Dialogue 48 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Hello,

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

[00:05] Bob Dobbs: and we're starting the

[00:07] Bob Dobbs: 48th episode of our dialogue revolving around my book Trump and the tech body.

[00:14] Bob Dobbs: And we're going to go into a quote on page 96.

[00:19] Bob Dobbs: That's how far we got the last two weeks ago.

[00:23] Bob Dobbs: But

[00:25] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron has brought up a quote from page 84,

[00:29] Bob Dobbs: which I don't,

[00:30] Bob Dobbs: did we talk about this quote?

[00:32] Bob Dobbs: I don't think we did.

[00:34] Cameron McEwen: Just a little bit,

[00:36] Cameron McEwen: but we really didn't sort of go into it.

[00:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[00:41] Cameron McEwen: One way to look at the quote is to see it in terms of the flow of the book.

[00:45] Cameron McEwen: Another way is to take it out of the flow of the book and look at it and see what sense-making.

[00:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[00:55] Bob Dobbs: So it's from a guy named Tom Dilworth,

[00:58] Bob Dobbs: who I don't know,

[00:59] Bob Dobbs: But he...

[01:00] Bob Dobbs: spoke at a conference in Ottawa 2002 or

[01:04] Bob Dobbs: 2003 and then they took the speakers essays or lectures and made a book out of it called at the speed of light there is only illumination so as the conference on McLuhan the title is at the time at the speed of light there's only illumination the book comes out in 2004 and this quote is from the lecture talk by Tom Dilworth on

[01:29] Bob Dobbs: page 33

[01:30] Bob Dobbs: So Dilworth says,

[01:32] Bob Dobbs: tired Desjardins fell into,

[01:35] Bob Dobbs: I have trap,

[01:36] Bob Dobbs: maybe it should be that trap,

[01:37] Bob Dobbs: or a trap of thinking there was a direction.

[01:40] Bob Dobbs: Now that's something you would say a thousand times,

[01:43] Bob Dobbs: right?

[01:43] Bob Dobbs: At Epsom.

[01:45] Bob Dobbs: Newman,

[01:46] Bob Dobbs: that means Cardinal Newman,

[01:48] Bob Dobbs: right?

[01:48] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[01:49] Bob Dobbs: Newman fell into the same trap.

[01:51] Bob Dobbs: Evolution is an unfortunate metaphor.

[01:54] Bob Dobbs: Clock time is visual.

[01:55] Bob Dobbs: Other cultures don't have it and is useless even as a metaphor at the speed of light.

[02:00] Bob Dobbs: So far,

[02:00] Bob Dobbs: I agree with him.

[02:03] Bob Dobbs: Under conditions of literacy,

[02:05] Bob Dobbs: continuum makes sense.

[02:06] Bob Dobbs: Continuum in quotes.

[02:08] Bob Dobbs: Acoustic man lives not in a continuum,

[02:11] Bob Dobbs: but in a sphere without margin or center.

[02:14] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[02:14] Bob Dobbs: he's pretty well quoting McLuhan accurately.

[02:17] Bob Dobbs: Maybe that's why I was struck by this guy's talk.

[02:19] Bob Dobbs: He was actually referring to the basics accurately.

[02:23] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[02:24] Bob Dobbs: As most people don't.

[02:26] Cameron McEwen: But

[02:27] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that...

[02:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would say that we talk about a sphere without margin or center.

[02:37] Cameron McEwen: He certainly spoke about a sphere without margin,

[02:41] Cameron McEwen: spoke about that a lot.

[02:42] Bob Dobbs: And he said centers everywhere.

[02:45] Cameron McEwen: That's correct.

[02:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[02:46] Cameron McEwen: That's absolutely correct.

[02:47] Cameron McEwen: So it's not that the sphere has no margin in the structural sense.

[02:55] Cameron McEwen: is that the sphere...

[02:58] Cameron McEwen: Whatever margins it has to define it as a sphere are also potentially centered.

[03:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[03:07] Cameron McEwen: that's a very good point.

[03:09] Cameron McEwen: But what bothers me is that the very next line,

[03:13] Cameron McEwen: he says man the Ross Perot.

[03:16] Cameron McEwen: But if you want to say that acoustic man lives in a sphere without margin or center,

[03:23] Cameron McEwen: that means that he doesn't live in a sphere.

[03:26] Cameron McEwen: a margin or center,

[03:27] Cameron McEwen: there is no sphere.

[03:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[03:29] Bob Dobbs: so actually he's now making a mistake.

[03:32] Cameron McEwen: I think so,

[03:32] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[03:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[03:33] Bob Dobbs: he's specializing,

[03:35] Bob Dobbs: he's taking the cliché that McLuhan pro-acoustic space and happy to go feudal and tribal and retrieve it.

[03:41] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[03:41] Bob Dobbs: that's where he's screwing up.

[03:43] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't seem to have a sense of the tactility.

[03:46] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[03:47] Bob Dobbs: under conditions of literacy,

[03:48] Bob Dobbs: continue to make sense.

[03:49] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[03:49] Bob Dobbs: that's okay up to that point.

[03:51] Bob Dobbs: Then he says,

[03:52] Bob Dobbs: Acoustic man lives not in a continuum but in a sphere without margin or center.

[03:56] Bob Dobbs: You explain the limitation of that sentence.

[03:59] Bob Dobbs: Then he has capitalized.

[04:00] Bob Dobbs: Man the Ross Perot,

[04:01] Bob Dobbs: or Ross Perot,

[04:03] Bob Dobbs: or Ross Perot,

[04:04] Bob Dobbs: man the sphere,

[04:06] Bob Dobbs: acoustic,

[04:06] Bob Dobbs: simultaneous man,

[04:08] Bob Dobbs: which you're always talking about,

[04:09] Bob Dobbs: is back together with a rush,

[04:11] Bob Dobbs: colon,

[04:12] Bob Dobbs: humpty dumpty.

[04:13] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[04:14] Bob Dobbs: that's okay,

[04:15] Bob Dobbs: man the Ross Perot,

[04:16] Bob Dobbs: but you object to him hyphenating this man stuck in the Ross Perot.

[04:22] Cameron McEwen: But also look at,

[04:23] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[04:23] Cameron McEwen: the next thing he brings up is Humpty Dumpty.

[04:26] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[04:27] Cameron McEwen: Humpty is not all back together,

[04:31] Cameron McEwen: right?

[04:31] Cameron McEwen: Humpty,

[04:32] Cameron McEwen: in order to,

[04:33] Cameron McEwen: the difference between Humpty Dumpty and an egg on the one hand and an omelet on the other is that

[04:41] Cameron McEwen: Humpty's fallen off the wall and is shattered and can't be put back together again,

[04:47] Cameron McEwen: right?

[04:48] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[04:49] Bob Dobbs: but McLuhan said that anti-environment does put them back together,

[04:52] Bob Dobbs: bypasses the king's bureaucrats.

[04:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[04:55] Cameron McEwen: but he doesn't put them back together seamlessly.

[05:02] Cameron McEwen: For McLuhan,

[05:04] Cameron McEwen: the whole idea of coming down on one side of the visual acoustic metaphor ruins it.

[05:15] Bob Dobbs: So,

[05:16] Cameron McEwen: what's happened here is that Dilworth is,

[05:21] Cameron McEwen: as you said,

[05:22] Cameron McEwen: he's going with probes,

[05:23] Cameron McEwen: but those probes can't be taken as anything more than probes.

[05:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[05:31] Bob Dobbs: So,

[05:31] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[05:32] Bob Dobbs: he makes a mistake on the Humpty Dumpty,

[05:34] Bob Dobbs: or he doesn't spell it out,

[05:35] Bob Dobbs: the particulars enough.

[05:37] Bob Dobbs: Then he says,

[05:37] Bob Dobbs: at the speed of light,

[05:38] Bob Dobbs: there is only illumination.

[05:40] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[05:41] Bob Dobbs: Tactile,

[05:42] Bob Dobbs: smelling,

[05:42] Bob Dobbs: hearing man.

[05:43] Bob Dobbs: senses no continuum.

[05:45] Bob Dobbs: Spengler was right.

[05:47] Bob Dobbs: Western man went down the hill and he disappeared.

[05:51] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[05:52] Cameron McEwen: And that's all good.

[05:53] Cameron McEwen: It's just that middle section where Dilworth has missed the complications in

[06:00] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan.

[06:03] Cameron McEwen: So, for example,

[06:04] Cameron McEwen: at the speed of light,

[06:05] Cameron McEwen: there is only illumination.

[06:07] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[06:07] Cameron McEwen: no.

[06:08] Cameron McEwen: At the speed of light,

[06:09] Cameron McEwen: there's also complete disaster.

[06:12] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[06:12] Bob Dobbs: There's numbness.

[06:13] Bob Dobbs: Colossal numbness.

[06:15] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[06:17] Cameron McEwen: Blindness.

[06:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[06:19] Bob Dobbs: So

[06:21] Bob Dobbs: I have to look at his whole essay.

[06:23] Bob Dobbs: Maybe he's trying to say that McLuhan had a way out in the cliche celebration of acoustic space,

[06:32] Bob Dobbs: which is really silly.

[06:34] Bob Dobbs: So

[06:36] Bob Dobbs: I guess I like the quote because it was half right.

[06:39] Bob Dobbs: And it pointed out to people that there is no.

[06:47] Bob Dobbs: Visual linearity is not easily removed,

[06:51] Bob Dobbs: and it's not necessarily ever removed.

[06:53] Bob Dobbs: It's just part of the composite,

[06:56] Bob Dobbs: the complex.

[06:58] Bob Dobbs: But he's good at describing the other bird better than most.

[07:02] Bob Dobbs: But again,

[07:03] Bob Dobbs: go ahead.

[07:05] Cameron McEwen: I would just point out that the phrase,

[07:07] Cameron McEwen: the medium is the message.

[07:11] Cameron McEwen: It is a very traditional insight.

[07:16] Cameron McEwen: And what the medium is the message says is that when you look at any opposition,

[07:25] Cameron McEwen: let's say between linearity and circularity,

[07:31] Cameron McEwen: what the two of them mean depends upon their relation,

[07:35] Cameron McEwen: right?

[07:36] Cameron McEwen: So later in the book,

[07:37] Cameron McEwen: you'll be quoting McLuhan on there are only...

[07:41] Cameron McEwen: relations.

[07:43] Cameron McEwen: So in order to understand what's meant by linearity and what's meant by circularity or simultaneity,

[07:53] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand their relation in any given instance.

[07:58] Cameron McEwen: And to understand them as a whole,

[08:01] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand all of the different relations there could be between the two and what they would look like.

[08:09] Cameron McEwen: given all of those different relations.

[08:14] Cameron McEwen: So any time anybody comes down on some singular reading of what McLuhan talking about,

[08:24] Cameron McEwen: they're ignoring the very basic insight that the medium is the message.

[08:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[08:32] Bob Dobbs: correct.

[08:33] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[08:33] Bob Dobbs: it actually reminds me of something.

[08:36] Bob Dobbs: On fake Explorations,

[08:38] Bob Dobbs: Adam Pugin's...

[08:39] Bob Dobbs: Facebook group,

[08:41] Bob Dobbs: Scott posted this statement.

[08:44] Bob Dobbs: That's Scott Dawkins.

[08:46] Bob Dobbs: Isn't the fact that two-thirds of the trivium is constrained to only half the brain inherently unfair?

[08:54] Bob Dobbs: Isn't the fact that two-thirds of the trivium is constrained to only half the brain inherently unfair?

[09:00] Bob Dobbs: So

[09:01] Bob Dobbs: Adam Pugin says it's not.

[09:03] Bob Dobbs: Rhetoric equals right hemisphere.

[09:05] Bob Dobbs: Dialectic equals left hemisphere.

[09:07] Bob Dobbs: Grammar equals corpus callosum.

[09:11] Bob Dobbs: So then

[09:13] Bob Dobbs: Scott comes back to Adam.

[09:15] Bob Dobbs: According to who?

[09:16] Bob Dobbs: Mark Stahlman?

[09:18] Bob Dobbs: And Adam says,

[09:19] Bob Dobbs: because Adam works with Stahlman a little bit.

[09:22] Bob Dobbs: He's a member of the board of that digital thing.

[09:26] Bob Dobbs: And Adam says,

[09:26] Bob Dobbs: no,

[09:27] Bob Dobbs: according to me,

[09:28] Bob Dobbs: meaning him.

[09:30] Bob Dobbs: So then

[09:31] Bob Dobbs: Scott says,

[09:34] Bob Dobbs: well,

[09:34] Bob Dobbs: I think before...

[09:37] Bob Dobbs: He said what I was going to read.

[09:40] Bob Dobbs: I came in and I said,

[09:41] Bob Dobbs: no,

[09:42] Bob Dobbs: you're both wrong.

[09:43] Bob Dobbs: The trivium,

[09:44] Bob Dobbs: and I have in brackets the Gutenberg Galaxy,

[09:46] Bob Dobbs: is left hemisphere.

[09:47] Bob Dobbs: The quadrivium,

[09:48] Bob Dobbs: in brackets understanding media,

[09:50] Bob Dobbs: the book,

[09:51] Bob Dobbs: is right hemisphere.

[09:52] Bob Dobbs: Both books form an epyllion.

[09:54] Bob Dobbs: In the brackets,

[09:55] Bob Dobbs: a model for consciousness.

[09:57] Bob Dobbs: Epyllion is a model for consciousness.

[09:59] Bob Dobbs: Then I said,

[10:00] Bob Dobbs: Mark Stahlman wouldn't know or understand any of this.

[10:02] Bob Dobbs: He's stuck in the eye here.

[10:05] Bob Dobbs: I had to take a smack at him.

[10:06] Bob Dobbs: He's stuck in the eye-ear dialectic of the

[10:09] Bob Dobbs: 50s. I mean,

[10:09] Bob Dobbs: he left this group because I showed up.

[10:12] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[10:14] Bob Dobbs: Mark Stahlman wouldn't know or understand any of this.

[10:15] Bob Dobbs: He's stuck in the eye-ear dialectic of the 50s.

[10:18] Bob Dobbs: Then I say the books from the medium as the massage on might be considered corpus callosum if we're lazy.

[10:27] Bob Dobbs: But the actual output of McLuhan that would be more accurately labeled corpus callosum is every medium he engaged that wasn't a book per se,

[10:34] Bob Dobbs: including the Monday night seminars.

[10:38] Bob Dobbs: So then,

[10:39] Bob Dobbs: let's see,

[10:39] Bob Dobbs: two pre...

[10:41] Cameron McEwen: Is this on New Explorations?

[10:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[10:44] Bob Dobbs: fake Explorations,

[10:45] Bob Dobbs: not New Explorations,

[10:46] Bob Dobbs: fake.

[10:47] Bob Dobbs: It's Adam's Facebook group.

[10:49] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[10:49] Cameron McEwen: on Facebook.

[10:50] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[10:50] Cameron McEwen: that's why I haven't seen it.

[10:51] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[10:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[10:53] Bob Dobbs: So I was wondering what...

[10:54] Bob Dobbs: Would you correct this?

[10:56] Bob Dobbs: Is Adam on the right path by saying rhetoric equals right hemisphere?

[11:01] Bob Dobbs: No,

[11:03] Cameron McEwen: Your Explorations was much better.

[11:07] Cameron McEwen: Adam is taking left and right and center according to one relationship between them.

[11:18] Cameron McEwen: And that's what I was just saying is that relationship is inherently plural.

[11:24] Cameron McEwen: So in order to understand the medium as a message,

[11:26] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand that the medium is media.

[11:31] Cameron McEwen: And therefore,

[11:32] Cameron McEwen: all of the things that are joined by media are inherently plural and can never be understood according to one relationship,

[11:45] Cameron McEwen: and especially cannot be understood aside from relationship.

[11:51] Cameron McEwen: So what you did was you pointed out absolutely correctly that the trivium and the quadrivium themselves are in dynamic relationship.

[12:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[12:07] Cameron McEwen: In order to understand,

[12:08] Cameron McEwen: and I think you said that mind was equal to all of the relationships that the trivium and the quadrivium can take.

[12:20] Cameron McEwen: between themselves.

[12:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[12:22] Bob Dobbs: I call it consciousness.

[12:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[12:25] Cameron McEwen: I think that's a very good definition.

[12:30] Cameron McEwen: What you could say is that if you take all of the ways in which the trivium can ground the quadrivium,

[12:38] Cameron McEwen: and then you take all of the ways in which the quadrivium can ground the trivium,

[12:43] Cameron McEwen: then that dynamic cloud is

[12:49] Cameron McEwen: consciousness.

[12:51] Bob Dobbs: Exactly.

[12:51] Bob Dobbs: So perfect.

[12:52] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[12:53] Bob Dobbs: It's a nice formula I came up with,

[12:54] Bob Dobbs: and I'm glad you get it.

[12:56] Bob Dobbs: So

[12:57] Bob Dobbs: Scott talking in response to what I said,

[13:01] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[13:01] Bob Dobbs: it's not a bad conjecture,

[13:04] Bob Dobbs: but I haven't seen anyone make Cayce for it.

[13:07] Bob Dobbs: The way Malign Fiesta sees it,

[13:09] Bob Dobbs: and

[13:10] Bob Dobbs: Scott's always quoting academics because he spent most of his life in Acadia University.

[13:16] Bob Dobbs: The way Malign Fiesta sees it,

[13:18] Bob Dobbs: and also the way McLuhan seems to see it in science of media,

[13:21] Bob Dobbs: meaning laws of media,

[13:24] Bob Dobbs: is that the right brain,

[13:25] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,

[13:26] Bob Dobbs: the master,

[13:27] Bob Dobbs: governs both grammar and rhetoric,

[13:30] Bob Dobbs: while dialectic plays an intermediate role between them.

[13:33] Bob Dobbs: This is why it doesn't need a ground.

[13:35] Bob Dobbs: This is ridiculous.

[13:37] Bob Dobbs: It is ridiculous.

[13:39] Bob Dobbs: He's over-complicating.

[13:41] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[13:41] Bob Dobbs: but we do know,

[13:43] Bob Dobbs: so this is why it doesn't need a ground,

[13:45] Bob Dobbs: But we do know that it's a Global Membrane...

[13:47] Bob Dobbs: function in most people,

[13:49] Bob Dobbs: and it's definitely not the corpus callosum.

[13:52] Bob Dobbs: Then he says the corpus callosum is the direct connection to God in Michelangelo's painting,

[13:58] Bob Dobbs: but perhaps the corpus callosum governs the ground characteristics for both grammar and rhetoric,

[14:03] Bob Dobbs: and the hemispheres are bigger.

[14:05] Bob Dobbs: Way too complicated there,

[14:08] Bob Dobbs: and maybe conceptual.

[14:09] Bob Dobbs: Do you have a comment on that,

[14:11] Bob Dobbs: what he says?

[14:12] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[14:13] Cameron McEwen: just a huge amount of not very good

[14:17] Cameron McEwen: thinking is the attempt to get around the missing link problem by generating words so that nobody

[14:33] Cameron McEwen: notices the missing link by the time you get to the end of your paragraph.

[14:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[14:41] Bob Dobbs: So then...

[14:44] Bob Dobbs: So then he later says,

[14:46] Bob Dobbs: in relation to what I said,

[14:49] Bob Dobbs: where

[14:50] Bob Dobbs: I talked about,

[14:52] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[14:52] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg Galaxy and understanding media,

[14:54] Bob Dobbs: he goes,

[14:54] Bob Dobbs: right,

[14:55] Bob Dobbs: they're books.

[14:56] Bob Dobbs: They're books.

[14:58] Bob Dobbs: Dot,

[14:58] Bob Dobbs: Like the Bible,

[15:00] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,

[15:01] Bob Dobbs: says the guy who can't tell one Bible book from another.

[15:04] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what that is referring to.

[15:07] Bob Dobbs: Like the Bible,

[15:08] Bob Dobbs: says the guy who can't tell one Bible book from another.

[15:11] Bob Dobbs: Hey,

[15:11] Bob Dobbs: mom.

[15:12] Bob Dobbs: My brain is a book written by some guy.

[15:15] Bob Dobbs: Where's the light switch so I can read it?

[15:18] Bob Dobbs: So that's silly.

[15:20] Bob Dobbs: Or do you see something applicable in there?

[15:23] Bob Dobbs: No,

[15:24] Cameron McEwen: I've kind of lost the thread.

[15:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: he always does that.

[15:29] Bob Dobbs: He loses everybody.

[15:30] Bob Dobbs: So then he then later has more to say.

[15:33] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[15:34] Bob Dobbs: the quadrivium are subjects,

[15:36] Bob Dobbs: bodies of knowledge,

[15:38] Bob Dobbs: or what Charles Pierce,

[15:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[15:39] Bob Dobbs: the guy from the 19th century,

[15:41] Bob Dobbs: or what Pierce called symbols,

[15:43] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,

[15:44] Bob Dobbs: like a library,

[15:45] Bob Dobbs: four divisions of thirdness.

[15:47] Bob Dobbs: So he's bringing in Pierce concepts.

[15:49] Bob Dobbs: The trivium are arts or capacities that are the triadic aspects of the logos.

[15:56] Bob Dobbs: And then he names three words that Pierce uses.

[16:00] Bob Dobbs: As significant...

[16:01] Cameron McEwen: It's first,

[16:01] Cameron McEwen: by the way.

[16:02] Bob Dobbs: What did I say?

[16:04] Cameron McEwen: You're saying pierce,

[16:05] Cameron McEwen: but it's purse.

[16:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[16:06] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[16:07] Bob Dobbs: So he says there are triadic aspects of the logos that pierce names.

[16:12] Bob Dobbs: One,

[16:12] Bob Dobbs: as significant,

[16:14] Bob Dobbs: or the second point,

[16:15] Bob Dobbs: representamen,

[16:17] Bob Dobbs: and the third one is the interpretant.

[16:19] Bob Dobbs: So he says these three are parts of the triadic sign.

[16:23] Bob Dobbs: No logos,

[16:25] Bob Dobbs: no quadrivium.

[16:26] Bob Dobbs: If there is a logos,

[16:27] Bob Dobbs: you can make the quadrivium.

[16:30] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[16:31] Bob Dobbs: that might be.

[16:32] Bob Dobbs: Interesting what he's saying there,

[16:33] Bob Dobbs: but not enough definitions of logos or how he means it.

[16:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[16:37] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[16:38] Cameron McEwen: I was just going to say what's needed there is to look at my Postman

[16:45] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talking about the logos,

[16:47] Cameron McEwen: which he did forever.

[16:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[16:49] Cameron McEwen: And you then see that it's a very,

[16:53] Cameron McEwen: very complicated matter.

[16:56] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[16:56] Bob Dobbs: So

[16:57] Bob Dobbs: Scott is trying to complicate it by overlaying Pierce's concepts,

[17:00] Bob Dobbs: which is...

[17:02] Bob Dobbs: not appropriate,

[17:03] Bob Dobbs: I don't think.

[17:04] Cameron McEwen: There's nothing wrong with complication if it's done well.

[17:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[17:08] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[17:08] Cameron McEwen: It's like somebody who's knitting something.

[17:12] Cameron McEwen: Knitting can be very complicated,

[17:14] Cameron McEwen: and if it's done well,

[17:15] Cameron McEwen: then you get a very nice end product,

[17:19] Cameron McEwen: a sweater or something like this.

[17:21] Cameron McEwen: But if it's a complication that doesn't know what it's doing,

[17:24] Cameron McEwen: you end up with something that isn't anything.

[17:29] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[17:30] Bob Dobbs: And what was I going to say about that?

[17:32] Cameron McEwen: Sorry.

[17:33] Bob Dobbs: He is,

[17:34] Bob Dobbs: what Barry Nevitt used to say,

[17:35] Bob Dobbs: taking

[17:36] Bob Dobbs: Peirce's knowledge and shining it in the light,

[17:39] Bob Dobbs: in the face of the other guy.

[17:41] Bob Dobbs: He's not trying to make it clear,

[17:44] Bob Dobbs: clarity,

[17:44] Bob Dobbs: or make a clarity,

[17:45] Bob Dobbs: or make it relevant to what McLuhan doing with the epyllion.

[17:50] Bob Dobbs: So he's just shining the light of his specialist knowledge in your eyes.

[17:56] Bob Dobbs: That's obvious.

[17:57] Bob Dobbs: And then he says...

[17:59] Bob Dobbs: But I see what you're getting at,

[18:00] Bob Dobbs: and

[18:01] Bob Dobbs: I assume he's answering me,

[18:03] Bob Dobbs: but I see what you're getting at.

[18:05] Bob Dobbs: The tetrad.

[18:06] Bob Dobbs: The problem is that each part of the quadrivium has its own tetrad.

[18:11] Bob Dobbs: 2,

[18:12] Bob Dobbs: comma,

[18:13] Bob Dobbs: over root 5 plus 1.

[18:17] Bob Dobbs: 2,

[18:17] Bob Dobbs: T-W-O,

[18:18] Bob Dobbs: comma,

[18:19] Bob Dobbs: over root 5 plus 1.

[18:20] Bob Dobbs: That's probably some esoteric mathematical subplot of Peirce or something.

[18:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what he's saying there,

[18:27] Bob Dobbs: but the problem is that each part of the quadrivium has its own tetrad.

[18:30] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[18:30] Bob Dobbs: every aspect,

[18:32] Bob Dobbs: concept,

[18:33] Bob Dobbs: object has a tetrad,

[18:35] Bob Dobbs: so that doesn't add anything.

[18:38] Bob Dobbs: Don't think I'm trying to get at the tetrad.

[18:40] Bob Dobbs: That could be brought in.

[18:42] Bob Dobbs: So then a little later,

[18:43] Bob Dobbs: he decides to add something else,

[18:45] Bob Dobbs: and he says,

[18:48] Bob Dobbs: Phi,

[18:49] Bob Dobbs: Pho,

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: and Phum meet Phi.

[18:52] Bob Dobbs: So

[18:52] Bob Dobbs: Phi, Phi,

[18:53] Bob Dobbs: Pho,

[18:53] Bob Dobbs: Phum.

[18:54] Bob Dobbs: So he has Phi.

[18:55] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure what that is.

[18:58] Bob Dobbs: So he's being silly and not taking on the seriousness of what I presented.

[19:05] Bob Dobbs: So

[19:07] Bob Dobbs: I wanted to get your comment,

[19:08] Bob Dobbs: and I'll enjoy playing it to him.

[19:13] Bob Dobbs: Are you there?

[19:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[19:15] Cameron McEwen: I'm here.

[19:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[19:16] Bob Dobbs: I heard a click.

[19:16] Bob Dobbs: I thought there was a hang-up.

[19:20] Bob Dobbs: So we finished Dilworth.

[19:22] Bob Dobbs: We finished Scott.

[19:25] Bob Dobbs: Now we'll go down to page 96.

[19:28] Cameron McEwen: Let me just ask one question about Dilworth.

[19:31] Cameron McEwen: You say on 83,

[19:33] Cameron McEwen: pulled from a paraphrased summary of March 1973 talk at St.

[19:39] Cameron McEwen: Basil's Seminary.

[19:41] Cameron McEwen: Do you know anything about the meeting or whatever it was in March 1973?

[19:49] Bob Dobbs: Let me see.

[19:49] Bob Dobbs: So that's page 83.

[19:52] Cameron McEwen: Bottom of 83.

[19:55] Cameron McEwen: In other words,

[19:56] Cameron McEwen: Dilworth is paraphrasing the talk that McLuhan gave at that meeting or whatever it was at the seminary.

[20:05] Cameron McEwen: And

[20:07] Cameron McEwen: I'm just wondering if you know anything about that meeting.

[20:11] Bob Dobbs: Not offhand,

[20:12] Bob Dobbs: I don't think.

[20:13] Bob Dobbs: I'm told from a paraphrased summary.

[20:15] Bob Dobbs: So he...

[20:17] Cameron McEwen: I thought you might even have been there.

[20:19] Bob Dobbs: No.

[20:19] Bob Dobbs: But what is this?

[20:21] Bob Dobbs: This is...

[20:23] Bob Dobbs: He's quoting...

[20:25] Bob Dobbs: This,

[20:26] Bob Dobbs: he summarized,

[20:26] Bob Dobbs: the quote I read by him is his summary of some summary that someone made.

[20:32] Bob Dobbs: In 1973,

[20:36] Cameron McEwen: I have a McLuhan talk.

[20:36] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[20:36] Cameron McEwen: maybe it may be that.

[20:39] Cameron McEwen: It may be sort of a double paraphrase,

[20:41] Cameron McEwen: like you're saying,

[20:43] Cameron McEwen: or

[20:45] Cameron McEwen: Dilworth may have made the first paraphrase.

[20:49] Cameron McEwen: And when you say a paraphrase summary,

[20:51] Cameron McEwen: you may be in the book saying that here comes the paraphrase.

[21:01] Cameron McEwen: So we don't quite know if it's a first order or second order paraphrase.

[21:06] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[21:07] Bob Dobbs: So maybe not right now,

[21:08] Bob Dobbs: but I can look that up and see.

[21:10] Bob Dobbs: I'll look up what's in the book that Dilworth's essay is in and see if they add something to that.

[21:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[21:17] Cameron McEwen: If I can find the book,

[21:18] Cameron McEwen: I'll do the same thing.

[21:20] Bob Dobbs: You may have the book?

[21:21] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[21:22] Cameron McEwen: I have it for sure.

[21:23] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[21:23] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[21:24] Cameron McEwen: And

[21:25] Cameron McEwen: I even have it in electronic form,

[21:27] Cameron McEwen: I believe.

[21:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[21:29] Bob Dobbs: So...

[21:31] Bob Dobbs: On page 96,

[21:34] Bob Dobbs: second quote down,

[21:37] Bob Dobbs: I have said,

[21:38] Bob Dobbs: and I think I read this last two weeks ago,

[21:46] Bob Dobbs: talked about the twist and simultaneous cultural transparency.

[21:51] Bob Dobbs: I'll just say it.

[21:52] Bob Dobbs: That was happening,

[21:53] Bob Dobbs: but most people were listening to Cliff Richards'

[21:56] Bob Dobbs: starting to learn the twist.

[21:57] Bob Dobbs: They weren't grasping languages,

[21:59] Bob Dobbs: ancient and modern.

[22:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was too optimistic about what intelligence would do with its time,

[22:04] Bob Dobbs: its new leisure.

[22:05] Bob Dobbs: Everybody was paranoid of,

[22:06] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[22:07] Bob Dobbs: simultaneous cultural transparency.

[22:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[22:09] Bob Dobbs: because I've been earlier explaining that management was able to make McLuhan predictions look silly because they were sticking the muds and they held everything back to everybody's destitution.

[22:22] Bob Dobbs: And so

[22:24] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was sacrificed for a larger sacrifice.

[22:28] Bob Dobbs: Because I have here...

[22:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan told me management managed to hold on and stop the opportunities that new technology was giving.

[22:35] Bob Dobbs: They got there,

[22:36] Bob Dobbs: Kissinger just sat there and said,

[22:37] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[22:37] Bob Dobbs: we aren't moving,

[22:39] Bob Dobbs: you don't run nothing,

[22:40] Bob Dobbs: we run it,

[22:40] Bob Dobbs: and we're still going to fight wars based on nationalism or tribalism.

[22:45] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan didn't realize it would get away with that stubbornness for so many decades.

[22:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[22:49] Bob Dobbs: we're at an interesting point today where these,

[22:53] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[22:53] Bob Dobbs: elites aren't getting away with anything,

[22:55] Bob Dobbs: are they?

[22:57] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[22:57] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[22:58] Cameron McEwen: you could say they aren't getting away with anything,

[23:01] Cameron McEwen: but you could also say they're getting away with everything.

[23:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[23:05] Bob Dobbs: there's a great illumination going on,

[23:07] Bob Dobbs: as we said,

[23:08] Bob Dobbs: a great transparency and a great numbness.

[23:12] Bob Dobbs: And so a lot of people are having the transparency experience and another 50%

[23:17] Bob Dobbs: are having the numbness experience.

[23:19] Bob Dobbs: And they argue over which one's doing one or the other,

[23:22] Bob Dobbs: right?

[23:23] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[23:24] Cameron McEwen: But I would not put it at this.

[23:26] Cameron McEwen: 50-50,

[23:27] Cameron McEwen: I would say it's about 95 numb and 5 illumination.

[23:32] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[23:32] Bob Dobbs: But what's interesting,

[23:36] Bob Dobbs: that people,

[23:37] Bob Dobbs: they both think something's dramatic going on.

[23:41] Bob Dobbs: There's a lot of worry across the board of society.

[23:46] Bob Dobbs: And,

[23:47] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[23:47] Bob Dobbs: the tech body or,

[23:48] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[23:48] Bob Dobbs: the media is playing this up.

[23:51] Bob Dobbs: And,

[23:52] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[23:52] Bob Dobbs: we're back to the nuclear clock.

[23:55] Bob Dobbs: What is that?

[23:56] Bob Dobbs: the doomsday clock that the atomic bulletin board has.

[24:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[24:00] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[24:01] Bob Dobbs: I think we're a couple of seconds from blow up.

[24:06] Bob Dobbs: So what's interesting is what made people,

[24:08] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[24:09] Bob Dobbs: panic?

[24:09] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[24:09] Bob Dobbs: the COVID started it,

[24:11] Bob Dobbs: and then what Putin's doing is that.

[24:14] Bob Dobbs: But people were already surprised by Black Lives Matter and the destruction of

[24:18] Bob Dobbs: American cities and nobody doing anything about it.

[24:22] Bob Dobbs: For some reason,

[24:23] Bob Dobbs: in late...

[24:24] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[24:24] Bob Dobbs: it could be because it was an election year.

[24:26] Bob Dobbs: Some practical,

[24:27] Bob Dobbs: efficient causality people say,

[24:29] Bob Dobbs: look,

[24:29] Bob Dobbs: they're out to get rid Trump and they're going to create all kinds of crap in 2020,

[24:33] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[24:34] Bob Dobbs: to get him out.

[24:35] Cameron McEwen: Just the election Trump was a shock.

[24:39] Bob Dobbs: That was the shock.

[24:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[24:40] Bob Dobbs: that's what the shock was.

[24:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[24:43] Cameron McEwen: well,

[24:43] Cameron McEwen: but basically since the Second World War,

[24:50] Cameron McEwen: there has just been one shock after another.

[24:53] Cameron McEwen: difference.

[24:55] Cameron McEwen: And so now it's like the small rocks that were let loose down the slope in 1945.

[25:08] Cameron McEwen: Those have become huge boulders and nobody knows what to do about them.

[25:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[25:16] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[25:17] Bob Dobbs: And,

[25:17] Bob Dobbs: um...

[25:20] Bob Dobbs: Trump,

[25:20] Bob Dobbs: part of the gall Trump was he claimed to know what to do about them.

[25:26] Bob Dobbs: And he fully was not qualified.

[25:28] Bob Dobbs: He had not gone through the proper think tanks.

[25:32] Bob Dobbs: He didn't have any experience in the sober halls of Congress.

[25:35] Bob Dobbs: He just was an amateur,

[25:37] Bob Dobbs: went golf to do what he did.

[25:38] Bob Dobbs: But that's what the shocking part of his image was.

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: He claimed to know more than anybody else and ran at that point,

[25:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[25:46] Bob Dobbs: you could say rudely,

[25:47] Bob Dobbs: crudely.

[25:49] Cameron McEwen: But he knew how to do all that stuff because he was.

[25:55] Cameron McEwen: part of that world.

[25:56] Bob Dobbs: Yep,

[25:56] Bob Dobbs: in New York.

[25:57] Cameron McEwen: Part of the TV world and part of the bullshit world and all that sort of stuff.

[26:05] Cameron McEwen: It's not to be expected that

[26:10] Cameron McEwen: Trump take some sort of objective view,

[26:14] Cameron McEwen: as if that were possible,

[26:16] Cameron McEwen: of what was going on.

[26:18] Cameron McEwen: He came from the wrong world.

[26:20] Cameron McEwen: He had the wrong advisors.

[26:22] Cameron McEwen: And he had no idea about the levers that had to be deployed.

[26:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[26:30] Bob Dobbs: so he did a silly thing.

[26:32] Bob Dobbs: He went on Twitter and now he caused an Armageddon because he picked a silly technology to communicate.

[26:40] Bob Dobbs: So he's like Mr.

[26:43] Bob Dobbs: Magoo.

[26:43] Bob Dobbs: He's always making mistakes,

[26:45] Bob Dobbs: but he still lands on his feet so far.

[26:50] Cameron McEwen: the

[26:52] Cameron McEwen: I think that's right,

[26:52] Cameron McEwen: that he may not have known what he was doing when he went to

[26:59] Cameron McEwen: Twitter.

[27:00] Cameron McEwen: It may have been sort of the last resort because he couldn't do anything with the news and he had been cut off from his old TV world,

[27:09] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[27:10] Cameron McEwen: So he goes to Twitter and by going to Twitter,

[27:15] Cameron McEwen: if I understand you correctly,

[27:17] Cameron McEwen: he was expressing something about the modern world.

[27:21] Cameron McEwen: that could never be expressed in terms of a tweet,

[27:25] Cameron McEwen: but that movement to

[27:27] Cameron McEwen: Twitter tells us where we're at.

[27:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[27:31] Bob Dobbs: he chose a new medium and used it.

[27:34] Bob Dobbs: So

[27:35] Bob Dobbs: I had a point there.

[27:37] Bob Dobbs: So he,

[27:43] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,

[27:44] Bob Dobbs: having been part of the New York gossip world and the media world,

[27:48] Bob Dobbs: he knew they were all bullshit.

[27:49] Bob Dobbs: He knew they knew nothing.

[27:51] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[27:52] Bob Dobbs: I,

[27:52] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan once said,

[27:55] Bob Dobbs: that the other people around him wouldn't even pretend to know what's going on.

[27:59] Bob Dobbs: At least he pretended to know what's going on.

[28:00] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[28:01] Bob Dobbs: Trump pretended to know what's going on.

[28:02] Bob Dobbs: He was McLuhan on that literal level of putting on everybody,

[28:08] Bob Dobbs: knowing that he had no opposition.

[28:11] Bob Dobbs: Of,

[28:15] Bob Dobbs: no,

[28:15] Bob Dobbs: what do we say?

[28:16] Bob Dobbs: He knew he could show that his opposition was...

[28:20] Bob Dobbs: melting or what could be melted.

[28:23] Cameron McEwen: So are you saying that a commonality between

[28:27] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and Trump that they had no problem wearing masks and what differentiated them from most people is that they knew that they were wearing masks?

[28:41] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[28:42] Bob Dobbs: Donald Trump,

[28:43] Bob Dobbs: in a way,

[28:43] Bob Dobbs: acted as if the medium had no content.

[28:46] Bob Dobbs: He knew just acting the way he did.

[28:49] Bob Dobbs: with no proper qualifications.

[28:51] Bob Dobbs: He couldn't even finish his sentences.

[28:53] Bob Dobbs: It was absurd listening to him.

[28:56] Bob Dobbs: But he knew that would be a way.

[28:58] Bob Dobbs: That's creating a gap.

[29:01] Bob Dobbs: This would allow people to participate in his image by not being a verbal Nevitt because he couldn't finish his sentence,

[29:10] Bob Dobbs: but he put on that he knew it all.

[29:12] Bob Dobbs: He non-verbally communicated that with a kind of swagger.

[29:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[29:17] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[29:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[29:17] Cameron McEwen: that was...

[29:19] Cameron McEwen: The whole notion of his TV show,

[29:22] Cameron McEwen: I forget what it was called,

[29:23] Cameron McEwen: but the whole notion of him firing people and stuff was that,

[29:29] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[29:30] Cameron McEwen: he could see into their soul.

[29:33] Cameron McEwen: He could see the future,

[29:35] Cameron McEwen: all this sort of stuff.

[29:37] Cameron McEwen: And that gave him this godlike power to hire and dismiss.

[29:45] Cameron McEwen: And so he knew from...

[29:48] Cameron McEwen: from that TV experience that the content was bullshit.

[29:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[29:55] Cameron McEwen: That's what he had been purveying and had gained popularity by selling bullshit.

[30:01] Cameron McEwen: And so then he applies that to politics,

[30:03] Cameron McEwen: and maybe he surprises even himself because it turns out that bullshit,

[30:09] Cameron McEwen: not only in television but in politics,

[30:12] Cameron McEwen: was exactly what people wanted.

[30:15] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[30:16] Bob Dobbs: by someone who appeared to know it was bullshit and called everybody out first.

[30:20] Bob Dobbs: It's a matter of who calls who out first,

[30:22] Bob Dobbs: right?

[30:23] Bob Dobbs: So he jumped the gun.

[30:25] Bob Dobbs: He'd go into debates and he used the slanging medieval thing of nicknaming people,

[30:32] Bob Dobbs: right?

[30:33] Bob Dobbs: That was a good strategy.

[30:34] Bob Dobbs: So I'm just looking up,

[30:37] Bob Dobbs: no wonder I'm writing about him,

[30:41] Bob Dobbs: looking up the TV show.

[30:44] Bob Dobbs: Come on,

[30:44] Bob Dobbs: when is it?

[30:47] Bob Dobbs: I keep wanting to say the argument,

[30:48] Bob Dobbs: but it begins with A maybe.

[30:53] Bob Dobbs: What was the word?

[30:56] Bob Dobbs: Still scrolling.

[30:57] Bob Dobbs: It's quite a long

[30:58] Bob Dobbs: Wikipedia entry.

[31:01] Bob Dobbs: Come on,

[31:02] Bob Dobbs: where's the TV shows?

[31:05] Bob Dobbs: Boy,

[31:06] Bob Dobbs: there's a lot here.

[31:13] Bob Dobbs: I'll just put in the word television,

[31:15] Bob Dobbs: see if that brings it up.

[31:22] Bob Dobbs: See,

[31:23] Bob Dobbs: we're so out of it.

[31:25] Bob Dobbs: We don't even know the show title.

[31:28] Bob Dobbs: That's how little we engage.

[31:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[31:30] Bob Dobbs: it begins with A,

[31:30] Bob Dobbs: The Apprentice.

[31:32] Cameron McEwen: The Apprentice,

[31:34] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[31:34] Cameron McEwen: I never actually watched one of the shows.

[31:37] Bob Dobbs: Me either.

[31:38] Bob Dobbs: I heard he fired people,

[31:39] Bob Dobbs: but I don't know what it is.

[31:40] Bob Dobbs: But it sounds like people are auditioning to work for him.

[31:45] Bob Dobbs: So he's The Apprentice when he gets to the White House.

[31:49] Bob Dobbs: Everybody wants to call him an apprentice.

[31:51] Bob Dobbs: He fulfilled his own...

[31:53] Bob Dobbs: Whatever you call that.

[31:55] Cameron McEwen: I hired myself.

[31:58] Bob Dobbs: And from that point on,

[32:00] Bob Dobbs: everybody else became Trump tried to fire him for four years.

[32:05] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[32:06] Cameron McEwen: Good point.

[32:07] Cameron McEwen: Good point.

[32:08] Cameron McEwen: That's the flip of figure and ground.

[32:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[32:11] Bob Dobbs: He did it.

[32:12] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[32:14] Bob Dobbs: So how does this quote from Cliché to archetype,

[32:16] Bob Dobbs: 1970 book,

[32:18] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan and Wilfred Watson,

[32:19] Bob Dobbs: page 150.

[32:20] Bob Dobbs: A cliché is an act of consciousness.

[32:23] Bob Dobbs: Total consciousness is the sum of all the clichés of all the media or technologies we probe with.

[32:29] Bob Dobbs: I was always impressed with that when I first read that.

[32:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[32:31] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[32:32] Cameron McEwen: And that's what we were talking about earlier.

[32:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[32:33] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[32:35] Bob Dobbs: The total of the media.

[32:37] Cameron McEwen: That's correct.

[32:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[32:39] Cameron McEwen: That is correct.

[32:40] Cameron McEwen: So everything can be a cliché.

[32:43] Cameron McEwen: Everything can be an archetype.

[32:46] Cameron McEwen: And consciousness is all of the media.

[32:50] Cameron McEwen: the cliches and archetypes in all of their relations.

[32:54] Bob Dobbs: And the guts you have to engage them all.

[32:58] Bob Dobbs: How many of cliches can you put on with archetypal intensity?

[33:03] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[33:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[33:05] Cameron McEwen: that's good.

[33:07] Cameron McEwen: And archetypal intensity might be called tactility.

[33:14] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[33:16] Bob Dobbs: or the larger mind.

[33:19] Bob Dobbs: A cliché is an act of consciousness.

[33:23] Bob Dobbs: It's an act of consciousness.

[33:25] Bob Dobbs: Total consciousness is the sum of all the clichés of all the media or technologies we probe with.

[33:31] Bob Dobbs: That's where I came up with the idea of mythic stage in my previous talk about politics.

[33:39] Bob Dobbs: The mythic stage is the particular media or clichés you use.

[33:44] Bob Dobbs: So your identity is made up of the media you use or celebrate or defend.

[33:50] Bob Dobbs: And it's mythic.

[33:52] Bob Dobbs: In McLuhan meaning of mythic,

[33:54] Bob Dobbs: it includes all that you're working with.

[33:58] Bob Dobbs: Not myth as a literary true or false statement.

[34:02] Bob Dobbs: He defined myth as a total structure that summarized a very complex process.

[34:12] Bob Dobbs: So you have the Arabs are defending their mythic stage of manuscript culture,

[34:18] Bob Dobbs: I'll call it.

[34:19] Bob Dobbs: against the industrial or electronic culture of America,

[34:23] Bob Dobbs: represented by Larry McDonald burgers and other

[34:26] Bob Dobbs: American things,

[34:28] Bob Dobbs: that appear to be satanic to the Arabs.

[34:32] Bob Dobbs: It's such a contrasting mythic stage that the American carries into the meeting,

[34:38] Bob Dobbs: compared to the smaller...

[34:41] Cameron McEwen: The same,

[34:41] Cameron McEwen: exactly that dialectic is playing itself out in the United States,

[34:46] Cameron McEwen: and in fact always has.

[34:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[34:48] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[34:48] Cameron McEwen: There's always been this tension between people that are trying to maintain a tradition.

[34:59] Cameron McEwen: Sometimes that means status quo,

[35:02] Cameron McEwen: sometimes it means an appeal to the Bible or something.

[35:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[35:06] Cameron McEwen: And then other people who say,

[35:08] Cameron McEwen: that's not important,

[35:10] Cameron McEwen: let's attend to these new things.

[35:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[35:13] Cameron McEwen: And so that...

[35:15] Cameron McEwen: dialectic or contest or quarrel between the ancient and the modern is always going on,

[35:25] Cameron McEwen: and always going on everywhere.

[35:27] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[35:27] Bob Dobbs: and you're an ancient,

[35:29] Bob Dobbs: you have a certain mythic structure,

[35:31] Bob Dobbs: or if you're a modern,

[35:32] Bob Dobbs: you have a certain mythic structure,

[35:34] Bob Dobbs: way more than used to be a thousand years ago.

[35:38] Bob Dobbs: still

[35:39] Bob Dobbs: different,

[35:40] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[35:40] Bob Dobbs: lifestyles,

[35:41] Bob Dobbs: different media,

[35:42] Bob Dobbs: but apparently,

[35:44] Bob Dobbs: according to a written history,

[35:46] Bob Dobbs: they had a simpler,

[35:47] Bob Dobbs: less complicated media choice to make up their mythic stage.

[35:51] Bob Dobbs: And I call it a myth,

[35:53] Bob Dobbs: but it's a stage because McLuhan said at one point that the stage of the global theater is the credit card.

[36:00] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[36:00] Bob Dobbs: it's not some theatrical structure.

[36:03] Bob Dobbs: The credit card is your stage.

[36:05] Bob Dobbs: So the credit card,

[36:07] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: um,

[36:09] Bob Dobbs: gave you access to things for prestige.

[36:12] Bob Dobbs: He called it prestige for use.

[36:14] Bob Dobbs: That's in a tetrad on the credit Chardin Laws of Media,

[36:17] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[36:18] Bob Dobbs: So a mythic stage.

[36:22] Bob Dobbs: So people are putting on different stages,

[36:26] Bob Dobbs: older media that they think they can stand on,

[36:29] Bob Dobbs: in a context where there is no ground or no ultimate stage.

[36:35] Bob Dobbs: Or the argument is over who...

[36:37] Bob Dobbs: stage is going to be named to be the stage,

[36:39] Bob Dobbs: the ultimate stage.

[36:40] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[36:40] Bob Dobbs: So when I think of Innis,

[36:42] Bob Dobbs: he said the American dilemma began with the battle between the fur trade and the farmers.

[36:49] Bob Dobbs: You remember that in Innis?

[36:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[36:50] Cameron McEwen: of course.

[36:51] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[36:52] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan thought that was very important.

[36:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[36:54] Bob Dobbs: that the Civil War was between two technological mixtures,

[36:59] Bob Dobbs: the fur trade and all that that brought with it versus the guys who wanted to start plantations or agriculture.

[37:07] Bob Dobbs: Stay home.

[37:09] Cameron McEwen: But if we go back to the quote from Cliché to archetype,

[37:14] Cameron McEwen: page 150,

[37:16] Cameron McEwen: the first phrase in that encapsulates everything we've been talking about.

[37:23] Cameron McEwen: He says that cliché is an act of consciousness.

[37:26] Cameron McEwen: And one of the things that I think is very important for any sort of good reading is to always try out...

[37:36] Cameron McEwen: subjective and objective genitives,

[37:39] Cameron McEwen: wherever there's a phrase like act of consciousness.

[37:43] Cameron McEwen: So if we say,

[37:45] Cameron McEwen: if we look at that as a subjective genitive,

[37:48] Cameron McEwen: as to say that the cliche is an act that belongs to a certain consciousness,

[37:56] Cameron McEwen: then what we see is that the presentation of any language,

[38:02] Cameron McEwen: the presentation of any mask,

[38:04] Cameron McEwen: The presentation of any position is always limited,

[38:09] Cameron McEwen: right?

[38:09] Cameron McEwen: You were calling this one myth,

[38:12] Cameron McEwen: right?

[38:15] Cameron McEwen: Human beings never get beyond the presentation of a certain myth.

[38:22] Cameron McEwen: And the question that is posed by somebody who thinks,

[38:29] Cameron McEwen: like McLuhan,

[38:30] Cameron McEwen: is,

[38:32] Cameron McEwen: is there such a thing?

[38:33] Cameron McEwen: as total consciousness that does not leap to the absurd claim that it is not mythic,

[38:46] Cameron McEwen: that it is not some sort of mass,

[38:51] Cameron McEwen: not some sort of stage,

[38:53] Cameron McEwen: but is it possible that total consciousness is itself a stage,

[38:59] Cameron McEwen: is itself an example of making?

[39:02] Cameron McEwen: Is it Self-Condemned?

[39:04] Cameron McEwen: And so once you ask those sorts of questions,

[39:10] Cameron McEwen: in the quotation that you offer there,

[39:13] Cameron McEwen: the word total,

[39:14] Cameron McEwen: in total consciousness,

[39:16] Cameron McEwen: and the word sum,

[39:17] Cameron McEwen: the sum of all clichés,

[39:19] Cameron McEwen: those words become very complicated.

[39:23] Cameron McEwen: And the sentence can't be understood without trying to see,

[39:29] Cameron McEwen: well,

[39:30] Cameron McEwen: what could...

[39:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan mean by total here and sum?

[39:35] Cameron McEwen: Does he mean that we could just leap away from our credit card,

[39:39] Cameron McEwen: from our stage,

[39:40] Cameron McEwen: from our myth?

[39:41] Cameron McEwen: No,

[39:42] Cameron McEwen: of course not.

[39:43] Cameron McEwen: So in that case,

[39:44] Cameron McEwen: what the hell did he mean?

[39:46] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[39:47] Bob Dobbs: So at this point,

[39:48] Bob Dobbs: you mentioned subjective genitive,

[39:51] Bob Dobbs: objective genitive.

[39:52] Bob Dobbs: You use these terms every now and then.

[39:54] Bob Dobbs: And when I first was reading you,

[39:55] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know what they were.

[39:56] Bob Dobbs: I'd forgotten my grammar knowledge.

[39:59] Bob Dobbs: So I looked them up.

[40:00] Bob Dobbs: And I never can remember,

[40:01] Bob Dobbs: but is objective,

[40:04] Bob Dobbs: genitive,

[40:05] Bob Dobbs: or subjective the word of?

[40:07] Bob Dobbs: Could you define for us,

[40:09] Bob Dobbs: for the record,

[40:11] Bob Dobbs: what the two phrases refer to?

[40:14] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[40:14] Cameron McEwen: so the phrase is act of consciousness.

[40:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[40:18] Cameron McEwen: And the subjective genitive is reading that to mean that the act belongs to consciousness,

[40:27] Cameron McEwen: right?

[40:27] Cameron McEwen: It's like saying the ball of...

[40:29] Cameron McEwen: the boy.

[40:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[40:31] Cameron McEwen: The ball belongs to the boy.

[40:32] Cameron McEwen: So the act of consciousness as a subjective genitive is that the consciousness,

[40:40] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[40:40] Cameron McEwen: is ground and the act is figure.

[40:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[40:44] Cameron McEwen: So,

[40:45] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[40:45] Cameron McEwen: So then the objective genitive is that the act is ground and the consciousness is figure.

[40:53] Cameron McEwen: So here,

[40:54] Cameron McEwen: instead of the act of consciousness indicating that consciousness owns the act,

[41:01] Cameron McEwen: Here,

[41:02] Cameron McEwen: the consciousness is the object of the act.

[41:06] Cameron McEwen: And so in a certain sense,

[41:08] Cameron McEwen: here,

[41:10] Cameron McEwen: it is consciousness that belongs to the act.

[41:13] Cameron McEwen: It's a reversal.

[41:14] Cameron McEwen: So when thinking is going on,

[41:18] Cameron McEwen: it's continually looking at genitives and seeing how they work in reverse.

[41:25] Cameron McEwen: And

[41:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talked about this constantly in terms of...

[41:29] Cameron McEwen: the ground becoming figure and the figure becoming ground.

[41:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[41:35] Bob Dobbs: now,

[41:35] Bob Dobbs: how did you come up with those terms?

[41:38] Bob Dobbs: Did McLuhan ever use those terms?

[41:41] Cameron McEwen: No,

[41:41] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.

[41:42] Cameron McEwen: But they're fairly common in scholastic theology,

[41:49] Cameron McEwen: and

[41:50] Cameron McEwen: Heidegger very frequently will say that some janitive

[42:00] Cameron McEwen: can't be understood,

[42:02] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[42:03] Cameron McEwen: he'll say it can't be understood objectively,

[42:05] Cameron McEwen: it needs to be understood subjectively.

[42:08] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[42:08] Bob Dobbs: so in your studies of Heidegger's where you came across it first and then you applied it to McLuhan.

[42:13] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[42:13] Cameron McEwen: I think that's right.

[42:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[42:15] Bob Dobbs: so what did you,

[42:19] Bob Dobbs: so you have the objective and subjective,

[42:22] Bob Dobbs: so of means that the act owns

[42:29] Bob Dobbs: Consciousness goes in the direction...

[42:31] Cameron McEwen: That would be the objective.

[42:33] Cameron McEwen: That would be the objective,

[42:34] Cameron McEwen: right?

[42:34] Cameron McEwen: The act of consciousness would say that consciousness is the result of the act.

[42:45] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[42:46] Bob Dobbs: And then you have the act possessed by consciousness?

[42:51] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[42:53] Bob Dobbs: Subjective.

[42:55] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[42:56] Bob Dobbs: So...

[42:59] Cameron McEwen: And so there's a dynamic there,

[43:01] Cameron McEwen: right?

[43:01] Cameron McEwen: And the dynamic can be named the medium as the message.

[43:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[43:06] Cameron McEwen: Because the of is the relationship.

[43:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[43:10] Bob Dobbs: so what kind...

[43:11] Bob Dobbs: If an act generates a consciousness,

[43:19] Bob Dobbs: and then the act is part of consciousness,

[43:23] Bob Dobbs: one's a container and one is a process?

[43:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[43:27] Cameron McEwen: you could say that.

[43:29] Cameron McEwen: But

[43:30] Cameron McEwen: I prefer just the idea of which belongs to the other,

[43:34] Cameron McEwen: which is ground and which is figure.

[43:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[43:38] Bob Dobbs: and they always flip or can be flipped.

[43:40] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[43:41] Cameron McEwen: That's what the medium is a message means.

[43:45] Cameron McEwen: The medium is a message is the medium is inherently dynamic.

[43:51] Cameron McEwen: And in order to understand the poles.

[43:58] Cameron McEwen: of any relationship,

[44:00] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand how the dynamic of the relationship works.

[44:07] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[44:07] Bob Dobbs: so then

[44:08] Bob Dobbs: I try to talk about it below more informally,

[44:13] Bob Dobbs: and I say,

[44:21] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan juxtaposing comprehensive ideas with the dull word cliché.

[44:27] Bob Dobbs: This was 1966.

[44:28] Bob Dobbs: That's approximately when he was doing Cliche Archive.

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: He was doing it throughout the whole

[44:32] Bob Dobbs: 60s with Watson,

[44:34] Bob Dobbs: you see in the letters.

[44:35] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[44:35] Bob Dobbs: they started the book in like 62 or so.

[44:39] Cameron McEwen: Or at least started their dialogue.

[44:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[44:42] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan juxtaposing comprehensive ideas with the dull word cliché.

[44:47] Bob Dobbs: This was 1966.

[44:49] Bob Dobbs: This was the last pinnacle of abundance.

[44:52] Bob Dobbs: It's going to get gory in 68.

[44:54] Bob Dobbs: That's because live

[44:56] Bob Dobbs: Sputnik news broadcast using the satellite presenting merch.

[45:02] Bob Dobbs: It's going to get gory in 68 with Vietnam coming in,

[45:04] Bob Dobbs: the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy after the Summer of Love in 67.

[45:09] Bob Dobbs: In the Malinowski,

[45:10] Bob Dobbs: there's an optimistic feeling about North America.

[45:13] Bob Dobbs: Do I mean about North America or about,

[45:16] Bob Dobbs: like,

[45:16] Bob Dobbs: all over?

[45:18] Bob Dobbs: I think it's about the lifestyle of North America.

[45:23] Bob Dobbs: The abundance making everybody feel pretty good.

[45:26] Bob Dobbs: in the mid 60s,

[45:28] Bob Dobbs: or numbed.

[45:29] Bob Dobbs: to the point of carefree.

[45:31] Bob Dobbs: In the Malinowski,

[45:32] Bob Dobbs: there's not,

[45:33] Bob Dobbs: like,

[45:33] Bob Dobbs: I always remember when Carol and I went out in Seattle in 69,

[45:38] Bob Dobbs: we were able,

[45:39] Bob Dobbs: as Canadians,

[45:40] Bob Dobbs: to walk into the welfare office and get food stamps.

[45:43] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how,

[45:44] Bob Dobbs: I don't remember how we did it,

[45:45] Bob Dobbs: what we filled out,

[45:46] Bob Dobbs: but there was no checking who we were.

[45:49] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm thinking of,

[45:51] Bob Dobbs: when the optimistic feeling of ongoing abundance,

[45:54] Bob Dobbs: that people were basically giving things away.

[45:57] Bob Dobbs: It didn't matter.

[45:57] Bob Dobbs: There was a generosity.

[45:59] Bob Dobbs: on the propagandic use of money.

[46:03] Bob Dobbs: Money,

[46:04] Bob Dobbs: as an obsolete medium,

[46:05] Bob Dobbs: was going to be everywhere.

[46:06] Bob Dobbs: And it was very easy to get it.

[46:09] Bob Dobbs: And Biden seems to be trying to bring that back by handing out money all over the place.

[46:17] Cameron McEwen: I can remember going to a Renaissance fair around that time.

[46:23] Cameron McEwen: I think it was near San Francisco,

[46:26] Cameron McEwen: somewhere in Northern

[46:28] Cameron McEwen: California.

[46:29] Cameron McEwen: And the feeling there was exactly what you're describing.

[46:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[46:34] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[46:35] Cameron McEwen: it was a summer of love,

[46:37] Cameron McEwen: as you say,

[46:37] Cameron McEwen: and it was nothing could be better than this was the general feeling.

[46:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[46:46] Bob Dobbs: and everybody was giving everything away for free.

[46:48] Bob Dobbs: The diggers were giving away free food.

[46:51] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[46:52] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[46:53] Cameron McEwen: I wonder.

[46:54] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[46:54] Bob Dobbs: taking McLuhan,

[46:55] Bob Dobbs: there is an abundance of chemical body operations,

[46:58] Bob Dobbs: but nobody saw the disservice of the TV and chip body coming.

[47:04] Bob Dobbs: That's what was not foreseen,

[47:05] Bob Dobbs: that this was a celebration of the old chemical body and all tactility without friction.

[47:12] Bob Dobbs: Now it could flow easily into any activity.

[47:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[47:16] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[47:17] Bob Dobbs: Because it was not the ground.

[47:19] Bob Dobbs: It was not doing any job.

[47:20] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't holding things together as a ground.

[47:23] Bob Dobbs: It was let loose.

[47:24] Bob Dobbs: And it's remarkable how short it lasted,

[47:28] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[47:29] Bob Dobbs: It didn't last very long,

[47:31] Bob Dobbs: unless you consider the period from Elvis to

[47:35] Bob Dobbs: 67 and the Beatles as a slow awareness of abundance as they got out of the hardship of the Korean War and World War II.

[47:43] Bob Dobbs: So,

[47:43] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[47:43] Bob Dobbs: you could say it was a slow unfolding of the emotion of multitude.

[47:48] Bob Dobbs: And,

[47:48] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[47:49] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[47:50] Bob Dobbs: that feeling is what McLuhan was surfing.

[47:53] Bob Dobbs: And many people,

[47:54] Bob Dobbs: critics,

[47:54] Bob Dobbs: would say he was optimistic.

[47:56] Bob Dobbs: No,

[47:57] Bob Dobbs: he was explaining where the optimism feeling came from in everybody else.

[48:02] Bob Dobbs: And he was subtly saying,

[48:04] Bob Dobbs: look out,

[48:05] Bob Dobbs: watch out,

[48:06] Bob Dobbs: this is going to flip.

[48:08] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: definitely.

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: he had been saying that for

[48:13] Cameron McEwen: 15 years or more at that time.

[48:16] Cameron McEwen: But he had never been understood.

[48:21] Cameron McEwen: The only time people ever listened to him is when they started misinterpreting him as a messianic yaysayer or something.

[48:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[48:31] Bob Dobbs: the Newsweek special on March

[48:34] Bob Dobbs: 67th. Yeah,

[48:35] Bob Dobbs: that's why I guess the difference,

[48:37] Bob Dobbs: he's already been saying this,

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: but now he had a world stage or a world audience,

[48:40] Bob Dobbs: a captive audience that was attached to him by Gossage and other people who saw that he was the next slaver to talk about.

[48:51] Bob Dobbs: And he tried to ride it pretty good.

[48:54] Bob Dobbs: I like that footage in Telescope.

[48:56] Bob Dobbs: The Telescope special on him where he's in a disco and the Go-Go Girls are dancing behind him.

[49:03] Bob Dobbs: And he's saying,

[49:04] Bob Dobbs: can somebody turn that down?

[49:09] Bob Dobbs: And then he says,

[49:11] Bob Dobbs: this music is not music.

[49:13] Bob Dobbs: It is like foam rubber that you press up against,

[49:17] Bob Dobbs: which evokes the falsies.

[49:19] Bob Dobbs: Girls'

[49:20] Bob Dobbs: War,

[49:20] Bob Dobbs: right?

[49:21] Bob Dobbs: The padded bras.

[49:24] Bob Dobbs: But it was very poetic,

[49:27] Bob Dobbs: what he was doing there,

[49:28] Bob Dobbs: talking about this music presses up against you.

[49:33] Bob Dobbs: Why am I citing that?

[49:35] Cameron McEwen: The phrase,

[49:35] Cameron McEwen: can you turn it down,

[49:38] Cameron McEwen: has so many meanings.

[49:39] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[49:40] Bob Dobbs: He means that philosophically to everybody.

[49:43] Bob Dobbs: Can we turn this global mania down?

[49:49] Bob Dobbs: So

[49:50] Bob Dobbs: I think I wanted to point out that's his acting.

[49:54] Bob Dobbs: That's where he was actually a very interesting actor in the global theater.

[49:58] Bob Dobbs: He was putting on people.

[50:00] Bob Dobbs: He knew the effects and what he was saying.

[50:04] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[50:04] Cameron McEwen: do you think he knew?

[50:06] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that he knew the effects as if he had a godlike vision.

[50:12] Cameron McEwen: No,

[50:12] Cameron McEwen: he had the vision.

[50:13] Bob Dobbs: He didn't know he'd be that successful.

[50:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[50:17] Cameron McEwen: that's successful slash unsuccessful.

[50:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[50:21] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[50:22] Cameron McEwen: It turned out that that act.

[50:24] Cameron McEwen: which was,

[50:25] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[50:26] Cameron McEwen: one probe turned out not to work.

[50:29] Cameron McEwen: And so by 1970,

[50:31] Cameron McEwen: as you've pointed out many times,

[50:34] Cameron McEwen: he had decided to pull back from it.

[50:36] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[50:36] Bob Dobbs: and he admitted it in

[50:38] Bob Dobbs: Take Today.

[50:39] Bob Dobbs: He has a section on success is failure and failure is success.

[50:42] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[50:43] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[50:43] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[50:45] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[50:47] Cameron McEwen: And notice how we're going round and round and round the same point,

[50:51] Cameron McEwen: but not because...

[50:54] Cameron McEwen: We can't get anywhere,

[50:55] Cameron McEwen: but because the point is so important.

[50:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:57] Cameron McEwen: that's what he called depth perception.

[51:00] Bob Dobbs: You spiral around in depth.

[51:03] Bob Dobbs: It's resonating.

[51:05] Bob Dobbs: And that's,

[51:06] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[51:06] Bob Dobbs: it's not repetition.

[51:09] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[51:10] Bob Dobbs: literate repetition.

[51:11] Bob Dobbs: It's not that.

[51:12] Bob Dobbs: It's resonance.

[51:14] Bob Dobbs: And,

[51:15] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[51:15] Bob Dobbs: when I think of the debate between McLuhan and Norman Mailer in 67,

[51:21] Bob Dobbs: or late 66,

[51:23] Bob Dobbs: Mayr has a fit.

[51:24] Bob Dobbs: He gets morally outraged.

[51:26] Bob Dobbs: And

[51:27] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan has this attachment.

[51:30] Bob Dobbs: He's cool through all of this.

[51:33] Bob Dobbs: He may have had to deal with new issues,

[51:34] Bob Dobbs: new problems every day because the success of his image for a year or so was just blowing up all over the place.

[51:42] Bob Dobbs: I thought he kept pretty cool.

[51:44] Bob Dobbs: Unless what was sneaking up on him was his brain disease.

[51:48] Bob Dobbs: Then he had to have the biggest surgery.

[51:51] Bob Dobbs: Which some people who like to...

[51:53] Bob Dobbs: not like McLuhan in the end.

[51:55] Bob Dobbs: They'll tolerate me talking about him,

[51:57] Bob Dobbs: but they're going to dismiss him.

[51:58] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking of this one person who said,

[52:01] Bob Dobbs: holy,

[52:02] Bob Dobbs: you're telling me he had brain surgery,

[52:04] Bob Dobbs: the longest of humans?

[52:06] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[52:06] Bob Dobbs: longest known in history.

[52:08] Bob Dobbs: And they go,

[52:08] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[52:09] Bob Dobbs: that makes sense.

[52:10] Bob Dobbs: He deserved it.

[52:12] Bob Dobbs: That guy was wrong.

[52:13] Bob Dobbs: He was operating on a diseased brain.

[52:19] Bob Dobbs: That came out.

[52:22] Bob Dobbs: But I think that he,

[52:23] Bob Dobbs: despite the,

[52:24] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[52:24] Bob Dobbs: I was going to bring this up,

[52:27] Bob Dobbs: the Dr.

[52:27] Bob Dobbs: Strange salute,

[52:30] Bob Dobbs: Dr.

[52:30] Bob Dobbs: Strangelove,

[52:31] Bob Dobbs: that salute in the movie,

[52:34] Bob Dobbs: I think I was talking about this with someone else,

[52:36] Bob Dobbs: is the salute that McLuhan gave when he apparently blacked out in front of the students,

[52:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[52:42] Bob Dobbs: when the pressure was being done on his brain.

[52:46] Bob Dobbs: He made a Nazi salute in class.

[52:49] Bob Dobbs: It would scare the crap out of the kids,

[52:51] Bob Dobbs: and they'd just sit there stunned.

[52:55] Cameron McEwen: Are you saying that this happened once or this happened repeatedly?

[52:58] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[52:58] Bob Dobbs: repeatedly,

[52:59] Bob Dobbs: in class.

[53:00] Cameron McEwen: I know the blackouts.

[53:01] Cameron McEwen: I know the blackouts happened repeatedly.

[53:03] Bob Dobbs: But you didn't know the arm.

[53:05] Cameron McEwen: No,

[53:06] Cameron McEwen: and so when he had the blackout,

[53:08] Cameron McEwen: it would cause some sort of constriction of his arm,

[53:12] Cameron McEwen: and it would get lifted up,

[53:13] Cameron McEwen: is that the idea?

[53:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[53:14] Bob Dobbs: something like that.

[53:17] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[53:17] Bob Dobbs: there are a lot of little details like that in Marchand book.

[53:20] Bob Dobbs: He was good at finding little,

[53:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[53:23] Bob Dobbs: how he talked to people who were there.

[53:25] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[53:25] Cameron McEwen: I think I like Marchand book.

[53:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[53:28] Cameron McEwen: I think it's,

[53:29] Cameron McEwen: in many ways,

[53:29] Cameron McEwen: it's a good presentation.

[53:31] Cameron McEwen: I think he had good insight into the relationship of McLuhan and his mother.

[53:37] Cameron McEwen: He has a good,

[53:42] Cameron McEwen: how can I say,

[53:43] Cameron McEwen: he doesn't go to extremes.

[53:45] Cameron McEwen: extremes with McLuhan at all.

[53:48] Cameron McEwen: If

[53:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is getting too rambunctious,

[53:52] Cameron McEwen: Marchand takes him down.

[53:54] Cameron McEwen: If he's too down,

[53:55] Bob Dobbs: Marchand takes him up.

[53:57] Cameron McEwen: It's a good book in that respect.

[53:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[54:00] Bob Dobbs: and he got to talk to a lot of people who told him anecdotes,

[54:03] Bob Dobbs: and he put it in there.

[54:04] Bob Dobbs: And it was probably very important that he was not policed by the family,

[54:08] Bob Dobbs: that he could do what...

[54:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[54:11] Cameron McEwen: but that's what got him into trouble,

[54:12] Cameron McEwen: right?

[54:14] Bob Dobbs: I don't...

[54:14] Bob Dobbs: I heard they eventually came around.

[54:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.

[54:17] Bob Dobbs: What trouble do you know of that he got into?

[54:20] Cameron McEwen: Because he talks in the book about problems between Marchand Eric and between

[54:27] Cameron McEwen: Marchand the girls.

[54:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[54:29] Cameron McEwen: And the family reacted against that,

[54:33] Cameron McEwen: and that's why they wanted Terrence Gordon to do the new bio.

[54:38] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[54:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[54:39] Bob Dobbs: they did ignore him as much as possible.

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't involved with them anyways.

[54:47] Bob Dobbs: He surprised them all,

[54:48] Bob Dobbs: but they didn't embrace him for years until they had to give up.

[54:53] Cameron McEwen: I think they started off by,

[54:55] Cameron McEwen: they gave him a bunch of permissions,

[54:57] Cameron McEwen: which they then came to regret.

[55:00] Bob Dobbs: How would you know that?

[55:01] Bob Dobbs: Who did you talk to that would tell you that?

[55:05] Cameron McEwen: No,

[55:05] Cameron McEwen: that's not from talking to anybody.

[55:06] Cameron McEwen: That's just from,

[55:07] Cameron McEwen: in order to get access to the papers in Ottawa,

[55:11] Cameron McEwen: which is...

[55:12] Cameron McEwen: is really the basis of everything.

[55:14] Cameron McEwen: He had to get their permission,

[55:16] Cameron McEwen: and he thanks them in his book for giving him that.

[55:19] Bob Dobbs: No,

[55:19] Bob Dobbs: no,

[55:19] Bob Dobbs: you know what he did?

[55:20] Bob Dobbs: He got a job.

[55:21] Bob Dobbs: He's the one who organized the archives.

[55:24] Bob Dobbs: And as he did it,

[55:25] Bob Dobbs: he took notes.

[55:25] Bob Dobbs: That's how he wrote the biography.

[55:28] Bob Dobbs: He had the job.

[55:29] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[55:29] Bob Dobbs: he had access more than the McLuhan did.

[55:32] Bob Dobbs: Because once the archives had it,

[55:34] Bob Dobbs: they wanted to organize it,

[55:35] Bob Dobbs: and he had the job.

[55:36] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if he was the only one who did it,

[55:37] Bob Dobbs: but he told me.

[55:39] Bob Dobbs: He had the job of organizing the archives,

[55:41] Bob Dobbs: and he made a brilliant opportunistic move.

[55:45] Bob Dobbs: I can take this information that I'm sifting and organizing it,

[55:48] Bob Dobbs: take notes,

[55:49] Bob Dobbs: and make a book out of it.

[55:50] Bob Dobbs: And that's what he did.

[55:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[55:52] Cameron McEwen: but in order to have that job and in order to do the book,

[55:55] Cameron McEwen: he needed their permission.

[55:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't know about that.

[55:58] Bob Dobbs: You might be right,

[55:59] Bob Dobbs: but I don't know.

[56:01] Bob Dobbs: I think that they had no clue that he was coming around the bend,

[56:05] Bob Dobbs: and he didn't let anybody know.

[56:07] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[56:08] Bob Dobbs: he didn't have to tell anybody he was doing it.

[56:10] Bob Dobbs: He just said,

[56:11] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[56:11] Bob Dobbs: you want me to organize these things?

[56:13] Bob Dobbs: Dobbs started it.

[56:14] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[56:14] Bob Dobbs: I started it in

[56:17] Bob Dobbs: November, December 1980.

[56:19] Bob Dobbs: I organized not the letters,

[56:21] Bob Dobbs: but the rest of it,

[56:22] Bob Dobbs: which was in a mess.

[56:23] Bob Dobbs: And then he got paid for it in Ottawa four years later,

[56:29] Bob Dobbs: say.

[56:30] Cameron McEwen: But you're saying you suspect that he got this job and got this access,

[56:36] Cameron McEwen: but without the McLuhan knowing it?

[56:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[56:38] Bob Dobbs: because

[56:41] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that they would be.

[56:42] Bob Dobbs: I don't see them caring.

[56:45] Bob Dobbs: Once they sold the thing and they got their money,

[56:47] Bob Dobbs: that was it.

[56:48] Bob Dobbs: They don't care what the archives did with it.

[56:50] Bob Dobbs: They put down rules eventually at some point.

[56:53] Bob Dobbs: There's a whole section that you can't see.

[56:56] Bob Dobbs: Clinton's the first to get permission to see the 40 stuff from Michael.

[57:01] Bob Dobbs: But

[57:03] Bob Dobbs: I don't see them caring what the employees did or the procedure the archives did in organizing an archive.

[57:12] Cameron McEwen: All right.

[57:12] Bob Dobbs: That would be part of their knowledge.

[57:16] Bob Dobbs: profession wouldn't know what to do about that.

[57:20] Cameron McEwen: That's something we can look up.

[57:21] Cameron McEwen: It's not a hugely important point.

[57:25] Bob Dobbs: We should ask Phil at some point.

[57:29] Bob Dobbs: Call him up or something.

[57:30] Bob Dobbs: I should ask him about that.

[57:31] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I got it wrong.

[57:34] Bob Dobbs: But

[57:34] Bob Dobbs: I did talk to him about it.

[57:35] Bob Dobbs: I wouldn't know otherwise.

[57:37] Bob Dobbs: He told me that he worked there.

[57:40] Cameron McEwen: No,

[57:41] Cameron McEwen: that's for sure.

[57:44] Bob Dobbs: You blipped out.

[57:52] Bob Dobbs: Uh-oh.

[57:53] Bob Dobbs: Did I blip out?

[58:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[58:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to hang up and call him back.

[58:05] Bob Dobbs: I think something happened to his phone.

[58:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[58:21] Bob Dobbs: Are you there?

[59:35] Bob Dobbs: on so you're there yeah i'm here okay i think it care i wouldn't you well i don't know if you know about the technology but i think it carries on because i didn't hang it up uh this i do remember that uh in one of our earlier conversations something like this happened and then it turned out that it wasn't recording yeah

[59:57] Bob Dobbs: uh but that was um we didn't know that it stopped we know this time

[1:00:04] Bob Dobbs: So we may have corrected it.

[1:00:10] Bob Dobbs: I think if it stopped...

[1:00:12] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:00:12] Bob Dobbs: see,

[1:00:12] Bob Dobbs: it wouldn't stop.

[1:00:13] Bob Dobbs: You had three phones on there.

[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: And if one drops off...

[1:00:17] Bob Dobbs: I dropped off.

[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: They don't know that you dropped off.

[1:00:20] Bob Dobbs: I dropped off.

[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: I can come back on because the other two are still functioning.

[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: And I will go over there and see if it's talking.

[1:00:29] Bob Dobbs: Say something.

[1:00:30] Cameron McEwen: Hello.

[1:00:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Hello,

[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Bob.

[1:00:33] Cameron McEwen: Calling Hawaii.

[1:00:36] Bob Dobbs: It's going.

[1:00:38] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:00:38] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:00:39] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[1:00:40] Bob Dobbs: so we'll finish the Marshawn topic.

[1:00:43] Bob Dobbs: That gets us into...

[1:00:45] Bob Dobbs: I think McLuhan would say tiger traps in elephant cages,

[1:00:49] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:00:50] Bob Dobbs: we get in trouble there.

[1:00:54] Bob Dobbs: So we are talking about page 96,

[1:00:59] Bob Dobbs: cliches as act of consciousness.

[1:01:03] Bob Dobbs: So what I was saying,

[1:01:08] Bob Dobbs: I was reading.

[1:01:09] Cameron McEwen: See,

[1:01:10] Cameron McEwen: one way to look at a cliche as an act of consciousness.

[1:01:16] Cameron McEwen: Let's go back to what you were saying about stage,

[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: So you say a cliche is a stage of consciousness.

[1:01:24] Cameron McEwen: So does that mean that consciousness always belongs to stage so that it's always a certain role?

[1:01:33] Cameron McEwen: Or does it mean that stage always belongs to consciousness so that what consciousness is,

[1:01:41] Cameron McEwen: is the sum total of stages?

[1:01:44] Cameron McEwen: Both of those are involved in the phrase.

[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: now that's your interplay of objective and subjective genitive?

[1:01:53] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[1:01:55] Cameron McEwen: or between figure and ground.

[1:01:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:01:57] Bob Dobbs: so don't ask me to answer that,

[1:02:01] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:02:02] Bob Dobbs: That would take volumes.

[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:02:04] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:02:05] Cameron McEwen: I'm just trying to relate what we're saying here to what we were talking about earlier.

[1:02:11] Cameron McEwen: You were talking about stage,

[1:02:13] Cameron McEwen: the credit card is a stage.

[1:02:14] Cameron McEwen: stage.

[1:02:15] Cameron McEwen: You were talking about the feeling of 67,

[1:02:19] Bob Dobbs: feeling of abundance.

[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: And it is interesting that 68 is the year the news industry says they now had satellite access and they could broadcast satellite footage or something on the people's TV.

[1:02:37] Bob Dobbs: So there was a deeper involvement in the Global Theater in 68.

[1:02:42] Bob Dobbs: And that was a flip out of the chemical body.

[1:02:47] Bob Dobbs: He says England had reached a point,

[1:02:50] Bob Dobbs: in his dialogue with John Lennon,

[1:02:52] Bob Dobbs: he says

[1:02:53] Bob Dobbs: England, Britain had arrived at a phase of contentment in the

[1:02:58] Bob Dobbs: 50s.

[1:02:59] Bob Dobbs: And they got there maybe before America did.

[1:03:02] Bob Dobbs: So there was a contentment in 65,

[1:03:04] Bob Dobbs: 66,

[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: 67 that then flipped,

[1:03:07] Bob Dobbs: just like it flipped in Britain by the early

[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: 70s.

[1:03:11] Bob Dobbs: You started to have social unrest,

[1:03:14] Bob Dobbs: the contentment wasn't there anymore.

[1:03:17] Bob Dobbs: So the flip from the feeling of 67 to 68,

[1:03:22] Bob Dobbs: which is traditionally said is a very violent year,

[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: Two assassinations and riots in Detroit,

[1:03:29] Bob Dobbs: I mean Chicago and all this stuff.

[1:03:31] Bob Dobbs: It was a different mood in 68.

[1:03:33] Bob Dobbs: Matter of fact,

[1:03:35] Bob Dobbs: those that want to say,

[1:03:37] Bob Dobbs: they tend to be conservatives.

[1:03:38] Bob Dobbs: The 60s was a bad time.

[1:03:40] Bob Dobbs: They'll go into the events of 68.

[1:03:42] Bob Dobbs: Those that were part or enjoyed the mood of 66,

[1:03:46] Bob Dobbs: 67 will go into the events of the year before 67,

[1:03:50] Bob Dobbs: before the violence of

[1:03:54] Bob Dobbs: 68. So the divide,

[1:03:57] Bob Dobbs: iconically,

[1:03:59] Bob Dobbs: left,

[1:03:59] Bob Dobbs: right,

[1:03:59] Bob Dobbs: is between 67 and 68 and what one remembers,

[1:04:03] Bob Dobbs: what one chooses to remember.

[1:04:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:04:06] Cameron McEwen: And the...

[1:04:08] Cameron McEwen: Problems in France,

[1:04:10] Cameron McEwen: and the French intellectuals divided on the question of 68,

[1:04:17] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:04:18] Bob Dobbs: that was a big deal.

[1:04:19] Bob Dobbs: So those are the stages,

[1:04:21] Bob Dobbs: 67,

[1:04:22] Bob Dobbs: 68 are two stages.

[1:04:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:04:25] Cameron McEwen: in the sense that we were talking about before.

[1:04:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:04:30] Cameron McEwen: If people understood that only in terms of chronological time,

[1:04:36] Cameron McEwen: They would miss.

[1:04:38] Cameron McEwen: the fact that stages are missed.

[1:04:42] Cameron McEwen: They are perpetual possibilities.

[1:04:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:04:45] Bob Dobbs: they're not limited to time,

[1:04:47] Bob Dobbs: the clock time.

[1:04:48] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:04:50] Bob Dobbs: It just struck me,

[1:04:51] Bob Dobbs: a major good-feeling event,

[1:04:54] Bob Dobbs: symbolic of 67 is Expo 67 in Montreal,

[1:04:59] Bob Dobbs: and it's very,

[1:05:01] Bob Dobbs: it's timely.

[1:05:02] Bob Dobbs: It's like an artist has good timing.

[1:05:05] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan.

[1:05:06] Bob Dobbs: Thanks to Don Theall,

[1:05:07] Bob Dobbs: it's celebrated all through Expo 67.

[1:05:10] Bob Dobbs: He becomes a myth,

[1:05:11] Bob Dobbs: a subplot in the exhibitions that people saw.

[1:05:16] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty good timing.

[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: by McLuhan as,

[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: an artist,

[1:05:21] Bob Dobbs: an actor of the Global Theater,

[1:05:22] Bob Dobbs: to position himself,

[1:05:24] Bob Dobbs: accidentally probably,

[1:05:25] Bob Dobbs: but end up looking like he positioned himself to appear in the pinnacle of good feeling,

[1:05:32] Bob Dobbs: which XO67 was for many people around the world.

[1:05:36] Cameron McEwen: So in that,

[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan in

[1:05:40] Cameron McEwen: 66, let's say,

[1:05:42] Cameron McEwen: had suddenly sort of blossomed onto the world.

[1:05:47] Cameron McEwen: And for Canadians,

[1:05:50] Cameron McEwen: this was a way of saying

[1:05:52] Cameron McEwen: Canadian intellectuals are world class.

[1:05:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:05:56] Bob Dobbs: they've arrived.

[1:05:57] Bob Dobbs: Canada has arrived.

[1:05:57] Cameron McEwen: And then Expo 67 says Canadian design,

[1:06:03] Cameron McEwen: being Canadian is world class.

[1:06:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:06:07] Cameron McEwen: And so these events,

[1:06:08] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and the Expo,

[1:06:13] Cameron McEwen: kind of merged into...

[1:06:16] Cameron McEwen: Canada's ideal presentation of itself.

[1:06:20] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:06:20] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall wrote a good essay on

[1:06:23] Bob Dobbs: Expo showing the programming of anti-environment under satellite conditions that McLuhan wrote about.

[1:06:30] Bob Dobbs: The new art was the programming the planet.

[1:06:32] Bob Dobbs: That was a major meme theme or something in Expo,

[1:06:36] Bob Dobbs: was the programming of the global environment.

[1:06:39] Bob Dobbs: So the art forms

[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan idea and the fact of the acting out of it.

[1:06:46] Bob Dobbs: emerged together and the best of the

[1:06:51] Bob Dobbs: 50s, 60s period,

[1:06:53] Bob Dobbs: what is the artist of that?

[1:06:54] Bob Dobbs: The artist in the sense of a celebration of what was going on?

[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was the right guy because he was celebrating what was happening as well as providing a warning.

[1:07:06] Bob Dobbs: But he's the guy who had perfect pitch at that period.

[1:07:10] Bob Dobbs: The world didn't know that.

[1:07:12] Bob Dobbs: We,

[1:07:12] Bob Dobbs: in retrospect,

[1:07:13] Bob Dobbs: can see that he had it.

[1:07:15] Bob Dobbs: Some parts of the world felt it because they made him famous.

[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: They just said,

[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: this guy is saying something significant no one else is doing.

[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: So it is quite an amazing expression of the logos that McLuhan was riding a surf wave,

[1:07:32] Bob Dobbs: and the logos recognized this,

[1:07:35] Bob Dobbs: and then also made

[1:07:36] Bob Dobbs: Expo have a good vibe.

[1:07:38] Bob Dobbs: And then that affected the French intellectuals,

[1:07:41] Bob Dobbs: who,

[1:07:41] Bob Dobbs: because they were interested in what was going on in their...

[1:07:44] Bob Dobbs: their cousins in Quebec,

[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: they started to look at McLuhan because he was the guy translating Joyce.

[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:07:51] Bob Dobbs: that was explaining Joyce.

[1:07:52] Bob Dobbs: As these guys in France started to get access to Joyce in the first French translations.

[1:07:59] Bob Dobbs: And so that leads to Baudrillard,

[1:08:00] Bob Dobbs: Jacques Derrida,

[1:08:01] Bob Dobbs: Deleuze and Guattari,

[1:08:02] Bob Dobbs: Lyotard,

[1:08:03] Bob Dobbs: Barthes,

[1:08:04] Bob Dobbs: the whole gang of them spill out.

[1:08:07] Bob Dobbs: But they are reacting to the bad news of 68,

[1:08:10] Bob Dobbs: the failed revolution of May 68.

[1:08:16] Cameron McEwen: I think that's right.

[1:08:17] Cameron McEwen: I would just add that

[1:08:20] Cameron McEwen: I haven't read Theall essay,

[1:08:23] Cameron McEwen: but it would be limiting to understand

[1:08:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan seeing the planet as an art form,

[1:08:36] Cameron McEwen: as only a celebration.

[1:08:38] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:08:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm emphasizing half the story.

[1:08:44] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying that the good vibe of

[1:08:46] Bob Dobbs: 67, because McLuhan himself is representing the flip of the 68 because he needs brain surgery.

[1:08:53] Bob Dobbs: He's got a problem.

[1:08:55] Bob Dobbs: And Don,

[1:08:56] Bob Dobbs: who had left Toronto and was working in McGill in 66,

[1:08:59] Bob Dobbs: 67,

[1:09:01] Bob Dobbs: he met Marshall in the parties leading into the beginning of Expo,

[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: let's say in the spring of 67.

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: he was an old friend.

[1:09:11] Bob Dobbs: He knew Marshall well.

[1:09:11] Bob Dobbs: and he said,

[1:09:12] Bob Dobbs: there's something wrong with Marshall.

[1:09:14] Bob Dobbs: He told me he saw that Marshall in his actions as a person,

[1:09:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:09:19] Bob Dobbs: his vibe,

[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: there was something ill.

[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: He saw that in the spring 67 and they all discovered it by November 67.

[1:09:29] Bob Dobbs: Gerd Stern,

[1:09:30] Bob Dobbs: who was part of the process of,

[1:09:32] Bob Dobbs: of at a party.

[1:09:34] Bob Dobbs: He told me this,

[1:09:34] Bob Dobbs: he was at a party in New York because he was hanging out with Ted Carpenter at the Fordham thing and the Fordham scene.

[1:09:41] Bob Dobbs: And somebody told

[1:09:46] Bob Dobbs: Gerd about the blackouts.

[1:09:48] Bob Dobbs: And Gerd thought,

[1:09:49] Bob Dobbs: that's odd.

[1:09:50] Bob Dobbs: So he goes over and talks to a doctor that he knew there at the party.

[1:09:54] Bob Dobbs: And the doctor says,

[1:09:54] Bob Dobbs: that's serious.

[1:09:55] Bob Dobbs: Who are you talking about?

[1:09:57] Bob Dobbs: So Gerd took the guy over and introduced him to McLuhan and maybe Corrine.

[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: And they talked about this problem he had with the Dr.

[1:10:06] Bob Dobbs: Strangelove salute and the blackouts.

[1:10:08] Bob Dobbs: And the doctor said,

[1:10:09] Bob Dobbs: man,

[1:10:09] Bob Dobbs: you need to get in the hospital right away.

[1:10:13] Bob Dobbs: He had to make a decision over the next day or so,

[1:10:15] Bob Dobbs: and Corinne went out.

[1:10:16] Bob Dobbs: Corinne says,

[1:10:17] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:10:17] Bob Dobbs: you're going in the hospital.

[1:10:19] Bob Dobbs: So he goes in there,

[1:10:20] Bob Dobbs: and he objects to all this.

[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't like doctors,

[1:10:24] Bob Dobbs: according to Marchand book.

[1:10:25] Bob Dobbs: And he puts up with it,

[1:10:28] Bob Dobbs: and then he has the longest unconsciousness of any surgery up to that point,

[1:10:33] Bob Dobbs: known in history.

[1:10:34] Cameron McEwen: Didn't he go in under duress and then actually checked himself out and then had to...

[1:10:42] Cameron McEwen: be brought back in?

[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: I think so.

[1:10:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:10:45] Bob Dobbs: there was some real resistance by him.

[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:10:48] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:10:49] Cameron McEwen: And do you know anything about how they found the tumor?

[1:10:52] Cameron McEwen: Because in those days they didn't have an MRI or CAT scan or anything.

[1:10:56] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:10:57] Bob Dobbs: they dug in there.

[1:10:58] Bob Dobbs: They dug in and looked at it and brought it out.

[1:11:01] Bob Dobbs: And it was a benign tumor.

[1:11:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:11:03] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:11:04] Cameron McEwen: But the size of a tennis ball or something.

[1:11:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:11:07] Bob Dobbs: And he said the convalescence was the real agony.

[1:11:11] Bob Dobbs: and that they didn't know to apply co-anesthetic to the convalescence.

[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: He wrote about that in War and Peace.

[1:11:16] Bob Dobbs: And he also couldn't remember the whole previous year.

[1:11:20] Bob Dobbs: And he lost a lot of his reading and brain information processing for a year or two just before that.

[1:11:26] Bob Dobbs: And then he was super sensitive to sounds from that point on.

[1:11:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:11:31] Cameron McEwen: he became very fidgety.

[1:11:35] Cameron McEwen: And that's one of the ties between

[1:11:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and...

[1:11:40] Cameron McEwen: and Jordan Peterson.

[1:11:41] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:11:42] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[1:11:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:11:44] Cameron McEwen: Peterson got ill,

[1:11:44] Bob Dobbs: didn't he?

[1:11:45] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:11:46] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:11:47] Cameron McEwen: And ended up extremely fidgety and nervous about sound,

[1:11:53] Cameron McEwen: and all of this is a commonality aside from all of the other commonalities.

[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: That's incredible.

[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:11:59] Bob Dobbs: you mean it's come out since he got sick a year or two ago that he's still on pins and needles?

[1:12:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:12:06] Cameron McEwen: that was according to his...

[1:12:08] Cameron McEwen: daughter,

[1:12:08] Cameron McEwen: that was one of the major symptoms of his problems.

[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: of course.

[1:12:13] Cameron McEwen: He could not stay still.

[1:12:16] Cameron McEwen: I forget there's a technical name for this condition,

[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: but in my blog,

[1:12:25] Cameron McEwen: I've quoted descriptions of Peterson,

[1:12:30] Cameron McEwen: and then Juxas posed them with descriptions of McLuhan,

[1:12:34] Cameron McEwen: and they're quite close.

[1:12:36] Bob Dobbs: So you've already pointed that we've discussed it,

[1:12:38] Bob Dobbs: but you have applied it and wrote it out,

[1:12:41] Bob Dobbs: the parallels going on.

[1:12:42] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:12:43] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:12:43] Cameron McEwen: I had done this even before we discussed it.

[1:12:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: 67 to 2017 is 50 years precisely,

[1:12:55] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:12:56] Bob Dobbs: Half a century.

[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: Because it's about to 2017 when he started to get attention,

[1:13:00] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:13:00] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:13:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:13:02] Bob Dobbs: So isn't it amazing?

[1:13:03] Bob Dobbs: That's where there's,

[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: I look at it as the Logos has its own communication order in the brain chart,

[1:13:11] Bob Dobbs: in laws of media.

[1:13:12] Bob Dobbs: The characteristics of left hemisphere and right hemisphere.

[1:13:15] Bob Dobbs: There's a term for the left side,

[1:13:18] Bob Dobbs: I think it's called abstract patterns,

[1:13:20] Bob Dobbs: where it's a different phrase in the right hemisphere,

[1:13:23] Bob Dobbs: a different kind of pattern recognition.

[1:13:24] Bob Dobbs: If you had the book there,

[1:13:25] Bob Dobbs: you could just quickly look it up and see that the way abstract is used,

[1:13:31] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:13:32] Bob Dobbs: One by means of two.

[1:13:33] Bob Dobbs: There's two meanings.

[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: Do you have that right there?

[1:13:36] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:13:36] Cameron McEwen: I don't have it,

[1:13:37] Cameron McEwen: but it's exactly what we've been talking about in our whole conversation.

[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: The medium is the message.

[1:13:44] Cameron McEwen: Because it's dynamic and not singular,

[1:13:47] Cameron McEwen: because the medium is the message is dynamic,

[1:13:50] Cameron McEwen: then any word,

[1:13:52] Cameron McEwen: like abstract,

[1:13:53] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:13:54] Cameron McEwen: or like pattern,

[1:13:55] Cameron McEwen: is inherently going to have a whole series of meanings.

[1:14:01] Cameron McEwen: Not only a series of meanings as figures,

[1:14:04] Cameron McEwen: but a series of meanings as grounds.

[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: and that's hendieties is one aspect of that.

[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: One by means of two.

[1:14:12] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: so we're talking about

[1:14:17] Bob Dobbs: 67 and the feeling of abundance that you got at the Renaissance Fair,

[1:14:21] Bob Dobbs: and I got in the welfare office in Seattle.

[1:14:25] Bob Dobbs: But I think it's interesting to flip from 67 to 68.

[1:14:30] Bob Dobbs: And then there's the election in late 68,

[1:14:33] Bob Dobbs: and then everybody is sobered up that,

[1:14:36] Bob Dobbs: uh-oh,

[1:14:37] Bob Dobbs: you could Trump got elected,

[1:14:39] Bob Dobbs: the bad guy got elected,

[1:14:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:14:41] Bob Dobbs: mafia Nixon.

[1:14:42] Cameron McEwen: And they got him too.

[1:14:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:14:45] Bob Dobbs: Then they,

[1:14:46] Bob Dobbs: even he has to go.

[1:14:48] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:14:48] Bob Dobbs: because it's getting beyond good and evil,

[1:14:51] Bob Dobbs: getting Nietzschean.

[1:14:54] Bob Dobbs: There's programming of the planet and the White House.

[1:14:57] Bob Dobbs: on a whole other level beyond normal chemical body value systems.

[1:15:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:15:04] Cameron McEwen: maybe it's going to turn out that this is a big part of your pamphlet.

[1:15:09] Cameron McEwen: But what we can see with both Nixon and Trump the huge power of media,

[1:15:19] Cameron McEwen: media in the figurative sense.

[1:15:21] Cameron McEwen: And perhaps with

[1:15:25] Cameron McEwen: Nixon, you see its triumph.

[1:15:28] Cameron McEwen: And Trump,

[1:15:29] Cameron McEwen: you see its demise.

[1:15:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:15:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:15:32] Bob Dobbs: it's gone beyond the theater of Nixon era,

[1:15:35] Bob Dobbs: and then it's excessively obsolete and supernovaed Trump.

[1:15:40] Bob Dobbs: And that means that finally it's moved into another area,

[1:15:42] Bob Dobbs: which becomes a figure.

[1:15:44] Bob Dobbs: Is that figure the zombie Biden?

[1:15:49] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[1:15:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:15:50] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[1:15:51] Cameron McEwen: You can see

[1:15:52] Cameron McEwen: Biden as the quixotic knight with a K.

[1:16:01] Cameron McEwen: the departing power of media.

[1:16:03] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:16:04] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[1:16:05] Cameron McEwen: it also relates to Vietnam and stuff in the way that you were hinting at a minute ago,

[1:16:10] Cameron McEwen: and that is that with satellite communication in 1968,

[1:16:16] Cameron McEwen: you had sort of the ascendancy of media into a godlike status,

[1:16:22] Cameron McEwen: into a world-straddling power.

[1:16:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:16:27] Bob Dobbs: and then you had the Tet Offensive in early 68.

[1:16:31] Bob Dobbs: In Vietnam,

[1:16:33] Bob Dobbs: everything went bad in 1968.

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: It was a general myth.

[1:16:37] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: there's this professor,

[1:16:42] Bob Dobbs: Betts,

[1:16:43] Bob Dobbs: B-E-T-T-S,

[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: and there's a book called Counterblasting Canada,

[1:16:47] Bob Dobbs: which is a bunch of essays on McLuhan,

[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: a recent book.

[1:16:50] Bob Dobbs: And Betts does one on

[1:16:53] Bob Dobbs: Sheila Watson and

[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: Wilfred Watson,

[1:16:56] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan discussing anti-environment,

[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: I guess.

[1:17:01] Bob Dobbs: And they decide,

[1:17:03] Bob Dobbs: or McLuhan says,

[1:17:05] Bob Dobbs: that Canada is the anti-environment to

[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: America and to the global theater.

[1:17:12] Bob Dobbs: Therefore,

[1:17:12] Bob Dobbs: it is the best artist of the late

[1:17:16] Bob Dobbs: 60s. Canada.

[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: Not Frank Zappa,

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: not Bob Dylan,

[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: not some theater guy,

[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: or whatever art,

[1:17:24] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg art you want to quote.

[1:17:25] Bob Dobbs: Those guys aren't artists compared to the real art,

[1:17:28] Bob Dobbs: which is the anti-environment,

[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: the mythic stages.

[1:17:31] Bob Dobbs: And Canada as a mythic stage is the appropriate anti-environment to

[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: America as a service environment with perfect pitch.

[1:17:42] Bob Dobbs: And that is what comes together in 67 at Expo.

[1:17:45] Bob Dobbs: Canada is the triumphant

[1:17:48] Bob Dobbs: Oscar winner for great performance,

[1:17:51] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan is in the middle of that.

[1:17:53] Bob Dobbs: And he's the one talking about the great artist is not a human chemical body,

[1:17:58] Bob Dobbs: it's anti-environment,

[1:17:59] Bob Dobbs: and it's Canada.

[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: as an Antigonish.

[1:18:02] Cameron McEwen: Yep,

[1:18:02] Cameron McEwen: yep.

[1:18:02] Bob Dobbs: And then you have the celebration of that as Trudeau becomes prime minister.

[1:18:07] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: So that actually was a good feeling in 68 for a big part of Canada.

[1:18:13] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:18:14] Cameron McEwen: definitely,

[1:18:14] Cameron McEwen: definitely.

[1:18:15] Cameron McEwen: So then you can see the intervening 50 years as the small hole in the bubble leaking more and more air.

[1:18:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:18:26] Bob Dobbs: as the celebrity becomes dope addicted.

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: kills a few people by accident.

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: Johnny Depp syndrome takes over.

[1:18:36] Bob Dobbs: The Depp state.

[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: Not the deep state,

[1:18:38] Bob Dobbs: the Depp state.

[1:18:39] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:18:42] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:18:42] Bob Dobbs: every celebrity,

[1:18:43] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan said,

[1:18:44] Bob Dobbs: he wouldn't worship,

[1:18:45] Bob Dobbs: he wouldn't advocate,

[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[1:18:48] Bob Dobbs: queen for a day on a dog.

[1:18:51] Bob Dobbs: So he's criticizing the fame neurosis of Hollywood and all that from the

[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: 30s and 40s on.

[1:18:59] Bob Dobbs: And he's trying to be detached from it.

[1:19:03] Bob Dobbs: But overall,

[1:19:05] Bob Dobbs: are there any celebrities that don't suffer increasingly from the 70s,

[1:19:10] Bob Dobbs: 80s,

[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: 90s?

[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: They all have a bad time at some point.

[1:19:14] Bob Dobbs: It's not cool to be hogging the content of the Android Meme in that phase and then later the tech body.

[1:19:23] Bob Dobbs: The tech body is...

[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: It's the technology coming alive and becoming famous and hijacking the process,

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: including directing it.

[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: If you look at my Tiny Note chart,

[1:19:33] Bob Dobbs: I've got producer,

[1:19:34] Bob Dobbs: director,

[1:19:35] Bob Dobbs: lawyer,

[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: detective,

[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: actor,

[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: or something else in there.

[1:19:39] Bob Dobbs: I've got all these roles that the Android Meme is miming,

[1:19:43] Bob Dobbs: and then the tech body acts out.

[1:19:44] Bob Dobbs: The tech body is acting out what our eyes,

[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: ears,

[1:19:50] Bob Dobbs: and senses are perceiving.

[1:19:51] Bob Dobbs: We're totally possessed.

[1:19:54] Bob Dobbs: by the tech body now.

[1:19:56] Bob Dobbs: So everything we're looking at,

[1:19:58] Bob Dobbs: experiencing in what they call the news or the media,

[1:20:02] Bob Dobbs: is a completely...

[1:20:05] Bob Dobbs: programmed environment,

[1:20:07] Bob Dobbs: not fake,

[1:20:08] Bob Dobbs: programmed consciously by the tech body.

[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: And we'll always be creating interruptions and changes in the direction of what people think is unfolding.

[1:20:19] Bob Dobbs: So the tech body is the new art form today.

[1:20:23] Cameron McEwen: I can follow what you're saying,

[1:20:25] Cameron McEwen: but the thing that I don't quite get is if you say that the tech body has programmed and

[1:20:35] Cameron McEwen: the perceptions programmed all of the sensory ratios,

[1:20:43] Cameron McEwen: then it seems that the tech body is both cause and effect.

[1:20:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:20:53] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:20:53] Cameron McEwen: that's true.

[1:20:54] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:20:54] Bob Dobbs: that would be page 137 at the bottom of Take Today.

[1:20:58] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[1:20:58] Bob Dobbs: process pattern recognition via percepts as opposed to causes becoming effects via concepts.

[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: Remember we went over that quote?

[1:21:07] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:21:08] Bob Dobbs: That's what

[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: Barry's getting at,

[1:21:10] Bob Dobbs: this complexity.

[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: And there's another point.

[1:21:12] Bob Dobbs: What did you say?

[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: It's not juggling senses.

[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: It's juggling bodies.

[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: That's where I go,

[1:21:23] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:21:23] Bob Dobbs: past McLuhan or overlay McLuhan with a more up-to-date statement of what's juggled.

[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: The senses is just the chemical body.

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: But you've got the...

[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: Digital senses and televised senses,

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: Barry called it,

[1:21:40] Bob Dobbs: we have 14 senses now,

[1:21:41] Bob Dobbs: so we've added to the five senses.

[1:21:43] Cameron McEwen: But it would be a mistake,

[1:21:45] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:21:46] Cameron McEwen: to think that

[1:21:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan took the senses literally.

[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:21:52] Bob Dobbs: He called them which?

[1:21:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:21:54] Cameron McEwen: so for example,

[1:21:55] Cameron McEwen: when he says that TV is tactile,

[1:21:58] Cameron McEwen: or when he says that symphonic music is visual,

[1:22:02] Cameron McEwen: right,

[1:22:02] Cameron McEwen: it's obvious.

[1:22:05] Cameron McEwen: or when he portrays the television as an ear,

[1:22:09] Cameron McEwen: he saw literal interpretation as belonging to the Gutenberg era.

[1:22:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: he saw the synesthesia.

[1:22:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:22:22] Cameron McEwen: synesthesia is a certain resolution of the senses,

[1:22:27] Cameron McEwen: and there's one resolution that's typical of Gutenberg,

[1:22:30] Cameron McEwen: and then there are other resolutions that...

[1:22:34] Cameron McEwen: Gutenberg tried not to see,

[1:22:37] Cameron McEwen: that it repressed.

[1:22:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:22:39] Cameron McEwen: So it's not the case that McLuhan saw the senses as literal,

[1:22:48] Cameron McEwen: and therefore you can't say that he didn't see them as bodies.

[1:22:54] Cameron McEwen: Bodies is one interpretation that McLuhan would have been very happy to admit once he was sure that

[1:23:04] Cameron McEwen: no literalism was meant.

[1:23:06] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:23:06] Cameron McEwen: Because bodies themselves aren't literal.

[1:23:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:23:10] Bob Dobbs: so I'm critiquing the audience of McLuhan that takes McLuhan literally and thinks in literal senses.

[1:23:16] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:23:16] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.

[1:23:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:23:17] Bob Dobbs: so I do that by suggesting bodies,

[1:23:21] Bob Dobbs: which I know people are going to think differently if they can even conceive of it.

[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: So that's a way of breaking the program response to McLuhan by the uninformed

[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: And...

[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: perceiver.

[1:23:33] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:23:34] Bob Dobbs: The unsophisticated perceiver.

[1:23:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:23:37] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:23:37] Cameron McEwen: and there's a whole tradition of this in Christianity,

[1:23:41] Cameron McEwen: and there may well be in other cultures as well,

[1:23:45] Cameron McEwen: but when in Christianity there's talk of the mystical body,

[1:23:51] Cameron McEwen: or in the phatic communion,

[1:23:53] Cameron McEwen: this is the body of Christ,

[1:23:57] Cameron McEwen: the whole notion of body is complicated.

[1:24:02] Cameron McEwen: And so what you have in modern times is a kind of a forgetting of that complication,

[1:24:09] Cameron McEwen: an overlaying of that complication for something that's more simple.

[1:24:14] Cameron McEwen: And that simplicity allows for efficiency,

[1:24:21] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[1:24:22] Cameron McEwen: but it also allows for blindness.

[1:24:26] Cameron McEwen: And so what you end up with...

[1:24:27] Cameron McEwen: What was the noun?

[1:24:28] Bob Dobbs: Did you say that's simplicity?

[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: What was the thing?

[1:24:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:31] Cameron McEwen: Simplicity allows for efficiency.

[1:24:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:35] Cameron McEwen: So once you simplify a process,

[1:24:39] Cameron McEwen: then it's possible to maximize it.

[1:24:41] Cameron McEwen: But in the maximization,

[1:24:44] Cameron McEwen: you also maximize the blindness that was a part of the simplification that first allowed the efficiency.

[1:24:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:24:52] Cameron McEwen: And so that's where we're at in the history of the world,

[1:24:56] Cameron McEwen: is that we have simplified things.

[1:25:01] Cameron McEwen: to enable the greatest possible efficiency,

[1:25:05] Cameron McEwen: but that's tied to the greatest possible blindness.

[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: An important point that we've repeated all the way through the 48 episodes.

[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: Apologies.

[1:25:18] Bob Dobbs: What did you say?

[1:25:19] Cameron McEwen: Apologies.

[1:25:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:25:24] Bob Dobbs: Theo talks about the art of Paul Klee and similar to James Joyce is that they take the unit and they repeat it,

[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: Klee in his painting,

[1:25:35] Bob Dobbs: but it's subtly changed slightly.

[1:25:38] Bob Dobbs: So that's the going over the same point in what McClellan called drilling.

[1:25:43] Bob Dobbs: You're not repeating.

[1:25:44] Bob Dobbs: You're going into the resonances of nuances and overlayings and echoes.

[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: of meaning to the point

[1:25:51] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,

[1:25:53] Bob Dobbs: you can take two words and make a whole world from it.

[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: And he says that's what Joyce did with Finnegans Wake.

[1:25:58] Bob Dobbs: He took two words and made a whole world.

[1:26:01] Bob Dobbs: That's what one...

[1:26:03] Cameron McEwen: So notice how that is getting into points that we've made earlier in our talk.

[1:26:10] Cameron McEwen: So you can take a certain image,

[1:26:15] Cameron McEwen: let's say the bird image in Klee,

[1:26:19] Cameron McEwen: Paul Klee.

[1:26:20] Cameron McEwen: So over and over and over again in his paintings,

[1:26:24] Cameron McEwen: he has birds,

[1:26:26] Cameron McEwen: but sometimes they're upside down,

[1:26:28] Cameron McEwen: sometimes they're sideways,

[1:26:30] Cameron McEwen: sometimes they're taken apart.

[1:26:33] Cameron McEwen: And so then you can say,

[1:26:35] Cameron McEwen: okay,

[1:26:38] Cameron McEwen: if you take an image like that and drill into it,

[1:26:42] Cameron McEwen: is the image,

[1:26:43] Cameron McEwen: the figure,

[1:26:44] Cameron McEwen: and we're doing the drilling,

[1:26:46] Cameron McEwen: Or is the image the ground and we are being drilled?

[1:26:50] Cameron McEwen: So one of McLuhan methods that we need to emphasize and that is not used enough,

[1:27:00] Cameron McEwen: one of his methods is to take a certain image and to just keep hammering away at it,

[1:27:07] Cameron McEwen: where it's not us doing the probing and the hammering,

[1:27:13] Cameron McEwen: it's us being probed and hammered.

[1:27:15] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:27:16] Bob Dobbs: Now that's the essence of tactility.

[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: That's the definition of it,

[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: this interplay.

[1:27:25] Bob Dobbs: And it's really easy to see that if you start having books,

[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: it makes the interplay not so obvious.

[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: It forces you,

[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: just by the act of reading,

[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: to look at one side,

[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: one sense,

[1:27:40] Bob Dobbs: the eyeball sense,

[1:27:41] Bob Dobbs: and that specializes you and that starts to create...

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: the loss of comprehensiveness,

[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: which we lost 500 years ago,

[1:27:50] Bob Dobbs: and here we are not knowing how to get to another platform of community knowing.

[1:28:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan demanded a corporate clairvoyance.

[1:28:04] Bob Dobbs: So we all have to recognize this problem that we're in.

[1:28:07] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:28:08] Cameron McEwen: And one of the really important things about McLuhan is

[1:28:14] Cameron McEwen: to understand what's meant by clairvoyance.

[1:28:16] Cameron McEwen: It's not some sort of breakthrough into total illumination.

[1:28:21] Cameron McEwen: It's the ability of the community to interrogate itself in a transparent manner.

[1:28:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:28:31] Bob Dobbs: aware of the paradoxes that we've been talking about,

[1:28:34] Bob Dobbs: the complementarity and the hendieties,

[1:28:36] Bob Dobbs: while engaging.

[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:28:39] Bob Dobbs: I have a suspicion the population is doing that.

[1:28:42] Bob Dobbs: and been doing it for 20,

[1:28:43] Bob Dobbs: 30 years.

[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: That's why McClellan said we're in a state of collective consciousness.

[1:28:47] Bob Dobbs: But it doesn't have a way to listen to someone explain that to them,

[1:28:53] Bob Dobbs: that to call the population is getting dumbed down is only half the story.

[1:28:58] Bob Dobbs: The population is getting smarter and smarter.

[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: And you see it in the polls,

[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: and you see less and less people participate in the elections as a collective preference of the election.

[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: And that's...

[1:29:11] Bob Dobbs: the amazing thing is that,

[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: I brought that up earlier,

[1:29:14] Bob Dobbs: 50%

[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: see it and the other 50 don't.

[1:29:17] Bob Dobbs: But nobody can figure out how to rally around a proper definition of this situation or a proper wording that doesn't stop awareness of the problem or the solution.

[1:29:29] Bob Dobbs: So very strange.

[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: Some people might think that this will be resolved accidentally by humans.

[1:29:38] Bob Dobbs: Others would say,

[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: if it's going to be resolved,

[1:29:41] Bob Dobbs: there's going to be a lot of loss of life on the way there.

[1:29:45] Bob Dobbs: So you'll find humans are both pessimists and optimists.

[1:29:49] Bob Dobbs: They don't totally believe it's over.

[1:29:52] Bob Dobbs: They know,

[1:29:53] Bob Dobbs: they feel,

[1:29:54] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:29:55] Bob Dobbs: we've done it,

[1:29:55] Bob Dobbs: we're still here,

[1:29:56] Bob Dobbs: so we can get through this one.

[1:29:58] Bob Dobbs: But maybe this is the most intense expression of the dilemma all through,

[1:30:05] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:30:06] Bob Dobbs: history.

[1:30:07] Cameron McEwen: Sure,

[1:30:07] Cameron McEwen: because of nuclear.

[1:30:08] Cameron McEwen: clear weapons.

[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:30:10] Cameron McEwen: But.

[1:30:11] Bob Dobbs: And you could say plagues,

[1:30:13] Bob Dobbs: not just nuclear weapons.

[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:30:15] Bob Dobbs: CDC,

[1:30:16] Bob Dobbs: some germ gets released.

[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: Driving around with JW in Atlanta,

[1:30:21] Bob Dobbs: we drove by the CDC and he said,

[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: there's stuff in there,

[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: wipe out the planet in three seconds.

[1:30:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:30:27] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:30:28] Cameron McEwen: And actually,

[1:30:30] Cameron McEwen: it's healthy to point out that the equivalent of nuclear bombs have been let loose in history before.

[1:30:41] Cameron McEwen: So the Black Plague,

[1:30:43] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:30:44] Cameron McEwen: but also asteroids crashing into the Earth and causing mass extinctions and stuff.

[1:30:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:30:50] Bob Dobbs: I think of Pompeii,

[1:30:52] Bob Dobbs: the volcano.

[1:30:53] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,

[1:30:54] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:30:55] Cameron McEwen: Or the fall of Constantinople in 1453,

[1:31:00] Cameron McEwen: etc.,

[1:31:01] Cameron McEwen: etc.

[1:31:01] Cameron McEwen: So the disasters are recurrent.

[1:31:08] Cameron McEwen: And this quest...

[1:31:10] Cameron McEwen: that you were just talking about for the collectivity to be able to articulate what the stakes are to build that articulation into

[1:31:26] Cameron McEwen: itself.

[1:31:27] Cameron McEwen: That's almost the story of history.

[1:31:31] Bob Dobbs: It's the lessons we never learned?

[1:31:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:31:35] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[1:31:36] Cameron McEwen: But it's not as if learning and

[1:31:40] Cameron McEwen: becomes extinguished.

[1:31:42] Cameron McEwen: And it's minds,

[1:31:45] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is an example of this,

[1:31:48] Cameron McEwen: minds when they think properly come upon the same problems.

[1:31:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:31:54] Cameron McEwen: And the calling of thinking is to once again take up these problems and drill at them,

[1:32:04] Cameron McEwen: as you were just saying.

[1:32:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:32:06] Bob Dobbs: I've noticed that.

[1:32:09] Bob Dobbs: If one studies McLuhan,

[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: you will get certain stages of questions.

[1:32:17] Bob Dobbs: The clearer it becomes to you what he's doing,

[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: and you'll find other people will come to those same points too.

[1:32:25] Bob Dobbs: And if you've done it before them,

[1:32:26] Bob Dobbs: you can tell them they're going to realize that point.

[1:32:30] Bob Dobbs: There is a programmed stage of apprehension,

[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: I call it in my chart,

[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: that you go through in encountering,

[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,

[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake,

[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: or McLuhan.

[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: You will think certain ideas.

[1:32:44] Bob Dobbs: At some point,

[1:32:45] Bob Dobbs: these questions will arise.

[1:32:47] Bob Dobbs: That arose in McLuhan.

[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: So you're replaying the stages of apprehension there.

[1:32:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:32:55] Cameron McEwen: stages of apprehension that already occurred to Plato,

[1:32:58] Cameron McEwen: let's say.

[1:32:59] Cameron McEwen: Or that arguably were known to the Egyptians as far before Plato as we are after.

[1:33:06] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:33:07] Bob Dobbs: There's a new...

[1:33:08] Bob Dobbs: A

[1:33:09] Bob Dobbs: Monday night seminar that Andrew has put up,

[1:33:13] Bob Dobbs: you know that series he's presenting?

[1:33:14] Cameron McEwen: I know,

[1:33:15] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:33:15] Cameron McEwen: I haven't been listening to them.

[1:33:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:33:17] Bob Dobbs: so I listened to the latest.

[1:33:19] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan was talking about visual space is static and it doesn't change.

[1:33:27] Bob Dobbs: And then he mentioned the word archetype and he might have said the archetype doesn't change.

[1:33:32] Bob Dobbs: And I got an aha there.

[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:33:36] Bob Dobbs: In Plato,

[1:33:37] Bob Dobbs: the cliche that I heard when I first heard about Plato is,

[1:33:40] Bob Dobbs: there's a world of archetypes that's more pure than here,

[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: and it doesn't change because they're pure.

[1:33:47] Bob Dobbs: Then,

[1:33:48] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:33:48] Bob Dobbs: that's the static space of visuality,

[1:33:52] Bob Dobbs: of visual extension.

[1:33:53] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't change.

[1:33:55] Bob Dobbs: That's why Plato,

[1:33:56] Bob Dobbs: who discovered visual space,

[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:33:59] Bob Dobbs: accidentally,

[1:34:00] Bob Dobbs: under phonetic alphabet conditions,

[1:34:02] Bob Dobbs: he defined a visual space.

[1:34:05] Bob Dobbs: as archetypes that didn't change.

[1:34:08] Bob Dobbs: They were ideal.

[1:34:09] Bob Dobbs: That was his distorted or perverse interpretation of the visual effect.

[1:34:16] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:34:17] Cameron McEwen: it wasn't perverse because he was very well aware of his limitations.

[1:34:23] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:34:23] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:34:24] Cameron McEwen: Plato is already a very great thinker because he doesn't define visual space and say that's all there is.

[1:34:32] Cameron McEwen: He defines visual space.

[1:34:34] Cameron McEwen: and says that's not all there is.

[1:34:36] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:34:37] Bob Dobbs: But he says it's ideal.

[1:34:40] Bob Dobbs: However he talked about the archetypes being pure,

[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: we are a shadow of it,

[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: of the ideal archetypes.

[1:34:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:34:51] Cameron McEwen: but it's...

[1:34:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:54] Bob Dobbs: but I'm saying that's the cliché version.

[1:34:57] Cameron McEwen: We don't want to get into a long discussion about Plato,

[1:35:00] Cameron McEwen: I don't think.

[1:35:00] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:35:00] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:35:01] Cameron McEwen: but wait,

[1:35:01] Cameron McEwen: look.

[1:35:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying that...

[1:35:03] Bob Dobbs: That's the cliche response,

[1:35:06] Bob Dobbs: that they're ideal.

[1:35:06] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:35:07] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[1:35:07] Bob Dobbs: But when Kaufmann explained that the archetype was like visual space and static,

[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: then I understood the ideality of the archetype in a new way.

[1:35:19] Bob Dobbs: I saw that

[1:35:21] Bob Dobbs: Plato was calling visual space archetype,

[1:35:28] Bob Dobbs: meaning it didn't change.

[1:35:30] Bob Dobbs: It was in an ideal condition.

[1:35:32] Bob Dobbs: Ideal meaning it's pretty perfect,

[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: so therefore it won't change.

[1:35:38] Bob Dobbs: And that is what McLuhan is saying visual space as an effect is.

[1:35:41] Bob Dobbs: It creates a static,

[1:35:43] Bob Dobbs: uniform,

[1:35:44] Bob Dobbs: continuous,

[1:35:45] Bob Dobbs: dead space,

[1:35:46] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[1:35:47] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:35:47] Cameron McEwen: All right.

[1:35:48] Cameron McEwen: So let's just...

[1:35:48] Cameron McEwen: to stop at this point and say,

[1:35:51] Cameron McEwen: try to say what's going on there.

[1:35:55] Cameron McEwen: All right.

[1:35:55] Cameron McEwen: So is McLuhan saying this is what a visual space is and that's all there is?

[1:36:03] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:36:04] Cameron McEwen: he's not saying that.

[1:36:05] Cameron McEwen: He's saying something like its ideality,

[1:36:11] Cameron McEwen: this is how visual space takes itself.

[1:36:16] Cameron McEwen: But visual space

[1:36:18] Cameron McEwen: is not by itself.

[1:36:21] Cameron McEwen: It takes itself,

[1:36:23] Cameron McEwen: but it's not by itself.

[1:36:26] Cameron McEwen: It's by acoustic space.

[1:36:29] Cameron McEwen: And the dynamic between visual space and acoustic space,

[1:36:34] Cameron McEwen: which is tactility,

[1:36:36] Cameron McEwen: is where the action is.

[1:36:39] Cameron McEwen: So when he's talking about the archetypes and being static and all that sort of stuff,

[1:36:43] Cameron McEwen: He's talking about how visual space takes...

[1:36:48] Cameron McEwen: itself.

[1:36:49] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[1:36:49] Cameron McEwen: if we go to Plato,

[1:36:51] Cameron McEwen: when talking about the ideality of the forms and their tactility and their being static,

[1:37:00] Cameron McEwen: that's how that world takes itself.

[1:37:04] Cameron McEwen: Plato called that the world of the gods.

[1:37:07] Cameron McEwen: But the world of the gods was in competition with the world of the titans,

[1:37:12] Cameron McEwen: with the underworldly gods.

[1:37:15] Cameron McEwen: And that contest,

[1:37:16] Cameron McEwen: says Plato,

[1:37:17] Cameron McEwen: is

[1:37:18] Cameron McEwen: eternal,

[1:37:18] Cameron McEwen: the contest between them,

[1:37:22] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:37:22] Cameron McEwen: So it's very important always to understand if something is being talked about as it takes itself or as it is in a much more complex environment.

[1:37:36] Cameron McEwen: And that then gets back to what we were talking about earlier about stages and myths and stuff where

[1:37:44] Cameron McEwen: These things are always in competition with other stages,

[1:37:49] Cameron McEwen: with other myths,

[1:37:49] Cameron McEwen: and with other roles.

[1:37:51] Cameron McEwen: And so once all of that complication is seen,

[1:37:56] Cameron McEwen: the question comes up,

[1:37:57] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:37:57] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:37:57] Cameron McEwen: how can we understand all that stuff?

[1:38:00] Cameron McEwen: And the answer,

[1:38:01] Cameron McEwen: according to Plato,

[1:38:02] Cameron McEwen: is very similar to the answer according to McLuhan,

[1:38:05] Cameron McEwen: and that is that the medium is the message.

[1:38:08] Cameron McEwen: This is to say we have to understand the ratio that is...

[1:38:14] Cameron McEwen: or the ratio is plural,

[1:38:15] Cameron McEwen: I should say,

[1:38:16] Cameron McEwen: that is possible between these contesting forms,

[1:38:21] Cameron McEwen: the form of visuality and acoustics,

[1:38:25] Cameron McEwen: or the form of ideality and realism for

[1:38:30] Cameron McEwen: Plato.

[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: It's that ratio or that medium that is sort of the fulcrum on which any proper understanding first rests.

[1:38:45] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: excellent points you're making.

[1:38:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't demur.

[1:38:53] Bob Dobbs: So we might be coming near the end,

[1:38:55] Bob Dobbs: so I want to move along a few quotes here.

[1:38:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:38:58] Cameron McEwen: sure.

[1:38:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.

[1:38:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:39:00] Bob Dobbs: so I say this was 1966.

[1:39:04] Bob Dobbs: This was the last pinnacle of abundance.

[1:39:07] Bob Dobbs: It's going to get gory in 68 with Vietnam coming in and the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy after the Summer of Love in 67.

[1:39:17] Bob Dobbs: I got this far before.

[1:39:18] Bob Dobbs: In the Malinowski,

[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: there's an optimistic feeling about North America.

[1:39:22] Bob Dobbs: But within a few years,

[1:39:23] Bob Dobbs: it all goes to misery because the anti-environment starts really impeding on people.

[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: And they start having satellite video in 68,

[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: which was a big change.

[1:39:30] Bob Dobbs: News agencies could show live footage from around the planet.

[1:39:35] Bob Dobbs: And then I quote the article on McLuhan in 64,

[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: Planner's Paradise.

[1:39:40] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:39:41] Bob Dobbs: when he's presenting the new huge

[1:39:44] Bob Dobbs: Center for Cultural Technology.

[1:39:46] Bob Dobbs: As a computerized programming situation,

[1:39:49] Bob Dobbs: the journalist calls it a planner's paradise.

[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: So I have here a planner's paradise.

[1:39:53] Bob Dobbs: It was very naive.

[1:39:55] Bob Dobbs: People accepted the experts,

[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: the actually obsolete specialists.

[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: They thought specialists knew what they were doing.

[1:40:01] Bob Dobbs: It was an easy time to be a specialist.

[1:40:04] Bob Dobbs: These United Nations bureaucrats had to be aware of the different biases of different cultures,

[1:40:09] Bob Dobbs: but that was a bias in itself.

[1:40:11] Bob Dobbs: They were trying to program the planet.

[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was inspired that he could program the planet because he knew the bias of all the different processes.

[1:40:18] Bob Dobbs: That was his bias,

[1:40:19] Bob Dobbs: but he knew he had that bias.

[1:40:22] Bob Dobbs: Then I say,

[1:40:22] Bob Dobbs: this is a satirical statement,

[1:40:24] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,

[1:40:26] Bob Dobbs: in

[1:40:27] Bob Dobbs: Counterblast, I think.

[1:40:28] Bob Dobbs: The bias of our time is precisely to isolate the bias of all others in an effort at orchestration.

[1:40:35] Bob Dobbs: That's our bias,

[1:40:37] Bob Dobbs: and it's said satirically by McLuhan,

[1:40:39] Bob Dobbs: I say.

[1:40:40] Bob Dobbs: In the 20th century,

[1:40:41] Bob Dobbs: every public intellectual had to offer solutions to the problems they outlined in their speeches.

[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is,

[1:40:47] Bob Dobbs: on the surface,

[1:40:48] Bob Dobbs: offering a solution,

[1:40:49] Bob Dobbs: a very unique one.

[1:40:50] Bob Dobbs: orchestration of the media through the global thermostat.

[1:40:54] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: I stop there,

[1:40:56] Bob Dobbs: and I have a quote from McLuhan.

[1:40:59] Cameron McEwen: What page are you on?

[1:41:00] Bob Dobbs: 97.

[1:41:03] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:41:03] Cameron McEwen: 97,

[1:41:04] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[1:41:05] Bob Dobbs: Do you want to just scan,

[1:41:07] Bob Dobbs: read?

[1:41:08] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:41:09] Cameron McEwen: I just wanted to see where the orchestration quote was,

[1:41:15] Cameron McEwen: because I don't think he was being satirical there or ironic.

[1:41:22] Cameron McEwen: I think he sincerely believed that and hoped for that,

[1:41:28] Cameron McEwen: but he realized that in order to do that,

[1:41:33] Cameron McEwen: there needed to be proper focus,

[1:41:36] Cameron McEwen: and we didn't have proper focus.

[1:41:38] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:41:39] Bob Dobbs: I would say that that's a satirical could maybe mean he's quite detached about it.

[1:41:46] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:41:46] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:41:47] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:41:47] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.

[1:41:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:41:49] Bob Dobbs: He's fully aware of the issues and problems that that statement makes that nobody else has much awareness of.

[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: Other than the United Nations bureaucrats and the CIA,

[1:42:03] Bob Dobbs: they feel it instinctively.

[1:42:06] Bob Dobbs: They don't want to define it.

[1:42:07] Cameron McEwen: It's like you could say you have a whole bunch of pieces of metal and even...

[1:42:18] Cameron McEwen: fully assembled components,

[1:42:20] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:42:22] Cameron McEwen: And you can have somebody who doesn't know how to put them together but feels the imperative to do it.

[1:42:30] Cameron McEwen: That can be the United Nations bureaucrat.

[1:42:32] Cameron McEwen: Or you can have somebody that knows how to build a car.

[1:42:36] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:42:37] Cameron McEwen: those are two entirely different things.

[1:42:40] Cameron McEwen: But you could say they both feel the imperative.

[1:42:45] Cameron McEwen: They both know that it has to be done.

[1:42:47] Cameron McEwen: It's just that one has the knowledge to do it and the other one doesn't.

[1:42:52] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:42:55] Bob Dobbs: I think you got it,

[1:42:56] Bob Dobbs: mate.

[1:43:00] Cameron McEwen: I doubt that very much.

[1:43:01] Cameron McEwen: Past experience would say no,

[1:43:03] Cameron McEwen: it doesn't.

[1:43:05] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:43:07] Bob Dobbs: I'm going on to the next quote.

[1:43:13] Bob Dobbs: Scanning down to see where it's from.

[1:43:17] Bob Dobbs: So ION page 97.

[1:43:25] Bob Dobbs: I've got the Playboy quote.

[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: I think the grammar is wrong.

[1:43:33] Bob Dobbs: Marshall McLuhan dash,

[1:43:34] Bob Dobbs: it should be Marshall McLuhan colon,

[1:43:37] Bob Dobbs: because I have him in quotes.

[1:43:38] Bob Dobbs: That means he's part of the

[1:43:40] Bob Dobbs: Playboy interview.

[1:43:42] Bob Dobbs: That's what we're coming into,

[1:43:43] Bob Dobbs: a few quotes from Playboy.

[1:43:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay?

[1:43:48] Cameron McEwen: Yep.

[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:43:51] Bob Dobbs: back to 97,

[1:43:54] Bob Dobbs: and we talked about McLuhan orchestration of the media.

[1:44:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is on the surface offering a solution,

[1:44:03] Bob Dobbs: a very unique one,

[1:44:05] Bob Dobbs: orchestration of the media through the global thermostat.

[1:44:09] Bob Dobbs: So then I quote Playboy,

[1:44:11] Bob Dobbs: and Marshall McLuhan says,

[1:44:12] Bob Dobbs: all these convulsive changes,

[1:44:14] Bob Dobbs: as I've already noted,

[1:44:15] Bob Dobbs: carry with...

[1:44:16] Bob Dobbs: with them attended pain,

[1:44:18] Bob Dobbs: violence,

[1:44:18] Bob Dobbs: and war,

[1:44:19] Bob Dobbs: the normal stigmata of the identity quest.

[1:44:23] Bob Dobbs: That's the collective identity quest,

[1:44:25] Bob Dobbs: if you're saying pain,

[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: violence,

[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: and war.

[1:44:28] Bob Dobbs: But the new society is springing so quickly from the ashes of the old that I believe it will be possible to avoid the transitional anarchy many predict.

[1:44:36] Bob Dobbs: Automation and cybernation can play an essential role in smoothing the transition to the new society.

[1:44:42] Bob Dobbs: Now this,

[1:44:44] Bob Dobbs: I have mentioned this to a professor.

[1:44:45] Bob Dobbs: professor once in the early 80s.

[1:44:46] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[1:44:47] Bob Dobbs: that's fascism.

[1:44:48] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan idea of programming

[1:44:51] Bob Dobbs: TV and radio and what proportions countries would have.

[1:44:55] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan understood that fascism and the tyrannies of the 30s under radio conditions were puny compared to the massive forces that were being programmed instinctively by 1969.

[1:45:10] Bob Dobbs: He used to say that

[1:45:12] Bob Dobbs: Hitler did was child's play compared to what people are doing today,

[1:45:16] Bob Dobbs: working with massive forces and really getting iON luck.

[1:45:20] Bob Dobbs: And how long will the luck last?

[1:45:26] Bob Dobbs: So I was saying that...

[1:45:30] Cameron McEwen: I'd like to go back to that professor for a minute,

[1:45:32] Cameron McEwen: because the ability to orchestrate the media,

[1:45:41] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[1:45:42] Cameron McEwen: depends upon being able to focus the media in a way that allows orchestration.

[1:45:49] Cameron McEwen: If you don't have the proper focus on what...

[1:45:52] Cameron McEwen: media are,

[1:45:54] Cameron McEwen: then you're not going to be able to orchestrate.

[1:45:57] Cameron McEwen: So when a professor says,

[1:46:00] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[1:46:00] Cameron McEwen: that's fascism,

[1:46:02] Cameron McEwen: what that professor is saying is that proper focus is not possible.

[1:46:09] Cameron McEwen: So when proper focus is not possible,

[1:46:13] Cameron McEwen: the only response to that is fascism,

[1:46:17] Cameron McEwen: because basically what you're saying is there is no proper focus.

[1:46:22] Cameron McEwen: But we have to focus in some way,

[1:46:24] Cameron McEwen: and therefore we need to Forsdale focus.

[1:46:28] Cameron McEwen: We need to make a decision about focus,

[1:46:32] Cameron McEwen: and that's exactly the fascist message.

[1:46:35] Cameron McEwen: So that professor and what he said about McLuhan,

[1:46:39] Cameron McEwen: specifically about McLuhan fascism,

[1:46:42] Cameron McEwen: was a kind of a mirror that was reflecting back his own fascism and was distorting the view of McLuhan.

[1:46:52] Cameron McEwen: orchestration which is precisely not fascism,

[1:46:56] Cameron McEwen: which is precisely to open up the social dialogue so that through transparency and focus that is

[1:47:11] Cameron McEwen: probed that we can turn away from fascism to some sort of,

[1:47:19] Cameron McEwen: as you were just saying,

[1:47:20] Cameron McEwen: Collective identity.

[1:47:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:47:22] Bob Dobbs: complex clairvoyance.

[1:47:23] Cameron McEwen: Yep,

[1:47:24] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:47:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:47:26] Bob Dobbs: well said.

[1:47:27] Bob Dobbs: So then automation and cybernation can play an essential role in smoothing the transition to the new society.

[1:47:37] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:47:40] Cameron McEwen: to me,

[1:47:40] Cameron McEwen: that's a very surprising statement for McLuhan to make and one that he wouldn't be able to make about his own.

[1:47:50] Cameron McEwen: family,

[1:47:50] Cameron McEwen: let alone about the world going on about him.

[1:47:53] Cameron McEwen: So I wonder,

[1:47:54] Cameron McEwen: do you think he's being satirical there or hopeful?

[1:48:01] Cameron McEwen: What's behind that surprising statement?

[1:48:04] Cameron McEwen: Maybe you go into that.

[1:48:06] Cameron McEwen: The damage from the surgery.

[1:48:08] Bob Dobbs: What's behind it?

[1:48:09] Bob Dobbs: The damage from the brain surgery.

[1:48:10] Bob Dobbs: Because this is after the brain surgery.

[1:48:15] Cameron McEwen: So it could be a hope that his own automation and cybernation.

[1:48:19] Cameron McEwen: can regain themselves.

[1:48:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: there's a shift here that might indicate a blindness in himself.

[1:48:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:48:35] Cameron McEwen: or he may have felt that in the context of the Playboy interview,

[1:48:45] Cameron McEwen: if he were going to...

[1:48:47] Cameron McEwen: make any quote-unquote headway that he had to come across as a potential optimist.

[1:48:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:48:57] Bob Dobbs: and so when he makes that statement,

[1:49:01] Bob Dobbs: the Playboy guy is shocked.

[1:49:03] Bob Dobbs: How,

[1:49:03] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[1:49:04] Bob Dobbs: how would we do this?

[1:49:06] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall says,

[1:49:07] Bob Dobbs: the computer can be used to direct a network of global thermostats to pattern life in ways that will optimize human awareness.

[1:49:15] Bob Dobbs: Already it's technologically feasible to employ the computer to program societies in beneficial ways.

[1:49:21] Bob Dobbs: And Playboy says,

[1:49:22] Bob Dobbs: how do you program an entire society,

[1:49:25] Bob Dobbs: beneficially or otherwise?

[1:49:27] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:49:27] Bob Dobbs: the guy's hung up on the fascist meaning of program,

[1:49:30] Bob Dobbs: the usual cliché point.

[1:49:31] Cameron McEwen: That's right,

[1:49:33] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[1:49:35] Bob Dobbs: So then McLuhan says,

[1:49:36] Bob Dobbs: there's nothing at all difficult about putting computers in the position where they will be able to conduct carefully orchestrated programming of the century life of whole populations.

[1:49:44] Bob Dobbs: I know it sounds rather science fictional,

[1:49:46] Bob Dobbs: but if you understood cybernetics,

[1:49:48] Bob Dobbs: you realize we could do it today.

[1:49:51] Bob Dobbs: The computer could program the media to determine the given messages that people should hear in terms of their overall needs,

[1:49:57] Bob Dobbs: creating a total media experience absorbed and patterned by all the senses.

[1:50:01] Bob Dobbs: We could program five hours less of TV in Italy to promote the reading of newspapers during an election,

[1:50:07] Bob Dobbs: or lay on an additional 25 hours of TV

[1:50:10] Bob Dobbs: in Venezuela to cool down the tribal temperature raised by radio the preceding month.

[1:50:16] Bob Dobbs: By such orchestrated interplay of all media,

[1:50:18] Bob Dobbs: this is like the connubium we were quoting from page 190 of War and Peace.

[1:50:23] Bob Dobbs: By such orchestrated interplay of all media,

[1:50:27] Bob Dobbs: whole cultures could now be programmed in order to improve and stabilize their emotional climate.

[1:50:32] Bob Dobbs: Just as we are beginning to learn how to maintain equilibrium among the world's competing economies.

[1:50:37] Bob Dobbs: That's a really great point.

[1:50:38] Bob Dobbs: To put it back into economics that we're already doing it and we don't get upset there.

[1:50:45] Bob Dobbs: Playboy says,

[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: how does such environmental programming,

[1:50:48] Bob Dobbs: however enlightened in intent,

[1:50:50] Bob Dobbs: differ from Pavlovian brainwashing?

[1:50:53] Bob Dobbs: So then Marshall goes in for the kill.

[1:50:55] Bob Dobbs: Your question reflects the usual panic of people confronted with unexplored technologies.

[1:51:02] Bob Dobbs: I'm not saying such panic isn't justified,

[1:51:04] Bob Dobbs: or that such environmental programming couldn't be brainwashing,

[1:51:07] Bob Dobbs: or far worse,

[1:51:08] Bob Dobbs: merely that such reactions are useless and distracting.

[1:51:12] Bob Dobbs: Though I think the programming societies could actually be conducted quite constructively and humanistically,

[1:51:19] Bob Dobbs: though I think the programming societies could actually be conducted quite constructively and humanistically,

[1:51:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to be in the position of a Hiroshima physicist extolling the potential of nuclear energy in the first days of August 1945.

[1:51:32] Bob Dobbs: But an understanding of media's effects constitutes a civil defense against media fallout.

[1:51:37] Bob Dobbs: The alarm of so many people,

[1:51:39] Bob Dobbs: however,

[1:51:39] Bob Dobbs: at the prospect of corporate programming's creation of a complete service environment on this planet,

[1:51:44] Bob Dobbs: is rather like fearing that a municipal lighting system will deprive the individual of the right to adjust each light to his own favorite level of intensity.

[1:51:52] Bob Dobbs: Computer technology can,

[1:51:54] Bob Dobbs: and doubtless will,

[1:51:55] Bob Dobbs: program anti-environment to fulfill the social needs and sensory preferences of communities and nations.

[1:52:00] Bob Dobbs: Now that's what the tech body is doing today.

[1:52:04] Bob Dobbs: Then he says the content,

[1:52:06] Bob Dobbs: and the content is italicized.

[1:52:08] Bob Dobbs: The content of that programming,

[1:52:09] Bob Dobbs: however,

[1:52:10] Bob Dobbs: depends on the nature of future societies,

[1:52:12] Bob Dobbs: but that is in our own hands.

[1:52:15] Bob Dobbs: That's where you have on page 11 of Take Today where the form and the content merge.

[1:52:22] Bob Dobbs: It's an interesting statement where he doesn't say it on page 11,

[1:52:27] Bob Dobbs: but he later says art,

[1:52:28] Bob Dobbs: science,

[1:52:29] Bob Dobbs: nature,

[1:52:29] Bob Dobbs: and media merge.

[1:52:30] Bob Dobbs: The content has now become the form.

[1:52:33] Bob Dobbs: They've merged,

[1:52:35] Bob Dobbs: and that's what I would call the word that makes the market.

[1:52:37] Bob Dobbs: The White House is now the ground for everything.

[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: And they can state that McClellan is right and then implement it,

[1:52:45] Bob Dobbs: or they can state that he's wrong.

[1:52:47] Bob Dobbs: But they,

[1:52:48] Bob Dobbs: it,

[1:52:49] Bob Dobbs: the White House,

[1:52:49] Bob Dobbs: this automated surrogate,

[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: has the levers in their hands to manipulate the global programming.

[1:53:01] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:53:01] Bob Dobbs: so this is quite an amazing quote.

[1:53:04] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:53:05] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:53:05] Cameron McEwen: it is an amazing quote.

[1:53:07] Cameron McEwen: but it needs to be teased apart in many ways.

[1:53:13] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:53:13] Bob Dobbs: we've been doing that for 47 sessions.

[1:53:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:53:17] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[1:53:17] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:53:18] Bob Dobbs: We were explaining this.

[1:53:20] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:53:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:53:21] Bob Dobbs: I mentioned it to Ted Carpenter,

[1:53:23] Bob Dobbs: or even maybe he brought it up.

[1:53:25] Bob Dobbs: He was talking about he preferred the McLuhan,

[1:53:28] Bob Dobbs: the Asteet,

[1:53:29] Bob Dobbs: the Asteet of the early

[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: 50s. He said,

[1:53:31] Bob Dobbs: I didn't like when he got into this computer talk and global thermostat.

[1:53:35] Bob Dobbs: Programming old farmers,

[1:53:37] Bob Dobbs: that's when I left.

[1:53:38] Bob Dobbs: Interesting that Ted Carpenter couldn't take that level.

[1:53:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:53:43] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:53:44] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:53:44] Cameron McEwen: Ted Carpenter wasn't entirely wrong that

[1:53:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was getting into a new way of expressing himself,

[1:53:56] Cameron McEwen: and there were dangers to that.

[1:54:00] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan himself admits it when he talks about the physicist in

[1:54:04] Cameron McEwen: Hiroshima.

[1:54:06] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:54:07] Cameron McEwen: Which is a very funny kind of image.

[1:54:09] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:54:10] Bob Dobbs: it's poetry what he says in that whole section.

[1:54:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:54:13] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:54:13] Cameron McEwen: It's beautiful.

[1:54:14] Cameron McEwen: But you brought up a very,

[1:54:15] Cameron McEwen: very important point,

[1:54:16] Cameron McEwen: and that is when he brought it down to the level of competing economics.

[1:54:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:54:22] Cameron McEwen: What we have to understand,

[1:54:23] Cameron McEwen: and you said

[1:54:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was showing here that what he was talking about was already happening.

[1:54:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:54:32] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:54:32] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:54:33] Cameron McEwen: um,

[1:54:34] Bob Dobbs: On the level of efficient causality.

[1:54:39] Cameron McEwen: But when he's talking about computers in the position where they'd be able to conduct carefully orchestrated programming of the century life of whole populations,

[1:54:54] Cameron McEwen: it has to be understood that that programming is already occurring.

[1:54:59] Cameron McEwen: It's just that we don't know it's already occurring.

[1:55:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:55:02] Bob Dobbs: we...

[1:55:03] Bob Dobbs: We think 1984 is coming in 84,

[1:55:05] Bob Dobbs: what already happened in 1900.

[1:55:08] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:55:09] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely correct.

[1:55:10] Cameron McEwen: Or that it not only had it already been happening in 1900,

[1:55:16] Cameron McEwen: but it's at the very basis of what human beings are.

[1:55:20] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:55:22] Cameron McEwen: We're subject to languages.

[1:55:23] Cameron McEwen: We're subject to cultures.

[1:55:25] Cameron McEwen: We're subject to all sorts of constraints that belong to our time.

[1:55:31] Cameron McEwen: But the possibilities with which we address those constraints are not subject to time.

[1:55:37] Cameron McEwen: And humans are always situated between those two things.

[1:55:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:55:42] Bob Dobbs: and that's why I say to start demanding your freedom is damn silly.

[1:55:47] Bob Dobbs: You're not looking at the conditioned environmental control of you.

[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: 50%

[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: of the situation.

[1:55:54] Cameron McEwen: So whatever freedom you have comes from insight into your constraints.

[1:56:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:56:01] Bob Dobbs: And so as we talk about this,

[1:56:05] Bob Dobbs: I feel that it's quite a thing we're talking about.

[1:56:10] Bob Dobbs: It's like the 1927 Copenhagen Conference where Einstein and those guys got together and tried to work out what quantum physics was.

[1:56:19] Bob Dobbs: That was a significant conference.

[1:56:22] Bob Dobbs: I think that what we're saying today is a very Hegel translation of what McLuhan was trying to have as a dialogue with people.

[1:56:34] Bob Dobbs: We're doing it.

[1:56:36] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:56:36] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:56:37] Bob Dobbs: one of the things we're doing is we're saying,

[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: When you read this passage,

[1:56:43] Bob Dobbs: isn't this exactly what's going on today in discussions about

[1:56:48] Bob Dobbs: Twitter and the media?

[1:56:50] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:56:50] Bob Dobbs: and about

[1:56:53] Cameron McEwen: Klaus Schwab at the WEF.

[1:56:54] Cameron McEwen: They say,

[1:56:55] Cameron McEwen: this guy is going to try to program the anti-environment.

[1:56:57] Cameron McEwen: This is outrageous.

[1:56:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:56:59] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:57:01] Bob Dobbs: And people are talking about the algorithms that are used in Twitter or in Google or in Facebook.

[1:57:10] Bob Dobbs: to say what can be said and what can't be said.

[1:57:15] Bob Dobbs: And that is sort of what McLuhan is talking about here,

[1:57:21] Bob Dobbs: but McLuhan talking about it,

[1:57:25] Bob Dobbs: what,

[1:57:26] Bob Dobbs: 50-some years ago.

[1:57:28] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:57:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was kind of channeling where we're headed and trying to juggle in his head how that...

[1:57:39] Bob Dobbs: can be avoided its inherent disasters and how it can be promoted in terms of its equally inherent benefits.

[1:57:54] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:57:56] Cameron McEwen: Once talking to McLuhan through the media,

[1:58:01] Cameron McEwen: Michael Blake Read,

[1:58:02] Cameron McEwen: and he channeled 6,500 to 7,000 entities called the Evergreens,

[1:58:05] Cameron McEwen: I've mentioned this before,

[1:58:07] Cameron McEwen: And so you can talk to McLuhan or whatever through the Evergreens,

[1:58:13] Cameron McEwen: channeled by Michael Blake Read.

[1:58:14] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:58:16] Cameron McEwen: I was asking about the final Armageddon,

[1:58:22] Cameron McEwen: and whoever was answering in the Evergreens,

[1:58:25] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if it was McLuhan,

[1:58:26] Cameron McEwen: said,

[1:58:29] Cameron McEwen: the final Armageddon will be when we have a technology and we know if we implement it,

[1:58:35] Cameron McEwen: anti-environment.

[1:58:37] Cameron McEwen: We will forget everything we ever knew.

[1:58:40] Cameron McEwen: We know that will happen.

[1:58:41] Cameron McEwen: And the Armageddon will be a fight over whether to implement that technology.

[1:58:47] Cameron McEwen: So that I saw

[1:58:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, that's arguing over to imply that's mediocrity.

[1:58:55] Cameron McEwen: Do we apply this new technology?

[1:58:57] Cameron McEwen: We know what it will do to us.

[1:59:01] Cameron McEwen: That's

[1:59:02] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is the final,

[1:59:05] Cameron McEwen: his topic is the final argument.

[1:59:07] Cameron McEwen: And that's where we're at today.

[1:59:10] Cameron McEwen: We're looking at China and saying,

[1:59:11] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:59:11] Cameron McEwen: they had a social credit system that was horrible from Western values.

[1:59:16] Cameron McEwen: Yet other people are saying we've got to do that,

[1:59:19] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:59:19] Cameron McEwen: here.

[1:59:20] Bob Dobbs: But the funny thing is,

[1:59:22] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[1:59:22] Bob Dobbs: we already do that.

[1:59:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:59:25] Bob Dobbs: there it is.

[1:59:26] Bob Dobbs: TV pollsters and political pollsters and stuff.

[1:59:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:59:33] Cameron McEwen: and I would say that because we're already doing it and therefore it's...

[1:59:37] Cameron McEwen: Now that it's become a figure of discussion,

[1:59:40] Cameron McEwen: we've moved on to something else.

[1:59:44] Bob Dobbs: Maybe,

[1:59:45] Bob Dobbs: I hope so.

[1:59:46] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:59:46] Cameron McEwen: we have gone past the issues that McNamee raising.

[1:59:49] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[1:59:50] Cameron McEwen: Ayan would say,

[1:59:51] Cameron McEwen: yes,

[1:59:52] Cameron McEwen: you're not going to stop this.

[1:59:53] Cameron McEwen: Armageddon is coming.

[1:59:55] Cameron McEwen: You've gone too far and it's over.

[1:59:58] Cameron McEwen: Just wait for if it bombs you or not.

[2:00:02] Bob Dobbs: Wait for the ball to drop.

[2:00:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:00:05] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[2:00:06] Cameron McEwen: so.

[2:00:07] Cameron McEwen: We do a lot on that topic,

[2:00:09] Cameron McEwen: and as I do it,

[2:00:11] Cameron McEwen: I'm the only person among the group that's doing it that has these scenarios that McLuhan laid out in my mind.

[2:00:18] Cameron McEwen: No one else has this data.

[2:00:19] Cameron McEwen: They don't have this in terms of thinking associatively about what the dilemma is today.

[2:00:25] Cameron McEwen: But we're doing it ourselves right now.

[2:00:28] Cameron McEwen: We're bringing up this final Armageddon about whether to implement the new thing,

[2:00:33] Cameron McEwen: and McLuhan starts the argument by saying,

[2:00:36] Cameron McEwen: no,

[2:00:36] Cameron McEwen: let's do it.

[2:00:38] Cameron McEwen: And everybody says,

[2:00:39] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[2:00:39] Cameron McEwen: let's do it.

[2:00:39] Cameron McEwen: And you go,

[2:00:40] Cameron McEwen: wait a minute.

[2:00:41] Cameron McEwen: Let me tell you what we've got to consider if we do it.

[2:00:45] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:00:46] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:00:47] Bob Dobbs: doing it is itself not literal,

[2:00:51] Bob Dobbs: right?

[2:00:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:00:52] Bob Dobbs: So the question is,

[2:00:54] Bob Dobbs: how are we to understand doing it?

[2:00:58] Bob Dobbs: And then that becomes a very complex matter.

[2:01:01] Cameron McEwen: And then that's where you say you don't need an answer.

[2:01:04] Cameron McEwen: You just have to recognize the question.

[2:01:06] Cameron McEwen: No.

[2:01:07] Bob Dobbs: Interrogate the question.

[2:01:08] Bob Dobbs: Probe.

[2:01:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:01:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:01:10] Cameron McEwen: So the complex clairvoyance would be that everybody,

[2:01:12] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan got the podium,

[2:01:14] Cameron McEwen: laid it all out and was sent to all embassies out of the United Nations.

[2:01:18] Cameron McEwen: And then the embassies told the school people and they told the colleges and then they told the students that we have the question.

[2:01:24] Bob Dobbs: But notice one thing that is very important for anybody to understand in McLuhan is that he had a great...

[2:01:36] Bob Dobbs: confidence in the human ability to figure things out.

[2:01:41] Bob Dobbs: So if you think,

[2:01:42] Bob Dobbs: for example,

[2:01:44] Bob Dobbs: of the literate revolution in Greece...

[2:01:48] Bob Dobbs: What happens is that people,

[2:01:51] Bob Dobbs: there had already been systems of writing,

[2:01:54] Bob Dobbs: but they had not worked out some of the problems that the Greeks were able to work out.

[2:02:00] Bob Dobbs: And that simplification that the Greeks were able to bring to language then sort of generated the Western tradition out of itself.

[2:02:11] Bob Dobbs: So for McLuhan,

[2:02:13] Bob Dobbs: that became a kind of archetype.

[2:02:15] Bob Dobbs: for the human ability to figure things out.

[2:02:19] Bob Dobbs: And he thought that now we'd reached a point where we were able to figure out media.

[2:02:28] Bob Dobbs: However...

[2:02:29] Cameron McEwen: He said,

[2:02:30] Cameron McEwen: we now know the creative process that creates culture.

[2:02:33] Bob Dobbs: Correct,

[2:02:34] Bob Dobbs: correct.

[2:02:35] Bob Dobbs: But it shouldn't be forgotten that McLuhan is very well aware that when people were able to figure out,

[2:02:44] Bob Dobbs: let's say...

[2:02:46] Bob Dobbs: geometry.

[2:02:48] Bob Dobbs: They were looking at the different kinds of figures,

[2:02:53] Bob Dobbs: the different kinds of land plots,

[2:02:59] Bob Dobbs: and realized that there were ways of interrogating this field of geometry that led to all sorts of interesting conclusions.

[2:03:13] Bob Dobbs: When they...

[2:03:14] Bob Dobbs: initiated that process in Greece,

[2:03:17] Bob Dobbs: it was still growing in McLuhan own time.

[2:03:21] Bob Dobbs: And he often talked about non-Euclidean geometries.

[2:03:27] Bob Dobbs: So when McLuhan thought that something could be figured out,

[2:03:31] Bob Dobbs: he didn't mean that there was suddenly a total illumination.

[2:03:36] Bob Dobbs: What he meant was that there was initial insight into the focal objects.

[2:03:44] Bob Dobbs: of interrogation,

[2:03:45] Bob Dobbs: and then those focal objects could be interrogated forever.

[2:03:51] Bob Dobbs: So there's a kind of not knowing,

[2:03:54] Bob Dobbs: ignorance,

[2:03:55] Bob Dobbs: built into our knowing.

[2:03:58] Bob Dobbs: And our knowing then keeps on interrogating or exploring ignorance to figure things out.

[2:04:08] Bob Dobbs: You have this dialectic in McLuhan between the great confidence...

[2:04:13] Bob Dobbs: in human mind to figure stuff out,

[2:04:18] Bob Dobbs: but the knowledge that if it figures it out,

[2:04:22] Bob Dobbs: it will then only initiate a process that goes on forever.

[2:04:26] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[2:04:27] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[2:04:27] Cameron McEwen: that's where,

[2:04:29] Cameron McEwen: on the side of humans figuring out,

[2:04:31] Cameron McEwen: that's what Marshall saw in art.

[2:04:34] Cameron McEwen: The great artists solved the problems by laying out the new century ratios in their art form that prepared you for the problems that were coming.

[2:04:43] Cameron McEwen: So humans solved it with the products of great art.

[2:04:50] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[2:04:51] Cameron McEwen: that was a sign that humans could solve it because artists showed up and solved it.

[2:04:55] Cameron McEwen: Nobody understood that's what they were doing.

[2:04:57] Bob Dobbs: Art there is the archetype of making.

[2:05:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:05:01] Cameron McEwen: of making solutions or creating coherent consciousness.

[2:05:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:05:07] Bob Dobbs: absolutely.

[2:05:09] Cameron McEwen: And I think we can end there because it's getting late.

[2:05:11] Cameron McEwen: It's time for you to...

[2:05:13] Bob Dobbs: attend your dog right that's well now we have another dog so uh attend to the two of them absolutely why do you have another dog uh well it's our son's dog and he's traveling so we're just looking after him right it's not for it's not permanent no

[2:05:32] Cameron McEwen: okay um so we we got to did you just laugh there no no no i just said good yeah okay so we're at um

[2:05:43] Cameron McEwen: How do you program entire society?

[2:05:48] Cameron McEwen: And then he says,

[2:05:49] Cameron McEwen: he goes down to Venezuela,

[2:05:51] Cameron McEwen: okay,

[2:05:51] Cameron McEwen: then Pavlovian.

[2:05:53] Cameron McEwen: So we got to page 100,

[2:05:56] Cameron McEwen: the top of 100,

[2:05:59] Cameron McEwen: with the italicized content.

[2:06:00] Cameron McEwen: Now,

[2:06:01] Cameron McEwen: I want to read the blue intervals as I popularize the depth of the quote.

[2:06:08] Cameron McEwen: I do a verbal thing.

[2:06:10] Cameron McEwen: So when we go back next time.

[2:06:13] Cameron McEwen: When we come back,

[2:06:14] Cameron McEwen: I'll do the blue parts from page 97 to 100.

[2:06:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:06:19] Bob Dobbs: perfect.

[2:06:20] Cameron McEwen: All right,

[2:06:21] Cameron McEwen: well,

[2:06:21] Cameron McEwen: thank you very much.

[2:06:23] Cameron McEwen: I think we are saying something that humans should hear,

[2:06:26] Cameron McEwen: but they've never heard before how we're talking about this.

[2:06:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:06:32] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:06:35] Bob Dobbs: I'm learning as we go,

[2:06:38] Bob Dobbs: enjoying it.

[2:06:40] Bob Dobbs: I hope we're clarifying some of these difficult and important points.

[2:06:44] Cameron McEwen: I think we are,

[2:06:45] Cameron McEwen: and no one's ever heard this.

[2:06:46] Cameron McEwen: They didn't know there was a problem?

[2:06:48] Cameron McEwen: And they didn't know you could come up with a solution.

[2:06:51] Bob Dobbs: There you go.

[2:06:52] Cameron McEwen: Which is stating the problem clearly,

[2:06:55] Cameron McEwen: you call it a question.

[2:06:57] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[2:06:57] Cameron McEwen: great.

[2:06:57] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely.

[2:06:58] Cameron McEwen: Thanks a lot,

[2:06:59] Cameron McEwen: Ewen Cameron.

[2:07:00] Cameron McEwen: And let's hope that it all got recorded.

[2:07:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:07:03] Bob Dobbs: sir.

[2:07:03] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[2:07:04] Cameron McEwen: talk to you later.

[2:07:06] Bob Dobbs: Bye-bye.

[2:07:06] Cameron McEwen: Bye.