[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Hello,
[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is Cameron McEwen and Bob Dobbs,
[00:05] Bob Dobbs: and this is session number 40 being recorded on November 4th,
[00:09] Bob Dobbs: 2021.
[00:13] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to lower my volume to get less echo.
[00:18] Bob Dobbs: Hello
[00:20] Bob Dobbs: It's still there,
[00:20] Bob Dobbs: but hopefully you don't hear too much,
[00:22] Bob Dobbs: do you,
[00:23] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron?
[00:24] Cameron McEwen: No,
[00:24] Cameron McEwen: not too much.
[00:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[00:30] Bob Dobbs: We're looking at my book,
[00:34] Bob Dobbs: All About Donald Trump,
[00:36] Bob Dobbs: and we've gone to page 77 on my layout.
[00:42] Bob Dobbs: Is it 77 for you,
[00:44] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron?
[00:45] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[00:46] Cameron McEwen: I have a 77,
[00:47] Cameron McEwen: but I don't know what you're pointing to.
[00:51] Bob Dobbs: So you scan down to the darkened part,
[00:55] Bob Dobbs: not the blue,
[00:56] Bob Dobbs: not the casual oral talk.
[00:59] Cameron McEwen: The abrasive confrontational aspect of tactility?
[01:02] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[01:04] Bob Dobbs: Meanwhile,
[01:05] Bob Dobbs: the abrasive confrontational aspects of tactility surfed over the old discarnate merged interrupting surfaces.
[01:12] Bob Dobbs: This evoked the dominance of the neoconservative liberal meme or preference in the Global Membrane of the last 35 years.
[01:20] Bob Dobbs: Not knowing this aspect of McLuhan tactility led to a discounting of McLuhan relevance on a theoretical level for educational purposes.
[01:30] Cameron McEwen: Why don't you tease that apart?
[01:34] Cameron McEwen: I don't understand much of that.
[01:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[01:38] Bob Dobbs: so McLuhan defined tactility as contrast or brutal encounter,
[01:45] Bob Dobbs: not brutal,
[01:50] Bob Dobbs: brusque interface.
[01:55] Cameron McEwen: Tactility could be anything.
[02:00] Cameron McEwen: Because tactility is the engine,
[02:04] Cameron McEwen: you could say,
[02:07] Cameron McEwen: of the genesis of all things.
[02:10] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[02:10] Bob Dobbs: wait,
[02:11] Bob Dobbs: you're fading out.
[02:12] Bob Dobbs: You suddenly went real quiet.
[02:14] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[02:15] Cameron McEwen: sorry.
[02:17] Cameron McEwen: Anyway,
[02:18] Cameron McEwen: tactility is the secret generator of all things.
[02:22] Cameron McEwen: So,
[02:23] Cameron McEwen: yes,
[02:23] Cameron McEwen: it can be abrasive and confrontational,
[02:26] Cameron McEwen: or it can be merging.
[02:30] Cameron McEwen: interrupting.
[02:32] Cameron McEwen: What I don't understand in your description here is how you're contrasting these things.
[02:44] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[02:44] Bob Dobbs: I don't give any examples.
[02:46] Bob Dobbs: I trust the words do enough,
[02:48] Bob Dobbs: but you just said it.
[02:50] Bob Dobbs: The brusque interfacing is the abrasive confrontational,
[02:55] Bob Dobbs: but tactility is not one thing or the other so you have to include
[02:58] Bob Dobbs: what people think is flow.
[03:00] Bob Dobbs: Some people think tactility is very sensitive,
[03:03] Bob Dobbs: touchy-feely stuff,
[03:05] Bob Dobbs: and you get into the zone or you flow,
[03:08] Bob Dobbs: and you don't have any interruptions,
[03:10] Bob Dobbs: but that'll get you in trouble because you will be interrupted.
[03:14] Bob Dobbs: So you have to expect the interruption and not idealize tactility as emerged floating.
[03:22] Bob Dobbs: You must include the abrasive confrontational.
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: So that's how you know something.
[03:29] Bob Dobbs: If you're just all in the flow,
[03:31] Bob Dobbs: you eventually lose awareness of that.
[03:33] Bob Dobbs: So then you've got to get your toe chopped off,
[03:37] Bob Dobbs: and then you wake up,
[03:38] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[03:38] Bob Dobbs: there's another state,
[03:39] Bob Dobbs: a painful state that's different from what I was in.
[03:43] Bob Dobbs: I wish I was back in the non-painful state.
[03:46] Bob Dobbs: So that's how we know.
[03:49] Bob Dobbs: Tactility helps us know.
[03:52] Bob Dobbs: It's probably the very drama of knowing.
[03:57] Bob Dobbs: I use the word contrast.
[03:58] Bob Dobbs: You've got to have contrast to know.
[04:00] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I'm trying to do there.
[04:05] Bob Dobbs: Merge versus non-merging.
[04:11] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[04:11] Bob Dobbs: you should understand that,
[04:13] Bob Dobbs: right?
[04:13] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[04:15] Cameron McEwen: I understand and agree with it.
[04:17] Cameron McEwen: That's more or less exactly what McLuhan is about.
[04:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[04:22] Bob Dobbs: So I said,
[04:23] Bob Dobbs: this evoked the dominance of the neoconservative liberal meme preference in the Global Membrane of the last 35 years.
[04:30] Bob Dobbs: What the heck?
[04:31] Bob Dobbs: The dominance of the...
[04:35] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what I mean by neoconservative liberal meme,
[04:39] Bob Dobbs: other than they tended towards the merged.
[04:43] Bob Dobbs: Oh yeah,
[04:44] Bob Dobbs: so that would be globalism.
[04:46] Bob Dobbs: They tended toward the merged,
[04:47] Bob Dobbs: and they didn't foresee...
[04:51] Bob Dobbs: bitterness or resentment to the first world,
[04:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan called it,
[04:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[04:56] Bob Dobbs: taking over the planet.
[04:58] Bob Dobbs: and everybody subsumed or subservient to it.
[05:01] Bob Dobbs: But then that confrontational brace of tribalism or nationalism,
[05:05] Bob Dobbs: whatever you want to call it,
[05:07] Bob Dobbs: symbolized Trump,
[05:09] Bob Dobbs: showed up.
[05:11] Bob Dobbs: And that set the neoconservative people out of whack.
[05:15] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know how to handle that.
[05:17] Bob Dobbs: So I think that's what I mean,
[05:19] Bob Dobbs: that the bias,
[05:20] Bob Dobbs: and I should say that in there,
[05:23] Bob Dobbs: the bias was for the discounted merged services.
[05:27] Bob Dobbs: not the confrontational.
[05:30] Bob Dobbs: So everywhere they went,
[05:31] Bob Dobbs: they caused confrontation,
[05:33] Bob Dobbs: but they,
[05:34] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[05:34] Bob Dobbs: suppressed it or ignored it,
[05:37] Bob Dobbs: just kept building the Global Membrane or what I would call the Android Meme.
[05:43] Bob Dobbs: So we need to go into what the difference is between the Global Membrane and the Android Meme.
[05:50] Bob Dobbs: On the surface,
[05:51] Bob Dobbs: no difference,
[05:52] Bob Dobbs: but then you have to go into the differences.
[05:55] Bob Dobbs: So what do I say?
[06:04] Bob Dobbs: I'm looking at the blue part to see what
[06:11] Bob Dobbs: I say to explain.
[06:16] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[06:16] Cameron McEwen: there you're just talking about the misinterpretation of McLuhan as some sort of romantic guy that was...
[06:25] Cameron McEwen: predicting
[06:26] Cameron McEwen: Shangri-La through television.
[06:28] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[06:33] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[06:36] Bob Dobbs: Where is this?
[06:37] Bob Dobbs: I went back too far,
[06:40] Bob Dobbs: but maybe this is good to point out.
[06:46] Bob Dobbs: So this is page 72.
[06:51] Bob Dobbs: I go,
[06:51] Bob Dobbs: let's look at this discarnate phenomenon as it actually is today.
[06:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was describing the actual possession of the Earth's population by an electrified climate that,
[06:59] Bob Dobbs: for all intents and purposes,
[07:01] Bob Dobbs: drowned the chemical body and Gutenbergian arts and sciences with a new invisible matter,
[07:06] Bob Dobbs: or physics,
[07:07] Bob Dobbs: in quotes.
[07:08] Bob Dobbs: The radio anti-environment,
[07:10] Bob Dobbs: via electricity in the global village,
[07:13] Bob Dobbs: were tactile in themselves,
[07:14] Bob Dobbs: extensions of the merging-slash-blocking or coherence aspect of tactility.
[07:19] Bob Dobbs: Another aspect of tech deal is that it...
[07:22] Bob Dobbs: Maybe it reduces your information input to a coherence or some semblance of organized mind,
[07:33] Bob Dobbs: or Western people say rationality.
[07:37] Bob Dobbs: And if that breaks down,
[07:38] Bob Dobbs: then people lose themselves and they can't get coherent again.
[07:43] Bob Dobbs: It leads to all kinds of mental discomfort.
[07:47] Bob Dobbs: Then I said,
[07:47] Bob Dobbs: but tactility has an abrasive hard edge aspect.
[07:51] Bob Dobbs: C.
[07:52] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter's They Became What They Beheld,
[07:54] Bob Dobbs: 1970.
[07:56] Bob Dobbs: According to McLuhan,
[07:57] Bob Dobbs: tactility is the interplay of the merging and abruptly interrupting tendencies,
[08:01] Bob Dobbs: not a hard and fast sense or object.
[08:05] Bob Dobbs: It's not a hard or fast sense or object,
[08:07] Bob Dobbs: and it's asymptotically.
[08:09] Bob Dobbs: So I'm thinking my definition is actually pretty good,
[08:13] Bob Dobbs: and I'm scrolling down to what I first read,
[08:18] Bob Dobbs: where I say the abrasive
[08:25] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[08:25] Bob Dobbs: I'll just read this part first.
[08:27] Cameron McEwen: Are you going back to 78?
[08:29] Cameron McEwen: No,
[08:30] Cameron McEwen: no,
[08:30] Cameron McEwen: I'm at 74.
[08:32] Bob Dobbs: I'm going down.
[08:32] Bob Dobbs: I was at 73 and 72.
[08:34] Bob Dobbs: Now I'm down at
[08:35] Bob Dobbs: 74. And I say,
[08:38] Bob Dobbs: once there were computer and satellite anti-environment,
[08:40] Bob Dobbs: the interplay of radio,
[08:41] Bob Dobbs: TV,
[08:41] Bob Dobbs: computer,
[08:41] Bob Dobbs: and satellite effects created tactile interplay among these different media,
[08:45] Bob Dobbs: a vaster and deeper extension of tactility in the global theater.
[08:51] Bob Dobbs: In other words,
[08:51] Bob Dobbs: you had a anti-environment that was tactile.
[08:53] Bob Dobbs: You had a Anti-environment.
[08:54] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[08:54] Bob Dobbs: when you had all these other anti-environment,
[08:57] Bob Dobbs: computer and satellite,
[08:58] Bob Dobbs: that's a larger,
[09:01] Bob Dobbs: bigger than the global village,
[09:03] Bob Dobbs: or more imploded,
[09:04] Bob Dobbs: or more tactile,
[09:06] Bob Dobbs: abrupt,
[09:07] Bob Dobbs: multi-level interfacing.
[09:09] Bob Dobbs: So we call that the global theater.
[09:11] Bob Dobbs: The pastoral tactility of radio and TV technology themselves was well developed in the first Explorations articles by McLuhan in the 50s.
[09:19] Bob Dobbs: So you can read what I say about that,
[09:21] Bob Dobbs: though.
[09:21] Bob Dobbs: That's a good statement.
[09:23] Bob Dobbs: And then I'm starting to talk about the Posthuman of power.
[09:28] Bob Dobbs: So I have a quote from Take Today.
[09:30] Bob Dobbs: Put on the whole world as your mask of power,
[09:32] Bob Dobbs: says the electrotechnical switch.
[09:35] Bob Dobbs: It gives you the opportunity to put on the whole world or all its media contents.
[09:40] Bob Dobbs: And,
[09:40] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[09:41] Bob Dobbs: that's a prediction before the Internet.
[09:44] Bob Dobbs: That's in 72.
[09:46] Bob Dobbs: So that's describing the Internet.
[09:48] Bob Dobbs: or social media.
[09:50] Bob Dobbs: So that's pretty good.
[09:52] Bob Dobbs: Then I say...
[09:53] Bob Dobbs: James Joyce is spinning his way to anticipate the tactile,
[09:57] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,
[09:58] Bob Dobbs: unity interplaying with fragmentation,
[10:01] Bob Dobbs: or the analog global theater of the
[10:03] Bob Dobbs: 60s, as spelled out by McLuhan,
[10:06] Bob Dobbs: but the seemingly more violent media landscapes of the late 60s and early
[10:10] Bob Dobbs: 70s, which was totally understandable if you included tactility in the interplay of satellite,
[10:16] Bob Dobbs: computer,
[10:16] Bob Dobbs: TV,
[10:17] Bob Dobbs: and radio,
[10:17] Bob Dobbs: right?
[10:18] Bob Dobbs: If you're still thinking the global village anti-environment,
[10:22] Bob Dobbs: and not noticing the anti-environment,
[10:24] Bob Dobbs: you rapidly became inefficient,
[10:27] Bob Dobbs: ineffectual,
[10:28] Bob Dobbs: and lost in nostalgia.
[10:33] Bob Dobbs: So I say,
[10:34] Bob Dobbs: but the seemingly more violent media landscapes of the late 60s and early
[10:37] Bob Dobbs: 70s that commentators thought contradicted McLuhan projections,
[10:42] Bob Dobbs: no,
[10:44] Bob Dobbs: they carried on and completed,
[10:45] Bob Dobbs: and he developed his projections,
[10:48] Bob Dobbs: including the more violent situation.
[10:51] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[10:52] Bob Dobbs: right in 68,
[10:53] Bob Dobbs: he makes a whole theme in War and Peace in the Global Village about violence as an identity question.
[10:57] Bob Dobbs: And that's the year that news agencies had video transmitted by satellite.
[11:04] Bob Dobbs: So it changed news programs.
[11:06] Bob Dobbs: You could be more right there,
[11:09] Bob Dobbs: getting footage right away.
[11:10] Bob Dobbs: So that's the global theater,
[11:12] Bob Dobbs: 68.
[11:15] Bob Dobbs: So these were fulfilling McLuhan actual projections.
[11:18] Bob Dobbs: So you go to his Don Theall articles.
[11:21] Bob Dobbs: from 68 to 1970,
[11:23] Bob Dobbs: and take today.
[11:24] Bob Dobbs: And these writings in the late 60s,
[11:27] Bob Dobbs: early 70s.
[11:28] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan saw the squaring of the extended tactility of TV in the interplay of massive electronic anti-environment.
[11:35] Bob Dobbs: So I'm trying to express a deeper,
[11:39] Bob Dobbs: more complex tactility.
[11:40] Bob Dobbs: So I just came up with the,
[11:42] Bob Dobbs: well,
[11:42] Bob Dobbs: we squared the global village of the
[11:45] Bob Dobbs: 50s. You follow that?
[11:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[11:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[11:49] Bob Dobbs: And in my commentary,
[11:51] Bob Dobbs: oral commentary,
[11:52] Bob Dobbs: I say the interplay of the global theater anti-environment is the squaring of the particular tactility in the TV screen.
[11:57] Bob Dobbs: And that helps people understand tactility a little more.
[12:00] Bob Dobbs: It's a 50s moment to say TV is tactile.
[12:03] Bob Dobbs: The global theater has all these anti-environment interplaying and interfering.
[12:07] Bob Dobbs: That's a different level of tactility,
[12:09] Bob Dobbs: but it's still tactility.
[12:10] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[12:11] Bob Dobbs: that is something not said by anybody,
[12:14] Bob Dobbs: and it's a very important point to understand the later McLuhan.
[12:18] Bob Dobbs: the post understanding media the McLuhan says that cliché to archetype that book is a great leap forward from understanding media do you know what i mean you agree with that well i certainly agree that um starting
[12:33] Cameron McEwen: already in the late
[12:35] Cameron McEwen: 1950s um McLuhan was saying that um in order to understand the medium you have to understand media and what you're saying here is that
[12:50] Cameron McEwen: in order to understand tactility,
[12:57] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand tactility.
[13:02] Cameron McEwen: I tell you squared.
[13:02] Cameron McEwen: Tactility squared is one way of talking about tactility as a natural plural.
[13:12] Cameron McEwen: We're agreeing that in order to understand media,
[13:16] Cameron McEwen: in order to understand
[13:17] Cameron McEwen: understand tactility,
[13:19] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand the range over which they extend.
[13:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[13:25] Bob Dobbs: and the reason I make the tactility squared,
[13:27] Bob Dobbs: ION the way to getting to technology coming live as the Android Meme.
[13:34] Bob Dobbs: It's separating itself from
[13:37] Bob Dobbs: TV tactility.
[13:39] Cameron McEwen: But when I hear you say,
[13:43] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[13:44] Cameron McEwen: technology coming
[13:46] Cameron McEwen: alive,
[13:49] Cameron McEwen: I can see some people understanding that in terms of some sort of horror movie.
[13:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[13:58] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[13:58] Cameron McEwen: like
[13:59] Cameron McEwen: Hal. Or They Live.
[14:01] Bob Dobbs: Did you ever see They Live?
[14:03] Bob Dobbs: The guy with the sunglasses?
[14:05] Bob Dobbs: Who could?
[14:06] Bob Dobbs: They Live,
[14:07] Bob Dobbs: sometime in the late 80s,
[14:09] Bob Dobbs: early 90s.
[14:10] Bob Dobbs: It's a good thing.
[14:11] Bob Dobbs: The guy discovers sunglasses,
[14:13] Bob Dobbs: so he can see.
[14:15] Bob Dobbs: subliminal advertising and billboards that every citizen can't see but you get this magic last on you can see the in you know it's juvenile in terms of subliminal programming but you are seeing something going on with
[14:31] Bob Dobbs: some special thing that the media managers are the only ones aware of but the point I'm trying to make here is that the
[14:43] Cameron McEwen: I think
[14:44] Cameron McEwen: when you talk about the media environment becoming alive.
[14:50] Cameron McEwen: I think what you're saying is that the notion of what being alive is needs to be rethought.
[15:04] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[15:04] Bob Dobbs: what I would do is I would quote two quotes,
[15:07] Bob Dobbs: two or three quotes from 68.
[15:10] Bob Dobbs: He had a couple of them in War and Peace in the Global Village talked about people have to realize it is an organic.
[15:17] Bob Dobbs: electric anti-environment the electric anti-environment are organic that was his term for alive and then he talks about he has another version of that in the playboy interview so i i i show that he's saying something about it that's different for what people you
[15:32] Bob Dobbs: know uh suspect um and then so i say that's what i mean by live you could just use McLuhan words rather than mine uh to get across the point.
[15:44] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[15:44] Bob Dobbs: people said in the biographies in that...
[15:47] Bob Dobbs: The McLuhan seemed to get depressed in the 70s and down and pissed off that the utopian so-called visions he had didn't happen.
[15:55] Bob Dobbs: It's so ridiculous.
[15:57] Bob Dobbs: And when you read his or heard his talk in the 70s,
[16:02] Bob Dobbs: talking about this more complex tactility,
[16:05] Bob Dobbs: and he couldn't even tell what the difference was between the medium and the message,
[16:09] Bob Dobbs: which you found he even felt that back in the late 50s,
[16:13] Bob Dobbs: but he didn't highlight that too much.
[16:15] Bob Dobbs: But he did in the
[16:16] Bob Dobbs: 70s.
[16:18] Bob Dobbs: If you get to what I'm talking about,
[16:21] Bob Dobbs: what I see,
[16:21] Bob Dobbs: what he's doing in the 70s,
[16:23] Bob Dobbs: he's a very interesting person and thinker and ahead of everybody still.
[16:27] Bob Dobbs: And that's shown in Take Today.
[16:30] Bob Dobbs: Not in the City as Classroom or the laws of media,
[16:34] Bob Dobbs: but Take Today with Barry's help.
[16:38] Bob Dobbs: There's something going on that includes the cliché to archetype.
[16:43] Bob Dobbs: And I guess it gets to the tetrad.
[16:45] Bob Dobbs: But the tetrad,
[16:46] Bob Dobbs: it looks like more reductionism for a very incredibly complex situation.
[16:52] Bob Dobbs: And exploring the confusion of the
[16:55] Bob Dobbs: 70s, the increasing terrorism and outright indecency by people on all levels.
[17:02] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[17:03] Bob Dobbs: And it gets worse in the 80s and 90s.
[17:05] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan was totally accurate about that.
[17:08] Bob Dobbs: He saw that coming.
[17:11] Bob Dobbs: And so...
[17:12] Bob Dobbs: I don't see any McLuhan people.
[17:14] Bob Dobbs: Maybe you do,
[17:15] Bob Dobbs: but you tend to talk more about words.
[17:19] Bob Dobbs: Do you say what I'm saying in any form?
[17:23] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[17:25] Cameron McEwen: I stay away from diachronic or historical analysis.
[17:31] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[17:31] Cameron McEwen: Because I'm distrustful of that with McLuhan,
[17:36] Cameron McEwen: or at least it's,
[17:38] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[17:39] Cameron McEwen: it may be that...
[17:40] Cameron McEwen: My take on McLuhan is a little bit one-sided,
[17:44] Cameron McEwen: and your take is a little bit one-sided the other way.
[17:47] Bob Dobbs: Yep,
[17:47] Bob Dobbs: I agree.
[17:49] Cameron McEwen: But...
[17:51] Bob Dobbs: I think they're both important.
[17:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[17:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[17:55] Bob Dobbs: We've carved out separate complementary developments of doing justice to what McLuhan was getting at.
[18:03] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[18:04] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[18:04] Bob Dobbs: well,
[18:04] Bob Dobbs: that's good to say it that way.
[18:06] Cameron McEwen: And it's not only...
[18:10] Cameron McEwen: around words like live and alive.
[18:15] Bob Dobbs: And organic.
[18:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[18:17] Cameron McEwen: where you can see those differences.
[18:19] Cameron McEwen: Another is that your analysis,
[18:23] Cameron McEwen: in my view,
[18:25] Cameron McEwen: is interesting in that you take up
[18:33] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan notion of languages being
[18:40] Cameron McEwen: the sort of the individuality of our time,
[18:45] Cameron McEwen: not individual people,
[18:47] Cameron McEwen: but the anti-environment that they're caught up in without knowing it.
[18:52] Cameron McEwen: And you do a better job of talking about that than I do,
[18:56] Cameron McEwen: I believe.
[18:57] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[18:57] Bob Dobbs: I agree.
[18:58] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I agree,
[18:59] Bob Dobbs: but I'll accept that,
[19:00] Bob Dobbs: because
[19:01] Bob Dobbs: I have specialized in that.
[19:04] Bob Dobbs: I know how to respond to people's different subjective not getting it,
[19:08] Bob Dobbs: and I have a way of...
[19:09] Bob Dobbs: talking around it to help them see it.
[19:10] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[19:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[19:12] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[19:13] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.
[19:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[19:16] Bob Dobbs: And then you do the,
[19:18] Bob Dobbs: it's almost conceptual,
[19:21] Bob Dobbs: trying to show percept conceptually and showing there's,
[19:24] Bob Dobbs: in a way,
[19:25] Bob Dobbs: you would say no difference.
[19:26] Bob Dobbs: But you just demand close reading more than I do.
[19:33] Bob Dobbs: So I'm like showing a movie and you're showing a medieval manuscript in Greek or something.
[19:38] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[19:38] Cameron McEwen: Maybe,
[19:39] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[19:42] Cameron McEwen: my point is that McLuhan is much deeper than he's taken to be,
[19:47] Cameron McEwen: and that depth.
[19:49] Cameron McEwen: leads us in good directions.
[19:54] Cameron McEwen: I think what you do is you say that
[19:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is a great kind of movie director.
[20:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[20:07] Cameron McEwen: He's interesting because of these scenes that he shows sort of as they go along in historical time.
[20:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[20:19] Bob Dobbs: I called him a satellite conductor,
[20:21] Bob Dobbs: and he found a way to think big.
[20:25] Bob Dobbs: Bucky Fuller said,
[20:26] Bob Dobbs: think big.
[20:27] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[20:27] Bob Dobbs: he didn't think as big as McLuhan.
[20:29] Bob Dobbs: And people need to be stretched by think-biggers or big thinkers.
[20:36] Bob Dobbs: He came up with a very great big-thinking scenario like he says in Playboy,
[20:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[20:43] Bob Dobbs: we take a computer and we modulate anti-environment around the planet,
[20:46] Bob Dobbs: and economics is already doing that.
[20:48] Bob Dobbs: puny scale that's a big thought and if you get too practical you say well that's never going to happen i'm not going to think about it but he did help you stretch if you considered what he was pointing out because it was kind of happening anyways you know clumsily by
[21:06] Bob Dobbs: the corporate elite they were managing global anti-environment all the time uh and doing a very bad hiding the fact they were doing it they were scared
[21:18] Cameron McEwen: No,
[21:18] Cameron McEwen: that's a very good way of putting it.
[21:21] Cameron McEwen: It's like some people are short-sighted,
[21:24] Cameron McEwen: some people are far-sighted.
[21:26] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan was sort of
[21:29] Cameron McEwen: megalo-sighted. Yeah.
[21:32] Cameron McEwen: Where he could see a big picture where other people not only didn't see anything,
[21:40] Cameron McEwen: but didn't even try to see anything.
[21:45] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[21:45] Bob Dobbs: and so that's why the globalist versus nationalist argument is so puny,
[21:50] Bob Dobbs: because people's vision of globalism is,
[21:53] Bob Dobbs: at best,
[21:55] Bob Dobbs: 1920s or something,
[21:55] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[21:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[21:58] Cameron McEwen: it's physical imperialism or something.
[22:00] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[22:01] Bob Dobbs: so then I would come up with terms like solar government.
[22:03] Bob Dobbs: That's what we're dealing with.
[22:05] Bob Dobbs: And it's actually called echelon.
[22:07] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[22:08] Bob Dobbs: that's the agreement among
[22:10] Bob Dobbs: New Zealand,
[22:11] Bob Dobbs: Britain,
[22:12] Bob Dobbs: the United States.
[22:14] Bob Dobbs: Australia,
[22:14] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[22:16] Bob Dobbs: and one other country,
[22:18] Bob Dobbs: Canada maybe.
[22:19] Bob Dobbs: You know about Echelon?
[22:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[22:23] Bob Dobbs: that is solar government,
[22:26] Bob Dobbs: not world government.
[22:28] Bob Dobbs: And that gets to the Global Membrane.
[22:31] Bob Dobbs: The solar government is not outer space.
[22:34] Bob Dobbs: It's a more extreme version of your interior landscape.
[22:38] Bob Dobbs: It's a resonating node with no...
[22:41] Bob Dobbs: no visual marker points,
[22:43] Bob Dobbs: which is tactility squared.
[22:46] Bob Dobbs: So I've said this so much for decades,
[22:48] Bob Dobbs: it's all obvious to me,
[22:50] Bob Dobbs: but it does take a while for people to catch up to me on the point.
[22:57] Bob Dobbs: They have to listen for a while.
[22:59] Cameron McEwen: So you see the vibrating membrane as a singular or as a plurality of membranes that are...
[23:09] Cameron McEwen: competing and cooperating with one another on different levels.
[23:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[23:14] Bob Dobbs: if it's tactility,
[23:15] Bob Dobbs: then it has to be both.
[23:18] Bob Dobbs: It has to be both,
[23:19] Bob Dobbs: always.
[23:20] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[23:20] Bob Dobbs: both and is a good statement.
[23:24] Bob Dobbs: Not either or,
[23:25] Bob Dobbs: both and.
[23:25] Bob Dobbs: And and is capitalized or italicized,
[23:28] Bob Dobbs: you know.
[23:28] Bob Dobbs: It's extra from even the both.
[23:31] Bob Dobbs: That's why yin-yang symbols are not any good.
[23:34] Bob Dobbs: So the embracing of these icons of...
[23:37] Bob Dobbs: Eastern religions,
[23:38] Bob Dobbs: which people find a little more complementary than the literate West black and white Christian ideas,
[23:48] Bob Dobbs: that's nowhere near what we need to perceive.
[23:50] Bob Dobbs: So no religions or icons have come up with the imagery we need for our time.
[23:55] Bob Dobbs: And so that's why I point to Finnegans Wake.
[23:57] Bob Dobbs: That's the closest picture of what we're dealing with,
[24:02] Bob Dobbs: way back
[24:03] Bob Dobbs: 40, 50 years ago.
[24:04] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[24:05] Bob Dobbs: the tech body...
[24:07] Bob Dobbs: That's a whole new thing.
[24:09] Bob Dobbs: So we're trying to get to there.
[24:11] Bob Dobbs: But you've got to go through this global theater,
[24:13] Bob Dobbs: solar theater.
[24:14] Bob Dobbs: You've got to update your percepts on this.
[24:17] Bob Dobbs: And you should be then fascinated that,
[24:20] Bob Dobbs: wow,
[24:20] Bob Dobbs: I can understand McLuhan.
[24:22] Bob Dobbs: I can see that he's doing what Bob's talking about.
[24:24] Bob Dobbs: And then you start to read McLuhan,
[24:25] Bob Dobbs: and you'll enjoy it.
[24:27] Bob Dobbs: You'll find it a great poetry.
[24:29] Bob Dobbs: And it's,
[24:29] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[24:30] Bob Dobbs: accurate.
[24:31] Bob Dobbs: And it's way beyond what Kissinger and the Trigger Men...
[24:35] Bob Dobbs: limit the conversation to.
[24:39] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[24:39] Cameron McEwen: for sure.
[24:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[24:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[24:44] Bob Dobbs: so I said...
[24:47] Bob Dobbs: different level of tactility.
[24:49] Bob Dobbs: Then I said later McLuhan in the late 70s accurately foresaw the flipping of this leviathan of tactile mixed corporate media,
[25:00] Bob Dobbs: which I've just been describing the huge part,
[25:03] Bob Dobbs: the solar government part,
[25:04] Bob Dobbs: into anti-environment of new autonomy for the already discarnate super angel.
[25:09] Bob Dobbs: And I always remember McLuhan saying once or twice in the
[25:13] Bob Dobbs: Monday night seminars that mass man was not tribal.
[25:16] Bob Dobbs: There was an increasing autonomy factor in the life of people with the mixed corporate media environment,
[25:26] Bob Dobbs: which people didn't know really how to translate that back into social values.
[25:32] Bob Dobbs: They just became more anarchistic in their lifestyles.
[25:37] Bob Dobbs: Nobody was watching them anymore.
[25:41] Bob Dobbs: No more tyranny of the tribal oral space.
[25:44] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[25:45] Bob Dobbs: tribal people.
[25:46] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[25:47] Bob Dobbs: you're in a tribe,
[25:47] Bob Dobbs: man.
[25:48] Bob Dobbs: You've got to watch yourself.
[25:49] Bob Dobbs: You can't be,
[25:51] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[25:52] Bob Dobbs: jerking off and going off and running amok from the tribe,
[25:55] Bob Dobbs: which you can do technologically once you had cable TV and then early
[26:00] Bob Dobbs: Internet.
[26:03] Bob Dobbs: You follow that?
[26:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[26:05] Cameron McEwen: but not,
[26:06] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[26:07] Cameron McEwen: it's not because,
[26:10] Cameron McEwen: at that point,
[26:11] Cameron McEwen: it's not because the technology...
[26:15] Cameron McEwen: It's not because the technology is enabling or disabling something at a personal level.
[26:24] Cameron McEwen: It's because the technology is disabling the old tribalisms.
[26:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[26:32] Cameron McEwen: And those old tribalisms were built into people so that their whole identity was caught up in it.
[26:41] Cameron McEwen: And when the...
[26:45] Cameron McEwen: the tribe became dismantled by the media,
[26:51] Cameron McEwen: then that had the effect of also disabling the tribal identity within.
[27:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[27:05] Bob Dobbs: What was I going to say about that?
[27:08] Bob Dobbs: That's why it's really sad to see appraisals...
[27:12] Bob Dobbs: Even maybe in McLuhan,
[27:13] Bob Dobbs: in university curricula,
[27:15] Bob Dobbs: or what are they called?
[27:16] Bob Dobbs: What's it called?
[27:18] Bob Dobbs: The prospectus or something,
[27:21] Bob Dobbs: when they describe the course.
[27:23] Bob Dobbs: What's that called?
[27:24] Bob Dobbs: The curriculum.
[27:27] Bob Dobbs: And they just talk about,
[27:27] Bob Dobbs: well,
[27:28] Bob Dobbs: he saw tribal values coming back,
[27:30] Bob Dobbs: and we were going tribal.
[27:31] Bob Dobbs: That's so stupid in terms of what he's really doing.
[27:36] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan never gets a fair hearing on the level we're talking about right now.
[27:42] Cameron McEwen: No,
[27:42] Cameron McEwen: for sure not.
[27:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[27:44] Cameron McEwen: And that's because a lot of the stuff that he was talking about was simply invisible until fairly recently.
[27:54] Cameron McEwen: And now it's just starting to sort of come into people's vision.
[28:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[28:02] Cameron McEwen: And so
[28:04] Cameron McEwen: I think McLuhan is on the upswing.
[28:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[28:08] Cameron McEwen: I think he'll be studied a lot.
[28:11] Cameron McEwen: more in the future than he has been in the past.
[28:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[28:14] Bob Dobbs: especially if they listen to us.
[28:16] Bob Dobbs: We'll point out what no one else is pointing out about the value of McLuhan and why he's a good guy to the 21st century,
[28:23] Bob Dobbs: even though he was describing what was going on in the
[28:26] Bob Dobbs: 60s and 70s.
[28:27] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[28:30] Cameron McEwen: He said if you pay attention to the present,
[28:34] Cameron McEwen: you are seeing the future.
[28:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[28:37] Bob Dobbs: So after
[28:40] Bob Dobbs: I say this,
[28:40] Bob Dobbs: new autonomy for the already discarnate super angel.
[28:44] Bob Dobbs: So,
[28:44] Bob Dobbs: the resonant node,
[28:46] Bob Dobbs: the Global Membrane are included Innis.
[28:49] Bob Dobbs: But I'm trying to go past that.
[28:52] Bob Dobbs: You're not just a resonant node.
[28:53] Bob Dobbs: You can disconnect from the resonant node.
[28:55] Bob Dobbs: So,
[28:56] Bob Dobbs: in the oral part after that,
[28:58] Bob Dobbs: I go explaining Leviathan.
[29:01] Bob Dobbs: The program,
[29:02] Bob Dobbs: monstrous anti-environment.
[29:05] Bob Dobbs: And most people felt that with stagflation.
[29:08] Bob Dobbs: and economic ups and downs and massive layoffs and,
[29:11] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[29:11] Bob Dobbs: the economic Cayce since the 70s.
[29:14] Bob Dobbs: That's programmed monstrous anti-environment that had to do that since nobody knew how to get a grip on it and get any consensus about how to make it softer or turn it off or modulate it.
[29:28] Bob Dobbs: So we were up against programmed monstrous anti-environment starting in the 70s.
[29:33] Bob Dobbs: And so I say the Leviathan of that is now going to flip into the more refined cloth of the individual God self.
[29:41] Bob Dobbs: So
[29:43] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to show,
[29:44] Bob Dobbs: I'm not trying to be religious,
[29:46] Bob Dobbs: but I'm taking the idea of what people might think a God is.
[29:49] Bob Dobbs: and saying,
[29:50] Bob Dobbs: well,
[29:50] Bob Dobbs: the technology was putting you in a God position on the autonomy level.
[29:57] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[29:57] Bob Dobbs: I want to...
[29:58] Cameron McEwen: That has to do with what I was just talking about with the shattering of the old tribes.
[30:04] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[30:06] Bob Dobbs: The closer you come to the new situation was that you weren't limited by
[30:12] Bob Dobbs: God self.
[30:12] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[30:13] Bob Dobbs: by tribal self.
[30:14] Bob Dobbs: You had a new freedom,
[30:16] Bob Dobbs: autonomy,
[30:17] Bob Dobbs: and...
[30:18] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[30:19] Cameron McEwen: Or so it seemed,
[30:20] Cameron McEwen: so it seemed.
[30:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[30:22] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[30:22] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[30:23] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[30:23] Bob Dobbs: as long as the media was there,
[30:25] Bob Dobbs: anti-environment was there,
[30:25] Bob Dobbs: you could write it.
[30:30] Bob Dobbs: So I say,
[30:30] Bob Dobbs: so I use the word God self cautiously.
[30:33] Bob Dobbs: But then I come using Don Theall.
[30:39] Bob Dobbs: This gets me out of that.
[30:40] Bob Dobbs: Professor Donald Theall termed this the synesthetic versus the co-anesthetic.
[30:44] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[30:44] Bob Dobbs: I only saw him use the word co-anesthetic.
[30:47] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.
[30:48] Bob Dobbs: If he made it up or if it is,
[30:50] Bob Dobbs: I looked it up years ago,
[30:51] Bob Dobbs: I can't remember,
[30:52] Bob Dobbs: it might be somewheres,
[30:54] Bob Dobbs: but it's not used very much,
[30:55] Bob Dobbs: just the synesthetic.
[30:57] Bob Dobbs: So the co-anesthetic is being the dynamics of the media merging,
[31:05] Bob Dobbs: so it puts one in the driver's seat.
[31:07] Bob Dobbs: So,
[31:08] Bob Dobbs: and that's what the internet did.
[31:10] Bob Dobbs: It took all these media,
[31:11] Bob Dobbs: analog
[31:13] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg media,
[31:14] Bob Dobbs: and put it into your palm pilot.
[31:15] Bob Dobbs: So you were sitting in the middle of it.
[31:18] Bob Dobbs: You were the driver of it.
[31:20] Bob Dobbs: And that's co-anesthetic,
[31:22] Bob Dobbs: not synesthesia.
[31:24] Bob Dobbs: So you use the co-anesthetic to explain this drive towards new autonomy and putting you at the center of your media clothing,
[31:33] Bob Dobbs: and that's your,
[31:34] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[31:34] Bob Dobbs: might seem like a god self.
[31:37] Bob Dobbs: And probably the people that were stealing,
[31:42] Bob Dobbs: they knew computers,
[31:42] Bob Dobbs: they knew how to steal lots of money all over the place,
[31:46] Bob Dobbs: they were...
[31:49] Bob Dobbs: stoned on their god self.
[31:51] Bob Dobbs: They saw the superpower they had understanding the new digital state and how they could hijack all kinds of corporate anti-environment.
[32:01] Bob Dobbs: They got drunk on that.
[32:03] Bob Dobbs: And maybe
[32:06] Bob Dobbs: Rupert Murdoch and those symbolisms,
[32:09] Bob Dobbs: those icons of these guys that people felt we can't stop them.
[32:15] Bob Dobbs: They The...
[32:17] Bob Dobbs: They just have too much access to the whole planet as a playground.
[32:22] Bob Dobbs: So they're like gods.
[32:25] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely.
[32:25] Bob Dobbs: And people didn't see that they were getting close to that themselves,
[32:30] Bob Dobbs: not until the Internet.
[32:31] Bob Dobbs: But it explored the loss of identity in the
[32:36] Bob Dobbs: 80s. People just found that,
[32:38] Bob Dobbs: wow,
[32:38] Bob Dobbs: this world is so much bigger than me.
[32:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm just a little guy because they were only thinking in chemical body terms.
[32:44] Bob Dobbs: Right?
[32:44] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[32:45] Bob Dobbs: Now...
[32:45] Bob Dobbs: If they listened to my radio show on CKLN for two or three years,
[32:49] Bob Dobbs: where I go over and over,
[32:50] Bob Dobbs: they'd start to see,
[32:51] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[32:53] Bob Dobbs: the bigger dimensions they were in.
[32:55] Bob Dobbs: And they are potentially as big as any corporate CEO.
[33:01] Bob Dobbs: The corporate CEOs were just propped up because of the bias of news media and Western individualism,
[33:08] Bob Dobbs: which liked to hoik up the billiard ball,
[33:10] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg individual.
[33:11] Bob Dobbs: It's still happening.
[33:13] Bob Dobbs: And they were called the billionaires.
[33:15] Bob Dobbs: You follow what I'm saying?
[33:17] Cameron McEwen: Sure,
[33:18] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[33:19] Bob Dobbs: So that's what needs to be talked about,
[33:22] Bob Dobbs: and that's what I did on the radio for many years.
[33:25] Cameron McEwen: But did you talk about how that sort of identity,
[33:32] Cameron McEwen: if it's taken seriously,
[33:34] Cameron McEwen: implodes?
[33:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[33:37] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[33:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[33:38] Cameron McEwen: At the blog,
[33:39] Cameron McEwen: I talk a lot about how the...
[33:45] Cameron McEwen: identity of the
[33:47] Cameron McEwen: God self,
[33:48] Cameron McEwen: as you call it,
[33:51] Cameron McEwen: depends upon the certification of the same God self doing the nomination,
[34:01] Cameron McEwen: right?
[34:03] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[34:04] Cameron McEwen: it's a logic that falls through itself like a black hole.
[34:11] Cameron McEwen: The God self has to certify itself.
[34:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[34:14] Bob Dobbs: now,
[34:14] Bob Dobbs: Kroker came along in the early
[34:16] Bob Dobbs: 90s and wrote,
[34:17] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[34:18] Bob Dobbs: eloquently,
[34:18] Bob Dobbs: poetically about the same situation I was talking about.
[34:22] Bob Dobbs: And he talked about ecstasy and then crash.
[34:28] Bob Dobbs: And
[34:29] Bob Dobbs: Steve Jobs and those guys would go through this.
[34:32] Bob Dobbs: They'd go through some ecstatic inflation,
[34:33] Bob Dobbs: and then they'd always crash.
[34:35] Bob Dobbs: And it happened in the population.
[34:40] Bob Dobbs: In terms of allergies anti-environment allergies and things like that,
[34:45] Bob Dobbs: I saw a lot of it in Carolyn practice.
[34:49] Bob Dobbs: Because she was on the leading edge in dealing with newer problems and effects that the medical profession wasn't keeping up on,
[34:56] Bob Dobbs: she was an expert,
[34:57] Bob Dobbs: so I would talk to her about it,
[35:00] Bob Dobbs: and
[35:01] Bob Dobbs: I could really see McLuhan point,
[35:03] Bob Dobbs: or what we're saying now about the God self and the inflated self,
[35:06] Bob Dobbs: how that really wrecked the chemical body.
[35:09] Bob Dobbs: So the population,
[35:11] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[35:11] Bob Dobbs: the discarnate peasants were all collapsing anyways.
[35:15] Bob Dobbs: Ecstasy and then crash.
[35:16] Bob Dobbs: That's why Kroker came up with crash theory.
[35:19] Bob Dobbs: He went further than Baudrillard,
[35:20] Bob Dobbs: I would say.
[35:23] Bob Dobbs: But yes,
[35:24] Bob Dobbs: it was happening to the biggies too.
[35:25] Bob Dobbs: It was happening to everybody.
[35:27] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,
[35:29] Bob Dobbs: you can't be a philosopher king and run the show.
[35:32] Bob Dobbs: He said that in the 60s.
[35:33] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[35:34] Bob Dobbs: nobody's chemical body survived.
[35:36] Bob Dobbs: what we're talking about unless you got into serious Self-Condemned,
[35:41] Bob Dobbs: turned yourself on,
[35:42] Bob Dobbs: didn't get turned yourself off rather,
[35:44] Bob Dobbs: you didn't get carried away with your God self,
[35:47] Bob Dobbs: you know what I mean?
[35:48] Bob Dobbs: So when part of my image on CKLN was to hoik up the God self and present it seriously,
[35:56] Bob Dobbs: present that I was in charge of everything and all these scenarios to show that that's what we all were experiencing.
[36:04] Bob Dobbs: But we never had the guts to understand it about ourselves or even tell anybody.
[36:09] Bob Dobbs: So that was the revolution of what I was doing in developing McLuhan and Kroker.
[36:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[36:20] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[36:20] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[36:21] Bob Dobbs: we met in 98,
[36:22] Bob Dobbs: but you never heard me until
[36:24] Bob Dobbs: 2009, 10,
[36:25] Bob Dobbs: or 11 or something,
[36:26] Bob Dobbs: right?
[36:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[36:29] Cameron McEwen: other than the talk that you gave.
[36:34] Cameron McEwen: after the question you gave to Tom Wolfe,
[36:39] Cameron McEwen: which I thought was excellent.
[36:42] Bob Dobbs: That was 99.
[36:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[36:44] Cameron McEwen: that would have been the first thing that I heard of you that was not on the printed page.
[36:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[36:54] Bob Dobbs: And you said,
[36:55] Bob Dobbs: well,
[36:55] Bob Dobbs: that guy kind of knows a little bit more than usually here in the McLuhan world.
[36:59] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[37:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[37:02] Bob Dobbs: So
[37:04] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[37:04] Bob Dobbs: I'm proud of what I did and proud of where I got to with it.
[37:12] Bob Dobbs: And I'm ridiculously,
[37:13] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[37:14] Bob Dobbs: satirized by the McLuhan industry.
[37:16] Bob Dobbs: It's amazing how stupid they are.
[37:20] Bob Dobbs: Maybe if you're a teacher,
[37:22] Bob Dobbs: you can't let yourself catch up to what's going on.
[37:26] Bob Dobbs: You have to stay on the stupid student level.
[37:29] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[37:32] Bob Dobbs: By having the job of teaching and adapting yourself to the lowly requirements of education Acadia University,
[37:40] Bob Dobbs: you're limiting yourself.
[37:41] Bob Dobbs: You've got a job,
[37:42] Bob Dobbs: you can raise a family,
[37:43] Bob Dobbs: you've got a mortgage and it's paid,
[37:45] Bob Dobbs: but it does not keep you tuned in.
[37:49] Bob Dobbs: I think it's hard for these people,
[37:50] Bob Dobbs: these professors,
[37:51] Bob Dobbs: to get away from it.
[37:52] Bob Dobbs: I had a lot of good conversation with Zingrone about it.
[37:55] Bob Dobbs: He struggled with it.
[37:57] Bob Dobbs: He consciously knew it wasn't good for him to be a teacher.
[38:03] Bob Dobbs: because you had to give yourself over to your students too much.
[38:06] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I'm saying?
[38:08] Bob Dobbs: Sure,
[38:09] Bob Dobbs: sure.
[38:10] Bob Dobbs: And you develop what you're doing,
[38:13] Bob Dobbs: which is unique,
[38:14] Bob Dobbs: because you weren't beholding anybody.
[38:19] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[38:19] Bob Dobbs: So that would give you time to notice things,
[38:21] Bob Dobbs: to newer developments,
[38:25] Bob Dobbs: even to notice me.
[38:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[38:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[38:30] Cameron McEwen: if you teach...
[38:31] Cameron McEwen: You need to have a kind of package that you present.
[38:39] Cameron McEwen: And if you were to,
[38:44] Cameron McEwen: instead of that,
[38:47] Cameron McEwen: identify what's wrong with packages,
[38:50] Cameron McEwen: what's limited about packages,
[38:54] Cameron McEwen: then you would be trying to pass on a kind of...
[39:01] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[39:02] Cameron McEwen: nihilism,
[39:02] Cameron McEwen: if you will,
[39:04] Cameron McEwen: formlessness to students that it's not really ethical to do.
[39:17] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[39:17] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[39:17] Cameron McEwen: it's like formlessness as a package.
[39:21] Bob Dobbs: And
[39:22] Cameron McEwen: I think that that kind of contradiction has increasingly become what teachers...
[39:30] Cameron McEwen: try to teach.
[39:31] Cameron McEwen: I think that's part of what the whole controversy now is before educational boards,
[39:38] Cameron McEwen: that teachers are saying that they should have the right more than parents to say what education is.
[39:47] Cameron McEwen: And by what does education they generally mean?
[39:51] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[39:52] Cameron McEwen: it means that you see that nothing is worthwhile that um
[39:58] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[39:58] Cameron McEwen: white people are evil,
[39:59] Cameron McEwen: and,
[40:02] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[40:04] Cameron McEwen: critical race theory,
[40:05] Cameron McEwen: CRT.
[40:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[40:07] Bob Dobbs: you know what they mean by white people are evil?
[40:09] Bob Dobbs: They're talking about the chip body.
[40:12] Bob Dobbs: And the white people are seen as the first world,
[40:15] Bob Dobbs: they got in there first.
[40:16] Bob Dobbs: It's not necessarily true anymore,
[40:17] Bob Dobbs: right?
[40:18] Bob Dobbs: Everybody in the world's got the chip body,
[40:19] Bob Dobbs: but I bet you that's what that is.
[40:22] Bob Dobbs: That's the horseless carriage term for the autonomy of the chip body.
[40:27] Bob Dobbs: And they're calling it a chemical body term,
[40:30] Bob Dobbs: identifying with the white race,
[40:32] Bob Dobbs: because they got there first on the level of affluence.
[40:36] Bob Dobbs: So there's a new idea.
[40:37] Bob Dobbs: I just explained the whole fucking white supremacy delusion.
[40:43] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[40:43] Cameron McEwen: I like the mythology,
[40:46] Cameron McEwen: or the methodology,
[40:48] Cameron McEwen: I should say,
[40:49] Cameron McEwen: because what you're suggesting is that there are ways of understanding the interrelationship of the bodies.
[40:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[40:57] Cameron McEwen: Which can account for historical phenomena.
[41:02] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[41:03] Bob Dobbs: and hysteria.
[41:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[41:05] Cameron McEwen: I'll have to think about that a bit.
[41:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[41:07] Bob Dobbs: that's pretty neat.
[41:08] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to be using that one.
[41:09] Bob Dobbs: White supremacy,
[41:10] Bob Dobbs: misidentification of the chip body.
[41:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[41:16] Bob Dobbs: makes sense.
[41:17] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[41:20] Bob Dobbs: So this co-anesthetic versus synesthetic,
[41:23] Bob Dobbs: had you ever read that in Theall or knew about it?
[41:26] Cameron McEwen: Is that new to you?
[41:29] Cameron McEwen: I haven't read much of
[41:31] Cameron McEwen: Theall work,
[41:32] Cameron McEwen: number one.
[41:33] Cameron McEwen: And number two,
[41:35] Cameron McEwen: I have looked up whether or not the term ever occurs in
[41:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, and I don't think it does.
[41:41] Bob Dobbs: No,
[41:41] Bob Dobbs: it doesn't.
[41:41] Bob Dobbs: But do you see it anywhere?
[41:44] Bob Dobbs: Is it even in the dictionary?
[41:47] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[41:47] Cameron McEwen: that I don't know.
[41:49] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[41:49] Bob Dobbs: you're fast.
[41:50] Bob Dobbs: Type it in.
[41:51] Bob Dobbs: See what you come up with.
[41:58] Bob Dobbs: C-O-E-N.
[42:00] Bob Dobbs: Kenner.
[42:03] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[42:03] Cameron McEwen: One of the problems with words like that is that they don't have a consistent spelling.
[42:11] Bob Dobbs: So you could do Kuhn without the A-E.
[42:26] Bob Dobbs: I seem to recall...
[42:28] Bob Dobbs: Don citing something,
[42:30] Bob Dobbs: some other place that he got it from.
[42:37] Bob Dobbs: So you don't see it anywhere,
[42:38] Bob Dobbs: right?
[42:39] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[42:39] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[42:40] Cameron McEwen: there's a lot of hits here,
[42:42] Cameron McEwen: mostly from dictionaries.
[42:45] Cameron McEwen: I see there's a
[42:47] Cameron McEwen: Wiktionary entry for it.
[42:53] Cameron McEwen: Lots of people are defining it,
[42:56] Cameron McEwen: but there's not too much.
[43:00] Cameron McEwen: saying how it would be used.
[43:02] Cameron McEwen: It seems to be used with vision.
[43:08] Cameron McEwen: It seems to be a little bit like...
[43:15] Bob Dobbs: The panopticon?
[43:25] Bob Dobbs: It's the idea of the director.
[43:27] Bob Dobbs: In the middle of all the media swirling around you.
[43:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[43:31] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[43:31] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[43:32] Cameron McEwen: That's precisely how,
[43:36] Cameron McEwen: I'm just glancing over hits,
[43:38] Cameron McEwen: but that's how the hits seem to treat it.
[43:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[43:43] Bob Dobbs: so they've got the definition correctly.
[43:48] Cameron McEwen: Seems like.
[43:49] Cameron McEwen: I don't know what correct or incorrect is,
[43:53] Cameron McEwen: because that's not a term that...
[43:56] Cameron McEwen: I use or that
[43:58] Cameron McEwen: I ordinarily see,
[43:59] Cameron McEwen: but
[44:01] Cameron McEwen: I can see that they're using it in terms of the coordination of bodily feeling.
[44:09] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[44:10] Bob Dobbs: So,
[44:11] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[44:12] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[44:13] Bob Dobbs: back in the day,
[44:14] Bob Dobbs: what,
[44:15] Bob Dobbs: in the
[44:16] Bob Dobbs: 80s, early
[44:17] Bob Dobbs: 90s, you want to read a magazine,
[44:19] Bob Dobbs: you had to get out in the street and buy it.
[44:23] Bob Dobbs: Then once the Internet happened.
[44:24] Bob Dobbs: The magazine was in your lap.
[44:25] Bob Dobbs: You didn't have to go anywhere.
[44:28] Bob Dobbs: So you were put in the center.
[44:31] Bob Dobbs: It was almost like you were at the head of a corporation of Time or Newsweek,
[44:35] Bob Dobbs: and they probably had rapid access to everything.
[44:38] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have to go into the fax machines or whatever.
[44:42] Bob Dobbs: They had technology where they could get stuff faster and not have to run down to the store.
[44:49] Bob Dobbs: We were becoming equal to that with the Internet.
[44:56] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty powerful to have that access compared to what people had before.
[45:04] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[45:05] Cameron McEwen: well,
[45:09] Cameron McEwen: the problem is that it's a power that is deceptive and
[45:21] Cameron McEwen: that it gives you a sense of power to begin with.
[45:26] Cameron McEwen: But it really removes a lot of power at the same time,
[45:31] Cameron McEwen: and you don't notice that.
[45:33] Cameron McEwen: So it's a little bit like the God Self.
[45:38] Cameron McEwen: When that emerges out of the tribal,
[45:42] Cameron McEwen: that seems like a liberation.
[45:45] Cameron McEwen: And later it turns out that that's a tremendous weakness because the tribal was giving you ground,
[45:52] Cameron McEwen: and the God Self can never do that.
[45:54] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[45:55] Bob Dobbs: and you're up against all the other god selves.
[45:57] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[46:05] Bob Dobbs: So you lose...
[46:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[46:09] Bob Dobbs: what was it?
[46:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[46:13] Bob Dobbs: it's more of a consumerist co-anesthetic.
[46:17] Bob Dobbs: You're in the center of the storm of media,
[46:21] Bob Dobbs: and you've got lots of stuff you can consume,
[46:23] Bob Dobbs: but...
[46:25] Bob Dobbs: The hijacking of visual space,
[46:28] Bob Dobbs: the Gutenberg administration or
[46:32] Bob Dobbs: Connecticut administration,
[46:34] Bob Dobbs: the guys who meet on golf courses,
[46:37] Bob Dobbs: they are more the producer level.
[46:42] Bob Dobbs: And you're just stuck with consuming a lot more stuff.
[46:46] Bob Dobbs: You can't compete with certain gods,
[46:53] Bob Dobbs: like the Murdochs say.
[46:55] Bob Dobbs: But with Web 2.0,
[46:56] Bob Dobbs: you got closer to that because you could start making your own media,
[47:00] Bob Dobbs: not just consuming.
[47:02] Bob Dobbs: So it became producer mania in the second phase rather than consumer mania.
[47:08] Bob Dobbs: But you still were not in charge of a big chunk of something.
[47:17] Bob Dobbs: In that sense,
[47:17] Bob Dobbs: you were deluded that you got more autonomy.
[47:21] Bob Dobbs: Bye.
[47:22] Bob Dobbs: There is a level of autonomy that everybody gets to enjoy that they never had before in social organization.
[47:32] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[47:33] Bob Dobbs: the Howard Hughes image,
[47:35] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[47:35] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was fascinated with Hughes.
[47:37] Bob Dobbs: He was like a guy who just stayed in a hotel room,
[47:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[47:41] Bob Dobbs: for decades.
[47:42] Bob Dobbs: And he'd be in the co-anesthetic hyper driver's seat and,
[47:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[47:50] Bob Dobbs: could conspire.
[47:51] Bob Dobbs: against governments all over the world.
[47:54] Bob Dobbs: Remember,
[47:54] Bob Dobbs: he did the Glomar Explorer thing in the 70s,
[47:57] Bob Dobbs: and it disappeared.
[48:00] Bob Dobbs: He lost it or something.
[48:02] Bob Dobbs: It was a problem with that big thing that he had.
[48:05] Bob Dobbs: And,
[48:05] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[48:05] Bob Dobbs: he was doing it for governments,
[48:07] Bob Dobbs: and then it backfired on him.
[48:10] Bob Dobbs: So
[48:11] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used to say,
[48:13] Bob Dobbs: by the Vincent Sherry,
[48:13] Bob Dobbs: that we were in a new ballgame,
[48:15] Bob Dobbs: and we were in a ballgame stadium where everybody was nobody.
[48:20] Bob Dobbs: even the apparent leaders.
[48:23] Bob Dobbs: So the God self flips into
[48:28] Bob Dobbs: G20,
[48:29] Bob Dobbs: G7 summit meetings.
[48:31] Bob Dobbs: You have to coordinate with other gods on the leftover of hierarchy,
[48:38] Bob Dobbs: which is propping up individual identity.
[48:42] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[48:42] Bob Dobbs: bureaucratic control of things comes out of the literate identity.
[48:47] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[48:47] Bob Dobbs: you can't be Nelson Rockefeller.
[48:49] Bob Dobbs: You can't hijack his name.
[48:51] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[48:52] Bob Dobbs: on the secret level,
[48:53] Bob Dobbs: among secret service worlds,
[48:55] Bob Dobbs: you could do that.
[48:56] Bob Dobbs: You could kill him and have your double be put in.
[49:00] Bob Dobbs: And that would be the wars of the gods.
[49:04] Bob Dobbs: And that's why people started to popularize or accept the idea of conspiracy theories.
[49:11] Bob Dobbs: Because they could see that there was a lot of fighting on the god self among the producer leaders,
[49:16] Bob Dobbs: or what McLuhan called the triggermen.
[49:21] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[49:21] Cameron McEwen: this is...
[49:23] Bob Dobbs: What?
[49:24] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[49:24] Cameron McEwen: this is all,
[49:26] Cameron McEwen: I agree with what you're saying,
[49:27] Cameron McEwen: but it's all on quite a superficial level.
[49:32] Cameron McEwen: Not what you're saying,
[49:33] Cameron McEwen: but what you're describing remains on a very superficial level.
[49:39] Cameron McEwen: So that
[49:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, for example,
[49:42] Cameron McEwen: in his letters to
[49:45] Cameron McEwen: Voegelin, he said that the essence of
[49:51] Cameron McEwen: Gnosticism is to
[49:53] Cameron McEwen: to pretend that everything is playing out on a secular level,
[49:59] Cameron McEwen: whereas really it's a theological level.
[50:03] Cameron McEwen: And so what you're describing with the Battle of the Gods and the
[50:09] Cameron McEwen: G20 and all this sort of stuff is people acting on the basis of a ground that is no longer there.
[50:21] Cameron McEwen: And they have their positions because they're able to either ignore that or act psychopathologically in spite of having
[50:37] Cameron McEwen: no ground.
[50:38] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[50:39] Bob Dobbs: Two thoughts come to that.
[50:42] Bob Dobbs: First of all,
[50:42] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says society became an art form.
[50:46] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[50:46] Bob Dobbs: People magazine creates this idea that there's an elite.
[50:50] Bob Dobbs: They can afford to go to the opera,
[50:52] Bob Dobbs: and they got their yachts and all that,
[50:54] Bob Dobbs: and they're running huge anti-environment.
[50:56] Bob Dobbs: Now they're trying to go to the moon or Mars,
[50:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[50:58] Bob Dobbs: Bezos and those guys,
[50:59] Bob Dobbs: right?
[51:00] Bob Dobbs: They're trying to do it on private spaceships.
[51:04] Bob Dobbs: The other thing he said was,
[51:06] Bob Dobbs: you can either be a devil or an angel.
[51:08] Bob Dobbs: Remember that statement?
[51:11] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[51:12] Bob Dobbs: So the first part you were talking about,
[51:15] Bob Dobbs: that's what I thought of.
[51:15] Bob Dobbs: You can either be a devil or an angel.
[51:18] Bob Dobbs: And that's not a super angel.
[51:20] Bob Dobbs: Everybody's a super angel.
[51:21] Bob Dobbs: But you could fall back to being a devil and an angel or an angel and think you're doing something,
[51:26] Bob Dobbs: and that's where you had no ground.
[51:28] Bob Dobbs: And you could get nailed at any time.
[51:32] Cameron McEwen: But that's something you talk about in your pamphlet,
[51:35] Cameron McEwen: right?
[51:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[51:37] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[51:39] Cameron McEwen: the angel or devil is not something that's...
[51:48] Cameron McEwen: is individual.
[51:50] Cameron McEwen: People may mistake it as being individual,
[51:54] Cameron McEwen: but really it's collectivities that are running people,
[51:59] Cameron McEwen: not people running them.
[52:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[52:03] Bob Dobbs: you put on those anti-environment and then you're subject to them.
[52:07] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[52:09] Bob Dobbs: So,
[52:09] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[52:10] Bob Dobbs: all the old humanist ideas of freedom and collectivity or state and...
[52:17] Bob Dobbs: Justice and all these things all are ridiculously nothing in these anti-environment.
[52:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[52:23] Cameron McEwen: they fall apart in anti-environment.
[52:27] Cameron McEwen: And one of the things that was not understood at all about McLuhan,
[52:32] Cameron McEwen: and this was part of what you brought out in your remarks to Tom Wolfe,
[52:38] Cameron McEwen: is that
[52:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was actually a champion of the book.
[52:44] Cameron McEwen: All right.
[52:46] Cameron McEwen: because he loved,
[52:47] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[52:48] Cameron McEwen: the feel of paper or something like that,
[52:51] Cameron McEwen: but because there are a lot of things that depend upon the Gutenbergian mentality,
[53:00] Cameron McEwen: like privacy,
[53:03] Cameron McEwen: like individual rights,
[53:05] Cameron McEwen: which are very important things,
[53:08] Cameron McEwen: but they cannot survive in anti-environment without understanding media.
[53:15] Bob Dobbs: And you can't even be ethical.
[53:17] Bob Dobbs: He said you can't have ethics.
[53:19] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[53:20] Cameron McEwen: correct.
[53:22] Bob Dobbs: And so you can see,
[53:23] Bob Dobbs: that would explain the rise of fundamentalism in all kinds,
[53:27] Bob Dobbs: in different cultures,
[53:28] Bob Dobbs: but people looking for virtue,
[53:30] Bob Dobbs: they're trying to retrieve literate values of ethics,
[53:36] Bob Dobbs: and they all make fools of themselves doing it.
[53:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[53:39] Cameron McEwen: they're trying to,
[53:40] Cameron McEwen: they're desperate for ground.
[53:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[53:44] Cameron McEwen: And so then...
[53:45] Bob Dobbs: They abstracted it into ideas of virtue.
[53:49] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[53:49] Cameron McEwen: The only way that they can see the establishment of ground is to find a singular virtue that can be contrasted to multiple evils.
[54:04] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[54:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[54:07] Bob Dobbs: you specialize in finding a value.
[54:10] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[54:10] Bob Dobbs: Stick to it.
[54:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[54:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[54:13] Cameron McEwen: so if a value,
[54:15] Cameron McEwen: the whole reason that the
[54:18] Cameron McEwen: God self falls apart is that the identification of virtue.
[54:27] Cameron McEwen: cannot be motivated.
[54:30] Cameron McEwen: It can't be something that you're doing because it benefits you.
[54:34] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[54:35] Cameron McEwen: But that's the only way for a God self to identify a virtue,
[54:40] Cameron McEwen: is to do it from him or herself,
[54:44] Cameron McEwen: because that's the God self.
[54:47] Bob Dobbs: And you can't do it.
[54:50] Cameron McEwen: It just falls apart.
[54:53] Cameron McEwen: It turns into a sort of a Charlie Chaplin.
[54:56] Cameron McEwen: Comedy.
[54:57] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[54:58] Bob Dobbs: and this is where McLuhan could be considered a saint in a couple hundred years,
[55:03] Bob Dobbs: eventually,
[55:04] Bob Dobbs: by the church,
[55:04] Bob Dobbs: if there's still a church.
[55:07] Bob Dobbs: He wrestled.
[55:09] Bob Dobbs: Nobody else seemed to do it.
[55:11] Bob Dobbs: Maybe they did,
[55:12] Bob Dobbs: but he was more populous about it and made it simple and got the question out there,
[55:18] Bob Dobbs: but he pointed out,
[55:20] Bob Dobbs: you can't be a Christian today.
[55:22] Bob Dobbs: All these values we're having.
[55:24] Bob Dobbs: that we're trying to retrieve and getting phatic about it and then becoming fundamentalist and fascist about it in the old terms.
[55:33] Bob Dobbs: And that's a ridiculous term to describe anything about today.
[55:36] Bob Dobbs: But he really explored,
[55:39] Bob Dobbs: there's your cul-de-sac,
[55:39] Bob Dobbs: he explored the problems of having those values or even having respect for yourself.
[55:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[55:50] Cameron McEwen: well,
[55:50] Cameron McEwen: he thought that...
[55:53] Cameron McEwen: personally that he knew sort of how to answer that sort of question,
[55:58] Cameron McEwen: but he found it very frustrating that he couldn't pass that on to his kids.
[56:04] Cameron McEwen: And so that told him that he might have some kind of answer that he could live with himself,
[56:13] Cameron McEwen: but it was not very persuasive.
[56:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[56:17] Bob Dobbs: it could be applied collectively.
[56:20] Bob Dobbs: become a public institution or something that people collectively could,
[56:27] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to say gather around,
[56:29] Bob Dobbs: but remember.
[56:34] Cameron McEwen: Gather around is a good term.
[56:37] Cameron McEwen: Because what's wanted is something that is collective that people can
[56:50] Cameron McEwen: believe in and be supported by,
[56:53] Cameron McEwen: but still be individuals.
[56:55] Cameron McEwen: And so that's the goal of the new tribalism,
[57:00] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[57:02] Cameron McEwen: But the problem is the new tribalism has not been able to find a ground.
[57:08] Cameron McEwen: And so what he was saying about the Catholic Church is that the Catholic Church should make that problem its sort of...
[57:20] Cameron McEwen: central question.
[57:23] Cameron McEwen: And he was very confident that the church could answer that question.
[57:29] Cameron McEwen: But first,
[57:30] Cameron McEwen: it had to take that question very seriously and pose it.
[57:35] Cameron McEwen: But instead of that,
[57:36] Cameron McEwen: the church was going back into some sort of Gutenbergian hierarchy and Gutenbergian symbolism and all this stuff.
[57:46] Cameron McEwen: And of course,
[57:47] Cameron McEwen: all of that was...
[57:48] Cameron McEwen: can disappear,
[57:49] Cameron McEwen: as McLuhan saw very clearly.
[57:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[57:53] Bob Dobbs: so you have come to the point where the Vatican cannot save its image.
[58:02] Bob Dobbs: There's still a lot of Catholics in the world,
[58:03] Bob Dobbs: but it's amazing how many people would not want to be Catholic or have left the Church because of all the unforeseen scandals and identity crises that happened in the priest's life.
[58:17] Bob Dobbs: So
[58:18] Bob Dobbs: I don't think people foresaw such a scrambling of such long-term institutions.
[58:27] Bob Dobbs: And you've got radical priests saying,
[58:29] Bob Dobbs: well,
[58:30] Bob Dobbs: the communists took over the Vatican,
[58:32] Bob Dobbs: or the devil did.
[58:35] Bob Dobbs: They blame some supernatural things that are happening,
[58:38] Bob Dobbs: or just conspiracies of trilaterals or something.
[58:43] Bob Dobbs: It's totally inadequate to the issue.
[58:46] Bob Dobbs: So they don't know why they're going to be dismantled.
[58:50] Bob Dobbs: So as you talk about that,
[58:52] Bob Dobbs: I think Wyndham Lewis comes up with the question really well when he said in 1929,
[59:00] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[59:00] Bob Dobbs: disregarding,
[59:01] Bob Dobbs: if you can,
[59:02] Bob Dobbs: whatever your political views may be.
[59:04] Bob Dobbs: So then he brackets it and tells you his political views to get them off out of the way so he can get on to other matters.
[59:12] Bob Dobbs: So now disregarding,
[59:13] Bob Dobbs: if you can,
[59:14] Bob Dobbs: whatever your political views may be.
[59:16] Bob Dobbs: Bracket.
[59:17] Bob Dobbs: And here's mine.
[59:18] Bob Dobbs: Mine are partly communist and partly fascist,
[59:21] Bob Dobbs: with a distinct streak of monarchism in my Marxism,
[59:24] Bob Dobbs: but at bottom anarchist with a healthy passion for order.
[59:28] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[59:29] Bob Dobbs: I take each one of those categories and put a body in there.
[59:33] Bob Dobbs: But the juggling of the body and these things,
[59:38] Bob Dobbs: these traditions.
[59:40] Bob Dobbs: are what I call quadrophrenia.
[59:41] Bob Dobbs: And I say that is what you have to look at.
[59:44] Bob Dobbs: That you are,
[59:45] Bob Dobbs: that's describing you.
[59:47] Bob Dobbs: You're communist and collective on the pension fund level.
[59:50] Bob Dobbs: You're a fascist about what TV shows you want or what you want in your neighborhood,
[59:56] Bob Dobbs: what technologies.
[59:57] Bob Dobbs: And then you have the God self,
[59:59] Bob Dobbs: so your monarchism in your Marxism.
[1:00:01] Bob Dobbs: And the Marxism is not communist.
[1:00:04] Bob Dobbs: Marxism is the discarnate astral state that everybody's in.
[1:00:08] Bob Dobbs: the super angel state.
[1:00:10] Bob Dobbs: And then you're an anarchist because nobody can control what you do and how you handle your consumer self.
[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: And you all have a passion for order within that.
[1:00:22] Bob Dobbs: You couldn't get a more perfect description of what we all have become than what he did in 1929.
[1:00:29] Bob Dobbs: Have we talked about that before?
[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: Have I thrown this quote at you?
[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:00:32] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.
[1:00:33] Cameron McEwen: You've mentioned that particular quotation before,
[1:00:37] Cameron McEwen: but we haven't discussed it.
[1:00:38] Cameron McEwen: it very much.
[1:00:39] Cameron McEwen: But,
[1:00:40] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:00:42] Cameron McEwen: I think for both of us,
[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: the role of tactility and that sort of juggling,
[1:00:56] Cameron McEwen: quadrophrenia,
[1:00:57] Cameron McEwen: is,
[1:00:59] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:00:59] Cameron McEwen: a very important,
[1:01:04] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,
[1:01:05] Cameron McEwen: question,
[1:01:05] Cameron McEwen: I guess I would say.
[1:01:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:01:07] Cameron McEwen: How...
[1:01:08] Cameron McEwen: How are we going to get ground without denying the necessity for that kind of juggling?
[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:01:17] Bob Dobbs: And so there was a
[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: Wyndham Lewis conference at Bath Spa University outside London in July 2014.
[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: So I was in
[1:01:26] Bob Dobbs: England, so I went to it.
[1:01:28] Bob Dobbs: And I presented this thesis that,
[1:01:30] Bob Dobbs: remember the permissive guy,
[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: Spock?
[1:01:35] Bob Dobbs: Remember in the 50s,
[1:01:37] Bob Dobbs: 60s?
[1:01:37] Bob Dobbs: He was the big guy for parents and made them be a little more permissive with their children,
[1:01:43] Bob Dobbs: not so strict.
[1:01:46] Bob Dobbs: So Spock was a model that people grabbed onto for conceptual sense of control for many decades,
[1:01:54] Bob Dobbs: and he was an icon.
[1:01:56] Bob Dobbs: And then he started to protest against the Vietnam War,
[1:01:59] Bob Dobbs: and then he got ostracized for that,
[1:02:01] Bob Dobbs: I think.
[1:02:02] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: I proposed that Lewis...
[1:02:06] Bob Dobbs: Even though he was a great artist and an individualist and an outsider and the enemy of society,
[1:02:10] Bob Dobbs: he actually updated Spock that what he says Innis quote should be applied to grade 10.
[1:02:20] Bob Dobbs: People should learn about this,
[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: this layout of these four directions in school so that they get a handle on why it's going to be difficult to have an identity in the old sense.
[1:02:33] Bob Dobbs: So I proposed that he was actually the best advisor to families in our time.
[1:02:41] Bob Dobbs: So the top scholars there,
[1:02:45] Bob Dobbs: the ones who were longest,
[1:02:47] Bob Dobbs: they sort of spearheaded the Wyndham Lewis revival.
[1:02:50] Bob Dobbs: Paul Edwards,
[1:02:51] Bob Dobbs: Alan Munton,
[1:02:52] Bob Dobbs: they thought it was very interesting what I said.
[1:02:55] Bob Dobbs: They liked it because their agenda is to make Lewis be...
[1:03:01] Bob Dobbs: I guess in an academic sense,
[1:03:03] Bob Dobbs: the darling of the
[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: 21st century and get rid of Joyce.
[1:03:08] Bob Dobbs: They think Lewis is more important than Joyce.
[1:03:11] Bob Dobbs: So that's their particular scholarly purpose.
[1:03:15] Cameron McEwen: But let me just butt in here for a minute.
[1:03:19] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had a very interesting take,
[1:03:22] Cameron McEwen: at least in my perspective,
[1:03:25] Cameron McEwen: on exactly what you're talking about.
[1:03:28] Cameron McEwen: imagine that um
[1:03:30] Cameron McEwen: somebody in grade 10,
[1:03:32] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[1:03:33] Cameron McEwen: is being introduced to this juggling.
[1:03:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:03:37] Cameron McEwen: Or let's even imagine that there have been hints and suggestions about this coming up in earlier grades,
[1:03:47] Cameron McEwen: and all that's happening in grade 10 is some sort of synthesis or some sort of emphasis or something on this.
[1:03:56] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:03:57] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan question is,
[1:03:59] Cameron McEwen: is this going to work?
[1:04:01] Cameron McEwen: Is this something that can actually be learned like this?
[1:04:04] Cameron McEwen: Is it something that can actually supply identity?
[1:04:08] Cameron McEwen: Is it something that would work for the schools?
[1:04:11] Cameron McEwen: And his answer is no,
[1:04:13] Cameron McEwen: it wouldn't work.
[1:04:14] Cameron McEwen: And why would it not work?
[1:04:15] Cameron McEwen: And it wouldn't work because the association of what's being taught there in the classroom would...
[1:04:28] Cameron McEwen: still be completely unintegrated with what was going on outside.
[1:04:33] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:04:34] Cameron McEwen: Which is where the children mostly have their education from.
[1:04:38] Cameron McEwen: But the predominance...
[1:04:41] Cameron McEwen: Factor in their education would be the difference between what they were being taught in their grade 10 classroom and what they were perceiving and feeling outside.
[1:04:55] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan,
[1:04:56] Cameron McEwen: the only way to get around that problem is to achieve a conceptualization of this juggling that we're talking about that works equally to
[1:05:11] Cameron McEwen: events outside as inside.
[1:05:15] Cameron McEwen: I think that's what Take Today is all about.
[1:05:19] Cameron McEwen: Today is something that's happening in a business corporation,
[1:05:23] Cameron McEwen: but it's also something that's happening in the classroom.
[1:05:27] Cameron McEwen: And the question is,
[1:05:28] Cameron McEwen: how can both of those areas be conceptualized in a way that allows the study of them.
[1:05:41] Cameron McEwen: whether in a research lab,
[1:05:43] Cameron McEwen: at the business,
[1:05:43] Cameron McEwen: or in the classroom,
[1:05:45] Cameron McEwen: how can that study be systematized or conceptualized so that it's the same thing?
[1:05:54] Cameron McEwen: And if it's once the outside and the inside are brought together like that,
[1:05:59] Cameron McEwen: then the teaching in grade 10 achieves a ground for the first time,
[1:06:04] Cameron McEwen: and education can be sort of refounded.
[1:06:09] Cameron McEwen: That's sort of what I think McLuhan central vision was.
[1:06:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:15] Bob Dobbs: he would say we're all four years old.
[1:06:18] Bob Dobbs: And so everybody is subject to this reconceptualizing of our perceptual life.
[1:06:25] Bob Dobbs: So there's no difference between a person in grade 10 and someone who works with the Trilateral Commission.
[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: They're all subject to the same problems.
[1:06:34] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:06:36] Cameron McEwen: But the big thing is,
[1:06:37] Cameron McEwen: are they subject to the same solutions?
[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:41] Bob Dobbs: that would be...
[1:06:42] Cameron McEwen: The idea that we're subject to the same problems is just an acidic sort of acids-come-nihilism type solution that tends
[1:06:57] Cameron McEwen: towards a sort of pseudo-Buddhism.
[1:07:01] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[1:07:02] Cameron McEwen: there are no answers.
[1:07:03] Cameron McEwen: And that is the answer sort of thing,
[1:07:07] Cameron McEwen: which is all bullshit.
[1:07:08] Cameron McEwen: But for McLuhan,
[1:07:11] Cameron McEwen: if there is such a thing as understanding media,
[1:07:15] Cameron McEwen: that can become the way of conceptualizing what happens in the interior landscape and the interior landscape,
[1:07:25] Cameron McEwen: in the classroom or in the corporation.
[1:07:28] Cameron McEwen: And it's what a...
[1:07:30] Cameron McEwen: what allows the reestablishment of ground,
[1:07:34] Cameron McEwen: but not through authority,
[1:07:37] Cameron McEwen: through investigation.
[1:07:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:07:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:07:41] Bob Dobbs: so I think I say this,
[1:07:42] Bob Dobbs: continuing this co-anesthetic part,
[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: I say one becomes a director of the media movie.
[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: That's co-anesthetic.
[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: While the content is going through an interplay of synergy called synesthesia,
[1:07:52] Bob Dobbs: the content is doing synesthesia,
[1:07:55] Bob Dobbs: which would have one identify with the movie or TV show or not.
[1:07:59] Bob Dobbs: Then I say,
[1:07:59] Bob Dobbs: perhaps identification with the content became more important.
[1:08:03] Bob Dobbs: People would only look at content that supported their identity.
[1:08:06] Bob Dobbs: That's all they had time for.
[1:08:08] Bob Dobbs: However,
[1:08:08] Bob Dobbs: their avoidance of the disruption of their identity never worked because anti-environment were coming along that they didn't know or anticipate,
[1:08:16] Bob Dobbs: which would upset them before they had an opportunity to hide.
[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: All of a sudden,
[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: their teenage son would come home a heroin addict.
[1:08:23] Bob Dobbs: I can imagine when that started happening in the 80s,
[1:08:26] Bob Dobbs: what a shock that was for suburban families.
[1:08:29] Bob Dobbs: Where did that come from?
[1:08:31] Bob Dobbs: It's like the young man had not obeyed his parents for five years.
[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: He'd secretly given up being a member of the family at the age of 11.
[1:08:39] Bob Dobbs: Then...
[1:08:40] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:08:41] Cameron McEwen: so the tribe had blown up.
[1:08:43] Cameron McEwen: Everybody knew it,
[1:08:45] Cameron McEwen: and the children grew up feeling it.
[1:08:50] Bob Dobbs: And coming up with their own solutions,
[1:08:52] Bob Dobbs: which didn't work.
[1:08:52] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,
[1:08:53] Cameron McEwen: had to.
[1:08:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:08:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:08:55] Cameron McEwen: and so you have one answer to that is gangs.
[1:08:59] Cameron McEwen: One answer to that is drugs.
[1:09:01] Cameron McEwen: One answer to that is hanging out on social media.
[1:09:05] Cameron McEwen: One answer to that is cliques.
[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: How about one answer to that is to become a phatic student and do well at Harvard.
[1:09:14] Bob Dobbs: That won't get you anywhere.
[1:09:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:09:16] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:09:17] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:09:18] Cameron McEwen: Those are all different ways of trying to establish identity aside from a general.
[1:09:29] Cameron McEwen: tribalism,
[1:09:30] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[1:09:32] Cameron McEwen: And the general tribalism,
[1:09:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan could see very clearly,
[1:09:36] Cameron McEwen: could not be based like the old tribes were on some kind of authority,
[1:09:42] Cameron McEwen: some kind of tradition,
[1:09:45] Cameron McEwen: some kind of that's the way it is.
[1:09:48] Bob Dobbs: Even some kind of big brother deep state control.
[1:09:52] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:09:53] Cameron McEwen: And the end of the day could not work.
[1:09:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:09:57] Bob Dobbs: So nothing works.
[1:09:58] Bob Dobbs: That's the beginning of the cul-de-sac or noticing the cul-de-sac.
[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: And then Lewis gives a good overview,
[1:10:09] Bob Dobbs: generalization of the factors involved and the panic juggling you have to do.
[1:10:19] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:10:20] Cameron McEwen: I don't know enough about Lewis.
[1:10:21] Cameron McEwen: to talk about him.
[1:10:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:10:24] Bob Dobbs: So continuing,
[1:10:27] Bob Dobbs: so then I say the co-anesthetic trend.
[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: This trend peaks in Web 2.0 in all the ways documented by a myriad of authors over the last 20 years.
[1:10:39] Bob Dobbs: But the media analysts missed the decline of the discarnate flood,
[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: if they had noticed it at all,
[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: into a retrieval.
[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: The decline into a retrieval of the triumphant walled-off individual,
[1:10:53] Bob Dobbs: discarnate or merged interrupting aspect in the old McLuhan sense.
[1:11:00] Bob Dobbs: This set the stage for the popularization of McLuhan discarnate percept via the cyberspace scenario of William Gibson Neuromancer,
[1:11:07] Bob Dobbs: which came out in 1984.
[1:11:09] Bob Dobbs: Gibson turned the McLuhan discarnate cliché into an art form.
[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: this is pretty interesting what I'm trying to get at.
[1:11:16] Bob Dobbs: that were past the discarnate.
[1:11:19] Bob Dobbs: Let's see how I try to say this.
[1:11:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:11:28] Bob Dobbs: I say,
[1:11:28] Bob Dobbs: take that what I just said,
[1:11:30] Bob Dobbs: but the media analyst missed the decline of the discarnate flood.
[1:11:34] Bob Dobbs: Then I say,
[1:11:35] Bob Dobbs: I quote that,
[1:11:36] Bob Dobbs: then I say,
[1:11:36] Bob Dobbs: this merged state,
[1:11:37] Bob Dobbs: merged and interrupting.
[1:11:39] Bob Dobbs: It was diminished as people celebrated their disconnected intelligence.
[1:11:43] Bob Dobbs: Derrick de Kerckhove didn't get this in the 90s and wrote a book titled Connected Intelligence.
[1:11:48] Bob Dobbs: He thought the Internet was connected.
[1:11:50] Bob Dobbs: It actually was disconnected in effect as people quickly realized throughout the 90s how rude and stubborn discussion forums were,
[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: how rude and stubborn discussion forums were,
[1:12:01] Bob Dobbs: and everybody lost friends.
[1:12:03] Bob Dobbs: William Gibson was the first science fiction baby boomer writer who took on the new computer world producing a novel,
[1:12:09] Bob Dobbs: Neuromancer,
[1:12:10] Bob Dobbs: which was a popular bestseller.
[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: In it,
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: he coined the term cyberspace,
[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: which then became widely used as the Android Meme started to get noticed in the 90s with the Internet.
[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: Gibson,
[1:12:22] Bob Dobbs: as a poet,
[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: named the anti-environment what people thought was a anti-environment,
[1:12:27] Bob Dobbs: but he actually was describing the old discarnate and super angel state that McLuhan had already spelled out.
[1:12:33] Bob Dobbs: Gibson had lived in Toronto in the late 60s and was familiar with McLuhan,
[1:12:37] Bob Dobbs: subsequently a decade later turning the McLuhan theme into an art form.
[1:12:40] Bob Dobbs: Now that's pretty unique,
[1:12:41] Bob Dobbs: eh?
[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: saying,
[1:12:43] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:12:43] Bob Dobbs: people just try to find out,
[1:12:46] Bob Dobbs: luckily,
[1:12:46] Bob Dobbs: that there's this McLuhan theme of discarnate,
[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: and they think they've got McLuhan.
[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: But I'm talking about how it's already turned into an art form.
[1:12:52] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty advanced,
[1:12:54] Bob Dobbs: if it's valid.
[1:12:55] Bob Dobbs: The anti-environment becomes an art form,
[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: and everybody thinks it's a new deal.
[1:13:00] Bob Dobbs: But it's old,
[1:13:01] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:13:02] Bob Dobbs: When something becomes an art form,
[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: it is noticed for the first time,
[1:13:05] Bob Dobbs: and people say,
[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: we've got to take care of this.
[1:13:08] Bob Dobbs: We've got to tidy it up.
[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: We've got to decorate it,
[1:13:10] Bob Dobbs: unquote.
[1:13:11] Bob Dobbs: That's how one knows one is in a anti-environment.
[1:13:13] Bob Dobbs: When the anti-environment,
[1:13:15] Bob Dobbs: being discarnate,
[1:13:16] Bob Dobbs: which was once a anti-environment,
[1:13:17] Bob Dobbs: starts to get noticed and tinkered with,
[1:13:19] Bob Dobbs: and some people begin worrying,
[1:13:21] Bob Dobbs: we should outlaw this,
[1:13:23] Bob Dobbs: like they did with LSD in 1966 in the USA,
[1:13:26] Bob Dobbs: or how they stopped live TV in the early
[1:13:28] Bob Dobbs: 60s. They created canned TV with laugh tracks.
[1:13:32] Bob Dobbs: That's TV as an art form.
[1:13:33] Bob Dobbs: There had been a lot of improvised and spontaneous TV in the
[1:13:37] Bob Dobbs: 50s.
[1:13:39] Bob Dobbs: Right. Take care.
[1:13:44] Cameron McEwen: We're getting up to a time when we should stop.
[1:13:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:13:47] Cameron McEwen: But let me just say that this paragraph about anti-environment and old anti-environment and tinkering with them and all that sort of stuff,
[1:13:57] Cameron McEwen: that's exactly what's going on today with the G20.
[1:14:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:14:02] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:14:03] Cameron McEwen: It's people looking at what happened a long time ago and...
[1:14:11] Cameron McEwen: trying to figure out dumb ways of dealing with it.
[1:14:20] Cameron McEwen: It's literally crazy.
[1:14:21] Cameron McEwen: It's people acting more or less as holograms from 50 years ago.
[1:14:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:14:36] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:14:36] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic retrievals.
[1:14:38] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:14:41] Bob Dobbs: I added some words for that.
[1:14:42] Bob Dobbs: So everybody is a media ecologist.
[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: They're trying to be media ecologists.
[1:14:49] Bob Dobbs: Crude,
[1:14:49] Bob Dobbs: but they're doing it.
[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: And they don't get the post-media ecology situation we're in.
[1:14:58] Bob Dobbs: That's why the McLuhan industry,
[1:15:01] Bob Dobbs: they're really going in the wrong direction because they would like to get media ecology kind of recognized,
[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: what they think is a more sophisticated understanding of McLuhan.
[1:15:10] Bob Dobbs: But as you just spelled out,
[1:15:12] Bob Dobbs: it's not relevant anymore.
[1:15:14] Bob Dobbs: At best,
[1:15:15] Bob Dobbs: people are already doing it.
[1:15:16] Bob Dobbs: You don't need to go out there and teach people media ecology.
[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: They instinctively are doing it on the executive level in these G7 meetings.
[1:15:24] Bob Dobbs: Trying to do it.
[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: And so that's an important point you're making.
[1:15:28] Bob Dobbs: And it supports what I'm saying.
[1:15:30] Bob Dobbs: That there's a large part of cliche McLuhan that's obsolete.
[1:15:38] Bob Dobbs: And obsolete means everybody's doing it with no success.
[1:15:44] Cameron McEwen: Hypertrophy.
[1:15:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:15:46] Bob Dobbs: Hypertrophy.
[1:15:52] Bob Dobbs: So.
[1:15:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:15:54] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:15:55] Bob Dobbs: we did over an hour.
[1:15:56] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty good,
[1:15:57] Bob Dobbs: and I think it was important.
[1:15:59] Bob Dobbs: We're still converging and finding areas of agreement.
[1:16:05] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:16:06] Cameron McEwen: But in terms of your pamphlet,
[1:16:08] Cameron McEwen: what we have to do,
[1:16:09] Cameron McEwen: and maybe we can start this way next time,
[1:16:13] Cameron McEwen: is to get a handle on why you had to go back from the tech body.
[1:16:22] Cameron McEwen: to this,
[1:16:25] Cameron McEwen: I don't know what you would call it.
[1:16:26] Bob Dobbs: Going through the stages of apprehension.
[1:16:30] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:16:33] Cameron McEwen: So the idea that the stages of apprehension are going to lead up to the tech body as a kind of orchestrator
[1:16:45] Cameron McEwen: of perception?
[1:16:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: As the orchestra...
[1:16:51] Bob Dobbs: has taken over the media college's role.
[1:16:54] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:16:55] Cameron McEwen: right.
[1:16:56] Bob Dobbs: And I like Theall addition,
[1:16:58] Bob Dobbs: apophenia.
[1:16:59] Bob Dobbs: It's a apophenia ecology.
[1:17:03] Bob Dobbs: Not post-media,
[1:17:05] Bob Dobbs: not Pryde,
[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: not retrieving feudalism or something.
[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: It's apophenia.
[1:17:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:17:12] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:17:12] Cameron McEwen: and I like that because it's not historical.
[1:17:15] Cameron McEwen: It's not diachronic.
[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: So...
[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: We're at page,
[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: I'm making a note,
[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to email you.
[1:17:24] Bob Dobbs: We are at page 77,
[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: so we will remember exactly where we were.
[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: I can email it to myself,
[1:17:31] Bob Dobbs: because we won't be talking for another two weeks.
[1:17:34] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: I think it's correct to go through the stages.
[1:17:41] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:17:43] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying things about McLuhan,
[1:17:45] Bob Dobbs: and you are too,
[1:17:46] Bob Dobbs: that no one's heard.
[1:17:48] Bob Dobbs: So this has to be said.
[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: It's like cleaning your game stables.
[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: Got to get the old stuff out that hasn't been digested or has been shit out but no one noticed it.
[1:17:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:18:00] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:18:01] Cameron McEwen: So you take the historical way,
[1:18:03] Cameron McEwen: and what I think we're doing is
[1:18:05] Cameron McEwen: I think we're doing an analysis.
[1:18:07] Cameron McEwen: For my purposes,
[1:18:08] Cameron McEwen: it would be like people in a lab and they're testing substances using acids and bases.
[1:18:18] Cameron McEwen: different kinds of pressure and different kinds of humidity to try and see what's going on.
[1:18:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: your side of it is you're looking at the chemistry,
[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: what you just described.
[1:18:31] Bob Dobbs: I'm there up with a telescope looking at the psychic weather.
[1:18:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:18:37] Cameron McEwen: that's right.
[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:18:38] Bob Dobbs: I got the telescope,
[1:18:39] Bob Dobbs: you got the microscope.
[1:18:43] Bob Dobbs: I'm pseudo-big and you're pseudo-small.
[1:18:46] Bob Dobbs: Though neither is the proper category for what we're looking at.
[1:18:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:18:52] Cameron McEwen: But maybe both together work.
[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: I think this is pretty good what we're saying here.
[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: Nobody else is saying this,
[1:18:59] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:19:00] Cameron McEwen: Not that I know of.
[1:19:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:19:05] Bob Dobbs: People should know about this or take it on or get mad about it.
[1:19:11] Cameron McEwen: But we can't worry about that.
[1:19:12] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:19:13] Cameron McEwen: All we can do is try to...
[1:19:16] Cameron McEwen: Update the situation as we see it and let fate go from there.
[1:19:24] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:19:24] Bob Dobbs: let inevitable fate,
[1:19:26] Bob Dobbs: not inevitable,
[1:19:27] Bob Dobbs: inevitable fate resolve it.
[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: very good,
[1:19:32] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.
[1:19:33] Bob Dobbs: Another great talk.
[1:19:33] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:19:34] Cameron McEwen: bye.
[1:19:34] Cameron McEwen: Talk to you in a couple weeks.
[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: Thanks a lot.
[1:19:38] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:19:38] Cameron McEwen: Talk to you later.
[1:19:39] Cameron McEwen: Bye.
[1:19:40] Bob Dobbs: Bye.