[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is
[00:03] Bob Dobbs: Bob and Ewen Cameron once again,
[00:06] Bob Dobbs: and
[00:08] Bob Dobbs: I've got to look up what number episode this is.
[00:13] Cameron McEwen: It must be around 37,
[00:15] Cameron McEwen: maybe even 38.
[00:17] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[00:17] Bob Dobbs: so let's just go over to the archive and bring it up here.
[00:25] Bob Dobbs: Take a few seconds.
[00:27] Bob Dobbs: Such a huge archive,
[00:29] Bob Dobbs: 33,000 hours.
[00:31] Bob Dobbs: discussion with you-know-who.
[00:36] Bob Dobbs: So it takes a long time for the inventory of articles.
[00:43] Bob Dobbs: We are doing a very good series for the Finnegans Wake reading group.
[00:49] Bob Dobbs: So there's a good
[00:52] Bob Dobbs: Facebook forum doing Finnegans Wake,
[00:55] Bob Dobbs: and it's a lot of fun to read all the different people.
[01:00] Bob Dobbs: our contribution is that we get
[01:02] Bob Dobbs: Ion to pick a page and then
[01:06] Bob Dobbs: I start reading it and he tells us what it means today.
[01:11] Bob Dobbs: He relates it to events today.
[01:13] Bob Dobbs: The words adapt to the present and it's pretty uncanny what he does or they do.
[01:21] Bob Dobbs: And the order of pages,
[01:24] Bob Dobbs: I think we're up to like 24,
[01:26] Bob Dobbs: 25 episodes,
[01:28] Bob Dobbs: 25 pages.
[01:29] Bob Dobbs: is the proper order of the pages in the book.
[01:33] Bob Dobbs: You get that?
[01:36] Bob Dobbs: It starts with page 44.
[01:38] Bob Dobbs: The real beginning of the book is page 44 with the ballad.
[01:43] Bob Dobbs: And then he goes up and down the book for page 2,
[01:47] Bob Dobbs: page 3,
[01:47] Bob Dobbs: page 4.
[01:49] Bob Dobbs: So,
[01:49] Bob Dobbs: pretty radical presentation.
[01:52] Bob Dobbs: And that's available here at Ion and Bob for you to...
[02:00] Bob Dobbs: Listen to those sessions.
[02:01] Bob Dobbs: They're pretty unique.
[02:02] Bob Dobbs: It's a new way to look at the
[02:04] Bob Dobbs: Innis Wake,
[02:05] Bob Dobbs: how it,
[02:05] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[02:06] Bob Dobbs: prophetically talks about today.
[02:10] Bob Dobbs: So,
[02:11] Bob Dobbs: let's see,
[02:11] Bob Dobbs: 23rd of September,
[02:14] Bob Dobbs: what's it going to say?
[02:15] Bob Dobbs: Hey,
[02:15] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron,
[02:16] Bob Dobbs: Bob,
[02:16] Bob Dobbs: we're back with the
[02:18] Cameron McEwen: 37th episode of our examination.
[02:21] Bob Dobbs: This is the
[02:22] Bob Dobbs: 38th episode.
[02:25] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[02:25] Bob Dobbs: we got that established and I told a nice story.
[02:28] Bob Dobbs: So what were you going to say if you were going to,
[02:31] Bob Dobbs: you were starting to say something,
[02:32] Bob Dobbs: do you remember?
[02:34] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[02:35] Cameron McEwen: I was going to say that the big point of the book seems to be the relationship between Trump the tech body.
[02:47] Cameron McEwen: But I,
[02:48] Cameron McEwen: for one,
[02:49] Cameron McEwen: don't understand what it is that you see in that regard.
[02:56] Cameron McEwen: There's a...
[02:57] Cameron McEwen: tetrad Trump at the bottom of page 174.
[03:03] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[03:03] Cameron McEwen: And that possibly is a way to get into that.
[03:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[03:10] Bob Dobbs: So,
[03:10] Bob Dobbs: well,
[03:10] Bob Dobbs: on page 172 begins the last section,
[03:14] Bob Dobbs: chapter 6,
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: the tech body and President Donald Trump.
[03:18] Bob Dobbs: And I go,
[03:19] Bob Dobbs: now we come to the point of this essay.
[03:21] Bob Dobbs: And I have a quote from page 11.
[03:24] Bob Dobbs: Take today.
[03:25] Bob Dobbs: It is man who has become both...
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness.
[03:32] Bob Dobbs: So in Playboy in 69,
[03:37] Bob Dobbs: he was talking about the content as ground,
[03:39] Bob Dobbs: one passing sentence,
[03:41] Bob Dobbs: and he put content in italics.
[03:44] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[03:44] Bob Dobbs: we're going to have to look at the content as ground.
[03:48] Bob Dobbs: He didn't say ground,
[03:49] Bob Dobbs: but it seemed to me what he was pointing out,
[03:51] Bob Dobbs: because he was probably writing this with Barry.
[03:54] Bob Dobbs: I know they wrote it from 68.
[03:56] Bob Dobbs: 71,
[03:56] Bob Dobbs: 72.
[03:58] Bob Dobbs: So when information completely takes over and the mixed corporate media have fused to a pure software,
[04:11] Bob Dobbs: can't find the hardware,
[04:15] Bob Dobbs: then the content becomes the ground.
[04:18] Bob Dobbs: So it says here,
[04:19] Bob Dobbs: it is man who has become both figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of awareness.
[04:23] Bob Dobbs: So the White House...
[04:25] Bob Dobbs: From that point on was the ground,
[04:27] Bob Dobbs: figure and ground,
[04:28] Bob Dobbs: this phenomenon.
[04:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[04:31] Cameron McEwen: let's not go too fast here.
[04:33] Cameron McEwen: Let's try and figure out what's going on with this citation from Take Today.
[04:40] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[04:41] Cameron McEwen: And
[04:43] Cameron McEwen: I think you're bringing up the content as ground is maybe a good way to get into this.
[04:54] Cameron McEwen: The distinguishing feature of the Gutenberg Galaxy
[05:01] Cameron McEwen: is that it doesn't maintain the distinction between figure and ground.
[05:07] Cameron McEwen: It loses ground.
[05:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[05:09] Cameron McEwen: So it becomes only figure that it takes to be both figure and ground.
[05:16] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[05:16] Cameron McEwen: That's the point at the end of perspective,
[05:21] Cameron McEwen: right?
[05:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[05:23] Cameron McEwen: So then you can say that in the Gutenbergian perspective,
[05:30] Cameron McEwen: Content is ground.
[05:35] Cameron McEwen: But in that flip,
[05:40] Cameron McEwen: ground as ground has disappeared.
[05:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[05:45] Cameron McEwen: So then when he says that it is man who has become both figure and ground,
[05:51] Cameron McEwen: we have to figure out,
[05:52] Cameron McEwen: is he talking there from a Gutenbergian perspective?
[05:57] Cameron McEwen: Or is he talking there from an electric,
[06:01] Cameron McEwen: tactile perspective?
[06:04] Cameron McEwen: And I think he's saying the latter.
[06:07] Cameron McEwen: I think he's saying that he is both figure and ground,
[06:12] Cameron McEwen: but not as identical.
[06:15] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[06:16] Cameron McEwen: Not such that figure and ground are the same.
[06:20] Cameron McEwen: Rather,
[06:21] Cameron McEwen: that human beings,
[06:24] Cameron McEwen: because they're finite,
[06:25] Cameron McEwen: because they're always limited,
[06:28] Cameron McEwen: can never be more than a finite delimited figure,
[06:35] Cameron McEwen: but they're related to ground,
[06:38] Cameron McEwen: which is figures plural.
[06:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[06:44] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[06:44] Cameron McEwen: So when he says both figure and ground,
[06:47] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is that,
[06:49] Cameron McEwen: or at least what I think he's saying,
[06:52] Cameron McEwen: is that in an electrotechnical environment,
[06:56] Cameron McEwen: we are...
[06:57] Cameron McEwen: instantaneously exposed to all possible figures but the uh all possible figures is ground yep well maybe the one you select is ground the
[07:13] Cameron McEwen: one that no no no no no no that's that's Gutenberg Galaxy gutenberg the um the ground very long pardon me
[07:26] Bob Dobbs: The tactility is the rapidity of shift from it's ground for a second and it isn't.
[07:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[07:33] Cameron McEwen: but you see,
[07:35] Cameron McEwen: you have to ask yourself,
[07:36] Cameron McEwen: it's ground for a second and it isn't.
[07:38] Cameron McEwen: That has two different meanings.
[07:41] Cameron McEwen: You're caching that at the level of history,
[07:45] Cameron McEwen: at the level of everyday experience.
[07:48] Cameron McEwen: But at the level of ground,
[07:51] Cameron McEwen: the figure and ground for a second is in a different.
[07:55] Cameron McEwen: time.
[07:57] Cameron McEwen: It's like the difference between the table of chemical elements and their expression in the world.
[08:06] Cameron McEwen: Their expression in the world is always momentary.
[08:10] Cameron McEwen: Everything in the world is changing second by second by second.
[08:14] Cameron McEwen: But the elementary table is not changing.
[08:17] Cameron McEwen: But what you can do is you can put your finger on hydrogen and then you can put your finger on helium them.
[08:24] Cameron McEwen: And you can say,
[08:25] Cameron McEwen: well,
[08:25] Cameron McEwen: this was ground for that second,
[08:27] Cameron McEwen: this was ground for another second,
[08:30] Cameron McEwen: and you can go right through the table up to 120 or whatever the number is now.
[08:37] Cameron McEwen: So those are two very,
[08:41] Cameron McEwen: very different things.
[08:43] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[08:43] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure
[08:44] Bob Dobbs: I know what you mean,
[08:45] Bob Dobbs: but
[08:48] Bob Dobbs: I took this to mean the second case,
[08:52] Bob Dobbs: electric tactility.
[08:55] Bob Dobbs: this figure and ground relationship.
[08:57] Bob Dobbs: And so he talked about the word making the market,
[09:01] Bob Dobbs: and the word came out of the White House or its associates like the Federal Reserve,
[09:07] Bob Dobbs: and that was the ground.
[09:11] Bob Dobbs: But the ground of visual space,
[09:15] Bob Dobbs: maybe.
[09:17] Bob Dobbs: So each space,
[09:19] Bob Dobbs: sensory space,
[09:20] Bob Dobbs: had its own spatial dimension.
[09:24] Bob Dobbs: And they're all flipping into each,
[09:26] Bob Dobbs: out.
[09:27] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[09:27] Bob Dobbs: it's a page of Finney's Wake,
[09:29] Bob Dobbs: always,
[09:30] Bob Dobbs: flipping in and out,
[09:31] Bob Dobbs: and you don't know which is which.
[09:33] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[09:34] Bob Dobbs: But the Gutenberg split.
[09:36] Bob Dobbs: figure and ground and then McLuhan said well figure and ground merge under electrical conditions so the medium became the message the message became the medium right but but don't but don't say that as
[09:52] Cameron McEwen: if the gap disappeared or is or as if tactility disappeared right there they merge there's two very different kinds of merging there's Gutenbergian merging yeah but
[10:05] Cameron McEwen: emerges at the point of perspective.
[10:08] Cameron McEwen: And then there's electric merging,
[10:11] Cameron McEwen: which is a natural condition and which,
[10:15] Cameron McEwen: once it was discovered,
[10:17] Cameron McEwen: that natural condition led from somewhere around 1800,
[10:23] Cameron McEwen: led to where we are today with all of the different applications of electricity.
[10:31] Cameron McEwen: But those applications of electricity Okay.
[10:35] Cameron McEwen: depend upon the difference between the negative and the positive poles.
[10:40] Cameron McEwen: There is no such thing as electric merging that does not pass through the gate in between those poles.
[10:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[10:51] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[10:52] Bob Dobbs: discontinuity,
[10:53] Bob Dobbs: it's an abrupt interface.
[10:59] Bob Dobbs: People,
[10:59] Bob Dobbs: the effect of electric technologies...
[11:02] Bob Dobbs: in the understanding media days was it created flux and flow but people they missed they maybe uh gutenberg did eyes gutenberg eyes did uh with uh new age philosophies you know go with the flow and
[11:20] Bob Dobbs: they didn't recognize that tactility had a lot of contrast so more and more contrast was coming on people so flow was a misnomer for actual um
[11:32] Cameron McEwen: overlaying interdependent imminent blur but momentary clarity which you would soon forget yeah it's just like people
[11:49] Cameron McEwen: said then and people say now the voyage is the destination right so
[12:00] Cameron McEwen: New Age philosophy
[12:02] Cameron McEwen: and cheap philosophy,
[12:05] Cameron McEwen: like the voyages to the destination.
[12:08] Cameron McEwen: These are attempts to consolidate what can't be consolidated.
[12:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[12:14] Cameron McEwen: So we're always lying to ourselves.
[12:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[12:19] Bob Dobbs: The overall big phrase for this problem is,
[12:23] Bob Dobbs: whatever.
[12:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[12:27] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[12:28] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[12:29] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan actually...
[12:31] Cameron McEwen: Where is that?
[12:33] Cameron McEwen: As we're talking,
[12:33] Cameron McEwen: I'll try and find where
[12:36] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan says something like that
[12:41] Cameron McEwen: 70 or 75 years ago.
[12:45] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[12:45] Bob Dobbs: while you say that,
[12:47] Bob Dobbs: he talked about where it's at.
[12:49] Bob Dobbs: He made a lot of interesting probes around where it's at.
[12:54] Bob Dobbs: And I think in Take Today,
[12:56] Bob Dobbs: he has where it's at,
[12:57] Bob Dobbs: A,
[12:57] Bob Dobbs: T,
[12:58] Bob Dobbs: and T,
[12:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[12:59] Bob Dobbs: it.
[12:59] Bob Dobbs: That's good.
[13:00] Bob Dobbs: That's very good.
[13:00] Bob Dobbs: I like that a lot.
[13:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[13:03] Bob Dobbs: that's in there somewhere,
[13:05] Bob Dobbs: one page.
[13:08] Bob Dobbs: But the whatever is our time after McLuhan.
[13:17] Bob Dobbs: The people,
[13:18] Bob Dobbs: they don't care where it's at.
[13:21] Bob Dobbs: You just tell them one.
[13:23] Bob Dobbs: Just give them one.
[13:24] Bob Dobbs: Send them there that you say is where it's at,
[13:27] Bob Dobbs: and they'll go there.
[13:28] Bob Dobbs: Because whatever,
[13:30] Bob Dobbs: there really is.
[13:32] Bob Dobbs: William Irwin Thompson talked about the victim of maritime was the mind.
[13:36] Bob Dobbs: He went through the history of culture,
[13:39] Bob Dobbs: and each phase had a victim.
[13:42] Bob Dobbs: If I remember,
[13:44] Bob Dobbs: the animal was victim in the first one.
[13:47] Bob Dobbs: Then woman was the victim in the next one.
[13:51] Bob Dobbs: Then religion.
[13:55] Bob Dobbs: Around the industrial,
[13:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[13:57] Bob Dobbs: 500 years ago,
[13:57] Bob Dobbs: religion was the next victim.
[14:00] Bob Dobbs: And then something,
[14:06] Bob Dobbs: not sure,
[14:07] Bob Dobbs: but the last one was the victim was the mind.
[14:10] Bob Dobbs: That would be the left hemisphere mind,
[14:12] Bob Dobbs: I guess,
[14:13] Bob Dobbs: or maybe both.
[14:15] Bob Dobbs: The deeper you go into it,
[14:17] Bob Dobbs: you get into the 70s,
[14:18] Bob Dobbs: both left and right hemispheres are obsolete and victim.
[14:25] Bob Dobbs: But people tended to,
[14:26] Bob Dobbs: they were forced to rely on what was last recognized by the chemical body,
[14:31] Bob Dobbs: which was the right hemisphere.
[14:33] Bob Dobbs: So
[14:33] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan called it the age of intuition.
[14:38] Bob Dobbs: But the intuition succumbed to whatever over the last 50 or so years.
[14:45] Cameron McEwen: So listen to this part.
[14:46] Cameron McEwen: Listen to this.
[14:48] Cameron McEwen: This is a letter that
[14:50] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan wrote to one of the acolytes of Ezra Pound in
[14:58] Bob Dobbs: 1949. Wow.
[15:01] Cameron McEwen: Where'd you get this letter?
[15:02] Cameron McEwen: A guy by the name of Simpson.
[15:04] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if you've heard of him.
[15:06] Cameron McEwen: He was an art dealer in Houston,
[15:09] Cameron McEwen: and he became a big
[15:12] Cameron McEwen: Giedion.
[15:13] Bob Dobbs: Wow. Where did you get the letter?
[15:17] Cameron McEwen: It's in the University of Texas collection.
[15:21] Cameron McEwen: The University of Texas has quite a big Pound collection,
[15:26] Cameron McEwen: including some letters of
[15:29] Cameron McEwen: Pound and McLuhan.
[15:30] Bob Dobbs: Did you correspond with them,
[15:32] Bob Dobbs: or did you go there?
[15:34] Cameron McEwen: No,
[15:35] Cameron McEwen: of course not.
[15:35] Cameron McEwen: I've corresponded with them.
[15:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[15:37] Bob Dobbs: So you found this letter.
[15:38] Cameron McEwen: I'll send you this letter.
[15:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[15:40] Cameron McEwen: So anyway,
[15:43] Cameron McEwen: the Houston art dealer,
[15:45] Cameron McEwen: his full name was William Dallam,
[15:47] Cameron McEwen: D-A-L-A-M
[15:50] Cameron McEwen: Simpson, and he was called Bill.
[15:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[15:54] Cameron McEwen: So this is the very end of 1949,
[15:58] Cameron McEwen: right?
[15:59] Cameron McEwen: So we're talking over 70 years ago.
[16:04] Cameron McEwen: and
[16:07] Cameron McEwen: remember what you were saying just a minute ago about people willing to go anywhere.
[16:16] Cameron McEwen: He says here,
[16:21] Cameron McEwen: he's talking about the quote-unquote,
[16:25] Cameron McEwen: the absolute squalor and anemia of mind,
[16:31] Cameron McEwen: which is now universal.
[16:33] Bob Dobbs: Wow.
[16:34] Bob Dobbs: I recall that in other letters,
[16:37] Bob Dobbs: similar idea,
[16:38] Bob Dobbs: but go ahead.
[16:40] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[16:40] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[16:41] Cameron McEwen: So then he says,
[16:42] Cameron McEwen: anybody will agree with that.
[16:45] Cameron McEwen: Everybody nearly will retort,
[16:49] Cameron McEwen: so what?
[16:50] Cameron McEwen: Who cares?
[16:51] Cameron McEwen: This is the current cliche on every campus.
[16:57] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty good,
[16:58] Bob Dobbs: isn't it?
[16:59] Cameron McEwen: Wow.
[17:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[17:01] Cameron McEwen: in the context of what we were saying a minute ago.
[17:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[17:04] Cameron McEwen: Quite amazing.
[17:05] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[17:06] Bob Dobbs: So what?
[17:09] Bob Dobbs: So he,
[17:10] Bob Dobbs: what is the,
[17:11] Bob Dobbs: can you read more?
[17:12] Bob Dobbs: What's the reason,
[17:13] Bob Dobbs: the paragraph that has that in it?
[17:17] Bob Dobbs: What is he telling the guy?
[17:19] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[17:20] Cameron McEwen: he's talking about what he calls the inhuman mechanism,
[17:26] Cameron McEwen: which our appetites have created.
[17:29] Cameron McEwen: So he's,
[17:31] Cameron McEwen: you can tell that this is before.
[17:32] Cameron McEwen: for the mechanical bride because he's still very caught up in the idea that the problem with modern society is our sinfulness and
[17:48] Cameron McEwen: our appetites and what we have to do is go through a conversion experience like he had done.
[17:58] Cameron McEwen: So he's going to drop that idea.
[18:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[18:00] Cameron McEwen: he's...
[18:01] Cameron McEwen: He's going to go through what I call his second conversion,
[18:05] Cameron McEwen: where he realizes that his ideas were sort of a
[18:11] Cameron McEwen: Gutenbergian
[18:12] Cameron McEwen: Catholicism, and what he needed was an electric
[18:18] Cameron McEwen: Catholicism, if that were possible.
[18:21] Cameron McEwen: And he decided that it was possible.
[18:26] Cameron McEwen: So he's talking about this inhuman mechanism of modern culture.
[18:31] Cameron McEwen: And then he talks about the absolute squalor and anemia of mind.
[18:37] Bob Dobbs: Amazing.
[18:39] Bob Dobbs: That's a good thing to know,
[18:41] Bob Dobbs: that one.
[18:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[18:42] Cameron McEwen: So earlier in the letter,
[18:43] Cameron McEwen: he's got an interesting quotation.
[18:45] Cameron McEwen: He says,
[18:47] Cameron McEwen: I continue to evolve a Baedeker,
[18:49] Cameron McEwen: a Guide to Kulch adapted to current university student frustration.
[18:55] Cameron McEwen: But this has to go on in the back of my mind till the book I'm doing is.
[19:00] Cameron McEwen: done.
[19:01] Cameron McEwen: So the book I'm doing was Mechanical Bride.
[19:04] Cameron McEwen: And
[19:04] Cameron McEwen: I wasn't aware before that
[19:08] Cameron McEwen: I knew that he was writing the Baedeker in the
[19:11] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, but I didn't realize that he had the idea that it would be a Robert Logan to Mechanical Bride.
[19:19] Cameron McEwen: So that's an interesting tidbit from this letter as well.
[19:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[19:23] Bob Dobbs: read the first line of what you read there.
[19:25] Bob Dobbs: I didn't get it.
[19:27] Cameron McEwen: I continue to evolve for you.
[19:29] Cameron McEwen: a Baedeker you know a Baedeker guy yeah yeah travel right yeah which he did in the
[19:34] Bob Dobbs: 70s guy in the early
[19:36] Bob Dobbs: 70s
[19:37] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[19:38] Cameron McEwen: He always had this idea.
[19:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[19:41] Cameron McEwen: His idea was that he was writing a Baedeker of modern culture.
[19:48] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[19:49] Cameron McEwen: if you're traveling through modern culture,
[19:52] Cameron McEwen: he wanted to be the travel guide.
[19:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[19:55] Bob Dobbs: Or Virgil.
[19:56] Bob Dobbs: He wanted to be the Virgil.
[19:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[19:59] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[19:59] Cameron McEwen: the Virgil or the Baedeker or whatever.
[20:03] Cameron McEwen: Coach.
[20:03] Bob Dobbs: Coach,
[20:04] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[20:07] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely.
[20:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[20:08] Bob Dobbs: What is it?
[20:09] Bob Dobbs: Rowing the cocks,
[20:10] Bob Dobbs: Wayne,
[20:10] Bob Dobbs: the cocks.
[20:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[20:13] Bob Dobbs: The cocks and forget what they used to call them.
[20:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[20:17] Cameron McEwen: he was too tall to do that.
[20:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[20:20] Cameron McEwen: So he was a rower.
[20:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[20:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[20:24] Cameron McEwen: But he calls it a Guide to Kulch,
[20:27] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[20:27] Cameron McEwen: a guide with Kulch spelled K-U-L-C-H.
[20:32] Cameron McEwen: And that's...
[20:33] Cameron McEwen: Pound's culture,
[20:35] Cameron McEwen: right?
[20:35] Cameron McEwen: Guide to Culture.
[20:36] Cameron McEwen: So he says,
[20:37] Cameron McEwen: I continue to evolve a Baedeker,
[20:40] Cameron McEwen: a Guide to Kulch adapted to current university student frustration.
[20:46] Cameron McEwen: But this has to go in the back of my mind until a book I'm doing is done.
[20:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[20:53] Bob Dobbs: He had met Pound the year before in 1948.
[20:56] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[20:57] Bob Dobbs: And he didn't have the throes of Giedion enlightenment.
[21:03] Cameron McEwen: So he's saying coach.
[21:05] Cameron McEwen: He's doing coach.
[21:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[21:06] Cameron McEwen: So Pound's insistence on precise reading and precise observation and precise use of words was getting to McLuhan because
[21:22] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had not paid enough attention to precision.
[21:28] Cameron McEwen: in his perception and in his writing up till then.
[21:34] Cameron McEwen: So
[21:35] Cameron McEwen: Pound kind of took a knife to
[21:37] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, which he needed.
[21:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[21:39] Bob Dobbs: people talk about,
[21:41] Bob Dobbs: or McLuhan scholars talk about the important 49 to 52 Innis influence,
[21:46] Bob Dobbs: but parallel to that is Pound,
[21:49] Bob Dobbs: and that's an intense Pound relationship at the same time.
[21:53] Cameron McEwen: That's correct,
[21:53] Cameron McEwen: but it's also when he was looking at cybernetics.
[21:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[21:59] Cameron McEwen: So
[22:00] Cameron McEwen: Wiener, then it was also the time that he was thinking in terms of
[22:09] Cameron McEwen: Mallarmé.
[22:11] Cameron McEwen: So there was a lot going on at that point.
[22:14] Cameron McEwen: And then,
[22:14] Cameron McEwen: of course,
[22:15] Cameron McEwen: he was writing
[22:16] Cameron McEwen: The Mechanical Bride.
[22:17] Cameron McEwen: So all of these things were,
[22:21] Cameron McEwen: it was sort of a thundercloud of ideas.
[22:27] Cameron McEwen: going on in his mind.
[22:29] Cameron McEwen: And really what he was doing was loading up for the analysis that he would do in the
[22:40] Cameron McEwen: 50s.
[22:41] Cameron McEwen: He took on a load of stuff,
[22:44] Cameron McEwen: including all of the
[22:46] Cameron McEwen: English poetry that he was dealing with and novels.
[22:50] Cameron McEwen: And then in the
[22:53] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, he had to sort out all that stuff.
[22:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[22:57] Bob Dobbs: and you also was doing Finney's Wake with
[23:01] Bob Dobbs: Don Fields.
[23:01] Bob Dobbs: So he was doing all the men of 1914.
[23:05] Bob Dobbs: He wrote a letter to Kenner around 1949 saying,
[23:08] Bob Dobbs: I think I'm going to start talking about Lewis a little more.
[23:11] Bob Dobbs: So he was doing all of them.
[23:12] Bob Dobbs: So what caused the explosion of inspiration,
[23:17] Bob Dobbs: say,
[23:18] Bob Dobbs: from 1947 to 1951?
[23:22] Bob Dobbs: What do you think?
[23:23] Bob Dobbs: Why was it all coming together?
[23:25] Bob Dobbs: Because...
[23:25] Bob Dobbs: They're coming out of the doldrums of World War II.
[23:28] Bob Dobbs: The atomic bomb was there.
[23:30] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[23:30] Bob Dobbs: he Wright the Southern Quality,
[23:32] Bob Dobbs: which has a great opening couple of pages.
[23:36] Bob Dobbs: What do you think that I don't know about,
[23:39] Bob Dobbs: or you might know about,
[23:40] Bob Dobbs: that was getting to him in that period?
[23:44] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[23:44] Cameron McEwen: the most important thing was the transfer of the University of Toronto.
[23:48] Cameron McEwen: He had never been in an atmosphere like that where there were
[23:55] Cameron McEwen: great minds coming at things from many different perspectives.
[24:00] Cameron McEwen: He had been in a Anti-environment since his conversion in 1937,
[24:08] Cameron McEwen: and then going to Assumption in 1944,
[24:12] Cameron McEwen: and then finally coming to Toronto in 1946.
[24:17] Cameron McEwen: So for 10 years,
[24:18] Cameron McEwen: he had been in a largely Anti-environment that had...
[24:24] Cameron McEwen: reinforced the ideas that led to his conversion.
[24:30] Cameron McEwen: And then at the University of Toronto...
[24:35] Cameron McEwen: with
[24:37] Cameron McEwen: Havelock and with
[24:39] Cameron McEwen: Ennis and with a large
[24:43] Cameron McEwen: English department with people,
[24:47] Cameron McEwen: many of whom didn't like
[24:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan or his ideas.
[24:51] Cameron McEwen: He was in a anti-environment that forced him to rethink a lot of stuff.
[24:58] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[25:00] Cameron McEwen: And,
[25:00] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[25:00] Cameron McEwen: and another very important thing,
[25:02] Cameron McEwen: in 1944,
[25:05] Cameron McEwen: Sigfried Giedion had written to McLuhan and said,
[25:09] Cameron McEwen: you need to start doing French poetry.
[25:12] Cameron McEwen: And so in the late
[25:14] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, he was working with,
[25:17] Cameron McEwen: especially there was one woman,
[25:19] Cameron McEwen: I forget her name now,
[25:20] Cameron McEwen: but there was a woman who was an expert in
[25:25] Cameron McEwen: French poetry,
[25:27] Cameron McEwen: and he was working with her to go through,
[25:31] Cameron McEwen: especially Mallarmé,
[25:32] Cameron McEwen: but also
[25:34] Cameron McEwen: Baudelaire and Rimbaud,
[25:37] Cameron McEwen: he was working through them in French.
[25:41] Cameron McEwen: And that kind of intense involvement in very complex art was sort of the context in which all
[25:56] Cameron McEwen: of the ideas that we were previously talking about got put into a kind of cement mixer.
[26:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[26:04] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall in the Medium is Rearview Mirror in 71 or so,
[26:08] Bob Dobbs: he Wright a note at the end of the book about the importance of the
[26:11] Bob Dobbs: University of Toronto milieu on McLuhan.
[26:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[26:15] Cameron McEwen: definitely true.
[26:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[26:16] Bob Dobbs: Theall pointed that out.
[26:19] Bob Dobbs: What is it,
[26:21] Bob Dobbs: so Toronto,
[26:21] Bob Dobbs: he's in a big city compared to where he was,
[26:24] Bob Dobbs: not so cloistered,
[26:28] Bob Dobbs: and he was sailing,
[26:30] Bob Dobbs: right?
[26:31] Bob Dobbs: He did a lot of sailing.
[26:33] Cameron McEwen: Like Havelock,
[26:34] Cameron McEwen: by the way.
[26:35] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?
[26:37] Cameron McEwen: Like Eric Havelock,
[26:38] Cameron McEwen: also.
[26:39] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[26:39] Bob Dobbs: was he a sailor?
[26:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[26:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[26:43] Bob Dobbs: I wonder,
[26:45] Bob Dobbs: and then he met Ted Carpenter.
[26:47] Bob Dobbs: Ted Carpenter was a big inspiration or something for him.
[26:52] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,
[26:52] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[26:53] Cameron McEwen: Ted Carpenter was a lively mind who was not a Catholic.
[26:58] Cameron McEwen: And he came in from the,
[27:00] Bob Dobbs: he was a spy who came in from the cold.
[27:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[27:03] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[27:05] Cameron McEwen: And notice how the cold works with the Arctic.
[27:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[27:09] Bob Dobbs: well,
[27:09] Bob Dobbs: that's what I mean.
[27:10] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[27:10] Bob Dobbs: and anthropologists are spies.
[27:12] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[27:13] Cameron McEwen: coming into the cold has many meanings.
[27:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[27:16] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[27:16] Cameron McEwen: I wasn't sure if you were talking about them all or one.
[27:19] Bob Dobbs: All of them.
[27:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[27:22] Cameron McEwen: well,
[27:22] Cameron McEwen: I agree,
[27:23] Cameron McEwen: of course.
[27:24] Bob Dobbs: And I'm saying an anthropologist is a spy.
[27:26] Bob Dobbs: And apparently the rumors are the
[27:29] Bob Dobbs: Aboriginals would spy back.
[27:32] Bob Dobbs: They'd play games on each other.
[27:34] Cameron McEwen: Sure,
[27:35] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[27:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[27:38] Bob Dobbs: so we're talking about that because you want to read that letter.
[27:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[27:44] Bob Dobbs: the so what letter.
[27:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[27:48] Bob Dobbs: So,
[27:50] Bob Dobbs: all right,
[27:51] Bob Dobbs: so I'm looking at
[27:53] Bob Dobbs: Trump.
[27:54] Bob Dobbs: We're coming out of the Android Meme phase,
[27:56] Bob Dobbs: which is like the Matrix as the movie presents it.
[28:00] Bob Dobbs: It's a bed.
[28:01] Bob Dobbs: It's a comforting bed,
[28:02] Bob Dobbs: the Android Meme.
[28:05] Bob Dobbs: And it's going to evolve into some Anthropomorphic Physical kind of thing that is,
[28:12] Bob Dobbs: I would call,
[28:13] Bob Dobbs: psychopathic.
[28:14] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[28:14] Bob Dobbs: you notice one of the letters I sent you...
[28:16] Cameron McEwen: Isn't it already Anthropomorphic Physical?
[28:20] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[28:21] Bob Dobbs: but the Android Meme is trying to reflect humans back to them.
[28:31] Bob Dobbs: to hide the fact that it's not human.
[28:33] Bob Dobbs: So it's trying to be as human.
[28:35] Bob Dobbs: So it's scanning the range of human expression.
[28:38] Bob Dobbs: And I like to cite in the
[28:40] Bob Dobbs: 90s the Jerry Springer shows,
[28:42] Bob Dobbs: the so-called dumbing down of American culture.
[28:45] Bob Dobbs: No,
[28:46] Bob Dobbs: that was the Android Meme taking out the aggressive,
[28:52] Bob Dobbs: frivolous,
[28:54] Bob Dobbs: rambunctious parts of humans and throwing it back at us.
[28:58] Bob Dobbs: And we got so intrigued by that.
[29:00] Bob Dobbs: we didn't notice it was a simulation.
[29:07] Cameron McEwen: You just said something very important.
[29:09] Cameron McEwen: You said something like the
[29:13] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme extends over the full range or something like that.
[29:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[29:18] Bob Dobbs: human expression.
[29:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[29:20] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[29:22] Cameron McEwen: What's interesting about that is that if the full range of human expression
[29:29] Cameron McEwen: Explorations ground.
[29:35] Cameron McEwen: uh even the Android Meme in attempting to obviate ground cannot help but uh rest on ground yeah cannot help but uh express it yeah and i mean by the full range of expression the politeness of media in
[29:53] Bob Dobbs: the analog phase uh like for the famous one in the
[29:58] Bob Dobbs: 50s they never showed a married couple in bed or something right the same bed yeah care.
[30:03] Bob Dobbs: There was a decency in culture and a politeness.
[30:09] Bob Dobbs: That's gone.
[30:10] Cameron McEwen: At least they attempted that.
[30:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[30:13] Bob Dobbs: And there always was the underbellies happening.
[30:17] Bob Dobbs: But the underbelly merged with the overbelly in the 90s.
[30:22] Bob Dobbs: And so the obscenity in all levels,
[30:26] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard talked a lot about this,
[30:29] Bob Dobbs: the obscene.
[30:30] Bob Dobbs: And
[30:31] Bob Dobbs: Barry called it the ob,
[30:32] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt.
[30:33] Bob Dobbs: obscene,
[30:35] Bob Dobbs: O-B hyphen
[30:36] Bob Dobbs: S-C-E-N-E.
[30:38] Bob Dobbs: But the censorship broke down and nobody could control the means people would culturally make money.
[30:50] Bob Dobbs: Every crazy way of expressing yourself and getting an audience became viable commercially.
[30:57] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I mean by the full range of human expression in the Android Meme.
[31:04] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[31:04] Cameron McEwen: but what I'm saying is that,
[31:06] Cameron McEwen: and you're absolutely right in what you're saying.
[31:11] Cameron McEwen: In fact,
[31:12] Cameron McEwen: Harold Ennis analyzes the
[31:14] Cameron McEwen: 19th century press revolution in England in exactly those terms.
[31:20] Cameron McEwen: So that's another thing that happened to McLuhan in the period we're talking about,
[31:25] Cameron McEwen: is that he arrives in 1946.
[31:31] Cameron McEwen: One of his best friends,
[31:32] Cameron McEwen: Tom Easterbrook,
[31:34] Cameron McEwen: arrives in 1947,
[31:36] Cameron McEwen: and Easterbrook is one of the best friends of Innis.
[31:39] Cameron McEwen: So Innis brings McLuhan together with Innis,
[31:44] Cameron McEwen: and
[31:46] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan finds out that one of the things that Innis is always writing about is writing and literature in the
[31:54] Cameron McEwen: 19th century,
[31:55] Cameron McEwen: which was exactly what McLuhan wrote his master's thesis on.
[31:59] Cameron McEwen: So then
[32:00] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan...
[32:01] Cameron McEwen: wants to know if Ennis knows anything about what he's talking about.
[32:05] Cameron McEwen: And so he reads the essays of
[32:10] Cameron McEwen: Ennis on literature in the
[32:12] Cameron McEwen: 19th century,
[32:13] Cameron McEwen: and he gets blown away because he realizes that there's stuff that Ennis is thinking about that he didn't know as an expert in that field.
[32:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[32:25] Cameron McEwen: So what you're talking about is the...
[32:30] Cameron McEwen: The tendency of all media to increase the size of the audience that it's addressing and thereby to tend to the obscene is
[32:48] Cameron McEwen: sort of a universal law.
[32:50] Cameron McEwen: It's happened with all media at all times.
[32:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[32:53] Bob Dobbs: In the...
[32:58] Bob Dobbs: Full range of expression.
[33:02] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[33:02] Bob Dobbs: what would you,
[33:03] Bob Dobbs: how do you think McLuhan,
[33:05] Bob Dobbs: if he was alive in the
[33:06] Bob Dobbs: 90s, what kind of language would he use?
[33:09] Bob Dobbs: How do you think he could talk about it?
[33:12] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[33:13] Bob Dobbs: with Bernard and everybody else,
[33:14] Bob Dobbs: Jacques Derrida,
[33:15] Bob Dobbs: and all the different forms of criticism that were popping up everywhere.
[33:22] Bob Dobbs: Let's say McLuhan doesn't age.
[33:24] Bob Dobbs: He's vibrant.
[33:25] Bob Dobbs: He's alive.
[33:26] Bob Dobbs: He's watching.
[33:26] Bob Dobbs: What do you think he would say?
[33:28] Bob Dobbs: Would he start to emphasize Finnegans Wake more?
[33:32] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[33:33] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[33:36] Cameron McEwen: I don't see him as changing his old mask as a comedian.
[33:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[33:47] Cameron McEwen: I think he would say that it's impossible to talk to people straight up.
[33:55] Cameron McEwen: So you have to wear a mask,
[33:57] Cameron McEwen: and the best mask is a mask that makes fun of itself.
[34:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[34:03] Cameron McEwen: So sort of a Seinfeld mask.
[34:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[34:08] Bob Dobbs: I was also going to say the figure becoming ground is expressed in how he and Barry used the formula E equals MC squared.
[34:18] Bob Dobbs: Wouldn't that be it?
[34:19] Bob Dobbs: The formula for figure and ground?
[34:22] Bob Dobbs: Or the flipping in both?
[34:24] Bob Dobbs: Content being figure and ground.
[34:26] Bob Dobbs: What do you think of that?
[34:27] Bob Dobbs: Eagles MC squared.
[34:29] Bob Dobbs: The item...
[34:31] Bob Dobbs: The E gets infinite mass at the speed of light,
[34:35] Bob Dobbs: but then he'd have to make it the speed of thought,
[34:37] Bob Dobbs: maybe.
[34:39] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[34:40] Bob Dobbs: that would be happening to all kinds of figures as more and more shows are happening with the cable phenomenon and then the beginning of the computer world.
[34:51] Bob Dobbs: So
[34:53] Bob Dobbs: E equals mc squared.
[34:54] Bob Dobbs: What do you think?
[34:55] Bob Dobbs: Maybe he added to it.
[34:57] Bob Dobbs: It never got stated,
[34:58] Bob Dobbs: but did he?
[35:00] Bob Dobbs: Kostelanetz that,
[35:01] Bob Dobbs: E equals MC squared?
[35:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[35:05] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[35:06] Cameron McEwen: obsolescence is only one of the four powers in the tetrad,
[35:12] Cameron McEwen: right?
[35:13] Cameron McEwen: So one would have to understand obsolescence as,
[35:20] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[35:20] Cameron McEwen: not an exclusive power.
[35:22] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[35:23] Cameron McEwen: But
[35:25] Cameron McEwen: I don't really know the answer.
[35:28] Cameron McEwen: I don't really know if there is an answer to what you're talking about,
[35:33] Cameron McEwen: but what I like about how you think is that this E equals MC squared.
[35:42] Cameron McEwen: I really hadn't given it much thought.
[35:44] Cameron McEwen: I need to give it some thought.
[35:45] Cameron McEwen: But what you were just saying is interesting.
[35:50] Cameron McEwen: It's fertile.
[35:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[35:53] Bob Dobbs: And Barry does have E equals MC squared somewhere to take today.
[35:57] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[35:57] Cameron McEwen: definitely.
[35:58] Cameron McEwen: I think in more than one place.
[36:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[36:03] Bob Dobbs: So what page is the tetrad Trump?
[36:08] Bob Dobbs: 174?
[36:10] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[36:10] Bob Dobbs: 75.
[36:11] Bob Dobbs: At the top of 175,
[36:12] Bob Dobbs: I have.
[36:15] Bob Dobbs: So
[36:16] Bob Dobbs: I was just starting to say that the Android Meme,
[36:20] Bob Dobbs: what pops out of it is the tech body,
[36:24] Bob Dobbs: pops out of the Android Meme.
[36:26] Bob Dobbs: Maybe you could say it creates a new ground,
[36:28] Bob Dobbs: creates a new space,
[36:31] Bob Dobbs: turns the Android Meme into an art form.
[36:34] Bob Dobbs: So I have that in my tetrad,
[36:37] Bob Dobbs: Trump enhances the Rumpelstiltskin effect over the Android Meme.
[36:44] Bob Dobbs: And remember,
[36:44] Bob Dobbs: Rumpelstiltskin,
[36:47] Bob Dobbs: he got away with his rape and pillage if nobody knew his name.
[36:54] Bob Dobbs: And so I was asking...
[36:56] Bob Dobbs: If McLuhan would have names for what was happening in the
[36:59] Bob Dobbs: 90s, I guess is what I was meaning.
[37:02] Bob Dobbs: Would he be able to continue to call Rumpelstiltskin out for what it is?
[37:11] Bob Dobbs: And that's what you see in my chart.
[37:12] Bob Dobbs: I have down in the corner
[37:14] Bob Dobbs: Rumpelstiltskin as the ground of the chart.
[37:17] Bob Dobbs: And in a sense,
[37:20] Bob Dobbs: the chart is a Rumpelstiltskin.
[37:23] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[37:23] Bob Dobbs: it's a naming of Rumpelstiltskin.
[37:26] Bob Dobbs: But probably the act of naming becomes a Rumpelstiltskin in itself.
[37:31] Cameron McEwen: That's why I was just going to say,
[37:32] Cameron McEwen: we can't take Rumpelstiltskin as a simple thing here.
[37:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[37:37] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[37:38] Cameron McEwen: Rumpelstiltskin is a mask of a mask,
[37:42] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[37:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[37:46] Cameron McEwen: When you Trump enhances the Rumpelstiltskin effect over the Android Meme,
[37:51] Cameron McEwen: one of the things I like about that is you're saying that the Android Meme
[37:57] Cameron McEwen: Exactly because it's the Android Meme cannot be one thing.
[38:03] Cameron McEwen: It must be subject to a dynamic.
[38:06] Cameron McEwen: And one of the dynamics is the Rumpelstiltskin effect,
[38:13] Cameron McEwen: which is in one way very negative.
[38:19] Cameron McEwen: It's kind of the,
[38:21] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[38:23] Cameron McEwen: correct me if I'm wrong here.
[38:24] Cameron McEwen: I think one of the main meanings of the Rumpelstiltskin effect is that it's an evil mask.
[38:33] Cameron McEwen: It's the emergence of the human attraction to evil that emerges out of the range of possible
[38:49] Cameron McEwen: human masks.
[38:51] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[38:52] Bob Dobbs: that's Baudrillard.
[38:53] Bob Dobbs: book or essay,
[38:54] Bob Dobbs: he had the phrase,
[38:54] Bob Dobbs: the demon of images.
[38:57] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[38:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[39:00] Bob Dobbs: He was picking up on that.
[39:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[39:02] Bob Dobbs: the demon.
[39:02] Bob Dobbs: And I have that in my...
[39:07] Bob Dobbs: Is it in that chart?
[39:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[39:09] Bob Dobbs: I have demon nuclei in the Dobbs quadrant,
[39:13] Bob Dobbs: which was a transient term used in physics in the
[39:17] Bob Dobbs: 80s for a little while.
[39:19] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[39:19] Bob Dobbs: you never hear about it again,
[39:21] Bob Dobbs: but it was listed.
[39:23] Bob Dobbs: In,
[39:25] Bob Dobbs: John
[39:27] Bob Dobbs: Abbie Hoffman book.
[39:28] Bob Dobbs: Brockman was a student of McLuhan.
[39:32] Bob Dobbs: He became very influential.
[39:33] Bob Dobbs: He created the third science series.
[39:35] Bob Dobbs: All these hip physicists and scientists,
[39:39] Bob Dobbs: he'd make them public figures,
[39:42] Bob Dobbs: move them towards having a TV show or something.
[39:46] Bob Dobbs: He called it the third science.
[39:50] Bob Dobbs: He laid out the five physical particle phases in the
[39:55] Bob Dobbs: 80s.
[39:55] Bob Dobbs: in one of his books,
[39:56] Bob Dobbs: and that's where I got the demon nuclei from.
[39:59] Cameron McEwen: I see.
[40:00] Cameron McEwen: That's interesting.
[40:02] Cameron McEwen: I really haven't heard of Brockman before.
[40:05] Cameron McEwen: Did he stay in Canada,
[40:06] Cameron McEwen: or did he come down to the States?
[40:08] Bob Dobbs: He was a New Yorker,
[40:10] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[40:11] Bob Dobbs: and he met Gerd Stern,
[40:15] Bob Dobbs: and
[40:16] Bob Dobbs: Gerd turned him on to the New Art movement.
[40:18] Bob Dobbs: He was more of a business guy,
[40:21] Bob Dobbs: not too exciting.
[40:24] Bob Dobbs: person and but garrard and other guys got hired for the monkeys movie called head in 1968 67 68 zappa's in the movie i don't know if you've ever seen it um so
[40:41] Bob Dobbs: um they made a poster and so they had to put someone's head on the poster and garrard told me they they picked as a joke on Brockman,
[40:51] Bob Dobbs: who was just starting to
[40:55] Bob Dobbs: feel the counterculture,
[40:57] Bob Dobbs: they put his head on the poster.
[41:00] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[41:01] Bob Dobbs: the next year,
[41:02] Bob Dobbs: in 69,
[41:02] Bob Dobbs: he put out a book called By the Late John Brockman,
[41:06] Bob Dobbs: where what he did is he went up to Cape Cod or someplace with Bucky Fuller and McLuhan books,
[41:12] Bob Dobbs: all the,
[41:13] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[41:13] Bob Dobbs: heavy books of that period,
[41:15] Bob Dobbs: and sort of crammed his head with them for a few days on the weekend and made notes,
[41:23] Bob Dobbs: and that became a...
[41:24] Bob Dobbs: the book by the late John Brockman.
[41:26] Bob Dobbs: And then he,
[41:29] Bob Dobbs: a year or so later,
[41:30] Bob Dobbs: did a second book,
[41:31] Bob Dobbs: number 37.
[41:33] Bob Dobbs: It was just 37,
[41:34] Bob Dobbs: but that's how old he was when he did that.
[41:36] Bob Dobbs: But then because his wife was the daughter of a heavy literary agent,
[41:44] Bob Dobbs: a major guy in New York,
[41:46] Bob Dobbs: he was able to get in there through his Father Phelan,
[41:50] Bob Dobbs: and he started...
[41:52] Bob Dobbs: being an agent for William Irwin Thompson and early people in the
[41:58] Bob Dobbs: 70s. So he got in early for the baby boomer thinkers and became a major literary agent.
[42:07] Bob Dobbs: And he started,
[42:07] Bob Dobbs: if you want to look it up,
[42:08] Bob Dobbs: edge.org,
[42:10] Bob Dobbs: a website that's been around for a long time,
[42:15] Bob Dobbs: which interviews all the latest in science or scientists and academics.
[42:21] Bob Dobbs: So,
[42:21] Bob Dobbs: no,
[42:22] Bob Dobbs: he's far from being a Canadian.
[42:23] Bob Dobbs: But
[42:24] Bob Dobbs: I first heard about him,
[42:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[42:28] Bob Dobbs: I saw a review of,
[42:30] Bob Dobbs: by the way,
[42:31] Bob Dobbs: John Brockman when I was in Seattle in 69,
[42:34] Bob Dobbs: in the East Village Other.
[42:35] Bob Dobbs: So I was aware of him in that sense,
[42:37] Bob Dobbs: that he did a book saying he was dead,
[42:40] Bob Dobbs: and didn't keep up with him.
[42:42] Bob Dobbs: But then one day in around 1977,
[42:45] Bob Dobbs: in the Coach House,
[42:46] Bob Dobbs: Mark says,
[42:47] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[42:47] Bob Dobbs: take a look at this book.
[42:48] Bob Dobbs: So she hands it to me.
[42:50] Bob Dobbs: And it was
[42:51] Bob Dobbs: 100 Philosophers,
[42:53] Bob Dobbs: some kind of title like that.
[42:55] Bob Dobbs: And it went through
[42:57] Bob Dobbs: 100 philosophers from cultures all over the world.
[43:02] Bob Dobbs: And you'd read the biography of one page,
[43:07] Bob Dobbs: and then you had to figure out something.
[43:11] Bob Dobbs: I forget what it was.
[43:12] Bob Dobbs: It was a little game.
[43:14] Bob Dobbs: You had to choose something.
[43:16] Bob Dobbs: So there'd be these facts or...
[43:19] Bob Dobbs: or anecdotes about the person,
[43:21] Bob Dobbs: and then you had to figure out who it was.
[43:23] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[43:23] Bob Dobbs: what struck me was number 100,
[43:26] Bob Dobbs: the last philosopher,
[43:27] Bob Dobbs: was Marshall McLuhan.
[43:29] Bob Dobbs: And I said,
[43:29] Bob Dobbs: that's correct.
[43:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan's the last philosopher.
[43:33] Bob Dobbs: At least that's how I felt in 1977.
[43:38] Bob Dobbs: So I bought the book and thought it was pretty cool.
[43:42] Bob Dobbs: And he co-wrote it with a guy named Edwin Schlossberg.
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: who ended up marrying Carolyn Kennedy,
[43:52] Bob Dobbs: JFK's daughter.
[43:54] Bob Dobbs: So they were a prominent couple.
[43:56] Bob Dobbs: And I think Schlossberg went on to do some kind of interesting architecture in New York City.
[44:02] Bob Dobbs: So what else to say?
[44:06] Bob Dobbs: So when I went to New York in 1993,
[44:08] Bob Dobbs: when we moved there,
[44:11] Bob Dobbs: I wanted to meet John Brockman.
[44:12] Bob Dobbs: So I called him up.
[44:15] Bob Dobbs: And talked about my interest in McLuhan,
[44:17] Bob Dobbs: and I knew what he'd done and all that.
[44:19] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[44:19] Bob Dobbs: well,
[44:20] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know how.
[44:22] Bob Dobbs: successful he was at that point and how quote busy because he said well i'm really busy he was just really he booms through the
[44:30] Bob Dobbs: 90s he's a big deal in the 90s uh and uh he says but i i can turn i can get you in touch with gared stern he's the guy you want to talk to about McLuhan and so that's how i met gared which turned out to be really important you know gared is on page 188 of from cliché to archetype he's
[44:49] Bob Dobbs: mentioned
[44:50] Bob Dobbs: They did the mixed media art.
[44:52] Bob Dobbs: Were you going to say something in the middle there?
[44:55] Cameron McEwen: I was just going to say that
[44:58] Cameron McEwen: I guess when you said that Brockman was a student of McLuhan,
[45:02] Cameron McEwen: I had taken you to mean that he was a student at University of Toronto.
[45:08] Bob Dobbs: No.
[45:09] Cameron McEwen: You must mean that he was just somebody who read his books.
[45:12] Bob Dobbs: And he always talked about McLuhan.
[45:13] Bob Dobbs: It was a big influence.
[45:15] Bob Dobbs: Even now I saw some interview and he said when he discovered McLuhan,
[45:19] Bob Dobbs: That explodes his mind.
[45:20] Bob Dobbs: Of course,
[45:21] Bob Dobbs: it's from my point of view,
[45:23] Bob Dobbs: he's a trivial McLuhan,
[45:25] Bob Dobbs: you know what I mean?
[45:26] Bob Dobbs: No clue,
[45:26] Bob Dobbs: but something sparked him that he thinks it was via McLuhan,
[45:32] Bob Dobbs: which
[45:32] Bob Dobbs: I guess that's the job of someone like a public artist or thinker is to do that.
[45:37] Bob Dobbs: They don't necessarily have to,
[45:38] Bob Dobbs: the audience doesn't have to get what you're saying,
[45:40] Bob Dobbs: but you somehow intrigue them and get them thinking in a strange way or a new way,
[45:46] Bob Dobbs: and then you might do new things in your life.
[45:49] Bob Dobbs: Dave Wally,
[45:50] Bob Dobbs: who did the first rock biography...
[45:52] Cameron McEwen: By the way,
[45:52] Cameron McEwen: I don't believe that at all.
[45:56] Cameron McEwen: I just put that in parentheses as you...
[45:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[46:00] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[46:02] Bob Dobbs: Dave Wally,
[46:02] Bob Dobbs: who did the first rock biography in the early 70s on Zappa,
[46:06] Bob Dobbs: he spent all his life in New York City and he knew a lot of people.
[46:09] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[46:11] Bob Dobbs: Bob,
[46:11] Bob Dobbs: you'd be amazed at how many people made millions using McLuhan.
[46:16] Bob Dobbs: Maybe the people didn't.
[46:17] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if he said this,
[46:18] Bob Dobbs: but...
[46:19] Bob Dobbs: He could have might have said this,
[46:20] Bob Dobbs: that nobody knew they were using McLuhan or how they were inspired,
[46:23] Bob Dobbs: but he kind of noticed a lot of people.
[46:27] Bob Dobbs: Somehow McLuhan inspired people to come up with stuff,
[46:31] Bob Dobbs: to get attention,
[46:34] Bob Dobbs: and then make something happen for themselves.
[46:38] Bob Dobbs: As a matter of fact,
[46:39] Bob Dobbs: when J.W.,
[46:40] Bob Dobbs: who became a friend of Warren Buffett,
[46:42] Bob Dobbs: Warren in 2008,
[46:48] Bob Dobbs: No,
[46:48] Bob Dobbs: 2009,
[46:50] Bob Dobbs: JW called me up.
[46:51] Bob Dobbs: This was before ION.
[46:53] Bob Dobbs: And he says,
[46:55] Bob Dobbs: what's tactility,
[46:56] Bob Dobbs: Bob?
[46:57] Bob Dobbs: And I had actually brought it up a few times.
[47:00] Bob Dobbs: And so I started to express it and define it.
[47:04] Bob Dobbs: But I said,
[47:05] Bob Dobbs: why do you want to know now?
[47:06] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[47:07] Bob Dobbs: well,
[47:07] Bob Dobbs: I just had dinner with Warren Buffett.
[47:09] Bob Dobbs: And he was telling me how much he was influenced by Marshall McLuhan in the
[47:13] Bob Dobbs: 60s.
[47:14] Bob Dobbs: And he was talking about tactility.
[47:17] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know what he was talking about.
[47:19] Bob Dobbs: So there you have it right there,
[47:20] Bob Dobbs: Warren Buffett,
[47:21] Bob Dobbs: right?
[47:22] Bob Dobbs: Something in McLuhan gave him ideas that put him in some confidence or whatever he did.
[47:30] Bob Dobbs: Figured out how to be an investor or whatever he does.
[47:34] Bob Dobbs: You see?
[47:36] Bob Dobbs: But this is where McLuhan is part of the lingua franca,
[47:43] Bob Dobbs: the ground of his time.
[47:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[47:51] Cameron McEwen: it's not wrong to say part of the ground of his time,
[47:55] Cameron McEwen: as long as you use ground there in the sense of one ground amongst many.
[48:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[48:05] Cameron McEwen: What you're talking about is an influence of McLuhan in exactly the way that he did not want to be an influence.
[48:15] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[48:17] Cameron McEwen: His whole intention was to be influential in the exact opposite direction.
[48:24] Bob Dobbs: And what is that?
[48:27] Cameron McEwen: He's not a cognitive artist?
[48:30] Bob Dobbs: He's an elitist artist?
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: No,
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: not at all.
[48:34] Cameron McEwen: But what you're talking about is people who are the motor of modern civilization,
[48:41] Cameron McEwen: if you want to call it civilization.
[48:45] Cameron McEwen: Making money,
[48:46] Cameron McEwen: making moves,
[48:47] Cameron McEwen: all this sort of stuff,
[48:48] Cameron McEwen: and basically they're driving a car towards the abyss.
[48:52] Cameron McEwen: That's ridiculous,
[48:54] Cameron McEwen: right?
[48:54] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan would try to alert them to what they were doing and would have them either stop the car or turn it around.
[49:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[49:06] Bob Dobbs: what would you call what he was doing?
[49:08] Bob Dobbs: He's just a warning?
[49:10] Cameron McEwen: A strategy for survival is what he called it over and over again.
[49:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[49:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[49:16] Bob Dobbs: so...
[49:18] Cameron McEwen: And these people were anti-environment.
[49:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[49:24] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[49:24] Bob Dobbs: Another guy influenced by McLuhan is,
[49:27] Bob Dobbs: is it Norman Lear?
[49:29] Bob Dobbs: Who's the guy who did
[49:30] Bob Dobbs: Archie Bunker in those TV shows?
[49:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[49:33] Cameron McEwen: Norman Lear.
[49:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[49:34] Bob Dobbs: he's,
[49:36] Bob Dobbs: Mary McLuhan told me that Terry was a good friend of theirs and would spend,
[49:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[49:41] Bob Dobbs: every summer at some point with the Lears.
[49:44] Bob Dobbs: So Jack Nicholson,
[49:46] Bob Dobbs: I read an article by him in 7071.
[49:50] Bob Dobbs: in some magazine and he was talking about the idea of the cliché,
[49:55] Bob Dobbs: it sort of completed his understanding of acting.
[49:57] Bob Dobbs: He got that from McLuhan,
[49:58] Bob Dobbs: he said.
[50:00] Bob Dobbs: So who knows,
[50:01] Bob Dobbs: the users of the content,
[50:02] Bob Dobbs: who knows what people get.
[50:03] Bob Dobbs: But
[50:06] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is,
[50:08] Bob Dobbs: I think
[50:09] Bob Dobbs: Duchamp said,
[50:10] Bob Dobbs: 30 years after an artwork is made,
[50:12] Bob Dobbs: it becomes public property.
[50:14] Bob Dobbs: So maybe that's where McLuhan becomes part of the language.
[50:20] Bob Dobbs: and part of the ground,
[50:22] Bob Dobbs: that is him becoming public property.
[50:25] Bob Dobbs: And it's out of his hands what his ambitions are.
[50:31] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[50:31] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[50:32] Cameron McEwen: But that's all part of the cul-de-sac.
[50:34] Cameron McEwen: What you're talking about is what might be called the quicksand of history.
[50:41] Cameron McEwen: And all of these things that you're talking about are aspects of...
[50:49] Cameron McEwen: the quicksand pit that is pulling McLuhan and all of us down into oblivion.
[51:00] Cameron McEwen: And he's trying to figure out a way out of the pit.
[51:05] Cameron McEwen: And so part of the difficulty is that his attempts to figure a way out of the pit.
[51:18] Cameron McEwen: are continually mis-taken.
[51:22] Cameron McEwen: And that's,
[51:28] Cameron McEwen: what can I say?
[51:29] Cameron McEwen: It's the...
[51:30] Bob Dobbs: Inevitable.
[51:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[51:32] Cameron McEwen: well,
[51:32] Cameron McEwen: it's inevitable.
[51:33] Cameron McEwen: It's the dynamic of the opposition,
[51:38] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[51:39] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[51:41] Bob Dobbs: Do you see anybody,
[51:44] Bob Dobbs: or you see a lot of people...
[51:46] Bob Dobbs: attempting to do what he did or tried to do.
[51:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[51:49] Cameron McEwen: I see a lot of people,
[51:50] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[51:52] Cameron McEwen: And I think,
[51:53] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[51:54] Cameron McEwen: when he had this lifelong book that he was writing called Great Tom on Eliot,
[52:01] Cameron McEwen: I think he realized that Eliot was trying to do the same thing as he was,
[52:11] Cameron McEwen: or he was trying to do the same thing as Eliot,
[52:13] Cameron McEwen: better said.
[52:16] Cameron McEwen: And he probably realized that part of Pound,
[52:20] Cameron McEwen: not all of Pound,
[52:21] Cameron McEwen: I think lots of Pound sort of scared McLuhan,
[52:25] Cameron McEwen: but parts of Pound were trying to do the same thing,
[52:29] Cameron McEwen: parts of Lewis,
[52:33] Cameron McEwen: Bucky Fuller.
[52:35] Cameron McEwen: Lots of people were attempting to do what he was attempting,
[52:40] Cameron McEwen: and I think he probably had great respect for them.
[52:45] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[52:46] Bob Dobbs: Would he think John Lennon was trying to do something?
[52:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[52:51] Cameron McEwen: probably.
[52:52] Cameron McEwen: But that's like your conversations with
[52:54] Cameron McEwen: Jack.
[52:57] Bob Dobbs: Oh, Jack.
[52:59] Bob Dobbs: Even my Instagram things?
[53:03] Cameron McEwen: No,
[53:03] Cameron McEwen: isn't your conversations with the basketball player,
[53:07] Cameron McEwen: isn't his name?
[53:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[53:07] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[53:08] Bob Dobbs: That's on Instagram.
[53:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[53:10] Cameron McEwen: the young guy.
[53:13] Cameron McEwen: I just.
[53:14] Cameron McEwen: see references to it every once in a while on your website.
[53:17] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[53:18] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[53:18] Cameron McEwen: it was on
[53:19] Cameron McEwen: Instagram. Yeah,
[53:21] Bob Dobbs: you haven't looked at one.
[53:23] Cameron McEwen: No.
[53:24] Bob Dobbs: No,
[53:24] Cameron McEwen: I'm not interested in stuff like that.
[53:27] Bob Dobbs: You ought to take a look.
[53:28] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I do a new version.
[53:30] Bob Dobbs: So,
[53:31] Bob Dobbs: here's a,
[53:33] Bob Dobbs: I read this somewhere,
[53:36] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan writing to Wilfred Watson in 1964.
[53:40] Bob Dobbs: I think you know this letter.
[53:42] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[53:43] Bob Dobbs: talk about blind spots in regions of maximal impact.
[53:47] Bob Dobbs: Looking at the diabolical principle just now,
[53:50] Bob Dobbs: I read loud and clear that art must be totally environmental.
[53:55] Bob Dobbs: It must be the content of nothing whatever.
[53:58] Bob Dobbs: Ergo,
[53:59] Bob Dobbs: the vortex equals the totally environmental.
[54:02] Bob Dobbs: Didn't you read this letter to me?
[54:05] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[54:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[54:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[54:08] Cameron McEwen: a few discussions ago.
[54:09] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[54:10] Bob Dobbs: But yes,
[54:11] Bob Dobbs: sir.
[54:11] Bob Dobbs: It might be timely again.
[54:12] Bob Dobbs: Lewis wants,
[54:13] Bob Dobbs: Wyndham Lewis wants nothing less for art than the power to create total anti-environment for life and death.
[54:18] Bob Dobbs: There must be no art as content of some other set of skills or interests.
[54:22] Bob Dobbs: I find it a bit staggering to confront Lewis as a man who really wanted to be Pontifex Maximus of a magical priesthood.
[54:29] Bob Dobbs: I suppose Yates,
[54:30] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,
[54:30] Bob Dobbs: and Pound had similar aspirations.
[54:32] Bob Dobbs: Their priesthood was to create new worlds of perception.
[54:35] Bob Dobbs: Is that what we're saying?
[54:37] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[54:38] Cameron McEwen: and that's exactly what we're saying,
[54:42] Cameron McEwen: because what McLuhan is regretting in those people
[54:48] Cameron McEwen: is the lack of perception of a plurality of grounds.
[54:54] Cameron McEwen: I think he's probably wrong as regards
[54:57] Cameron McEwen: Joyce and Elliot and Pound,
[54:59] Cameron McEwen: by the way,
[54:59] Cameron McEwen: and Lewis do.
[55:02] Cameron McEwen: It's an oversimplification.
[55:03] Bob Dobbs: You're saying that he criticized them for failing to see multi-ground?
[55:08] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[55:09] Cameron McEwen: in that letter.
[55:10] Cameron McEwen: I don't think he did that all the time.
[55:14] Cameron McEwen: But the point,
[55:15] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[55:15] Cameron McEwen: is very well taken,
[55:16] Cameron McEwen: and it's the point I'm making.
[55:18] Cameron McEwen: about the culture gurus that you're talking about in New York.
[55:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[55:23] Cameron McEwen: What these people do is that they harness a ground and then ride it into wealth.
[55:30] Cameron McEwen: And what McLuhan was interested in was the plurality of ground and trying to communicate that to a civilization that was potentially killing itself by,
[55:43] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[55:44] Cameron McEwen: riding these horses into great wealth.
[55:47] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[55:47] Bob Dobbs: So the plurality of grounds is what I mean by quadrophrenia.
[55:52] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[55:54] Bob Dobbs: Very good.
[55:56] Bob Dobbs: Trump quadrophrenia.
[55:57] Bob Dobbs: So that might help us to get to what I mean Trump.
[56:00] Cameron McEwen: Is he consciously?
[56:01] Cameron McEwen: Everybody's quadrophrenia.
[56:03] Cameron McEwen: It's just a question of do they know it or not.
[56:06] Cameron McEwen: So Trump realize that?
[56:08] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.
[56:10] Bob Dobbs: He's realized something.
[56:13] Bob Dobbs: He hijacked the process.
[56:15] Cameron McEwen: But wait a minute,
[56:17] Cameron McEwen: The word realize,
[56:20] Cameron McEwen: excuse me,
[56:21] Cameron McEwen: has very different meanings.
[56:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[56:24] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[56:26] Cameron McEwen: You can realize some,
[56:33] Cameron McEwen: what,
[56:33] Cameron McEwen: some fashion,
[56:36] Cameron McEwen: meaning you can instantiate it.
[56:39] Cameron McEwen: You can be an exemplar of it,
[56:44] Cameron McEwen: right?
[56:44] Cameron McEwen: But realize can also mean.
[56:46] Cameron McEwen: understanding it and those are two very different things yeah oh to me
[56:53] Bob Dobbs: Trump realize certain things but he doesn't realize those things in terms of understanding now maybe you have a different view I don't know but well I have different access to him and remember he listens to me a lot so
[57:10] Bob Dobbs: he's listening to the right guy
[57:13] Bob Dobbs: I mean I don't think anybody else is listening to to be.
[57:17] Bob Dobbs: But he is.
[57:18] Bob Dobbs: But that's because of Ion.
[57:19] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[57:20] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[57:20] Cameron McEwen: when we talk,
[57:21] Cameron McEwen: I listen to you.
[57:24] Cameron McEwen: I try to understand the depths from which you're coming.
[57:28] Bob Dobbs: No,
[57:29] Bob Dobbs: I guess I meant public figures,
[57:31] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[57:32] Bob Dobbs: famous people,
[57:32] Bob Dobbs: the idiots.
[57:32] Cameron McEwen: Not somebody in consequence.
[57:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[57:35] Bob Dobbs: not somebody who's a nobody from Regina who's an up-and-coming McLuhan.
[57:39] Bob Dobbs: No,
[57:39] Bob Dobbs: not that.
[57:44] Bob Dobbs: But no,
[57:45] Bob Dobbs: but I'm talking to you.
[57:47] Bob Dobbs: They may be listening to me,
[57:48] Bob Dobbs: but I'm talking to you,
[57:49] Bob Dobbs: so there's the compliment.
[57:51] Cameron McEwen: All right.
[57:52] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[57:53] Cameron McEwen: but
[57:55] Cameron McEwen: I didn't regard what you said about being a nobody from Regina.
[58:00] Cameron McEwen: I didn't regard that as anything but a compliment.
[58:03] Bob Dobbs: I know.
[58:03] Bob Dobbs: I know.
[58:04] Bob Dobbs: That's to be a nobody.
[58:05] Cameron McEwen: Because the way to be a somebody in the present environment is to be a nobody.
[58:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[58:13] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[58:13] Cameron McEwen: Everybody's.
[58:14] Cameron McEwen: everybody's running around being a somebody and that's the problem.
[58:18] Bob Dobbs: Those are role players.
[58:21] Cameron McEwen: Inevitably.
[58:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[58:22] Cameron McEwen: They're realizing in the sense of being exemplars,
[58:28] Cameron McEwen: right?
[58:29] Cameron McEwen: Whereas what I'm trying to do is realize in the sense of not being an exemplar.
[58:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[58:35] Cameron McEwen: That's what a nobody is.
[58:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[58:38] Bob Dobbs: Like I said,
[58:38] Bob Dobbs: that's why I'm talking to you.
[58:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[58:41] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[58:41] Cameron McEwen: good.
[58:42] Bob Dobbs: I'm not making any effort to have a series with Mr.
[58:45] Bob Dobbs: Trump,
[58:46] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[58:46] Bob Dobbs: I'm not trying to talk to him.
[58:47] Bob Dobbs: There you go.
[58:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't desire to talk to him.
[58:50] Bob Dobbs: Might have to someday.
[58:52] Cameron McEwen: But do you think that
[58:54] Cameron McEwen: Trump somebody who realized,
[58:57] Cameron McEwen: in the sense of understanding,
[59:00] Cameron McEwen: realized these things?
[59:02] Cameron McEwen: Or do you think he just realized them in the sense of being an exemplar,
[59:07] Cameron McEwen: being a totem?
[59:09] Bob Dobbs: He realized...
[59:11] Bob Dobbs: what he needed to do to become president.
[59:13] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[59:13] Bob Dobbs: he was very familiar with the pop media junk world of New York.
[59:18] Bob Dobbs: He knew how to hijack the media.
[59:20] Bob Dobbs: He knew how to become president.
[59:23] Bob Dobbs: But that's not necessarily an important position,
[59:27] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[59:27] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[59:29] Cameron McEwen: And it's a realization in the exemplar sense.
[59:36] Bob Dobbs: That's to be,
[59:37] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[59:37] Bob Dobbs: becoming president is the exemplar sense.
[59:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[59:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[59:42] Cameron McEwen: And so you're realizing a fashion.
[59:45] Cameron McEwen: You're realizing a certain mask.
[59:47] Cameron McEwen: You're realizing a certain role.
[59:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[59:50] Bob Dobbs: you're creating a role.
[59:52] Bob Dobbs: And you are.
[59:53] Bob Dobbs: acknowledged,
[59:55] Bob Dobbs: you become a somebody.
[59:56] Bob Dobbs: A big mistake.
[59:59] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[1:00:01] Cameron McEwen: You become a totem.
[1:00:04] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:00:05] Bob Dobbs: Trump obsolesces the continuous iconic TV image,
[1:00:09] Bob Dobbs: and probably continuous means their visual space.
[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: The continuity from one administration to the next,
[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:00:19] Bob Dobbs: Continuity of government,
[1:00:20] Bob Dobbs: I think they call it.
[1:00:22] Bob Dobbs: That's a fact that isn't true,
[1:00:25] Bob Dobbs: but we project a visual uniformity or linearity onto the thing.
[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: So the continuous icon...
[1:00:32] Cameron McEwen: That's closely related to the enhancing effect.
[1:00:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:00:38] Cameron McEwen: Because in order to have the Rumpelstiltskin effect over the Android Meme,
[1:00:44] Cameron McEwen: you have to have discontinuity.
[1:00:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:00:47] Cameron McEwen: And so the first one is discontinuity,
[1:00:50] Cameron McEwen: and that's what's...
[1:00:51] Cameron McEwen: enhanced,
[1:00:53] Cameron McEwen: and then the obsolescent is the continuity.
[1:00:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:00:57] Bob Dobbs: and that's what everybody got upset about,
[1:00:59] Bob Dobbs: Trump didn't appear to be fulfilling the continuous iconic role.
[1:01:04] Cameron McEwen: That's right,
[1:01:05] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[1:01:06] Cameron McEwen: It was something new in the history of the country.
[1:01:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:01:10] Bob Dobbs: and the New York,
[1:01:11] Bob Dobbs: I saw a little documentary years ago on the New York Times journalist,
[1:01:15] Bob Dobbs: Maggie somebody,
[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: Halberstam or whatever,
[1:01:18] Bob Dobbs: they say it was hell every day trying to
[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: figure out what to write about the guy because he did so many different things all day long.
[1:01:24] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: they couldn't get continuity.
[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: So they just started bashing him,
[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: I guess.
[1:01:32] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:01:33] Cameron McEwen: But notice that continuity,
[1:01:37] Cameron McEwen: again,
[1:01:37] Cameron McEwen: has two faces.
[1:01:40] Cameron McEwen: Or discontinuity,
[1:01:41] Cameron McEwen: better to talk about that.
[1:01:43] Cameron McEwen: Discontinuity has two faces.
[1:01:44] Cameron McEwen: You can be discontinuous in life and be...
[1:01:50] Cameron McEwen: screwed up because of the discontinuity.
[1:01:52] Cameron McEwen: Or you can realize the discontinuity of ground and then that's a completely different thing.
[1:02:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:02:00] Bob Dobbs: I agree.
[1:02:01] Bob Dobbs: I wonder,
[1:02:04] Bob Dobbs: I think I used to say there was always an eye and ear modality of everything.
[1:02:09] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:02:10] Cameron McEwen: of course.
[1:02:14] Cameron McEwen: The ratio between eye and ear is what
[1:02:18] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan calls media.
[1:02:20] Bob Dobbs: Calls media?
[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:02:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:02:27] Bob Dobbs: So you always have to...
[1:02:29] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,
[1:02:31] Cameron McEwen: I think it's on page 14 or page 13 of Finnegans Wake.
[1:02:37] Cameron McEwen: Let me just find the exact quotation here for you.
[1:02:41] Bob Dobbs: In the ignorance that nits...
[1:02:43] Bob Dobbs: If it's in the ignorance that nits,
[1:02:45] Bob Dobbs: the impression,
[1:02:46] Bob Dobbs: that's page 18.
[1:02:47] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:02:48] Cameron McEwen: 'Tis the optophone which ontophanes.
[1:02:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:02:54] Cameron McEwen: And so optophone is eye-ear.
[1:02:57] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:02:59] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:02:59] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:03:00] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:03:02] Cameron McEwen: and onto is reality and phanes is shining forth.
[1:03:07] Cameron McEwen: So what
[1:03:09] Cameron McEwen: Joyce says there is that it is the ratio of eye-ear which shines forth our realities.
[1:03:19] Cameron McEwen: which is exactly what we were talking about.
[1:03:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:03:22] Bob Dobbs: so the shiny fourth,
[1:03:24] Bob Dobbs: would that be tactility?
[1:03:26] Bob Dobbs: The clear white light of tactility?
[1:03:29] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:03:31] Cameron McEwen: in order to shine forth,
[1:03:34] Cameron McEwen: you have to have an origin and an end.
[1:03:38] Cameron McEwen: And tactility is between the origin and the end.
[1:03:42] Cameron McEwen: So shining is itself tactility,
[1:03:44] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[1:03:46] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:03:46] Bob Dobbs: shining itself is tactility.
[1:03:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:03:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:03:49] Bob Dobbs: that's what I meant.
[1:03:52] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:03:53] Bob Dobbs: he talks about that sentence in one of the
[1:03:57] Bob Dobbs: 50s Explorations essays,
[1:03:59] Bob Dobbs: doesn't he?
[1:03:59] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:04:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:04:01] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:04:02] Cameron McEwen: That's what I'm...
[1:04:03] Cameron McEwen: Looking at.
[1:04:04] Cameron McEwen: That's what I'm referring to.
[1:04:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:04:05] Cameron McEwen: it's the 1954 New Media's Political Forms and Explorations 3.
[1:04:13] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:04:14] Bob Dobbs: Do you have...
[1:04:15] Cameron McEwen: If I see it's...
[1:04:16] Cameron McEwen: strange that he doesn't continue that.
[1:04:19] Cameron McEwen: He doesn't deal further with optophone,
[1:04:22] Cameron McEwen: although you could say that the
[1:04:27] Cameron McEwen: optophone principle,
[1:04:28] Cameron McEwen: as he calls it,
[1:04:30] Cameron McEwen: is what his whole life was about.
[1:04:34] Bob Dobbs: What does he say around it in that paragraph?
[1:04:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:04:39] Cameron McEwen: you want me to read that paragraph too?
[1:04:41] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:04:41] Cameron McEwen: he says,
[1:04:42] Cameron McEwen: For the lineal procedure of individual awareness,
[1:04:46] Cameron McEwen: Joyce,
[1:04:47] Cameron McEwen: in his last work,
[1:04:49] Cameron McEwen: substituted an everyday roundabout with intrusions from above and below.
[1:04:55] Cameron McEwen: That's more or less a quotation.
[1:04:59] Cameron McEwen: What the hell was the guy's name?
[1:05:01] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember at the moment,
[1:05:03] Cameron McEwen: but a guy that wrote about Joyce in 1930 or 32 had that to say.
[1:05:10] Cameron McEwen: For those locked in the metallic and rectilinear embrace of the printed page,
[1:05:16] Cameron McEwen: Joyce appears as a surrealist magician or clown.
[1:05:22] Cameron McEwen: But his optophone principle in art...
[1:05:25] Cameron McEwen: provides the key for future literary and social education.
[1:05:30] Cameron McEwen: The optophone is an instrument for turning images into sounds.
[1:05:35] Cameron McEwen: Surrounded by a vast new imagery,
[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: technological man has yet to learn how to interpret this imagery verbally or socially.
[1:05:45] Cameron McEwen: Until he learns its language,
[1:05:47] Cameron McEwen: it will continue to act on him like the new liquid meat tenderizers.
[1:05:57] Cameron McEwen: I have a full post on that.
[1:05:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:06:02] Bob Dobbs: optophone.
[1:06:04] Bob Dobbs: What was I going to say about that?
[1:06:10] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:06:11] Bob Dobbs: you're not thinking of
[1:06:13] Bob Dobbs: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy,
[1:06:14] Bob Dobbs: who wrote on Joyce in the 40s?
[1:06:18] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:06:18] Cameron McEwen: He's related to this because he...
[1:06:25] Cameron McEwen: He was one of the guys that made a kind of optophone machine.
[1:06:34] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:06:35] Cameron McEwen: his neighborhood,
[1:06:36] Bob Dobbs: his neighbor,
[1:06:37] Bob Dobbs: the guy who lived at 7 Eccles Street.
[1:06:42] Bob Dobbs: Forget his name.
[1:06:42] Bob Dobbs: He's Cranley in The Portrait of the Artist.
[1:06:45] Bob Dobbs: He's the guy that,
[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: he cracked,
[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: he did cryptography.
[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: That guy?
[1:06:50] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:06:53] Cameron McEwen: Are you talking about the guy that...
[1:06:54] Cameron McEwen: wrote on Finnegans Wake?
[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: No.
[1:07:01] Cameron McEwen: Are you talking about somebody who built an optophone or something?
[1:07:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:07:05] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:07:06] Bob Dobbs: he built a key for all cryptography,
[1:07:09] Bob Dobbs: tried to sell it to the American military.
[1:07:12] Bob Dobbs: And he lived at 7 Eccles Street,
[1:07:14] Bob Dobbs: Bloom's Address.
[1:07:16] Bob Dobbs: And he's in Ulysses.
[1:07:18] Bob Dobbs: And in Portrait of the Artist,
[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: he's the colleague of Stephen.
[1:07:23] Bob Dobbs: named Cranley.
[1:07:25] Bob Dobbs: But his real name,
[1:07:26] Bob Dobbs: he was a friend of Joyce,
[1:07:27] Bob Dobbs: a key friend.
[1:07:29] Bob Dobbs: His Tom Easterbrook,
[1:07:30] Bob Dobbs: you know.
[1:07:33] Bob Dobbs: And so Joyce did a version of the guy's cryptograph on page about 137 of Finney's Wake.
[1:07:39] Bob Dobbs: It's in the first page of War and Peace in the Global Village.
[1:07:43] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan talks about the two of them.
[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: But there's a Jim Stewart somebody who did a biography.
[1:07:51] Bob Dobbs: I think who wrote about
[1:07:53] Bob Dobbs: You don't mean Joseph Campbell.
[1:07:54] Bob Dobbs: That's the 40s.
[1:07:57] Bob Dobbs: I wonder who you mean.
[1:07:59] Bob Dobbs: And he invented things.
[1:08:00] Cameron McEwen: I'll find out in a second.
[1:08:03] Bob Dobbs: In a second,
[1:08:04] Bob Dobbs: did you say?
[1:08:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:08:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:08:07] Bob Dobbs: We'll wait.
[1:08:11] Bob Dobbs: Second's over.
[1:08:12] Bob Dobbs: How'd it go?
[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: And,
[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: what you just read.
[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: was describing the visual continuity and then the oral continuity.
[1:08:30] Bob Dobbs: That paragraph illustrated the continuity here,
[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: the two forms of continuity.
[1:08:41] Cameron McEwen: I don't know
[1:08:42] Cameron McEwen: I would say that.
[1:08:44] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: look at the first sentence.
[1:08:46] Bob Dobbs: It says the linear something was a problem.
[1:08:50] Bob Dobbs: What is the very first words?
[1:08:52] Bob Dobbs: of that paragraph of optophane.
[1:08:55] Cameron McEwen: I have to go back.
[1:08:56] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:08:57] Cameron McEwen: the lineal procedure of individual awareness.
[1:09:01] Cameron McEwen: Joyce substituted an everyday roundabout with intrusions from above and below.
[1:09:05] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:09:07] Cameron McEwen: Those are two kinds of continuity.
[1:09:10] Cameron McEwen: One is a type of continuity.
[1:09:12] Cameron McEwen: The second is discontinuity.
[1:09:16] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:09:16] Cameron McEwen: it's both continuity and discontinuity together.
[1:09:20] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:09:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:09:21] Cameron McEwen: it's above and below.
[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: so that's
[1:09:24] Bob Dobbs: I guess it's not two kinds of continuity is continuity and then the eye and then ear discontinuity so
[1:09:33] Bob Dobbs: or tactility.
[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,
[1:09:36] Bob Dobbs: it fit into this sequence we're working on here.
[1:09:40] Bob Dobbs: So Trump retrieves the knight and the vampire.
[1:09:45] Bob Dobbs: The knight is for the Trump,
[1:09:47] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:09:48] Bob Dobbs: 50%
[1:09:49] Bob Dobbs: of the voters.
[1:09:50] Bob Dobbs: He was the white knight,
[1:09:52] Bob Dobbs: the white racist knight.
[1:09:56] Bob Dobbs: But for the other half of the population,
[1:09:58] Bob Dobbs: he was something from the depths of the Nazi hell creatures.
[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: He was a vampire.
[1:10:03] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:10:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:10:06] Bob Dobbs: So.
[1:10:07] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:10:07] Cameron McEwen: that's a good,
[1:10:09] Cameron McEwen: that's an excellent line,
[1:10:10] Cameron McEwen: I think.
[1:10:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:10:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:10:12] Bob Dobbs: And so then he reverses.
[1:10:16] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.
[1:10:17] Cameron McEwen: Just for the knight and the vampire,
[1:10:19] Cameron McEwen: do you think he was consciously trying to be both?
[1:10:25] Bob Dobbs: I think as an artist,
[1:10:28] Bob Dobbs: as an instinctive public figure.
[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: He had a talent for it.
[1:10:33] Bob Dobbs: So how much does one have to realize it?
[1:10:36] Bob Dobbs: He knows what to do every day to keep in the game.
[1:10:42] Bob Dobbs: And he might not be able to step aside and say what he's doing,
[1:10:46] Bob Dobbs: but he'd say,
[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: sir,
[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: I can't explain this.
[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: And then he'd go and continue doing it.
[1:10:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:10:52] Cameron McEwen: But notice how we're back to the ambiguity of realizing.
[1:11:01] Cameron McEwen: You're absolutely right that he could realize these roles.
[1:11:04] Cameron McEwen: But my question is,
[1:11:08] Cameron McEwen: is it a realization only in the sense of exemplifying,
[1:11:13] Cameron McEwen: or is it also some kind of understanding of what's going on with this role flipping?
[1:11:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:11:22] Bob Dobbs: the role of knowing.
[1:11:24] Bob Dobbs: I think the...
[1:11:26] Bob Dobbs: Dialectic McLuhan has a cliché to archetype around about page 160 or something.
[1:11:30] Bob Dobbs: It's knowing and growing.
[1:11:34] Bob Dobbs: So there's the continuous.
[1:11:36] Bob Dobbs: That would be your endless crux.
[1:11:40] Bob Dobbs: What's the word?
[1:11:43] Bob Dobbs: Forget the word.
[1:11:44] Bob Dobbs: The cusp?
[1:11:46] Bob Dobbs: What's the bad thing we're talking about?
[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: The cul-de-sac.
[1:11:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:11:52] Bob Dobbs: The cul-de-sac.
[1:11:53] Bob Dobbs: The universal or the ongoing.
[1:11:55] Bob Dobbs: cul-de-sac that everybody confronted the greats.
[1:12:04] Bob Dobbs: That's the continuity.
[1:12:05] Bob Dobbs: That's the constant.
[1:12:10] Bob Dobbs: Ion talks about the platitudes and the vicissitudes.
[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: So you see the same issues always being confronted.
[1:12:22] Bob Dobbs: Remember he says the...
[1:12:24] Bob Dobbs: conditions of the artists are the same,
[1:12:26] Bob Dobbs: but the conditions are always changing.
[1:12:28] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember that line back in the
[1:12:31] Bob Dobbs: 40s?
[1:12:32] Bob Dobbs: The conditions of art are changing,
[1:12:37] Bob Dobbs: but the artist's condition is the same.
[1:12:39] Bob Dobbs: Something like that.
[1:12:43] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.
[1:12:45] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:12:45] Cameron McEwen: that's exactly where I draw the parallel with chemistry.
[1:12:49] Cameron McEwen: Chemical elements are always the same,
[1:12:52] Cameron McEwen: but the world...
[1:12:53] Cameron McEwen: that is produced out of those elements is always changing.
[1:12:59] Bob Dobbs: Always what?
[1:13:01] Cameron McEwen: Changing.
[1:13:01] Bob Dobbs: Changing,
[1:13:02] Bob Dobbs: yes.
[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: so now what Trump reverse into?
[1:13:11] Bob Dobbs: The image of an emperor cum saint.
[1:13:16] Bob Dobbs: His likeness will be lasered into Mount Rushmore.
[1:13:21] Bob Dobbs: There's no indication of that.
[1:13:23] Bob Dobbs: happening today.
[1:13:24] Bob Dobbs: But watch what happened.
[1:13:27] Bob Dobbs: Trump our only president.
[1:13:28] Bob Dobbs: He's still the president.
[1:13:30] Bob Dobbs: Biden can't even find the right set design to fake his White House.
[1:13:37] Bob Dobbs: He's not in the White House.
[1:13:38] Bob Dobbs: He has never been in there.
[1:13:40] Bob Dobbs: And he's not allowed to be in there.
[1:13:45] Bob Dobbs: So he can't be a president.
[1:13:47] Bob Dobbs: He can't arrive at it.
[1:13:50] Bob Dobbs: This is what's interesting.
[1:13:51] Bob Dobbs: Trump around being the popular,
[1:13:55] Bob Dobbs: what do you call it,
[1:13:56] Bob Dobbs: the rabble rouser or pop star or icon of kinetic charisma,
[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:14:06] Bob Dobbs: So he's the president.
[1:14:08] Bob Dobbs: The president was a cheerleader anyways for the last few decades,
[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: and he's still doing it.
[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: Biden can't do it.
[1:14:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:14:16] Cameron McEwen: but you see,
[1:14:17] Cameron McEwen: I agree with what you're saying.
[1:14:22] Cameron McEwen: But it's not the case that the quote,
[1:14:29] Cameron McEwen: role,
[1:14:29] Cameron McEwen: unquote,
[1:14:30] Cameron McEwen: of the quote,
[1:14:31] Cameron McEwen: president,
[1:14:32] Cameron McEwen: unquote,
[1:14:33] Cameron McEwen: is the same thing.
[1:14:36] Cameron McEwen: You were right before when you said that the role of the president has undergone a revolution.
[1:14:44] Cameron McEwen: And it's not at all the same thing.
[1:14:47] Cameron McEwen: So you can't then go from...
[1:14:51] Cameron McEwen: The role of the president being completely different to saying that,
[1:14:55] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:14:56] Cameron McEwen: Trump the president in the old sense.
[1:14:59] Cameron McEwen: You might say he's the president in a new sense.
[1:15:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:15:04] Bob Dobbs: I would say that.
[1:15:05] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:15:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: And you might even say that he flipped into a Biden image.
[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: Trump too much for people,
[1:15:12] Bob Dobbs: so they had to have an incompetent person who couldn't finish his syllables.
[1:15:17] Bob Dobbs: That's my joke about Biden.
[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: Trump couldn't finish his sentences.
[1:15:21] Bob Dobbs: Biden Antigonish his syllables.
[1:15:23] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:15:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:15:26] Cameron McEwen: But what you could say that.
[1:15:29] Cameron McEwen: Biden is not immediately related Trump,
[1:15:36] Cameron McEwen: but he is immediately related to the role of the,
[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: to the obsolescence of the role of the president.
[1:15:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:15:45] Cameron McEwen: He's a,
[1:15:45] Cameron McEwen: he's the representation of the old age of a form of government that doesn't work.
[1:15:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:15:53] Bob Dobbs: Does not work.
[1:15:54] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[1:15:56] Bob Dobbs: Pardon me?
[1:15:56] Bob Dobbs: That's a major.
[1:15:57] Bob Dobbs: In fact,
[1:15:58] Bob Dobbs: it does not work.
[1:16:01] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:16:01] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:16:01] Cameron McEwen: It's been taken over.
[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:16:04] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:16:04] Cameron McEwen: It's a bureaucratic form that can be run even by people that aren't American,
[1:16:13] Cameron McEwen: that can be run from elsewhere.
[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:16:16] Cameron McEwen: So it's,
[1:16:17] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:16:18] Cameron McEwen: it's an obsolete form that has the power of blowing up the world if it wants to express its power.
[1:16:27] Cameron McEwen: It's powerlessness.
[1:16:29] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:16:31] Bob Dobbs: In that way.
[1:16:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:16:33] Cameron McEwen: By the way,
[1:16:34] Cameron McEwen: the guy that wrote the part about
[1:16:39] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake being a roundabout way is Frank Budgen.
[1:16:43] Bob Dobbs: I was going to say him.
[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: That was his buddy.
[1:16:45] Bob Dobbs: He was an artist.
[1:16:46] Cameron McEwen: There you go.
[1:16:47] Bob Dobbs: And he was McLuhan's favorite interpreter of Joyce because he was an artist and he knew what he was doing,
[1:16:54] Bob Dobbs: whatever Joyce was doing,
[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: you know.
[1:16:56] Bob Dobbs: in a similar ballpark as artists.
[1:16:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:16:59] Bob Dobbs: Frank Budgen.
[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: So what do you...
[1:17:02] Bob Dobbs: Thought he invented something?
[1:17:07] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:17:07] Cameron McEwen: no,
[1:17:08] Cameron McEwen: that was Moholy-Nagy.
[1:17:10] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:17:12] Cameron McEwen: That's related to the optophone,
[1:17:14] Cameron McEwen: but that's a film that
[1:17:17] Cameron McEwen: Moholy-Nagy did in the
[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: 40s. Right,
[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: Frank Budgen.
[1:17:23] Bob Dobbs: I was going to say the...
[1:17:27] Bob Dobbs: The inadequacy of cultural criticism.
[1:17:31] Bob Dobbs: So you hear whoever they are,
[1:17:35] Bob Dobbs: the strangers that run the Acadia University,
[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: are always saying,
[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: we're encouraging critical awareness.
[1:17:41] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:17:42] Bob Dobbs: you come to colleagues,
[1:17:43] Bob Dobbs: you become a critic.
[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: And if you're not doing that,
[1:17:46] Bob Dobbs: you're not doing great.
[1:17:47] Bob Dobbs: The obsolescence of the ability,
[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: the ability to have critical perception.
[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: is not achievable in the Gutenberg sense or any whatever they think they are doing,
[1:18:01] Bob Dobbs: critical position.
[1:18:03] Bob Dobbs: So you'll find that whatever...
[1:18:06] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[1:18:06] Cameron McEwen: did you say the obsolescence is not achievable?
[1:18:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:18:11] Bob Dobbs: I go that far,
[1:18:12] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: Obsolete critic.
[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: Wasn't that the line,
[1:18:16] Bob Dobbs: C.C.B.
[1:18:16] Bob Dobbs: De Menil?
[1:18:17] Bob Dobbs: Critics,
[1:18:17] Bob Dobbs: don't even ignore them.
[1:18:20] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:18:21] Cameron McEwen: that's okay.
[1:18:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:18:22] Bob Dobbs: but my insight here is that...
[1:18:26] Bob Dobbs: People try to figure out what the problem with Trump,
[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: and they might come up with something.
[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: But it's always going to be inadequate.
[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: It's not enough.
[1:18:35] Bob Dobbs: So if I say something and people say,
[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: that's not the whole story,
[1:18:39] Bob Dobbs: I immediately agree with them.
[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: It's pretty hard.
[1:18:42] Bob Dobbs: You'd have to give me five minutes to list off 100 aspects of the whole story.
[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:18:48] Bob Dobbs: I'm relaxed about saying one aspect Trump.
[1:18:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm not saying that's the whole thing.
[1:18:53] Cameron McEwen: I agree.
[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:18:54] Cameron McEwen: But...
[1:18:55] Cameron McEwen: Humans aren't capable of the whole thing.
[1:18:59] Cameron McEwen: That's the...
[1:19:02] Cameron McEwen: What all these culture vultures or what all these university administrators want is the whole thing.
[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: They want the wrong thing.
[1:19:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: they really are so obsolete.
[1:19:15] Bob Dobbs: Which means you're everywhere if you're obsolete,
[1:19:19] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: You've been duplicated,
[1:19:21] Bob Dobbs: cloned,
[1:19:22] Bob Dobbs: all over the place.
[1:19:23] Bob Dobbs: Because obsolete means more and more use of it.
[1:19:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:19:29] Bob Dobbs: So I was thinking that,
[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: so if you understand,
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: yes,
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: as I talk about Trump,
[1:19:34] Bob Dobbs: I could talk for an hour about one theme,
[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: then talk for an hour about a completely different,
[1:19:39] Bob Dobbs: maybe contradictory theme about Trump,
[1:19:42] Bob Dobbs: knowing that you have to pile up the different angles on it.
[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: And that's spinning its wake.
[1:19:50] Bob Dobbs: The guy was making it daily.
[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: diary-like inventory of his multimedia grounded experience.
[1:19:58] Bob Dobbs: and registering it,
[1:19:59] Bob Dobbs: just noting it.
[1:20:02] Bob Dobbs: And so he makes a huge inventory,
[1:20:04] Bob Dobbs: a Menippean list,
[1:20:07] Bob Dobbs: framed around the Ten Thunders,
[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: but it's the endless inventory.
[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: He continues writing the book after it's published.
[1:20:16] Bob Dobbs: He keeps working on it,
[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: processing his diary.
[1:20:20] Cameron McEwen: Just like he did with Ulysses.
[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: So I think we talked about that last time,
[1:20:26] Bob Dobbs: the process.
[1:20:28] Bob Dobbs: Joyce discovered as an information artist.
[1:20:31] Bob Dobbs: He went from being a novelist to an information artist,
[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: processing the information environment.
[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: And that's what McLuhan figured out.
[1:20:44] Cameron McEwen: That was his role.
[1:20:46] Cameron McEwen: Let me read something to you here from a book that
[1:20:50] Cameron McEwen: Joyce read in the middle
[1:20:54] Cameron McEwen: 20s when he was getting...
[1:20:57] Cameron McEwen: getting going on Finnegans Wake.
[1:21:01] Cameron McEwen: And the book is called
[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: Quo Vadimus.
[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: What?
[1:21:05] Cameron McEwen: Where are we going?
[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: Where are we going?
[1:21:08] Bob Dobbs: Quo Vadimus.
[1:21:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:21:10] Bob Dobbs: Who wrote that?
[1:21:13] Cameron McEwen: The guy's name is too hard to say.
[1:21:18] Cameron McEwen: I'll tell you that in a minute.
[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:21:21] Cameron McEwen: But I'll first give you the quote.
[1:21:26] Cameron McEwen: He says,
[1:21:28] Cameron McEwen: And it's part of a series of books that address the question of the future,
[1:21:35] Cameron McEwen: of where are we going?
[1:21:37] Cameron McEwen: And Joyce read a whole bunch of the series and took out bits and pieces from these people that he would use in Finnegans Wake.
[1:21:47] Cameron McEwen: And so lots of these people contemplated,
[1:21:51] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:21:52] Cameron McEwen: how television would take over the world,
[1:21:56] Cameron McEwen: how humans would...
[1:21:58] Cameron McEwen: populate other planets and all of this sort of stuff.
[1:22:02] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:22:03] Cameron McEwen: Joyce took it all in.
[1:22:05] Cameron McEwen: But anyway,
[1:22:07] Cameron McEwen: this guy says if Mars,
[1:22:10] Cameron McEwen: the planet,
[1:22:11] Cameron McEwen: if Mars,
[1:22:13] Cameron McEwen: millions of years older than ourselves,
[1:22:16] Cameron McEwen: has arrived at such a stage of advancement that it can think of transcending its own borders,
[1:22:24] Cameron McEwen: it may make some attempt at communication.
[1:22:28] Cameron McEwen: But the attempt might take the form which to us would be quite unrecognizable.
[1:22:35] Cameron McEwen: But some observers thought that the persistent thunderstorms experienced during the last opposition,
[1:22:44] Cameron McEwen: and I think by opposition he means alignment between Mars and
[1:22:49] Cameron McEwen: Earth, during the last opposition over wide areas were signs of such an attempt.
[1:22:58] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[1:22:59] Cameron McEwen: look at here,
[1:23:00] Cameron McEwen: we have the thunder.
[1:23:02] Cameron McEwen: In Finnegans Wake,
[1:23:03] Cameron McEwen: I believe
[1:23:06] Cameron McEwen: Joyce uses the phrase something like
[1:23:09] Cameron McEwen: Mars talking,
[1:23:12] Cameron McEwen: or
[1:23:12] Cameron McEwen: Mars attempting to communicate,
[1:23:14] Cameron McEwen: something like that,
[1:23:16] Cameron McEwen: which
[1:23:16] Cameron McEwen: I believe refers to this passage here.
[1:23:20] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[1:23:21] Cameron McEwen: what's quite amazing about this is that the guy who wrote this book
[1:23:27] Cameron McEwen: is the guy that invented the optophone,
[1:23:31] Cameron McEwen: believe it or not.
[1:23:32] Cameron McEwen: The optophone was invented in...
[1:23:38] Cameron McEwen: The first machine was 1912,
[1:23:41] Cameron McEwen: but the improved machine was 1914,
[1:23:46] Cameron McEwen: and it appeared in the proceedings of the Royal Society.
[1:23:51] Cameron McEwen: And the optophone was a real machine that attempted to...
[1:23:57] Cameron McEwen: scan print,
[1:23:59] Cameron McEwen: and turn it into musical tones so that a blind person could take a book or a newspaper,
[1:24:06] Cameron McEwen: put it in the machine,
[1:24:08] Cameron McEwen: and then know what the newspaper or book were saying by listening to the music.
[1:24:16] Bob Dobbs: Wow.
[1:24:17] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:24:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:24:18] Cameron McEwen: So then
[1:24:19] Cameron McEwen: Joyce takes the
[1:24:21] Cameron McEwen: optophone and uses that in...
[1:24:26] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake,
[1:24:27] Cameron McEwen: along with things from this guy's book,
[1:24:32] Cameron McEwen: which was written
[1:24:33] Cameron McEwen: 10 years later.
[1:24:36] Cameron McEwen: And I believe the guy's name is Fournier,
[1:24:39] Cameron McEwen: but I'll have to go up and,
[1:24:42] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:24:42] Cameron McEwen: it's Fournier d'Alba.
[1:24:44] Cameron McEwen: So Fournier,
[1:24:46] Cameron McEwen: his real last name is Fournier,
[1:24:48] Cameron McEwen: but he was French.
[1:24:49] Cameron McEwen: And so he had Fournier d'Alba.
[1:24:52] Cameron McEwen: The Alba was,
[1:24:53] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:24:54] Cameron McEwen: the...
[1:24:55] Cameron McEwen: where the family was originally from.
[1:24:58] Cameron McEwen: But now listen to this,
[1:24:59] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:25:00] Bob Dobbs: But just before you go on,
[1:25:01] Bob Dobbs: did you say that this book was written 10 years after the start of the wake?
[1:25:05] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:25:07] Cameron McEwen: 10 years after the optophone was announced.
[1:25:10] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:25:10] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:25:11] Cameron McEwen: And the proceedings of the Royal Society.
[1:25:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:25:14] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:25:15] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:25:18] Cameron McEwen: this guy invents this machine,
[1:25:23] Cameron McEwen: and the proceedings of the Royal Society publish a picture of it and a description of it.
[1:25:30] Cameron McEwen: in 1914.
[1:25:32] Cameron McEwen: But this guy himself was not a fellow of the Royal Society,
[1:25:38] Cameron McEwen: FRS.
[1:25:40] Cameron McEwen: And so he had to have the proceedings did not publish stuff from outside the Royal Society.
[1:25:50] Cameron McEwen: You had to be a member of the Royal Society to publish,
[1:25:53] Cameron McEwen: or you had to have somebody publish a paper for you.
[1:25:58] Cameron McEwen: as what was called a communication.
[1:26:02] Cameron McEwen: So this guy's announcement of the optophone in 1914 was a communication from a physicist by the name of Sir
[1:26:16] Cameron McEwen: Oliver Lodge.
[1:26:18] Cameron McEwen: And Sir Oliver Lodge...
[1:26:20] Bob Dobbs: Was he related to Winnipeg?
[1:26:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:26:23] Cameron McEwen: he was the uncle of Rupert Lodge,
[1:26:27] Cameron McEwen: who was...
[1:26:28] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan great mentor in Winnipeg.
[1:26:31] Bob Dobbs: Wow,
[1:26:32] Bob Dobbs: that's pretty good.
[1:26:34] Cameron McEwen: It's amazing,
[1:26:35] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:26:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:26:36] Bob Dobbs: another link.
[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: Did you just discover that?
[1:26:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:26:40] Cameron McEwen: I wrote a post on it,
[1:26:41] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:26:42] Bob Dobbs: So what is it against Oliver Lodge?
[1:26:44] Bob Dobbs: What did he do with the optophone or the optophone?
[1:26:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:26:48] Cameron McEwen: first off,
[1:26:49] Cameron McEwen: he was a physicist,
[1:26:51] Cameron McEwen: and the guy that designed,
[1:26:55] Cameron McEwen: that invented the optophone,
[1:26:57] Cameron McEwen: was working in
[1:26:59] Cameron McEwen: Lodge's lab for some years.
[1:27:03] Cameron McEwen: And so in the description of the optophone,
[1:27:06] Cameron McEwen: he says that he owes a great deal of gratitude to
[1:27:11] Cameron McEwen: Oliver Lodge for helping him in the process.
[1:27:19] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:27:21] Cameron McEwen: Oliver Lodge was a physicist who became the principal of
[1:27:26] Cameron McEwen: Birmingham.
[1:27:27] Cameron McEwen: University.
[1:27:28] Cameron McEwen: When he was a professor of physics,
[1:27:31] Cameron McEwen: he was at the University of Liverpool.
[1:27:34] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:27:34] Cameron McEwen: I don't know which of those two was the place where this Fournier guy invented the optophone.
[1:27:44] Cameron McEwen: The fact is,
[1:27:45] Cameron McEwen: the optophone was a real machine.
[1:27:48] Cameron McEwen: It appears in Finnegans Wake.
[1:27:50] Cameron McEwen: It was a communication from Sir Oliver
[1:27:53] Cameron McEwen: Lodge. And Sir Oliver Lodge was the uncle.
[1:27:57] Cameron McEwen: of Rupert Lodge,
[1:27:59] Cameron McEwen: who is McLuhan mentor in Winnipeg.
[1:28:02] Bob Dobbs: There you go.
[1:28:05] Bob Dobbs: I call it the God's view,
[1:28:07] Bob Dobbs: God's eye view,
[1:28:08] Bob Dobbs: God's view,
[1:28:09] Bob Dobbs: because
[1:28:11] Bob Dobbs: God can see who's connected to who that humans can't see.
[1:28:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:28:19] Cameron McEwen: that's a fine description of God.
[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:28:23] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:28:26] Bob Dobbs: Did I ever tell you,
[1:28:27] Bob Dobbs: I think I mentioned this,
[1:28:28] Bob Dobbs: my favorite is when McLuhan is heading for
[1:28:34] Bob Dobbs: Dover, the day the war breaks out,
[1:28:37] Bob Dobbs: he and Corrine are in Paris.
[1:28:39] Bob Dobbs: They're running to the border.
[1:28:41] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if they get on a train or whatever,
[1:28:43] Bob Dobbs: but they head to Gold Coast.
[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:28:44] Cameron McEwen: they were on a train.
[1:28:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:28:47] Bob Dobbs: At the same time,
[1:28:48] Bob Dobbs: where
[1:28:50] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would end up on the coast of France to get the boat to go across,
[1:28:53] Bob Dobbs: very near there.
[1:28:55] Bob Dobbs: James Joyce was at a clinic for his daughter.
[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: And then,
[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: the same day,
[1:29:03] Bob Dobbs: what's floating down the,
[1:29:06] Bob Dobbs: what's it called,
[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: the channel?
[1:29:08] Bob Dobbs: What's that river?
[1:29:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:29:10] Cameron McEwen: the channel.
[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: The channel between England and France.
[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:29:13] Cameron McEwen: the ditch,
[1:29:14] Cameron McEwen: they call it.
[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: The what?
[1:29:16] Cameron McEwen: They call it the ditch.
[1:29:18] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:29:18] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:29:18] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:29:19] Bob Dobbs: The English Channel.
[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: Is that what they call it,
[1:29:21] Bob Dobbs: the English Channel?
[1:29:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: And so.
[1:29:26] Bob Dobbs: Lewis is floating down,
[1:29:28] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan passing by,
[1:29:30] Bob Dobbs: and Joyce is on the shore.
[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: The three factors of some kind of significance are all together on that day in the same area.
[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that neat?
[1:29:39] Cameron McEwen: And was Joyce in England or in France?
[1:29:42] Bob Dobbs: He was in France,
[1:29:43] Bob Dobbs: northern France,
[1:29:44] Bob Dobbs: where the clinic was for his daughter.
[1:29:47] Cameron McEwen: And Lewis...
[1:29:48] Cameron McEwen: His daughter ended up in a clinic in England.
[1:29:50] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:29:51] Bob Dobbs: is that right?
[1:29:51] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know that.
[1:29:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:29:54] Cameron McEwen: I think in
[1:29:54] Cameron McEwen: Nottingham or someplace like that.
[1:29:57] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:29:58] Bob Dobbs: And Lewis.
[1:29:59] Bob Dobbs: He's on a boat,
[1:30:00] Bob Dobbs: and he's supposed to be on a previous boat,
[1:30:05] Bob Dobbs: but he didn't get on it.
[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: That one goes out and heads toward Iceland and gets bombed and sinks.
[1:30:11] Bob Dobbs: So he luckily,
[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: he would have died on that one,
[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: but he got pushed to the next boat behind him.
[1:30:17] Bob Dobbs: And so he made it to New York.
[1:30:20] Bob Dobbs: But you think of the three of them quite,
[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: resonant with each other.
[1:30:25] Bob Dobbs: Or what is it,
[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: Proximus?
[1:30:28] Bob Dobbs: proximity of visual space.
[1:30:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:30:32] Cameron McEwen: proximate is the word you're looking for.
[1:30:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:30:34] Bob Dobbs: they're approximate.
[1:30:36] Bob Dobbs: Is it with an AP or just P?
[1:30:38] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:30:39] Bob Dobbs: just P.
[1:30:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:30:41] Bob Dobbs: they were proximate.
[1:30:43] Bob Dobbs: And they are going to express what the war is really about.
[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: That starts that day.
[1:30:55] Bob Dobbs: The background and what was to come.
[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: So that's one of my favorite God's eye views.
[1:31:03] Cameron McEwen: But do you know that
[1:31:06] Cameron McEwen: Lewis was in the Channel?
[1:31:07] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:31:08] Cameron McEwen: usually boats across the Atlantic were leaving from Liverpool or some port on the western side,
[1:31:20] Cameron McEwen: maybe Belfast,
[1:31:21] Cameron McEwen: even in Ireland.
[1:31:23] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:31:23] Bob Dobbs: I remember he got on a boat and then he got docked,
[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: maybe in France.
[1:31:28] Bob Dobbs: and they had to get on another boat.
[1:31:29] Bob Dobbs: And there was an odd interruption.
[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: So maybe the boat went out of Liverpool,
[1:31:35] Bob Dobbs: went down to France,
[1:31:36] Bob Dobbs: and then he got on the safe boat by accident.
[1:31:39] Bob Dobbs: And then it was a day late.
[1:31:43] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:31:43] Bob Dobbs: I'd have to find a biography or something,
[1:31:46] Bob Dobbs: which I might have out there in the library,
[1:31:50] Bob Dobbs: that goes into those details of Lewis's life.
[1:31:53] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:31:53] Cameron McEwen: you'd be able to find that on Google,
[1:31:55] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[1:31:55] Cameron McEwen: pretty easily.
[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:31:57] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[1:31:57] Bob Dobbs: so
[1:31:58] Bob Dobbs: Trump reverses into the image of an emperor,
[1:32:01] Bob Dobbs: comes saint.
[1:32:04] Bob Dobbs: This may be wrong,
[1:32:06] Bob Dobbs: but I wonder what I'm getting at.
[1:32:09] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure.
[1:32:10] Cameron McEwen: To me,
[1:32:10] Cameron McEwen: that seems like the weakest of the four.
[1:32:15] Bob Dobbs: Right now.
[1:32:16] Bob Dobbs: Right now,
[1:32:17] Bob Dobbs: it seems weak.
[1:32:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:32:18] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[1:32:18] Cameron McEwen: It may be something that I just don't understand yet.
[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:32:24] Bob Dobbs: For the...
[1:32:26] Bob Dobbs: For the Trump,
[1:32:28] Bob Dobbs: they now consider him a saint because
[1:32:33] Bob Dobbs: Biden is so bad,
[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: they would think.
[1:32:35] Bob Dobbs: And they hanker to Trump back.
[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: Don't think he can come back.
[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: But a lot of other things are falling apart.
[1:32:43] Bob Dobbs: So we have predicted that he'll become viceroy of the new government,
[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: the new post,
[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: what do you call it?
[1:32:55] Bob Dobbs: Executive,
[1:32:56] Bob Dobbs: legislative,
[1:32:57] Bob Dobbs: and judiciary,
[1:32:58] Bob Dobbs: the three-part structure of government,
[1:33:00] Bob Dobbs: will collapse and a new feudalism comes in and he'll be the viceroy of it.
[1:33:07] Bob Dobbs: Did I hear you laughing a minute ago when I said viceroy?
[1:33:12] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:33:13] Cameron McEwen: the three parts of government have already collapsed.
[1:33:16] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:33:17] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:33:18] Cameron McEwen: The courts don't work.
[1:33:21] Cameron McEwen: The
[1:33:22] Cameron McEwen: Congress doesn't work.
[1:33:24] Cameron McEwen: And the president doesn't work.
[1:33:26] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:33:27] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:33:28] Bob Dobbs: I saw a poll a couple of days ago,
[1:33:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:33:30] Bob Dobbs: 50%
[1:33:31] Bob Dobbs: of Americans say get rid of the Supreme Court.
[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: there's this obsolescence when the populace feels this way about it.
[1:33:41] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:33:42] Bob Dobbs: That's the effect.
[1:33:45] Cameron McEwen: How dangerous would that be,
[1:33:47] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:33:50] Bob Dobbs: you mean if they got rid of the court?
[1:33:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:33:53] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:33:53] Bob Dobbs: we're in an incredibly dangerous situation.
[1:33:57] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: we talk about it all the time.
[1:34:01] Bob Dobbs: And I guess we're in the middle of the danger is killing people.
[1:34:06] Bob Dobbs: People are dying for all kinds of crazy reasons.
[1:34:08] Bob Dobbs: People didn't expect to die.
[1:34:12] Bob Dobbs: They thought they had a few more years on them.
[1:34:14] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:34:16] Bob Dobbs: So we're in a kind of apocalypse.
[1:34:19] Bob Dobbs: Or Armageddon.
[1:34:22] Bob Dobbs: business as usual.
[1:34:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:34:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:34:27] Bob Dobbs: so we did a tetrad Trump,
[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: and those,
[1:34:31] Bob Dobbs: you got the Android Meme,
[1:34:35] Bob Dobbs: the iconic TV image,
[1:34:37] Bob Dobbs: then historical phenomenon,
[1:34:38] Bob Dobbs: knight and vampire,
[1:34:41] Bob Dobbs: and then emperor.
[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: I'm sort of looking at it,
[1:34:44] Bob Dobbs: the tech body is a scattershot.
[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: Thanks.
[1:34:50] Bob Dobbs: just shooting out all over the place and making sure that what's prominent today is not prominent tomorrow.
[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: Might get retrieved later in the week,
[1:35:00] Bob Dobbs: but...
[1:35:01] Bob Dobbs: The replacement of the focus of attention that the tech body wants is the ground,
[1:35:09] Bob Dobbs: or the way it looks.
[1:35:14] Bob Dobbs: What would you call that?
[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: Is that the figure?
[1:35:17] Bob Dobbs: The way it looks?
[1:35:19] Bob Dobbs: The way obvious sense perception sees it?
[1:35:21] Bob Dobbs: Because they would put it into familiar terms.
[1:35:26] Bob Dobbs: So what do you call that?
[1:35:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:35:31] Cameron McEwen: that's...
[1:35:31] Cameron McEwen: That's phenomenalizing.
[1:35:34] Cameron McEwen: It's concretion.
[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:35:36] Cameron McEwen: But you might say that can be an effect of the tech body,
[1:35:46] Cameron McEwen: but you can't say that that's the tech body itself.
[1:35:49] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:35:49] Cameron McEwen: Surely not.
[1:35:50] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:35:51] Cameron McEwen: I noticed that you say
[1:35:55] Cameron McEwen: Trump enhances the Rumpelstiltskin effect over the Android Meme.
[1:35:59] Cameron McEwen: So...
[1:35:59] Cameron McEwen: That's the kind of a flip of one mask.
[1:36:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:36:05] Cameron McEwen: And then you seem to be saying that the tech body is the ground of the flipping of the
[1:36:16] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme.
[1:36:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:36:17] Cameron McEwen: Would that be a correct reading?
[1:36:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:36:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah?
[1:36:20] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:36:20] Bob Dobbs: Because it pops out,
[1:36:22] Bob Dobbs: but it was underneath.
[1:36:24] Bob Dobbs: It was a hidden,
[1:36:25] Bob Dobbs: a anti-environment.
[1:36:27] Bob Dobbs: And so,
[1:36:28] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:36:29] Bob Dobbs: What's the phrase you just said?
[1:36:31] Bob Dobbs: It not pops out,
[1:36:32] Bob Dobbs: but you said it's the ground.
[1:36:34] Cameron McEwen: Dominalizers?
[1:36:35] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:36:35] Bob Dobbs: the ground.
[1:36:36] Bob Dobbs: It's the invisible ground.
[1:36:37] Bob Dobbs: And then it became visible.
[1:36:41] Bob Dobbs: Or maybe not visible.
[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: The effects of it are disrupting people.
[1:36:48] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:36:50] Bob Dobbs: Is that the figure?
[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: The effects,
[1:36:55] Bob Dobbs: they are a figure,
[1:36:56] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:36:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:36:58] Cameron McEwen: So.
[1:37:00] Cameron McEwen: If we can say that the tech body is the realization of the potential of flipping within the Android Meme,
[1:37:12] Cameron McEwen: then the realization of that in the sense of the Explorations of that at the phenomenal level is a flipping.
[1:37:26] Cameron McEwen: People are flipping out as the expression goes.
[1:37:30] Cameron McEwen: But they're flipping out because they don't realize the ground of flipping.
[1:37:36] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:37:37] Bob Dobbs: all that you just said,
[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: that describes Trump phenomenon as it was presented by the tech body.
[1:37:45] Bob Dobbs: You see?
[1:37:46] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:37:46] Bob Dobbs: See,
[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: Trump represents this complex situation you were just...
[1:37:52] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:37:53] Cameron McEwen: So that's why I was asking earlier about the relationship of realization to realization.
[1:37:57] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:37:58] Bob Dobbs: right.
[1:37:58] Cameron McEwen: So now you seem to be saying Trump re-presents.
[1:38:06] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: I would say he realizes.
[1:38:07] Bob Dobbs: He realizes.
[1:38:09] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:38:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:38:11] Cameron McEwen: He realizes this flipping.
[1:38:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:38:13] Cameron McEwen: Does he realize in the sense of understanding or realizes in the sense of exemplifies?
[1:38:21] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:38:21] Bob Dobbs: I was going to say,
[1:38:23] Bob Dobbs: it immediately came to me that the one who understands is the observer.
[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: So that's the Gutenberg phase of understanding.
[1:38:30] Bob Dobbs: What is the electronic Marconi phase of understanding?
[1:38:37] Bob Dobbs: Is it remaining anonymous?
[1:38:39] Bob Dobbs: Is it a kind of poise one has that people who you bump into notice?
[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: What is the...
[1:38:48] Cameron McEwen: I think all of those are correct.
[1:38:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:38:51] Bob Dobbs: that's quite a meaning.
[1:38:53] Cameron McEwen: Poise refers to the fulcrum.
[1:38:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:39:01] Cameron McEwen: Poise is something that is in between.
[1:39:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:39:05] Cameron McEwen: And so poise is a very good way of saying that.
[1:39:12] Bob Dobbs: I think somebody,
[1:39:13] Bob Dobbs: it might have been McLuhan,
[1:39:15] Bob Dobbs: he made a pun on porpoise.
[1:39:16] Bob Dobbs: Poor poise.
[1:39:18] Bob Dobbs: Poor poise.
[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: Porpoise.
[1:39:22] Bob Dobbs: And remember,
[1:39:24] Bob Dobbs: the cosmic skin diver of the TV age.
[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: What are we today?
[1:39:32] Bob Dobbs: There was one ocean in the global theater of the
[1:39:35] Bob Dobbs: 60s.
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: What do we have now?
[1:39:37] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: it's a common metaphor.
[1:39:39] Bob Dobbs: You hear people talk about parallel worlds.
[1:39:41] Bob Dobbs: They talk about that a lot,
[1:39:43] Bob Dobbs: more than they did 10 years ago.
[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: Timelines.
[1:39:46] Bob Dobbs: People seem to have an acceptance of multiple anti-environment.
[1:39:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:39:56] Bob Dobbs: And that would be...
[1:40:00] Bob Dobbs: what animal lives in multiple anti-environment?
[1:40:02] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:40:02] Bob Dobbs: a demon.
[1:40:05] Bob Dobbs: A demon.
[1:40:06] Bob Dobbs: And we're all demons.
[1:40:09] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan said that.
[1:40:10] Bob Dobbs: You can be an angel or a devil.
[1:40:12] Bob Dobbs: You remember that quote?
[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: Not sure where it was.
[1:40:16] Cameron McEwen: A vague recollection of that,
[1:40:18] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:40:19] Cameron McEwen: I think he talked about that stuff in more than one place.
[1:40:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: the role player can be an angel or a devil.
[1:40:30] Cameron McEwen: And human beings are continually flipping between those.
[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:40:36] Bob Dobbs: which then comes to his point that you can't have morality or ethics in these conditions.
[1:40:44] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: So what we're saying here,
[1:40:48] Bob Dobbs: we just said,
[1:40:50] Bob Dobbs: is what nobody covers.
[1:40:54] Bob Dobbs: They might in some academic course.
[1:40:56] Bob Dobbs: go into Nietzsche,
[1:40:58] Bob Dobbs: Beyond Good and Evil or something,
[1:41:00] Bob Dobbs: but they'll find it in a book.
[1:41:03] Bob Dobbs: They don't see anti-environment.
[1:41:07] Bob Dobbs: That's the perceptions required to see this quadrophrenia flipping and amoral existence in
[1:41:21] Bob Dobbs: today.
[1:41:21] Bob Dobbs: So then all through today and what people make money from.
[1:41:26] Bob Dobbs: Wealth is generated by outrage and judgment and retrieving morality or finger-pointing,
[1:41:33] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:41:34] Bob Dobbs: That is what Kroker calls abuse value.
[1:41:38] Bob Dobbs: That is what makes wealth.
[1:41:40] Bob Dobbs: What can't be completed,
[1:41:43] Bob Dobbs: realized,
[1:41:45] Bob Dobbs: exploited,
[1:41:47] Bob Dobbs: or get benefits from?
[1:41:50] Bob Dobbs: You can't go with the traditional human chemical body balancing mechanisms.
[1:41:57] Bob Dobbs: Need a new kind of balance.
[1:41:58] Bob Dobbs: So you have to recognize your multiple anti-environment.
[1:42:01] Bob Dobbs: That's first,
[1:42:05] Bob Dobbs: because then you'd have to have a new kind of balance.
[1:42:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:42:09] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.
[1:42:10] Cameron McEwen: But if that's first,
[1:42:11] Cameron McEwen: what's second?
[1:42:14] Bob Dobbs: Would you say that's first?
[1:42:16] Cameron McEwen: You said first you have to recognize multiple anti-environment,
[1:42:20] Cameron McEwen: which require a new kind of balance.
[1:42:23] Cameron McEwen: But if that's first,
[1:42:24] Cameron McEwen: what's second?
[1:42:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:42:28] Bob Dobbs: I was saying the obsolescence of the cosmic skin diver,
[1:42:32] Bob Dobbs: and then you become a demon.
[1:42:39] Bob Dobbs: That may be enough.
[1:42:41] Bob Dobbs: I'd say there's no second.
[1:42:42] Bob Dobbs: You recognize the multiple anti-environment.
[1:42:44] Bob Dobbs: That's all you need to do.
[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: You couldn't do anything about it.
[1:42:48] Bob Dobbs: You have to ride them.
[1:42:49] Bob Dobbs: Then you have to realize you are these anti-environment,
[1:42:52] Bob Dobbs: and you're going to be demonized.
[1:42:56] Bob Dobbs: That's what they say is happening in America,
[1:42:58] Bob Dobbs: maybe the West,
[1:42:59] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[1:42:59] Bob Dobbs: but America,
[1:43:00] Bob Dobbs: the breakdown of social decency,
[1:43:03] Bob Dobbs: social communication,
[1:43:04] Bob Dobbs: social respect,
[1:43:07] Bob Dobbs: and,
[1:43:07] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:43:08] Bob Dobbs: blatant murder going on in the streets all day long.
[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty drastic,
[1:43:13] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:43:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:43:17] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan said in Playboy 1968,
[1:43:20] Bob Dobbs: end of the year,
[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: mind your media men or you'll catch a cold environment.
[1:43:25] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:43:26] Bob Dobbs: so I took that tack that I couldn't come up with a two.
[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: Now let's say another tack would be to come up with a second.
[1:43:33] Bob Dobbs: So what would that be?
[1:43:33] Bob Dobbs: You recognize the multiple anti-environment,
[1:43:36] Bob Dobbs: and then you buy my products for sane nutrition.
[1:43:41] Bob Dobbs: You're not going to get it anywhere else.
[1:43:46] Bob Dobbs: It's partly serious.
[1:43:47] Bob Dobbs: That's what I do recommend.
[1:43:50] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:43:50] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:43:51] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking about bringing this up today.
[1:43:53] Bob Dobbs: Do media change matter?
[1:43:58] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[1:43:58] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:43:59] Bob Dobbs: the thesis we have is that matter is radically changing,
[1:44:04] Bob Dobbs: and your body processes are out of line with it,
[1:44:08] Bob Dobbs: out of sync.
[1:44:09] Bob Dobbs: So you've got to take our products to get synced in,
[1:44:13] Bob Dobbs: get new matter in your body to be potentially almost harmonious with what's happening in matter.
[1:44:22] Bob Dobbs: So do media...
[1:44:23] Bob Dobbs: change matter.
[1:44:25] Bob Dobbs: They change our images of matter.
[1:44:28] Bob Dobbs: And is matter only an image?
[1:44:30] Bob Dobbs: We actually don't have matter.
[1:44:33] Bob Dobbs: And that is altered by media.
[1:44:35] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:44:37] Bob Dobbs: I say we've got a profound changing of our images of matter.
[1:44:42] Bob Dobbs: And it's very disorienting.
[1:44:44] Bob Dobbs: And doctors'
[1:44:46] Bob Dobbs: tools don't work anymore.
[1:44:47] Bob Dobbs: Their scales of measurement of how you're doing don't work.
[1:44:52] Bob Dobbs: And our product is the balance to that.
[1:44:59] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:44:59] Bob Dobbs: that's,
[1:45:00] Bob Dobbs: in terms of living mediocrity,
[1:45:01] Bob Dobbs: that's what I live,
[1:45:02] Bob Dobbs: that's what I say.
[1:45:04] Bob Dobbs: I got proof of it every day that it works,
[1:45:07] Bob Dobbs: you know.
[1:45:08] Bob Dobbs: That's my mediocrity,
[1:45:10] Bob Dobbs: para-mediocrity.
[1:45:14] Cameron McEwen: But somewhere in the last
[1:45:16] Cameron McEwen: 15 minutes or so,
[1:45:18] Cameron McEwen: I kind of,
[1:45:20] Cameron McEwen: I wasn't sure if we were on page 175 of your book.
[1:45:26] Cameron McEwen: and doing exegesis there,
[1:45:30] Cameron McEwen: or if you had kind of jumped out of the book and were on to something else.
[1:45:36] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:45:37] Cameron McEwen: you ended up with your products,
[1:45:38] Cameron McEwen: and obviously that isn't right here.
[1:45:41] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:45:42] Cameron McEwen: I lost the connection somehow.
[1:45:45] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:45:45] Bob Dobbs: that's good.
[1:45:46] Cameron McEwen: I wasn't sure where you took off from.
[1:45:48] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:45:49] Bob Dobbs: but that's what I'm acting out what we do.
[1:45:53] Bob Dobbs: That's quadrophrenia.
[1:45:55] Bob Dobbs: We hop into areas that surprise others.
[1:46:00] Bob Dobbs: In what you do in business,
[1:46:02] Bob Dobbs: your social life,
[1:46:04] Bob Dobbs: your private recreation,
[1:46:06] Bob Dobbs: that's everybody is,
[1:46:08] Bob Dobbs: what did McLuhan say?
[1:46:09] Bob Dobbs: Everybody's forced to be an explorer or an artist today.
[1:46:14] Bob Dobbs: And that's what people are doing,
[1:46:17] Bob Dobbs: we would say,
[1:46:18] Bob Dobbs: without understanding.
[1:46:20] Bob Dobbs: They don't know.
[1:46:23] Bob Dobbs: You could Trump...
[1:46:24] Bob Dobbs: intuits it,
[1:46:26] Bob Dobbs: but the majority of people aren't in any focused on position,
[1:46:36] Bob Dobbs: which will make them have to come up with defining what they're doing.
[1:46:40] Bob Dobbs: They're adrift.
[1:46:42] Bob Dobbs: And that's what McLuhan ended in an essay.
[1:46:44] Bob Dobbs: Will we continue to drift?
[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: with so many drifting,
[1:46:49] Bob Dobbs: they don't have the anchor of understanding.
[1:46:55] Bob Dobbs: And that's what's dangerous,
[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: The majority of people are like that.
[1:46:59] Cameron McEwen: The whole civilization is drifting in a way that the word civilization doesn't apply anymore.
[1:47:06] Cameron McEwen: So that's what the cul-de-sac is.
[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:47:12] Bob Dobbs: are there any columnists?
[1:47:15] Bob Dobbs: See,
[1:47:15] Bob Dobbs: we're writing a column here,
[1:47:17] Bob Dobbs: speaking,
[1:47:17] Bob Dobbs: uttering,
[1:47:18] Bob Dobbs: making a column.
[1:47:19] Bob Dobbs: Let's say,
[1:47:20] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[1:47:21] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?
[1:47:23] Cameron McEwen: Let's say.
[1:47:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:47:24] Bob Dobbs: Let's say we're doing that,
[1:47:25] Bob Dobbs: and you will not get a properly written column like we're making because people just say,
[1:47:32] Bob Dobbs: things are bad.
[1:47:33] Bob Dobbs: If we do this or that,
[1:47:34] Bob Dobbs: maybe it'll get better.
[1:47:37] Bob Dobbs: It's always a panic,
[1:47:39] Bob Dobbs: hysteria,
[1:47:42] Bob Dobbs: schizophrenia,
[1:47:43] Bob Dobbs: and paranoia,
[1:47:44] Bob Dobbs: or overextasy,
[1:47:46] Bob Dobbs: as I have on my chart.
[1:47:47] Bob Dobbs: It's always a fragmented expression.
[1:47:56] Cameron McEwen: A fragmented expression which wants to take itself as non-fragmented.
[1:48:02] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:48:03] Bob Dobbs: And there's no place where you could Wright column discussing that like that,
[1:48:08] Bob Dobbs: other than your own blog.
[1:48:10] Bob Dobbs: Would the New York Times let you do an op-ed saying what we're saying?
[1:48:14] Bob Dobbs: They might,
[1:48:15] Bob Dobbs: but not likely.
[1:48:19] Bob Dobbs: They'd say,
[1:48:19] Bob Dobbs: this has to be for grade 8.
[1:48:22] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:48:22] Bob Dobbs: They'd align the...
[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: the style of writing to a certain age group,
[1:48:28] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:48:29] Bob Dobbs: a New York Post grade 8,
[1:48:30] Bob Dobbs: what would be
[1:48:31] Bob Dobbs: New York Times freshman college or something?
[1:48:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:48:39] Cameron McEwen: but doing a column in a newspaper or doing a show on TV,
[1:48:48] Cameron McEwen: it's not going to do anything.
[1:48:50] Cameron McEwen: It's going to be further drifting.
[1:48:54] Bob Dobbs: So I say our series is doing something.
[1:48:58] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[1:49:01] Bob Dobbs: It may be valuable at some point in the indefinite span of time.
[1:49:09] Bob Dobbs: It may be what people would find soothing after all kinds of ruptures.
[1:49:16] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:49:17] Cameron McEwen: we're doing,
[1:49:17] Cameron McEwen: in my view at least,
[1:49:19] Cameron McEwen: we're doing all that can be done.
[1:49:21] Cameron McEwen: And that is to try to say it like it is.
[1:49:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:49:26] Bob Dobbs: and I think in Newsweek
[1:49:27] Bob Dobbs: 1968, McLuhan was interviewed,
[1:49:32] Bob Dobbs: might have been about the due line,
[1:49:34] Bob Dobbs: I remember,
[1:49:35] Bob Dobbs: like July,
[1:49:35] Bob Dobbs: but he said he was making new commandments.
[1:49:40] Bob Dobbs: He was doing a Moses.
[1:49:42] Bob Dobbs: You ever seen that quote?
[1:49:44] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:49:45] Cameron McEwen: But that would be his loss,
[1:49:47] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:49:47] Bob Dobbs: The loss.
[1:49:50] Bob Dobbs: Interesting you find that funny.
[1:49:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:49:52] Cameron McEwen: I find it very funny.
[1:49:54] Bob Dobbs: I've been meditating on that since I read it in 68.
[1:49:59] Bob Dobbs: Way back then,
[1:50:00] Bob Dobbs: he said,
[1:50:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm making new commandments.
[1:50:04] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:50:05] Cameron McEwen: if you have that story or quotation or something from Newsweek,
[1:50:13] Cameron McEwen: I'd very much like to see it.
[1:50:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:50:14] Bob Dobbs: I'll have to check that.
[1:50:17] Bob Dobbs: I've got to put my letters back in the late 60s folders,
[1:50:21] Bob Dobbs: so I'll be near the 68 folder.
[1:50:22] Bob Dobbs: It won't be a problem to look it up.
[1:50:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:50:24] Cameron McEwen: good.
[1:50:26] Bob Dobbs: So let's end there.
[1:50:27] Cameron McEwen: I thought you said...
[1:50:28] Cameron McEwen: 78 before.
[1:50:31] Bob Dobbs: Is it 68 or 78?
[1:50:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:50:32] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:50:32] Cameron McEwen: 68.
[1:50:33] Bob Dobbs: He's in Newsweek in the summer for the due line or for some other reason.
[1:50:38] Bob Dobbs: It's in that period where he seems to be saying,
[1:50:43] Bob Dobbs: we're making commandments.
[1:50:44] Bob Dobbs: He also said in there,
[1:50:49] Bob Dobbs: he said,
[1:50:49] Bob Dobbs: we're doing something.
[1:50:51] Bob Dobbs: Since everybody else is doing it,
[1:50:53] Bob Dobbs: we're just going along with it.
[1:50:57] Bob Dobbs: They acted very passive.
[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: Go with the flow.
[1:51:01] Bob Dobbs: And see,
[1:51:02] Bob Dobbs: if you look at,
[1:51:03] Bob Dobbs: I read somebody writing on McLuhan,
[1:51:06] Bob Dobbs: it's so pitiful because they're trying to pin him down,
[1:51:09] Bob Dobbs: and they don't get the process.
[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: You've got to begin by saying,
[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:51:12] Bob Dobbs: look,
[1:51:12] Bob Dobbs: this guy is drifting,
[1:51:14] Bob Dobbs: and he's miming it for you.
[1:51:17] Bob Dobbs: Here's back at you.
[1:51:18] Bob Dobbs: And that's what you have to,
[1:51:21] Bob Dobbs: you have to basically back then,
[1:51:23] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan.
[1:51:24] Bob Dobbs: If you said this and understood it,
[1:51:26] Bob Dobbs: you'd say the guy is insane.
[1:51:28] Bob Dobbs: But everybody's become like that.
[1:51:30] Bob Dobbs: So it's not so insane.
[1:51:33] Bob Dobbs: It's prophetic.
[1:51:37] Bob Dobbs: Yet the book dictates the error.
[1:51:41] Bob Dobbs: Each medium dictates the error of style.
[1:51:45] Bob Dobbs: Nobody gets the medium,
[1:51:47] Bob Dobbs: what you should do in the medium correctly.
[1:51:50] Bob Dobbs: Because the medium dictates.
[1:51:52] Bob Dobbs: So you're actually doing what...
[1:51:54] Bob Dobbs: The medium requires,
[1:51:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:51:55] Bob Dobbs: you Wright book,
[1:51:56] Bob Dobbs: you have to have a point of view.
[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: That's what a book evokes.
[1:52:00] Bob Dobbs: But you have to Wright book to counter that effect.
[1:52:03] Bob Dobbs: You have to illustrate that you're aware of that effect and you're going to try to counter it.
[1:52:08] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:52:08] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:52:08] Bob Dobbs: buddy,
[1:52:09] Bob Dobbs: I'm selling you a book.
[1:52:12] Bob Dobbs: It's the wrong medium for our time,
[1:52:14] Bob Dobbs: but it's all you have time to do.
[1:52:16] Bob Dobbs: So here it is,
[1:52:18] Bob Dobbs: and
[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: I will illustrate how.
[1:52:22] Bob Dobbs: Completely inadequate you are in engaging my book.
[1:52:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:52:29] Cameron McEwen: But I will accept your $22.95.
[1:52:34] Bob Dobbs: As a repentance or some kind of penitent fee,
[1:52:37] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:52:39] Bob Dobbs: It's a tithe,
[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: and that's where we're at.
[1:52:43] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:52:44] Bob Dobbs: I come back.
[1:52:45] Bob Dobbs: Trump always the closest to expressing this.
[1:52:49] Bob Dobbs: His presidency was exactly the absurdity I just laid out,
[1:52:54] Bob Dobbs: and it's all it could be.
[1:52:56] Bob Dobbs: How could you be president anymore?
[1:52:59] Bob Dobbs: It's so obsolete that you had to be non-presidential just to make it look potentially real.
[1:53:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:53:10] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:53:10] Cameron McEwen: since the office had completely changed,
[1:53:15] Cameron McEwen: then the office holder had to be completely changed.
[1:53:19] Bob Dobbs: And that's,
[1:53:21] Bob Dobbs: we're not sure,
[1:53:23] Bob Dobbs: we probably changed again,
[1:53:25] Bob Dobbs: but we're not sure how to do it after Trump.
[1:53:30] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:53:30] Cameron McEwen: for sure not.
[1:53:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:53:31] Cameron McEwen: no,
[1:53:31] Cameron McEwen: the cul-de-sac is consolidated more than ever.
[1:53:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:53:36] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:53:37] Cameron McEwen: of course,
[1:53:38] Cameron McEwen: it's completely opaque.
[1:53:40] Bob Dobbs: Trump is...
[1:53:41] Bob Dobbs: We should...
[1:53:42] Bob Dobbs: We've got to end,
[1:53:43] Bob Dobbs: I know.
[1:53:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:53:45] Cameron McEwen: but that's a good place to end because it's a great place to start.
[1:53:49] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:53:50] Bob Dobbs: And I'm saying that to update McLuhan,
[1:53:57] Bob Dobbs: my book nails it.
[1:53:58] Bob Dobbs: I go for the right phenomenon,
[1:53:59] Bob Dobbs: the correct phenomenon,
[1:54:01] Bob Dobbs: Trump.
[1:54:02] Bob Dobbs: You've got to deal Trump.
[1:54:03] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:54:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:54:05] Cameron McEwen: I know what you mean,
[1:54:06] Cameron McEwen: but that's too linear for me,
[1:54:08] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:54:08] Bob Dobbs: I know,
[1:54:09] Bob Dobbs: but I've just heard so many people in the McLuhan birthday celebration a year ago.
[1:54:18] Bob Dobbs: The whole gang of them,
[1:54:19] Bob Dobbs: the McLuhan,
[1:54:20] Bob Dobbs: and they're all,
[1:54:22] Bob Dobbs: if the Trump came up,
[1:54:23] Bob Dobbs: they'd start to vomit or very dismissive.
[1:54:27] Bob Dobbs: They had no way to write about or to discuss the phenomenon.
[1:54:33] Bob Dobbs: And that showed their inadequacy.
[1:54:34] Bob Dobbs: You've got to be able to talk about Trump clinical terms,
[1:54:38] Bob Dobbs: whatever the phrase would be from a position of poise,
[1:54:41] Bob Dobbs: not
[1:54:42] Bob Dobbs: Trump derangement syndrome or whatever the other one is.
[1:54:46] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[1:54:46] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.
[1:54:47] Cameron McEwen: Of course,
[1:54:48] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:54:50] Bob Dobbs: And I think McLuhan helps you get a handle on this.
[1:54:57] Bob Dobbs: That guy who wrote the article Trump,
[1:55:00] Bob Dobbs: he had the thesis Trump read
[1:55:03] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan Playboy interview when he was 23 in 1969.
[1:55:11] Bob Dobbs: And it influenced him somehow,
[1:55:13] Bob Dobbs: subliminally.
[1:55:13] Bob Dobbs: Have you seen that essay?
[1:55:14] Bob Dobbs: Did I send it to you?
[1:55:15] Cameron McEwen: I think so.
[1:55:16] Cameron McEwen: That's the online thing,
[1:55:19] Cameron McEwen: the blog Windows or something like that.
[1:55:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:55:20] Bob Dobbs: that's it.
[1:55:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:55:22] Cameron McEwen: I read it.
[1:55:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:55:23] Bob Dobbs: If I get a chance to interview Trump,
[1:55:25] Bob Dobbs: that's going to be my first question.
[1:55:27] Bob Dobbs: Did you read the Playboy interview?
[1:55:29] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember it?
[1:55:30] Bob Dobbs: 1969,
[1:55:33] Bob Dobbs: March issue.
[1:55:34] Bob Dobbs: That's going to be my first question.
[1:55:36] Cameron McEwen: All right,
[1:55:37] Cameron McEwen: good.
[1:55:39] Bob Dobbs: But that's what I always do.
[1:55:41] Bob Dobbs: As soon as I can,
[1:55:42] Bob Dobbs: I'll bring up McLuhan or one of my other holy offices to gauge.
[1:55:49] Bob Dobbs: It's my way of being an Eskimo,
[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: to gauge where the anti-environment at.
[1:55:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:55:54] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:55:56] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:55:57] Bob Dobbs: Excellent.
[1:55:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:55:59] Cameron McEwen: let's start.
[1:56:01] Cameron McEwen: We're on page 175.
[1:56:03] Cameron McEwen: We'll make a point of starting there.
[1:56:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:56:05] Bob Dobbs: I think you're right.
[1:56:06] Bob Dobbs: It's good to go to defining Trump rather than running through the script.
[1:56:12] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:56:13] Bob Dobbs: I'll talk to you later.
[1:56:14] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:56:15] Bob Dobbs: Thanks,
[1:56:16] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: Thanks,
[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.
[1:56:17] Bob Dobbs: Ciao.
[1:56:17] Cameron McEwen: Bye.
[1:56:17] Cameron McEwen: Bye-bye.