob Dobbs: a doctor at the radar station.
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: The radar station is doctor.
[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: You've explained bee farts.
[1:39:42] Bob Dobbs: That's a good one.
[1:39:43] Bob Dobbs: But the,
[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: and improving.
[1:39:46] Bob Dobbs: Definitely have improved.
[1:39:49] Bob Dobbs: And,
[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: but what markets to the average fake human,
[1:39:54] Bob Dobbs: fake citizen,
[1:39:55] Bob Dobbs: is the debate over issues,
[1:39:58] Bob Dobbs: like talk radio.
[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: Rush Limbaugh and those guys.
[1:40:01] Bob Dobbs: And then the endless debate on...
[1:40:03] Bob Dobbs: It used to be on Crossfire.
[1:40:05] Bob Dobbs: That was what was hypocritical.
[1:40:09] Bob Dobbs: I see,
[1:40:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:40:10] Bob Dobbs: Tucker Carlson,
[1:40:11] Bob Dobbs: all these guys,
[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: they expose something every night.
[1:40:15] Bob Dobbs: They found another horrible situation.
[1:40:18] Bob Dobbs: Then they move on to the next day with the next one,
[1:40:21] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[1:40:21] Bob Dobbs: And they don't see the bias of endlessly dumping this stuff on people.
[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: It's very antisocial.
[1:40:28] Bob Dobbs: It's violence.
[1:40:30] Bob Dobbs: to keep coming up with...
[1:40:32] Bob Dobbs: scandals that you can even prove are a scandal to an audience that hasn't got time to deal with any of it.
[1:40:39] Bob Dobbs: And apparently they're getting more and more turned off and not watching CNN or Fox.
[1:40:47] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:40:47] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true.
[1:40:49] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true.
[1:40:50] Cameron McEwen: People,
[1:40:50] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:40:53] Cameron McEwen: when
[1:40:55] Cameron McEwen: I was a kid,
[1:40:59] Cameron McEwen: your knowledge of the world.
[1:41:01] Cameron McEwen: was simply a page or two of the local newspaper.
[1:41:07] Cameron McEwen: And then it became what Walter Cronkite was saying or what the
[1:41:11] Cameron McEwen: CBC National was saying.
[1:41:15] Cameron McEwen: And nowadays,
[1:41:16] Cameron McEwen: people pay no attention to newspapers,
[1:41:19] Cameron McEwen: pay no attention to
[1:41:22] Cameron McEwen: TV.
[1:41:24] Cameron McEwen: And so then if they're asked or if they even question themselves,
[1:41:31] Cameron McEwen: themselves about what's ultimately going on in the world.
[1:41:36] Cameron McEwen: They have no idea.
[1:41:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:41:38] Bob Dobbs: It's almost not an important question.
[1:41:42] Bob Dobbs: I don't have to tell you what's going on.
[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: I'm living my world.
[1:41:46] Bob Dobbs: I'm making it up as I go.
[1:41:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:41:48] Cameron McEwen: I don't have time.
[1:41:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:41:51] Cameron McEwen: to evaluate.
[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: That's how we're doing.
[1:41:56] Bob Dobbs: Now that has become a problem now,
[1:41:58] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:41:58] Bob Dobbs: We've been doing that for too long.
[1:42:01] Bob Dobbs: That's a disservice of the electric information environment.
[1:42:03] Cameron McEwen: It's a huge problem,
[1:42:05] Cameron McEwen: but it's just a reflection,
[1:42:09] Cameron McEwen: a reflex of the cul-de-sac.
[1:42:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:42:14] Cameron McEwen: We can't expect...
[1:42:15] Cameron McEwen: that people that are immersed in the cul-de-sac know the answer to the problem of the cul-de-sac.
[1:42:23] Cameron McEwen: We wouldn't have a cul-de-sac if there were an answer to it that was communicable.
[1:42:30] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:42:30] Bob Dobbs: and that's the hypocrisy of the Information Society,
[1:42:33] Bob Dobbs: is that those who are engaged in putting out magazines,
[1:42:36] Bob Dobbs: Lewis Laugham to
[1:42:39] Bob Dobbs: CNN, to Fox,
[1:42:41] Bob Dobbs: do not recognize...
[1:42:43] Bob Dobbs: the silliness of their operation.
[1:42:47] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:42:48] Cameron McEwen: or conversely,
[1:42:50] Cameron McEwen: maybe they realize it and are cynical or they hate life or something.
[1:43:01] Bob Dobbs: And they need to drug themselves with bigger salaries to buy bigger distractions.
[1:43:07] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:43:07] Cameron McEwen: but all of these things are properties of the cul-de-sac,
[1:43:11] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: And if we forced Tucker Carlson to listen to us the past half hour,
[1:43:18] Bob Dobbs: he'd be outraged.
[1:43:20] Bob Dobbs: He would really threaten his identity if he took it seriously and knew we were saying something,
[1:43:26] Bob Dobbs: but he couldn't believe that was what's going on.
[1:43:28] Bob Dobbs: He's doing great stuff.
[1:43:30] Bob Dobbs: He's saving the republic or whatever he thinks he's doing.
[1:43:34] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:43:34] Bob Dobbs: I think they would be quite shocked.
[1:43:37] Cameron McEwen: Of all of the people that are on TV,
[1:43:40] Cameron McEwen: I don't watch TV.
[1:43:41] Cameron McEwen: Tucker Carlson.
[1:43:42] Cameron McEwen: I never have,
[1:43:42] Cameron McEwen: never will.
[1:43:45] Cameron McEwen: My understanding of the guy is that he attempts to show these distortions of power that are going on everywhere and are
[1:44:00] Cameron McEwen: sort of simulations that arise out of the cul-de-sac.
[1:44:05] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[1:44:05] Cameron McEwen: he doesn't say that there's simulations arising out of the cul-de-sac,
[1:44:09] Cameron McEwen: But what he says is...
[1:44:12] Cameron McEwen: If I understand him properly,
[1:44:14] Cameron McEwen: what he says is that these exercises of power are improper,
[1:44:20] Cameron McEwen: that they are unconstitutional or they're irrational or immoral or something like that.
[1:44:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:44:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:44:29] Cameron McEwen: and definitely fake for sure.
[1:44:31] Bob Dobbs: And he can say that every night.
[1:44:33] Bob Dobbs: So if you actually believed,
[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: you're naive and you believe Tucker and you were a fan of him.
[1:44:39] Bob Dobbs: you'd gradually be made into a very cynical,
[1:44:42] Bob Dobbs: depressed person because you believe what he was saying.
[1:44:47] Cameron McEwen: But how is that different?
[1:44:48] Cameron McEwen: On your interpretation,
[1:44:50] Cameron McEwen: how is that different from people that are watching CNN or
[1:44:55] Cameron McEwen: NPR? No,
[1:44:55] Cameron McEwen: anything.
[1:44:56] Bob Dobbs: Anything.
[1:44:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:44:57] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:44:57] Cameron McEwen: it's...
[1:44:59] Bob Dobbs: This is the hypocrisy.
[1:45:01] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:45:01] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was saying at the beginning of this process,
[1:45:04] Bob Dobbs: turn it off.
[1:45:04] Bob Dobbs: And nobody said,
[1:45:05] Bob Dobbs: you can't turn this thing off.
[1:45:07] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:45:07] Bob Dobbs: now...
[1:45:08] Bob Dobbs: The majority wishes it could be turned off for a while at least.
[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: And so that's where McLuhan was the SubGenius with the solution.
[1:45:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:45:18] Cameron McEwen: but people are saying,
[1:45:20] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:45:21] Cameron McEwen: I guess we can't turn it off globally,
[1:45:24] Cameron McEwen: but we can turn it off individually.
[1:45:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:45:26] Cameron McEwen: So they just don't watch.
[1:45:29] Bob Dobbs: But so much of the economy is based on information exchange.
[1:45:37] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:45:39] Cameron McEwen: what do they say,
[1:45:40] Cameron McEwen: America,
[1:45:41] Cameron McEwen: 30 years ago?
[1:45:42] Cameron McEwen: We don't know.
[1:45:42] Cameron McEwen: What?
[1:45:42] Cameron McEwen: See,
[1:45:43] Cameron McEwen: we don't know about that.
[1:45:47] Cameron McEwen: What is actually grounding this economy?
[1:45:50] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:45:51] Bob Dobbs: nothing.
[1:45:52] Cameron McEwen: Nothing is exactly right.
[1:45:54] Cameron McEwen: So if you think of the information world,
[1:45:58] Cameron McEwen: which is not just
[1:46:00] Cameron McEwen: TV and radio stations and
[1:46:02] Cameron McEwen: Hollywood.
[1:46:04] Cameron McEwen: It's also book publishing.
[1:46:07] Cameron McEwen: It's also the academy.
[1:46:10] Cameron McEwen: It's a vast world of what is supposed to be information exchange and scholarship and all this stuff.
[1:46:19] Cameron McEwen: And enormous parts of it are all bullshit.
[1:46:22] Cameron McEwen: One part feeding another
[1:46:28] Cameron McEwen: And then it just comes around like a snake biting its tail.
[1:46:32] Cameron McEwen: And so the great question is,
[1:46:34] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:46:35] Cameron McEwen: what the hell is going on here?
[1:46:36] Cameron McEwen: Is there really,
[1:46:37] Cameron McEwen: is there money being generated?
[1:46:39] Cameron McEwen: Is this a real market?
[1:46:41] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:46:42] Cameron McEwen: I think the whole United States economy is devolving into questions like that.
[1:46:50] Cameron McEwen: Nobody knows the value of the money.
[1:46:52] Cameron McEwen: Nobody knows the value of Bitcoin.
[1:46:55] Cameron McEwen: Nobody knows the value of gold.
[1:46:58] Cameron McEwen: It's,
[1:46:59] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:46:59] Cameron McEwen: it's like the fake order.
[1:47:01] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard title.
[1:47:02] Bob Dobbs: It's the ecstasy of communication.
[1:47:04] Bob Dobbs: Everybody's communicating.
[1:47:06] Bob Dobbs: without questioning it,
[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: without knowing...
[1:47:08] Cameron McEwen: Did you mean Baudrillard?
[1:47:10] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:47:10] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard.
[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: He wrote a book in 87 called The Ecstasy of Communication.
[1:47:14] Cameron McEwen: Ah,
[1:47:14] Cameron McEwen: okay.
[1:47:15] Bob Dobbs: And that's what people are doing.
[1:47:16] Cameron McEwen: It sounded to me like Kroker.
[1:47:18] Bob Dobbs: What?
[1:47:19] Cameron McEwen: It sounded to me like Kroker.
[1:47:22] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:47:22] Bob Dobbs: no.
[1:47:24] Bob Dobbs: Did you ever look at a Kroker book?
[1:47:27] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:47:28] Cameron McEwen: only the early stuff.
[1:47:29] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:47:30] Bob Dobbs: You would see that phrase.
[1:47:32] Bob Dobbs: He was...
[1:47:33] Bob Dobbs: He'd be writing on Baudrillard phrases like that.
[1:47:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:47:37] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[1:47:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:47:37] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[1:47:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:47:38] Bob Dobbs: It'd be a little title of a section.
[1:47:40] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:47:42] Bob Dobbs: Till McLuhan said,
[1:47:43] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:47:44] Bob Dobbs: 20th century man's run down the street saying,
[1:47:46] Bob Dobbs: I've got all the answers.
[1:47:48] Bob Dobbs: What are the questions?
[1:47:49] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:47:49] Bob Dobbs: you know what we've done today?
[1:47:51] Bob Dobbs: We have nothing but questions.
[1:47:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:47:54] Bob Dobbs: And it's flipped into,
[1:47:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:47:56] Bob Dobbs: 21st century man would say.
[1:48:01] Bob Dobbs: I got all the answers.
[1:48:02] Bob Dobbs: I got even more questions.
[1:48:05] Bob Dobbs: And now that it gets resolved,
[1:48:09] Bob Dobbs: count me out.
[1:48:11] Bob Dobbs: I ain't listening.
[1:48:12] Bob Dobbs: I'm disconnecting.
[1:48:13] Bob Dobbs: Something like that.
[1:48:14] Bob Dobbs: Some desperate station attempt at disconnection from anti-environment of information,
[1:48:20] Bob Dobbs: which is answers and questions swirling about.
[1:48:24] Bob Dobbs: And they become indistinguishable,
[1:48:26] Bob Dobbs: which again is a page of Finnegans Wake.
[1:48:30] Bob Dobbs: When you see Dawkins work like that,
[1:48:32] Bob Dobbs: what an act SubGenius that book was.
[1:48:35] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:48:36] Bob Dobbs: Joyce didn't really know whether he was doing it right what he was doing.
[1:48:41] Bob Dobbs: But it's interesting that the creative mind comes up with,
[1:48:45] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:48:45] Bob Dobbs: the answer,
[1:48:47] Bob Dobbs: or the accurate painting,
[1:48:50] Bob Dobbs: regardless of what they think is going on,
[1:48:54] Bob Dobbs: what the artist thinks he's doing.
[1:48:58] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:48:58] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true.
[1:49:00] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:49:01] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan used to quote
[1:49:04] Cameron McEwen: Eliot as saying that communication takes place aside from understanding.
[1:49:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:49:14] Bob Dobbs: before understanding,
[1:49:15] Bob Dobbs: there's an effect or a communication,
[1:49:19] Bob Dobbs: right.
[1:49:20] Bob Dobbs: Maybe the great poetry communicates before understanding,
[1:49:23] Bob Dobbs: maybe something like that.
[1:49:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:49:25] Cameron McEwen: exactly,
[1:49:26] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[1:49:27] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:49:28] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:49:28] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:49:29] Bob Dobbs: You had something else to say?
[1:49:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:49:32] Cameron McEwen: I was just going to say that when a person takes 20 years of their life or
[1:49:44] Cameron McEwen: 15 years of their life like
[1:49:46] Cameron McEwen: Joyce did with Finnegans Wake,
[1:49:51] Cameron McEwen: and every day sitting down with problems with the kids,
[1:49:57] Cameron McEwen: problems with his eyes,
[1:49:59] Cameron McEwen: problems with money,
[1:50:01] Cameron McEwen: on and on and on like this,
[1:50:03] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:50:04] Cameron McEwen: But every day,
[1:50:06] Cameron McEwen: sitting down and writing,
[1:50:07] Cameron McEwen: trying to think through problems,
[1:50:09] Cameron McEwen: or a painter like Clay going to the canvas every day and putting on the paint.
[1:50:22] Cameron McEwen: As we were saying earlier,
[1:50:24] Cameron McEwen: you need to have a confidence
[1:50:31] Cameron McEwen: that you're called to a task.
[1:50:35] Cameron McEwen: And beyond that,
[1:50:39] Cameron McEwen: you don't need to know anything.
[1:50:43] Cameron McEwen: You don't need to think that you're in possession of
[1:50:49] Cameron McEwen: God's truth or something like that.
[1:50:51] Cameron McEwen: You just need to know it's something that you need to do when you do it.
[1:50:55] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:50:55] Bob Dobbs: so I'm thinking of
[1:50:57] Bob Dobbs: Job.
[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: Kroker wrote at some point that America was Job,
[1:51:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:51:04] Bob Dobbs: endless shit piled on it.
[1:51:07] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:51:08] Bob Dobbs: I once asked
[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: Ion, what biblical character am I most like?
[1:51:14] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[1:51:15] Bob Dobbs: Job.
[1:51:18] Bob Dobbs: If there's a guy who appears not to be Job,
[1:51:20] Bob Dobbs: I have a pretty good,
[1:51:22] Bob Dobbs: relaxed life.
[1:51:23] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:51:24] Bob Dobbs: I have not experienced one bit of the Service environment.
[1:51:27] Bob Dobbs: I haven't worn a mask.
[1:51:29] Bob Dobbs: I haven't been to a store where you have to stand in line.
[1:51:31] Bob Dobbs: Nothing.
[1:51:33] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:51:33] Bob Dobbs: very un-Job-like.
[1:51:35] Bob Dobbs: But I thought I was pretty perceptive because
[1:51:38] Bob Dobbs: I am in a position of Job in a lot of ways,
[1:51:41] Bob Dobbs: especially dealing with Ion.
[1:51:44] Bob Dobbs: You know?
[1:51:45] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:51:46] Bob Dobbs: I just thought I'd bring that in.
[1:51:47] Bob Dobbs: I thought you might find that interesting.
[1:51:49] Bob Dobbs: The metaphor of Job.
[1:51:51] Bob Dobbs: That's a guy that put up with a lot of shit and triumphed somehow.
[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: Supposedly in the end,
[1:51:59] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:52:00] Cameron McEwen: He kept going.
[1:52:01] Bob Dobbs: He kept going.
[1:52:03] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:52:06] Bob Dobbs: He had a confidence,
[1:52:07] Bob Dobbs: or what they might say,
[1:52:08] Bob Dobbs: faith.
[1:52:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:52:11] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:52:14] Cameron McEwen: his idea of what it would be to triumph,
[1:52:18] Cameron McEwen: what it would be to survive,
[1:52:19] Cameron McEwen: gets changed.
[1:52:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:52:21] Cameron McEwen: In the process of losing everything,
[1:52:25] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[1:52:26] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:52:27] Bob Dobbs: He learns.
[1:52:29] Bob Dobbs: He has a new insight.
[1:52:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:52:31] Cameron McEwen: But what do they,
[1:52:34] Cameron McEwen: what does...
[1:52:35] Cameron McEwen: Ion think that you're going to lose if you're Job-like?
[1:52:41] Bob Dobbs: With my Coldplay,
[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: did you say?
[1:52:43] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:52:44] Cameron McEwen: if you are Job-like,
[1:52:48] Cameron McEwen: it seems like there's a prediction in there that you're going to lose things.
[1:52:53] Bob Dobbs: I've lost everything already.
[1:52:57] Bob Dobbs: I have no reputation.
[1:52:59] Bob Dobbs: I'm considered as a matter of fact,
[1:53:02] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:53:02] Bob Dobbs: I'd like to say now
[1:53:04] Bob Dobbs: is that we're really in trouble when what Bob said in the past and that is actually now coming true.
[1:53:12] Bob Dobbs: Then we're in real trouble.
[1:53:13] Bob Dobbs: That's what he says today.
[1:53:15] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:53:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm turning to,
[1:53:16] Bob Dobbs: what is it,
[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: I'm getting into where Job recovers.
[1:53:21] Bob Dobbs: And the world's going to have to acknowledge me in some way that I was right.
[1:53:28] Bob Dobbs: And you realize that.
[1:53:29] Bob Dobbs: You know I'm right.
[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: You finally found someone you agree with.
[1:53:37] Bob Dobbs: Or who can say stuff and go on for hours and you don't object to it too much.
[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[1:53:45] Cameron McEwen: That I agree with.
[1:53:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:53:48] Bob Dobbs: So continuing the second half of the paragraph,
[1:53:52] Bob Dobbs: DNA realizes this aleatory reduction at the level of the living substance.
[1:53:57] Bob Dobbs: Television itself,
[1:53:58] Bob Dobbs: in the example of the Louds,
[1:54:00] Bob Dobbs: also attains this indefinite limit.
[1:54:03] Bob Dobbs: where the family vis-a-vis TV are no more or less active or passive than is a living substance vis-a-vis its molecular code.
[1:54:10] Bob Dobbs: In both,
[1:54:11] Bob Dobbs: there is only a nebula indecipherable into its simple elements,
[1:54:15] Bob Dobbs: indecipherable as to its truth.
[1:54:18] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:54:18] Bob Dobbs: with the word elements,
[1:54:19] Bob Dobbs: that brings up your meaning of media or a term you use.
[1:54:23] Bob Dobbs: Does that fit here?
[1:54:25] Bob Dobbs: In both,
[1:54:25] Bob Dobbs: there is only a nebula indecipherable into its simple elements,
[1:54:29] Bob Dobbs: indecipherable as to its truth.
[1:54:32] Bob Dobbs: That's interesting.
[1:54:32] Bob Dobbs: It has a truth,
[1:54:33] Bob Dobbs: but you can't figure it out or you can't say it or you,
[1:54:37] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[1:54:38] Bob Dobbs: can't be conscious of it.
[1:54:40] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:54:43] Cameron McEwen: in all of the preceding paragraphs,
[1:54:46] Cameron McEwen: he's basically explained that elements or truth need to be understood as self-dissolving.
[1:54:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:54:59] Cameron McEwen: He says a nebula indecipherable.
[1:55:02] Cameron McEwen: So it could be that elements and truth are things that Baudrillard could pursue and wonder if there's some sense of them that
[1:55:18] Cameron McEwen: would lead him out of the cul-de-sac that he's describing.
[1:55:22] Cameron McEwen: But he's not doing that here.
[1:55:25] Cameron McEwen: He's using them in the negative sense.
[1:55:28] Cameron McEwen: Remember,
[1:55:29] Cameron McEwen: just in the paragraph before,
[1:55:31] Cameron McEwen: he said,
[1:55:33] Cameron McEwen: this whole process only makes sense to us in negative form.
[1:55:37] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:55:38] Cameron McEwen: That's what he's saying here,
[1:55:40] Cameron McEwen: too.
[1:55:41] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:55:41] Bob Dobbs: he's repeating himself again.
[1:55:43] Bob Dobbs: But this is in the middle of the article.
[1:55:47] Bob Dobbs: I doubt if he gets out of it,
[1:55:49] Bob Dobbs: but he might have something.
[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: It might be interesting to read the rest of the article,
[1:55:55] Bob Dobbs: you know what I mean,
[1:55:55] Bob Dobbs: to see where he gets through.
[1:55:57] Bob Dobbs: where he tries to get to.
[1:55:59] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:55:59] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to do it again,
[1:56:00] Bob Dobbs: because this says some of the things that we were saying when we were interpreting previous paragraphs,
[1:56:07] Bob Dobbs: and because every paragraph is repeating itself,
[1:56:11] Bob Dobbs: we come to what we already said in this paragraph.
[1:56:15] Bob Dobbs: Everywhere,
[1:56:15] Bob Dobbs: because you said this,
[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: everywhere,
[1:56:17] Bob Dobbs: in whatever political,
[1:56:18] Bob Dobbs: biological,
[1:56:18] Bob Dobbs: psychological,
[1:56:19] Bob Dobbs: media domain,
[1:56:21] Bob Dobbs: all these fakes.
[1:56:22] Bob Dobbs: But he says,
[1:56:23] Bob Dobbs: where the distinction between poles can no longer be maintained.
[1:56:26] Bob Dobbs: That would be normal dialectic or contrast that humans recognize that they're different from someone else,
[1:56:34] Bob Dobbs: where the distinction between poles can no longer be maintained.
[1:56:37] Bob Dobbs: And that would explain why there's so much...
[1:56:41] Bob Dobbs: Making distinctions in people over sex,
[1:56:44] Bob Dobbs: class,
[1:56:44] Bob Dobbs: gender,
[1:56:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:56:46] Bob Dobbs: these kind of things are what they're all warring in the public about.
[1:56:49] Bob Dobbs: Black lives matter.
[1:56:51] Bob Dobbs: That's because there are no differences.
[1:56:53] Bob Dobbs: Where the distinction between poles can no longer be maintained.
[1:56:57] Bob Dobbs: One enters into simulation and hence into absolute manipulation.
[1:57:00] Bob Dobbs: How is this manipulation,
[1:57:02] Bob Dobbs: if you're living in a world of fakes,
[1:57:05] Bob Dobbs: but he's saying you're not passively manipulated.
[1:57:10] Bob Dobbs: But the non-distinction of,
[1:57:12] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:57:13] Bob Dobbs: the manipulation is you don't understand this situation,
[1:57:16] Bob Dobbs: the non-distinction of active and passive.
[1:57:18] Bob Dobbs: That's what he means.
[1:57:19] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't mean the Bilderbergers are controlling you or something.
[1:57:24] Bob Dobbs: It's absolute manipulation.
[1:57:26] Cameron McEwen: I think he does mean something like that.
[1:57:28] Cameron McEwen: I think he means that in a world in which all standards,
[1:57:36] Cameron McEwen: all truth has disappeared,
[1:57:40] Cameron McEwen: absolute manipulation becomes possible.
[1:57:43] Bob Dobbs: And that's what we got now.
[1:57:45] Bob Dobbs: I agree with that,
[1:57:48] Bob Dobbs: but I'm also discovering the other meaning.
[1:57:51] Bob Dobbs: You are manipulated in this condition,
[1:57:53] Bob Dobbs: beyond what the Bilderbergers think they can do.
[1:57:59] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[1:57:59] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:58:00] Cameron McEwen: they're manipulated too.
[1:58:02] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:58:03] Bob Dobbs: So look at the massive protests going on.
[1:58:06] Bob Dobbs: A lot of people think they're being manipulated.
[1:58:09] Bob Dobbs: They're right.
[1:58:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:58:12] Bob Dobbs: but it's more complex about what they're being manipulated by or what they need to think through it more,
[1:58:19] Bob Dobbs: which we're offering here.
[1:58:23] Bob Dobbs: We're offering a way to think through,
[1:58:25] Bob Dobbs: maybe by example,
[1:58:26] Bob Dobbs: by our failure,
[1:58:27] Bob Dobbs: about what is being manipulated.
[1:58:30] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[1:58:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:58:32] Cameron McEwen: in a certain sense,
[1:58:33] Cameron McEwen: what both of us do with most of our time,
[1:58:38] Cameron McEwen: is what Baudrillard doing here.
[1:58:39] Cameron McEwen: That is,
[1:58:40] Cameron McEwen: we're trying to think about the cul-de-sac in a way that would allow our extraction from it.
[1:58:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:58:52] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:58:53] Cameron McEwen: Wittgenstein, for example,
[1:58:55] Cameron McEwen: said,
[1:58:55] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:58:57] Cameron McEwen: what is the purpose of your work?
[1:58:59] Cameron McEwen: And the answer he gave was to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.
[1:59:07] Bob Dobbs: And he failed,
[1:59:07] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:59:08] Bob Dobbs: Like everybody did.
[1:59:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:59:12] Cameron McEwen: like not only everybody did,
[1:59:14] Cameron McEwen: but everybody is doing in the present.
[1:59:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:59:19] Bob Dobbs: everybody's doing it now.
[1:59:21] Bob Dobbs: Everybody.
[1:59:24] Cameron McEwen: Attempting.
[1:59:25] Bob Dobbs: Attempting to extract themselves in a communicative context.
[1:59:29] Bob Dobbs: Endless communication about how you're doing.
[1:59:32] Bob Dobbs: I'm doing it,
[1:59:32] Bob Dobbs: I'm halfway out.
[1:59:36] Cameron McEwen: So DNA,
[1:59:38] Bob Dobbs: now what is DNA?
[1:59:41] Bob Dobbs: That living substance,
[1:59:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:59:44] Bob Dobbs: what is DNA here?
[1:59:45] Bob Dobbs: It's like saying G-O-D or something.
[1:59:48] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:59:48] Cameron McEwen: no.
[1:59:49] Cameron McEwen: What he's doing is he's saying if we have to go back to all of his talk about DNA previously and genetic coding.
[1:59:59] Cameron McEwen: So what he's saying is in a situation where active and passive have become non-distinguishable,
[2:00:06] Cameron McEwen: Then what we have to try to do is figure out the genesis of that.
[2:00:15] Cameron McEwen: Just as DNA realizes the aleatory reduction at the level of the living substance,
[2:00:20] Cameron McEwen: right?
[2:00:20] Cameron McEwen: So a human body and a human mind are generated out of a certain code,
[2:00:29] Cameron McEwen: DNA code.
[2:00:31] Cameron McEwen: So what
[2:00:34] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard is trying to think here...
[2:00:36] Cameron McEwen: is what is the genesis,
[2:00:39] Cameron McEwen: what is the genetic code of a situation in which the active and the passive aren't distinguished?
[2:00:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:00:48] Bob Dobbs: he's saying DNA solved the problem.
[2:00:52] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[2:00:52] Cameron McEwen: it solved the problem at the level of a living substance.
[2:00:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:00:56] Cameron McEwen: But the problem is to figure it out at the level of psychology.
[2:01:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:01:01] Cameron McEwen: And that's a very difficult problem for many,
[2:01:04] Cameron McEwen: many,
[2:01:04] Cameron McEwen: many reasons.
[2:01:05] Cameron McEwen: But one is that the investigator,
[2:01:12] Cameron McEwen: let's say McLuhan,
[2:01:16] Cameron McEwen: has to not only know the different codes that generate experience,
[2:01:29] Cameron McEwen: but the investigator has to have found...
[2:01:34] Cameron McEwen: That one code that is able to investigate all codes.
[2:01:43] Cameron McEwen: See,
[2:01:43] Cameron McEwen: that's exactly where or it's exactly one of the places where
[2:01:51] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan research fails.
[2:01:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:01:53] Cameron McEwen: That is that it does not understand many of the difficulties that McLuhan realized and that research into McLuhan has to take into account in reading them.
[2:02:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:02:15] Bob Dobbs: What was I going to say?
[2:02:17] Bob Dobbs: So replaying the stages of apprehension,
[2:02:21] Bob Dobbs: the DNA code does that.
[2:02:27] Bob Dobbs: And then you say psychology,
[2:02:29] Bob Dobbs: we're failing on the psychological.
[2:02:32] Bob Dobbs: Would you say metaphysical?
[2:02:35] Cameron McEwen: Interior landscape.
[2:02:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[2:02:38] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[2:02:38] Bob Dobbs: the interior landscape.
[2:02:46] Bob Dobbs: There was something else I was going to say,
[2:02:47] Bob Dobbs: but I have to read this,
[2:02:48] Bob Dobbs: maybe it'll come back.
[2:02:49] Bob Dobbs: DNA realizes this aleatory reduction at the level of the living...
[2:02:53] Bob Dobbs: At the level,
[2:02:54] Bob Dobbs: that's where the realization is,
[2:02:55] Bob Dobbs: living substance.
[2:02:56] Bob Dobbs: Television itself,
[2:02:57] Bob Dobbs: in the example of Louds,
[2:02:58] Bob Dobbs: also attains this indefinite limit.
[2:03:01] Bob Dobbs: So it gets similar to the...
[2:03:05] Bob Dobbs: It's alive.
[2:03:07] Bob Dobbs: Sort of like alive here.
[2:03:08] Bob Dobbs: It attains this indefinite limit,
[2:03:10] Bob Dobbs: right?
[2:03:10] Bob Dobbs: That's what the DNA's got.
[2:03:15] Cameron McEwen: No,
[2:03:15] Cameron McEwen: The indefinite limit is referring to the non-distinction of active and passive.
[2:03:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:03:21] Bob Dobbs: this barrier.
[2:03:22] Bob Dobbs: It changes this indefinite limit.
[2:03:25] Bob Dobbs: It's a huge limit,
[2:03:29] Bob Dobbs: right?
[2:03:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:03:30] Cameron McEwen: well,
[2:03:31] Cameron McEwen: it's kind of the point of perspective.
[2:03:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:03:35] Cameron McEwen: It's,
[2:03:37] Cameron McEwen: as he goes on to say,
[2:03:38] Cameron McEwen: it's a nebula indecipherable.
[2:03:41] Cameron McEwen: So they,
[2:03:43] Cameron McEwen: when the...
[2:03:44] Cameron McEwen: When the family is on TV,
[2:03:46] Cameron McEwen: when life is dissolved into television,
[2:03:49] Cameron McEwen: and when television is dissolved into life,
[2:03:54] Cameron McEwen: and you try to grasp,
[2:03:56] Cameron McEwen: get a handle on what's going on here,
[2:04:00] Cameron McEwen: there's nothing there.
[2:04:03] Cameron McEwen: So it's just a nebular cloud.
[2:04:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: and you,
[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: way back at the beginning,
[2:04:09] Bob Dobbs: talked about the dot.
[2:04:11] Bob Dobbs: You know that Ulysses ends in a dot.
[2:04:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:04:15] Cameron McEwen: that's true.
[2:04:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:04:17] Bob Dobbs: So this dot is huge here,
[2:04:20] Bob Dobbs: maybe even a black hole.
[2:04:22] Bob Dobbs: It takes this indefinite limit where the family vis-a-vis TV are no more or less active or passive than is a living substance vis-a-vis a molecular code.
[2:04:33] Bob Dobbs: In both,
[2:04:33] Bob Dobbs: there's only a nebula indecipherable.
[2:04:35] Bob Dobbs: That's what
[2:04:36] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says.
[2:04:38] Bob Dobbs: A lot of laws in the media was written in the late 70s.
[2:04:43] Bob Dobbs: So it ends with this unchartable milieu.
[2:04:46] Bob Dobbs: In both,
[2:04:47] Bob Dobbs: there's only a nebula indecipherable into its simple elements.
[2:04:52] Bob Dobbs: You can't make it simple.
[2:04:54] Bob Dobbs: Is that what it's saying?
[2:04:57] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[2:04:58] Cameron McEwen: as we said before,
[2:05:02] Cameron McEwen: once you're into an indefinite limit,
[2:05:05] Cameron McEwen: then the word and the concept of an element,
[2:05:09] Cameron McEwen: or the word and concept of truth,
[2:05:13] Cameron McEwen: are exploded.
[2:05:15] Cameron McEwen: And so it's not the case that the nebula that is indecipherable destroys elements and truth.
[2:05:27] Cameron McEwen: It's the reverse is the case,
[2:05:30] Cameron McEwen: where the implosion of elements and the implosion of truth have resulted in the cul-de-sac,
[2:05:38] Cameron McEwen: which is this nebula that is
[2:05:41] Cameron McEwen: indecipherable.
[2:05:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:05:44] Bob Dobbs: So
[2:05:45] Bob Dobbs: I have actually come to some kind of temporary understanding.
[2:05:50] Bob Dobbs: Got some insights in tonight's discussion.
[2:05:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:05:54] Cameron McEwen: No,
[2:05:54] Cameron McEwen: I think
[2:05:57] Cameron McEwen: I came to a greater respect of Baudrillard through our conversation.
[2:06:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:06:03] Cameron McEwen: So
[2:06:04] Cameron McEwen: I think it was an interesting experiment that we've been through.
[2:06:09] Cameron McEwen: I think that if we
[2:06:11] Cameron McEwen: treat some of the stuff you're saying or some of the stuff that McLuhan says in a similar way,
[2:06:18] Cameron McEwen: I think that's a good way of proceeding.
[2:06:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:06:22] Bob Dobbs: No,
[2:06:23] Bob Dobbs: this book is really just a way to get this quote out there.
[2:06:29] Cameron McEwen: Could be seen that way.
[2:06:30] Cameron McEwen: Why not?
[2:06:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:06:31] Bob Dobbs: What do you call that?
[2:06:32] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[2:06:32] Bob Dobbs: the red herring or the meat that distracts the dog from something?
[2:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:06:39] Cameron McEwen: by the burglar.
[2:06:41] Bob Dobbs: By the what?
[2:06:43] Cameron McEwen: By the burglar.
[2:06:44] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[2:06:45] Bob Dobbs: right,
[2:06:45] Bob Dobbs: right,
[2:06:45] Bob Dobbs: by the burglar.
[2:06:47] Bob Dobbs: So,
[2:06:47] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[2:06:48] Bob Dobbs: this has been really good.
[2:06:49] Bob Dobbs: And,
[2:06:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[2:06:53] Bob Dobbs: if you suddenly got your wife to read this,
[2:06:55] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[2:06:56] Bob Dobbs: read this,
[2:06:56] Bob Dobbs: she wouldn't know what it fucking meant,
[2:06:58] Bob Dobbs: right?
[2:06:58] Bob Dobbs: Nobody would.
[2:06:59] Bob Dobbs: It's pretty complicated.
[2:07:01] Bob Dobbs: You have to talk to her like we did to get her to move with it.
[2:07:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[2:07:05] Cameron McEwen: it's characteristic of
[2:07:08] Cameron McEwen: French thought at that time.
[2:07:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:07:11] Cameron McEwen: People,
[2:07:12] Cameron McEwen: after 68,
[2:07:17] Cameron McEwen: a certain wing of
[2:07:19] Cameron McEwen: French philosophy was trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
[2:07:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:07:26] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[2:07:28] Bob Dobbs: And a lot of them discovered McLuhan and then bounced off McLuhan.
[2:07:31] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[2:07:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:07:34] Cameron McEwen: That's true.
[2:07:36] Cameron McEwen: That's true.
[2:07:37] Cameron McEwen: So this is actually a pretty good...
[2:07:39] Cameron McEwen: place to stop.
[2:07:44] Cameron McEwen: Next time we can take up some of the stuff that you talk about in terms of McLuhan and this quote.
[2:07:54] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking,
[2:07:56] Bob Dobbs: I wonder if this feeling of getting understanding will go away.
[2:08:02] Bob Dobbs: This is dangerous.
[2:08:04] Bob Dobbs: Walking around thinking you know something.
[2:08:08] Cameron McEwen: Your head might explode.
[2:08:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:08:11] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[2:08:11] Bob Dobbs: well,
[2:08:12] Bob Dobbs: great talking to you.
[2:08:13] Bob Dobbs: We'll talk next week.
[2:08:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[2:08:14] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.
[2:08:15] Bob Dobbs: Good.
[2:08:15] Cameron McEwen: Look forward,
[2:08:16] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[2:08:16] Cameron McEwen: Thanks.
[2:08:16] Cameron McEwen: Bye-bye.
[2:08:17] Bob Dobbs: Bye.