Dialogue 50 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

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

[00:06] Bob Dobbs: and this is the 50th episode being recorded on

[00:09] Bob Dobbs: June 9th,

[00:09] Bob Dobbs: 2022.

[00:12] Bob Dobbs: And we're looking at the bottom of page 98,

[00:19] Bob Dobbs: where the blue text,

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: which is my oral ramblings,

[00:24] Bob Dobbs: are presented,

[00:26] Bob Dobbs: what we want to look at.

[00:28] Bob Dobbs: So right above that...

[00:31] Bob Dobbs: Playboy excerpt,

[00:32] Bob Dobbs: Playboy magazine.

[00:34] Bob Dobbs: How?

[00:34] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[00:35] Bob Dobbs: How would you program the planet or something like that?

[00:40] Bob Dobbs: What's the guy say?

[00:43] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan says,

[00:45] Bob Dobbs: All these convulsive changes,

[00:47] Bob Dobbs: as I've already noted,

[00:48] Bob Dobbs: carry with them a concomitant pain,

[00:50] Bob Dobbs: violence,

[00:50] Bob Dobbs: and war,

[00:51] Bob Dobbs: the normal stigmata of the identity quest.

[00:53] 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.

[01:01] Bob Dobbs: Automation and cybernation can play an essential role in smoothing the transition to the new society.

[01:08] Bob Dobbs: So the interviewer says,

[01:11] Bob Dobbs: how?

[01:13] Bob Dobbs: The computer can be used to direct a network of global thermostats to pattern life in ways that will optimize human awareness.

[01:20] Bob Dobbs: Already it's technologically feasible to employ the computer to program societies in beneficial ways.

[01:26] Bob Dobbs: Playboy says,

[01:27] Bob Dobbs: how do you program an entire society,

[01:29] Bob Dobbs: beneficially or otherwise?

[01:32] Bob Dobbs: And before Marshall gives his answer,

[01:36] Bob Dobbs: I say this,

[01:37] Bob Dobbs: which is a more colloquial way,

[01:40] Bob Dobbs: less formal way of addressing what Playboy is asking.

[01:44] Bob Dobbs: I say this is a time when people are thinking they're free.

[01:47] Bob Dobbs: This is the late 60s.

[01:48] Bob Dobbs: They aren't interested in being programmed.

[01:50] Bob Dobbs: That's like fascism.

[01:52] Bob Dobbs: Eric Norden,

[01:53] Bob Dobbs: the interviewer,

[01:53] Bob Dobbs: can't believe what McLuhan saying.

[01:56] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan pushing this programming.

[01:58] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan very detached when he's saying it.

[02:00] Bob Dobbs: He proclaimed it,

[02:01] Bob Dobbs: and people read it and exclaimed,

[02:03] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[02:04] Bob Dobbs: there's a cold tone to McLuhan that's frightening.

[02:07] Bob Dobbs: This guy is so nuts.

[02:08] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to turn Orwell into an art form as if it's acceptable,

[02:13] Bob Dobbs: unquote.

[02:15] Bob Dobbs: Not that anybody ever actually said that,

[02:17] Bob Dobbs: but I do know that some reviewers thought that McLuhan tone was very cold,

[02:22] Bob Dobbs: and I think that essay's in hot and cool.

[02:24] Bob Dobbs: And so there's my made-up statement of some sophisticate.

[02:30] Bob Dobbs: And then

[02:31] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[02:31] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan knew that he was having that effect,

[02:34] Bob Dobbs: that people would be frightened.

[02:36] Bob Dobbs: It was a level of a satire,

[02:38] Bob Dobbs: but he was pointing out really what was happening.

[02:41] Bob Dobbs: The economy was programmed by the banks at that point.

[02:44] Bob Dobbs: People didn't have any updated thinking mechanism for it.

[02:48] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have any models for The Coming Race virtual economy,

[02:51] Bob Dobbs: virtual in quotes.

[02:53] Bob Dobbs: So then McLuhan asked...

[02:56] Cameron McEwen: Let me just note there,

[02:57] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[02:57] Cameron McEwen: that I agree with...

[02:59] Cameron McEwen: what you say there.

[03:00] Cameron McEwen: I think that all makes good sense.

[03:04] Cameron McEwen: But McLuhan had actually been talking about this.

[03:07] Cameron McEwen: This is 1968 when he's talking to the interviewer.

[03:11] Cameron McEwen: He'd been already talking about this for something like 20 years and had had no success whatsoever trying to explain to people what he was talking about.

[03:26] Bob Dobbs: Is there any particular essay that comes to mind where

[03:28] Bob Dobbs: If somebody could look that up as a sample of him talking about it in the 50s,

[03:36] Cameron McEwen: say.

[03:36] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[03:36] Cameron McEwen: usually it comes out as sort of a sidebar in his essays.

[03:45] Cameron McEwen: In almost every one of them,

[03:47] Cameron McEwen: he talks about how there were revolutions in Greece around 400 B.C.

[03:55] Cameron McEwen: and the Gutenberg Galaxy.

[03:57] Cameron McEwen: revolution starting sometime around 1500 and he always points out that those things happened relatively slowly and so now here we are undergoing a revolution that's much much faster and

[04:12] Cameron McEwen: much much more dangerous because of the bomb and so now there's a kind of emergency response

[04:27] Cameron McEwen: that's necessary to get a handle on what's happening to us.

[04:34] Cameron McEwen: So in all of his essays,

[04:41] Cameron McEwen: I would say that this is an ever-present undercurrent.

[04:48] Cameron McEwen: But in something like Prospect,

[04:49] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[04:50] Cameron McEwen: 1962,

[04:54] Cameron McEwen: you can see that...

[04:56] Cameron McEwen: Um...

[04:57] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is actually frightened by what's going on and how little we know about it.

[05:11] Bob Dobbs: I wonder if that's to be done,

[05:12] Bob Dobbs: that interview is before the October missile crisis or after.

[05:15] Bob Dobbs: Do you have a clue?

[05:18] Cameron McEwen: I don't.

[05:19] Cameron McEwen: I don't.

[05:19] Cameron McEwen: That would be an interesting question,

[05:22] Cameron McEwen: but I assume that it's before.

[05:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[05:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[05:26] Bob Dobbs: I think you would have mentioned it if it had happened.

[05:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[05:31] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[05:32] Bob Dobbs: Do you have a quote there?

[05:37] Bob Dobbs: Do you have a quote,

[05:38] Bob Dobbs: a sample handy?

[05:39] Cameron McEwen: From Prospect?

[05:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[05:43] Bob Dobbs: I've quoted it.

[05:45] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if I can come up with it.

[05:51] Bob Dobbs: Just a second.

[06:05] Bob Dobbs: So we'll put in prospect.

[06:20] Bob Dobbs: Yep,

[06:20] Bob Dobbs: I have it.

[06:21] Bob Dobbs: So got to find where it is.

[06:24] Bob Dobbs: So it's in my index at the back or quotes.

[06:28] Bob Dobbs: So what's a word in that thing?

[06:32] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[06:32] Cameron McEwen: I've got,

[06:33] Cameron McEwen: well,

[06:33] Cameron McEwen: nightmare is one.

[06:35] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[06:35] Cameron McEwen: Heightened is another very heightened kind of existence,

[06:39] Cameron McEwen: a sort of nightmare.

[06:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[06:42] Cameron McEwen: He talks about the condition of man is what you dread.

[06:46] Cameron McEwen: You no longer dread that animal,

[06:48] Cameron McEwen: that famine,

[06:49] Cameron McEwen: and so on,

[06:50] Cameron McEwen: but this condition.

[06:52] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[06:52] Cameron McEwen: So he's talking about a danger that's global,

[06:56] Cameron McEwen: but it's global inside as well as outside.

[07:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[07:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[07:02] Bob Dobbs: So...

[07:04] Bob Dobbs: How did I do this?

[07:06] Bob Dobbs: I'm just going through my Phatic communion book.

[07:14] Bob Dobbs: So should I,

[07:14] Cameron McEwen: do you want me to read the quote that I have in the blog?

[07:20] Bob Dobbs: No,

[07:20] Bob Dobbs: I want to see if I can find what I picked.

[07:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[07:29] Bob Dobbs: so you read your quote and let's see if it's familiar.

[07:32] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[07:33] Cameron McEwen: so...

[07:33] Cameron McEwen: He says,

[07:36] Cameron McEwen: you couldn't bear a fully conscious existence under the frenetic conditions that he's exposed to.

[07:42] Cameron McEwen: You could not register these terrible shocks directly and survive.

[07:47] Cameron McEwen: He'd go mad.

[07:49] Cameron McEwen: I think that all human technology and invention has occurred under this kind of anxious pressure.

[07:56] Cameron McEwen: You don't out or anything until you're under some dire pressure and fear.

[08:00] Cameron McEwen: But fear is no longer the problem.

[08:02] Cameron McEwen: Anxiety is the problem.

[08:04] Cameron McEwen: Fear is specific.

[08:06] Cameron McEwen: Anxiety is total.

[08:08] Cameron McEwen: You don't know how precisely,

[08:10] Cameron McEwen: no,

[08:11] Cameron McEwen: you don't know now precisely what you're dreading.

[08:15] Cameron McEwen: Rather,

[08:15] Cameron McEwen: it's a pervasive state.

[08:17] Cameron McEwen: The condition of man is what you dread.

[08:19] Cameron McEwen: You no longer dread that animal,

[08:21] Cameron McEwen: that famine,

[08:22] Cameron McEwen: and so on,

[08:22] Cameron McEwen: but this condition.

[08:24] Cameron McEwen: Anxiety means utmost alertness,

[08:27] Cameron McEwen: utmost watchfulness.

[08:28] Cameron McEwen: involvement,

[08:29] Cameron McEwen: and therefore,

[08:30] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[08:30] Cameron McEwen: a very heightened kind of existence,

[08:33] Cameron McEwen: a sort of nightmare.

[08:35] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[08:37] Bob Dobbs: I don't remember any of that.

[08:38] Bob Dobbs: I certainly don't have that excerpt,

[08:41] Bob Dobbs: so I'm trying to see what I did do.

[08:45] Bob Dobbs: But so far,

[08:49] Bob Dobbs: I'm not coming across it.

[08:54] Bob Dobbs: Since I don't have any words,

[08:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't have heightened.

[08:59] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't bring anything up.

[09:00] Bob Dobbs: I can't,

[09:00] Bob Dobbs: I don't,

[09:01] Bob Dobbs: I can only go with my letter code,

[09:03] Bob Dobbs: PR.

[09:04] Bob Dobbs: That's not coming up.

[09:05] Bob Dobbs: There's too many PRs,

[09:06] Bob Dobbs: so...

[09:07] Cameron McEwen: What about anxiety?

[09:11] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[09:11] Bob Dobbs: try that.

[09:12] Bob Dobbs: Anxiety.

[09:13] Bob Dobbs: I think it was something about art.

[09:17] Bob Dobbs: Programming the anti-environment something,

[09:19] Bob Dobbs: maybe?

[09:20] Bob Dobbs: What is said about art?

[09:41] Cameron McEwen: See anything?

[09:41] Cameron McEwen: No,

[09:42] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to another part of the blog to see if I've got other stuff.

[09:48] Bob Dobbs: What's a page number?

[09:51] Bob Dobbs: Do you have a page number for it in Prospect?

[09:56] Cameron McEwen: In a second,

[09:57] Cameron McEwen: I have to go back here.

[10:03] Cameron McEwen: No,

[10:04] Cameron McEwen: I didn't note the page.

[10:06] Cameron McEwen: I've stopped doing page references in the blog because

[10:12] Cameron McEwen: I want to force people to use the digital anti-environment see what's out there.

[10:20] Cameron McEwen: It's incredible to me how...

[10:24] Cameron McEwen: paper-bound

[10:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan research is.

[10:28] Cameron McEwen: It's nuts.

[10:31] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[10:45] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[10:45] Bob Dobbs: it's not working.

[10:47] Bob Dobbs: Give me another art,

[10:48] Bob Dobbs: something like art.

[10:49] Bob Dobbs: What does he say uniquely about art?

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: Does he say constructivist in there?

[10:53] Bob Dobbs: Doesn't he talk about the

[10:56] Bob Dobbs: 1910s, a little art history?

[11:01] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[11:02] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to find the complete article at the moment.

[11:06] Cameron McEwen: It was

[11:08] Cameron McEwen: 1962. Can you search for Prospect 1962?

[11:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[11:12] Bob Dobbs: I have that in my index at the back.

[11:16] Bob Dobbs: See,

[11:16] Bob Dobbs: I have a quote in my book and then a code,

[11:18] Bob Dobbs: so the code is explained.

[11:20] Bob Dobbs: I don't have the title by the quote.

[11:24] Bob Dobbs: I just have a code like PR.

[11:26] Bob Dobbs: So you look in the index and you see PR and see what it refers to.

[11:31] Cameron McEwen: But it doesn't give you a page number or anything when you go to the index?

[11:35] Bob Dobbs: No.

[11:36] Bob Dobbs: The page number is by the quote.

[11:38] Bob Dobbs: So

[11:39] Bob Dobbs: I can usually find,

[11:40] Bob Dobbs: I know the quote so well,

[11:42] Bob Dobbs: I'll just take a word and it'll take me to the quote.

[11:46] Bob Dobbs: The sources are at the end of the book.

[11:51] Cameron McEwen: He certainly talked about art because the article appeared in

[11:55] Cameron McEwen: Art Magazine,

[11:56] Cameron McEwen: right?

[11:56] Cameron McEwen: I think it's Canada Art or something like that.

[11:59] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[11:59] Bob Dobbs: See,

[12:01] Bob Dobbs: I thought there was something special in that article.

[12:06] Cameron McEwen: The whole article is special.

[12:08] Cameron McEwen: It's a very strange submission,

[12:13] Cameron McEwen: I would say.

[12:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[12:15] Bob Dobbs: but the thing is,

[12:16] Bob Dobbs: I usually would find a quote.

[12:19] Bob Dobbs: And I would have sections,

[12:20] Bob Dobbs: like a bunch of quotes on art.

[12:23] Bob Dobbs: So they're not in order.

[12:27] Bob Dobbs: So

[12:31] Bob Dobbs: I have to keep scanning until I find it.

[12:35] Bob Dobbs: But you're looking at the article.

[12:37] Bob Dobbs: Does he talk about camp?

[12:39] Bob Dobbs: Not too early.

[12:40] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to get to the article right now,

[12:45] Cameron McEwen: but I'm not there.

[12:48] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[12:49] Cameron McEwen: he certainly did talk about

[12:50] Cameron McEwen: Camp and Susan Sontag,

[12:53] Cameron McEwen: but whether he does so in that article,

[12:56] Cameron McEwen: I cannot tell you.

[12:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[12:58] Cameron McEwen: Yet.

[13:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[13:01] Bob Dobbs: so I'll keep going along here.

[13:08] Bob Dobbs: There are a lot of quotes from Plegiat Archetype.

[13:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[13:14] Cameron McEwen: that was written in the

[13:16] Cameron McEwen: 60s.

[13:16] Cameron McEwen: But it appeared after the

[13:20] Cameron McEwen: Playboy interview.

[13:22] Bob Dobbs: In

[13:23] Bob Dobbs: Prospect? No,

[13:24] Bob Dobbs: no,

[13:24] Bob Dobbs: Prospect was 62.

[13:26] Bob Dobbs: I have the actual...

[13:26] Bob Dobbs: No,

[13:27] Cameron McEwen: I was talking about Cliché and Architect.

[13:29] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[13:29] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[13:30] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[13:31] Bob Dobbs: No,

[13:31] Bob Dobbs: I'm just...

[13:31] Bob Dobbs: There's just a lot of good quotes I have.

[13:34] Bob Dobbs: I can find my code CA easily for that.

[13:40] Bob Dobbs: I hope...

[13:41] Bob Dobbs: people find this interesting,

[13:43] Bob Dobbs: working our way through the process of indexing here to archivists,

[13:49] Bob Dobbs: how we work.

[13:50] Cameron McEwen: You gave me that book when we met in New York in 59,

[13:54] Cameron McEwen: I guess it was,

[13:55] Cameron McEwen: maybe 98,

[13:56] Cameron McEwen: 99.

[14:02] Bob Dobbs: So what could be a word,

[14:06] Bob Dobbs: an idea that would be in that article?

[14:12] Bob Dobbs: Very important article,

[14:13] Bob Dobbs: people.

[14:14] Bob Dobbs: See if you can find it.

[14:19] Bob Dobbs: He does speak differently than he was saying in 62 in most interviews.

[14:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[14:28] Cameron McEwen: it's an important article for his biography,

[14:31] Cameron McEwen: for sure.

[14:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[14:34] Cameron McEwen: And

[14:34] Cameron McEwen: I think it reflected his terrible health at the time.

[14:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[14:41] Bob Dobbs: maybe he wanted to get something said that he normally wouldn't reveal.

[14:47] Bob Dobbs: So the only thing to do is to scan down through the McLuhan section.

[14:53] Bob Dobbs: So let's go up here.

[14:55] Bob Dobbs: You've got the LaRouche section.

[14:57] Bob Dobbs: And then you go to the McLuhan section,

[15:03] Bob Dobbs: a lot of great quotes by LaRouche for efficient causality.

[15:18] Bob Dobbs: You can keep talking while I'm looking at things

[15:23] Bob Dobbs: that occur to you.

[15:23] Cameron McEwen: I'm just,

[15:25] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[15:25] Cameron McEwen: well,

[15:25] Cameron McEwen: I'm just pulling up the article now.

[15:27] Cameron McEwen: so

[15:28] Cameron McEwen: I should be able to give you a bunch of...

[15:31] Bob Dobbs: So the programming aspect,

[15:35] Bob Dobbs: what do you think is in that article that you brought?

[15:40] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[15:40] Cameron McEwen: no,

[15:40] Cameron McEwen: you were saying,

[15:43] Cameron McEwen: you were talking about,

[15:47] Cameron McEwen: well,

[15:49] Cameron McEwen: I pointed out that the problems that you were mentioning in your pamphlet,

[15:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had been talking about for 20 years.

[16:01] Cameron McEwen: So the interview represented one more attempt by McLuhan to communicate the problems that he saw going on and the only

[16:16] Cameron McEwen: sort of solution that he saw to them.

[16:21] Cameron McEwen: And he'd been talking already in the...

[16:26] Cameron McEwen: Let's say in the 1947 or so period,

[16:31] Cameron McEwen: he already had a pretty good idea of what he had to do.

[16:36] Cameron McEwen: And the Playboy interview just represents one more attack on that same salient.

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: I think I found it.

[16:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[16:49] Bob Dobbs: good.

[16:52] Cameron McEwen: He begins by talking about television.

[16:58] Bob Dobbs: He says new languages.

[17:00] Bob Dobbs: I just passed over it just a second.

[17:03] Bob Dobbs: There it is.

[17:04] Bob Dobbs: Page 366.

[17:06] Bob Dobbs: Does that sound correct?

[17:07] Bob Dobbs: Would it be that high of a number?

[17:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[17:10] Cameron McEwen: definitely.

[17:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[17:11] Cameron McEwen: The first page of the article is 363.

[17:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[17:14] Bob Dobbs: there it is.

[17:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[17:15] Bob Dobbs: So put in 366.

[17:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[17:26] Bob Dobbs: this is the famous quote I'm always quoting.

[17:29] Bob Dobbs: I always thought he said that in 65.

[17:32] Bob Dobbs: So here's the important part for me.

[17:34] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[17:35] Bob Dobbs: these new forms,

[17:36] Bob Dobbs: television and radio,

[17:37] Bob Dobbs: are new languages.

[17:38] Bob Dobbs: They're huge extensions of ourselves which enable us to participate in one another's lives much as language does.

[17:45] Bob Dobbs: But these forms lay down their own ground rules.

[17:48] Bob Dobbs: The modes of participation are already built into the technology.

[17:52] Bob Dobbs: There are real,

[17:53] Bob Dobbs: rigid art rules.

[17:55] Bob Dobbs: for each form.

[17:57] Bob Dobbs: I like that.

[17:57] Bob Dobbs: Rigid art rules.

[17:59] Bob Dobbs: So he's talking about media as art forms there.

[18:01] Bob Dobbs: The fact that we have many media now enables us to leap across the barriers from one form or one set of rules to another.

[18:10] Bob Dobbs: And I think it is this multiplicity of media that is now enabling man to free himself from media for the first time in history.

[18:19] Bob Dobbs: See,

[18:19] Bob Dobbs: so the mediumism massage is not necessarily happening anymore other than this new

[18:25] Bob Dobbs: where detachment is a product of the global theater,

[18:29] Bob Dobbs: which is like anti-environment,

[18:32] Bob Dobbs: invisible media,

[18:33] Bob Dobbs: the collection of it.

[18:35] Bob Dobbs: I call it global tactility.

[18:38] Cameron McEwen: But it's not right to say that the massage is not happening anymore.

[18:44] Cameron McEwen: The massage is always happening.

[18:47] Cameron McEwen: It's just a question of how it is happening and what our consciousness is of it.

[18:54] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[18:54] Bob Dobbs: now this is a key point.

[18:56] Bob Dobbs: The massage at this point in the middle

[18:58] Bob Dobbs: 60s makes people feel that they're not being controlled by anti-environment.

[19:03] Bob Dobbs: That's the effect of the massage.

[19:06] Bob Dobbs: See,

[19:06] Bob Dobbs: so all those movements celebrating their freedom,

[19:10] Bob Dobbs: chemical body freedom in the

[19:12] Bob Dobbs: 60s, all came to naught by the 70s because the larger massage that they didn't recognize was coming in and would become the digital Android Meme and then the tech body.

[19:23] Bob Dobbs: See,

[19:24] Bob Dobbs: people thought they'd come to some kind of end point of Orwell control of themselves and were feeling free of it.

[19:31] Bob Dobbs: Even the kids felt that way with the Summer of Love,

[19:34] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[19:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[19:36] Cameron McEwen: especially the kids,

[19:37] Cameron McEwen: I would say.

[19:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[19:38] Bob Dobbs: they were picking up the instinct.

[19:40] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[19:42] Bob Dobbs: and I think it is this multiplicity of media that is now enabling man to free himself from media for the first time in history.

[19:48] Bob Dobbs: He has been the victim,

[19:49] Bob Dobbs: the servomechanism of his technologies.

[19:52] Bob Dobbs: his media from the beginning of time,

[19:54] Bob Dobbs: but now because of the sheer multiplicity of them,

[19:57] Bob Dobbs: he is beginning to awaken.

[19:59] Bob Dobbs: Because he can't live with them all.

[20:01] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan has to say,

[20:03] Bob Dobbs: because he's using words,

[20:04] Bob Dobbs: that there's some kind of independence of media happening.

[20:08] Bob Dobbs: But he has to drop the other half of the idea.

[20:12] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[20:12] Bob Dobbs: you're being conditioned to think that you're free from these media,

[20:16] Bob Dobbs: because there's so many of them,

[20:17] Bob Dobbs: you think that almost indifference or void you're put into is freedom.

[20:25] Bob Dobbs: But he has to say one half of the idea and then say the other half later.

[20:30] Bob Dobbs: He can't say both at the same time.

[20:32] Bob Dobbs: It looks too confusing to him just trying to get some basics across.

[20:39] Bob Dobbs: You get that?

[20:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[20:41] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[20:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[20:42] Bob Dobbs: so that's how you read McLuhan,

[20:44] Bob Dobbs: what we're just saying here.

[20:45] Bob Dobbs: So this quote was well worth going into because it is one of my favorite quotes.

[20:52] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knows he said it.

[20:55] Bob Dobbs: rare person,

[20:56] Bob Dobbs: maybe a guy who Wright a book,

[20:57] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure who might come across it,

[20:59] Bob Dobbs: but it's a very unique statement.

[21:02] Bob Dobbs: Because everybody's going around,

[21:03] Bob Dobbs: well,

[21:03] Bob Dobbs: we're victims of the media,

[21:05] Bob Dobbs: we're victims of TV,

[21:07] Bob Dobbs: and they're still living in the

[21:08] Bob Dobbs: 50s. They don't see the mixture of media anti-environment that the satellite has brought in,

[21:13] Bob Dobbs: or is the Peterson Arch covering this interplay of TV,

[21:18] Bob Dobbs: computers,

[21:18] Bob Dobbs: and radio,

[21:19] Bob Dobbs: and bulldozers and everything.

[21:21] Bob Dobbs: It's a tactile uh

[21:24] Bob Dobbs: world of objects,

[21:25] Bob Dobbs: anti-environment,

[21:26] Bob Dobbs: not the tactile,

[21:28] Bob Dobbs: not the raw thing.

[21:31] Bob Dobbs: The electricity is an extension of our tactile central nervous system.

[21:35] Bob Dobbs: It's now,

[21:36] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[21:37] Bob Dobbs: you have an image of your central nervous system.

[21:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[21:40] Bob Dobbs: but you have to have a new image of the global theater.

[21:42] Bob Dobbs: That's what's tactile.

[21:44] Bob Dobbs: I maintain nobody gets that point until later.

[21:48] Cameron McEwen: Maybe I don't get it either.

[21:51] Cameron McEwen: I think that...

[21:52] Cameron McEwen: Utility is the essence of the anti-environment.

[21:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[21:57] Bob Dobbs: it's the essence of electricity.

[22:00] Bob Dobbs: And then people learn that electricity is the extension of the central nervous system.

[22:04] Bob Dobbs: But the interplay of anti-environment,

[22:06] Bob Dobbs: whole anti-environment,

[22:08] Bob Dobbs: the TV landscape,

[22:09] Bob Dobbs: the radio landscape,

[22:11] Bob Dobbs: the magazine,

[22:12] Bob Dobbs: all the different industrial media anti-environment are now floating in a satellite proscenium arch.

[22:20] Bob Dobbs: And so you're tuning the sky,

[22:23] Bob Dobbs: and the sky is made up of these clouds,

[22:25] Bob Dobbs: which are different anti-environment.

[22:26] Bob Dobbs: So the interplay of the leadership of the corporate emperors of these different anti-environment are in a tactile interplay,

[22:34] Bob Dobbs: so that the Orwell idea of a committee running everything is not adequate.

[22:40] Bob Dobbs: There is a committee behind the scenes,

[22:42] Bob Dobbs: at least the intelligence agency is trying to coordinate something,

[22:45] Bob Dobbs: but they're inside a very chaotic interplay.

[22:48] Bob Dobbs: that has a kind of symmetry to it.

[22:51] Bob Dobbs: There is an ecology going on in the tactile effect of all the anti-environment intermingling in the global theater.

[22:59] Bob Dobbs: But humans can't see that,

[23:00] Bob Dobbs: so they think chaotically in response.

[23:04] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan,

[23:05] Bob Dobbs: to the degree he wrote a poetic vision,

[23:08] Bob Dobbs: like a romantic poet or a symbolist or a Blake,

[23:12] Bob Dobbs: was the poetry of the global theater.

[23:15] Bob Dobbs: The interplay and balancing of eye,

[23:17] Bob Dobbs: ear,

[23:17] Bob Dobbs: and tactility,

[23:18] Bob Dobbs: and kinetic,

[23:19] Bob Dobbs: and smell,

[23:20] Bob Dobbs: and all the senses,

[23:21] Bob Dobbs: through their extended anti-environment,

[23:23] Bob Dobbs: is a vision.

[23:25] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[23:25] Bob Dobbs: he knows a vision is not enough.

[23:28] Bob Dobbs: You have to get into applying Joyce.

[23:30] Bob Dobbs: You have to apply media ecology,

[23:32] Bob Dobbs: which is the Playboy statement.

[23:33] Bob Dobbs: You modulate the anti-environment,

[23:35] Bob Dobbs: which you don't take literally,

[23:36] Bob Dobbs: but I do.

[23:38] Bob Dobbs: At least he presents that for someone to think about,

[23:41] Bob Dobbs: that there is a solution if people want it.

[23:44] Bob Dobbs: get coordinated clairvoyantly and come up with a solution.

[23:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[23:48] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan came up with it.

[23:50] Bob Dobbs: Global programming is more important than financial programming through the banks and the central banks and the programming that was

[23:57] Bob Dobbs: Keynesian economics.

[23:59] Bob Dobbs: So,

[24:00] Bob Dobbs: go ahead.

[24:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[24:02] Cameron McEwen: when you say that you take it literally,

[24:05] Cameron McEwen: how can you not deposit yourself into the Gutenberg Galaxy,

[24:11] Cameron McEwen: which is...

[24:14] Cameron McEwen: the attempt to base human identity and society on the letter,

[24:23] Cameron McEwen: on the literal.

[24:24] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[24:24] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if it's Gutenbergian to say,

[24:26] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[24:27] Bob Dobbs: there's too much radio in Venezuela.

[24:28] Bob Dobbs: We're going to turn the radio off and bring in newspapers for a month to cool off or hot up,

[24:36] Bob Dobbs: whatever term he's going to use about that situation for that culture.

[24:41] Bob Dobbs: The actually doing that,

[24:43] Bob Dobbs: in other words,

[24:45] Bob Dobbs: I think that when he said,

[24:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm the center for culture and technology,

[24:48] Bob Dobbs: he's the center of this new knowledge and the new way to manage the economy,

[24:52] Bob Dobbs: not...

[24:53] Bob Dobbs: the way the bankers do it because they're just propping up Gutenberg identity with private property and individual ownership and wealth and people becoming wealthy.

[25:03] Bob Dobbs: That's all Gutenbergian.

[25:04] Bob Dobbs: He says that's not real wealth anymore.

[25:06] Bob Dobbs: Real wealth is everybody engaging and participating in whatever electric media they have access to.

[25:11] Bob Dobbs: It's way beyond property ownership or hardware ownership.

[25:15] Bob Dobbs: So let's modulate that.

[25:17] Bob Dobbs: If you can get people to see his vision,

[25:19] Bob Dobbs: let's let me and my buddies

[25:21] Bob Dobbs: see what happens if we turn these media anti-environment off and on.

[25:25] Bob Dobbs: Just stop them for a little while.

[25:27] Bob Dobbs: And we might even have a way to do it orderly by looking at different society's sensory thresholds and seeing what is making them heated or cooled down.

[25:38] Bob Dobbs: So that's...

[25:39] Cameron McEwen: But look at how...

[25:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan,

[25:41] Cameron McEwen: by this time,

[25:42] Cameron McEwen: for 20 years,

[25:43] Cameron McEwen: had been talking about what he calls arrest.

[25:47] Cameron McEwen: So...

[25:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[25:48] Cameron McEwen: The aesthetic moment,

[25:50] Cameron McEwen: he calls it.

[25:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[25:52] Bob Dobbs: Which was a Gutenberg moment.

[25:53] Bob Dobbs: That's a Gutenberg art,

[25:55] Bob Dobbs: the aesthetic moment.

[25:57] Bob Dobbs: Because in the Electric Age...

[25:58] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[25:59] Cameron McEwen: it happens in Gutenbergian time,

[26:01] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[26:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[26:02] Cameron McEwen: But for McLuhan,

[26:04] Cameron McEwen: what it indicates is that that moment is the labyrinth,

[26:10] Cameron McEwen: he says.

[26:12] Cameron McEwen: So,

[26:13] Cameron McEwen: especially people like Mallarmé understood that that was...

[26:17] Cameron McEwen: it was no longer a moment in the external landscape.

[26:22] Cameron McEwen: It was a moment in the interior landscape.

[26:25] Cameron McEwen: So that moment had to be taken as a labyrinthine thread to get down to the internal basics of the personality

[26:39] Cameron McEwen: landscape,

[26:40] Cameron McEwen: the interior landscape.

[26:42] Cameron McEwen: So when he's talking about stopping,

[26:45] Cameron McEwen: He's not talking about stopping in the external landscape where you have your

[26:51] Cameron McEwen: TV stations and your newspapers and all that sort of stuff.

[26:55] Cameron McEwen: He's talking about getting into the interior landscape where talk about television,

[27:01] Cameron McEwen: the press,

[27:03] Cameron McEwen: radio are literal transcriptions of the outer landscape that can...

[27:14] Cameron McEwen: perform as a way of getting a grasp on the internal one.

[27:19] Cameron McEwen: And that transformation from the external to the internal involves metamorphosis,

[27:25] Cameron McEwen: it involves psychological decentralization.

[27:28] Cameron McEwen: So if you think for a moment about,

[27:30] Cameron McEwen: you were talking quite properly.

[27:31] Cameron McEwen: No,

[27:32] Cameron McEwen: wait,

[27:32] Bob Dobbs: stop there.

[27:34] Bob Dobbs: Do you mean interior,

[27:35] Bob Dobbs: the collective interiority,

[27:37] Bob Dobbs: which has been extended?

[27:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[27:39] Cameron McEwen: so when the interior...

[27:43] Cameron McEwen: landscape becomes exposed,

[27:47] Cameron McEwen: then the problem of the dialectic between the individual and society also becomes exposed.

[27:57] Cameron McEwen: And that dialectic is just another word for language.

[28:00] Cameron McEwen: So

[28:02] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is constantly saying that we need new languages to come to grips with

[28:12] Cameron McEwen: this moment that we're in.

[28:15] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[28:16] Bob Dobbs: and the moment is a time of incredible wealth and experience,

[28:20] Bob Dobbs: whole new experiences.

[28:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[28:22] Cameron McEwen: and danger.

[28:24] Bob Dobbs: Hell yeah,

[28:25] Bob Dobbs: but see,

[28:25] Bob Dobbs: he's saying,

[28:26] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to tell you what's happening,

[28:28] Bob Dobbs: and if anybody could understand it and had some influence,

[28:32] Bob Dobbs: maybe they'd let him have a role at the United Nations.

[28:36] Bob Dobbs: But he couldn't rely on them getting his poetic vision.

[28:42] Bob Dobbs: Because when you talk about the ascetic moment,

[28:44] Bob Dobbs: that's what understanding media is.

[28:45] Bob Dobbs: It's a presenting of the Marconi moment,

[28:48] Bob Dobbs: the global theater.

[28:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay?

[28:50] Bob Dobbs: So let's say nobody gets that.

[28:52] Bob Dobbs: There's still the ongoing panic and danger of these anti-environment creating unforeseen effects.

[28:58] Bob Dobbs: And on that level,

[28:59] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[29:00] Bob Dobbs: look,

[29:00] Bob Dobbs: let me handle this emergency by telling you,

[29:04] Bob Dobbs: you're going to have to turn off radio for a couple of weeks,

[29:07] Bob Dobbs: even though it's painful.

[29:08] Bob Dobbs: Or you're going to have to turn off TV.

[29:10] Bob Dobbs: That's all he was applying on the practical level.

[29:14] Bob Dobbs: And all he could get were a couple of small towns to experiment it,

[29:19] Bob Dobbs: do it.

[29:20] Bob Dobbs: And usually it was such an upset in the town's life that they quickly got back on and continued on the path to oblivion.

[29:31] Bob Dobbs: by keeping the media going.

[29:33] Bob Dobbs: So he had a practically efficient causality solution,

[29:39] Bob Dobbs: not that anybody's ever going to believe it,

[29:40] Bob Dobbs: but it was on the record.

[29:42] Bob Dobbs: And so I include that.

[29:44] Bob Dobbs: I went on the radio in,

[29:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[29:47] Bob Dobbs: 84 saying this is what we need to do.

[29:51] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knew what I was talking about.

[29:52] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know McLuhan had said it unless I pointed it out.

[29:55] Bob Dobbs: But

[29:56] Bob Dobbs: I present myself as a political answer to all the chaos that was going on.

[30:01] Bob Dobbs: Using McLuhan.

[30:02] Bob Dobbs: So

[30:03] Bob Dobbs: I dared to apply that,

[30:05] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[30:06] Bob Dobbs: literally,

[30:07] Bob Dobbs: to do what he said to do.

[30:12] Bob Dobbs: I would just add that that's just before the digital implosion.

[30:17] Bob Dobbs: You couldn't do that by 1980.

[30:19] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[30:19] Bob Dobbs: It was a one-time solution for 1968,

[30:23] Bob Dobbs: which could have been implemented if there were wiser people in charge.

[30:28] Bob Dobbs: But there weren't,

[30:29] Bob Dobbs: and there never is.

[30:30] Bob Dobbs: in charge,

[30:31] Bob Dobbs: wiser people.

[30:33] Bob Dobbs: So that has him,

[30:34] Bob Dobbs: as I said in my speech about this at Fordham in March 98,

[30:39] Bob Dobbs: he fell back on Menippean satire.

[30:41] Bob Dobbs: His books and actions are stressing the absurdity,

[30:45] Bob Dobbs: but it was not his conclusion about life that life was absurd.

[30:49] Bob Dobbs: He just,

[30:50] Bob Dobbs: the reality,

[30:52] Bob Dobbs: cannot understand the new prophet,

[30:55] Bob Dobbs: and so the prophet has to witness absurdity all around him.

[31:01] Bob Dobbs: in people's reactions.

[31:03] Bob Dobbs: So,

[31:03] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[31:04] Bob Dobbs: pick up what you were going to say.

[31:06] Cameron McEwen: All right,

[31:06] Cameron McEwen: so I want to go back to the small town experiment,

[31:10] Cameron McEwen: turning off TV for a while,

[31:11] Cameron McEwen: for example.

[31:13] Cameron McEwen: You call it a solution,

[31:15] Cameron McEwen: but what kind of solution?

[31:19] Cameron McEwen: I don't think there was any solution going on.

[31:22] Cameron McEwen: It wasn't as if the people in the small town,

[31:25] Cameron McEwen: if they turned off their television and it remained off.

[31:31] Cameron McEwen: It wouldn't be some sort of condition of paradise in that town.

[31:36] Cameron McEwen: It wouldn't be something where there was no crime anymore.

[31:40] Cameron McEwen: It wouldn't be something where people weren't anxious.

[31:44] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[31:45] Bob Dobbs: now let me respond to that.

[31:47] Bob Dobbs: I certainly don't mean that.

[31:48] Bob Dobbs: What would happen is that tragedies of all levels would happen.

[31:52] Bob Dobbs: And then people,

[31:53] Bob Dobbs: if McLuhan was there to speak to them,

[31:55] Bob Dobbs: have a town meeting halfway through the week and everybody's in a wreck.

[31:59] Bob Dobbs: And then he could say,

[32:00] Bob Dobbs: You see how addicted you are to this thing?

[32:03] Bob Dobbs: Do you see how you need it?

[32:05] Bob Dobbs: And it's not healthy to need a fucking toy like this.

[32:09] Bob Dobbs: But it's not a toy.

[32:10] Bob Dobbs: It's all involving.

[32:11] Bob Dobbs: It's a whole new reality.

[32:12] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[32:12] Bob Dobbs: he would take the Ivins,

[32:14] Bob Dobbs: and that would be a way towards a solution.

[32:17] Bob Dobbs: Point out that they're sick and they didn't know it.

[32:19] Bob Dobbs: That's why you turn it off.

[32:21] Cameron McEwen: That's all correct.

[32:22] Cameron McEwen: So what you're saying is that the...

[32:30] Cameron McEwen: Manipulation of media to show Ivins points to something that needs to become conscious if people are to become healthy again.

[32:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[32:42] Cameron McEwen: And that's exactly right.

[32:44] Cameron McEwen: So that means that when people become aware of their dependence on multiple media,

[32:57] Cameron McEwen: it's something that they can research.

[32:59] Cameron McEwen: for the first time.

[33:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[33:02] Cameron McEwen: So they don't suddenly awaken into a whole new awareness and a whole new service environment.

[33:12] Cameron McEwen: What they do is they slowly begin to understand that there's parts of human reality,

[33:19] Cameron McEwen: the human condition,

[33:21] Cameron McEwen: that they have sort of let slide.

[33:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[33:28] Cameron McEwen: ecstasy,

[33:29] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[33:31] Cameron McEwen: following the Gutenberg Galaxy,

[33:33] Cameron McEwen: an ecstasy that had an underside of panic.

[33:36] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan doing in that small-town experiment is he's trying to show,

[33:42] Cameron McEwen: number one,

[33:43] Cameron McEwen: that media are real things with real effects,

[33:48] Cameron McEwen: and you're sitting in this maelstrom of these effects,

[33:51] Cameron McEwen: and you don't even know it.

[33:54] Cameron McEwen: So in a world...

[33:57] Cameron McEwen: where the greatest thing anti-environment is the atomic bomb or the nuclear bomb,

[34:05] Cameron McEwen: not to be aware of these huge effects is very,

[34:11] Cameron McEwen: very dangerous.

[34:12] Cameron McEwen: And what we need to do is focus on what these media are and what their effects are.

[34:21] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[34:22] Bob Dobbs: So

[34:23] Bob Dobbs: I said that McLuhan...

[34:26] Bob Dobbs: Proposing this project for small towns or whatever level of society took it on was the most important art form.

[34:34] Bob Dobbs: Way more important than theater,

[34:36] Bob Dobbs: whatever other arts there are,

[34:38] Bob Dobbs: they just give messages to people,

[34:41] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg information,

[34:42] Bob Dobbs: messages.

[34:43] Bob Dobbs: They're not made aware of the new surround,

[34:47] Bob Dobbs: and I don't like using the word addiction,

[34:49] Bob Dobbs: but it communicates,

[34:51] Bob Dobbs: the addiction that's going on,

[34:53] Bob Dobbs: so that the new drug,

[34:54] Bob Dobbs: it's not LSD or anything else,

[34:56] Bob Dobbs: cocaine,

[34:57] Bob Dobbs: anti-environment.

[34:59] Bob Dobbs: And the only way to point it out,

[35:00] Bob Dobbs: the only way to deal with it artistically,

[35:03] Bob Dobbs: is to do what he suggested,

[35:05] Bob Dobbs: have people go on media fast.

[35:07] Bob Dobbs: So that was the most important message for his time,

[35:11] Bob Dobbs: that one-upped all the wonderful messages of the Beatles or

[35:15] Bob Dobbs: Broadway plays or Hair or whatever,

[35:18] Bob Dobbs: the Explorations,

[35:19] Bob Dobbs: whatever,

[35:19] Bob Dobbs: the

[35:20] Bob Dobbs: Black Power.

[35:21] Bob Dobbs: These were tiny and puny for chemical bodies and did not deal with the new situation.

[35:26] Bob Dobbs: So I find it interesting that through a culture,

[35:30] Bob Dobbs: there's always someone who's very close to the perfect.

[35:32] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[35:33] Bob Dobbs: solution or answer about the issues.

[35:36] Bob Dobbs: And I think that's what you celebrate,

[35:38] Bob Dobbs: the great philosophers who seemed and call out the disease more accurately than other people.

[35:43] Bob Dobbs: They never got a solution,

[35:45] Bob Dobbs: you say,

[35:46] Bob Dobbs: but

[35:47] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan represents that tradition.

[35:49] Bob Dobbs: He called it right.

[35:50] Bob Dobbs: He had perfect pitch.

[35:52] Bob Dobbs: Do you know what I mean?

[35:53] Bob Dobbs: Among all the other people who had all their issues and concerns,

[35:58] Bob Dobbs: from

[36:00] Bob Dobbs: Rachel Carson and pollution.

[36:02] Bob Dobbs: Or

[36:04] Bob Dobbs: Noam Chomsky and manufacturing kids said,

[36:07] Bob Dobbs: this lists off a million of them.

[36:09] Bob Dobbs: They all were puny compared to the larger effect that Marshall saw.

[36:15] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[36:15] Cameron McEwen: And you use the term media fast.

[36:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[36:21] Cameron McEwen: And that's an excellent description of what McLuhan was advocating.

[36:29] Cameron McEwen: But the media fast didn't mean...

[36:32] Cameron McEwen: You cancel your subscription to the Toronto Daily Star.

[36:37] Cameron McEwen: You unplug your televisions.

[36:40] Cameron McEwen: You don't listen to radio anymore.

[36:42] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[36:42] Cameron McEwen: That's not what a media fast is.

[36:44] Cameron McEwen: What a media fast is,

[36:48] Cameron McEwen: is the gap into which the person and individuals and society must enter.

[37:02] Cameron McEwen: in order to begin to understand what media are.

[37:07] Cameron McEwen: As long as you're in some medium and it is dominating your thought,

[37:13] Cameron McEwen: you cannot understand the media environment,

[37:17] Cameron McEwen: which is a mixture of media.

[37:20] Cameron McEwen: So the media fast is a methodological demand.

[37:25] Cameron McEwen: It's the demand that a person or a group of people

[37:31] Cameron McEwen: persons and ideally whole society withdraw from media dominance in order to understand what media dominance is.

[37:46] Bob Dobbs: And that's why it is so irrelevant and disgusting to Marshall to ask whether he liked TV or not.

[37:54] Bob Dobbs: Was it more important than print?

[37:55] Bob Dobbs: And all those value judgments are totally irrelevant.

[37:58] Bob Dobbs: Because if you have a media fast to find out what is this thing,

[38:02] Bob Dobbs: what does it do that's different from books or movies?

[38:04] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[38:05] Bob Dobbs: that's part of the goal of the fast is to understand a little closer what the structural components of the anti-environment.

[38:11] Bob Dobbs: You definitely don't make judgments calls on,

[38:14] Bob Dobbs: oh my God,

[38:15] Bob Dobbs: we're losing literacy.

[38:16] Bob Dobbs: You don't know.

[38:17] Bob Dobbs: More and more people read books than ever,

[38:19] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[38:19] Bob Dobbs: over the last 50 years.

[38:21] Bob Dobbs: Because they have more leisure time to read and they live longer.

[38:25] Bob Dobbs: But that doesn't accomplish anything really in media dynamics.

[38:28] Bob Dobbs: There's a lot of people reading.

[38:29] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[38:30] Bob Dobbs: Julian Huxley and those guys in the 19th century that,

[38:32] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[38:33] Bob Dobbs: got the working class to go to evening classes and started to become illiterate is a puny operation of what's necessary.

[38:40] Bob Dobbs: So everybody kept asking whether Marshall was for books or not.

[38:45] Bob Dobbs: What an irrelevant response.

[38:47] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[38:48] Cameron McEwen: correct.

[38:48] Cameron McEwen: So just think for a moment about

[38:51] Cameron McEwen: Darwin in the 19th century.

[38:54] Cameron McEwen: What

[38:55] Cameron McEwen: Darwin does is he says,

[38:57] Cameron McEwen: look,

[38:59] Cameron McEwen: we,

[39:00] Cameron McEwen: everybody,

[39:01] Cameron McEwen: are participating in anti-environment that nobody knew about before.

[39:07] Cameron McEwen: Service environment of evolution.

[39:10] Cameron McEwen: And what this does is it,

[39:14] Cameron McEwen: this consciousness service environment that we exist in,

[39:19] Cameron McEwen: that is a whole new service environment.

[39:23] Cameron McEwen: It's one that changes how people think and how people operate in the service environment,

[39:33] Cameron McEwen: but it also raises questions about...

[39:36] Cameron McEwen: human identity and human society.

[39:39] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan is,

[39:44] Cameron McEwen: in order to see that,

[39:45] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[39:45] Cameron McEwen: what Darwin had to do is he had to say,

[39:47] Cameron McEwen: look,

[39:48] Cameron McEwen: folks,

[39:49] Cameron McEwen: you have to withdraw from your current thinking and see yourself in the world in a different perspective.

[40:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[40:01] Bob Dobbs: which evokes different thoughts.

[40:03] Bob Dobbs: You're going to have new thoughts.

[40:05] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[40:06] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan is suggesting something similar for the 20th century.

[40:11] Cameron McEwen: What he's saying is there is anti-environment,

[40:15] Cameron McEwen: it's actually anti-environment plural,

[40:17] Cameron McEwen: but there is anti-environment in which you exist that you do not see.

[40:22] Cameron McEwen: It's like a fish in water.

[40:25] Cameron McEwen: And our problems cannot be solved except by withdrawing from this stuff.

[40:33] Cameron McEwen: So when you talk about solution,

[40:35] Cameron McEwen: I think what you mean,

[40:37] Cameron McEwen: or what I take you to mean,

[40:40] Cameron McEwen: is that the solution is the withdrawal that raises the question for the first time.

[40:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[40:49] Cameron McEwen: And if you mean solution in that sense,

[40:52] Cameron McEwen: then we completely agree.

[40:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[40:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[40:56] Bob Dobbs: It's,

[40:57] Bob Dobbs: maybe a better word is tactic in a problem.

[41:01] Bob Dobbs: A tactic would be to have a media fast.

[41:03] Bob Dobbs: Or is that a strategy?

[41:06] Cameron McEwen: No,

[41:06] Cameron McEwen: I think it's a tactic.

[41:07] Cameron McEwen: The strategy is enabling a anti-environment in which these questions can be collectively addressed in the same sense that our physical anti-environment be physically addressed now.

[41:27] Cameron McEwen: What we need City as Classroom without walls for the interior landscape.

[41:33] Bob Dobbs: Which is not interior inside the skull.

[41:37] Bob Dobbs: You don't mean that.

[41:38] Cameron McEwen: No,

[41:39] Cameron McEwen: definitely not.

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: No,

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: of course not.

[41:41] Bob Dobbs: You could even call it outer space.

[41:42] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used to say that going into outer space was going into inner space.

[41:47] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[41:47] Bob Dobbs: Because there's no visual boundaries.

[41:49] Bob Dobbs: So if you,

[41:51] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[41:52] Bob Dobbs: you would have to say interior landscape.

[41:54] Bob Dobbs: I've never gotten you to say this up to this point,

[41:57] Bob Dobbs: but you're agreeing with what I'm saying,

[41:59] Bob Dobbs: correcting it,

[42:00] Bob Dobbs: or what you would add.

[42:01] Bob Dobbs: to the description of what you mean by interior landscape.

[42:04] Bob Dobbs: It's a new water.

[42:07] Bob Dobbs: It wouldn't be inside or outside of the body.

[42:13] Bob Dobbs: It's somewhere else.

[42:14] Cameron McEwen: It's not somewhere else.

[42:18] Cameron McEwen: It's not a spatial question.

[42:20] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan all the time says what we've done is we've gotten rid of the idea that space is the parameters of our problems.

[42:30] Cameron McEwen: It's not.

[42:32] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[42:33] Cameron McEwen: When he talks all the time about consideration and the sitter in consideration,

[42:43] Cameron McEwen: it refers to the Latin word for star,

[42:46] Cameron McEwen: sidereal.

[42:47] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[42:47] Cameron McEwen: So when something is considered,

[42:51] Cameron McEwen: it's considered in terms that exceed our galaxy.

[42:56] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[42:56] Cameron McEwen: Our galaxy is only anti-environment.

[43:01] Cameron McEwen: amongst countless others.

[43:04] Cameron McEwen: And anti-environment beyond our galaxy is a service environment.

[43:12] Cameron McEwen: So when McLuhan talks about outer space,

[43:15] Cameron McEwen: what he's talking about anti-environment that exceeds our galaxy and demands our thinking about the context of human beings beyond the stars.

[43:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[43:31] Cameron McEwen: Outer space,

[43:32] Cameron McEwen: as you were just saying,

[43:33] Cameron McEwen: that kind of outer space then rebounds into our inner space and calls that inner space along with the outer space into question.

[43:45] Cameron McEwen: Who are we?

[43:46] Cameron McEwen: What are we doing?

[43:47] Cameron McEwen: What should we be doing?

[43:49] Cameron McEwen: What's really at stake in human being?

[43:53] Cameron McEwen: And that's the Global Membrane and the global theater.

[43:57] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[43:57] Bob Dobbs: the Global Membrane,

[43:58] Bob Dobbs: Global Membrane.

[43:58] Bob Dobbs: So how I was defining tactility as this interplay of the anti-environment with the clouds that inside the satellite frame,

[44:07] Bob Dobbs: you're and so I said it's somewhere else.

[44:10] Bob Dobbs: So this extended tactility,

[44:13] Bob Dobbs: I used to call it tactility squared or cubed.

[44:17] Bob Dobbs: That's exactly what you mean by interior landscape.

[44:20] Bob Dobbs: What I mean by tactility,

[44:23] Bob Dobbs: it's cubed.

[44:25] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[44:25] Bob Dobbs: So we've come to a match on your terms versus my terms,

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: because to me,

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: interior landscape is too acoustic,

[44:33] Bob Dobbs: or you think of it as in the skull.

[44:35] Bob Dobbs: But I got you to say,

[44:36] Bob Dobbs: no,

[44:37] Bob Dobbs: it's beyond the skull,

[44:38] Bob Dobbs: and bringing in outer space is inner space,

[44:40] Bob Dobbs: and that gets you beyond your bodies,

[44:42] Bob Dobbs: and beyond the planet is art form.

[44:46] Bob Dobbs: Again,

[44:46] Bob Dobbs: the solar system is art form,

[44:48] Bob Dobbs: and that's what you would call global tactility,

[44:53] Bob Dobbs: And not the...

[44:56] Bob Dobbs: A simple idea that electricity is tactile and comes from our central nervous system.

[45:01] Bob Dobbs: That's very puny compared to what you're describing as the interior landscape,

[45:05] Bob Dobbs: if you accept my interpretation of your interior landscape.

[45:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[45:09] Cameron McEwen: I think so,

[45:10] Cameron McEwen: but

[45:12] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't call the tactility of electricity puny.

[45:17] Cameron McEwen: I would call it the dynamic that is...

[45:24] Cameron McEwen: exactly what we need to question.

[45:26] Cameron McEwen: And the peculiarity of that is that you can't question the dynamic of tactility from the outside because the dynamic of tactility is already operating in everything that we do.

[45:42] Cameron McEwen: So this kind of withdrawal that we're talking about is very,

[45:46] Cameron McEwen: very difficult and it causes anxiety in people and the whole you

[45:52] Cameron McEwen: question of why wasn't

[45:55] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan able to communicate and then going all the way back to Plato and others,

[45:59] Cameron McEwen: why weren't they able to communicate?

[46:02] Cameron McEwen: That's

[46:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan numb and he could see that people for some very strange reason cannot enter into this media fast.

[46:18] Cameron McEwen: It causes them too much anxiety,

[46:21] Cameron McEwen: It causes them too much disorientation.

[46:24] Cameron McEwen: And rather than do that,

[46:27] Cameron McEwen: they amputate,

[46:29] Cameron McEwen: self-amputate the consciousness of their need to do it.

[46:35] Bob Dobbs: So we know we did have that happen.

[46:38] Bob Dobbs: COVID lockdowns.

[46:39] Bob Dobbs: COVID lockdowns was approximating immediate fast.

[46:42] Bob Dobbs: They still had the digital world to play in,

[46:45] Bob Dobbs: but a lot of other bodily activities and

[46:49] Bob Dobbs: TV landscape stuff.

[46:52] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[46:53] Bob Dobbs: couch potato stuff was amputated.

[46:56] Bob Dobbs: And this really freaked people out.

[46:59] Bob Dobbs: They really globally had a panic to the point it even probably threw Fauci and the so-called managers of things,

[47:06] Bob Dobbs: threw them off.

[47:07] Bob Dobbs: And they didn't know what they were doing and they panicked too.

[47:10] Bob Dobbs: Because they couldn't believe that way people,

[47:13] Bob Dobbs: they didn't just become passive slaves.

[47:15] Bob Dobbs: They were nervous wrecks and started doing all kinds of crazy stuff in their families.

[47:20] Bob Dobbs: committing suicide,

[47:22] Bob Dobbs: disrupting wherever they were,

[47:23] Bob Dobbs: having fights all over the place.

[47:25] Bob Dobbs: So we did have the global McLuhan fast with the COVID lockdown.

[47:31] Bob Dobbs: It showed what would happen on a global level.

[47:35] Bob Dobbs: And it's interesting.

[47:37] Cameron McEwen: You could say he was predicting what was inevitable.

[47:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[47:41] Cameron McEwen: So if human beings do not come to terms with these questions,

[47:46] Cameron McEwen: there will be a global fast.

[47:49] Cameron McEwen: in the guise of nuclear war that will turn people off from media,

[47:55] Cameron McEwen: but may do so for good.

[47:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[47:57] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[47:58] Bob Dobbs: May shut everything down completely.

[48:00] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[48:02] Bob Dobbs: So I was so confident about the accuracy of what we're saying,

[48:06] Bob Dobbs: so I went on the radio and said,

[48:07] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to hear from any of you other people.

[48:09] Bob Dobbs: You don't know what you're talking about.

[48:10] Bob Dobbs: Listen to me.

[48:11] Bob Dobbs: I will spell out,

[48:12] Bob Dobbs: because I understand McLuhan,

[48:13] Bob Dobbs: and he nailed it right.

[48:14] Bob Dobbs: So I did that,

[48:15] Bob Dobbs: you could say,

[48:15] Bob Dobbs: as an art form,

[48:16] Bob Dobbs: as an entertainment,

[48:17] Bob Dobbs: but I was a

[48:18] Bob Dobbs: I was serious that people took it seriously.

[48:20] Bob Dobbs: Nobody took it seriously.

[48:22] Bob Dobbs: So I joined the great tradition of lost philosophers and carried on.

[48:28] Bob Dobbs: But then things have turned around now.

[48:31] Bob Dobbs: Now they're listening.

[48:32] Bob Dobbs: But the interesting thing is

[48:36] Bob Dobbs: I understood that everybody else was noise.

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: And

[48:39] Bob Dobbs: I don't call that fascism.

[48:41] Bob Dobbs: I'm just saying,

[48:42] Bob Dobbs: hey,

[48:42] Bob Dobbs: buddy,

[48:42] Bob Dobbs: take time.

[48:44] Bob Dobbs: Do it fast.

[48:44] Bob Dobbs: See what happens to you.

[48:45] Bob Dobbs: And if you find it really uncomfortable.

[48:47] Bob Dobbs: Here's a guy,

[48:48] Bob Dobbs: read his books,

[48:49] Bob Dobbs: he's explaining where it came from,

[48:51] Bob Dobbs: how it happened,

[48:52] Bob Dobbs: how it evolved,

[48:53] Bob Dobbs: where you got to this state.

[48:55] Bob Dobbs: I thought that was the best thing to tell people to engage,

[48:57] Bob Dobbs: to study,

[48:58] Bob Dobbs: in a world that was reluctant to study because they're having too much fun with all the different anti-environment they were free to play in.

[49:05] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[49:06] Bob Dobbs: A lot of distractions.

[49:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[49:09] Cameron McEwen: So notice the parallel with

[49:11] Cameron McEwen: Freud, Jung,

[49:11] Bob Dobbs: and Adler,

[49:13] Cameron McEwen: all of whom

[49:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan studied fairly closely in the

[49:19] Cameron McEwen: 30s and 40s.

[49:22] Cameron McEwen: People started going to psychotherapeutic sessions when their prosperous life,

[49:34] Cameron McEwen: their life with

[49:36] Cameron McEwen: rules about marriage and about business and about social conventions,

[49:44] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[49:44] Cameron McEwen: all that stuff,

[49:45] Cameron McEwen: when that broke down.

[49:47] Cameron McEwen: And so they had to go to some place where they would sort of clutch,

[49:53] Cameron McEwen: in the sense of a clutch in a car,

[49:55] Cameron McEwen: they would clutch their lives and they would begin to go over what they didn't know,

[50:01] Cameron McEwen: what that was unconscious but operating.

[50:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[50:04] Cameron McEwen: So

[50:06] Cameron McEwen: In a way,

[50:06] Cameron McEwen: what McLuhan is trying to do is the psychoanalysis of society,

[50:11] Cameron McEwen: of world history.

[50:13] Cameron McEwen: And that's why he liked Finnegans Wake so much,

[50:15] Cameron McEwen: because he saw a similar activity going on with Joyce.

[50:19] Bob Dobbs: He had a phrase for it,

[50:20] Bob Dobbs: corporate psychiatry.

[50:23] Bob Dobbs: That was his term about what he was doing as opposed to Jung and Freud or anybody else in the therapy world.

[50:28] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[50:29] Cameron McEwen: Corporate psychiatry.

[50:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[50:31] Cameron McEwen: so he had McLuhan even before he first went.

[50:35] Cameron McEwen: to college,

[50:37] Cameron McEwen: was hyper-conscious of language through his mother.

[50:42] Cameron McEwen: So he grew up in anti-environment where his mother's going around muttering all the time in different voices,

[50:49] Cameron McEwen: and it dominated their house.

[50:56] Cameron McEwen: And it did so in kind of a negative way for everybody.

[51:00] Cameron McEwen: But when McLuhan came to study English,

[51:04] Cameron McEwen: At the University of Manitoba,

[51:07] Cameron McEwen: he had all of these voices echoing in his head.

[51:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[51:11] Cameron McEwen: And he continued to pursue the idea that there's a plurality of languages going on.

[51:20] Cameron McEwen: And if we're going to achieve some sort of balance,

[51:23] Cameron McEwen: some sort of understanding of our anti-environment,

[51:28] Cameron McEwen: we have to understand that plurality.

[51:31] Cameron McEwen: And he just...

[51:33] Cameron McEwen: continues along that line,

[51:35] Cameron McEwen: and eventually in 1958,

[51:39] Cameron McEwen: he says the media is the message.

[51:41] Cameron McEwen: So instead of talking about the different languages that have been involved in English literary history,

[51:51] Cameron McEwen: which had been his shtick for decades,

[51:57] Cameron McEwen: he now said,

[51:57] Cameron McEwen: well,

[51:59] Cameron McEwen: instead of talking about that,

[52:00] Cameron McEwen: Let's talk about the media because...

[52:03] Cameron McEwen: The media is something that everybody thinks that they're concerned with,

[52:08] Cameron McEwen: and all they really need to do is say,

[52:11] Cameron McEwen: what is it that we're concerned about with these media?

[52:16] Cameron McEwen: And if they pursue that question,

[52:17] Cameron McEwen: it will lead them inside and into some sort of revolution about thinking about themselves and thinking about society.

[52:26] Bob Dobbs: You said resolution?

[52:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[52:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[52:29] Bob Dobbs: resolution,

[52:30] Bob Dobbs: not revolution,

[52:31] Bob Dobbs: resolution.

[52:33] Bob Dobbs: That's what you said.

[52:33] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[52:34] Cameron McEwen: I think I said revolution.

[52:36] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[52:36] Bob Dobbs: a revolution.

[52:37] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[52:38] Bob Dobbs: so two points.

[52:43] Bob Dobbs: You were just saying there,

[52:47] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[52:47] Bob Dobbs: I want to go to the other point.

[52:53] Bob Dobbs: He threw his life experience when he was young,

[52:56] Bob Dobbs: threw into question about what should be done in an educated environment because

[53:01] Bob Dobbs: He grew up in a madhouse,

[53:03] Bob Dobbs: in a very subtle madhouse.

[53:05] Bob Dobbs: The father was a passive,

[53:06] Bob Dobbs: talkative storyteller,

[53:08] Bob Dobbs: supposedly.

[53:09] Bob Dobbs: Didn't do much otherwise.

[53:11] Bob Dobbs: And his mother was going around like a maniac,

[53:14] Bob Dobbs: mumbling the great classics,

[53:17] Bob Dobbs: obsessed with them,

[53:18] Bob Dobbs: memorizing them,

[53:19] Bob Dobbs: planning on performing them.

[53:21] Bob Dobbs: And he is in the middle of that.

[53:23] Bob Dobbs: And that made him ready.

[53:25] Bob Dobbs: That madness made him a little different.

[53:28] Bob Dobbs: And when he got into education,

[53:30] Bob Dobbs: would equal the madness,

[53:32] Bob Dobbs: which was Cambridge.

[53:34] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[53:36] Cameron McEwen: But what he brought to that madness that most people didn't have was the kind of equanimity that his father had.

[53:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[53:44] Cameron McEwen: So his father was somehow able to exist in this anti-environment with a sense of humor and kind of feeling well.

[53:54] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[53:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[53:55] Cameron McEwen: it's crazy,

[53:56] Cameron McEwen: but that's sort of the way it is,

[53:57] Cameron McEwen: and I can live with that.

[53:59] Cameron McEwen: And

[54:00] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan brought those two things from his parents that were absolutely necessary.

[54:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[54:07] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[54:07] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[54:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[54:08] Bob Dobbs: and so it's interesting how reality,

[54:11] Bob Dobbs: whatever that is,

[54:13] Bob Dobbs: something bigger than us maybe,

[54:15] Bob Dobbs: that conditions people to be what they become.

[54:18] Bob Dobbs: And so he...

[54:21] Bob Dobbs: That's probably why he did so poorly in the grade school,

[54:25] Bob Dobbs: grade six net.

[54:26] Bob Dobbs: He flunked grade six.

[54:27] Bob Dobbs: It was so calm and normal and non-mad.

[54:32] Bob Dobbs: He just couldn't activate them because he was used to a more anti-environment.

[54:38] Bob Dobbs: So he was not prepared for the dull school level until he met one teacher,

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: supposedly,

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: that sparked him.

[54:46] Bob Dobbs: But you see,

[54:48] Bob Dobbs: he's quite...

[54:51] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[54:51] Bob Dobbs: megalomaniac in his years at Manitoba.

[54:54] Bob Dobbs: He's writing for the student newspaper quite much like his later personality,

[55:00] Bob Dobbs: saying,

[55:01] Bob Dobbs: these guys,

[55:02] Bob Dobbs: the leaders of society,

[55:02] Bob Dobbs: they got that all wrong.

[55:04] Bob Dobbs: These guys are erroneous over there.

[55:06] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[55:06] Bob Dobbs: you've read some of those articles,

[55:08] Bob Dobbs: right?

[55:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[55:09] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[55:09] Bob Dobbs: He has quite a superiority complex going on.

[55:12] Bob Dobbs: But that's a result of anti-environment,

[55:14] Bob Dobbs: what he grew up in.

[55:16] Bob Dobbs: So it throws in what is the value,

[55:19] Bob Dobbs: what is the way to do education?

[55:21] Bob Dobbs: If you get different reactions,

[55:24] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan being an example,

[55:26] Bob Dobbs: of a totally different perverted environment,

[55:29] Bob Dobbs: not your normal balanced situation,

[55:32] Bob Dobbs: or is it due to just unique individuals?

[55:35] Bob Dobbs: Mother was unique in doing what she did and the father was unique,

[55:37] Bob Dobbs: so they were a special family already.

[55:41] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[55:41] Cameron McEwen: I think so.

[55:44] Cameron McEwen: He then found himself in a special environment,

[55:47] Cameron McEwen: right?

[55:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[55:47] Cameron McEwen: World wars,

[55:48] Cameron McEwen: bombs,

[55:53] Cameron McEwen: new inventions that the world had never seen before.

[55:57] Cameron McEwen: So all of these things sort of came together for him.

[56:03] Cameron McEwen: He's not unique in the sense of had things come together for other people.

[56:09] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[56:09] Cameron McEwen: of course they had.

[56:10] Cameron McEwen: And a very great mind said,

[56:14] Cameron McEwen: grappled with all of these things in the past,

[56:17] Cameron McEwen: or at least comparable things in the past.

[56:20] Cameron McEwen: And in order to grapple with them in new conditions,

[56:25] Cameron McEwen: what you have to do is start again.

[56:28] Cameron McEwen: You have to retreat through a mental fasting to where the questions can first be raised.

[56:40] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan was one of those.

[56:43] Cameron McEwen: Fairly exceptional people for whom that happened.

[56:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[56:48] Bob Dobbs: So

[56:50] Bob Dobbs: Bucky Fuller thought he had the answer.

[56:52] Bob Dobbs: Freud thought he had the answer.

[56:54] Bob Dobbs: Is it a quality of Gutenberg conditioning that it heightens the individual's thought processes and perspective to make them think that they can direct the whole culture?

[57:05] Bob Dobbs: I think that's just a...

[57:08] Bob Dobbs: It's an intellectual act which would come in before the printing press and maybe in manuscript culture,

[57:13] Bob Dobbs: but 2,000 years before,

[57:14] Bob Dobbs: you had to be a mighty Caesar to take over,

[57:17] Bob Dobbs: right?

[57:17] Bob Dobbs: You had to be powerful physically,

[57:20] Bob Dobbs: militarily.

[57:21] Cameron McEwen: So it's important for you to clarify that when you're talking about somebody orchestrating the media environment,

[57:30] Cameron McEwen: you're not talking about a new Caesar.

[57:32] Cameron McEwen: You're not talking about some sort of fascist leader.

[57:36] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[57:38] Cameron McEwen: going to do this.

[57:40] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[57:40] Bob Dobbs: it's the way presently Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum is trying to be,

[57:45] Bob Dobbs: right?

[57:46] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[57:47] Bob Dobbs: It pontificates the whole world about how it's going to go.

[57:50] Bob Dobbs: And it's so inadequate,

[57:52] Bob Dobbs: so erroneous,

[57:54] Bob Dobbs: that you can start to get suspicious.

[57:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[57:56] Bob Dobbs: the real people behind the scenes are putting up the idiots so that they don't get found out.

[58:01] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[58:01] Bob Dobbs: behind the scenes.

[58:04] Bob Dobbs: There are behind the scenes.

[58:06] Bob Dobbs: It's interesting how Bagehot word like,

[58:09] Bob Dobbs: well,

[58:10] Bob Dobbs: a word that is hot causes a lot of sight and sound of fury is conspiracy.

[58:16] Bob Dobbs: And I remember seeing Zingrone on TVO in Ontario talking on a panel.

[58:20] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[58:21] Bob Dobbs: all businesses are conspiracies.

[58:22] Bob Dobbs: That's how you do business.

[58:24] Bob Dobbs: You get together,

[58:25] Bob Dobbs: you scheme and plan about how you're going to market something.

[58:28] Bob Dobbs: That's a conspiracy,

[58:29] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[58:30] Bob Dobbs: against the public.

[58:31] Bob Dobbs: So it's a word.

[58:35] Bob Dobbs: That actually is the most important word for our time,

[58:38] Bob Dobbs: but it needs to be better explained and elaborated on all the potential angles to look at what a conspiracy is and how we are.

[58:49] Bob Dobbs: I think people are projecting a Gutenberg idea of conspiracy,

[58:53] Bob Dobbs: and the actual conspirators aren't doing that.

[58:55] Bob Dobbs: They're not concerned about media messages.

[58:57] Bob Dobbs: That's what Jacques Ellul pointed out.

[58:59] Bob Dobbs: Propaganda is not the messages,

[59:01] Bob Dobbs: the literate content,

[59:03] Bob Dobbs: the spoken content.

[59:04] Bob Dobbs: It's the machines and their anti-environment that you're living in.

[59:08] Bob Dobbs: That's the propaganda.

[59:10] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[59:11] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[59:11] Cameron McEwen: And so it's a conspiracy in the sense that you're talking about is like a language that people are living in.

[59:22] Cameron McEwen: And there's definite rules to the language.

[59:27] Cameron McEwen: But people...

[59:29] Cameron McEwen: and don't know how they're shaped by them.

[59:33] Cameron McEwen: So conspiracy is always going on.

[59:37] Cameron McEwen: It's not as if we can ever exist aside from conspiracy,

[59:42] Cameron McEwen: but we need to understand the conspiracies,

[59:46] Cameron McEwen: plural,

[59:47] Cameron McEwen: that are possible for human beings.

[59:50] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan,

[59:51] Cameron McEwen: the whole idea of how would we ever have peace,

[59:56] Cameron McEwen: P-E-A-C-E,

[59:57] Cameron McEwen: how would we ever have peace?

[59:59] Cameron McEwen: is the question that is both raised and in a certain sense answered by awareness of the plurality

[1:00:15] Cameron McEwen: of media that somehow allow understanding.

[1:00:23] Cameron McEwen: The possibility of understanding media.

[1:00:26] Cameron McEwen: means that there's a kind of language that we can implement to understand our surrounding languages.

[1:00:36] Cameron McEwen: And that meta-language is the key to peace.

[1:00:40] Cameron McEwen: And that's what understanding media is,

[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: as a phrase.

[1:00:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:00:44] Bob Dobbs: so that quote I read from Prospect,

[1:00:46] Bob Dobbs: it begins with radio and TV as new languages.

[1:00:49] Bob Dobbs: So you were talking about how he was involved with literate languages,

[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: and then he recognized in 1958 there was larger languages afoot.

[1:00:56] Bob Dobbs: And it required a new kind of Esperanto or Volapak or some kind of new form of expression,

[1:01:06] Bob Dobbs: at least to mirror the new expression that was happening around us.

[1:01:09] Bob Dobbs: I think I had another point there.

[1:01:11] Cameron McEwen: And remember in 1956,

[1:01:14] Cameron McEwen: E.M.

[1:01:14] Cameron McEwen: Ted Carpenter published an essay called The New Language.

[1:01:17] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:01:17] Bob Dobbs: right.

[1:01:18] Bob Dobbs: Was that Thinking on Language?

[1:01:21] Bob Dobbs: Was that another essay by Ted Carpenter?

[1:01:23] Bob Dobbs: Remember that pamphlet?

[1:01:24] Cameron McEwen: That's another one.

[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:01:26] Bob Dobbs: Similar,

[1:01:26] Bob Dobbs: though,

[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: the new languages.

[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:01:33] Bob Dobbs: so then occasionally McLuhan would do conventional ponderings,

[1:01:38] Bob Dobbs: and he'd say,

[1:01:39] Bob Dobbs: sort of look at what is evil under these conditions,

[1:01:42] Bob Dobbs: or what is suicide.

[1:01:43] Bob Dobbs: He'd occasionally take on,

[1:01:44] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:01:44] Bob Dobbs: a moral issue and think about it a little bit.

[1:01:50] Bob Dobbs: Often he was tolerant of it.

[1:01:54] Bob Dobbs: He said...

[1:01:55] Bob Dobbs: Suicide was not a problem.

[1:01:58] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:01:58] Bob Dobbs: have you ever seen that sentence?

[1:02:01] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:02:01] Cameron McEwen: I haven't.

[1:02:01] Bob Dobbs: It's in the 50s,

[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: in Renaissance,

[1:02:04] Bob Dobbs: or those kind of articles.

[1:02:06] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[1:02:06] Bob Dobbs: we can see that suicide may be a viable option.

[1:02:10] Bob Dobbs: That's because he saw 1984 happen in 1934,

[1:02:15] Bob Dobbs: and the planet was gone,

[1:02:16] Bob Dobbs: the human dimension,

[1:02:17] Bob Dobbs: by 1900.

[1:02:19] Bob Dobbs: So you can see,

[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: you really see what McLuhan pointing out.

[1:02:24] Bob Dobbs: And you can't make a breakthrough,

[1:02:26] Bob Dobbs: some kind of equanimity that comes from,

[1:02:28] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:02:29] Bob Dobbs: religion or something,

[1:02:30] Bob Dobbs: or faith.

[1:02:31] Bob Dobbs: If you can't do that,

[1:02:32] Bob Dobbs: suicide is a natural option that he recognizes,

[1:02:36] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:02:37] Bob Dobbs: that's a good way to,

[1:02:38] Bob Dobbs: if it's all,

[1:02:40] Bob Dobbs: it's not so wrong to commit suicide considering what we're doing to ourselves.

[1:02:44] Bob Dobbs: You're just an early...

[1:02:46] Cameron McEwen: We are committing suicide.

[1:02:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:02:48] Bob Dobbs: we are committing suicide.

[1:02:49] Bob Dobbs: You're just doing an early version of it,

[1:02:51] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[1:02:51] Bob Dobbs: personally.

[1:02:53] Cameron McEwen: A micro version of the macro.

[1:02:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:02:56] Cameron McEwen: But notice how suicide is a living out of the need for media fast.

[1:03:02] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:03:02] Bob Dobbs: exactly.

[1:03:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:03:04] Bob Dobbs: you want to get a break?

[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: I need a break today.

[1:03:08] Cameron McEwen: You're getting a real break.

[1:03:09] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: what's interesting is sleep is that.

[1:03:12] Bob Dobbs: Sleep gives people a break from their media environment.

[1:03:16] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:03:17] Cameron McEwen: And so in Finnegans Wake,

[1:03:20] Cameron McEwen: you have

[1:03:22] Cameron McEwen: The kind of awakening to the media anti-environment comes across as nightmare.

[1:03:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:03:34] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:03:34] Bob Dobbs: it's so perfect the way he translated Finney's Wake.

[1:03:36] Bob Dobbs: And when you talk to Joyce,

[1:03:38] Bob Dobbs: they'll say,

[1:03:39] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,

[1:03:39] Bob Dobbs: you can put any meaning into Finney's Wake.

[1:03:42] Bob Dobbs: And they go on actually about the content and they accept every crazy interpretation.

[1:03:47] Bob Dobbs: But they don't see,

[1:03:48] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:03:48] Bob Dobbs: there's a larger pattern maybe beyond interpretation that McLuhan saw that Joyce was getting to.

[1:03:54] Bob Dobbs: Because Joyce said that he didn't want any particular angle or interpretation to rule.

[1:04:00] Bob Dobbs: He was always canceling the whole process of understanding.

[1:04:05] Cameron McEwen: And look at

[1:04:07] Cameron McEwen: Joyce writing Finnegans Wake in the

[1:04:11] Cameron McEwen: 1930s in terms of what we were just saying about the McLuhan family.

[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:04:17] Cameron McEwen: Joyce is sitting there,

[1:04:18] Cameron McEwen: his daughter is going crazy,

[1:04:22] Cameron McEwen: his wife is trying to deal with anti-environment where there's no money,

[1:04:27] Cameron McEwen: where they're constantly moving,

[1:04:29] Cameron McEwen: just as Joyce had constantly moved when he was a young boy with his family.

[1:04:36] Cameron McEwen: Everything is a complete mess.

[1:04:41] Cameron McEwen: Joyce can't find things,

[1:04:43] Cameron McEwen: he can't read things because his eyes aren't so bad.

[1:04:47] Bob Dobbs: He's the worst guy to take on the new task.

[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: The worst guy.

[1:04:51] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,

[1:04:52] Cameron McEwen: he's got this peculiar equanimity.

[1:04:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:04:56] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:04:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:04:57] Cameron McEwen: So you have this same combination that you have in McLuhan of a completely crazy environment combined with,

[1:05:06] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:05:06] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:05:07] Cameron McEwen: that's sort of the way it is.

[1:05:10] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:05:11] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:05:11] Bob Dobbs: I actually posted on the Finnegans Wake Group something exactly like that.

[1:05:17] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if I can bring it up.

[1:05:20] Cameron McEwen: I noticed they're both Irishmen.

[1:05:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:05:23] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:05:23] Bob Dobbs: Irish,

[1:05:24] Bob Dobbs: Scottish.

[1:05:25] Bob Dobbs: Joyce is pure.

[1:05:26] Bob Dobbs: He's no Scottish in Joyce,

[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: is there?

[1:05:28] Bob Dobbs: I don't think so.

[1:05:30] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan claimed he had Scottish in him.

[1:05:33] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:05:33] Cameron McEwen: definitely.

[1:05:33] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:05:35] Cameron McEwen: he was Northern Irish,

[1:05:36] Cameron McEwen: Protestant

[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: Irish.

[1:05:40] Cameron McEwen: So his family was from what is now still part of the kingdom over there,

[1:05:49] Cameron McEwen: the UK.

[1:05:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:05:53] Bob Dobbs: You know what that is?

[1:05:54] Bob Dobbs: The cold fish of the British,

[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: that part of the world.

[1:05:59] Bob Dobbs: They're in the north.

[1:06:00] Bob Dobbs: It's cold.

[1:06:00] Bob Dobbs: They're not warm southerners.

[1:06:03] Bob Dobbs: Their coldness might have prepared them.

[1:06:05] Bob Dobbs: for that kind of equanimity in this global theater.

[1:06:11] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:06:11] Bob Dobbs: Their Irishness,

[1:06:14] Bob Dobbs: you're saying,

[1:06:15] Bob Dobbs: could be due to the peculiar weather anti-environment that they exist in,

[1:06:22] Bob Dobbs: those cultures.

[1:06:26] Bob Dobbs: The memory of McLuhan says...

[1:06:27] Cameron McEwen: There's a humor.

[1:06:29] Cameron McEwen: The thing about Ireland is that there's a humor about their situation.

[1:06:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:06:34] Cameron McEwen: They were so...

[1:06:35] Cameron McEwen: they're a little bit like Canada.

[1:06:37] Cameron McEwen: Ireland is so dominated by the English language and

[1:06:42] Cameron McEwen: English laws and

[1:06:44] Cameron McEwen: English armed forces and an English overclass that in order to sort of maintain their dignity,

[1:06:57] Cameron McEwen: they had to locate that dignity on another level.

[1:06:59] Cameron McEwen: That other level was humor,

[1:07:02] Cameron McEwen: was...

[1:07:04] Cameron McEwen: taking an odd view of things.

[1:07:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:07:07] Bob Dobbs: like blacks in America,

[1:07:09] Bob Dobbs: Canadians in the West,

[1:07:12] Bob Dobbs: similar situation.

[1:07:13] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:07:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:07:15] Bob Dobbs: Canadians being a colony,

[1:07:16] Bob Dobbs: then a nation,

[1:07:17] Bob Dobbs: then a colony again.

[1:07:21] Bob Dobbs: So yeah,

[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: so there's a in responding to Empire,

[1:07:26] Bob Dobbs: the Irish had developed an interesting response.

[1:07:29] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan pointed out that Shaw and

[1:07:33] Bob Dobbs: Oscar,

[1:07:34] Bob Dobbs: what's the famous Oscar guy?

[1:07:36] Bob Dobbs: I forget his last name.

[1:07:38] Cameron McEwen: Wild?

[1:07:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:07:39] Bob Dobbs: Oscar Wilde,

[1:07:40] Bob Dobbs: Shaw,

[1:07:43] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,

[1:07:44] Bob Dobbs: and maybe a couple of other Irish writers,

[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeats.

[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: They took over the cultural scene in London.

[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: They took over the empire because they had that Irish sensibility,

[1:07:53] Bob Dobbs: which was necessary for the new media environment.

[1:07:57] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:07:58] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[1:07:59] Cameron McEwen: but because of the need for fasting.

[1:08:02] Cameron McEwen: You needed to be able to see it and to see its dominance,

[1:08:06] Cameron McEwen: but to also have a gap from it.

[1:08:10] Cameron McEwen: You needed to at once recognize your dire situation,

[1:08:17] Cameron McEwen: but step back from it.

[1:08:19] Cameron McEwen: And that's what they were able to do.

[1:08:20] Cameron McEwen: And he brought that together with Eliot and Pound and

[1:08:27] Cameron McEwen: Stein with the idea that

[1:08:30] Cameron McEwen: Americans...

[1:08:31] Cameron McEwen: When they came to

[1:08:33] Cameron McEwen: England and when they came to Europe,

[1:08:36] Cameron McEwen: had that kind of distance that the Irish had.

[1:08:41] Cameron McEwen: And so when

[1:08:42] Cameron McEwen: Pound becomes the secretary to Yeats and the teens,

[1:08:47] Cameron McEwen: then that brings together the

[1:08:50] Cameron McEwen: Irish and the

[1:08:52] Cameron McEwen: American. Yeah,

[1:08:54] Cameron McEwen: that then can be seen in the whole interrelationship.

[1:09:01] Cameron McEwen: of um elliot pound uh yates and Joyce yeah and of course lewis and lewis there lewis was born in america and had that kind of uh distance simply because he was such an odd character he was born in canada in nova scotia but

[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: i would add um the irish were forced into a media fast

[1:09:29] Bob Dobbs: because they weren't allowed to run their society.

[1:09:31] Bob Dobbs: So they were forced to be sideline,

[1:09:34] Bob Dobbs: observers on the sideline,

[1:09:36] Bob Dobbs: like Canadians are in relation to America.

[1:09:38] Bob Dobbs: So that's the characteristic,

[1:09:40] Bob Dobbs: is they had a cultural media fast.

[1:09:43] Bob Dobbs: They were kicked out of the action.

[1:09:46] Bob Dobbs: They had to sit back in a media fast,

[1:09:49] Bob Dobbs: imposed media fast situation.

[1:09:51] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:09:51] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:09:52] Cameron McEwen: And that's why what McLuhan saw and saw quite correctly is that as the media became more invasive,

[1:10:05] Cameron McEwen: the

[1:10:06] Cameron McEwen: Anglo-Saxon culture would disintegrate and the new stars would be colored people.

[1:10:15] Cameron McEwen: They would be people that knew.

[1:10:20] Cameron McEwen: the dominance,

[1:10:23] Cameron McEwen: but also knew that that wasn't them.

[1:10:28] Cameron McEwen: And our whole society now is trying to come to grips with this sort of world historical fact.

[1:10:40] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:10:43] Bob Dobbs: What do they say that the 20th century is the greatest century for exiles?

[1:10:49] Bob Dobbs: refugees.

[1:10:51] Bob Dobbs: Everybody is kicked out of wherever they came from and put in nomadic purgatory,

[1:10:58] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:10:59] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:10:59] Bob Dobbs: Everybody is a refugee.

[1:11:03] Bob Dobbs: So I posted on...

[1:11:05] Cameron McEwen: The word nomad is very important for McLuhan,

[1:11:08] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:11:10] Cameron McEwen: He brought together nomad and no man.

[1:11:13] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:11:14] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:11:15] Bob Dobbs: Nomad allowed around here.

[1:11:17] Bob Dobbs: Nobody's allowed to be mad here.

[1:11:21] Bob Dobbs: No mad.

[1:11:23] Bob Dobbs: So in the Reading Finnegans Wake forum,

[1:11:28] Bob Dobbs: Facebook forum,

[1:11:30] Bob Dobbs: I posted some stuff about the January

[1:11:38] Bob Dobbs: 6th hearings and a documentary that came out with a whole different bunch of footage that no one had seen before.

[1:11:44] Bob Dobbs: You would have seen it on I and a Bob.

[1:11:48] Bob Dobbs: a new documentary.

[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: And so the entanglement of the Clintons with everything,

[1:11:59] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:12:01] Bob Dobbs: Jeffrey Epstein and all this stuff.

[1:12:02] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:12:04] Bob Dobbs: I posted that story,

[1:12:05] Bob Dobbs: and I said,

[1:12:07] Bob Dobbs: this is just like Finnegans Wake,

[1:12:10] Bob Dobbs: the entanglement of everybody.

[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: But I just said,

[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: this is Finnegans Wake.

[1:12:14] Bob Dobbs: So someone posted,

[1:12:16] Bob Dobbs: and they said,

[1:12:17] Bob Dobbs: I might have said a few other words.

[1:12:19] Bob Dobbs: But anyway,

[1:12:20] Bob Dobbs: so someone says,

[1:12:22] Bob Dobbs: this sounds like QAnon stuff.

[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: If this is true,

[1:12:27] Bob Dobbs: this is certainly not a group that I want to be part of.

[1:12:32] Bob Dobbs: So this ridiculous moral response.

[1:12:34] Bob Dobbs: And so the organizer of the Facebook said,

[1:12:38] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:12:39] Bob Dobbs: yikes,

[1:12:41] Bob Dobbs: I'm shutting down this thread.

[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: So they wouldn't let me respond to him.

[1:12:45] Bob Dobbs: stopped it and removed it because it's too inflammatory.

[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:12:50] Bob Dobbs: I responded,

[1:12:51] Bob Dobbs: I said this as a separate topic,

[1:12:56] Bob Dobbs: starting a new thread.

[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: the first pattern to get a handle on,

[1:13:01] Bob Dobbs: say this again,

[1:13:01] Bob Dobbs: the first pattern to get a handle on Finnegans Wake is it,

[1:13:07] Bob Dobbs: then hyphen,

[1:13:07] Bob Dobbs: this book,

[1:13:08] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,

[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: book slash radio program,

[1:13:12] Bob Dobbs: hyphen.

[1:13:12] Bob Dobbs: It's the tactile interplay of high culture and low culture.

[1:13:17] Bob Dobbs: Hyphen.

[1:13:17] Bob Dobbs: You will be offended.

[1:13:20] Bob Dobbs: Dot,

[1:13:20] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[1:13:20] Bob Dobbs: dot.

[1:13:21] Bob Dobbs: No matter where you've mastered your cool.

[1:13:24] Bob Dobbs: Cool in quotes.

[1:13:26] Bob Dobbs: If you're not offended,

[1:13:27] Bob Dobbs: then you haven't seen it all.

[1:13:29] Bob Dobbs: Dot,

[1:13:30] Bob Dobbs: Yet.

[1:13:31] Bob Dobbs: So you get what I'm saying?

[1:13:32] Bob Dobbs: I'm pointing out this person was offended that some pattern that he thought was beneath the quality of discussion.

[1:13:40] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:13:41] Bob Dobbs: I think that...

[1:13:42] Bob Dobbs: It helped me see that Joyce made a book that will offend you ultimately.

[1:13:47] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan used to say that,

[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: that he loved

[1:13:50] Bob Dobbs: The Wake,

[1:13:51] Bob Dobbs: but then it would drive him up the wall.

[1:13:53] Bob Dobbs: So he took it so far,

[1:13:54] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,

[1:13:55] Bob Dobbs: that he made it in the end.

[1:13:58] Bob Dobbs: Most Finnegans Wake people get to the point where,

[1:14:00] Bob Dobbs: what the hell am I reading this for?

[1:14:02] Bob Dobbs: This is so ridiculous.

[1:14:03] Bob Dobbs: I can't get a point.

[1:14:04] Bob Dobbs: I can't get a conclusion.

[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what the story is.

[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: And that's actually how we live today.

[1:14:09] Bob Dobbs: You can't get any answers to anything.

[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: Just think of all the stories you hear about that you don't hear the completion of.

[1:14:15] Bob Dobbs: This environment is a Menippean satire on all of us.

[1:14:20] Bob Dobbs: And the wake mimes that.

[1:14:21] Bob Dobbs: He actually shows the process of life,

[1:14:25] Bob Dobbs: living.

[1:14:26] Bob Dobbs: You will be more offended than not.

[1:14:29] Bob Dobbs: And you better figure out how to deal with that.

[1:14:31] Bob Dobbs: And we'll bring you in the media fest.

[1:14:32] Bob Dobbs: How are you going to be cool about it?

[1:14:34] Bob Dobbs: So I will repeat.

[1:14:35] Bob Dobbs: The first pattern to get a handle on Finnegans Wake is,

[1:14:38] Bob Dobbs: first,

[1:14:38] Bob Dobbs: you realize this book.

[1:14:40] Bob Dobbs: or radio program is the tactile interplay of high culture and low culture.

[1:14:45] Bob Dobbs: You will be offended no matter where you've mastered your cool.

[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: So we're talking about media fasting as a way of adopting Irish cool,

[1:14:55] Bob Dobbs: but...

[1:14:56] Bob Dobbs: National culture's presentation of coolness differently and in different cultures is not enough for today.

[1:15:05] Bob Dobbs: There's a new kind of irritation or language that requires a new kind of cool.

[1:15:11] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:15:12] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:15:13] Bob Dobbs: So if you're not offended,

[1:15:15] Bob Dobbs: then you haven't understand me and Ewen Cameron at all yet.

[1:15:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:15:22] Bob Dobbs: so I posted that and a few people liked that.

[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: There was this woman who's a very good

[1:15:32] Bob Dobbs: Joyce scholar on the literate level.

[1:15:37] Bob Dobbs: She posted this.

[1:15:39] Bob Dobbs: They're always questioning about the act of reading Finnegans Wake,

[1:15:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:15:43] Bob Dobbs: in this group dynamic here.

[1:15:45] Bob Dobbs: So she says the key problem and delight of reading Finnegans Wake,

[1:15:50] Bob Dobbs: and we could think of McLuhan.

[1:15:51] Bob Dobbs: The key problem and delight of reading Finnegans Wake is that we don't know the nature of what we're reading.

[1:15:56] Bob Dobbs: What kind of book?

[1:15:57] Bob Dobbs: Is it a novel?

[1:15:59] Bob Dobbs: An oracle?

[1:16:00] Bob Dobbs: An encyclopedia?

[1:16:01] Bob Dobbs: A riff on several holy books?

[1:16:04] Bob Dobbs: A cartography?

[1:16:05] Bob Dobbs: A musical score?

[1:16:08] Bob Dobbs: Just a bunch of misunderstandings?

[1:16:10] Bob Dobbs: A mockery of how we think of language?

[1:16:13] Bob Dobbs: Guidelines for a resurrection?

[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: Groundwork for infinite epiphanies?

[1:16:18] Bob Dobbs: A dream journal?

[1:16:19] Bob Dobbs: Poop taxonomy?

[1:16:21] Bob Dobbs: A history of the world,

[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: an atlas,

[1:16:24] Bob Dobbs: a weather map,

[1:16:26] Bob Dobbs: and then she says,

[1:16:26] Bob Dobbs: if Ulysses takes a different structure for each section of the book,

[1:16:31] Bob Dobbs: if Ulysses takes a different structure for each section,

[1:16:34] Bob Dobbs: each chapter,

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: here,

[1:16:37] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,

[1:16:38] Bob Dobbs: in Finnegans Wake,

[1:16:39] Bob Dobbs: the entire book is simultaneously all of these things,

[1:16:43] Bob Dobbs: and most importantly,

[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: the relationship between all of these,

[1:16:46] Bob Dobbs: or the playful movement between all of these,

[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: making a,

[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:16:50] Bob Dobbs: serious,

[1:16:50] Bob Dobbs: unquote,

[1:16:51] Bob Dobbs: reading impossible because the book makes you continually shift positions and scratch your head and wonder what you were reading and what you were scratching.

[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: So I thought that was an interesting question.

[1:17:04] Bob Dobbs: But it's still content.

[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: Time to classify it.

[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: And I think my quote was directed at her.

[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: I didn't say it.

[1:17:11] Bob Dobbs: But I think what I'm saying is a larger situation.

[1:17:15] Bob Dobbs: These are all content annoyances.

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: The process of annoyance that is Finnegans Wake is what's really going on,

[1:17:24] Bob Dobbs: not whether it's a poop taxonomy or infinite epiphanies or a weather map.

[1:17:29] Bob Dobbs: Those are minor.

[1:17:30] Cameron McEwen: But the woman is pointing out the plurality of these possibilities.

[1:17:37] Cameron McEwen: And so what she's saying is that we're situated in between these possibilities,

[1:17:44] Cameron McEwen: and that can be...

[1:17:47] Cameron McEwen: make us anxious or it can make us laugh or it can there's all sorts of responses that we can have but that she's saying the first fact about Finnegans Wake is that there's no answer to which of these is at stake because they're all simultaneously at stake yes so i see what she's saying as agreeing with you um you're talking you're talking about um the necessary

[1:18:16] Cameron McEwen: X

[1:18:16] Cameron McEwen: exile that is involved in taking offense.

[1:18:21] Cameron McEwen: And she's talking about the situation of exile,

[1:18:25] Cameron McEwen: namely that there's no ground rules that are sufficient to describe what's going on.

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: And let's see.

[1:18:36] Bob Dobbs: OK,

[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: so here's the reaction to what she posted.

[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: So the first guy says,

[1:18:43] Bob Dobbs: it's a dream,

[1:18:44] Bob Dobbs: a long one.

[1:18:48] Bob Dobbs: Then she says in response,

[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: Jim,

[1:18:50] Bob Dobbs: you're a dream.

[1:18:52] Bob Dobbs: Then she says,

[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: check it out,

[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: though.

[1:18:55] Bob Dobbs: I'm suggesting,

[1:18:57] Bob Dobbs: I'm suggesting,

[1:18:57] Bob Dobbs: not just interpreting.

[1:18:59] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: I know,

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: I know what I wanted to say about her.

[1:19:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:19:02] Bob Dobbs: she's presenting a simultaneous thing similar to me,

[1:19:05] Bob Dobbs: but they don't know the media angle,

[1:19:07] Bob Dobbs: which gives you a larger span of time,

[1:19:10] Bob Dobbs: and it swallows up way more categories.

[1:19:13] Bob Dobbs: If you just talk about Gutenberg or Marconi,

[1:19:16] Bob Dobbs: and that's what McLuhan said,

[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: the medium is the message is a useful approach to our situation because it covers a huge span of time,

[1:19:24] Bob Dobbs: and we need that span of time because we have access to so much information about history and thousands of years.

[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: So we've got way more information overload,

[1:19:33] Bob Dobbs: so we need a bigger frame of generalization.

[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: So that's the problem,

[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: is that she's got a lot of good points.

[1:19:39] Bob Dobbs: She's got simultaneity in her mind.

[1:19:41] Bob Dobbs: Bye.

[1:19:42] Bob Dobbs: She's still stuck in content.

[1:19:44] Bob Dobbs: They can't see the larger environment.

[1:19:48] Bob Dobbs: So then she says,

[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: check it out though.

[1:19:50] Bob Dobbs: I'm suggesting,

[1:19:51] Bob Dobbs: I'm suggesting,

[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: not just interpreting,

[1:19:53] Bob Dobbs: but the relationship between interpretations.

[1:19:57] Bob Dobbs: So I'm suggesting not just interpreting,

[1:19:58] Bob Dobbs: but the relationship between interpretations.

[1:20:00] Bob Dobbs: For example,

[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake is the man's funeral,

[1:20:03] Bob Dobbs: but sounds like wake or waking up or the wake of a wave,

[1:20:08] Bob Dobbs: making us think that a wave,

[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: when it recurs,

[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: is a kind of resurrection.

[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: That reading of wave is only possible by bouncing off the other readings.

[1:20:17] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:20:17] Bob Dobbs: still bouncing off content.

[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: So someone says waves wake up when they realize they are the ocean.

[1:20:25] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:20:26] Bob Dobbs: I'm...

[1:20:26] Bob Dobbs: We're pointing out that the ocean is the new medium,

[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: or historically.

[1:20:31] Bob Dobbs: There's Berlin Wall kinds of oceans.

[1:20:33] Bob Dobbs: And then she says,

[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: that's beautiful.

[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: Waves wake up when they realize they're the ocean.

[1:20:38] Bob Dobbs: And then the guy who runs the thing,

[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: well put.

[1:20:41] Bob Dobbs: And then she says,

[1:20:43] Bob Dobbs: this entire post is an apologia for your chosen name for this group.

[1:20:47] Bob Dobbs: So she addressed the organizer.

[1:20:49] Bob Dobbs: It's called Reading Finnegans Wake.

[1:20:51] Bob Dobbs: A very good name,

[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: because what are we reading and how to read together?

[1:20:56] Bob Dobbs: and hearing others readings is the entire point me thinks so then someone uh clint responds he goes hmm well let me just check is that his first response yeah that's typical for clinton if

[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: it's typical for what that's typical for how clinton would start off yeah but it's not clinton oh it's not oh no no no no this is not clinton this is the guy who runs the thing is clinton

[1:21:26] Bob Dobbs: Hey,

[1:21:26] Bob Dobbs: don't be in speakerphone mode unless you have to.

[1:21:31] Bob Dobbs: You're beating your dog or something.

[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: It's too,

[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: you're too blurry.

[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: Come back on the phone.

[1:21:37] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:21:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: you see,

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: that's a lot better.

[1:21:39] Bob Dobbs: So she says,

[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: I like the title,

[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: Reading Finnegans Wake,

[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: of the form.

[1:21:45] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:21:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm beginning to think there's no figuring the book out.

[1:21:50] Bob Dobbs: Light bulb moment.

[1:21:52] Bob Dobbs: There's no light bulb moment,

[1:21:53] Bob Dobbs: no figuring out,

[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: or big payout.

[1:21:55] Bob Dobbs: It's honestly soured me toward it for over a year now.

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: So remember I was telling you that they eventually get fed up.

[1:22:01] Bob Dobbs: And this is a guy who loves the book.

[1:22:03] Bob Dobbs: He's been celebrating it for years on the forum,

[1:22:05] Bob Dobbs: but now he's admitting he's pissed off at it.

[1:22:08] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:22:08] Bob Dobbs: I haven't read it much,

[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: but I'm starting to see it as a book that meets you where you're at.

[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: You want to sing it?

[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[1:22:16] Bob Dobbs: You want to chant it?

[1:22:17] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[1:22:18] Bob Dobbs: You want to obsess over every reference and detail?

[1:22:21] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[1:22:21] Bob Dobbs: You want to hunt for the novelistic story?

[1:22:23] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[1:22:24] Bob Dobbs: It's all great and ever-changing.

[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: So she says,

[1:22:29] Bob Dobbs: now she's probably finding,

[1:22:30] Bob Dobbs: well gee,

[1:22:30] Bob Dobbs: you mean you actually don't like it?

[1:22:32] Bob Dobbs: She says,

[1:22:32] Bob Dobbs: hmm,

[1:22:33] Bob Dobbs: what I'm enjoying in this group,

[1:22:35] Bob Dobbs: she says,

[1:22:36] Bob Dobbs: is really the multiple sub-genres of reading that develop.

[1:22:40] Bob Dobbs: Take,

[1:22:40] Bob Dobbs: for example,

[1:22:41] Bob Dobbs: all of the Christian denominations and how particular readings,

[1:22:44] Bob Dobbs: interpretations,

[1:22:44] Bob Dobbs: marginalia,

[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: and even ideas of what the Bible is in the first place,

[1:22:48] Bob Dobbs: determine so many distinct social forms.

[1:22:51] Bob Dobbs: And we are free to take on particular understanding of particular moments,

[1:22:54] Bob Dobbs: but the atmosphere changes and we slip into another realm.

[1:22:57] Bob Dobbs: A cosmic comedy of perpetual movement without a single meaning.

[1:23:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:23:02] Bob Dobbs: I would say that a cosmic comedy of perpetual movement without a single meaning,

[1:23:07] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:23:07] Bob Dobbs: you could say that's the way life has always been,

[1:23:09] Bob Dobbs: but under electric conditions of the 20th century,

[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: it was exaggerated,

[1:23:12] Bob Dobbs: squared,

[1:23:12] Bob Dobbs: quadrupled,

[1:23:14] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:23:16] Cameron McEwen: That's our global theater,

[1:23:18] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:23:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:23:19] Bob Dobbs: To the point that people,

[1:23:20] Bob Dobbs: interior landscape,

[1:23:21] Bob Dobbs: to the point that it's a cliche for people to be recognized for living in a cosmic economy of perpetual movement without a single meaning.

[1:23:29] Bob Dobbs: Slower societies didn't have that.

[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: Didn't have that sensation.

[1:23:35] Bob Dobbs: Maybe occasional alienated personality might have,

[1:23:37] Bob Dobbs: but in general,

[1:23:40] Bob Dobbs: you could develop a meaning or a myth and live in it.

[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: So then he says to that,

[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: a way to think of the book.

[1:23:48] Bob Dobbs: is it's like a very technical mountain with a near endless number of climbing routes.

[1:23:53] Bob Dobbs: Climbing one route gives you a very specific experience and thrill,

[1:23:56] Bob Dobbs: but it's not a complete conquering or understanding of the mountain.

[1:24:01] Bob Dobbs: So she goes,

[1:24:01] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:24:02] Bob Dobbs: that's very funny.

[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: And I will add that we could climb as a professional climber or a worshiper or a mountain goat or with the intention to ski down,

[1:24:11] Bob Dobbs: view the horizon,

[1:24:12] Bob Dobbs: or as part of a portage route,

[1:24:14] Bob Dobbs: etc.

[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: So then he says,

[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: and of course.

[1:24:16] Bob Dobbs: You can climb the same route a hundred times and get a different experience each time depending on the weather,

[1:24:21] Bob Dobbs: gear,

[1:24:21] Bob Dobbs: experience,

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: hunger,

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: emotional state,

[1:24:23] Bob Dobbs: etc.,

[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: And she says,

[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[1:24:26] Bob Dobbs: And weather is a good entryway because weather doesn't mean anything.

[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: Instead,

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: remember McLuhan Hot and Cool?

[1:24:33] Bob Dobbs: Weather doesn't mean anything,

[1:24:35] Bob Dobbs: mean capitalized.

[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: Instead,

[1:24:37] Bob Dobbs: it is the basis of how we perceive,

[1:24:39] Bob Dobbs: feel,

[1:24:39] Bob Dobbs: or think.

[1:24:40] Bob Dobbs: It is more fundamental than meaning and orients our life,

[1:24:43] Bob Dobbs: cultural festivals,

[1:24:44] Bob Dobbs: wakings.

[1:24:45] Bob Dobbs: sleeping in a particular but always shifting way.

[1:24:49] Bob Dobbs: So then this other guy comes in and says,

[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: see fitting his wake as autistic narrative.

[1:24:55] Bob Dobbs: And she says,

[1:24:56] Bob Dobbs: again.

[1:24:57] Bob Dobbs: This post is not about a specific reading,

[1:24:59] Bob Dobbs: but how multiple readings relate to each other,

[1:25:01] Bob Dobbs: and constant shifts in reading.

[1:25:03] Bob Dobbs: So it is never about autism or dreams,

[1:25:06] Bob Dobbs: but about the way autism,

[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: with its repetitive patterns,

[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: would relate to music,

[1:25:11] Bob Dobbs: or dreaming,

[1:25:11] Bob Dobbs: or death,

[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: or life,

[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: or madness,

[1:25:13] Bob Dobbs: or politics,

[1:25:15] Bob Dobbs: or the impossibility of communication.

[1:25:17] Bob Dobbs: I would say that's getting close to what I'm saying.

[1:25:21] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:25:22] Cameron McEwen: she sounds like a very smart person.

[1:25:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:25:25] Bob Dobbs: So this other guy comes in and he says,

[1:25:28] Bob Dobbs: certainly,

[1:25:28] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: the wake creates interesting commentary.

[1:25:32] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: in approaching the wake,

[1:25:34] Bob Dobbs: I think you need a place to anchor.

[1:25:39] Bob Dobbs: Once you decide that,

[1:25:40] Bob Dobbs: which may take you a minute or a hundred years,

[1:25:43] Bob Dobbs: you start delving down,

[1:25:44] Bob Dobbs: soaring up,

[1:25:45] Bob Dobbs: and reticulating outward from that anchoring point.

[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: I chose Phoenix Culprit,

[1:25:51] Bob Dobbs: it's in quotes,

[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: Phoenix Culprit as my anchoring point.

[1:25:54] Bob Dobbs: I'm still lost.

[1:25:55] Bob Dobbs: but in a seemingly more meaningful way.

[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: so then she says,

[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: fair enough,

[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: I agree.

[1:26:04] Bob Dobbs: As long as you agree that sometimes the anchor is lifted,

[1:26:06] Bob Dobbs: sometimes there's a lifeboat,

[1:26:08] Bob Dobbs: sometimes a larger vessel,

[1:26:09] Bob Dobbs: sometimes scuba diving,

[1:26:11] Bob Dobbs: and the anchor is temporary but essential,

[1:26:13] Bob Dobbs: anything to keep from drowning.

[1:26:16] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[1:26:16] Bob Dobbs: Rick says,

[1:26:19] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:26:19] Bob Dobbs: now I realize I'm a lot more lost than I thought after listening to her.

[1:26:23] Bob Dobbs: But that's why it's such an adventure.

[1:26:26] Bob Dobbs: And then she says,

[1:26:27] Bob Dobbs: I like the word disaster.

[1:26:29] Bob Dobbs: Apparently coming from dis-aster,

[1:26:32] Bob Dobbs: as in not being able to see stars,

[1:26:36] Bob Dobbs: meaning no signs of orientation when on a ship.

[1:26:38] Bob Dobbs: That is a disaster.

[1:26:41] Bob Dobbs: And then he says,

[1:26:44] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:26:44] Bob Dobbs: someone else.

[1:26:44] Cameron McEwen: I don't know how that relates to what I was saying about consider.

[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: sidereal,

[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: right.

[1:26:50] Bob Dobbs: And then a third guy comes in.

[1:26:52] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:26:52] Bob Dobbs: you're not lost.

[1:26:53] Bob Dobbs: You're just at sea.

[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: So then

[1:26:57] Bob Dobbs: Rick says,

[1:26:57] Bob Dobbs: just turn back and look at my anchor when it gets too dark and I need some reassurance.

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: So then she says,

[1:27:03] Bob Dobbs: I like Joseph Conrad's line.

[1:27:05] Bob Dobbs: The fog is more blinding than the night because lights don't work.

[1:27:09] Bob Dobbs: Try lights and you get opaque whiteness back.

[1:27:13] Bob Dobbs: So then I come in and I go,

[1:27:15] Bob Dobbs: an anthropologist,

[1:27:16] Bob Dobbs: a fellow

[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: First Nations explorer in the forested deeps of Canada.

[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: We're lost.

[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: His friends,

[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: meaning the native Indians,

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: his friends'

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: response,

[1:27:25] Bob Dobbs: we're not lost.

[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: Wigwam lost.

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: we got that from McLuhan,

[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: You've heard that anecdote.

[1:27:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: They never thought they were lost.

[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: They were in acoustic space.

[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: The wigwam was lost.

[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: So then somebody,

[1:27:39] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[1:27:39] Bob Dobbs: has had enough.

[1:27:41] Bob Dobbs: So they go scratch,

[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: burp,

[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: fart,

[1:27:44] Bob Dobbs: gurgle,

[1:27:44] Bob Dobbs: gurgle,

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: gurgle,

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: scratch,

[1:27:46] Bob Dobbs: soma,

[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: or.

[1:27:48] Bob Dobbs: All right?

[1:27:49] Bob Dobbs: So they.

[1:27:50] Bob Dobbs: They get into phatic sounds.

[1:27:53] Bob Dobbs: So then I go,

[1:27:54] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:27:54] Bob Dobbs: here's something they don't know.

[1:27:56] Bob Dobbs: I have posted different McLuhan quotes,

[1:27:58] Bob Dobbs: but this one I don't think I ever posted anywhere,

[1:28:01] Bob Dobbs: so I finally transcribed it.

[1:28:03] Bob Dobbs: So on page 102 of Take Today,

[1:28:05] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[1:28:06] Bob Dobbs: James Joyce knew that any word was a storehouse of innumerable human perceptions that could be released by abrasive interplay with other words.

[1:28:14] Bob Dobbs: Given any two words,

[1:28:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,

[1:28:17] Bob Dobbs: Joyce could invent a verbal universe.

[1:28:19] Bob Dobbs: The following fugue or dance of tones and gestures,

[1:28:23] Bob Dobbs: if read aloud,

[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: provides a dramatic account of organized ignorance.

[1:28:28] Bob Dobbs: So he's going to do that famous quote on page 18 in Finnegans Wake.

[1:28:33] Bob Dobbs: But below it,

[1:28:35] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[1:28:36] Bob Dobbs: you might not read it before you read the Joyce quote,

[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: but I say,

[1:28:39] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan often explained what he's doing as,

[1:28:41] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:28:41] Bob Dobbs: organizing ignorance for discovery,

[1:28:43] Bob Dobbs: unquote.

[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: Or he called the activity Applied Joyce.

[1:28:48] Bob Dobbs: So you can have that and then understand why McLuhan says this quote is a dramatic account of organized ignorance.

[1:28:55] Bob Dobbs: So the quote is,

[1:28:56] Bob Dobbs: in the ignorance that implies the impression that nits knowledge,

[1:29:00] Bob Dobbs: that finds the name form,

[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: that wets the wits,

[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: that convey contacts,

[1:29:05] Bob Dobbs: that sweet sensation that drives desire,

[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: that adheres to attachment,

[1:29:09] Bob Dobbs: that dogs death,

[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: that bitches birth,

[1:29:11] Bob Dobbs: that entails the ensuance of existentiality.

[1:29:16] Bob Dobbs: So...

[1:29:17] Cameron McEwen: All of human life from the beginning of history to the end.

[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: Is in that quote.

[1:29:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:29:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:29:26] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:29:27] Bob Dobbs: one person liked my quote,

[1:29:29] Bob Dobbs: Gary Hunter,

[1:29:30] Bob Dobbs: my McLuhan quote.

[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: My earlier statement about,

[1:29:37] Bob Dobbs: did I read the very first thing I put out?

[1:29:43] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:29:43] Bob Dobbs: what was my first quote?

[1:29:46] Bob Dobbs: Got a lot.

[1:29:47] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:29:47] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: the pattern.

[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: The book was always there to offend you.

[1:29:51] Bob Dobbs: Will always offend you.

[1:29:52] Bob Dobbs: That got a lot of likes.

[1:29:53] Bob Dobbs: People like that one.

[1:29:55] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:29:56] Bob Dobbs: I think this is a nice digression.

[1:29:58] Bob Dobbs: We're talking about McLuhan when talking about Finnegans Wake.

[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: So we covered with these other people's quotes our eternal issues.

[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: Eternal up to a point,

[1:30:10] Bob Dobbs: maybe.

[1:30:10] Bob Dobbs: We may come to a resolution.

[1:30:15] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:30:16] Cameron McEwen: eternal is what comes into question as soon as you have the media fast.

[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:30:23] Cameron McEwen: Because the media fast is a break from the narrative.

[1:30:27] Cameron McEwen: And so...

[1:30:30] Cameron McEwen: The ascetic moment,

[1:30:32] Cameron McEwen: as

[1:30:33] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan called it,

[1:30:35] Cameron McEwen: is a kind of well or a maelstrom into which the media fast is precipitated.

[1:30:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:30:48] Bob Dobbs: it's kind of a death.

[1:30:50] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:30:51] Cameron McEwen: It's a death in every sense.

[1:30:53] Cameron McEwen: a death of orientation,

[1:30:56] Cameron McEwen: a death of...

[1:31:01] Cameron McEwen: framework.

[1:31:05] Cameron McEwen: It's something that calls for a new orientation that is built on the debris of the old orientations.

[1:31:19] Cameron McEwen: That's why the maelstrom was so important to McLuhan,

[1:31:22] Cameron McEwen: is that the escape can only be made by studying the pattern of the whirlpool.

[1:31:30] Cameron McEwen: and then riding the detritus of the previous wrecks.

[1:31:40] Cameron McEwen: So that's how we read

[1:31:42] Cameron McEwen: Pound, for example.

[1:31:44] Cameron McEwen: That's how we read Joyce and

[1:31:45] Cameron McEwen: Eliot as attempting to ride the remaining fragments of the destruction of our previous orientations.

[1:32:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:32:01] Bob Dobbs: and so

[1:32:02] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said that Edgar Allan Poe was on the level of a

[1:32:05] Bob Dobbs: Leonardo da Vinci with his breakthrough,

[1:32:07] Bob Dobbs: because his statement of looking at the effects preceding causes or the maelstrom is a first attempt to express a detachment,

[1:32:16] Bob Dobbs: a coolness toward

[1:32:19] Bob Dobbs: Gutenberg content,

[1:32:22] Bob Dobbs: bringing in the multifarious whirlpools and different anti-environment you'd experience that way.

[1:32:27] Bob Dobbs: So that's why he affected the symbolists.

[1:32:30] Bob Dobbs: Baudelaire and those guys,

[1:32:32] Bob Dobbs: and then the later men of 1914.

[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: Poe was very important,

[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: so

[1:32:37] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was lucky to stumble in.

[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: Do you know how he discovered Poe?

[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: Do you know,

[1:32:43] Bob Dobbs: was it at Cambridge or when he was young?

[1:32:45] Bob Dobbs: Do you know anything about that?

[1:32:47] Cameron McEwen: I actually have raised that question in the post,

[1:32:54] Cameron McEwen: in several posts on the blog.

[1:32:57] Cameron McEwen: He was already talking about

[1:33:00] Cameron McEwen: Poe in the early

[1:33:04] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, and it may be that

[1:33:08] Cameron McEwen: Cleanth Brooks was influential in this because

[1:33:13] Cameron McEwen: Brooks was an expert in the new criticism,

[1:33:18] Cameron McEwen: but he was also an expert in

[1:33:22] Cameron McEwen: Southern culture and

[1:33:24] Cameron McEwen: American literature.

[1:33:26] Cameron McEwen: And Poe was regarded.

[1:33:29] Cameron McEwen: as a southerner and part of the southern literary tradition.

[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:33:35] Cameron McEwen: So it may be that in that context,

[1:33:38] Cameron McEwen: he began to talk about Poe.

[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: So that

[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: Brooks is one of the first guys to take Poe seriously?

[1:33:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:33:48] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:33:48] Cameron McEwen: that's certainly not true.

[1:33:50] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:33:50] Cameron McEwen: Baudelaire took Poe very seriously,

[1:33:52] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:33:53] Cameron McEwen: So it's also possible that McLuhan,

[1:33:55] Cameron McEwen: through his study of the French,

[1:33:59] Cameron McEwen: that he got precipitated into through Elliott,

[1:34:03] Cameron McEwen: through Pound,

[1:34:04] Cameron McEwen: and through Giedion,

[1:34:07] Cameron McEwen: it may be that he sort of got rebounded back from

[1:34:14] Cameron McEwen: Baudelaire to Poe.

[1:34:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:15] Bob Dobbs: and I guess I should say that

[1:34:18] Bob Dobbs: Clint is the first American to take Poe seriously.

[1:34:22] Bob Dobbs: Up to that point,

[1:34:22] Bob Dobbs: he's a Jerry Lewis,

[1:34:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:34:26] Bob Dobbs: the comedian,

[1:34:27] Bob Dobbs: Jerry Lee Lewis,

[1:34:27] Bob Dobbs: or Jerry Lewis.

[1:34:28] Bob Dobbs: Wednesday.

[1:34:29] Bob Dobbs: singer and one's a comedian jerry lewis uh you know how the french celebrated in the

[1:34:35] Bob Dobbs: 50s those guys that became the nouvelle director the new wave of directors i forget what uh that billy's voice Andrew Sarris called it the auteur theory a-u-t-e-u-r you know the director was the guy made the movie uh it was the ground of it um

[1:34:56] Bob Dobbs: They,

[1:34:56] Bob Dobbs: in the 50s,

[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: celebrated Jerry Lewis,

[1:34:59] Bob Dobbs: his movies,

[1:35:00] Bob Dobbs: his Skornia comedy,

[1:35:01] Bob Dobbs: because they thought it was a documentary of American life.

[1:35:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:35:07] Cameron McEwen: so they saw

[1:35:11] Cameron McEwen: Lewis as taking a conscious remove from anti-environment that Americans didn't see.

[1:35:19] Cameron McEwen: Americans saw

[1:35:20] Cameron McEwen: Lewis within anti-environment as being funny.

[1:35:23] Cameron McEwen: It's a little bit like Homer Simpson.

[1:35:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:35:26] Cameron McEwen: Homer Simpson can be taken as your neighbor,

[1:35:32] Cameron McEwen: but he can also be seen as a meta-critique of the culture.

[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:35:37] Cameron McEwen: And the French were inclined to take the meta-critique point of view.

[1:35:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:35:42] Bob Dobbs: And so Cleanth Brooks might have been the first American to take the South.

[1:35:46] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:35:47] Bob Dobbs: those guys took the South seriously.

[1:35:50] Bob Dobbs: That was their revolution.

[1:35:51] Bob Dobbs: And the North had been snobbish about the South.

[1:35:55] Bob Dobbs: So maybe,

[1:35:56] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:35:56] Bob Dobbs: he was the first within American culture to take the Jerry Lewis of the

[1:36:01] Bob Dobbs: 19th century,

[1:36:01] Bob Dobbs: Edgar Allan Poe,

[1:36:02] Bob Dobbs: just did Monstre Gai movies or Monstre Gai stories or horror stories and make a meta level out of him.

[1:36:10] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:36:11] Bob Dobbs: I'll limit it to America that

[1:36:13] Bob Dobbs: Brooks was the first to see of Poe.

[1:36:16] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:36:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if anybody,

[1:36:18] Bob Dobbs: he was considered quite a scoundrel in many ways and,

[1:36:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:36:21] Bob Dobbs: died ignominiously.

[1:36:24] Bob Dobbs: And all kinds of crazy stuff about him.

[1:36:29] Bob Dobbs: Probably too much of a journalist kind of person.

[1:36:33] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:36:34] Cameron McEwen: a journalist,

[1:36:34] Cameron McEwen: an alcoholic,

[1:36:35] Cameron McEwen: a madman,

[1:36:38] Cameron McEwen: an unhappy lover,

[1:36:41] Cameron McEwen: on and on and on.

[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: so back to my book,

[1:36:46] Bob Dobbs: page 99.

[1:36:48] Bob Dobbs: We're talking about the virtual economy,

[1:36:51] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan is going to say...

[1:36:54] 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 sensory life of whole populations.

[1:37:02] Bob Dobbs: I know it sounds rather science fictional,

[1:37:05] Bob Dobbs: but if you understood cybernetics,

[1:37:06] Bob Dobbs: you'd realize we could do it today.

[1:37:08] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:37:09] Bob Dobbs: he says it sounds rather science fictional.

[1:37:11] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[1:37:11] Bob Dobbs: he said Mechanical Bride was a new kind of science fiction,

[1:37:15] Bob Dobbs: so it could be a self-referential thing there.

[1:37:17] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:37:18] Cameron McEwen: But notice how what he's doing there is he's putting on the mask of his father.

[1:37:25] Cameron McEwen: He's saying all this may sound crazy,

[1:37:27] Cameron McEwen: but you can look on it with humor and equanimity.

[1:37:33] Cameron McEwen: It's no big deal.

[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:37:35] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[1:37:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:37:37] Bob Dobbs: The computer could program the media to determine the given messages that people should hear in terms of their overall needs,

[1:37:43] Bob Dobbs: creating a total media experience absorbed and patterned by all the senses.

[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: We could program five hours less of TV in Italy to promote the reading of newspapers during an election.

[1:37:53] Bob Dobbs: or lay on an additional 25 hours of TV in Venezuela to cool down the tribal temperature raised by radio the preceding month.

[1:38:01] Bob Dobbs: By such orchestrated interplay of all media,

[1:38:03] Bob Dobbs: now there's your global theater,

[1:38:05] Bob Dobbs: orchestrated interplay,

[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: whole cultures,

[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: your interior landscape,

[1:38:09] Bob Dobbs: whole cultures can now be programmed in order to improve and stabilize their emotional climate.

[1:38:15] Bob Dobbs: There's your weather metaphor,

[1:38:16] Bob Dobbs: just as we are beginning to learn how to maintain equilibrium among the world's competing economies.

[1:38:21] Bob Dobbs: So Playboy says,

[1:38:22] Bob Dobbs: how does such environmental programming,

[1:38:24] Bob Dobbs: however enlightened in intent,

[1:38:26] Bob Dobbs: differ from Pavlovian brainwashing?

[1:38:29] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,

[1:38:30] Bob Dobbs: like his father,

[1:38:31] Bob Dobbs: your question reflects the usual panic of people confronted with unexplored technologies.

[1:38:37] Bob Dobbs: I'm not saying such panic isn't justified,

[1:38:39] Bob Dobbs: or that such environmental programming couldn't be brainwashing,

[1:38:42] Bob Dobbs: or far worse,

[1:38:43] Bob Dobbs: merely that such reactions are useless and distracting.

[1:38:47] Bob Dobbs: Though I think the programming of societies could actually be conducted quite constructively,

[1:38:51] Bob Dobbs: And humanistically,

[1:38:53] 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.

[1:39:03] Bob Dobbs: That's very funny.

[1:39:04] Bob Dobbs: But an understanding of media's effects constitutes a civil defense against media fallout.

[1:39:10] Bob Dobbs: The alarm of so many people,

[1:39:11] Bob Dobbs: however,

[1:39:12] Bob Dobbs: at the prospect of corporate programming's creation of a complete service environment on this planet is rather like...

[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: fearing that a municipal lighting system will deprive the individual of the right to adjust each light to his own favorite level of intensity.

[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: Computer technology can and doubtless will program entire environments to fulfill.

[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: He's going to do it anyways.

[1:39:34] Bob Dobbs: Computer technology can and doubtless will program entire environments to fulfill the social needs and sensory preferences of communities and nations.

[1:39:42] Bob Dobbs: That's all Gutenbergian preference.

[1:39:44] Bob Dobbs: The content,

[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: and he has this in italics.

[1:39:47] Bob Dobbs: the content

[1:39:48] Bob Dobbs: of that programming,

[1:39:49] Bob Dobbs: however,

[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: depends on the nature of future societies.

[1:39:53] Bob Dobbs: But that is in our own hands.

[1:39:55] Bob Dobbs: I like the way he...

[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: content becomes that sentence in Take Today on page 11,

[1:40:01] Bob Dobbs: where the figure and ground merge.

[1:40:03] Bob Dobbs: The content becomes the ground.

[1:40:07] Bob Dobbs: The word that makes the market at the White House is the narrative.

[1:40:11] Bob Dobbs: Who gets to say the narrative?

[1:40:13] Bob Dobbs: It's the new ground.

[1:40:14] Bob Dobbs: Once we've imploded into a global theater and the planet's an art form,

[1:40:19] Bob Dobbs: and we've ended the technological evolution,

[1:40:22] Bob Dobbs: then it's a battle over the medium,

[1:40:23] Bob Dobbs: but the medium is the content.

[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: Who gets to say what's what?

[1:40:28] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:40:28] Cameron McEwen: Notice the word hand is referring to tactility there.

[1:40:35] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:40:35] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:40:35] Cameron McEwen: And,

[1:40:36] Cameron McEwen: um,

[1:40:38] Cameron McEwen: When he says computer technology can,

[1:40:40] Cameron McEwen: a doubtless will,

[1:40:41] Cameron McEwen: program entire environments,

[1:40:43] Cameron McEwen: that's already happened.

[1:40:44] Cameron McEwen: He's predicting the future by looking at the present.

[1:40:48] Bob Dobbs: And defining what was happening in new terms.

[1:40:51] Bob Dobbs: Because the people doing it are working with new technologies.

[1:40:54] Bob Dobbs: They're nervous about it.

[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: They don't want too much attention on what they're doing because they're not sure what they're doing.

[1:40:59] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[1:40:59] Cameron McEwen: They don't know what they're doing.

[1:41:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:41:02] Cameron McEwen: But that's the human folly.

[1:41:07] Cameron McEwen: you're going about with great dedication doing stuff that you don't understand.

[1:41:15] Cameron McEwen: Don't understand what it's doing to you,

[1:41:18] Cameron McEwen: don't understand what it's doing to your family,

[1:41:20] Cameron McEwen: don't understand what it's doing to your country,

[1:41:23] Cameron McEwen: don't understand what it's doing to anything.

[1:41:25] Bob Dobbs: That's why every

[1:41:27] Bob Dobbs: Christian in medieval times should have been forced to go to a monastery to have a media fast,

[1:41:33] Bob Dobbs: no matter how stupid they were,

[1:41:34] Bob Dobbs: smart or educated.

[1:41:36] Bob Dobbs: A media fast helps them.

[1:41:38] Bob Dobbs: And now you see that in the popular sensibility,

[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: is all these people carrying around yoga mats.

[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: Yoga is a way to get a temporary media fast in an impossible situation.

[1:41:49] Bob Dobbs: So people do this,

[1:41:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: 15 minutes here or there,

[1:41:52] Bob Dobbs: they'll do a little yoga fast.

[1:41:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:41:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:41:56] Cameron McEwen: So even today,

[1:41:59] Cameron McEwen: people go on retreats.

[1:42:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:42:02] Cameron McEwen: And that's exactly what a media fast is.

[1:42:05] Cameron McEwen: It is to step back,

[1:42:07] Cameron McEwen: to retreat,

[1:42:09] Cameron McEwen: to step back from anti-environment and question it and try to reorient yourself.

[1:42:18] Cameron McEwen: And what McLuhan basic advice is,

[1:42:22] Cameron McEwen: retreat,

[1:42:24] Cameron McEwen: try to consider where you are,

[1:42:28] Cameron McEwen: and above all,

[1:42:32] Cameron McEwen: ask what...

[1:42:35] Cameron McEwen: are these media that are so powerful anti-environment?

[1:42:40] Cameron McEwen: So the media is the message.

[1:42:42] Cameron McEwen: We have to consider what those media are and how they act.

[1:42:49] Cameron McEwen: That's the whole point of his life,

[1:42:51] Cameron McEwen: really,

[1:42:52] Cameron McEwen: was to raise those questions.

[1:42:54] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:42:55] Bob Dobbs: so the meaning of repent is to retrace,

[1:43:00] Bob Dobbs: retrace your life.

[1:43:01] Bob Dobbs: So you go into retreat.

[1:43:03] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:43:03] Bob Dobbs: if something is very popular,

[1:43:05] Bob Dobbs: you have those yoga retreats or new age retreats.

[1:43:09] Bob Dobbs: But you also have a lot of people maybe go to night school or go to classes or they like workshops.

[1:43:15] Bob Dobbs: They'll go to a conference and,

[1:43:16] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:43:17] Bob Dobbs: three days listening to literate lectures.

[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: That's adopting the old Gutenberg position as an art form to get away from the electric maelstrom or digital maelstrom.

[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: They'll go back to the classroom.

[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: That's another form of media fast.

[1:43:32] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:43:32] Cameron McEwen: And notice

[1:43:35] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan didn't say that you could be exclusively in a literate environment.

[1:43:45] Cameron McEwen: He believed,

[1:43:46] Cameron McEwen: like,

[1:43:47] Cameron McEwen: let's say Freud,

[1:43:48] Cameron McEwen: that there's always multiple levels going on.

[1:43:53] Cameron McEwen: So if somebody goes to a conference and it's about letters and the conference has a very um,

[1:44:01] Cameron McEwen: literal organization,

[1:44:03] Cameron McEwen: top-down,

[1:44:04] Cameron McEwen: all that sort of stuff,

[1:44:05] Cameron McEwen: that seems to be purely Gutenbergian.

[1:44:10] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,

[1:44:11] Cameron McEwen: it's a retreat,

[1:44:12] Cameron McEwen: and at the same time,

[1:44:14] Cameron McEwen: there's conversations going on at the edge of the conference,

[1:44:18] Cameron McEwen: and at the same time,

[1:44:19] Cameron McEwen: there's people's unconsciouses working away inside them.

[1:44:25] Cameron McEwen: And so there is a very complex environment going on there.

[1:44:30] Cameron McEwen: The meaning of anti-environment is simply to raise the question of where it's at.

[1:44:39] Cameron McEwen: And,

[1:44:40] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[1:44:40] Cameron McEwen: as you know,

[1:44:41] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was constantly just saying we need to consider where it's at.

[1:44:48] Cameron McEwen: What does that mean?

[1:44:49] Cameron McEwen: What does that phrase mean?

[1:44:51] Cameron McEwen: What does it implicate?

[1:44:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:44:54] Bob Dobbs: so he said the new media,

[1:44:56] Bob Dobbs: the new yoga is service environment.

[1:45:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:45:02] Bob Dobbs: To control your involvement.

[1:45:06] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:45:06] Bob Dobbs: there's an example of a natural ecology.

[1:45:09] Bob Dobbs: People spend a lot of time,

[1:45:11] Bob Dobbs: from the baby boomers on,

[1:45:12] Bob Dobbs: going to conferences for the last 50 years.

[1:45:16] Bob Dobbs: That was a retrieval of the Gutenberg anti-environment another purpose,

[1:45:20] Bob Dobbs: a media fast.

[1:45:22] Bob Dobbs: And that was a natural balancing to the storm that came in with Nixon and everybody,

[1:45:30] Bob Dobbs: whatever president you want to name,

[1:45:33] Bob Dobbs: that society developed.

[1:45:36] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:45:36] Bob Dobbs: people didn't go to classes like that before World War II.

[1:45:39] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:45:41] Bob Dobbs: It would be a small literary group like Bloomsbury that might have those kind of anti-environment,

[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: or the Theosophists.

[1:45:48] Bob Dobbs: But for whole populations to be going to some form of workshop in whatever area they're interested in,

[1:45:56] Bob Dobbs: or their profession demands,

[1:45:57] Bob Dobbs: remember that was another thing.

[1:45:59] Bob Dobbs: Conferences took over in the jet age,

[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,

[1:46:03] Bob Dobbs: for people to...

[1:46:05] Bob Dobbs: I have a media fast.

[1:46:06] Bob Dobbs: I didn't say that part.

[1:46:07] Bob Dobbs: But just think of all the conferences that every profession has every year.

[1:46:12] Bob Dobbs: It's a way of getting in touch with your particular anti-environment you work in,

[1:46:18] Bob Dobbs: your mythic stage.

[1:46:20] Bob Dobbs: Uh-oh.

[1:46:20] Bob Dobbs: You disconnected?

[1:46:22] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:46:23] Cameron McEwen: I'm right here.

[1:46:23] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:46:23] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:46:24] Cameron McEwen: I don't know what that was.

[1:46:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:46:26] Bob Dobbs: So what did I just say there?

[1:46:30] Bob Dobbs: Give me a word or two you heard.

[1:46:35] Cameron McEwen: And what we were just talking about?

[1:46:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:46:38] Bob Dobbs: what were some last words I just said?

[1:46:44] Cameron McEwen: You were talking about conferences.

[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: Oh yeah,

[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: conferences.

[1:46:48] Bob Dobbs: And in every profession,

[1:46:51] Bob Dobbs: there are conferences,

[1:46:53] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:46:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:46:54] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:46:55] Bob Dobbs: They certainly didn't do that,

[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: as far as I know,

[1:46:58] Bob Dobbs: in the

[1:46:59] Bob Dobbs: 20s and 30s,

[1:47:00] Bob Dobbs: 100 years ago.

[1:47:02] Bob Dobbs: That would be very rare.

[1:47:03] Bob Dobbs: Somebody might go to one conference in their lifetime,

[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: somewheres.

[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:47:10] Bob Dobbs: I'm pointing out how naturally humans create an ecology.

[1:47:15] Bob Dobbs: So we're still crashing into Armageddon,

[1:47:18] Bob Dobbs: but we got this far because of all those compensatory uses of older media in new situations to counter the horrible present,

[1:47:29] Bob Dobbs: the stressful present.

[1:47:32] Bob Dobbs: Super stressful.

[1:47:33] Bob Dobbs: You get me?

[1:47:34] Bob Dobbs: See what I'm saying?

[1:47:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:47:39] Cameron McEwen: Conference,

[1:47:41] Cameron McEwen: in a way,

[1:47:44] Cameron McEwen: recapitulates all of human life and also raises the question of what that life is.

[1:47:54] Cameron McEwen: So I'm just looking up the etymology.

[1:47:56] Cameron McEwen: And so the pharaohs is the same.

[1:48:02] Cameron McEwen: word family that we have in ferry,

[1:48:05] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:48:07] Cameron McEwen: the boat ferry.

[1:48:09] Cameron McEwen: It's related to carry something across,

[1:48:13] Cameron McEwen: to bear,

[1:48:14] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:48:14] Cameron McEwen: So a conference is a group that raises the question of the burden of human beings.

[1:48:27] Cameron McEwen: What do we bear with us?

[1:48:29] Cameron McEwen: So we bear children,

[1:48:31] Cameron McEwen: we bear meaning,

[1:48:32] Cameron McEwen: we bear our obligations,

[1:48:35] Cameron McEwen: we bear the burden of the whole question of what it means to be finite,

[1:48:40] Cameron McEwen: what it means to be born and to die.

[1:48:43] Cameron McEwen: So a conference is something that kind of,

[1:48:50] Cameron McEwen: it's a surface manifestation that gives way to deeper levels of questions.

[1:48:58] Cameron McEwen: It's...

[1:48:58] Cameron McEwen: surface manifestation that happens in all human life where something obvious is taking place at the surface but beneath the surface there are all sorts of questions

[1:49:16] Bob Dobbs: and doubts and problems are bubbling away yeah the word you're looking for is metaphor remember that means to carry across yes yes

[1:49:29] Bob Dobbs: So anti-environment become metaphors.

[1:49:32] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:49:32] Cameron McEwen: So this all relates back to what we were saying in Finnegans Wake,

[1:49:36] Cameron McEwen: because there is no word,

[1:49:39] Cameron McEwen: there is no human activity that does not have these multiple levels to it.

[1:49:45] Cameron McEwen: So we are always questioning what it means to be a human being,

[1:49:51] Cameron McEwen: what it means to exist in a human society,

[1:49:55] Cameron McEwen: what it means to exist in a sidereal...

[1:49:58] Cameron McEwen: environment.

[1:49:59] Cameron McEwen: We're always doing that,

[1:50:01] Cameron McEwen: but we don't know that we're doing it.

[1:50:03] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan is saying,

[1:50:05] Cameron McEwen: along with all sorts of people in the tradition,

[1:50:08] Cameron McEwen: is step back from what you're doing in order to see what you're doing.

[1:50:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:50:16] Bob Dobbs: So we'll have to wrap it up.

[1:50:18] Bob Dobbs: You got to go.

[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: I'm just going to read my oral translation of that Playboy quote that I read.

[1:50:29] Bob Dobbs: So I say,

[1:50:30] Cameron McEwen: let me just go to your book here for a second so I can follow it closely.

[1:50:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:50:35] Bob Dobbs: page 100,

[1:50:36] Bob Dobbs: I think it is.

[1:50:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:50:37] Cameron McEwen: it is page 100.

[1:50:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:50:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:50:39] Bob Dobbs: so you have the,

[1:50:41] Bob Dobbs: but that is in our own hands,

[1:50:43] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says at the end of the quote in Playboy.

[1:50:45] Bob Dobbs: And I say,

[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: translating it,

[1:50:47] Bob Dobbs: people have this massive lighting system going on in their homes,

[1:50:50] Bob Dobbs: in the streets,

[1:50:51] Bob Dobbs: and they don't think of programming it and adjusting it to their individual preferences.

[1:50:56] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan says,

[1:50:57] Bob Dobbs: That's what we're doing.

[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:51:00] Bob Dobbs: I'm laying anti-environment that you're not going to worry about whether you're free to adjust it or not.

[1:51:05] Bob Dobbs: You might find the environment a great service environment like electric light is municipal lighting system.

[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: Unquote.

[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: It's important to get that point.

[1:51:13] Bob Dobbs: We're not demanding freedom in relation to these anti-environment.

[1:51:19] Bob Dobbs: We're accepting them.

[1:51:21] Bob Dobbs: And as we get more and more post litter,

[1:51:22] Bob Dobbs: we accept them even more so.

[1:51:25] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[1:51:25] Cameron McEwen: but when we accept them...

[1:51:27] Cameron McEwen: We understand them in new ways.

[1:51:30] Cameron McEwen: So,

[1:51:30] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[1:51:31] Cameron McEwen: we now understand that a municipal lighting system isn't just a fabulous boon like people thought 100 and 150 years ago.

[1:51:41] Cameron McEwen: We now understand that it's a kind of light pollution that obscures our access to the stars and thereby obscures our access to all of the societies.

[1:51:55] Cameron McEwen: for whom stars were so important.

[1:51:58] Cameron McEwen: So we need to have a media fast from a lighting system in order to have new access to the dark that was always so important in human society,

[1:52:11] Cameron McEwen: but we've lost touch with it.

[1:52:13] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know it,

[1:52:14] Bob Dobbs: but I solved that problem after being in New York for 15 years.

[1:52:18] Bob Dobbs: So we moved here.

[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: We're on the side of a mountain.

[1:52:21] Bob Dobbs: It's like the second tallest mountain in the world.

[1:52:26] Cameron McEwen: In the world or in Hawaii?

[1:52:27] Bob Dobbs: In the world.

[1:52:28] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:52:29] Cameron McEwen: you mean,

[1:52:29] Cameron McEwen: but that's because you're thinking of it from the base of the ocean.

[1:52:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:52:36] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:52:37] Bob Dobbs: So two-thirds is underwater,

[1:52:39] Bob Dobbs: and there's 10,000 feet,

[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: but it's a 30,000-mile mountain,

[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: and there's a sign at the top where there's a military station that says this is 500 feet taller than Mount Everest.

[1:52:49] Bob Dobbs: And then the one over on the other island is a little taller than ours,

[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: so we're number two.

[1:52:53] Bob Dobbs: But what I wanted to say is that we have a very dark anti-environment the evening because the military runs this area sort of secretly,

[1:53:02] Bob Dobbs: and they need their space stuff,

[1:53:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:53:05] Bob Dobbs: not bothered,

[1:53:06] Bob Dobbs: all their telescopes and that,

[1:53:08] Bob Dobbs: so they don't want any lighting from the people coming up the side of the mountain.

[1:53:12] Bob Dobbs: So we have a very dark situation here.

[1:53:16] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: very unusual.

[1:53:18] Bob Dobbs: Most suburbs don't have that,

[1:53:20] Bob Dobbs: but we have it.

[1:53:21] Bob Dobbs: So I walked right into a necessary fast from city lighting that you were just spelling out that we need.

[1:53:28] Bob Dobbs: That's what I got here.

[1:53:30] Bob Dobbs: It's very dark here in the evenings,

[1:53:32] Bob Dobbs: at night.

[1:53:34] Bob Dobbs: But that's because the military says,

[1:53:36] Bob Dobbs: you peasants,

[1:53:38] Bob Dobbs: we want the stars.

[1:53:39] Bob Dobbs: We're not going along with this 20th century technology.

[1:53:42] Bob Dobbs: Screw your multiple lighting systems.

[1:53:45] Bob Dobbs: You don't get one here.

[1:53:46] Bob Dobbs: You got the beach and sun and good weather.

[1:53:50] Bob Dobbs: But you can't have everything.

[1:53:51] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:53:52] Bob Dobbs: you're going to have stars whether you want them or not.

[1:53:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:53:56] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:53:57] Cameron McEwen: By the way,

[1:53:58] Cameron McEwen: that's my translation when you talk about turning off the radio or newspapers in Venezuela,

[1:54:04] Cameron McEwen: for example.

[1:54:06] Cameron McEwen: My translation of that into a practical recommendation would be in Canada,

[1:54:12] Cameron McEwen: every city,

[1:54:14] Cameron McEwen: town,

[1:54:15] Cameron McEwen: and village should have one day a...

[1:54:20] Cameron McEwen: month where lighting is not allowed.

[1:54:25] Cameron McEwen: And what would happen through that is that there would be new access to the Milky Way and to the stars,

[1:54:31] Cameron McEwen: and it would raise the question of where are we?

[1:54:37] Cameron McEwen: What should we be doing?

[1:54:38] Cameron McEwen: What is our orientation?

[1:54:41] Cameron McEwen: And so it would be a kind of media fast from lighting that would raise...

[1:54:48] Cameron McEwen: questions,

[1:54:49] Cameron McEwen: and through those questions,

[1:54:51] Cameron McEwen: we would have a possible solution.

[1:54:54] Cameron McEwen: The media fast itself would not be the solution,

[1:54:57] Cameron McEwen: but the question of orientation would be the first step.

[1:55:03] Cameron McEwen: towards a solution.

[1:55:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:55:06] Bob Dobbs: It's interesting that the society can't have an organized fasting like you suggest.

[1:55:13] Bob Dobbs: At least that one hasn't come across.

[1:55:16] Bob Dobbs: But the society has festivals and all kinds of activities that people use to get the retreat from the ongoing basic desperation of daily life,

[1:55:27] Bob Dobbs: the panic and whatever it is,

[1:55:28] Bob Dobbs: the anxiety that...

[1:55:30] Bob Dobbs: It doesn't allow anybody to get their society together to organize the sensible thing that you're suggesting.

[1:55:35] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:55:35] Bob Dobbs: it's interesting how you can't get that.

[1:55:37] Bob Dobbs: But people do get it through other media,

[1:55:40] Bob Dobbs: like for,

[1:55:41] Bob Dobbs: it used to be the church,

[1:55:42] Bob Dobbs: maybe still is,

[1:55:44] Bob Dobbs: but that's the natural ecology.

[1:55:46] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan recommended,

[1:55:48] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:55:49] Bob Dobbs: programming Venezuela,

[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: but the people said,

[1:55:52] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:55:52] Bob Dobbs: we're going to go to classrooms.

[1:55:54] Bob Dobbs: We're going to go to workshops instead of having it turned off.

[1:55:59] Bob Dobbs: That's their media ecology that they compensate it with.

[1:56:02] Cameron McEwen: That is a turning off.

[1:56:05] Cameron McEwen: It's a psychological decentralization of turning off.

[1:56:09] Cameron McEwen: So instead of turning a knob to turn off or on a media device,

[1:56:19] Cameron McEwen: going to a conference or going to a yoga session or going to a retreat,

[1:56:27] Cameron McEwen: That is a kind of...

[1:56:30] Cameron McEwen: a psychological decentralization of what turning off means.

[1:56:34] Cameron McEwen: It's a release from this anti-environment.

[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: needed for humans to begin to breathe in a new way.

[1:56:46] Cameron McEwen: Well said.

[1:56:47] Cameron McEwen: So then

[1:56:50] Cameron McEwen: I said you might...

[1:56:51] Bob Dobbs: You were at the point of computer technology.

[1:56:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:56:55] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan says you might find the environment a great service environment like electric light is,

[1:56:59] Cameron McEwen: municipal lighting systems.

[1:57:01] Cameron McEwen: And I say it's important to get that point.

[1:57:04] Cameron McEwen: Then,

[1:57:05] Cameron McEwen: I quote McLuhan,

[1:57:06] Cameron McEwen: computer technology can and doubtless will program entire environments to fulfill the social needs and sensory preferences of communities and nations.

[1:57:14] Cameron McEwen: Then I say nowadays over the last five years,

[1:57:17] Cameron McEwen: that would be 2015 to 2020 I guess,

[1:57:23] Cameron McEwen: nowadays over the last five years in the Web 2.0 phase people would say quote,

[1:57:28] Cameron McEwen: yeah that's happening now.

[1:57:31] Cameron McEwen: And then...

[1:57:32] Cameron McEwen: I say it's called surveillance capitalism,

[1:57:35] Cameron McEwen: with all the devices that people allow themselves to be programmed with.

[1:57:40] Cameron McEwen: They can't stop it.

[1:57:41] Cameron McEwen: Fifty years later,

[1:57:42] Cameron McEwen: they think McLuhan vision has arrived now.

[1:57:45] Cameron McEwen: But no,

[1:57:46] Cameron McEwen: it was actually back then,

[1:57:47] Cameron McEwen: and it's something perhaps worse now.

[1:57:50] Cameron McEwen: So yeah,

[1:57:50] Cameron McEwen: surveillance capitalism is a kind of media ecology,

[1:57:55] Cameron McEwen: the monitoring of people's,

[1:57:58] Cameron McEwen: that Facebook can do,

[1:57:59] Cameron McEwen: of everybody's activity.

[1:58:00] Bob Dobbs: So he saw that in the 19...

[1:58:03] Bob Dobbs: So his friend,

[1:58:05] Bob Dobbs: Muller-Thym,

[1:58:07] Bob Dobbs: was talking about how corporations need to know the tastes and preferences of their consumers in order to make the products that fit with that

[1:58:21] Bob Dobbs: consumer preference.

[1:58:23] Bob Dobbs: And so surveillance capitalism was already obvious in the

[1:58:29] Bob Dobbs: 1940s.

[1:58:30] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan then interpreted ads as functioning within anti-environment.

[1:58:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:58:38] Cameron McEwen: And he was blessed by meeting people like Muller-Thym.

[1:58:42] Cameron McEwen: He was lucky that way.

[1:58:43] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:58:45] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:58:46] Cameron McEwen: I end by saying the word content is italicized in the actual Playboy interview.

[1:58:52] Cameron McEwen: And I noticed that years later,

[1:58:54] Cameron McEwen: no one else has ever pointed that out.

[1:58:56] Cameron McEwen: I asked.

[1:58:57] Cameron McEwen: Quick question.

[1:58:58] Cameron McEwen: Why is content italicized?

[1:59:01] Cameron McEwen: That means the form and the message came together.

[1:59:05] Cameron McEwen: Content was now the medium.

[1:59:07] Cameron McEwen: The content of that programming is up to us.

[1:59:10] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:59:10] Cameron McEwen: that's a question.

[1:59:11] Cameron McEwen: The content of that programming is up to us?

[1:59:14] Bob Dobbs: Question mark,

[1:59:15] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:59:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:59:16] Cameron McEwen: Well stated,

[1:59:17] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:59:21] Cameron McEwen: So that could bring us to 101.

[1:59:25] Cameron McEwen: And another...

[1:59:27] Cameron McEwen: Just looking at it,

[1:59:28] Cameron McEwen: he says in the middle of the next quote,

[1:59:30] Cameron McEwen: Wright cartoons.

[1:59:31] Cameron McEwen: So we're going to handle that shift by McLuhan next time.

[1:59:37] Bob Dobbs: Good.

[1:59:39] Cameron McEwen: So very good discussion and fun bringing in the

[1:59:41] Cameron McEwen: Fittings Wake people as they wrestle,

[1:59:45] Cameron McEwen: wrestle with the book without McLuhan help,

[1:59:48] Cameron McEwen: unless they read my posts.

[1:59:52] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:59:53] Cameron McEwen: Thanks a lot,

[1:59:53] Cameron McEwen: Ewen Cameron.

[1:59:54] Cameron McEwen: We'll talk soon.

[1:59:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:59:55] Bob Dobbs: Bob.

[1:59:56] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:59:56] Bob Dobbs: Thanks.

[1:59:56] Bob Dobbs: Bye-bye.

[1:59:57] Cameron McEwen: Bye.