Dialogue 46 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: we're back.

[00:03] Bob Dobbs: Cameron McEwen and Bob Dobbs,

[00:05] Bob Dobbs: and this is episode number 46,

[00:09] Bob Dobbs: being recorded on March 17th,

[00:10] Bob Dobbs: 2022.

[00:15] Cameron McEwen: St.

[00:16] Bob Dobbs: Patrick's Day.

[00:17] Bob Dobbs: Oh yeah,

[00:17] Bob Dobbs: we're moving,

[00:19] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[00:19] Bob Dobbs: St.

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: Patrick's Day is now,

[00:22] Bob Dobbs: we're coming into it,

[00:23] Bob Dobbs: and then tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of

[00:28] Bob Dobbs: ION. ION arrived on March 18th,

[00:30] Bob Dobbs: the day after.

[00:32] Bob Dobbs: But it was the night of St.

[00:33] Bob Dobbs: Patrick's that I was talking to J.W.

[00:35] Bob Dobbs: and

[00:36] Bob Dobbs: Dr. Beder came up and

[00:39] Bob Dobbs: I got an idea.

[00:40] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[00:40] Bob Dobbs: I'd like to talk to Dr.

[00:41] Bob Dobbs: Beder,

[00:43] Bob Dobbs: who was dead.

[00:45] Bob Dobbs: And that goal of talking to Dr.

[00:47] Bob Dobbs: Beder accidentally evoked ion the next day.

[00:51] Bob Dobbs: So this is quite a monumental period.

[00:55] Bob Dobbs: So I thought it was interesting.

[00:56] Bob Dobbs: It starts on St.

[00:57] Bob Dobbs: Patrick's Day,

[00:59] Bob Dobbs: the evoking of the ion level.

[01:03] Bob Dobbs: So you're the first to point that out,

[01:07] Bob Dobbs: except for me,

[01:08] Bob Dobbs: who points it out to myself all the time.

[01:11] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[01:12] Bob Dobbs: so

[01:13] Bob Dobbs: I'm going back to the beginning.

[01:17] Bob Dobbs: We're actually at page 87,

[01:19] Bob Dobbs: but let me just explain a bit of what we've done in all these hours.

[01:27] Bob Dobbs: We have gone to the end of the book and discussed the...

[01:31] Bob Dobbs: interview I did with the tech body,

[01:34] Bob Dobbs: an actual recorded interview with something claiming it's a tech body,

[01:38] Bob Dobbs: which is an interesting phenomenon Innis own right.

[01:41] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[01:42] Bob Dobbs: my point is that McLuhan kind of anticipates the tech body,

[01:46] Bob Dobbs: if you include an understanding of Innis Wake.

[01:49] Bob Dobbs: So,

[01:50] Bob Dobbs: I begin the book basically describing

[01:55] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan more esoteric thinking about the Global Village,

[01:58] Bob Dobbs: way beyond what people...

[02:00] Bob Dobbs: the cliches people think.

[02:03] Bob Dobbs: For example,

[02:04] Bob Dobbs: the Global Village started 150 years ago with the telegraph.

[02:08] Bob Dobbs: Most people don't think McLuhan is going that far back when he starts.

[02:12] Bob Dobbs: So on page 9,

[02:15] Bob Dobbs: they start laying out all these quotes by McLuhan.

[02:17] Bob Dobbs: We have to go

[02:18] Bob Dobbs: 80 pages,

[02:20] Bob Dobbs: which is almost half the book,

[02:23] Bob Dobbs: from 9 to 87 to get to the next phase,

[02:26] Bob Dobbs: the Global Theater,

[02:27] Bob Dobbs: which is in the

[02:28] Bob Dobbs: 60s with the satellite.

[02:29] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn Dean Arch.

[02:31] Bob Dobbs: And we're just arriving,

[02:32] Bob Dobbs: through all these hours,

[02:35] Bob Dobbs: to

[02:36] Bob Dobbs: Part 2,

[02:36] Bob Dobbs: Global Theater.

[02:37] Bob Dobbs: Then we're going to go into Global Membrane,

[02:40] Bob Dobbs: or Android Meme Phase 1.

[02:42] Bob Dobbs: Then Android Meme Phase 2,

[02:44] Bob Dobbs: which is basically social media,

[02:46] Bob Dobbs: Web 2.0.

[02:48] Bob Dobbs: And then the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[02:51] Bob Dobbs: And what else do I have after that?

[02:52] Bob Dobbs: And then we go into the Tech Body,

[02:54] Bob Dobbs: which we've already started to talk about and quoted,

[02:57] Bob Dobbs: the Tech Body,

[02:57] Bob Dobbs: in Part 6.

[02:58] Bob Dobbs: Now we're back in part two.

[03:01] Bob Dobbs: So

[03:05] Bob Dobbs: I think that there's a lot of stuff on the Global Village that one should go through.

[03:11] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to pick the parts of McLuhan thinking about the Global Village on into the Global Theater that anticipated the tech body,

[03:20] Bob Dobbs: to help define where the tech body came from.

[03:24] Bob Dobbs: So what do you think of that?

[03:25] Bob Dobbs: Is that a good summary there?

[03:27] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[03:28] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[03:29] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[03:30] Cameron McEwen: And I will say that my interest,

[03:35] Cameron McEwen: if I want to distinguish it from yours,

[03:38] Cameron McEwen: is more in the synchronic

[03:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and the all at all-at-onceness rather than these stages.

[03:47] Cameron McEwen: And of course,

[03:49] Cameron McEwen: I believe we both intend the synchronic and the diachronic to be...

[03:56] Cameron McEwen: a kind of not and so and you have to understand uh both yeah k-n-o-t k-n-o-t yeah yeah absolutely absolutely so um in the connubium of being posts that we've discussed briefly at times i

[04:14] Cameron McEwen: try to show that one understanding of the global village is the plurality and interconnections

[04:26] Cameron McEwen: of being itself,

[04:29] Cameron McEwen: of hauntology.

[04:32] Cameron McEwen: And so in that sense,

[04:35] Cameron McEwen: the global theater is not an advance on the global village.

[04:40] Cameron McEwen: It's a derivative of the global village.

[04:43] Cameron McEwen: That is to say that once the global village is understood ontologically,

[04:50] Cameron McEwen: then the fact that human beings can do no more than

[04:55] Cameron McEwen: fulfill roles from moment to moment to moment is obvious.

[05:02] Cameron McEwen: Because human beings,

[05:06] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[05:07] Cameron McEwen: are in being.

[05:09] Cameron McEwen: And you could say they're vertically connected to the plurality of possibilities in being.

[05:18] Cameron McEwen: And that interplay between being and beings is the global theater.

[05:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[05:28] Bob Dobbs: and would you accept me saying that the global theater is an overlaying?

[05:32] Bob Dobbs: on the global village?

[05:34] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[05:35] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[05:35] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[05:35] Cameron McEwen: Because when you talk about overlaying,

[05:40] Cameron McEwen: you're not saying that one is more real than the other or something.

[05:44] Cameron McEwen: What you're saying is that what we're dealing with here are translucent surfaces through which the other can be seen.

[05:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[05:57] Bob Dobbs: So,

[05:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[05:58] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall recommended the word Carolyn Dean.

[06:02] Bob Dobbs: as opposed to postmodern,

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: because he didn't think you completely left the modern,

[06:06] Bob Dobbs: which is the telegraph era,

[06:09] Bob Dobbs: so you have to include that.

[06:10] Bob Dobbs: So we're doing Cameron McEwen here,

[06:14] Bob Dobbs: of his terms,

[06:15] Bob Dobbs: of his themes,

[06:16] Bob Dobbs: Cameron McEwen.

[06:18] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[06:18] Cameron McEwen: I don't mind that at all.

[06:21] Bob Dobbs: Or para-global village.

[06:25] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,

[06:25] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[06:26] Cameron McEwen: himself,

[06:27] Cameron McEwen: often talked about para,

[06:29] Cameron McEwen: usually in terms of...

[06:31] Cameron McEwen: paradox.

[06:34] Cameron McEwen: But whenever he discussed symbol,

[06:39] Cameron McEwen: he would talk about the fact that in Greek,

[06:47] Cameron McEwen: this has to do with some kind of throwing aside or creating what might be called a project.

[07:00] Cameron McEwen: Or a,

[07:03] Cameron McEwen: what's a good,

[07:07] Cameron McEwen: a metaphor,

[07:09] Cameron McEwen: right?

[07:09] Cameron McEwen: So for

[07:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, the concept of symbol or the thrust is a better word than concept.

[07:19] Cameron McEwen: The thrust of symbol has to do with para.

[07:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[07:25] Bob Dobbs: Metaphor,

[07:25] Bob Dobbs: carrying a cross.

[07:27] Bob Dobbs: Didn't he say that the metaphor...

[07:29] Bob Dobbs: that the symbol,

[07:30] Bob Dobbs: the word meant throwing together?

[07:34] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[07:34] Cameron McEwen: but you can only have something thrown together when you realize its distinction.

[07:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[07:43] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[07:43] Cameron McEwen: So I don't know if this is the right time to talk about it,

[07:46] Cameron McEwen: but I wanted to at some point today,

[07:48] Cameron McEwen: I wanted to bring up what you were talking about,

[07:53] Cameron McEwen: at least briefly on the website,

[07:56] Cameron McEwen: about

[07:56] Cameron McEwen: Ayan and the tech body.

[07:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[08:01] Cameron McEwen: Coming together in 11.

[08:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[08:04] Bob Dobbs: that is a private session,

[08:05] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[08:06] Bob Dobbs: I call the tech bodies now 11-11.

[08:10] Bob Dobbs: And what that means is I used to say that there was ion,

[08:14] Bob Dobbs: and then this tech body started coming in.

[08:17] Bob Dobbs: So out of 11 parts,

[08:20] Bob Dobbs: it used to be eight parts ion,

[08:22] Bob Dobbs: three parts tech body.

[08:25] Bob Dobbs: Then over the last couple of years,

[08:26] Bob Dobbs: tech body started.

[08:28] Bob Dobbs: eating up and catching up to it got to

[08:33] Bob Dobbs: 5-5 that's within 11 parts,

[08:37] Bob Dobbs: you know 6-5 5-5 and then two months ago the tech body moved ahead and So it was like

[08:46] Bob Dobbs: 6-5 for the tech body then he started saying 11-11.

[08:51] Bob Dobbs: That's two groups of 11.

[08:52] Bob Dobbs: It sounds like

[08:54] Bob Dobbs: And I think ION means have talked to him about it

[08:58] Bob Dobbs: Sometimes ion is not exactly clear,

[09:01] Bob Dobbs: unless you do some more talking,

[09:02] Bob Dobbs: but it means that they're pretty well intertwined of equal,

[09:07] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[09:08] Bob Dobbs: strength and contrast.

[09:10] Bob Dobbs: Ion and tech body,

[09:11] Bob Dobbs: they're both 11-11.

[09:12] Bob Dobbs: So that's what you're referring to.

[09:15] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[09:16] Cameron McEwen: And let me give you my reading or my hearing of what's going on there.

[09:21] Cameron McEwen: So 11 is a prime number,

[09:24] Cameron McEwen: right?

[09:25] Cameron McEwen: So the...

[09:27] Cameron McEwen: And by prime number,

[09:28] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[09:28] Cameron McEwen: we mean 1,

[09:30] Cameron McEwen: 2,

[09:31] Cameron McEwen: 3,

[09:32] Cameron McEwen: 5,

[09:36] Cameron McEwen: 7,

[09:36] Cameron McEwen: 11.

[09:36] Cameron McEwen: The prime numbers are numbers that are not divisible into other numbers.

[09:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[09:43] Cameron McEwen: And I'm not a mathematician,

[09:47] Cameron McEwen: unfortunately.

[09:47] Cameron McEwen: I wish I knew much more about this.

[09:50] Cameron McEwen: But in advanced mathematics,

[09:54] Cameron McEwen: the prime numbers play a prime role.

[09:58] Cameron McEwen: It turns out that the prime numbers,

[10:01] Cameron McEwen: as opposed to the numbers just of prime and Pryde numbers,

[10:09] Cameron McEwen: one,

[10:10] Cameron McEwen: two,

[10:10] Cameron McEwen: three,

[10:10] Cameron McEwen: four,

[10:11] Cameron McEwen: five,

[10:11] Cameron McEwen: turns out that the...

[10:12] Cameron McEwen: prime numbers have laws of their own and those laws of the prime numbers are essential for understanding mathematics and for understanding the application of mathematics to the world.

[10:30] Cameron McEwen: So what I find interesting about

[10:34] Cameron McEwen: 11 is that it's a prime number and by prime

[10:39] Cameron McEwen: I understand that it's elemental.

[10:42] Cameron McEwen: So if we think about the one and the one that make up 11,

[10:51] Cameron McEwen: we can imagine that there are two forces which could be seen to kind of march through the

[11:06] Cameron McEwen: prime number possibilities.

[11:07] Cameron McEwen: So if we put it in your terms of the...

[11:12] Cameron McEwen: Tech body and ion forming different combinations to 11.

[11:18] Cameron McEwen: So 6 and 5,

[11:19] Cameron McEwen: 4 and 7,

[11:21] Cameron McEwen: all this sort of stuff.

[11:23] Cameron McEwen: We can imagine that the combination of the two has a number of essential possibilities which are gapped from

[11:39] Cameron McEwen: each other.

[11:41] Cameron McEwen: So the

[11:41] Cameron McEwen: 4 and 7 is essentially different from,

[11:46] Cameron McEwen: say,

[11:47] Cameron McEwen: 6 and 5.

[11:49] Cameron McEwen: So what the different possibilities lying within 11 tell us about are different elemental possibilities gapped from each other and

[12:04] Cameron McEwen: which can be signified by 11.

[12:10] Cameron McEwen: Because you have the two one strokes that do not coalesce.

[12:16] Cameron McEwen: They're gapped.

[12:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[12:18] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[12:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[12:18] Cameron McEwen: And the one and the one in 11 can be imagined as emphasis strokes,

[12:32] Cameron McEwen: right?

[12:32] Bob Dobbs: Emphasis strokes or spokes?

[12:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[12:36] Cameron McEwen: strokes.

[12:36] Bob Dobbs: ST.

[12:37] Cameron McEwen: I'll explain what,

[12:38] Cameron McEwen: stroke,

[12:39] Cameron McEwen: S-T-R-O-K-E-S.

[12:40] Cameron McEwen: What I mean by that is,

[12:42] Cameron McEwen: if we think about four and seven as one of the possibilities lying within 11,

[12:50] Cameron McEwen: the four and the seven can be imagined as two kinds of emphasis.

[13:00] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[13:00] Cameron McEwen: the four might be a certain emphasis of the tech body.

[13:06] Cameron McEwen: And the 7 would be a corresponding emphasis of ion.

[13:11] Cameron McEwen: So the 11 is not only a possibility in itself,

[13:16] Cameron McEwen: it's also the general possibility that's always there.

[13:20] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[13:21] Cameron McEwen: every single possibility within 11 is two strokes of emphasis.

[13:27] Bob Dobbs: That's the structure.

[13:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[13:29] Cameron McEwen: you have 11 and 1,

[13:31] Cameron McEwen: 10 and 1,

[13:32] Cameron McEwen: 9 and 2,

[13:33] Cameron McEwen: right?

[13:33] Cameron McEwen: Each one of those is...

[13:35] Cameron McEwen: a double emphasis stroke,

[13:38] Cameron McEwen: one belonging to I and one belonging to tech body.

[13:42] Cameron McEwen: And so the 11 is not only a possibility in itself,

[13:47] Cameron McEwen: it's also the possibility of every other possibility.

[13:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[13:52] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[13:54] Cameron McEwen: And so what's being said out here is the,

[13:59] Cameron McEwen: you could say it's the metaphysics of the possible forms

[14:05] Cameron McEwen: of being,

[14:07] Cameron McEwen: and that is the connubium of being,

[14:09] Cameron McEwen: the global village of being.

[14:12] Cameron McEwen: It's all of the possibilities like

[14:15] Cameron McEwen: 11 and 0,

[14:16] Cameron McEwen: 10 and 1,

[14:17] Cameron McEwen: 9 and 2.

[14:20] Cameron McEwen: Those are,

[14:21] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[14:22] Cameron McEwen: those are the villagers,

[14:24] Cameron McEwen: plural,

[14:25] Cameron McEwen: that each one of which is essentially gapped from the next one,

[14:29] Cameron McEwen: that is to say they have a fundamental reality that can never be taken away.

[14:36] Cameron McEwen: And their link is a gap which is even deeper than those possibilities.

[14:46] Cameron McEwen: And according to the best thinkers of the tradition,

[14:49] Cameron McEwen: the reason that we have not had communication,

[14:53] Cameron McEwen: real communication so that it could be applied to the world,

[14:57] Cameron McEwen: the reason that we have not had communication about the possibilities in being is that in order to grasp those possibilities,

[15:07] Cameron McEwen: you have to first of all have grasped the gap between them that is even deeper than they are.

[15:15] Cameron McEwen: And that gap is one that is,

[15:18] Cameron McEwen: you can call it death,

[15:20] Cameron McEwen: you can call it the origin of life,

[15:23] Cameron McEwen: you can call it many different things,

[15:25] Cameron McEwen: but it's a very fearsome thing to encounter.

[15:30] Cameron McEwen: But unless it's encountered,

[15:32] Cameron McEwen: you can't get from the ordinary world to the world of fundamentals.

[15:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[15:39] Cameron McEwen: Because,

[15:40] Cameron McEwen: go ahead.

[15:41] Bob Dobbs: You remind me,

[15:42] Bob Dobbs: last episode,

[15:43] Bob Dobbs: I...

[15:44] Bob Dobbs: think I was trying to remember the two words,

[15:46] Bob Dobbs: complementary and this other word.

[15:48] Bob Dobbs: I couldn't remember it that McCone uses.

[15:50] Bob Dobbs: I found out later incommensurable.

[15:53] Bob Dobbs: They're complementary and incommensurable.

[15:57] Bob Dobbs: That implies a kind of gap that's a problem,

[16:01] Bob Dobbs: incommensurable.

[16:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[16:04] Cameron McEwen: it's a problem in some senses,

[16:06] Cameron McEwen: but it's also the secret.

[16:09] Cameron McEwen: It's also what makes language possible.

[16:12] Cameron McEwen: It's what even makes the world possible.

[16:15] Bob Dobbs: It makes consciousness possible?

[16:17] Bob Dobbs: Sure,

[16:18] Cameron McEwen: all of the above.

[16:19] Cameron McEwen: Language,

[16:20] Cameron McEwen: consciousness,

[16:21] Cameron McEwen: but even the world itself.

[16:24] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[16:24] Cameron McEwen: Because if there were not what might be called an original gap,

[16:32] Cameron McEwen: if there were just sort of a blank,

[16:36] Cameron McEwen: which is kind of the wrong question,

[16:42] Cameron McEwen: that much of science is currently asking.

[16:45] Cameron McEwen: They're asking,

[16:46] Cameron McEwen: how can we understand that an original blank through a Big Bang became the universe?

[16:56] Cameron McEwen: But the problem is that there was no original blank.

[17:01] Cameron McEwen: There was an original complexity of which the universe is an expression.

[17:10] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[17:16] Bob Dobbs: Um,

[17:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[17:17] Bob Dobbs: Ion used to,

[17:19] Bob Dobbs: the number 11 came up years ago in the beginning.

[17:23] Bob Dobbs: After a few years,

[17:25] Bob Dobbs: Ion began to joke that our show,

[17:27] Bob Dobbs: Bob's show,

[17:28] Bob Dobbs: had 11 listeners.

[17:30] Bob Dobbs: He always emphasized 11,

[17:32] Bob Dobbs: which in your terms is a good beginning point.

[17:36] Bob Dobbs: The complexity at the beginning is there's 11 listeners.

[17:41] Bob Dobbs: 11.

[17:41] Cameron McEwen: You can say that.

[17:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[17:42] Bob Dobbs: and out of that comes the further sophistication.

[17:45] Bob Dobbs: The other thing was,

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: or complexities or resolutions,

[17:49] Bob Dobbs: that when we first asked ION what it was,

[17:54] Bob Dobbs: at first I thought it was an entity or a group of entities,

[17:58] Bob Dobbs: like the Evergreens channel by Michael Blake Read,

[18:00] Bob Dobbs: who I used to talk to McLuhan through,

[18:04] Bob Dobbs: or something claiming to be McLuhan.

[18:07] Bob Dobbs: So I said,

[18:07] Bob Dobbs: how many entities are you?

[18:11] Bob Dobbs: ion and I said you take a dodecahedron which is the fourth platonic solid and you take an angle on it and imagine 500 or a thousand entities on one line one angle then

[18:27] Bob Dobbs: you do an another shift to another angle and then add another thousand so he said you add them all up the angles that make up a dodecahedron and I said well that would be millions

[18:40] Bob Dobbs: Because Michael Blake Read had

[18:42] Bob Dobbs: 6,500 to 7,000 entities.

[18:44] Bob Dobbs: So I said,

[18:44] Bob Dobbs: well,

[18:44] Bob Dobbs: this is way more.

[18:46] Bob Dobbs: And Ion says,

[18:47] Bob Dobbs: no,

[18:47] Bob Dobbs: zillions.

[18:48] Bob Dobbs: So he corrects my millions to zillions.

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: So that is the complexity that we begin with,

[18:54] Bob Dobbs: with Ion.

[18:56] Bob Dobbs: And then we found out that Ion was not the entities.

[19:00] Bob Dobbs: Ion was the container of what is known as the guff in

[19:04] Bob Dobbs: Jewish religious literature.

[19:07] Bob Dobbs: The Gough was the place for souls went to,

[19:11] Bob Dobbs: so it was like a heaven.

[19:13] Bob Dobbs: Souls,

[19:13] Bob Dobbs: when they died,

[19:14] Bob Dobbs: went to heaven,

[19:15] Bob Dobbs: to the Gough.

[19:16] Bob Dobbs: So Einstein said they were the Gough,

[19:18] Bob Dobbs: or they contained the Gough,

[19:20] Bob Dobbs: and they weren't the entities.

[19:22] Bob Dobbs: So as you talk about the complexity in the beginning,

[19:27] Bob Dobbs: in the so-called origin,

[19:30] Bob Dobbs: that is the dodecahedron in Ion's terms,

[19:33] Bob Dobbs: and all that's implied by it.

[19:36] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[19:37] Cameron McEwen: So you can see in what you're talking about that there's many different ways,

[19:43] Cameron McEwen: many different levels,

[19:45] Cameron McEwen: many different types of figuration through which one can approach these questions.

[19:53] Cameron McEwen: So if you talk about the guff,

[19:55] Cameron McEwen: that is a kind of a psychological decentralization of something that can also be talked about in terms of prime numbers.

[20:04] Cameron McEwen: Or it can also be talked about in terms of platonic solids.

[20:10] Cameron McEwen: So all of these are ways that human beings have tried to configure their fate.

[20:22] Cameron McEwen: And one of the things that we're attempting to do,

[20:27] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[20:28] Cameron McEwen: in our conversations is we're attempting to carry on that interrogation that has always characterized human beings on the Earth.

[20:39] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[20:39] Bob Dobbs: correct.

[20:41] Bob Dobbs: I want to say to listeners,

[20:43] Bob Dobbs: we started off talking about

[20:45] Bob Dobbs: Cameron's recent essay called The Connubium of Being.

[20:50] Bob Dobbs: You should read that.

[20:51] Bob Dobbs: Have you done any more on that?

[20:52] Bob Dobbs: Have you added another part?

[20:56] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that I've added another part,

[20:57] Cameron McEwen: but

[20:58] Cameron McEwen: I have added footnotes and tried to clarify some pieces.

[21:05] Cameron McEwen: I have mostly been concerned about the war in Ukraine the last few weeks,

[21:12] Cameron McEwen: but what work I have done at the blog has been...

[21:19] Cameron McEwen: concentrated on that post.

[21:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[21:21] Bob Dobbs: so I'm recommending people,

[21:24] Bob Dobbs: you just go to McLuhan Sciences,

[21:26] Bob Dobbs: just Google that,

[21:27] Bob Dobbs: you'll get Ewen Cameron site,

[21:29] Bob Dobbs: and then it's like at the top,

[21:31] Bob Dobbs: on the right corner at home,

[21:34] Bob Dobbs: the latest essay,

[21:35] Bob Dobbs: Connubium of Being,

[21:37] Bob Dobbs: and that's what we've got to Innis series,

[21:41] Bob Dobbs: that we've got to page 190 of War and Peace in Global Village,

[21:46] Bob Dobbs: where the Connubium is discussed,

[21:48] Bob Dobbs: and then...

[21:49] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn found some other places it was said in the 60s by McLuhan,

[21:53] Bob Dobbs: different articles.

[21:54] Bob Dobbs: So that's what we got to before we started going into global theater.

[22:00] Bob Dobbs: Or it goes with the global theater because the Connubium being is in the book where McLuhan now talks about the global theater,

[22:11] Bob Dobbs: even though the title of the book is War and Peace in the Global Village.

[22:14] Bob Dobbs: But he's pointing out the theatrical part.

[22:18] Bob Dobbs: that year in 68 in the Dew Line,

[22:20] Bob Dobbs: his executive newsletter.

[22:22] Bob Dobbs: And

[22:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if there's any mention of the word global theater and War and Peace in the Global Village.

[22:27] Bob Dobbs: I don't think so.

[22:28] Bob Dobbs: But it comes out in like August 68,

[22:33] Bob Dobbs: and he started the newsletter in July 68.

[22:35] Bob Dobbs: And within a couple of months,

[22:37] Bob Dobbs: he's talking about the global theater.

[22:39] Bob Dobbs: So

[22:40] Bob Dobbs: I guess he was wrapping up the Global Village with that book and moving into a new overlaying.

[22:48] Bob Dobbs: Or a synchronistic echo of the same themes with new words.

[22:55] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[22:56] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[22:57] Bob Dobbs: What else do I want to mention?

[23:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[23:04] Bob Dobbs: so I find

[23:05] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan helps to understand Ion,

[23:08] Bob Dobbs: and Ion helps to understand McLuhan,

[23:10] Bob Dobbs: the subtleties in either direction.

[23:14] Bob Dobbs: They're both very different languages and approaches.

[23:18] Bob Dobbs: They sometimes come pretty close in their sophistication or in their describing the new magic that's afoot,

[23:28] Bob Dobbs: that is hypnotizing people.

[23:31] Bob Dobbs: So then,

[23:32] Bob Dobbs: you've been thinking about the war.

[23:35] Bob Dobbs: What are you thinking?

[23:36] Bob Dobbs: How do you begin to think about it?

[23:38] Bob Dobbs: Because there's so much noise around it.

[23:43] Bob Dobbs: How do you approach that?

[23:46] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[23:46] Cameron McEwen: I tend to...

[23:48] Cameron McEwen: see it in terms of a battle between tactility and Acadia University.

[24:01] Bob Dobbs: The unipolar versus the bi or multipolar.

[24:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[24:07] Bob Dobbs: Which is

[24:08] Bob Dobbs: Putin?

[24:15] Cameron McEwen: I don't like to characterize

[24:18] Cameron McEwen: people in terms of their masks,

[24:22] Cameron McEwen: the masks that they're wearing,

[24:25] Cameron McEwen: as if to imply that,

[24:28] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[24:28] Cameron McEwen: one of them is

[24:30] Cameron McEwen: St. George and the other is a dragon.

[24:33] Cameron McEwen: One of the problems with the war is that it's being characterized as a struggle of good and evil.

[24:39] Cameron McEwen: And that prevents understanding.

[24:43] Cameron McEwen: Instead,

[24:45] Cameron McEwen: there are complex...

[24:47] Cameron McEwen: motivations on both sides,

[24:49] Cameron McEwen: but

[24:51] Cameron McEwen: I think

[24:53] Cameron McEwen: What we see in the war is an unraveling.

[24:57] Cameron McEwen: Of war.

[24:58] Bob Dobbs: Of war.

[25:01] Cameron McEwen: Maybe that would be good if that really happened.

[25:05] Bob Dobbs: What I would add to that is there are many more people or thinkers or consciousnesses in the planet that are aware of this problem that you're talking about,

[25:16] Bob Dobbs: the good and evil mistake,

[25:18] Bob Dobbs: the fallacy.

[25:20] Bob Dobbs: Probably never has there been so many people who include that.

[25:23] Bob Dobbs: You could say it's kind of a collective consciousness that's happening as a result of this Global Membrane we're in,

[25:29] Bob Dobbs: or even the tech body,

[25:31] Bob Dobbs: that this is a new factor.

[25:34] Bob Dobbs: It's very hard for the Manichaeans to get anybody to agree on the terms.

[25:40] Bob Dobbs: And who's what?

[25:42] Bob Dobbs: Who's George and who isn't?

[25:44] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[25:44] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[25:45] Cameron McEwen: And it's like I was saying before that you...

[25:49] Cameron McEwen: You can't get to the fundamentals of anything without first understanding the gap that separates fundamentals.

[25:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: The gap between war and peace,

[25:59] Bob Dobbs: you mean?

[26:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[26:01] Cameron McEwen: not only between war and peace,

[26:02] Cameron McEwen: but between war and what it's expressing.

[26:08] Cameron McEwen: So,

[26:10] Cameron McEwen: as you were just pointing out a minute ago,

[26:13] Cameron McEwen: the understanding of this war has many different possibilities.

[26:18] Cameron McEwen: So you could have a Manichean understanding or you could have an understanding that sees through the

[26:26] Cameron McEwen: Manichean understanding and arrives at a different understanding.

[26:30] Cameron McEwen: So whenever we come to think about war,

[26:35] Cameron McEwen: we have already activated some possibility of that understanding.

[26:42] Cameron McEwen: So if people are beginning to see through the propaganda...

[26:48] Cameron McEwen: of good versus evil,

[26:51] Cameron McEwen: what that means is they're beginning to understand a certain confusion that enters into our thinking as soon as we understand that things are not so

[27:05] Cameron McEwen: fixed,

[27:06] Cameron McEwen: are not so defined as we had thought they were.

[27:12] Cameron McEwen: So it's the confusion that can possibly lead to truth.

[27:19] Cameron McEwen: We have to leave aside the previous understanding,

[27:23] Cameron McEwen: say,

[27:24] Cameron McEwen: between war and peace,

[27:25] Cameron McEwen: and go to a new understanding.

[27:27] Cameron McEwen: And that's exactly what I was trying to talk about with the 11 a minute ago.

[27:32] Cameron McEwen: The 11 is gapped.

[27:35] Cameron McEwen: And so the movement has to be from,

[27:39] Cameron McEwen: we have two strokes there,

[27:41] Cameron McEwen: two ones that make up 11.

[27:43] Cameron McEwen: And each one of those ones has...

[27:47] Cameron McEwen: a myriad different understandings which is correlate to understandings of the other one.

[27:55] Cameron McEwen: So,

[27:55] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[27:57] Cameron McEwen: if one understanding of 11 is 0 and 11,

[28:02] Cameron McEwen: in order to get to the understanding of 11 of 1 and 10,

[28:07] Cameron McEwen: you have to transverse the gap between those two possibilities.

[28:13] Cameron McEwen: So,

[28:14] Cameron McEwen: same with war.

[28:16] Cameron McEwen: The different understandings of war are differentiated from each other by what appears to be confusion.

[28:25] Cameron McEwen: But really,

[28:27] Cameron McEwen: that confusion is what needs to be entered into like a labyrinth.

[28:32] Cameron McEwen: And through that transversing of the labyrinth,

[28:37] Cameron McEwen: we come to a different understanding of war.

[28:40] Cameron McEwen: And that's what's at stake in what's going on in Ukraine,

[28:44] Cameron McEwen: which I think is what you just said.

[28:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[28:47] Bob Dobbs: now,

[28:48] Bob Dobbs: as you've been watching,

[28:49] Bob Dobbs: we haven't talked in a month,

[28:53] Bob Dobbs: how do you express your involvement with it?

[28:57] Bob Dobbs: When you say you've been not thinking about the connubium of being,

[29:00] Bob Dobbs: but not writing anything new,

[29:03] Bob Dobbs: you've been concerned,

[29:04] Bob Dobbs: or you had some verb in there,

[29:05] Bob Dobbs: about the war.

[29:07] Bob Dobbs: What are you doing in that process?

[29:11] Bob Dobbs: Are you just watching reports and yelling at the screen that they got it wrong?

[29:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[29:17] Cameron McEwen: you could say that,

[29:18] Cameron McEwen: but I mean,

[29:20] Cameron McEwen: you could say that the big question posed by Western civilization is how to identify fundamentals and then go from fundamentals to their practical application in

[29:36] Cameron McEwen: life.

[29:38] Cameron McEwen: So just to take an example,

[29:41] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle in the Politics talks about the different...

[29:45] Cameron McEwen: forms of government.

[29:48] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[29:48] Bob Dobbs: so is that something you did the past few weeks?

[29:50] Bob Dobbs: You looked up Aristotle?

[29:52] Cameron McEwen: So it's fresh in your mind?

[29:55] Bob Dobbs: No,

[29:55] Bob Dobbs: It's just coming to your mind now?

[29:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[29:57] Cameron McEwen: as a way of talking about what we're talking about.

[30:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[30:01] Cameron McEwen: So what Aristotle says is that there's a dynamic between different forms of government,

[30:08] Cameron McEwen: and each one taken to an extreme gives birth to another.

[30:13] Cameron McEwen: So you can have government by a dictator.

[30:16] Cameron McEwen: You can have government by a group that sort of.

[30:22] Cameron McEwen: aristocrats,

[30:23] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[30:24] Cameron McEwen: or at least people with combined power,

[30:27] Cameron McEwen: and then you can have a democracy.

[30:29] Cameron McEwen: And all of these three forms have good types and bad types.

[30:35] Cameron McEwen: And what happens to them all is that the good type of anyone seems to go over to the bad type,

[30:43] Cameron McEwen: which then gives birth to a whole other type.

[30:46] Cameron McEwen: And so you have a kind of dynamic of history.

[30:49] Cameron McEwen: So what's happened...

[30:51] Cameron McEwen: the modern world.

[30:53] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[30:53] Bob Dobbs: the synchronic view of that literate linear history is the sphere,

[30:58] Bob Dobbs: an echo chamber,

[30:59] Bob Dobbs: right?

[31:00] Bob Dobbs: When you're describing one thing shifting to another thing,

[31:03] Bob Dobbs: and then to a bad,

[31:05] Bob Dobbs: and then that creates a newness.

[31:06] Bob Dobbs: Those are echoings in a sphere?

[31:09] Bob Dobbs: That's synchronic?

[31:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[31:11] Cameron McEwen: you could say that.

[31:13] Cameron McEwen: It's what I was just talking about is confusion,

[31:15] Cameron McEwen: right?

[31:16] Cameron McEwen: The,

[31:20] Cameron McEwen: what lies

[31:20] Cameron McEwen: between fundamental possibilities is not itself a fundamental possibility.

[31:29] Bob Dobbs: What lies between fundamental possibilities is not itself a fundamental possibility.

[31:33] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you just said?

[31:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[31:35] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[31:36] Cameron McEwen: And to understand that really goes to the heart of everything.

[31:44] Cameron McEwen: If being is a connubium,

[31:47] Cameron McEwen: that is to say if it is a plurality,

[31:50] Cameron McEwen: If it is something like a global village,

[31:54] Cameron McEwen: then there needs to be separate entities in that village,

[31:58] Cameron McEwen: or it couldn't be a village.

[32:00] Cameron McEwen: So in order to have separate entities at the level of being,

[32:04] Cameron McEwen: there needs to be abysmal borders between them,

[32:09] Cameron McEwen: right?

[32:10] Cameron McEwen: If you don't have borders,

[32:11] Cameron McEwen: you can't have plurality.

[32:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[32:13] Cameron McEwen: But if you're talking about a plurality of fundamental things,

[32:18] Cameron McEwen: then the gap...

[32:19] Cameron McEwen: between fundamental things is deeper than de Menil.

[32:24] Cameron McEwen: That is to say it's abysmal.

[32:26] Cameron McEwen: Abysmal,

[32:27] Bob Dobbs: abysmal.

[32:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[32:29] Cameron McEwen: you could Posthuman beings are the animal that has an intuitive understanding through language or in language of its abysmal connection,

[32:41] Cameron McEwen: right?

[32:41] Cameron McEwen: Humans are the animal that understands that it's going to die.

[32:47] Cameron McEwen: So the...

[32:48] Cameron McEwen: There is an intuitive understanding in human beings of this gap in which they are situated,

[32:59] Cameron McEwen: but it's a very fearsome thing to go into that labyrinth.

[33:04] Cameron McEwen: So the great task that is posed to Western civilization is to understand through that labyrinth the possibilities of being and then to apply them.

[33:19] Cameron McEwen: And since

[33:20] Cameron McEwen: Plato and Aristotle,

[33:22] Cameron McEwen: arguably from thousands of years before that,

[33:26] Cameron McEwen: human beings have had this task of applying fundamentals to their individual being and to their society,

[33:36] Cameron McEwen: but they've failed to do it.

[33:38] Cameron McEwen: And so here we are in

[33:40] Cameron McEwen: 2022, and the world has thousands and thousands and thousands of nuclear bombs.

[33:49] Cameron McEwen: And the failure,

[33:53] Cameron McEwen: the recurrent failure to be able to apply fundamentals has come to haunt us.

[34:01] Cameron McEwen: It's something that we need to do or we're going to be skunked.

[34:06] Cameron McEwen: And that's something that McLuhan said over and over and over again,

[34:09] Cameron McEwen: that he was attempting to understand the possibilities of survival.

[34:18] Cameron McEwen: into.

[34:19] Cameron McEwen: if we didn't understand the possibilities of survival,

[34:23] Cameron McEwen: then we were going to destroy ourselves.

[34:27] Bob Dobbs: So you look at this spectacle in the last few weeks,

[34:36] Bob Dobbs: what are you prompted to say Wright?

[34:40] Bob Dobbs: What you're saying to me now?

[34:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[34:42] Cameron McEwen: sort of,

[34:43] Cameron McEwen: but I mean,

[34:46] Cameron McEwen: human beings are...

[34:50] Cameron McEwen: dumb,

[34:51] Cameron McEwen: stupid.

[34:52] Cameron McEwen: and dumb in the sense of stupid and weak.

[34:57] Cameron McEwen: So I think about my own stupidity and my own weakness.

[35:02] Cameron McEwen: I wish that I had been better able in my life to think about these issues so that they had better application,

[35:12] Cameron McEwen: right?

[35:12] Cameron McEwen: I'm a guy that sits around and Wright about this stuff and I think about this stuff,

[35:17] Cameron McEwen: but it's weak and powerless.

[35:21] Cameron McEwen: I'm one more person that should have done more,

[35:28] Cameron McEwen: but I've been unable to do it.

[35:33] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[35:33] Bob Dobbs: you're doing a good job at catching up for your slack years.

[35:39] Bob Dobbs: You may not catch up,

[35:40] Bob Dobbs: though.

[35:41] Bob Dobbs: But

[35:42] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what you mean by elementals.

[35:45] Bob Dobbs: Could you begin to explain that a little bit,

[35:47] Bob Dobbs: what you mean by them?

[35:49] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[35:49] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used to say,

[35:50] Bob Dobbs: back to basics,

[35:51] Bob Dobbs: which was media study,

[35:52] Bob Dobbs: the language of forms,

[35:54] Bob Dobbs: or the ground,

[35:55] Bob Dobbs: all these different terms.

[35:57] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[35:57] Bob Dobbs: That's what you mean by fundamentals,

[35:59] Bob Dobbs: right?

[36:00] Bob Dobbs: What he was pointing to with those words.

[36:02] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[36:03] Cameron McEwen: yes.

[36:03] Cameron McEwen: So ground for McLuhan is not singular but plural,

[36:10] Cameron McEwen: and ground also never stays as ground.

[36:14] Cameron McEwen: It becomes cliché,

[36:16] Cameron McEwen: and cliché becomes ground.

[36:17] Cameron McEwen: ground back and forth and back and back and forth.

[36:21] Cameron McEwen: So the there's a confusion about ground or de Menil into which people need to enter if they

[36:36] Cameron McEwen: are to truly understand ground or fundamentals.

[36:41] Cameron McEwen: And so one of the things I'm attempting to do with the blog is I'm attempting Thanks.

[36:47] Cameron McEwen: simply to keep alive those sorts of considerations.

[36:54] Cameron McEwen: If I could find the secret of application,

[36:57] Cameron McEwen: if I could find the secret of actually communicating with people,

[37:02] Cameron McEwen: that would be tremendous.

[37:04] Cameron McEwen: That would be sort of the end goal.

[37:07] Cameron McEwen: But it may be that that's something too big for me.

[37:13] Bob Dobbs: And you don't mean...

[37:16] Bob Dobbs: becoming famous and then you're talking it on this week in the news you don't mean that when you say could you get more people uh talking with you responding to what you have to say so what do you write well i mean what you just said is almost the tragedy of McLuhan right McLuhan

[37:35] Cameron McEwen: came to his central ideas around 1960 and just as he was coming to a formulation of them

[37:44] Cameron McEwen: He had his stroke and damn near died and had the last rites read to him.

[37:53] Cameron McEwen: So he then spent

[37:57] Cameron McEwen: 20 years,

[37:58] Cameron McEwen: the 60s and the 70s,

[38:00] Cameron McEwen: knowing that he was very sick,

[38:01] Cameron McEwen: knowing that he was going to die and trying to figure out,

[38:05] Cameron McEwen: well,

[38:05] Cameron McEwen: how do I communicate this stuff?

[38:08] Cameron McEwen: And so one of the ways in which he tried to communicate it was to become...

[38:14] Cameron McEwen: famous to become a talking head,

[38:16] Cameron McEwen: but it didn't work.

[38:18] Cameron McEwen: So one of the ways to interrogate McLuhan is to interrogate the ways that he attempted to communicate and see what was wrong with them and

[38:33] Cameron McEwen: hope that coming to an understanding of how that didn't work,

[38:37] Cameron McEwen: hope that that will lead to something that will work.

[38:43] Bob Dobbs: There were different times when I spoke to him,

[38:45] Bob Dobbs: I got the impression that he knew that.

[38:49] Bob Dobbs: He knew that it might not work.

[38:52] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[38:52] Bob Dobbs: he wasn't,

[38:53] Bob Dobbs: oh boy,

[38:54] Bob Dobbs: if I get to be a talking head out there,

[38:56] Bob Dobbs: I'll get something done.

[38:58] Bob Dobbs: He knew that it was a problem.

[39:00] Bob Dobbs: I remember in 71,

[39:02] Bob Dobbs: I was at the Coach House,

[39:04] Bob Dobbs: and

[39:05] Bob Dobbs: Morris, his brother,

[39:06] Bob Dobbs: who was working the front desk,

[39:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[39:09] Bob Dobbs: receiving visitors and all that,

[39:10] Bob Dobbs: he says to me,

[39:12] Bob Dobbs: Out of the blue,

[39:12] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[39:13] Bob Dobbs: we've decided to retreat a bit.

[39:15] Bob Dobbs: So this is in 71 after he's getting a lot of bad press in 69 and 70.

[39:21] Bob Dobbs: And,

[39:22] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[39:22] Bob Dobbs: and Liz Jeffries wrote a

[39:23] Bob Dobbs: PhD on this period.

[39:26] Bob Dobbs: Jonathan Miller's book came out in 71.

[39:28] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall book came out in 71.

[39:30] Bob Dobbs: There was something else in that period.

[39:34] Bob Dobbs: And plus he'd been at the Bilderbergers,

[39:37] Bob Dobbs: and they weren't interested in him anymore.

[39:39] Bob Dobbs: So.

[39:40] Cameron McEwen: There were a whole lot of very negative reviews of his stuff,

[39:47] Cameron McEwen: saying that he was a moron and stuff.

[39:49] Bob Dobbs: And just repeating himself,

[39:50] Bob Dobbs: no new,

[39:51] Bob Dobbs: no new,

[39:52] Bob Dobbs: throwing new novels or something,

[39:54] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[39:54] Bob Dobbs: They were expecting endless surface creativity,

[39:57] Bob Dobbs: yet he was harping on the same issues,

[39:59] Bob Dobbs: which is probably more significant than all the books that Norman Mailer wrote or anybody else,

[40:04] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[40:05] Cameron McEwen: Exactly,

[40:06] Cameron McEwen: and continually making mistakes.

[40:09] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[40:09] Cameron McEwen: So his references were wrong,

[40:11] Cameron McEwen: or he didn't even know how to spell,

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: or on and on like that.

[40:17] Bob Dobbs: So Morris says to me,

[40:18] Bob Dobbs: we've decided to retreat.

[40:21] Bob Dobbs: We're not going out there doing conferences or something like that.

[40:25] Bob Dobbs: We're going to stay here locally.

[40:27] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[40:27] Bob Dobbs: that was around the time of the Spadina Expressway battle he got involved in locally.

[40:33] Bob Dobbs: I think that movie was made in

[40:35] Bob Dobbs: 69 or 70,

[40:37] Bob Dobbs: Burning Wood.

[40:38] Bob Dobbs: I think it was called,

[40:40] Bob Dobbs: for a line from Finney's Wake,

[40:42] Bob Dobbs: or a couple of words.

[40:45] Bob Dobbs: So I thought that was incredible.

[40:47] Bob Dobbs: They had a very conscious understanding of their image and the effects of going out,

[40:52] Bob Dobbs: which you've been doing for two or three years.

[40:54] Bob Dobbs: And you have that conversation with the board of the University of Toronto that I got sent to me,

[41:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[41:02] Bob Dobbs: a few years ago,

[41:04] Bob Dobbs: and where he's talking to

[41:06] Bob Dobbs: Bissell and everybody.

[41:08] Bob Dobbs: who's ever on the board there,

[41:09] Bob Dobbs: and they're aware McLuhan has become famous.

[41:12] Bob Dobbs: He's 69.

[41:13] Bob Dobbs: The student radicalism is happening.

[41:16] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan,

[41:18] Bob Dobbs: they're talking about,

[41:18] Bob Dobbs: well,

[41:20] Bob Dobbs: if we do this,

[41:21] Bob Dobbs: what will happen?

[41:22] Bob Dobbs: This could be a problem.

[41:23] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[41:24] Bob Dobbs: well,

[41:24] Bob Dobbs: I'm a good example of that.

[41:26] Bob Dobbs: I went out there and look what happened.

[41:28] Bob Dobbs: It failed.

[41:29] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[41:30] Bob Dobbs: Nothing but confusion.

[41:31] Bob Dobbs: So he even says it among his bureaucratic colleagues at this point.

[41:36] Bob Dobbs: So he was aware of the problem of the communication,

[41:39] Bob Dobbs: but he didn't stop.

[41:41] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[41:42] Bob Dobbs: he didn't go into despair.

[41:44] Bob Dobbs: He came up with new dialectics.

[41:47] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[41:48] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[41:48] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[41:49] Cameron McEwen: And look at how that applies to today.

[41:53] Cameron McEwen: We have websites in Toronto and Winnipeg and other places,

[41:58] Cameron McEwen: New York,

[42:00] Cameron McEwen: which kind of take up...

[42:05] Cameron McEwen: what could be called the famous McLuhan gambit.

[42:09] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[42:10] Cameron McEwen: the idea that by coining some new words and having them become famous,

[42:17] Cameron McEwen: having them become typical Explorations of the society,

[42:22] Cameron McEwen: that that way leads to communication.

[42:27] Cameron McEwen: And so you have people taking up,

[42:29] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[42:30] Cameron McEwen: the

[42:31] Cameron McEwen: 1971 McLuhan,

[42:34] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.

[42:34] Cameron McEwen: Whereas for him,

[42:37] Cameron McEwen: there was a question embedded in that stance that these websites exclude.

[42:45] Cameron McEwen: And so the problem that McLuhan had in the

[42:49] Cameron McEwen: 70s is now emerging in the websites about McLuhan.

[42:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[42:55] Cameron McEwen: They miss this gap,

[42:58] Cameron McEwen: this confusion,

[42:59] Cameron McEwen: this connubial,

[43:01] Cameron McEwen: which is at the heart of his thinking.

[43:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[43:04] Bob Dobbs: Way back in the 80s when I started spearheading the McLuhan revival,

[43:08] Bob Dobbs: half unconsciously,

[43:10] Bob Dobbs: just knowing that he was not being included in the public dialogue,

[43:14] Bob Dobbs: at least in Toronto,

[43:15] Bob Dobbs: enough.

[43:16] Bob Dobbs: So I made a point of going public with it.

[43:20] Bob Dobbs: I always,

[43:21] Bob Dobbs: within every couple of shows,

[43:22] Bob Dobbs: apologize for doing this.

[43:26] Bob Dobbs: Because I knew

[43:27] Bob Dobbs: I was creating more confusion or some unforeseen effects.

[43:31] Bob Dobbs: So I was always showing a consciousness.

[43:33] Bob Dobbs: of what I was doing and not saying,

[43:35] Bob Dobbs: wow,

[43:36] Bob Dobbs: isn't it neat what I'm doing and you guys need to know this and follow me and we'll get somewheres.

[43:40] Bob Dobbs: I pointed out the problems of communication,

[43:43] Bob Dobbs: which is what you're always emphasizing.

[43:44] Bob Dobbs: I did that all through the years.

[43:47] Bob Dobbs: So

[43:47] Bob Dobbs: I congratulate myself,

[43:49] Bob Dobbs: at least in your terms.

[43:52] Bob Dobbs: But,

[43:52] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[43:52] Bob Dobbs: you're saying these others aren't doing that.

[43:56] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[43:57] Cameron McEwen: unfortunately.

[43:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[43:59] Cameron McEwen: So to my way of thinking,

[44:02] Cameron McEwen: we've...

[44:03] Cameron McEwen: kind of got different McLuhan masks put up without understanding what masks entail,

[44:15] Cameron McEwen: without understanding what the global theater entails.

[44:18] Cameron McEwen: So that is a good introduction to where you are in your book now.

[44:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[44:26] Bob Dobbs: and

[44:28] Bob Dobbs: I think...

[44:30] Bob Dobbs: We honestly,

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: sincerely,

[44:32] Bob Dobbs: transparently believe that we are maybe offering the best McLuhan mask going because we include all these,

[44:40] Bob Dobbs: what do you call,

[44:41] Bob Dobbs: he used to call them elephant traps and tiger cages.

[44:43] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[44:44] Bob Dobbs: we are more conscious in admitting our fallacies than anybody else is.

[44:50] Bob Dobbs: I think other people are just trying to get gigs as consultants or something.

[44:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[44:55] Cameron McEwen: get tenure.

[44:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[45:01] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[45:01] Cameron McEwen: there's lots of things that can be got for being a leading intellectual.

[45:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[45:09] Bob Dobbs: so what else is there to say about that?

[45:13] Bob Dobbs: I like you talking about this.

[45:16] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[45:16] Bob Dobbs: we've talked about this many times,

[45:17] Bob Dobbs: about the problem.

[45:18] Bob Dobbs: So,

[45:19] Bob Dobbs: looking at...

[45:20] Bob Dobbs: the situation,

[45:22] Bob Dobbs: is there a sentence or two where you could say what is being missed in the media commentary?

[45:30] Bob Dobbs: Or is there even media commentary?

[45:33] Bob Dobbs: Because there's so much of it,

[45:34] Bob Dobbs: it all just cancels itself out.

[45:36] Bob Dobbs: Is there something for you to talk to out there?

[45:42] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[45:43] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that I would say that because the...

[45:50] Cameron McEwen: 99%

[45:52] Cameron McEwen: of the quote-unquote media coverage is just crap.

[45:57] Cameron McEwen: It's words.

[46:00] Cameron McEwen: It's like McLuhan note to pound in 51,

[46:04] Cameron McEwen: where he says that the word has become the problem.

[46:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[46:08] Bob Dobbs: it's a new drug.

[46:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[46:10] Cameron McEwen: that's what the reporting of the war is near useless,

[46:16] Cameron McEwen: because it's all moralized.

[46:20] Cameron McEwen: It all,

[46:21] Cameron McEwen: it attempts to present the war,

[46:25] Cameron McEwen: including every little detail of the war,

[46:28] Cameron McEwen: as an incident and a struggle between good and evil.

[46:34] Cameron McEwen: So one of the things I do in my blog is I try and talk about Nietzsche a lot,

[46:39] Cameron McEwen: because Nietzsche foresaw all of this stuff.

[46:41] Cameron McEwen: He foresaw that when the word dies,

[46:46] Cameron McEwen: then...

[46:47] Cameron McEwen: Morality doesn't die because human beings are the moral animal.

[46:52] Cameron McEwen: So what happens is that morality,

[46:55] Cameron McEwen: although it's obsolete,

[46:57] Cameron McEwen: becomes super abundant,

[46:59] Cameron McEwen: just like McLuhan said about the book or the car.

[47:02] Cameron McEwen: So what happens when morality becomes super abundant,

[47:07] Cameron McEwen: but it is no longer moral?

[47:08] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[47:09] Cameron McEwen: that's the reporting we have on the war right there.

[47:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[47:12] Bob Dobbs: I remember Kroker.

[47:14] Bob Dobbs: After he did his book on McLuhan Grant and Innis in 1984,

[47:18] Bob Dobbs: he then did a book on the postmodern scene,

[47:22] Bob Dobbs: where he confronted the new fad in academia,

[47:26] Bob Dobbs: what was called poststructuralism or simulation,

[47:32] Bob Dobbs: postmodern studies.

[47:35] Bob Dobbs: They put out a book,

[47:36] Bob Dobbs: his press put out a book on the excessive valuation.

[47:42] Bob Dobbs: or the concern over values that was happening,

[47:47] Bob Dobbs: Wychwood Park be the arguing,

[47:48] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[47:48] Bob Dobbs: over content in McLuhan terms.

[47:52] Bob Dobbs: The valuation,

[47:54] Bob Dobbs: the excessive valuation is what you mean of moral beings keep on jabbering even though the language has died.

[48:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[48:03] Cameron McEwen: but it's the reign of woke,

[48:08] Cameron McEwen: right?

[48:08] Cameron McEwen: It's the reason that the...

[48:12] Cameron McEwen: reactions to the war are so extreme is that people believe that they are participating in a war of good and evil,

[48:24] Cameron McEwen: and the whole meaning of their life on earth becomes involved in their valuation of the war.

[48:34] Cameron McEwen: It's very,

[48:34] Cameron McEwen: very dangerous,

[48:36] Cameron McEwen: because if you have people that are willing to bet everything

[48:41] Cameron McEwen: on a fallacy,

[48:43] Cameron McEwen: then you're really screwed up.

[48:46] Cameron McEwen: The reason that

[48:47] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is so good in talking about fallacies is that he does not believe that there is one such thing that is a fallacy.

[48:58] Cameron McEwen: He believes that all things are fallacies.

[49:02] Cameron McEwen: And once you know that,

[49:03] Cameron McEwen: then you're away from woke.

[49:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[49:06] Bob Dobbs: and he includes himself.

[49:07] Bob Dobbs: He said to Woody Allen,

[49:07] Bob Dobbs: you think my whole fallacy is wrong.

[49:12] Bob Dobbs: There might be an aspect of clarity that he's pointing to that he has.

[49:22] Bob Dobbs: You think my whole fallacy is wrong.

[49:24] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[49:24] Bob Dobbs: maybe there's a part of it that isn't.

[49:29] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that what he's saying?

[49:30] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[49:30] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[49:31] Cameron McEwen: well,

[49:31] Cameron McEwen: let's say he's making the whole idea of good and evil into something complex.

[49:39] Cameron McEwen: and anything that's...

[49:40] Cameron McEwen: complex as we were saying earlier leads down into a fundamental confusion that exists between fundamentals

[49:51] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[49:51] Bob Dobbs: what do you think of the response,

[49:52] Bob Dobbs: which I tend to do,

[49:54] Bob Dobbs: is I don't follow any of it.

[49:56] Bob Dobbs: I'm not processing the information.

[49:58] Bob Dobbs: I recognize you can't totally turn off the processing because it gets into your experience in other ways,

[50:06] Bob Dobbs: through other media or something.

[50:08] Bob Dobbs: What do you think of the strategy of not engaging in the coverage?

[50:13] Bob Dobbs: Because McLuhan used to point out that the coverage was bigger than the war back in the Vietnam War days.

[50:20] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[50:20] Cameron McEwen: and that's even more true today.

[50:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:23] Bob Dobbs: so is that a fundamental,

[50:25] Bob Dobbs: recognizing that there's more coverage than the incidents,

[50:30] Bob Dobbs: the content,

[50:31] Bob Dobbs: the events,

[50:32] Bob Dobbs: and that one should always apologize for engaging the little bit of content you're engaging?

[50:42] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[50:42] Cameron McEwen: because

[50:44] Cameron McEwen: I think a minute ago you said something like,

[50:48] Cameron McEwen: coming to a conclusion or coming to an understanding through the coverage.

[50:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[50:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[50:56] Cameron McEwen: but you see,

[50:56] Cameron McEwen: that's a linear Gutenbergian sense,

[51:00] Cameron McEwen: right,

[51:00] Cameron McEwen: which you were rightly criticizing.

[51:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[51:02] Cameron McEwen: So if people think that what they have to do in regard to the war is come to a moral understanding about it,

[51:11] Cameron McEwen: then they have already fundamentally misunderstood what was at stake.

[51:21] Bob Dobbs: So what do you see in the commentary?

[51:23] Bob Dobbs: I see people despairing.

[51:25] Bob Dobbs: They certainly don't see that they can do anything about it,

[51:29] Bob Dobbs: or they see the leaders are incompetent.

[51:33] Bob Dobbs: There's no hope for people.

[51:38] Bob Dobbs: They resolve to prayer,

[51:41] Bob Dobbs: but they give up in the public discussion.

[51:46] Bob Dobbs: They recognize the noise.

[51:47] Bob Dobbs: But they're so fascinated by it,

[51:49] Bob Dobbs: they can't stop engaging it.

[51:52] Bob Dobbs: They can't stop watching it,

[51:53] Bob Dobbs: texting,

[51:54] Bob Dobbs: Worringer about it.

[51:55] Bob Dobbs: They can't give up.

[51:56] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[51:57] Bob Dobbs: isn't that partly they can't die?

[51:59] Bob Dobbs: They need to die,

[52:01] Bob Dobbs: metaphysically.

[52:01] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[52:02] Cameron McEwen: I agree.

[52:04] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[52:07] Cameron McEwen: people both understand and don't understand that there is a need.

[52:16] Cameron McEwen: both at the level of the world and at the level of their own individual being,

[52:22] Cameron McEwen: there is a necessary transformation at stake.

[52:28] Cameron McEwen: And the transformation in the world and the transformation in the individual either will or will not happen.

[52:36] Cameron McEwen: And that question is at stake for everybody.

[52:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[52:43] Bob Dobbs: And that transformation is...

[52:46] Bob Dobbs: Probably not any known,

[52:48] Bob Dobbs: cliche version of transformation that is sold or propagated or institutionalized.

[52:54] Bob Dobbs: There's a new kind of transformation that's required.

[52:58] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[52:58] Cameron McEwen: Or you could say not only a new kind of transformation,

[53:02] Cameron McEwen: but by definition,

[53:04] Cameron McEwen: a new kind of transformation into something new.

[53:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[53:07] Cameron McEwen: Because anything that is essentially new,

[53:11] Cameron McEwen: that is to say,

[53:12] Cameron McEwen: something that requires an essential transformation,

[53:17] Cameron McEwen: And this is something we were talking about the whole time we've talked today.

[53:21] Cameron McEwen: Anything that requires an essential transformation to something that is essentially new cannot be seen in advance,

[53:29] Cameron McEwen: cannot be seen through the rearview mirror.

[53:33] Cameron McEwen: It requires a groping like a blind person,

[53:37] Cameron McEwen: which is one of the reasons that McLuhan was always bringing up the book,

[53:42] Cameron McEwen: Let There Be Light or whatever it was called.

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[53:45] Cameron McEwen: I,

[53:45] Cameron McEwen: um...

[53:46] Cameron McEwen: Paul Levinson.

[53:48] Bob Dobbs: Jacques E.H. Gombrich?

[53:51] Bob Dobbs: What was the name of that guy?

[53:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[53:54] Cameron McEwen: it was

[53:55] Cameron McEwen: Paul Levinson or something like that.

[53:57] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember his name at the moment.

[53:59] Bob Dobbs: Larry Flynt?

[54:00] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn Dean?

[54:01] Bob Dobbs: Jacques Carolyn Dean or something.

[54:04] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,

[54:04] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[54:04] Bob Dobbs: and there was light.

[54:05] Bob Dobbs: The blind guy.

[54:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[54:08] Cameron McEwen: So

[54:10] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan also talked,

[54:11] Cameron McEwen: he talked about this in many,

[54:13] Cameron McEwen: many different sort of images.

[54:16] Cameron McEwen: So one of the ways he talks about it is a thief who's trying to break into a safe.

[54:24] Cameron McEwen: And the thief has to use his or her sense of touch to understand on the combination dial when

[54:40] Cameron McEwen: they've reached some point where the dial has to be turned in the other direction.

[54:45] Cameron McEwen: So for

[54:47] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, understanding means going back and forth and back and forth in an attempt to open a safe.

[54:57] Cameron McEwen: right yeah this going back and forth and back and forth is what we were just talking about listening for when the tumblers fall he would say exactly exactly exactly so i looked up the guys Jacques Lusseyran and yeah i've never seen a picture of him uh

[55:14] Bob Dobbs: there's a picture of what i got here on wikipedia which is interesting and he lived from 1924 to 1971 yeah yeah and the tragedy of The guy,

[55:25] Cameron McEwen: he died in a car accident.

[55:27] Bob Dobbs: Really?

[55:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[55:28] Cameron McEwen: And imagine what it's like to be blind in a car,

[55:34] Cameron McEwen: and you don't know what kind of driving is going on.

[55:41] Cameron McEwen: You don't know what kind of cars are coming up in the other direction.

[55:44] Cameron McEwen: You don't know what kind of trees are around.

[55:48] Cameron McEwen: And in that unknowing,

[55:52] Cameron McEwen: suddenly there's a fatal accident,

[55:55] Cameron McEwen: and you're gone.

[55:57] Cameron McEwen: So you go from what could be called a live blindness to a dead blindness.

[56:06] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[56:06] Bob Dobbs: and it's appropriate that it happens to him,

[56:09] Bob Dobbs: and there was light,

[56:10] Bob Dobbs: because he was illustrating,

[56:13] Bob Dobbs: you were citing him to illustrate how you have to move into the unknown,

[56:18] Bob Dobbs: and he experienced it dramatically.

[56:20] Cameron McEwen: And how you have to use your hand to...

[56:26] Cameron McEwen: feel tactile differences,

[56:29] Cameron McEwen: or you have to use your ear to listen to what's going on with the tumblers,

[56:35] Cameron McEwen: or you have to use your antennae to feel out into the unknown.

[56:41] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan used all of those,

[56:42] Cameron McEwen: and some of them he got from Wyndham Lewis.

[56:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[56:46] Bob Dobbs: And the other men of 1914,

[56:48] Bob Dobbs: he got a little from

[56:50] Bob Dobbs: Peter Montgomery,

[56:51] Bob Dobbs: Lado.

[56:52] Bob Dobbs: What McLuhan got from Elliott,

[56:54] Bob Dobbs: what he got from Joyce,

[56:54] Bob Dobbs: what he got from Lewis,

[56:55] Bob Dobbs: what he got from Pound and Yates.

[56:57] Bob Dobbs: Five of the guys.

[56:59] Bob Dobbs: It was a nice pattern.

[57:01] Bob Dobbs: As a matter of fact,

[57:02] Bob Dobbs: it would be interesting,

[57:03] Bob Dobbs: can I quickly bring that up?

[57:07] Bob Dobbs: I know I saved it,

[57:09] Bob Dobbs: categorized it,

[57:10] Bob Dobbs: so let's see.

[57:21] Bob Dobbs: Still looking,

[57:21] Bob Dobbs: just a second.

[57:37] Bob Dobbs: So,

[57:39] Bob Dobbs: sure,

[57:40] Bob Dobbs: fragment sure,

[57:41] Bob Dobbs: there it is.

[57:55] Bob Dobbs: So then I'll put this in,

[58:15] Bob Dobbs: still

[58:15] Bob Dobbs: looking.

[58:18] Cameron McEwen: Maybe we should do a conversation on this.

[58:24] Cameron McEwen: some other time and in the meantime we could find the link and read it and think about it because this topic of what he got from the man of 1914 is a very rich one and

[58:41] Cameron McEwen: a very important one.

[58:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah okay so I'll send that to you when I get it.

[58:46] Bob Dobbs: So you were saying that he got from Lewis

[58:54] Bob Dobbs: What?

[58:54] Bob Dobbs: What was the aspect that he got from Lewis?

[58:57] Cameron McEwen: I was talking about the different metaphors that McLuhan used for how probing works.

[59:04] Cameron McEwen: And the idea of the artist being the antennae of the race,

[59:08] Cameron McEwen: I believe that comes from Lewis.

[59:11] Bob Dobbs: No,

[59:11] Bob Dobbs: antennae of the race is pound.

[59:14] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[59:14] Cameron McEwen: yeah?

[59:14] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[59:15] Cameron McEwen: good.

[59:17] Bob Dobbs: So,

[59:19] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking,

[59:21] Bob Dobbs: I'm starting to say to people,

[59:22] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,

[59:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't expect...

[59:23] Bob Dobbs: explain,

[59:24] Bob Dobbs: I explore.

[59:25] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[59:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't explore,

[59:27] Bob Dobbs: I explain.

[59:27] Bob Dobbs: I'm flipping back.

[59:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[59:31] Cameron McEwen: both imply each other.

[59:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[59:34] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[59:35] Cameron McEwen: If somebody understood explaining and exploring as two different things,

[59:42] Cameron McEwen: as good and evil,

[59:44] Cameron McEwen: then they wouldn't understand either one.

[59:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[59:48] Cameron McEwen: So that's why when I was talking about

[59:52] Cameron McEwen: Ion and Eleven,

[59:54] Cameron McEwen: The interesting thing about the two ones in 11 is that when they're used as markers,

[1:00:02] Cameron McEwen: let's say in 4 and 7,

[1:00:04] Cameron McEwen: then that's essentially different from their use in 11.

[1:00:08] Cameron McEwen: And to understand that difference is the only way to understand what 11 is about.

[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: now you've read a lot of Jacques Derrida.

[1:00:19] Bob Dobbs: He talks about the mark or the trace.

[1:00:22] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you're discussing here?

[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: The two ones?

[1:00:25] Bob Dobbs: It's not the Marchand the trace?

[1:00:28] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:00:28] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so,

[1:00:29] Cameron McEwen: because

[1:00:30] Cameron McEwen: I'm certainly no expert in

[1:00:33] Cameron McEwen: Jacques Derrida. I haven't read

[1:00:35] Cameron McEwen: Jacques Derrida for decades,

[1:00:38] Cameron McEwen: because

[1:00:40] Cameron McEwen: I just thought that he was mostly spinning his wheels.

[1:00:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:00:46] Cameron McEwen: That just ceased to be interesting to me.

[1:00:51] Cameron McEwen: When I started to read him in the late

[1:00:56] Cameron McEwen: 1960s or the early

[1:00:58] Cameron McEwen: 1970s,

[1:01:00] Cameron McEwen: I read him as offering a kind of challenge to thought.

[1:01:08] Cameron McEwen: Here,

[1:01:09] Cameron McEwen: Jacques Derrida was saying,

[1:01:10] Cameron McEwen: here are the problems.

[1:01:12] Cameron McEwen: Try and think your way through these.

[1:01:16] Cameron McEwen: And so

[1:01:17] Cameron McEwen: I found him as...

[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: very valuable as a challenge,

[1:01:22] Cameron McEwen: but not valuable as somebody who had taken up that challenge very well himself.

[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: Did you go to Symposia that featured him?

[1:01:35] Cameron McEwen: I went to Symposia where he had made presentations,

[1:01:44] Cameron McEwen: but I wasn't there at the time that he made the presentations.

[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: so you never met him?

[1:01:51] Cameron McEwen: No.

[1:01:52] Bob Dobbs: You never had a chance to...

[1:01:53] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:01:56] Cameron McEwen: I knew people that were quite close to him,

[1:01:59] Cameron McEwen: and I had great respect for those people that I knew and had friendships with.

[1:02:06] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:02:07] Cameron McEwen: I always suspected,

[1:02:09] Cameron McEwen: because I had this respect for these people that had studied with Jacques Derrida and were friends with Jacques Derrida,

[1:02:17] Cameron McEwen: because I had great respect...

[1:02:18] Cameron McEwen: for them,

[1:02:19] Cameron McEwen: I always thought that there was more to Jacques Derrida than I was able to see.

[1:02:26] Cameron McEwen: So I don't,

[1:02:27] Cameron McEwen: just because

[1:02:29] Cameron McEwen: I don't find his work personally enlightening doesn't mean that I don't suspect that there's something more there that I don't understand.

[1:02:43] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:02:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:02:45] Bob Dobbs: So we...

[1:02:47] Bob Dobbs: Ended the last episode with me quoting the beginning of the global theater section,

[1:02:53] Bob Dobbs: where,

[1:02:53] Bob Dobbs: I'll just repeat it,

[1:02:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan became famous for his phrase,

[1:02:56] Bob Dobbs: global village,

[1:02:57] Bob Dobbs: but not so well known at the time was his phrase for the late,

[1:03:00] Bob Dobbs: or during the late 60s,

[1:03:02] Bob Dobbs: the global theater,

[1:03:03] Bob Dobbs: which meant the satellite technology of the

[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: 60s had turned the global city,

[1:03:07] Bob Dobbs: or megalopolis,

[1:03:08] Bob Dobbs: into an art form.

[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:03:10] Cameron McEwen: So let's just,

[1:03:11] Cameron McEwen: that paragraph is a very,

[1:03:13] Cameron McEwen: very good paragraph in my view.

[1:03:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:03:15] Cameron McEwen: So let's just,

[1:03:16] Cameron McEwen: let's just.

[1:03:17] Cameron McEwen: tease that apart a bit.

[1:03:20] Cameron McEwen: You say here that the global city had been turned into an art form,

[1:03:27] Cameron McEwen: and that art form we can say is the global theater.

[1:03:31] Cameron McEwen: So what happens is that when

[1:03:36] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is talking about the global village,

[1:03:41] Cameron McEwen: people,

[1:03:42] Cameron McEwen: even today,

[1:03:44] Cameron McEwen: take him to be talking about

[1:03:46] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:03:47] Cameron McEwen: I can phone Nairobi and find out what's going on there.

[1:03:52] Cameron McEwen: They take the physical world and the tangible media as the content of what McLuhan is talking about.

[1:04:05] Cameron McEwen: But what

[1:04:08] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had to do in reaction to that was say,

[1:04:12] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:04:13] Cameron McEwen: all of our understandings of media

[1:04:16] Cameron McEwen: All our understandings of the physical world,

[1:04:18] Cameron McEwen: the Juan Gris and the

[1:04:20] Cameron McEwen: Mumbais and all that stuff,

[1:04:22] Cameron McEwen: all of these things are always seen in some particular perspective.

[1:04:29] Cameron McEwen: And the only way that we can really get an understanding of what's going on in the global village is to understand the roles through which the global village is understood.

[1:04:44] Cameron McEwen: That movement,

[1:04:46] Cameron McEwen: which you call turn the global village into an art form,

[1:04:50] Cameron McEwen: that's understanding the roles or the perspectives or the characterizations or the biases through which.

[1:05:01] Cameron McEwen: the global village is always understood.

[1:05:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:05:08] Bob Dobbs: there's a letter early 60,

[1:05:11] Bob Dobbs: 61 or something,

[1:05:12] Bob Dobbs: where he talks about air traffic controllers,

[1:05:15] Bob Dobbs: and he says that the lack of sophistication in the global village needs a new city,

[1:05:24] Bob Dobbs: a center of sophistication,

[1:05:26] Bob Dobbs: which he means,

[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: media ecology awareness.

[1:05:29] Cameron McEwen: That's a letter to Jackie Tyrwhitt from

[1:05:32] Cameron McEwen: December 1960.

[1:05:34] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:05:35] Bob Dobbs: You want to read the last paragraph or section?

[1:05:39] Cameron McEwen: I don't have the letters in front of me here.

[1:05:43] Bob Dobbs: You remember that date?

[1:05:45] Cameron McEwen: I just remember it as being a very important letter.

[1:05:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:05:48] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:05:49] Bob Dobbs: So he's saying we need to build a city.

[1:05:52] Bob Dobbs: So that's the global city,

[1:05:54] Bob Dobbs: which was a messy form that was there.

[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: imminent or imminent pervasive,

[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: that sense of imminent pervades.

[1:06:05] Bob Dobbs: It's there and we need to make ourselves conscious of the global city so we have a new sophisticated zone that's not subject to the rubes of the role players in the global theater who are bumping,

[1:06:19] Bob Dobbs: just little Abner bumping around and creating all kinds of unforeseen effects.

[1:06:25] Bob Dobbs: So he said

[1:06:28] Bob Dobbs: It's not a literal city.

[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: Imagine air traffic controllers programming the planes and the media coming in and out and orchestrating survival in that situation so nobody crashes too much into something else.

[1:06:46] Bob Dobbs: That's what

[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: I think he says in that letter,

[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: the global city is what we're looking to make,

[1:06:52] Bob Dobbs: and that's what I'm referring to when I say art form.

[1:06:56] Cameron McEwen: turn the global city into an art form right that's right yeah and they um um he's actually in 1960 he's actually coming back to a point that he made i think it's in 1954 in

[1:07:12] Cameron McEwen: a letter to walter ong and uh what he says to walter ong is um that we needed what we're trying to do walter is build a census communis for the world

[1:07:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:07:27] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:07:29] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan spent the

[1:07:31] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, you could say,

[1:07:33] Cameron McEwen: trying to understand what happens as soon as we understand the multiplicity of media.

[1:07:40] Bob Dobbs: But also the co-anesthetic,

[1:07:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:07:43] Bob Dobbs: Theall term.

[1:07:43] Bob Dobbs: Because in 1964,

[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: in the Burroughs Review,

[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: he talks about one can program the whole anti-environment.

[1:07:51] Bob Dobbs: It's pharaonic.

[1:07:52] Bob Dobbs: You're a pharaoh.

[1:07:53] Bob Dobbs: We're all becoming pharaohs.

[1:07:55] Bob Dobbs: That's what he was proposing to

[1:07:57] Bob Dobbs: Ong.

[1:07:58] Bob Dobbs: Let's provide a census Cameron McEwen for the whole world.

[1:08:01] Bob Dobbs: We can do it as the new pharaoh effect.

[1:08:06] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:08:07] Cameron McEwen: But we can do it,

[1:08:10] Cameron McEwen: and there could be a new pharaoh.

[1:08:14] Cameron McEwen: But even though we can do it,

[1:08:16] Cameron McEwen: we aren't doing it,

[1:08:18] Cameron McEwen: and there is no new pharaoh.

[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:08:20] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan is saying is I can intuit.

[1:08:25] Cameron McEwen: this possibility,

[1:08:28] Cameron McEwen: but trying to define the possibility,

[1:08:31] Cameron McEwen: trying to communicate the possibility,

[1:08:33] Cameron McEwen: trying to apply the possibility is something that I need to think through.

[1:08:38] Cameron McEwen: And he spent the next almost 30 years hammering away at that and didn't succeed.

[1:08:48] Bob Dobbs: Would he say as a Christian that of course he wouldn't succeed?

[1:08:55] Bob Dobbs: Man can't solve it.

[1:08:57] Bob Dobbs: He has to go to the transcendent,

[1:08:59] Bob Dobbs: whatever that means.

[1:09:01] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:09:01] Cameron McEwen: the problem with that is that you're using the word succeed in a

[1:09:15] Cameron McEwen: Gutenbergian way.

[1:09:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:09:16] Bob Dobbs: I conclude.

[1:09:18] Cameron McEwen: To succeed doesn't mean to consolidate,

[1:09:21] Cameron McEwen: to have no doubts,

[1:09:23] Cameron McEwen: to reach.

[1:09:24] Cameron McEwen: the final illumination or something.

[1:09:26] Cameron McEwen: To succeed would involve blindness,

[1:09:33] Cameron McEwen: inability,

[1:09:34] Cameron McEwen: finitude,

[1:09:35] Cameron McEwen: etc.,

[1:09:36] Cameron McEwen: but it would at the same time show that these limitations are not somehow opposed to truth.

[1:09:47] Cameron McEwen: So if you think in terms of the 11 that we were talking about,

[1:09:52] Cameron McEwen: the 11 Bye-bye.

[1:09:53] Cameron McEwen: as a prime number is fundamentally different from

[1:09:58] Cameron McEwen: 10 as a Pryde number,

[1:10:00] Cameron McEwen: but it's also fundamentally different from 7 as another prime number.

[1:10:06] Cameron McEwen: So the understanding of

[1:10:10] Cameron McEwen: 11 means leaving aside an understanding of 10 or of 7 as the guide,

[1:10:19] Cameron McEwen: as potential guides to 11.

[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:10:23] Cameron McEwen: The understanding of

[1:10:25] Cameron McEwen: 10 and 7 needs to come from 11,

[1:10:28] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:10:29] Cameron McEwen: So there's a kind of jump that's involved here,

[1:10:32] Cameron McEwen: a jump to 11 and a jump back from 11.

[1:10:36] Cameron McEwen: And what's needed for communication and the application of these ideas to the world is tremendously complicated.

[1:10:51] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:10:51] Cameron McEwen: it's defeated the greatest minds of the tradition for thousands of years.

[1:10:57] Cameron McEwen: But we've reached a point in the world where we have to do that.

[1:11:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:11:05] Bob Dobbs: Do you think you could say he was a success if he passed it on and he passes away and there's a successful continuation equal to what he was doing?

[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:11:18] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't use success in that sense,

[1:11:20] Cameron McEwen: but I would say that people like you and I are attempting in our own ways to continue something that we see in him.

[1:11:30] Cameron McEwen: And just as he wasn't entirely successful.

[1:11:34] Cameron McEwen: At least in my case,

[1:11:36] Cameron McEwen: I don't want to speak for you,

[1:11:37] Cameron McEwen: but at least in my case,

[1:11:38] Cameron McEwen: I also won't be completely successful.

[1:11:42] Cameron McEwen: So it's part of the human condition to be less than perfectly successful.

[1:11:53] Cameron McEwen: There is no such thing as perfect success for humans.

[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:11:59] Bob Dobbs: but then you use the words that we must do a transformation.

[1:12:04] Bob Dobbs: A new kind of transformation.

[1:12:05] Bob Dobbs: We have to overcome that limitation somehow.

[1:12:09] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:12:09] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't say overcome the limitation.

[1:12:11] Cameron McEwen: I would say enter into it better.

[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: Enter into it better.

[1:12:17] Bob Dobbs: Does that mean getting the correct terms or just knowing when the terms serve and then they don't serve so you get new terms?

[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:12:26] Cameron McEwen: All of the above.

[1:12:27] Cameron McEwen: All of the above.

[1:12:28] Bob Dobbs: It's interesting.

[1:12:30] Bob Dobbs: If Joyce was trying to have all of the above and sitting his wake.

[1:12:34] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:12:34] Bob Dobbs: it took him 17 years to feel that he got a lot in there,

[1:12:37] Bob Dobbs: to get to the problem that your origins,

[1:12:40] Bob Dobbs: which had contained so many capacities,

[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: potentialities,

[1:12:45] Bob Dobbs: he tried to show,

[1:12:47] Bob Dobbs: draw,

[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: paint the makeup of that origin point.

[1:12:53] Bob Dobbs: So he put everything in it,

[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: every language,

[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: every idea,

[1:12:58] Bob Dobbs: every game,

[1:13:00] Bob Dobbs: every response,

[1:13:01] Bob Dobbs: every stupidity.

[1:13:02] Bob Dobbs: He just kept piling it in.

[1:13:05] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:13:05] Cameron McEwen: But notice how that disables the term origin point.

[1:13:10] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:13:10] Cameron McEwen: It turns out that the whole notion of the point needs to be exploded,

[1:13:17] Cameron McEwen: needs to be seen as something laughable.

[1:13:22] Cameron McEwen: So to get back to how people are looking at the war in Ukraine,

[1:13:29] Cameron McEwen: people have a moral need.

[1:13:33] Cameron McEwen: to reach a point of view about it.

[1:13:38] Cameron McEwen: They need to situate it on a moral spectrum,

[1:13:41] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[1:13:43] Cameron McEwen: And what they want to do is they want to reach a certain point of good as opposed to evil that is no longer questionable.

[1:13:55] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:13:56] Cameron McEwen: all of Finnegans Wake is a demonstration that that's ludicrous.

[1:14:02] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:14:02] Cameron McEwen: I guess.

[1:14:03] Cameron McEwen: That's a funny goal to have.

[1:14:05] Cameron McEwen: It should be given up.

[1:14:08] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:14:09] Bob Dobbs: are there services to remain Innis tense moment that the world thinks it's in?

[1:14:15] Bob Dobbs: Keep it going?

[1:14:18] Cameron McEwen: For people to stay focused?

[1:14:21] Cameron McEwen: I didn't understand what you were saying there.

[1:14:24] Bob Dobbs: The tension the world apparently is in,

[1:14:26] Bob Dobbs: there's a lot of suspension.

[1:14:28] Bob Dobbs: Like yourself,

[1:14:28] Bob Dobbs: you're not writing your articles.

[1:14:30] Bob Dobbs: You're paying attention to something.

[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: going on that is critical or a threat,

[1:14:37] Bob Dobbs: would there be a service to maintain that threat,

[1:14:41] Bob Dobbs: that Putin doesn't make a move,

[1:14:43] Bob Dobbs: Americans don't make a move that moves it to what they are worried about,

[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: some almost nuclear level?

[1:14:51] Bob Dobbs: This tension is an art form that forces everybody to do what we're doing,

[1:14:56] Bob Dobbs: talking and thinking about it more than they ever did.

[1:15:01] Cameron McEwen: You could say that.

[1:15:02] Cameron McEwen: So if we want to get back to 11 for a second,

[1:15:06] Cameron McEwen: the

[1:15:09] Cameron McEwen: 11.

[1:15:10] Cameron McEwen: is a possibility that includes all of the other possibilities like

[1:15:21] Cameron McEwen: 1 and 10,

[1:15:22] Cameron McEwen: 2 and 9,

[1:15:23] Cameron McEwen: 8 and

[1:15:24] Cameron McEwen: 3, etc.

[1:15:26] Cameron McEwen: So trying to understand what

[1:15:32] Cameron McEwen: 11 represents is a very healthy

[1:15:39] Cameron McEwen: exercise and the hope is that by interrogating

[1:15:46] Cameron McEwen: 11, a transformation can take place whereby the confusions and difficulties implicated in 11,

[1:16:01] Cameron McEwen: instead of preventing understanding,

[1:16:03] Cameron McEwen: instead of driving understanding to try to understand

[1:16:07] Cameron McEwen: 11,

[1:16:08] Cameron McEwen: as only one.

[1:16:11] Cameron McEwen: You could say that the whole Gutenberg Galaxy is the attempt to take 11 and to take the one on one side or the other and consolidate it into a single point,

[1:16:26] Cameron McEwen: into a 1 instead of an 11.

[1:16:29] Cameron McEwen: But once the 11 is understood Innis complexity,

[1:16:33] Cameron McEwen: once the gap is introduced between the ones,

[1:16:37] Cameron McEwen: to bring about the 11,

[1:16:41] Cameron McEwen: right,

[1:16:41] Cameron McEwen: as opposed to the 1.

[1:16:43] Cameron McEwen: Once that 11 is understood as something inherently problematic because of the gap between the 1s through which alone 11 can be,

[1:16:58] Cameron McEwen: that confusion and that difficulty is what needs to be understood,

[1:17:06] Cameron McEwen: not overcome.

[1:17:07] Cameron McEwen: but taken on and through that applied.

[1:17:13] Cameron McEwen: And the great question that's being urged by that war is whether or not humans can learn that lesson.

[1:17:22] Cameron McEwen: I hope so.

[1:17:23] Cameron McEwen: And I think that's what you mean by bearing the tension.

[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:17:27] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:17:28] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:17:32] Bob Dobbs: I think I had a thought there,

[1:17:33] Bob Dobbs: but it got lost in your endless paragraph there.

[1:17:41] Bob Dobbs: But the...

[1:17:43] Cameron McEwen: My oblivating.

[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:17:47] Bob Dobbs: What were you talking about?

[1:17:51] Cameron McEwen: The war,

[1:17:52] Cameron McEwen: the 11th...

[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: I keep thinking how he ends Culture Is Our Business by saying there is no finish line.

[1:17:57] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:17:58] Bob Dobbs: It's the last line in the book.

[1:18:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:18:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:18:02] Cameron McEwen: look at that.

[1:18:04] Cameron McEwen: If you take the

[1:18:05] Cameron McEwen: 11 as two lines...

[1:18:08] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:18:09] Cameron McEwen: So there is no finish line,

[1:18:10] Cameron McEwen: singular.

[1:18:13] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:18:13] Cameron McEwen: There's two lines.

[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: There's two lines,

[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: no finish line.

[1:18:18] Bob Dobbs: I still like to ask you,

[1:18:25] Bob Dobbs: are you just praying?

[1:18:26] Bob Dobbs: You're hoping?

[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: As Ian says,

[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: hope is not a strategy.

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: What would you like to contribute to the situation,

[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: other than what we're doing right now,

[1:18:35] Bob Dobbs: which might be enough?

[1:18:41] Cameron McEwen: What do you see?

[1:18:42] Cameron McEwen: I think imagine somebody who's in Constantinople in 1453,

[1:18:51] Cameron McEwen: and the Turks are all around and they're bombarding the walls with their big cannons and all that sort of stuff.

[1:18:59] Cameron McEwen: What can the individual do?

[1:19:01] Cameron McEwen: The individual can go and try and get...

[1:19:06] Cameron McEwen: as neighbors,

[1:19:07] Cameron McEwen: not to despair,

[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: to come to the wall,

[1:19:10] Cameron McEwen: to fight against the invaders and all that sort of stuff.

[1:19:16] Cameron McEwen: Or the individual can sit around and try and think,

[1:19:18] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:19:18] Cameron McEwen: is there some weapon that we might put together that would be able to fight against this threat or something?

[1:19:27] Cameron McEwen: But oftentimes the individual is just overwhelmed.

[1:19:31] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:19:32] Cameron McEwen: cities do fall.

[1:19:34] Cameron McEwen: Civilizations do.

[1:19:35] Cameron McEwen: do fall.

[1:19:38] Cameron McEwen: That's the way of the world.

[1:19:40] Cameron McEwen: So it's not as if the individual should have an answer.

[1:19:47] Cameron McEwen: It would be good to come up with an answer.

[1:19:50] Cameron McEwen: It would be a very fine thing.

[1:19:53] Cameron McEwen: But it's not very usual in the world for that to be the case.

[1:19:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: So that's well said.

[1:20:05] Bob Dobbs: So let's see what I say.

[1:20:08] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,

[1:20:10] Cameron McEwen: in a certain way,

[1:20:11] Cameron McEwen: what we're doing is we're mining your first paragraph there.

[1:20:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:20:16] Cameron McEwen: Because this transformation of the global village to the global theater means understanding all of the different aspects of the global village through all the different ways of understanding those aspects.

[1:20:32] Cameron McEwen: So it's very,

[1:20:33] Cameron McEwen: very,

[1:20:33] Cameron McEwen: very complicated.

[1:20:35] Cameron McEwen: But the idea of...

[1:20:37] Cameron McEwen: Seeing the complications of the global village through the roles of understanding is this movement to the global theater.

[1:20:48] Cameron McEwen: And it's more or less the conclusion that McLuhan came to when he said the medium is the message.

[1:20:55] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:20:56] Cameron McEwen: That is to say that when people were saying,

[1:21:00] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:21:01] Cameron McEwen: how can education be made relevant?

[1:21:06] Cameron McEwen: once again,

[1:21:07] Cameron McEwen: which is one of the main questions McLuhan was trying to answer in the

[1:21:12] Cameron McEwen: 1950s.

[1:21:13] Cameron McEwen: When he says the medium is the message,

[1:21:15] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is,

[1:21:17] Cameron McEwen: if we understand all of the different ways that we understand the world in terms of roles,

[1:21:25] Cameron McEwen: so just to say,

[1:21:26] Cameron McEwen: in terms of media,

[1:21:28] Cameron McEwen: that might be a way of coming to address these questions.

[1:21:34] Cameron McEwen: And it's just...

[1:21:36] Cameron McEwen: It's all there in your paragraph.

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:21:40] Bob Dobbs: Would you take up arms and go over to Ukraine,

[1:21:46] Bob Dobbs: volunteer?

[1:21:49] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:21:49] Cameron McEwen: because

[1:21:52] Cameron McEwen: I don't see that,

[1:21:54] Cameron McEwen: number one,

[1:21:55] Cameron McEwen: as contributing,

[1:21:56] Cameron McEwen: and I don't see which side you would go on.

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: if you were on Tucker Carlson or something saying that,

[1:22:03] Bob Dobbs: you'd be considered a

[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: Putinite.

[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[1:22:06] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:22:08] Bob Dobbs: How would you...

[1:22:10] Cameron McEwen: Any kind of introducing complexity into the situation is seen as propaganda.

[1:22:17] Cameron McEwen: But,

[1:22:17] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[1:22:20] Cameron McEwen: the whole idea that there aren't complexities is itself propaganda.

[1:22:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:22:25] Cameron McEwen: So there's a kind of labyrinth or maelstrom taking place here,

[1:22:33] Cameron McEwen: but it's not recognized.

[1:22:35] Cameron McEwen: Instead,

[1:22:36] Cameron McEwen: there's a maelstrom,

[1:22:38] Cameron McEwen: and the brothers on the boat with the mariner are saying,

[1:22:46] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:22:46] Cameron McEwen: look,

[1:22:47] Cameron McEwen: we can go home this way.

[1:22:49] Cameron McEwen: And the mariner is saying,

[1:22:50] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:22:50] Cameron McEwen: there's a maelstrom there.

[1:22:52] Cameron McEwen: And right now,

[1:22:54] Cameron McEwen: the brothers are taking us into the maelstrom.

[1:22:57] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:22:58] Cameron McEwen: And they won't survive.

[1:23:01] Bob Dobbs: Who won't survive?

[1:23:02] Bob Dobbs: They won't.

[1:23:02] Cameron McEwen: The brothers.

[1:23:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:23:04] Cameron McEwen: And posed.

[1:23:05] Cameron McEwen: tail.

[1:23:07] Cameron McEwen: It's difficult to know from his tail if there's one brother or more than one.

[1:23:13] Cameron McEwen: It seems like there's more than one other brother and that the two other brothers both perish.

[1:23:23] Bob Dobbs: If we do get to this point of no return,

[1:23:26] Bob Dobbs: there will be survivors from it.

[1:23:29] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[1:23:31] Bob Dobbs: Do you think it's possible everybody could get wiped out?

[1:23:35] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:23:37] Cameron McEwen: And to me,

[1:23:37] Cameron McEwen: the terrible thing there is,

[1:23:39] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:23:39] Cameron McEwen: there's,

[1:23:40] Cameron McEwen: it would be,

[1:23:41] Cameron McEwen: there are some very,

[1:23:42] Cameron McEwen: there's all the time that Western civilization and Eastern civilization,

[1:23:50] Cameron McEwen: all civilizations are producing wonderful,

[1:23:54] Cameron McEwen: wonderful stuff.

[1:23:55] Cameron McEwen: And it would be a terrible thing for that to sort of go into the night and having amounted to nothing.

[1:24:02] Cameron McEwen: But even worse,

[1:24:03] Cameron McEwen: in my view,

[1:24:04] Cameron McEwen: is that.

[1:24:04] Cameron McEwen: if human beings wipe out themselves,

[1:24:08] Cameron McEwen: they're going to wipe out all sorts of other life forms.

[1:24:12] Cameron McEwen: And those life forms are innocent of what would be happening to them.

[1:24:19] Cameron McEwen: And that would be a terrible,

[1:24:20] Cameron McEwen: terrible thing for human beings to do that to the world.

[1:24:27] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:24:27] Bob Dobbs: does

[1:24:29] Bob Dobbs: Christian faith say that one would survive that?

[1:24:34] Bob Dobbs: Do you have the correct faith?

[1:24:37] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:24:37] Cameron McEwen: Christian faith says that the world may well destroy itself,

[1:24:49] Cameron McEwen: may well disappear.

[1:24:51] Cameron McEwen: Because if you take the Godhead,

[1:24:56] Cameron McEwen: the

[1:24:57] Cameron McEwen: Son of God is killed by the world and dies.

[1:25:04] Cameron McEwen: And that death.

[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: is a death that's more monumental than the death of the world.

[1:25:12] Cameron McEwen: So the notion of the world killing itself,

[1:25:19] Cameron McEwen: obviating itself,

[1:25:21] Cameron McEwen: is not as difficult,

[1:25:23] Cameron McEwen: you might say,

[1:25:24] Cameron McEwen: as the death of God.

[1:25:26] Cameron McEwen: So in Christian thought,

[1:25:31] Cameron McEwen: the fact that the world could kill itself and might indeed

[1:25:36] Cameron McEwen: kill itself,

[1:25:38] Cameron McEwen: is an aspect of the monumental possibility of God himself dying.

[1:25:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: So I didn't say McLuhan by the Malinowski,

[1:25:56] Bob Dobbs: as can be seen in his correspondence with Sheila and Wilford Watson,

[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: was perceiving a anti-environment of electronic process.

[1:26:03] Bob Dobbs: We've been saying that.

[1:26:05] Bob Dobbs: The interplay of cliches and archetypes,

[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: the essence of consciousness.

[1:26:08] Bob Dobbs: So we've been explaining that.

[1:26:12] Bob Dobbs: Then

[1:26:13] Bob Dobbs: I do a little oral statement.

[1:26:15] Bob Dobbs: It's very useful to know Barry Nevitt wrote the above sentence explaining consciousness,

[1:26:20] Bob Dobbs: quoting McLuhan,

[1:26:22] Bob Dobbs: when McLuhan was thinking about electronic process during the years he wrote the book from Cliché to archetype,

[1:26:27] Bob Dobbs: published in 1970.

[1:26:31] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:26:31] Cameron McEwen: So just to bring people up to date.

[1:26:34] Cameron McEwen: We've been talking about electronic process as the inherent interplay between poles,

[1:26:40] Cameron McEwen: between north and south poles,

[1:26:44] Cameron McEwen: let's say.

[1:26:46] Cameron McEwen: And so the idea of electronic consciousness or the essence of consciousness as an electronic process is that thinking itself is dynamic,

[1:26:58] Cameron McEwen: going between poles.

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:27:03] Cameron McEwen: And those polls,

[1:27:04] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:27:05] Cameron McEwen: cliche and archetype.

[1:27:06] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[1:27:08] Bob Dobbs: Very good.

[1:27:09] Bob Dobbs: So then I say the separate media categories of his opinion no longer applied.

[1:27:16] Bob Dobbs: So there he is realizing his categories in the

[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: 60s failed.

[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: So he's got to come up with new categories,

[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: which are cliché to archetype.

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: And he's admitting he's doing an opinion.

[1:27:32] Bob Dobbs: which is to justify the ways of God to people,

[1:27:35] Bob Dobbs: to the tribe.

[1:27:37] Bob Dobbs: That's how he defines a epyllion.

[1:27:39] Bob Dobbs: It's not an epic.

[1:27:40] Bob Dobbs: It's not a heroic story.

[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: It is an Explorations of why humans fail,

[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: almost.

[1:27:48] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:27:49] Bob Dobbs: Justification.

[1:27:51] Cameron McEwen: Notice that the difference between an epic and an epyllion is that an epic is a single linear story.

[1:27:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:27:59] Cameron McEwen: And an epyllion...

[1:28:01] Cameron McEwen: is always stories,

[1:28:03] Cameron McEwen: plural.

[1:28:04] Cameron McEwen: So if we think of human beings in their achievement,

[1:28:10] Cameron McEwen: that's one story.

[1:28:11] Cameron McEwen: But the same,

[1:28:13] Cameron McEwen: quote unquote,

[1:28:14] Cameron McEwen: achievement seen as failure is another story.

[1:28:18] Cameron McEwen: So that's the difference between epic and appealing is that an appealing recognizes limits.

[1:28:25] Cameron McEwen: You can't have different stories without limits between or limits or borders.

[1:28:30] Cameron McEwen: between those stories.

[1:28:32] Cameron McEwen: So the whole notion of a pelion,

[1:28:36] Cameron McEwen: which

[1:28:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan came to through Eric Havelock,

[1:28:42] Cameron McEwen: the whole notion of a pelion is that it has difference or discontinuity built into it.

[1:28:49] Cameron McEwen: And then the application of that Posthuman life is very obscure.

[1:28:55] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan came to think that may be one way of

[1:28:58] Cameron McEwen: explaining that is this dynamic between cliché to archetype.

[1:29:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:29:04] Bob Dobbs: and epyllion is spelled Epyllion for people not familiar with the word.

[1:29:11] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: Wright,

[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: the separate media,

[1:29:14] Bob Dobbs: that's the

[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: 60s understanding media book,

[1:29:18] Bob Dobbs: the separate media categories of his epyllion,

[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: which was the two books,

[1:29:22] Bob Dobbs: Schoenberg,

[1:29:22] Bob Dobbs: Gaussian,

[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: Understanding Media,

[1:29:24] Bob Dobbs: no longer apply.

[1:29:25] Bob Dobbs: He called it intermedia.

[1:29:27] Bob Dobbs: That was his new term.

[1:29:29] Bob Dobbs: And that comes from the original book sleeve of From Cliché to archetype.

[1:29:34] Bob Dobbs: Not many people have seen that book sleeve.

[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: So it says on the book sleeve,

[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:29:42] Bob Dobbs: the book title,

[1:29:42] Bob Dobbs: From Cliché to archetype,

[1:29:44] Bob Dobbs: so they're referring to the book,

[1:29:45] Bob Dobbs: From Cliché to archetype is Marshall McLuhan most important and definitive statement on today's culture and technology since understanding media.

[1:29:52] Bob Dobbs: It goes way beyond the medium is the message theme into a Étienne Gilson...

[1:29:57] Bob Dobbs: study of the process of intermedia action.

[1:30:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:30:01] Bob Dobbs: isn't that interesting?

[1:30:03] Bob Dobbs: He's recognized that it failed.

[1:30:05] Bob Dobbs: Now he's starting a new decade with a new,

[1:30:08] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: different approach.

[1:30:11] Bob Dobbs: Same old problem,

[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: but he knows he must,

[1:30:15] Bob Dobbs: what is it,

[1:30:15] Bob Dobbs: lie down in the garbage?

[1:30:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:30:18] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:30:20] Bob Dobbs: the yates.

[1:30:21] Cameron McEwen: And the bone and rag chops.

[1:30:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: Of the heart.

[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: He has to start over again.

[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: So that's interesting.

[1:30:33] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if we have,

[1:30:34] Bob Dobbs: did many philosophers do that?

[1:30:37] Bob Dobbs: Announce that they blew it?

[1:30:40] Bob Dobbs: And then start over again.

[1:30:43] Bob Dobbs: Or is our time the only time when one could do that?

[1:30:46] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:30:49] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:30:50] Cameron McEwen: that's always been known.

[1:30:54] Cameron McEwen: What you call blowing it can also be understanding some aspect of the labyrinth which tells you to reverse course or to take

[1:31:07] Cameron McEwen: a left turn or Wright turn or whatever.

[1:31:10] Cameron McEwen: So what you're calling blowing it can be revelatory.

[1:31:17] Cameron McEwen: So it's not the case that we're going on from,

[1:31:22] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[1:31:22] Cameron McEwen: now I know that I was completely wrong and now I'm going to become completely right.

[1:31:29] Cameron McEwen: It's a question of understanding limits.

[1:31:34] Cameron McEwen: One way of understanding has a natural limit.

[1:31:38] Cameron McEwen: And it may be advantageous or it may be helpful to go to another understanding.

[1:31:47] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[1:31:47] Cameron McEwen: that other understanding will itself have limits,

[1:31:51] Cameron McEwen: but everything that human beings do has limits.

[1:31:54] Cameron McEwen: So it's just it's a question of understanding the different kinds of limits and understanding the different kind of limits can be called understanding the different kinds of roles that people.

[1:32:07] Cameron McEwen: can assume.

[1:32:08] Cameron McEwen: And that's the global village.

[1:32:10] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:32:10] Cameron McEwen: the global theater.

[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:32:12] Bob Dobbs: So in footnote 40,

[1:32:14] Bob Dobbs: the bottom of this page,

[1:32:16] Bob Dobbs: what is that,

[1:32:17] Bob Dobbs: page 87?

[1:32:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:32:19] Bob Dobbs: sir.

[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: Page 87.

[1:32:22] Bob Dobbs: I have a good quote from Barry Nevitt from his book,

[1:32:25] Bob Dobbs: ABC of Prophecy,

[1:32:26] Bob Dobbs: which he put out in 1980.

[1:32:31] Bob Dobbs: The quote is,

[1:32:32] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan perceives that consciousness,

[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: and consciousness is in quotes,

[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan foresees that consciousness will prove to be an effect of speeding up cliché to archetype processes in the brain,

[1:32:45] Bob Dobbs: speeding them up.

[1:32:46] Bob Dobbs: So we've been doing that,

[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: taking the cliches of McLuhan,

[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: putting archetypal force to it,

[1:32:56] Bob Dobbs: and trying to wake,

[1:32:58] Bob Dobbs: get consciousness.

[1:33:01] Bob Dobbs: And of course,

[1:33:03] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of...

[1:33:03] Cameron McEwen: Let's understand speeding up there.

[1:33:07] Cameron McEwen: In another way,

[1:33:09] Cameron McEwen: when the people like

[1:33:13] Cameron McEwen: Lavoisier and Priestley were trying to understand the elements of the physical world,

[1:33:21] Cameron McEwen: and they came to isolate oxygen,

[1:33:27] Cameron McEwen: and I think that happened in the

[1:33:29] Cameron McEwen: 1780s.

[1:33:33] Cameron McEwen: You could say that the...

[1:33:37] Cameron McEwen: They were learning to speed up our perception of the relation between physical elements and the physical world.

[1:33:49] Cameron McEwen: They were speeding them up in a way that jumped out of the old understanding into a whole new understanding.

[1:33:59] Cameron McEwen: And so speeding up there isn't a linear acceleration that builds.

[1:34:07] Cameron McEwen: on point after point after point,

[1:34:11] Cameron McEwen: it's a jumping from one understanding of cliché to archetype to another.

[1:34:18] Cameron McEwen: So if we understood all clichés as embodying archetypes and all archetypes as being themselves clichés,

[1:34:28] Cameron McEwen: that's a completely different understanding of cliché to archetype from one that thinks of a cliché

[1:34:37] Cameron McEwen: in terms of a certain term that is to be understood in some way by an archetype that is itself consolidated.

[1:34:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: so that image of speed up in movies,

[1:34:52] Bob Dobbs: TV,

[1:34:53] Bob Dobbs: the blur,

[1:34:54] Bob Dobbs: they'll show speed up with the blur.

[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: That's not speed up.

[1:34:59] Bob Dobbs: That's a linear speed up.

[1:35:01] Bob Dobbs: That's not the speed up we're talking about.

[1:35:02] Bob Dobbs: It's a quantum leap is a popular phrase.

[1:35:05] Bob Dobbs: It's the speed up we're talking about.

[1:35:07] Bob Dobbs: Like he even said,

[1:35:08] Bob Dobbs: with the anti-environment,

[1:35:10] Bob Dobbs: he only said this once,

[1:35:11] Bob Dobbs: with the anti-environment,

[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: we leaped.

[1:35:13] Bob Dobbs: We evolved a million years.

[1:35:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:35:17] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:35:19] Cameron McEwen: He often spoke of events of,

[1:35:23] Cameron McEwen: and now people are saying this in regards to the war,

[1:35:25] Cameron McEwen: by the way.

[1:35:27] Cameron McEwen: A lot of people are talking about how history has sped up,

[1:35:32] Cameron McEwen: how it's possible now to lead to experience of 10 years,

[1:35:42] Cameron McEwen: 10 years of events.

[1:35:43] Cameron McEwen: in a single day,

[1:35:45] Cameron McEwen: something like that.

[1:35:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:35:46] Bob Dobbs: people walking around here a month ago,

[1:35:50] Bob Dobbs: here in the tourist paradise of Maui,

[1:35:53] Bob Dobbs: did not know that they would be confronting the end of the world a few weeks later,

[1:35:57] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[1:35:58] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:35:58] Bob Dobbs: That's speed up.

[1:35:59] Cameron McEwen: Exactly right.

[1:36:00] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:36:00] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[1:36:02] Bob Dobbs: So then I have another quote from just below,

[1:36:06] Bob Dobbs: Barry's quote,

[1:36:09] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan,

[1:36:10] Bob Dobbs: Kathryn Hutchon,

[1:36:11] Bob Dobbs: and Eric McLuhan,

[1:36:11] Bob Dobbs: City as Classroom.

[1:36:14] Bob Dobbs: They say a study of cliches which,

[1:36:18] Bob Dobbs: when pushed to extremes,

[1:36:19] Bob Dobbs: flip into archetypes and vice versa.

[1:36:23] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:36:26] Cameron McEwen: They often talk about figure and ground that way.

[1:36:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:36:29] Bob Dobbs: that is flipping.

[1:36:32] Bob Dobbs: I think I saw a video in 1975 at TV Ontario where the student in the audience said,

[1:36:41] Bob Dobbs: haven't we kind of gone past?

[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: your movie is an art form and then TV is an art form,

[1:36:47] Bob Dobbs: that sequence that McLuhan would do,

[1:36:49] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:36:50] Bob Dobbs: Plato turns oral culture into an art form by making a book,

[1:36:56] Bob Dobbs: a Socratic book.

[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: So this guy says,

[1:37:00] Bob Dobbs: haven't we gone beyond that?

[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan says,

[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,

[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: there's been many flip points since then.

[1:37:07] Bob Dobbs: Since the last one I mentioned,

[1:37:09] Bob Dobbs: many,

[1:37:09] Bob Dobbs: many flip points.

[1:37:12] Bob Dobbs: So we then go to,

[1:37:16] Bob Dobbs: so he coined this new word,

[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: intermedia.

[1:37:21] Bob Dobbs: So I say it's about the obsolescence of the medium as the message theme.

[1:37:25] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan turned it into a synthesis study of intermedia,

[1:37:28] Bob Dobbs: not media and not understanding media.

[1:37:31] Bob Dobbs: It was intermedia action,

[1:37:34] Bob Dobbs: which meant,

[1:37:34] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: we can't tell the difference between the message and the media.

[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: It's all tactility blurred.

[1:37:41] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:37:41] Bob Dobbs: he never.

[1:37:42] Bob Dobbs: said those actual words,

[1:37:43] Bob Dobbs: but that is the last phase when he's talking to the priest.

[1:37:46] Bob Dobbs: And he says,

[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: I can't tell what his message or medium anymore.

[1:37:50] Bob Dobbs: So I just summed it up with this colloquial statement.

[1:37:54] Bob Dobbs: We can't tell the difference between the message and the media.

[1:37:56] Bob Dobbs: It's all tactility blurred,

[1:37:59] Bob Dobbs: but it's not blurred visually,

[1:38:02] Bob Dobbs: as I was just saying.

[1:38:03] Bob Dobbs: It's not kinetic blur.

[1:38:05] Bob Dobbs: It's tactility blurred,

[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: which means that you've gone into the accident.

[1:38:10] Cameron McEwen: that Lusseyran had i mean he's blind and then he goes in a blind squared right correct yeah yeah yeah so this this we're actually circling back to where we started Innis conversation because

[1:38:25] Cameron McEwen: um when i was uh talking about 11 i was trying to talk about um the uh fact that 11 couldn't be understood aside from gaps.

[1:38:37] Cameron McEwen: The gaps of...

[1:38:39] Cameron McEwen: prime numbers as differentiated from Pryde numbers,

[1:38:43] Cameron McEwen: or the gaps between the prime numbers themselves,

[1:38:46] Cameron McEwen: or the gaps between the two ones that make up 11.

[1:38:53] Cameron McEwen: So what you're talking about by this blur and by the flip points,

[1:39:01] Cameron McEwen: it always comes back to the gap.

[1:39:04] Cameron McEwen: And the fact that the last thing human beings want to do is...

[1:39:09] Cameron McEwen: enter into the gap in order to come to an understanding.

[1:39:15] Cameron McEwen: But the only way to come to an understanding is by entering into the gap.

[1:39:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:39:20] Bob Dobbs: so

[1:39:24] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan meant that with his phrase,

[1:39:26] Bob Dobbs: exploring ignorance for discovery?

[1:39:29] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:39:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:39:30] Bob Dobbs: that was his motto for all the stuff he said.

[1:39:35] Bob Dobbs: He'd come back to that.

[1:39:37] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: so

[1:39:39] Bob Dobbs: we're coming up near time to wrap up so two more quotes that I have after what I've done the actual quote just below he's interviewed by Father Patrick Peyton November 14th 1971 we're focusing a lot on 1971 today

[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says I guess the guy asked explain the medium is the message and McLuhan goes well the medium

[1:40:05] Bob Dobbs: It's hard to know now where the medium begins and where it ends,

[1:40:10] Bob Dobbs: because,

[1:40:10] Bob Dobbs: and then,

[1:40:11] Bob Dobbs: I don't think he finishes the sentence,

[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what he says.

[1:40:15] Bob Dobbs: But that's for him announcing the intermedia game he's playing.

[1:40:22] Cameron McEwen: He talked a lot.

[1:40:23] Cameron McEwen: Right in 1970,

[1:40:26] Cameron McEwen: 1971,

[1:40:29] Cameron McEwen: his main idea in those years was that the reason people didn't understand what he was talking about,

[1:40:36] Cameron McEwen: or didn't understand what anybody was talking about,

[1:40:39] Cameron McEwen: was that they didn't understand discontinuity.

[1:40:42] Cameron McEwen: So he begins to talk about discontinuity in a whole bunch of different ways,

[1:40:47] Cameron McEwen: one of which was to talk in terms of

[1:40:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeats, especially talking about multitude,

[1:40:58] Cameron McEwen: because you can't understand multitude without understanding the intermedia,

[1:41:05] Cameron McEwen: without understanding the borders that first define a multitude.

[1:41:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:41:10] Bob Dobbs: was that where he talked about?

[1:41:11] Bob Dobbs: the phrase from Yeats,

[1:41:12] Bob Dobbs: the emotion of multitude?

[1:41:14] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you're thinking?

[1:41:14] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:41:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:41:16] Cameron McEwen: that's a very short,

[1:41:18] Cameron McEwen: it's a one-page essay called The Emotion of Multitude.

[1:41:21] Bob Dobbs: And he gets into the subplot,

[1:41:23] Bob Dobbs: which is your two lines,

[1:41:25] Bob Dobbs: plot and subplot.

[1:41:25] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:41:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:41:27] Cameron McEwen: which is the appealing.

[1:41:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:41:29] Bob Dobbs: there it is.

[1:41:30] Bob Dobbs: So the next year,

[1:41:35] Bob Dobbs: two years later,

[1:41:36] Bob Dobbs: Ecclesiastes Archive is 1970,

[1:41:39] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[1:41:40] Bob Dobbs: Out Comes the Executive's Dropout,

[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: take today the Executive's Dropout,

[1:41:43] Bob Dobbs: 1972.

[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: So here's a...

[1:41:44] Cameron McEwen: It was written in 1971.

[1:41:48] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?

[1:41:49] Cameron McEwen: It was written in 1971.

[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:41:52] Bob Dobbs: And that's the year you're confronting McLuhan in his office about what you should do,

[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:42:01] Cameron McEwen: It was in 71.

[1:42:01] Cameron McEwen: I don't really know when it was.

[1:42:04] Cameron McEwen: Nowadays,

[1:42:04] Cameron McEwen: I'm leaning more to 1969.

[1:42:09] Cameron McEwen: Right in that 1969,

[1:42:12] Cameron McEwen: 70,

[1:42:12] Cameron McEwen: 71 period.

[1:42:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:42:15] Bob Dobbs: I often ask Ion when these things happen.

[1:42:18] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I'll ask him,

[1:42:19] Bob Dobbs: see if he can pinpoint it.

[1:42:21] Bob Dobbs: Though they don't do time,

[1:42:23] Bob Dobbs: but he can give a relative something,

[1:42:26] Bob Dobbs: a relationship.

[1:42:28] Bob Dobbs: So in 71 is when Morris is telling me they're retreating.

[1:42:33] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:42:34] Bob Dobbs: Morris is not going to do the role that he had been doing in the public.

[1:42:39] Bob Dobbs: as a,

[1:42:39] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:42:40] Bob Dobbs: leader or Posthuman artist,

[1:42:42] Bob Dobbs: or the man who was the center of culture and technology.

[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: That's quite a center,

[1:42:48] Bob Dobbs: to be the center for all culture and all technology,

[1:42:51] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:42:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:42:53] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:42:53] Bob Dobbs: He was dropping that role.

[1:42:56] Cameron McEwen: He realized the center was de-centered.

[1:43:01] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:43:01] Bob Dobbs: So this is a great line,

[1:43:04] Bob Dobbs: great paragraph on page 137.

[1:43:07] Bob Dobbs: I think this is maybe his...

[1:43:09] Bob Dobbs: Very most complex statement.

[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: And we are doing that all the time.

[1:43:16] Bob Dobbs: We've caught up to this complexity.

[1:43:18] Bob Dobbs: So what he says,

[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: it's at the bottom of page 137.

[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: Food for the mind is like food for the body.

[1:43:25] Bob Dobbs: The inputs are never the same as the outputs.

[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: So what you eat is not the same as the output at the end of your digestion.

[1:43:36] Bob Dobbs: This pattern of non-lineality,

[1:43:38] Bob Dobbs: there's your...

[1:43:39] Bob Dobbs: your discontinuity this pattern of non-lineality is evident in every human activity as figures and i put that in quotes he's talking about our senses as figures all senses create their own spaces which are metamorphosed by interaction with

[1:43:56] Bob Dobbs: their environmental grounds grounds is in quotes now here comes the most complex statement maybe McLuhan's ever made or barry did it causes and that's in quotes

[1:44:08] Bob Dobbs: become effects,

[1:44:09] Bob Dobbs: and effects is in quotes.

[1:44:10] Bob Dobbs: But the next two words,

[1:44:13] Bob Dobbs: via or via concepts,

[1:44:15] Bob Dobbs: is italicized.

[1:44:16] Bob Dobbs: That's on another level.

[1:44:18] Bob Dobbs: Causes become effects via concepts.

[1:44:21] Bob Dobbs: So if you take McLuhan saying that the medium causes this,

[1:44:25] Bob Dobbs: the radio caused World War II,

[1:44:29] Bob Dobbs: to do that,

[1:44:30] Bob Dobbs: you're turning it into a concept,

[1:44:33] Bob Dobbs: and it just becomes an effect.

[1:44:35] Bob Dobbs: Even though he has to say radio cause World War II,

[1:44:38] Bob Dobbs: but your response to that,

[1:44:41] Bob Dobbs: your conceptualizing of what he means gets into problems.

[1:44:45] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:44:45] Cameron McEwen: But we shouldn't say that that turns into a concept.

[1:44:50] Cameron McEwen: It comes from a concept.

[1:44:52] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:44:53] Bob Dobbs: that's what he says,

[1:44:53] Bob Dobbs: via concepts.

[1:44:54] Bob Dobbs: He says causes become effects via concepts.

[1:44:59] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:45:00] Bob Dobbs: So you've lost the understanding or perception of the cause.

[1:45:03] Bob Dobbs: It's just another effect,

[1:45:04] Bob Dobbs: the way you've...

[1:45:06] Bob Dobbs: reduced it in your attempt to translate into Gutenbergian tactility.

[1:45:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:45:12] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:45:12] Cameron McEwen: causes and both causes and effects are in quotation marks because they have been moralized into singularities.

[1:45:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:45:25] Cameron McEwen: Whereas,

[1:45:26] Cameron McEwen: in fact,

[1:45:27] Cameron McEwen: they're confused kind of fogs,

[1:45:30] Cameron McEwen: each one of them.

[1:45:31] Cameron McEwen: And so their relationship as complex fogs becomes very difficult and is what intermediality is.

[1:45:42] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:45:42] Bob Dobbs: And you said FOGS,

[1:45:43] Bob Dobbs: F-O-G-S?

[1:45:44] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:45:45] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[1:45:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: So what you were saying,

[1:45:47] Bob Dobbs: the should,

[1:45:49] Bob Dobbs: you were shooting on everybody,

[1:45:51] Bob Dobbs: is what he says after that statement.

[1:45:54] Bob Dobbs: Causes become effective via concepts,

[1:45:56] Bob Dobbs: whereas effects merge with causes,

[1:45:59] Bob Dobbs: and they're not italicized,

[1:46:00] Bob Dobbs: or in quotes,

[1:46:02] Bob Dobbs: whereas effects merge with causes in process pattern recognition via percepts,

[1:46:08] Bob Dobbs: but via percepts it's not italicized.

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: there's a lot in that sentence there.

[1:46:15] Cameron McEwen: And neither are effects and causes in the last clause.

[1:46:21] Cameron McEwen: So causes and effects are both within quotation marks at the start of the sentence,

[1:46:27] Cameron McEwen: and then they drop their quotation marks as he continues.

[1:46:31] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:46:31] Bob Dobbs: they merge,

[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: so they don't become gapped.

[1:46:35] Bob Dobbs: They lose their gap.

[1:46:37] Bob Dobbs: Or is that making the gap?

[1:46:38] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: It's vice versa.

[1:46:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:46:41] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:46:41] Cameron McEwen: it's...

[1:46:43] Cameron McEwen: First off,

[1:46:43] Cameron McEwen: the gap is always there.

[1:46:45] Cameron McEwen: So it's a question of whether or not the gap is recognized and allowed to be operative.

[1:46:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:46:54] Cameron McEwen: When causes are in quotation marks,

[1:46:57] Cameron McEwen: that's an un-gapped cause.

[1:47:00] Cameron McEwen: And then that's related to an effect in quotation marks,

[1:47:04] Cameron McEwen: which is an un-gapped effect.

[1:47:07] Cameron McEwen: So the two of them are un-gapped on their own.

[1:47:10] Cameron McEwen: and then their relationship is also un-gapped.

[1:47:13] Cameron McEwen: That's a concept.

[1:47:15] Cameron McEwen: A percept is when these things are understood in terms of their gap plurality,

[1:47:22] Cameron McEwen: and then they're no longer in quotation marks.

[1:47:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:47:26] Bob Dobbs: gap plurality.

[1:47:28] Bob Dobbs: You said gap plurality.

[1:47:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:47:30] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[1:47:31] Cameron McEwen: So what's difficult for humans to understand is that when something comes into its clarity,

[1:47:39] Cameron McEwen: which you could say is dropping its quotation marks,

[1:47:43] Cameron McEwen: when it comes into its clarity,

[1:47:46] Cameron McEwen: it contains an inherent gap,

[1:47:50] Cameron McEwen: and it's complex and foggy,

[1:47:54] Cameron McEwen: F-O-G-G-Y.

[1:47:56] Cameron McEwen: So humans have a very difficult time understanding that illumination requires those kinds of darknesses,

[1:48:05] Cameron McEwen: but that's just what human being is.

[1:48:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:48:09] Bob Dobbs: Humans,

[1:48:10] Bob Dobbs: they might Gilson to a presentation,

[1:48:12] Bob Dobbs: a lecture or something,

[1:48:14] Bob Dobbs: and they'll come out of it and say,

[1:48:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm more confused now than I was before I came here.

[1:48:19] Bob Dobbs: They don't recognize the services of that confusion.

[1:48:22] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:48:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: good stuff.

[1:48:26] Bob Dobbs: Our stuff,

[1:48:26] Bob Dobbs: what we're doing now,

[1:48:28] Bob Dobbs: past hour and a half or more,

[1:48:30] Bob Dobbs: should be confusing the listener.

[1:48:33] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:48:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:48:34] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:48:35] Cameron McEwen: Because we're,

[1:48:35] Cameron McEwen: at least on my side,

[1:48:37] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.

[1:48:37] Cameron McEwen: I'm pretty confused myself.

[1:48:40] Bob Dobbs: I would never admit that,

[1:48:41] Bob Dobbs: but of course

[1:48:43] Bob Dobbs: I'm very confused.

[1:48:46] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:48:46] Bob Dobbs: I say it a bit in a different tone there,

[1:48:48] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:48:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:48:49] Bob Dobbs: You're confusing,

[1:48:50] Bob Dobbs: but I'm really confused.

[1:48:52] Bob Dobbs: Causes become effects via concepts,

[1:48:55] Bob Dobbs: whereas effects merge with causes and process pattern recognition via percepts.

[1:49:00] Bob Dobbs: Have you thought much about that sentence through the years,

[1:49:02] Bob Dobbs: looked at it?

[1:49:04] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:49:05] Cameron McEwen: I am very aware that...

[1:49:07] Cameron McEwen: in lots of your work,

[1:49:10] Cameron McEwen: you emphasize that paragraph.

[1:49:13] Cameron McEwen: And sometimes you just say,

[1:49:17] Cameron McEwen: you'll say something like,

[1:49:19] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:49:19] Cameron McEwen: this reminds me of page 137.

[1:49:23] Bob Dobbs: The sacred page

[1:49:26] Bob Dobbs: 137. The archetype.

[1:49:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:49:29] Cameron McEwen: but when a person,

[1:49:31] Cameron McEwen: one of the things that I think is to

[1:49:34] Cameron McEwen: Interesting about talking to you or about reading stuff you've written is that it often repays thought.

[1:49:45] Cameron McEwen: So thinking about this paragraph in 137 is an important thing to do.

[1:49:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:49:52] Cameron McEwen: And people should do it.

[1:49:55] Bob Dobbs: And nobody did do it.

[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: So I did it.

[1:49:57] Bob Dobbs: I had to do it.

[1:49:58] Bob Dobbs: Somebody had to do it.

[1:49:59] Bob Dobbs: So I did it.

[1:50:00] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:50:00] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:50:00] Bob Dobbs: I'm emphasizing something.

[1:50:02] Bob Dobbs: You might have read it,

[1:50:03] Bob Dobbs: but you had not been thinking much about it through the years.

[1:50:07] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:50:08] Cameron McEwen: And you show that...

[1:50:11] Cameron McEwen: One of the most important ways to think about this is to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it,

[1:50:19] Cameron McEwen: but not repeating it mechanically,

[1:50:23] Cameron McEwen: re-gap repeating it in a way that indicates that it's constantly being reconsidered,

[1:50:32] Cameron McEwen: put into replay.

[1:50:34] Cameron McEwen: All of these re-things are always at stake.

[1:50:39] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.

[1:50:40] Bob Dobbs: And then.

[1:50:40] Bob Dobbs: I make an oral commentary below that.

[1:50:42] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[1:50:43] Bob Dobbs: referring to what this thing we've just analyzed,

[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: via concepts and via percepts,

[1:50:49] Bob Dobbs: that's McLuhan most complex sentence intake today.

[1:50:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm throwing that in because I'm starting to make a little more complex global village and calling it global theater,

[1:50:58] Bob Dobbs: which a letter earlier tonight called overlaying.

[1:51:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm bringing in very rare quotations explaining that the global village is more complex than expected.

[1:51:08] Bob Dobbs: It's actually the global theater,

[1:51:09] Bob Dobbs: as you'll see in the following quotation.

[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: So what is,

[1:51:12] Bob Dobbs: oh yes,

[1:51:13] Bob Dobbs: so then this quotation is interesting.

[1:51:18] Bob Dobbs: And it's from

[1:51:20] Bob Dobbs: Take Today Again,

[1:51:21] Bob Dobbs: page 294.

[1:51:25] Bob Dobbs: The extension,

[1:51:26] Bob Dobbs: now this is italicized,

[1:51:27] Bob Dobbs: the extension of the planet itself meant that the technology was not transported by individual or collective man,

[1:51:33] Bob Dobbs: but by his previous environment,

[1:51:35] Bob Dobbs: the Earth.

[1:51:36] Bob Dobbs: Interesting.

[1:51:37] Bob Dobbs: The extension of the planet itself meant that technology did not come from man.

[1:51:43] Cameron McEwen: Listen,

[1:51:43] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:51:46] Cameron McEwen: this is one indication of how your writing indicates beyond itself.

[1:51:55] Cameron McEwen: Because

[1:51:56] Cameron McEwen: I hadn't realized it before,

[1:51:58] Cameron McEwen: but I realize now that this quotation from 294 take today actually goes back to the connubium.

[1:52:06] Cameron McEwen: quote from

[1:52:09] Cameron McEwen: War and Peace,

[1:52:10] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:52:10] Cameron McEwen: Because that connubium quote is talking about the extension of the planet itself.

[1:52:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:52:16] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:52:17] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[1:52:18] Cameron McEwen: So you're pointing out something very important here.

[1:52:21] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.

[1:52:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:52:23] Bob Dobbs: that's another quote you can add to that theme.

[1:52:26] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:52:27] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to take this quote and put it into a footnote in the connubium of being post and show how this

[1:52:36] Cameron McEwen: Thanks.

[1:52:36] Cameron McEwen: quotation is related to the previous one from The End of War and Peace.

[1:52:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: and you'll say,

[1:52:43] Bob Dobbs: thanks to Bob Dobbs.

[1:52:45] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:52:45] Bob Dobbs: I'll get credit.

[1:52:46] Cameron McEwen: I'll say,

[1:52:47] Cameron McEwen: Bob deserves credit.

[1:52:50] Cameron McEwen: The usual phrase for that.

[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: but less I'm proud of in terms of McLuhan world,

[1:52:56] Bob Dobbs: I'm pointing out stuff that nobody ever brings up.

[1:52:58] Bob Dobbs: They don't even notice it.

[1:53:00] Bob Dobbs: They're not working with McLuhan.

[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: If they were,

[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: they would be pointing out these

[1:53:05] Bob Dobbs: particular quotations,

[1:53:07] Bob Dobbs: they're very important,

[1:53:08] Bob Dobbs: these ones,

[1:53:09] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:53:10] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that what you're saying?

[1:53:10] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:53:11] Cameron McEwen: I'm not only saying that.

[1:53:13] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying that there's a way.

[1:53:14] Cameron McEwen: It's not a question of selecting quotations so much as a way of thinking with

[1:53:23] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan that appreciates his complications.

[1:53:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:53:28] Cameron McEwen: And your thinking does do that.

[1:53:31] Cameron McEwen: And then as part of that,

[1:53:34] Cameron McEwen: it's...

[1:53:35] Cameron McEwen: shows how there's certain key quotations that can help a person along that way.

[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: it helps them remain gapped.

[1:53:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:53:48] Bob Dobbs: remain gapped.

[1:53:49] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[1:53:50] Bob Dobbs: so we'll just finish up with this,

[1:53:51] Bob Dobbs: and then we can end because you've got to move on.

[1:53:54] Bob Dobbs: So it became a total,

[1:53:58] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:53:58] Bob Dobbs: so this is a situation where the planet extended itself.

[1:54:02] Bob Dobbs: It became a totally new game with new ground rules,

[1:54:06] Bob Dobbs: ground italics.

[1:54:07] Bob Dobbs: Our ground,

[1:54:08] Bob Dobbs: italicized,

[1:54:10] Bob Dobbs: now was literally in the sky.

[1:54:12] Bob Dobbs: The ground was in the sky.

[1:54:14] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that interesting?

[1:54:16] Bob Dobbs: An aerial perspective had come to despotize from the Greek Lester Pearson,

[1:54:21] Bob Dobbs: which means for inclusive vision from above,

[1:54:25] Bob Dobbs: is the Greek for knowing something inside out,

[1:54:27] Bob Dobbs: which he has on page 136 of from Ecclesiarch of Tithes.

[1:54:31] Bob Dobbs: That is the British bias,

[1:54:32] Bob Dobbs: to know something inside out.

[1:54:34] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:54:34] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:54:34] Bob Dobbs: it's the American bias,

[1:54:36] Bob Dobbs: to know something inside out.

[1:54:38] Bob Dobbs: The British person says,

[1:54:39] Bob Dobbs: I know it like the back of my hand,

[1:54:40] Bob Dobbs: and there's eight cultural,

[1:54:43] Bob Dobbs: what he calls plenary Cosmic Awareness.

[1:54:45] Bob Dobbs: So I think it's the American culture that says,

[1:54:48] Bob Dobbs: I know it's something inside out.

[1:54:50] Bob Dobbs: So an aerial perspective had come to despotize.

[1:54:53] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[1:54:54] Bob Dobbs: people thought they knew something inside out.

[1:54:57] Cameron McEwen: I noticed in the war,

[1:55:01] Cameron McEwen: Putin is often called a despot.

[1:55:04] Bob Dobbs: Ah,

[1:55:04] Cameron McEwen: interesting.

[1:55:05] Cameron McEwen: So the despot comes from this Greek word.

[1:55:11] Cameron McEwen: And it has to do,

[1:55:13] Cameron McEwen: a despot is a person who controls a state or a situation.

[1:55:21] Cameron McEwen: And so the very heart of the Gutenberg Galaxy is the attempt to control a process.

[1:55:31] Cameron McEwen: Could be an assembly line,

[1:55:34] Cameron McEwen: could be the generation of an artwork,

[1:55:36] Cameron McEwen: but the human being despotizes.

[1:55:41] Cameron McEwen: becomes a despot over a process.

[1:55:45] Bob Dobbs: And you know who did that in the past couple of weeks?

[1:55:48] Bob Dobbs: It was Elon Musk when he brought in his Starlink to despotize the aerial perspective.

[1:55:55] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to make his ground be in the sky,

[1:56:01] Bob Dobbs: where the ground is.

[1:56:03] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:56:03] Cameron McEwen: But notice that,

[1:56:05] Cameron McEwen: at least for McLuhan and arguably for Musk as well,

[1:56:10] Cameron McEwen: It's not that the ground and the sky are being understood as a cause and effect in quotation marks or something.

[1:56:26] Cameron McEwen: They're being understood in the dynamic.

[1:56:29] Cameron McEwen: And when the dynamic between the two is understood,

[1:56:33] Cameron McEwen: then you can no longer despotize them in the sense of fixing them.

[1:56:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:56:39] Bob Dobbs: perfect.

[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: So then he says,

[1:56:41] Bob Dobbs: whereas previous extensions had altered the speed of human motions in a great variety of ways,

[1:56:47] Bob Dobbs: freely hybridizing with one another,

[1:56:50] Bob Dobbs: the new extension of the planet seemed to call despotically for a new harmonizing of the spheres of action,

[1:56:57] Bob Dobbs: influence,

[1:56:58] Bob Dobbs: and knowledge.

[1:56:59] Bob Dobbs: Now that's what they call a great reset,

[1:57:03] Bob Dobbs: or the new world order,

[1:57:04] Bob Dobbs: 20 years ago,

[1:57:05] Bob Dobbs: 30 years ago,

[1:57:06] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:57:07] Bob Dobbs: They're attempting to harmonize it.

[1:57:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:57:10] Cameron McEwen: but we have to understand that there's different kinds of reset.

[1:57:15] Cameron McEwen: The great reset,

[1:57:17] Cameron McEwen: if I understand it correctly,

[1:57:19] Cameron McEwen: is a reset to a certain set of norms,

[1:57:24] Cameron McEwen: a certain set of law.

[1:57:26] Cameron McEwen: And it's the law of Western civilization understood in sort of American exceptionality.

[1:57:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:57:36] Cameron McEwen: Whereas the reset that we're talking about or that McLuhan is talking about is a completely different reset from that.

[1:57:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:57:44] Bob Dobbs: The reset already happened.

[1:57:46] Bob Dobbs: We've got to understand what happened.

[1:57:49] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:57:49] Cameron McEwen: A reset that's actually the ground of the world.

[1:57:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:57:53] Bob Dobbs: So this is a good sentence.

[1:57:56] Cameron McEwen: A very good one.

[1:57:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:58:00] Cameron McEwen: As usual,

[1:58:02] Cameron McEwen: you're saying more than you're right.

[1:58:05] Bob Dobbs: What is that?

[1:58:06] Bob Dobbs: My reach exceeds my grasp?

[1:58:09] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:58:11] Bob Dobbs: The new extension.

[1:58:12] Cameron McEwen: And grasp,

[1:58:13] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:58:14] Cameron McEwen: the word concept comes from grasp.

[1:58:17] Bob Dobbs: Ah,

[1:58:17] Bob Dobbs: that's a good one.

[1:58:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:58:20] Bob Dobbs: The baby is starting to use their hands to grab onto something,

[1:58:26] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:58:27] Bob Dobbs: The baby's always reaching out,

[1:58:29] Bob Dobbs: trying to hold something,

[1:58:31] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:58:31] Bob Dobbs: Grasp something,

[1:58:33] Bob Dobbs: is what I recall.

[1:58:34] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:58:35] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true,

[1:58:35] Cameron McEwen: but the baby,

[1:58:37] Cameron McEwen: in reaching out,

[1:58:39] Cameron McEwen: comes to a new understanding of the world.

[1:58:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:58:41] Bob Dobbs: that's how they understand.

[1:58:43] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:58:45] Cameron McEwen: So the reaching out is gapped.

[1:58:48] Cameron McEwen: The baby has to jump from an understanding of the world that is kind of womb-based into an understanding of the world that is a social language.

[1:59:03] Cameron McEwen: social structuring of the world.

[1:59:07] Cameron McEwen: So in the first counterblast in 54,

[1:59:14] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan calls this something,

[1:59:18] Cameron McEwen: doesn't he say it's a lighting up of the night of the world?

[1:59:21] Cameron McEwen: Doesn't he say something like that?

[1:59:23] Cameron McEwen: That that's what language is?

[1:59:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't remember that.

[1:59:26] Bob Dobbs: I'll have to look at that.

[1:59:27] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:59:29] Bob Dobbs: That's interesting.

[1:59:31] Bob Dobbs: So the

[1:59:31] Bob Dobbs: Extension of the plant itself is a new grasp,

[1:59:34] Bob Dobbs: new grasping.

[1:59:35] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:59:36] Cameron McEwen: So remember at the end of

[1:59:38] Cameron McEwen: War and Peace,

[1:59:41] Cameron McEwen: what he's talking about is the,

[1:59:45] Cameron McEwen: I forget the technical word for it,

[1:59:49] Cameron McEwen: but he's talking about species either giving.

[2:00:01] Bob Dobbs: The outbreeder,

[2:00:02] Bob Dobbs: outbreeder.

[2:00:03] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[2:00:04] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[2:00:04] Cameron McEwen: The outbreeder and the inbreeder.

[2:00:06] Cameron McEwen: And he says there that now the world itself is becoming an outbreeder.

[2:00:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:00:14] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[2:00:14] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[2:00:14] Cameron McEwen: And look at the two passages work very closely together.

[2:00:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:00:20] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:00:22] Bob Dobbs: And so he says that in 68 and four years later,

[2:00:28] Bob Dobbs: he is checking.

[2:00:29] Bob Dobbs: what you might have done with page 190.

[2:00:32] Bob Dobbs: You might have conceptualized it because he's saying this new connubium that the world is arriving at,

[2:00:39] Bob Dobbs: was it macro connubium?

[2:00:42] Bob Dobbs: It's macro in there.

[2:00:44] Bob Dobbs: It can flip into despotically harmonizing the spheres of action,

[2:00:51] Bob Dobbs: influence,

[2:00:52] Bob Dobbs: and knowledge.

[2:00:52] Bob Dobbs: You see?

[2:00:54] Bob Dobbs: Most people are trying to harmonize.

[2:00:57] Bob Dobbs: These areas,

[2:00:58] Bob Dobbs: action,

[2:00:58] Bob Dobbs: influence,

[2:00:58] Bob Dobbs: knowledge,

[2:00:59] Bob Dobbs: have no understanding of the ground of what it requires.

[2:01:04] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[2:01:04] Cameron McEwen: So that gets into the gap.

[2:01:07] Cameron McEwen: But notice how this goes back to our discussion earlier this evening about the whole problem of trying to isolate the fundamentals and apply them.

[2:01:22] Cameron McEwen: So here he's talking about the spheres of action.

[2:01:25] Cameron McEwen: Influence and knowledge,

[2:01:27] Cameron McEwen: and those spheres,

[2:01:29] Cameron McEwen: plural,

[2:01:31] Cameron McEwen: are what the great minds have entered into and they've explored them.

[2:01:38] Cameron McEwen: But when they've come to its communication,

[2:01:40] Cameron McEwen: when they've come to its application,

[2:01:43] Cameron McEwen: they haven't been able to do it.

[2:01:44] Cameron McEwen: It's not necessarily a personal failing.

[2:01:47] Cameron McEwen: It has to do with a failing of what it means to be a human being,

[2:01:51] Cameron McEwen: what it means to be finite.

[2:01:54] Cameron McEwen: But now that problem of this inability is hanging over us like the sword of Damocles.

[2:02:05] Cameron McEwen: We don't know what's...

[2:02:08] Cameron McEwen: going to eventuate out of that failure in the context of the war.

[2:02:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:02:14] Bob Dobbs: the impulse to be the new pharaoh,

[2:02:17] Bob Dobbs: harmonizing of the spheres.

[2:02:20] Bob Dobbs: So these are great quotes coming up here.

[2:02:22] Bob Dobbs: So it's going to be fun to continue to explore these.

[2:02:25] Bob Dobbs: These are really good.

[2:02:26] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[2:02:27] Cameron McEwen: It's difficult to fathom the SubGenius that it took to isolate these things and to bring them into relationship.

[2:02:34] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:02:34] Bob Dobbs: by harmonizing of the quote,

[2:02:35] Bob Dobbs: it's incredible.

[2:02:37] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:02:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:02:40] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:02:40] Bob Dobbs: thank you very much,

[2:02:41] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron,

[2:02:42] Bob Dobbs: and look forward to the next session.

[2:02:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:02:45] Cameron McEwen: we'll look forward to the next one.

[2:02:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:02:47] Bob Dobbs: great.

[2:02:47] Bob Dobbs: Talk to you soon.

[2:02:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:02:49] Cameron McEwen: remember you want to try and find the

[2:02:51] Cameron McEwen: Peter Montgomery thing.

[2:02:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:02:53] Bob Dobbs: and also I'll look up counterblast,

[2:02:56] Bob Dobbs: and I'm going to make a note that we're starting at the top of page 89.

[2:03:00] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:03:00] Cameron McEwen: sir,

[2:03:01] Cameron McEwen: all of the above.

[2:03:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:03:02] Bob Dobbs: great.

[2:03:02] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[2:03:03] Bob Dobbs: bye.

[2:03:03] Cameron McEwen: Thanks,

[2:03:03] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[2:03:04] Bob Dobbs: You're welcome.

[2:03:04] Bob Dobbs: Bye.